Class. 
 
 Book. 
 
 COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT 
 

 George Washingt< 
 
 Reproduced by perm 
 
 rom the painting by Rembrandt 
 
 Klackner, N.V. Copyright 
 
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 THE AMERICAN IMMORTALS 
 
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 *G.TESS, 
 
 Two Cu^u Neocived 
 
 JAN 
 
 27 1902 
 
 COFVRKWT ENTRY 
 
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 ii-ilti 
 
 OLASS 0- XXo. No. 
 
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 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 Che fcnlchevbocfcec pues, «cw i'ort 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 I.— INTRODUCTORY 
 II.— THE MEN OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
 PAGE 
 
 GEORGE WASHINGTON 3 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 23 
 
 * JOHN ADAMS 43 
 
 THOMAS JEFFERSON t>6 
 
 III.— THE STATESMEN 
 
 DANIEL WEBSTER 99 
 
 HENRY CLAY 125 
 
 IV.— THE JURISTS 
 
 JOHN MARSHALL 175 
 
 JOSEPH STORY 186 
 
 JAMES KENT 192 
 
 V.— THE MEN OF THE CIVIL WAR 
 
 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 199 
 
 ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT 221 
 
 ROBERT EDWARD LEE 247 
 
 DAVID GLASGOW FARRAGUT . . . '. . .270 
 
 VI.— THE MEN OF LETTERS 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING 287 
 
 NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 303 
 
 HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW . . . .317 
 RALPH WALDO EMERSON 324 
 
iv Gcntents 
 
 VII.— THE PREACHERS 
 
 JONATHAN EDWARDS 337 
 
 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNINC ■ -.= 
 
 HENRY WARD BEECHER -.;-, 
 
 VIII.— THE PHILANTHROPISTS AND EDUCATORS 
 
 GEORGE PEABODY 507 
 
 PETER COOPER 374 
 
 HORACE MANN 380 
 
 IX.— THE INVENTORS 
 
 ROBERT FULTON 387 
 
 SAMUEL FINLAY BREESE MORSE 392 
 
 ELI WHITNEY 400 
 
 X.— THE ARTISTS AND NATURALISTS 
 
 GILBERT CHARLES STUART 400 
 
 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 413 
 
 ASA GRAY 418 
 
 INDEX 423 
 
 
ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 George Washington Frontispiece 
 
 From the painting by Rembrandt Peale. Reproduced by permission of 
 C. Klackner, N. Y. Copyright, 1S04. 
 
 Benjamin Franklin 24 
 
 From the painting by Duplessis. Reproduced by permission of Foster 
 Bros., Boston. 
 
 John Adams 44 
 
 Thomas Jefferson 66 
 
 From the painting by Gilbert Charles Stuart. 
 
 Daniel Webster 10O 
 
 From an etching by F. Johnson. 
 
 Henry Clay I2 6 
 
 From a lithograph. 
 
 John Marshall ,^6 
 
 From the painting by Henry Inman. 
 
 Joseph Story 186 
 
 From an etching by Max Rosenthal. 
 
 James Kent ,02 
 
 From the painting by F. R. Spencer. 
 
 Abraham Lincoln 200 
 
 From a drawing from life by F. B. Carpenter. 
 
vi Illustrations 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Ulysses Simpson Grant 222 
 
 From a photograph by W. Kurtz, N. Y. 
 
 Robert Edward Lee 248 
 
 From a photograph. 
 
 David Glasgow Farragut 270 
 
 From a steel engraving. 
 
 Washington Irving 288 
 
 Etched by Jacques Reich. From the painting by C. R. Leslie, R.A. 
 
 Nathaniel Hawthorne 304 
 
 From the painting by A. E. Smith. Reproduced by permission of Foster 
 Bros., Boston. 
 
 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 318 
 
 From the painting by G. P. A. Healy. Reproduced by permission of 
 Foster Bros., Boston. 
 
 Ralph Waldo Emerson 324 
 
 From the painting by A. E. Smith. Reproduced by permission of Foster 
 Bros., Boston. 
 
 Jonathan Edwards 338 
 
 From a steel engraving. 
 
 William Ellery Channing 35° 
 
 From a lithograph. 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher 356 
 
 From a photograph by Sarony, N. Y. 
 
 George Peabody .368 
 
 From a steel engraving. 
 
 Peter Cooper 374 
 
 From a steel engraving. 
 
 Horace Mann 380 
 
 Redrawn from a steel engraving. 
 
11 [lustrations vii 
 
 Robert Fulton 388 
 
 From the painting by Benjamin West, P.R.A. 
 
 Samuel Finley Breese Morse 392 
 
 From the painting by Alonzo Chappel. 
 
 Eli Whitney 400 
 
 From the painting by C. B. King. 
 
 Gilbert Charles Stuart 4 1 © 
 
 From a miniature by Sarah Goodrich. 
 
 John James Audubon 4 '4 
 
 From the painting by Henry Inman. 
 
 Asa Gray 4 lS 
 
 From the bust by St. Gaudens in the Botanical Garden, Cambridge. 
 
INTRODUCTORY 
 
 THE HALL OF FAME AND THE SELECTIONS MADE 
 
 IT is the purpose of this book to present critical 
 estimates of the men elected to the New York 
 University's Hall of Fame, with so much of 
 biography in each case as is necessary to a due 
 comprehension of the subjects. It has been the au- 
 thor's endeavor to give to the reader an impartial and 
 intelligent account of the character, achievements, and 
 history of each of the twenty-nine men who have 
 been deemed worthy of place in this pantheon, and 
 also to make them the subjects of some essays which 
 the public may wish to read. The subjects, at any 
 rate, are attractively worthy. The occasion of their 
 admission to the Hall of Fame gives an opportunity to 
 consider them anew. 
 
 These estimates have been written, the author per- 
 suades himself, in the broadest spirit of appreciation, 
 but without flinching from adverse criticism where ad- 
 verse criticism has seemed to him to be justified. His 
 sole aim has been to get at the truth and tell it. 
 
x flntrocmctorp 
 
 In his official book, The Hall of Fame (G. P. Put- 
 nam's Sons), Chancellor MacCracken has fully explained 
 the origin and purpose of this unique University ad- 
 junct. A more succinct account is all that is needed 
 as an introduction to the present work. 
 
 The Hall of Fame is a very noble architectural 
 structure on the grounds of the New York University, 
 with commanding views that can scarcely be matched 
 anywhere for their beauty or their nobility. In its 
 design and proportions, it is quite unique in American 
 architecture. It is the gift of an anonymous generos- 
 ity, and its purpose is to stimulate patriotism and 
 high endeavor by commemorating those virtues in per- 
 sons who have passed away, and by collecting in a 
 museum busts, portraits, and mementos of these 
 our great. 
 
 Under the terms of the gift, and under the rules 
 adopted by the Senate of the University for the ad- 
 ministration of the trust, no name is to be admitted 
 to inscription in the Hall of Fame except those of 
 men or women born within the present territorial 
 limits of the United States ; no name except that of 
 one who has been ten years dead ; and no name 
 which has not been selected by a majority of the 
 distinguished jury impanelled to pass upon nomina- 
 tions, and afterwards approved by the Senate of the 
 University. Indeed, it is not possible to speak too 
 highly of the care taken by the generous giver of the 
 Hall of Fame, and by the Senate of the University, to 
 prevent all mistakes of enthusiasm or of prejudice. 
 
flntrccmcton? xi 
 
 The jury which made the selections consists of 
 one hundred men and women, each eminent in attain- 
 ments and position, and together they represent a 
 varied activity. To them, by popular nomination and 
 otherwise, were submitted two hundred names. 
 Each member of the jury was privileged to make fur- 
 ther nominations at will, and in that way thirty-four 
 additional names were presented for consideration. 
 From this list of two hundred and thirty-four names 
 each member of the jury was privileged to vote for 
 fifty, the number of canonizations that the conditions 
 allowed in the election of iqoo. 
 
 It was wisely decreed by the Senate of the Univer- 
 sity that no name should be accepted without at least 
 fifty-one votes, a majority of the entire jury, whether 
 all the jury should vote or not. As a result, only twen- 
 ty-nine men were in fact elected to the Hall of Fame, 
 and a supplementary election in 1Q02 will be necessary 
 to complete the list of fifty assigned to iqoo. Afterthat, 
 elections will occur every five years during this century. 
 
 There has naturally been a good deal of criticism, 
 in the newspapers and elsewhere, of the results of the 
 election. That criticism, however, has not taken the 
 form of censure upon any of the selections made. It 
 has concerned itself rather with the omissions. 
 
 There is wonder, for example, that while Asa Gray 
 was admitted, as the great botanist that he was, by 
 fifty-one votes, his mentor and master, John Torrey, 
 to whom he always bowed his head in reverence, had 
 but a single vote. Apparently, the members of the 
 
xii Introductory 
 
 jury were imperfectly informed as to the relative dis- 
 tinction of American botanists. 
 
 Wonder has been expressed, also, that while Gilbert 
 Stuart was elected to a place by ^2 votes, and while 
 Copley had }}, Hiram Powers 36, William M. Hunt 
 13, and Crawford 0, Benjamin West was not even 
 nominated for consideration. Whatever judgments 
 the art critics of to-day may form as to the merits of 
 West's work, he is, without question, the most 
 famous of American artists, in the sense at least of 
 being- ranked first by the greatest number of people. 
 In his own time, he was one of the most famous 
 artists of any country. It was he who first brought 
 common sense to bear upon modern historical paint- 
 ing. He first insisted upon clothing modern historical 
 characters in the costumes of their own time and 
 country and position, instead of tricking them out in 
 classical garb or mediaeval garniture of person. He 
 made this daring innovation in behalf of truth, in 
 defiance of Sir Joshua Reynolds's protest, but with 
 that great master's full approbation after West had 
 demonstrated the artistic practicability of such a sub- 
 stitution of truth for tradition. West created a new 
 epoch in art. He rose to such eminence that, despite 
 his American birth, the British Royal Academy repeat- 
 edly elected him to be its President, at a time when 
 everything American was anathema maranatha in 
 England. Surely Benjamin West ought to have a 
 place in the Hall of Fame. Perhaps the election of 
 [902 will repair this extraordinary oversight. 
 
•flntrctouctorv? xiii 
 
 Again, it is difficult to understand why Elias Howe, 
 the inventor of the sewing-machine, was not accorded 
 a place by the side of Eli Whitney, the inventor of 
 the cotton-gin. To these two men, in about equal 
 degree, the world owes it that in our time the poorest 
 of men and women may be comfortably clad. Eli 
 Whitney's invention gave mankind the cheapest raw 
 material of clothing that has been known "since ever 
 the foundations of the world were laid." Elias Howe's 
 invention enormously cheapened the process of con- 
 verting this and all other raw materials of clothing into 
 actual garments for the warming of human backs. In- 
 cidentally, too, Howe's invention of the sewing-ma- 
 chine enormously increased the employment and the 
 earnings of all sewing-women and of all others who 
 are engaged in the manufacture of clothing, while 
 Whitney's gave a new lease of life to human slavery. 
 If one were asked which of these two inventors did 
 most for humanity, it would be difficult to give an 
 answer. But surely if one of them deserves a place 
 in our pantheon the other does. 
 
 There has been objection made in some of the 
 newspapers to the admission of Fulton instead of Fitch 
 as the originator of the steamboat, and of Morse 
 instead of Henry as the inventor of the telegraph. 
 These questions are carefully examined in this volume, 
 in the essays that relate to their subjects. It is enough 
 to say here, that while Fitch did build and navigate 
 a steamboat, as some others did before Fulton launched 
 the Clermont, their experiments were so far from. 
 
xiv flntrobuctorp 
 
 successful that they were abandoned, while Fulton 
 carried his to a success of which we hear the applause 
 every time a steamer blows its whistle. It was Fulton 
 who made steam navigation a fact, with all the won- 
 derful consequences of good that have followed. 
 
 In the same way, while Joseph Henry did indeed 
 invent a telegraph and send signals by it, in anticipa- 
 tion of Morse's efforts, he did not know what to do 
 with his discoveries. His experiments were academic, 
 not practical ; so were his results. He could ring bells 
 at a distance by electrical impulse. He first discovered 
 how to send that impulse over long intervening spaces. 
 But the bells meant next to nothing, and Henry never 
 found out how to send accurate written messages over 
 a wire, how to make telegraphy minister to that close 
 and easy and quick intercommunication among men 
 which is the chief condition of civilization and human 
 progress. It was Morse who did this. It was he who 
 gave us the electro-magnetic telegraph. A later elec- 
 tion will undoubtedly inscribe Joseph Henry's name 
 upon a well-deserved tablet in the Hall of Fame. But 
 there is no just ground of criticism in the fact that the 
 judges selected Morse first as the inventor of practical, 
 working, and widely beneficent telegraphy. 
 
 In every such controversy as these two concerning 
 the steamboat and the telegraph, the thoughtful man is 
 reminded of the controversy concerning the discover)' 
 of America by the Norsemen, the Irish, and the Welsh. 
 If any of those people discovered this continent, they 
 did not know what they had found, and they care- 
 
■flntrofcuicton? xv 
 
 lessly lost it again ; no accidental, wind-governed dis- 
 coveries of theirs in any conceivable way impaired the 
 value or lessened the credit of Columbus's deliberately 
 planned and painfully executed work. It was not a 
 mythical Lief the Lucky or Eric the Red who gave the 
 Americas to civilization and made the greatest of all 
 liberty-loving nations possible, but the Genoese sailor, 
 Christopher Columbus. 
 
 Still another fact, in connection with the selection 
 made, deserves mention. The poll is an absolutely 
 free one, without distinction as to sex. There were 
 three women on the jury of selection, and women 
 equally with men, throughout the country, were 
 privileged to make nominations. Yet no woman was 
 chosen: only eight women were voted for at all, 
 and the highest vote given to any one of them was 
 20 for Mary Lyon, against 14 for Charlotte Cushman, 
 11 for Martha Washington, 7 for Maria Mitchell, 12 
 for Dorothea L. Dix, 1 1 for Lucretia Mott, 4 for 
 Emma Willard, and 3 for Helen Hunt. Harriet Beecher 
 Stowe, of course, had not been long enough dead 
 to permit the inclusion of her name in the list of 
 nominations. Otherwise the inscription of her name 
 in the "Hall of Fame" would have been quite a 
 matter of course, as it will be when the prescribed 
 ten years after death shall have elapsed. For there 
 can be no question in any instructed mind that Mrs. 
 Stowe's genius and work have exercised a larger 
 influence upon the thought of the American people 
 and upon the destinies of the Republic than have 
 
xvi fntroouctorp 
 
 those of any other woman who has lived and 
 worked. 
 
 Another fact that has excited remark is that no 
 name has been selected from the list of great physi- 
 cians and surgeons who have been celebrated in the 
 land. The highest vote given to any man in this 
 class was 42 for Benjamin Rush. Valentine Mott had 
 18 votes, and I. Marion Sims 28. Dr. Gross, the father 
 of American surgery, whose writings on that subject 
 are recognized as authoritative in the hospitals and 
 medical schools of every enlightened country, was 
 not even suggested to the jury or by any of its 
 members. Was this because there is not one man 
 on the jury who is eminent in medicine or surgery or 
 even well informed as to achievements in that depart- 
 ment ? 
 
 In literature, personal taste plays so large a part 
 in the formation of opinion that no selection could 
 possibly have been made, perhaps, which would not 
 have encountered much astonished criticism Yet, 
 as there were fifty names to be chosen and only 
 twenty-nine were in fact selected, and as the test 
 was intended to be fame, rather than any critical 
 judgment o\ the individual jurors as to merit, many 
 have wondered that while Longfellow had 8^ votes, 
 William Cullen Bryant received but 40, Edgar Allan 
 Poe only 38, John Lothrop Motley 41, James Feni- 
 more Cooper 30, John Howard Payne 4, and Thoreau 
 a beggarly 3. 
 
 In the class of educators, also, the result of the 
 
•flntrotmcton? xvii 
 
 voting has awakened some surprise. The choice of 
 Horace Mann for a place in the Hall of Fame was quite 
 properly a matter of course. The only wonder is that 
 he did not receive the full 97 votes cast instead of the 
 67 actually given to him. But there is a good deal 
 of popular wonder that Dr. Gallaudet's lifelong and 
 extraordinary service in the education of the blind — 
 the most notable service of that kind that has been 
 rendered by anybody anywhere since the nineteenth 
 century dawned— did not command for him more than 
 14 votes in his class ; that Mark Hopkins had but 48, 
 Francis Wayland 24, Theodore D. Woolsey 21, and 
 Lindley Murray 7, while several other eminent edu- 
 cators were not nominated at all. 
 
 The purpose of this analysis of the vote is not one 
 of criticism, but of exposition. Its aim is to show 
 simply the points at which criticism, in the public 
 prints and elsewhere, has found fault. But fault is 
 found exclusively with omissions, and later elections 
 will almost certainly repair these errors in so far as 
 they are found to be really errors. With the single 
 exception that one contentious and intemperately 
 partisan newspaper has condemned the admission of 
 General Robert E. Lee to the pantheon, there has 
 been nowhere a suggestion that any of those chosen is 
 unworthy of the honor accorded to him. The twenty- 
 one names to be chosen next year will pretty certainly 
 include most, if not all, of those who really ought to 
 have been chosen in iqoo. And the quinquennial 
 elections that are to occur later will doubtless fill up 
 
xviii flntroouctcup 
 
 the roll to the reasonable satisfaction of every well- 
 balanced mind. 
 
 Every reader of these essays will probably find 
 something in them with which to disagree. 1 should 
 be sorry if it were to fall out otherwise. For that 
 would mean that my readers are unthinking people, 
 while in all that I have here written my appeal has 
 been made to people who think. 
 
 One purpose of this book is to stimulate a just 
 appreciation of the men who have made our nations 
 history what it is in every department of human en- 
 deavor. If in any degree the essays that follow ac- 
 complish that patriotic purpose, the author will rest 
 satisfied with his work. 
 
 -f&r 
 
THE MEN OF THE REVOLUTION 
 
GEORGE WASHINGTON 
 
 WHEN the Senate of the University of the 
 City of New York empanelled a jury of 
 nearly one hundred distinguished men, 
 representing in themselves and their work most of that 
 which is best in current American endeavor and 
 achievement, and asked them to select the fifty greatest 
 Americans of the past for a species of canonization in 
 the " Hall of Fame," they were all of one mind as to a 
 single name with which to head their lists. George 
 Washington alone had the suffrage of every member 
 of the distinguished jury. Concerning the supremacy 
 of his title to fame, there was no question in any mind, 
 no hesitation in any judgment. 
 
 It is quite safe to say that the verdict would have 
 been precisely the same if any other hundred Ameri- 
 cans of enlightened mind had constituted the jury. 
 Nay, more ; if any hundred distinguished foreigners, 
 in no close way in touch with our American life, had 
 been asked to select our fifty greatest men, it is be- 
 yond doubt or question that every one of them would 
 have named George Washington first, no matter what 
 
4 Z\k HDcn of tbc "Revolution 
 
 differences of opinion they might have manifested 
 concerning the rest of the list. It is even truer to-day 
 than it was when the President of Congress, in 1783, 
 said to Washington : "You retire from the theatre o\ 
 action with the blessings o( your fellow-citizens ; but 
 the glory o( your virtues will not terminate with your 
 military command. It will continue to animate the 
 remotest ages." 
 
 All this is instructively significant and indicative. It 
 aptly suggests not only the universality o\ Washing- 
 ton's fame, but also the unquestioned and unquestion- 
 able character of the foundations upon which that 
 fame securely rests. 
 
 Early in the nineteenth century, and while the pas- 
 sions of two American wars still rankled in British 
 breasts. Lord Byron touched one of the keys to this 
 universal, all-comprehending fame when he wrote : 
 
 "George Washington had thanks and naught beside, 
 Except the all-cloudless glory which few men's is 
 To free his country.'' 
 
 There was the keynote— self-sacrifice ! The will- 
 ing surrender o\ personal advantage, personal ambi- 
 tion, personal ease, for the good of others, and for the 
 country's salvation, was the central fact o\ George 
 Washington's character and career, and it is the rock 
 basis o\ his fame as it is the foundation oi all true 
 greatness and o\ even' lovable religion that has at any 
 period ot the world's history contributed to the up- 
 lifting of mankind. If our American admiration of 
 
(Beorcje Masbington 5 
 
 Washington partakes somewhat of the religious in its 
 character, it does so with just reason. 
 
 With every tempting opportunity for self-seeking, 
 with every reward before his eyes that ambition could 
 covet, George Washington devoted his whole life to 
 the patient and toilsome and often severely painful 
 service of his country, asking nothing in the way of 
 compensation, and treating the great honors that were 
 thrust upon him by his countrymen merely as new 
 calls of duty, new occasions for devotion, new oppor- 
 tunities to render service in behalf of the public weal. 
 
 When he took command of his country's armies, 
 and with meagre, uncertain, and often untrustworthy 
 means, undertook the seemingly hopeless task of 
 throwing off the British yoke, his distrust of himself 
 was grandly genuine, and his consecration to his coun- 
 try's cause devoutly complete. His first concern was 
 for duty, and to that he gave all of love and devotion 
 of which his great nature was capable. He rejected 
 every suggestion of reward. In the very act of ac- 
 cepting his commission, and with it a duty more oner- 
 ous than any other that ever fell to an American, he 
 refused in advance the pay that Congress offered him, 
 and said to that body that he would accept nothing 
 whatever for his services,— that he would take no dollar 
 of the people's money as pay. He would permit Con- 
 gress to do nothing more in a financial way than repay 
 his actual expenditures incurred in the conduct of his 
 arduous work ; and even for these expenditures — 
 amounting to more than fourteen thousand pounds— 
 
6 £bc fIDen of tbc devolution 
 
 he made no demand until his seven-years' service was 
 ended and his great work completely done. 
 
 When the seven years of strenuous war were over, 
 and he sought rest in that country life which he had 
 always longed to lead, his repose was of brief dura- 
 tion. He was again called into the service of his coun- 
 try, and again he rendered that service without pay, 
 as president of that matchless body of nation-builders 
 who framed the Constitution of these United States. 
 He even bore his own expenses during the whole time 
 of that splendid service, without which it is doubtful 
 that we should ever have had a constitution or a repub- 
 lic worthy of a place in history. 
 
 Not only was his country ready to reward him for 
 services that were felt to be of inestimable value, but 
 the separate parts of it, the individual States, pressed 
 upon him offers of compensation which he might hon- 
 orably have accepted. Thus, upon his first retirement 
 to Mount Vernon, after surrendering his commission, it 
 was foreseen that he must exercise a great hospitality 
 there. It was foreseen that his countrymen would 
 crowd upon him as guests eager to do him honor, but 
 incidentally "eating him out of house and home." 
 In this situation the Supreme Council of Pennsylvania 
 instructed the delegates of that State in Congress to 
 call attention to the threatened infliction and to sug- 
 gest that the nation should in some way take from 
 Washington's shoulders this enormous burden, the 
 nation itself assuming it by means of some national 
 award. All this was done officially, and when the 
 
(Bcorac Masbinoton 7 
 
 official documents were laid before Washington he 
 was busily engaged in an effort to adjust his own 
 affairs so as to "make both ends meet." During his 
 long absence in the service of the country his estates 
 had become involved in many ways, and on his return 
 he found more than a little difficult)- in providing ways 
 and means for the discharge of his obligations. He 
 was, in fact, financially embarrassed. Yet he rejected 
 the offered intervention in his favor, as Irving says, 
 "most gratefully and respectfully," " jealously main- 
 taining the satisfaction of having served his country 
 at the sacrifice of his private interests." 
 
 As for the question of entertainment, he solved 
 that in a truly democratic way. To a friend he wrote : 
 "My manner of living is plain, and 1 do not mean to 
 be put out of it. A glass of wine and a bit of mutton 
 are always ready for any caller, and such as will 
 be content to partake of them are always welcome. 
 Those who expect more will be disappointed." 
 
 Still more greatly was he embarrassed in [785, w hen 
 his native State, Virginia, sought to reward him for 
 another and more special service. He had devised a 
 scheme of canal construction which promised to render 
 Virginia the great commercial State that New York is. 
 and the scheme had been adopted. It was fell by 
 the Legislature and people of the State that the man 
 who had conceived this splendid enterprise should 
 have a share in the profits of it. By unanimous vote 
 of the Assembly of Virginia, fifty shares of stock in 
 the Potomac Company and one hundred shares in 
 
8 Cbc m>cn of tbc devolution 
 
 the lames River Company were appropriated for 
 Washington's benefit. Irving tells us of his embar- 
 rassment in presence of this offer in the following 
 words: "To decline so noble and unequivocal a 
 testimonial of the good opinion and good will of his 
 countrymen might be construed into disrespect, yet he 
 wished to be perfectly free to exercise his judgment 
 and express his opinion in the matter without being 
 liable to the least suspicion of interested motive." He 
 solved the difficulty by declining to accept the shares 
 for his own personal benefit, while agreeing to accept 
 them for devotion to a great public and educational 
 use which he had long cherished as a hope. He asked 
 the Legislature, instead of giving this property to him, 
 to devote it to the establishment of institutions of 
 learning planned by himself, as a means of solidifying 
 the country, eradicating sectional prejudices, and breed- 
 ing a great race of men devoted broadly to the up- 
 building of the Republic. 
 
 And once again, when he had completed his service 
 as President of the Constitutional Convention, and had 
 retired to Mount Vernon to seek that rest and enjoy- 
 ment in country life for which from his youth up he 
 had longed, his countrymen demanded a still further 
 service of him. Reluctantly, and with much misgiv- 
 ing as to his qualification for affairs of state, he con- 
 sented at their call to serve as the first President of 
 the United States, and to conduct the affairs of the 
 new Republic in that first and formative period, on 
 the direction of which the entire future of the nation 
 
©coroe TKHaebinflton 9 
 
 depended. He thus again relinquished his well-earned 
 repose and gave up the care of personal affairs that 
 sorely needed his supervision, to take weary burdens 
 upon his tired soul. Yet his first official act as Presi- 
 dent was to ask Congress to make no appropriation 
 for a salary for himself. He said to the House of 
 Representatives in his Inaugural Address : 
 
 "When I was first honored with a call into the service of my 
 country, then on the eve of an arduous struggle for its liberties, 
 the light in which 1 contemplated my duty required that 1 should 
 renounce every pecuniary compensation. From this resolution 
 1 have in no instance departed. And being still under the im- 
 pressions which produced it, 1 must decline, as inapplicable to 
 myself, any share in the personal emoluments which may be 
 indispensably included in a permanent provision for the executive 
 department ; and must accordingly pray that the pecuniary esti- 
 mates for the station in which I am placed may, during my con- 
 tinuance in it, be limited to such actual expenditures as the public 
 good may be thought to require." 
 
 These acts of generous self-sacrifice in devotion to 
 the public service were indicative of the lofty patriotism 
 that inspired Washington's soul and guided his life. 
 Yet they do not constitute the marrow of the matter. 
 They are not in themselves the grounds upon which 
 all mankind to-day stand ready to vote him into a su- 
 preme place in any Hall of Fame that may be estab- 
 lished anywhere upon earth. Behind and beneath and 
 above and beyond all of these acts of patriotic self-sac- 
 rifice was the wonderful character that gave them birth 
 -a character which made the man great whether he 
 willed to be great or not ; a character which exaltedly 
 
io £bc HDcn of tbe "Revolution 
 
 inspired all his acts in every circumstance of life ; a 
 character which determined all his campaign plans and 
 dictated the conduct of all his battles, the tenor of all 
 his state papers, his attitude toward every man and 
 every policy that had anything to do with the country's 
 fortune or future. 
 
 To define such a character or to describe it must be the 
 despair of any writer who essays the task. To suggest 
 its salient points is perhaps less difficult. From the 
 day of his birth to the day of his death it was always 
 the resolute purpose of George Washington to do his 
 full duty as God gave it to him to see his duty, with- 
 out any regard whatsoever to personal consequences. 
 Even that instinctive concern for his own credit with 
 his countrymen, which troubles every public man 
 upon occasion, did not restrain him from giving high 
 command to Horatio Gates when the giving of such 
 command seemed likely to promote the public inter- 
 ests, although Gates had been, within Washington's 
 perfect knowledge, a prime mover in the Conway 
 cabal for Washington's destruction. He believed it to 
 be for the public interest to give this command to 
 Gates, and he put aside every other impulse in that 
 behalf. And when Gates disastrously failed before 
 Camden, and was meditating suicide as the only way 
 out of his military disgrace, it was Washington who 
 wrote him a letter over which he wept like a child 
 or a woman, because of its generosity and its tender, 
 brotherly sympathy. Perhaps no other man who ever 
 exercised military command would have been capable 
 
(Scoroe Washington n 
 
 of the great and unflinching generosity that Washington 
 
 displayed in this case. 
 
 Again, after General Charles Lee had played Wash- 
 ington false, and, — as later-discovered documents 
 have revealed, though Washington did not know that 
 fact,— had deliberately negotiated with the enemy, for 
 a treachery as infamous as Arnold's, Washington sought 
 to soften to that personal enemy and mercenary traitor 
 the wounds inflicted through his own agency in the 
 peremptory exercise of duty. Still again, when Bene- 
 dict Arnold had secured asylum in New York after his 
 treason, and Washington sent Sergeant Champ on a 
 perilous expedition for his recapture, the great fatherly 
 chieftain had such regard for Arnold's previous and 
 superb services that he gave peremptory orders that in 
 no case was the traitor to be physically harmed ; that 
 rather than execute irregularly upon him that sentence 
 of death which all mankind have always been agreed 
 in assigning to the Judas Iscariot of the Revolution as 
 his well-earned deserts, Sergeant Champ should him- 
 self suffer any hardship and accept any fate that might 
 befall him. 
 
 And so in brief throughout. It was Washington's 
 exalted character rather than the particular deeds 
 through which that character manifested itself— the 
 inspirations of his lofty soul rather than the mere 
 achievements of his hand, though these were very 
 great— that won for him his supreme place, not only 
 in the regard of his countrymen but equally in the 
 estimation of all enlightened men throughout this 
 
.2 Che Men of tbe devolution 
 
 earth of ours. He was great because he was great, and 
 not merely because he had the good fortune to achieve 
 great things. 
 
 This distinction cannot be too strongly emphasized 
 in any just estimate of Washington's character and 
 career. In every act and circumstance of his life, 
 whether as son or husband or adopting father ; 
 whether as subordinate executing the will of another, 
 or as commander demanding obedience at the hands of 
 others ; whether in commending and rewarding merit 
 where he found it, or in censuring neglect of duty ; 
 whether in apportioning blame among the blamewor- 
 thy, or taking it upon himself as a just meed — in all 
 that he did or left undone, in all that he said or left 
 unsaid, Washington's grandly rounded character was 
 the controlling influence, the dominating force, the in- 
 spiration of his every act, the final answer to all ques- 
 tions concerning him. 
 
 It is that chiefly which so powerfully appeals to the 
 minds and hearts of men in contemplating him as a 
 figure in history. Other soldiers have planned and 
 fought more brilliant campaigns than any that Wash- 
 ington conceived— unless we exceptthetrulyNapoleonic 
 operation that he marked out and carried to completion 
 for the destruction of Cornwallis and the practical end 
 of the British power in America. Other statesmen, 
 perhaps, have had a larger and firmer grasp than he upon 
 the policies that must be pursued by great nations in the 
 conduct of their affairs, — though that is doubtful,— but 
 no man in all history ever brought to bear upon prob- 
 
(Beorge Masbinoton 13 
 
 lems of generalship, or of statecraft, or of personal con- 
 duct, so lofty a purpose, so self-sacrificing a patriotism, 
 so superb a common sense, or so unflinching a deter- 
 mination to do at every step the duty that lay before 
 him without concern for consequences. As soldier, 
 statesman, patriot, and man, he was by innate character 
 the most perfect type of what God may be supposed 
 to have intended that a man should be, that has ever 
 yet been born upon this earth. And his life was the 
 inescapable corollary of his character. 
 
 Unlike some other heroes of popular American ado- 
 ration, Washington was born to high social place and to 
 honorable name. There was nothing in his origin to 
 serve as a foil to his achievements, nothing of diat 
 dramatic contrast in his life's story which so greatly 
 emphasizes the things done and attained by Lincoln, 
 Franklin, and some others. Washington was born to 
 an inheritance of the best. When he came into beinu\ 
 on February 22, 1712, the country was still completely 
 in a thraldom of aristocratic tradition, and George 
 Washington was born an aristocrat of aristocrats. His 
 family was peculiarly well descended and well con- 
 nected. It was also well-to-do, measured by the 
 standard of the time and country. The primrose path 
 of idle and luxurious indulgence lay plain and open be- 
 fore him had he chosen to walk in it. Perhaps it is 
 quite as great proof of his high quality of mind and 
 character that he chose instead the thorny path of 
 public service, the arduous life which he in fact led, as 
 it is to the credit of others that, in spite of early 
 
14 Gbc flDcn of the "Revolution 
 
 disadvantages, they raised themselves to eminence and 
 honor. Surely he whose ambitions seem to be satisfied 
 in advance by birth and early circumstance, but who 
 puts aside personal ease and converts his inherited 
 advantages into opportunities for strenuous, self-sacri- 
 ficing public service, is deserving of quite all the honor 
 we give to him who, born to poverty and obscurity, 
 refuses to rest content with his birthright, and advances 
 his own personal fortunes by similar devotion to high 
 aims. It is as greatly to the credit of George Wash- 
 ington that he refused to live the easy, well-fed life of 
 an aristocratic Virginia planter, and chose instead to do 
 a strong man's share in the arduous work of his time, 
 as it is to the credit of Lincoln or Franklin or any other 
 that he resolutely raised himself out of that low estate 
 in which he was born. In the one case equally with 
 the other, the honor lies in the fact that the man con- 
 cerned chose the higher life of strenuous and often 
 painful endeavor instead of resting content, as the 
 catechism puts it, " in that state of life to which it had 
 pleased God to call him." 
 
 In Washington's case, the temptation to rest con- 
 tent was peculiarly great. A sufficient fortune, which 
 needed only his attention to keep it sufficient, was his 
 from the beginning. A home climate, as nearly perfect 
 as any that exists on earth, the peculiarly pleasurable 
 activity of that planter's life for which he always 
 longed, and which he always reluctantly surrendered 
 at the call of duty, the friendship of all about him who 
 were well placed, including many of high birth and 
 
6cor$c Masbinoton 15 
 
 even of title— everything, in short, that could tempt a 
 man of his physical, mental, and moral nature to a 
 self-indulgent life of dignified and honored ease pre- 
 sented itself to his mind in fullest force. His position 
 in the community in which he lived was of the highest. 
 His friends were the honored ones of earth in that time 
 and country. All that there was of social pleasure was 
 freely his to enjoy at will. All of honor that his neigh- 
 bors or the authorities of his province could bestow 
 upon any man was at his command. The planter life 
 itself was peculiarly inviting to a man of his robust 
 nature. It involved only so much of work as an active 
 man of robust physique craves as a delight. It offered 
 all of pleasure that a reasonable mind could desire— the 
 chase, the magistracy, the lordship over broad acres, 
 the best of social intercourse, that leisure which lends 
 itself to culture, the opportunity for travel, the intimate 
 friendship of those best worth knowing within his 
 horizon — everything, in fact, that could tempt the mind 
 to content and the soul to repose. 
 
 Yet at no time in his life did George Washington 
 long remain in his little kingdom of Mount Vernon to 
 enjoy these inherited opportunities of personal satis- 
 faction. From his youth to the end of his life his years 
 were given to hard work in distant fields, with only 
 now and then a brief period of repose, a slender oppor- 
 tunity to look after his personal affairs— and all without 
 compensation or recompense of any kind, save that 
 "all-cloudless glory " of which Byron wrote. 
 
 But if Washington's birth and family and associa- 
 
1 6 Ebe fIDcn of tbc "Revolution 
 
 tions were aristocratic, his educational opportunities 
 were as slender as those of any man whose career is 
 commonly cited to us as typical of achievement under 
 difficulty. He attended an " old field school," kept by 
 one of his family's tenants, and later was, for a brief 
 time, under another master, but he never had the ben- 
 efit of instruction in any higher school. He learned 
 from his rude masters so much of reading, writing, and 
 arithmetic as a slenderly-educated teacher could impart 
 to him, and at the age of fifteen even this instruction 
 ceased. From his second master he had learned a little 
 of geometry and of the practical field work of land sur- 
 veying before he reached his sixteenth year. That 
 was all of systematic education that George Wash- 
 ington ever had. "He never attempted the learned 
 languages," says Irving, " nor manifested any inclina- 
 tion for rhetoric or belles-lettres." 
 
 One month after he attained the age of sixteen the 
 active career of this remarkable man began. He was 
 just sixteen years of age when Lord Fairfax sent him 
 into the wilds of what was then the West, to survey 
 his great possessions there. And to this commission 
 was added the authority and duty of public surveyor. 
 It was an arduous service, and one attended by much 
 of hardship and no little danger. It was also, in the 
 highest degree, a responsible service, involving as it 
 did the vital interests not only of the great landed 
 estates of the Fairfaxes, but also those of their tenants, 
 those of the province, and those of a multitude of im- 
 migrants who were settling on the frontier. It was 
 
(Seorcje Masbinoton 17 
 
 such a service as is usually committed only to a man 
 of mature years and ripe experience ; yet so obvious 
 were the qualifications of this mere boy for the work 
 to be done that the task was confidently entrusted to 
 him with the sanction of William and Mary College 
 and of the colonial government. And so well did 
 the lad discharge his duties that the records of his 
 surveys remain to this day undisputed in their 
 authority. 
 
 From the hour of this juvenile appointment Wash- 
 ington was looked upon not only as a fully grown 
 man, but as a man of distinction and one specially 
 qualified for difficult public service. At twenty, he 
 was made chief executor of his dead brother's will, 
 and placed in control of the affairs of a great estate. 
 Two years earlier, at the age of eighteen, he had been 
 appointed by the Royal Governor to be adjutant- 
 general of his district, and charged with the perplexing 
 duty of organizing the militia and placing Virginia in 
 a state of defence, in preparation for that French and 
 Indian war which was obviously impending, and which 
 so soon afterward broke out. 
 
 At twenty-one Washington was selected by Gov- 
 ernor Dinwiddie as the fittest man in all the province 
 to head a mission to the Ohio country, charged with 
 the delicate duty of winning the allegiance of the In- 
 dians there from the French, and, if possible, of per- 
 suading or compelling the French to abandon their 
 claims in that quarter. It was a mission of the utmost 
 difficulty and delicacy, as well as one of great danger, 
 
is Gbc fiDen of tbe "Revolution 
 
 and, as it proved, one involving almost incredible hard- 
 ship to the youth who undertook it. Washington 
 conducted it with such masterly discretion and cour- 
 age, that from the hour of his return this youth of 
 twenty-one was regarded by the authorities and peo- 
 ple of the provinces as indisputably a foremost man in 
 military skill, in diplomacy, and in statecraft. He was at 
 once appointed— mere boy that he was— Commander- 
 in-chief of Virginia's forces, and when, a little later, an 
 army was organized for an expedition to the troubled 
 Ohio country, Washington was commissioned Lieuten- 
 ant-Colonel, and placed second in command to an Eng- 
 lish officer of distinction. The death of his superior 
 officer soon left the young man in complete charge of 
 the difficult and perilous enterprise. 
 
 Again, when the trained soldier, Braddock, was 
 sent out from England to lead an expedition against 
 Fort Duquesne, Washington, though only twenty-three 
 years of age, was made second only to him in military 
 authority. And when Braddock's arrogant rejection of 
 Washington's advice led to his disastrous defeat and 
 death, it fell to young Washington to extricate the 
 beaten and broken army from its perilous position. 
 This he did so skilfully that when, a little later, a larger 
 army was created for the defence of the frontier, 
 Washington was, quite as a matter of course, placed 
 in supreme command of it. 
 
 From the time of his first mission westward, Wash- 
 ington had insisted upon the reduction of Fort Du- 
 quesne as a necessity to the defence of all the western 
 
(Beorge Washington 19 
 
 border, and to the retention of any Virginian or Eng- 
 lish claim to dominion in that quarter. To that end 
 Braddock's expedition had been directed, with disas- 
 trous incompetency, and it was reserved to Washing- 
 ton at last, in command of the advance guard of a later 
 expedition, to plant the British flag over the ruins of the 
 fort that had so long been a menace to all English 
 interests west of the Alleghanies. 
 
 He was then only twenty-six years of age, yet he- 
 was everywhere recognized as the ablest military com- 
 mander in the colonies, one well fitted to instruct, in 
 the art of border war, the trained officers sent out from 
 England, had they been willing to learn of him as of 
 the master that he was. 
 
 During his absence on this last western campaign, 
 the people of his district had chosen young Washing- 
 ton over three competitors to represent them in the 
 House of Burgesses although he had declined to avail 
 himself of a permit to go home and look after his po- 
 litical interests. He had scarcely settled himself at 
 Mount Vernon with his newly wedded wife, after re- 
 signing his military commission with intent thereafter 
 to lead the planter life that he so greatly loved, when 
 he was summoned to Williamsburg to attend a ses- 
 sion of the Legislature. On his first appearance in 
 the Legislature there occurred one of the most inter- 
 esting events in his career, illustrating in an extraor- 
 dinary way the extent of the admiration this mere 
 youth had won from his countrymen. The House 
 had, by a unanimous vote, instructed its Speaker 
 
20 Gbc m>en of tbc "Revolution 
 
 to welcome young Washington publicly and in the 
 most conspicuous way he could. When Washington, 
 knowing nothing of the honor planned for him, en- 
 tered the legislative hall to take his seat, the Speaker 
 arose, and, in the name of the Colony, presented thanks 
 to Washington for his brilliant military services, in an 
 address so warmly eulogistic that, for the only time in 
 his life, George Washington lost his self-control and fell 
 into confusion of mind. Stunned and bewildered by 
 the extraordinary welcome extended to him, he stam- 
 mered helplessly in an effort to make reply. It was 
 said by one who was present on that occasion that he 
 " could not give distinct utterance to a single sylla- 
 ble." The Speaker came to his rescue most master- 
 fully. He called out: "Sit down, Mr. Washington ! 
 Your modesty equals your valor, and that surpasses 
 the power of any language I possess." 
 
 Is it any wonder that a man who, at so early an age, 
 had won such recognition for high character and dis- 
 tinguished soldiership, should have been kept busy for 
 the rest of his life in answering the calls of his coun- 
 trymen to high service ? Is it surprising that when, at 
 last, the country accepted war with England as an inev- 
 itable necessity, this man, now in his maturity, was 
 chosen by the common voice to be " Commander-in- 
 chief of all the forces raised or to be raised," for the 
 defence of American liberty ? And considering the well- 
 nigh incredibly discreet way in which he conducted 
 the war for independence to a successful conclusion, 
 in spite of meagre means, in spite of a divided loyalty 
 
(Bcoroe TKllasbinflton 21 
 
 on the part of the people, in spite of treachery and trea- 
 son among his subordinates, in spite of confused coun- 
 sel in a Congress that lacked power to provide for even 
 the most imperative needs— considering, in short, the 
 wonder-story of George Washington's achievements in 
 the Revolutionary War, was it not quite inevitable 
 that his countrymen should look to him for guidance 
 when they decided to make an experiment in govern- 
 ment such as had never been made before in all his- 
 tory ? And is there occasion for surprise in the fact 
 that, in spite of a divided and discordant Cabinet, in 
 spite of those sectional and social jealousies that had so 
 greatly disturbed him during the Revolutionary War, 
 and, above all, in spite of the feeble uncertainty of the 
 public mind, he succeeded, during eight years of sore 
 soul-travail, in setting this Republic on its feet and 
 laying securely the foundations upon which has been 
 built the greatest, freest, strongest, and in human 
 affairs the most significant nation of which the his- 
 tory of mankind furnishes any record or takes any 
 account ? 
 
 Not any of the glory that halos the name of George 
 Washington is less than fully deserved. Not any of 
 the adoration that is given to his character is in the 
 least degree extravagant or excessive. Of him— abso- 
 lutely alone among mankind— may we prudently speak 
 in unrestrained superlatives. He was, beyond all 
 question, the greatest man that God ever gave to a 
 deserving or undeserving world. 
 
 The story of his campaigns need not be recounted 
 
22 £be nDcn of tbe "Revolution 
 
 here. It is a commonplace of education. It would 
 be equally a waste of space to tell, in this essay, of his 
 eight years of civil administration as President. That, 
 also, is a story familiar to every tolerably well-instructed 
 boy in our public schools. 
 
 <?& 
 
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN 
 
 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN was the apostle of Com- 
 mon Sense. In his life, in all his work, in his 
 dealings with men and measures, in his at- 
 titude toward women and marriage, and even in 
 his attitude toward himself, he made common sense 
 always the dominant note, the controlling influence, 
 the guiding principle of his every word, and act, and 
 thought. To this sole god of his adoration he stood 
 ready always to make sacrifice of his dignity, his inter- 
 ests, and his dearest desires. To it, as to a court of last 
 resort, he made his final appeal in every case. To it 
 he referred every question that arose in his mind, and 
 from the judgments of common sense he permitted no 
 exception to be taken by sentiment. 
 
 This rule of life he applied equally in science, phil- 
 osophy, statecraft, diplomacy, and personal affairs, 
 and in every case he unflinchingly abided by the re- 
 sults. In some instances his loyalty to common sense 
 was manifested with a whimsical humor almo 
 tesque in its exaggeration and perversity. For example. 
 he tells us that at one time, freethinker that he was. 
 
24 Gbc HDcn of tbe "Revolution 
 
 he regularly attended a church and contributed liber- 
 ally to its support, because the minister of it preached 
 sermons that intellectually interested and morally stim- 
 ulated him. Presently, some pestilently knowing 
 brother found out and proved that the minister was 
 preaching sermons not his own, "cribbing" them from 
 some old book, written by some old divine. In con- 
 sequence, the clergyman was dismissed from his 
 pastorate and another installed in his stead. This 
 other preached sermons that were his own, and Frank- 
 lin found them dull, whereupon he ceased to attend 
 the church, though he continued to contribute to its 
 support. He ceased to attend upon the ground that 
 he preferred a clergyman clever enough to purloin 
 good sermons, and preach them attractively, to one 
 stupid enough to deliver dull discourses of his own 
 instead. 
 
 There was here, perhaps, a failure of moral percep- 
 tion on Franklin's part, unless we accept his statement 
 of the affair as a grim jest,— just as in another case 
 there was a curious failure on his part to recognize 
 military proprieties. 
 
 In that other case he found himself in command of a 
 military post, with a military rank of which any other 
 man would have been jealously mindful. Presently 
 there joined him a man with no military rank at all, but 
 possessed of a military training and a military expe- 
 rience which Franklin had not. Instantly Franklin 
 issued to this man a commission, and turned over the 
 command to him upon the simple common-sense 
 

Benjamin jfranfclin 25 
 
 ground that, as there was military work to be done, 
 this trained military man was titter than himself to 
 carry it to success. The proceeding was extremely 
 irregular, of course, and in a well-organized army it 
 might have drawn Franklin into difficulty with a court- 
 martial. But at any rate it was an exhibition of ex- 
 alted common sense and of the lofty patriotism that 
 seeks public results rather than personal honors and 
 dignities. 
 
 In precisely the same way, when European sci- 
 entists, engaged in a study of electricity, sent out an 
 invocation for his help, and with it some apparatus, 
 carefully prepared according to the ill-informed text- 
 books of that time, Franklin threw aside the apparatus 
 and devised simple, common-sense appliances of his 
 own for testing the question at issue— which was 
 whether or not a flash of lightning, is in simple fact, an 
 electrical discharge ; and, with his common-sense de- 
 vices he settled that question for all time, with the inven- 
 tion of the lightning-rod as a corollary to his discovery. 
 He, also, by equally simple devices, finished the work 
 of discriminating between positive and negative elec- 
 tricity, traced, for the first time, the path of storms 
 across this continent, thus making the work of our 
 modern meteorologists possible, and pointed out those 
 peculiarities of the Gulf Stream, the knowledge of 
 which has made the thermometer ever since a ship- 
 saving and life-saving instrument of navigation in the 
 approach of ships to the American coast. 
 
 Poor Richard's Almanac, the work upon which 
 
26 3be flDen of tbc "Revolution 
 
 Franklin's literary and popular tame chiefly rests, con- 
 sisted, in its literary part, simply of a setting down of 
 common sense on paper. 
 
 Here, indeed, Franklin's common sense sometimes 
 betrayed itself into indiscretions that are hurtful rather 
 than helpful to the fame of the author. His maxims 
 were worldly wise in an extreme degree — so worldly 
 wise, indeed, as now and then to impress a sensitive 
 mind as almost sordid. 
 
 They were maxims pointing the way to success 
 with accuracy and certainty, it is true, but the success 
 to which the way was pointed was always material 
 in its character, and nearly always had reference to the 
 getting of money or its equivalent. There is much in 
 Poor Richard to inspire industry, thrift, economy, 
 and the like, with an eye to the personal welfare of 
 the man practising the precepts. There is very little, 
 indeed, to inspire the higher wisdom of self-sacrifice 
 or to teach the nobler lesson that there are objects in 
 life of greater value than gain,— purposes that should 
 be preferred to personal prosperity. 
 
 Yet it is certain that Franklin was not insensible to 
 these higher ideals. His life was a long one, and the 
 greater part of it was devoted in a grandly self-sacrifi- 
 cing way to the service of his country— a service that 
 cost him very much of personal inconvenience and 
 discomfort at a time of life when personal ease and 
 comfort are apt to mean much to a man. Is it not 
 possible that Franklin had, in fact, much more of that 
 sentiment which his common sense rejected and his 
 
Benjamin jfranftlin 27 
 
 humor ridiculed than he was willing to admit, even 
 to himself? 
 
 Yet there was certainly a regrettable lack of senti- 
 ment in his make-up. He fell in love, while yet 
 scarcely more than a lad, with Deborah Read, the 
 lady who afterwards became his wife. He engaged to 
 marry her, and went away on a voyage to London 
 to secure the means of setting up a printing-office in 
 Philadelphia. Presumably sentiment toward her con- 
 stituted a part of his impulse in this venture. But 
 when he reached London and found that his Phila- 
 delphia patron's promises of money and credit for his 
 enterprise were so much breath and nothing more, he 
 wrote only one letter to his sweetheart, in which 
 he told her, with no great show of emotion, that he 
 was likely to be detained in London for an indefinite 
 time, and, during the year and a half of his stay there, 
 he never wrote to the girl again, or in any other way 
 manifested any tenderness of sentiment or sympathy 
 towards her. It seems never to have occurred to him 
 that she might be suffering a distress of mind which a 
 loving letter from him would relieve. He seems, on 
 his own part, to have accepted the dissolution of their 
 marriage engagement quite as a matter of course and 
 a thing of no particular consequence, just as he might 
 have accepted the fact that a change of residence 
 rendered it necessary to cancel an engagement for the 
 employment of a servant or a housekeeper. 
 
 It is true that he afterwards married this woman 
 and lived with her as his wife for forty-four years. 
 
28 Gfoc flDcn of tbc "Revolution 
 
 But his neglect of her during and for years after this first 
 London trip, and his extraordinary lack of sentiment 
 when his god, Common Sense, decreed their separation, 
 had meantime driven her into marriage with a worth- 
 less fellow, who soon deserted her and not long after- 
 ward died. Six years after Franklin so indifferently 
 dismissed her and turned from love of her to the 
 delights of London life, he found her a widow and 
 married her. Apparently they lived together in a com- 
 mon-sense sort of happiness during the forty-four years 
 of their married life, and when he came to die, Frank- 
 lin manifested a certain tender sentiment towards this 
 devoted wife by directing that his body should be 
 interred by the side of hers, under a single slab, bear- 
 ing the simple inscription of their names—" Benjamin 
 and Deborah Franklin." But, during the long years 
 that he spent in London after their marriage as agent 
 of the colonies, contending with great ministers of 
 State for the rights of the American people, and reap- 
 ing a rich harvest of honors from great universities 
 and world-famous learned societies, that eagerly vied 
 with each other in heaping honors upon him, it seems 
 never to have occurred to Franklin to summon this 
 loyal and loving wife to his side, to share with him the 
 glory of his recognition. She died in 1774, before that 
 era of Franklin's greatest honor when, as the diplomatic 
 representative of the young Republic, he literally "stood 
 before kings," the most honored diplomat in the 
 world, the most highly esteemed scientific investi- 
 gator, enjoying a universal homage such as has been 
 
Benjamin Jfranfeltn 29 
 
 paid to no other man who lias lived in this country of 
 ours. Honors were showered upon him by kings and 
 exalted dignitaries, who gave attentive heed to his 
 words of counsel. Learned societies besought him 
 to lend them his name. Financiers furnished millions 
 of money to the still struggling Republic upon his 
 simple representations. At every social function 
 grand dames and courtly gentlemen struggled with 
 each other for the honor of a word of recognition from 
 him. The very shopkeepers of Paris left their custom- 
 ers to wait while they went to their doors to make 
 obeisance when Franklin went by. The gamins of the 
 Paris streets stood aside in a reverence wholly un- 
 wonted to them when he appeared, and doffed their 
 head-gear to him, when they happened to have any 
 head-gear to doff. 
 
 Deborah Franklin was in her grave before these 
 glories came upon her husband. Let us try to believe 
 that had she lived till that time Franklin would have 
 summoned her to his side to share in their enjoyment, 
 though he did not offer her a share in that earlier glory 
 of his London life. 
 
 Yet it seems doubtful that he would have done so, 
 in view of what he himself has revealed to us of his 
 attitude toward the woman he made his wife. He 
 tells us in his autobiography that after his first stay of 
 eighteen months in London, during which time he had 
 written to Miss Read only his one cold letter of dis- 
 missal, he returned to Philadelphia and presently set 
 up a printing-house of his own. He renewed friendly 
 
30 Gbc flDcn of tbc 'Revolution 
 
 relations with the Reads, but in no way sought to 
 renew his closer relations with Deborah, now the 
 widow of the dissolute fellow whom Franklin's neglect 
 had prompted her in a mood of vexed desperation to 
 marry. Six years passed before he thought of that, 
 and then he thought of it only as a matter of expe- 
 diency and common sense. He had, meantime, made 
 love, in a way, to the daughter of a man who rented a 
 part of his house. But when the question of marriage 
 with that young woman arose, Franklin made up his 
 mind to make marriage " pay," as we say in our time. 
 He demanded as a dowry with his bride, a sum of 
 money sufficient to discharge the debt that he still 
 owed upon his printing-house. That being refused, 
 he broke off the negotiations and declined afterwards 
 to consider the proposals pressed upon him for their 
 renewal. 
 
 But he tells us in his singularly candid autobiog- 
 raphy that this incident turned his thoughts again 
 toward marriage as a practically desirable arrange- 
 ment, and upon the grossest grounds of prudence and 
 personal expediency, which he unhesitatingly sets 
 forth in his account of himself, but which may not be 
 reported here because of their lack of delicacy, he 
 decided to take a wife. Knowing nobody more readily 
 available for this purpose, he decided to renew the old 
 engagement with the widow who had been Miss Read, 
 and he thus married the sweetheart of his youth. It 
 is a cold-blooded and rather repulsive story, as Frank- 
 lin himself related it in his old-age chronicle, and it 
 
Benjamin jfrannlin 31 
 
 presents his contemptuous hick of sentiment in a 
 scarcely less than shocking light. 
 
 Nevertheless, Franklin had sentiment. When Brad- 
 dock was stopped in his campaign for want of wagons, 
 Franklin not only undertook to supply them at cost of 
 great labor and without a cent of profit to himself, but, 
 in the process of doing so, spent a small fortune of his 
 own money, which he afterwards and with difficulty 
 got back only in part — all for patriotism. Whenever, 
 in Philadelphia, a public need was to be served, Frank- 
 lin freely spent his time and money, and all his in- 
 genuity in serving it. In this way he created the first 
 charity hospital in America and the first fire-company, 
 established the University of Pennsylvania, founded 
 one of the most notable learned societies in this re- 
 public, created the first great circulating library in 
 the land, and, throughout a long lifetime, lent himself, 
 his genius, his money, his industry, his time, and 
 whatever else was his, to the service of his country 
 and his fellow-men, under an impulse of purely senti- 
 mental patriotism and public spirit. 
 
 It seems, therefore, that this man, so strangely 
 lacking in passion and sentiment, so far as personal 
 concerns were involved, was possessed of an exalted 
 and inspiring sentiment of patriotism. And for the 
 country it was well that his sentiment took such direc- 
 tion. For certainly no man except Washington did 
 more than he to achieve that independence which 
 made possible and actual this foremost republic of 
 which history takes account, this greatest nation that 
 
32 Gbe HDcn of tbe "Revolution 
 
 ever existed in the world. Patriotism was his one 
 passion, and yet at one time, when he was the agent 
 of the colonies at London, Franklin brought himself 
 under grave suspicion of a lack of that impulse, by 
 his excessive earnestness in behalf of a reconciliation 
 between the colonies and the mother country— he 
 even going so far as to urge that the colony of Massa- 
 chusetts should pay for the tea dumped into Boston 
 harbor by the celebrated "tea party." 
 
 Better perhaps than any other man, even in this 
 land of self-made men, Franklin, in his career and 
 achievements, illustrated certain truths that cannot be 
 too strongly impressed upon youths whose educational 
 opportunities are meagre. The first is, that he who 
 has learned to read has in his hands the master key 
 to all doors that lead to learning. The second is, that 
 every man who is educated at all is self-educated ; 
 schools, colleges, and universities render incalculable 
 assistance in the work of self-education, but in the last 
 analysis the man who would be educated must edu- 
 cate himself, and there is no limit to the possibilities 
 of achievement in that way. 
 
 Franklin had, if that be possible, even slenderer 
 school opportunities than Lincoln enjoyed. He quit- 
 ted his masters at ten years of age, after a scant two 
 years of attendance upon a horn-book school. He 
 never had another hour's tuition at the hands of any 
 master, yet as journalist, writer, philosopher, states- 
 man, original scientific investigator, diplomatist, and 
 thinker, he achieved a position that might well have 
 
Benjamin jfranklin 33 
 
 been envied by any highly educated specialist in any 
 one of these departments of learning or endeavor. So 
 great was the fame of his learning that, in spite of his 
 colonial residence, in spite of three thousand miles of 
 ocean over which no steamer pushed her prow and 
 under which no cable flashed intelligence, in spite of 
 prejudice, and in spite of the lack of community of 
 thought and sympathy between Europe and America, 
 this man of no schooling was made a Fellow of the 
 Royal Society of Great Britain and a member of every 
 learned society in Europe, while the universities of St. 
 Andrews, Edinburgh, and Oxford rivalled each other in 
 their eagerness to confer upon him those honorary 
 degrees that crown learning and scholarly achievement 
 with academic recognition. In the meantime, as has 
 been already related, Franklin had founded an institute 
 that is still everywhere recognized as a learned society 
 of high authority, and a university that ranks to-day 
 with the foremost in this or any other country. 
 
 These were his lesser achievements, however. Sci- 
 ence and literature and learning were to him avoca- 
 tions rather than vocations. They were his intellectual 
 amusements and pastimes, while the labors of state- 
 craft and diplomacy, and his great share in the creation 
 of this republic of ours, constituted the serious busi- 
 ness of his long life. 
 
 Franklin was three score years and ten of age when 
 he signed the Declaration of Independence. He had 
 reached a time of life when he was entitled to seek 
 rest from his labors and leave to other and younger 
 
34 £be flDen of tbc "Revolution 
 
 men the completion of the great task of nation- 
 building to which he had already so grandly con- 
 tributed. But he faltered not nor failed. Old man 
 that he was, he cheerfully took up the new and very 
 arduous labors that the birth of the Republic rendered 
 necessary. All that wonderful career of diplomacy 
 in which he won courts to his will and compelled kings 
 and great ministers of State to his purpose lay later in 
 his life than the period fixed upon by the psalmist as 
 the limit of human activity. It was as a man of 
 advanced age that he did his greatest work— greatest 
 in its influence upon his country's future, greatest in 
 that illustration of his genius upon which his fame 
 securely rests. It was this old man who persuaded 
 the King of France to an alliance with the new-born 
 republic. It was he who, on the scant and uncertain 
 credit of a confederacy of revolting colonies, without 
 authority to levy a tax or power to enforce a decree, 
 succeeded in borrowing those millions without which 
 the American armies must have been disbanded and 
 the American struggle for independence must have 
 gone down to an inglorious grave, to be reckoned 
 thenceforth and forever one of the worst and most 
 disastrous blunders recorded in all history. 
 
 In brief, it is not too much to say that, next to 
 Washington, this old man, Benjamin Franklin, did more 
 than any other to achieve American independence and 
 make our republic possible. And the greater part 
 of this he did after he had passed his three score years 
 and ten. 
 
Benjamin jfranfclin 35 
 
 It is not extravagant to say that Franklin, first of 
 all Americans, conceived the thought of what this 
 country must be, and under what form of government 
 the States must ally themselves if the confederation 
 was ever to become a great, free, and self-respecting 
 nation. As early as 1754 he brought forward and 
 strongly urged a scheme for the close union of the 
 thirteen colonies under a general government, em- 
 powered to lay taxes, make treaties, and do whatever 
 else might concern the public weal, while leaving the 
 several colonies free to legislate, according to their own 
 good pleasure, upon all matters of purely local concern. 
 His plan was, in all essential particulars, identical 
 with the present Constitution of the United States. 
 But the colonies were not then ready to accept it. 
 They were so far jealous of their individuality that 
 even when the strenuous conflict for independence 
 came, they could not be persuaded to vest any ade- 
 quate powers in the loosely constituted central gov- 
 ernment of the confederation, and, by consequence, 
 from beginning to end of the Revolutionary War, they 
 were beset by difficulties and dangers of the gravest 
 character, every one of which they would have escaped 
 if Franklin's scheme of a union, instead of a mere 
 confederacy, had been adopted. And when at last, 
 after the war was over and independence achieved, 
 the necessity for "a more perfect union " was pressed 
 home to all enlightened minds by daily and dis- 
 astrous experience, the great convention which, under 
 Washington's guidance, finally framed the Federal 
 
36 Zlyc flDcn of tbc "Revolution 
 
 constitution, could do no better or more wisely than 
 adopt in substance the scheme which Franklin had 
 wrought out and urged upon acceptance a third of a 
 century before. 
 
 Franklin was born in Boston, 17 January, 1706. He 
 was the son of a poor tallow-chandler, the youngest 
 son and the fifteenth child in a family of seventeen. 
 There lay in such circumstances small chance of a 
 bringing up or education to anything better than the 
 commonest kind of manual labor, such as men with 
 dwarfed and undeveloped brains may do as well 
 as any others. Franklin's father did indeed at one 
 time plan to send the gifted boy to Harvard College 
 and have him trained for the Ministry. Fortunately, 
 the father could not afford the expense. Fortu- 
 nately, we say, because, with his inquiring, sceptical 
 turn of mind, Benjamin Franklin as a clergyman would 
 have upset New England thought long before the 
 time arrived for such upsetting to be safe and whole- 
 some ; and fortunately, too, because his training for 
 the ministry in the theological schools of that dark 
 age would almost certainly have unfitted Benjamin 
 Franklin for the broadly liberal intellectual work that 
 he was destined and fitted by the peculiar qualities 
 of his mind and character to do, and for his great 
 doing of which, his country and all mankind are 
 beyond measure indebted to him. 
 
 As has been said already, Franklin had a scant two 
 years of schooling, and at ten years of age he went 
 to work cutting wicks and filling candle-moulds in his 
 
Benjamin jfranhlin 37 
 
 father's little shop. Never afterwards did he have an 
 hour's instruction. But at ten years of age he had 
 learned how to read, and with that open sesame to 
 all the arcana of knowledge in his possession, he made 
 himself in the end the most thoroughly and variedly 
 educated man of his generation. Throughout life 
 he was a reader with an omnivorous and insatiable 
 intellectual appetite. He made himself familiar with 
 all of literature upon which he could lay his hand, 
 not only in English but in Latin, French, Italian, and 
 Spanish also— for he taught himself all those languages 
 as he taught himself all that was then known of 
 physical science, and of whatever else might minister 
 to his unquenchable thirst for knowledge. 
 
 He soon quitted the chandlery and became appren- 
 tice to his brother, a printer. In this position he 
 learned the twin trades of compositor and pressman, 
 learning both so thoroughly that a few years later, 
 when he was in London, he was able to teach the 
 best printers there much that they neither knew nor 
 dreamed of about their art. And he learned some- 
 thing else during this apprenticeship— something of 
 vastly greater consequence to the world if not to 
 himself, than any skill in printing could be. He 
 learned how to write with that trenchant vigor, that 
 extraordinary simplicity and directness, and that 
 singular lucidity of statement and aptness of illustra- 
 tion, which gave to his writings throughout life a 
 persuasive influence scarcely parallelled in his time 
 and country. 
 
38 XTbc HDen of tbe devolution 
 
 Whatever Franklin did he did in a superior fashion, 
 whether it was mechanical or intellectual, scientific or 
 commonplace, literary or of homely domestic charac- 
 ter. The printer's devil, who set more type and set 
 them better than any journeyman in the shop could 
 do, was also able to write the strongest papers that 
 appeared in his brother's newspaper, and, surrepti- 
 tiously securing the acceptance of these his essays, he 
 had the pleasure of hearing them attributed by the 
 pundits of the town to the leading minds in the colonies. 
 
 But Franklin was a man not born to submit himself 
 to servitude. He quickly quarrelled with his brother, 
 broke his indentures at the time when he was capable 
 of rendering the best service to his fraternal master, and 
 ran away to Philadelphia, where, all unknown to him, 
 his great career awaited him. Years afterward he 
 made abundant amends to his brother for the time and 
 service he had filched from him, and the brother was 
 more than satisfied. 
 
 Franklin quickly made a place for himself in Phila- 
 delphia, by reason of his superior skill in his trade, his 
 extraordinary alertness of mind, the gentle courtesy of 
 his manners, his singular grasp of questions of public 
 import, his resolute self-discipline, his uprightness and 
 sincerity, and his manifest ability to take care of 
 himself. 
 
 He was still scarcely more than a boy when, de- 
 luded by the golden promises of the charlatan gov- 
 ernor of the province, he went to London, as already 
 related, to buy a printing outfit, and found himself 
 
Benjamin franklin 39 
 
 stranded there without money or friends or credit of 
 any kind. 
 
 It was a year and a half before he returned, but 
 when he did so he begun that extraordinary career of 
 diversified public service which ended only with his 
 life. As clerk of the Legislature, and afterwards for 
 many years a commandingly influential member of that 
 body, he impressed himself mightily upon the public 
 policies of the period ; as a delegate to the successive 
 continental congresses, he was even more influential in 
 directing the thought of that troubled time. As post- 
 master-general for the colonies, he brought order out of 
 chaos, and in simple fact created that system of mail 
 service which, developing with increasing facilities, 
 has become one of the wonders of our modern time. 
 As the editor of an influential newspaper, as a forceful 
 and very daring pamphleteer, and still more as a 
 shrewd organizer of popular sentiment for the accom- 
 plishment of desirable ends, he was all this while the 
 most potent intellectual force in Pennsylvania or in 
 any of the colonies. By a wily use of his common 
 sense he instituted the paving of streets in Philadel- 
 phia, just as in London he had first taught men the 
 possibility and the desirability of street-cleaning. His 
 services in establishing a public library, a hospital, a 
 fire-extinguishing service, a learned society, and a uni- 
 versity of world-wide repute, have already been suffi- 
 ciently mentioned for the purposes of this pnper. 
 
 So also have been his services in electrical, meteoro- 
 logical, and marine science. It is worth while to add 
 
4o Gfoc flDcn of tbe "Revolution 
 
 to the chronicle of these achievements the fact that 
 when that association which is supreme in France, so 
 far as scientific research is concerned, decided to in- 
 vestigate the pretensions of Mesmer and his hypnotic 
 performances, it was the untrained American, Ben- 
 jamin Franklin, who had never had a lesson in science 
 in all his life, to whom, chiefly, the task of making 
 the searching inquiry was delegated. 
 
 When the troubled times of Revolution came — 
 when the stupidity of Lord North and the unteachable 
 arrogance of George 111. had made compromise and 
 reconciliation clearly impossible, Franklin's functions as 
 agent of the colonies in London were manifestly at an 
 end, and he returned to his native land in time to 
 serve in the Congress which put forth the Declara- 
 tion of Independence as the great charter of American 
 liberty. 
 
 A little later followed that period of splendid diplo- 
 matic service, during which Franklin made France our 
 ally, secured for his country the money necessary for 
 the carrying on of the war, and at last laid the firm 
 foundations of that final treaty of peace with Great 
 Britain which ended the war and made American Inde- 
 pendence an accomplished fact. In all this extraor- 
 dinary diplomatic work, Franklin's guiding principle at 
 every step was that masterful Common Sense which 
 we have spoken of as the keynote of his character. 
 Not only did he govern himself by it, but in all his 
 negotiations he appealed to it in the minds of princes, 
 potentates, and ministers of State, as to a principle 
 
Benjamin jfranfclin 41 
 
 that even the wiliest state craft could not blink or 
 dodge, or in any other way escape. 
 
 All this while Franklin was growing old. He was 
 nearly eighty years of age when he negotiated with 
 Prussia the treaty which, first of all conventions be- 
 tween civilized nations, contained a provision looking 
 to the abolition of that species of piracy known as 
 " privateering." 
 
 Having brilliantly completed the great diplomatic 
 work that had occupied his energies for so many years, 
 the old man, now in his eightieth year, besought the 
 Congress of his grateful country to release him and let 
 him come home for the rest that he had so nobly 
 earned. 
 
 He came back in [785, but there was no rest for him 
 yet from public service. He was immediately chosen 
 President of Pennsylvania, and was re-elected to that 
 arduous post in 1786 and 1787. Then came the con- 
 vention that framed the Constitution of the United 
 States, under which the Republic has grown so great. 
 Franklin was made a member of that august body, 
 and the work of his life was fitly crowned when the 
 convention adopted and the States ratified a system 
 of Federal government substantially identical with that 
 which he had devised and urged thirty-three years 
 before. 
 
 In 17Q0 Franklin died, full of years and full of honors. 
 His labors of a public character, and for the benefit of 
 the country and of humanity, continued to the end. 
 It was only four weeks before his death that he put 
 
42 
 
 Gbc flDen of tbe "Revolution 
 
 forth one of the strongest, wittiest, and most convinc- 
 ing of those polemic pamphlets which had been his 
 favorite weapon of debate throughout his life. 
 
 The country has had no wiser man than Benjamin 
 Franklin among its sons, and certainly it has had none 
 who rendered more, or more willing, or more effective 
 service to the land of his birth and to the liberty that 
 he so greatly loved. 
 
JOHN ADAMS 
 
 IN his character, in his mind, and in his career, John 
 Adams was a far less picturesque personage than 
 some of those great contemporaries of his with 
 whom he wrought mightily in the work of building 
 this nation. He was a type of that sturdy patriotism, 
 that unflinching courage, and that solid ability which 
 contributed perhaps quite as much to the work that 
 was done in the Revolution and in the formative 
 period of our Government, as did the more brilliant 
 qualities of other men. 
 
 He was a sound lawyer, thoroughly trained, and he 
 shared with such men as Jefferson, John Jay, and John 
 Marshall, an abiding faith in the absolute and ultimate 
 righteousness of those fundamental principles upon 
 which the law of all English-speaking peoples is 
 founded. 
 
 He was a man of unusual intellectual courage. He 
 was one of the very first among the revolutionary 
 group to perceive clearly that reconciliation between 
 the colonies and Great Britain was hopelessly impossi- 
 ble, and from the very moment that he perceived this, 
 
44 Sbe flDcn of tbe Revolution 
 
 he resolutely opposed petitions and the other lame de- 
 vices o\ the time tor patching up a peace "where 
 there is no peace.'' as Patrick Henry phrased it. 
 
 In the same way, this upright, downright, honest, 
 truth-telling man introduced new methods into di- 
 plomacy when he was sent to Europe as one of the 
 ministers o\ the new Republic. He went straight at 
 his object in even case and frankly set forth what 
 he wanted. He told the truth, to the surprise of 
 the Count de Yergennes. and of that wily diplomat's 
 representative at The Hague. He had an abiding con- 
 tempt for shams and false pretences. He hated a lie 
 with all the intensity o\ a strong and honest nature. 
 He loved the truth because it was the truth, and quite 
 irrespective of any advantage that might be gained by 
 the telling of it. 
 
 Like the other gre:it men of that time. John Adams 
 sacrificed much oi personal prosperity and gain to the 
 public service. Like them he gave up ease and com- 
 fort, absenting himself for years from the joys o\ that 
 family life which he loved, and denying himself asso- 
 ciations and intellectual pursuits which were very dear 
 to him. in order that he might answer the call of his 
 country to public duty. His contribution to that ser- 
 vice was one of the most conspicuous and most last- 
 ingly valuable rendered by any man of his time. 
 
 John Adams was born in 1735, the son of a pros- 
 perous small farmer. Unlike Washington, he had the 
 advantage of a systematic academic training, and he 
 was graduated from Harvard College in 1755. A tew 
 
John Adams 
 

 ' 
 
 
 
'I /' " A//////./ 
 

3obn aoame 45 
 
 years later he entered upon the practice of the law, 
 gaining recognition rather for solid ability and sound 
 learning in his profession than for any particular bril- 
 liancy of genius. Like Franklin and Jefferson, he held 
 religion in high respect, but believed little in the dog- 
 mas of theology. He actively rejected the authority 
 of church in any form, as they also did. He had been 
 educated for the pulpit, but his state of mind clearly 
 unfitted him for that vocation. That was a time when 
 authority was everything in religion, and Adams utterly 
 rejected authority. One of his biographers quotes him 
 as asking : " Where do we find a precept in the Gospel 
 requiring ecclesiastical synods, convocations, councils, 
 decrees, creeds, confessions, oaths, subscriptions, and 
 whole cartloads of other trumpery that we find reli- 
 gion encumbered with, in these days ? " Clearly, the 
 law offered a fitter career for a young man thus inquir- 
 ingly minded than the ministry did, in that aggressively 
 polemic age. 
 
