EW A R D , fi__fL_n, REESE LIBRARY ; in UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. WILLIAM H. SEWAKD: AN AUTOBIOGRAPHY 180 X to 1834. MEMOIR OF HIS LIFE, AND SELECTIONS FROM HIS LETTERS. 1831-1846. FREDERICK W. SEWARD * - i- BfV/r OF THE . UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK: DERBY AND MILLER, 149 CHURCH STREET. 1891. REESE COPYRIGHT BY D. APPLETON A CO., 1877. Entered, according to act of Congress, in the year eighteen hundred and ninety, BY FREDERICK W. SEWARD, In the office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PUBLISHERS ANNOUNCEMENT. The story of the personal experiences, the daily life and con versation of one who has occupied a prominent place in the world s history, is the most effective and interesting way of presenting a picture of the era in which he lived. Valuable as historic records are, they grow wearisome to the reader, when confined to dry detail of public events. But the tale of human life and endeavor, in the past or present, is one that never lacks interest and never grows old ; because it is one in which all are always taking part. Hence, the publishers have found that there is a demand for a new edition of this volume, which bears the same relation to the history of the State of New York and of the Union, in the early portion of the century, that the subsequent volumes of "&EWARD AT WASHINGTON" do to the period of the struggle for Emancipation, the Civil War, and Reconstruction. All the leading events of each O period are set forth, in due order, not as they may seem to remote observers, now; but as they looked to those actually participating in them, then. The three volumes are similarly bound so as to make a uniform series. DERBY AND MILLEB. November, 1891. 117899 CONTENTS. * AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 1801-1816. Birth and Parentage. Colonel John Se ward. School-Life in Orange County. Witches. The Great Eclipse. The Eighteen States. War with England. Downfall of Napo leon. Kitchen and Parlor. A Boy s Impressions about Slavery . PAGE 19 1816-1818. First Steamboat Journey. Chancellor Kent. College-Life at Schenectady. The Mohawk Trade. Dr. Nott. Wayland. Welcome to Daniel D. Tompkins . . 29 1818-1819. A College Escapade. A Coasting-Voyage. Six Months in Georgia. Kindly Patrons. The Union Academy. Planters and Slaves. Law-Studies. Eeturn to College. Adelphio and Philomathean. A Secession. Trial and Defense. Commencement Honors 36 1820-1824. Studying Law. John Duer. John Anthon. The Forum. Edward N. Kirk. Ogden Hoff man. Chief-Justice Spencer." Bucktails " and " Clintonians." Constitution of 1821. Admitted to the Bar." Going West." Partnership with Judge Miller. Choosing Church and Party .......... 47 1824. Stage-Coach Excursion to Niagara. First Meeting with Thurlow Weed. Buffalo. New York and the Western Trade. Benjamin Rathbun. Origin of Parties in the United States. Their History and Character. Presidential Election of 1824. Struggle over the Electoral Law. Adams and Jackson. Marriage . . . . .55 1825-1828. President Adams, Clinton, and Clay. A Southern Combination. The " National Repub - lican " Party. A Night-Ride with Lafayette. Pageants in his Honor. Visit to De Witt Clinton. Adhering to Adams. Rejection as Surrogate. A Resolution about Of fice. Death of Clinton. Presidency of Young Men s Convention at Utica . . 6S PORTRAITS ON STEEL. PAOB. PACK. WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Frontispiece. HORACE GREELBY, . . 534 THURLOW WEED, ... 66 GEKRIT SMITH, . . . 594 FRANCES A. SEWARD, . . 260 JOHN QUTNCY ADAMS, . . .672 DANIEL WEBSTER, ... 839 HENRY CLAY, .... 732 6 CONTENTS. -1828-1829. The Convention. Abduction of Morgan. Popular Excitement. The Antimasonic Party. Solomon South wick. Smith Thompson and Francis Granger. Van Buren and Throop. Congressional Nomination. A Coalition and an Explosion. General Jack son s Election. Auburn Projects. Working for a Competence. Buying a House. PA&E 69 1830. Popular Elections. The Evening Journal. A Fourth-of-July Demonstration. Henry Dana Ward. The " Working-men." Granger for Governor. National Convention. Thaddeus Stevens. Judge McLean. Myron Holley. Elected to the Senate . 76 1831. Legislative Life. First Experience in Debate. Militia Eeform. A Dream of William Morgan. Albert H. Tracy. William H. Maynard. N. P. Tallmadge. Imprisonment for Debt, Calhoun and Van Buren. General Jackson and the United States Bank. Breaking up of the Cabinet. The " Albany Begency." The Eichmond Junto. National Policy 80 1831. ,/ Oration at Syracuse. Eailroads and Canals. Visit to John Quincy Adams. Baltimore Convention. Charles Carroll of Carrollton and Chief-Justice Marshall. William Wirt for President. Eed-Jacket. Samuel Miles Hopkins. A Warning from Virginia 88 1832-1833. * Legislative Session. Banks. Eailroads. Female Convicts. The Canal System. Debate on United States Bank. Van Buren rejected. Court of Errors." Citizen " Genet- Visit from Aaron Burr. His Eeminiscences. A Long Chancery Suit. The Cholera. Jackson reflected. The Nullification Movement . . . . .93 1833. First Voyage to Europe. The Letter-Bag. A Lost Sailor. Liverpool and New York. Chester. Scenes hi Ireland. The Merchant s Widow. Emmet s Cell. Emigrants to America. Scotland and Scottish Memories. Edinburgh. A Grumbling Legend. London Sights and People. Seeing the King. Malibran. An American Charge\ Joseph Hume. A Day in Parliament. Cobbett. Peel. Hay. O Connell. Stanley. American Eeformers. Indians and Quakers. Paganini. Thoughts on leaving Eng land .... 104 1838. Crossing the German Ocean. Traveling through Holland by Canal. Dutch Towns and Thrift. Amsterdam and the Hague. Broeck. The Children s Patron Saint. Meeting an Army. A Woman s-Eights Question. Diisseldorf and Cologne. The Ehine. Coblentz. Bingen. Mayence. Frankfort. Heidelberg. Among the Swiss Moun tains. Young and Old Eepublics. A Tavern Adventure. Berne. Lausanne. Ge neva, An Unhappy Man. St.-Gervais . . . . . .116 1833. Chamouni. Mont Blanc. En Voiture. Politics in the Coupe". Paris. Scenes of Eevolu- tionary Changes. The Tenants of the Tuileries. Lafayette in the Chamber of Depu ties. Trying the Guillotine. Napoleon s Old Soldiers. The Orleans Family. The Pantheon. La Chapelle Expiatoire. Josephine s Cottage .... 125 CONTENTS. 7 1833. A Visit to La Grange. Lafayette s Affection for America. His Family. His Conversation and Habits. His Description of the Revolution of 1830. Views of French Politics, Past and Future . ffl " . . ,. ! ?iti rts~. -ofj i( . p^eg 184 1833-1834. Home again. Colonel Swartwout. Protecting Settlers in the Court of Errors. Jackson s Progress. Edward Livingston. Abolition of Slavery in the West Indies. Coloniza tion and Antislavery Movements. Removal of the Deposits. Dissolution of the Anti- masonic Party .......... 141 1834. /Laet Year in the Senate. Speech on Removal of the Deposits. The Six-Million Loan. A Warm Debate. Honest John Griffin. Land Distribution. Improvement of the Hud son River. Beginning of the Whig Party. Eulogy on Lafayette. Searching for a Candidate under Difficulties. Nomination for Governor. Where Great Men live. Silas M. Stilwell . . 149 MEMOIR, AM) SELECTIONS FROM HIS LETTERS. CHAPTER I. 1831. Home at Auburn. Journey to Albany. First Experiences of Legislative Life. Sketches of Character. Aaron Burr. Citizen Genet. Maynard. Tracy. Granger. Weed 161 CHAPTER II. 1831. Albany Society. Dinners. Parties and Visits. Governor Throop. Samuel Miles Hop kins. Nathaniel P. Tallmadge. Levi Beardsley. Millard Fillmore. Philo C. Fuller. Lobbying. Election of Marcy to the United States Senate. Speech on Militia Re form. Troy and Schenectady. Mad Dogs. Reading Novels . . . 174 CHAPTER III. 1831. Visit to the Shakers. Presidential Candidates. Callioun. Chief-Justice Spencer. Rural Life. A Parent s Responsibilities. Banks. Edward Ellice. Trip to Orange County. 183 CHAPTER IV. 1831. Maynard s Eloquence. Rev. Edward N. Kirk. Religious Belief. John C. Spencer. Bon nets. United States Bank. West Point and "Old Fort Put." Imprisonment for Debt. Closing Scenes of the" Session . . . . . . .1ST g CONTENTS. CHAPTER Y. 1831. J?ouith-of-July Orations. Captain Seward. A Militia Career. President-Making. First Bailway-Bide. Disraeli. Dr. Campbell. Judge Bronson. Gerrit Y. Lansing. Abram Van Veohten. Mrs. Hamilton . . . . . . ^ PAGE 192 CHAPTER VI. 1831. A New England Journey. A Steamboat Lottery. Indian Traditions. " Last of the Mo hicans." Providence. President Wayland. Boston. Revolutionary Memories and Men. The Polish Standards. Eide to Quincy. First Meeting with John Quincy Adams. Down the Delaware. The Baltimore Convention. William Wirt . 198 CHAPTER VII. 1832. Legislative Debates. Speech on the United States Bank. Railroads. General Eoot and the Eegency. Boyish Memories. Ways of the Lobbyists. The Address. The Greeks 209 CHAPTER VIII. 1832. Rural Fancies. Rev. Alonzo Potter. The Fire-King. Coming of the Cholera. Maynard s Death. Lieutenant-Governor Livingston. Jackson reflected. Governor Marcy. A Weather-Prophet. Eival Stages. The Price of Candles. Edwin Forrest. A Pre monition of the Civil War . . . i . ? v f^ . MI r; :;>- . . 215 CHAPTER IX. 1833. New-Year s Eeflections. A Bound of Calls. United States Senators. Silas Wright. N. P. Tallmadge. Christian Faith. South Carolina Nullification. Speech defending Jackson s Proclamation. A Mother s Illness. Voyage to Europe . . 225 CHAPTER X. 1833-1834. Return Home. The Wadsworths. Dissolution of the Antimasonic Party. Debate on Removal of the Deposits. The Six-Million Loan. Commercial Distress. A Depre ciated Currency. The Cholera. Freeman the Artist. Nomination for Governor 280 CHAPTER XI. 1834. Campaign of 1834. Seward and Stilwell." Young Man with Bed Hair." The Whig Party. Election. " Mourners." Journey with Gary. New York Hospitalities. Charles King. Chancellor Kent. New England Dinner. End of Legislative Life. 236 CONTENTS. 9 CHAPTER XII. 1835. Eeturn to Private Life. Law and Chancery Practice. Judge Miller. Seward and Beards- ley. Political Speculations. French Claims. Personalities in Debate. Attempt to assassinate Jackson. Advice about going West. Editorial Life. " Optimism." Henry Bulwer , . . . . . . . . PAGE 248 CHAPTER XIII. 1835. A Summer Tour. The Pennsylvania Mountains. The Susquehanna Valley. Harrisburg. Harper s Ferry. -The Valley of Virginia. Weyer s Cave. Natural Bridge. Slaves and their Masters ......... 260 CHAPTER XIV. 1835. Virginia Hospitality. The Blue Ridge. Monticello. Jefferson. Fredericksburg. Mount Vernon. The Washington Estate. The National Capital in 1835. Visit to "Old Hickory." Baltimore and Philadelphia. The Biddies. Sully. Dr. Physick. Joseph Bonaparte. Long Branch Life. Old Memories and Traditions of Florida. The * Moon Hoax." Death of Mrs. Miller. The " Neutral Ground " .272 CHAPTER XV. 1835-1836. v Abolitionists. " Incendiary Publications " and Riots. The Auburn <fe Owasco Canal Project. Harrison and Granger. The " Loco-focos." Webster and Clay s With drawal. The Small-Bill Law. Town and Country Life . . . . 291 CHAPTER XYI. 1836. The Holland Land Company. Trouble with Settlers. A Fortified Land-Office. Seward as Pacificator. Life at Westfield. A Night Attack. Geology and Science. Exploring Chautauqua County ......... 301 CHAPTER XVII. 1836. The Year of Speculation. New York Schemes. Auburn Projects. A Complex Trust- Van Buren elected President. Thanksgiving-Day. A Christmas Sermon . 315 CHAPTER XVIII. 1837. The Year of Financial Collapse. Busy Times at the Land-Office. Death of his Daughter. A Conflagration. The Ides of March. Van Buren. A Member of the Episcopal Church. General Banking Law. The Crash. u Shinplasters." Louis Napoleon 323 1$ CONTENTS. CHAPTER XIX. 1837. Chautauqua in Summer. Discourse on Education. Washington in the Extra Session. First Meeting with Clay and Webster. Calhoun s Speech. New York & Erie Rail road Convention. Samuel B. Ruggles. A Political Revolution. Whig Exultations. Weed and the Clerkship. The Canadian " Patriot War." The Jeffersonian. Letters to Children ......... PAGE 334 CHAPTER XX. 1838. Auburn & Syracuse Railroad. A Whig Legislature. Small Bills and Specie Payments. An Ice- Ad venture. Ruggles s Canal Report. Charleg King. Ocean-Steamers. Over-zealous Friends. Granger and Bradish . . . . .356 CHAPTER XXI. 1838. The Canvass. Whig Young Men s Convention. Whittlesey. Fillmore and Tracy. The Episcopal Diocese. Whig State Convention. Nomination of Seward and Bradish. "A Speculator." The Antislavery Interrogatories. The Election . .. . 366 CHAPTER XXII. 1839. A Busy Season. The " Kane Mansion." The Inauguration. The Message. A Legisla tive Dead-Lock. State Officers. The Oneidas. Geological Survey. "The Three- Walled House." The " Atherton Gag." Horace Greeley. Spencer. Dr. Potter. Canadian Raids. Secretary Poinsett. Foreigners. Colonel Worth . * f 379 CHAPTER XXIII. 1839. A Levee in New York. The Bible. Habits of the Letter-Basket. J. P. Kennedy. Hamil ton. First Diplomatic Question. A Canal-Journey. Visit to the Prison. Future Railroads. Animal Magnetism. Van Buren s Progress. Fourth of July with Sunday- School ChUdren ,. . .407 CHAPTER XXIV. 1839. The Pardoning Power. Experiences, Sad and Grotesque. Going to Commencement. Mrs. Clinton. Henry Clay at Auburn. President Van Buren in Albany. A Requisition for Three Black Men. Tour through the Northern Counties. Conferences with Clay. A Clever Caricature ......... 419 CHAPTER XXV. 1839. Visit to Western New York. The Amistad. The Virginia Controversy. Cole s Picture. Military Reviews. School Libraries. Morus Multicaulis Fever. No Coal-Mines. Church and State. Election of a Whig Legislature. Presidential Tours. Partisanship in Office . . 433 CONTENTS. 11 CHAPTER XXVI. 1839. The Harrisburg Convention. General Harrison nominated. Congress disorganized. R, M. T. Hunter. The Patroon. The Helderberg War. Story of a Youthful Friendship. David Berdan. Scotchmen. Gulian C. Verplanck. Frankenstein . PASB 447 CHAPTER XXVII. 1840. The Whigs in Power.- Appointments. Virginia s Threats. Antislavery Laws. The Schools in New York. The Old Writing-Chair. The First Daguerreotypes. Social Life. John A. King. Stephens. St. Patrick and St. George. Natives and Foreigners. The " Higher Law " ........ 458 CHAPTER XXVIH. 1840. A Talk with the Onondagas. Abraham Le Fort. New Railways and Canals. Registry Law. The D Hauteville Case. Manorial Tenures. Law Reform.- Bankrupt Law. Silk Experiments. The Staff Snuffbox. Smoking . .472 CHAPTER XXIX. 1840. Besults of the Session. Embarrassments of the Appointing Power. Six Thousand Disap pointments. The Rathbun Forgery Case. Outlook for the Presidential Contest. Escape of Lett. Establishment of the Cunard Line .... 482 CHAPTER XXX. 1840. Cherry Valley Centennial. The World s Antislavery Convention. Georgetown wanting to get out. The Sub-Treasury Law. Prison Bibles. Utica Convention. Renomina- tion. Webster at Saratoga. Caleb Cushing. Edward Stanley. Case of Cornelius 488 CHAPTER XXXI. 1840. The Presidential Campaign. " Old Tip." Mass-Meetings. Speeches and Songs. The Conservatives. Bishop Hughes. The " Forty-Million Debt." The Glentworth Ex plosion. Reception at Albany. The Last Time a Candidate ... 495 12 CONTENTS. OHAPTEK XXXII. 1840. Rush for Federal Appointments. Whig Jubilations. Antislavery Party. Virginia Con troversy continued. Thanksgiving. Murder Cases. The Electoral College PAGE 508 CHAPTER XXXIII. 1841. Second Inauguration. A Prosperous State. Burning of the Caroline. Fox and Forsyth. The Legislature on the Virginia Question. The Colonial History. Brodhead s Search among Dusty Kecords. Cabinet-Making. Granger. No Secrets. Legislative Fun. John Duer. Death of his Brother 516 CHAPTER XXXIV. 1841. New Administration at Washington. Appointments. The McLeod Case. General Scott. Crittenden. Virginia Search Law. Trial by Jury of Fugitive Slaves. Crisis at Eichmond. Irishmen and Father Matthew. Death of President Harrison. Funeral Solemnities . . . . . i., , . . . . \ 525 CHAPTER XXXV. 1841. Tyler sworn in. Whig Hopes. The Tribune. The State Printing. The " Nine Months Law." Sunday-Schools. The Public Schools in New York. The Blind and Mute.- The Oneidas. McLeod s Arrest. Correspondence with President Tyler . 53S CHAPTER XXXVI. 1841. Proposal to stop Work on the Canals. Whig Assembly turned Democratic. Willis Gay- lord Clark. The Senecas. Tyler s Message.