 Adams's interest in public affairs began early and 
 lasted until his death. Braddock's defeat affected him 
 painfully. He foresaw and foresaid that the future of 
 this country must depend upon its success in securing 
 liberty to expand westward of the Alleghanies, and 
 even to the Mississippi, which was then the Ultima 
 Thule of ambitious imaginings in the way of national 
 grandeur. He boldly predicted what has come to 
 pass, namely, that with this liberty to extend English- 
 speaking civilization westward, our numbers would in 
 another century exceed those of Great Britain herself, 
 
46 Sbc flDcn of tbc 'Revolution 
 
 a prediction which has been fulfilled twice over and 
 more. 
 
 A little later there came that series of aggressions 
 upon the rights and liberties of the people of the 
 colonies which resulted ultimately in the revolution 
 and in independence. From the very first, Adams 
 was strongly and outspokenly on the right side. 
 Against the Stamp Act, against the writs of assistance, 
 against any and every aggression, his patriotism was 
 at once angry and insistent. As early as 1761, he 
 heard James Otis deliver his splendid diatribe against 
 British aggressions, and in his old age he wrote of that 
 occasion, "every man of an immense, crowded audi- 
 ence appeared to me to go away, as 1 did, ready to 
 take arms against writs of assistance. Then and there 
 was the first scene of the first act of opposition to the 
 arbitrary claims of Great Britain. Then and there the 
 child. Independence, was born." 
 
 When the Stamp Act was passed and the superior 
 courts refused to wink at its violation as the inferior 
 courts had done, John Adams was quite naturally 
 chosen one of the advocates to conduct the appeal 
 against that injustice, and from the first — he delivering 
 the opening argument— he took the bold ground that 
 the Act was in itself null and void, by reason of its 
 violation of the fundamental principles of English lib- 
 erty. He then asserted as a principle that doctrine, 
 which was afterwards embodied in the Declaration of 
 Independence, that there could be no just or legal 
 taxation without the representation of the people taxed 
 
3obn Hfcams 47 
 
 in the legislative body that assumed to tax them. 
 Though less startlingly presented, his point was iden- 
 tically the same as that which Jefferson made when 
 he declared that the Virginia Legislature had as clear a 
 right to pass laws for the taxation of men in England 
 as the British Parliament had to enact laws for the 
 taxation of men in Virginia. 
 
 Adams busied himself, also, at that time in writing 
 for the public prints, in advocacy of those principles of 
 liberty which he held so near to his heart. Writing, 
 in those days, either in the public prints or in the form 
 of pamphlets, was an unremunerated occupation, but 
 it was, at the same time, one of the most effective 
 means open to any man of impressing his thought 
 upon the community and stirring men to action. 
 Adams made free use of it throughout his life, just as 
 Franklin did. 
 
 In this and other ways, he made himself so danger- 
 ous an antagonist to British aggression that the royal 
 authority in the colony of Massachusetts thought to 
 buy him off. To that end, it offered him a lucrative 
 office in the line of his profession, the acceptance of 
 which must have silenced him as an opponent of the 
 pretensions of the crown. Adams quite clearly under- 
 stood what the bait meant and refused it. 
 
 From that time forward, Adams's activity in behalf 
 of American liberty — as speaker, writer, legislator, 
 legal adviser, and plain patriot— was incessant. It is 
 not the purpose of the present essay to enter into any 
 detailed account of the proceedings which thus brought 
 
48 Z\k flDen of tbe "Revolution 
 
 him more and more to the attention of his countrymen 
 as a leader in that revolutionary movement which was 
 presently to culminate in war. In the first Continental 
 Congress, Adams made himself at once the leader of 
 those who stood for colonial rights against the aggres- 
 sions of the British Parliament, the British Ministry, 
 and the British Administration in this country. That 
 Congress was called for the sole purpose of protesting 
 against these wrongs. And it was John Adams who 
 drew the resolutions of protest, and advocated them 
 with no shadow of fear or hesitation, and with no hint 
 of a disposition to compromise any right of the Ameri- 
 cans, though at that time, and in that body, there 
 were strenuous advocates of compromise, and the fear 
 was great that extreme measures might provoke dis- 
 astrous retaliation. Adams had already made up his 
 mind that a longer continuance of the colonies in a 
 state of dependence upon Great Britain meant and 
 could mean nothing less than a sacrifice of liberty. 
 He was already, in 1774, an earnest advocate of abso- 
 lute independence, and of bloody war as a means of 
 securing it, if that should be necessary. To this end, 
 he filled the public prints with essays that still live 
 and still reflect the most advanced sentiments of his 
 time. 
 
 His printed utterances were fearless in the extreme. 
 They were daring almost to desperation in the bold- 
 ness of their contentions. They were the work of a 
 man whose patriotism asked no favors and shrank 
 from no possible retribution. 
 
3obn Hfcams 49 
 
 When the second Continental Congress assembled, 
 Mr. Adams was recognized as one of the foremost 
 men of New England, and New England had already 
 put an army into the field to besiege the British 
 in Boston. Believing, as he did, firmly and unflinch- 
 ingly that the time had come when, in Patrick Henry's 
 language, "We must tight," and "There is no elec- 
 tion," he moved the appointment of George Wash- 
 ington to be "Commander-in-chief of all the armies 
 raised, and to be raised " in defence of American 
 Liberty. 
 
 This was in every way a wise and politic thing for 
 him to do. Washington was, without doubt or ques- 
 tion, the one commander tit to conduct a war so un- 
 equal and to bring it to a happy conclusion. But not 
 only so ; there were jealousies and bickerings, and 
 grave distrusts between the several colonies that 
 tended to disturb that harmony among them which 
 was so imperatively necessary to the success of their 
 struggle, and nothing could have gone further to 
 allay those jealousies, to silence those bickerings, and 
 to remove those distrusts, than for John Adams, the 
 representative of Massachusetts and the foremost man 
 of New England, to move this selection of George 
 Washington, the chosen hero of Virginia, as the com- 
 mander of those forces which were first of all to rescue 
 Boston and afterwards to free the country of its yoke. 
 It is probable that Washington would have been made 
 Commander-in-chief upon the motion of someone else 
 if Adams had not thus taken the initiative, but it is 
 
so Zbc flDen of tbe IRcvolutton 
 
 conceivable, at least, that some other and less fortunate 
 choice might have been made. In any case, it is 
 certain that, in thus nominating Washington for the 
 command and securing his appointment, John Adams 
 rendered to the country a service that has rarely been 
 matched. For had any other than a conspicuous New 
 England delegate so nominated him, the jealousies and 
 sectional prejudices which were then so dangerous 
 would not have been allayed in anything like the same 
 degree in which his action accomplished that purpose. 
 
 It would require greatly more space than that 
 which is proper to this paper to recount the multi- 
 farious services of Adams at this time. Like Wash- 
 ington, and Jefferson, and Franklin, he was everywhere 
 present where there was duty to do. Even while 
 serving in the Continental Congress he served also in 
 his State's Legislature, in local councils, and especially 
 in that revolutionary body organized in Massachusetts 
 to take possession of government there, and thus prac- 
 tically to declare the independence of the colony. 
 About this time he was appointed to the office of 
 Chief-Justice, but wisely omitted to take his seat, for, 
 learned in the law as he was, John Adams was of radi- 
 cal intellectual tendency, had an uncommonly caustic 
 habit of utterance, and was in other ways less fitted 
 for the calm deliberations of the bench, than for the 
 intellectual conflicts of the senate, the bar, and the 
 public press. 
 
 In the spring of 1776, Mr. Adams secured the pas- 
 sage of an Act of Congress recommendino- all the 
 
3obn Hfcmms 5 1 
 
 colonies to form governments for themselves, inde- 
 pendent of those thrust upon them by the British 
 ministry. Into the preamble with which he introduced 
 this resolution, Mr. Adams put in fact a declaration 
 of independence. That preamble declared unequivo- 
 cally that the American people could no longer give 
 allegiance to any government deriving its authority 
 from a royal decree ; that the king had withdrawn his 
 protection from the colonies, and that the people of the 
 colonies must therefore look out for themselves. 
 
 In June of that year, Richard Henry Lee, of Vir- ' 
 ginia, moved in Congress that a formal declaration be 
 made of the absolute independence of the colonies, 
 and of their right to be recognized as free and inde- 
 pendent States. John Adams seconded this resolution, 
 and when it came to debate a few weeks later he ' 
 championed it through Congress, leading the debate 
 in the absence of Mr. Lee. Thus were Virginia and 
 Massachusetts— the leading Southern and Northern 
 colonies in influence— brought together to act for inde- 
 pendence with a force then irresistible in the colonies. 
 For these two were everywhere recognized as domi- 
 nant among the newly forming States. Their public 
 men were everywhere looked to for counsel and 
 guidance. Even South Carolina, with the almost 
 matchless John Rutledge for her chief representative, 
 made her bow to Virginia and Massachusetts as the 
 acknowledged leaders in the Revolution. It was a 
 happy coincidence that a chief among Virginians and 
 a chief among the representatives of Massachusetts 
 
52 Z\k flDcn ot tbc "Revolution 
 
 should thus be associated in the advocacy of this 
 final decisive act of revolt and resolution, just as it 
 was a fortunate thing that the nomination of George 
 Washington to be Commander-in-chief of the revolu- 
 tionary armies had come more than a year before, not 
 from a Virginian, or from any man of the Middle States, 
 but from John Adams, a representative of Massachu- 
 setts and o\ that sentiment which had led New Eng- 
 land to put an army of sixteen thousand men into the 
 tield for the purpose of driving the British out o\ their 
 capital, Boston. 
 
 Before the Declaration of Independence was finally 
 signed. Congress created a Board oi War and Ord- 
 nance, designed to provide the military ways and 
 means necessary for the now inevitable conflict, and 
 John Adams served as its chairman till after that 
 splendid achievement o\ American arms, the capture 
 of Burgoyne and his army at Saratoga. 
 
 At this time, the British representatives in America 
 were busying themselves with belated and futile at- 
 tempts at reconciliation. These were conducted with 
 every device o\ deception that wily ingenuity could 
 invent, and often by means that closely resembled 
 the attempted corruption of American officers. Many 
 men in Congress and out of it — still cherishing that 
 hope which Adams had long ago abandoned, that re- 
 conciliation might even yet be possible — were de- 
 ceived by these manoeuvres. Not so John Adams. 
 Like Patrick Henry of Virginia, and John Rutledge, of 
 South Carolina, he steadfastly opposed every negotia- 
 
3obn Htmms 53 
 
 tion of the sort, as insincere, delusive, and likely to be 
 fruitful of harm. Nevertheless, Adams was usually 
 appointed one of the commissioners to negotiate in 
 every such case, and it was fortunate that this was 
 so, because his sagacity always penetrated the purpose 
 of the enemy and baffled it, and because, when it was 
 baffled, his shrewdness of speech was potent to recon- 
 cile others to the abandonment of the futile endeavor. 
 
 It was in recognition of these qualities that Adams 
 was chosen in 1777 to replace Silas Deane as the repre- 
 sentative of the United States in France. His sagacity, 
 his diplomatic skill, and his unfaltering patriotism spe- 
 cially fitted him to deal with the problems presented 
 there. Before his arrival in France in 1778 the alliance 
 between the most arbitrary and despotic of European ~L[ 
 kings and the most aggressively liberty-asserting of all 
 republics had been formed. But Adams from the first 
 and almost alone saw through the shams that lay 
 behind this alliance. He quite well understood that 
 it was self-interest and not a love of liberty which 
 prompted the French King to lend aid to the colonies 
 in their effort .to separate this great imperial domain 
 of ours from British rule and British influence. He 
 saw clearly that the aid of France was never likely to 
 go beyond this selfish purpose. But at this time 
 Adams's diplomatic service was brief. He found and 
 corrected great abuses in the management of Ameri- 
 can affairs in Europe, and himself recommended the 
 dissolution of that triumvirate— consisting of himself, 
 Benjamin Franklin, and Arthur Lee — which then had 
 
54 Sbc flDen of tbc "Revolution 
 
 charge of the Republic's interests at Paris. Under his 
 advice, Arthur Lee was sent to Madrid, Franklin was 
 left sole Minister at Paris, and Adams himself was 
 called home. 
 
 A little later he was sent again to Paris as a com- 
 missioner to treat for peace with Great Britain. It 
 was then that his shrewd judgment of men and their 
 motives, and his wily caution rendered the public of 
 the United States one of the greatest services recorded 
 in his career. He profoundly distrusted the Count de 
 Vergennes, and he shrewdly penetrated that unscrupu- 
 lous minister's designs. He saw clearly that it was no 
 part of Vergennes's purpose to permit a treaty of peace, 
 or even to allow him to suggest such a treaty to the 
 British Government. Vergennes did not understand 
 and could not believe that any treaty made at that 
 time could result otherwise than in some form of 
 reconciliation and re-union between Great Britain and 
 her revolted colonies. His purpose being the weak- 
 ening and, if possible, the destruction of the British 
 power, he was bent upon it that no such reconciliation 
 should occur. He little understood Adams's attitude or 
 that of the Congress that had sent him abroad to seek 
 peace, with the absolute and unequivocal recognition of 
 American Independence as its fundamental condition. 
 
 Adams, in his turn, saw clearly that it was the 
 purpose of Vergennes, whenever a treaty should be 
 made, to "cabin, crib, confine" the young Republic in 
 ways that should forever forbid it to grow into great- 
 ness, and incidentally to sacrifice its dearest interests 
 
3ofon Hfcams 55 
 
 to the aggrandizement of France's other ally, Spain. 
 It was his purpose to shut the Americans out from 
 expansion west of the Alleghanies, to make of the 
 Mississippi Valley a Spanish territory, and forever to 
 exclude American vessels from the Newfoundland fish- 
 eries. In brief, Adams clearly saw that the professed 
 friendship of the mediaeval French monarchy for the 
 radical young American Republic was purely selfish, 
 and that it contemplated nothing further of benefit to 
 the Republic than the securing of a feeble indepen- 
 dence, confined within narrow bounds and subject to 
 restrictions of the most paralyzing kind. 
 
 Fortunately for our country, no treaty was made at 
 that time, for the obstinate British Government had 
 not yet learned its lesson. But without doubt Adams's 
 early perception of the French attitude and purposes 
 bore rare fruit when the treaty of 1783 was ultimately 
 made. 
 
 Although Adams's suspicions somewhat annoyed 
 Franklin, who believed in Vergennes, they opened that 
 great statesman's mind to conditions which threatened 
 the Republic with danger, and without question the 
 shrewd bargaining of Franklin in the later negotiations 
 was largely inspired by Adams's warning. 
 
 In 1780 Adams was sent to Holland to negotiate 
 a loan. He there adopted Franklin's habitual device 
 of writing and publishing a series of articles and letters 
 as a preparation of the popular mind in that country 
 for the proposition he was about to bring before its 
 government and its bankers. There he encountered the 
 
56 Gbc flDen of the "Revolution 
 
 wiles of Vergennes again, exercised through his am- 
 bassador at The Hague, the Duke de la Vauguyon. 
 By dint of his blunt and courageous truthfulness, 
 Adams forced that shrewd diplomat to help where he 
 had intended to hinder the American purpose. The 
 result of his mission there was the formal recognition 
 of the United States as an independent nation by the 
 Government of Holland, and a little later the negotia- 
 tion of a loan of $2,000,000, and a treaty of amity and 
 commerce. Mr. Adams himself always regarded this 
 success of his at The Hague as the best achievement 
 of his life in the service of his country, and perhaps it 
 was so. 
 
 At the conclusion of this matter, Mr. Adams was 
 again summoned to Paris to act with Franklin and Jay 
 in negotiations with Great Britain for the recognition 
 of American independence and for peace and commerce 
 between the two nations. The negotiation was in 
 itself difficult and its perplexities were enormously 
 increased by the attitude of the Count de Vergennes, al- 
 ready indicated and explained. Franklin seems at this 
 time to have been more or less hoodwinked by Ver- 
 gennes and by his own great kindliness toward the 
 French, inspired by their assistance at a critical time in 
 the fortunes of the new Republic. But Jay and Adams 
 resolutely stood together in opposing the French 
 policy, and, as a result, the treaty, when it was made, 
 imposed no restriction upon our country's western 
 expansion and left to our hardy fishermen a full right- 
 not a privilege but a right — to participate freely in 
 
3obn Ht>ams 57 
 
 those Newfoundland fisheries whose proceeds have so 
 greatly enriched New England and incidentally the 
 whole Republic. 
 
 It is simply impossible to estimate the service thus 
 rendered by Adams and Jay to the future of the Repub- 
 lic. That service indeed made the glory of the Repub- 
 lic possible. If the reader will imagine the thirteen 
 new States as an independent republic, shut off on the 
 south by the Florida border, bounded on the north 
 by the Canadian frontier, and forever forbidden to pass 
 beyond the Appalachian chain on the West, he will 
 understand how insignificant would have been the 
 future of the United States. It is to these men that 
 we owe it, that the great States of the Middle West 
 and the rich commonwealths of the far West and of 
 the Pacific coast are ours to-day— that the corn grown 
 in Illinois, and the pork produced there, that the cot- 
 ton of Mississippi and Alabama and Louisiana, that 
 the cattle that swarm over the prairies of Texas, that 
 the grain of Kansas and Nebraska, that the wheat of 
 Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the Dakotas, that the cattle 
 and the gold and the silver of Montana, Idaho, Colo- 
 rado, Arizona, and Nevada, that the fruits of Utah and 
 California and Oregon, are all products of this great 
 nation of ours— and that nowhere on our borders have 
 we an enemy capable of interfering or disposed to 
 interfere with that wonderful progress which has in 
 little more than a century raised us from the condition 
 of feebly dependent colonies into that of the richest, 
 greatest, strongest nation upon earth, the feeder of 
 
58 £bc flDcn of tbc "Revolution 
 
 the world, as well as the inspirer of the world's ideas 
 of human liberty. Of course, the treaty negotiated 
 by Adams, Jay, and Franklin did not provide for all 
 of this, or for the half of it, but it made all of it pos- 
 sible. Had the Republic been confined to the region 
 east of the Alleghanies, as the Count de Vergennes 
 desired, the Louisiana purchase would have been 
 impossible, and all that great accession of territory 
 formerly belonging to Mexico would have been be- 
 yond the reach even of our aspirations. 
 
 It is only fair to the great men of that time thus 
 to estimate the results of their industry and genius, 
 even though some of those results were not at the 
 time contemplated by their foresight. And it is to be 
 said to the credit of Adams and Jay that they nego- 
 tiated this treaty in direct violation of certain of their 
 instructions from Congress. 
 
 It is, perhaps, fortunate that there were no ocean 
 cables or fast-sailing steamers in those days. Other- 
 wise the sagacity of these two men might have been 
 restrained by the dulness, the hesitation, the timidity, 
 of those who had authority to give them their orders. 
 For Congress did not understand, as Jay and Adams 
 did, the attitude of the French Ministry. With a 
 frankness and generosity of mind wholly foreign to the 
 experience of the French court, Congress was disposed 
 to regard the French alliance as one of sentiment, 
 where in fact it was one of the grossest selfishness. 
 Congress was, therefore, moved to instruct its diplo- 
 matic agents to preserve a quixotic regard for French 
 
3obn Hcmms 59 
 
 interests — to undertake nothing in the way of nego- 
 tiations without the concurrence of "the ministers of 
 our generous ally, the King of France." It instructed 
 them that they were to govern themselves entirely by 
 the advice of the wily diplomat who was playing fast 
 and loose with American interests and making the 
 Republic a mere pawn upon the chess-board of 
 European politics. 
 
 Adams and Jay had the courage as well as the 
 sagacity to disobey these instructions, and to make for' 
 the Republic the best terms they could— and mightily 
 good terms they were— with the mother country, with 
 little or no regard to the plans, wishes, and advice of 
 the French Minister of State, who sought to make of 
 American interests nothing more than counters in the 
 game that he was playing. 
 
 This duty ended, Adams very greatly desired to re- 
 turn to his native land. His ambition was of the very 
 highest, and his opinion of himself was an exalted one. 
 He foresaw that at home, rather than abroad, he had 
 a chance for that recognition and reward which he 
 deemed to be his just due. But the time was unpro- 
 pitious for the reaping of those rewards, or the realiza- 
 tion of those ambitions. And, moreover, there was still 
 much strenuous work for Adams to do as a diplomatic 
 representative of his country in Europe. In one diplo- 
 matic capacity and another he remained abroad until 
 1788, and on his return, after a ten-years' service, he was 
 publicly thanked by Congress for patriotism, persever- 
 ance, integrity, and diligence in his various missions. 
 
6o £be Qfocn of tbc "Revolution 
 
 In the meantime, the new Federal Constitution had 
 been adopted, to replace that loose coalition of the 
 States which had so conspicuously failed of its pur- 
 pose to make one nation of the thirteen separate com- 
 monwealths. The time was at hand when a President 
 must be chosen for the new and stronger Republic — 
 one under whose guidance its destinies might be 
 launched, and its future foreshadowed in present ac- 
 tion. With that excessive appreciation of himself 
 which had always been a part of his character, John 
 Adams regarded himself as conspicuously the fittest 
 man for this high honor and function. 
 
 In his utterances at that time he clearly manifested 
 impatience with the contrary judgment of his country- 
 men in favor of George Washington as the first pre- 
 siding officer of the Republic. He was wholly unable 
 to discover a sound reason why Washington's ser- 
 vices, which he regarded as purely military, should be 
 deemed greater than his own. He was, therefore, 
 deeply chagrined and disappointed when the result of 
 the election proved to be the unanimous choice of 
 Washington for the first place and the far less unani- 
 mous choice of himself for the second. 
 
 "Nevertheless, during Washington's administration, 
 John Adams worked usually in harmony with him, 
 especially after that division of parties began which 
 was destined to lead to the embodiment of Jefferson's 
 ideas and principles in the institutions of the country. 
 To those ideas and principles John Adams was reso- 
 lutely opposed. He believed firmly in the necessity 
 
3obn Hoams 61 
 
 of a ruling class. He conscientiously doubted the pos- 
 sibility of stable government under a system of uni- 
 versal suffrage, that provided for the equal participation 
 of all the people in governmental affairs. Even in his 
 writings he offended the sentiment of the times by 
 speaking of the " well-born," thus assuming that very 
 prerogative of birth against which the innermost souls 
 of the great majority of the people were in active re- 
 volt and protest. He profoundly distrusted the masses 
 of the people. He did not believe, with Jefferson, 
 that ordinary men could be safely trusted with the 
 business of governing themselves. Though himself 
 less conspicuously well-born than was Jefferson, with 
 his Randolph mother, Adams nevertheless advocated 
 privilege, or something like it, in strenuous opposition 
 to Jefferson's doctrine of equality of right and of the 
 capacity of the people to rule themselves wisely and 
 well. In his " Discourses on Davila " he argued, with 
 all the strength of a powerful mind and all the ingenu- 
 ity of a practised debater, that pure democracy was 
 an impracticable and undesirable form of government, 
 and that a certain admixture of monarchy and aristoc- 
 racy was essential to the permanence of governmental 
 institutions. 
 
 Nevertheless, in 17Q6, in spite of the strenuous and 
 wily opposition of Hamilton and Jay, Adams was 
 elected to succeed Washington as President. It is sig- 
 nificant of the growing popular discontent with his 
 doctrines that he alone, of the first five presidents, was 
 denied a second term. During the first thirty-six 
 
62 Z\k fIDcn of tbc devolution 
 
 years of the Republic, every chief magistrate, except 
 John Adams, was rewarded for good service during 
 his first term by election for a second. 
 
 Adams's administration was perplexed in many 
 ways, and in many ways turbulent. He had Jefferson 
 for his Vice-President, but he ignored him as a factor 
 in the administration. On the other hand, instead of 
 commanding the strong support of Alexander Hamil- 
 ton, who was by all odds the foremost lender of the 
 Federalists, Adams managed to get into a violent con- 
 troversy with that great leader, and thus in the end 
 to disrupt the Federalist party, to which both belonged. 
 
 The new outbreak of hostility between Fiance and 
 England added enormously to the perplexities of 
 Adams's administration. To an extent scarcely con- 
 ceivable in our time, foreign affairs, scarcely at all 
 connected in any vital way with our own national 
 interests, influenced and dominated our national po- 
 litical feeling at that time. The Republicans, repre- 
 sented by Jefferson, strenuously favored France in her 
 contest with Great Britain ; first, because France had 
 now come to represent that liberty, self-government, 
 and popular sovereignty for which America had so 
 long and so painfully struggled against the British 
 power, and, secondly, because the War of the Revolu- 
 tion had left upon the popular mind an affectionate 
 remembrance of the help rendered by France in our 
 own struggle, and a popular detestation of everything 
 that bore the name or stamp of the British Govern- 
 ment. There were more or less important questions 
 
3obn Hoame 63 
 
 at issue between the two parties, with reference to 
 our own domestic policy. There was also grave dis- 
 content on the part of the people with those stately 
 aristocratic and monarchical forms and ceremonies 
 which Washington had instituted in the government, 
 and which John Adams, with his abiding belief in the 
 necessity of such things, had rather emphasized than 
 abated. But none of these questions of grave do- 
 mestic import counted for one half as much in the 
 politics of that time as did the question of the Federal- 
 ist leaning toward Great Britain, on the one hand, 
 and the Republican enthusiasm for France in her battle 
 for liberty, on the other. 
 
 Thus was John Adams's administration handi- 
 capped from the beginning. The country was grow- 
 ing more and more republican, more and more into 
 sympathy with Jefferson's opinions and with the 
 principles which he had embodied in its great charter 
 of liberty, the Declaration of Independence. John 
 Adams, now over seventy years of age, was too old 
 and too far fixed in his own opinions to share in this 
 growth of democracy. On the contrary, he seems 
 increasingly to have shrunk from and dreaded it as 
 a danger to the Republic that he loved so well. 
 
 Added to this was the necessity for practical legisla- 
 tion concerning the foreign affairs in controversy. It 
 would have been almost a miracle if even his sagacity 
 had been sufficient to steer his administration safely 
 through such shoals and breakers. It is easy now for 
 us to understand and realize that all the acts and 
 
64 £be fIDen of tbc "Revolution 
 
 policies of his administration, whether wise or unwise, 
 were sincerely directed by him to what he believed 
 to be the safety and the ultimate welfare of the 
 country. It is also easy for us to see now that in 
 many ways his policy, in fact, served that high purpose. 
 It saved us, for the time at least, from a war with 
 Great Britain, in which we should have stood a tar 
 smaller chance of successful issue than we did when 
 that inevitable conflict ultimately occurred in 1S12. 
 His policy at least secured a postponement of the 
 contest until such time as the country should be 
 readier and abler than it then was to conduct the 
 struggle to success. 
 
 But the result of Adams's administration was to 
 discredit him, for the time at least, and to make an 
 end of his career by the overthrow of his party and 
 its practical extinction as a controlling influence in the 
 government of the country for all time to come. In 
 1800 he was defeated by Jefferson in his candidacy for 
 re-election, and with his retirement from the presi- 
 dential office his public career practically came to an 
 end. But before he quitted office he gave to the 
 country John Marshall as Chief Justice of the United 
 States — an appointment which perhaps did more than 
 any other that any President has ever made to estab- 
 lish the Republic upon the firm foundations of clearly 
 interpreted law and to make its greatness lasting. 
 
 But upon his retirement from office, John Adams 
 vented his rage at his own failure of re-election in a 
 puerile way, singularly unworthy of a character that 
 
3obn Hfcams 65 
 
 had so many times shown itself to be capable of 
 exalted greatness. Instead of welcoming his suc- 
 cessor, as has always since been the custom of out- 
 going Presidents, and thus gracefully bowing to the 
 decision of the people at the polls, John Adams left 
 the Capital before daybreak on the 4th of March, 1801, 
 and in a fit of pique left Jefferson to get himself in- 
 ducted into office as best he might. This and some 
 other instances, cited in his biographies, reveal on his 
 part a vanity, a personal conceit, and a pettiness of 
 mind wholly unworthy of the character of the man 
 as exemplified in his great public services. But in 
 view of those great public services his countrymen 
 have always been disposed to overlook these little- 
 nesses and to estimate him rather by the greatnesses 
 of his mind and character. 
 
 It is to the credit of the broader side of his mind 
 that, in spite of his long antagonism to Jefferson, he 
 resumed his friendship with that statesman in his later 
 life, and cherished to his dying hour a high regard for 
 the services of his great contemporary to the Republic 
 and to the cause of liberty. Adams was nearly ninety- 
 one years of age when he died, on the 4th of July. 
 1820— the fiftieth anniversary of the signing of the 
 Declaration of Independence. Jefferson died on the 
 same day, but Adams, unaware of that fact, congratu- 
 lated himself, the country, and mankind upon the 
 thought, expressed in his last words, "Thomas Jef- 
 ferson still survives." 
 
THOMAS JEFFERSON 
 
 THE dominant characteristic of Thomas Jefferson's 
 mind and life was his unfaltering love of 
 human liberty. He not only believed in free- 
 dom as the inborn right of every human being, but he 
 believed also and equally in the entire practicability 
 and safety of permitting and authorizing personal free- 
 dom as the actual and rightful possession of the indi- 
 vidual. He believed that every human being born 
 into this world has a God-given right to do as he 
 pleases, so long as in doing so he does not interfere 
 with the equal right of any other human being to do as 
 he pleases. And, further, he believed that it is entirely 
 safe to apply this rule in practice to all human life and 
 conduct. 
 
 How much this meant in Thomas Jefferson's time, 
 we in our more liberal day are apt to underestimate. 
 To us, the doctrines which once put him into the 
 category of anarchists, — in which even Mr. Bryce has 
 classed him, — and led to his inclusion in a Bill of 
 Attainder, are commonplaces of thought. In his day 
 indulgence in thought of that kind made the thinker 
 
Thomas Jefferson 
 
 ill.ert Stusir 
 

 
w^ 
 
Gbomas 3ef£erson 67 
 
 anathema maranatha, not only to the constituted 
 
 powers that were, but often to the friends and inti- 
 mates of the thinker as well. But Jefferson so strongly, 
 so earnestly, so intensely, believed those doctrines of 
 human right and human liberty that he not only 
 declared them, but wrought them into the very web 
 and woof of his life, and did all that was possible to 
 him to embody them in the institutions and in the 
 statute laws of his country. 
 
 When he wrote the Declaration of Independence he 
 literally believed every word that he put into that 
 document. He believed "that all men are created 
 equal ; that they are endowed by their Creator with 
 certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, 
 liberty, and the pursuit of happiness," and to that 
 gospel of human freedom and human equality he was 
 grandly and resolutely true to the end of his life. 
 
 It is urged, in opposition to this view, that he was a 
 slaveholder. That is true. Nevertheless, Thomas 
 Jefferson hated slavery and feared it, and did all that 
 was possible to him to secure its extinction. In the 
 first draft that he made of the Declaration of Indepen- 
 dence — that draft which most fully expressed his own 
 unfettered thought — he included as a count in his 
 tremendous indictment of King George the charge that 
 his Majesty hail permitted, authorized, and encouraged 
 the infamy of the slave trade. This count came hot 
 from Jefferson's indignant heart. All the passion (hat 
 was possible to his well-poised nature was wreaked 
 upon it. It is missed to-day from the Declaration, 
 
6S Zbc flDcii of tbe "Revolution 
 
 simply because Congress struck it out in opposition to 
 his will, and Jefferson's biographers inform us that the 
 reason for its striking out was the interest that New 
 England had, through its ship-owners and ship- 
 masters, in that horrible traffic in human beings which 
 made chattels of their persons and merchandise of their 
 muscles. 
 
 In like manner, when Virginia ceded the Northwest 
 Territory to the United States, Jefferson earnestly 
 busied himself to write into the act of cession— drawn 
 by himself — a stipulation forever binding the govern- 
 ment to prohibit the existence of slavery in all that 
 fair land which Virginia so generously gave to the 
 nation. 
 
 The first public speech that Jefferson ever made in 
 the Legislature of Virginia was made in advocacy 
 of the bill of Mr. Bland, designed to facilitate the 
 emancipation of negro slaves. The law of the State 
 at that time forbade any owner of a negro slave to 
 manumit him without sending him beyond the borders 
 of the State. Mr. Bland's bill proposed to make eman- 
 cipation easier by repealing that provision of the 
 statute, and Jefferson, a young man just beginning his 
 political career, boldly ventured to advocate the reform 
 as a means of getting rid of the curse of slavery. He 
 did this in face of the fact that the author of the bill 
 was openly denounced in the Legislature, on the rostrum, 
 and in the public prints as an enemy of order, an 
 opponent of law, and an assailer of sacred vested 
 interests. 
 
Gbomas 3cffcrson 6 9 
 
 Further than this, Jefferson later, but while still a 
 young man, busied himself in still more important ways 
 in behalf of the'liberty that he so devotedly loved. He 
 was a member of the Virginia Legislature after inde- 
 pendence was declared ; and at that time what Virginia 
 did the other States were apt to do in reverent imita- 
 tion. Jefferson brought forward in that dominant 
 Legislature and strenuously advocated three measures 
 which were then accounted anarchistic and dangerously 
 subversive of established institutions. He advocated 
 them solely upon that ground of natural human equality 
 which he had already so superbly set forth in the 
 Declaration of Independence. 
 
 One of these measures abolished the iniquity of en- 
 tails, thus making all property liable, as it ought to be, 
 for all debts, and thus removing a fruitful source of 
 inequality and injustice from the statute law. The 
 second abolished the absurd iniquity of primogeniture 
 and with it the degrading dependence of younger chil- 
 dren upon the will of eldest sons. The purpose of this 
 measure was to secure among the children of an estate- 
 owner that equality of opportunity and right which 
 Jefferson believed to be God's own gift to all human 
 beings. It was the custom at that time not only to give 
 the entire estate to the first-born son, but to give him 
 also educational advantages that were wholly denied 
 to all the younger sons, and to all the daughters either 
 older or younger, of the family. This oldest son might 
 be a blockhead, while some younger brother might be 
 a man of genius. The older son might be inclined to 
 
-o Gbc flDcn of tbe "Revolution 
 
 dissoluteness, while his younger brother might be a 
 youth o\ probity and good habits. Regardless of all 
 this, the eldest son was sent abroad to be educated at 
 Oxford or Cambridge and to make the grand tour of 
 the continent in company with a tutor, while the 
 younger was left with no other education than that 
 which he might pick up in an " old held school." And 
 the younger brother was left also for life a helpless 
 dependent upon his senior. He was not expected or 
 even allowed to do anything in particular if the estate 
 could afford to support him in idleness, and if he could 
 manage to be sufficiently subservient to retain the 
 favor of my lord, his brother. It was a vicious system, 
 embodying in itself all that is worst in aristocracy, all 
 that is most destructive in the system of class privilege. 
 
 Jefferson sought with all his soul to abolish this 
 hideous wrong, and perhaps no other service that he 
 rendered to the country during his long and busy life 
 was more lastingly important than this. 
 
 The third of Jefferson's great measures was a statute 
 providing for religious liberty, which then did not exist 
 in Virginia or, in any true sense, in any of the other colo- 
 nies. This measure absolutely abolished the connection 
 between church and state, and firmly established that 
 perfect freedom of conscience upon which we boast 
 ourselves. Prior to that time, liberty ot conscience had 
 mainly meant the liberty of the dominant church in 
 each colony to impose itself and its will upon dis- 
 senters and unbelievers, without fear of restraint from 
 any other ecclesiastical authority. This was true in 
 
ftbomas 3cffcrson 71 
 
 New England, as the life of Roger Williams and the 
 history of the Quakers testify. It was true in Pennsyl- 
 vania, where the Quakers, while themselves claiming a 
 liberty not enjoyed elsewhere, were distinctly intoler- 
 ant of that which did not agree with their order. It 
 was true in Maryland, where the Catholics boasted 
 themselves of their liberality in granting Protestants 
 the right to live, and not much else. In brief, the con- 
 ception of religious liberty which Jefferson embodied in 
 this statute was utterly absent from the laws, the insti- 
 tutions, and the very fundamental ideas of every colony, 
 just as it was from the laws, institutions, and ideas of 
 every European nation. 
 
 It is not too much to say that by his introduction, 
 advocacy, and successful passage of this statute in Vir- 
 ginia, Thomas Jefferson, for the first time in history, 
 made religious liberty a fact. He was unquestionably 
 right in selecting this as one of the three great achieve- 
 ments of his life worthy to be recorded on his tomb- 
 stone, where he directed that the legend should be 
 inscribed : " Here was buried Thomas Jefferson, author 
 of the Declaration of American Independence, of the 
 statute of Virginia for religious freedom, and father of 
 the University of Virginia." 
 
 In support of this measure of religious freedom, 
 Jefferson uttered some eternal truths which in our time 
 seem commonplaces, but which then were regarded as 
 revolutionary in the extreme. He said: " Government 
 has nothing to do with opinion." " Compulsion makes 
 hypocrites, not converts." "It is error alone which 
 
72 Gbc fIDcn of tbc Revolution 
 
 needs the support of government : Truth can stand by 
 itself." These statements seem truisms to the modern 
 American mind, but in Jefferson's day they seemed 
 startling and even shocking in their radicalism. Byron 
 says that "Cervantes smiled Spain's chivalry away." 
 It may with equal truth be said that Thomas Jefferson 
 legislated religious intolerance out of this country. He 
 could not banish bigotry from our free land, but at any 
 rate he cut its hideous claws. 
 
 His advocacy of each of these three measures was a 
 direct slap in the face to the spirit of his time and to 
 the social order to which he belonged. For, while Jef- 
 ferson through his father was descended from the 
 yeomanry, he inherited through his mother the bluest 
 blood and the most aristocratic lineage then existing 
 on the American continent. His three measures were 
 calculated and deliberately intended to destroy the 
 very institutions on which that aristocracy of which 
 he was a part rested as its foundation. And his zeal 
 in their advocacy was an affront to his own people 
 and a challenge to the institutions that gave him place 
 and prominence. His advocacy of them was not less 
 than heroism on the part of a man born to aristocracy 
 on one side of his house and on the other to a plebe- 
 ianism that needed bolstering. 
 
 His advocacy of these three measures is cited here 
 not as the only illustration of his devotion to human 
 liberty and equality, but merely as furnishing the 
 three most conspicuous examples of it. That senti- 
 ment dominated his entire life and inspired all of his 
 
Gbomas 3cffcrecm 73 
 
 public nets. It was he who originated the statute for 
 the establishment of local courts of justice throughout 
 the commonwealth, in order that equity and the pro- 
 tection of the law might be available equally to the 
 poor and the rich — an idea wholly foreign to the co- 
 lonial Virginian mind. 
 
 It was he who alone and laboriously struggled for 
 the establishment of a system of common schools 
 throughout the State. It was he who tried for years 
 to introduce into Virginia the New England system of 
 town government, upon the avowed ground that, as 
 a matter of observation, that system secured liberty 
 and exact right among men, and thus ministered at the 
 altar of that god of his idolatry, human equality. 
 
 We have here the keynote to Jefferson's character. 
 His love of human freedom, his belief in its entire 
 practicability, and his firm conviction of the natural 
 equality of men were things fundamental to his nature 
 and dominant in his life. In support of these beliefs — 
 which were then accounted dangerously anarchis- 
 tic — he never faltered, never wavered, never for one 
 moment permitted himself to doubt the righteousness 
 of his principles. 
 
 It has been stupidly suggested by writers inatten- 
 tive to dates and facts that Jefferson imbibed his creed 
 from the vagaries of the French Revolution. It is only 
 necessary, by way of reply, to remind the reader that 
 the French Revolution occurred many years after Jef- 
 ferson had written his creed not only into statutory 
 law but into a public document— the Declaration of 
 
74 £bc flDcn of tbc "Revolution 
 
 Independence — which will live to inspire men so long 
 as time endures. He wrote that greatest charter of 
 liberty in 1770. The French Revolution did not begin 
 until 1789. Without doubt or question, the French 
 revolutionists borrowed much from Jefferson's teach- 
 ings, but to suggest that Jefferson learned his lessons 
 of liberty from acts or utterances of theirs, is to sup- 
 pose that the year 1789 antedated the year 1770. 
 
 Jefferson was, in fact, scarcely more than a boy 
 when he began that splendid career in the Virginia 
 Legislature which has been already adverted to, and 
 which in that Legislature, in Congress, as Secretary of 
 State, and as President of these United States, contin- 
 ued for nearly half a century, as an apostleship of 
 human liberty. 
 
 Another characteristic which Jefferson shared with 
 Washington, Franklin, and Adams, and with the other 
 great men of that heroic time, was his self-sacrificing 
 devotion to the public welfare. As Franklin spent his 
 own money to provide the means of public defence, 
 and turned into the treasury of his country at the time 
 of its sorest need every dollar of his private fortune 
 that he could in any wise convert into money, and 
 as Washington served seven years in war and eight 
 years in peace, refusing not only the pay assigned by 
 Congress as a compensation for his services, but also 
 those richer emoluments which were afterwards 
 pressed upon him by a grateful country, so Jefferson 
 actually impoverished himself, sinking from opulence 
 to indigence, in the public service. When he first 
 
Gbomas 3cffcrson 75 
 
 entered upon his legislative duties in Virginia, he 
 wrote it down as a resolution, "Never to engage, 
 while in public office, in any kind of enterprise for the 
 improvement of my own fortune, nor to wear any 
 other character than that of a farmer." How as- 
 tonishing would be a suggestion of such a doctrine 
 to certain of the public men of our time ! How con- 
 temptuously they would reject it as the absurdest 
 quixotism ! Yet Jefferson resolutely adhered to it 
 throughout all the years of his protracted public ser- 
 vice, loyal to it upon principle, and, as has been said, 
 at cost of financial ruin to himself. When he entered 
 Washington's Cabinet he was an opulent man, pos- 
 sessed of vast estates, the improvement of which 
 would have been the first care of a man less devoted 
 than he to the public weal. When he retired from 
 the presidency, twenty years later, he was so far im- 
 poverished by neglect of his own affairs in his care for 
 the interests of the nation, that he seriously feared 
 arrest for debt before his departure from the capital. 
 Only a timely loan from a Richmond bank enabled him 
 to leave Washington without that humiliation, and to 
 retire to his estate in the hope of so managing his 
 affairs as to pay his debts and retain something for the 
 support of his declining years. No grander spectacle 
 of heroic devotion to the public service has ever been 
 presented in the career of any man, not excepting even 
 that of George Washington himself. 
 
 Before Jefferson died, he had had to sell his library, 
 and part with much else that was precious to him, in 
 
76 Sbe flDcn of tbc "Revolution 
 
 order to meet the obligations incurred while he was 
 attending- to the public's affairs to the neglect of his 
 own. When he died, the whole of his estate was 
 sold for barely enough money to discharge his debts. 
 His daughter and her children were left without the 
 means of support, and would have fallen into want but 
 for the spontaneous generosity of Virginia and South 
 Carolina, whose Legislatures each voted to his daugh- 
 ter a free gift of $10,000. 
 
 Unlike Washington and Franklin, Jefferson had the 
 advantage of an orderly education. He was trained ;it 
 William and Mary College, which then gave to its 
 students, as Harvard did to the young men of New 
 England, about that amount of instruction which our 
 boys in the present day receive in a good High School, 
 or somewhat less than that. His instruction in law, 
 though irregular in its ordering, was of a much higher 
 character. It had for its basis Coke upon Lyttleton, 
 and it included four years of diligent reading and 
 practical experience in the office of a learned coun- 
 sellor. It was a training in the law of that high qual- 
 ity which made possible such jurists as John Marshall 
 and John Jay, and the other legal giants of that strenu- 
 ous time. It was such training in the law as few 
 students receive in our day, when Practice is given 
 precedence over Principle; when ancient traditions and 
 broad historical truths are made to give place to a 
 study of codes and statutory technicalities, and when 
 the coming lawyer is taught rather how to win cases 
 in court than to understand the theory, the principle, 
 
Gbomas 3effcrecm 77 
 
 the history, and, above all, the eternal righteousness of 
 the law. 
 
 It was in thus learning the law that Thomas Jef- 
 ferson imbibed those convictions of human right, hu- 
 man liberty, and human equality which dominated his 
 mind throughout his career. He knew more of Eng- 
 lish constitutional law than the King and all his minis- 
 ters ever dreamed of, and upon occasion he sorely 
 confounded them with his learning. In previously- 
 learning the mathematics, to which he was a devotee, 
 and in which he was an expert, he had acquired that un- 
 compromising devotion to exact truth which prompted 
 him throughout life to apply the principles he had 
 learned in his study of the law to present conditions as 
 relentlessly as if they had been mathematical formula;. 
 
 And in thus learning the law Jefferson acquired 
 that intellectual training which leads to precision of 
 statement, lucidity of comprehension, and simple di- 
 rectness of utterance. Literary style in that period 
 was supposed to be formed by "giving one's days 
 and nights to Addison"; but it is observable in the 
 writings of such men as John Jay, John Marshall, John 
 Adams, and the rest of the great lawyers, that they 
 had learned from their law studies a literary art finer 
 than any of which Addison was a master. They had 
 learned to think clearly and to express their thoughts 
 with a precision and lucidity that Addison scarcely 
 dreamed of. 
 
 Jefferson has been called "the pen of the Revolu- 
 tion." Certainly no man in that time wrote with 
 
78 Zbc flDcii of tbc "Revolution 
 
 greater ease and elegance than he, and, still more cer- 
 tainly, none wrote with a more convincing simplicity. 
 It is doubtful that there is in the language anywhere a 
 nobler specimen of convincing literary style than the 
 Declaration of Independence, and it was Jefferson's habit 
 throughout life to write in that clear-cut, masterly way. 
 
 From his father, Peter Jefferson, Thomas inherited 
 a stalwart frame and a mind simple in its conscien- 
 tiousness. From this father, also, he received up to 
 the age of fourteen an invaluable tuition in the robust 
 exercises of the chase. He learned to shoot, to ride, 
 to swim, and, better still, to dare; and this father — 
 planter, surveyor, and man of exalted character — left 
 behind him instructions for the education of his son, 
 both physically and mentally, which, without doubt, 
 had large influence in moulding him for that high ser- 
 vice that he was destined later to render to his coun- 
 try and to mankind. From his mother, Jane Randolph, 
 Thomas Jefferson inherited the highest traditions of 
 loyalty to duty then prevalent in a community where 
 traditions were binding, especially when they involved 
 the point of honor. 
 
 This was the making of the man, and this explains 
 him. According to the custom of his time and family, 
 he entered at twenty-one years of age upon unpaid 
 public service as a justice of the peace and a vestry- 
 man of his parish. In the meantime, he had assumed 
 charge of his dead father's estate and was managing 
 its difficult affairs with skill and discretion, while carry- 
 ing on an earnest study of the law. At the age of 
 
Gbomas 3cfferson 79 
 
 twenty-four, he was admitted to the bar and entered 
 at once upon an active practice. He was no speaker, 
 and in that day, in Virginia, oratory was accounted the 
 most essential equipment of the young lawyer. But 
 his knowledge was so profound, his judgment so dis- 
 creet, and his industry so untiring, that his lack of 
 oratorical ability counted scarcely at all against him 
 in the reckoning. 
 
 He was twenty-six years of age when, in May, 1769, 
 he took his seat as a member of the Virginia House of 
 Burgesses, of which Washington also was a member. 
 It was a stormy time of conflict with the royal gov- 
 ernor, Lord Botetourt, who three days later dissolved 
 the House for what he regarded as its treasonable 
 course in contending for the right of the colonies to 
 exemption from all taxation not levied by their own 
 representatives. From that time till 1774, Thomas 
 Jefferson was one of the most active, intelligent, and 
 uncompromising opponents in the Virginia Legislature 
 of every assertion of royal authority. It was he who 
 prepared that " Draught of Instructions" which Virginia 
 gave to her delegates in Congress, and which formed 
 the basis and inspiration of the movement in behalf 
 of independence throughout all the colonies. Here 
 Thomas Jefferson's extraordinary grasp of the princi- 
 ples of English law and of human right, and his 
 singular capacity for the lucid and convincing utter- 
 ance of truth, rendered possible his first great contri- 
 bution to the cause of American independence. He 
 proposed an address to the King ; but he proposed 
 
so £bc fiDcn of tbc "Revolution 
 
 also that this address should be not servile or too 
 submissive, but manly and courteously self-assertive. 
 He proposed that the address should frankly remind 
 the King that he was, after all, nothing more than the 
 chosen chief executive of a great people, and that he 
 was possessed only of definite and limited powers. 
 He insisted that the Legislature of Virginia had as clear 
 a right to pass laws for the government of England 
 as the Parliament of England had to pass laws for the 
 government of Virginia. This was bold and radical 
 ground to take, and there is little wonder that it 
 brought Jefferson under condemnation as a pestilent 
 revolutionist ; but even this was not all. Intimately 
 familiar as he was with the history as well as with the 
 law of England, he actually ventured to refer approv- 
 ingly to "the late deposition of His Majesty King 
 Charles by the Commonwealth of England.'" 
 
 Is it any wonder that two years later, when Con- 
 gress at last accepted the idea of independence, this 
 young apostle of human right and of American liberty 
 was chosen chairman of the committee charged with 
 the duty of drawing up that declaration of causes and 
 reasons which was felt to be due to "a decent respect 
 for the opinions of mankind " ? The veteran Benjamin 
 Franklin — everywhere recognized as the most effective 
 writer, and the most experienced diplomatist in all the 
 colonies — was a member of that committee. John 
 Adams, representing the best thought, the highest 
 learning, and the fundamental character of the already 
 revolted and warring New England States, was an- 
 
Ebomas 3effcrson 81 
 
 other. Roger Sherman and Robert R. Livingston- 
 giants in their way— completed the list of the com- 
 mittee. But, among these notables and veterans, it 
 was Thomas Jefferson, a young man only thirty-three 
 years of age, who was made chairman of the com- 
 mittee and charged with the exalted duty of writing 
 the greatest State paper and the grandest setting forth 
 of the essentials of human right that has a place any- 
 where in the archives of the nations of earth. It was 
 eminently fit, and it was felt to be so, that the man 
 who had drawn the Virginia Instructions should write 
 the Declaration of Independence, of which they were 
 the foundation. This young man had boldly ventured 
 to ask, " Can any one reason be assigned why 160,000 
 electors in the Island of Great Britain should give 
 law to 4,000,000 in the States of America ? " In that 
 question, boldly propounded to the King and Parlia- 
 ment of Great Britain, Jefferson had put the essentials 
 of the American thought and contention. It was 
 specially fit, when the time came to declare indepen- 
 dence as a measure of revolt against injustice and 
 usurpation, that this young man, who so clearly under- 
 stood the subject and so vigorously grasped the ideas 
 fundamental to it, should be employed to set forth to 
 all mankind the reasons that impelled the colonies to 
 declare themselves, of right, free and independent 
 States. He had already by his utterances brought 
 upon himself, as he himself phrased it, " the honor of 
 having his name inserted in a long list of proscriptions, 
 enrolled in a Bill of Attainder." 
 
.82 Gfoc flfccn of tbc "Revolution 
 
 Having accomplished the work assigned him, 
 Thomas Jefferson resigned his seat in Congress and 
 returned to his duties as a member of the Virginia 
 Legislature. It was then that he sought to introduce 
 the New England system of local self-government into 
 his native State. It was then that he began his suc- 
 cessful warfare upon entails, primogeniture, and the 
 relation between church and state to which reference 
 has already been made in this essay. As he himself 
 expressed it, in a letter to Dr. Franklin, his efforts were 
 directed to the end that Virginia— then the dominant 
 State in the Union— should lay aside "the monarchi- 
 cal, and take up the republican government," and, 
 as he said, Virginia did this "with as much ease as 
 would have attended the throwing off an old and 
 putting on a new suit of clothes." 
 
 If Jefferson's work had ended here, it would have 
 been enough to justify the granting of a place to him in 
 any Hall of Fame in which the demigods of American 
 history are entitled to the celebration of their virtues 
 and their services. Three times Congress called upon 
 him to go abroad in the delicate and difficult diplomatic 
 service of that time. Three times he declined, not 
 for personal reasons, but in each case because the 
 occasion for sending him abroad seemed to have 
 passed away before the time for his departure arrived. 
 But, meantime, other public services continuously occu- 
 pied his mind and his energies to the serious detriment 
 of his private fortunes. In 1770, in the storm-and- 
 stress period of the Revolution, he was made Governor 
 
Gbomas 3cffcrson S3 
 
 of Virginia, and for two years lie occupied that difficult 
 position, and discharged its arduous and perplexing 
 duties so efficiently that when, later, in answer to cer- 
 tain carping criticisms, he demanded a searching inves- 
 tigation of his administration, the Legislature of Virginia, 
 without a dissenting voice, passed a resolution thank- 
 ing him by public authority, and in behalf of the people, 
 for his " impartial, upright and attentive discharge of 
 duty." 
 
 In 17S2, he was again unanimously chosen as the 
 country's plenipotentiary to France, to treat for peace. 
 He accepted the appointment, but did not sail because 
 news came that a preliminary treaty had already been 
 signed. In 1783, he was again elected to Congress, 
 and, as chairman of the committee on the currency, he 
 gave to us that decimal monetary system which has so 
 greatly ministered to the prosperity of the country. 
 Unfortunately, his effort to apply this decimal system 
 to all weights and measures was not successful, and 
 consequently to this day our boys and girls must 
 stupefy their brains in muddling over a lot of "tables" 
 which are without congruity, without reason for 
 being, and without sense. Some day, perhaps, we 
 shall be civilized enough and wise enough to carry 
 out Thomas Jefferson's idea and apply to all measures 
 that decimal system which he, even in that early day, 
 applied in his odometer to the measuring of all roads 
 over which he travelled. 
 
 In 1784, Congress still again appointed Jefferson 
 Minister Plenipotentiary to France, and on the sth of 
 
84 Zbc nDcn of tbe "Revolution 
 
 July of that year he went abroad upon that mission. 
 "You replace Dr. Franklin," said the Count de Ver- 
 gennes to him, when he presented his credentials, in 
 1785. "I succeed Dr. Franklin," answered Jefferson ; 
 "nobody can replace him." 
 
 During his stay in France, Jefferson's intense repub- 
 licanism was enormously recruited by his study of the 
 horrible conditions into which arbitrary and insanely 
 mediaeval government, and the abuses of aristocratic 
 privilege, had brought the plain people. He was 
 shocked and horrified by what he saw— so shocked 
 and horrified that the very excesses of the French 
 Revolution, which soon afterward broke out, always 
 seemed to him less horrible than the evils against which 
 they were a protest. In a letter to Madison, he wrote 
 that the government then existing in France was a 
 "government of wolves over sheep, or kites over 
 pigeons." He went among the people, ate of their 
 scanty meals, rested himself upon their beds, as he 
 said, "to see if they were soft," and found them very 
 hard. 
 
 After five years, passed alternately in the glittering 
 pageants of the court and in the hovels of the peas- 
 antry, he returned to America a more intensely deter- 
 mined Democrat even than he had been before his 
 mission began. All that he had wrought out of prin- 
 ciple and theory by his philosophy he found there 
 demonstrated by fact. All of antagonism to tyranny, 
 which his studies of the law and his thinking upon 
 lines of common sense had implanted in his soul, was 
 
Gbomas 3cffcrson 85 
 
 thus strengthened by example, and intensified by prac- 
 tical illustration of the misery to which the luxury of 
 the aristocrat condemns the children of the people. He 
 had seen both sides. He had enjoyed the glories of 
 the French court, and had lain upon the couches and 
 eaten the meagre porridge of the people. He had seen 
 privilege at its best and privation at its worst. He 
 came back to America more deeply convinced than ever 
 of those self-evident truths which he had long ago 
 written into the Declaration of Independence — "that all 
 men are created equal ; that they are endowed by their 
 Creator with certain unalienable rights ; that among 
 these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." 
 
 On his return to Virginia, in 1789, after five years 
 of arduous service in France, he was instantly called 
 again to public duty. Washington, then President, 
 asked him to assume the functions of Secretary of 
 State. He accepted the appointment very reluctantly. 
 The duties of the place were delicate and difficult in 
 the extreme. The salary attached to it was not more 
 than half sufficient to pay for the diplomatic dinners 
 that the Secretary must give and the other expenses 
 that he must incur in the discharge of his duties to the 
 government. Moreover, Washington had been elected 
 as the candidate of no party, or rather of all parties. 
 As a result, he had called about him for his Cabinet 
 men of exceedingly diverse views, whose opinions 
 there was no hope of reconciling. Oil and water are 
 not more difficult of fusion than were the opinions of 
 Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State, and Alexander 
 
86 Elnc fiDcn of tbe devolution 
 
 Hamilton, Secretary of the Treasury. Jefferson be- 
 lieved absolutely in democratic government — a gov- 
 ernment such as Lincoln many years later characterized 
 as "government of the people, by the people, for the 
 people. " Hamilton believed in government of the peo- 
 ple, by authority, for the general good — the general 
 good including especially the good of the ruling class. 
 There is much dispute as to whether Hamilton really 
 desired and proposed the establishment of monarchy 
 in this country, with an aristocracy as its buttress, but 
 whether he did or not, it is certain that his ideas did 
 not at all follow those lines upon which the ideas of 
 Jefferson were formed ; it is certain that he had less 
 faith in the capacity of the people for self-government 
 than Jefferson had ; it is certain that he believed in more 
 government and stronger government than Jefferson's 
 mind was ready to tolerate. 
 
 Knox, another member of the Cabinet, was in all 
 these respects the disciple of Hamilton, and thus Jef- 
 ferson, though at the head of the Cabinet, found him- 
 himself in continuous antagonism with the ideas and 
 opinions of those others who were associated with 
 him in that formative period, which was destined to 
 give color and direction to our national institutions. 
 Even Washington himself had a belief in state and 
 ceremony which was peculiarly obnoxious to Jeffer- 
 son's mind. He instituted ceremonies that were to 
 Jefferson intensely offensive, as Jefferson himself de- 
 monstrated by decreeing their utter and instant abolition 
 when he became President in his turn. 
 
Gbomas 3efferson 87 
 
 It is hard to imagine a more difficult position than 
 that which Jefferson occupied, as the head of Wash- 
 ington's Cabinet. He was personally so firm a be- 
 liever in his doctrine of human liberty and of the right 
 of the people to rule themselves that he eulogized 
 Thomas Paine's " Rights of Man," declared that if the 
 French Revolution " had desolated half of the earth " 
 it would still have benefited mankind by its abolition 
 of the abuses that gave rise to it, and said that 
 " were there only an Adam and an Eve left in each 
 country, and left free, it would be better than as it 
 now is." The antagonism of Hamilton to such views 
 as these was wholly irreconcilable, and even Wash- 
 ington, with all his tact and charity, and dread of 
 partisanship, was unable to reconcile this conflict of 
 fundamental opinions. 
 
 The situation became so strained at last that at 
 the beginning of 1794 Jefferson forced his resignation 
 upon the President and retired to Monticello, in the 
 hope that, by attention to his estate, he might in some 
 degree repair those ravages which the war and his 
 long neglect of personal for public affairs had wrought 
 in his fortunes. In common with Washington, Frank- 
 lin, John Adams, and many others of the founders of 
 the Republic Jefferson had grievously sacrificed his 
 own fortunes to those of the nation. It was now his 
 fond hope to retire permanently from public life and 
 devote the remainder of his days, as Washington so 
 often and so earnestly desired to do, to the peaceful 
 and gratifying pursuit of agriculture. A few months 
 
ss Sbe flDcn of tbe "Revolution 
 
 later, however, Washington invited Jefferson to re- 
 sume his headship in the Cabinet, Hamilton having, in 
 the meantime, retired. This invitation Jefferson de- 
 clined, declaring that under no circumstances would 
 he ever again enter upon public office. Yet two years 
 later Jefferson was voted for as a candidate for the 
 presidency and was actually chosen to be Vice-Presi- 
 dent. Four years later still, he was a candidate for the 
 presidency, and was elected to that high office, which 
 he filled for eight years, being re-elected in 1804. 
 
 Every intelligent student of Jefferson's career must 
 realize that, indirectly but actually his greatest service 
 to the Republic was educational— that in his legisla- 
 tive and other labors for liberty, and in his long-con- 
 tinued advocacy of the freedom of the individual as a 
 natural, God-given right, and not as a gracious gift of 
 government, he rendered a service wholly matchless 
 in its splendor. 
 
 But it was as President that in material ways he 
 most conspicuously conferred benefit upon his coun- 
 try. It was he who gave to this nation the right and 
 privilege of becoming great. It was he who negotiated 
 a purchase which not only gave to us the vast territory 
 west of the Mississippi, but with it gave us also per- 
 petual exemption from the possibility of a hostile 
 power on our Western borders, and made the whole 
 length of that most wonderful of all river systems for- 
 ever our own. In the minds of those who look most 
 at material things this will always stand as Jefferson's 
 greatest service to the Republic. And certainly, in 
 
Gbomae 3efferson s 9 
 
 material ways, there has been no greater service ren- 
 dered by any man or any administration. 
 
 But Jefferson impressed himself for good in other 
 ways upon the government of the country, upon its 
 institutions, and upon its habits of thought. Wash- 
 ington, born and bred an aristocrat and for long years 
 exercising arbitrary power and maintaining state as a 
 great commander of armies, had brought into the gov- 
 ernment a degree of pomp and ceremony which he 
 deemed essential to the maintenance of that popular 
 awe and respect which, up to that time, had been 
 deemed essential to the preservation of governmental 
 dignity. He had been accused, indeed, of introducing 
 actually royal surroundings for himself. So grave 
 had been this question in his mind that at one time he 
 formally submitted it to the members of his Cabinet, 
 and drew from them written opinions as to what 
 measure of state and ceremony it was desirable and 
 necessary for the President to maintain. To Jefferson, 
 when he came into power, this was no question at all. 
 He was a democrat of democrats. He believed in the 
 equality of men as well as in their liberty. He re- 
 garded the government as nothing more nor less than 
 their agency for the transaction of the public business. 
 He regarded himself, in his capacity as President, as 
 nothing more than the citizen selected by his fellow 
 citizens to care for their common concerns. He there- 
 fore at once swept away all of Washington's forms 
 and ceremonies, which John Adams, in spite of his own 
 love of simplicity, had permitted to survive through 
 
90 Gbe riDcn of tbe 'Revolution 
 
 his administration. Jefferson lived plainly, dressed 
 plainly, and behaved as any plain gentleman might. 
 He abolished the weekly levee, and in every other 
 way possible stripped the presidential office of the 
 millinery and flummery of state. 
 
 It had been the custom of presidents to deliver 
 annual addresses to Congress, after the manner of the 
 English Speech from the Throne. Jefferson abolished 
 this custom. Instead of an address, he sent to Con- 
 gress a carefully prepared message, laying before that 
 body the information, the suggestions, and the recom- 
 mendations called for by the Constitution. He thus 
 established a democratic practice which has endured to 
 our own day, no president having ever thought (^f re- 
 verting to the older and more monarchic way. 
 
 As Vice-President under Mr. Adams, Jefferson had 
 taken no part whatever in government, beyond the 
 discharge of his duties as President of the Senate. 
 For by this time the cleavage between parties was 
 becoming marked, and Jefferson and Adams were an- 
 tipodal to each other in their political opinions. Adams 
 the Federalist felt no desire to consult with Jefferson 
 the radical Republican. And Jefferson, in his turn, had 
 no wish to share responsibility for the acts of an ad- 
 ministration whose principles he regarded as wrong, 
 and whose proceedings he considered hurtful and, in 
 some part at least, unlawful. Two years before his 
 own election to the presidency he had drawn the cele- 
 brated Kentucky Resolutions of 1708. expressing, as 
 they had never before been expressed, those doctrines 
 
Gbomas 3cffcrson 91 
 
 upon which the Republican — afterwards called the 
 Democratic — party made its appeal to the people. 
 Those resolutions denounced the Alien and Sedition 
 Laws not only as unconstitutional, but as subversive 
 of fundamental human rights. Except in writing the 
 Declaration of Independence, it is doubtful that Jeffer- 
 son ever made a greater contribution to the science of 
 free government than in the framing of those resolu- 
 tions. Naturally, when he came to be President, he 
 did all that he could to undo the mischiefs wrought by 
 those laws. He pardoned every man who was im- 
 prisoned under the terms of the Sedition Law, holding 
 that law to be " a nullity as absolute and palpable as 
 if Congress had ordered us to fall down and worship 
 a golden image." He sent friendly and sympathetic 
 letters to the chief victims of the Alien Law, Kosci- 
 uszko and Volney, and he invited Dr. Priestley, who 
 had been menaced by that statute, to be his guest in the 
 Executive Mansion. To Thomas Paine he offered the 
 honor of a homeward voyage in a government war-ship. 
 Jefferson was the first of our presidents to encounter 
 those problems of the civil service which have so 
 greatly vexed all of his successors. He found practi- 
 cally every office, great and small, occupied by a 
 Federalist, and he found, too, that the hunger and thirst 
 for place with which we are now so familiar had already 
 begun its clamor. The least that was demanded of 
 him was that he should make enough removals and 
 new appointments to establish an equality of office- 
 holding between the two parties. This Jefferson 
 
92 <Ibc flDcn of tbc "Revolution 
 
 resolutely refused to do. He held firmly to the doc- 
 trine that a faithful subordinate, whose functions are 
 not political, should never be displaced because of 
 a difference between his political views and those 
 of the administration. He made no removals except 
 for official misconduct, or, in his own words, for 
 "active and bitter opposition to the order of things 
 which the public will has established "—that is to say, 
 for disloyalty to our republican form of government. 
 
 It is no part of the purpose of the present essay to 
 recount in detail the acts and the events of Jefferson's 
 administration. In historical importance, the Louisiana 
 Purchase, already referred to, was chief among the 
 external acts of his administration. It not only gave 
 to us a territory which American enterprise has wrought 
 into a matchless empire of populous and opulent States, 
 but it made this country great by forever freeing us 
 from the possibility of a rival nation in the country 
 beyond the Mississippi. But to the thoughtful mind 
 the greatest service of Jefferson's administration was its 
 efficiency in republicanizing the Republic— in making 
 this great democracy democratic— in teaching the 
 people to trust themselves, and in demonstrating to 
 all mankind the possibility of a free people establishing 
 and maintaining a great and powerful nation without 
 any of those adventitious aids which had from the 
 beginning of time been accounted necessary to the 
 creation and the maintenance of national power. 
 
 When Jefferson entered upon the presidency there 
 was everywhere doubt and distrust of republican 
 
Gbomas 3cffcrson 93 
 
 forms and principles. It was everywhere doubted 
 that a government strong enough to stand alone could 
 be securely rested upon faith in the popular honesty 
 and intelligence. It was everywhere doubted that 
 national strength was compatible with actual indi- 
 vidual liberty. It was everywhere doubted that the 
 people could be trusted to manage their own affairs. 
 When Jefferson quitted the presidency all these 
 problems had been wrought out to a demonstration 
 through his superb courage in fearlessly applying prin- 
 ciples to practice. It is scarcely too much to say that 
 Thomas Jefferson created the only great Republic this 
 world has ever known, in which republicanism is real 
 and self-government an actual fact. 
 
 It has already been related that Jefferson griev- 
 ously impoverished himself in his devotion to the 
 public service, and that when he retired from the presi- 
 dency he was actually apprehensive of detention in 
 Washington under an arrest for debt— that hideous 
 thing, imprisonment for debt, having not then been 
 eliminated from American law. Jefferson had inherited 
 from his father a fair patrimony of fertile lands, with 
 about thirty slaves to till them. His wife had brought 
 to him as her dowry 40,000 acres of land and one 
 hundred and thirty-five slaves. Such an estate, under 
 the careful and skilful management of such a man as 
 Thomas Jefferson, would unquestionably have made 
 him one of the most opulent men in America. That 
 opportunity he sacrificed willingly to the public service, 
 and his declining years were passed in poverty and 
 
94 <Ihc flDcn of tbc "Revolution 
 
 financial embarrassment solely because of his sacrifice 
 of his time, his genius, and his energies, to the service 
 of his countrymen. 
 
 His retirement from public life occurred at the age 
 of sixty-six years, and his personal affairs strenuously 
 demanded his utmost attention, yet he did not cease 
 even then, and under such circumstances, to concern 
 himself with the welfare of his country and especially 
 of his native State. His correspondence with Madison 
 and Monroe was mightily helpful to the nation in a 
 time of sore stress and strait. He busied himself in 
 a renewed effort to establish common schools in Vir- 
 ginia like those that had done so much for New Eng- 
 land. He was baffled in this, largely by reason of 
 the fact that in Virginia the land was held in large 
 plantations, and the population, therefore, was so 
 widely scattered that the maintenance of schools for 
 all was difficult, expensive, and in some cases impos- 
 sible. Yet to this educational purpose Jefferson de- 
 voted all his energy and all his abilities for years. 
 
 In another educational project he was more suc- 
 cessful. He made himself truly— as he desired that 
 his tombstone should declare— " the father of the 
 University of Virginia." He not only secured the 
 financial appropriations necessary to the establishment 
 and maintenance of that noble institution, but he 
 planned its system of education and personally super- 
 intended every detail of the construction of its build- 
 ings. He founded it rigidly upon those principles of 
 truth and justice which had dominated all his thoughts 
 
Gbomas 3etterson 95 
 
 throughout his life. He forbade it to grant honorary 
 degrees, holding it rigidly to the function of crowning 
 actual scholarship and actual work with academic rec- 
 ognition. He freed it, from the beginning, from all sem- 
 blance of monarchism by providing that it should have 
 no president, and he freed its students for all time from 
 religious oppression by providing in its fundamental 
 law that attendance on their part upon religious exer- 
 cises of every kind should be purely voluntary. 
 
 This, in brief, is the portrait of that apostle of 
 liberty, without whose brave thought and aggressive 
 energy much that this Republic means to mankind 
 would have been lost. 
 
THE STATESMEN 
 
DANIEL WEBSTER 
 
 NO man who has lived in this land of ours had 
 richer gifts of genius than Daniel Webster. 
 No man conspicuous for such gifts has had 
 them marred to a greater degree by reason of his 
 moral deficiency. 
 
 As a lawyer, he was for thirty years and more the 
 foremost man at the bar. In his grasp of great consti- 
 tutional principles and of their bearing upon questions 
 at issue in court or in the halls of legislation he had 
 no superior, and perhaps no equal. Two men, only, 
 in American history have surpassed him in this respect 
 —namely, John Marshall and Joseph Story— and they 
 were called so early to the bench as never to have 
 been his competitors at the bar. As a statesman, dur- 
 ing a still longer period he was unquestionably one of 
 the greatest forces in America, both in legislative and 
 in executive performance. As an orator of the larger 
 kind, he was without a superior, without a rival, with- 
 out a peer. After his Plymouth oration, John Adams, 
 a very cool and self-possessed critic, not given in any 
 degree to extravagances, went so far as to place him 
 
 99 
 
 L.oFC. 
 
ioo Gbe Statesmen 
 
 above Burke, as "the most consummate orator of mod- 
 ern times." His grasp of principles was instant and 
 all-embracing. His diction was incisive in an extreme 
 degree. He had an extraordinary gift of lucid, simple, 
 and convincing statement, and joined with this a re- 
 markable power of impassioned eloquence of that kind 
 that gives to the orator a complete mastery over men. 
 In aid of his oratory he had, too, a personal presence 
 so impressive that it sometimes made even platitudes 
 falling from his lips seem eloquent. 
 
 His bearing was dignified and characterized by a 
 solemnity which at times barely stopped short ol 
 pomposity and affectation. 
 
 But with all this splendid equipment — with every 
 gift that Nature could lavish upon the orator and law- 
 yer and statesman — with an unmatched power to com- 
 pel, others to his way of thinking — Webster failed to 
 achieve the highest greatness. He said himself a few 
 months before his death : "1 have given my life to 
 law and politics. Law is uncertain, and politics is 
 utterly vain." It was the cry of a disappointed am- 
 bition, the lamentation of conscious failure. The fail- 
 ure was altogether due to those moral defects which 
 were, from the beginning, the canker in the fair flower 
 of his genius and his life. 
 
 Webster had no moral convictions to which he 
 adhered with any trustworthy persistency. It was not 
 so much that he was immoral as that he was unmoral. 
 He seems to have lacked any efficient sense of abiding 
 moral obligation. He was strangely deficient in fixed 
 

 Daniel Webster 
 
 From an etching by I fohnson 
 

©anicl TOlcbstcr 101 
 
 principle and in controlling conviction. Yet his per- 
 ception of the value of such principles and convictions 
 was so strong that he devoted much of his energy to 
 the feigning of a virtue when he had it not. He posed 
 throughout life as the foremost advocate and champion 
 of a perpetual, indissoluble union, and without ques- 
 tion did more than any other man in his time to im- 
 press that thought and feeling on his countrymen. 
 Yet in the early days of his congressional career, 
 he bitterly and disloyally opposed the nation in its 
 war with England, and used all his eloquence to de- 
 feat measures designed to strengthen the hands of the 
 government with men and means for the carrying on 
 of that second war of independence. He went even 
 farther than this. This champion and advocate of the 
 union, of the constitution, of a strong, national gov- 
 ernment was the author of the Rockingham Memorial, 
 into which he wrote a scarcely veiled threat of New 
 England's secession at a time of great national peril, 
 when the perpetuity of the Union itself seemed im- 
 mediately dependent upon universal and cordial sup- 
 port of the administration at the hands of all citizens 
 and all sections. 
 
 Again, while professing the utmost breadth of na- 
 tional feeling and sympathy, and boasting in his own 
 phrase that "there are no Alleghanies in my politics," 
 his speeches and votes in Congress, and his attitude 
 upon all public questions were manifestly determined 
 largely by purely sectional considerations. When Clay 
 brought forward his protective tariff scheme Webster 
 
io2 £be Statesmen 
 
 strongly opposed it, even to the point of contending, 
 with much force and learning, that protection in any 
 form is unconstitutional. In all this he spoke the 
 voice of New England, which at that time was en- 
 gaged almost exclusively in commerce by sea, and held 
 radical free-trade doctrines. Later, when New Eng- 
 land had become a manufacturing centre, and the in- 
 terests of her mill-owners outweighed those of her 
 merchant princes, Webster veered about and supported 
 with all the power of his eloquence that extreme tariff 
 bill which was justly called "the bill of abomina- 
 tions." So, too, he began by opposing all banks and 
 paper money, and ended as a foremost champion of 
 the Second United States Bank when Jackson was 
 making a war upon that institution. In brief, Webster 
 clearly had no political convictions which he felt him- 
 self bound to respect when his own interest or that 
 of New England dictated a change. 
 