- The Georgia Correspondence. The Anti-rent Troubles. Trip to New England. Bob, the Mocking-Bird. McLeod Excite ment. Supreme Court Decision ....... 541 CHAPTER XXXVII. 1841. Whig Troubles at Washington. The Georgia Correspondence. Stealing a Woman. Re fusal to be a Candidate. Extra Session at Buffalo. Lyell. Murder of Mary Rodgers. Webster and the McLeod Case. The Vetoes. Clay and Tyler. Breaking up the Cabinet . 554 CONTENTS. 13 CHAPTER XXXVIII. 1841. Spencer in the War Department. Trial of McLeod. An Alibi. The Election. A Demo cratic Victory. Letters to Adams and Scott. The Prince de Joinville. Lord Mor- peth. Opening of Boston & Albany Kailroad. Josiah Quincy. O Connell s Opinion PAGE 565 CHAPTER XXXIX. 1842. The Temperance Kefonn. Opposition Plans and Discords. The Eight of Petition. Sir Charles Bagot. Dickens. Lord Ashburton. A Revolutionary Reminiscence. Letter to Greeley. Battle between Senate and Governor. Expunging Messages . 577 CHAPTER XL. 1842. A Mammoth Petition. Change of State Officers. South Carolina Search-Law. The " Fis cal Agent." Passage of the New York School Law. Seward s Policy adopted. Meet ing of the Legislatures of Massachusetts and New York." Honest John Davis." General Herkimer . . . . . . . . . 586 CHAPTER XLI. 1842. St. Patnck and Father Mathew. Congressional Temperance Society. The "Stop-and- Tax" Policy. Aldermen as Judges. The Liberty Party. Gerrit Smith. Closing Scenes of the Legislature. Trial by Jury of Fugitives. New York Riot. Election CHAPTER XLH. 1842. Lord Ashburton. " The Dorr Rebellion" in Rhode Island. Prigg vs. Pennsylvania. Virginia Search Law. Protestants and Catholics. -Extradition. Jenny, the Fawn. Dickens. Spencer. Wickliffe. Hammond ..... 598 CHAPTER XLin. 1842. End of Rhode Island Rebellion. Dr. Vinton. " Notes on New York." Opening of Cro- ton Aqueduct. Collapse of United States Bank. Presidential Nominations. Guber natorial Candidates. Extradition. The Ashburton Treaty . . . 608 14 CONTENTS. CHAPTER XLIV. 1842. The Extra Session. Stoppage of Public Works. Repudiating States. Carlin. The Hutch - insons. The Millerites. Webster and Adams. Bradish and Bouek. Address at State Fair. Education of Farmers . . . . v : :* . 4 PAGE 617 CHAPTER XLV. 1842. The Croton Water Celebration. Spencer and Tyler. Election. A Whig Overthrow. Phi losophy of Defeat. The Murder of Samuel Adams. Case of John C. Colt . 624 CHAPTER XLVI. 1842-1843. Lest Month in Office. Dr. Sprague. Colonel Webb. A Christmas Pardon. Lewis Tap- pan. Half a Cord of Papers. Case of Philip Spencer and Mackenzie. A Week at the Eagle Tavern. Governor Bouck ....... 635 CHAPTER XL VII. 1843. At Home again. The Law-Office. A Struggle for Independence. The Mackenzie Inquiry. The Virginia Question. The City-Hall Portrait 645 CHAPTER XL VIII. 1843. War at Albany. "Old Hunkers" and "Barnburners." Harding. Abolition Nomination. Greeley and Fourier. Law and Gardening. Proposed Constitutional Convention. Sydney Smith on Repudiation. O Connell on Slavery .... 654 CHAPTER XLIX. 1843. Weed in Europe. Letters from America. Bunker Hill Monument. Death of Legare". Van Buren, Cass, and Calhoun. Change of Professional Employment. Patent Cases. The End of the World 668 CHAPTER L. 1843. John Quincy Adams at Auburn. Prediction about Slavery. Inman and Harding. A Friendly Contest. Father Mathew. Chancellor Kent. Opinions vs. Commentaries. Weed s Letters." Hunkers " and " Barnburners " in Convention ^ 671 CONTENTS. 15 CHAPTER LI. 1843. Van Buren, Bouck, and Webster. State Fair. A Dramatic Scene. Checks and Balances. " Pusey ism. "Morse s Telegraph. A Candidate for no Office. Fillmore and the Vice-Presidency. Weed for Governor . , * ^ ., .. *, : f PAG 680 CHAPTER LII. 1843-1844. Postal Reforms. Simultaneous Repeal Meetings. The Law s Delay. Prescott s " Con quest of Mexico." Mocking- Bird Moralizings. Legislative 1 Battles. Clay Meetings on Washington s Birthday. Auburn Speech. Fillmore and Seward. The Texas Issue. 688 CHAPTER LIII. 1844. Explosion of the " Peacemaker." American Destiny. Calhoun and Annexation. Native American Movement. Whig National Convention. Clay and Frelinghuysen. Greeley and Cooper. Legislative Address. Characteristics ..... 695 CHAPTER LIV. 1844. The Law-Office. Recollections of a Student. A Church Quarrei. " Third Parties." Philadelphia Riots. Adams s Report. Democratic National Convention. Polk and Dallas 704 CHAPTER LV. 1844. The Presidential Canvass. Calhoun s Policy. Texas and the Tariff. Addresses at Union and Amherst. Whig Mass Meetings. Incidents of the Campaign. Jealousies and Forebodings. Ash and Hickory. The Alabama Letter. Clay s Defeat . .715 CHAPTER LVI. 1844. Southern Exultation. Clay defeated by Abolition Votes. His Letter to Seward. Gerrit Smith. Weed in the West Indies. Birth of a Daughter. Death of his Mother. Stage-coach Accident. A Dislocated Shoulder. John Stanton Gould . . 732 CHAPTER LVII. 1845. Convalescence. At Work again. The Greeley and Cooper Case. Folk s Administration. The Antislavery Movement. Letter to Chase. House and Grounds. Birds and Dogs . 738 16 CONTENTS. CHAPTER LVIII. 1845. Trip to Lake Superior. Cleveland. Detroit. Lake Huron. The Chippewas. The Mani- tou. French Missionaries. Mackinac. Henry R. Schoolcraft. Sault Ste. Marie. Down the Kapids. Wigwam-Life . . . PAGE 747 CHAPTER LIX. 1845. Texas annexed. Rumors of War. Policy of the Whigs. Governor Throop. Free Suf frage. John Van Buren. Fillmore. Governor Wright. Whig Discords. Seward, Morgan, and Blatchford. The S. S. Seward Institute . . . .755 CHAPTER LX. 1845. Rural Cemeteries. Constitutional Changes. The Anti-Renters. Organizing a School. A Pair of Ponies. The Telegraph. Hudson River Railroad. Congress and Slavery Ex tension. Going to Washington ....... 762 CHAPTER LXI. 1846. Washington Life. Causes in the Supreme Court. The Oregon Question. Stanley. Washington Hunt. The Adams Family. Mrs. Gaines. Mrs. Maury. John M. Clay ton. Judge McLean. General Scott ....... 767 CHAPTER LXII. 1846. Trip to Richmond and Norfolk. The Happiest People in the World. Benjamin Watkins Leigh. President and Mrs. Polk. Mr. Buchanan s Ball. Governor Marcy and the Diplomats. Colonel Benton. The Calhouns. Mrs. Madison. Mrs. Hamilton. The Oregon " Notice . . ... 776 CHAPTER LXin. 1846. Wyatt s Case. Winter Journey to Florida. The Van Nest Murder. A Bloody Mystery. Popular Excitement. Attempt to lynch Freeman. A Solemn Appeal . . 785 CHAPTER LXIV. 1846. St. Patrick and his People. Convention Delegates. General Taylor marching to the Rio Grande. Oregon Compromise. Webster and Adams." 54 40 , or Fight ! " . 788 CONTENTS. 17 CHAPTER LXV. 1846. Western Tour. Pittsburg. The Ohio River. Wheeling. Cincinnati. Louisville. Lex ington. Cassius M. Clay. Henry Clay at Ashland. Southern Indiana and Illinois. Vincennes. Vandalia. The Prairies. Butler Seward. St. Louis. Steamboat-Life on the Mississippi. Memphis. New Orleans. Volunteers for Mexico. War proclaimed. Palo Alto and Eesaca de la Palma. The Future . . . PAGE 794 CHAPTER LXVI. 1846. The Trials for Murder. Public Feeling. Wyatt. Arraignment of Freeman. His Counsel. His Story. Sane or insane ? Witnesses. John Van Buren. The Argument. Con- viition and Sentence. Seward s Epitaph ...... 809 WILLIAM H. SEWARD. * AUTOBIOGRAPHY. 1801-1816. Birth and Parentage. Colonel John Seward. School-Life in Orange County. Witchs. The Great Eclipse. The Eighteen States. War with England. Downfall of Napo leon. Kitchen and Parlor. A Boy s Impressions about Slavery. IT is natural that you should ask me to relate for you, in my leisure hours, as much as I can recall of what I have hitherto seen, and thought, and done. I can tell you little of my ancestors. I know the fathers of my father and mother only by name and tradition. John Seward, of Mor ris County, New Jersey, has been described to me as a gentleman of Welsh descent, intelligent, public-spirited, and courteous. He bore, bravely and well, a colonel s commission in the Revolutionary War, and educated a numerous family respectably. He died in 1799. His wife, Mary Swezy, lived until 1816. I remember her as a highly- intellectual woman, pious as well as patriotic, although many of her relations had adhered to the British cause, and consequently found it convenient to seek an asylum, after the war, in Nova Scotia and Canada. Of my maternal grandfather, Isaac Jennings, I know only that he was of English derivation, a well-to-do farmer, who turned out with the militia of Goshen, and, more fortunate than most of his associates, escaped the Indian massacre at the battle of Minisink. His wife, Margaret Jackson, who was of Irish descent, survived him many years. Her peculiarity which I most distinctly remember was, antipathy toward the Roman Catholic religion. My father, Samuel S. Seward, received such a classic education as the academies of that period furnished, Columbia College, the only one in the colony of New York, being disorganized during the war. He was educated a physician, and during my minority practised his 20 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1801- 16. profession, to which occupation he added those of the farmer, the merchant, and county politician, magistrate, and judge, discharging the functions of all with eminent ability, integrity, and success, and gradually building up what at that day, and in that rural neighborhood, seemed a considerable fortune. He represented Orange County in the State Legislature in 1804, and showed much vigor and ability in debate. My mother, Mary Jennings, enjoyed only the advantages of education in country schools, but improved them. She is remembered by her survivors as a person of excellent sense, gentleness, truthful ness, and candor. I was the fourth of six children, and the third son, born in 1801, May 16th. A daughter, older than myself, died in infancy; a second daughter and a son came after me. I have been told that the tender ness of my health caused me to be early set apart for a collegiate education, then regarded, by every family, as a privilege so high and so costly that not more than one son could expect it. I remember only one short period when the schoolroom and class emulation were not quite so attractive to me as the hours of recess and recreation. But this devotion was not without its trials. My native village, Florida, then consisted of not more than a dozen dwellings. While the meeting-house was close by, the nearest schoolhouse was half a mile distant. It stood on a rock, over which hung a precipitous wooded cliff. The schoolhouse was one story high ; built half of stone and half of wood. It had a low dark attic, which was reached by a ladder. They did say, at the time, that a whole family of witches dwelt in that wooded cliff above the schoolhouse by day, and that they came down from that favorite haunt and took up their lodgings, by night, in the little attic. One day, before I had reached the age at which I was to take a legitimate place in the school, I went there with my elder brothers, without parental permission. While there, and " all of a sudden," it grew dark; the light from the windows failing. The larger boys and girls were formed in a circle, round the open door, to recite their cus tomary lessons. I had no doubt that the tyrannical schoolmaster had kept us in school until night, and I expected every moment to see the aerial inhabitants of the hill enter the schoolhouse, and make short work of us all, for obstructing them in their way to their nocturnal abode in the garret. Crying vociferously, I was discharged from the school, and ran for my life homeward. On the way I met what seemed to me a great crowd, some of whom were looking down into a pail of standing water, while others were gazing into the heavens through fragments of smoked glass. In after-years, I came to learn that I had thus been an observer of the total eclipse of the sun which occurred in the year 1806. The phenomenon repeated itself to me, sixty-three 1801- 16.] SCHOOL-LIFE. 21 long years afterward, under the sixtieth parallel of latitude, in the midst of the Indians of Alaska. I do not know how near I came to losing my destined preferment, by a failure to satisfy my father s expectations of my progress. He placed me on the counter of the store, and directed me to recite a poetical address, which I had committed to memory, before an audi ence of admiring neighbors. When I had performed this task, amid great applause, one of the persons present asked me which one of my father s many callings I should adopt. I had not been unobservant of the deference paid to the magistrate. I answered therefore, innocently, that I intended to be a justice of the peace. When my audience had dispersed, my father took me severely to task for not knowing that the office of magistrate was to be obtained through the favor of others, and not to be ambitiously usurped. This reproof, however, did not subdue my aspirations; judicial preferment continued to be the aim of my ambition until an advanced period in life. How often have I reflected that, whatever care and diligence we exercise, our fortunes in life are beyond our own control ! Franklin s lightning-rod was then a new invention. I was engaged out-doors in making reservoirs during a summer shower, when I was alarmed by a terrific peal of thunder. I gathered myself up and rushed toward the house for safety, but, falling by the way, a reflection came over me that the bolt always precedes the aerial report; that, conse quently, I was safe already. From that time until now, I have never been alarmed by a commotion of the elements in that form. At the age of nine years I was transferred to the Farmers Hall Academy at Goshen, where my father had been educated. I boarded there with two affectionate cousins, who were nieces of my father, and daughters of the brother-in-law under whom he studied his profession. You have known those ladies well. I need not tell you of the endur ing friendship which grew out of that relation. I began then my study of Latin, but my rural training had not prepared me for association with the ambitious youth of the county capital, some of whom insisted that, as I came from a neighboring village, I must establish my right by single combat ; and all of whom were disgusted with my refusal to join them in shutting the master out when he required us to attend school on Christmas-day. I cheerfully retired in the spring to private life at home, where a graduate of a New England college had been employed in a new academy which, in the mean time, had been erected. My preparation for college was chiefly made here. I was not long in coming to the discovery that the elaborate education appointed for me had its labors and trials. My daily studies began at five in the morning, and closed at nine at night. The tasks were just the utmost that I could execute, and every day a little more ; even the intervals 22 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1801- 16. allowed for recreation were utilized. It was my business to drive the cows, morning and evening, to and from distant pastures, to chop and carry in the fuel for the parlor-fire, to take the grain to mill and fetch the flour, to bring the lime from the kiln, and to do the errands of the family generally ; the time of my elder brothers being too precious to permit them to be withdrawn from their labors in the store and on the farm. How happy were the winter evenings, when the visit of a neighbor brought out the apples, nuts, and cider, and I was indulged with a respite from study, and listened to conversation, which generally turned upon politics or religion ! My first schoolmaster in the new academy, whose name I will not mention, must have thought that I had an intuitive knowledge of the art of war, and an aptitude for unraveling the inversions of heathen poetry. He required me, unaided, to translate Caesar s most terse descriptions of his campaigns, and to render into English prose the most intricate and inverted lines of Virgil. When I failed in these tasks, he brought me upon the floor, with the classic in one hand and the dictionary in the other, to complete the work amid the derision or the pity of my youthful associates. This, although others were served in the same way, was more than I could bear. I contrived, ineffectu ally, to lose my Latin books in the fields as I passed home ; and the schoolmaster, on his part, reported me to my father as too stupid to learn. This brought about the crisis, which was followed by explana tions and reform. My father excited my emulation by telling me that I might ultimately become a great lawyer, like Theodore Frelinghuysen and Joseph C. Hornblower, of the neighboring State of New Jersey ; and under that influence I readily acquired a double lesson within the time allowed for a single one. The schoolmaster no longer exposed me to disgrace, and I found study thenceforward as attractive as it had before been irksome under his severe administration. I cannot but think that, at that period, when recollections of the Revolution were quite recent, and the world was engrossed with the tremendous Napoleonic wars in Europe, men were more intensely earnest than they are now. Of course, whatever thoughts I had, how ever puerile, took their shape and complexion from the debates that I heard on every side. The first mental anxiety which I recall was, manifestly, an effect of the fearful presentation of death and its consequences, so common in the sermons and exhortations of the clergy at that day ; I hurried rapidly past the graveyard, the monuments of which were generally ornamented with a skull and cross-bones ; and I made an especially wide circuit around the reputed resting-place, by the roadside, of a man who had taken his own life. The murky theology of that period had filled the popular mind with a belief that not only the Evil One 180] - 16.] SCHOOL-LIFE. 23 himself, but hordes of spirits he had seduced and ruined, were lurking, prowling, and intruding everywhere into human affairs, seeking only to destroy the unsuspicious, and that continually. I often was watchful at night, through fear that if I should fall asleep I should awake in the consuming flame which was appointed as a discipline that allows no reformation. My mother unwittingly cured me, in a large degree, of these painful imaginings. I overheard her earnestly protesting, in debate with some of her orthodox neighbors, that she could not believe, would not believe, and did not believe, that " there were infants in hell not a span long." I thought I was but a little longer than that meas ure ; and I supposed my mother knew whereof she affirmed her faith. Reflecting upon this incident, it became an interesting study afterward, how constantly a decline of imaginary terrors in the future state of being attends the progress of mankind in natural science. Think of Dante s " Inferno," and of Milton s " Pandemonium ; " and yet the hell of both of those great poets, while depicted with the most vivid hues of the imagination, was described with all the sincerity of the firmest convictions of fact. I can now see that surrounding influences early determined me in the bent toward politics. Addison s "Cato" was presented in one of our school exhibitions ; and, although I was too young to take a part in the representation, it made me a hater of military and imperial usur pation for life. I think it a misfortune that that great drama has lost its place on the modern stage. The opening of an academy at Florida was attended by one of those efforts for local improvement which, too often, prove merely convulsive, as this one did, but which can seldom be injurious. Too much is ex pected of them, and the failure to realize all brings reaction, followed by ridicule, the most effective weapon of conservatism. The ascent to an academy, from a school which was of the lowest class, never attain ing half the stability or character which belongs to the common school, under our present district system, was abrupt, and therefore impossible. Nevertheless teacher, parents, and pupils, were of one consent in trying it. Very ludicrous incidents occurred. The plan embraced four dis tinct measures, all of which seemed to the pupils of my age, and per haps even to our rural parents, new inventions. First, we were to learn to " declaim select pieces." Second, we were to " write original compositions." Third, we were to have a " debating society." Fourth, an annual or semi-annual " dramatic exhibition." Charles Jackson, a farmer s son, I think fourteen years old, but large enough for eighteen, dull and awkward, was called up to open the exer cises in declamation, with the speech of Romulus on the foundation of Rome. At the first attempt, taking his place in the middle of the schoolroom, with arms hanging straight downward, and eyes dropped 24 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1801- 16, to the floor, he spoke the speech in a low and perfectly monotonous manner, and was dismissed, with the master s criticism that he had done very well for the first effort, but, on the next Thursday, he must speak with head erect, and turn from one side of the audience toward the other. With continual prompting, he managed to lift his eyes, and roll his head from right to left, with regular alternation, through the whole exercise. This proved, to the awkward boy, a sad encourage ment, when it brought the further requisition that, on the third rehear sal, he should gesticulate with his arms and change the posture of his feet. He honestly declared that he could not understand the process, nor the object of the required movements of his arms and legs. There upon the master opened a page of " The Monitor," and showed him a diagram, in which the orator was represented standing with head erect, facing a dotted line drawn across the opposite wall, a similar dotted line drawn across under his feet, one arm horizontally extended from the shoulder, with a dotted line extending from the end of the thumb to the wall, and the other arm raised at an angle of 45, with a dotted line from the thumb of that hand stretching also diagonally to the wall. The diagram only confused the pupil still more. The master cleared up the affair, by taking a stand and going through the motions indi cated by the diagram, shifting his feet, first to one side and then to the other, lifting one arm, then the other, and thus showed how easily it could be done. Thereupon Charles, thus instructed, took the master s place, and aiming, as well as he could, at the points designated on the wall, and turning his head to the right, lifted his right arm out, straight and stiff ; then, suddenly dropping that arm and turning his head to the left, he lifted the other to the same position, and so, with the regular ity, precision, and quickness of a clock-pendulum, sawed the air, and meanwhile, with a drawling intonation, addressed the people of the newly-established city of Rome in a manner that Livy never dreamed of: " If all the strength of cities (sawing with right arm) Lay in the height of their ramparts (sawing with left arm), Or the depth of their ditches (sawing with right arm), We should have great reason to be in fear (sawing with left arm) For that which we have now built " (sawing with right arm). Charles Jackson I think was discouraged. He certainly never be came even a stump-orator or a Methodist exhorter. It was mine to lead off in the second great exercise that of " ori ginal composition." Not having the least idea of what was wanted, or how it was to be done, I moved to the side of Robert Armstrong, a young man eighteen years old, self-possessed and capable of instruct ing me, because he had already been a pupil at the famous academy of Mendham, New Jersey. He told me nothing was easier. " You are," 1801- 16.] FOURTH OF JULY. 25 said he, "first to take a subject, and then all you have to do is to write about it." " But," said I, " what is a subject ? " He replied, " It is anything you want to write about." " But," said I, " I don t know of anything that I do want to write about. I wish I could see a composition." " Well," said he, " if you won t tell, I will show you an old one of mine, that I wrote at Mendham." Having bound myself to secrecy, he showed me a composition, which was after this sort : " On Drunkenness" (A heavy black line was drawn under this caption.) " Drunkenness is the worst of all vices." Then followed an argument which, I think, well sustained the proposi tion thus confidently announced. I do not know why, perhaps because I was constitutionally an optimist, I decided instantly that I would not choose, for my subject, anything that was naughty, bad, or wicked. So I said, " I will choose a different subject, and will show the com position to you when it is written." He promised me his help. I wrote with great labor my essay, brought it and submitted it to him. It began : " On Virtue. Virtue is the best of all vices ! " My success in my department seemed as hopeless as Charles Jackson s in his. The " dramatic exhibition " was abandoned after a single perform ance. "The Debating Society" continued, with interruptions, sev eral years. I profited by the debates, although I think, from diffidence or some other cause, I did not participate in them. The debate was at that day a prominent feature of college societies. If I were required now to say from what part of my college education I derived the great est advantage, I should say, the exercises of the Adelphic Society. It was under this conviction that I afterward cheerfully associated myself with debating societies, during the studies of youth in Goshen, New York, and Auburn. There was of course an annual or nearly annual celebration of the Fourth of July. My first conception of the dignity and destiny of our country arose out of these rural festivities. In one of them, a skiff was brought from the neighboring mill-pond, mounted on a wagon, over a carpet, which covered the wheels. Four horses were harnessed before it. In the stern stood my elder brother, who personated Colum bus, listening intently to Miss Fanny Bailey, a farmer s pretty daugh ter, who stood by his side, as the Genius of America, and point e toward scenes " by distance made more attractive." Two village lad representing boatmen, plied their busy oars above the carpet. I among the curious and anxious crowd of boys who clustered around wagon, as it moved, to the measured strains of martial music, along t road to the foot of the hill which is crowned by the village chu and thence made its way up the lawn in front with a graceful swelp 26 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1801-16. and over many hillocks beneath which "the rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep." The eventful barge came to a stop, and the great dis coverer, with his guardian genius, alighted upon an island extemporized for the occasion, by sods, plants, and trees, and inhabited by one stuffed fox, three or four chained gray squirrels, and a painted and alarmed Indian chief, crouching in the foliage, the whole revealing, to his won dering and fascinated eyes, the island of San Salvador, the earnest of a New World, which was now to be added to the kingdom of Castile and Leon. I was much older before I appreciated the wit with which the village attorney travestied the ode that was sung on the memora ble occasion by the village choir : " Columbus sing ; for it is he Can poise the globe and bound the sea, Can boldly sail through waves unseen, And find an island on the green. 1 There were, at that time, only eighteen members of the American Union. At the next anniversary their greatness and felicity were sym bolized by eighteen boys, whom their mothers had carefully dressed in white muslin coats and trousers, with white-paper caps on their heads and pretty blue sashes around their waists, and the neatest blackened shoes possible. These formed in procession, each carrying a green- bordered white banner, upon which was printed the name of some one of the renowned civil and military founders of the republic. It was my part to personate my native State, by no means then the " Empire State," and on my banner I bore the pure and chivalrous name of " La fayette." I have loved, honored, and lamented the gallant French hero since that time, and I suppose I shall die loyal to New York, and to the Federal Union. While these patriotic experiences were going on, war was pro claimed by the United States against Great Britain. The village uni formed artillery-company, to the number of forty swords, came out upon the green, and fired a salvo, which, according to my thinking, gave the enemy notice of what he might expect. Just in the moment when I was listening for the news that General Hull had conquered Canada, and annexed it all, with Gaspe and Newfoundland, to the United States, came the astounding disappointment of that unfortunate general s surrender and capitulation, at Detroit, without the discharge of a single musket! Then quickly came the recruiting-lieutenant, with i cockade in his hat, and red trimming on his coat ; then came the .eparture of the artillery to New York for the defense of the city ; ijen the draft. The long and sad story of military failures was relieved !> the brilliant achievements in the campaign of Scott, on the Canada frontier, and the glorious naval victories on the lakes and the ocean. 1801- 16.J KITCHEN AND PARLOR. 2T I took new courage and new hope from these achievements, and the victory at New Orleans compensated me for the defeat and overthrow of Napoleon, which caused me to weep, because I had come to regard him as an ally of the United States. I had already become old enough to understand that a domestic party which continues to oppose and assail the government, when engaged in a foreign war, becomes, though indirectly and unintentionally, an ally of the enemy. It was not until long after the dissolution of the Federal party that I became able to believe its members as loyal to the country as their opponents on the issue newly raised between them. In later life, when our militia system was falling into disuse and ridicule, men wondered at the personal vanity which they supposed I manifested by continuing to hold and fill its offices. A remembrance of the War of 1812, and of its losses and sufferings, increased by reason of inadequate military preparation, determined me to adhere to and uphold the reviled militia system, which a republican government, if it means to endure, must always substitute in time of peace for the stand ing army. Even at this late day, when many of the different titles of honor allowed by our form of government have descended, as if in a copious shower, upon me, I am not at all ashamed when one of the surviving veterans, whom I commanded before going into the higher departments of civil life, accosts me in the presence of visitors from distant States or countries with the now obsolete title of " general," " colonel," or " captain." There was existing at that time a social anomaly, which I long found a perplexing enigma. Besides my parents, brothers, and sisters, all of whom occupied the parlor and the principal bedrooms, there were in the family two black women, and one black boy, who remained exclusive tenants of the kitchen and the garret over it. The kitchen fireplace stretched nearly across the end of the room. A grown person need hardly stoop to get under the mantel. The supply of wood was pro fuse, and the jambs at the side of the fireplace were not only the warmest but the coziest place in the whole house. The group that gathered round this fireplace could be enlarged by merely sweeping a new circle. Turkeys, chickens, and sirloin, were roasted ; cakes and pies were baked at this noble fire. Moreover, the tenants of the kitchen, though black, had a fund of knowledge about the ways and habits of the devil, of witches, of ghosts, and of men who had been and, what was more, they were vivacious and loquacious, as well affectionate, toward me. What wonder that I found their aparti more attractive than the parlor, and their conversation a relief frc severe decorum which prevailed there ? I knew they were though I did not know why. If my parents never uttered befoi word of disapproval of slavery, it is but just to them to say tl 28 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1801- 16. never uttered an expression that could tend to make me think that the negro was inferior to the white person. The few rich families in the neighborhood had as many as or more than we ; others had only one. While the two younger of my father s slaves attended school, and sat at my side if they chose, I noticed that no other black children went there. After a time I found that the large negro family of a neighbor were held in disrepute for laziness, drunkenness, and disorder; and that they came under suspicion of having stolen anything that either was lost or was supposed to be. Zeno, a negro boy in the family of an other neighbor, was a companion in my play. He told me one day that he had been whipped severely, and the next day he ran away. He was pursued and brought back, and wore an iron yoke around his neck, which exposed him to contempt and ridicule. He found means to break the collar, and fled forever. In the mean time, both of my father s female servants were seduced and disgraced ; and the third, a boy, followed Zeno in his flight. I regarded all this immorality and wicked ness just as inexcusable and ungrateful toward their masters as it would have been in me to bring dishonor upon my parents ; nor had I any distinct idea of any difference between the relations of children and slaves. A black woman died in the neighborhood at the age, it was said, of one hundred years. She had been imported when young ; and she died asserting a full belief that she was then going back to her native Guinea. How could such a superstition be accounted for? How could the ignorance and vice of these black people, living in the midst of a moral and virtuous community, be accounted for ? I early came to the conclusion that something was wrong, and the " gradual emancipation laws " of the State, soon after coming into debate, en abled me to solve the mystery, and determined me, at that early age, to be an abolitionist. Shall I not stop now to say that, while the family of which I was a member has increased, until it numbers more than eighty persons, all of whom hold respectable positions in society, and some one or more of whom are to be found in every quarter of the globe the descendants of that slave family in my father s kitchen now number but seven, and these have their only shelter under a roof which I pro vide for them ? So time went on, and I went on with it, closing my preparatory ^ studies in a new term of six months at the old academy in Goshen, with little variation of habit or occupation, except that my parents occasionally permitted me to attend them in their social visits at New- burg. These excursions gave me the only glimpses I then had of life outside of the sweet little valley in which I was cradled. 