 If this had been all, the excuses which have been 
 put forward for his vacillating political course might 
 perhaps be accepted. It might in that case have been 
 enough of explanation to say that he was an oppor- 
 tunist, changing his attitude from time to time in or- 
 der at each moment to accomplish the best results that 
 might then be attainable ; or to urge, as some of his 
 biographers have done, that his changes were due to 
 changes of public conditions ; — for example : that when 
 he turned from radical free-trade to extreme protection 
 he was simply accepting the policy of protection as 
 one fixed by law, in spite of his endeavors to the 
 
Daniel THIlebstcr 103 
 
 contrary, and seeking to make the most and the best 
 of it. 
 
 But, unhappily, Webster's moral deficiencies appear 
 as clearly in his personal conduct as in his political career. 
 In the Dartmouth College case, which first made him 
 conspicuous as a constitutional lawyer, he accepted a 
 fee from one side and afterwards appeared in behalf of 
 the other. Lawyers have an ugly name for that spe- 
 cies of conduct, which it is not necessary in an essay 
 like this to employ. 
 
 Again, throughout his wonderful career as a lawyer 
 and statesman, Webster was greatly and continuously 
 indebted to the counsel and assistance of Judge Story. 
 At the time, he gratefully acknowledged this aid in 
 many letters to Story, but after Story's death he most 
 ungenerously refused to let the great Justice's son and 
 biographer reprint either the letters in which Story 
 had given him the counsel and assistance, or his own 
 replies, acknowledging the service. It is not an ob- 
 trusive or uncalled-for utterance to say that this was 
 mean, small, and unworthy. 
 
 Still more grievous was Webster's extraordinary 
 lack of financial honesty. He earned an annual income 
 of twenty thousand dollars during the first years of 
 his law practice in Boston, and from that time forward 
 his earnings were enormously increased by his cease- 
 less employment in the Supreme Court. His income 
 was greater, perhaps, than that of any other man of his 
 time, and certainly very much greater than that of any 
 other lawyer then living,— greater, far, than even an 
 
104 Gbc Statesmen 
 
 extravagant man could need. Yet he was always and 
 heavily in debt, always a ravenous borrower of other 
 men's money, and, from beginning to end of his career 
 he seemed never to concern himself with any effort to 
 discharge his obligations or even to repay sums gen- 
 erously loaned to him by men much poorer than himself, 
 including the cab-drivers of Washington, whom he 
 forced to accept his notes-of-hand in lieu of five-dollar 
 bills. 
 
 All his life he lived like a nabob on other men's 
 money. All his life he lavishly squandered large sums 
 that he did not own, and indulged every caprice of his 
 own extravagant fancy, while his creditors were crip- 
 pled for lack of the money he owed them. 
 
 Finally, with all his ponderous dignity, he was not 
 ashamed to accept outright a gift of money sent to him 
 avowedly in recognition and reward of that seventh-of- 
 March speech, in which he made himself the champion 
 and most effective minister of the slave-power which 
 he had all his life antagonized. 
 
 Curiously enough, in face of all these extraordinary 
 manifestations of dishonest selfishness, Mr. Webster's 
 admirers, shutting their eyes to the undisputed facts, 
 have been loud in their praises of his unselfishness and 
 his generosity. They cite, in proof, the fact that he 
 lavishly spent and gave away money ; but they omit 
 to ask themselves whose money it was. 
 
 Webster was born on the eighteenth of January, 
 1782, in a little town in New Hampshire. He was the 
 son of a poor, hardworking, and very meagrely educated 
 
XDanicl Webster 105 
 
 farmer, a man of great integrity and fine intelligence. 
 At a cost which he could ill afford, Ebenezer Webster 
 gave Daniel, his brightest son, the best education he 
 could command. The boy was graduated from Dart- 
 mouth College in 1801, having distinguished himself 
 there less by his devotion to study — which was not 
 great— than by his eloquence, which even at that early 
 age was conspicuous. He began at once to study law, 
 but presently suspended that work in order to earn 
 money for the education of his brother by teaching at 
 Fryeburg, Maine. This was an impulse of unselfish- 
 ness not often repeated in Webster's career. A little 
 later he went to Boston and entered the law office 
 of Mr. Gore, who secured his admission to the bar 
 in 1805. Returning to New Hampshire, Webster 
 opened a law office in the little town of Boscawen, 
 where he speedily secured as good a practice in his 
 profession as was possible in so small a place, and 
 among a people so poor. On his father's death, about 
 a year later, the family were found to be impoverished. 
 Ebenezer Webster had sacrificed all his chances of 
 accumulation, and had deeply mortgaged his little 
 possessions in order to educate his sons. With that 
 jaunty indifference to debt which characterized Webster 
 throughout his life, the young man promptly assumed 
 these, his father's debts. It is not recorded that he 
 ever paid them ; or, if he did, that he ever repaid the 
 money he borrowed for that purpose. From Boscawen 
 Webster removed to Portsmouth, in search of a larger 
 field, and there he quickly achieved all of practice and 
 
io6 Sbe Statesmen 
 
 all of reputation that was then within the reach of 
 a young lawyer in that not overpopulous or over- 
 wealthy State. During the ten years of his residence 
 in Portsmouth, Webster married and made his first 
 entrance into politics. It was during that time that 
 he wrote the Rockingham Memorial, already referred 
 to, and was promptly elected to represent his district 
 in Congress, with the session beginning in 1S13. He 
 was at once made a member of the Committee on 
 Foreign Relations, which, during that period of war, 
 was by odds the most important committee in the 
 House. He promptly renewed his antagonism to the 
 administration, and to the war in which the country 
 was engaged. His first act was to introduce and 
 advocate resolutions designed to embarrass the ad- 
 ministration, and to discredit the war, in which the 
 national life itself was then in peril, as a war without 
 due occasion. A little later he went farther than this, 
 and spoke with great earnestness and eloquence against 
 the bill designed to encourage enlistments. He shared 
 passionately, and with a good deal of justice on his 
 side, in the struggle then made against the restrictive 
 measures which were crippling the commerce of the 
 country. He opposed the war tax, denounced the war 
 itself and its authors, and even went so far in the 
 direction of disloyalty as to vote against the taxes 
 necessary to carry on the struggle. Senator Lodge, 
 in his biographical sketch, says : 
 
 " There is a nice question of political ethics here, as to how 
 far the opposition ought to go in time of national war and distress, 
 
Daniel Mcbstcr 107 
 
 but it is certainly impossible to give more extreme expression to 
 parliamentary opposition than to refuse supplies at the most 
 critical moment in a severe conflict. To this last extreme of party 
 opposition to the administration Mr. Webster went. It was as far 
 as he could go, and remain loyal to the Union." 
 
 Webster served for two terms in Congress, as a 
 representative from New Hampshire. It was during 
 that time that the United States Bank was chartered, 
 against his opposition. He succeeded in compelling 
 some radical and publicly beneficial modifications in 
 the measure,— notably one which compelled the bank 
 to redeem its notes in specie. But, even in this im- 
 proved form, he voted against the bill to the last. 
 Nevertheless, he afterwards, as already stated, became 
 a champion and chief advocate of the bank, voting for 
 the renewal of its charter and bitterly antagonizing 
 Jackson's course with respect to the institution. 
 
 At the end of his second term, on March 4, 1816, 
 Webster retired to private life, and in the following 
 June he removed from Portsmouth to Boston. There 
 his law practice immediately became very great and 
 remunerative. It was during this period of retirement 
 from active political life that Webster became engaged 
 in the celebrated Dartmouth College case. It was 
 then that, after accepting a fee as pay for engaging in 
 their case, he abandoned his clients for the service of 
 their adversaries, — a course of which he never offered 
 any explanation that could satisfy sensitively honor- 
 able minds. The true explanation seems clearly to 
 have been one of politics. The case took on a partisan 
 complexion, and actually wrought a political revolution 
 
108 £bc Statesmen 
 
 in the State. Webster was then, as previously, a 
 strong partisan, one who usually accepted the policies 
 and opinions of the Federalists without much of inde- 
 pendent thought, and sustained them as an advocate 
 maintains the contentions of his employing client. It 
 happened that Webster's party took that side in the 
 college causes which was opposed to the clients who 
 first engaged him as counsel, and it was as a partisan 
 that, in defiance of legal ethics, he abandoned his 
 clients and went over to their enemies. 
 
 It was he who finally argued the causes before the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, where he suc- 
 ceeded in fixing upon the Constitution an interpretation 
 which has ever since embarrassed efforts to restrain or 
 regulate corporations by state or national authority. 
 Simply stated, the doctrine thus established is that a 
 corporate charter is a contract, and that laws enacted, 
 after the granting of charters, for the regulation of cor- 
 porate action, are unconstitutional, on the ground that 
 they impair the obligations o\ contracts. On the first 
 hearing the majority of the Supreme Court was mani- 
 festly opposed to this construction, but Chief Justice 
 Marshall, who leaned strongly to Webster's view, ad- 
 journed the case, and. before it came up for a second 
 hearing, several o\ the opposing justices, enough to 
 make a majority, were induced to change their views, 
 and Webster triumphed. 
 
 The effect of this decision was important and far- 
 reaching. It fearfully embarrasses legislative action 
 even now. It greatly strengthened the authority o\ 
 
©anicl TCHcbster 109 
 
 the Supreme Court. It subjected state legislation to 
 judicial restraints greater than had before been sup- 
 posed possible, and in many of the States it led to im- 
 portant changes in constitutions and in the law of 
 corporations designed to reserve to the legislature the 
 right to modify or abrogate charters for cause. 
 
 Webster did not return to Congress until [823. In 
 1820 he served with influence and distinction in the 
 very notable convention which revised, liberalized, and 
 modernized the Constitution of Massachusetts. His 
 fame, both as a great lawyer and as an orator, grew 
 even more rapidly than the years passed by. 
 
 In December, ;S2o, he delivered the oration on the 
 two-hundredth anniversary of the Landing of the Pil- 
 grims. It was, perhaps, the noblest, the most effective, 
 the most eloquent of all the orations this modern 
 Demosthenes ever delivered. Its eloquence not only 
 moved the masses of his audience as they had never 
 been moved before, but it well-nigh drove mad with 
 joyous enthusiasm the most learned and the soberest- 
 minded of the men who listened to its impassioned 
 words. No less calm a mind than that of Mr. Ticknor 
 was so overwrought by the splendid eloquence that 
 for a time he could not give a lucid judgment of the 
 address. 
 
 " It must have been a great, a very great performance," Mr. 
 Ticknor wrote ; " but whether it was so absolutely unrivalled as I 
 imagined when I was under the immediate influence of his pres- 
 ence, of his tones, of his looks, I cannot be sure till I have read it, 
 for it seems to me incredible. I was never so excited by public 
 speaking before in my life. Three or four times I thought my 
 
no Zbc Statesmen 
 
 temples would burst with the gush of blood. . . . When 1 
 came out 1 was almost afraid to come near to him. It seemed to 
 me as if he was like the mount that might not be touched, and that 
 burned with lire. 1 was beside myself and am so still." 
 
 This wonderful oration — scarcely less effective in 
 the reading than in the delivery— passed at once into 
 the literature of the people. It was read with enthusi- 
 asm everywhere, and portions of it were embodied in 
 those school-books from which millions of children 
 throughout the land were learning that love of country 
 which, a generation later, enabled the government to call 
 into the field more than two millions of men as defend- 
 ers of the Union. 
 
 It has been truly said of Webster that in this address 
 and in those other orations of like exalted quality which 
 followed it, he did far more than any other one man to 
 cultivate among the people an undying devotion to the 
 Union, and to the idea of nationality which is embodied 
 in the Union. Upon such a service it is of course im- 
 possible to place too high an estimate. For such a 
 service no reward of honor that the people can pay can 
 be deemed excessive. 
 
 The second of Webster*s great masterpieces of 
 patriotic oratory was his address at the laying of the 
 corner-stone of the Bunker Hill Monument in 182s. 
 The third was his noble eulogy upon John Adams and 
 Thomas Jefferson in 1S20. The fourth was his second 
 reply to Hayne, delivered in the Senate of the United 
 States, in January, 1830. 
 
 The orator's period of public service was almost 
 
Daniel Webster m 
 
 coextensive with his manhood, and his speeches upon 
 public questions were frequent and very eloquent. 
 But in the four orations mentioned he reached an alti- 
 tude of all-inspiring eloquence that even so divinely 
 gifted an orator as he could not hope to attain upon 
 any but the most exalted occasions. Had he done 
 nothing else in life than give utterance to these orations 
 his fame would have been secure and enduring. 
 
 On his return to Congress, in 1821, Webster was 
 made Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, and in that 
 capacity he drew a bill which completely remodelled 
 the national criminal law, bringing order and consis- 
 tency out of the chaos previously existing. He secured 
 the passage of this measure, but was less successful in 
 his determined opposition to Mr. Clay's protective 
 tariff system. In one of the strongest, most logical, 
 and most destructively analytical speeches that he ever 
 made in Congress, he took his stand as the foremost 
 champion of free trade, both as an abstract principle 
 and as a national policy. As has already been said, he 
 afterwards reversed his position on this question. His 
 free-trade speech was made in behalf of New England's 
 commerce, which was then the dominant interest of 
 that part of the country. Four years later, when he 
 repudiated his former doctrine and advocated the 
 measure of extreme protection which was called the 
 "tariff of abominations," New England's chief interest 
 was in manufactures. In 1824, in the lower House, 
 Webster stoutly contended that protection was plainly 
 unconstitutional ; in 1828, in the Senate, he discovered 
 
H2 £bc Statesmen 
 
 nothing in the Constitution to antagonize that policy. 
 The Constitution had not been altered in the meantime, 
 but conditions and opinions in New England had been 
 reversed. 
 
 Webster entered the Senate reluctantly. He pre- 
 ferred the field offered to his abilities in the popular 
 House, and as his re-election as often as he might desire 
 was certain, the longer term in the Senate could not 
 add anything to the security of his tenure of legislative 
 place. But the demand of the Massachusetts Legisla- 
 ture that he should represent its State in the Senate was 
 too imperative to be resisted, and he was chosen to 
 that service in 1827. 
 
 In January, iS;o, the fourth of Webster's great ora- 
 torical opportunities came to him. Calhoun and his 
 followers were at that time believers in the right of 
 a State to nullify a national statute upon grounds of 
 unconstitutionality, the State, and not the courts, to be 
 the judge of the constitutional question. But as yet 
 the doctrine had not been openly proclaimed in the 
 Senate. In January, iS^o. Senator Hayne, of South 
 Carolina, in the course of debate on a question relating 
 to the public lands, made an attack on New England, to 
 which Webster replied in a way that stirred Hayne 
 to a second and severer assault than before, and in 
 this second speech the South Carolina Senator openly 
 proclaimed and advocated nullification as a constitu- 
 tional right. Webster then delivered his celebrated 
 " Reply to Hayne," the very ablest speech he ever 
 delivered in the Senate. The utterance passed at once 
 
Daniel Mcbster 113 
 
 into popular literature, and for a generation afterwards 
 parts of it were favorite selections for declamation in 
 all the schools of the country. The speech is too 
 familiarly known to everybody to require detailed 
 analysis here. The keynote of its argument was that 
 nullification could not be without revolution ; that 
 its peaceable exercise within the Union was manifestly 
 impossible ; and that its advocacy meant and could 
 mean nothing other than a dissolution of the Union. 
 To this argument Webster added one of the most 
 persuasive and most impassioned pleas for perpetual 
 union that even he ever uttered. 
 
 The advocates of nullification argued that histori- 
 cally the Union was an experimental compact between 
 the States, and that the National Government was 
 merely the creature of the States. So careful a student 
 of history as Henry Cabot Lodge finds that the facts 
 of history were thus far on the side of the nullifkation- 
 ists, and that even Webster failed to break down the 
 historical contention made by them. But Webster 
 passed from that to higher ground. He contended 
 that the Constitution was a vital thing, capable of 
 growth ; that in the course of half a century it had 
 changed its character, ceasing to be an experiment 
 and becoming, by virtue of popular use and purpose, 
 a perpetual bond of union ; that what had been at 
 first a mere voluntary confederacy of States had crys- 
 tallized into a nation which could not be dissolved 
 into its constituent elements except by the violent 
 hand of revolution. In brief, Webster's argument was 
 
H4 £be Statesmen 
 
 precisely that upon which the National Government, a 
 generation later, exercised the right to resist attempted 
 secession by the employment of force. Without doubt, 
 Webster's teaching, which had sunk deep into the 
 minds and hearts of the people, was a very potent 
 element of strength to the Union cause when civil war 
 came with a threat to the integrity and perpetuity of 
 the nation. He had done more than any other man 
 to implant in the popular mind the conviction that the 
 United States constitute a nation, not a confederacy,— 
 a conviction so firmly rooted that neither radical 
 abolitionism on the one hand nor secessionism on the 
 other could turn the people from their purpose to 
 maintain "Liberty and Union, now and forever, one 
 and inseparable." 
 
 In 1832, South Carolina undertook nullification in 
 actual practice, and President Jackson issued his proc- 
 lamation of a determination to enforce the laws at all 
 hazards, and with all of power that he possessed. 
 That power was manifestly inadequate, and the 
 President asked Congress for specific authority to 
 use the Army and Navy in compelling obedience to the 
 laws. Many men in Congress, who repudiated the 
 doctrine of nullification and deplored South Carolina's 
 attempt to act upon it, were nevertheless unwilling to 
 pass the measure asked for by the President. Then 
 it was that Webster brought all the batteries of his 
 legal learning and of his matchless oratory to the sup- 
 port of the President in his effort to uphold the Con- 
 stitution and defend the Union. In political views 
 
Daniel Mcbster 115 
 
 Webster was diametrically opposed to Jackson and to 
 the party that had made him President. But in this 
 matter he held Jackson to be absolutely right. He 
 saw in him the only force that could successfully meet 
 and avert the danger to the Union which nullification 
 involved. He therefore thrust all other considera- 
 tions into the background and unflinchingly supported 
 a President all of whose political beliefs and policies 
 he detested. He did so upon the simple and sufficient 
 ground that in this grave crisis Jackson was the cham- 
 pion of right, and that the strengthening of his hands 
 was necessary to the salvation of the country and the 
 Constitution. At no crisis of his career was Webster 
 greater than upon this occasion. At no time did his 
 statesmanship rise to a higher level. At no time did 
 he more boldly risk his reputation or more patrioti- 
 cally dare hostile criticism, in obedience to his con- 
 victions. He battled not for the President but for the 
 national life, and in the long debate which followed 
 with Calhoun he made it clear that the question at 
 issue was not one to chop logic over, not one of nice 
 historical or constitutional interpretation, but the simple 
 one of whether the nation should survive or be de- 
 stroyed, whether the Union should continue or should 
 suffer disintegration. 
 
 In the event both sides in Congress weakened, 
 and under the leadership of Clay a compromise was 
 effected, a new tariff bill was passed to placate the nulli- 
 fiers, and they in their turn relinquished their resistance 
 to the enforcement of the revenue laws. But in the 
 
n6 £be Statesmen 
 
 meantime Webster had mightily reinforced among the 
 people that passionate devotion to the Union which his 
 eloquence had already done so much to establish. 
 
 Having supported the President in his struggle 
 with nullification, Webster with equal vigor antago- 
 nized him in his warfare upon the National Bank. 
 In the course of that contest Jackson claimed for the 
 President, as the "direct representative of the peo- 
 ple," powers, rights, and immunities such as the 
 Constitution was clearly never intended to confer upon 
 the executive branch of the government. He went so 
 far as to rebuke Congress for venturing to censure his 
 official acts, contending that that body had no con- 
 stitutional right even to consider executive acts, far 
 less to pass resolutions of censure upon them. In 
 brief, he sought to read Cassarism into the Constitution. 
 On the other hand, Webster argued a little later for 
 an equally dangerous perversion of the Constitution, 
 in an opposite direction. He contended that the 
 power of removal from office, like the power of ap- 
 pointment, is vested not in the President alone, but in 
 the President "by and with the advice and consent 
 of the Senate." Fortunately, neither of these per- 
 versions prevailed. Either would have destroyed the 
 nice balance between the executive and the legislative 
 power which the framers of the Constitution wisely 
 sought to establish. The one would have given 
 almost dictatorial powers to the President ; the other 
 would have stripped that officer of powers that are 
 essential to executive independence and efficiency. 
 
Daniel TKflcbster n; 
 
 When, in the early thirties, the elements of opposition 
 to Jackson began to form themselves into the Whig- 
 party, Webster seems to have turned his eyes tor the 
 first time toward the supreme prize of American politi- 
 cal life, the presidency. He was both the ablest and 
 the most famous American statesman of his time, with 
 Henry Clay alone for a rival. He was the recognized 
 champion of the policies for which the new party 
 stood ; — what was more natural than that he should 
 expect to be made its candidate for the highest office 
 in the country ? This ambition was destined to dis- 
 appointment, and the only effect of it upon his life and 
 character was detrimental. As successive quadrennial 
 elections approached, each suggesting golden possi- 
 bilities to his imagination, he became more and more 
 careful not to give offence in any quarter from which 
 support might be expected to come, more and more 
 regardful of his own political interests, more and more 
 a time-server for personal advantage 
 
 In the first election in which the Whigs appeared 
 as a party, the electoral vote of Massachusetts was cast 
 for Webster, and that was the nearest approach he 
 ever made to the coveted office. Dividing its votes 
 among several candidates, the party was easily de- 
 feated. In 1840, Webster's confidence was strong 
 that he would be chosen as the candidate of a united 
 opposition, which had every prospect of success, espe- 
 cially in view of the financial disaster that had befallen 
 in 1837, and which was attributed to the financial 
 policy pursued by Jackson and his successor, Van 
 
1 1 s <lbe Statesmen 
 
 Buren. But, returning from a summer's visit to Europe, 
 Webster was sorely disappointed to learn that the 
 Whigs had taken a leaf out of the Democratic book. 
 They had made an appeal to unreasoning popular en- 
 thusiasm by choosing William Henry Harrison for their 
 leader. 
 
 Webster supported the candidate with loyalty and 
 efficient vigor, and, in answer to the invitation of Har- 
 rison, who sought to surround himself with the very 
 ablest men of his party, the Massachusetts statesman 
 became the head of the Cabinet as Secretary of State. 
 The tasks set him in this new capacity were extraordi- 
 narily perplexing. Our foreign relations, particularly 
 our relations with Great Britain, were threateningly 
 strained. The utmost tact and circumspection were 
 required at every point, for at every point there lurked 
 a threat of war. As if Fate itself were hostile, Harrison 
 quickly died, and his successor, Tyler, speedily broke 
 with his party and deeply offended the country. All 
 the members of the Cabinet except Webster resigned, 
 and a great popular clamor arose against Webster's 
 course in remaining a member of the offending Presi- 
 dent's official family. It seems quite certain that 
 Webster so remained only under a compelling sense of 
 public duty. To remain was clearly dangerous to his 
 own popularity and prospects. To retain his place 
 was to give offence in quarters where a man with his 
 ambitions could least afford to offend. To escape all 
 danger, and to win a new popularity, he had only to 
 resign as others had done. But, on the other hand, he 
 
Banie I Mcbster 119 
 
 clearly saw that his continuance in office, pending the 
 exceedingly delicate negotiations then in progress or 
 in prospect, was necessary to the safety of the country 
 itself. It was not certain that even he could avert 
 a dangerous war with England by conducting those 
 negotiations to a satisfactory conclusion. It was quite 
 certain that no successor to him was likely to accom- 
 plish that purpose. In this crisis Webster deliberately 
 sacrificed his interests to his patriotism. He disre- 
 garded the popular clamor for his resignation. He 
 remained at his post, and patiently worked at the prob- 
 lem of peacefully adjusting the country's international 
 relations until that task was fully done. Then he re- 
 signed, in 1 843, and retired to his law office in Boston. 
 
 In 1844, Webster was again disappointed in his 
 presidential hopes. Clay, with his great popularity, 
 was selected to lead the Whigs, and Webster, putting 
 aside any chagrin he may have felt, made a strong 
 oratorical canvass in his rival's behalf. 
 
 In the next year, Webster returned to the Senate, 
 Polk being then President. Through the influence 
 he had acquired with British statesmen while Secre- 
 tary of State, Webster was able, by timely counsel 
 to both sides, to bring about a settlement of the 
 Oregon boundary dispute, which had seriously threat- 
 ened a war with England. 
 
 In 1846 came the Mexican War, leading to the 
 annexation of Texas and California— a vast region out 
 of which a number of States and Territories have since 
 been carved. 
 
120 Zbc Statesmen 
 
 Webster earnestly opposed this acquisition, clearly 
 foreseeing that it would not only add largely to our 
 slave territory by the admission of Texas to the Union, 
 but would very certainly reopen the entire slavery 
 question in forms perilous to the country's peace. 
 On Webster's own ambitions the war had an almost 
 immediate effect. It deprived him of the presidential 
 nomination in 1S4S, when his opportunity seemed at 
 last to have come to him. The glory of Taylor's 
 achievements in the war had filled the country with 
 an enthusiasm that was blind to all but emotional 
 considerations. Taylor had never cast a vote in his 
 life, and nobody knew what his political opinions 
 were, if he had any, as he probably had not. But his 
 military glory made him "available." and the Whigs 
 nominated him, at once recognizing and insulting 
 Webster by an offer of the nomination for the Vice- 
 Presidency. He scornfully rejected the offer, and for 
 a time refused to support the absurdly unfit candidate. 
 It is interesting to reflect that, had he taken the second 
 place, he would have achieved his long-cherished 
 ambition, becoming President upon Taylor's death. 
 
 The acquisition of Texas and the California country 
 speedily had the effect which Webster had foreseen. 
 It reopened the slavery controversy in an aggravated 
 and dangerous form. The South wanted slavery in 
 the newly acquired regions : the North was more and 
 more opposed to any extension of the area in which 
 slavery was authorized by law. Many plans of solu- 
 tion were offered and rejected. Polk had proposed 
 
"2>antcl Mcbstcr 121 
 
 that the question of slavery in the new Territories 
 should be left open until those Territories, on becom- 
 ing States, should settle the matter each in its own 
 way ; but that, in the meantime, the owners of slaves 
 should be permitted to take their negroes with them, 
 upon emigrating to the new regions. Another pro- 
 posal, which came from the South, was to extend the 
 line of the Missouri Compromise to the Pacific Ocean, 
 a plan which would in effect have made slave territory 
 of all the region south of that line. From the North 
 had come the proposal of the Wilmot Proviso, forbid- 
 ding slavery in any of the newly acquired lands. The 
 discussion grew daily angrier and more threatening to 
 the public peace. The South demanded an effective 
 law to compel the return of slaves fleeing into North- 
 ern States. California, under inspiration of great gold 
 discoveries, had rapidly peopled itself, mainly with 
 men of the North, and was now demanding admission 
 to the Union under a constitution that forbade slavery. 
 This the men of the South opposed, though with 
 small reason to expect success, in view of the over- 
 whelming preponderance of the anti-slavery sentiment 
 on the Pacific coast. Added to all this, a new political 
 party was rapidly forming at the North, whose shib- 
 boleth was " Free Soil." It disclaimed any purpose to 
 interfere with slavery in the States where that institu- 
 tion already existed, but advocated the absolute and 
 perpetual exclusion of the system from all the new 
 Territories. In its composition the party was of course 
 purely sectional, having no being elsewhere than in 
 
122 £be Statesmen 
 
 the North. On the other hand, there was growing 
 up at the South a party, equally sectional, still un- 
 organized but strong in numbers and influence, which 
 looked to the dissolution of the Union as the only 
 way out of the difficulty. 
 
 So hotly was the conflict waged that the wisest 
 statesmen became seriously apprehensive of bloody 
 revolution. Then came forward Henry Clay, the great 
 pacificator, with a new plan of adjustment. He pro- 
 posed, by way of compromise, that California should 
 be admitted, with its constitution forbidding slavery ; 
 that a stringent fugitive slave law should be enacted 
 and enforced with all the power of the Federal Gov- 
 ernment ; that the slave trade should be forbidden 
 in the District of Columbia, but that slavery should 
 never be abolished there without the consent of Mary- 
 land ; that Congress should declare its lack of author- 
 ity to interfere with the trade in slaves between the 
 States in which the system was authorized ; and that 
 territorial governments should be established in the 
 new possessions without any reference to slavery. 
 This last was in effect a repeal of the Missouri Com- 
 promise, which forbade slavery in any new State to be 
 formed out of territory north of }6° 30' north latitude. 
 
 Clay submitted his plan to Webster, who approved 
 it and lent to it an advocacy without which it must 
 almost certainly have failed of adoption. In its behalf 
 he delivered his seventh-of-March speech — the last of 
 his great orations. 
 
 His attitude in that speech was utterly inconsistent 
 
2)anicl Webster 123 
 
 with his activities on former occasions. His speech 
 was a complete abandonment of the ground he had 
 before held in uncompromising hostility to any exten- 
 sion of slavery into new Territories. It was welcomed 
 at the South and bitterly resented at the North. 
 Webster's critics have always insisted that it was a 
 conscienceless abandonment of principle, intended to 
 win Southern support for him as a candidate for the 
 presidency in 1852 ; while his apologists have as stoutly 
 contended that it was inspired by his overmastering 
 devotion to the Union, the perpetuity of which he had 
 long held to be a consideration immeasurably supe- 
 rior to all others. He himself argued that the com- 
 promise measures could not work any considerable 
 extension of slavery, because, as he assumed, nature 
 herself had established conditions that must forever 
 render negro slavery unprofitable in the greater part of 
 the region in dispute. 
 
 Upon Taylor's death, in July, 1850, Webster was 
 called again to the Department of State as the head 
 of Fillmore's Cabinet. This was the end of his career 
 in the Senate, and the end of his life was not far off. 
 In [852, he made his last effort to be nominated for 
 President, and failed. He felt the disappointment 
 keenly. He refused to support his successful competi- 
 tor, Scott, and took no part in the campaign, during the 
 progress of which he died, on October 24, 18S2. 
 
 His career was one of almost phenomenal success, 
 marred, to his appreciation, by its failure to culminate 
 in the honor he most coveted. His gifts were scarcely 
 
i24 Gbc Statesmen 
 
 matched by those of any other man who has played a 
 large part in American history. In conspicuous ways 
 he employed them for his country's good, sometimes 
 at cost of self-sacrifice. Yet in other conspicuous 
 ways he was often untrue to his convictions for the 
 sake of personal advantage. 
 
 He lived in princely extravagance on other people's 
 money, and died amid luxurious surroundings a hope- 
 less bankrupt. His extraordinary learning in the law 
 seems never to have included the moral code as a 
 thing of binding obligation. He lived a life, the story 
 of which is full of inspiration to high endeavor, and 
 equally full of warning to the consciences of those 
 who ponder it. 
 
HENRY CLAY 
 
 FOR nearly half a century Henry Clay was the 
 most conspicuous figure in American politics, 
 the most influential statesman in the Councils 
 of the Nation. When he first entered the Senate, to 
 serve for a single session of an unexpired term, he was 
 not yet thirty years of age — being, in fact, ineligible, if 
 anybody had seen fit to raise that question, as, in fact, 
 nobody did. Yet he at once assumed something of 
 leadership, to which his fellow senators seemed in- 
 stinctively to assent. When he finally left the Senate 
 chamber for his death-bed, he had reached the age of 
 seventy-six years ; yet, even in the last hours of his 
 service there, his was the commanding presence, his 
 the dominant voice. 
 
 And "there were giants in those days," a fact 
 which emphasizes the leadership of Clay, and im- 
 presses us strongly with the greatness of a mind and 
 character which could so quickly seize, and so long 
 hold, first place among the remarkable company of 
 men who at that time had the destinies of the Re- 
 public in their keeping. Webster, Calhoun, John 
 
126 <Tbc Statesmen 
 
 Quincy Adams. Albert Gallatin. Mason, Marcy. Silas 
 Wright, Crittenden. Randolph. Buchanan, and a score 
 of other men of high distinction, were Clay's contem- 
 poraries, his workfellows, or his antagonists in the di- 
 rection of public affairs : but not one of them, whether 
 acting with him or opposing his policies, seems ever 
 seriously to have thought of questioning his leader- 
 ship of the cause he espoused. Even in that haughti- 
 est of haughty assemblages — the Senate of the United 
 States — it was Clay's custom to take matters into his 
 own hands, formulate his ideas, and present them as a 
 programme, after the manner of one who speaks with 
 authority. Yet his course did not offend. That which, 
 in another man would have been resented as an un- 
 warranted assumption of the right to dictate, was ac- 
 cepted from him without protest. Often a majority 
 was against him when he presented a measure or out- 
 lined a policy : very often that majority yielded itself 
 to the persuasiveness of his eloquence, or to the 
 strangely compelling power of his will. 
 
 He was. indeed, a born leader o\ men. The readi- 
 ness with which his legislative associates accepted his 
 guidance was not more remarkable than the passion- 
 ate enthusiasm with which great masses of the people 
 made him their political idol, blindly and unquestion- 
 ingly following him— not for a brief while, after the 
 manner of hero-worship, but through scores of years, 
 and even unto the end, in spite of repeated and disas- 
 trous defeats, in defiance of grave accusations against 
 his character, in complacent disregard of clamorous 
 
lenry Clay 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Ibcnrp Clap 127 
 
 slanders, and unmoved by those inconsistencies, and 
 worse, which at times marred his course. 
 
 His character and career were full of strange con- 
 trasts. Meagrely educated, and throughout life unac- 
 customed to thorough study, he yet impressed men 
 everywhere with a belief in his superior wisdom, and 
 his absolute mastery of the subjects with which he 
 was called upon to deal. Greatly inferior as he was to 
 Webster in his intellectual grasp, in his perception of 
 principles, and in logical force, he was easily Webster's 
 master in parliamentary debate and in eloquence of the 
 kind that stirs men, persuades them, and in the end 
 dominates them. 
 
 Like Webster, and, indeed, in common with almost 
 all the statesmen of his time, Clay was inconsistent in 
 his policies, and even unfaithful at times to his own 
 profoundest convictions. Deploring slavery, he began 
 his public career with an earnest effort to secure its 
 extinction ; yet in all the long struggle with the slave 
 power he did more than any other statesman of the 
 time to protect the institution against influences that 
 tended to restrict and ultimately to make an end of it. 
 He opposed a National Bank on the perfectly sound 
 ground that such an institution must sooner or later 
 come to exercise a malign and dangerous influence 
 over public affairs, and become itself an agency of 
 direct corruption. But half a dozen years iater he 
 advocated the establishment of another National Bank, 
 and when it had fulfilled all his prophecies of evil, Clay 
 made himself the most impassioned of its champions, 
 
1^8 Che Statesmen 
 
 the most relentless \oc o\ those who opposed it. 
 Again, at the time o\ the Florida troubles. Clay con- 
 tended that the Louisiana Purchase embraced and 
 included all of Texas. He eloquently denounced the 
 administration for surrendering our claim to that vast 
 region. Yet when Texan annexation was in contem- 
 plation, he was the leader o\ the opposing- forces. 
 This and some other of his inconsistencies are ex- 
 plainable in ways altogether creditable to him. as will 
 be seen hereafter : but some o\ his somersaults. 
 shiftings. and inconsistencies, as will also appear, can 
 be attributed to nothing but that impairment of charac- 
 ter and mind which an overweening ambition to be 
 President wrought in his case as it has done in so 
 many others. 
 
 Much o\ his inconsistency maw indeed, be explained 
 upon grounds that make of it. in fact, a higher con- 
 sistency. Thus, when he was denounced at the North 
 as a slaveholder and an apologist for slavery, while 
 at the South he was stigmatized as an " abolitionist." 
 both characterizations were, in a measure, correct, as 
 Clay himself knew and felt. 
 
 He did. indeed, earnestly desire the extinction of 
 slavery : he did favor policies which he believed 
 would ultimately accomplish that end. To that 
 extent he was an " abolitionist." But. in 1S20. in [833, 
 and again in 1850, as we shall see later, it was Clay 
 who. by his compromises, secured for the slave States 
 legislation which for the time being satisfied them. 
 Under the circumstances then existing, no other man 
 
Ibenrp Clai? 129 
 
 in Congress or out of it could have accomplished that 
 result. To that extent he was, in fact, the champion 
 of the slave power. 
 
 There was inconsistency here, of course, and it was 
 said by his enemies that he "carried water on both 
 shoulders" in aid of his presidential aspirations. In 
 the latter case, at least, that motive could not have 
 been operative. For in i8so he had distinctly and 
 finally put aside his ambition to be President, refusing 
 to be considered again as a candidate in terms too 
 explicit and too emphatic to leave room for doubt as 
 to his sincerity. And, even as regards his action on 
 the two earlier occasions of compromise, it is not 
 necessary to suppose a selfish motive, in order to 
 explain his course. There is another and sufficient 
 explanation. From beginning to end of his career, 
 Henry Clay had one all-dominating idea and purpose 
 — the perpetuity and the glory of the American Union. 
 To that he stood always ready to make any sacrifice. 
 It was in the sincere belief that the Union was in 
 danger that he brought forward his successive com- 
 promise measures. Those measures did violence to 
 his convictions of right, but for the sake of that Union 
 which he regarded as essential to the maintenance 
 of popular self-government, he advocated them. It 
 was, in his belief, a sacrifice of unimportant for su- 
 premely important principles, a relinquishment of the 
 smaller for the greater good. 
 
 His course on these occasions was unquestionably 
 inspired by the loftiest patriotism, even when his 
 
i3o <Ibc Statesmen 
 
 policies were mistaken. And it was all in accordance 
 with his convictions and the temper of his mind. He 
 was by nature the " great pacificator." He firmly be- 
 lieved that a republic, and more especially a federal 
 republic, could be held together only by a spirit of 
 mutual concession and a policy of compromise. In 
 that belief, and for the sake of the country's life, he 
 advocated measures that could not satisfy either him- 
 self or any partisan on either side— measures that were 
 bound of necessity to bring condemnation and distrust 
 upon himself from both sides. He did not compre- 
 hend the truth that there was an " irrepressible con- 
 flict " between the advocates and the opponents of 
 slavery. He did not fully or clearly understand that, 
 as Lincoln later phrased it. this Republic could not 
 "permanently endure half free and half slave." He 
 believed that all questions arising out of slavery could 
 be adjusted by compromise and permanently set at 
 rest. To that end he labored, only to find that after 
 each settlement the issue again and quickly presented 
 itself, usually in a more dangerous form than before. 
 With respect to tariff protection. Clay's opinions un- 
 derwent a radical change, as indeed did those of most 
 statesmen of that time on both sides of the issue. 
 Webster began as a declared free-trader by opposing 
 Clay's "American System," and ridiculing it. He 
 ended by advocating and voting for the most extreme 
 protectionist measures that were ever thought of during 
 the first half of the nineteenth century. Calhoun be- 
 gan by demanding protection as a "right" o\~ the 
 
1bciu\> Clay 131 
 
 Southern States, and ended as the author and advo- 
 cate of nullification as a necessary means of ridding the 
 South of what he held to be unendurable oppression 
 in the shape of a protective tariff. Clay's change of 
 view was scarcely less radical. At first he was a free- 
 trader in principle, and advocated only a very mild 
 measure of protection, to be continued only for a brief 
 period. He desired simply to use protective duties so 
 far as might be necessary to render the country inde- 
 pendent of foreign markets in time of war. That is to 
 say, he desired a very moderate protection, applied only 
 to the manufacture of clothing and military and naval 
 supplies, especially the hempen rope for which the 
 farmers of his own State furnished the raw material. 
 He did not desire to encourage manufactures generally. 
 He looked with something akin to abhorrence upon 
 the suggestion that the United States might ultimately 
 become a great manufacturing nation, able to export 
 the products of its skilled labor. He declared the 
 natural industry of this country to be farming, and held 
 that the exports of the United States should always 
 consist of agricultural products. He pointed to the 
 condition of things in Manchester and Birmingham as 
 a warning to his countrymen of the danger of so 
 stimulating manufactures as to create a large class of 
 operatives, dependent upon mill-work for their living. 
 He hoped to limit protection to such moderate and 
 temporary encouragement as might be necessary to 
 enable the country to provide for its people's simplest 
 necessities, with the aid of such domestic weaving as 
 
132 Sbc Statesmen 
 
 was then common in western and southern house- 
 holds. 
 
 This was his attitude in the year 1S10. Eight years 
 later he was the champion and sponsor of protection 
 for its own sake, and o\ the farthest expansion of 
 manufacturing industry that tariff duties could bring 
 about. He called that the " American system," though, 
 as Webster pointed out, ours was the only civilized 
 country that had never adopted it. The opposite sys- 
 tem he dubbed " European," though, as Webster again 
 demonstrated, no European country had ever accepted 
 it. His phrases were meant to be catch words, disin- 
 genuously appealing to ignorant patriotism. He de- 
 liberately declared that the prosperity of every country 
 was measured by the extent to which it " protected" 
 its industries, citing England, with its then oppressive 
 laws in restraint of importation, as an example to be 
 imitated in America. A few years later, in 1833, he 
 pushed through Congress a tariff measure of a directly 
 opposite character, providing for the gradual but rapid 
 lowering of duties to a revenue basis, and the great 
 enlargement of the free list. 
 
 For his course in this latter case, the explanation 
 was obvious enough. South Carolina had gone into a 
 species of revolt against the extremely high tariff meas- 
 ure of 1828 and Clay's amendments of 1S12. Nulli- 
 fication had been decreed by a convention of that 
 State, and Clay believed, not without reason, that in 
 spite of Jackson's firmness, the Union was in serious 
 danger of disruption and a devastating civil war. To 
 
1bcnr\> Clay 133 
 
 save the Union, he stood ready to sacrifice protection 
 or anything else. It was solely as a Union-saving 
 compromise that he conceived and put through Con- 
 gress his low-tariff bill of 1813. 
 
 Clay had the very meagrest educational advantages, 
 and it was never his habit to repair the deficiency by 
 systematic or even diligent reading. His great readi- 
 ness of mind and his unusual capacity to absorb 
 information, enabled him' quickly to achieve a super- 
 ficial mastery of any subject with which he was called 
 upon to deal, but he was content with superficiality, 
 depending upon his intellectual alertness, and his 
 almost incredible aptitude in presenting a case, to 
 make his acquirements seem profound. 
 
 He was born in the slashes of Hanover County, 
 Virginia, on April 12, 1777. The only schools he ever 
 attended were of the "old field" kind, and there he 
 learned only reading, writing, and elementary arith- 
 metic. At the age of fourteen he went to Richmond, 
 where he served for a year as a boy in a store. A 
 year afterward he secured employment in the clerk's 
 office of the Court of Chancery. A little later he be- 
 came amanuensis to Chancellor George Wythe, the 
 head of the High Court, and his association with 
 that able and high-minded jurist did much to direct 
 Clay's youthful mind toward better things than his 
 surroundings might otherwise have suggested. From 
 Wythe, certainly, Clay imbibed his early views as to 
 slavery. Wythe was one of the many Virginians of 
 his time who regarded negro slavery as a wrong to 
 
i34 Cbc Statesmen 
 
 the negro and a curse to the white man— an inherit- 
 ance of evil which it was desirable to get rid o\ as 
 speedily as possible. Accordingly, he had manumitted 
 his own slaves and expended the greater part o\ his 
 fortune in providing them with the means o\ self-sup- 
 port. The sentiment and the convictions that inspired 
 him were common in Virginia at that day, and such a 
 man as George Wythe could give free utterance to 
 them without fear of offending. 
 
 From the Chancellor's service, young Clay passed 
 to a law office as a student, and with only such super- 
 ficial knowledge of the law as a single year of study 
 could give him he was admitted to the bar. Thus 
 equipped, he set out for Kentucky, whither his mother 
 and his stepfather had preceded him. He was at that 
 time only twenty years of age. yet he quickly won 
 success at the bar. and became remarked as a young 
 man of unusual intellectual gifts. When only twenty- 
 two years old. Clay took an active part as a speaker in 
 the canvass for the election of a convention to revise 
 the constitution of Kentucky. With a courage that 
 must be admired, he advocated a constitutional pro- 
 vision for the gradual emancipation of the slaves in 
 that State, and so brilliant was his oratory that, al- 
 though his cause was overwhelmingly defeated, his 
 espousal of the unpopular view did not impair his 
 young tame or seriously interfere with his political 
 prospects. In 1803 he was elected to the Legislature. 
 In 1806 he was so far distinguished as a lawyer that 
 Aaron Burr employed him as counsel. In the same 
 
Ibcnrp Clap 135 
 
 year he was appointed to fill a vacancy in the United 
 States Senate, where he immediately took a leading 
 part in debate and on important committees. His 
 term ended in March, 1807, and he was elected again 
 to the Kentucky Legislature, where his capacity of 
 leadership was promptly recognized by his elevation 
 to the speakership of the Assembly. It was at this 
 time that the growing intensity of the anti-British feel- 
 ing found insane expression in a bill to forbid the citing 
 of British court decisions or the reading of British law 
 text-books in the courts of Kentucky. But for Clay's 
 influence, that absurd and destructive measure would 
 have been made into law. Clay left the chair and, in 
 one of his singularly lucid expository speeches, so far 
 enlightened the minds of his fellow-legislators as to save 
 the State from the proposed folly. 
 
 It was at this time, too, that he first put forward his 
 doctrine of home manufacture, in a resolution urging 
 Kentucky legislators and officials to wear no clothing 
 not made in America. Politics and law-giving were 
 attended in those days with more or less of danger, 
 and Clay was wounded in a duel with Humphrey 
 Marshall, growing out of the debate on this resolution. 
 Later in life, Clay severely condemned duelling as bar- 
 barous, unchristian, and unworthy of civilized men. 
 But with that inconsistency which was characteristic 
 of him, he not long after that utterance fought with John 
 Randolph. As he continued all his life to desire the 
 extinction of slavery, and to pride himself on his early 
 advocacy of emancipation, yet continued also to hold 
 
136 Gbe Statesmen 
 
 slaves and to advocate measures in behalf of slavery, 
 so he condemned duelling but continued to prac- 
 tise it. 
 
 In 1809, Clay was again made a Senator of the 
 United States, to fill out the two years of an unexpired 
 term. During this period he for the first time fully 
 expounded his policy of narrowly limited tariff protec- 
 tion, designed to render the country independent of 
 foreign markets in time of war, but to avoid the ex- 
 tensive diversion of capital from agriculture to manu- 
 factures, and especially to avoid the creation of a 
 a msiderable class of mill-operatives. It was during the 
 next few years, also, that he supported in the House the 
 West Florida occupation, put forth the theory that 
 the Louisiana Purchase included Texas, and opposed 
 the renewal of the charter of the United States Bank 
 on the ground that the creation of such a corporation 
 by the national authority was manifestly unconstitu- 
 tional, and that the existence of the bank was danger- 
 ous to the public welfare. His argument in this behalf 
 was so able and convincing that even he could not 
 satisfactorily answer it when he afterwards became the 
 bank's champion. 
 
 In 181 1, Clay was for the first time elected to the 
 House of Representatives, and so well recognized was 
 his gift of leadership that he was at once made Speaker. 
 During all the succeeding time of his service in the 
 House, he was chosen Speaker in every Congress 
 almost without opposition, except on a few occasions, 
 when for personal reasons he refused the office. From 
 
Ibcnrp CIa\> 137 
 
 first to last there was nobody to question his primacy 
 in a body that directly represented the people. 
 
 Clay promptly made himself the foremost cham- 
 pion of war with England. He used all his splendid 
 eloquence in "tiring the popular heart" against British 
 aggressions. He pictured to the country a gloriously 
 victorious struggle, embracing the conquest of Canada, 
 the capture of Quebec, and a peace to be dictated by 
 American commissioners at Halifax. So convincing 
 were his plans of campaign, and so fascinating his 
 foreshadowings of glorious victory, that Gallatin had 
 to labor with President Madison to prevent him from 
 appointing Clay Commander-in-chief of the armies 
 in the tield. 
 
 The contrast between the all-conquering career 
 predicted for our armies by the orator who was chiefly 
 instrumental in bringing the war about, and the actual 
 occurrences of that war, would have destroyed the 
 popularity of almost any other man than Clay. He, 
 strange favorite of fortune, was scarcely at all hurt by 
 the humiliation inflicted upon the country. After our 
 attempts upon Canada had ended in disastrous re- 
 verses and in the shameful surrender of Hull's army, 
 —after the British had ravaged our coasts, made them- 
 selves masters of Washington City, burned the Capi- 
 tol, destroyed the public records, and subjected our 
 national pride to a bitter humiliation which was not 
 yet solaced by Jackson's extraordinary victory at New 
 Orleans,— after all this, Clay was still so conspicuous 
 a statesman that he was made one of the commissioners 
 
138 £bc Statesmen 
 
 to negotiate the treaty of Ghent So sorely, how- 
 ever, did he personally feel the shame of the outcome, 
 that when, after the signing of a peace treaty, he was 
 ordered to London to assist in the negotiation of a 
 commercial treaty, he hesitated, lingering in Paris until 
 news of Jackson's victory in a battle fought after the 
 conclusion of peace brought solace to his mind, and 
 gave the people at home an opportunity to vaunt 
 American superiority in arms as one of the truths de- 
 monstrated by the war. 
 
 Clay's star showed no dimming. He was still in 
 favor with the administration, and almost an object of 
 worship among the people. Madison offered him the 
 high post of Minister to Russia, which he declined. 
 The people of his district again chose him to represent 
 them in Congress, and on his return to Washington 
 in December, 181s, the House promptly elected him 
 Speaker, with scarcely any opposition. 
 
 He now brought forward his first protective tariff 
 measure, known in history as the tariff of 18 16. It 
 represented a remarkable change in his views on the 
 subject of protection. The rates of duty imposed by 
 the measure were very moderate in comparison with 
 those afterwards advocated by Clay, but they were 
 imposed with the distinct and avowed purpose of 
 protecting manufactures, and creating the very con- 
 ditions which Clay had before so eloquently depre- 
 cated as dangerous to the happiness and even to the 
 liberties of the people. He still clung to the belief, 
 or put forward the pretence, that the protective sys- 
 
Ibcnrp Clap 139 
 
 tern was only a temporary expedient, intended to meet 
 a situation which must presently pass away ; that as 
 soon as our " infant industries " were able to maintain 
 themselves without government aid, they would cease 
 to ask sustenance from the law ; that as soon as they 
 were able to walk alone, they would cast aside the 
 crutches of protection ; and that the people had only 
 to submit to a temporary exaction of tribute in order 
 to see these industrial children, nourished into a lusty 
 and helpful youth, needing and asking nothing further 
 of their nursing mother, the government. 
 
 It is possible that Clay believed all this. It is pos- 
 sible that the ingenuity of his intellect was sufficient 
 to deceive himself, as it deceived others, with these 
 predictions of altruism on the part of those to whom 
 the people were asked to pay tribute. If so, how 
 greatly he was misled ! How fallacious was his fore- 
 sight ! How conspicuously his prophecies failed of 
 fulfilment ! 
 
 The fact seems to be that Clay always deceived 
 himself when the deception served his cherished pur- 
 poses. Imperfectly educated as he was, untrained in 
 thorough research, instinctively and by habit content 
 with superficial inquiry, enthusiastic far beyond the 
 common, and gifted with a highly creative imagina- 
 tion, he was always able to persuade himself of the 
 soundness of any views that might accord with his 
 immediate desires, however flatly they might contra- 
 dict his views of the day before. 
 
 His course in 18 16 afforded another illustration of 
 
ho Gbe Statesmen 
 
 these tendencies. We have seen that he made him- 
 self the most conspicuous adversary of the United 
 States Bank when it sought to have its charter renewed 
 in 1S11. He opposed it on every ground. He held 
 that it threatened the creation of a great, oppressive, 
 and dangerously corrupting money-power, immeas- 
 urably inimical to the public welfare and peculiarly 
 menacing to free popular government. He went 
 farther, and challenged the constitutionality of the act 
 under which the bank existed. Still further, he con- 
 tended that Congress could not enact any consti- 
 tutional measure chartering a bank or any other 
 corporation. In one of the most logical and convin- 
 cing speeches he ever made, he argued that the Con- 
 stitution makes no grant of such power, and dwelt 
 upon the absurdity of the claim that a grant of such 
 power could be in any wise inferred or implied as 
 incidental to the exercise of any of the granted powers 
 of the National Government. He made, in short, the 
 very ablest and most conclusive argument that was 
 ever made by anybody to show both the unconstitu- 
 tionality and the extreme undesirability of a National 
 Bank's existence. It was largely due to his efforts 
 that the charter renewal was withheld and that the 
 bank went out of being. Between that time and the 
 year 1816 there had been no change in the Constitu- 
 tion or in the principles of constitutional interpre- 
 tation; certainly nothing had occurred to render a vast 
 organized money-power less dangerous to the public 
 welfare than it had been half a dozen years before. 
 
"Ibenrp Clap 141 
 
 Yet in 18 16, when it was proposed to establish another 
 Bank of the United States, Clay easily persuaded him- 
 self that the constitutional objections which he had 
 before urged with such force and fervor were unsound, 
 and that the dangers to popular liberty before which 
 he had stood appalled were chimerical. So over- 
 mastering was his influence in this new and strange 
 behalf that it is not exaggeration to call him the 
 creator of the bank which in 18 16 received a charter 
 to run during the next twenty years. 
 
 in that and the immediately succeeding years, Clay 
 busied himself with efforts to establish a system of 
 internal improvements— canals, roads, etc.— to be con- 
 structed by the National Government. He also 
 strenuously advocated the recognition of the Spanish 
 American Republics. His fervid imagination then, 
 and for years afterwards, pictured those turbulent 
 and chronically revolutionary states as republics like our 
 own, founded upon well-ordered conceptions of human 
 liberty and popular self-government. His fancy could 
 scarcely have gone further astray. But the generosity 
 and high patriotism that inspired his course under this 
 mistaken conception of facts did honor to his charac- 
 ter, to say the least of the matter. 
 
 He continued to be Speaker in the successive Con- 
 gresses, and in all of them exercised an influence 
 which it would be impossible for the very wisest and 
 ablest to command in our time. Congress was then 
 a deliberative assembly, and not, as now, a mere col- 
 lection of carefully selected committees. There were 
 
i-p 3bc Statesmen 
 
 no "gag" rules to prevent debate. Orators in Con- 
 gress were at that day accustomed to speak, not 
 merely " for the Record," but with actual intent to 
 influence the votes of members, and very generally 
 with that result. Clay, although Speaker, was ac- 
 customed to take a large and very masterful part in 
 the debates, especially making the sessions in Com- 
 mittee of the Whole his opportunity. 
 
 Another circumstance that enabled Clay at that time 
 to make all his influence effective, was the absence of 
 party divisions. The Federalist party was dead by 
 suicide. Its unpatriotic course and attitude during the 
 War of 1S12-1S had completely discredited and de- 
 stroyed it. Moreover, the republicanism of Jefferson, 
 which had been gravely feared in the early days of the 
 Republic as something akin to anarchism, or at the 
 least something with anarchistic tendencies, had com- 
 mended itself during the sixteen years of Jefferson's 
 and Madison's administrations, and when Monroe be- 
 came President there was no party left in opposition. 
 Even those who had been the Federalist leaders, or a 
 majority of them, had accepted the more liberal doc- 
 trines and policies of the party of young America. 
 
 In these circumstances personal influence, skill in 
 debate, and persuasive eloquence were far more effec- 
 tive forces of legislation than under ordinary conditions. 
 They encountered no strong party spirit. They were 
 not battled of their purposes by the organized and 
 drilled forces of party opposition. 
 
 It was under these conditions that Clay was called 
 
Ibenq? Clap 143 
 
 upon to deal, for the first time, with a great, strenuous, 
 country-racking issue. The Territory of Missouri, a part 
 of the Louisiana Purchase, sought admission to the 
 Union as a State in 1819. Slavery existed in the Terri- 
 tory and the people there desired to continue it. It 
 was proposed in Congress that an enabling act should 
 be passed, permitting Missouri to adopt a constitution 
 and apply for admission. An attempt was made to 
 insert a clause in this enabling act, providing that the 
 constitution of the new State should forbid slavery, 
 and making that a condition of admission. Thus, for 
 the first time the slavery question presented itself in 
 Congress in a practical and seriously disturbing form. 
 Clay— though he deprecated slavery, advocated gradual 
 emancipation, and hoped for the ultimate extinction of 
 the system — nevertheless opposed with all his force 
 and fervor this restrictive clause, designed to prevent 
 the extension of slavery into new territory. Debate 
 ran high in Congress and in the country. Finally Clay 
 adopted and made his own a plan of compromise sug- 
 gested by Senator Thomas of Illinois. This plan was 
 to admit Missouri as a slave State, but to provide by 
 law that slavery should not thereafter be permitted in 
 any State formed out of territory lying north of }6° 30', 
 north latitude,— that being the southern boundary line 
 of Missouri. Under Clay's strong advocacy, this com- 
 promise measure was adopted. 
 
 But the matter did not end there. When Missouri 
 made formal application for statehood it was found that 
 her proposed constitution not only authorized slavery, 
 
144 Gbe Statesmen 
 
 but forbade free negroes from other States to immigrate 
 into her Territory. Instantly the controversy was re- 
 opened in a more difficult form than before, and Clay, 
 in his character of "the great pacificator," seemed a 
 reference of the matter to a special committee, of which 
 he was made chairman. In conjunction with a like 
 committee o\ the Senate, this body adopted and re- 
 ported a resolution, drawn by Clay, to the effect that 
 Missouri should be admitted upon condition that the 
 Mate should never enact a law forbidding any class of 
 American citizens from settling within her borders. 
 The adoption of this resolution, Missouri's assent to it, 
 and her admission to the Union in 1821, completed the 
 fam< uis Missouri Compromise. It was the first of those 
 pacifications which Clay's life-long policy of concession 
 and compromise brought into being. He. and indeed 
 most of the statesmen of the time, fondly believed that 
 it would make an end o\ all irritation growing out of 
 the slavery issue. Texas. New Mexico. California, and 
 Utah were not then United States possessions, even in 
 prospect. Louisiana was already a State. The com- 
 promise seemed, therefore, to limit the future extension 
 o\ slavery to the single Territory o\ Arkansas, while 
 providing that all the remainder o\ the Louisiana Pur- 
 chase should come into the Union only as free States. 
 It was everywhere believed to be a permanent settle- 
 ment o\ all questions touching slavery extension. Men 
 did not then foresee the annexation o\ Texas and the 
 acquisition of New Mexico. California, and Utah. Nor 
 did they sufficiently take into account the fact that one 
 
Ibenn? Clap 145 
 
 Congress cannot bind another ; that a law is always 
 subject to repeal by the same power that enacted it ; 
 that the Missouri Compromise was effected by the mere 
 enactment of a statute which Congress could repeal at 
 pleasure. Nevertheless, for the time being, the com- 
 promise did settle the slavery question and remove it 
 from politics as a subject of irritating controversy. 
 
 At the end of this Congress, Clay declined a re-elec- 
 tion. His personal finances needed his attention, and 
 with a view to their repair he returned to the practice 
 of his profession, a practice which was always lucra- 
 tive when he had time to attend to it. But after a 
 brief interval he was again made a Representative. 
 When he returned to Congress in December, -1823, he 
 was immediately chosen again to the Speakership. In 
 that Congress he made his second marked advance to- 
 ward extreme protection, with his tariff of 1824. 
 
 It was in 1824 that he first came before the country 
 as a candidate for the presidency. The conditions 
 were peculiar, and at first they seemed strongly to 
 favor Clay. As has been already explained in this 
 essay, there was only one party in the country, which 
 is equivalent to saying that there was none. Practi- 
 cally all men were Republicans. Four years before 
 Monroe had been elected to a second term almost 
 without opposition, only one electoral vote being cast 
 against him. But while the " era of good feeling," as 
 it was called, had not yet given place in 1824 to a 
 party division, there were strong personal rivalries in 
 play, and Clay was one of four candidates for the 
 
146 Gbe Statesmen 
 
 presidency — the other three being Andrew Jackson, 
 John Quincy Adams, and William H. Crawford. Adams 
 was the legitimate successor of Monroe, according to 
 the tradition then prevailing, which made the Secre- 
 tary of State heir presumptive if not quite heir appar- 
 ent. Jackson ran upon the record o\ his astonishing 
 military achievements, and was a popular idol. Craw- 
 ford had much strength, and was supported by many 
 politicians o\ shrewdness and great industry. Clay 
 was unquestionably the most influential statesman of 
 the time, and his very legitimate aspirations were sup- 
 ported by an almost passionate popularity. But for 
 the furor of enthusiasm awakened in behalf of Jackson 
 by the memory o\ his military exploits, and by the 
 feeling among the people West and South that he alone 
 of the candidates was one of themselves, there is little 
 reason to doubt that Clay's chances of election would 
 have been excellent. As it was. he was fourth in the 
 poll iA electoral votes, and the election was thrown 
 into the House o\ Representatives. There the voting 
 was by States, each State having one vote and no 
 more, and Clay was not eligible, by reason o\ the con- 
 stitutional requirement that the House should choose a 
 President from among the three candidates having the 
 highest number of electoral votes. As he was not one 
 of those three he could not be made President, but he 
 was obviously the President-maker. His influence 
 in the House was so dominant that, as every one 
 clearly saw. the choice o( a president in effect rested 
 with him. Crawford having become almost helpless 
 
1bciu*\) Clap 147 
 
 in consequence of a paralytic stroke, the choice lay 
 between Jackson and Adams alone, and their respec- 
 tive partisans entered into a fierce struggle for the 
 favor of Clay, who for a considerable time did not in- 
 dicate his intentions. Jackson and he were not on 
 good terms. He had censured Jackson's course in 
 Florida, criticising the general somewhat severely in a 
 speech in Congress. Jackson had shown his resent- 
 ment in successive affronts to Clay, and the two had 
 ceased to associate in any way. But Jackson now 
 sought a reconciliation with the man who could make 
 him President or defeat him for that office, as he might 
 choose. A peace was effected over a succession of 
 dinners, but Clay did not yet declare his purpose. 
 Jackson's friends induced the Kentucky Legislature to 
 request that State's members of Congress to vote for 
 him, but Clay paid no heed to the request, and the 
 members from Kentucky remained obedient to Clay's 
 will. Finally, an attempt was made to frighten Clay from 
 his anticipated purpose to give his influence to Adams. 
 Through an anonymous letter, afterwards avowed by 
 a ridiculously unimportant member of Congress from 
 Pennsylvania, it was asserted that Clay and Adams 
 had made a corrupt bargain, by the terms of which 
 Clay was to secure Adams's election and Adams in 
 return was to make Clay Secretary of State. Clay de- 
 nounced the charge as an atrocious falsehood, and the 
 House sustained him. Hut the cry of "bargain ami 
 corruption " would not down. Although Adams testi- 
 fied to its falsity, and its malignant untruth was 
 
148 ftbe Statesmen 
 
 otherwise made apparent, it was repeated by Jackson 
 and his friends for almost a generation afterwards, to 
 Clay's great disadvantage. 
 
 To this result Clay himself somewhat contributed. 
 When the day of election came Clay and his following 
 supported Adams, electing him on the first ballot, and 
 when Adams made up his Cabinet Clay accepted the 
 post of Secretary of State. There is now no doubt 
 that Adams in offering him the place consulted only the 
 public welfare, or that Clay, in accepting it, acted with 
 entirely upright motives. But to great multitudes of 
 people the facts presented themselves as conclusive 
 proof oi the truth of the old, scandalous charge. Jack- 
 son aided it by insisting, then and afterwards, that he 
 had been cheated of the office, and that the will of the 
 people, expressed in his plurality of electoral votes, 
 had beer, overridden by a corrupt bargain. Jackson 
 probably believed this to be true. It was his habit of 
 mind to believe every man a scoundrel who differed 
 with him in opinion, and especially every man who 
 stood in the way of his purposes. Others believed it, 
 too, and not long after Clay became Secretary of State, 
 John Randolph, whether he believed it or not, openly 
 denounced both Clay and Adams, characterizing their 
 official association as " the coalition of 3 1 i til and Black 
 George, the combination of the Puritan with the black- 
 leg." A duel between Clay and Randolph resulted. 
 
 A great hostility to the administration arose. In 
 Congress and in the country a party division was 
 formed, not upon any question of principle or policy, 
 
Ibcnrp Cla\> 149 
 
 but solely upon the issue of support or hostility to the 
 administration. Its every act was questioned and re- 
 sisted. Its purposes were denounced, and Jackson, in 
 a letter, went so far as to suggest that Adams held office 
 illegally and by usurpation. The old " bargain and 
 corruption " charge was reiterated and again refuted, 
 this time by testimony that could not reasonably be 
 questioned. But Jackson calmly asserted that the testi- 
 mony offered in refutation of it in fact proved its truth, 
 and the unreading and unthinking multitude accepted 
 that view. Still viler charges were made against 
 Adams, one of them accusing him of personal conduct 
 in Russia which would be possible only to the lowest 
 and most depraved of human beings. 
 
 The result of all this appeared in the election for the 
 twentieth Congress. When that body assembled in 
 December, 1827, it had a majority opposed to the ad- 
 ministration, a thing unprecedented in the history of 
 the country. The session of 1827-28 was stormy be- 
 yond anything ever before seen, and resulted in the 
 enactment of only one bill of public consequence — the 
 "tariff of abominations." 
 
 Meantime the presidential campaign was in progress. 
 Adams was of course a candidate for re-election, and, 
 equally of course, Jackson was the candidate in opposi- 
 tion. It is entirely safe and not extravagant to say that 
 this was the bitterest, most scandalous, and most de- 
 moralizing canvas ever made in the country, before or 
 since. The shame of it was so great that many enlight- 
 ened men in all parts of the country began to despair 
 
150 Z\k Statesmen 
 
 of the Republic, and o\ the system upon which it 
 rests. 
 
 Jackson was elected, and Clay, though himself not 
 a candidate, was deeply grieved at a result which 
 seemed to reflect upon himself. 
 
 In 1831, Clay accepted an election to the Senate, and 
 during the next year busied himself with a new tariff 
 measure, amending that of 1S2S, and strengthening 
 some of its protective features, while lowering the duties 
 on articles not made in this country, in order to reduce 
 the revenues, which were already excessive, and which 
 promised to become dangerously so with the extin- 
 guishment of the public debt, then near at hand. 
 
 It was in resistance to the tariff of 1S2S. as amended 
 by Clay's bill o\ [832, that nullification was attempted 
 in South Carolina. Jackson took resolute ground in 
 opposition to the movement, declared in a proclama- 
 tion that he would enforce the laws at all costs, and 
 called upon Congress for the military means and au- 
 thority to do so. For a time there was very grave 
 apprehension throughout the country. The disruption 
 of the Union was threatened, and civil war seemed im- 
 minent. Again Clay came forward in his character of 
 "pacificator." He framed and succeeded in passing a 
 new tariff bill which provided for a gradual and pro- 
 gressive lowering of the protective duties to about the 
 rate imposed by the mild first protective tariff meas- 
 ure—that of 1S10. The compromise was effected 
 mainly by Clay's exertions. Nullification ceased its 
 menace, and the country was again at rest. Clay had 
 
1benr\> Clap 151 
 
 won new credit, and in a great degree recovered the 
 ground lost during the presidential campaign of 1832. 
 
 But in that campaign he had made the worst blunder 
 of his life. He was put in nomination for the presi- 
 dency as a candidate of the new National Republican 
 or Whig party,— the party opposing Jackson. He de- 
 liberately forced into the campaign an issue which, but 
 for his initiative, would not have been raised at that 
 time, and upon that issue mainly he lost the election. 
 Jackson had sent three messages to Congress, criticis- 
 ing the Bank of the United States. In the first and 
 second messages he had suggested that instead of re- 
 newing the charter of that institution, Congress should 
 create a bank of different character. Congress had re- 
 fused to consider the matter seriously, the President's 
 own adherents refusing to support his proposal, while 
 his Secretary of the Treasury made elaborate reports in 
 support of the existing institution, reports in precise 
 contradiction of Jackson's assumptions. Accordingly, 
 in his third message, Jackson had expressed his wish 
 to drop the matter. 
 
 The bank's charter would not expire until 1836, 
 three years after the expiration of Jackson's first term. 
 There was, therefore, not the slightest occasion for 
 Congress to deal with the matter in 1811-32. Still less 
 was there reason to thrust the bank question into the 
 presidential campaign of 1832, at risk, and indeed with 
 the certainty, of losing the votes of all men who thought 
 the bank a source of danger. But in the face of advice 
 to the contrary, urged upon him by his most devoted 
 
152 Gbc Statesmen 
 
 and wisest supporters, Clay insisted upon making the 
 question of rechartering the bank the " dominant 
 issue " of the campaign. To that end he had the con- 
 vention that nominated him issue a " ringing " address 
 on the subject, and persuaded the bank to make im- 
 mediate application to Congress for the renewal of its 
 charter. 
 
 Clay's purpose in all this was to make an issue on 
 which he could defeat Jackson. He made one on which 
 Jackson defeated him overwhelmingly. Years before, 
 as we have seen, Clay had made an elaborate argument 
 to show the unconstitutionality of the bank's existence; 
 in vetoing the recharter bill, Jackson deliberately 
 adopted Clay's own reasoning on that point, to the 
 orator's immitigable confusion. On that earlier occa- 
 sion, too, Clay had sought to alarm the people with 
 the spectre of a great, chartered money-power, threat- 
 ening to liberty, corrupting statesmen for its own 
 advantage, using its resources for political purposes, 
 and making of itself an unscrupulous and well-nigh 
 irresistible force in the control of elections and legisla- 
 tion. In 1832 he deliberately sought to fulfil his own 
 prophecy. He forced the bank to take a dangerously 
 active part in politics in his behalf, to the very great 
 alarming of the people. He had thought, by thrusting 
 the bank issue into the campaign., to alienate from 
 Jackson those of his party who shared the opinion of 
 Jackson's Secretary of the Treasury, that the bank was 
 sound, well managed, and publicly useful, and that it 
 ought to receive an extension of its charter ; he sue- 
 
1bcnr\> Clap 153 
 
 ceeded instead in driving such men into hostility to the 
 bank as the enemy of Jackson. He succeeded also in 
 alienating many of his own adherents, who, taking 
 alarm at the bank's interference in politics, abandoned 
 his support on that issue alone. Thousands of voters 
 who had never before thought or cared anything about 
 the bank were awakened to the danger that lurked in 
 its vast and unrestrained power. They saw it for the 
 first time endeavoring to control an election and itself 
 choose a president to its liking. They understood for 
 the first time how, by granting or withholding its 
 favors, it could make or mar the fortune of individuals; 
 how, in the same way, it could bring prosperity to one 
 city, or state, or section, and distress and ruin to an- 
 other ; how it even held in its hands the power to con- 
 trol the financial markets of the entire country, making 
 money scarce or plentiful as the speculative purposes 
 of its managers might suggest,— a power which the 
 bank actually exercised a little later with results calam- 
 itous to the country. In brief, scores of thousands who 
 had never before concerned themselves with the mat- 
 ter were taught to look upon the bank as the all- 
 threatening monster that Jackson represented it to be, 
 and to regard Jackson as the only man who could save 
 them from its clutch. 
 
 If Clay had not forced this issue into the campaign, 
 if he had not needlessly compelled the bank to engage 
 in political activities that alarmed the people and justi- 
 fied Jackson's attitude, he might or might not have 
 become President. But having made that blunder, his 
 
154 £be Statesmen 
 
 case was hopeless. He was himself indeed confident 
 to the end, and the result was a staggering blow to 
 him. Jackson had 219 electoral votes ; Clay only 49. 
 
 The nullification crisis, of which an account has 
 already been given, occurred in 1873. Clay shared 
 Jackson's view of nullification and, as we have seen, 
 devised as a remedy his compromise tariff bill, reliev- 
 ing the country of onerous protective duties by annual 
 reductions, until the maximum should fall in 1S41 to 
 twenty per cent. But it was not upon many subjects 
 that Clay and Jackson could agree, and the Senate 
 leader was soon as bitterly at war with the President 
 as ever. Clay opposed Jackson at every point, and 
 with an extreme bitterness of personal feeling which 
 Jackson returned with interest. The crisis came on the 
 subject of the bank. Not content with having vetoed 
 the bill to extend that institution's charter, and fearing 
 that it might have better success during the three 
 years it had yet to live, Jackson determined to de- 
 stroy it without waiting for the expiration of its lease 
 of existence. He ordered the Secretary of the Treasury, 
 who alone had legal authority to do so, to remove the 
 government deposits from the bank. The Secretary 
 refused. Jackson substituted another Secretary for 
 him, but he too refused to obey the mandate. Then 
 Jackson gave the place to Roger B. Taney, who did his 
 will by ordering that there should be no further deposits 
 of government funds in the bank, and that the funds 
 already there should be drawn out, as needed to meet 
 treasury expenditures, until all were withdrawn. This 
 
"Ibenrp Clap 155 
 
 was done upon Jackson's actual or pretended conviction 
 that the bank was financially unsound, and therefore 
 an unfit custodian of the government's money. But 
 there is no room for doubt that he was chiefly influ- 
 enced by resentment of the bank's efforts to defeat his 
 election. 
 
 The bank retaliated by enormously curtailing its 
 loans, upon the plea that the prospective withdrawal 
 of the deposits compelled it to that course. The real 
 purpose seems clearly to have been to cripple business, 
 and thus compel a relenting in the warfare upon the 
 bank — perhaps even to arouse an overmastering popu- 
 lar sentiment in favor of extending its lease of life. 
 
 The excitement was intense. All else in politics was 
 subordinated to this issue, and in the debates that fol- 
 lowed the most virulent personalities often took the 
 place of argument. Clay levelled his heaviest guns at 
 the President. He introduced resolutions in the Senate 
 censuring Jackson and declaring that the President had 
 "assumed upon himself authority and power not con- 
 ferred by the Constitution and laws." After an acri- 
 monious debate, the Senate adopted Hie resolutions, 
 and Jackson replied with a "protest," which he de- 
 manded should be recorded on the journal of the Sen- 
 ate. In this astonishing document he declared that the 
 Senate had transcended its constitutional authority by 
 adopting, and even by considering, such resolutions. 
 He urged that the Senate's action had been in effect an 
 impeachment, without any of the prescribed forms and 
 safeguards of a trial. He claimed for the President, as. 
 
156 £bc Statesmen 
 
 "the direct representative of the people," powers and 
 duties never before suggested, and declared it to be his 
 right and his duty to protect the Republic, if need be, 
 against senatorial usurpation, and much else of an as- 
 tonishing sort. Clay replied with eloquent denuncia- 
 tion, and later made a serious effort to curtail the 
 President's powers. He sought to repeal the law which 
 limited government officers to four-years' terms, and to 
 secure an enactment forbidding the President to remove 
 office-holders from place without the advice and con- 
 sent of the Senate, after the submission o\ reasons for 
 the proposed removal. This effort led to sharp debate, 
 but it came to nothing. A few years later, Jackson's 
 friends being in a majority in the Senate, a resolution 
 was brought forward to expunge from the Senate rec- 
 ords Clay's resolutions of censure upon Jackson. This 
 called forth from Clay one of the most eloquent speeches 
 he ever made, in which he denounced Jackson with a 
 passionate fervor such as only he knew how to mani- 
 fest while keeping within the rules of debate. 
 