1816- 18.] ALBANY IN 1816. 29 1816-1818. First Steamboat Journey. Chancellor Kent. College-Life at Schenectady. The Mohawk Trade. Dr. Nott. Wayland. Welcome to Daniel D. Tompkins. I THINK I am six years older than the first steamboat on the Hud son. But my first sight of a vessel of that kind was when I embarked on one, at night, to ascend that river on my way to college. What a magnificent palace ! What a prodigy of power, what luxury of enter tainment, what dazzling and costly lights ! More than by all these was I struck with the wondrous crowd of intelligent passengers, among whom some youthful acquaintances, newly made, pointed out many of the eminent men of the day. But no one was able to identify Chan cellor Kent, who was said to be on board. At noon there was what I thought to be an alarm of colliding with some other vessel, or running upon a rock, or encountering an enemy. The vessel certainly scraped against something that obstructed her speed. The captain had mounted a bench on deck, and was objurgating violently with somebody on the level of the water below. I climbed up behind the crowd, and saw that we were running against upright poles, which had been stuck into the river-bottom by the fishermen. A short, thick-set, cheery -looking man leaped upon the bench, and, seeing at a glance the state of the case, cried out in a loud voice, heard by all: "That s right, captain! that s right ! bring those fellows into my court, and I ll take care of them ! " This was Chancellor Kent, the great judge, who was uphold ing the steamboat monopoly conferred by the State of New York upon its citizens, Fulton and Livingston, against the no less great and finally overruling authority, the Supreme Court of the United States. The monopoly was lost ; the inventors died unrewarded ; but the public gained. On my first passage I paid eight dollars fare. We now make the entire voyage of the navigable Hudson for fifty cents. Chancellor Kent was the most buoyant and cheerful of men. When he afterward lost his great office and its dignity, he told me that he had never ex perienced any disappointment worth grieving over. "A gentleman wants," he said, " only a clean shirt and a shilling, every day, and I have never been without them." Have I ever seen, in after-life, a city so vast, so splendid, so im posing as Albany, that then loomed up before me ? Not Paris, not Benares, not even Constantinople, inspired me with so much awe. And then the figure of blind Justice, with her sword and scales, that sur mounts the little red-stone Capitol. What patriotic pride it inspired^ While the stages were coming up, I ran stealthily up into Pearl St and, looking through the fence, I fed my wondering eyes with a of the house in which the loyal and patriotic Governor Tompkins 30 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1816- 18. But it was not my destiny yet to see the chief magistrate of my native State. The country between Albany and Schenectady, slightly rolling, was then a sandy and almost sterile plain, without culture or dwellings, except the frequent taverns on the broad turnpike-road. This road, roughly paved at first, had been renderd nearly impassable by heavy wagons. In the stunted pine-woods on either side were huts or hovels of a vagrant race called " Yancys," who had the habits of gyp sies, and were said to be a mixture of debased whites, vicious negroes, and Indians. I do not know, nor have I ever heard, in what way they disappeared. At Schenectady I alighted on the bank of the Mohawk River, then navigated with "bateaux." I think that ideas of material improve ment come to us later than those belonging to every other form of social progress. I had found the Hudson River gay with canvas, the intermediate turnpike crowded with freight and emigrant-wagons ; and I now found the narrow, shallow Mohawk filled with flat-bottomed produce-boats. It was not yet, nor indeed until a much later period, that I was to conceive my first idea of the commercial and political im portance of this great thoroughfare. It has been my habit always to distrust my capacity and qualifi cations for every new enterprise. Mr. Givens gave me a generous breakfast at his hotel, and cheered me with the recollections of his acquaintance with my father when he was a member of the Assembly at Albany ; but I had no heart for either of these enjoyments. I climbed the College Hill with a reluctant and embarrassed step, to offer myself for an examination at which I feared I might not pass. I called at the office of the register, Mr. Holland, and by him was imme diately introduced into the presence of the Professor of Mathematics and Natural Philosophy. The college catalogue, which I had carefully read, described him as the Rev. Thomas McCauley, Doctor of Divinity and Doctor of Laws. I wondered at my presumption in coming into so high a presence. The professor inquired which of the classes I sup posed myself prepared to enter. I summoned boldness to answer that I had studied for examination to enter the junior class. He immedi ately put me through a series of questions for half an hour, in several preparatory class-books, and pronounced me more than qualified. He then asked my age, and on receiving the answer, " fifteen," he replied that my studies had carried me beyond my years ; the laws of the col lege making sixteen the age for entering the junior class. I did not regret the decision. Life at college seemed very attractive ; and my previous excess of preparation would make my studies easier. Long before night my " chum " was chosen, my room supplied with the cheap furniture which the college regulations required, and I sat down to 1816- 18.] COLLEGE-LIFE. 31 meditate, with self-complacency, on the dignity of my new situation. I was duly matriculated as sophomore ; and these two large words signified, for me, a great deal, because I had not the least idea of the meaning of either. Within a week my habits of life were established. The class competition required diligent but not excessive study; while I felt a conscious self-satisfaction in being trusted to pursue my studies and govern my conduct without the surveillance of parent or teacher. The companionship of intelligent and emulous classmates harmonized with my disposition, while I cherished in my secret thoughts aspira tions to become, at the end of my three years, the valedictorian of my class. In college-life, if one looks beyond that distinction at all, it is only with the full belief that unto him who obtains that honor all other honors shall come without labor or effort. Union College, founded in 1795, was now, in 1816, at, or near the height of its prosperity. The President, Dr. Nott, ranked with the most popular preachers of the day ; while his great political talents se cured him the patronage of all the public men in the State. The dis cipline of the college was based on the soundest and wisest principles. There was an absence of everything inquisitorial or suspicious ; there were no courts or impeachments ; every young man had his appointed studies, recitations, and attendance at prayers ; and a demeanor was required which should not disturb the quiet or order of the institution. If he failed or offended, he was privately called into the presence of the president or professor, remonstrated with, and admonished that repeated failure would be made known to his parents for their consid eration, while habitual insubordination would be visited with dismissal. What notices were given to parents was never known to any but them selves and their son ; nor was any offender ever disgraced by a public notice of his expulsion. I think I know of no institution where a man lier spirit prevailed among the under-graduates than that which distin guished the pupils of Dr. Nott. I cannot speak so highly of the system of instruction. There was a daily appointment of three tasks, in as many different studies, which the pupils were required, unaided, to master in their rooms, the young, the dull, and the backward, equally with the most mature and the most astute. The pupil understood that he performed his whole duty when he recited these daily lessons with out failure. With most of us the memory was doubtless the faculty chiefly exercised ; and where so much was committed mechanically to memory, much was forgotten as soon as learned. It was a consequence of this method of instruction, which, I think, was at that day by no means peculiar to Union College, that every study was not a continu ous one, but consisted of fragmentary tasks, while no one volume or author was ever completed. The error, if it be one, is, I suppose, inci dental to our o-eneral svstem of education, which sacrifices a full ^nd 32 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1816- 1S. complete training of the individual to the important object of af fording the utmost possible education to the largest number of citi zens. My first session in college was not without its mortifications. When 1 came to write what are called compositions, I found that, having rarely practised it, I wrote with difficulty, and confusedly, and it seemed to me that difficulty was incurable, because I had no general supply of facts or knowledge. The first time I rose to speak I encountered a general simper, which, before I got through, broke into laughter. On carefully inquiring the reasons, I found I had a measured drawl. More over, the dress which I wore was not of sufficiently fine material, hav ing been awkwardly cut by the village tailor, who came annually to my father s to prepare the wardrobe for the whole rustic family. The former difficulty was so far surmounted as to save me from future morti fication ; the latter, which did not depend upon any efforts of my own, was only surmounted by my early falling into debt to the accomplished tailors of Schenectady ; and this was the beginning of many and seri ous woes. There was, moreover, a third difficulty. I conceived a desire, not merely to acquire my lessons, but to understand them as well. I had not yet learned either to suspect, or to be suspected of, dis honor. Finding, in my Latin author, passages too obscure to be solved unaided, I went freely, though meekly, to the tutor, and obtained his assistance during the study-hours. Soon afterward the leading mem bers of the class, with the support of the rest, determined to oblige the accomplished tutor to give them shorter lessons, and more frequent holidays. They attempted to effect this by throwing asafcetida on the heated stove, and, when this proceeding failed, one, bolder than the rest, standing behind the tutor, pulled him by the hair. Of course he found out the offenders, and of course they were punished. The whole class suspected an informer; and who could the informer be but myself, who excelled them all in the recitations, who refused to go into the general meeting, and who was seen daily going to and from the tutor s room upon some errand unexplained ? This, I think, was my first ex perience of partisan excitement. I need not say that I never afterward offended my classmates by seeking to obtain special instruction or aid from my teachers. It was about this time that I first came to be personally known to the president, Dr. Nott. My tutor in Homer was then known as Mr. Wayland, afterward the distinguished and learned Rev. Dr. Wayland, author of an excellent treatise on " Moral Philosophy," and President of Brown University. He seemed to be much abstracted. Our class, though it was large enough to form two or three sections, nevertheless recited together. It happened, of course, that any one lesson would be exhausted in going one-third through the class. The tutor invari- 1816- 18.] DR. NOTT AND DR. WAYLAND. 33 ably began each new recitation at that point in the class where he had stopped the previous day. The members, knowing by this practice the days on which they would not be called upon to recite, contracted the habit of carrying, with their Homer, novels, or other light literature, into the hall to occupy them during the recitation. Bolder than the rest, I carried my book of amusement without a Homer, making no dis guise of it. My next neighbor in the class was a simple-minded, in offensive, dull young man, who was seldom if ever prepared, but who depended on me to help him through by whispering. The tutor, desir ous to correct so objectionable a practice as that into which the class had fallen, one day skipped from one end of the class to the other, and called up this unfortunate friend of mine. He had a novel concealed by his Homer. Taken all aback, he asked me what he should do. I was surprised by the tutor s adopting this mode of correcting his previ ous mistake ; and, moreover, I knew that my companion would be quite unable to recite the lesson with any help I could give him. I told him, therefore, in a whisper, to answer that he was not prepared. He did so. The tutor insisted. In a more earnest and louder voice I instructed my companion to say that he could not recite. Some one, however, found the place for him, and he got through badly enough. The tutor then said, " The next, Mr. Seward." I had already committed myself to insubordination by the instruction I had given to my unfortunate neighbor, and I answered that I declined to recite to-day. " What is the reason ? " I replied, " I do not know that I am prepared." He said, "I thought you might assign that reason; and, therefore, I have called you to recite to-day from the book which one of your classmates now offers you the very lesson which you recited only yesterday, from memory, without any book at all." I answered with decision, " I shall not recite to-day." "Then, sir, you will please leave the room." I obeyed. That night I received a summons from the teacher to apologize to him for my insubordination. I declined to comply, unless the tutor would at the same time apologize to me for having resorted to a sur prise which exposed me to the class, instead of having given me notice privately, or the class some notice publicly, of his desire to change his system of examination. He declined to do this. The next day when I came to the recitation my name was omitted in the call ; and a like omission of my name occurred in all the recitations. I left the college, and took up my lodgings in the city, upon this implied hint that I was suspended. After two weeks Dr. Nott sent for me, and asked me what I was doing, and why I was absent from college. I gave him the facts of the case. He asked me why I did not come back. I answered, "The tutor requires me to apologize." " Why, then, don t you apologize, my son ?" 3 34 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1816- 18, I replied, " I think the tutor did me the first wrong, and he ought to apologize to me first." " If the tutor would apologize to you, would you then apologize to him?" " Oh, yes, I am quite convinced that I was wrong ; but he was wrong before me." "Well, my son, suppose that I should apologize to you for him, would you be willing to apologize to me for his benefit ? " Certainly." " Well, then, I do say that I think the tutor would have acted more wisely in telling the class that he had observed the erroneous practice into which they had fallen, and appealed to them to correct it." " Well, then," I replied, " I confess that it would have been better and more becoming in me to recite my lesson, with an explanation of my sense of the grievance of the class." " Now, my son, go to your room, and resume your studies, and re flect upon this incident, whenever you are tempted to stand upon the punctilio of anybody." If there is one enjoyment of youth higher than another, it is found in the pleasant vacations which the college student spends in the so ciety of his family and friends at home. Next to this is the enjoyment of return to industrious and emulous pursuits when the vacation i& ended. The college reports of my study and demeanor gratified my parents and encouraged me. There was only one drawback, and that was my entire failure to bring my expenses to an equation with the parental allowance. There were small things, not in the estimates,, with which I could not dispense. Not the least of these was my equal portion of the expenses of recreations, not to speak of the sums which I could not refuse to give away in charity, or to lend to juvenile bor rowers, by whom I am not yet reimbursed. Moreover, the more I re trenched these expenditures, the more the quarterly appropriation was reduced. Nor did the established system of awarding the college honors, which was then universal in the United States, and, for aught I know, may be so now, escape distrust on my part. The honors of the class were reserved for the close of the entire academic course, at the end of the senior year. Competition for these honors began at the organiza tion of the freshman class, and the final award depended upon the smallest number of failures exhibited in recitations during the entire course. The class had hardly commenced its curriculum before candi dates appeared, as in the case of a presidential election, demanding, prematurely, a division of the faculty, and of the suffrages of the class. It was impossible to avoid a suspicion that the partiality of the faculty was to be won by servile or unmanly compliances with their caprices. 1816- 18.] DANIEL D. TOMPKINS. 35 However that might be, I thought I discovered that the competitors who aspired to the great reward came to exhibit less of sympathy than others with their classmates, and to take a more contracted view of subjects of general interest. In short, while I would have been willing to receive the honors of valedictorian, I doubted very much whether they were to be desired at the expense of, at least, the isolation which the pursuit of them involved. I do not know how much I had become demoralized, by sentiments of this sort, at the beginning of the junior year, but I was brought to a serious reconsideration of them, when it was finally announced that the Phi Beta Kappa Society of the United States, which embraced in its raembers all the eminent philosophers, scholars, and statesmen of the country, and which had already three branches one at Harvard, one. at Yale, and one, I think, at Dartmouth had determined to establish a fourth branch at Union College, and that its membership would be conferred, at the end of the year, upon those only of the junior class who excelled in scholarship. Ought I not to be ambitious to have my name enrolled in a society of which De Witt Clinton, Chancellor Kent, and Dr. Nott, were members ? Would it not be a disgrace to be left out ? Besides, the Phi Beta Kappa was a secret society, and was it not a case of laudable pride and curiosity, not merely to acquire great secrets of science, but to hold them in common with the great men of the country and the age ? T determined to make a trial. My Toom-mate agreed to share with me the labors and privations of it. We quitted the college commons, supplied our selves with provisions for living in our own room throughout the long period of trial. We rose at three o clock in the morning, cooked and spread our own meals, washed our own dishes, and spent the whole time which we could save from prayers and recitations, and the table, in severe study, in which we unreservedly and constantly aided each other. The fruits of this study were soon seen in our work. It was not enough for us to solve the most difficult equation in algebra or problem in Euclid upon the black-board, but we went through them without the use of lines or figures ; it was not enough for us to read Homer or Cicero, translating the passages, word by word, into English, but, when called upon to recite, we closed the book, and recited the text in a carefully prepared and euphonious version. Need I say that we entered the great society without encountering the deadly black ball ? The junior year closed with introducing me into a political field, much broader than that of the college. Daniel D. Tompkins had been advanced, in 1816, to the vice-presidency of the United States. A schism, which occurred in the same election, had divided the Republican party into two sections : at the head of one of which was De Witt Clinton, then the Governor of the State ; and at the head of the other 36 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1818- 19. was Martin Van Buren. The latter faction, despairing of defeating Governor Clinton in the election, had nominated the popular Vice- President for the gubernatorial office. My training at home had pre pared me to be an earnest admirer of Tompkins, and of course hostile to Clinton. Vice-President Tompkins, at the request of his party, made a progress through the eastern part of the State, and, in " swing ing round the circle," came to Schenectady. He had a reception in the city, which, of course, was a party one. The Republican students, nicknamed " Buck-tails," thought it a patriotic duty to receive him at the college. Should I not study carefully the first political speech I was to make, especially when that speech was an address to the great est patriot and statesman whom my native State had produced ? I did study the speech, and I did make it ; but, like many other well-studied speeches, made to or for political candidates in our country, this effort of mine " fell on stony ground ; " and, in spite of the advice of the Republican students of Union College, De Witt Clinton was reflected Governor of the State of New York. 1818-1819. A College Escapade. A Coasting-Voyage. Six Months in Georgia. Kindly Patrons. The Union Academy. Planters and Slaves. Law-Studies. Eeturn to College. Adelphic and Philomatheau. A Secession. Trial and Defense. Commencement Honors. THE first session of the senior class came on in September, 1818, and I was to take my degree in July, 1819. The financial misunder standing with my father, at which I have already hinted, increased by the intrusion of the accomplished tailors of Schenectady, had brought a crisis which I had long apprehended. I would by no means imply a present conviction that the fault in the case was altogether with my father. On the other hand, I think now that the fault was not alto gether mine. However this may have been, He declined to pay for me bills that he thought unreasonable ; and I could not submit to the shame of credit impaired. I resolved thenceforth "upon independence and self-maintenance. On the 1st of January, 1819, without notice to him, or any one else, I left Union College, as I thought then forever, and proceeded by stage-coach to New York with a classmate who was going to take charge of an academy in Georgia. I had difficulty in avoiding observation as I passed through Newburg, the principal town of the county in which my father lived. Arriving in New York for the first time, I would have staid to see its curiosities and its wonders, but I feared pursuit. I took passage, with my fellow-traveler, on the schooner which was first to sail for Savannah ; but the vessel was 1818- 19.] A SEA-VOYAGE. 37 obliged to wait for a wind. I lived on board during this detention, so as to avoid discovery on shore. The last night before our departure, with the permission of the captain of the schooner, I went to the Park Theatre, the only one then in New York. Not merely my education, but my straitened circumstances, impressed me with the importance of econo mizing in this my first act of dissipation. I bought the cheapest ticket, price twenty-five cents, and of course ascended to the gallery in entire ignorance of all other grounds of discrimination than that of economy. Taking no notice of my surroundings, I wept with Mrs. Barnes in the tragedy until the curtain fell on the first act, when I discovered that I had become, for some cause, the object of sneering remark and con temptuous laughter among the promiscuous crowd of both sexes who occupied the opposite side of the gallery. As I looked immediately around me to see what could be the cause, a negro man of middle age, black as the ace of spades, but gentle of speech, approached me meekly and said, " Guess young master don t know that he s got into the colored folk s part of the gallery." I thanked him, repaired to my proper position, and the jibes and laughter ceased. From what I afterward learned of the usages of the theatre, I suppose it may be doubtful whether the change was for the better in a moral point of view ; but the immediate effect of the incident was to awaken my distrust of my ability to begin the world alone. At sunrise next morning there was a rushing of the wind and the sea. We were under way. Full of curiosity, I leaped from my ele vated berth upon the floor, and fell like a drunken man against the opposite side of the cabin. Gathering my clothes in my hand, I climbed the stairs ; but no toilet was to be made until I had paid the tribute which the ocean exacts of every navigator on his first voyage. The weather was cold, and the sea rough. I crept into a peddler s wagon freighted with dried codfish, and made my breakfast upon it. After that I went to the cabin, only to sleep. The confinement to the deck was not a great privation, for a voyage then on a coasting- schooner had few conveniences and no luxuries. On the seventh day we crossed Tybee, and anchored in the river at Savannah. What an unexpected transition from New York, which I had left congealed and covered with snow, to Savannah, which seemed embowered among trees and flowers ! I was in haste, because my funds were small and I feared pursuit. I rode by stage-wagon to Augusta, the way at night often lighted up by immigrants camp-fires, which consumed the dry, girdled trees. My associate and I made inquiries at Augusta, and he contracted there for employment in the academy in that city. I proceeded by stage-coach as far as it went, and then hired a gig, which landed me at Mount Zion, in a society that had lately been founded there by immigrants from Orange County, to whom I was known. They 38 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1818- 19, were under the pastoral care of Rev. Dr. Beman, who afterward be came so distinguished a preacher at Troy, in the State of New York. Here I rested one or two days, while my linen was washed ; and then, no longer able to hire a conveyance, I took the road on foot for a journey thirty miles, more or less, to Eatonton, the capital town of Putnam County. Farmers, there called " Crackers," cheerfully gave me a lift as I overtook them on the way, and shared their provisions with me. Arriving at the town late at night, and weary, I was shown into a large ballroom, which I found filled with long rows of cots, one of which was assigned to me. My reflections in the morning were by no means cheerful. Inquiring of the tavern-keeper, I learned that the academy which I was looking for was in a new settlement, ten miles distant. I was to make that journey with only nine shillings and six pence, New York currency, in hand, after paying my reckoning The shirt I wore, of course, was soiled with the wear of travel, and the light cravat I wore was worse. I invested eight shillings in a neck cloth, which concealed the shirt-bosom, and with the one and sixpence remaining I resumed my journey. Arriving at a country store, standing at the cross-roads, after walk ing eight miles, I came to a rest, communicated the news which I had received at Eatonton, and in return was enlightened with the mer chant s news of the admission of Missouri into the Union, then under debate in Congress, and with what was more directly to my own pur pose, the names and residences of the planters living in the neighbor hood who had founded the new academy of which I was in search. I was directed to Mr. Ward, whose house was distant two miles and a half, as the person to whom I should apply. Going a mile and a half through the woods, I became both hungry and thirsty, and quite too weary to go farther. A double cottage, built of logs, that is to say, a log-house of one story, with two rooms, one on each side of the door, invited me. It was new, its windows were without glass, and its chim ney not yet "topped out;" but manifestly it was occupied, because domestic utensils lay about the doorway, and the blanket which served for a door was drawn up. I found there a lady, yet youthful, and handsome as she was refined, with her two small children. The owner of the house was Dr. Iddo Ellis, a physician, who had emigrated there only a year or two before from Auburn, New York, and his wife was a daughter of the Rev. Mr. Phelps, an Episcopal clergyman at that place. The doctor soon came home, and it was immediately made known to me that a visitor who had just come from the vicinity of their ancient home could not be allowed to go farther, although he might fare better than in their humble and unfurnished cottage. Of course, I stopped there, and during the evening told my hospitable entertainers of my journey and its object, giving the explanation that I was impatient to 1818- 19.] THE UNION ACADEMY. 39 begin the work of life in the new and attractive field which they had found. The house had no partitions, but I had a separate apartment for sleep, which was easily made by suspending a coverlid from the beam to the floor. After an early breakfast, the doctor summoned a meeting of the trustees, which I could attend, at eleven o clock. They were five in number. Major William Alexander, of the militia, a genial planter, was president; William Turner, Esq., Treasurer of the State, was sec retary; and Dr. Ellis chief debater. The matter of my introduction was promptly disposed of. My traveling associate, who, while we were yet in college, had accepted the call to this academy, had obtained a more distinguished situation at Augusta, and had recommended me. Dr. Ellis spoke kindly of the impression which my brief acquaintance with him had made. Mr. Turner, who had had a better academic edu cation than the rest, asked me a few general questions ; and then Colonel Alexander announced that the board did not think it necessary to extend the examination further. I withdrew, that the board might consider. I went round the corner of the academy, sat down on the curbstone of the spring, into which I dipped the gourd which hung upon the tree by its side ; and I meditated: What chance was there that these trustees would employ me ? If they should decline to do so, what next ? With only eighteen pence in my pocket, a thousand miles from home, my little wardrobe left thirty miles behind, where was I to go, and what could I do ? I scarcely had time to conceive possible answers to these questions, when Dr. Ellis appeared, and in vited me into the official presence. If ever mortal youth was struck dumb by pleasant surprise, I was that youth, when William Turner, Esq., rose before me, six feet high, grave and dignified, and made me this speech : " Mr. Seward, the trustees of Union Academy have ex amined you, with a view to ascertain whether you are qualified to assume the charge of the new institution they have founded. They have desisted from that examination because they have found that you are better able to examine them than they are to examine you. The trustees desire to employ you, but they fear that they are unable to make you such a proposition as your abilities deserve. The school is yet to be begun, and with what success, of course, they do not know. The highest offer that they feel able to make is eight hundred dollars for the year, with board in such of their houses as you may choose, to be paid for at the rate of one hundred dollars a year. But the academy will not be finished for six weeks, during which time you will be with out employment. We will compensate you for that delay by furnish ing you a horse and carriage, in which you can travel in any part of the State, and, in the interval of rest, you will board among us with out charge." 