 Meanwhile the bank, as a national institution, was 
 dead. It continued business for a time under a state 
 charter, but ultimately failed, its stockholders losing all 
 their investments. The condition thus revealed was 
 cited by Jackson's friends as proof that the institution 
 had been bankrupt when he had declared it to be so— 
 a conclusion which did not logically follow from the 
 premises, whether it was in fact correct or not. 
 
 During the session o\ [835-36 the slavery question, 
 after its habit, presented itself again in Congress in dis- 
 
Ibenrp Clap 157 
 
 turbing shape. The sentiment in favor of abolition had 
 led to the formation of anti-slavery societies throughout 
 the North, but especially in New England. These so- 
 cieties bombarded Congress with petitions for the abo- 
 lition of slavery in the District of Columbia, where the 
 National Government is supreme, and where there is 
 neither State nor local authority to question the power 
 of Congress. Efforts were made in the Senate to stop 
 the annoyance of these ceaseless petitions, either by 
 flatly refusing to receive them or by agreeing to lay 
 them on the table as soon as received, and thus dispos- 
 ing of them without committee reference or considera- 
 tion in any other way. This was opposed on the 
 ground that the right of petition is sacred, that it in- 
 heres in every citizen by virtue of his citizenship, and 
 that it is a right essential to republican self-government. 
 
 Thus a new element was introduced into the slavery 
 question. The opponents of slavery were enabled to 
 take position as men defending one of the inherent and 
 sacred rights of freemen, and in some degree to put the 
 advocates of slavery and its apologists in the attitude 
 of men denying that fundamental right. The battle 
 raged long and fiercely in both Houses of Congress, 
 with a consequent agitation among the people. 
 
 As usual, Clay took what he regarded as the safe 
 middle course. After his habit, he sought for grounds 
 of compromise, in the hope that thus once more the 
 disturbing spectre might be laid. He opposed the abo- 
 lition of slavery in the District of Columbia without the 
 previous consent of Virginia and Maryland, arguing 
 
158 Zbc Statesmen 
 
 that such abolition would inflict a wrong and bring 
 
 danger upon those States, which had ceded the District 
 fo the nation. But he favored the continued reception 
 of anti-slavery petitions, and opposed attempts then 
 making to authorize postmasters to remove anti-slavery 
 literature from the mails. 
 
 In the election o\' [836 Clay was not a candidate, 
 and Martin Van Buren, selected by Jackson to be his 
 successor, was elected. Almost immediately after his 
 accession there broke upon the country a financial panic 
 such as had never been known before. It was in part 
 the result of Jackson's dealing with the bank and in 
 part due to other causes. The story of it does not 
 concern the subject of the present essay, except that 
 it prepared the way for a Whig victory in 1840. As is 
 usual when financial stress and business prostration 
 afflict the country, the people laid the blame upon the 
 party in power, and clamorously demanded a change. 
 The Whigs had no particular policy to offer as a remedy, 
 but at any rate the Democrats, under whom the catas- 
 trophe had come, must be ousted from their control of 
 the government, and it required very little political 
 foresight to discover that the Whigs would carry the 
 country in 1840 by an overwhelming majority. In fact, 
 their candidate received 2^4 electoral votes with only 
 00 against him. But Clay was not their candidate. 
 This was the one occasion on which they could easily 
 and certainly have made him President. But they 
 turned to another instead. They chose as their candi- 
 date William Henry Harrison, as they had done in 1836. 
 
Ibenrp Clap 159 
 
 He was a man possessed of no knowledge or experi- 
 ence in public affairs, a man having in fact no qualifica- 
 tions whatever for the high office he was chosen to fill. 
 But he was a soldier, "a hero," and he had overthrown 
 the power of the Indian chief Tecumseh. He lived 
 plainly, like one of the people, and had never " put on 
 airs." So the Whigs nominated him and went into 
 the campaign with a positively insane enthusiasm. It 
 was a campaign of catch-words, hero-worship, torch- 
 light processions, and meaningless hurrahs. It repre- 
 sented nothing of principle or policy, and its result 
 could mean nothing except that the people were minded 
 to dismiss one party from power and to install another 
 in its stead, without stopping to ask what either of them 
 represented or what either would do with power upon 
 attaining to it. But this purely senseless campaign 
 was extraordinarily successful. 
 
 Harrison entered upon office apparently with only 
 one well-defined purpose, namely, to put the very 
 strongest men he could find into his Cabinet. He made 
 Webster its chief, and asked Clay to accept a place, 
 which he, however, declined. The clamorous office- 
 seekers drove Harrison to his death within a month, 
 and he was succeeded by the Vice-President, Tyler — 
 the first Vice-President who had ever become President 
 in that way. 
 
 As we have seen, the Whigs had no definite policy. 
 The party stood for nothing in particular, and it had 
 nominated Tyler for Vice-President without inquiring 
 what his political convictions might be. As the event 
 
160 Zbc Statesmen 
 
 proved, he was for more a Democrat than anything 
 else. He was a strict constructionist and an anti-bank 
 man. Upon taking office he retained the Cabinet ap- 
 pointed by Harrison, and for a time it was supposed 
 that his administration would accord with the views 
 and wishes of the great Whig leaders— Clay and Web- 
 ster more especially. Chief among those wishes was 
 that a new United States Bank should be chartered. 
 Clay introduced a measure providing for that end and 
 it was passed. Tyler vetoed it. Clay framed another 
 bill in a form which he thought would meet the Presi- 
 dent's objections, but Tyler vetoed that also. Indeed, 
 he broke so completely with the party that had elected 
 him that all the members of his Cabinet, except Web- 
 ster, resigned their offices, and Webster remained 
 against the clamorous protest of his party only in order to 
 complete some negotiations of an exceedingly difficult 
 and delicate nature, on the success of which depended 
 the question of peace or war with England. When 
 that work ended in the final ratification of the Ashbur- 
 ton Treaty, he too relinquished his portfolio. 
 
 Clay's anger at the vetoing of his bank bills, and the 
 long succession of other vetoes that followed, was so 
 great that he introduced and urged a constitutional 
 amendment to restrict the veto power and make a mere 
 majority vote of Congress sufficient to override it, and 
 another to give Congress the power of appointing the 
 Secretary of the Treasury and the United States Treas- 
 urer. Fortunately Congress was less ready than Clay 
 to meet temporary emergencies with permanent con- 
 
Ibcnq? Cla\> 161 
 
 stitutional changes, and so these resolutions were 
 never adopted. 
 
 In 1842, after a session of an extremely arduous and 
 trying character, Clay, who had declined a re-election, 
 delivered an eloquent and touching farewell to the 
 Senate, declaring it to be his fixed purpose never again 
 to accept a seat in that body. 
 
 But he by no means meant by this to withdraw 
 from political life. On the contrary, his retirement from 
 the Senate was but the beginning of the most deter- 
 mined effort he had yet made to secure his election to 
 the presidency. By withdrawing from active participa- 
 tion in public affairs he freed himself from the necessity 
 of antagonizing others, and from all responsibility for 
 things done or advocated. He could appear before the 
 country as one who. after long and patriotic public ser- 
 vice, sought retirement and rest, leaving both his fame 
 and the reward of his eminent services to his country- 
 men. Instead of devoting himself to his law practice, 
 and thus making that reparation in his personal for- 
 tunes the necessity of which he had assigned as the 
 chief reason of his retirement, he set out on a long 
 series of " progresses," the manifest purpose of which 
 was to arouse enthusiasm for him as a candidate for 
 President in 1844. Everywhere he spoke eloquently 
 and persuasively to great multitudes. Everywhere he 
 was received with an enthusiasm which a king return- 
 ing from glorious conquests might have envied. He 
 had completely succeeded in breaking down Tyler's 
 administration and driving the President into the 
 
162 Che Statesmen 
 
 Democratic party, which had no great love for hin. 
 and not the slightest purpose to nominate him as its 
 candidate in 1S44. He had completely succeeded, 
 also, in making himself, in the minds of the people, 
 the recognized leader of the Whigs, the one man 
 who could rally all that party's forces for the com- 
 ing contest. He had entirely displaced his only- 
 possible rival, Webster, and while he made his "pro- 
 gresses," showing himself to the people and exercising 
 all his wonderful gifts of persuasive oratory in winning 
 them to his support, his friends were at work in the 
 ways of "practical politics" in his behalf. One after 
 another, state legislatures under Whig control, and 
 state conventions of the Whig party put Clay in nomi- 
 nation without waiting for the orderly' action of a 
 "National Convention. 
 
 As to issues, the situation presented but one em- 
 barrassing difficulty. The bank question was so far 
 given up by the Whigs that Clay could return to his 
 old position, saying that while his views on that sub- 
 ject had not changed, he had no desire to urge the 
 establishment of a bank so long as there was no over- 
 mastering popular demand for it, — a declaration which 
 practically amounted to a final abandonment of the 
 issue. As to the tariff, events had in effect disposed of 
 that. The imperative need of revenue had compelled 
 Congress in 1842, soon after Clay's retirement from the 
 Senate, to abandon his compromise tariff of 1833, and 
 continue duties that satisfied the protected manufac- 
 turers. Finally, Clay's scheme of distributing the pro- 
 
Ibcnrp Clap 163 
 
 ceeds of public land sales had been finally abandoned 
 in obedience to Tyler's behest, expressed in his veto of 
 successive tariff bills containing that provision, and his 
 manifest determination to adhere to that refusal to the 
 end. 
 
 But there remained the question of the annexation 
 of Texas, and a very dangerous question it was to 
 a presidential aspirant. Tyler was moving heaven and 
 earth to accomplish annexation, but neither party was 
 as yet united either in behalf of the project or in oppo- 
 sition to it. It was bitterly opposed at the North, be- 
 cause it would involve an extension of slave territory. 
 It was strongly supported at the South for that very 
 reason. But both at the North and at the South there 
 were large numbers of men in both parties who advo- 
 cated, and other large numbers who opposed, annexa- 
 tion, upon grounds quite apart from all questions of 
 slavery. Manifestly, therefore, this was precisely one 
 of those questions of which presidential candidates had 
 every inducement to steer clear. If that could not be, 
 as obviously it could not, safety for either candidate 
 lay in keeping the issue out of the presidential election. 
 Accordingly Van Buren, who was then regarded as 
 almost certain of the Democratic nomination, visited 
 Clay at his home at Ashland. The two had always 
 been personally on the best of terms in spite of their 
 political differences, and, as was reported at the time, 
 they now agreed to keep the Texas question out of the 
 campaign by both of them coming out in opposition 
 to annexation. Whether such an agreement was made 
 
1 64 Gbe Statesmen 
 
 or not, it was carried out. For when Tyler concluded 
 a treaty of annexation, and was planning to have it 
 ratified, Clay and Van Buren published simultaneous 
 letters in their respective newspaper organs in opposi- 
 tion to the scheme. This made it certain that in a 
 contest between these two as rival candidates for the 
 presidency, the question of Texan annexation could not 
 be made an issue. 
 
 But the fates overthrew all these calculations. Van 
 Buren was not made the Democratic candidate. Al- 
 though he had a majority of votes in the Democratic 
 convention, the rule requiring a two-thirds' vote to 
 make a nomination defeated him, and in the end the 
 Democrats nominated James K. Polk, a representative 
 of the extreme pro-slavery wing of his party, and an 
 unflinching advocate of annexation. The convention 
 also adopted annexation as a party policy. Thus 
 Clay's activity in opposing annexation, so far from 
 removing that question from the canvass, made it in 
 fact the dominant issue. Clay made matters worse for 
 himself by an unwise attempt to "hedge," as the 
 gamblers say, on this question. Instead of standing 
 firmly upon the ground he had taken in opposition to 
 annexation, as likely to discredit the country and in- 
 volve it in war, he wrote a second letter of an equivo- 
 cating character, declaring that he did not personally 
 object to annexation if it could be peaceably accom- 
 plished. This was designed to placate Southern Whigs, 
 who desired the acquisition of Texas in the interest of 
 slavery, while retaining the favor of Northern Whigs 
 
1bcnr\? Clap 165 
 
 who opposed annexation as a pro-slavery measure. 
 The letter failed of both its purposes. It was too 
 strongly in the pro-slavery interest to please the North- 
 ern wing of the party, and not sufficiently pronounced 
 in that way to satisfy the ardent annexationist Whigs 
 of the South, who for safety's sake voted in large num- 
 bers for Polk. 
 
 Polk was elected, and again Clay's life-long ambi- 
 tion to be President was baffled. He retired to Ashland 
 and busied himself with efforts to rescue his private 
 fortunes from embarrassments that seemed hopeless. 
 He was deeply in debt, mainly by reason of his gen- 
 erosity in assuming responsibility for others. At 
 one time it seemed certain that he must lose even the 
 home in which his entire married life had been spent, 
 and in which his children had been born. But he was 
 spared this calamity. Just when his affairs seemed 
 most hopeless he was notified by a bank that persons, 
 wholly unknown to the bank, had deposited to his 
 credit a sum sufficient to discharge all his obligations 
 and enable him to retain his home free of all debt. 
 This was only one of the many proofs that came to 
 him in those years of the profound affection in which 
 he was held. 
 
 During the next four years he accepted no public 
 place, but he kept himself in touch with political affairs 
 and managed more and more to emphasize his " claim " 
 to be again his party's leader in the election of 1848. 
 The "presidential fever" was still hot upon him ; the 
 bee buzzed in his bonnet with unabated persistency. 
 
1 66 £be Statesmen 
 
 He was unquestionably the ablest statesman among 
 the Whigs, the one fittest to be President, the one who, 
 by reason of his great gifts and extended experience, 
 held the largest place in the popular mind. But the 
 Whigs wanted to win in the election, and as the time 
 of it approached they more and more doubted that they 
 could win with Clay for their candidate. The annexa- 
 tion of Texas, the war with Mexico, and the acquisition 
 of all the vast California region had brought many 
 perplexing questions into being, and had thrust the 
 slavery question again into politics in very dangerous 
 shape. If the Whig party had had any principles that 
 it could call its own or any policy on which it could 
 hope to unite, Henry Clay or Daniel Webster would 
 have been beyond question its fittest candidate. Hav- 
 ing none, and being hopelessly divided on every ques- 
 tion at issue, and having in common no aspiration 
 except to carry the election, it looked for a candidate 
 whose nomination should mean nothing, but whose 
 personal popularity might secure the necessary votes. 
 It found such a candidate in Zachary Taylor. He had 
 never voted in his life or in any other way indicated 
 what his politics might be. He had never had the 
 smallest experience in civil affairs, and presumably had 
 no capacity in that direction. He was a Southern man 
 and a slaveholder, but the Northern anti-slavery Whigs 
 were ready to overlook that for the sake of the victory 
 they hoped to achieve with him as their candidate. He 
 was deservedly a popular " hero," because of his really 
 extraordinary military achievements in Mexico. He 
 
Ibenrp Cla\> 167 
 
 had much the same kind of strength that had made 
 Jackson and Harrison successful in elections. He was 
 nominated without any platform whatever or any dec- 
 laration in any other form of what his candidacy meant. 
 He regarded himself, indeed, less as a party candidate 
 than as a man chosen by the people and accepted by 
 the Whig convention. He had declared in writing, be- 
 fore the convention met, that he would be a candidate 
 whether the party nominated him or not, and while the 
 campaign was in progress he formally accepted a nomi- 
 nation tendered by a Democratic caucus in South 
 Carolina. 
 
 Clay was wounded to the quick when this merely 
 military man was preferred to him. He was profoundly 
 disgusted, too, by the nomination of one so unfit for 
 the office to which he aspired. Webster called it "a 
 nomination unfit to be made," and, after long hesita- 
 tion, supported Taylor only as a choice of evils. Clay 
 went farther, and refused to support the candidate at 
 all or to take any interest in the campaign. 
 
 The time was now near at hand when Clay was to 
 render his last and greatest service to the advocates of 
 slavery extension. Yet he still clung to his desire to 
 see slavery abolished, and in 184Q, when a convention 
 to revise the constitution of Kentucky was to be 
 elected, he took up the parable of his young manhood, 
 and again urged, at the age of seventy-two, that scheme 
 of gradual emancipation which he had advocated half 
 a century before. 
 
 In December, 1840, Clay again took his seat in the 
 
i6S Zbc Statesmen 
 
 Senate as the unanimous choice of the Kentucky Legis- 
 lature, and in the Senate he straightway claimed and 
 was accorded his old position as undisputed leader of 
 the majority. The political situation was the most 
 difficult one that the country had ever confronted. 
 The slavery question had come forward in a more 
 threatening form than it had ever before assumed, and 
 the country was inflamed concerning it in an unpre- 
 cedented degree. Texas had been admitted as a slave 
 State, with the understanding that her vast territory 
 was presently to be carved into four States, thus adding 
 eight Southerners to the Senate. The Mexican War 
 had added California, New Mexico, and Utah to our 
 national domain, and, by reason of the gold discoveries, 
 California had rapidly become populous. The people 
 of that Territory, without waiting for an enabling act, 
 had framed a constitution and asked admission into the 
 Union as a free State. To this the South objected, 
 and various propositions were brought forward by way 
 of settlement. One of these was to extend the Mis- 
 souri Compromise line to the Pacific Ocean. This 
 would have divided California into two States. Texas 
 was claiming most of New Mexico, and the slave- 
 holders of Texas insisted upon their right to take their 
 slave property into that region. A great congressional 
 battle had been fought over what was called "the 
 Wilmot Proviso " — a proviso which had been inserted 
 into an appropriation bill, forever forbidding slavery 
 in the Territories acquired from Mexico. The pro- 
 viso had been rejected, but its discussion had greatly 
 
1bcnr\> Clap 169 
 
 inflamed men's minds, North and South, and intensi- 
 fied the excitement over the slavery question. The 
 South complained not only that efforts were making to 
 deny to Southerners their equal rights in the Territories, 
 but that Northern States interfered with the laws for 
 the rendition of fugitive slaves, and that the agitation 
 in favor of abolishing slavery in the District of Colum- 
 bia was an injury and a menace to all the slave States. ' 
 Thus, when Clay returned to the Senate he found the 
 country seemingly on the very edge of disruption and 
 civil war, with no apparent prospect, in the temper 
 then existing, of finding any way of escape. Again 
 he assumed the role of pacificator, and set himself to 
 solve the problem. Without any question his efforts 
 were inspired solely by his overmastering concern for 
 the Union. To preserve the Republic from disintegra- 
 tion he was ready to yield anything and everything of 
 conviction or of policy, and in that behalf he was 
 prepared to exercise all his powers of persuasion in 
 inducing others to accept his plan of compromise. 
 
 That plan proposed that California should be ad- 
 mitted as a free State ; that territorial governments 
 should be established in Mew Mexico and Utah, with- 
 out any restriction as to slavery ; that the boundary of 
 Texas should be drawn as it now is, the general Gov- 
 ernment undertaking to satisfy Texas for the loss of 
 territory claimed by that State ; that an act should be 
 passed by Congress solemnly promising that slavery 
 should never be abolished in the District of Columbia 
 without the consent of Maryland ; that the slave trade, 
 
i/o Hbc Statesmen 
 
 however, should be forbidden in the District ; and, 
 finally, that a new and effective fugitive slave law 
 should be enacted and enforced with all the power of 
 the Federal Government. As chairman of a special 
 committee. Clay embodied these propositions in bills, 
 and after a long struggle they were enacted. 
 
 This, in substance, was the famous " Compromise of 
 iSso." It satisfied nobody, though for the time being 
 it seemed to have averted danger to the Union. So 
 widespread was the dissatisfaction, however, and so 
 difficult was it to enforce the Fugitive Slave Law in 
 many of the Northern States — in brief, so truly " irre- 
 pressible " was the conflict of opinion, sentiment, and 
 material interests with respect to slavery that Clay 
 advocated the creation of special powers vested in the 
 President, to enable him to enforce the compromise. 
 He also issued a sort of proclamation, signed by himself 
 and forty-three other Senators and Representatives, de- 
 claring their purpose to oppose, for any office, great or 
 small, any man not openly favoring the strictest adhe- 
 rence to the terms of the compromise, as a safeguard to 
 the Union. 
 
 Thus, in [851, Clay looked forward to his final retire- 
 ment from public life at the end of his term, in the firm 
 belief that he had at last succeeded in settling the 
 slavery question, eliminating it from politics, and for- 
 ever securing the Union against disruption upon that 
 exasperating issue. It was only ten years later that the 
 battle of Manassas was fought within cannon-sound of 
 Washington. 
 
Ibcnrp Clap 
 
 '7' 
 
 Clay was, in i8si, in his seventy-fifth year, and his 
 health was so greatly impaired that he appeared only 
 once in his senatorial seat during the session of 1851- 
 52. His work in the world was done, and on June 29, 
 1852, he died, honored and deeply mourned by his 
 countrymen. 
 
 Few men in our history have played so large a part 
 in American affairs of state, and few h;ive been inspired, 
 in the main, by a purer patriotism than his. 
 
THE JURISTS 
 
JOHN MARSHALL 
 
 JOHN MARSHALL, as Chief Justice of the United 
 States during the formative period of the coun- 
 try's history, did more than any other man at 
 any period ever did to determine what sort of govern- 
 ment this Republic should have and what its destiny 
 among nations should be. For more than a third of a 
 century he presided over the Supreme Court, and in all 
 important cases dominated and directed the opinions 
 of that august tribunal. 
 
 The framers of the Constitution had prepared a 
 written document for the government of the Republic, 
 —a document which might mean one thing or another, 
 according to its interpretation. John Marshall decided 
 by his interpretations of it what it should mean and 
 what it should enforce. Practically all of the great con- 
 stitutional questions that have arisen in the nation's 
 history came before him for decision, and in deciding 
 them he did more even than the members of the Con- 
 stitution-framing Convention themselves to determine 
 under what system of fundamental law the affairs of 
 the Republic should be conducted. They framed an 
 
1 76 £bc 3iui6ts 
 
 organic law. He decided what that organic law 
 meant. 
 
 Chief among his achievements in this direction was 
 his successful insistence upon the right of the Supreme 
 Court to override and nullify any act of Congress 
 which it might find to be in contravention of the Con- 
 stitution, or without warrant from the fundamental 
 law. This point was gravely disputed. It was in- 
 sisted that Congress itself should be the only judge of 
 its own right to legislate — a doctrine which would 
 have made the legislative power as completely inde- 
 pendent of restraint as it is in England, and would 
 have rendered the Constitution so much waste paper 
 as a fundamental law designed to restrain and regulate 
 the conduct of Congress. 
 
 When that question was brought before John Mar- 
 shall he decided it once and forever in behalf of the 
 Constitution and against the claims of Congress. In 
 effect his decision in Marbury vs. Madison was that 
 Congress is the creature of the Constitution, not its 
 master ; that so long as its legislation is such as the 
 Constitution authorizes, it is valid, and the courts are 
 bound to enforce it ; but that wherever it transgresses 
 the Constitution or transcends the authority granted 
 to Congress by that document, the courts must hold 
 its acts to be null and void, and not legislation at all. 
 His reasoning on this supremely important point is 
 best presented in his own absolutely conclusive words: 
 
 " It is a proposition too plain to be contested, that the Consti- 
 tution controls any legislative act repugnant to it, or (else) that the 
 
John Marshall 
 
 >„, the painting by Henry tnr 
 
 

 
3obn flDarsball 177 
 
 legislature may alter the Constitution by an ordinary act. Between 
 these alternatives there is no middle ground. The Constitution 
 is either a superior, paramount law, unchangeable by ordinary 
 measures, or it is on a level with ordinary legislative acts, and, like 
 other acts, is alterable when the legislature shall please to alter it. 
 If the former part of the alternative be true, then a legislative act 
 contrary to the Constitution is not law ; if the latter part be true, 
 then written constitutions are absurd attempts on the part of the 
 people to limit a power in its own nature illimitable." 
 
 If Chief Justice Marshall had done nothing else in 
 all his life than deliver this one decision his service to 
 the country would have been of inestimable value. 
 For by this decision he once and forever gave force and 
 effect to the great purpose of the constitution-makers 
 to establish the judiciary as a co-ordinate branch of the 
 government, equal to and wholly independent of the 
 legislative and executive branches. It is under this 
 decision, and by virtue of it alone, that a check-rein 
 has ever since been held upon the will of Congress ; 
 and he must be an inattentive student of history who 
 does not recall countless instances in which the sub- 
 jection of Congress to the Constitution, under penalty 
 of the annulment of its lawless acts, has been a con- 
 dition of salvation to the dearest interests of the nation 
 and its people. 
 
 John Marshall was born in Fauquier County, Vir- 
 ginia, September 24, 1755. He was irregularly but 
 thoroughly educated. His father trained him from 
 early childhood in +he classic English literature. In 
 boyhood he attended a school for a single year. After 
 that he was trained by private tutors alone, never 
 attending any other school or any college. At the age 
 
178 Ebe 3urists 
 
 of eighteen he began the study of law, and a little 
 later, the Revolution having broken out, he entered 
 the military service of his country, in which he suf- 
 ficiently distinguished himself to attain the rank of 
 captain in the line. 
 
 After six years of nearly continuous service, the 
 war having in effect come to an end, Marshall 
 devoted himself to the study and practice of the law, 
 a career in which he quickly rose to distinction, 
 chiefly by reason of his extraordinary power of so 
 lucidly stating a principle or a succession of facts that 
 not even the dullest intelligence could fail to grasp 
 and comprehend his meaning and the body of reason- 
 ing upon which it rested. It is related of the late 
 Judah P. Benjamin that, on his first appearance in the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, he had to answer 
 the eloquent speech of a truly Ciceronian orator. In 
 his reply, Benjamin indulged in no rhetoric, constructed 
 no periods, in short, did nothing for effect. Instead, he 
 presented the case of his client in so simple, lucid, and 
 convincing a way that the then Chief Justice, turning 
 to Justice Campbell, said : 
 
 "That little fellow has stated his adversary clear 
 out of court." 
 
 Something like this was said of John Marshall by 
 his contemporaries. It was said by one of the greatest 
 of them that "when Marshall makes a law point he 
 does it so simply that the most uneducated farmer in 
 court understands it as completely as the ablest lawyer 
 does." 
 
3obn flDareball 179 
 
 Yet not for a long- time, and not until he was made 
 Chief Justice, did this man of eminently judicial mind 
 hold any judicial office. He was from time to time 
 elected to a seat in the Virginia Legislature. In 17S8 
 he was made a member of the Virginia Convention, 
 called to consider the acceptance or rejection of the 
 new Federal Constitution. He was a strong advo- 
 cate of acceptance, and it was chiefly by reason of his 
 eloquence in answer to Patrick Henry that Virginia 
 finally ratified the Constitution and made the Union 
 a practical possibility. For had Virginia withheld her 
 assent, her commanding position would undoubtedly 
 have brought the whole project to naught. Yet with 
 all of Marshall's persuasive logic and James Madison's 
 impressive influence, the Virginia Convention gave a 
 majority of only ten in a total vote of 168 in favor 
 of accepting the new Federal Constitution. Very 
 certainly the majority would have been on the other 
 side if John Marshall had not won the convention to 
 his views by his masterly presentation of the coun- 
 try's needs, especially in the matters of taxation, the 
 control of the militia, and the establishment of that 
 supreme judicial power which, all unknown to him- 
 self at the time, he was destined to exercise for so 
 long a time and with such beneficent consequences 
 to the country. 
 
 When the Constitution was ratified and the National 
 Government organized, with Washington for President, 
 the first cleavage leading to the formation of parties 
 appeared. Washington, Hamilton, John Adams, and 
 
i so £be 3urtets 
 
 other strong leaders of men believed strenuously in 
 the necessity of adequate strength in the National Gov- 
 ernment, and were disposed to interpret the Constitu- 
 tion with that end in view. Jefferson and his followers 
 profoundly distrusted this policy, fearing that the Fed- 
 eral Government might become too strong for the 
 States and impair their independence. The cleavage 
 was not yet so well defined as to prevent united action 
 in behalf of the public welfare by the leaders of the 
 two sides. Both Jefferson and Hamilton — the fore- 
 most representatives respectively of the Republican 
 and Federalist parties — were members of Washing- 
 ton's Cabinet, and to the end of his days Washing- 
 ton's chief concern in statecraft was to avert what he 
 deemed the danger to the Republic that lay in the 
 arousing of party spirit. 
 
 In all these early controversies John Marshall leant 
 strongly to the side of Washington and Hamilton. 
 He wanted a government strong enough to stand alone, 
 and he had no fear that such a government, restrained 
 at every point by a written constitution, would become 
 dangerous to liberty. In the controversies of that time 
 his great influence, his extraordinary legal learning, 
 and his still more wonderful capacity for lucid state- 
 ment and convincing exposition, were constantly called 
 into activity in defence of Washington's policies and 
 of those views of the Constitution upon which such 
 policies were based. 
 
 In 170- Washington offered Marshall the place of 
 Attorney-General of the United States, and Marshall 
 
3obn flDarsball 181 
 
 declined it. In 1796 Washington wanted to make him 
 Minister to France, a country with which our relations 
 were then severely strained. Again Marshall declined 
 the appointment. In 1797 President Adams appointed 
 Pinckney, Marshall, and Gerry joint Ministers to 
 France, and, seeing now an opportunity to serve his 
 country, Marshall accepted. 
 
 The corruption of the French republican govern- 
 ment at that time was almost incredible. Talleyrand, 
 its head, boldly demanded of the American Ministers a 
 money bribe as the condition of re-establishing diplo- 
 matic relations between France and the United States. 
 
 The Ministers indignantly rejected the infamous 
 proposal, and Marshall prepared a State paper of extra- 
 ordinary force and vigor which the Ministers sent to 
 Talleyrand, and in which they set forth clearly this 
 country's earnest desire to be at peace and to re-estab- 
 lish friendly relations with France, at the same time 
 emphasizing their determination never to buy such 
 terms of amity by the payment of any sort of tribute. 
 It was in celebration of this affair that at a Philadelphia 
 dinner, given to Marshall on his return, the toast was 
 proposed, "Millions for defence; not one cent for 
 tribute." 
 
 Marshall and Pinckney, Federalists, were instantly 
 ordered by Talleyrand to quit France, as Pinckney 
 had been once before. Gerry, being a Republican, was 
 permitted to remain, but not in a position that prom- 
 ised the achievement of anything of value to the 
 country. 
 
1S2 £bc 3uri5t6 
 
 Concerning this matter President John Adams wrote 
 to the Secretary of State : 
 
 " Of the three envoys the conduct of Marshall alone has been en- 
 tirely satisfactory and ought to be marked by the most decided 
 approbation of the public. He has raised the American people 
 in their own esteem, and if the influence of truth and justice. 
 reason and argument, is not lost in Europe, he has raised the consid- 
 eration of the United States in that quarter of the world." 
 
 In pursuit of his purpose thus to signalize Marshall's 
 service by public recognition. President Adams offered 
 to the great Virginian a seat upon the bench o( 
 the Supreme Court. Again Marshall declined the 
 honor. 
 
 In 1700 Marshall reluctantly accepted an election to 
 Congress, where he served but for a single term. But 
 during that term he served the government in a wax- 
 productive of lasting benefits. In connection with 
 an extradition case, the details of which need not be 
 related here, resolutions, bitterly censuring the Admin- 
 istration and a Federal judge in South Carolina, were 
 introduced into Congress, and the obvious impulse of 
 Congress was to adopt them. John Marshall came to 
 the rescue. In a speech o\ extraordinary force and 
 persuasiveness, he showed that the course of the 
 Administration and the Federal court had been sound 
 in law, right in morals, and should be made a prece- 
 dent to govern all future proceedings in extradition. 
 So lucidly did he present his argument, and so elo- 
 quently did he plead for the right, that Congress aban- 
 doned its purpose of censure and decidedly rejected 
 
3obn HDarsball 183 
 
 the resolutions of condemnation. Thus was the Ad- 
 ministration served at the moment, but that was the 
 very smallest part of the matter. For thus did John 
 Marshall establish a principle and a precedent which 
 have ever since governed and determined our nation's 
 dealings with similar cases. 
 
 It was by a series of happy accidents that the coun- 
 try, in its formative period, secured the inestimable 
 advantage of John Marshall's appointment to the 
 Chief-Justiceship, and, by consequence of it, all those 
 wonderfully wise decisions that have given form and 
 consistency to the National Constitution. Adams took 
 him out of Congress and made him Secretary of State. 
 A little later there occurred a vacancy in the Chief-Jus- 
 ticeship. Adams offered the place to John Jay, who 
 declined it. Adams had failed of re-election, and his 
 term was drawing to a close. Jefferson was to succeed 
 him, and it is pretty safe to assume that Jefferson, the 
 supreme leader of the Republicans, would never have 
 appointed the stalwart Federalist, John Marshall, to be 
 Chief Justice and chief interpreter of the Constitution. 
 Nor did Marshall himself anticipate anything of the 
 kind. On the contrary, as Secretary of State, he busied 
 himself to find a proper person for the supremely im- 
 portant place of Chief Justice, in order that the ap- 
 pointment might be made by Adams before the 
 inauguration of Jeffeison. One of his biographers tells 
 a pleasant story of the way in which Adams announced 
 to Marshall his purpose of appointing him to the 
 most exalted judicial place in the land. Marshall, as 
 
1 84 £be 3iirtet9 
 
 Secretary of State, suggested the name of a man whom 
 he thought fit for the appointment. President Adams 
 replied : 
 
 " General Marshall, you need not give yourself any 
 further trouble about that matter. 1 have made up my 
 mind about it." "I am happy to hear," answered 
 Marshall, "that you are relieved on the subject. May 
 I ask whom you have fixed upon?" "1 have con- 
 cluded," said Adams, "to nominate a person whom it 
 may surprise you to hear mentioned. He is a Virginia 
 lawyer, a plain man, by the name of John Marshall." 
 
 Thus by a happy succession of accidents was John 
 Adams enabled to crown his expiring Administration by 
 giving to the country the greatest Chief Justice it has 
 ever had, at the precise time when the wisdom and 
 learning of such a man had their best opportunity to 
 impress themselves upon our half-formed institutions 
 in that wonderful series of judicial decisions which set- 
 tled the Constitution and determined for all time what 
 it should mean. Nothing more fortunate has ever hap- 
 pened to the Republic than the appointment of John 
 Marshall at that precise moment of time. 
 
 Chief Justice Marshall wrote a Life of IVjshiiiii- 
 ton, but his enduring monument must always be the 
 Supreme Court reports that embody those decisions of 
 his, during his thirty-five years of service, which 
 moulded the Republic into its existing form, and did 
 much to give it permanence as a power of commanding 
 import in the world. 
 
 Marshall died in 1835, at the ripe age of eighty 
 
3obn flDarsball 
 
 185 
 
 years, and his activity of mind had continued unim- 
 paired to the last. In virility of reasoning, in aptness 
 of illustration, in vigorous grasp of the principles of law, 
 his very last decisions were tit fellows for those that he 
 had rendered in the prime of his manhood. 
 
\ Ad*i*>;, : aX& ; ;«& -C 
 
 ■■ >*- 
 
 
 v-~^- •^■-— /*^> •"'»"■•>' •--^ir-^V'-V 
 
 JOSEPH STORY 
 
 IT is related upon good authority that when Joseph 
 Story's masterly work on the Conflict of Laws 
 appeared, the Lord Chancellor of England sent 
 his judicial wig to the American jurist, with an inscrip- 
 tion in it which read: "From a Lord Chancellor to 
 one who deserves to be." 
 
 The anecdote aptly illustrates the regard in which 
 Story was held in England and on the continent oi 
 Europe as an expounder of the more difficult principles 
 of the law. It was everywhere recognized that Joseph 
 Story shared with John Marshall. Lord Mansfield. Lord 
 Eldon. Lord Ellenborough. and a few others of the elect, 
 the honor of supreme masterfulness in the comprehen- 
 sion and application of those fundamental principles of 
 law which have been justly called the sum and ultimate 
 outcome of human reason. 
 
 Among American jurists. Story had but one peer as 
 a profound and sagacious interpreter oi the law — and 
 that one peer was no less a master than John Marshall. 
 
 From his boyhood to the end oi his days, Joseph 
 Story was a voracious seeker of knowledge for its own 
 
Joseph Story 
 
 From an etching by Max Rosenthal 
 

 

3osepb 5 ton? 187 
 
 sake. He brought to bear upon all his studies not only 
 the eagerness of acquisition which marks the "honor 
 man" of the schools, but also, and much better, the 
 scientific attitude of mind. He hungered and thirsted 
 for truth, whatever the truth might be. He permitted 
 no prejudice or preconception to embarrass discovery 
 or to forbid any conclusion. He studied the funda- 
 mental principles of the law in the same spirit in which 
 the biologist investigates the bases of organic being, or 
 the chemist observes reactions and notes precipitations, 
 and, in like scientific spirit, he applied the teachings of 
 his studies to the work of drawing conclusions. He 
 applied broad principles to individual questions pre- 
 cisely as the scientific investigator applies his knowl- 
 edge of general facts to the particular purpose of a 
 laboratory experiment. If this thought is made clear 
 to the reader's mind, he will understand Joseph Story 
 and appreciate the great work that he did in the world. 
 He will understand also how and why it is that Story's 
 law books have been translated into many languages, 
 and through three generations have been quoted as final 
 and conclusive authorities in every civilized country 
 of the world. 
 
 Story was born on the 1 8th of September, 177Q, in 
 Marblehead, Massachusetts. He was the son of a 
 doctor, from whom he inherited his instinct of intellec- 
 tual activity and that love of truth for its own sake 
 which constituted his scientific habit of mind. Gradu- 
 ating from Harvard in 179S, he studied law, and was 
 admitted to the bar in 1801. His strongly literary 
 
1 88 Zbc 3urists 
 
 instincts led him presently to publish a volume of poems, 
 of which he was afterwards, quite needlessly, ashamed. 
 At the same time he began writing and publishing law- 
 books, which the attorneys and counsellors of his 
 time sadly needed for their instruction. 
 
 All this while he was tirelessly prosecuting his 
 studies of the old black-letter laws of England, and 
 giving such attention to his practice that he speedily 
 rose to a foremost place among the Massachusetts 
 lawyers of the time. 
 
 In politics he favored Jefferson's views in the main, 
 though his reverence for Washington, Adams, and 
 especially Marshall, put a check upon all tendencies of 
 his mind to extreme partisanship, whether personally 
 or as a member of the Massachusetts Legislature, in 
 which he served several terms at this time, or later as 
 a Representative in Congress, to which body he was 
 elected in 1808. 
 
 In 181 1, although he was only thirty-two years of 
 age, he was appointed one of the Justices of the 
 Supreme Court of the United States, an office which 
 he continued to hold until the time of his death, in 
 1845. On several occasions he acted as Chief Justice, 
 and he was always regarded in the court as chief among 
 those below the Chief-Justiceship. 
 
 It is not easy for the lawyers of this modern time to 
 understand the perplexities of law which Story, sitting 
 on circuit, had to deal with. His courts were located 
 in New England, where commerce presented all its 
 problems of admiralty jurisdiction, of marine insurance, 
 
3osepb Storp 189 
 
 of prize-law, of salvage, of flotsam and jetsam, of aban- 
 donments and rescues, and all the rest of it. All these 
 questions are now completely covered by statutes, de- 
 cisions, and well-settled precedents. When Story had 
 to deal with them they presented all manner of prob- 
 lems which there were no statutes to solve, concerning 
 which there were no decisions to be cited in support of 
 one view or another, no precedents to be invoked. He 
 had only the general principles of law to guide him, 
 and it is a fact worthy of interested note, that scarcely 
 one of the decisions that he rendered on the strength 
 of his learning in the fundamental principles of law was 
 afterwards overthrown by the Supreme Court, sitting in 
 banc. 
 
 When the century was in its teens, the African 
 slave trade, in spite of its legal prohibition since 1808, 
 was still carried on, mainly in ships sailing out of New 
 England ports, and with the financial support of New 
 England capital. Against this nefarious traffic, Mr. 
 Justice Story sternly set his face. His charges to Fed- 
 eral grand juries, urging upon them the duty of indict- 
 ing all the highly moral and respectable gentlemen of 
 New England who were directly or indirectly engaged 
 in the slave trade, brought down upon him the most 
 violent vituperations of the press. He was assailed as 
 a judge who deserved to be hurled from the bench- 
 simply because, in his judicial capacity, he was endeav- 
 oring to secure the enforcement of the humane laws of 
 the land, against those who, greedy of gain, were en- 
 gaged in an inhuman traffic in plain violation of the 
 
i go £be 3urists 
 
 " statutes in that case made and provided." But Joseph 
 Story was a man of courage as well as of upright mind. 
 He faltered not, nor tailed. He did his duty and dared 
 the consequences. In the face of such angry denuncia- 
 tion as might well have appalled a man of less exalted 
 character, he persisted in urging this matter upon grand 
 juries, and when a case involving the slave trade came 
 before him for adjudication, he unhesitatingly and very 
 eloquently denounced the traffic in slaves from Africa as 
 inhuman, abhorrent to all enlightened minds, a plain, un- 
 disputed, and indisputable transgression of the national 
 statutes, and a flagrant violation of the laws of nations. 
 It was a very daring thing to do. There were vast 
 "vested interests" involved. There were New England 
 ships that found a greater profit in the illegal and in- 
 human slave trade than in any other carrying. There 
 were negroes to be had in plenty, and at a trifling cost, 
 on the west coast of Africa. There was a profitable 
 market for them in the South, where the cotton-gin 
 invention of Eli Whitney had made slave labor enor- 
 mously profitable. What business had this sentimen- 
 tal Justice of the Supreme Court to interfere with a 
 traffic which gave employment to all the ships that 
 New England carpenters could build, and paid exces- 
 sive interest on all the money that New England wealth 
 and thrift could invest in the traffic ? That question 
 bristled in the press, asserted itself in the market- 
 place, and met no resolute answer even in the pulpit. 
 Only in the court, only at the hands of the scholarly 
 Justice Story did the traffic meet the decree, "Thou 
 
3o9cpb Storp 191 
 
 shalt not," and that decree Story pronounced with a 
 calmly resolute mind that took no account either of 
 "vested interest" in evil, or of the "power of the 
 press," perverted to the subservient advocacy of crime. 
 
 Joseph Story's tame rests upon quite other founda- 
 tions than this. But if it had no other corner-stone 
 this might well serve as a sufficient support. 
 
 Following a custom, which has now fallen into 
 perhaps deserved disuse, Story, while remaining a Su- 
 preme Court Justice, became, in 1829, a professor of 
 law in Harvard College, where he in effect created a 
 law school that is now one of the largest and most in- 
 fluential in the country. There had been but one 
 student in that department during the year preceding 
 his incumbency. Under his direction the school 
 quickly became populous with eager students of the 
 law. He was active in other departments of endeavor 
 also, but his chief work, and that upon which his fame 
 securely rests, was his masterful interpretation of the 
 law in a series of text-books that are still unsurpassed, 
 in their learning, their lucidity, and their limpidness of 
 expression, by any of the writings that grace the litera- 
 ture of the law. His writings are fundamental to every 
 student's work. They are of recognized authority in 
 every court in Christendom, and wherever Law is held 
 in honor, and Justice speaks with a clear voice, there 
 the name of Joseph Story is spoken as that of one 
 of the chief prophets of enlightened jurisprudence. 
 His honored and most useful life came to an end on 
 the 10th of September, 1845. 
 
JAMES KENT 
 
 CHANCELLOR JAMES KENT never held any 
 office under the Federal Government. On 
 the only occasion on which he was a can- 
 didate for Congress, he was defeated. He had no gift 
 of moving eloquence. As a lawyer at the bar, his name 
 was never identified with any of the great causes 
 that have become famous as determinative of impor- 
 tant points in Constitutional interpretation. In brief, 
 lie had absolutely none of the adventitious aids to 
 celebrity that play so large a part in the life-histories 
 of most distinguished men. Yet there is not a lawyer 
 in all this land, and not a man acquainted with the 
 history of legal development among us, who does not 
 regard Judge Kent's selection for a place in the Hall of 
 Fame by the side o\ Marshall and Story as one emi- 
 nently fit to be made. 
 
 He was a man of extraordinary learning in the law, 
 and he devoted much o\ his energy to the task o\ 
 making his learning practically available for the uses of 
 others and for the enlightenment of the courts them- 
 selves. He was the author of one of the most learned, 
 192 
 

 James Kent 
 
 by I''. K. Spencer 
 

3amc9 Ikent 193 
 
 most intelligent, and most useful treatises upon the 
 principles of law in their application to the administra- 
 tion of justice which has ever been published in the 
 English language. His Commentaries on American 
 Law very justly gave him a place in the company 
 of Justinian, Grotius, Vattel, Coke, Blackstone, and 
 Story, as one of the great law-writers of the world. 
 
 He was born in Putnam County, N. Y., on July 31, 
 1763. At Yale College he received the very meagre 
 education which at that time was all that any college 
 could give — an education less comprehensive, less 
 thorough, and immeasurably less sensible than that 
 which the ordinary High Schools of our day give to 
 their pupils. But at least young Kent had learned at 
 Yale his need of learning vastly more than Yale could 
 teach, and he set himself at once to the task of repair- 
 ing the deficiency in his education by a course of 
 self-imposed study. With a courageous industry, the 
 simple record of which seems appalling, he gave four 
 hours before breakfast each morning to the study of 
 Latin and Greek, and two hours after supper each 
 evening to French literature, after which he devoted 
 his evenings to the reading of English standard authors. 
 His days, in their regular working hours, were given up 
 to the diligent study of the law. Something like this 
 was continued as his daily habit throughout a life 
 which extended over eighty-four years. 
 
 His reputation for learning in the law grew rapidly, 
 and when he removed to New York, at the age of little 
 more than thirty years, he was made Professor of Law 
 
194 Gbc 3urists 
 
 in Columbia College. He then took up an exhaustive 
 study of the Roman civil law, and its development in 
 France and the other Latin countries of Europe. He 
 also made at that time those studies of the United 
 States Constitution which afterwards formed the basis 
 of his Commentaries. Meanwhile, he served several 
 terms in the State Legislature, and in 1797 became 
 Recorder of the City of New York. 
 
 During the next year he became a J ustice of the State 
 Supreme Court, and in 1S04 Chief Justice of that tribu- 
 nal. For ten years thereafter he devoted himself to the 
 better ordering of Supreme Court practice, to the deter- 
 mination of unsettled principles of law, to the reform of 
 judicial proceedings, and to the development of a sys- 
 tem of commercial law— founded upon the accepted 
 principles of all law, but adapted to the new conditions 
 of American trade and industry. His service in these 
 directions, as every educated lawyer knows, was of in- 
 estimable value, and his expository decisions of that 
 time, as they are recorded in the reports, are freely cited 
 nearly a century later as the very highest authorities 
 on the questions of law with which they are concerned. 
 
 In 1814, Kent was made Chancellor of New York, 
 and in that capacity he restored equity jurisprudence 
 to its ancient efficiency as the guardian of imperilled 
 rights, and the helpful handmaiden of the sometimes 
 erring law. 
 
 On his retirement for age in 1821, Kent returned to 
 New York City and resumed his professorship of law in 
 Columbia University. It was then that he put forth, at 
 
3ames Ikcnt 
 
 195 
 
 first in the form of class-room lectures, his Commen- 
 taries on American Law, which, frequently revised by 
 himself, and, since his death, by others, has remained 
 until now as an indispensable, fundamental text-book 
 basis of the earnest law-student's study. It is upon 
 that work that Chancellor Kent's fame rests, and the 
 foundation is adequate and secure. 
 
 He was always active in aid of others, and especially 
 in aid of all that tended to the popular enlightenment. 
 He lived in conspicuous honor, and died at the advanced 
 age of eighty-four, on December \2, 1847. 
 
THE MEN OF THE CIVIL WAR 
 

 ABRAHAM LINCOLN 
 
 IN some respects, at least, the history of Abraham 
 Lincoln is more remarkable than that of any other 
 of the men who have achieved greatness in face 
 of difficulties in this wonderful country of ours. Other 
 men have been born poor, and have reached high dis- 
 tinction without opportunity of education except such 
 as they provided for themselves. But no other man 
 who has attained great distinction was so unfortunately 
 born as Lincoln was, and no other man, with the sin- 
 gle exception of Washington, has achieved a fame so 
 great as his. 
 
 He was born not only in poverty, but in squalor. He 
 was born not only without prospects, but seemingly 
 without hope. He was the son of a Southern poor 
 white— a class from whose eyes even visionary hope of 
 betterment was shut out by their own lack of thrift, 
 their chronic indolence, their utter and unconquerable 
 lack of that divine discontent which breeds aspiration. 
 Lincoln's father belonged to that class of semi- 
 nomadic creatures who passed their lives mainly in re- 
 moving from one piece of ill-cultivated land to another, 
 
200 Zbc flDcn of the Civil Mar 
 
 on which their indolence was destined to let the weeds 
 grow with unabated neglect. 
 
 As if to make matters worse for the young Lincoln, 
 his father removed while he was yet a little child from 
 Hardin County, Kentucky, to the unsettled regions of 
 Indiana, and thence afterwards to various points in 
 Illinois. In all that country there were, properly speak- 
 ing, no opportunities open to the lad to acquire an 
 education. There were so-called schools, open perhaps 
 during three months in the year, in which men, them- 
 selves ignorant, taught the little that they knew to un- 
 willing pupils, thrashing into them the rudiments of 
 reading, writing, and arithmetic. Beyond this, there 
 were no educational opportunities whatever, and even 
 these meagre chances for instruction were often denied 
 to the young Lincoln by reason of his father's frequent 
 removals. Nevertheless, the boy secured possession of 
 that talisman, the ability to read — the master-key al- 
 ways and everywhere to learning of every kind. He 
 voraciously read the few books upon which he could in 
 any wise lay his hands, and they fed a mind that proved 
 itself well worthy of the nourishment. He had mechan- 
 ical ability, and with it he taught himself to write that 
 excellently legible hand with which the world is now 
 familiar. His great simplicity of character, his instinc- 
 tive directness of thought, his absolute honesty of 
 mind, and the earnestness of his purpose to make him- 
 self understood, taught him that extraordinary clearness 
 of literary style which in later years enabled him to 
 give to the world his celebrated Gettysburg speech— an 
 
Abraham Lincoln 
 
 rawing frum life by 1 ■". B. 
 

 
 ■ 
 
Hbrabam Xincoln 201 
 
 utterance unexcelled in its perfection by any words 
 that human lips have spoken. 
 
 It has been conjectured by some of Lincoln's biog- 
 raphers that the exceeding terseness, compactness, and 
 simplicity of his literary style were the results of the fact 
 that when he wrote "compositions" in his youth he 
 was forced to clip short his sentences, and to reject every 
 unnecessary word in order to save paper, which was 
 then an expensive thing. Possibly this compulsory 
 training in terseness may somewhat have helped in the 
 development of Lincoln's style ; but it seems almost 
 absurd to attribute so great an effect to so insignificant a 
 cause. It seems more reasonable to find the causes of 
 Lincoln's truly wonderful clearness of utterance in the 
 character of the man, in the inborn sincerity of his mind, 
 and in the earnestness with which he sought always, 
 in writing or in speech, to make clear and unmistakable 
 to others the thought that was in him. "The style is 
 the man," it has been said, and in Lincoln's case at 
 least the literary style perfectly accorded in its sincerity, 
 simplicity, and directness, with the like qualities in the 
 character of the man. The Gettysburg speech and that 
 splendid burst of eloquence, so often quoted from the 
 second inaugural address, in which occur the words, 
 "With malice toward none, with charity for all," were 
 very certainly not the results of any paper-saving rhe- 
 torical drill, but the spontaneous utterances of a great, 
 simple, and sincere mind. 
 
 Lincoln's intellect seems always to have been acute, 
 but it was slow in development, and the history of his 
 
2oa Zbc flDcn of tbc Civil TKHar 
 
 youth and his young manhood does not indicate the 
 existence of any particular ambition or high hope in 
 him. He was content to do farm labor, rail-splitting, 
 flat boating, and even that most inconsequent of all 
 labors, the work of a clerk in a country store. During 
 many years, his ambition seems not at all to have been 
 awakened. He thought of himself, apparently, merely 
 as a young man who must somehow— it didn't much 
 matter to him how — manage to put bread and butter 
 into his own mouth. He seems to have looked forward 
 to no future better than his meagre present. It seems 
 not to have occurred to him in all the earlier years of 
 his life that he had a mind worth cultivating, a charac- 
 ter worth developing, or a future worth striving for. 
 He read voluminously, it is true, so far as he could 
 borrow books, but he read apparently for his own 
 gratification alone, and not at all with any view to 
 future possibilities. He was inspired by no ambition 
 and stirred to action by no hope. He was alternately 
 busy and indolent — busy when he had a job to do, 
 and indolent when it was done. 
 
 Here, perhaps, we discover the results of heredity. 
 The mood of mind in which Lincoln passed his earlier 
 years was not unlike that ot his forbears, the "poor 
 whites," to whom dinner meant the end o( the day, 
 and to whom there was no morrow in prospect. 
 
 It was very slowly that Lincoln worked himself out 
 of this condition of inherited indolence— this disposition 
 to rest content with things as they were, to sit satisfiedly 
 in the sun or in the shade, as the temperature might 
 
Hbrabam TLincoln 203 
 
 suggest, and to leave the future to take care of itself. 
 No intelligent student of the various biographies that 
 have been written of this extraordinary man can fail to 
 observe this tendency of his mind during the years of 
 his earlier manhood, and perhaps there is nothing in his 
 history which redounds more to his credit than the fact 
 that he ultimately overcame this paralyzing influence 
 of heredity, acquired ambition, and devoted himself 
 with the strenuoLisness of a strong man to the work 
 that he was fitted by his genius to do in the world. 
 
 Lincoln was born on the 12th of February, 1800. 
 He was, therefore, twenty-three years old when, in 
 1812, he returned from the Black Hawk War, ran for the 
 Legislature, was defeated, and in looking about him lor 
 bread-winning employment seriously contemplated the 
 apprenticing of himself to a blacksmith. Accident led 
 him, instead, to join with another in the purchase of a 
 country store, altogether upon credit. The venture was 
 doomed to failure from the beginning. Neither partner 
 devoted energetic attention to business. Lincoln had 
 got possession of some books, including a grammar 
 and a copy of Blackstone's Commentaries, and he de- 
 voted himself to the study of these to the sad neglect of 
 the business of the "store." In the meantime, his part- 
 ner devoted himself chiefly to the drinking of whiskey, 
 and, between the two, they managed speedily to ruin 
 the business, and to bring Lincoln into a slough of debt. 
 
 He next became postmaster, at a miserable wage, 
 and assistant to a local surveyor at scarcely more of pay. 
 But he now had leisure for the study of law, and he 
 
204 Gbc fIDcn of tbc Civil imar 
 
 read incessantly. In August, 1814, he was elected to 
 the Legislature, and during the six succeeding years he 
 was three times re-elected for terms of two years each. 
 
 He did not distinguish himself in his legislative 
 career. The questions that arose in the Illinois Legis- 
 lature at that time were petty, and of only local signifi- 
 cance. There was nothing in them to enlist those 
 great emotions of which Lincoln's nature was capable, 
 nothing to arouse that conscience which was the domi- 
 nating force in his character. He was a clever, business- 
 like representative of his constituents, and nothing 
 more. The real Abraham Lincoln was not yet born. 
 
 In like manner he failed to make any conspicuous 
 place for himself in Congress when, in 1S40, he was 
 elected to the National Legislature. He did indeed 
 throw himself strenuously into an effort for the aboli- 
 tion of slavery in the District of Columbia. Here was 
 a matter concerning which he felt deeply and intensely. 
 But the time was not yet ripe. The country had not 
 yet been aroused to the necessity of dealing in drastic 
 ways with this question, and Lincoln, himself hating 
 slavery with all the intensity of a nature at once tender 
 and robust, was not prepared to take advanced ground 
 of attack upon it. There was no response to his effort, 
 and his congressional career ended in failure. 
 
 Meantime he had been admitted to the bar of Illinois, 
 and had won a good place for himself among the 
 lawyers of that State. His persuasiveness of oratory 
 especially impressed the people, and prepared the way 
 for his advancement as a man offeree and consequence 
 
Hbrabam ^Lincoln 205 
 
 in politics. He had never lost touch with those whom 
 he called " the plain people." He had never forgotten 
 how they thought, and reasoned, and felt. He had 
 never ceased to be one of themselves or to receive their 
 eager recognition as such. He could interpret their 
 aspirations as no other man then living could do. He 
 could speak for them, " not as the scribes, but as one 
 having authority." And, above all, his honesty and 
 sincerity were so well recognized and so universally 
 approved that "the people heard him gladly" when- 
 ever he was minded to speak. 
 
 These were the conditions out of which Lincoln's 
 subsequent exaltation grew. But meantime his per- 
 sonal life was unhappy in the extreme. 
 
 That humor of which so much has been made, was 
 to him, as to many others notable in like manner, 
 merely the safety-valve of a nature inclined to sadness 
 and subjected always to conditions calculated to breed 
 melancholy. Young Lincoln met with that most irrep- 
 arable "disappointment in love," the death of the 
 woman he loved. For a time his grief threatened the 
 integrity of his reason. Later, he formed another at- 
 tachment, which in its turn was brought to naught by 
 the young woman's rejection of his suit. Still later, he 
 courted Mary Todd, a woman of social pretensions far 
 above his own, and became engaged to marry her. 
 But when the wedding-day came and the guests were 
 assembled, Lincoln did not appear. In one of his fits 
 of brooding he had come to doubt the sincerity of his af- 
 fection for the young woman, and so he simply stayed 
 
206 Gbc fll>en of tbc Civil Mar 
 
 away from the appointed ceremony. It was at this 
 time that the suicidal impulse was so strong upon him 
 that he dared not carry even a penknife upon his per- 
 son, lest he do himself harm. 
 
 Later the matter was "patched up," and Lincoln 
 married Mary Todd, but, if we may accept the testi- 
 mony of his biographers and of those who knew him 
 intimately in his years of greatness, this marriage was 
 the most unfortunate circumstance of all in his career. 
 
 It is not necessary here to pursue inquiry into that 
 subject, but it may fairly be wondered how often, dur- 
 ing the dark days of the Civil War, — after the seven- 
 days' fights around Richmond, after the second defeat 
 of Bull Run, after Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville, 
 and after Grant's fearful punishment in the Wilderness, 
 at Spottsylvania, and at Cold Harbor, — the old suicidal 
 impulse must have come again upon this man of ten- 
 der conscience, whose habit it was to take upon himself 
 the blame for every disaster in the field, and for every 
 mistake in the Cabinet. 
 
 But this is getting ahead of our story. The repeal 
 of the Missouri Compromise in 18S4 brought into 
 American politics a question which actively and in- 
 tensely engaged Lincoln's heart— the question, as he 
 deliberately put it, whether this country should be- 
 come "all slave, or all free," whether it should be 
 lawful to hold slaves in all the States or in none. In its 
 immediateness the question was not so broad as that, 
 but, looking to ultimate rather than to immediate re- 
 sults, Lincoln thus interpreted the issue. 
 
Hbrabam ^Lincoln 207 
 
 Here a word of explanation may be in season. 
 When, between 1818 and 1821, the territory of Mis- 
 souri sought admission to the Union as a State, and 
 a demand was made that slavery should be permitted 
 there, a great controversy arose between the friends 
 and the opponents of slavery. Finally, and as a com- 
 promise, it was agreed and enacted in 1821 that Mis- 
 souri should be admitted as a slave State, but that 
 thereafter slavery should not be carried into any Terri- 
 tory west of the Mississippi and north of latitude 36 
 30', which was the southern boundary of Missouri. 
 For a third of a century this " compromise" furnished 
 a modus Vivendi and kept the slavery question, in a 
 degree at least, out of practical politics. In i8so, how- 
 ever, another "compromise" was found to be neces- 
 sary, and it was enacted into law. In the meantime 
 the hostility of the North to slavery grew steadily 
 stronger, even among men who would have fought, 
 as in resentment of a mortal insult, if called by the 
 opprobrious term, "abolitionist." The Fugitive Slave 
 Law, which to many seemed to make the country 
 "all-slave" territory, and the Dred Scott decision, 
 which seemed to open all the Territories to slavehold- 
 ing, profoundly stirred the nation. Nevertheless the 
 Missouri Compromise and its supplement, the Com- 
 promise of 1850, warued off the conflict until, in 18S4, 
 under the leadership of Stephen A. Douglas, Senator 
 from Lincoln's own State of Illinois, the Kansas- 
 Nebraska bill was passed. That measure in effect re- 
 pealed the Missouri Compromise, and with its passage 
 
2o8 £bc riDcn of the Civil Mar 
 
 was introduced the doctrine that property in slaves 
 was recognized by the Constitution of the United 
 States equally with all other property ; that the slave- 
 holder could take his negroes into any Territory and 
 own them there as freely as any other man could do 
 with his horses, his mules, or his cattle ; and that 
 not until a State constitution forbidding slavery was 
 adopted and accepted by Congress could the institu- 
 tion of slavery be excluded from any Territory not yet 
 organized into a State. 
 
 Here was Abraham Lincoln's opportunity. Here 
 was a question which appealed to the very marrow 
 of his soul. Here was an occasion upon which he 
 could mightily oppose the extension of slavery without 
 incurring the odium of being an "abolitionist" by 
 seeming to advocate the extinction of slavery in the 
 States wherein it existed as a tradition. 
 
 There was little, if any, chance to defeat Douglas 
 for re-election in the State of Illinois, whose political 
 machinery the "Little Giant," as he was called, held 
 firmly within his grasp. But there was a chance to do 
 things much greater than the defeat of Douglas for 
 re-election to the Senate. There was opportunity to 
 educate the people, and better still, as Lincoln alone 
 saw clearly, there was opportunity to end forever 
 Douglas's chance of election to the presidency. 
 
 When Lincoln, in i8sS, was pitted against Douglas 
 as a rival candidate for the senatorship, and when the 
 two had agreed to meet in joint debate, Lincoln 
 shrewdly devised questions which need not be set 
 
Hbrabam ILincoln 209 
 
 forth here, but which forced Douglas, in their answer- 
 ing, either to offend the strong pro-slavery sentiment 
 of the South or else to strip himself of Democratic 
 support in the North. Against the pressing of these 
 questions Lincoln's best friends remonstrated. They 
 foresaw that the course Lincoln had resolved upon 
 would lose him all chance of an election to the Senate. 
 But he did not care. A greater question than any that 
 vexed 1858 was coming on in [860, and to that Lincoln 
 addressed himself. He clearly foresaw that if he could 
 compel Douglas to offend and alienate the extreme 
 Southern sentiment, that statesman could not be 
 nominated as the Democratic candidate for the presi- 
 dency in 1S00. He foresaw also, with that political 
 sagacity which always distinguished his vision, that 
 if Douglas were not nominated no other candidate 
 could be found who could even hope to unite the 
 Democracy and command the full support of that 
 party. 
 
 The Democracy had a clear majority of the votes. 
 It was Lincoln's thought to "divide and conquer," 
 and he accomplished it. In the contest of i8s8 he 
 deliberately sacrificed his own ambition in order that 
 he might destroy Douglas and make it possible that 
 Seward or Chase, or some other great Republican 
 leader, might be elected President in i860. That there 
 was no element of personal ambition to inspire this 
 self-sacrifice is sufficiently attested by the fact that in 
 iSsS the suggestion of Abraham Lincoln's name as 
 that of a candidate for the presidency would have been 
 
210 Gbe flDcn of tbe Civil mnv 
 
 greeted with derision even in Illinois, and in the rest 
 of the States with wondering inquiry as to who Abra- 
 ham Lincoln might be. 
 
 "Nevertheless, it was in that daring and unsuccess- 
 ful campaign against Douglas that Abraham Lincoln 
 made himself President of the United States at the 
 greatest crisis in the country's history. In that cam- 
 paign he forced Douglas to make admissions which 
 forever alienated Southern Democrats from him, as 
 appeared in the Charleston Convention of i860. Thus 
 Lincoln made a united Democracy impossible at a 
 time when a united Democracy would very certainly 
 have carried the country. So far from being united in 
 opposition to Mr. Lincoln's election in 1800, his oppo- 
 nents were divided into three parties, one supporting 
 Douglas, one loyal to Breckinridge, and one, a forlorn 
 hope, voting for that "man in the moon," John Bell 
 of Tennessee. Mr. Lincoln's election, in such condi- 
 tions, was inevitable, although, when the poll was 
 reckoned, there was a popular majority of nearly a 
 million votes (947,279) against him, in a total vote of 
 4,680,201. 
 
 Almost immediately after the returns showed that 
 Lincoln was elected, the long-threatened secession 
 movement began. South Carolina led the way, and 
 before Lincoln could take his office seven Southern 
 States had passed ordinances declaring their with- 
 drawal from the Union, and had organized a new 
 Confederacy. In the meantime, the government at 
 Washington was in the irresolute hands of lames 
 
Hbrabam Xincoln 2 1 1 
 
 Buchanan, whose sole hope it was to tide over the time 
 till the expiry of his term, and some of whose Cabinet 
 officers were in open and active sympathy with the 
 seceding States. 
 
 When, on the 4th of March, 1S61, Lincoln was in- 
 ducted into office, he found himself in surroundings 
 more difficult and perplexing than those that any other 
 executive head of a great government had ever con- 
 fronted. The cotton States had declared their with- 
 drawal from the Union, and had seized upon forts, 
 arsenals, custom-houses, etc., within their borders. 
 Virginia was still stoutly opposed to the policy of 
 secession, and had elected by an overwhelming ma- 
 jority a strongly pro-Union convention. The other 
 border States were disposed to follow Virginia's lead, 
 and apparently there was still time and opportunity to 
 avert a civil war if wise counsels were followed. But 
 what were wise counsels ? Nobody knew. Horace 
 Greeley, the most influential of Republican editors, 
 had already advocated the recognition of secession as 
 a right, and urged the nation to say to the seceding 
 States : " Wayward sisters, go in peace." Other lead- 
 ers, eqiuilly influential, were clamoring for the instant 
 and relentless employment of force to restore the 
 Union, while still others contended that there was 
 neither constitutional authority nor power enough in 
 the government to coerce the seceding States. 
 
 In the midst of this chaos of conflicting counsels 
 Lincoln did not command the confidence of the leaders 
 of his own party. The country knew him only as a 
 
212 She flfecn of tbc Civil "Mar 
 
 "smart" Western lawyer and stump speaker, who 
 had been nominated only because the convention could 
 not agree upon either of the really great party leaders, 
 Seward or Chase, and who had been elected only 
 because the opposition was divided into three warring 
 tactions. 
 
 Very few of the Republican leaders even suspected 
 Lincoln of statesmanly capacities. When he put Seward 
 at the head o\ his Cabinet and made Chase Secre- 
 tary of the Treasury, it was quite generally understood 
 that these two, and particularly Sewaid. were to 
 conduct the Administration by ministerial dictation, 
 leaving to Lincoln no duty except to acquiesce in their 
 decisions. 
 
 Seward seriously attempted to act upon this assump- 
 tion. He presented to the President a carefully pre- 
 pared paper, complaining that the Administration had 
 formulated no policy, and himself formulating one for 
 the President's acceptance. Mr. Lincoln's response 
 was a rebuke all the more severe because o\ its entire 
 courtesy ot tone, and because it did not include a 
 request for Mr. Seward's resignation, as it might very 
 well have done. But that reply taught Seward and the 
 other leaders a much-needed lesson. It. in fact, made 
 them acquainted with Lincoln for the first time. It 
 taught them that, instead of a blundering ignoramus, 
 their part_\- had in fact put into the presidency a great, 
 strong, sagacious, and masterful man. It taught them 
 and the country that Abraham Lincoln was President, 
 and resolutely intended to exercise the functions of his 
 
Hbrabam lincoln 213 
 
 office, and finally, it convinced them of the sagacity of 
 his mind and the dominance of that conscience which 
 inspired all his thoughts and directed all his courses of 
 conduct. 
 
 In the same way, from the beginning the radical 
 abolitionists clamorously urged Lincoln to convert the 
 war for the salvation of the Union into a war against 
 the institution of slavery in the States. This he reso- 
 lutely refused to do, upon the double ground of policy 
 and right. To do so, he reminded the radicals, would 
 alienate from the cause a powerful support which it 
 could not afford to dispense with. There were men 
 by hundreds of thousands who were ready to support 
 the government in an effort to restore and preserve 
 the Union, but who would not, on any plea then 
 available, consent to a war for the extirpation of 
 slavery by the federal power, in States in which it 
 lawfully and constitutionally existed. So much for 
 policy. On higher grounds than those of policy, Lin- 
 coln reminded his urgent advisers that while they 
 were free to advocate any proceeding that might please 
 them, he was bound by his oath of office not to make 
 constitutions or override them, but to observe the 
 Constitution as it existed and to enforce the laws as 
 they were. 
 
 Still later, when he decided in his own mind and 
 conscience that it was his right and duty to issue a 
 limited and qualified proclamation of emancipation, as 
 a measure necessary to the success of the war and 
 the preservation of the Union, he wrote the document 
 
2i4 Gbc fIDen of the Civil Mar 
 
 himself, without consulting anybody. Having com- 
 pleted it he submitted it to his Cabinet, but in doing so 
 he notified the members of that body that he was not 
 consulting them with regard to the wisdom or propri- 
 ety of his act in issuing the proclamation, but solely 
 with regard to its rhetorical form. 
 
 In the same spirit of independence, and with a like 
 readiness to take responsibility upon himself, he dis- 
 missed his War Secretary for inefficiency, and dared to 
 appoint to that exalted office, on grounds of superior 
 fitness alone, Edwin M. Stanton, a Democrat, politi- 
 cally opposed to the Administration, profoundly dis- 
 trusting its sincerity and its capacity, and not even 
 commended to his favor by personal friendship for 
 himself. He saw in Stanton a sincere patriot and a 
 man capable of " getting things done," and done well. 
 He therefore invited Stanton to become Secretary of 
 War, in face of partisan jealousies and personal re- 
 sentments. It would be difficult to imagine a loftier 
 or more courageous act of administration than this 
 was under the circumstances, and certainly none in all 
 the history of Lincoln's Administration accomplished 
 more than Stanton's appointment did for the result to 
 which alone Lincoln's efforts were directed, namely, 
 the restoration and perpetuation of the Union. 
 
 But again we are anticipating the order of events. 
 When he came into office Lincoln realized the diffi- 
 culties of the situation as no other man of that time 
 seems to have done. The doctrine that a State had 
 a right peaceably to withdraw from the Union had 
 
Hbrabam Xincoln 215 
 
 been long and widely accepted. New England had 
 threatened, in the Hartford Convention and upon at 
 least one other occasion, to resort to secession as a 
 remedy for conditions deemed intolerable. N. P. 
 Banks, a distinguished representative of Mr. Lincoln's 
 own party, and its first Speaker of the House of Rep- 
 resentatives, had met the Southern threat of disunion 
 with the slangy but expressive adjuration to " Let the 
 Union slide," rather than consent to certain proposed 
 aggressions of the slave power. The right of the 
 government to coerce a seceding State into submis- 
 sion was denied by many and doubted by multitudes 
 in both parties. To have inaugurated military opera- 
 tions, based upon the assertion of that right, at that 
 time, would have been madness. It would have 
 alienated from the Administration a world of support 
 that Mr. Lincoln's wiser methods secured to it and 
 retained. 
 
 Whatever the rights of the government in the 
 matter of coercion might be, the people clearly under- 
 stood and recognized the right and duty of the Presi- 
 dent to repossess the forts, arsenals, custom-houses, 
 and other public property that had been seized by the 
 seceding States. To that end, for the time at least, he 
 directed military operations, and in that purpose he had 
 the support of the country. 
 
 Then came a perplexing situation, and a most un- 
 fortunate event. Virginia —without whose pith and 
 substance there could have been no war of conse- 
 quence, and without whose geographical position 
 
216 Zbe fIDcn of tbe Civil TWlar 
 
 there could have been no effective line of military 
 resistance— still stood out against secession as a policy, 
 and the border States were awaiting her lead. The 
 people of that State very generally believed in the right 
 of a State to secede, but they had indicated, by their 
 choice of men to represent them in the Constitutional 
 Convention, their firm conviction that Mr. Lincoln's 
 election had given no proper occasion for the exercise 
 of that right. Even until the bombardment and cap- 
 ture of Fort Sumter, the Virginia Convention remained 
 resolutely and overwhelmingly opposed to the policy 
 of secession. But in order to carry out his policy of 
 recovering the forts, arsenals, etc., Mr. Lincoln must 
 have troops, and the regular army could not furnish 
 them. That army consisted of a mere handful of men, 
 scattered over the country from Maine to California, 
 and mainly engaged in the indispensable work of hold- 
 ing the Indians to peace. There was no alternative but 
 to call upon the States for their several quotas of mili- 
 tiamen or volunteers. This Mr. Lincoln did. He asked 
 for seventy-five thousand men, and apportioned the 
 call among the States that had not yet seceded. Vir- 
 ginia was called upon for her quota, and she must 
 either furnish the men or go into the revolt which she 
 had previously refused to join. But to furnish the 
 men would be to lend the State's military strength to 
 what the people there sincerely believed to be an un- 
 warranted and unjust war of coercion and subjugation, 
 for which they, at least, found no warrant in the Con- 
 stitution or in the history of the country. To the 
 
Hbrabam Uincoln 217 
 
 Virginian mind there seemed no alternative to seces- 
 sion but dishonor, and a convention which had long 
 stood out against secession as a policy, instantly ac- 
 cepted it by an almost unanimous vote as an obliga- 
 tion of honor. That ended the hesitation of the other 
 border States, and the war was on. 
 
 This is not the place in which to recount the history 
 of that long and bloody struggle. Nor is there necessity 
 to do so. The history of that time is familiar to every 
 educated reader. But certain facts concerning it must 
 be pointed out because of their bearing upon the career 
 and their incidental illustration of the character of 
 Abraham Lincoln. 
 
 The South had certain important advantages over 
 the North at the beginning of the struggle. It had 
 made up its mind to war from the beginning, and much 
 had been done there in the way of preparation which 
 could not have been done at the North under the cir- 
 cumstances then existing. Moreover, the Southern 
 people, after the secession of Virginia, were practically 
 a unit in behalf of their cause, while at the North there 
 was so great a division of sentiment and opinion that 
 even so late as the summer of 1854 there was grave 
 doubt felt as to the re-election of Mr. Lincoln over a 
 candidate whose platform unequivocally denounced the 
 war for the Union as a failure, and demanded its cessa- 
 tion, with the plainly implied condition of recognizing 
 Southern independence, or in some other way yielding 
 to the demands of the South. 
 
 As for Mr. Lincoln himself, his perplexities from 
 
218 Zbc riDcn of tbe Civil Mat- 
 
 beginning to end of the war, and his occasions for de- 
 pression, were such as must have been intolerable to 
 any soul less resolute, less courageous, or less infinitely 
 enduring than his. For every defeat of an army in the 
 field he felt that the people held him responsible. For 
 every failure of a campaign he bitterly blamed himself. 
 His policies were carpingly criticised in Congress, in 
 the public prints, and in private interviews with men 
 who, representing large though often ill-informed por- 
 tions of the people, eagerly and sometimes even angrily 
 pressed unwise advice upon him. 
 
 It is the highest proof of his greatness that he endured 
 all this and with a calm mind pursued to the end his 
 one fixed purpose to restore and perpetuate the Union 
 of these States. 
 
 When the evacuation of Richmond and the sur- 
 render of the small remaining fragment of Lee's army 
 marked the accomplishment of that great purpose, 
 Lincoln still had before him a task that might well have 
 appalled him— the task of reconstruction. There can 
 be no doubt that his efforts would have been directed 
 to the single-minded purpose of restoring the Union, 
 healing the wounds of war, and, as quickly as possible, 
 obliterating the history of that four years of conflict as 
 a ghastly memory that should be buried and forgotten. 
 In that task he must have encountered all of antagonism 
 that prejudice could invoke, and all of difficulty that 
 passion could plant in his pathway. But Lincoln's 
 work was done. These new and perplexing problems 
 were not for him to solve. Almost at the moment 
 
Hbiabam Xincoln 219 
 
 when the fruition of his labors came to him, he was 
 stricken down by the bullet of an assassin, who pro- 
 fessed to act in the name of that South to which he had 
 never rendered a single hour's service in her time of 
 need. 
 
 In the North Lincoln's death was everywhere ac- 
 cepted as a personal bereavement. In the South the 
 assassination was resented as a crime, done in the 
 name, but without the will of the Southern people, 
 and also as the most grievous calamity that could 
 have befallen them in their hour of sorest tribulation. 
 For the people of the South had by that time 
 learned in some degree to understand Abraham 
 Lincoln. They had learned that he entertained no 
 feeling of hostility to them ; that his sole purpose 
 throughout the war had been to bring about the res- 
 toration of the Union with the least possible of suf- 
 fering or violence, and that with that end accomplished 
 he would have busied himself — as his hurried am- 
 nesty proclamation bore eloquent witness — in the 
 restoration of peace and good will between the lately 
 warring sections. 
 
 On the other hand they profoundly distrusted An- 
 drew Johnson, the Vice-president who must succeed 
 Lincoln as chief magistrate. Johnson was a Southerner, 
 and the men of the South regarded him as a renegade. 
 They saw in his nature none of that gentle kindness of 
 spirit which characterized Mr. Lincoln, and certainly 
 none of that exalted sentiment of justice which was 
 the very marrow of Mr. Lincoln's nature. And Andrew 
 
22o £bc fIDcn of tbe Civil IKIlar 
 
 Johnson took hurried pains to prove that in this esti- 
 mate the men of the South were right. To no other 
 part of the country was Lincoln's assassination a sorer 
 calamity than to the Southern States. 
 
ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT 
 
 GENERAL GRANT was the typical modern sol- 
 dier, as distinguished from the soldier of more 
 imaginative times. War was to him a mat- 
 ter of simple, practical business, with no "pomp and 
 circumstance," and nothing "glorious" about it. His 
 sole idea of strategy, whether in the conduct of a cam- 
 paign or in the ordering of a battle, was to " get things 
 done." He reckoned up the means at his own com- 
 mand and those that the enemy could bring to bear 
 against him. He considered how best he could employ 
 his means to the accomplishment of the ends aimed at, 
 and ordered his movements accordingly. 
 
 He brought to bear upon the conduct of battles and 
 the planning of campaigns precisely the same sort of 
 intelligence that he would have used if charged with 
 the duty of removing a hill, or piercing it with a tun- 
 nel, or building a railroad, or doing anything else which 
 required the wise employment of easily calculable re- 
 sources in overcoming difficulties that could be, in a 
 measure at least, estimated. 
 
 Grant had an iron will, indomitable courage, tireless 
 
222 £bc flDcn of tbc Civil Max 
 
 patience, and a persistence and pertinacity that knew no 
 limit. And these qualities in him were not crippled, as 
 they have been in many other commanders, by any 
 weakness of sentiment or by any misleading of the 
 imagination. 
 
 There is no doubt that he had tender pity for the 
 sufferings to which he must subject his soldiers in order 
 to accomplish the purposes they were set to achieve. 
 There cannot be a question that he felt keen sympathy 
 with his men in their hardships, and alert sorrow for 
 the slaughter they endured and for that which he must 
 inflict upon the enemy. But these were the means 
 given to him for the accomplishment of world-impor- 
 tant ends, and he did not flinch from their employment 
 to the uttermost. 
 
 As for imagination, he seems never to have per- 
 mitted that faculty of his mind to interfere with his 
 calculations or his plans. General Sherman once said 
 that Grant had advantage over himself in the fact 
 that Grant never worried concerning what the enemy 
 might be doing or intending to do somewhere out of 
 his sight, but acted always upon the tacts within 
 range of his discovery, while he — Sherman — was 
 constantly distressing himself with imaginings of pos- 
 sibilities. In other words, General Grant never per- 
 mitted his imagination to take the reins from reason. 
 
 He was not at all a sentimental person, but very 
 certainly he was not deficient in the tenderer senti- 
 ments of humanity becoming to a strong man. When 
 he was President he manifested his compassionate 
 
Ulysses Simpson (irant 
 
 >tograph by W, Kurtz, N. V. 
 
Zhe flften of tbe Civil 
 
 ■ 
 
TIllpsscs Simpson (Brant 225 
 
 nature by urging the newspaper correspondents to 
 make a crusade in behalf of the comfort of horses. 
 In other and higher ways Grant's tenderness of senti- 
 ment was shown on many occasions. Thus when 
 the garrison at Vicksburg surrendered, he issued an 
 order to forbid the wounding of a conquered enemy's 
 feelings. "Instruct the commands," the order read, 
 "to be orderly and quiet as these prisoners pass, and 
 to make no offensive remarks." When he visited 
 General Lee at Appomattox to receive his surrender 
 he wore a blouse, with no trappings about him and 
 with no sword at his belt. And after the surrender 
 he forbade all cheering, generously intent upon sparing 
 the feelings of a conquered foe. Still other examples 
 may be cited to show that under his cold, business- 
 like exterior General Grant was inspired by sentiments 
 as warmly generous as any that more demonstrative 
 soldiers have shown. When Andrew Johnson threat- 
 ened the arrest of Lee for treason Grant was alert to 
 remind him that in accepting Lee's surrender he had 
 promised the Southern leader immunity from that in- 
 dignity. And when Johnson manifested a disposition 
 to persist, Grant "ended the incident" by announcing, 
 in his calm, determined way, that if Lee were mo- 
 lested, he — Grant — would resign his command of the 
 army and leave it to the people to decide between 
 himself and "his Accidency," the President. 
 
 There is no doubt, indeed, that General Grant felt 
 all the highest sentiments and enthusiasms of the 
 soldier. Fortunately for his campaigns he did not let 
 
2?4 Cbe fIDcn of tbc Civil Mar 
 
 these sentiments interfere with the necessary but more 
 brutal work of war, the work of killing men and 
 maiming them in order that the great purposes of war 
 might be accomplished. 
 
 There is absolutely no question now in any well- 
 informed mind that it was General Grant chiefly who 
 made the war for the Union successful. 
 
 Born at Point Pleasant, Ohio, on the 27th of April, 
 1822, he had been educated at West Point, graduating 
 low in his class. He had served at various frontier 
 posts. He had done such service in the Mexican 
 War as to demonstrate his quality and to secure 
 him promotion to the rank o\ captain. Then he had 
 resigned to engage, unsuccessfully, in business in St. 
 Louis. Quitting that business he had gone to Galena, 
 Illinois, on a salary of S800 a year, which was eked out 
 by the earnings of his slaves in Missouri. When the 
 war broke out he offered his services to the gov- 
 ernment, but got no answer. Presently he was elected 
 colonel of an Illinois regiment of volunteers, and in 
 August, [861, he was appointed a brigadier-general of 
 volunteers. Thus by the back door, as it were, did 
 this greatest commander of the national armies in the 
 Civil War reach a position in which he could show 
 what stuff he was made of and what manner of man 
 he was. 
 
 He was ordered to Cairo, Illinois, at the junction of 
 the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. The enemy had 
 seized upon the strategic points of Columbus, twenty- 
 live miles below Cairo, and Hickman, a little farther 
 
Trusses Simpson ©rant 225 
 
 down the river. Grant learned that the enemy's pur- 
 pose was next to seize upon Padncah, Kentucky, fifty 
 miles up the Ohio, and he instantly set out to defeat it. 
 Without orders — and in his case, as a brigadier-general 
 of volunteers, being without orders meant being with- 
 out permission to undertake such an operation— he 
 resolved to prevent this. He moved at once with the 
 force at hand, seized Paducah and held it, issuing a 
 proclamation to the people in which he said, " 1 have 
 nothing to do with opinions and shall deal only with 
 armed rebellion and its aiders and abettors." 
 
 That was his attitude throughout the war. He 
 held himself to be nothing but a soldier charged with 
 the work of a soldier, and he adhered to that view not 
 only during the war but after it, as was illustrated in 
 the incident already related of his controversy with 
 President Andrew Johnson as to the fulfilment of the 
 promise he had given Lee at Appomattox. 
 
 At the time of his seizure of Paducah, Grant had 
 not yet " won his spurs" as a military commander; 
 nor did he win them in his first independent battle, 
 at Belmont, Missouri. For a time successful in the fight, 
 he was ultimately driven back and forced to re-embark 
 his troops upon the steamboats that had carried them 
 to the point of conflict. Nevertheless, he had won 
 respect by the stubbornness of his fighting and by the 
 extent of the losses he had inflicted upon the enemy. 
 
 Now, for the first time, Grant began planning a 
 campaign. In January, 1802, he went to St. Louis and 
 submitted his plan to his commander, General Halleck. 
 
226 £bc flDen of tbc Civil Mar 
 
 It concerned itself with the strategic advantage pos- 
 sessed by the Southern forces in holding Forts Henry 
 and Donelson, the one on the Tennessee, and the other 
 on the Cumberland River. Possession of those forts 
 gave them command of two practically navigable riv- 
 ers leading into the very heart of the Confederacy. It 
 was Grant's idea to reverse this advantage by the cap- 
 ture of those forts, and he was convinced that with the 
 aid of the gunboats he could seize and retain the two 
 strongholds. He asked permission to do so. Halleck 
 refused it with manifest impatience. But Grant sub- 
 mitted his plans again later, with the strong support of 
 Commodore Foote, commander of the naval force. At 
 last, on the ist of February, Halleck consented to let 
 Grant make the attempt, and on the next day the fu- 
 ture commander-in-chief of the national armies set out 
 to demonstrate what he could do with a meagre force 
 unsupported by prospective reinforcements from any 
 quarter. The story of the campaign is a familiar one. 
 Grant captured both forts and thus planted the national 
 power in the midst of the Confederacy, while open- 
 ing the two great rivers as inestimably valuable lines 
 of communication and of supply to the national forces 
 destined to operate farther south. 
 
 This was the fust of the decisive actions of the 
 Civil War— the first capture of commanding strategic 
 positions made anywhere by the Union forces. It was 
 also the marked beginning of Grant's career as a com- 
 mander given to accomplishing military ends by the 
 determined use of military means. It opened the way 
 
TTllv»5SC6 Simpson (Brant 227 
 
 to his future campaigns. A general who had res- 
 cued two important rivers from the enemy's control, 
 and captured two commanding strategic positions and 
 with them 14,623 men, (is pieces of artillery, and 17,000 
 stands of small arms, was certainly not one to be 
 further restrained by that superior officer who had so 
 reluctantly given him permission to undertake this bril- 
 liant operation. There is every reason to believe that 
 Halleck still disliked and distrusted Grant, but in face 
 of such achievements the commanding general could 
 not forbid his subordinate to go on and win the war. 
 
 Promoted to be major-general of volunteers, but 
 still holding no rank in the regular army, Grant in- 
 stantly began to look about him for other opportu- 
 nities of successful campaigning. With that instinct 
 of promptitude in action which has always been the 
 mark of a great soldier he planned a new campaign 
 and instead of asking for permission to execute it he 
 simply notified his superior that unless forbidden by 
 express orders he intended to carry out his plans. 
 This disregard of red tape brought Grant into new dis- 
 favor at headquarters, and for a time he was sus- 
 pended from his command. But on 13th March he 
 was restored to authority in view of the pressing need 
 for his services which was created by a great concen- 
 tration of the Confederates near Corinth, Mississippi, 
 under Albert Sydney Johnston and Beauregard. With 
 about 18.000 available men Grant established himself 
 at Pittsburg Landing, to meet the obviously intended 
 assault of the enemy. He placed his entire force south 
 
228 h\k fIDen of tbe Civil TWlar 
 
 of the river. It was a hazardous thing to do. It put 
 the river at his back, thus making it certain that any- 
 thing like a decisive defeat of his army must be beyond 
 measure disastrous and destructive. But on the other 
 hand it gave to him the utmost available force with 
 which to repel the assault of the enemy, and it was 
 Grant's habit of mind to consider present problems to 
 the neglect of future contingencies. It was his plan 
 to beat off the enemy's assault, and he did not much 
 concern himself with the problem of retreat in case he 
 should himself be beaten. 
 
 In the minds of military critics there is not the 
 smallest doubt to-day that the results at Pittsburg 
 Landing were made possible solely by Grant's daring 
 in thus throwing the whole of his forces across the 
 river. Even with all of them at command he had an 
 exceedingly difficult task in maintaining a precarious 
 foothold beyond the river till the coming of Buell's 
 army enabled him to drive back the fierce second onset 
 of the enemy. With less than the whole of his force 
 he must apparently have been driven into the river, 
 with a badly broken and disorganized army, on the 
 evening of the first day and many hours before the 
 arrival of Buell's strong column. 
 
 For that first day's struggle was unmistakably a Con- 
 federate victory, at least up to something near the end 
 of it. Grant's forces were attacked in the early morning, 
 badly broken, and, after a desperate day's fighting, 
 beaten back to the river, until it seemed for a time that 
 they must be driven into the stream to perish there. 
 
TEUpsses Simpson Grant 229 
 
 But Grant's obstinacy and determination stood in the 
 way. Concentrating what remained of his strength 
 upon the river bank, he made so stout a resistance that 
 Beauregard shrank from a charge across that valley of 
 the shadow of death which lay between him and 
 Grant's cornered and desperate artillery. To this we 
 have Beauregard's written testimony, presented many 
 years afterwards. 
 
 Thus Grant saved for himself a chance of re-inforce- 
 ment and of further fighting, and for the Federal army 
 a foothold south of the very last natural barrier between 
 it and the Gulf of Mexico. When Buell came up the 
 previously victorious Confederates were driven into a 
 retreat which carried them well into Mississippi, and 
 left in front of the invading force not a single serious 
 physical obstacle thence to Mobile. 
 
 In the opinion of some critics, this was the strategic 
 turning-point of the Civil War. They contend that by 
 his desperate stand on the southern bank of the river, 
 giving time for Buell to re-inforce him, Grant made the 
 cutting in two and the ultimate destruction of the Con- 
 federacy inevitable. 
 
 Nevertheless, there was much and tremendous work 
 to be done. There was still the superb power of reso- 
 lute Southern armies to overcome, and to this task 
 Grant addressed himself as soon as General Halleck, 
 who had hurried to Pittsburg Landing to assume per- 
 sonal command, permitted him to prosecute his plans 
 further. 
 
 The Confederates still held Vicksburar and Port 
 
2jo Zbc flDcn of the Civil Mar 
 
 Hudson, and thus rendered the great Mississippi River 
 a "no thoroughfare" between the Federal forces at 
 New Orleans and those upon the river above. Vicks- 
 burg was clearly the key to the strategic situation, and 
 Grant's eminently practical mind turned to the conquest 
 of that strong position as the natural and necessary ' ' ob- 
 jective " of the next campaign. 
 
 But it was not until the autumn that he was left 
 again with a free hand, after some battles in which the 
 advantage had been often on the side of the Southern 
 arms. 
 
 Grant's first plan was to send Sherman down the 
 river, and himself to advance upon the rearofVicksburg 
 by way of Holly Springs, Grenada, etc. He presently 
 found his line of communications by this route too long 
 and too attenuated to be successfully defended against 
 an alert and active foe. He therefore moved his whole 
 force to and down the Mississippi. It was in January 
 that he arrived at a point near Vicksburg and took 
 personal direction of the operations against that strong- 
 hold. Grant had the gunboats "run the batteries," a 
 feat celebrated in song, and landing his forces, pushed 
 them into a distinctly perilous position between Pem- 
 berton, defending Vicksburg, Johnston, operating from 
 the interior of Mississippi for the relief of the strong- 
 hold, and the troops at Port Hudson, farther down the 
 river. The operation occupied months of almost in- 
 cessant battle, and on the fourth of July Vicksburg sur- 
 rendered. Port Hudson fell as a necessary consequence, 
 and the Confederacy was cleft in twain. Grant had 
 
lapses Simpson (Brant 231 
 
 recovered for the Union the undisputed control of the 
 Mississippi from Minnesota to the mouth. 
 
 Grant was now made a major-general in the regular 
 army and placed in supreme command of all the west- 
 ern armies with Sherman, Thomas, and Burnside for his 
 chief lieutenants. A series of brilliant operations and 
 bloody battles around Knoxville and Chattanooga, and 
 the battle of Chickamauga, resulted in driving the Con- 
 federates out of Tennessee and into Georgia. Thus by 
 the spring of 1864 Grant had succeeded in opening the 
 Mississippi, recovering control of Tennessee, and enor- 
 mously crippling the enemy's resources. But there 
 yet remained the tremendous power of Lee and the 
 Army of Northern Virginia to be broken. One after 
 another the great Confederate had beaten and driven 
 back greatly superior forces under McClellan, Pope, 
 Hooker, and Burnside, and he had twice formidably 
 invaded the North, fighting two of the greatest battles 
 of the war beyond the Potomac. 
 
 It is true that Lee's army had suffered enormous 
 losses in the battles around Richmond, at Antietam, at 
 Fredericksburg, at Chancellorsville, at Gettysburg, and 
 in many severe contests of lesser note ; it is true too that 
 the country behind him was pretty well exhausted of 
 both men and supplies, and that he could draw scarcely 
 any reinforcements from such Confederate armies as 
 there were in other parts of the South without inviting 
 the immediate overrunning of the cotton States and a 
 complete collapse of the Confederate power. Never- 
 theless, Lee and his army now constituted the greatest 
 
232 Cbc flDcn of tbc Civil Uflar 
 
 danger to the Union, the most serious obstacle to be 
 overcome, at a time when a threatening political party 
 at the North was preparing to nominate its candidate for 
 the presidency upon a platform declaring the war to be 
 a failure. 
 
 There was thus a double and very immediate reason 
 for doing all that was possible during the summer of 
 1S04 for the destruction or the crippling of Lee. To 
 that task, early in the spring, Grant was called. He 
 was transferred to Washington, made lieutenant-gen- 
 eral, and placed in command of all the armies of the 
 Union. 
 
 Then began that fierce struggle of the giants which 
 ended at Appomattox after nearly a year of such strenu- 
 ous fighting as military history has very rarely recorded. 
 
 Grant's plan of campaign was simple and practical. 
 The Union armies greatly outnumbered those of the 
 South, but hitherto their strength had been much im- 
 paired by attempts to occupy points that it was not 
 necessary to occupy, and to hold regions that there was 
 no strategic need to hold. Grant saw clearly that the 
 Confederate power of resistance lay in the splendid 
 fighting quality of the Southern armies, and that until 
 those armies should be overthrown the war could not 
 be brought to an end, no matter what or how much 
 territory or what or how many important towns might 
 be occupied. He decided that the sole "objective" 
 of his campaigning should be the destruction of the 
 Southern armies rather than the mere occupation of 
 Southern towns and States. Here was the keynote of 
 
Tttlpsees Simpson Giant 233 
 
 his policy, and it is necessary to bear it always in mind 
 if we would rightly estimate the military genius that 
 inspired the operations of the war after Grant assumed 
 supreme command. 
 
 It has often been said, by way of criticism, that 
 Grant fought a series of exceedingly costly and bloody 
 battles in order to reach a position before Petersburg and 
 Richmond which he might have reached without the 
 loss of a man by an advance up the James River — a 
 path which McClellan's campaign had clearly pointed 
 out to him. He did nothing of the kind. He did 
 indeed fight terrible battles, but nut for the purpose 
 assumed. To plant his army before Richmond, and 
 especially before Richmond's military key, Petersburg, 
 was not at all Grant's primary object. His first and 
 chief purpose was to break Lee's power of resistance 
 before beginning a siege in which he must assail one of 
 the finest and best commanded armies that the world has 
 ever seen, securely entrenched and protected by every 
 engineering device known to military science. In other 
 words Grant's " objective " was not Richmond or Peters- 
 burg, but Lee's army, and there is no shadow of doubt 
 that he crippled the power of that splendid military 
 machine far more by the terrible fighting in the Wilder- 
 ness, at Spottsylvania, and at Cold Harbor than he 
 could have done with equal effort and loss by moving 
 up the Peninsula and setting himself down before the 
 Confederate capital and its commanding outpost. It 
 was inevitable that he should suffer terrific losses in 
 these operations, but he had reckoned upon that as a 
 
234 Ebc flDcn of tbc Civil Mar 
 
 part of the price the nation must pay for its ultimate 
 deliverance, and, after all, these losses, heavy as they 
 were, were doubtless much smaller than would have 
 been suffered in the siege of Richmond and Petersburg 
 had Grant adopted the plan that his critics suggest 
 as wiser than his own. From the point of view that 
 regards strategy as the art of accomplishing military 
 ends, it is impossible to regard Grant's campaign from 
 the Wilderness to Petersburg otherwise than as emi- 
 nently wise and brilliantly successful. 
 
 But the conduct of the war in Virginia was by no 
 means all of it. Having set out to crush Lee's army, 
 recognizing it as the very vitals of Confederate resist- 
 ance, Grant took pains that it should receive no acces- 
 sions of strength from any quarter to make good its 
 losses in battle and to offset the reinforcements he was 
 constantly drawing from the North to repair the terrible 
 ravages in his own columns. To that end he concen- 
 trated all the forces of the Union in a number of effective 
 and well commanded armies and set to each its task. 
 Sherman, with the combined forces in the West, was 
 ordered so to operate against Johnston at Atlanta as to 
 forbid the sending of reinforcements to Lee, and. if 
 possible, to achieve a victory in that quarter ; Banks, 
 at New Orleans, was ordered to can)- on an offensive 
 campaign against Mobile, so that no troops might be 
 spared from the forces defending that post : Butler, in 
 command of the Peninsula, was ordered to threaten 
 Petersburg and Richmond with all his force, and thus 
 prevent Beauregard from sending assistance to Lee. 
 
TUlvsses Simpson (Srant 235 
 
 Meantime Sigel was directed to carry on persistently 
 active operations in the Valley of Virginia to prevent 
 the strengthening of Lee from the Confederate forces 
 there. 
 
 Thus Lee received no considerable reinforcements 
 during that month of ceaseless pounding, and although 
 Grant had lost forty or fifty thousand men in the cam- 
 paign, he at last sat down in front of Lee's trenches 
 relatively much stronger than at the beginning of the 
 campaign. For the men that Lee had lost in the fearful 
 struggle could never be replaced, while Grant's own 
 losses were easily and quickly made good by reinforce- 
 ments. 
 
 This was assuredly the strategy of common sense, 
 and Grant pursued it to the end. The breaking of Lee's 
 resisting power was very clearly and very certainly the 
 one military problem to be solved. 
 
 Again recognizing his advantage of superior num- 
 bers, Grant at once began extending his Petersburg 
 lines to the left and front, compelling Lee to make a 
 like extension until the Confederate forces were drawn 
 out into an attenuated thread, and finally cutting one 
 of their important lines of communication by crossing 
 the Weldon Railroad and establishing himself securely 
 west of it. 
 
 Meantime he continued his policy of keeping the 
 Confederate forces in other parts of the South hard 
 pressed by the ceaseless operations of Sherman, Sheri- 
 dan. Thomas, and his other lieutenants, several im- 
 portant battles resulting. Sherman pushed his way to 
 
236 Zbc flDcn of tbe Civil TJUar 
 
 Atlanta, and entered that stronghold at the beginning 
 of September. Under Grant's direction Sheridan made 
 earnest and successful war against Early in the Valley 
 of Virginia ; and all along Grant's own line, from a point 
 north of Richmond to the southern extremity of his 
 works south of Petersburg, he directed a ceaseless 
 series of assaults, now here and now there, some of 
 them resulting in the seizure of important works, and 
 all of them so planned and timed as to give the enemy 
 no opportunity to concentrate his forces anywhere. 
 
 In November Sherman, at Atlanta, abandoned his 
 base and communications and began his march to Sa- 
 vannah, leaving Thomas in command of the forces in 
 Tennessee. Instead of following Sherman, the Con- 
 federates, under Hood, pushed their columns north- 
 ward, and assailed Thomas's forces at Nashville and 
 Franklin, reaping a harvest of disaster as the result. 
 Within less than a month Sherman reached Savannah, 
 and invested that city, forcing the enemy to evacuate it. 
 About the same time Grant sent a combined naval and 
 military force, under direction of Butler, to capture Fort 
 Fisher, a Confederate stronghold of great importance 
 near Wilmington, North Carolina. Butler failed, but 
 Grant held to his purpose, and sent a second expedition 
 under Terry to execute it. Terry succeeded, after one 
 of the most desperate struggles of the war. 
 
 Thus, within three quarters of a year after taking 
 supreme command, Grant's operations had so far broken 
 up the Confederate power of resistance that the end of 
 the struggle manifestly drew near. But there remained 
 
Tfllpsses Simpson (Brant 237 
 
 Lee with the remnant of his splendid Army of Northern 
 Virginia, and while Lee remained in the field there was 
 no safety for the Union. Grant planned, therefore, for a 
 second campaign in the spring of 1865, directed, as be- 
 fore, to the sole purpose of crushing Lee's army. In 
 preparation for this, and while waiting for spring to 
 make field operations in Eastern Virginia practicable, he 
 ordered Sherman, with his army of 60,000 men, to 
 march northward from Savannah, brought Schofield 
 from Tennessee to Alexandria, Virginia, whence he sent 
 him by sea to North Carolina to operate against Wil- 
 mington, and directed Sheridan to drive Early out of 
 the Valley of Virginia. These operations were bril- 
 liantly successful. 
 
 In the meantime Sherman on his northward march 
 had captured Columbia, South Carolina, thus cutting 
 Charleston off and compelling its evacuation. Thence 
 he continued his march northward, stoutly but unsuc- 
 cessfully opposed by Johnston at every available point 
 of resistance. He reached Goldsboro, North Carolina, 
 on March 23d where Schofield, who had come up from 
 Wilmington, was awaiting him with reinforcements. 
 
 Still pursuing the plan he had followed from the 
 beginning, Grant kept his lieutenants in every part of 
 the country at work to prevent the sending of rein- 
 forcements to Lee or Johnston and to prevent the pos- 
 sibility of a junction between those two. He brought 
 Sheridan to Petersburg, sent Hancock to command the 
 troops near Washington, ordered Pope, in Missouri, to 
 drive Price beyond Red River, directed Canby, at New 
 
238 Gbc fIDcn of tbc Civil War 
 
 Orleans, to move in force against Mobile, and Stone- 
 man to march from East Tennessee toward Lynchburg, 
 Virginia. 
 
 The time was now ripe for the final struggle, and 
 Grant made his dispositions accordingly, his plan being 
 to break through Lee's lines south of Petersburg, thus 
 compelling Lee to abandon his entrenchments and go 
 into hurried, harassed, and hopeless retreat. In order 
 that the retreat might be made harassed and hopeless 
 he sent Sheridan to Dinwiddie Court House, and thence 
 on to Five Forks, so that when the retreat should begin 
 he might hang upon Lee's left flank and front and force 
 him out of his line of march, pressing him towards 
 James River on the north and rendering it impossible 
 for him to reach the Roanoke, which offered his only 
 possible line of renewed defence. Other dispositions 
 were made with like purpose, and on the 2d of April, 
 following a brilliant success achieved by Sheridan at 
 Five Forks, Grant hurled his entire force against Lee's 
 main line of defences at Petersburg and carried them, 
 driving Lee into a confused retreat, both Richmond and 
 Petersburg being evacuated that night. 
 
 With Sheridan well in front on Lee's left, with strong 
 forces closely following Sheridan, and with Grant 
 pressing the Confederate rear, the remnant of Lee's 
 army was steadily pressed back toward the James River 
 and kept almost ceaselessly in action. 
 
 After a week of this struggle Lee found himself at 
 Appomattox, with his army reduced to a meagre force, 
 with no food for his soldiers and no source of supply, 
 
TMpsses Simpson (Brant 239 
 
 with Sheridan and Ord in front of him, Grant on his 
 left and rear, and with no thoroughfare open to him in 
 any direction. He had no choice but to surrender be- 
 fore his already famished men should starve to death, 
 and on the 9th of April he capitulated. 
 
 Grant's work of war was ended. The task he had 
 undertaken a year before was done. The programme 
 he had marked out for himself when he crossed into the 
 Wilderness and had resolutely adhered to was now ful- 
 filled. He had broken the Confederate power of resist- 
 ance and in effect the war was over. 
 
 The next three years of Grant's life afforded a 
 severer trial of his character than war itself had done. 
 His protest against the purpose of President Johnson 
 to bring Lee and the other surrendered Confederate 
 leaders to trial on charges of high treason, accompanied 
 as that protest was by a written threat to resign his 
 commission if that course were persisted in, gave offence 
 to the President, the more because it aroused a popular 
 sentiment which compelled Johnson to abandon his 
 cherished purpose. From that time forward there was 
 an almost continuous struggle between the President 
 and the General of the army— for to that rank, revived 
 by Congress especially for Grant's rewarding, he was 
 raised in 1866. This contest placed Grant in a most 
 delicate and embarrassing position, compelling him in 
 many cases to choose between violating the law on the 
 one hand and disobeying the orders of his superior 
 officer on the other. With that superb moral courage 
 which was the dominant characteristic of the man, 
 
Cl.v flDen of the Civil tUar 
 
 Grant steadfastly and at all hazards adhered to what 
 he conceived to he his duty throughout all that trying 
 period, and from beginning to end of it he triumphed. 
 He had Congress and the people with him and so far 
 from damaging his popularity his contest with Johnson 
 brought him into even greater favor than before with 
 his countrymen, though there is not the slightest 
 reason to suppose that he ever took that result into 
 consideration. His course was determined at even- 
 step by his convictions of duty, and apparently with- 
 out any regard whatever to personal consequences. 
 
 It was quite inevitable that Grant should he chosen 
 President at the election oi 1S0S. Only his refusal to 
 accept the post could have prevented that, and he did 
 not refuse it. He was elected in Novemher by an 
 overwhelming majority of both the popular and elec- 
 toral votes, and he entered upon the office in March. 
 [869. 
 
 His acceptance o\ the presidency was deemed by 
 many of his friends at the time a mistake. It was 
 thought to he a step perilous to his popularity. While 
 he remained General of the army he was subject to no 
 political hostility, no partisan criticism. He belonged 
 to no party. His fame was the cherished possession 
 of all men who rejoiced in the restoration of the Union 
 by virtue of his splendid military achievements. The 
 moment he hecame the candidate of one party he was 
 subject to the antagonism and the hostile criticisn 
 the other. When he entered upon office the country 
 w as still wrestling with perplexed questions growing 
 
Tlllssses Simpson Grant 241 
 
 out of the war and reconstruction and the status of 
 the negro at the South. As President lie must affirma- 
 tively deal with these matters, and it was impossible 
 that he should so deal with them as not to offend and 
 antagonize a large part of the people. 
 
 In fact that is what occurred. At the end of his 
 first term a considerable body of influential Republicans, 
 including some of the most potent of Republican news- 
 paper editors, went into revolt, nominated Horace 
 Greeley, and sought alliance with the Democrats for 
 his election. The effort failed conspicuously and Grant 
 was re-elected by even larger popular and electoral 
 majorities than before. 
 
 It is not the purpose of this essay to review the acts 
 of Grant's administration in detail or to criticise them 
 closely. Without doubt he made serious mistakes, 
 partly through his lack of acqaintance with politics and 
 politicians, and partly through his mistaken estimates 
 of men. But also, without doubt, he rendered some 
 very notable services to the country by his administra- 
 tive acts, and by the exercise of his influence. 
 
 Chief among these must be reckoned his work in 
 rescuing the nation from threatened repudiation and 
 financial dishonor, and in leading the way to the resto- 
 ration of a sound currency. 
 
 To these purposes he devoted himself earnestly from 
 the beginning. It was due to his insistent urging that 
 Congress, early in his first term, passed "an Act to 
 strengthen the public credit " by pledging the national 
 honor to the payment of all the government's obligations 
 
2-p <Ibc fIDcn of tbe Civil Mar 
 
 in coin, except where payment in other forms was 
 expressly stipulated in the contract. In 1874, under 
 pressure of popular clamor, due to the financial and in- 
 dustrial depression which the panic of a year before had 
 left behind it, Congress passed a bill to inflate the 
 already depreciated paper currency. Grant was urged 
 by many of the most influential leaders of his party to 
 approve the measure. They assured him of its political 
 necessity, predicting defeat for the Republicans at the 
 next election should this relief be denied to the people. 
 Grant weighed the matter carefully, and decided that 
 the measure was unwise and dangerous to the financial 
 integrity of the nation. In face of all protests, there- 
 fore, and in disregard of all political consequences that 
 might flow from his act, he vetoed the bill, sending to 
 Congress a message in which he so clearly set forth the 
 impolicy of inflation that the legislative body refused 
 to override the veto. The effect was even more far- 
 reaching than that. The veto put an end, once for all, 
 to serious attempts to secure paper inflation, and made 
 possible the passage of the Resumption Act and its exe- 
 cution four years after Grant's second term expired. 
 
 Grant was also the first President since John Quincy 
 Adams's time who made earnest and well directed 
 efforts to secure a reform in the civil service by making 
 appointments depend upon demonstrated capacity and 
 fitness. In these efforts he was without the support 
 of any considerable body of opinion, either in Congress 
 or in the country. The subject had net been brought 
 to the attention of the people. Marcy's dictum that "to 
 
TIUpsscs Simpson Grant 243 
 
 the victors belong the spoils " had long been accepted 
 as an axiom. Grant appears to have had no doctrinaire 
 convictions on the subject. He simply saw— plain, 
 blunt man of practical sense that he was— that, as he 
 expressed it in his message of 1870, "the present sys- 
 tem does not secure the best men, and not even fit 
 men, for the public service." He wished to change it 
 simply in order that the country might be better served 
 by a fitter class of men. His efforts to accomplish that 
 purpose were balked by congressional and popular in- 
 difference, but they served to arouse the public intelli- 
 gence and awaken the public conscience on the subject, 
 and unquestionably we owe most of the improve- 
 ment that has since been wrought to Grant's timely 
 initiative. 
 
 In common with all enlightened military command- 
 ers, Grant deprecated war as the worst calamity that 
 can befall a nation, and his plan for avoiding it was 
 that approved by the moral sense of the highest civili- 
 zation. At a time when our relations with Great 
 Britain were strained almost to the breaking-point, he 
 spoke these words of righteousness : "I would deal 
 with nations as equitable law requires individuals to 
 deal with each other." 
 
 In this spirit Grant sought and secured the settle- 
 ment of all differences between the United States and 
 Great Britain by arbitration, under a treaty secured 
 mainly by the persistent exercise of his masterful in- 
 fluence in behalf of peace. The service thus rendered 
 to the country and to humanity was incalculably bene- 
 
244 Sbc flDen of tbc Civil Mar 
 
 ficent at the time, and it furnished to civilized nations 
 a precedent of inestimable value. It made an end of 
 the old tradition that only by war could a great nation 
 secure justice or maintain its prestige. It was the be- 
 ginning of that advance in civilization which sought at 
 The Hague conference to formulate a system of arbitra- 
 tion sufficient to answer all the just purposes of war. 
 The old savagery still resists and war is not yet at an 
 end ; but important progress has been made since the 
 two great English-speaking nations set an exalted ex- 
 ample under the provisions o\ the Treaty o\ Washing- 
 ton, and they are not optimists or the idle dreamers of 
 vain things who hope that the new century, while it is 
 yet young, will make of war between great civilized 
 states a thing of the past. 
 
 And that preference of peaceful measures to brute 
 force which Grant advocated as a principle, he prac- 
 tised in the actual conduct of vexed foreign relations. 
 The disturbed condition of Cuba and the Spanish 
 oppressions there appealed strongly to American 
 sympathies, and afforded full justification for armed 
 intervention on the part of this country. And when, 
 in [873, Spain added insult and injury to the United 
 States by the seizure of the American vessel / 'irginius, 
 and the deliberate butchery oi ninety Americans, the 
 sentiment of the country strongly favored an immediate 
 declaration of war. The President stood firmly for 
 peace, not by omitting the obvious duty of demanding 
 reparation, but by seeking reparation in peaceful instead 
 of warlike ways. Haughtily angry as Spain was, and 
 
TDUpsses Simpson (Brant 245 
 
 vainglorious as to her power, Grant nevertheless suc- 
 ceeded by diplomacy in inducing her to make quite all 
 the reparation that successful war could have secured. 
 
 During Grant's period of service the work of restor- 
 ing the seceding States to the Union was completed ; 
 the Kuklux proceedings at the South were repressed ; 
 an amnesty bill was passed which restored all but three 
 hundred and fifty of the late Confederates to full citizen- 
 ship ; a system of refunding the national debt was 
 adopted at his suggestion, which resulted in an enor- 
 mous reduction of the interest charge ; the heavy taxes 
 rendered necessary by war were reduced, and many of 
 them abolished, and at the end of his second term he 
 quitted office, leaving behind him a record of achieve- 
 ment in behalf of his country which might of itself 
 have entitled him to fame, had he never been a soldier 
 at all. 
 
 Upon his retirement from office, in 1877, General 
 Grant made a tour around the world which occupied 
 somewhat more than two years. His journey was like 
 a royal progress. In every country visited kings, princes, 
 and people paid extraordinary homage to him, testify- 
 ing, in every imaginable way, the honor in which the 
 whole world held him as soldier and statesman. 
 
 Having retired to private life with a scanty fortune, 
 he unwisely suffered himself to be drawn into a bank- 
 ing partnership with one Ferdinand Ward, who robbed 
 and swindled everybody associated with him, and 
 when the inevitable catastrophe came in 1884 General 
 Grant was left impoverished and in seriously broken 
 
246 Gbe flDen of tbe Civil Wlar 
 
 health. The public knowledge of his unflinching in- 
 tegrity alone saved him from the worse fate of being 
 held responsible for his partner's misdeeds. 
 
 The painful malady which a year later ended in his 
 death had already seized upon him, but resolutely and 
 uncomplainingly he took up the task of providing for his 
 family by the writing of a book of Memoirs, and in 
 order that this provision for those dear to him might 
 not fail he continued his labors upon it even after cease- 
 less pain had made existence itself a torture to him. 
 Only four days before his death he completed the 
 writing, and with it his work in the world. Thus 
 to the end those high qualities of patience, endur- 
 ance, courage to bear as well as to do, unflinching 
 devotion to duty, and unconquerable determination 
 which had made him great in the days of his strength 
 shone forth undimmed as he approached death in bodily 
 anguish but without a murmur of complaint or a sug- 
 gestion of self-pity. His greatness of soul endured to 
 the end. 
 
ROBERT EDWARD LEE 
 
 EXALTATION of moral character, unfaltering de- 
 votion to duty, as he understood it, measureless 
 patience, and a self-control that no stress of cir- 
 cumstances could weaken — these were the qualities 
 that made Robert Edward Lee great as a man. Of 
 those military gifts which in early manhood marked 
 him in the eyes of his superiors as the fittest successor 
 of General Scott in command of the army, and which 
 in the war of 1801-65 secured for him the admiration of 
 all men North and South as the foremost soldier and 
 strategist on the Southern side, there will be occasion 
 to speak later. 
 
 It is not recorded of Lee, or remembered by those 
 who were nearest to him, that he ever uttered a com- 
 plaint during all the weary struggle against odds of 
 numbers and resources, or that he ever excused the 
 failure of any of his enterprises by pleading lack of 
 means or by casting the responsibility upon others. 
 When at Gettysburg his supreme effort came to naught 
 because of Longstreet's failure to support Pickett's 
 charge with all his force, and because of Ewell's neglect 
 247 
 
248 Zbc flDen of the Civil Mar 
 
 on another part of the field, Lee's countrymen were 
 fierce in their censure of these his lieutenants. Lee 
 came to their rescue, calmly announcing that he alone 
 was responsible for the miscarriage of his plans, thus 
 bravely taking all the blame upon himself. And when 
 the war was over he sought in no way to excuse his 
 defeat. He offered no pleas in abatement of any criti- 
 cism that might be made upon his conduct of cam- 
 paigns. He said nothing of the odds that had been 
 against him. He did not even mention the fact that 
 the obstinacy of the Confederate President and cabinet 
 had compelled him to hold Richmond when his military 
 judgment clearly recognized the necessity of evacuating 
 an untenable position and retiring to one where, by 
 calling Johnston's army to his aid, he might still have 
 hoped to achieve something of success in the field. 
 Nor did he ever complain of the sentimentality which 
 denied him the privilege of enlisting negroes for the 
 defence o\ the Richmond and Petersburg lines, thus 
 setting free a part of his veteran forces for campaigns 
 northward that would at least have afforded valuable 
 possibilities. He wrote no memoirs to explain defeat 
 by setting forth the embarrassing restrictions under 
 which he was placed, or by fastening upon others their 
 fair share of responsibility. He calmly turned to the 
 new duties of peace, leaving his fame to such judgment 
 as posterity might render, unassisted by any sugges- 
 tions or explanations from himself. 
 
 In the matter of descent Lee was born to the best 
 He was the son oC' Lighthorse Harry " Lee, Washing- 
 

 Robert Edward I 
 
fIDen c 
 
 
 
IRobcrt J6bwar& %cc 249 
 
 ton's nearest friend and most trusted subordinate— the 
 one man in whom he retained confidence and with 
 whom he dared consult when Arnold's treason left him 
 in doubt as to the loyalty of all his other lieutenants. 
 Lee inherited traditions of the most sensitive honor, 
 and with them those qualities of mind and character 
 which have been set forth at the beginning of this 
 paper as his dominant characteristics. By marriage he 
 was closely allied with other families of like traditions 
 and character, and in his United States army life the 
 esteem in which he was held secured for him all that 
 was best in the matter of intimate association. 
 
 Lee was born at Stratford, in Westmoreland County, 
 Virginia, on the 19th of January, 1807. He was there- 
 fore twenty-two years of age when he was graduated, 
 second in his class, from the Military Academy at 
 West Point. As an honor man he received a commis- 
 sion in the engineer corps, always accounted the best 
 in the service, and the one to which only men of 
 superior attainments are assigned. During the peaceful 
 period that followed, promotion in the army was 
 necessarily slow, and of opportunities for purely mili- 
 tary distinction, in the engineer corps especially, there 
 were next to none. Lee won the regard of his superiors 
 however by his masterly work in the improvement of 
 rivers and harbors, and nine years after he received his 
 first commission as a second lieutenant, he had risen 
 to a captaincy. He still held that rank when the 
 Mexican War, declared in 1846, brought to him an 
 opportunity to exercise his engineering skill in military 
 
250 £bc flicn of tbe Civil Wav 
 
 ways. Here he soon distinguished himself. General 
 Scott frankly attributed the fall of Vera Cruz to Lee's 
 ability as an engineer and his conduct as a soldier. He 
 was thrice brevetted during that war, the last time to 
 the rank of lieutenant-colonel in recognition of his 
 services in the storming of Chapultepec. 
 
 In 1SS2 he was selected to command the Military 
 Academy at West Point, where he improved and 
 extended the course of study and wrought other 
 changes of enduring advantage to the institution and 
 to military education in America. Three years later 
 he was raised to the rank of lieutenant-colonel in the 
 army and sent to Texas, where he served, with a brief 
 interval at the time of John Brown's raid at Harper's 
 Ferry, until called to Washington on the approach of 
 the Civil War. 
 
 This war brought to Lee the severest ordeal of his 
 life — involving at once a conflict of emotions and a con- 
 flict of duties. He had always been devoted to the 
 Union and to its military service, and in common with 
 the majority of Virginians at that time he regarded 
 secession as altogether unwise, impolitic, and unneces- 
 sary. Yet in common with nearly all Virginians he 
 believed firmly in the constitutional right of a State to 
 secede from the Union. That doctrine indeed had 
 been widely accepted in time past at the North as well 
 as at the South, and in certain crises of history many- 
 leaders of opinion in New England had seriously con- 
 templated its exercise as a remedy for evils which they 
 felt to be growing intolerable. In common with such 
 
IRobcrt je&wart) Xec 251 
 
 men as William C. Wickham and Juhal Early — who in 
 the Virginia convention opposed secession to the end, 
 but when it was decreed became notable military 
 leaders on the Southern side — Lee believed that his 
 first and highest allegiance was due to his State, and 
 that the act of Virginia in withdrawing from the Union 
 was binding upon his conscience. So long as Virginia 
 refused to secede he remained in the military service, 
 though he declined an offer of the chief command of 
 the national armies which was made to him at the 
 time. When Virginia adopted an ordinance of secession 
 Lee resigned his commission, in great distress of mind, 
 under an overmastering sense of duty. 
 
 He wrote a letter at the time to his sister, the wife of 
 an army officer in the national service. In it he gave 
 the only expression he is known ever to have given, to 
 the convictions and sentiments that determined his 
 course in the matter. 
 
 "We are now in a state of war," he wrote, "which will yield to 
 nothing. The whole South is in a state of revolution, into which 
 Virginia, after a long struggle, has been drawn ; and though I 
 recognize no necessity for this state of things, and would have for- 
 borne and pleaded to the end for redress of grievances, real or 
 supposed, yet in my own person I had to meet the question whether 
 I should take part against my native State. With all my devotion 
 to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citi- 
 zen, 1 have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand 
 against my relatives, my children, my home. I have therefore re- 
 signed my commission in the army, and save in defence of my 
 native State, — with the sincere hope that my poor services may 
 never be needed — I hope I may never be called upon to draw my 
 sword." 
 
 We have here a moving suggestion of the tragedy of 
 
252 ftbe flDcn of tbe Civil Mar 
 
 that time ; of the heart breaks that were involved in 
 events which cruelly set brother against brother ; of the 
 perplexity of mind in which officers of Southern birth, 
 holding commissions in the regular army, were com- 
 pelled to confront a divided and uncertain duty ; for 
 Lee's was only one of many cases of the kind. 
 
 As the head of the national army, General Scott 
 deeply lamented the loss of Lee. Too old and infirm 
 to take the field himself, he had hoped to have Lee as 
 his right hand, especially in the work of organizing the 
 new levies and converting them into an army fit to take 
 the held. He regarded Lee's resignation as a sorer loss 
 than those of all the others who had surrendered their 
 commissions combined, and pronounced him the ablest 
 organizer of military forces in all the land. 
 
 It was to work of that organizing character that Lee 
 at once devoted himself on his arrival at Richmond. 
 He accepted the command of all the Virginia forces, 
 and set to work with diligence to convert the enthu- 
 siastic volunteers into drilled and disciplined soldiers. 
 A little later, Virginia having joined the Southern Con- 
 federacy, the capital was transferred from Montgomery, 
 Alabama, to Richmond, and Lee was commissioned as 
 one of the five full generals appointed by Mr. Davis. 
 
 He selected the strong strategic position at Manassas 
 Junction as the first point of resolute resistance and at 
 his suggestion an army under Beauregard was sent 
 thither, while another, under Johnston, was concen- 
 trated near Winchester in the lower, or northern end of 
 the Shenandoah Valley. Lee himself went to the west- 
 
IRobcrt Et>warci %cc 253 
 
 em part of the State to settle the differences which had 
 arisen among the subordinate commanders there and to 
 repair the blunders they had made. There were no op- 
 portunities for conspicuous service in that quarter and 
 for a time Lee was lost to the popular view and his 
 fame was obscured by the very dramatic success of 
 Johnston and Beauregard at Manassas or Bull Run. 
 
 With the exception of the action near Leesburg, Vir- 
 ginia, on the 21st of October, there were no military 
 operations of consequence in Virginia during 1 86 1 after 
 the battle at Manassas Junction. Johnston was content 
 to hold Centreville and Fairfax Court House, with 
 strong cavalry outposts on Mason's and Munson's hills 
 within sight of Washington, while on the other side, 
 McClellan occupied himself with the work of reorgan- 
 izing the army which had retreated in panic and dis- 
 integration from Bull Run. 
 
 In the autumn a Union force assailed the coast of 
 South Carolina and captured the forts at Beaufort and 
 near the mouth of the Savannah River, together with 
 Hilton Head and other islands of strategic importance. 
 For a time it was thought at Richmond that a deter- 
 mined winter campaign was to be prosecuted in that 
 quarter, and Lee was sent South to prepare the means 
 of resistance. As no such campaign was attempted 
 Lee was again hidden from view, living mainly in hum- 
 ble quarters at the little hamlet of Coosawhatchie. 
 with almost no staff and without any of the visible 
 indications of high military rank about him. He 
 strongly fortified Charleston, Savannah, and the coast 
 
254 Cbc m>cn of tbe Civil lUar 
 
 between, taking such advantage of the swampy and 
 creek-laced country as to make it possible for a very 
 small force to defend the Charleston and Savannah 
 Railroad against the most determined assaults. So 
 well did he do his work that a mere handful of men did 
 in tact defend that important line until the very end. 
 
 In March. 1S02, Lee was ordered to Richmond and 
 •' under the direction o\ the President " was " charged 
 with the conduct of military operations in the armies 
 of the Confederacy." That is to say he was in effect 
 made Commander-in-chief of all the Southern armies. 
 and vested with an authority similar to that conferred 
 upon Grant on the other side two years later. But he 
 did not immediately take direct command of any army 
 or personally take part in field operations. He remained 
 in Richmond, directing all the generals in the held in 
 the best employment of their forces. 
 
 A little later in the spring McClellan manifested .1 
 purpose to advance upon Johnston at Centreville. 
 and in accordance with the Fabian policy which he 
 always practised. Johnston fell back behind the Rappa- 
 hannock, a position which later in the war was recog- 
 nized as the best in Northern Virginia for successful 
 resistance to armies coming from the direction of Wash- 
 ington. But McClellan had no real intention of ad- 
 vancing upon Richmond by that route. Instead he 
 transferred his base to Fortress Monroe, and marched 
 up the peninsula. Johnston met this movement by 
 transferring his force to Williamsburg, leaving Jackson 
 in the Valley of Virginia and Ewell in command of such 
 
IRobert jEfcwaro lee 255 
 
 forces as remained on the Rappahannock line. When 
 in May McClellan's advance reached Williamsburg 
 Johnston fell back to the neighborhood of Richmond. 
 McClellan again advanced and established his line upon 
 the Chickahominy River. He had an effective force of 
 more than 100,000 men, against the much smaller army 
 that confronted him, but it was McClellan's habit of 
 mind to exaggerate his enemy's strength, and he mis- 
 takenly believed himself outnumbered. He therefore 
 fortilied and postponed operations to await the arrival 
 of McDowell, who with 40,000 men was advancing by 
 way of Fredericksburg. 
 
 Lee decided promptly to prevent this reinforce- 
 ment. To that end he ordered Ewell, with his whole 
 force to move into the valley and join Jackson there, at 
 the same time directing Jackson, thus reinforced, to 
 drive Banks across the Potomac and threaten Washing- 
 ton. This strategy completely succeeded. Apprehen- 
 sive for the safety of the capital, the authorities recalled 
 McDowell's army for its defence, and McClellan was 
 left without the great addition to his strength upon 
 which he had confidently counted. 
 
 McClellan's line now lay mainly to the north of the 
 Chickahominy, but with a strong force entrenched on 
 the southern side of that river. A flood coming, John- 
 ston vigorously assailed this force in the hope of crush- 
 ing it before assistance could be brought to it across the 
 swollen stream. Thus occurred, on the list of May, 
 the battle of Seven Pines, or Fair Oaks, as it is variously 
 called. 
 
256 Cbe fIDcn of tbc Civil Hilar 
 
 Johnston was severely wounded in the action, and 
 completely disabled for service for many months to 
 come. Lee immediately took personal command of the 
 army before Richmond, at the same time retaining and 
 exercising his authority as Commander-in-chief to direct 
 the operations of the other armies of the Confederacy. 
 Thus, for the first time, he found himself in direct com- 
 mand of an important force in the field, and then began 
 that career of battle and strategy which so brilliantly 
 demonstrated his superiority to all the other Southern 
 commanders in those qualities that bring fame to a 
 soldier. 
 
 He set to work at once to dislodge McClellan and 
 raise what was in moral effect the siege of Richmond. 
 First he sent Stuart with his cavalry on a raid in rear 
 of McClellan. in search of information as to the condi- 
 tion of the roads and whatever else it might be desirable 
 to know. Next he ordered Jackson to move secretly 
 from the valley to Ashland on the Fredericksburg Rail- 
 road, a dozen or twenty miles northwest of Richmond. 
 Lee's plan was to have Jackson advance from Ashland, 
 and assail the rear and flank of McClellan's right wing, 
 thus uncovering the crossings ; to throw the other 
 Confederate corps across as rapidly as possible, and 
 concentrate them in McClellan's rear, threatening his 
 communications, and compelling him to quit his en- 
 trenchments and either accept battle in the open or go 
 into retreat. 
 
 There were some miscarriages and delays in the 
 execution of the movement, which began on June 20th; 
 
IRobcrt fi&warfc %cc 257 
 
 but after seven days of continuous marching and 
 fighting, McClellan's army was forced back under the 
 protection of the gunboats in James River, and his cam- 
 paign against Richmond had ended in failure. He had 
 saved the credit of his arms, however, by his last 
 stand at Malvern Hill, where he repulsed with great 
 slaughter the repeated and determined assaults of the 
 Confederates. 
 
 But Richmond was not yet safe. McClellan had 
 indeed been dislodged, but at Harrison's Landing he 
 was still within easy striking distance of the Confed- 
 erate capital, and his army was still very strong and 
 wholly unbroken in spirit. Moreover, another army 
 of considerable proportions, under command of General 
 Pope, was advancing, unopposed, by way of Manassas 
 Junction to join McClellan. Lee strongly felt the neces- 
 sity not only of preventing this junction, but of manag- 
 ing in some way, for the sake of moral effect, if for 
 nothing else, to transfer the active theatre of war to a 
 greater distance from Richmond. 
 
 In attempting this, he reckoned upon the excessive 
 concern felt at the North for the safety of Washington. 
 If he could manage to threaten that city without losing 
 Richmond in the operation, he was confident that Mc- 
 Clellan's force would be quickly withdrawn by water 
 to the national capital. 
 
 Accordingly, on July nth, Lee ordered Jackson with 
 his own and Ewell's commands, to operate in Northern 
 Virginia. Jackson moved to Orange Court House, 
 and near the end of July Lee sent A. P. Hill's corps to 
 
258 Sbc fIDcn of tbe Civil Mar 
 
 reinforce him there. Jackson pushed across the river 
 and engaged a part of Pope's force at Cedar Mountain, 
 on the Qth of August. Two days afterwards he recrossed 
 the river to await the reinforcements which Lee was 
 hurrying forward from Richmond as rapidly as the 
 gradual withdrawal of McClellan's army to protect 
 Washington permitted. Having at last transferred 
 practically his entire army to the Rapidan, Lee took 
 personal command on August 14th. Lee's force slightly 
 exceeded Pope's, and it was the plan of the Confederate 
 General to attack as soon as dispositions could be made 
 to that end. But Pope, discovering his danger, with- 
 drew to the stronger defensive line north of the Rappa- 
 hannock. Lee moved by his left flank up the river, 
 but Pope moved with equal celerity, and at every 
 available point had his force strongly posted to resist 
 any attempt on Lee's part to force the river. Finally, 
 at a point near Warrenton Springs, Lee came to a halt 
 and made demonstrations as if tryingto pass the stream 
 in face of his resolute adversary. While thus occupy- 
 ing Pope's attention, Lee detached Jackson and sent 
 him to march around Bull Run Mountain and through 
 Thoroughfare Gap to strike the enemy's rear. 
 
 The movement was completely concealed and er 
 tirely successful. On the 20th, Jackson reached Man- 
 assas Junction and captured Pope's supply depots there. 
 Meantime, Lee had sent Longstreet to follow the same 
 route and reinforce Jackson, which he did on the 20th. 
 Pope had hurriedly retired to protect his communica- 
 tions, and, having received reinforcements from Mc- 
 
•Robert Eo\varc> %cc 259 
 
 Clellan, posted himself to give battle on the same field 
 on which the first considerable battle of the war had 
 been fought. For two days he assailed Lee's lines 
 with all possible vigor, but at the end of that time Lee 
 succeeded in driving him across Bull Run to Centreville, 
 five or six miles nearer Washington. There Lee turned 
 his position and Pope retreated towards Washington. 
 
 Thus within two months, and with a force inferior 
 to that of McClellan, Lee had raised the siege of Rich- 
 mond, overthrown Pope at the head of another army 
 equal to his own in strength, and so manoeuvred as to 
 compel the withdrawal of all actively invading forces 
 from Virginia. 
 
 He now planned to transfer the scene of operations 
 to the northern side of the Potomac. Practically aban- 
 doning his base of supplies and planning to subsist his 
 army of forty-five thousand men upon the country, he 
 passed the Potomac on the sth of September and took 
 up a position near Frederick, Maryland, where his pres- 
 ence was a threat at once to Washington, Baltimore, 
 and the cities farther north. But the strong garrison at 
 Harper's Ferry did not withdraw as Lee had expected, 
 and as it commanded his route to the Valley of Virginia, 
 it was necessary for him to reduce the stronghold be- 
 fore continuing his movement in any direction. Accord- 
 ingly he sent Jackson back across the Potomac to assail 
 Harper's Ferry from the south, while Mc Laws, Walker, 
 and D. H. Hill seized and held respectively Mary- 
 land Heights, London Heights, and Boonesboro Pass, 
 Lee moving with the rest of his army to Hagerstown 
 
260 Sbc fIDen of tbe Civil Mar 
 
 in search of subsistence. Jackson captured Harper's 
 Ferry, with all the stores there and eleven thousand 
 men, but meantime the temporary scattering of Lee's 
 army in five different bodies was made known to 
 McClellan, who was slowly advancing from Wash- 
 ington to meet him. Lee had written out for the infor- 
 mation of his generals a detailed order setting forth his 
 plans of concentration and incidentally revealing the 
 fact of his army's temporary dispersal. A copy of this 
 order fell into McClellan's hands and that commander 
 hastened forward to take advantage of the opportunity 
 of crushing his adversary in detail. He assailed D. H. 
 Hill at Boonesboro Pass on September 14th, but failed to 
 drive him from his position. Lee reinforced Hill and 
 during the night withdrew to Sharpsburg or Antietam, 
 where two days later he succeeded in concentrating his 
 whole force, except A. P. Hill's division. On the 17th 
 the two armies met in one of the most fiercely con- 
 tested battles of the war. Neither gained a decisive 
 victory and for the twenty-four hours after the battle 
 they confronted each other, neither venturing to renew 
 the contest. But Lee's plan of invasion was foiled, and 
 during the night of the 18th the Confederates retired 
 across the river and took position at Winchester, Mc- 
 Clellan not pursuing them. A month later Lee retired 
 to the line of the Rappahannock. 
 
 Thus ended Lee's first campaign in the field. At its 
 beginning the Confederate capital was sorely pressed by 
 an army of 100,000 men entrenched almost within 
 cannon shot of the city. By battle and strategy Lee had 
 
IRobert Efcwarfc Xee 261 
 
 driven that army away, overthrown Pope at Manassas, 
 transferred the seat of war for a time to the other side 
 of the Potomac and completely reversed the situation 
 so far as it affected the moral conditions on either side. 
 But he had been unsuccessful in the decisive battle of 
 the campaign, and his plan of invading the North had 
 failed. Nevertheless the moral effect of the campaign 
 upon the Southern army and people was very great. 
 The men of the army had learned almost to idolize their 
 leader, and the Southern people's faith in both army 
 and leader was without bounds. 
 
 Burnside having succeeded McClellan in command 
 of the Army of the Potomac, made his base at Acquia 
 Creek on the Potomac and sought to advance upon 
 Richmond by way of Fredericksburg thus securing a 
 short line and keeping Washington always covered. 
 Lee, with 80,000 men, took up a strong position on the 
 hills in rear of Fredericksburg and awaited Burnside 's 
 attack. Burnside threw about 100,000 men across the 
 river, and on the 13th of December hurled his columns 
 upon the Confederate lines. The advantage of ground 
 was with Lee and even that marvellously determined 
 and heroic series of assaults which the national troops 
 made upon Marye's Heights failed utterly of effect. After 
 a whole day of continuous battling Burnside withdrew 
 to the river bank, having lost nearly 1 3,000 men to Lee's 
 loss of a little more than 5000. Lee's critics have 
 pointed out that as Burnside tarried during the whole 
 of the next day on the southern side of the river, and 
 had only some frail pontoon bridges as his means of 
 
262 She flDcn of tbc Civil UHar 
 
 crossing, the Confederate commander might have as- 
 sailed him on the bank on the day after the battle, with 
 every prospect of crushing or capturing his army. But 
 Lee hoped that Burnside would renew the effort to 
 carry his works, and was confident of his ability, in 
 that event, not only to repel all assaults but to inflict 
 the severest punishment at cost of small losses on his 
 own part. But after waiting a day, Burnside withdrew 
 to the north of the river on the 15th and the military 
 operations of [862 were at an end. 
 
 With the comingof the springof 1863 General Hooker, 
 who had succeeded Burnside in command of the Army 
 of the Potomac, planned a campaign upon new strategic 
 lines. His army numbered about 120.000 men while 
 Lee's had been reduced by detachments and otherwise 
 to about 57,000. It was Hooker's purpose to compel 
 Lee to abandon his strong position at Fredericksburg, 
 divide his comparatively small force, and accept battle 
 in the open held. To that end he ordered Sedgw ick 
 with about 50,000 men. to cross the Rappahannock be- 
 low Fredericksburg, threatening Lee's right, while with 
 the main army he should himself cross the river above 
 into the Wilderness and by marching to Chancellors- 
 ville, turn the left of the Confederate position. 
 
 These movements were carried out. and Lee. leav- 
 ing about 9000 men to hold the works at Fredericks- 
 burg against Sedgwick, marched to Chancellorsville 
 and met Hooker there at the beginning of May. After 
 forcing Hooker's advance back upon the main body 
 which had taken a defensive attitude. Lee determined 
 
"Robert BSowaro Xce 263 
 
 upon the hazardous experiment of dividing his already 
 inferior force of 48,000 men in front of his enemy. He 
 sent Jackson, with more than two thirds of the army 
 to march round Hooker and strike him in Hank and 
 rear. Jackson accomplished this movement without 
 discovery while Lee, with about 14,000 men, occupied 
 the enemy's attention in front. Jackson delivered his 
 blow in the late afternoon of May 2d, taking his enemy 
 completely by surprise and throwing a part of his line 
 into confusion. Jackson receiving a mortal wound, the 
 command devolved upon Stuart, who renewed the 
 contest the next morning and forced his way to a 
 reunion with Lee, who instantly ordered an advance 
 of the whole line. The assault was made with such 
 impetuosity that Hooker was driven from his position 
 and withdrew in some confusion to the banks of the 
 river in his rear. Then Lee turned about to meet 
 Sedgwick, who had carried the works at Fredericks- 
 buig and was marching against the Confederate 
 right at Chancellorsville. After a sharp action Sedg- 
 wick was pressed to and across the river, and by 
 the 6th the whole of Hooker's army had retired to 
 the northern bank, to resume position opposite Fred- 
 ericksburg. 
 
 At Fredericksburg Lee was still confronted by an 
 army greater in numbers than he could hope to make his 
 own, even by calling to him every available reinforce- 
 ment. It was for him to choose whether he should 
 stand on the defensive and await events or should under- 
 take a campaign of aggression in an effort to remove 
 
264 Sbe flDen of tbc Civil Mar 
 
 the seat of active warfare to a region farther from Rich- 
 mond. He decided upon the latter course. But as in 
 the case of his dealing with McClellan. it was necessary 
 to proceed cautiously so as not to uncover Richmond 
 to an army strong enough to capture that city if 
 unopposed by any force except the meagre garrison 
 there. His plan was to threaten Washington as he 
 had done before and thus compel the Army o( the 
 Potomac to retire from its advanced position and 
 defend the capital. 
 
 In pursuance of this plan he first detached Ewell 
 and sent him to the Shenandoah Valley with orders 
 to drive out the national forces there under Milroy. 
 As soon as he thought it prudent to do so he de- 
 tached Longstreet to march northward east of the 
 Blue Ridge. By this time the menace to Washington 
 was so serious that Hooker withdrew from the Rappa- 
 hannock and fell back upon the capital, precisely as 
 Lee had expected and intended. Lee immediately 
 sent his remaining corps, under A. P. Hill, to join 
 Ewell and ordered Longstreet also to cross into the 
 valley. Thence the whole Confederate force was 
 pushed across the Potomac, arriving at Chambers- 
 burg and Carlisle in Pennsylvania, on the 27th of 
 June. 
 
 Stuart, with the cavalry, had been ordered to ob- 
 serve the enemy, but. after his habit. Lee had left much 
 to the discretion of the cavalry leader, and. acting under 
 one of his dramatic impulses. Stuart made a spectacular 
 raid around Washington. He left Lee. in the mean- 
 
"Robert Eowaro Xee 265 
 
 time, without that information as to the movements of 
 the Union army, which he sorely needed as a guide to 
 his own operations. The result was that while his 
 army was stretched out in a long and partially dis- 
 jointed column, the unsupported head of it stumbled 
 upon the advance of the Army of the Potomac, now un- 
 der Meade, at Gettysburg, where Lee, in the absence 
 of his cavalry, had not expected to find any force more 
 formidable than a division or so of mounted men. An 
 attempted reconnoissance quickly brought on a general 
 engagement. Thus, reversing the usual practice of 
 war, the assailing, instead of the defending, army was 
 taken by surprise. Lee hurried his widely separated 
 forces forward as rapidly as possible, but meantime 
 Meade had succeeded in establishing himself with his 
 entire army in a strong position. For three days, July 
 1 st, 2d, and id, there raged the most hotly contested 
 and bloodiest battle of modern times. At the end of 
 that time both armies were badly crippled, and after 
 passing a day of inactivity on the held, Lee retired 
 to Virginia almost unmolested in his retreat. Thus 
 his second invasion of the North was brought to 
 naught, as the first had been, by a battle technically 
 undecisive. In this case, as in the Antietam cam- 
 paign, however, the moral advantage rested with the 
 Northern arms. Lee had not been defeated in action, 
 but he had been balked of his purpose. His army was 
 not broken or overthrown, but it had completely failed 
 to accomplish the objects for which it had crossed the 
 Potomac. 
 
266 Gbe fIDcn of tbe Civil Mar 
 
 The opposing armies returned to the line of the 
 Rapidan, and although it was scarcely past mid-summer 
 when they sat down to face each other there, neither 
 commander ventured upon a further campaign during 
 that year. 
 
 In the spring of 1864 General Grant was made com- 
 mander of all the national armies. He conceived a new 
 plan for prosecuting the war to a successful end. He 
 saw clearly that the vitality of Southern resistance lay 
 in the fighting strength of the Southern armies rather 
 than in the possession of cities or strategic positions. 
 The Confederate strength was much broken in the west 
 and the material resources of the cotton States were 
 practically exhausted. But Lee remained with the 
 Army of Northern Virginia at his back, and Grant clearly 
 understood that there could be no successful issue of 
 the war until this force should be crushed. As he him- 
 self expressed it, he determined to make Lee's army, 
 rather than Richmond, the sole "objective" of the 
 campaign, not only in Virginia but in all quarters of the 
 South. He ordered Sherman to operate against John- 
 ston at Atlanta, and directed other commanders in 
 other parts of the South to maintain ceaseless activity 
 as a means of preventing Lee's reinforcement. Then 
 placing himself at the head of the Army of the Potomac, 
 he began the task he had set himself, of crushing the 
 power of Lee. Instead of seeking an easy approach to 
 Richmond, he sought the shortest road to Lee's army. 
 Crossing the Rapidan on the 4th of May, with about 
 120,000 men, he marched into the Wilderness where 
 
■Robert Eowaro %cc 267 
 
 Lee with 66,000 effective men promptly assailed him. 
 After a severe struggle there, Grant moved by his left 
 flank to the neighborhood of Spottsylvania Court House, 
 where Lee, moving on a parallel line, confronted him 
 again in another prolonged and stubbornly contested 
 battle. Grant continued his plan of moving by the left 
 Hank, and at Cold Harbor he again found Lee strongly 
 posted behind improvised earthworks. Here Grant 
 made a desperate assault, which was repelled with ter- 
 rible slaughter, Lee's loss being inconsiderable. Re- 
 suming his flank march. Grant sat down before 
 Petersburg about the middle of June and began a siege 
 of that city which was plainly the master-key to Rich- 
 mond. From that time until April, 180s, the struggle 
 of the giants was continued night and day without 
 ceasing. By continually extending his line to the left 
 and pushing it forward, Grant compelled Lee to stretch 
 his army out to attenuation, and at last the Union 
 forces crossed the Weldon Railroad leading from Peters- 
 burg, south. 
 
 The time had now come when military prudence 
 prompted Lee to abandon Petersburg and Richmond, 
 and by retreating toward the southwest, to form a junc- 
 tion with Johnston, who had been driven out of At- 
 lanta and was now being driven slowly northward by 
 Sherman's advance from Savannah through the Caro- 
 linas. But Lee was not permitted to act in this matter 
 as his judgment dictated. The authorities at Richmond 
 obstinately insisted upon holding that city and Peters- 
 burg. Thus Lee had no choice but to remain in his 
 
268 Cbe flDcn of tbc Civil War 
 
 works, fighting desperately, and awaiting the inevitable 
 end with that unfaltering patience which was always a 
 dominant trait of his character. 
 
 At the beginning of April, 1865, the end came. 
 Grant broke through Lee's right wing, south of Peters- 
 burg, compelling the hasty evacuation of that city and 
 Richmond, and rendering futile in advance any attempt 
 that Lee might make to retreat. For at every step 
 Grant's cavalry were in front of the Confederates while 
 his infantry and artillery ceaselessly operated upon his 
 left flank, pressing him back toward the upper James 
 River, a direction which afforded him no road of es- 
 cape. On the Qth of April, at Appomattox Court House, 
 Lee surrendered what remained of his famous army, 
 and the war was in effect ended. 
 
 Without a murmur or any attempt to shift the blame 
 of failure, though that task offered tempting oppor- 
 tunities, Lee retired to private life, earnestly setting 
 his face against all attempts to continue the struggle 
 by irregular war, and urgently advising the men who 
 had so unfalteringly followed him in war, to betake 
 themselves at once to the pursuits of peace. 
 
 At the beginning of the war, Lee had been well-to- 
 do. Its end found him impoverished, and, of course, 
 without hope of employment in his profession there- 
 after. 
 
 He accepted the presidency of Washington College 
 (now Washington and Lee University), and occupied 
 himself with the teaching and training of young men 
 until his death, on the 12th of October, 1870. 
 
IRobert lEbwarfc %ce 
 
 269 
 
 He was, without question, the greatest soldier that 
 the Southern cause produced, and his exalted personal 
 character is held in the highest esteem at the North, 
 while among the people of the South his memory is 
 cherished with passionate affection and reverence. 
 
DAVID GLASGOW FARRAGUT 
 
 DAVID GLASGOW FARRAGUT was the first 
 man who ever held the rank of Admiral in 
 the United States Navy. He was also the last 
 survivor of that " old school" of naval officers who, as 
 he once described them. " entered the navy through a 
 port hole instead of a cabin door."— officers who, be- 
 ginning sea service in childhood, made themselves 
 masters of seamanship first, and added scholarly attain- 
 ments afterward, when opportunity offered. He entered 
 the navy when only a little over nine years of age, 
 distinguished himself at twelve as a capable navigator 
 and resolute commander, and died Admiral, after sixty 
 years o\ devoted and distinguished service. In the 
 meantime, by his courage, his masterful skill, and his 
 almost matchless determination he had added more to 
 the glory of the American sea service than any other 
 one man ever did before or after him. 
 
 He was the son of an old revolutionary patriot and 
 soldier, who had settled as a pioneer in Tennessee. 
 When Farragut was born, on July 5, 1801. the Tennes- 
 see country was still the haunt of hostile Indians. His 
 
David Glasgow Farragut 
 
 From a steel engraving 
 
2)av>io (Blasoow jfarraout 271 
 
 father labored diligently to inspire the boy with courage 
 and that unflinching devotion to duty which distin- 
 guished every act of his arduous life, but beyond this 
 instruction in manliness the lad was without education. 
 He was orphaned when, at the age of eight years, he 
 was adopted by Commodore Porter — the great Com- 
 modore of that name— who promised him a career. 
 
 The untrained backwoods boy was taken by sea to 
 Washington, and put into a school ; but scant time 
 was allowed him in which to acquire even the slender- 
 est rudiments of education ; for when he was only nine 
 and a half years of age he received his warrant as a 
 midshipman, and began the active work of his life. He 
 presently went to sea in the Essex, Porter's Hag-ship, 
 and was trained in seamanship during the summer, and 
 sent to school whenever opportunity offered in the 
 winter. 
 