40 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [18 18- 19. I accepted the position with an expression of profound thanks, and an assurance of determination to merit the approval of my generous patrons. It was, as I still think, an important crisis in my life. I indulged, with satisfaction, the reflection that thenceforth I was to be an independent, self-reliant, and self-supporting man. At dinner with the doctor and his family, he said : " I am going to state something to which, if you prefer, you need not reply. In your absence from the meeting of trustees, they asked how old you were. I answered that I thought you were twenty. They replied that seemed very young for such an enterprise." I candidly confessed to my generous patron that I was only seventeen. " Well, we ll leave them to find that out." The part of Georgia into which I had fallen was in the northwestern region, and had then recently been recovered from the Indians. It was newly settled with immigrants from Virginia and North and South Caro lina. The staple was cotton, and its culture very profitable. Profes sional men and teachers were freely accepted and welcomed there from the North. The Southern States were only just beginning to establish schools and academies for themselves. Although the planters were new and generally poor, yet I think the slaves exceeded the white population. No jealousy or prejudice at that day was manifested in regard to inquiries or discussions of slavery. But, at the same time, there were two kindred popular prejudices highly developed. One was a suspicion, amounting to hatred, of all emancipated persons, or free negroes, as they were called ; the other, a strong prejudice, of an abstract nature, against the lower class of adventurers from the North, called " Yankees." The planters entertained me always cordially, as it seemed, from a regard to my acquirements ; while the negroes availed themselves of every occasion to converse with a stranger who came from the " big North," where they understood their race to be free, but which they believed to be so far distant as to be forever inaccessible to them. They seemed like children in this respect. Two house-carpenters, bright and intelligent men, expressed so much curi osity about the " big North," that I asked them why they did not lay up wages, buy their freedom, and go there. They thought the distance an insuperable obstacle in any case. Conversations of this kind with these simple creatures attached the whole community of negroes to me, without exciting any jealousy on the part of their masters. Of course, its effect was to confirm and strengthen the opinions I already entertained adverse to slavery. A " Yankee " had come there, with an exhibition of wax-figures. He was allowed to exhibit it in the chief room of the wealthiest planter. His price for admission was a dollar, negroes half price. Among the crowd attracted were a pair of middle- aged slaves, with a long retinue of young children. The parents had 1818- 19.] GEORGIA LIFE. 41 mustered just money enough to admit the latter. They were standing outside. When I asked why they did not go in themselves, they replied that they had only money enough to pay for the children. I took them in with me. Not the faintest idea had they of the manner or material with which the figures had been prepared. Looking long with admiration upon " General Washington," " General Greene," "General Marion," " The Sleeping Beauty," "Louis XVI.," and "The Witch of Endor," their master became impatient, but they were reluc tant to leave. I interposed, and asked them why they did not go. They replied that they understood that all the figures would dance at four o clock, and asked me to secure their master s consent that they should stay till that hour. Making an excursion into Jasper County in a gig, I had occasion to cross the " Little River." The stream was broad and the water low. There was the framework still remaining of a bridge, but only a con tinuous flooring of the width of two planks, available for a footpath, but not for wheels. I drove in my carriage across the ford, below the bridge, over round stones, and at imminent peril of being lost in the stream. Arriving at the opposite bank, I found there a young negro woman, with a blind horse loaded with grain for the mill. She asked my advice and help. I thought it impossible to conduct the blind beast safely across the ford. I explored the entire pathway of the bridge, and judged that it was safer to attempt to lead him over it ; at all events the woman would be safe. I led the horse along the bridge, care fully keeping the middle of the path until we had almost reached the end, when a miss-step precipitated him off the plank, and across a great beam of the bridge. The grist fell off. No effort that I could make, with the aid of the woman, could extricate the animal. I said that I would go and bring her master to the rescue. The woman implored me not to do so, for he would beat her. But there was no alternative. I found the master a mile distant from the river, and when I told him of the ill-luck which had befallen his servant, he hastened to the spot to give relief ; but not without swearing so wrathfully at the slave and at myself as to make me feel that I only just escaped, while the poor woman would be made a victim. I availed myself, next day, of the horse and wagon to proceed to Eatonton, where I called at the post-office, expecting there a letter from the associate I had left at Augusta. Besides the expected letter I received others, which, while they gave me much pleasure, caused me much perplexity. There was a packet which had been transmitted to me by Richard Richardson, President of the United States Branch Bank at Savannah. The packet contained a letter from my father, in which he stated that he had heard with paternal anguish and solicitude of my flight from college and home ; that he had followed me from 42 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1818- 19. Newburg to New York, and personally, and with the aid of necessary agents, had gone through nearly the entire shipping at the wharves, resting at night from his unsuccessful search, leaving only unvisited the schooner in which I had sailed. He implored me to return, and in formed me that I would be supplied with what funds I should need by Mr. Richardson. By no means disposed to give up an independence which had been so dearly gained, I drew on Mr. Richardson, as he had advised me I might, for one hundred dollars. With this sum I brought my person into more presentable condition, and returned to my patrons near the Union Academy. I replied to my father a day or two after ward, and, in declining his request for my return, I know not whether it was my vanity, or a solicitude that I felt to relieve parental appre hension, that induced me to send to him an Eatontoii newspaper, which contained an advertisement that had been carefully prepared by Wil liam Turner, Esq., secretary, and signed by himself and Major Alex ander as president, which announced to the people of the State of Georgia that " William H. Seward, a gentleman of talents, educated at Union College, New York," had been duly appointed Principal of the Union Academy ; that applications for admission were now in order ; and that the school would be opened on the first of May next. My patrons contended with each other for the honor of entertaining me during the interval ; and so I moved in a hospitable circle round the new academy, now staying at Mr. Ward s, then at Mr. Walker s, and then at Mr. Turner s, and from these places I made excursions to Mil- ledgeville, Sparta, and other towns, always hospitably received by promirient citizens. Hardly more than half my vacation was passed in this pleasant way when there arose a new and startling difficulty. I was in my attic bed room, at Mr. Ward s, alone, revising the classics which I was so soon to teach, when Major William Alexander, President of the Board of Trustees of Union Academy, ascended the crooked little stairway un attended, and presented to me a letter, written in a hand that I quick ly recognized. He said, " I thought I ought to show you this letter before informing any one else about it." I read it, L doubt not, with manifest embarrassment. My indignant father, in this letter, informed Major William Alexander that he had read a newspaper advertisement, in which the major announced the employment of William H. Seward as principal. My father proceeded to say that he lost no time in in forming Major Alexander and the trustees who and what kind of a person this new principal of their academy was, that he was a much- indulged son, who, without any just provocation or cause, had abscond ed from Union College, thereby disgracing a well-acquired position, and plunging his parents into profound shame and grief. In con clusion my father warned the major, the trustees, and all whom it 1818-l.q RETURN HOME. 43 might concern, that, if they should continue to harbor the delinquent, he would prosecute them with the utmost rigor of the law. " There," said the major, in the chivalrous manner which the South ern planter had already learned to assume, " I suspected as much all the while, but I don t believe that you abandoned your college and home without good cause ; I shall be your friend. I will keep the affair to myself, and you may decide upon it as you think best. If you should conclude to go home, we will not oppose you, although it will be a disappointment. If you decide to remain, your father may prose cute me as soon as he pleases." Had this been the whole of the case, it would have been easily settled. But, by the same mail which brought my father s summons, I received letters from my mother, which showed that the proceeding I had taken had been represented to her with aggravating additions, and that she neither had received, nor could be expected to receive, anything that should go to extenuate my conduct. Her letter indicated a broken heart ; and my sister, next in years to myself, assured me that our mother was on the verge of distraction. Alas ! poor lady, my desertion was not her only sorrow. My eldest brother had, two or three years earlier, come into a misun derstanding with my father, no less unhappy than my own ; had left the paternal home, and was seeking, with uncertain success, to establish a fortune for himself in the then new State of Illinois. My next brother, perhaps more under the influence of erroneous example than from any real difficulty in his own case, had strayed away from the paternal mansion, and obtained precarious employment in the city of New York ; had afterward thought to improve his condition by enlist ing in the United States Army, and was then writing to his mother mysterious accounts of his new occupation from the barracks at Old Point Comfort. Taking sufficient time, I carefully reconsidered the case, and then convened the trustees. I assured them that I would not break the en gagement to the injury of the institution ; that I would call a } r oung gentleman thither from Union College, as competent as myself, to take my place, and I would remain with them, in the performance of my duties, until he should arrive, and they should declare their entire satis faction with him. They assented to the arrangement, and it was carried into effect, I opened the academy on the appointed day, with sixty pupils, most of whom were well advanced in years, but quite unin- structed. Mr. Woodruff, my successor, came, and was accepted, and I took leave of my spirited and generous patrons, and affectionate scholars, with sentiments of affection and sadness such as I have sel dom since experienced. A long summer voyage made the sea seem congenial. Th e idea of its expanse took possession of me, and as I had improved the sea to 44 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1818- 19. learn how the people of the Southern States differed from those of my native region, so I determined that an early use should be made of my now postponed independence to explore the eastern shores of the Atlantic. On my way home I learned that a voyage, made in com panionship with others, in order to be agreeable, must not be too long. During the first eight days, the passengers were not merely mutually pleased and satisfied with each other, but seemed to become affectionate friends. In the next ten days they broke into cliques and factions, from which the quarantine week, inflicted upon us at Staten Island, seemed a welcome escape. I felt well satisfied on arriving at home, on the ground, not that I had decided wisely for myself in returning there, but that I had relieved my fond mother and sister from anxiety and sorrow on my account, and I promised myself never thereafter to abandon them, however diffi cult my own situation might become. I soon ascertained that I had no change to expect on the part of my other parent. On the other hand, his former opinions of my great disobedience were confirmed by the discovery that, unlike the prodigal son in the parable, in coming home again I had come impenitent. But I now reckoned that the time must be short when, having arrived at my majority and acquired my profes sion, I should resume, lawfully, the independence I had seized upon prematurely, and given up with reluctance. It was decided that I should return to Union College, and join the senior class of that year, at the same stage at which I had left my own class in the previous year. But this gave me six months, which I determined not to lose. I en tered an attorney s office, and diligently studied at Florida, and at Goshen, the elementary books of law. A changed condition of feeling affecting me had partially revealed itself while in Georgia, and now it broke upon me more fully and dis tinctly at home. In obtaining and asserting so much personal inde pendence, I found I had become amenable to popular opinion ; that the society around me divided, more or less equally, into two parties, and with great earnestness, upon the question whether my previous con duct should be approved or condemned. Of course, each party pre dicted a future for me in harmony with the sentiments they respectively adopted. While I was trying to silence this debate by a meek and inof fensive line of conduct, a new incident occurred which, at first, seemed to put an end to all hope of that kind. The load of debt which had driven me, like Christian s " burden," into my desperate pilgrimage, was some thing less than a hundred dollars. I now began the process of liquida tion, not by establishing a sinking-fund, but by earning fees as an advo cate in the justice s court. These earnings, with small but convenient tem porary loans from friends, always early repaid, had enabled me to tran- quilize, though not fully relieve myself from, my sartorian creditor. 1818- 19.] CLOSING YEAR AT COLLEGE. 4.5 One warm September day my father mounted me upon a horse and dispatched me with letters and drafts upon debtors of his who lived within a circuit of six miles. The very first draft which I presented, at a distance of a mile from home, brought into my hands a hundred and fifty dollars in small bank-bills. I rode three miles farther and brought up at the door of another debtor, Mr. Archibald Owens, to whom one of my letters was addressed. Unfortunately for me, Mr. Owens s house was raised some ten feet above the ground, and his door was only to be reached by ascending an abrupt flight of steps. A woman, I then thought a lady, had just ascended the steps as I rode up. I thought first that she might come down to take the letter from me, as I was in the saddle, but on second thought this seemed to be ungallant. I dis mounted, walked up the steps, gave her the letter, which she promised to deliver to Mr. Archibald Owens when he should come home. It was not until I had ridden a mile farther that I discovered that I had lost the bank-bills previously received. I led my horse while I went back, carefully searching the road, over which, in the mean time, no subse quent traveler had passed. Night came on, and the amiable Archibald Owens searched the road with me with the aid of lantern-light ; but the money was not found. It was hopelessly lost. Nearly two years afterward, the woman who had received the letter from me on the steps at Mr. Owens s house suddenly bloomed out in silk dress, parasol, and a set of china, and made presents, as rich people ought always to do, to her poor relations. She was arrested, and then confessed that she had picked up the money I had dropped at the door. My father submitted to the loss, perhaps all the more cheerfully be cause he had mentally appropriated the lost money to the discharge of mv indebtedness at Schenectady. The resumption of my collegiate course was embarrassing. I think that, by competitors for collegiate honors, I was regarded as a late in truder ; and by those who had no such aspirations, as a probable leader in irregularities and insubordination. I determined, though my pro bation must be short, if possible, to reconcile these two prejudices, to maintain my personal independence, and not to lose a just share of the collegiate distinctions. A new state of things, however, had occurred during the year of my absence from the college. Previously to that event, the students from the North and the South mingled promiscu ously and lived harmoniously together. The great debate of the Mis souri Compromise, which occurred during the year, faintly disclosed to the public the line of alienation upon which, forty years afterward, the great civil war, through which we have just passed, was contested. Union College, during that year, received a large accession of students who, even at that early day, had become known as " Southerners." Previous to their coming, the students were divided between two lit- 46 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1818- 19. erary societies, secret according to the custom of the time, the one "the Philomathean," the other "the Adelphic," which were nearly coeval with the college itself. Of these, the Philomathean was the larger and more popular, as it claimed to be, by a year or two, the more ancient. I belonged to the Adelphic, which, at that time, con soled itself for inferiority of numbers by pretensions to superior schol arship. The Southerners, on their arrival at the college, had joined the Philomathean, but soon afterward had complained of oppression, seceded and organized a third (and, of course, exclusive) society, under the name of the " Delphian Institute," which new society was improvi- dently sanctioned by the faculty. This division of the Philomathean Society, not unnaturally, agitated the Adelphic, leading members of which anticipated an increase of their own strength from the diminution of the numbers and prestige of their great rival, the Philomathean. The agitation drew into dis cussion, not at all the question of slavery, but the relative merits of Southern and Northern society. It seemed to be believed by both par ties that the opinions I should express, after having had a six months experience in the South, would carry weight. The Philomatheans claimed my sympathy on the ground of the character I had established for independence. The Adelphic sympathizers with the seceders claimed my adhesion on the ground of loyalty to the institution to which I belonged, and which had crowned me with all its little honors. Thus at that early day, before my educational course was ended, I stood upon the threshold of national politics. I promptly decided that the Southern secession was unjustifiable and disloyal to the institution and the country, while I made due acknowledgments of the hospitable and chivalrous character of the South. This decision brought me into direct conflict with the recognized leaders of the Adelphic Society. They caused me to be indicted and arraigned for some offense against the institution, the nature of which I do not remember, but the punish ment for which was expulsion. The college honors, whatever tliey might be, lay beyond that preliminary trial. I appeared on the day appointed, and met the charge with such proofs as I could command. I addressed the society, but without any previous canvass of my judges. I spoke alone in self-defense, and, when I closed, I asserted that I did not then know the opinion of any member ; that even if the decision was one of expulsion, I should never inquire how any member of the society had cast his vote; that I disdained the advantage of hearing the summing up of my accusers, as well as the debate preliminary to the final vote. With this speech I left the chamber. An hour or two afterward there was a rush of generous young men into the antecham ber where I sat in waiting. I had been triumphantly acquitted. An election as one of the three representatives of the Adelphic Society 1820- 24.] STUDYING LAW. 4.7 who were to speak on commencement-day, an election by the class as one of its managers for that day, and finally the assignment of my name in an alphabetical arrangement of the members of the class re ceiving the highest honors of the college, easily followed the ill-con sidered and unsuccessful impeachment. A review at this day of the experience of this my last term at col lege leaves me in doubt upon the question of precocity. My chef- d oeuvre in the Literary Society was an essay in which I demonstrated that the Erie Canal (then begun under the auspices of De Witt Clinton, the leader of the political party in the State to which I was opposed) was an impossibility, and that, even if it should be successfully con structed, it would financially ruin the State. On the other hand, the subject of my commencement oration was " The Integrity of the Amer ican Union." Commencement in July was signalized by an open feud between the Delphians, now known as " Southerners," and the combined Philoma- theans and Adelphics, now the Northern party. The class separated on the stage, and I think it was not until thirty years afterward that I received a kind recognition from any one of the seceders. 1820-1824. Studying Law. John Duer. JohnAnthon. The Forum. Edward N. Kirk. Ogden Hoff man. Chief-Justice Spencer. " Bucktails " and " Clintonians." Constitution of 1821. Admitted to the Bar. " Going West." Partnership with Judge Miller. Choosing Church and Party. the commencement platform in July I returned directly to the humble law-office of John Duer, Esq., in Goshen, which I had left. There I remained until the autumn of the following year, when I was received as a student in the office of John Anthon, Esq., in Beekman Street, in the city of New York. Mr. Anthon had written a book on " Practice," and this department received my more special attention. The young lawyers and students in New York, then less numerous than now, had a literary society called " The New York Forum," in which they in private tried causes as a mock court; while they defrayed their expenses by the sale of tickets of admission to their public meeting s, in which they recited or declaimed original compositions. I was an active and earnest member of this association. It was useful to all its members, while it afforded me one experience peculiarly useful to my self. Earlier than I can remember I had had a catarrhal affection, which had left my voice husky and incapable of free intonation. I had oc casion, throughout my college course, to discover that I was unsuccess- 48 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1820- 24. ful in declamation. When *I came to deliver my own compositions in competition with others, they received applauses which were denied to me. This discouraged me as a writer. The same experience continued in the public exercises of the New York Forum. A fellow law-student, who very soon afterward attained distinction, which he yet enjoys, as a great and eloquent divine, always carried away the audience by his declamation in these debates. He assured me that my essays, which fell upon the audience with much less effect, were superior in merit to his own, and generously offered me a chance for trial. He wrote and gave to me the best essay he could produce ; and I, in exchange, gave him one of mine. I pronounced his speech as well as I could, but it did not take at all. He followed me with my speech, and I think Broadway overheard the clamorous applause which arose on that occa sion in Washington Hall. In the spring of 1822 my old master, John Duer, transferred his law- office in Goshen to Ogden Hoffman, already, though young, one of the most eloquent of advocates. Mr. Hoffman invited me to join him, giving me the privilege of earning what I could by practice in justices courts; and also, although I had not yet been admitted to the bar, one-third of the attorney business of the office, reserving the counsel fees for him self. My collegiate debts, unavoidably increased on my return to Schenectady, had again become embarrassing, and I eagerly accepted the offer. The partnership continued six months, during which I re viewed all the elementary books I had before read, and completely analyzed " Sellon s Practice," in the form of questions and answers. My partnership with Mr. Hoffman closed with the end of my prepara tory studies for the bar. This period of study was marked by few in cidents of interest and importance. I attended the courts held at Goshen, and there, for the first time, saw the late Chief -Justice Spencer. He arrived at the village hotel on Monday morning after breakfast, and was immediately surrounded by a large and respectful assemblage of citizens. He was then universally regarded as the chief adviser and manager of the administration of the Governor, De Witt Clinton. He discoursed to his large audience in a manner so dogmatical and so vehement as to silence all debate, and to raise in my own mind a doubt whether a partisan so violent could be an impartial judge. The doubt was unjust. No more independent and impartial judge ever presided in any court. The sternness of his manner, however, is remembered by all his contemporaries. One morning, shortly before the opening of that term of the court, a stranger, not past the middle age, and well dressed, who declared himself a member of the Philadelphia bar, appeared in the village, em ployed the printer, and posted placards throughout the place, announc ing that he would deliver a lecture on the next evening- for which 1820- 24.] CHIEF-JUSTICE SPENCER. 49 tickets could be had at the bookstore price twenty-five cents. The modern lecture-system was then unknown. The tickets were largely bought, and the avails paid over to the lecturer. Night came. No lecturer appeared. He had quietly and clandestinely departed. The next morning a young farmer, with the aid of a constable, brought the lecturer back to the town, and he was committed to jail on a complaint of having, on an out-of-the-way road, on the bank of the Wallkill River, entered the complainant s house and bedroom by the light of a candle which his wife had left burning awaiting her husband s return, and made a forcible attempt on her virtue. The prisoner was arraigned on this charge, and for want of means of his own an eminent member of the bar was assigned as his counsel. The counsel put in a plea of in sanity. The adventurer s eccentricities were duly proved ; and the pleadings being concluded, Judge Spencer charged the jury, strongly advising them to acquit the prisoner on the ground of madness. The jury were unconvinced, and rendered a verdict of guilty. The prisoner was brought up the next morning to receive his sentence. The judge began his address to the culprit by saying that he had been tried for a heinous crime ; that, in consideration of his poverty and defenseless position as a stranger, the court had mercifully given him the aid of the most eminent advocate at the bar, who had defended him with such signal ability as to produce conviction on the part of the court that the prisoner was insane ; but the jury thought otherwise, and it was their exclusive province to decide that issue. " Have you anything to say why the sentence of the law should not now be pronounced ? " " I have much to say I have enough to say to prevent any just court from dooming me to a felon s punishment. My counsel has not understood my case. He has betrayed me by putting my defense upon a false ground. Instead of admitting it, and excusing me on the ground of insanity, he ought to have defended me on the ground that I attempted no violence." " Stop, sir, stop ! " said the judge, interrupting him. " The pun ishment of the crime of which you have been convicted is, in the dis cretion of the court, either imprisonment in the county-jail for a short period as for a misdemeanor, or in the State-prison for seven years as a felony, according to the aggravation of the case. The court, taking a more favorable view of the case than the jury, have instructed me to impose a sentence of ten days imprisonment in the county-jail. What you have already said has gone far to shake the confidence of the court in that opinion, and to convince them that the jury have not been unjust in their verdict. You may resume your speech, but you will understand that you will do it at your peril." The prisoner sank into his seat. During the same period the politics of the State took a new aspect, 4 50 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1820- 24. and became confused and highly exciting. Under the Federal Admin istration of President Monroe, national politics subsided into a dead calm. The State of New York was divided into two parties, each claiming to be Republicans, successors of the party under the lead of the Virginia Presidents, Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe. One was nicknamed " Bucktails " and the other stigmatized as " Clintonian." A local contention arose. The so-called Bucktail faction, opposed to Mr. Clinton, and led by Mr. Van Buren, had succeeded in obtaining a Constitutional Convention. The convention was held at Albany in 1821. It brought into activity the highest talents and virtue of the State. Daniel D. Tompkins presided. Committed by my early train ing to the support of that faction, I was so far prejudiced against Mr. Clinton as to be able to see that he had, perhaps unavoidably, lost the position of a great national leader, and become instead the head of a merely personal but ardent, intelligent, and energetic organization. When the constitution was submitted to the people I had become of age, and was an elector. I was well prepared for the abolition of the Council of Revision, which made the judiciary a power obstructive of legislation. An ardent believer in democracy, I rejoiced in the new provisions which enlarged the sphere and the bases of popular suffrage. In these respects the new constitution satisfied me ; and I rejoiced in it as the work of the political party in which I had been educated. But this satisfaction and pride were abated in view of two other provisions, the harmony of which with the liberal spirit pervading the rest of the new charter I was unable to see. First, while the new constitution gave to the people the election of their sheriffs and other executive officers, it withheld from them the power of choosing inferior magistrates, and vested it in the county courts. Secondly, while it removed all property qualifications as conditions of suffrage for white men, it, for the first time, required the negroes, now universally free, to possess a freehold of the value of two hundred and fifty dollars, as a condition of voting. It vexed and mortified me to