 Presently the war with Great Britain came, and 
 young Farragut went with Porter on his successive 
 cruises, winning special approbation by his sagacity 
 and alertness. Soon Porter sailed into the Pacific to 
 make that matchless cruise against British commerce 
 which marked him at once as the foremost officer of 
 the navy. He captured so many rich prizes that pres- 
 ently he found himself without an available officer to 
 whom to entrust a captured ship that must be navi- 
 gated to Valparaiso, fifteen hundred miles away. In 
 this stress of circumstance he determined to put his 
 midshipman Farragut — a lad only twelve years of age 
 —in command of the ship, with instructions that her 
 
:-: Cbe flDen of tbe Civil tUar 
 
 prisoner captain should serve the boy as navigating' 
 officer. It was a stupendous responsibility to place 
 upon a boy still scarcely more than a child, but young 
 Farragut had shown such capacity of command that 
 Porter accepted the risk, and placed the little midship- 
 man on the quarter deck, with instructions to sail the 
 ship to Valparaiso and there enter her as a prize. 
 Surely such a task had never before been committed to 
 so young a person, and the compliment implied was 
 without precedent. But Farragut was worthy of the 
 trust reposed in him. His masterful spirit and his alert- 
 ness of mind, rose to the opportunity of distinction thus 
 thrust upon him. The captured captain resented his 
 subjection to a boy's command, of course, and refus- 
 ing to obey orders, went below for his pistols. There- 
 upon Farragut himself assumed all responsibility, 
 undertook to navigate the ship himself, and ordered 
 the captain to remain below under penalty o\ being 
 shot should he attempt to make his appearance on 
 Having thus made the captain a close prisoner, 
 the boy took complete control of the ship and sailed 
 her. unaided, into the prize port. 
 
 Remarkable as his seamanship was proved by this 
 exploit to be. it was a matter of small consequence in 
 comparison with his demonstrated resolution, readi- 
 ness, and sound judgment in dealing with the human 
 difficulty of a mutinous navigating officer poss 
 of every advantage in the contest of wits and courage. 
 From the hour in which he sailed into Valparaiso, the 
 navy recognized this lad as one destined to achieve the 
 
E>aviJ> Glasgow jfarrafliu 273 
 
 highest things and win the highest honors. Only a 
 hostile shot could mar the career that lay so plainly 
 before the wonderful boy. 
 
 Two years later Farragut saw his first severe sea 
 battle, that in which Porter, in the Essex, fought two 
 English war-ships, in one of the bloodiest and most 
 severely contested struggles of the entire war. In this 
 as in the less dangerous service which he had before 
 known, the youth acquitted himself with distinction. 
 He was now recognized not only as a person of un- 
 usual readiness of mind and devotion to duty, but as a 
 competent navigator and a fighter of high courage and 
 exceeding self-possession. But he still lacked the 
 technical training of the schools, and when the war 
 ended his mentor, Commodore Porter, sent him to 
 Chester, Pennsylvania, for instruction in book lore and 
 for systematic training in the school of the soldier. 
 There was no Annapolis Naval Academy at that time. 
 
 The war with Algiers having broken out, Farragut 
 was again taken from his books in 18 is and sent on 
 service to the Mediterranean. In iS 17-18 Farragut 
 lived in the consulate at Tunis, in order to perfect him- 
 self in his knowledge of the French and Italian languages, 
 and to learn somewhat of mathematics, commercial 
 affairs, international law, and whatever else it might 
 become a rising young naval officer to know. Inci- 
 dentally, also, he attended grand balls and learned 
 something of the manners of polite society, with which 
 he had not before been brought into contact, but in 
 which his unvarying courtesy and kindliness quickly 
 
274 tlbc flDen of tbc Civil Mar 
 
 commended him, especially to queenly women who 
 took pains to cultivate him out of his inexperienced 
 awkwardness of demeanor, and to convert his em- 
 barrassed self-consciousness into an easy self-confi- 
 dence. Thus, little by little, and in fragmentary, 
 haphazard ways, did Farragut acquire that education 
 which in the end made him the most accomplished as 
 well as the greatest of American naval commanders. 
 
 So marked were his gifts at this time that the 
 consul at Tripoli, in a prophetic letter, spoke of him as 
 ''the young admiral " a prediction which seemed then 
 impossible of fulfilment as the rank of admiral was not 
 only unknown in our naval service, but was deemed 
 too aristocratic ever to be created by a vote of Congress. 
 Yet it was reserved to Farragut to render such service 
 to his country as to compel the creation of that supreme 
 rank as the only and still insufficient recognition of his 
 deeds in the country's behalf. 
 
 From this early period until 1840-47 was a time of 
 peace. Farragut's service during that part of his life 
 embraced many voyages, much study, afloat and ashore, 
 and an eager effort at every point to improve himself. 
 In regular course he rose to the rank of commander, 
 and when the war with Mexico came he sought and 
 obtained a commission of active service. But, as he 
 believed and asserted in letters to the Navy Department, 
 he "encountered the ill will of his commodore." At 
 any rate he was denied all opportunities of fruitful 
 service, and after a time, at his own request, was 
 ordered home. 
 
Bavufc Glasgow Jfarraout 275 
 
 In 1 8S4 Farragut asked to be sent to the Crimea, for 
 purposes of observation, but was denied the commis- 
 sion. He had long been in bad odor among the 
 civilians who, strangely enough, have always domi- 
 nated that purely military department to its sore detri- 
 ment. He was sent to the Pacific coast instead, to 
 select, fortify, and equip a naval station. Mare Island 
 was the satisfactory result of his labors during the next 
 four years. 
 
 The Civil War brought perplexity to Farragut, as it 
 did to other officers of the army and navy who were 
 men of Southern birth. It presented a problem of 
 divided allegiance. Farragut solved it, not as Lee did 
 by going with his State, but as George H. Thomas and 
 Winfield Scott did by adhering to the Union. He 
 unhesitatingly declared that if peaceable secession 
 should be accomplished, as many persons North and 
 South then believed might happen, he would resign 
 from the national service and go with the South in 
 which he had been born, and in which all his kinships, 
 whether by birth or marriage lay. But if the disruption 
 should involve war, he understood it to be his impera- 
 tive duty to sacrifice all other ties and bear true allegi- 
 ance to the National Government which had given him 
 his education, and all his life long had provided him 
 with employment which it had rewarded with honor 
 and promotion. He was living at Norfolk on waiting 
 orders, during the trying winter of 1860-61. He 
 strongly sympathized with the efforts made to keep 
 Virginia out of the secession movement and for many 
 
2-6 £bc flDcn of tbc Civil IClar 
 
 months had reason to believe that these efforts would 
 be successful to the end. But when, in April, 1S01, 
 Virginia was — in his phrase — "dragooned out of the 
 Union," he went North to await the call of duty. 
 
 It was not until the end of i So i that the call of duty 
 came. Then he was placed in command of an expedi- 
 tion designed to reduce New Orleans and reopen the 
 Mississippi to navigation. At the beginning of Feb- 
 ruary, i $02, he sailed from Hampton Roads in command 
 of a fleet in whose efficiency he had not the smallest 
 confidence. His flag-ship was the Hartford, destined, 
 under his command, to become one of the great his- 
 toric vessels of the navy— a fit companion of the Con- 
 stitution and the Constellation. 
 
 His orders were peculiar. His mission was to "re- 
 duce the defences " of New Orleans and possess 
 himself of that city. As if doubting his devotion or his 
 skill or his determination or something else, the depart- 
 ment instructed him, almost menacingly, to achieve 
 success and offer no excuses for failure. " As you have 
 expressed yourself," the orders ran, " perfectly satisfied 
 with the force given to you, and as many more power- 
 ful vessels will be added before you can commence 
 operations, the department and the country require of 
 you success. " 
 
 Farragut neither resented the extraordinary tone of 
 his orders nor shrank from the task they set him, with 
 an insulting intimation that failure to accomplish that 
 very difficult duty to the satisfaction of the ill-informed 
 civilians of the Navy Department would mean discredit 
 
Bavnfc (Slasgow jfarragut 277 
 
 and bring rebuke upon him as its consequence. He 
 knew, as they did not, the insufficiency of his means. 
 He knew, as they did not and could not, the difficulty 
 of getting his ships over shallow bars and through 
 narrow passes into the Mississippi. He knew, as they 
 did not, the extraordinary character of the defences 
 that the Confederates had established below New Or- 
 leans, defences that must still confront him as almost 
 insuperable obstacles after he should get such of his 
 ships as he could over the bars and through the passes. 
 In short, he knew how desperate was the enterprise 
 set for his accomplishment, and how calumniously he 
 would be criticised by official authority should he in 
 any degree fail to meet the extravagant expectations of 
 ignorant over-confidence. 
 
 A lesser man than he, a man less sincerely devoted 
 to patriotic purposes, a man of smaller moral courage, 
 a man less capable of heroic self-sacrifice, would have 
 refused the commission, or at the least, would have 
 accepted it under strenuous protest. Farragut set to 
 work instead to do all that skill and courage and heroic 
 determination could do to fulfil the mission entrusted 
 to his hands. He collected all the ships that were 
 available for the purpose — many of them utterly unfit 
 for such a service and not one of them such as it would 
 now be deemed proper to employ in an enterprise so 
 difficult. He took with him an army under Butler, with 
 which to occupy New Orleans when it should surren- 
 der. But for his own purposes that army was of no 
 use. It could not be employed in the reduction of the 
 
278 Gbc flDen of tbc Civil Mar 
 
 river defences, or be brought into any use whatever 
 until the work of his campaign should be fully done. In 
 the meantime its presence was a clog upon his move- 
 ments, its care a heavy burden to him. 
 
 Thus equipped Farragut sailed for the mouths of the 
 Mississippi early in February. It was not until the 
 middle of April that he succeeded in dragging his ships 
 over mud bars into the river. One of them— among 
 the most efficient— he could not force past the bars 
 at all. 
 
 Once in the river, this was his situation. He had 
 sixteen wooden sloops of war ; sixteen wooden gun- 
 boats ; twenty-one frail wooden schooners, each carry- 
 ing only one mortar, the efficiency of which was gravely 
 doubtful ; and five other vessels of varying character. 
 He had a little over 200 guns in all, big and little, effec- 
 tive and of very doubtful efficiency. 
 
 Opposed to him were the defensive works of the 
 Confederates, the fruit of long months of exertion and 
 of the most masterful engineering skill. At a point 
 where the river narrowed to half a mile and made a 
 sharp bend in its course, there stood two strong, and 
 heavily armed fortresses commanding every inch of the 
 river above and below, and able to deliver a concen- 
 trated fire of many tons per second upon any approach- 
 ing enemy. The two forts were armed with about 1 is 
 guns, mostly thirty-two pounders — a weapon deemed 
 capable of instantly sinking any wooden ship against 
 which its missiles might be directed. Well below these 
 forts there were two iron chains stretched across the 
 
©avufc (Slasgow jfarraout 279 
 
 stream guarded by sharp-shooters and supported by- 
 vessels anchored there for the purpose. Above lay a 
 Confederate fleet of fifteen sail, including an iron-pro- 
 tected floating battery, heavily armed and an iron-clad, 
 steam-propelled ram, capable of instantly sinking any 
 craft with which her steel-shod prow might come into 
 contact. 
 
 In spite of all Farragut advanced to the attack after 
 a six days' bombardment with the mortars, which had 
 not proved as effective as the Navy Department had 
 anticipated, but as Farragut, with his larger knowledge 
 and greater skill had not. He wearied at last of this 
 ineffectual fire, and of the constant difficulty he had in 
 warding off Confederate tire-rafts, and protecting his 
 own vessels against collisions in the narrow confines of 
 the river. He therefore gave orders for a determined 
 attack. First of all he cut the chains that obstructed 
 the passage. Next he " fortified " his ships, as it were, 
 by adroitly disposing of their coal and their chain cables 
 in such fashion as should best protect their boilers and 
 machinery. Then he ordered a general advance which 
 was begun before daylight on the morning of April 24. 
 1862. 
 
 Under a " fire of Hell " his fleet forced its way past 
 the forts — all but three vessels which were disabled in 
 the attempt. Then came " the River Fight," as a poet 
 has named it, with the Confederate fleet. It was a brief 
 but very bloody action, in which deeds were done on 
 both sides that might well claim place in those pages 
 which history specially reserves for the recording of the 
 
280 Zhc fll>cn of the Civil HWar 
 
 most heroic of human achievements — those pages to 
 which poets turn for inspiration when minded to sing 
 their most sonorous songs. 
 
 When the Confederate fleet was destroyed there re- 
 mained the defences immediately below the city to be 
 overcome. Against these Farragut hurled all his force, 
 and on the morning of April 25th, he anchored in front 
 of the now defenceless city of New Orleans, the city in 
 which as a child he had been adopted into the navy and 
 set into the way of that great career which thus culmi- 
 nated in astounding glory where it had begun in feeble, 
 boyish hope. 
 
 Farragut desired to go on with his work in a sen- 
 sible way. He asked permission to sail at once to 
 Mobile, and reduce that city's defences as he had 
 reduced those of New Orleans. His idea was identical 
 with that which inspired Grant's campaign of 1864 — 
 namely, that the only way to bring the war to a speedy 
 end was to break the power of Confederate resistance 
 at those points where that power afforded the greatest 
 strength to the Confederate cause. There were block- 
 ade runners making trips with almost packet-like regu- 
 larity into and out of every Confederate port south of 
 Albemarle Sound. The South was marketing its 
 cotton and buying its supplies in the Bahamas and the 
 West Indies, and obviously no blockading fleet, how- 
 ever strong, could put an end to a traffic from which 
 Southern resistance largely drew its material resources. 
 In order to stop that traffic and make the blockade 
 effective as a means of cutting off the South at once 
 
Davifc Glasgow tfarracjut 281 
 
 from its market and its source of supplies, Farragut 
 desired to reduce every Confederate port to national 
 control as he had done with New Orleans. Without 
 doubt his policy was the wisest, the most humane, and 
 altogether the best that could then inspire and direct 
 naval enterprise. It would have shortened the war by 
 a year at the least, and it would have saved lives by 
 scores of thousands and treasure by hundreds of mil- 
 lions. But the time was not yet ripe for such wise 
 direction of the war as Grant w;is to give it in 1854. 
 The civilians in control of the bureaus at Washington 
 had more dramatic effects in mind, and in aid of these 
 they compelled Farragut to waste time and strength 
 and precious lives in a fruitless running of batteries at 
 Vicksburg and Port Hudson where, as was obvious 
 to his educated mind, the breaking of Confederate 
 resistance could be accomplished only by the land 
 operations under Grant — operations that neither 
 needed nor could profit by the perilous exposure of 
 the navy at a time when it might have been more 
 advantageously employed in the reduction of Con- 
 federate ports. 
 
 After the opening of the Mississippi, there came a 
 period of inaction to Farragut. The Navy Department 
 was not yet ready to grasp his ideas and permit him to 
 carry them into execution. At last, in the summer of 
 1864, more than two years after he had proposed the ex- 
 pedition, he was permitted to assail Mobile. With a fleet 
 consisting in part of wooden vessels and in part of iron- 
 clads, commanded from the bridge of his flag-ship 
 
282 Zbe flDcn of tbe Civil Mar 
 
 Hartford, he undertook the reduction of the Mobile 
 defences and the closing of the sole remaining Gulf 
 port of consequence. 
 
 The assault was begun early in the morning of 
 August 5, 1864. The port was defended by strongly 
 armed forts, by a formidable fleet, and by a torpedo- 
 strewn harbor. Into these "jaws of death" Farragut 
 pushed his way. One of his ironclads ran foul of a 
 torpedo, was blown up and sank to the bottom. Pres- 
 ently the Brooklyn, which preceded the flag -ship, 
 stopped her engines. Farragut shouted inquiries as to 
 the cause. The answer was that torpedoes lay just 
 ahead. Then it was that Farragut gave his celebrated 
 order — "Go on. Damn the torpedoes." Instantly 
 he pushed his flag-ship past the Brooklyn and himself 
 took the perilous lead. 
 
 Inside the bay Farragut was vigorously assailed by 
 the Confederate fleet, whose officers and men mani- 
 fested a determination as strong and a courage as reck- 
 less as his own. But the fire of his ironclads and the 
 activity of his other vessels were presently crowned 
 with victory, and about nightfall his perilous task was 
 done. The forts, cut off from their communications, 
 surrendered a few days later, and the harbor of Mobile 
 was completely within control of the Federal authori- 
 ties. The city itself was inaccessible by reason of 
 shoal water, but the purposes of the expedition were 
 accomplished to the full. The cost in life and in ships 
 was very great — much greater than the damage in- 
 flicted upon the Confederates. But the victory was 
 
E>avrt> Glasgow Jfarraout 283 
 
 well worth all the sacrifice that had been exacted as 
 the price of it 
 
 This " Bay Fight" was the crowning achievement 
 of Farraguts life and the last battle in which he ever 
 engaged. In failing health he returned to the North, 
 where every honor that ingenious popular gratitude 
 could devise was heaped upon him. Congress had 
 already revived the rank of Rear-Admiral for his reward 
 and the President had conferred it upon him. Later 
 Congress created the still more exalted rank of Admiral, 
 previously unknown in the American Navy, and he was 
 made supreme commander of our sea forces, with that 
 " sea lord " rank which knows no superior in the naval 
 service of any nation. A few years of peaceful and en- 
 joyable life were left to him as the rich reward of a 
 lifetime of strenuous and most heroic service. On the 
 14th of August, 1870, he was gathered to his fathers. 
 
THE MEN OF LETTERS 
 
WASHINGTON IRVING 
 
 WASHINGTON IRVING had long passed the 
 psalmist's life limit of three score years 
 and ten when he died in [859. All the 
 work for which he is held in loving remembrance was 
 done during the first half of the nineteenth century. 
 Yet there is to-day in a new century no figure fresher 
 in our literary annals, no American writer who in this 
 dawn of the twentieth century holds a larger or securer 
 place than he does in the admiration and the affection 
 of those who read books to find in them a reflection of 
 human nature. 
 
 In several respects Irving's position in literature is 
 unique. He was the first of American creative writers 
 in point of time, as he was and still remains foremost 
 in achievement. Brockden Brown did indeed precede 
 Irving, but during his brief career he struck no distinc- 
 tively American note, and his works are to-day forgot- 
 ten except that here and there a scholar turns over 
 their yellowed pages with archaic interest concerning 
 aspirations born before their time. It was Irving who 
 first put aside the copy books of English literature and 
 2S7 
 
288 ftbe flDcn of Xcttcrs 
 
 ventured to write in a hand that was all his own. It 
 was he who first discovered the literary possibilities of 
 American life and history, and who turned them to 
 largest account as the materials of original, creative 
 work. In advance of all others he wrought the dust 
 of our annals into plastic clay, fashioned from it creatures 
 of his own imagining and breathed into their nostrils 
 the breath of life. 
 
 He, first among Americans, created enduring human 
 types, or, more properly, human individuals, so per- 
 fectly fashioned and so vital that they must always 
 seem to men of sense as actual as the personages of 
 history. If this be. as critics have always taught, the 
 ultimate test of creative genius in literature, then we 
 may without offence use the superlative and call Irving 
 the very greatest of American men of letters, so long at 
 least as Rip Van Winkle and Ichabod Crane survive in 
 the memory of men, and so long as the proper name 
 Knickerbocker endures as an accepted adjective of the 
 English language. 
 
 If this were all, Hawthorne at least might dispute 
 with Irving the first place in our literature. But it is 
 not all. Irving's achievements were by no means con- 
 fined to a local or even an American field. Much of 
 his best work was devoted to quite other than American 
 subjects. We are indebted to him for the best and 
 fairest and most winning interpretations of English life 
 that are accessible to us. To him we owe, more than 
 to any other writer, our capacity to appreciate the 
 romance of old Spain, and it was from him that we 
 
Washington Irving 
 
 Leslie, R, 
 
Zbe flDen of 1 
 
 
 
 
Wasbinoton flrvino 289 
 
 learned practically all that, as a people, we know of 
 Mahomet and the Moors and the wars that rescued 
 Europe from the grasp of the Saracens. It was he who 
 first read the riddle of Columbus's life and character, 
 and made alive to our comprehension the times in 
 which the discoverer lived, and the conditions under 
 which his work for the world was done. 
 
 If Irving had done nothing except revivify the old 
 Dutch life of New York, as he did, his rank in American 
 letters would have been among the foremost of our 
 creative writers. If he had never done that work at 
 all, but had given us only his pictures of English life, 
 his prose poems of old Spain, and his Columbus and 
 Mahomet, he would still have been ranked among our 
 best. 
 
 His grasp was vastly greater than Hawthorne's and 
 his human sympathies immeasurably more catholic 
 and comprehensive. He was less subtle and more 
 human ; less mystical and more wholesome ; less intro- 
 spective and more healthfully observant. 
 
 He was a man of the world. He loved association 
 with his fellow-men, and sought it all his life with an 
 eager and natural interest in every manifestation of 
 human character. He looked upon human conduct 
 with an amused mind, but always with understanding 
 and full sympathy. He was not only in the world, but 
 of it. He shared its impulses and its points of view. 
 His habit of mind was to look " out and not in, up and 
 not down," and to be inimitably tolerant of folly and 
 frailty, as one who felt himself easily capable of both. 
 
2go Gbe fiDen of letters 
 
 He himself used to tell with delight how he once 
 joined forces with a predator)' urchin and spent a de- 
 lightful afternoon in helping the young freebooter steal 
 his own apples from the orchard at Sunnyside. His in- 
 tensely human instincts were illustrated in many ways. 
 He loved life in Spain for the sake of its grace and dignity 
 of bearing, but still more because of the black-eyed 
 beauties who charmed him in that country by their 
 winsome coquetry. His most intimate friend, the late 
 Mr. George P. Putnam, used to relate how on one 
 occasion he discovered a very lovable human weakness 
 in Irving. Looking over his friend's library. Mr. Putnam 
 found it sadly overloaded with ■"trash," and with 
 Irving's permission he undertook to purge it. But 
 when he had sorted out the worthless books, Irving 
 came to their rescue with a plaintive plea for them as 
 old and loved friends. This book might be the veriest 
 trash— probably it was so— but Irving remembered how 
 it had solaced his loneliness once at a country inn. and 
 could not think o\ parting with it. Another was non- 
 sense, of course, but it reminded Irving of the delightful 
 days at sea. when he had idly turned its pages the 
 while he sat at the masthead, and the sailors below 
 whistled for a wind. And so throughout the list. 
 Irving- found in each worthless volume some associa- 
 tion that made it precious to him. Mr. Putnam might 
 send all his collection of worthy and respectable books 
 to the auction-room, if he liked, but these dear old 
 trashy and altogether worthless friends of his wander- 
 ing life he would not part with on any account. The 
 
TKHaebington Annuo 291 
 
 incident illustrates a characteristic of Irving which went 
 far to give to his writings their winsomeness, their ex- 
 traordinary capacity to enlist the affectionate sympathy 
 of the reader— his capacity, to wit, to appreciate the 
 lovable in the unimportant. 
 
 In this characteristic we discover the chief charm of 
 all of Irving's writings. He always wrote with a sym- 
 pathy that awakened sympathy. He took his reader 
 by the arm, as it were, and told him his stories in full 
 confidence that his reader would enjoy hearing them, 
 as in truth the reader always did and still does. 
 
 It was a very notable achievement for Irving to ac- 
 complish this. He wrote at a time when youths were 
 taught that if they would write well they must give 
 their days and nights to Addison ; a time when dignity 
 of literary style was more highly regarded than interest 
 of subject or of treatment in literature ; when the round- 
 ing of a period was deemed of greater consequence than 
 the provoking of the reader to smiles or tears. The fatal 
 facility of literary stilt-walking still appealed strongly 
 to men who ventured into print in the early part of the 
 nineteenth century, and living's success in avoiding 
 that temptation to stumbling was by no means the least 
 notable of his achievements, or the least conclusive 
 proof we have of the spontaneity of his genius. 
 
 Irving used, laughingly, to boast that he was the 
 only man of his time who had been born in New York 
 City. "All the rest," he said, "came early and re- 
 mained." The boast was not quite true, but at least it 
 reflected Irving's intense feeling of loyalty to his native 
 
292 £be fIDcn of Xettcrs 
 
 city — a feeling that endured through all his long wan- 
 derings abroad and was never in the least weakened by 
 the delight he took in life in older lands. 
 
 He was born in a house in William Street, between 
 Fulton and John, on April 1, 1783. His father was a 
 seafaring man who had settled himself in a mercantile 
 business in New York. This father was fairly well to 
 do, highly respectable, a rigid disciplinarian in his own 
 family, a stern religionist, and during the American 
 Revolution an uncompromising patriot, a fact which 
 echoed itself in the name bestowed upon the son whose 
 unimagined fame was destined to make his own person- 
 ality remembered. 
 
 The mother of Washington Irving seems to have 
 been a woman of rare good sense and of a gentle, lov- 
 ing disposition. Without doubt her influence was more 
 potent than the father's stern uprightness in forming the 
 character of the boy. 
 
 It is an interesting fact that the elder Irving was care- 
 ful to give his two elder and quite unimportant sons a 
 college education, and that Washington, the only mem- 
 ber of the family who was possessed of high intellectual 
 gifts, was left with scarcely any education at all. He 
 rather irregularly attended such schools as there were 
 in the neighborhood, acquired little of what their mas- 
 ters could teach, and at the age of sixteen quitted school 
 finally. He entered, nominally at least, upon the study 
 of law in the office of an attorney, but gave small atten- 
 tion to his text-books. He preferred more interesting 
 literature than the law of inheritance or the authorities 
 
Washington Irving 293 
 
 on reversions and remainders could furnish, and accord- 
 ingly he read all the books of a literary character that 
 fell in his way. At this time, too, he manifested his in- 
 clination to literary pursuits by contributing light articles 
 of his own to the newspapers of the day. His health 
 was not strong, — indeed he manifested symptoms of 
 pulmonary trouble which aroused a good deal of 
 anxiety on the part of his family, and in 1804 he was 
 sent to Europe for his health. During the next two 
 years he enjoyed to the full the delights of society, 
 the theatre, and bohemia generally, on the continent 
 and in England. On his return he projected his first lit- 
 erary venture, Salmagundi, which he conducted in 
 conjunction with his brother William and James K. 
 Paulding. 
 
 It was at this period of his life that sorrow for the 
 first time fell heavily upon his sensitive nature. His 
 betrothed, a daughter of Judge Hoffman, was a young 
 woman, by all accounts, of extraordinary charm, and 
 Irving's love for her was extreme. When she fell ill 
 and at last died with her lover by her bedside, a shadow 
 fell upon Irving's soul which was never completely lifted 
 while he lived. He did not grow morbid, indeed,— his 
 mind was too soundly healthful for that. He preserved 
 his interest in life, and after a time all his old relish for 
 human association returned, with its abounding sym- 
 pathy, its keen capacity for enjoyment, and its gentle, 
 humorous tolerance of faults and foibles. But, with all 
 his strongly domestic instincts and with his unusual 
 opportunities in the choice of a wife, he never married. 
 
294 Gfoc fll>en of letters 
 
 Nevertheless in his bachelorhood there was no touch 
 of woman-hating, no slightest abatement of the rever- 
 ence and chivalric tenderness with which he regarded 
 
 womankind. His spirit was deeply wounded by the 
 blow that fate had dealt him. but it was not soured or 
 otherwise perverted. Sorrow seems, indeed, rather to 
 have sweetened and ennobled his character, fitting him 
 in peculiar fashion for the best doing of the work that lay 
 before him in life. If this point seems too much dwelt 
 upon in this place, it is because o\ its importance as a 
 factor in the career that we are studying. Creative 
 literature must o\ necessity be largely a reflection, a 
 revelation of the man who writes it. and the sorrow that 
 touched Irving's humor with a gentle melancholy, in a 
 large degree determined the quality o( his work. He 
 himself wrote long afterwards: "The despondency 1 
 had suffered for a long time in the course of this attach- 
 ment, and the anguish that attended its catastrophe, 
 seemed to give a turn to my whole character, and throw 
 some clouds into my disposition which have ever since 
 hung about it." Fortunately the "clouds" were not 
 angry, storm-threatening ones : rather they were such 
 as the sun irradiates, their gloom only emphasizing the 
 golden glory of the sunshine that falls upon them. 
 
 Irving was at that time engaged upon his most 
 purely humorous work. Knickerbocker's History of A a 
 York from the Beginning of the World to the end of the 
 Dutch Dynasty. According to his own account his sor- 
 row gave him some distaste for its rollicking humor. 
 but if that sorrow enlarged his sympathies and refined 
 
Washington Hrvino 295 
 
 his feeling it added much of tenderness and grace even 
 to a work then already wrought out in his mind. How 
 much it contributed to the intensely human qualities of 
 his later writings, who shall say ? 
 
 The Knickerbocker History was Irving's first success- 
 ful work. He had written, in a letter to a friend, of that 
 anticipated time when, "you and I shall get this great, 
 stupid public by the ears," and the History of New 
 York fully accomplished that cherished purpose. Its 
 success was phenomenal for that time. It earned for 
 Irving the sum of $}ooo — the amount which the suc- 
 cessful author of to-day would receive from the sale of 
 20,000 copies of a book published at $1 .50 a copy. Better 
 still, it made its author famous, both in this country and 
 abroad. This was the more remarkable inasmuch as 
 the book was the very first distinctively American work 
 in creative literature that attracted attention in England, 
 or deserved attention, for that matter. 
 
 But even the remarkable success of this his first 
 work, did not prompt Irving to make deliberate choice 
 of literature as a profession. Perhaps it was in part 
 because there was at that time no such thing as a 
 profession of literature in America. But a larger reason 
 seems to have been the fact that Irving was by tem- 
 perament averse to the systematic following of any 
 profession. Years afterwards, in England, when finan- 
 cial distress had fallen upon him, Walter Scott came 
 forward with an offer to make him editor of a new 
 magazine which he, Scott, wished to found ; but Irving, 
 in spite of his pecuniar) - need, declined the generous 
 
2q6 Cbc flDen of letters 
 
 offer, pleading in excuse his constitutional inability to 
 cimage systematically in any employment. How much 
 more strongly must this temperamental difficulty have 
 influenced him about the year 1S10. when he found 
 himself a partner of his brothers in a lucrative business 
 which gave him a sufficient income without severely 
 taxing his energies or exacting much of his attention. 
 
 He detested the law. and was clearly unfit for its 
 practice. He was exceedingly iond o\ society and even 
 o( dissipation o\ a certain not very scandalous sort. 
 He had money enough to indulge these tastes and 
 literary reputation enough to make him something of a 
 lion in all drawing-rooms. So instead of following up 
 the Knickerbocker success he entered upon a career 
 of social enjoyment enlivened by a certain rather idle 
 dalliance with the muses. That is to say, he nominally 
 edited a magazine and did some desultory writing 
 which added nothing to his reputation. 
 
 This lasted until 1815, when Irving went again to 
 England, where the firm, o\ which he was a member, 
 had a house. About the time of his arrival there the 
 firm fell into financial difficulties, and his brother, who 
 had managed it. fell ill. As a consequence, Irving was 
 compelled to devote himself, for the next three years, 
 to business affairs for which he had no liking and not 
 much fitness. But the fame of his Knickerbocker was 
 still fresh in Great Britain, and during these years it 
 brought him into intimate friendship with Sir Walter 
 Scott, the elder Disraeli, and many others of those best 
 worth knowing in literature and art. 
 
Masbington llivino 297 
 
 In 1818 his firm failed, and Irving was thrown upon 
 his own resources. A government employment was 
 offered him from Washington, but it was declined. 
 For Irving had at last chosen the literary life as his 
 own. In 1 8 10 he brought out in America the first 
 number of The Sketch Book. It contained the 
 immortal romance of " Rip Van Winkle," and achieved 
 instant success. Other numbers followed and sustained 
 the popularity of the work. Irving had not thought of 
 The Sketch Book as a work that could appeal to 
 English favor, and had therefore made no arrangement 
 for an English edition. But the pirates were keener 
 than he to scent popularity, and presently they came 
 forward with a fragmentary London edition. On this 
 hint Irving acted, and in 1820 John Murray brought out 
 an authorized edition of the book. Its success was im- 
 mediate and phenomenal. All over England the book 
 was greeted with enthusiasm. 
 
 At that time Irving might well have said, with 
 Byron, "I woke up one morning and found myself 
 famous." 
 
 Other works followed, as a matter of course. 
 Bracebridgc Hall, in 1822, and Tales of a Traveller, in 
 1824. For the three books Murray paid the author 
 no less than $15,^25, the payments increasing with 
 each work published. 
 
 In 1S20, Irving began those Spanish studies which 
 later bore so rich a fruitage. In that year he went to 
 Madrid as an attache of the American Legation. 
 There he plunged into the archives as a boy dives into 
 
2qS Zbe .Often of letters 
 
 a temptingly limpid stream, and at the end of two 
 years he published his fascinating Life of Columbus 
 in London and New York. Again increased apprecia- 
 tion brought him greater gains, this work yielding him 
 the sum of SiS.ooo — or nearly as much as all his 
 earlier works together had brought to him. It gave him 
 a new and enlarged recognition, also, as a historian, a 
 man of diligent research and accurate scholarship, a man 
 to be taken seriously in the domain of letters, and his 
 later work profited mightily by this reputation, con- 
 joined as it was with an equal fame for extraordinary 
 lucidity, simplicity, and picturesqueness of literary 
 style. The Conquest of Grenada which followed, 
 in 1S2Q, and the Tales of the Alhatnbra (1832) were 
 additional products o\ his residence in Spain, where 
 fact fed his fancy and history furnished a fit background 
 for his splendid imaginings. The subjects enlisted all 
 his sympathies, and their treatment gave opportunity 
 for the exercise of all his extraordinary graces of style 
 and literary presentation. 
 
 In 1S20 Irving was made secretary of legation to 
 the American Ministry at London, and during the next 
 three years he enriched his acquaintance with British 
 life and letters in notable ways — meantime not neg- 
 lecting to enjoy to their full the delights of that high 
 social life which he so greatly loved. He produced no 
 literary work of consequence during this period, but 
 the work already done was recognized by a medal from 
 the Royal Society of Literature, and by an honorary 
 decree from the University of Oxford. 
 
Wasbtnoton Irving 299 
 
 After an absence of seventeen years, Irving returned 
 to New York in [832, a better American than ever, his 
 patriotism and his pride of country stimulated not only 
 by his broadened comprehension of what the land dis- 
 covered by Columbus was destined to be in human 
 history, but by every comparison he had made between 
 the older civilization and the new. On his return he 
 found his country greatly changed ; but all the changes 
 were for the better ; all of them had been made along 
 those lines of progress which his shrewd intelligence 
 saw to be the natural lines of American growth. 
 
 With intent to settle himself in a worthy home-life 
 he bought the place Sunnyside, and gathered those 
 dearest to him there, his brother and his nieces tilling 
 the place in his heart and home which his early 
 bereavement had left vacant. His literary work during 
 the next five years was comparatively unimportant. 
 He chronicled a tour on the prairies, and wrote of 
 Astoria with appreciation, but without making any 
 strong appeal to his readers. Much the same was true 
 of his Adventures of Captain Bonneville, which ap- 
 peared in 1817. Nothing that he ever wrote was defi- 
 cient in charm, but these works were trifles as compared 
 with those that had gone before, and they added noth- 
 ing to his reputation. Yet what schoolboy is there who 
 has not read with unmeasured delight the story of the 
 bee tree in the Crayon Miscellanies? And how en- 
 chanting must that work be to the generations which 
 did not have birth till after the prairies, with their 
 wierd vastness and mystery, were converted into 
 
3 oo Gbe flDen of Xctters 
 
 commonplace farms, or vulgarized by steam gang 
 ploughs and improved threshing machines ! 
 
 And then, too, Irving was going back to his old 
 literary love in his magazine work during these years 
 with Wolfert's Roost (1854) as a ' on g delayed but 
 delightful result. 
 
 In 1842 Irving was sent back to Spain, this time as 
 the American Minister. He went with much reluc- 
 tance and some anticipations of enjoyment — reluctance 
 to leave the delightful home-life he had created for 
 himself at Sunnyside, and eager anticipations of joy in 
 a renewal of the studies that had so fascinated him in 
 the archives of the ancient kingdom. He pleasantly 
 looked forward, too, to the renewal of old friendships, 
 and to an agreeable revival of his interest in the pic- 
 turesque life and character of the Spanish people. 
 
 He remained in Spain for four years, so occupied 
 with the official and social duties of his diplomatic post 
 that he did no literary work of consequence. He seems, 
 indeed, to have begun to feel old, and to regard his 
 work as done and himself as entitled to rest. He had 
 still one important and long contemplated task to ac- 
 complish—the Life of Washington. But he did no 
 work on it in Madrid, and on his return to Sunnyside 
 in 1840 was disposed, not to relinquish the purpose, 
 but to postpone it to some Spanish "to-morrow." 
 
 Yet during his second residence in Spain Irving had 
 prepared himself for one piece of work which readers 
 would not willingly have missed. He made those 
 studies which resulted in Mahomet and his Siuws- 
 
Masbinoton Hrvino 301 
 
 sors—a work which was a delightful revelation of 
 a fascinating history when it first appeared in 1849-50, 
 and which remains to this day the very best interpre- 
 tation that literature anywhere furnishes of the spirit 
 and purpose and achievements of the prophet and of 
 those who carried forward his work after him. 
 
 At the time of Irving's return to America his works 
 seemed to have had their day. They were mostly out 
 of print and they held in men's minds the place of 
 things that had been, rather than of things that were. 
 It was then that Mr. George P. Putnam rendered the 
 most inestimable of his great services, not only to 
 Irving's fame, but to American literature as well. With 
 his large-minded liberality as a publisher, and with his 
 unusually generous literary culture, he was unwilling 
 that Irving's writings should sink into neglect and for- 
 getfulness. Exercising the privilege of intimate per- 
 sonal friendship, he persuaded Irving to undertake a 
 thorough revision of his works, and when that was 
 done he brought them anew before the public at his own 
 financial risk, in a collected edition, which met with a 
 popular acceptance scarcely less marked than that which 
 the fascinating books had separately won upon their 
 first appearance. In a word, Mr. Putnam did much to 
 make Irving the foremost of American classic authors, 
 where before he had been only a popular writer of his 
 time. The The Life of Goldsmith and the Mahomet 
 were added at that time to the list of Irving's works. 
 
 The years that followed were not productive. Irving 
 toiled from time to time over the long-postponed Life 
 
302 £be men of Xcttcrs 
 
 of Washington, but he was now too old and too 
 world-weary to put into it the kind of genius that had 
 so greatly fascinated men in his earlier books. When 
 at last, in the closing year of his life, he put forth the 
 final volume of this Life, it was felt to be a careful, 
 conscientious, and admirably accurate work ; but it 
 sadly lacked the verve, the enthusiasm, and the sympa- 
 thetic appreciation of its subject which would very 
 certainly have made it a work of lasting, national im- 
 portance, if by good fortune its author could have 
 written it during the vigor of his manhood. 
 
 Except for the abatement of his interest in literary 
 pursuits, and the lessening of his power to put into 
 literary undertakings that which was best in himself, 
 Irving never grew old, in the true sense of those 
 words. He preserved his interest in life to fhe end. 
 His bubbling humor continued to the last to delight 
 those who were privileged to be his intimates. His 
 sympathy with all that is human suffered no diminu- 
 tion. "No arrogance of age, no irritability of mind, no 
 consciousness of his own consequence in human affairs 
 came to mar the gentle sweetness of his temper or the 
 kindly simplicity of his demeanor. When he died the 
 whole country honored and mourned him, but those 
 who most sorely felt his loss as a personal bereave- 
 ment were the intimates of his household and the 
 humble neighbors round about Sunnyside, every one 
 of whom wept at his grave in sincere sorrow for one 
 whom all the simple folk had learned to think of as a 
 friend. 
 
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE 
 
 THE achievements of Nathaniel Hawthorne as a 
 writer of subtle, psychological fiction must 
 always be a marvel and a mystery. They 
 strangely contradict all accepted theories as to the con- 
 ditions that are necessary to the novelist's equipment. 
 It is held that in order to depict human character and 
 truthfully reflect human life, the novelist must closely 
 study men and women of varying kinds and in widely 
 differing- circumstances. Hawthorne did nothing of 
 the kind. Until after he had written the books upon 
 which his fame securely rests, he scarcely knew men 
 and women at all. His life up to that time had been, 
 indeed, precisely the reverse of that which is supposed 
 to be the necessary apprenticeship of the novelist. 
 
 Born in 1S04. in the dull and decaying village of 
 Salem, where neither life nor character presented any 
 variety of interest, Hawthorne was from earliest child- 
 hood secluded and solitary amid surroundings of the 
 most depressing character. His father died when he 
 was four years old, and his mother at once went into a 
 seclusion more than monastic, from which she never 
 303 
 
304 <Tbc m>en of letters 
 
 afterwards emerged. The elder of his sisters, too. as 
 she grew up. developed the temper and habits of a re- 
 cluse, separating herself from all association, even with 
 her brother and sister, so far as that was possible. So 
 strong was her hermit habit that she passed the last 
 thirty years of her life in a lonely farmhouse by the 
 sea, with nobody about her but the farmer's family, 
 who were wholly incapable o\ companionship with one 
 oi her education and tastes. The hermit instinct was a 
 family failing. 
 
 Hawthorne himself shared the family tendency to 
 solitary living, and. even as a boy, sought no healthful 
 boyish companionships. When he grew up he lived 
 almost wholly in his chamber, and even after his mar- 
 riage — which was one of complete sympathy and 
 happiness— it was his custom to pass the greater part 
 of his waking hours in solitude in his study, in the 
 woodlands, and by night in lonely paddlings on 
 the dark face of a little river, but always far away 
 from human companionship, even that of his loving 
 wife. In brief, here was a man who took the ut- 
 most pains to see as little as possible of his fellow- 
 human beings, men or women, to commune with 
 them as briefly and as infrequently as he might, to 
 see nothing of society, to heed nothing of affairs, to 
 learn nothing of human ways. Yet out of his solitude 
 this man, untutored of experience, unaccustomed to the 
 ways o\ men, sent forth books that astonished the 
 English-speaking world, and that still astonish it. by 
 the subtle insight that inspires them, by the profound 
 
Nathaniel Hawthorne 
 
 From the painting by A. E. Smith 
 Reproduced by permission of Foster Bros., Boston 
 
matbanicl Ibawtborne 305 
 
 mastery they display of the deepest springs of human 
 conduct, and by the extraordinary truthfulness and 
 convincing character of their interpretation of human 
 motives. 
 
 Mr. Julian Hawthorne has very properly and effec- 
 tively rebuked the foolishness which a while ago 
 prompted certain enthusiasts to compare Hawthorne 
 with Shakespeare. And yet there is one characteristic 
 of genius which Hawthorne undoubtedly shared with 
 Shakespeare — namely, a subtle, instinctive, and un- 
 erring insight into the human heart, a marvellous 
 mastery of the impulses of the soul. 
 
 All this had its best revelation in The Scarlet Letter, 
 The House of the Seven Gables, and The Blithedale Ro- 
 mance — works produced while yet their author was 
 hiding himself in solitude, and refusing to mingle among 
 men. Travel and a larger association with his fellows 
 came to him later, but after those opportunities were 
 his he wrote no bonks comparable with these, no books 
 that revealed so profound an insight, or made so irre- 
 sistible an appeal for acceptance as revelations of truth. 
 His intuitive perceptions were safer guides to a knowl- 
 edge of truth than other men's experience, and expe- 
 rience, when it came, added nothing to his power. 
 That is why we may apply to him in all sincerity the 
 much abused word Genius. 
 
 Hawthorne was fortunate, too, in the possession of 
 a literary style of peculiar clearness and unusual attract- 
 iveness in which to clothe the wonderful creations of 
 his imagination. Even in his earliest writings there is 
 
3oo £be HDen of letters 
 
 no affectation, no insincerity, no excess, and no rhetor- 
 ical false note. The uncompromising honest)' of his 
 character, and perhaps also the singular shyness and 
 modesty of his nature protected him always from errors 
 of that kind. It is not difficult to suppose that the ex- 
 treme simplicity of utterance which adds a special 
 charm of its own to his style, was learned in fairy-land, 
 where, he tells us. he always lived by preference when 
 permitted to do so. 
 
 Hawthorne passed his boyhood mainly in the dull, 
 dispiriting atmosphere of Salem, but a year or so of it 
 was spent in the woodlands of Maine, where he found 
 a congenial solitude under the trees or by the margin 
 of a little lake. He was prepared for college under 
 the personal tuition o\ Dr. Worcester, the author of 
 Worcester's Dictionary. At the age o\ seventeen he 
 entered Bowdoin College, where he won disl 
 among the students as a writer of college themes, but 
 made no great mark for scholarship. 
 
 On leaving college he was without a calling and 
 without prospects. He seems also to have been with- 
 out much ambition. At any rate he made no marked 
 effort to improve his condition. He sought out no 
 employment, but lapsed again into his life of solitude. 
 For twelve years he lived, as he has himself reported. 
 '" in a lonely chamber." which he rarely left except for 
 lonelier twilight rambles by the sea. It was an ex- 
 tremely unhealthy life and one that might well have 
 brought unwholesome literature as its consequence. 
 But it did not. During this time Hawthorne read and 
 
IRatbaniel Ibawtborne 307 
 
 wrote much, but most of what he wrote by day he 
 burned at night. The remainder he published in vari- 
 ous periodicals and annuals. As he published anony- 
 mously his writings brought him no recognition, and 
 as the pay was always very small and was often with- 
 held entirely, his industry brought him but scanty 
 bread and butter. In 182b — the year after his gradu- 
 ation, —he published his first novel, Fanshawe. It 
 met with no success and Hawthorne presently sup- 
 pressed it. It has been republished since his death. 
 He met with other rebuffs in his efforts to win public 
 attention, and for a time contented himself with pub- 
 lishing small productions in newspapers and magazines 
 of limited circulation. In 18^0 he sent some manuscripts 
 to S. G. Goodrich (Peter Parley), who offered him $35 
 for the privilege of publishing one of them in his an- 
 nual, which was called the Token and Atlantic Souve- 
 nir. At the same time Goodrich promised to find a 
 publisher for the book that embraced all of them if pos- 
 sible. As the papers were all anonymous, Goodrich 
 ultimately included four of them in a single volume of 
 the Token in 1831. Goodrich also secured for Haw- 
 thorne the editorship of The American Magazine of Use- 
 ful and Entertaining Knowledge, at a salary of $soo a 
 year, most of which was never paid. Hawthorne at 
 this time compiled for Goodrich a Universal History, 
 for which he received the munificent sum of $100. 
 Think of it ! One of the greatest creative writers that 
 America has produced, set to write a Universal His- 
 tory, to be published under another man's pen name,. 
 
3oS Zbc flDcn of letters 
 
 all for less money than a capable newspaper reporter 
 in our day earns every week, and often by a single 
 article ! 
 
 The country had not at that time achieved or even 
 declared its intellectual independence, of Great Britain. 
 Even had Hawthorne put forth The Scarlet Letter 
 then, it is doubtful that any considerable portion of the 
 public would have dared proclaim him a great writer 
 until British criticism should first give them leave. In- 
 deed, the first reception given in this country to The 
 Scarlet Letter and its successor, was that of pleased 
 fancy rather than anything higher or better. The re- 
 viewers and readers oi the books — all but a select few 
 — thought and spoke of Hawthorne rather as a very 
 clever romance writer, with a charming literary style, 
 than as a new-born force in the world of letters. It 
 was not until the sea brought to them news of the im- 
 pression made in England by his works that Americans 
 generally ventured to recognize Hawthorne's genius 
 for what it was. Irving had had a like experience, for 
 it was only after English criticism had dubbed him 
 knight and awarded him his spurs, that he of Sunny- 
 side succeeded— to borrow his own phrase— in getting 
 "this great stupid public by the ears." 
 
 But English approval came to Hawthorne, in some 
 small degree at least, before his great work was begun. 
 As early as [835 the London Athenceum made a text 
 of his stories in the Token recognizing both their 
 charm and the promise that was in them. This en- 
 couraged him to collect those stories and others, and. 
 
IRatfoaniel Ibawtborne 309 
 
 with the pecuniary support of his friend Horatio 
 Bridge, he brought out the first series of Twice Told 
 Tilt's. After a time Goodrich pronounced the book a 
 financial success, in support of which judgment he 
 cited the fact that about seven hundred copies had been 
 sold ! Here we see in all its glory the inducement 
 which a literary career held out to this penniless genius 
 who was about to get married, and to whom for years 
 yet to come the doubt about the morrow's bread and 
 butter was destined to be the burden of each day's 
 anxiety. We see also why Hawthorne, with all his 
 gifts and all his high imaginings was content in 1819 
 to accept a post in the Boston custom house as a 
 weigher and gauger of merchandise at a salary of 
 $1200 a year. The facts are anything but creditable 
 to a people who even then prided themselves upon 
 a superior intellectuality and vaunted their culture. 
 Their neglect would have cost us all that Hawthorne is 
 to our literature and our national good name, had the 
 gifted dreamer lived elsewhere than in the fairy-land of 
 his own imaginings, or had he been duly mindful of 
 his own necessities and those of the family that was so 
 soon to be his. As it was, the neglect served only to 
 dispirit him for a time and perhaps to postpone for a 
 little the splendid fruition of his genius. 
 
 For in spite of all his discouragements Hawthorne 
 never wavered in his purpose to go on as well as he 
 could with the work that nature had made him to do. 
 He accepted such employment as that in the custom 
 house as affording a temporary means of subsistence, 
 
3 io Sbc fIDen of letters 
 
 and never as a stepping-stone to a career other than 
 his chosen one of creative writer. But for his real 
 work he needed always his solitude and his musings, 
 and, therefore, during his two years in the custom 
 house he produced nothing. Fortunately for letters, 
 the Whigs came into power at the end of two years, 
 and dismissed Hawthorne from the service, upon the 
 then accepted theory that no Democrat could be 
 trusted by a Whig administration to weigh and gauge 
 merchandise properly — or, in plainer terms, because 
 politics was in that unenlightened state which was 
 reflected in Marcy"s barbaric dictum, "To the victors 
 belong the spoils." 
 
 Thus compulsorily freed from official drudgery, 
 Hawthorne retired again to his "lonely chamber" and 
 to his literary work, and presently he brought out a 
 book of historical sketches for young people. He had 
 saved about a thousand dollars, and he unwisely in- 
 vested and lost it in that picturesquely impractical 
 experiment, the Brook Farm community. He joined 
 the community but quickly found himself out of sym- 
 pathy with the life at Brook Farm. That life was, 
 indeed, fundamentally impossible to one of his tempera- 
 ment. It was community life, while he was by incli- 
 nation and lifelong habit a recluse, a man of intense 
 individuality. Its purpose was to promote close and 
 constant association, while his very nature shrank from 
 such daily contact with others. He himself said of his 
 experiment: "1 went to live in Arcady and found 
 myself up to the chin in a barn-yard." He therefore 
 
IRatbanid Ibawtborne 3" 
 
 remained but a brief time in the community of brilliant 
 scholars and thinkers, and in 1842 — poor as he was 
 after sinking his savings in the experiment — he mar- 
 ried and went to live in the old manse at Concord. 
 The only return he got from Brook Farm was a back- 
 ground for The BUthedale Romance, written long 
 afterwards. 
 
 At Concord, for the first time, Hawthorne was 
 thoroughly happy He had for his wife a woman 
 peculiarly fit to minister to a nature such as his, and 
 from beginning to end their married life, as reflected in 
 their letters and journals, and in the delightfully inti- 
 mate biography written by their son, appears to have 
 been a poem unmarred by a single false quantity. Haw- 
 thorne's only trouble during all the years of his most 
 productive literary activity was the daily necessity of 
 struggling with the problem of bread-winning. 
 
 In the old manse he resumed both his writing and 
 his habits of solitude, habits that his wonderfully wise 
 and tenderly sympathetic wife encouraged as a neces- 
 sary condition of life and work for him. 
 
 He here produced some of the stories afterwards 
 collected as Mosses from an Old Mjnse, publishing them 
 in a magazine which paid him meagerly and uncertainly 
 for them. On their proceeds, however, the family 
 contrived to live, and presently a child was born to 
 them, the eldest of the three whom Hawthorne made 
 his playmates and his only entertainers in the years to 
 come. In 184s the second series of Twice Told Tales 
 appeared, achieving a somewhat larger sale than its 
 
3i2 £be HDen of Xcttcrs 
 
 predecessor had done. For Hawthorne had been slowly 
 but steadily gaining the favor of those who read. 
 
 After four years in the old manse, Hawthorne met 
 with serious losses, chiefly through the failure of the 
 Democratic Review while heavily in his debt— heavily 
 at least from the point of view of a man so poor as he 
 at that time was. This failure not only lost to him the 
 return he should have had from stories already written 
 and published, but it cut off his chief reliance for a con- 
 tinued income from his writings. He therefore quitted 
 his Arcady and returned to Salem, where, in 1840. he 
 was made surveyor of the port, and established himself 
 in the custom house. 
 
 It was during his three years' incumbency of this 
 office that he wrote the first draft of The Scarlet Letter, 
 the work which first brought him fame, and first re- 
 vealed to an appreciative world the full measure of his 
 genius. The story was published in 1850, and achieved 
 a success such as Hawthorne had never known and 
 probably had not hoped for, and especially such as he 
 had not anticipated from that work. For both he and 
 his publisher distrusted the story as much too sombre 
 to be widely accepted. After a first edition of five 
 thousand copies had been sold during the first fortnight, 
 both author and publisher were convinced that there 
 could be no further demand for the book, and so the 
 type from which it had been printed was distributed. 
 But the demand for the story continued and increased, 
 until it became necessary to set the pages anew, and to 
 stereotype them. 
 
IHatbanicl Ibawtborne 313 
 
 Now for the first time Hawthorne came to his own. 
 Both in America and in England, where the book had 
 been reprinted, The Scarlet Letter became immediately 
 the most widely popular book of the time, and the 
 enthusiasm with which British critics hailed the work 
 as a remarkable manifestation of genius encouraged 
 the timid among Hawthorne's own countrymen to 
 recognize him for what he was. 
 
 And his newly won fame brought to him, of course, 
 a greatly increased earning capacity, a new and larger 
 market for his literary wares. But fortunately Haw- 
 thorne did not exploit his popularity. His artistic con- 
 science was too fine and true to permit him to trade 
 upon his name, as so many popular writers of later 
 times have done. He did not fall into that lamentable 
 and dishonoring mistake which has been so often 
 made in our less conscientious age. 
 
 Hawthorne could never live contentedly in one 
 place for any great length of time. Now that his place 
 in the world was made, as one of the most renowned 
 of American men of letters, he removed to Lenox, in 
 the Berkshire Hills, and again went into close seclusion, 
 living in an ugly little red farmhouse a mile or more 
 from the village, on a lonely country road. Herman 
 Melville lived at Pittsfield, not far away, and Haw- 
 thorne saw a good deal of him. Otherwise his com- 
 panions were his wife and children, the little lake, and 
 the beautiful hills. Here he produced The House of 
 the Seven Gables, which was published in 1851, and 
 at once achieved a popularity even greater than that 
 
314 £be flDen of Xcttcrs 
 
 of The Scarlet Letter. During the next year he 
 wrote the Wonder Book for children, a fascinating 
 story book founded upon the classic mythology, which 
 at once made him the idol of all the young people of 
 that generation. During the next year he published 
 The Snow Image and Other Twice Told Tales. 
 
 By the autumn of 1851 Hawthorne's old restlessness 
 returned, and he removed from Lenox to West Newton, 
 a most unattractive and railroad)' suburban village near 
 Boston. Here he remained for less than a year, during 
 which time he wrote the third of that trilogy of tales 
 on which his tame securely rests — The Blithedale 
 Romance. 
 
 In [852 he returned to Concord, where he had 
 bought a house which he named "The Wayside." 
 Here he remained until the spring of [853, when his 
 old college intimate and lifelong friend, Franklin 
 Pierce, who had become President of the United States, 
 appointed him to the consulate at Liverpool, at that 
 time the most desirable office, from a pecuniary point 
 of view, within the President's gift. During Haw- 
 thorne's incumbency. Congress passed an act so far 
 reducing the emoluments of the office as to leave the 
 consul with barely sufficient income to cover his 
 expenses. 
 
 During his later stay at Concord, Hawthorne con- 
 tinued to write, but he produced no more works com- 
 parable in quality with the wonderful three already 
 put forth. The really great work of his life was done, 
 and all that followed, to the end of his days, was good 
 
"IRatbaniel Ibawtborne 315 
 
 rather than great literature, unless possibly the reader 
 may feel inclined to reckon The Marble Faun, 
 written in Italy and England with The Scarlet Letter, 
 The House of the Seven Gabels, and The Blithedale 
 Romance. 
 
 Hawthorne remained in England during the four 
 years of Pierce's presidency, and afterwards travelled 
 on the continent of Europe, returning to Concord just 
 before the outbreak of the Civil War. Little more 
 of consequence happened to him during the few 
 years that remained to him of life. He died on May 18, 
 1864, honored and beloved as few Americans have 
 ever been by their countrymen, most honored and 
 beloved by those who were permitted to know him 
 best. 
 
 His love of solitude was unnatural and unhealthy 
 of course, but it had no touch of moroseness or even 
 of melancholy about it. He lived, as he said, in fairy- 
 land. Guests could not visit him there, and if he must 
 receive them he must quit the paradise of his imaginary 
 world for a world less real to him and less attractive. 
 
 He had a great gift of happiness. His cheerfulness 
 was extraordinary, and his kindliness unbounded. In 
 his children he found unfailing delight, and his com- 
 panionship with them was so intimate, so sympathetic, 
 so childlike in its abandonment, that, as his son has 
 recorded, they never desired other companionship than 
 his when he was near. 
 
 His literary themes were usually sombre in their 
 setting, but were illumined in his handling of them by 
 
316 Zbc flDen of Xettcrs 
 
 a humor as subtle as his psychology itself and as fasci- 
 nating. 
 
 In personal character he was altogether admirable, 
 and his fame is unsullied by any act that it is neces- 
 sary to explain or to excuse. 
 
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW 
 
 BY way of introduction to a voluminous life of 
 the poet Longfellow, his brother, the Rev. 
 Samuel Longfellow, is at pains to warn his 
 readers that there is little in that life to call for bio- 
 graphical record. So far as events were concerned the 
 whole story of Longfellow's career might easily be 
 written upon a sheet or two of note paper and, except 
 for the interest that necessarily attaches to all that con- 
 cerns the personality of a beloved poet, even that brief 
 record might be reduced to a few lines, setting forth 
 that Longfellow was born in Portland, Maine, on Feb- 
 ruary 27, 1807; that he was educated at Bowdoin Col- 
 lege ; that after a period of study in Europe— which 
 was later followed by other like periods of study— he 
 became a professor of modern languages at Bowdoin 
 and afterwards at Harvard ; that he was twice happily 
 married ; that he wrote the poems which have en- 
 deared his name to all Americans and won recognition 
 for his genius in other lands ; and that he died in Cam- 
 bridge, Massachusetts, on March 24. 1882. 
 
 So far as incident was concerned, his life included 
 317 
 
318 Gbc (IDcn of letters 
 
 none of it. It was, from beginning to end, that quiet, 
 uneventful, and only gently emotional life of which his 
 poetry is the noblest and fittest reflection that our 
 literature holds. 
 
 Perhaps he would have been a greater poet if he had 
 suffered more. Perhaps he would have sounded a 
 stronger note of song if his experience had been less 
 tranquil. Perhaps if he had been a man of less exem- 
 plary life : if he had sinned and repented more ; if his 
 experience had been more strenuous, more passionate, 
 more intense ; if fortune, if mischance, if weakness of 
 will, had brought into his being more trying experi- 
 ences, more of personal acquaintance with the seamy 
 side of life, more of remorse, more of folly, and more of 
 recompensing repentance his poetry might have made 
 a more irresistible appeal than it does to men of warm 
 blood and conscious human weakness. 
 
 John Milton said— and surely John Milton knew — 
 that poetry must be "simple, sensuous, passionate." 
 The poetry of Longfellow is simple enough ; in a 
 very gentle and reserved way it is sensuous, but its 
 passion is never intense enough to raise it to the 
 highest levels of inspiring force. Even in Evange- 
 line — a story as dramatic in its incidents as any that 
 human life and love and sorrow have ever combined 
 to bring to birth, we have tar more of exquisite, 
 idyllic portrayal than of tempestuous passion, heroic 
 assertion or intense imagining of good or ill. Think 
 what a telling Victor Hugo would have given to that 
 tale ! Imagine the intensity of passion that Byron 
 
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow 
 
 From the painting by G. P A. Healy 
 Reproduced by permission of Foster Bros., Boston 
 
 
£be flDen of 1c 
 
 
 
Ibenr^ Ma&swortb Xongfdlow 3 '9 
 
 would have infused into it ! Picture the result that 
 Walter Scott would have wrought out of it, had it 
 been his to relate in verse ! 
 
 But these were Longfellow's limitations. It was 
 given to him to sing the gentler emotions and to re- 
 flect in his verse the less strenuous, less passionate 
 life of which alone, from youth to age, he had per- 
 sonal experience. And surely no poet has more per- 
 fectly fulfilled his mission than he did. No poet has 
 more inspiringly spoken the thought of those who 
 lead sheltered lives, or more entrancingly reflected 
 the emotions of those to whom simplicity of soul, 
 uprightness of conduct, and purity of mind seem the 
 necessary and only tolerable conditions of worthy 
 human living. 
 
 To the gentle, to the refined, to those of simple 
 life, to those who find this world of ours a theatre of 
 lowly duty and only humble ambitions, Longfellow 
 must always be a prophet whose words are irresistibly 
 inspiring, and to readers of less gentle experience they 
 bear always a winsome message of persuasion to 
 simpler and purer and homlier ways of living and 
 thinking and feeling than any that the great world 
 knows. 
 
 The "Psalm of Life" is a sermon of untold excel- 
 lence in its inspiration to earnestness and honesty of 
 soul. The "Village Blacksmith" is an apotheosis of 
 those homlier human virtues on which mainly the 
 sweetening of human life depends. The " Old Clock 
 on the Stairs " ticks out more than one lesson that it 
 
320 £be HDcn of Xettcrs 
 
 were well for all men and women to learn. It is in 
 these poems and such as these that we find the true 
 quality of Longfellow, the note that made him above 
 all and beyond all the poet of the people, the inter- 
 preter and the inspirer of that simple and honest and 
 sweetly wholesome living that lies at the foundation of 
 our national history, and that sadly less and less distin- 
 guishes our national character as we grow older in 
 world-knowledge, and less like our earlier and better 
 selves. 
 
 Mr. Longfellow began writing verse while yet a 
 mere boy, and during his student life in college he 
 published a number of fugitive pieces in the news- 
 papers. Only a few of these did he afterwards deem 
 worthy of preservation in more permanent form. It 
 was not until 1S39 that Hyperion appeared as his 
 first ambitious work. He had already won his audi- 
 ence by the "Psalm of Life" and other writings in 
 poetry and prose in the magazines, and Hyperion 
 quickly confirmed his claim to be reckoned among 
 American men of letters. A little later followed Voices 
 of the Night, his first orderly volume of poetry. Some 
 of the pieces in it — and notably " The Psalm of Life "— 
 quickly became household words throughout the coun- 
 try, and from that hour Longfellow's fame was estab- 
 lished and his audience secure. 
 
 In 1841 appeared the volume entitled Ballads and 
 Other Poems, which added to the list of his univers- 
 ally popular productions, "The Village Blacksmith," 
 " The Wreck of the Hesperus,"' and " Excelsior.'" 
 
Ibenrp IHflabswortb ILongfdlow 321 
 
 The record of his further work in poetry is a public 
 possession, and it need not be here set down in detail. 
 In Evangeline Mr. Longfellow embarrassed a very beauti- 
 ful story and a very poetical telling of it by adopting 
 as its vehicle the so-called English hexameter. That 
 is a deformed and hunchbacked kind of verse, differing 
 from the Latin hexameter in that, for lack of spondees 
 in our language with which to end the lines resonantly, 
 it is forced to employ a very lame and halting foot of 
 which the first syllable is long and the other triflingly 
 short. It is entirely safe to say that the choice of this 
 metre for a poem otherwise so full of grace and charm 
 was an unfortunate mistake into which the poet's 
 elaborate scholarship betrayed him in spite of the pro- 
 test of his very musical ear. A man with a set purpose 
 may jolt over a corduroy road with ejaculatory pro- 
 testations that he never found a turnpike so delight- 
 fully smooth ; in like manner one who is set in that 
 way may read Evangeline in so loyally appreciative 
 a spirit as to declare its form a pleasure-giving one. 
 But in the one case as in the other, the experience must 
 in fact be one of jolting and joggling. By no possible 
 elocutionary device can the lines of Evangeline be 
 made to read easily, smoothly, naturally, and with sat- 
 isfaction to the ear. But so touching is the story, and 
 so exquisitely sympathetic is its telling, that in spite 
 of its unfortunate form and versification, it has taken 
 its well-deserved place as one of the classics of our 
 literature. 
 
 In Miles Standish, written half a lifetime later, 
 
322 Z\k flDen of letters 
 
 the same meter is used with far better effect. Whether 
 because use had taught Longfellow to employ the 
 pseudo-hexameter more expertly, or because the theme 
 of the poem was better adapted to this form, or because 
 ot some other and more recondite reason, we read 
 Miles Standish with greater ease and more of musi- 
 cal satisfaction than we do Evangeline. And Miles 
 Standish has the additional merit o\ telling one of the 
 most fascinating love stories that have been written 
 since the ancient chronicler celebrated in everlasting 
 poetry the devotion of Ruth to Boaz. It was Ruth 
 who spoke and Boaz who heard, when Priscilla inter- 
 rupted John Alden's eloquence in behalf o( his friend, 
 with her exasperated maidenly protest, "Why don't 
 you speak for yourself, John ? " 
 
 In Hiawatha which was published in 1855, Mr. 
 Longfellow undertook to do for the Indian side of our 
 very romantic and picturesque national history what 
 he had already done for another side of it in Evangeline, 
 what he was already planning to do for a still other 
 side of it in The Courts/zip of Miles Standish. Un- 
 happily, in his ambition to devise new metrical vehicles 
 for English verse he adopted for Hiawatha a metre 
 and a method that lent themselves with fatal facility to 
 parody and imitation. When the poem appeared there 
 was not a college in all the land in which some more 
 or less clever student did not record college happen- 
 ings in Hiawathan verse, not a rural newspaper that 
 did not bristle with like efforts from the hands of local 
 wits and pretending humorists. The poem became — 
 
1bcnr\> THflabswortb Xongtellow 323 
 
 quite undeservedly — a joke, and for a time at least its 
 appeal to serious attention was lost in the frivolity of 
 its imitators. 
 
 Nevertheless, it is a poem of great and lasting 
 worth, and in despite of the oceans of parody in which 
 for a time it seemed destined to be swamped, it has 
 vigorous life in it still, which will increase in interest as 
 the country recedes farther and farther from the Indian 
 life of which it furnishes our noblest poetic record. 
 
 Unlike most of the guild of the poets, Mr. Longfel- 
 low prospered in his worldly affairs, and some years 
 before his death he was enabled by the profits that his 
 books yielded to retire from the drudgery of his profes- 
 sorship, and for a little while to enjoy that leisure which 
 a lifetime of sincere endeavor ought to bring, but often 
 does not, to every man whose service to mankind is 
 of his best. 
 
RALPH WALDO EMERSON 
 
 TO commonplace minds Ralph Waldo Emerson 
 must always be an inscrutable enigma. Even 
 to those who knew him best and best under- 
 stood him, he was an Oracle, teaching often in 
 paradoxes, and often veiling his thought in mystical 
 utterances not always easily understood. 
 
 It is difficult to define a genius such as his — a 
 genius that never succeeded in defining itself, though 
 believing absolutely in itself as a Divine emanation. 
 By way of suggestion, rather than of definition, it may 
 be said that Emerson was a poet who believed his own 
 poetry, a seer who reverently held his own thought to 
 be a revelation of Divine truth, in the deliverance of 
 which he was merely the agent and implement of a 
 higher power, and not in any sense himself a creative 
 intelligence. It is necessary to understand clearly his 
 intellectual attitude in this respect if we would at all 
 understand his life and work. Emerscn held inspira- 
 tion to be the source of all that is good in utterance. 
 He regarded Divine revelation as a gift of God to man, 
 not confined to any period of human history or to any 
 
Ralph Waldo Emerson 
 
 painting by A. E. Smith 
 Reproduced , Foster Bros., Bosto 
 

 
 
 
 
 
ftnlpb UQnloo £mcreon 
 
 group of specially inspired men, but as a n 
 ering itself continuously in all times and count: 
 
 innumera: human and other. He 
 
 utterly rejected the thought that God had r- 
 himself and his will once for all in a body of cai 
 scriptur* \ had withdrawn himself behind the 
 
 veil of I 
 • 
 which the great majority of men were destine 
 
 He believed that revelation is never final, but 
 always progre % to man in e 
 
 land, as man is fitted by circumstance to receive the 
 enlightenment of truth. 
 
 Equally he rejected the theory that our only means 
 
 • s. He 
 indeed, as 
 he share : 
 e of matt' 
 which alone the s< 
 tioned the reality of phe 
 
 of the mind. He ; be the best source 
 
 is capable of 
 rid that 
 ■ 
 
 nomena is to 
 be weighed for an instant. 
 In thi 
 
 dness of hi 
 what he believed to be tr it to find its 
 
 way to acceptance 
 
3^6 £bc fi>cn of Xetters 
 
 than this he was powerless to answer. If challenged 
 to furnish proof he sat silent. If required to defend his 
 teachings or to reconcile them with conclusions drawn 
 from phenomena, he declined to undertake the task. 
 firmly believing that intuition and intellectual and 
 moral perception, furnish safer guides than any argu- 
 ment based upon phenomena can — that truth is inde- 
 pendent of what we call fact, and superior to it. In 
 his writings he made large and fruitful use of the phe- 
 nomena of nature, but only by way o\ suggestion, never 
 in support o\ what he believed to be truth, but con- 
 stantly in helpful illustration of it. 
 
 This is necessarily an inadequate statement. Let 
 us strengthen and clarity it by quoting Emerson's own 
 account o\ his attitude. In an address before the 
 Divinity School at Harvard, in 1838, he frankly preached 
 all his heresies, not with offensive dogmatism, but with 
 perfect candor and sweet persuasiveness. Instantly his 
 teaching was challenged, not alone by the orthodox 
 and conservative, but equally by the most advanced 
 and liberal Unitarians. Among these was the Rev. 
 Henry Ware. Emerson's friend and former colleague. 
 He wrote to Emerson on the subject and preached a 
 sermon in answer to the address. In reply Emerson 
 wrote a letter in which he said : 
 
 •■ It strikes me very oddly that good and wise men at Cambridge 
 and Boston should think of raising me into an object of criticism. 
 . . . I well know there is no scholar less willing or less able 
 than myself to be a polemic. I could not give an account of myself 
 if challenged. I could not possiblv give you one of the •argu- 
 ments ' vou cruellv hint at. on which any doctrine of mine stands ; 
 
IRalpb THHaloo Emerson 327 
 
 for I do not know what arguments are in reference to any expres- 
 sion of a thought. I delight in telling what 1 think ; but if you 
 ask me how 1 dare say so, or why it is so, I am the most helpless 
 of mortal men. I do not even see that either of these questions 
 admits of an answer." 
 
 Rejecting all creeds and dogmas, Emerson was, in 
 his own person and life, profoundly religious. He has 
 been called a pantheist, and he was such, though not 
 in the grossly material sense in which we apply that 
 term to certain of the ancient philosophers. They held 
 that all things are God ; he taught that God is all 
 things and all things only a part of God— a spiritual 
 doctrine quite different from the materialistic, pagan 
 one. That, in Theodore Parker's phrase, "sinks God 
 in Nature." Emerson's belief sank Nature in God. He 
 held God to be the one, only existence, of which the 
 material universe— if it be material— and all created 
 souls, are only a thought, an emanation, a manifesta- 
 tion. He held human life to be purely educational in 
 its purpose, designed to create and develop character 
 and to lead through death to a higher and more spirit- 
 ual life. He rejected the doctrine of damnation as 
 unthinkably inconsistent with the idea of God. But 
 he was not quite sure that the human soul might nut 
 be incarnated twice or thrice or many times by way of 
 preparation for a higher existence, and on at least one 
 notable occasion he put forth the thought that in 
 God's wisdom human souls might perhaps altogether 
 cease to be at death, a teaching which, if he had been 
 concerned to argue in justification of his thought, he 
 might have found it difficult to reconcile with his 
 
328 Z\k flDen of letters 
 
 belief concerning the all-embracing, all-including char- 
 acter of the Deity as the only existence in the universe. 
 Still more difficult would it have been to square this 
 suggestion with his firm belief that human souls are 
 not created existences, but are from everlasting to 
 everlasting. 
 
 Here we are reminded of a notable trait of Emerson's 
 mind and character. He had no fear of inconsistency. 
 At one time he would frankly contradict what he had 
 said at another, without apology or any attempt to 
 reconcile the later with the earlier utterance. The 
 fundamental characteristic of the man was truthfulness. 
 On even- occasion he spoke his thought, not only 
 without shrinking, but with deep reverence for it as 
 God-given truth. It troubled him not at all if the 
 thought of to-day was in contradiction of the thought 
 o( yesterday or a year ago. Such inconsistency was 
 in entire harmony with his conviction that thought is 
 revelation and that revelation is partial, fragmentary, 
 progressive. His moral and intellectual courage was 
 boundless. A suppression of truth, a withholding of his 
 most daring thought for fear of any consequence, was 
 as impossible to him as downright lying, and it would 
 have seemed the equivalent of that to his apprehension. 
 
 These contradictions are very frequent in his writ- 
 ings done at different times. In one case, cited by Dr. 
 Oliver Wendell Holmes, the conflict between two 
 utterances made at the same time, seems obvious. 
 Yet Emerson put forth the two conflicting thoughts 
 in close juxtaposition without explanation or any ef- 
 
IRalpb THttatoo Emerson 329 
 
 fort to reconcile them, offering both equally as truth 
 perceived. 
 
 The explanation of this attitude of mind is to be 
 found, doubtless, in the fact that Emerson was at 
 all times a poet. It is true that a comparatively small 
 part of his writings is in metrical form, and that he was 
 neither facile nor accurate in the writing of verse. But 
 very nearly all his prose is in its essence poetry of an 
 exalted character, while some of the passages so over- 
 flow with apt and fascinating imagery that, in Dr. 
 Holmes's happy phrase, they "seem to long for the 
 music of rhythm and the resonance of rhyme." His 
 habit of mind was that of the poet altogether, and 
 poets are not accustomed to harness their thought 
 between thills. They think as the zephyrs blow, and 
 if they be honest and fearless, as Emerson was, in a 
 scarcely paralleled degree, their utterances take color 
 from their moods and are necessarily full of contradic- 
 tions which represent the constant shifting of their 
 points of view. 
 
 Extraordinary intellectual insight, transparent sim- 
 plicity of character, perfect purity of life, and a con- 
 scientious devotion to truth as he saw it joined with 
 unfaltering moral courage, made Emerson a born leader 
 of men in matters of mind and morals. He spoke 
 always as one having authority. Yet he claimed no 
 authority for himself. He asked of men nothing more 
 than acceptance of what messages of truth he might 
 bear to them, and that for truth's sake, and not because 
 he was the bearer of the messages. He was therefore 
 
33Q Zbc flDen of letters 
 
 never dogmatic even in rejecting dogma. And in re- 
 jecting dogma he never lost sympathy with those who 
 clung most tenaciously to old forms of thought and 
 belief. He was far more than tolerant. With his 
 views as to Divine revelation he found good in all 
 religions, in all sincere beliefs and especially in all 
 things that tended to the uplifting of character and the 
 enthronement of conscience as the ruler of human life : 
 and the good that he found in each, he loved and 
 revered, as a part of that truth which he regarded as 
 of God. 
 
 Yet singularly enough — at least in the contempla- 
 tion of lesser minds than his — he steadfastly opposed 
 organized propagandist efforts for reform. This is the 
 way in which he spoke of such movements. 
 
 "The reforms whose fame now fills the land with Temper- 
 ance, Anti-Slavery, Non-Resistance, No Government, Equal Labor, 
 fair and generous as each appears, are poor, bitter things when 
 prosecuted for themselves as an end. . . . I say to you. plainly, 
 there is no end to which your practical faculty can aim so sacred or 
 so large that, if pursued for itself, will not at last become carrion 
 and an offence to the nostrils. . . . Your end should be one 
 inapprehensible to the senses." 
 
 And again he spoke these words of condemnation 
 and rebuke : 
 
 "The reforms have their higher origin in an ideal justice, but 
 they do not retain the purity of an idea. They are quickly organ- 
 ized in some low, inadequate form, and present no more poetic 
 image to the mind than the evil tradition which they reprobated. 
 Thev mix the fire of the moral sentiment with personal and party 
 heats, with measureless exaggerations and the blindness that pre- 
 fers some darling measure to justice and truth. Those who are 
 
IRalpb Malfco Emerson 331 
 
 urging with most ardor what are called the greatest benefit of man- 
 kind are narrow, self-pleasing, and conceited men." 
 
 Another seeming contradiction in his intellectual 
 attitude and methods is seen in his teaching with 
 regard to superlatives. So tar as adjectives were con- 
 cerned he detested superlatives and rarely used them. 
 Apparently he would have liked to reduce the compari- 
 son of all adjectives to two degrees. Yet no writer 
 was ever more given than he to hyperbole, to over 
 statement, to extravagant excess in the presentation of 
 his thought. Not satisfied with the gold, he gilded it, 
 and illuminated it with the calcium lights of his fervid 
 imagination and his splendid rhetoric. 
 
 In Emerson's life there was so little of incident that 
 his biography, so far as externals are concerned, might 
 be compressed into a few lines. But as an intellectual 
 and moral force, as an inspirer of others to higher and 
 purer living, as an apostle of conscience he lived a life 
 which many volumes would not adequately compass. 
 
 He was born in Boston, May 25, 1801. He was 
 educated at the Boston Latin School and Harvard Col- 
 lege, as his forebears had been for several generations 
 past. After a period of school teaching he studied 
 divinity, entered the pulpit as a Unitarian clergyman, 
 and was soon pleasantly settled as minister of an intel- 
 lectual and refined congregation. Meantime he had 
 married, and in 1832 his wife died. During the same 
 year he found himself troubled in mind with respect 
 to the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Feeling that he 
 could not administer that rite with a good conscience, 
 
33 2 <Ihc flDcn of letters 
 
 he courageously decided to give up his profession 
 and abandon the career that was s.» promisingly 
 opening to him. He explained his scruples in a ser- 
 mon, and resigned from the ministry, at the aye of 
 thirty-two, and. when tempting calls to other pulpits 
 came to him he declined them all on conscientious 
 grounds. He was a poor man. with no other profes- 
 sion but that o\ preaching. Indeed, he was wholly 
 unfitted by the quality of his mind for any other. But 
 with him prudence and self-interest were never per- 
 mitted for an instant to overrule conscience or to 
 obscure its light. 
 
 In [833 he went to Europe, making a journey which 
 afterwards led to the writing o\ his English Traits. 
 On his return he preached occasionally, finally taking 
 the lecture platform for his pulpit and delivering there 
 and in what are called occasional addresses, his con- 
 ceptions o\ truth. Throughout his life. too. he wrote— 
 though more sparingly than the cultivated public could 
 have desired — for the higher public prints. He went 
 to Concord to live, and from the time o\ taking up his 
 residence there until age dulled his faculties he was 
 recognized as the master by all those intellectual men 
 and women of Concord. Boston, and Cambridge, who 
 made that age and that region famous for " plain living 
 and high thinking." All who were best and wisest 
 and most earnest were his intimates, and most of them 
 his disciples through whom his teachings were trans- 
 mitted to others through. nit the land. 
 
 It is perhaps the best testimony to the purity and 
 
IRalpb Matoo lEmcrson 333 
 
 sweetness of his character that all who were permitted 
 to know him loved him, and that those who knew him 
 best loved him best. When his house was burned, in 
 1872, a fund for its rebuilding was quickly made up by 
 voluntary contributions. No one was asked to sub- 
 scribe, yet within a brief time the fund amounted to 
 more than eleven thousand dollars. Those who gave 
 the money claimed the right to contribute as a precious 
 privilege, and the gift was placed in Mr. Emerson's 
 hands with so much of delicacy and so much of sincere 
 affection that he had no choice but to accept it. He 
 was now in his seventieth year and in feeble health. 
 The destruction of his house had been a severe shock 
 to him. In order to spare him further distress, and for 
 the sake of diverting his mind from thoughts of a cal- 
 amity which had involved the loss of his household 
 gods and still more precious manuscripts, these friends 
 of his formed a conspiracy to send him abroad, pend- 
 ing the reconstruction of his house. They fabricated a 
 mission for him, which did not deceive him. But their 
 kindly affection was so apparent that he yielded to 
 their desire and went not only to Europe but to the 
 Nile. On his return Concord received him with bands 
 of music, a triumphal arch, and a greeting like that of a 
 returning conqueror. Surely we have in this incident 
 an illustration of the extraordinary hold that the quiet, 
 solitude-loving poet had taken upon the minds and 
 hearts of men. 
 
 Emerson had married his second wife in 183s, and 
 to her loving ministrations and the devotion of his sons 
 
334 Gbe (TDcn of ^Letters 
 
 and daughter, he owed the happiness of his calm and 
 beautiful old age. About 1S07 or [868 his faculties 
 began to show impairment, first in a progressive loss 
 of memory, and later in a distressing aphasia, or loss of 
 power to command the words he wanted, even though 
 they were merely the names of commonplace things 
 which he had no difficulty in describing so as to make 
 his meaning clear. His sight failed too. and slowly 
 but surely he sank into the doze of old age which pre- 
 cedes the sleep of death when death comes naturally 
 and not from accident or disease. 
 
 He died on April 27. 1SS2. mourned not only by 
 those brilliant men and women who had been his com- 
 panions and disciples in life, but by all men throughout 
 the land who think and aspire. 
 
 MOJ i^Sg^Cl^ 
 
 ^r'^^^ip^^b^? 
 
THE PREACHERS 
 
JONATHAN EDWARDS 
 
 EVERY man is the product of his time and country. 
 In his character, his intellectual attitude, and, 
 ultimately, even in his opinions, he is as truly 
 a necessary consequence of his environment as is any 
 tree or plant grown in a garden. Heredity gives the 
 first impulse, indeed, to the direction of every man's 
 development, just as the seed selected determines 
 whether the plant is to be of one species or of another. 
 But environment does all the rest, in the case of the 
 man, just as climate, soil, and cultivation do in the case 
 of the plant. There is individuality of strength or 
 weakness in both cases of course, but it determines 
 scarcely anything more than whether the particular 
 specimen of human or plant life is to fulfil its functions 
 perfectly or in a less adequate degree. 
 
 It is important to bear this truth in mind in con- 
 sidering the life, the character, and the intellectual 
 attitude of such a man as Jonathan Edwards. Begin- 
 ning in 1701 and ending in 1758, his life was almost 
 exactly coterminous with the first half of the eighteenth 
 century, and in estimating his work, we must judge 
 337 
 
338 £be Ipreacbcrs 
 
 him always in the light of his time. What that light 
 was. we shall presently consider. 
 
 In the meantime it is interesting to observe that 
 Jonathan Edwards reasoned upon the great theological 
 question that most earnestly engaged his attention. 
 upon lines precisely parallel to those suggested above. 
 With respect to the freedom of the Human Will, in 
 which he believed, and the doctrine of eternal decrees 
 in which he also believed, he argued in reconciliation 
 o\ the two. substantially in this way : The law of 
 cause and effect is universal in its application ; even- 
 man is by God's permission, absolutely free to act in 
 accordance with his own will ; but his power to will 
 is controlled by causes outside himself and so. while 
 his will is free to carry out its purposes, he is power- 
 less to control the will itself, but must obey the behests 
 of a power independent of his own purposes. 
 
 This is very closely like the statement that a flower- 
 ing shrub is free to bring forth as many blossoms as it 
 has strength to bear, but that it has no choice as to 
 what those blossoms shall be in kind. It may aspire 
 to roses, but if it be sprung from an apple seed its 
 tlowers must be apple blossoms. 
 
 This is a digression, permitted here only because it 
 illustrates an interesting tendency of the human mind. 
 Jonathan Edwards would have rejected, almost with 
 anathemas, the assumption of a parallelism between 
 the processes of plant growth and those of the human 
 soul's development. And yet his reasoning followed 
 lines so close to those of Huxlev and Haeckel and Her- 
 
Jonathan Edward. 5 
 
3onatban l£&war&8 339 
 
 bert Spencer, that it requires only an easily inferential 
 illustration to make their identity apparent. 
 
 Quitting the digression, let us come back to the 
 fact that Jonathan Edwards was a product and a con- 
 spicuous example of New England ways of thinking 
 during the first half of the eighteenth century. In 
 our day it is customary to think of him as the type 
 and embodiment of a rigidly strait-laced and almost 
 inhumanly merciless theology. But if we duly con- 
 sider the environment in which his thinking was done, 
 we are forced to regard him rather as a liberal in 
 theology than as a conservative ; rather as a man 
 disposed to advance toward the light than as a re- 
 actionary. There is not the smallest doubt that 
 his teachings in his own day were regarded as 
 liberal almost to the verge of radicalism, by the less 
 able but sterner adherents of Calvinism whose thought 
 and influence so largely dominated opinions at that 
 time. 
 
 While he was anxiously seeking to reconcile what 
 seemed to him the indisputable doctrine of the decrees 
 with some form of freedom for the human will— while 
 he was trying to find that God was "not the author 
 of sin," while still holding fast to his belief that every 
 human act and event had been determined by divine 
 decree "before ever the foundations of the world were 
 laid "—his less sensitive fellows in the pulpit were cry- 
 ing simply : "Thus saith the Lord." They preached 
 Calvinism equally, without qualification or apology. 
 They made no effort to reconcile its contradictions 
 
Cbc pccacbecs 
 
 explanation of its incons stencies 
 
 human reason. They scorned human reason, in- 
 and were disposed to visit all the anathemas 
 of the Church upon those who sought to exercis 
 in connection with theological dogma. Their mes- 
 to mankind was simply this ::ded 
 
 before the world was made, either that you should 
 be adopted at death into eternal bliss, or that you 
 should be eternally damned in a very literal hell of tire 
 and brimstone, and nothing that can in 
 
 se ge - ^nied 
 
 u. In any case you deserve all you get. if you 
 are damned, while if you .. s list be simply 
 
 by the d: ine g d pleasure, in spite of your s 
 inherited and personally committed. 
 
 _ >t this repellent teaching Jonathan Ed 
 instinctively revolted. But the theology upon which 
 ^ nos too firmly fixed in his mind even to be 
 questioned. It was to him like the fact of the day and 
 night, or the succession of the seas - 
 
 _ o si hich all contav 
 
 must of r... ssil V 5 -ore than 
 
 this. It was to him the direct revelation of tru: 
 
 Himself, to dispute which was to question the 
 He could not reject the theological 
 >asis ;':iing. therefore, and so. with an abid- 
 
 ing conviction of the Divine mercy and goodne>> 
 s ght, and believed that he had found an explanation 
 of it all which sufficiently reconciled the 1 c nflict- 
 ing views of the Divine character. He was in truth, 
 
3onatban Efcwar&s 34' 
 
 therefore, a liberal, judged by his time and the en- 
 vironment of his life. 
 
 It is not easy for us of a later and laxer age to 
 realize what rigid limitations were then imposed upon 
 a devout man's thinking. Let us aid conception by 
 mentioning a few of the more obvious restraints that 
 at that time saddled themselves like an incubus upon 
 thought. The Holy Scriptures were then held to be 
 holy in utter fact. They were believed to be the 
 direct, final, absolute, and indisputable word of God 
 to man, absolutely true and divinely authoritative in 
 every word and line and syllable ; and this belief in 
 their inspiration extended to the English translation, 
 as well as to the Hebrew and Greek originals. This 
 authoritative revelation of divine truth admitted of no 
 question at any point. To doubt its literal accuracy, 
 indeed, was to invoke upon oneself the curses with 
 which the Book of Revelation closes. To suggest an 
 interpretation other than the obvious and literal one 
 of the words, was to make an addition to the revealed 
 record of a kind equally anathematized by St. John the 
 Divine. 
 
 Thus every believer who, like Jonathan Edwards, 
 undertook theological study, was forced to begin and 
 continue under the rigid restraint of a divinely inspired 
 revelation, which must not only not be disputed in its 
 least important part, but must not even be subjected 
 to inquiry as to its authority or its significance. The 
 theological student of that day no more dared doubt 
 any miracle story, or dispute the literal accuracy of any 
 
34^ £bc fl>rcacbcrs 
 
 statement made in the Bible, than the scientific student 
 of to-day dares suggest that gravitation may not be 
 a fact, that the correlation of forces is a myth, 
 that action and reaction bear no necessary relation to 
 each other, or that energy is utterly independent of 
 supply. 
 
 Again, it was the fixed habit of men's minds in that 
 age to reason from accepted premises without ever 
 subjecting the premises to critical inquiry as to their 
 truth. Bacon had indeed written the Novum Or- 
 ganum some centuries before, but even he had never lost 
 that untrustworthy habit of reasoning from dogma 
 which his greatest work was written to condemn, and 
 the new method had in no perceptible way influenced 
 the minds of theological thinkers in Jonathan Edwards's 
 day. It was the universal custom, not in theology 
 alone but in law. in politics, in medicine, and in every- 
 thing else that involved thought, to accept as fixed 
 and eternally true, the notions that had been promul- 
 gated by men of authority. It was the universal habit 
 to reason from such premises to whatever absurd 
 conclusions the processes of logic might reach. The 
 thought of subjecting the premises themselves to ques- 
 tion, or of investigating the right of the authorities to 
 dogmatize, never occurred to men. and in theology at 
 least it was forbidden by a direct threat of eternal dam- 
 nation as its inevitable consequence. 
 
 In other words, the scientific attitude of mind was 
 impossible in the time in which Jonathan Edwards 
 lived. The spirit of criticism was not yet born. And, 
 
3onatban lE&war&s 343 
 
 still more important, perhaps, the scholarship upon 
 which criticism bases its investigations did not exist. 
 
 All these things constituted the conditions under 
 which Jonathan Edwards's thinking and Jonathan Ed- 
 wards's work were done. They are facts with which 
 we must reckon if we would justly judge the man. If 
 he accepted doctrines that are abhorrent to our moral 
 sense, he did so under a compulsion of authority 
 which we can scarcely even understand ; and it is only 
 fair, in estimating his influence, to consider how largely 
 it tended to alleviation— how much worse it might 
 have been for his countrymen if, with his great ability 
 and his masterful influence, he had taught the full 
 measure of his doctrine with no attempt to And a soft- 
 ening influence, a mitigating explanation of the truth 
 as he believed it to be written by God Himself for the 
 admonition of mankind. 
 
 Still again it is necessary to bear in mind that, in 
 Jonathan Edwards's day, this earthly life was held to 
 be of small account, or no account at all, except as a 
 stage of existence that furnished opportunity of prepa- 
 ration for a future life— for in spite of the doctrine that 
 every man's eternal salvation or damnation had been 
 irrevocably decreed "before ever the foundations of 
 the world were laid," and that the number of the saved 
 and of the damned, thus irrevocably fixed by divine 
 decree, was " so fixed and limited that it could neither 
 be added to nor taken from " — in spite of this doctrine, 
 it was still held as revealed truth that the present life 
 is a period of probation and preparation, having no 
 
344 Che preachers 
 
 significance or purpose apart from the work of getting 
 ready for the life that is to come. The fatalism of the 
 Calvinist of that age was as absolute as that of the 
 Mahometan, and it was as utterly inconsistent with 
 itself. As the Mahometan who believes that all things 
 are determined by Kismet, also confidently believes 
 that he who dies in battle for the faith goes instantly 
 to Paradise without so much as a question whether 
 or not his personal character fits him to enjoy that 
 state of existence, so the Calvinist of that inexorably 
 logical and most unreasonable time, believed that 
 every man's eternal fate was sealed beyond recall, but 
 at the same time that he was permitted to live in this 
 world in order that his fitness for bliss or its reverse 
 in the world to come might be demonstrated. If a 
 man were born to be damned it could make no possi- 
 ble difference in his fate for him to do well or ill in his 
 life on earth. It was expressly set forth by authority 
 indeed, that a man condemned to hell before the foun- 
 dations of the world were laid, might lead an excellent, 
 humane, and most lovely life, without in any wax- 
 altering the decree : that he might even attain to a 
 large degree of godliness without winning the smallest 
 chance of a future life among the godly : that all good- 
 ness was a mere matter of " works." and that works, 
 either good or evil, counted as nothing in the decrees 
 of God : that salvation was by faith alone, and that 
 even faith could not save any man from damnation if to 
 damnation he had been doomed long ages before he 
 was born. 
 
3onatban i£&war&8 345 
 
 It is not necessary to set forth more fully that ex- 
 traordinary medley of contradictions which constituted 
 the creed to which Jonathan Edwards was born and in 
 which he was trained, and lived and died. It is only 
 necessary to bear in mind that this body of belief 
 presented itself to his mind, not as a matter to be 
 questioned, or to be reasoned about, or to be accepted 
 or rejected accordingly as it commended itself to his 
 intelligence or affronted his understanding, but as a 
 direct, indisputable revelation from God, the absolute 
 truth of which was not open even to reverent inquiry. 
 He believed not only that God could tell only the 
 truth, but that those who professed to bear God's 
 messages to man were incapable of misinterpretation, 
 misunderstanding, or any perversion of the Word. 
 
 It is with no remotest purpose of theological dispu- 
 tation that this brief and incomplete summary of the 
 beliefs that dominated Jonathan Edwards's life and 
 mind is here set forth. It is solely with the purpose of 
 enabling the reader to estimate aright the intellectual 
 attitude, the life and the work of Jonathan Edwards, 
 by pointing out the conditions under which he lived. 
 Interpreted in the light of those conditions, his attitude 
 appears as that of the liberal, lacking only the enlight- 
 enment of modern scholarship to make him a leader of 
 the generous thought of our less logical but more com- 
 passionate time. 
 
 For the rest, Jonathan Edwards was a man of extra- 
 ordinary uprightness of character and perfect purity of 
 life. To his conscience he made sacrifices that may 
 
346 Sbe iprcacbers 
 
 have been uncalled for, but the record of which must 
 awaken the admiration of all men possessed of chivalry 
 enough to see glory in self-sacrifice without regard to 
 the worthiness of the cause in behalf of which the 
 sacrifice was made. 
 
 Edwards was born at East Windsor, Connecticut, 
 on October s, 1703, now nearly two hundred years 
 ago. He was the son of a clergyman, and from in- 
 fancy his mind was directed quite abnormally into theo- 
 logical controversy. At ten years of age, when he 
 ought to have been perfecting himself in the game of 
 marbles, he was writing a satirical paper against ma- 
 terialism. At twelve, when a ball ought to have 
 meant more to him than all the spheres in the uni- 
 verse, and when a bat should have commended itself 
 to his youthful imagination as the most effective im- 
 plement of controversy, he was writing to Europe 
 concerning the "Wondrous Way of the Working of 
 the Spider "'—an excursion into natural science which 
 reflected a natural but resolutely suppressed intellectual 
 tendency of his mind. 
 
 At the age of twelve he entered Yale College— then 
 scarcely on the scholastic level of a modern high- 
 school. At sixteen he was graduated as a bachelor of 
 arts. During the next two years he studied theology 
 at Yale. When nineteen years of age he was called to 
 preach in a New York church, a post which he held for 
 only eight months. He was at this time an almost 
 morbid enthusiast in religion, "dedicating" himself to 
 the " service of God " with a solemnity that clergymen 
 
3onatban Bs&war&s 347 
 
 in good physical health in our time would sternly dis- 
 courage in a boy under twenty years old. 
 
 In 1721 — when twenty years old — he became a 
 tutor at Yale. Two years later he accepted the assist- 
 ant pastorate at Northampton, Massachusetts, where, 
 a few years later, he succeeded to the full pastorate. 
 Here his fame as a preacher grew apace, and for seven- 
 teen years his relations were altogether happy. 
 
 Then came, in 1744, the great trial of his life, out 
 of which he came with unlimited credit to his con- 
 science. Under his preaching and that of the evan- 
 gelist Whitefield a remarkable "revival" occurred in 
 New England, Northampton largely sharing in it. It 
 speedily bred fanatical excesses, against which Edwards 
 preached with all his logic, all his fervor, and all his 
 healthful common sense, but to no avail. It is a mat- 
 ter of historical record that great emotional religious 
 excitement, when unrestrained by other and saner 
 influences, tends to result in some form of sexual im- 
 morality—not perhaps as a legitimate result of religious 
 fervor, but as a quite illegitimate and most deplorable 
 consequence of emotional excitement inadequately re- 
 strained and left without proper direction. The Oneida 
 community, with all its abominations, had its birth in 
 what is still known as "the great revival." The Ger- 
 man Muckers trace their history to a like occasion. 
 The Mormon movement, originating in ill-regulated 
 emotional fervor, culminated in licensed polygamy. 
 Thus history emphasizes the truth already recognized 
 by psychology, that the emotions are closely co-related, 
 
348 Sbe preachers 
 
 that laughter and tears lie not far apart, and that when 
 any impulse, however pure and _ abnormally 
 
 5 the ::onal nature of men and women, some 
 form of emotional immorality is apt to result. 
 
 This is what happened in Jonatha i'sc 
 
 _ ?gation. The details, even in that ieg vhich 
 
 they were permitted, by a rigid censorship of utter- 
 
 I bee ne kr are not p easa it :ess 
 
 subir: ts scuss here. It came to Jonathan Ed- 
 
 i'sl _ that improper literature ~ _ 
 
 freely circulated among the men and women of his 
 grregal th sue suits as ;rel : rjted 
 
 in the emotionally excited conditions that he had 
 diligently labored to prevent. 
 
 the instinct of an honest man. fearless in the 
 discharge of duty, and uncompromising in his devotion 
 to morality, he insisted that a searching inquiry should 
 be made into the facts. But men oi influence in the 
 church objected. Prompted by or 
 
 by other m s,as1 case might be 
 
 _ s: :ess :hat might lead to a _ 
 
 lal, injurious to the church. 
 
 - > immeasurably honest mind 
 this st compromise with unright- 
 
 eousness, and he would h; I in it. R 
 
 than soil his soul by participation in such a parley with 
 iniq; ° his pastoral - surren- 
 
 him the only m€ - 
 of putting bread and butter in: :hs of his 
 
 children and clothes upon their bac 
 
3onatban JEowarfcs 
 
 349 
 
 He was a man of truly heroic mould. He resolutely 
 faced poverty and want and sore distress, rather than 
 make terms of any kind with the forces of unrighteous- 
 ness — rather than lend his countenance, even by in- 
 direct implication, to evil. No hero of the sword could 
 do a braver thing. No paladin ever proved his courage 
 or his character more gloriously. 
 
 Declining many offers of settlement in good parishes, 
 in Scotland, in Virginia, and elsewhere, Edwards un- 
 dertook a mission to the Indians. 
 
 On February 16, 1758, he became President of the 
 College of New Jersey— now Princeton University. He 
 lived only thirty-four days thereafter, dying of small- 
 pox on the 22d of March. 
 

 
 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANGING 
 
 WILLIAM ELLERY CHANGING was Mieofa 
 remarkable group of thinkers, who did 
 their work in obedience : theii c - 
 sciences but in opposition to their intention. They 
 wrought a revolution which they deprecated. They 
 established a sect in direct opposition to their own pur- 
 and. having established it. they did all they could 
 to make it rather an influence in behalf of free thought 
 in ot lan an organized exponent of the free 
 
 thought formulated by itself. 
 
 ::erson contributed mightily to all the reforms 
 of his time, from abolitionism to the emancipation of 
 theology from its swaddling clothes, while denouncing 
 and contemning all organized reform movements - 
 unworthy 7 >ress s f self-seeking, so Channir. 
 came the great apostle of liberal Christianity and the 
 chief force in a radical movement while stoutly con- 
 tending for conservatism, and loyally striving to pre- 
 serve the old church organization intact in its unit}" and 
 undisturbed in its supre 
 
 The trouble with these men was that their minds 
 : 
 
William Ellery Channing 
 
w 
 
 
 
 
 
William Elicit Cbanning 35' 
 
 were dominated by a conscience which refused to sub- 
 mit itself to their wills or to accommodate itself to their 
 prejudices. 
 
 Channing was the irresistibly eloquent and im- 
 measurably persuasive orator of that movement of 
 which Emerson was the thinker and Theodore Parker 
 an apostle and evangelist. 
 
 Channing's temper was sweetly sympathetic, almost 
 beyond example. His love of truth was always un- 
 compromising, but never unkindly or aggressive. 
 There was no taint of arrogance in his intellectual pro- 
 cesses, no suggestion of the dogmatist in his thinking. 
 He loved truth and righteousness, and it was his 
 endeavor in life to commend truth and righteousness 
 to other men's minds, not only for the sake of truth 
 and righteousness, but even more for the sake of other 
 men's minds. For Channing loved men better than 
 dogmas. He held humanity in higher esteem than 
 human reason. He sought rather to make men feel 
 aright than to compel their opinions to his standards. 
 
 Human conduct was to him merely an evidence — 
 and not always a conclusive evidence — of the moral 
 conditions that inspired it ; and his concern as a per- 
 suasive apostle of a rational religion was rather for the 
 preservation of the religion than for the propagation of 
 the rationalism. 
 
 Most of his fellows in this movement were coldly 
 rational ; he was warmly religious. They assailed the 
 old dogmas with destructive intent ; he sought to amel- 
 iorate them. They contended for rationalism in religion ; 
 
wbc pzcz: ; 
 
 r — t: - t _ -. " s~ _ ~t; r.ii 
 
 siasni for k«gk. he for piety. They, in putting aside their 
 ancient beliefs, were chiefly concerned to destroy the 
 • . :.: r . ■ -". : rue: : _:: :t - ■- _ ■ _ - 
 
 prevail ; he was chiefly concerned to preserve all that 
 could be saved from the wreck of the old faith, in order 
 :.-:-■- --- - _.■-..:•.. 7 7-7 : - 7- 
 
 - • 7 : ■ : . st h :r.e:" "'- r tit : se v-. ;- : .-. ; -.. T / 
 with him sought to destroy, he sought to preserve and 
 upbuild. He endeavored to engraft upon the new 
 theology a loving belief in divine beneficence, and in 
 all those " gifts of the Spirit." to employ his own pi 
 v. r.zh tended to make men better in their characters 
 and in their lives. 
 ■ 
 Channing would have been an evangelist of ortho- 
 His impulses were all in that direction, and only 
 his intellectual environment turned him to an oppo- 
 :_:: - " 
 
 ■_l:.:: - : " :: 
 
 Personally he was a man to be esteemed without 
 : : r his purity of soul and his absolute uprightness of 
 
 7 : : 7 7: ir.i 7 77 ; ::: 
 human sympathy. As an orator he was withe 
 surer::: in the rers-isi.er.ess :: his . the 
 
 ierfulness of his presentation of his thought and 
 in the extraordinarily wimimg quafity of his voice and 
 
 He was bom in Newport. R. I.. on April - 
 He 7 7 eagre education that Hi 
 
TOlliam Ellcr^ Cbanning 353 
 
 College afforded at the end of the eighteenth century, 
 of which Mr. Justice Joseph Story has given us a 
 detailed account— an education which conferred the 
 bachelor of arts degree upon a basis of study far smaller 
 than that now required for admission to the Freshman 
 class of even the smallest and obscurest college in the 
 country. He was graduated in 1798, and immediately 
 afterwards went to Richmond, Virginia, to serve as 
 tutor in the family of D. M. Randolph. There he fell 
 in love with Virginian hospitality, and with the Vir- 
 ginian breadth of view and practice respecting the pos- 
 session of wealth. He looked upon slavery with 
 abhorrence as did his employers, the Randolphs, and 
 sympathized strongly with the desire then widely 
 prevalent in Virginia to carry out Jefferson's ideas and 
 bring about, in some orderly and safe fashion, the 
 emancipation of the State from the incubus that had 
 been imposed upon it by the greed of an earlier historic 
 period. 
 
 It was during this stay in Richmond, also, that 
 Channing, in spite of the temptations of Virginia's 
 groaning dinner-tables and of the indulgent lavishness 
 of living then prevalent there, adopted an ascetic method 
 of eating which permanently impaired his digestion and 
 undoubtedly shortened his life, after making living 
 itself, for many years, a pain to him. 
 
 From Virginia he went hack to New England and 
 became a divinity student at Harvard. In 180"; he was 
 made pastor of the Federal Street Congregational 
 Church, in Boston, where the peculiarly winning 
 
354 XTbc fl>rcacbcrs 
 
 quality of his eloquence quickly brought him into 
 popular favor. 
 
 During all the years of his ministry in this church, 
 Channing occupied a position of compromise between 
 the old orthodoxy and the new Unitarianism. He held 
 fast to the doctrine of the Divinity of Christ, while 
 refusing to admit Christ's identity with God. He 
 earnestly desired the old, while courageously accepting 
 the new. His instincts were conservative, while his 
 intellectual processes tended inexorably to the accept- 
 ance of radical opinions. 
 
 His teaching as a pulpit orator was at once reforma- 
 tory and mystical. His influence was that of a leader 
 of advanced thought on the one hand and a restraining 
 force in behalf of orthodoxy on the other. With it all 
 he was beloved as few preachers have ever been, and 
 his influence was overmastering upon a generation of 
 men whose intellects were in revolt against their 
 inclinations. 
 
 The same influence that he brought to bear in the 
 pulpit was still more powerfully felt in his writings 
 contributed to The Christian Examiner, the North 
 American Review, and other periodicals in which the 
 men of that time were trying to hold fast to the tradi- 
 tions of religion while rejecting the fundamental as- 
 sumptions on which those traditions rested. 
 
 This is not the place in which to show in detail the 
 nature and extent of the revolution in which, almost in 
 spite of himself, Channing became both a leader and a 
 formative influence. It suffices if we have made clear 
 
TCHilliam Ellen? Cbanning 
 
 155 
 
 his attitude of conscientious revolt against dogmas 
 repellent to his mind, coupled with a conservative 
 reverence for traditions that were dear to him by 
 virtue of inherited association. 
 
 He died on October 2, 1842, after an unsullied life 
 of high endeavor in which conscience was always a 
 dominant factor, but in which conscience itself was 
 ameliorated by an abounding and all-embracing sym- 
 pathy. 
 
Ht'NRY WARD BEECHER 
 
 DURING the decade and a half o\ years that 
 have passed since Henry Ward Beecher's 
 death, men and women have got far enough 
 away from the echoes of lus persuasive voice to esti- 
 mate him with some degree of accuracy. 
 
 lh.it he was a commanding force in human thought 
 and affairs during the period of his activity is a tact 
 admitting of no doubt. But while his published writ- 
 ings include more than a score of titles, there is 
 scarcely one of them that lias vitality of interest 
 to-day. They were the works of a man essentially 
 and almost exclusively an orator, a man who dealt 
 always with the thought at the immediate moment 
 uppermost in men's minds, and handled it. as the 
 oiatoi always must do, in the temper ot" the pass- 
 ing hour and with a view to immediate effect. Mr. 
 Beecher mightily moved men's minds while he was 
 living and speaking ; but his words survive only in 
 echoes that have lost their resonance. His case illus- 
 trates anew and strongly the truth that the orator, like 
 the actor, howevei irresistibly he may appeal to those 
 
Henry Ward B< 
 

 
 D 
 
 
 
 
 . 
 
Ibenrp XXHart) Bcccber 357 
 
 who hear him, leaves comparatively little behind him 
 to bear witness of his might ; that spoken words, 
 however eloquent, lose most of their force in the pro- 
 cess of transference into print ; that the voice, and 
 bearing, and personal presence of the orator are neces- 
 sary adjuncts, without which his utterance must lose 
 much of its virile influence. 
 
 Mr. Beecher was never a closely logical thinker. 
 Perhaps, if he had been, his oratory would not have 
 been so great as it was, for, after all, the orator makes 
 his appeal rather to the emotions of men than to their 
 intellects, and carries their excited minds with him 
 rather than convinces them by reasoning of the justice 
 of his views. 
 
 When Mr. Beecher spoke in antagonism to slavery, 
 he pictured to men's minds the easily imagined horrors 
 they would suffer if subjected to such a system, and 
 the fervor of his speech took no account of the negro's 
 radically different temperament and point of view as 
 factors in the problem. Still less did he pause to 
 consider the grave difficulties that lay in the path of 
 statesmen who must deal with that subject, the con- 
 stitutional structure of our government, with all its 
 embarrassing limitations, and the still graver problems 
 that perplexed Clay and other sincere advocates of 
 gradual emancipation, who foresaw the difficulty of so 
 adjusting affairs as to make freedom and enfranchise- 
 ment compatible with orderly civil government by pop- 
 ular suffrage in States where the most ignorant of the 
 blacks outnumber the whites. As an orator, speaking 
 
358 Gbe Iprcacbers 
 
 for a temporary purpose, Beecher put these considera- 
 tions aside and forced upon his auditor the simple 
 question : " How would you like to be a slave, 
 owned in your body and life by another man whose 
 arbitrary will you must recognize as law ? " 
 
 All this is said, not in criticism but in exposition and 
 in illustration of Mr. Beecher's methods, which were 
 necessarily those of the orator, rather than those of 
 the closely reasoning essayist or those of the states- 
 man, who must take into account many limitations and 
 many practical difficulties with which the orator need 
 not concern himself. 
 
 The orator doubtless convinces himself of the jus- 
 tice of his cause before he begins to speak in its behalf. 
 But when he once begins to speak, he feels himself 
 free to put aside whatever stands in his way, to disre- 
 gard all difficulties as "side issues," and to make the 
 strongest appeal he can to human passion, with little 
 or no regard to anything else. It is his function to 
 persuade, and to that alone he devotes himself. He 
 has no time for close and orderly reasoning, and if he 
 be really an orator with the divine gift of all-moving 
 speech, he has no liking for it. 
 
 It was not only in the ways indicated that Mr. 
 Beecher illustrated the disposition of his mind to put 
 aside the harder things of logic, and to base belief 
 rather upon inclination and impulse than upon nicely 
 reasoned argument. 
 
 While holding fast to all the premises of the old 
 theology, instilled into him by his father, Mr. Beecher 
 
1benn> TKIlar& Bcecber 359 
 
 led his church into an emotional revolt against the 
 doctrine of eternal punishment. He once preached a 
 sermon in which he frankly accepted the Darwinian 
 theory of the Descent of Man, but at the same time 
 declared his unquestioning faith in the doctrine of 
 Christ's atonement. Thereupon a newspaper man 
 asked him how he reconciled these two antagonistic 
 things, pointing out that the doctrine of atonement 
 rested upon the theory of man's fall, while the 
 Darwinian theory was that the whole history of man 
 had been the story, not of a fall, but of a gradual, con- 
 tinuous, and law-directed advance, from protoplasmic 
 conditions through the lower animal life into the full 
 glory of manhood as we know it. Mr. Beecher's reply 
 was characteristic. "Don't bother, my dear boy," 
 he said; "we are bound to accept Darwin. All the 
 evidence is with him. But we simply can't give up the 
 doctrine of the atonement, and we won't. Let 's accept 
 both and be happy. The two may be fundamentally 
 irreconcilable, as you say, but what does it matter ? 
 We must believe one and we love to believe the other. 
 After all, we don't know much about it, and the main 
 thing is to be happy, whatever happens. What 's the 
 use of chopping logic ? " 
 
 It is chiefly as an orator, therefore, that we must 
 consider Mr. Beecher. And as an orator, as a man 
 capable of moving, controlling, and inspiring men by 
 his voice and words, he was unquestionably foremost 
 even in a generation which included Henry Clay, 
 Daniel Webster, Rufus Choate, and Wendell Phillips 
 
Cbv prcacbcr» 
 
 among its men gues _ degree 
 
 than any of these he influenced the thought, the emo- 
 tions, the conduct of men. 
 
 Through long years, from Plymouth pulpit, he 
 : :ed to an audience of three thousand people, 
 while other thousands waited outside in hope of rind- 
 ing standing room somewhere whither his voice might 
 pene: a lecturer the eagerness to hear him 
 
 >o great that although he raised his price : 
 hundred dollars a night he was compelled to reject the 
 _ :er number of applications for his presence, on the 
 ground that he had not time in which to address 
 
 the multitudes that -ed to hear him. Yet 
 
 if the desire to know what he thought had been the 
 Inspiration, his stenographer might e 
 fcisfie J these muhit u 
 
 His career began simply enough. He was a son of 
 Lyman Beecher. and was bom in Litchfield. Cor. -. . 
 cut. on June :_ 813 - asedi the Boston 
 
 Latin School. Mount Pleasant Institute, and Amherst 
 College. He studied theology at the Lane Sen: 
 and went to Indiana to preach in 1S-7. Ten years later 
 he became pastor of Plymouth Church, in Bn>; 
 and there made his reputation as a pulpit orator. 
 
 His methods were wholly contrary to the traditions 
 of his time. He put aside the frills and ftirbelo 
 the pulpit and presented himself to his congregation 
 
 man like unto themselves. He spoke ;i 
 with a most tremendous earnestness of conviction and 
 purpose, but he did not hesitate to :> ce tain 
 
1bcm\> lWarc> fficccber 361 
 
 oratorical arts and artifices which, until then, had been 
 deemed out of place in the pulpit and inconsistent 
 with the solemnity befitting the preacher's high mis- 
 sion. He freely indulged his sense of humor as a means 
 of attracting and holding the attention of his congrega- 
 tion. He drew from history, from biography, and from 
 experience the most dramatic stories that could be used 
 in illustration of his preaching, and he related them 
 with an extraordinary histrionic skill. His sole con- 
 cern was to impress his own thought upon the minds 
 of those who listened and to win them to his point of 
 view. In aid of that purpose he employed every con- 
 ceivable art of oratory, suffering no consideration of 
 dignity and no tradition of the pulpit to stand for one 
 moment in his way. 
 
 He made as little of creeds as of conventionalities, 
 and if he had been a preacher commissioned by any 
 well-ordered ecclesiastical authority he would almost 
 certainly have been silenced for heresy at any one of a 
 dozen points in his career. 
 
 He was the first of the " political preachers." Hat- 
 ing slavery with all his soul, he was not restrained 
 from pulpit utterance in antagonism to it by the fact 
 that it had become a question of party politics. He 
 became a member of the anti-slavery party at its in- 
 ception, and when it took form as the Republican 
 party, with its machinery and its candidates, he 
 preached its cause from the pulpit as unhesitatingly 
 as he preached the doctrines of his religion. He went 
 further and became a public speaker in that behalf, at 
 
302 Cbc preacbere 
 
 cost oi much obloquy when he spoke for "'Sharp's. 
 Rifles " in Kansas, but with great applause when, during 
 the Civil War. he went to England to plead there for 
 a revision of that popular opinion which at first set so 
 strongly in favor of the Southern Confederacy. 
 
 He once said to the present writer: " 1 have this 
 advantage over most preachers of righteousness, that 
 1 have always felt myself capable of all unrighteous- 
 ness. 1 know what the impulses to wrong-doing are. 
 because they are strong in my own being. When 1 
 am called upon to attack wrong. 1 know in my own 
 person all the details of its defensive works. 1 am 
 familiar with every gun-room in its fortifications, every 
 traverse it has built tor purposes of defence. It is the 
 best equipment oi the preacher of righteousness to feel 
 in himself all the impulses of unrighteousness, to be 
 able to put himself into the place oi the wrong-doer 
 or the wrong thinker, and to assail him from the van- 
 tage-ground oi his own points oi view."' This ut- 
 terance, quoted from memory, and imperfectly, no 
 doubt, furnishes a sufficient key to that extraordinary 
 influence which Beecher exercised so long as he 
 lived, and which so completely died with him that 
 not one of his published works is to-day a vital factor 
 in human affairs. 
 
 His influence, while he lived, was almost matchless 
 in its extent and in its masterfulness. Now that he is 
 dead, almost nothing remains of it. His persuasive- 
 ness of speech appealed irresistibly to the minds oi the 
 men who listened to his voice : to-day it survives only 
 
1bcnn> WIiar& Beecbcr 363 
 
 as a memory in the minds of a rapidly passing gener- 
 ation. It was as evanescent as the sound of the sea 
 beating upon the shifting sands. The world has 
 passed on to other questions than those that Beecher so 
 passionately discussed. It is concerning itself with mat- 
 ters quite apart from those that engaged his mind. The 
 voice of the orator is silent, and the echo of his eloquence 
 is dying out of the ears to which it made its appeal. 
 
 To record this truth is in no way to discredit the 
 work or the public service of the orator. It is only to 
 define it and to point out its necessary limitations. 
 
 The later life of Mr. Beecher was embittered by a 
 controversy that involved the question of his integrity 
 and his purity. Theodore Tilton, in the public prints 
 and in a suit at law, accused Mr. Beecher of gross and 
 criminal immorality. At the trial, both sides seemed 
 to shrink somewhat from a full revelation of the facts, 
 whatever they may have been. After a hearing of six 
 months, the jury found itself unable to reach a verdict, 
 and when the trial was over there was a like division of 
 opinion among the people, especially those whose opin- 
 ions were of consequence, including the leading minis- 
 ters of the church to which Mr. Beecher belonged. 
 
 This coldly impartial statement is perhaps all that 
 need be made in an essay like this concerning a mat- 
 ter the very mention of which must be grievously 
 distressing to all honest and generous minds. 
 
 Mr. Beecher lived in full health and vigor of mind and 
 body until his seventy-fifth year, when he was stricken 
 with apoplexy, and died on the 8th of March, 1887. 
 
THE PHILANTHROPISTS AND EDUCATORS 
 
4J§ 
 til 
 
 fY^SVJ^^V 
 
 
 
 M 
 
 GEORGE PEABODY 
 
 R. GLADSTONE said of George Peabody that 
 " he taught the world how a man may be the 
 master of his fortune and not its slave." To 
 men of great possessions he set an example by which 
 many of them in this later time are wisely profiting. 
 He did his giving while he was still in vigor of life and 
 able to direct his benefactions wisely to the ends in- 
 tended, instead of postponing them until death, and 
 thus making of his fortune a lure to lawyers. 
 
 Further than this, he did not withhold his hand from 
 generosity until the work of accumulation was finished. 
 He began his giving early and continued it to the end. 
 His benefactions were oft-recurring incidents in his 
 career of money-making, and not, as is usually the 
 case, a sort of belated supplement. He gave while yet 
 he was engaged in the work of making, not waiting till 
 the instinct of accumulation should be satiated before 
 seeking enjoyment in the exercise of the instinct of 
 bestowing. 
 
 Moreover, he distributed in patriotic and philan- 
 thropic ways an astonishingly large proportion of his 
 367 
 
368 Cbe philanthropists ani> Educators 
 
 total wealth. Other men have given away larger 
 sums than he did, particularly in our day of accumula- 
 tions vaster than any he ever dreamed of; but few if 
 any ever bestowed upon purposes helpful to others so 
 great a proportional share of their total possessions. 
 We pay well-deserved honor to a multi-millionaire who 
 has lavished ten millions in a single year in bestowing 
 public benefits, and reflect that the sum represents all 
 but two or three millions of the giver*s income during 
 that year from secure investments, leaving him only a 
 little richer at the end of the year than he was at its 
 beginning. What, then, should be our attitude of mind 
 towards a man like Peabody, who gave away, not only 
 his income, but quite two thirds of the total accumula- 
 tions of his lifetime ? 
 
 As nearly as can be reckoned George Peabody made 
 about fifteen million dollars by his lifework. Of that 
 sum he gave away about ten millions in beneficence. 
 And his beneficence was as wise in its direction as it 
 was liberal in its amount. He was as diligent and as 
 sagacious in the distribution of his wealth as he had 
 been in its gathering. He took as much pains with his 
 benefactions as he had ever taken with his invest- 
 ments. He worked as hard to make his gifts lastingly 
 productive of the good he intended as he had ever 
 worked to make his money-earning enterprises yield 
 their full meed of profit. 
 
 He was not content to bestow money upon philan- 
 thropic or humanly unlifting enterprises : he invested 
 in those enterprises, laboriously planning to make 
 
George Peabody 
 


(Beoroc IPcalxtop 369 
 
 them yield a perpetual harvest of good, so that to-day 
 the sums he bestowed are as fruitful of the good to 
 which he devoted them as they were when first dedi- 
 cated to beneficent ends. A generosity so wisely 
 ordered is not at all to be measured by the figures that 
 set forth merely the sums thus invested in perpetual 
 good works. It is not too much to say, that rightly 
 judged, George Peabody was the greatest of philan- 
 thropists, the one who most freely gave of his time, 
 his industry, his sagacity, and his experience, as well 
 as of his money, for the betterment of his fellow-men. 
 
 George Peabody was born on February 18, 179s, 
 at Danvers, Massachusetts. The town has since fit— 
 ingly taken the name Peabody, in honor of its most 
 illustrious son. The only schooling he ever had was 
 got before he was eleven years old. At that age he 
 began his business career as a clerk in a country store. 
 After serving in that capacity in several towns, he was 
 entrusted by his uncle with the entire charge of a 
 store in Georgetown, District of Columbia. At the 
 age of nineteen he was admitted t<> partnership in a 
 dry goods establishment in Baltimore of which, with 
 its branches, he ultimately became the head. 
 
 In this business he accumulated money and experi- 
 ence, and in 1817, with a large knowledge of affairs, 
 he sought a broader field of activity in London, where 
 he established himself as a banker, founding the house 
 of George Peabody & Co. in 1841. Before he went 
 to London to live he had demonstrated his genius for 
 finance by negotiating in [835 a Maryland loan for 
 
Civ pbilaiitbcopists anc educators 
 
 attempts to aa :plish the 
 purpose had been baffled by the State's lack of ci 
 He had also begun his career as a liberal giver to pub- 
 lic purposes, by refusing to accc: the cor 
 pao due to him on the negotiation of the State 
 
 bove. 
 In London Peab s sagacit as; . -:ker rapidly 
 but there is little to 
 . ceming that part of his career, except that his 
 patriotism in investing heavily in United States 
 ernme t B is, di g the st - ld-stj ess 
 
 5 greal gains. 
 
 It is as j _ rather than as j 
 that the si _ - teresting, and 
 
 that part of his riograp st startling as his 
 
 generosil - sufficiently told in a few - 
 
 pie words and ekx fig 25 
 
 . h . shed the arrang g 
 
 _ : )it at the first V 
 
 Fair. In: also he gave the first of tri s< 
 
 nificent Fourth of Jul) dinners 
 
 annually repeated till the end of his life, and which 
 did much I stimulate fi ends for our cou 
 
 g the g eatest and most influential mc 
 land. In 1852 1m - edition 
 
 tribul S ig the same yes 
 
 he _ v - ; . the Peabody Institute in 
 
 -.ent which he after wards 
 creased to $2 . a -- nort 
 
 stitutc 1 South Da - B57 he founded the 
 
d$eor<je Ipcaboop 37' 
 
 Peabody Institute in Baltimore, which, then and later, 
 he endowed to the extent of $1,000,000. At the same 
 time he gave $2=1,000 each to Kenyon College in Ohio, 
 and Phillips Andover Academy in Massachusetts. 
 
 Meantime, Peabody had his pity for the condition 
 of the London poor strongly aroused, and after a 
 painstaking study of the conditions he instituted the 
 wisest and most beneficent <»f all his projects for the 
 betterment of his fellow-men. His plan was to build 
 tenement- or lodging-houses in which the industrious 
 poor could find wholesome and comfortable homes at 
 a cost not greater than the rents they had before been 
 paying for squalid, pestilential, and indecently crowded 
 tenement quarters. In common with other students 
 of the problems of human betterment, he was con- 
 vinced that the first and chief requisite was to take the 
 poor out of their squalid and unwholesome kennels, 
 and give them decent homes in which the conditions 
 should be such as to stimulate them to endeavor for the 
 improvement of their lives. His purpose was to give 
 the poor a chance, and by demonstration to prove to 
 other landlords the possibility of making profit by 
 building a better kind of habitation for the toilers than 
 any that had previously existed. To this inestimably 
 beneficent purpose, Peabody gave no less than S2,=>oo,- 
 000, and he gave something better than that to his 
 charity. He gave his time, his minute knowledge of 
 conditions, his wisdom in human nature, and hisextraor- 
 dinary business sagacity. His benefaction provided 
 comfortable homes for more than twenty thousand 
 
372 Cbe pbilantbropiste anfr Educators 
 
 people of the class most in need of such help and 
 most likely to be benefited by its bestowal. 
 
 In [866, Peabody came again to his native country. 
 and again he " came bearing gifts " of surprising mu- 
 rjificence. Three hundred thousand dollars he devoted 
 to the establishment o\ institutes of archaeology at 
 Yale and Harvard. He gave at the same time $2,100.- 
 000 in aid ot education in the Southern States of the 
 Union, and three years later he increased this sum 
 to $3, ^00.000. Other educational and charitable pur- 
 poses were benefited to the extent of S200.000 dur- 
 ing his visit of 1 s 
 
 Congress rendered fitting thanks to him for his 
 munificence, and on his return to England the Queen 
 desired to mark her appreciation of his good works by 
 creating him a baronet. He declined that honor, but 
 her Majesty was not satisfied to let the matter rest 
 there. She caused Peabody to be asked what she 
 could give him in token of her desire to do him public 
 honor, and he expressed a wish for a simple letter from 
 the Queen. " which." he said. " 1 may carry across the 
 ) and deposit as a memorial of one of her most 
 faithful sons." The letter, written by the Queen's 
 own hand, was accompanied by the additional gift of a 
 portrait of herself, and both are cherished in the Pea- 
 body Institute, in the native town oi the man they 
 were meant to honor. 
 
 A little later, Peabody permanently endowed an art 
 school in Rome. In 1869 he visited the United States 
 for the last time, adding largely to his former benefac- 
 
(Bcoroc fl>cabo&p 373 
 
 tions : establishing a museum at Salem, Massachu- 
 setts, and giving more than §iso,ooo to other public 
 purposes. 
 
 On his return to England he found that he had been 
 honored there by the erection, in London, of a noble 
 bronze statue of himself, the work of the American 
 sculptor, W. W. Story, unveiled by the Prince of 
 Wales with every public manifestation of the uni- 
 versal honor in which the prince of philanthropists was 
 held in his adopted country. 
 
 Then came death to end the splendidly beneficent 
 career, on November 4, 1869. And then came, from the 
 two great English-speaking nations of the world, 
 which he had so greatly honored and benefited by his 
 philanthropy, such tributes to his memory as had never 
 before been paid to a private personage. Great Britain 
 put aside all traditions and all precedents in offering a 
 grave for George Peabody in Westminster Abbey, and 
 there, in fact, his funeral was celebrated. But, in ac- 
 cordance with his own wish in life, his body was 
 brought to America for burial by the side of that of 
 his mother. 
 
 But so great and so universal was the desire in 
 both countries to pay tribute to the memory of this 
 man that the British Government detailed the finest 
 frigate in that country's navy to bear the body home 
 in state, while, on our side, Admiral Parragut in person 
 commanded the squadron appointed by this govern- 
 ment to receive it. 
 
PETER COOPER 
 
 ABOU BEN ADHEM > c a ri " be set down as 
 loves his telle - as I 
 
 better founded than Peter v~ >ers 1 tie to a 
 iisl ction. As a philanthropist Ik 5 I con- 
 tent to give money lavishly in aid of others 
 ght to bear upon his giving as ge Peat 
 
 thai - _ cil which had won fortune for him- 
 self, all that practical knowledge of the work a 
 
 lich his own experience, first as himself a 
 
 is as a large employer of 
 
 _ d given 1 him. 
 
 His t - mere gifts dn m from 
 
 ?rfluous wealth. The;. . s< 5 of help 
 
 scan telligently wrought 
 
 s lad been the >rises which his _ >os- 
 
 sessions t was s purpose to 
 
 s I s tile end 
 
 to relieve . st 
 
 severity to-morrow. His plan of beneficence was - 
 
 lelping nen t help 
 selves. Heen< togivetotlu leedy not 
 
Peter Cooper 
 
 From a steel engraving 
 
A 
 
 
 
 
 
 
IPeter Cooper 375 
 
 the unearned rewards of industry, but such equipment 
 as should enable the beneficiaries of his bounty to earn 
 reward for themselves by industry of their own. 
 
 His own strangely varied career had taught him, 
 far better than most men ever learn, the conditions 
 under which endeavor achieves success, the equip- 
 ment that is necessary to hopeful industrial effort. 
 He knew, as few men have ever known, the actual 
 educational needs of men and women who have only 
 their hands and eyes and physical capacities as their 
 means of subsistence, and it was intelligently to meet 
 and satisfy these needs that he did his great works of 
 charity. 
 
 His career was typically American. Beginning with 
 nothing he achieved the best that he sought. With- 
 out capital, without schooling, without assistance of 
 any sort, he managed to do conspicuously well those 
 things which are commonly supposed to be possible 
 only to trained intelligence supported by adequate 
 means. 
 
 He was born the son of a poor hatter in New York 
 City, on February 12, [791. His only education was 
 secured during a single year of half-day sessions at a 
 very common school. While still a mere child he 
 went into the hat shop and completely learned the 
 trade of fashioning headgear as that trade was then 
 practised. A little later he was employed in a brewery 
 at Peekskill. After a brief time we find him in the 
 Catskills, still a mere boy, engaged again in making 
 hats, and afterwards in moulding bricks. Hat-making 
 
3/6 £bc IPbilantbropists anc» Educators 
 
 in Brooklyn, brewing at Newburgh, and other occupa- 
 tions followed in disorderly and rather purposeless suc- 
 cession, under the vacillating direction of the boy"s 
 apparently irresolute and incapable father, until at the 
 age of eighteen years Peter was regularly apprenticed 
 to a carriage-maker. 
 
 But although he had mastered that trade and even 
 made an important invention in connection with it, 
 young Cooper, when his apprenticeship expired, de- 
 clined to follow it. His natural mechanical gifts had by 
 this time been supplemented by skill in the working of 
 wood and iron, and for the exercise of this skill and of 
 his natural ingenuity he sought, in a machine shop, a 
 larger opportunity than wagon-making could offer. For 
 a time he made cloth-shearing machines in a factory 
 which he had himself set up. Then he made cabinet 
 work. Soon afterwards he removed from Long Island 
 to New York and established a grocery. He next began 
 that business of glue-making which he continued, in 
 connection with other enterprises, throughout his life. 
 Little by little he added other products to his glue, and 
 little by little he acquired wealth in the business. 
 
 In 1S2S he went to Baltimore, where he established 
 iron works, solved some of the most difficult problems 
 of American railroad operation, designed and built the 
 first locomotive engine ever constructed in America, and 
 rescued from bankruptcy the only railroad then existing 
 in the United States— the Baltimore & Ohio line. To 
 say that he constructed the first American locomotive 
 is very inadequately to record that achievement. It 
 
Ipctcr Cooper 377 
 
 was easily possible for American railroad projectors to 
 buy from England as many locomotives as they might 
 need. But practical experiment showed that those 
 locomotives could not haul trains over the steep grades 
 and sharp curves which marked the Baltimore & Ohio 
 road, and which then seemed necessary to the con- 
 struction of all railroads in America. Nor could British 
 mechanics adapt their engines to such American uses. 
 The Baltimore & Ohio road had been built at an expense 
 that practically exhausted the resources of those in 
 control of it. It could not be operated with any ma- 
 chinery then known. Either it must be abandoned and 
 its enormous cost thrown away, or some new and 
 practically available form of locomotive engine, adapted- 
 to its peculiar conditions, must be devised. That is 
 what Peter Cooper achieved in 1830, and from his labors 
 to that end he realized what was then regarded as a 
 great fortune. 
 
 From that time forward, Cooper devoted himself 
 largely to the conduct of iron foundries, rolling-mills, 
 and machine shops in New York, Pennsylvania, and 
 New Jersey, becoming one of the great "captains of 
 industry " of his age, and originating many new uses 
 for iron, among them the substitution of iron for wooden 
 beams in architectural work and bridge-building. 
 
 He was the early advocate of an Atlantic cable line, 
 and in the hour of its sorest need, when faith in the pos- 
 sibility of ocean telegraphing sank to zero, he supplied, 
 out of his own private means, the money with which 
 the work was ultimately carried to completion. Thus 
 
Cbc philanthropist* ane educators 
 
 he was the real fathei f cean telegraphy. It was his 
 
 faith, rather than that o\ Cyrus Field, that carrier 
 enter? s« I : npletion. and the poem "HowCynis 
 Laid the Cable " ought properly to have celebrated Peter 
 5 ts hero. 
 Having made his fortune, and having established his 
 various enterprises so that their conduct might safely be 
 left to the superintendence of others. Peter C 
 voted himself for the remainder o\ his life to his _ 
 philanthrop c k :f providing others with that 
 
 : :-f brain and eye and hand which renders 
 the .'■ I the t of any- 
 
 laking of them perso:> - capable of 
 rendering service to the world that the world in its 
 5 eager the ssisl [ 
 
 - 5 se n mind, he creal 
 
 ere a free g- - .ould 
 
 furnish all that be ksc sup struct ..here 
 
 free lectures iciena itry s 
 
 I manner m the best rsults 
 
 f in vestigatior 
 
 ~ _ should furnish to men and 
 
 dons for " " 
 
 g of the < telled 
 
 deftness *s its fort 
 
 sess the fit accomp shment of any task that 
 
 ■ tself. 
 
 sdom o\ his varied experience ir. . 
 s c rdered this beneficence of his that it 
 should be forever self-s - tempi g those who 
 
IPctcr Cooper 379 
 
 should come after him, indeed, to enlarge its useful- 
 ness with lavish gifts of their own, but not leaving 
 it in any degree dependent upon their impulses of 
 generous giving. Having bought a suitable plot of 
 ground, he built his institute in such form that the 
 rentals from those parts of it that could not in any 
 case be used directly for its purposes should forever 
 and increasingly furnish an annual income for its 
 support. To this he added an endowment fund, thus 
 rendering his benefaction secure against all hazards 
 of circumstance. 
 
 Peter Cooper's Americanism was intense, instinctive, 
 all-mastering. He believed in his country, its institu- 
 tions, its people, its past, its present, its future, its 
 achievements, and its aspirations. He was a democrat 
 in the fullest and best sense of the term. His belief was 
 in the people, not in a class. His concern was for the 
 great masses of men and women who do the world's 
 work, not for the few who assume to direct their 
 endeavors and appropriate to themselves the pecuniary 
 rewards of other men's labors. 
 
 He lived simply, honestly, and always in most 
 neighborly fashion. He had an encouraging word for 
 every effort that sought human benefit, and his inter- 
 est in the betterment of human conditions knew no 
 abatement, even to the end of a life that covered no 
 less than ninety-two years, one month, and twenty- 
 two days. 
 
HORACE MANN 
 
 AS lawyer, statesman, legislator, codifier, trav- 
 eller, and college president, Horace Mann led 
 a variedly active life which was fruitful of 
 good in many and diverse directions. But his fame 
 rests solely and justly upon the work he did for educa- 
 tion in this republic of ours. 
 
 He was the very first to appreciate at its full value 
 the necessity of popular education in a republic gov- 
 erned by the suffrage, a nation in which every man 
 has a vote, and in which the masses must always out- 
 number the classes, a nation in which the course and 
 policy of government must always be directed by the 
 will of the people, whether that will be well or ill 
 informed. He was the first, also, to realize what and 
 how much education includes and what it means, the 
 first to divorce school training from its traditions of 
 routine acquirement, and to awaken men's minds to a 
 due appreciation of its function in training the char- 
 acter as well as the intellect, and fitting the young 
 for the efficient discharge of the duties of mature man- 
 hood and womanhood. He was the first serious ad- 
 
Hoi 
 
 Mann 
 
A 
 
Iboiacc fIDann 381 
 
 vocate of rational methods in American education ; 
 the first to see how far the teacher might increase his 
 influence for good by making himself the friend and 
 companion of his pupils, where by tradition he had 
 been their enemy to be hated, their taskmaster to 
 be thwarted whenever juvenile ingenuity was equal to 
 that undertaking. 
 
 How great a work of school amelioration he did, it 
 is difficult for men and women of this generation to 
 imagine, or even to understand upon explanation. 
 When he set his face against flogging he was met by 
 the very angry antagonism of the whole schoolmaster 
 class. He was denounced as an enemy of all success- 
 ful teaching, as a visionary enthusiast who would rob 
 the school of that discipline of terror on which alone 
 it had up to that time relied as a means of compelling 
 the mastery of dull tasks, stupidly assigned by learned 
 unintelligence. When he recognized the rights of 
 childhood and urged that they be respected, he was 
 jeered at as an impractical dreamer and a pestilent 
 revolutionizer of the established order of things. 
 When he urged the gentle and loving training of the 
 very young through appeals to their natural instincts 
 of interest in the wonderful world into which they had 
 been born, the whole army of schoolmasters, backed 
 by all the mongers of catechisms and all the devotees 
 of Solomon's-rod rule, opposed him as a vain dreamer 
 of mad, disturbing schemes of innovation. 
 
 But Horace Mann, with his keen insight into hu- 
 man nature, with his enlightened mind and broad 
 
382 £bc philanthropists and Educators 
 
 sympathies, and, above all. with that resistless force 
 which enthusiasm brings to the aid of every genuine 
 apostle of reform, was more than a match for all the inter- 
 ests and all the prejudices that opposed him. It is no 
 exaggeration to call him the founder and father and insti- 
 gator of all that is best in modern American methods of 
 education ; it is not too much to say of him that he 
 wrought that educational revolution which has put 
 reason and kindly interest into the seats once occupied 
 by brute force, substituted intelligence for passion in 
 school government, and made of teaching a profession 
 in which the best men and women among us may 
 engage with self-respecting enthusiasm. The influence 
 of Horace Mann is dominant to-day in every school, 
 public and private, throughout the land, and it is an 
 influence of inestimable beneficence. 
 
 Horace Mann was born of very poor parents, in 
 Franklin, Massachusetts, on May 4. [796. He earned 
 his own education by hard work, and extremely 
 meagre living, and after his graduation from Brown 
 University in iSiq he devoted himself for a time to 
 teaching. In 1823 he was admitted to the bar. In 1 ^27 
 he was elected to the State Legislature, where, during 
 the next six years, he took an active part, especially in 
 all legislation that concerned education, public or private. 
 In 1833 he removed to Boston, where, during the same 
 year, he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate, of 
 which he became presiding officer four years later. 
 
 His great work for education began in 1837, when 
 he was made Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of 
 
"Iboracc fIDann 383 
 
 Education. In that capacity, during the next eleven 
 years, he was a tireless worker for the betterment of 
 all schools. He secured important reforms in the State 
 school laws. He brought about the establishment of 
 normal schools for the training of a fitter class of teach- 
 ers than then existed. He instituted teachers' conven- 
 tions in all the counties, the purpose of which was to 
 stimulate among teachers an intelligent enthusiasm in 
 their work, and to improve methods by a free inter- 
 change of opinions and experiences. He discouraged 
 the use of corporal punishment in schools, and, despite 
 angry resistance, succeeded at last in abolishing that 
 abominable relic of barbarism. He instituted a system 
 of school statistics, the first ever known in America, 
 and in other ways sought to give unity and systematic 
 purpose to educational work. 
 
 He went to Europe at his own expense, and 
 brought back a rich harvest of observation for the en- 
 lightenment of American educators. He quickly made 
 of Massachusetts, so far as the masses of the popula- 
 tion were concerned, the best-educated State in the 
 Union, with the clearly foreseen result that the educa- 
 tors and the public authorities of other States began 
 eagerly to learn of Massachusetts the lessons he had 
 taught. If some of them have since notably bettered 
 the instruction and taken the lead even of Massa- 
 chusetts, it may be fairly assumed that that, too, was a 
 result contemplated by the great apostle of educational 
 reform. It was at any rate inevitable as a result of the 
 great work he had done in Massachusetts. 
 
384 cl?c pbUantbroptets anb Cbucatore 
 
 He has himself left the best record of the diligence 
 with which he did that work. He wrote : 
 
 "From the time 1 accepted the secretaryship in 
 June, 18*7. until Maw 1S4S. when 1 tendered my resig- 
 nation of it. 1 labored in this cause an average of not 
 less than fifteen hours a day. From the beginning to 
 the end of this period 1 never took a single day for 
 relaxation, and months and months together passed 
 without my withdrawing a single evening to call upon 
 a friend." 
 
 When he resigned his secretaryship, his great life- 
 work was fully done. He had wrought the revo- 
 lution intended. He had not only sowed the seed, but 
 had seen it spring into lusty life and grow under his 
 careful cultivation into a vigor that no adverse influ- 
 ence could threaten with impairment. The rest was 
 for others to do. 
 
 From 1S4S till [853, Horace Mann served in Con- 
 gress, acquitting himself there, as everywhere else, with 
 abundant credit. But in comparison with his educa- 
 tional reform work, his congressional activity was in- 
 significant in its fruitage. In 1852 he was defeated as 
 a candidate for governor of Massachusetts, and in the 
 same year he became president of Antioch College, 
 an obscure coeducational institution at Yellow Springs, 
 in Ohio. He died there on August 2. 1859. He left 
 behind him. as a heritage o\ the American people, a 
 legacy of beneficence such as it is the fortune of few 
 men to <rive to those who come after them. 
 
THE INVENTORS 
 
ROBERT FULTON 
 
 THERE are many points of close and interesting 
 similarity in the life stories of Robert Fulton, 
 the father of the steamboat, and S. F. B. Morse, 
 the father of the telegraph. Both began life as artists. 
 Both were miniature- and portrait-painters while yet 
 mere boys under age. Both became pupils of Benja- 
 min West. Both drifted into science and invention 
 through accidental association. Each invented a vari- 
 ety of quite dissimilar contrivances. Each made one 
 supreme invention which mightily ministered to that 
 facility of human intercourse which is the harbinger 
 and chief agency of civilization. Each was forced to 
 face disputes as to the originality and priority of his 
 invention, and to each the only harvest from his labors 
 for long years was a multitude of costly and vexatious 
 lawsuits. Finally each was destined to receive un- 
 stinted honor in spite of rivalries and jealousies, each 
 being everywhere popularly recognized as in effect 
 the inventor of that which he claimed. 
 
 Robert Fulton was born in Lancaster County, Penn- 
 sylvania, in the year 170s. When only seventeen years 
 337 
 
388 Cbe Inventors 
 
 of age the untutored country boy went to Philadelphia, 
 where he achieved immediate success as a painter of 
 portraits, miniatures, and landscapes. Before reaching 
 his majority he had earned money enough by his art 
 to purchase a farm for his widowed mother, and to 
 justify him in going abroad for study. 
 
 In England he became the pupil oi Benjamin West, 
 and so far perfected himself in his art as to secure 
 rich commissions from wealthy and titled personages. 
 It was in the practice oi his art that he became favor- 
 ably acquainted with Earl Stanhope and the Duke oi 
 Bridge water, two noblemen who had achieved dis- 
 tinction as inventors. Stanhope oi an improved print- 
 ing-press, and Bridgewater of new methods oi canal 
 construction. In association with these two men. 
 Fulton's mind was directed towards mechanical and 
 engineering problems, especially in connection with 
 navigation. He invented a system oi inclined planes 
 to take the place oi locks in canal navigation : a new 
 device for cutting marble : a system oi cast-iron acque- 
 ducts and bridges; a flax-spinning machine : and several 
 new types oi watercraft. He was one of the earliest 
 advocates of that system oi canals which afterwards 
 contributed so greatly to New York's commercial 
 supremacy. He published treatises in London urging 
 the commercial advantage and necessity oi canals, 
 and these he pressed upon American attention, par- 
 ticularly as to New York's need and opportunity in 
 that respect. All this was in the latter end oi the 
 eighteenth century. 
 

IRobert jfulton 389 
 
 In 17Q4 Fulton went to France and there painted 
 the first panorama ever exhibited in that country. 
 Three years later we find him engaged in constructing 
 a submarine torpedo-boat of his own invention— 
 which, after repeated trials by the French and English 
 governments, was rejected by both. The craft would 
 sink below the surface of the water and rise again at 
 the will of its inventor ; but its utmost speed under 
 water was only five miles an hour, and it had not 
 power enough to stem any considerable current. 
 
 About 1800 Fulton returned to the United States 
 where he continued his experiments with torpedoes 
 and other war contrivances, for which Congress fur- 
 nished a fund. But his chief attention at this time was 
 given to the problem of steam navigation, on which he 
 had been at work, at intervals, for more than ten years. 
 While he was yet in France, he had experimented 
 with a steamboat on the Seine, but unsatisfactorily. 
 On his return to America he seriously set himself 
 to work on this problem, and on August 11, 1807, his 
 steamboat Clermont made the passage from New York 
 to Albany in thirty hours. From that time forward 
 the boat made regular trips, and others of an improved 
 type were added later. 
 
 Fulton's claim to the honor of originating the 
 steamboat was hotly contested by many rivals at the 
 time, and controversy on that subject has not even yet 
 quite subsided or lost all of its acrimony. The facts 
 bearing upon the matter seem to be as follows : 
 
 As soon as the steam-engine was invented by Watt, 
 
39° Che Inventors 
 
 many men of ingenious minds began to busy them- 
 selves in devising practical applications of the newly 
 harnessed power. Naturally, much attention was 
 given to devices by which to make the steam-engine 
 propel vessels, that being the most obviously desirable 
 use to make of it. At many widely separated places 
 inventors were simultaneously at work upon that 
 problem, with varying degrees of partial success. In 
 [788 John Fitch's experiments on the Delaware 
 resulted in the navigation of a boat for a distance 
 of twenty miles. Three years earlier Rumsey had 
 achieved partial success on the Potomac. John C. 
 Stevens of Hoboken, New Jersey, experimented with 
 some success : and in 1704 Samuel Morev navigated a 
 steamboat from Hartford to New York. Other experi- 
 menters there were, but none except those mentioned 
 achieved results worthy of serious consideration. 
 
 Unquestionably Fitch, Stevens, and Morey antici- 
 pated Fulton in the more or less successful con- 
 struction of steamboats : but no one of them brought 
 his devices to such perfection as to make the steam- 
 boat as a vehicle of commerce an accomplished fact. 
 That is what Fulton did. and it is for that that he is hon- 
 ored. It was in recognition of this, his great service to 
 commerce and civilization, that the United States Gov- 
 ernment, in 1S14. gave his name to the first steam 
 war-ship ever built in the world. 
 
 On the 24th of February. 1815, the inventor passed 
 away, leaving unfinished what he regarded as the most 
 important part of his life-work, namely, the construe- 
 
IRobcrt jfulton 39' 
 
 tion of a practical submarine torpedo-boat. Upon that 
 undertaking he was busily engaged when his last ill- 
 ness came upon him. 
 
 Fulton will always be held in honor as one of the 
 great benefactors of mankind. Doubtless the steam- 
 boat, and its successor, the ocean-going steamship, 
 would have come into being without him. But the 
 fact remains that it was he who first practically solved 
 the problem of steam navigation, and the fame of his 
 achievement is surely none too great if we measure 
 it by the stupendous results that have flowed from his 
 labors. 
 
SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE 
 
 IT is as the inventor of the telegraph that Samuel Fin- 
 ley Breese Morse has been assigned a place in the 
 Hall of Fame. His selection for that honor in 
 preference to Joseph Henry, and to the exclusion of 
 Henry, is sharply criticised in many quarters. Indeed, 
 from the time of Morse's first success until now there 
 has been much and very acrimonious controversy as to 
 the rival claims of the two men to be considered the 
 inventor in that case. Without entering into that con- 
 troversy,— concerning which there is no newly discov- 
 ered fact to be stated, and no new argument to be 
 advanced,— it will be sufficient in this paper to set forth 
 briefly the essential facts of the matter and the conten- 
 tions that'have been based upon them. 
 
 It should be borne in mind that many students of 
 electricity about the year 1810 were- independently 
 working upon the problem of electro-magnetic tele- 
 graphing, and it would be surprising indeed if no two 
 of them had wrought upon substantially identical lines, 
 duplicating each other's ideas in whole or in part. 
 
 According to his biographers, Morse's attention was 
 392 
 

 
 Samuel Finley Breese Morse 
 
 From the painting by Alonzo Chappel 
 
Samuel Jfinlcp JSrccsc fIDorse 393 
 
 first directed to the matter as one offering practical 
 possibilities, during a sea voyage in October, 1812. 
 He devised the dot-and-dash alphabet, now every- 
 where employed, before the voyage was ended, but he 
 did not produce his first working model until the year 
 1835. 
 
 In the meantime, in 1828, Joseph Henry had devised 
 and exhibited in use the electro-magnet, upon which 
 all telegraphing primarily depends. In 18^0 he in- 
 vented the "intensity magnet," without which electric 
 impulses could not be sent over long distances. In 
 1811 Professor Henry published a paper suggesting the 
 use of this device in the transmission of telegraphic sig- 
 nals. During the same year he constructed at Prince- 
 ton an electro-magnetic telegraph one mile long, over 
 which he transmitted signals which were sounded at 
 the further end by the tapping of a bell. 
 
 All this was a full year, and much of it two or three 
 years, before Morse began his experiments. But it is 
 by no means a necessary inference, as some have con- 
 tended, that Morse knew of Henry's achievements or 
 borrowed his results. In any case, two tacts of the 
 highest importance stand to Morse's credit : he first of 
 all men devised a practical telegraphic alphabet, and it 
 was he who first established a telegraph line for the 
 actual transmission of messages. 
 
 Morse was a man of extraordinary versatility of 
 mind. He won distinction, indeed, in two departments 
 of endeavor — art and science — which are usually ac- 
 counted almost antagonistic to each other in impulse 
 
394 ttbc Inventors 
 
 and in method. It" he had not won fame from the 
 telegraph he would still have been remembered as a 
 famous painter and sculptor. His achievement in the 
 practical application of science to human needs has 
 o\ ershadowed his earlier work in art. and in the pop- 
 ular estimation at least the latter holds small place. 
 And yet it was sufficiently notable to have won for 
 him in 1813 a place among the twelve most successful 
 contributors to the British Royal Academy's exhibition, 
 besides other honors both at home and abroad. 
 
 Morse was born at Charlestown, Massachusetts, on 
 the 27th of April. 1791, and was graduated from "tale 
 College in the Class of 1810. Even while an under- 
 graduate he earned money by painting miniatures and 
 cutting out those silhouettes in black which were 
 greatly esteemed in the early years of the nineteenth 
 century. After graduation he studied painting under 
 V\ ashington Allston. going with him to London, where 
 he also had Benjamin West for a master. Two years 
 later, in iSr>. while Britain was at war with the United 
 States, the young American art student won high 
 honor in the Royal A< :!i his pic- 
 
 ture T D . d a little later received the 
 
 gold medal of the Adelphi Society for the plaster 
 model which he had fashioned to aid him in the paint- 
 ing. After painting some portraits Morse returne 
 America in 1S1-. and meeting with small encourage- 
 ment and smaller success in his Boston studio, he be- 
 
 s .'.peripatetic portrait painter, first V .. E ..land 
 and later in the South. In this department of art he 
 
Samuel Jfinlcy Breesc fIDorsc 395 
 
 was abundantly successful, especially in Charleston, 
 South Carolina, where, in spite of his tireless industry 
 ;it the easel, his commissions outran his ability to exe- 
 cute them, sometimes by as many as one hundred 
 and fifty orders in advance. Among the portraits 
 painted about this time were those of President Mon- 
 roe for the city of Charleston, Lafayette for the city 
 of New York, and Fitz Greene Halleck, now owned by 
 the Astor Library. Meantime Morse was busy in his 
 spare moments in works of mechanical invention. 
 
 In [823 Morse opened a studio in New York, which 
 city and its neighborhood remained his home lor the 
 rest of his long life. There he became in effect the 
 founder and first president of the National Academy of 
 Design, and won much applause by his occasional lec- 
 tures on art. 
 
 In 182Q he went to Paris for further study, remain- 
 ing there for three years. It was on the return voyage 
 in 1832 that his attention was first strongly directed to 
 the subject of electro-magnetic telegraphing, and in 
 this fact we have a positive, if not a conclusive argu- 
 ment against the hypothesis that his experiments and 
 results were consciously or unconsciously borrowed 
 from those of Joseph Henry. It is extremely unlikely. 
 to say the least, that Morse, studying art in Paris, — 
 then a month away from our shores, had learned 
 there anything of what Henry was doing with electro- 
 magnets in the seclusion of a mid-Jersey college. And 
 this improbability is rendered all the stronger by the 
 fact that Henry's attitude toward his work was not at 
 
C k I itc iters 
 
 all that of the inventor, looking for what are called 
 :al results, but altogether that of the scientific 
 t *:_.: - engaged in a dis tor 
 
 truth. 
 
 The newspapers of that time made no chronicle of 
 I the modest scientist at Princeton was doing. 
 Henry himself at no time exploited his» 
 outside the college campus nothing was known of 
 either his methods or the results atl hem 
 
 Henry himself in due season set forth his 
 conclusions in the proceedings of learned soc iel 
 He was studying the phenomena of electricity, not 
 : l telegraph, though he referred in one 
 ------ 
 
 ultir .rlegraphic 
 
 iceived the idea of dectro-magnetic 
 teteg > e busied himself with the invent 
 
 an apparatus 
 his dot-and-dash alphabet This 
 
 ".of clock- _ _ 
 
 paper, on which a:: ang and falling, marked 
 
 the dots and dashes. For some 
 lishment of telegraphic lines all mess: ges ere :hus 
 recorded. But when the ears of opi 
 • . . ■ _ • 
 
 .-atus, on which 
 Morse had expended many laborious months of en- 
 
 . npleted his model near the end of the 
 
Samuel Jfinlc\> Brecse flDorse 397 
 
 year 183s. Meantime in that year he was appointed 
 professor of the literature of art in the New York Uni- 
 versity. 
 
 It was not until [837 that he exhibited his telegraph 
 in operation. This was done by means of a 1700-foot 
 wire stretched back and forth across a lecture-room. 
 In that year also he first applied for a patent, and asked 
 Congress for the money necessary to build his first 
 line. The application for aid was unsuccessful, and in 
 the following spring Morse went abroad to secure the 
 support of foreign governments. He was received 
 with high honors and scientific men applauded his 
 discoveries. But his mission produced no results of 
 value. 
 
 On his return to New York in 1839 he found himself 
 impoverished, penniless, and deeply in debt. During 
 the next four years he found difficulty in providing 
 himself even with the poorest food and the meanest 
 of lodgings. Sometimes, indeed, he was in a state of 
 actual starvation. Not until 1842 did he succeed in 
 inducing Congress to grant him financial aid to the 
 extent of $ 10,000. With Ezra Cornell for his partner, 
 Morse made experiments with buried wires and finally 
 built a line on poles from Baltimore to Washington. 
 This line was opened in May, 1S44, and messages were 
 sent and received over it to the measureless admiration 
 of men. 
 
 Morse offered his line and his system to the gov- 
 ernment for $100,000, but the offer was declined. The 
 victory had been won, however. The telegraph was a 
 
398 Gbc flnventors 
 
 practical working fact, and the possessors of private 
 capital were quick to see the boundless wealth it was 
 capable of yielding to those who should invest their 
 money in the extension of the system. 
 
 There were difficulties still to be overcome, how- 
 ever. Morse's patents were violated and their validity 
 contested. It was not until prolonged, vexatious, and 
 very expensive lawsuits had been carried to the 
 Supreme Court of the United States and there finally 
 decided in his favor, that those who had undertaken to 
 establish lines throughout the land were able to gather 
 any return from their investments, or even to rest 
 securely in the possession of the lines they had con- 
 structed. Then the patents were extended and tele- 
 graphs spread nerves of intelligence all over the country. 
 
 Morse's system was so greatly and so obviously 
 better than Wheatstone's in Great Britain, and the 
 modifications of Wheatstone's system which were 
 experimented with on the Continent of Europe, that 
 it soon replaced all others, and is now the only system 
 in use anywhere on earth. 
 
 Morse, in the meantime, was prosecuting experi- 
 ments in submarine telegraphy. With a cable stretched 
 under New York Harbor, he demonstrated the practica- 
 bility of ocean cable service and laid the secure founda- 
 tion for that vast system of undersea telegraphy which 
 has since made the whole civilized world a closely re- 
 lated neighborhood. 
 
 Many other problems of invention engaged Morse's 
 attention from time to time, but the results of his 
 
Samuel jfinlep Brecse flDorse 399 
 
 labors upon them are so overshadowed by his achieve- 
 ment in establishing the telegraph, that they are now 
 remembered only by the few. 
 
 A list of the honors showered upon him by univer- 
 sities and learned societies and governments through- 
 out Europe would fill pages. They are all recorded in 
 the cyclopaedias, and need not be repeated here. 
 They were, after all, only echoes of the greater fame 
 that sounded in the applause of mankind for the father 
 of the telegraph. Every pole upon which a wire is 
 hung is to-day a reminder of the service this man ren- 
 dered to mankind. Every click of an electric magnet 
 sounds his praise. 
 
 He died on the 2d of April, 1872, in the eighty- 
 second year of his age. 
 
ELI WHITNEY 
 
 ELI WHITNEY was a typical inventor. His habit 
 of mind throughout life was to look straight at 
 things and use common sense in dealing with 
 them. All of his inventions were simple in the extreme, 
 as all really valuable inventions must be. All of them 
 were the simplest imaginable devices for the accom- 
 plishment of the end aimed at with the least possible 
 expenditure of force and the least loss of time. 
 
 Whitney was bom in Massachusetts. December 8, 
 176s. Mainly by self-teaching and personal ingenuity 
 he made himself a skilled artisan at a time when 
 skilled artisans were few and their appliances exceed- 
 ingly meagre and clumsy. During the Revolutionary 
 War, mere boy that he was, he rendered an inesti- 
 mable service to the country by making nails by hand. 
 Without his endeavors New England at that time 
 must have gone without nails. 
 
 Having accumulated a little money, Whitney ma- 
 triculated at Yale College and took his degree there 
 in 1792, at what was then the almost unprecedented 
 age of twenty-seven, for at that time it was the cus- 
 
Eli Whitney 
 
 I!. K|ng 
 

 
Eli Wbitnc\> 401 
 
 torn for boys to enter college at about twelve or four- 
 teen years of age and to be graduated at sixteen or 
 eighteen. 
 
 Whitney had not yet found his work, and until a 
 man does that his career does not really begin. It was 
 his plan, after his graduation, to devote himself to the 
 work of teaching, for he seems to have had as yet no 
 adequate conception of his own inventive genius. He 
 therefore went to Georgia to accept the place of tutor 
 in a planter's family. When he got there the place to 
 which he aspired was filled, and Eli Whitney was " a 
 man out of a job." 
 
 He went, by invitation, to live in the family of the 
 widow of General Nathanael Greene, while awaiting 
 opportunity to secure a tutor's employment. In that 
 lady's household, Whitney brought his mechanical in- 
 genuity to bear in the construction of many little 
 household conveniences of a mechanical character, 
 which so pleased the lady that she vaunted his abilities 
 abroad, telling everybody that "Whitney can make 
 anything." 
 
 There was just then a perplexing problem that not 
 only confronted the Georgia planters but interested the 
 entire civilized world. Linen was necessarily a costly 
 product, as it is to-day and always will be. It was 
 much more costly then, relatively, than it is now, be- 
 cause, thanks to Whitney's ingenuity, cotton has since 
 replaced ninety-nine one-hundredths of its uses. 
 
 But cotton could not then do this. The difficulty of 
 separating cotton from its seed, and thus rendering it 
 
402 a be Inventors 
 
 available for the manufacturing of fabrics, was so great 
 as to make cotton fabrics as expensive as those made 
 of linen. One pound, or, at the most, two pounds, of 
 lint cotton was all that a negro could separate from the 
 seed in a day, and so the cultivation of cotton remained 
 unprofitable. The problem was to find a better way, 
 a way which would produce lint cotton so cheaply 
 that every civilized man in the world might wear a 
 shirt, and every civilized woman might pile high in 
 her "presses" the household store of sheets and 
 pillow-cases, while clothing herself in comely fashion 
 in cotton gowns at one tenth the cost of woollen or 
 linen fabrics. 
 
 It was the widow of General Nathanael Greene 
 who suggested that the planters should invoke Eli 
 Whitney's aid in the solution of this problem. It was 
 then that this gracious woman declared her conviction 
 that Whitney "could make anything." 
 
 Whitney instantly undertook the task. As yet he 
 did not know the terms of the problem he was set to 
 solve, for he had never seen seed cotton. He procured 
 some with difficulty, studied its structure, and set him- 
 self at work on the construction of a machine that 
 should enable a negro man to separate the seed from a 
 thousand pounds or more of cotton in a single day 
 without exercising any particular intelligence or skill. 
 
 Having no tools and no source of supply from 
 which to get any, Whitney had to go to a forge and 
 manufacture with his own hands all the implements 
 that he needed. Having no wire and no possibility of 
 
Eli Mbitnq? 403 
 
 buying any, he had to create a wire-drawing plant and 
 himself make the wire which he intended to use in 
 the construction of his machines. 
 
 Thus toilsomely and in the face of almost inconceiv- 
 able difficulties, Eli Whitney constructed a cotton-gin 
 that, with the superintendence of one ignorant negro, 
 was capable of doing the work of a thousand negroes 
 in the way in which they had worked before. 
 
 His invention made cotton cheap, and its cultivation 
 enormously profitable. It gave clothing to mankind 
 in a lavish abundance never before dreamed of, and at 
 a cost that the poorest could easily afford, while to 
 this country it gave a staple product whose sale has 
 poured incalculable wealth into the laps of the people. 
 How greatly beneficent his invention was, a few figures 
 will show. The largest export of cotton in any one year 
 before the invention of the cotton-gin was less than 
 one hundred and ninety thousand pounds. By the year 
 iSo"> the export had increased to more than forty-one 
 million pounds. Since then the country has produced 
 cotton crops amounting to more than eleven million 
 bales, or five and a half billion pounds in a single year. 
 
 All the wealth represented by these stupendous 
 figures was in effect Eli Whitney's gift to his country 
 and to mankind. But incidentally his invention gave 
 a new lease of life to African slavery in America. It 
 made slave labor enormously profitable where before 
 it had been of very doubtful profit indeed. It created 
 a" vested interest" in opposition to the influence of 
 Jefferson and other such men who earnestly sought 
 
404 Cbe Inventors 
 
 the gradual but certain extinction of slavery in the 
 South. For this result, of course. Eli Whitney was no 
 more responsible than was the inventor of wire nails 
 for the loss of employment by thousands of cut-nail 
 makers who were reduced to idleness and poverty by 
 that device. 
 
 In common with many other inventors who have 
 conferred great benefits upon mankind. Eli Whitney 
 got practically nothing out of this, his greatest, inven- 
 tion. Before he could take out a patent on his cotton- 
 gin his workshop was broken open and his machine 
 stolen. It was so simple in its fundamental idea that 
 any mechanic could duplicate it. and so presently cot- 
 ton-gins, closely resembling it. and some of them being 
 improvements upon it. were put upon the market to 
 his destruction. He asked redress of the law. but to 
 little effect. The lawyers accepted his retaining fees. 
 but accomplished next to nothing in the matter of pro- 
 tecting his rights. At one time, it is said, he had no 
 less than sixty lawsuits pending against those who 
 had stolen his invention, but it is not recorded that he 
 got out of them enough to pay his attorneys. 
 
 The State of South Carolina did indeed vote him an 
 award of fifty thousand dollars for his invention, but 
 he had to spend most of the money in litigation before 
 he got it. "North Carolina granted him a royalty on 
 the use of his machines, but very little ever came to 
 him from that grant. Tennessee, by legislative act, 
 promised him a like reward, but at a later session of 
 the Legislature of that State the act was annulled. 
 
j£li TKQbitnc? 405 
 
 Thus from an invention which gave cheap clothing 
 to all mankind the earth over, and gave to the country 
 many thousands of millions of dollars in productive 
 capacity, the inventor got practically no return what- 
 ever. 
 
 One thing, however, it gave him. It taught him to 
 appreciate his own abilities and to turn them to account. 
 It turned his mind from that small and meagrely com- 
 pensated career as a tutor, which he had before con- 
 templated, to the more active and intelligent use of 
 his rare mechanical gifts. He went back to New Eng- 
 land and established a manufactory of arms, in which 
 he, first of all men, introduced the system of a division 
 of labor for the sake of greater precision and a more 
 perfect result. He made many improvements in the 
 arms themselves, also, and upon his models all the 
 government arsenals and private factories of arms have 
 ever since been conducted. 
 
 In this work he earned a competence, and in spite 
 of his loss of recompense for his greatest invention — 
 the cotton-gin — he became a man of abundant fortune 
 and died a distinguished personage in "New Haven, 
 Connecticut, on the 8th of January, 182s, just after 
 passing his sixtieth birthday. 
 
 His service to the world is not rightly to be meas- 
 ured by the wealth — enormous as it is — that his cot- 
 ton-gin has enabled the cotton-growing regions of earth 
 to produce. Incidentally his invention also made pos- 
 sible all that vast cotton-spinning and cotton-weaving 
 industry from which families by hundreds of thousands 
 
406 
 
 Sbe inventors 
 
 in Europe and America derive their means of liveli- 
 hood. And still more important, perhaps, is the fact 
 that the cotton-gin has given cheap clothing to all 
 classes and conditions of men. women, and children 
 throughout the world. 
 
 The distinguished jury of the Mew York University 
 has judged wisely in according to Eli Whitney a place 
 among the immortal benefactors of mankind. 
 
 ^l--?2t.' 
 
THE ARTISTS AND NATURALISTS 
 
GILBERT CHARLES STUART 
 
 GILBERT STUART alone of American painters 
 has been admitted to the Hall of Fame in his 
 capacity as artist. Audubon, Robert Fulton, 
 and Morse were also painters, but their fame rests upon 
 quite other than artistic achievements. Strangely 
 enough, Benjamin West has been excluded from the 
 honor. 
 
 But whether or not Stuart was the greatest of Amer- 
 ican painters, he was at any rate and very certainly the 
 greatest of American portrait artists, and one of the 
 greatest portrait-painters of any time or country. 
 
 His genius for catching and fixing the expression of 
 the human countenance was manifested even in his 
 earliest youth, as two portraits, still preserved in the 
 Redwood Library at Newport, attest. These and 
 some other pictures were painted while Stuart was 
 yet a boy, and before he had any instruction what- 
 ever in his art, or even any opportunity to see pictures 
 that were worth his while. 
 
 Stuart was born in Narragansett, Rhode Island, on 
 December 3, 1755. As has been said, he began painting 
 409 
 
4'o Gbe artists an& IHaturalists 
 
 while a mere child, and at the age of fifteen, when he 
 received his first instruction in that art, he had already 
 won some distinction for his ability to reproduce ex- 
 pression as well as form in a portrait. 
 
 His first tutor was Cosmo Alexander, who took the 
 boy at the age of seventeen to Scotland for instruction. 
 Alexander's death and that of the only other friend 
 that Stuart had made in England left him so destitute 
 that he was forced to work his way back to America 
 as a landsman sailor on board a collier. 
 
 His instruction was still, of course, exceedingly 
 scant, and his youth was necessarily against him in 
 the effort that he now made to establish himself as a 
 portrait-painter in Newport, yet from the very begin- 
 ning he seems to have commended himself by his work. 
 
 His desire for further instruction induced him, in 
 177s, to close his studio and go again to England. 
 His hope was to study there under Benjamin West, 
 as it was the ambition of every young American art 
 student at that time to do. But the youth was 
 modest even to extreme shyness, and it was not 
 until three years later that he summoned the courage 
 necessary to make application for admission to West's 
 studio and for tuition at his hands. 
 
 His gifts, however, quickly appealed to that master, 
 and a little later, at West's suggestion, Stuart opened a 
 studio of his own in London. There he almost in- 
 stantly achieved a most notable success. During the 
 next few years he was indeed the most famous portrait- 
 painter then living in London. 
 
Gilbert Charles Stuart 
 
 From a miniature liy -^arah (Goodrich 
 
Gilbert Cbarles Stuart 
 
 When he returned to America, in 17Q: 
 behind him in England and in Ireland some of the 
 noblest works of his life. 
 
 This success was quickly repeated in the United 
 States, and after a little time he was able to realize 
 the ambition of his life in painting a portrait of Wash- 
 ington. There is some doubt whether that first por- 
 trait of Washington remains or was destroyed by 
 Stuart himself. It is pretty well established, however, 
 that he made several replicas of it. He afterward 
 painted many portraits of Washington, all of which 
 are cherished as the best presentments of the Father 
 of his Country which anywhere survive. 
 
 Stuart's fame was now so great that his services 
 were in constant demand, and his fees much higher 
 than those of any other artist of his time. But so 
 reckless was he of expenditure, and so careless and 
 negligent of his affairs, that he was always in financial 
 difficulties, and, when he died, on July 27, 1828, he 
 left his family absolutely penniless. 
 
 The qualities which distinguished Stuart's art were 
 his wonderful mastery of color, his extraordinary fa- 
 cility in reproducing evanescent expressions, making 
 them contribute to his portraiture, and his masterful 
 handling of flesh tints. 
 
 He was never content to paint the face as it pre- 
 sented itself to him in the pose. He diligently sought 
 to catch it, as it were, unawares : to bring into play 
 that which was most characteristic of his subject, and to 
 put upon his canvas those expressions of countenance 
 
4" Cbc Rrrirt? and naturalists 
 
 which meant so much more than mere form and 
 feature. He was aided in this, it is said, by his re- 
 markable conversational powers. He was an irres 
 ible story-teller, and it was his habit during a sitting to 
 indulge this faculty to the full, managing thus to inter- 
 est his subject and to surprise in him those character- 
 visions which were best interpretative of his 
 character. 
 
 Stuart left behind him at his death nearly a thousand 
 portraits, more than seven hundred and fifty of which 
 were catalogued in a single exhibition in Boston in the 
 year 1SS0. These included, in addition to his other 
 subjects, practically all the great Americans of his 
 time, a fact which would give value to his work even 
 if it had been artistically less notable than it was. 
 
 Gilbert Stuart was. indeed, the portrait-painter of 
 American celebrity, the limner of the countenances 
 of those who chiefly contributed to make our country 
 great. 
 
 u{^ 
 
 
 
JOHN JAMES AUDUBON 
 
 JOHN JAMES AUDUBON was a man of one idea, 
 an enthusiast and devotee to his single chosen 
 subject of fascinated study. 
 
 His devotion to that study was strangely unselfish 
 and even self-sacrificing. To it he gave time, toil, the 
 endurance of hardship, and an utter disregard of per- 
 sonal well-being throughout long years. 
 
 In all this, he seems to have had no idea whatever 
 of gain, or even of reputation. It was not, indeed, 
 until he was a man of middle age that he seems ever 
 to have thought of turning to any practical account the 
 results of his long years of diligent endeavor. 
 
 He was the son of a French naval officer, and was 
 born in Louisiana, May 4, 1780. His father thought to 
 train him for a career similar to his own as an officer 
 in the French navy, but the boy from his earliest 
 childhood manifested a passion for natural history 
 which was not only absorbing but strangely exclusive 
 of interest in anything else. 
 
 As a mere child he was a student of animals and 
 birds, but more particularly of birds. It was his habit 
 
4'4 Che artiste and naturalists 
 
 to make drawings of them and to color these, when he 
 could, as faithfully as his untrained eye and hand 
 would permit. In view of his later eminence in this 
 department, it seems a special pity that he was mod- 
 est while a boy. and burned those juvenile efforts, 
 which, had they been preserved, would have had 
 an interest peculiar to themselves, and quite in- 
 estimable. 
 
 The making of these pictures began soon after his 
 early infancy was past. The passion that inspired 
 them seems to have been born with the boy. It was 
 observed by his parents while he was yet in pinafores. 
 
 It was impossible to educate such a boy in any but 
 the one direction of his own choice, and his father, 
 wisely realizing this, sought to make a painter of him. 
 To that end he placed him as a student with David, 
 who was then foremost among painters, and especially 
 notable for his capacity to instruct young pupils, par- 
 ticularly in the art of drawing. 
 
 But young Audubon took little interest in the work 
 assigned him in the studio. Following his instincts, 
 instead, he spent the time he should have given to 
 the study of perspective in wandering through the 
 woods and fields, and making more and more intimate 
 acquaintance with his friends, the birds. These he 
 portrayed in preference to the subjects that David set 
 for him to study. 
 
 When young Audubon was seventeen years of age, 
 his father abandoned all effort to give him a regular 
 education, even in art. and sent him to live the wild 
 
John James Audubon 
 

 
 J 
 
3obn 3amcs Huonbcn 415 
 
 life that he preferred, on a farm which he owned near 
 Philadelphia. Here began that wonderful collection 
 of birds and eggs which made Audubon's name famous 
 in after years. Here, too, began in earnest his work 
 of painting portraits of his specimens, though to him 
 it did not present itself as work, or impress him in any 
 sense as a matter of serious endeavor. He pictured 
 his birds with fidelity because he loved them, taking 
 no thought whatever for any use that might be made 
 of his pictures. 
 
 He was comfortably well off in the goods of this 
 world, and, while still a very young man, ventured to 
 fall in love with the woman who afterwards became 
 not only his wife but the lifelong companion of his 
 wanderings, the sympathetic sharer of his thoughts 
 and aspirations. 
 
 At the suggestion of the young woman's father, 
 Audubon attempted a business career, but he so 
 neglected affairs for his favorite pursuits as to make 
 only a succession of failures out of it. In New York, 
 in Louisville, Kentucky, in New Orleans, — everywhere, 
 indeed, that he went — his career as a merchant resulted 
 only in that failure which might have been predicted 
 in the case of a man of his inclinations and his habits 
 of life. Finally he abandoned all efforts of this kind 
 and went to live on a little Kentucky farm, where he 
 might spend the greater part of his time wandering 
 through the woods and studying natural history. 
 
 Little by little his collections became notable and 
 his drawings of them multiplied, yet among his 
 
4i 6 £bc artists ant) IRaturalists 
 
 neighbors he was deemed a half-crazy fellow, good for 
 nothing except to tramp and shoot and idle away his 
 time in making quite useless pictures. 
 
 In 1820, misfortune having overtaken him anew, 
 he went to Louisiana, where his wife opened a school 
 in which he taught music and dancing— music being 
 the only art, apart from his bird portraiture, in which 
 he was proficient. 
 
 At this time, also, Audubon painted portraits and 
 such other pictures as he could manage to sell for 
 small sums. It was about 1824 that the thought was 
 first suggested to him of turning to account the ac- 
 cumulations of his woodland work, by giving his 
 drawings in some shape to the public. Failing in his 
 endeavors to accomplish this in Philadelphia, he went 
 to England in 1820, where he became acquainted with 
 many of the most distinguished men of the time, in- 
 cluding Christopher North, Sir Walter Scott, Cuvier, 
 and Humboldt. He was encouraged by them in his 
 project of bringing out his drawings in the form of 
 colored plates. 
 
 The enterprise must necessarily be a very expensive 
 one, and Audubon had no money whatever with 
 which to undertake it. He set to work to earn the 
 necessary capital by painting such pictures as he could 
 get to do, and with the proceeds of this industry for 
 capital he presently began the issue of that wonder- 
 ful work, The Birds of North America. It consisted 
 entirely of plates, five to a number, and the subscrip- 
 tion price for the entire work was not less than a 
 
3obn 3amcs Hucntlxm 417 
 
 thousand dollars. Audubon, meantime, was his own 
 chief canvasser for subscriptions, a work in which 
 his wife diligently assisted him. He also painted 
 from time to time in order to support himself, and 
 at last had the gratification of finishing, in 1839, the 
 publication of the work which had been begun in 1830. 
 
 Having thus brought out the volumes containing 
 the plates, he set to work upon the letter-press volumes 
 which were to accompany, illustrate, and explain them. 
 This work occupied him for several years and was 
 finished in 1844. Afterwards he wrote and published 
 a small edition of The Birds of North America, and 
 when that was done his work in the world was in 
 effect ended. 
 
 He had in the meantime been recognized as one of 
 themselves by the greatest naturalists then living, and 
 by the greatest artists as a fellow-worker, peculiarly 
 gifted in his own department of artistic endeavor. 
 Honors were showered upon him by learned societies 
 in Europe and America, and the man who had for so 
 many years tramped through the woods in homespun 
 garb, " idling away his time," as his neighbors thought, 
 died, one of the most famous of men, on January 27, 
 1851. 
 
ASA GRAY 
 
 NEXT to Dr. John Torrey— whose pupil and life- 
 long' co-worker he was — Professor Asa Gray 
 was the most learned of American botanists, 
 and the one who contributed most, not only to the 
 ordering of American plant study and its interpreta- 
 tion, but to the advancement of botanical science gen- 
 erally. In co-operation with Torrey, he was one 
 o\ the influential leaders in those endeavors which 
 brought about the natural classification of plants by 
 their kinships, as a substitute for the arbitrary classifi- 
 cation of Linnaeus. This was a service to botany 
 scarcely less important than was the work, in another 
 department of science, of those chemists who devised 
 and secured the acceptance of the new. orderly, and 
 rational nomenclature o\ chemistry by which the very- 
 name given to an element or to a compound reveals at 
 once its nature and its scientific place. 
 
 Dr. Gray had also another claim to distinction 
 among botanists. He knew, as Agassiz and Darwin 
 and Huxley did. how to make science both intelligent 
 and interesting to comparatively untrained minds, and 
 
Asa Gra\ 
 
 tlie ltu^t by St. 
 

 N 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
ASA-WAT- 
 
 ■iBB^ 
 
Hsa (5 rap 4' 9 
 
 how thus to make its teachings acceptable, instructive, 
 and greatly enlightening to multitudes to whom the 
 ordinary formulas of science were a mystery past un- 
 derstanding. Probably there never were two little 
 books that set so many people to thinking and observ- 
 ing as Asa Gray's How PLinls Crow ami How Plants 
 Behave. The very title of the last-named work is an 
 inspiration to profitable study through observation,— 
 the only form of study that science recognizes as worth 
 the effort put into it. The simple suggestion that 
 plants "behave,"— that they have ways ol their own, 
 that they seem to be inspired with a purpose, whether 
 their own or that of some power outside of themselves 
 matters not,— that simple suggestion is an inspiration to 
 scientific observation, a lure to interested looking, a 
 temptation to earnest and profitable thought, and the 
 simple lucidity of the essay both stimulated study and 
 rewarded it. When the little book appeared in print, 
 Dr. George Thurber, himself one of the notable botan- 
 ists of his time, asked Professor Gray : " How did you 
 happen to think of it ? " Dr. Gray replied : " It 's all 
 due to that wonder-worker, Darwin. He has taught all 
 of us how to observe, and that is the greatest lesson that 
 anybody ever taught in this dull-eyed world of ours." 
 
 Gray himself had much of Darwin's gifts of obser- 
 vation and of inspiration. To a pupil who was worthy 
 of his instruction he once said : " Look. Then think. 
 Then look again in the light of your thinking. After that 
 you will be tit to think in the light of your looking." 
 
 All this was the genius of the born teacher; but it 
 
420 £be artists ano IRaturalists 
 
 was more. That which he taught to his pupils as 
 the art of acquisition in science was his own art of 
 original, scientific discovery. To that temper of his 
 mind, to that direction of his intellect, we owe all that 
 he found out and recorded for our instruction. 
 
 Asa Gray was born in the little village of Paris, 
 Oneida County, New York, on November 18, 1810. 
 The village had aspirations of greatness, as the name 
 it selected for itself abundantly attests. If it has never 
 achieved its ambitions in any other way, it is at any rate 
 entitled to pride itself upon the fact that one of its 
 mothers gave Asa Gray to a world that is always 
 eagerly waiting for such men as he was. He had 
 only an " academy " education, after which he studied 
 so much of medicine as was in that day required for a 
 degree that meant nothing in particular. In the course 
 of his medical studies he learned at least what science 
 means, and developed a passion for inquiry which 
 made his subsequent career possible. 
 
 He turned almost immediately from the pill practice 
 of those days to the study of botany, under the tuition 
 of the greatest botanist this country has ever pro- 
 duced — Dr. John Torrey, an Immortal who has been 
 strangely omitted in the choice of names for inscrip- 
 tion in the Hall of Fame. He learned rapidly, and in 
 1834 was recognized by the National Government as 
 a botanist of authority, being appointed in that year to 
 the place of botanist to the Wilkes expedition. Delay 
 in the departure of that expedition led to his resigna- 
 tion of the post assigned him. 
 
Bea <5rap 421 
 
 The University of Michigan offered him a professor- 
 ship, which he declined. In 1842 he was made a 
 Professor of Natural History at Harvard, a position 
 which he retained for more than thirty years, resign i un- 
 it at last in 1871 because of advancing age ; but, by 
 request of the University, retaining the curatorship of 
 that wonderful herbarium, numbering more than 200,- 
 000 specimens, and that library of more than 2200 
 authoritative botanical works which he had collected 
 during a lifetime of devotion to the subject of his 
 special study, and had presented to the University as 
 his material contribution to a science to which his en- 
 tire life and all of his intellectual gifts had been a less 
 material but immeasurably more important gift. 
 
 In the practical work of American botanical ex- 
 ploration only two men had been recognized by the 
 United States Government as master minds in that 
 department of scientific research— John Torrey and Asa 
 Gray. To them were submitted all the wonderful col- 
 lections made by the various expeditions sent out by 
 the government, and to their labors we owe all that 
 we possess of interpretative botanical literature. 
 
 Earlier in life, Gray had undertaken, in collaboration 
 with Torrey, to prepare a great, comprehensive, and 
 authoritative work on The Flora of North America. 
 Publishing, after the fashion of that time, in successive 
 numbers, they covered those plants which are classed 
 as " composite," but during the progress of the work 
 the materials were so enormously increased by investi- 
 gation, that even to complete this part of the work 
 
422 £be artists anfc IRaturaltsts 
 
 would have required an appendix greater in extent 
 than the work itself. To the lasting regret of all stu- 
 dents, the enterprise was therefore abandoned. 
 
 Asa Gray's writings on the specialties of his 
 scientific study were mainly presented in the form 
 of official reports and scientific monographs. He 
 wrote several popular books of fascinating interest, the 
 most popular of which have been mentioned already. 
 But it is a matter of enduring regret that he found no 
 time in which to interpret his more strictly scientific 
 writings into a form in which they might inspire and 
 enlighten men and women and children who have the 
 scientific thirst for exact knowledge, but lack that 
 technical instruction in science which is necessary to 
 the full appreciation of formally scientific papers. 
 
 Professor Gray continued to live at Cambridge until 
 January 30, 1888, when his long and most useful life 
 came to an end. 
 
INDEX 
 
 Adams, John, essay on, 4; ; character, cour- 
 age and learning, 43; early appreciation 
 of inevitable independence, 43, 44 ; 
 his diplomatic methods, 44 ; his love of 
 truth, 44 ; his patriotic self-denial, 44 ; 
 birth and education, 44; attitude toward 
 religion, 4s ; early and lasting interest 
 in public affairs, 45 ; advocate of western 
 extension of country, 4s ft st-q. ; his fore- 
 cast of the country's greatness, 45 ; his 
 angry and insistent patriotism, 40-48 ; 
 his opposition to stamp act and writs of 
 assistance, 46; as a writer, 47; attempts 
 to corrupt him, 47; in first colonial Con- 
 gress, 48 ; early advocate of indepen- 
 dence and antagonist of at compromise, 
 48 ; moves Washington's appointment 
 as commander-in-chief, 49; value of that 
 service, 49, so ; secures passage of an 
 act recommending independent colonial 
 governments, so, si ; writes a declara- 
 tion of independence into the preamble, 
 5 1 ; leads debate in advocacy of decla- 
 ration of independence, s 1 ; chairman 
 board of war and ordnance, S2 ; op- 
 poses reconciliation in every form, 52 ; 
 his mission to France, 53 ; his shrewd 
 penetration of French purposes, 53 ; re- 
 called, 54 ; his return to Paris, 54 ; his 
 distrust of Vergennes, 54 ; he defeats 
 project to confine United States to re- 
 gion east of Alleghanies, ss ; minister 
 
 to Holland, S3 ; negotiates loan and 
 treaty of commerce, 56; in Paris again 
 to negotiate treaty of peace and inde- 
 pendence, so; magnitude of his service, 
 S7 ; thanked by Congress, 59 ; ambi- 
 tion to be first President, 00 ; his over- 
 weening self-conceit, 60; his impatience 
 with the country's choice of Washing- 
 ton, 60; opposed to Jefferson's doctrines, 
 00 ; his belief in an aristocratic ruling 
 class, 61 ; his distrust of universal suf- 
 frage, 61 ; his discourses on Davila, 01 ; 
 opposes pure democracy, 6i ; elected 
 President, 01 ; unpopularity, 01, 62; 
 ignores Jefferson, 62 ; has controversy 
 with Hamilton, 62 ; perplexities of his 
 administration, 02, 6s ; discredited and 
 beaten at the end of it, 64; his appoint- 
 ment of Marshall to be chief justice, 04 ; 
 his puerile resentment of defeat, 64 ; his 
 petulant retirement from office, 64 ; re- 
 sumes his friendship with Jefferson, os ; 
 his death and last words, 05; on Web- 
 ster's eloquence, 99 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, vile charges against, 
 140 
 
 Arnold, Benedict, Washington's attitude 
 to, 11 
 
 Audubon, John James, essay on, 411 ; his 
 devotion to his one subject, 41 5 ; birth, 
 41-,; his child-drawings of animals, 414; 
 student under David, but abandoned 
 
4=4 
 
 Inbey 
 
 Audubon — Continued. 
 
 studio for woods and fields, 414; art 
 education abandoned, 41^; sent to a 
 farm, 41? : begins his wonderful bird 
 collection and his serious paint- 
 ing of birds, 41; ; fortunately sympa- 
 thetic marriage, 4 1 ; : repeatedly attempts 
 a business career and fails, 415; goes to 
 Kentucky farm and lives in the woods, 
 415; deemed a half-crazy good-for- 
 naught, 41s; goes to Louisiana and 
 teaches music and dancing. 410: goes 
 to England to make market of his draw- 
 ings and paintings, 410: encouraged by 
 i!i. and Cuvier, 410: earning 
 the necessary capital by painting, begins 
 at last the issue of Birds of North 
 Americj, 410 ; everywhere honored by 
 naturalists and painters, 417; dies fa- 
 mous, 417 
 
 Bank. National, fight concerning, 1^4 et 
 
 J;',/..- retaliates. 155 
 Beecher. Henry Ward, essay on. 356 ; a 
 commanding force as orator, i^o : 
 ephemeral character of his work. 356 et 
 seq.; his books neglected 
 anal\-:-. 356 ei • . oratorical method. 
 -.;-. 358 ; his illogical temperament, 
 -,;S; an emotional thinker, 358, 
 his intellectual method illustrated in 
 an anecdote, 359 ; birth and education, 
 360 : preacher in Indiana, 360; in Ply- 
 mouth pulpit, 560 ; his earnestness of 
 conviction. ;6o ; his oratorical artifices. 
 501 ; histrionic skill. -01 : first of the 
 "political preachers.'' 501 ; his own ac- 
 count of himself, 562 ; his influence, liv- 
 ing and dead, 502, ;o; : the Tilton 
 scandal, ^o" : death, -o; 
 Braddock, Washington as lieutenant of, 
 . 18 ; Washington saves his army, 18 
 Bryant, William Cullen, fails of election, 
 
 Bryce's injustice to Jefferson, 66 
 Byron on Washington. 4 
 California, peopling of, reopens slavery 
 question, 131 
 
 Champ, Sergeant, Washington's dealing 
 with. 1 1 
 
 Channing. William Ellery, essay on, 351 
 apostle of liberality, yet by instinct a 
 conservative, ;;o ; comparison with 
 Emerson. ;=;o ; character, 55 i ; his re- 
 ligious temperament, ^^i, -^2 ; birth 
 and education, ;=;2; tutor in Richmond, 
 ;;■; his asceticism, ;;■;: becomes clergy- 
 man, 353 ; his Federal Street pastorate, 
 353 ei seq.; his preaching and his 
 writings, ;^4; the revolt of conscience, 
 -^4, 355 ; death. 355 
 
 Clay. Henry, essay on, 12^ ; his gift of 
 leadership, 125 et seq.; his popularity, 
 120 et seq.; his eloquence, 127; his in- 
 consistency. 12-jetseq.; opposes slavery 
 but serves it. 127./ seq.; opposes Na- 
 tional Bank, but becomes its chief advo- 
 cate. 127; his attitude toward slavery, 
 127. 12S et seq. : his devotion to the 
 Union a dominating force in his charac- 
 ter and career, 1 20. 1 30 ; his tariff in- 
 consistencies, 1-1. r,: et seq.; his 
 meagTe education, 133 ; his superficial- 
 ity, i",: advocates emancipation, 134; 
 appointed Senator, 135; saves Ken- 
 tucky from ridiculous blunder. 135; di ic- 
 trine of home manufacture, 1 35 ; 
 duellina. 1 -^ ; Senator again. 1 -,o ; his 
 policy of limited protection. 1 36 ; op- 
 poses U. S. Bank, 136; in 
 -;o: speaker and leader. i~,7; cham- 
 pions war with England, 1 ^7 : Madison 
 wants to make him commander-in- 
 chief. 1 37 : his popularity strangely 
 survives disappointment, 1 37 ; peace 
 commissioner. 1 ^S ; speaker again, 
 i-,S: fir-t protective tariff. 1 ;S, 
 1 ;o : Clay's self-deception, 1 39 tt 
 seq.: his erratic bank course, 140 it 
 seq.; internal improvements, 141 etseq.; 
 secret of Clay's influence, 141. 14- *' 
 seq. : no party divisions. 142 ; Missouri 
 Compromise, 142 et seq. : returns to 
 Congress and is again made speaker, 
 14; : candidate for presidency. 14= ! 
 president-maker, 140; the charge of 
 
Hn&cy 
 
 425 
 
 Clay — Continued. 
 
 "bargain and corruption," 147, 140; 
 accepts cabinet place at Adams's hands, 
 148; fights duel with Randolph, 148; 
 Jackson's hostility, 140; election of hos- 
 tile Congress, 149 ; bitterest of all cam- 
 paigns, 149 ; Clay's chagrin over 
 Jackson's election, 130; Senator again, 
 150; strengthens "tariff of abomina- 
 tions," 150; nullification, 130; pacifica- 
 tor, 150; reduces tariff, 150; his greatest 
 blunder, 1 5 1 ; forces bank issue into 
 campaign of 1832, and is beaten by his 
 own masterly arguments, 151 et seq.; 
 fight on National Bank, 1 =14 et st'i/. ; reso- 
 lutions of censure, 15s; Jackson protests, 
 iss ; renewal of slavery question, 1 so, 
 1S7 ; Clay seeks compromise, 137; not 
 a candidate for President in 1836 and 
 1840, 158 ; Clay's bank bills and Tyler's 
 vetoes, 160; Clay's anger, 160; bids 
 farewell to Senate, 101 ; makes "pro- 
 gresses " as candidate for presidency, 
 101 ; candidate in 1S44, 102 et seq.; ar- 
 ranges with Van Buren to exclude Texas 
 issue, 163, 104; failure, 164; Clay's 
 "hedging," 104; defeat, 165; his 
 poverty, 163 ; relief, 10s ; presidunti.il 
 fever still hot, 165 ; set aside for Tay- 
 lor, 100 ; Clay's humiliation, 167 ; re- 
 fuses to support candidate, 167; again 
 advocates emancipation in Kentucky, 
 107; Senator again, 107, 10S; the com- 
 promise of 1850, 168 et seq.; death, 171 
 Columbus, Christopher, validity of his 
 claim to honor as discoverer of America, 
 
 Cooper, James Fenimore, fails of election, 
 xvi 
 
 Cooper, Peter, essay on, 174 ; intelligent 
 beneficence, 374 ; helping men to help 
 themselves, 374 ; a typically American 
 career, 37s ; birth and boyhood, 37s ; 
 learns hatter's trade, 375 ; in other em- 
 ployments, 37s; learns carriage making,, 
 376 ; glue making, iron working, ma- 
 chinery, etc., 376; makes first American 
 locomotive, 376 ; a great captain of in- 
 
 dustry, 377 ; aids Atlantic cable, 177 ; 
 establishes Cooper Union, -,7s ; his 
 Americanism and democracy, 378 
 
 Criticism of selections made, xi et seq. 
 
 Duel between Clay and Marshall, 1 35 ; 
 between Clay and Randolph, 14S 
 
 Edwards, Jonathan, essay on, 337 ; en- 
 vironment, intellectual altitude, and 
 limitations, 337 et seq.; the blight of a 
 doctrine, 344 ; a logical but unreason- 
 able age, 344 ; a great mind in hand- 
 cuffs and spancels, 34s ; his uprightness 
 and purity, 345 ; sacrifices to conscience, 
 346; birth and precocity, ,40 ; at Yale, 
 346 ; in New York pastorate, 346 ; tutor 
 at Yale, 347 ; goes to Northampton, 
 346 ; great trial of his life, 346 et seq.; 
 refuses to compromise with wrong, 348; 
 self-sacrificing honesty, 348 ; a genuine 
 hero, 349 ; missionary, 349 ; president 
 of Princeton College, 349 ; death, 349 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, essay on, 324 ; 
 his genius and intellectual altitude, 124, 
 325 et seq.; his transcendentalism, -,2s 
 el seq. ; his refusal to defend his doc- 
 trines, 326 et seq.; his pantheism, -,27 ; 
 his cheerful inconsistency, 328 et seq. ; 
 at all times a poet, 329 ; estimate, -,29 ; 
 opposes organized reform, 310 ; his un- 
 eventful life, 331 ; birth and education, 
 331 ; abandons the pulpit, 332 ; writes 
 English Traits, 332 ; affection in which 
 he was held, 333 ; rebuilding of his 
 burned house, 333 ; triumphal recep- 
 tion, S33 ; intellectual decay and death, 
 334 
 
 Farragut, David Glasgow, essay on, 270 ; 
 first American admiral, 270 ; last sur- 
 vivor of old-school naval officers, 270 ; 
 birth, 270; adopted into navy, 271 ; 
 commands prize ship at twelve years of 
 age, 271, 272 ; his first sea fight, 273 ; 
 serves in Mediterranean, 273 ; lives at 
 Tunis, 273; nicknamed "the young 
 admiral," 274 ; Mexican War service, 
 
 274 ; establishes Mare Island navy yard, 
 
 275 ; Civil War and divided allegiance,. 
 
426 
 
 In&cy 
 
 Farragut— Continued. 
 
 273 ; Farragut adheres to Union, 276 ; 
 ordered to capture New Orleans, 270 ; 
 peculiar insolence of the orders given 
 him, 270 ; campaign against New Or- 
 leans, 270 et seq.; his splendid "river 
 fight," 270 ; captures New Orleans, 
 280 ; forbidden to attack Mobile, 280 ; 
 opens Mississippi, 281 ; ordered to assail 
 Mobile, 2S1 ; the "Bay fight," 282; 
 " Go on. Damn the torpedoes," 282 ; 
 made rear admiral and afterwards ad- 
 miral, 283 ; commands fleet to receive 
 George Peabody's body, 383 ; death, 
 
 Foreign politics, influence in American 
 affairs, 02 
 
 Franklin, Benjamin, essay on, 23 ; Apostle 
 of Common Sense, 2 3 et seq .; anecdote 
 of plagiarizing clergyman, 24 ; his mili- 
 tary vagary, 20-24 \ h' s electrical ex- 
 periments, 25 ; observations of Gulf 
 Stream, 25 ; Poor Richard's Almanac 
 and its sordidness, 20 ; his grandly self- 
 sacrificing life, 26 ; his lack of sentiment, 
 27 ; his treatment of Deborah Read, 27 
 et seq.; his neglect of his wife, 28 ; 
 why he married her, 20, 30 ; his service 
 to Braddock, 31 ; the institutions he 
 created, 31 ; his patriotism, 31 et 
 passim : his meagre education and 
 its lesson, 32 ; his old-age service, 
 30, 40, 41 ; his conception of the 
 Union, 3=; ; birth and circumstances, 36; 
 omnivorous reader, 37 ; his linguistic 
 attainments, 37 ; learning his trade, 
 37 ; his early achievements as a forcible 
 writer, 37, 38 et seq.; career in Phila- 
 delphia, 38 ; first journey to London, 
 37, 38 ; postmaster-general, 39; organ- 
 izer of public sentiment, 30; his meth- 
 ods, 30 ; his scientific work, 30, 40 ; 
 his diplomatic career, 40, 41 ; president 
 of Pennsylvania, 41 ; member of con- 
 stitutional convention, 41 ; death, 41 ; 
 summary, 42 
 
 Fulton, Robert, essay on, 387 ; why he 
 was chosen instead of Fitch, xiii, xiv ; 
 
 parallel between his career and Morse's, 
 387 ; birth, 387 ; a successful painter at 
 seventeen, 387 ; pupil of Benjamin 
 West, 388 ; becomes acquainted with 
 the inventors, Earl Stanhope and Duke 
 of Bridgewater, 388 ; becomes himself 
 an inventor, 388 ; advocates New York 
 canals, 388 ; paints first panorama in 
 France, 389 ; first submarine boat, 380 ; 
 succeeds in navigating Hudson, 380 ; 
 his claim to be considered originator of 
 steam navigation, 389 et seq.,; death, 
 390 
 
 Gallaudet, Dr., strange omission of, xvi 
 Gates, Horatio, Washington's treatment 
 
 of, 10 
 Grant, Ulysses Simpson, essay on, 221 ; 
 typical modern soldier, 221 ; personal 
 characteristics, 221, 222 ; his control of 
 imagination, 222 ; his sentiment illus- 
 trated, 223 ; birth, 224 ; education, 224; 
 service in Mexican War, 224 ; resigns, 
 224 ; unsuccessful in business, 224 ; so- 
 licits service at outbreak of Civil War 
 unsuccessfully, and gets into the army 
 through volunteers, 224 ; captures Pad- 
 ucah, 22s; battle of Belmont, 22=;; plans 
 campaign against Forts Henry and Don- 
 elson, 22s ; Halleck rejects plan, 226 ; 
 later Halleck consents, 226 ; Grant's 
 success, 220 ; first decisive victories of 
 Union armies, 227 ; major-general of 
 volunteers, 227 ; again in disfavor with 
 Halleck, 227; Shiloh or Pittsburg Land- 
 ing, 227 ; Grant's daring strategy and 
 its results, 22S ; Vicksburg campaign, 
 
 230 et seq. ; major-general in regular 
 army and in command of the West, 
 
 231 ; achievements, 231 ; in command 
 of all the armies, 232 ; decides to make 
 the destruction of Lee's power his sole 
 objective, 232 ; exposition of his strat- 
 egy, 232 el seq.; errors of criticism, 
 233<7s«/.; strategy of common sense, 
 23=;; the final struggle, 237 et seq. ; 
 end of the war, 230 ; controversy 
 with President Johnson, 239 ; general 
 
"lln&cy 
 
 427 
 
 Grant — Continued. 
 
 of the army, 210; his delicate posi- 
 tion, 239 ; President, 240 ; his errors 
 and Ins achievements in administration, 
 240, 241 ; his service to sound money 
 and the nation's financial integrity, 242 ; 
 practical civil service reform, 24; ; his 
 intense deprecation of war, 241 ; his 
 international polity, 24-, ; his services to 
 peace by arbitration, 24; ; his practice, 
 244 ; his dealings with Spain, 244 ; his 
 extraordinary services as President, 24s ; 
 his tour around the world, 24s ; the 
 honors everywhere heaped upon him, 
 24^ ; the Grant & Ward calamity, 24s, 
 24b ; last labors and death, 240 ; high 
 qualities of character, 240 
 
 Gray, Asa, his selection instead of Torrey, 
 xi ; essay on, 418; co-operation with 
 Torrey in reforming botanical classifica- 
 tion, 418 ; his capacity in interpreting 
 science, 41 S; How Plants Grow, and 
 How Plants Behave, 419 ; Gray's esti- 
 mate of Darwin, 410; his teaching 
 method, 410 ; birth and education, 420; 
 studies under Torrey, 420 ; government 
 service, 420 ; professor at Harvard, 42 1 ; 
 his writings, popular and official, 422 ; 
 death, 422 
 
 Gross, Dr., not nominated, xvi 
 
 Hall of Fame — account of, x ; conditions 
 of admission to, x, xi 
 
 Harrison, W. H., his unfitness for Presi- 
 dent, 158 ; his death, 159 
 
 Hawthorne, Nathaniel, essay on, 303 ; 
 his genius, 303 ; birth, 303 ; love of 
 solitude, 303 etseq.; literary style, 305 ; 
 education, 306 ; meagre returns of his 
 literary work, 307, 308 ; Tin- Scarlet 
 Letter, -,oS, -,12; English appreciation, 
 308 ; Twice Told Tales, 309 ; weigher 
 in Boston Custom House, 309 ; Brook 
 Farm experience, 310 et scq.; at Con- 
 cord, 311; domestic happiness, 311; 
 bread- winning problem, 31 1 ; magazine 
 work, 311; second series of Twice Told 
 Tales, 311 ; financial losses, 312 ; in 
 
 Salem Custom House, 312 ; fame unex- 
 pected, 313 ; restlessness, 313 ; removes 
 to Berkshire Hills, 313; House of the 
 Seven Gables, 313 ; The IVonder Hook, 
 The Snow /mage, etc., 314 ; removes to 
 Lenox, 114 ; The Blithedale Romance, 
 314; returns to Concord, 314; consul 
 at Liverpool, 314 ; life in Europe, 31s ; 
 return to America and death, lis ; his 
 character, ; 1 5, 316 
 
 Henry, Joseph, his telegraphic inventions, 
 xiv, -,02, 393 et scq. 
 
 Hopkins, Mark, omitted, xvi 
 
 Howe, Elias, his service to humanity, xiii 
 
 Introductory, ix 
 
 living, Washington, essay on, 2S7 ; his 
 supremacy in American literature, 287 ; 
 his varied achievements, 288 et seq.; 
 his intellectual grasp and broad sympa- 
 thies, 2S9 ; character of his mind, 289 ; 
 robs his own orchard, 290 ; his affec- 
 tion for trashy books, 290 ; Mr. George 
 P. Putnam's anecdote, 290 ; his loyalty 
 to New York City, 291, 202; birth, 
 292 ; father and mother, 292 ; meagre 
 and irregular education, 292 ; goes to 
 Europe, 20-, ; Salmagundi, 293 ; his 
 great sorrow, 293 et seq. ; Knicker- 
 bocker's History, 204, :o, ; distaste for 
 systematic work, 20s ; Walter Scott's 
 effort to befriend him, 29s, 296 ; detesta- 
 tion of law practice, 200 ; love of so- 
 ciety, 200 ; goes again to England, 200; 
 in business, 296 ; failure of his firm, 
 297 ; the Sketch Book, 297 ; Brace- 
 bridge Hall, Tales of a Traveller, etc., 
 achieve remarkable success, 297 ; goes 
 to Madiid, 207 ; Life of Columbus, 
 Granada, Alhambra, etc., wonderfully 
 successful, 298 ; Secretary of Legation 
 at London, 298 ; honored by Royal So- 
 ciety and Oxford University, 20S ; re- 
 turns to New York, 29Q ; buys Sonny- 
 side and makes beautiful home life, 299 ; 
 literary work, 300 ; Minister to Spain, 
 300 ; Mahomet, 300 ; Mr. Putnam 
 undertakes Irving's revival, 301 ; Life 
 
428 
 
 "flnbey 
 
 Irving — Continued. 
 of Washington, 302 ; old age and 
 death, 302 
 
 Jackson, Andrew : Webster supports him 
 against nullification', 114; Webster op- 
 poses his bank policy, no; Jackson 
 censures Congress for criticising him, 
 and claims extraordinary powers, 1 16 et 
 seq. ; his hostility to Clay, 149 ; elected 
 President, 150; resolute attitude toward 
 nullification, iso ; his war on national 
 banks, 1^4 et seq.; protests against 
 resolutions of censure, i^ 
 
 Jefferson, Thomas, essay on, 66; domi- 
 nant characteristic love of liberty, 06 ; 
 Bryce's injustice to his memory, 66 ; 
 his efforts to write human liberty into 
 statute law, 07 ; attitude toward slavery, 
 67, 68 et seq.; his first public speech in 
 advocacy of emancipation, 08 ; his three 
 measures for liberty, 00 et seq. ; his work 
 for religious liberty, 70-72 ; his labors 
 for local courts, common schools, and 
 town government, 7-, ; keynote of his 
 character, 7-5 ; his attitude toward 
 French Revolution, 73, 74 ; stupid 
 blunders concerning it, 73, 74 ; his self- 
 sacrificing devotion to public service, 74, 
 7=, ; his rule ot life, 7; ; how he im- 
 poverished himself in national service, 
 75, 76 ; education, 70, 77 et seq.; his 
 literary style, 77, 78 ; unpaid public 
 service, 78 ; member of Virginia House 
 of Burgesses, 79 ; conflict with Lord 
 Botetourt, 79 ; writes Virginia's 
 " Draught of Instructions," the first 
 declaration of independence, 79 ; his ad- 
 dress to the King, 70, 80 ; chairman of 
 committee to draught Declaration of 
 Independence at thirty - three years 
 of age, 80, 81 ; his question to the King 
 and Parliament, 81 ; his special fitness 
 to write the Declaration of Independence, 
 81 ; his warfare upon primogeniture, en- 
 tails, and church and state, 82 ; three 
 times appointed Minister, 82 ; Governor 
 of Virginia, 82, 83 ; again appointed 
 
 Minister, 83 ; in Congress, 83 ; orig- 
 inates decimal currency, 83 ; appoint- 
 ed for fifth time Minister to France, 
 
 83, 84 ; his study of French social con- 
 ditions, 84, 85 ; his return to America, 
 
 84, 8s ; Secretary of State under Wash- 
 ington, 85 ; difficulties of the position, 
 85-87 ; resigns, 87 ; Washington in- 
 vites him to return to Cabinet, but he 
 declines, 88 ; President from 1S01 to 
 1809, 88 et seq. ; his educational service 
 to the Republic, 88 ; the Louisiana Pur- 
 chase and its significance, 88, 92 ; demo- 
 cratic administration, 89 ; sweeps away 
 all aristocratic forms and ceremonies, 89 ; 
 abandons speech and substitutes message 
 to Congress, 90 ; author of Kentucky 
 resolutions of 1798, 90, 91 ; undoing of 
 the Alien and Sedition Laws, 91 ; his civil 
 service problems and record, 91, 92 ; 
 Louisiana Purchase, 92 ; his service in 
 republicanizing the Republic, 02,9;; his 
 poverty at end of his public service, o;, 
 04 ; his effort to establish common 
 schools in Virginia, 94 ; father of the 
 University of Virginia, 94, 95 ; sum- 
 mary, 95 
 
 Kent, James, essay on, 192 ; his learning, 
 192 ; his commentaries, 10; ; birth, 
 101 ; educated at Yale, 10; ; his extra- 
 ordinary studiousness, 193 ; professor 
 of law at Columbia, 194; Supreme 
 Court justice, 194 ; his work for com- 
 mercial law, 194; chancellor, 194; 
 retirement, 194 ; death, 193 
 
 Lee, Robert Edward, essay on, 247 ; crit- 
 icism of his selection, xvii ; his charac- 
 teristics, 247 ; offered command of 
 Union armies, 247 ; his uncomplaining 
 assumption of all responsibility, 247 et 
 seq. ; his wish to employ negroes as 
 soldiers baffled, 248 ; wrote no me- 
 moirs, and bravely offered no excuse for 
 failure, 248 ; high descent, 248, 249 ; 
 alliances by marriage, 249 ; birth, 249 ; 
 honor man at West Point, 249 ; engi- 
 
fli^ey 
 
 429 
 
 Lee — Continual. 
 
 neering work, 249, 2,0 ; Scott's high 
 tribute to, 2so ; in command of West 
 Point, 250 ; reforms institution and en- 
 larges curriculum, 2S0 ; at Harper's 
 Ferry during John Brown's raid, 250 ; 
 Civil War and Lee's ordeal, 2io ; his 
 attitude, 250 ; his letter concerning it, 
 2=, 1 ; Scott deeply laments his loss, 
 252 ; Lee goes to Richmond and un- 
 dertakes organization of Virginia's force, 
 252 ; appointed full general :;: ; plans 
 campaign, 2s2 ; goes to West Virginia, 
 2s*; sent to South Carolina for coast 
 defence, 253 ; made Commander-in- 
 chief, 2,4; McClellan's advance on 
 Richmond, 204 ; Lee's strategy, 2S4 ; 
 compels McDowell to retire, 25s ; Lee 
 in personal command, 2so ; seven 
 days' fight, 2^7 el seq. ; dislodges Mc- 
 Clellan, 257 ; Lee manoeuvres to com- 
 pel McClellan's retirement, 2=57 et seq. ; 
 meets and overcomes Pope, 259 ; re- 
 sults of his strategy, 2^0 ; invades 
 Maryland, 2<;o et seq. ; Antietam, 200 ; 
 summary of results, 200 ; confronts 
 Burnside at Fredericksburg, 201 ; great 
 battle there, 201 ; Lee's hesitancy, 202 ; 
 confronts Hooker, 202 ; Chancellorsville 
 campaign, 202 et seq.; Lee again crosses 
 Potomac, 204 ; Gettysburg campaign, 
 264 et seq. ; retreats 265 ; results, 26s ; 
 confronted by Grant (q. v.) campaign 
 of, 1864, 206 et seq. ; compelled to 
 hold Richmond against his own judg- 
 ment, 267, 268 ; surrender, 208 ; con- 
 duct in adversity, 268, 200 ; college 
 work, 208 ; death, 208 ; greatness, 200 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham, essay on, ioq ; extra- 
 ordinary contrast between birth and 
 achievements, 109 et seq. ; his lack of 
 education, 200 ; his literary style, 201 ; 
 slow to develop, 201, 202; hereditary 
 indolence and content, 202 ; birth, 203 ; 
 Black Hawk War, 201 ; country store 
 keeper, 203 ; studies law, 201, 204 ; 
 member of Legislature, 204 ; member 
 of Congress, 204 ; his " touch " with 
 
 " the plain people," 20, ; his melan- 
 choly and his humor, 20=; ; his love 
 affairs, 20s ; suicidal impulse, 200 ; 
 Missouri Compromise, 207 ; Kansas- 
 Nebraska bill, 207 ; campaign against 
 Douglas, 208-210; elected President, 
 210; perplexities, 211, 212; Seward's 
 assumption, 212 ; attitude toward radi- 
 cal abolitionists, 21 ■* ; his resolute inde- 
 pendence, 214; his steadfast policy of 
 saving the Union, 21=; el seq. ; Virginia's 
 attitude, 216; Virginia's secession pre- 
 cipitates war, 217 ; his perplexities and 
 travail of soul, 218 ; his patient endu- 
 rance, 218 et seq. ; assassination, 210 ; 
 South's resentment of the crime, 210 
 
 Lodge, Henry Cabot, comment on Web- 
 ster's disloyalty, 106 
 
 Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth, essay on, 
 317; birth, 317 ; education, 317 ; pro- 
 fessorship, 317; death, 317; uneventful 
 life, 318; estimate of his poetry, 318 et 
 seq. ; his lack of passion and other lim- 
 itations, 118, 310; his English hexa- 
 meters, 321 et seq.; the Hiawatha 
 metre, 322 
 
 Louisiana Purchase, far-reaching import- 
 ance of, 92 
 
 Mann, Horace, essay on, 180 ; had only 
 67 votes, xvii ; the revolution he 
 wrought in educational conception and 
 methods, 380 et seq. ; birth and educa- 
 tion, 4S2; work of education begins, 382 
 et seq. ; results of his eleven years' de- 
 votion, 383 ; his extraordinary industry, 
 384 ; service in Congress, 384 ; presi- 
 dent of Antioch College, 384 ; death, 
 384 ; his legacy of beneficence to the 
 nation, 384 
 Marshall, Humphrey, duel with Clay, 1 35 
 Marshall, John, essay on, 17s ; Adams's 
 appointment of him, 04 ; Chief Justice 
 for more than third of century, 17s et 
 seq. ; his extraordinary formative influ- 
 ence, 17s et seq. ; independence of 
 Supreme Court, 170; Marbury vs. Madi- 
 son, 170; birth, 177; education, 177; 
 
430 
 
 InDej 
 
 Marshall — Continued. 
 soldier, 178; his extraordinary lucid- 
 ity of statement, 1 78 ; secures Vir- 
 ginia's acceptance of Constitution, 179 ; 
 by instinct a Federalist, 180; three 
 times rejects office, 181 ; Minister to 
 France, 1S1 ; " Millions for defence but 
 not one cent for tribute," 181 ; John 
 Adams's commendation, 182; Marshall 
 declines Supreme Court judgeship, 182 ; 
 member of Congress, 182 ; happy acci- 
 dent made him Chief Justice, 183 etseq.; 
 manner of his appointment, 184 ; his 
 fame and his enduring monument, 1S4 ; 
 death, 184 
 
 McClellan's advance on Richmond, 2^4 
 
 Missouri Compromise, 145, 207 
 
 Morse, Samuel Finley Breese, essay on, 
 :sm of his selection overjoseph 
 Henrv, -02 ; elements of controversy, 
 slated. -,02 et seq. : Morse's versatility, 
 -o^; ; achievements in art and science, 
 ■;q-;, -04 ; birth and education, 394 ; 
 boy painter, ;o4 ; studies under Wash- 
 ington Allston, and Benjamin West, 
 504 ; wins high honors in England, 
 -,04 ; returns to America and achieves 
 remarkable success as portrait painter, 
 394; conspicuous works, 395 . opens 
 studio in New York, 395 ; founder of 
 National Academy, 395 ; his fame, 395 1 
 returns to Paris, iq^ ; attention drawn to 
 telegraphy on return voyage, 395 ; his 
 work and Henrys. 395, 306; invents 
 dot-and-dash alphabet, 390; exhibits first 
 telegraph in operation, 307 : unsuccess- 
 fully appeals to Congress for subsidy, 
 307 : goes to Europe for financial sup- 
 port but returns penniless. 397 : se- 
 cures aid of Congress, ;97 : establishes 
 first public telegraph from Washington 
 to Baltimore, ^07 ; private financiers 
 support him and after long litigation the 
 Morse electro-magnetic telegraph is ex- 
 tended over entire country, 598 ; experi- 
 ments in submarine telegraphy and 
 other problems of invention, 30S ; 
 deat!' 
 
 Motley, John Lothrop, fails of election, 
 
 xvi 
 Murray, Lindley, omitted, xvi 
 
 New England's interest in the slave trade, 
 antagonism to Story for en- 
 forcing law, 180, 100 
 
 Nullification, Webster's support of Jack- 
 son, 114; Clay's compromise, 114; 
 attempted, 1 =;o et seq. 
 
 Parties, first formation of, 180 
 
 Payne, John Howard, fails of election, xxi 
 
 Peabody, George, essay on. -,07 ; Glad- 
 stone's tribute, ^07 ; his extraordinary 
 beneficence, -,07 et seq. : business 
 methods in philanthropy. 368 ; bi th 
 and education, ■joo ; business success, 
 -,00 : establishes himself in London, 
 369 ; his confidence in United States 
 securities during Civil War, 370 ; his 
 principal benefactions. 370 et seq. : his 
 London tenement houses, 371; CongTess 
 thanks him, 372 ; Queen of England 
 lavishes honor upon him, ^72 ; other 
 benefactions, 372, 373 ; public statue 
 erected to him in London, 373; extraor- 
 dinary honors from two nations. -,7- 
 
 Pennsylvania presses relief upon Wash- 
 ington, which he refuses, o 
 
 Physicians and surgeons, their strange 
 omission from the list, xvi 
 
 Poe. Edgar Allan, fails of election, xvi 
 
 Purpose of this work, ix 
 
 Putnam, George P., his friend, anecdote 
 of Irving, 200 ; his service to Irving and 
 to literature, 501 ; revives Irving's pop- 
 ularity. ^01 
 
 Randolph. John, duel with Clay, 148 
 Rush, Benjamin, xvi 
 
 Scott, Sir Walter, friendship for Irving, 
 
 20^, 200 
 Scott. Winfield, Webster refuses to sup- 
 Seven Pines, battle of. 2;; 
 Slavery question, Webster's attitude, 121; 
 
Ilnfccy 
 
 431 
 
 Slavery question— Continued. 
 
 approves Clay's compromise measures, 
 122 ; Clay's inconsistent attitude, 127, 
 \2%et seq. ; Missouri Compromise, 143; 
 question conies up again, 1^7 
 
 Story, Joseph, essay on, 180 ; genius and 
 character, 186, 187 ; birth and educa- 
 tion, 187 ; literary work, 188 ; a mod- 
 erate adherent of Jefferson, 188 ; 
 appointed to Supreme Court bench at 
 age of thirty-two, 1 88 ; attitude toward 
 African slave trade, 18a ; vituperated 
 for trying to enforce plain letter of the 
 law, 189 ; professor at Harvard, 101 ; 
 death, lot ; his account of college edu- 
 cation in his time, 3S"? 
 
 Stuart, Gilbert Charles, essay on, 400 ; 
 preferred to West and others, xii ; su- 
 premacy as portrait painter, 400 ; genius 
 manifested in boyish paintings still ex- 
 tant, 409 ; birth, 409 ; goes to England 
 with Cosmo Alexander, 410; in utter 
 destitution works his way back on 
 board a collier, 410; succeeds as painter 
 in Newport, 410 ; goes to Europe and 
 studies under Benjamin West, 410 ; 
 becomes most famous portrait painter in 
 London, 410 ; repeats success in Amer- 
 ica, 411 ; his Washingtons, 41 1 ; enor- 
 mous activity and earning, 411 ; yet 
 lives in debt and dies penniless, 41 1 ; 
 qualities of his art, 411 ; his methods, 
 411; nearly a thousand of his works 
 survive, 412 
 
 Surgeons and physicians, their strange 
 omission, xvi 
 
 Tariff of abominations, 149 
 
 Taylor, Zachary, takes nomination from 
 Clay and Webster, 1 20 
 
 Texas, annexation of, opens slavery ques- 
 tion, 120 
 
 Thoreau, Henry, fails of election, xvi 
 
 Virginia, presses rewards upon Washing- 
 ton, which he diverts to education, 7 ; 
 opposes secession as a policy while 
 holding to be a right, 210; secedes, 2 1 7 
 
 Washington, George, essay on, ; ; suprem- 
 acy of his fame, 3 ; its enduring charac- 
 ter, 4 ; keynote of his greatness, 4 ; his 
 devotion to duty, 5 ; his refusal of all 
 emoluments as commander and as Pres- 
 ident, s, o ; States press rewards upon 
 him and he refuses, 6, 7; Pennsylvania's 
 proposal of aid declined, 7 ; his plan of 
 hospitality, 7 ; Virginia's offer of canal 
 shares, 7 ; he devotes them to educa- 
 tion in national spirit, 8 ; president of 
 constitutional convention, 8 ; President 
 of United States, 8, 9 ; asks Congress 
 to make no provision for his salary, 9 ; 
 his wonderful character, 0, to, 12; an- 
 alysis of his character, to, 11 et seq. ; 
 illustrations of character, to, 11 ,7 seq ; 
 his treatment of Horatio Gates, 10 ; atti- 
 tude toward Arnold, 11 ; birth, family, 
 wealth, and aristocratic lineage, 1 3 et 
 seq. ; education meagre, 10 ; surveyor 
 while yet a boy, 10; adjutant-general 
 at eighteen, 17; mission to Ohio coun- 
 try, 17; commander-in-chief of Vir- 
 ginia's forces at age of twenty-one, 18 ; 
 Braddock's lieutenant, 18; saves army, 
 18 ; captures Fort Du Quesne, to ; 
 elected to House of Burgesses, to ; his 
 extraordinary reception, 20 ; com- 
 mander-in-chief in Revolution, 20; 
 President, 21 ; greatest of men in all 
 departments of endeavor, 21, 22 
 
 Wayland, Francis, omitted, xvi 
 
 Webster, Daniel, essay on, 00 ; his ge- 
 nius, 99 et seq. ; his moral deficiency, 
 99 et seq. ; his eloquence, 99; his 
 lamentation over the failure of his life, 
 100, 101 ; his narrowness and section- 
 alism, 101, 102 ; his erratic course con- 
 cerning tariffs and national banks, 102 
 .•/ seq ; Dartmouth College case, 103, 
 10- ,7 seq. ; his moral obliquity illus- 
 trated, 103 t7 seq.; his treatment of 
 Judge Story, to-? ; his financial dishon- 
 esty, [03 et seq. ; accepts a shameless 
 gift, 104; birth and education, 104 et 
 s,,/. .■ writes Rockingham Memorial, 
 threatening secession, 100 ; in Congress 
 
•432 
 
 •flnfccy 
 
 Webster — Continued. 
 opposes government in its hour of dis- 
 tress, 106, 107 ; Senator Lodge's com- 
 ment, 100 ; his Pilgrim oration, log; 
 Ticknor's account of his eloquence, 109, 
 110; his influence in creating sentiment 
 in behalf of the Union, 110 et seq. ; 
 Bunker Hill oration, 1 10 ; his eulogy of 
 Adams and Jefferson, 1 10 ; his second 
 reply to Hayne, 110, 113, 114; re- 
 models criminal law, in; champions 
 free trade, III ; becomes Senator, 112; 
 supports Jackson against nullification, 
 114, 11s; presidential ambition, 117, 
 1 18 et seq.; Secretary of State, 118; 
 averts war with England, 118; opposes 
 Texan annexation, 120; seventh of 
 March speech, 123 ; again Secretary of 
 State, 123 ; refuses to support Scott's 
 candidacy, 123 ; death, 123 ; summary, 
 12-,, 124 
 
 West, Benjamin, his fame and the foun- 
 dations of it, xii ; his strange omission 
 from the list of immortals, 409 
 Whitney, Eli, essay on, 400 ; compared 
 with Elias Howe, xiii ; birth, 400 ; 
 renders valuable service as nail maker 
 during Revolution, 400; graduates at ad- 
 vanced age of twenty-seven, 400 ; goes 
 to Georgia in search of employment as 
 tutor, 401 ; develops inventive genius, 
 401 ; his supreme invention the cotton- 
 gin, 402, 403 ; its beneficence, 403 ; 
 robbed of all profit, 403 ; returns to 
 New England, establishes armory, and 
 achives competence, 40s ; death, 405 ; 
 his high claim to enduring fame, 406 
 Women, why none were selected, xv 
 Woolsey, Theodore D., omitted, xvi 
 Wythe, George, his influence over Clay, 
 133 ; attitude toward slavery, 133, 
 '34 
 
 ^r