see that on both these points the Clintonian minority were more liberal than the ma jority of which I was a supporter. Nor was this circumstance rendered less perplexing and painful by the suspicion it awakened in my mind, that the Republican party in the State, and its leaders, adopted the re straint upon negro suffrage from a motive of sympathy with slavery,. or favor toward it, as that institution then existed in all the more Southern Atlantic States of the Union. I ought not to forget here the very feeble attempts I made, at this period, to acquire neglected accomplishments. My father employed for me a music-master, who promised to instruct me to sing in the choir at the church, but gave it up in despair after a second lesson. I was social, and had heard much of dancing as tending to refine man- 1820- 24.] "GOING WEST." 51 ners. The dancing-master found me too awkward to execute the pre liminary " positions." The French teacher carried me successfully, on the Hamiltonian system, through the first two chapters of St. John s Gospel ; but I found that further study would restrict the time that I required for reviewing Coke on Lyttleton, and mastering Lilly s Entries. Just before I left Orange County, Judge Thompson, who was the oldest and most eminent citizen of that region, and was the owner of a small eminence that overlooked the valley of the Wallkill, told me that he remembered when the last Indian chief who resided there took his leave and departed for the West. Mr. Thompson said his father asked the Indian why he should go away. The chief replied, " You have cut away the trees, and let the sunlight in upon the valley, and the Indian can no longer stay here." I received from the treasury of the firm of Hoffman & Seward sixty dollars, in full satisfaction of my earnings in it. The earnings in the justice s court had been already expended in keeping up my proper state in society during that period. My father furnished me with the necessary means of traveling to Utica for examination in the Supreme Court, and return. These sixty dollars received from Hoffman & Seward would enable me to explore the western part of the State with a view to my establishment there. I passed my legal examination at Utica in October, 1822, having lost no considerable time by my one year s absence from college. I stumbled on a single question of practice, which gave an advantage to a candidate from Geneva, who availed himself of it to treat me with particular respect and kindness. We became thenceforth close friends, and, if he is living, we are so yet. The Chief -Justice, Spencer, won me to a grateful and confiding friendship by the affectionate kindness with which he delivered to me the diploma for which I had so hardly labored. Certain heavy scales fell from my eyes as I descended from the wharf and entered the packet-boat that was to convey me on the Erie Canal (which two years before I had pronounced impracticable) eighty miles to Weedsport, the landing-place for Auburn. Between two offers of legal partnership which I received at Auburn, I declined the one which promised the largest business, but involved debt for a law library, and accepted the less hopeful one which I might assume with out new embarrassment. I returned home to announce to my parents and friends that I had made that engagement, and on the 20th of De cember, 1822, receiving fifty dollars from my father, with the assurance of his constant expectation that I should come back again too soon, I took leave of my native home and arrived at Auburn by stage-coach through the southern tier of counties on Christmas-morning. My new business began on the 1st of January, 1823. I had stipu- 52 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1820- 24. lated with my senior partner, Elijah Miller, that if my earnings during the first year should fall short of five hundred dollars, he would make up the deficiency. The younger portion of the bar were at that time generally in the habit of employing their elder brethren to try their causes in court. I shocked the bar by trying my own causes, where the rules of the court permitted, from the first. At the end of the year I had exceeded my stipulated gains. My distant creditors were fully paid, and so long as I continued in my profession I was neither without occupation nor independence. My d ebut at Auburn obtained for me a reputation which, though I was thankful for at the time, I had no reason to be proud of. A con vict discharged from the State-prison there in the morning was warned to leave the town immediately. Reaching the suburb he discovered an open door, entered it, and proceeded to rifle a bureau. Taking alarm, he rushed out, carrying with him only a few valueless rags. He was indicted for this petty larceny, which, being a second offense, was punishable with a new term in the State-prison. I was assigned by the court to the defense of the unfortunate wretch. The theft and the detection were completely proved. The stolen articles lay on the table. The indictment described them as " one quilted holder of the value of six cents," and " one piece of calico of the value of six cents." I called upon a tailor as an expert, who testified that the holder was sewed, not " quilted," and that the other article was white jean, and not " calico " at all. The by-standers showed deep interest in the argument which this defense produced, and were gratified when they found that the culprit escaped a punishment which they thought would be too severe for the transgression. My habit of business was promptly settled. I had long before known that I was to support myself by the practice of the law. I liked the study, but only necessity reconciled me to a toleration of the tech nicalities of the practice, to the uncertainty of results, and to the jealousies and contentions of the courts. Nevertheless, I resigned myself to the practice with so much cheerfulness that my disinclina tion was never suspected. Scarcely any one would have believed me if I had told him that when I came to the responsibilities of a trial or an argument I would have paid a larger sum to be relieved from them than the fees which I had before received or stipulated. My papers were carefully engrossed in a fair round hand. Within a year I had acquired reputation as a careful conveyancer, and the clerks of courts pronounced that the papers I filed in their offices were peculiarly neat and accurate. My circuit as an advocate before jus tices courts extended over the county, and the merchants, not only at Auburn, but also at New York and Albany, employed me as a diligent collector of debts. 1820- 24.] CHURCH AND PARTY. 53 I boarded at the house of a widow lady, Mrs. Brittan, with other young men who were my contemporaries as lawyers, merchants, and bankers, and I lodged in the back room which, in the daytime, served as the counsel-chamber of my office. My senior partner gradually re linquished the business to me, only coming in to my aid in cases of diffi culty. It had been a maxim, in the offices in which I had studied the profession, that a lawyer must eschew society and politics, and no newspaper must be seen on any office-table. But I was practising law only for a competence, and had no ambition for its honors, still less any cupidity for its greater rewards. I thought that my usefulness and my happiness lay in the devotion of what time and study could be saved from professional pursuits to promote the interests of the community in which I lived, and of the Commonwealth. The newspapers and magazines of the day, therefore, those not only of one party, but of both parties, were always at my hand, while the law-books were only taken down from the cases for reference when necessary. I took my pew and paid my assessments in the church, attended the municipal, political, and social meetings and caucuses, acting generally as secre tary. I enrolled myself in the militia, and wore my musket on parade. I paid my contributions, and, when required, managed dancing assem blies, although, for want of skill, I never have danced myself. And so I rendered, to my neighbors and acquaintances, such good offices as my training and position made convenient. The new constitution had opened the circuit courts to equity juris diction, and I found in that department a study congenial with my zeal for direct justice. I have often seen the foreign immigrant or exile come, under the law of naturalization, to enjoy the right of suffrage. I have seen the negro race, within the United States, raised to the same status, and I have admired the spirit of self-satisfaction which that advancement afforded them. But I have never seen any person, of either of those classes, or of any class, who regarded the rights and responsibilities of citizenship more highly than I did at that period. I found that, after all, politics was the important and engrossing business of the country. It was obvious, too, that society was irreconcilably divided on the subject of politics and religion. Whatever might be a man s personal convictions, and however earnestly he might desire to promote the public welfare, he could only do it by associating himself with one of the many reli gious sects which divided the community, and one of the two political parties which contended for the administration of the government. A choice between sects and parties once made, whether wisely or unwisely, it was easy to see, must be practically irrevocable. Content with the general system of religious doctrine that was held in common by the many sects, which divided on what seemed to me unimportant questions 54 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1820- 24. of faith or discipline, I decided to adhere to the Episcopal Church, into attendance upon which I had casually fallen, and thus, through associa tion with that Church, give to the community the benefit, if any, of my example, while I should, at the same time, inculcate toleration of all religious creeds and denominations, and render them any aid and assist ance in their undertakings to educate the people, and extend and fortify the institution of Christianity in new regions and foreign countries. I had been taught that the Republican party was the one which was loyal to the country, and faithful to republican institutions. I had not been able to obtain a satisfactory solution of the question why Wash ington, whom I regarded as the greatest and the purest of the founders of the republic, dissented from the Republican party, or why Hamil ton, the ablest and most effective statesman engaged in organizing and establishing the Union, was opposed by the Republican party. My father and his associates explained it to me in this way, that Washing ton failed in intellectual strength and independence during his adminis tration, and surrendered himself too implicitly to the advice of Hamil ton, while Hamilton, though accepting the Constitution as it came through the ordeal of convention and elections, really desired a stronger and even a monarchical government. History forbade my acceptance of either of these explanations. On the other hand, I had seen in the Virginia and Kentucky resolu tions, which came from the pen of Jefferson himself, and were accepted by the Republican party, the bold and dangerous theories that, long afterward, were to culminate in nullification and secession. I found it easy, therefore, to disenthrall myself from the influence of tradition and personal association in choosing the party to which I should belong. I considered the matter in this light : " The nation has become inde pendent, and it has received its efficient and complete organization. It has proved its ability to endure, by trials of foreign war. What is needed now is, for the future, a policy which shall strengthen its founda tions, increase its numbers, develop its resources, and extend its do minion." I did not doubt that its foundations were to be strengthened by the abolition of slavery, and by the enlargement of popular suffrage, with the more general diffusion of knowledge, and extension of popular rights. To develop the resources of the country, there was necessary a general system of material improvement, involving the construction of canals and roads. An increase of numbers required that an asylum should be offered to the immigrant and exile of every creed and nation. By the tendencies which the Republican party already exhibited, I judged that, having its base chiefly in the slaveholding States of the South, it could not be trusted to abolish slavery and to prosecute the system of material improvement, while the opposite party was un equivocally hostile to foreign immigration. 1824.] NIAGARA EXCURSION. 55 In the election of 1824 De Witt Clinton was a candidate for Governor of the State. He and his party were completely iden tified with the system of internal improvements within the State, and throughout the country, while the opposing party gave it a reluctant and divided support within the State, and their associates in the South ern States had already avowed themselves opposed to it. I avowed my preference for John Quincy Adams as the candidate for President, and Mr. Clinton as the candidate for Governor, from whose election most might be hoped in respect to the policy which commended itself to my approval. It thus happened that, although educated and trained in the Republican party, I nevertheless cast my first votes in 1824 for the opposing one. Butpthough I thus chose my religious denomination and political party, I did so with a reservation of a right to dissent and protest, or even separate, if ever a conscientious sense of duty, or a paramount regard to the general safety or welfare, should require. 1824. Stage-Coach Excursion to Niagara. First Meeting with Thurlow "Weed. Buffalo. New York and the Western Trade. Benjamin Eathbun. Origin of Parties in the United States. Their History and Character. Presidential Election of 1824. Struggle over the Electoral Law. Adams and Jackson. Marriage, I HAD, in the spring of 1821, while on a visit to Florida, met there my sister, who was a pupil in Mrs. Willard s popular seminary at Troy, and was then at home, accompanied by her schoolmate, Miss Frances A. Miller, of Auburn. A partiality that I conceived for her was my inducement to stop at Auburn when afterward exploring the West. Our intercourse had now ripened into an engagement of marriage. My father seemed especially pleased when, instead of receiving me home again as a returned prodigal, I invited him, with my mother and my sister, to visit me at Auburn, and become acquainted with what the lawyers would then have described as the " condition of prosperity and happiness" which I was enjoying. They came, and the two parents projected an excursion by us all to Niagara Falls. Colonel Wilhelmus Mynderse, of Seneca Falls, a gentleman of great intelligence, a friend of Mr. Miller and his family, joined us. The three gentlemen provided a spacious stage-coach, and Colonel Mynderse took his own carriage and horses, so that the journey, which was made to the satisfaction of all, is still remembered as one of my most pleasant experiences. At Rochester, then new, and inferior to Auburn in population, we visited a suspension-bridge which spanned the Genesee River at Carthage, 56 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1824. below the Falls. I think this, the first of suspension-bridges in our country, fell in the next year. Returning through the streets of Rochester from that excursion, a linchpin gave way, a fore-wheel fell off, the coach went down, and the whole party, except myself, required to be lifted out of the muddy ravine. Among a crowd, which quickly assembled, one taller and more effec tive, while more deferential and sympathizing, than the rest, lent the party his assistance. This was the beginning of my acquaintance with Thurlow Weed. He had acquired the printer s art through severe trials, was then editing and conducting a newspaper at Rochester, which he printed chiefly with his own hand, and he had already become distinguished for public spirit and eminent ability. I think also he was, the next year, a leading member of the Assembly at Al bany. From Rochester we proceeded through Lockport, already noted for its seven double locks, though still a very inconsiderable and obscure town, to Lewiston, where we crossed the Niagara by a ferry, and exam ined the battle-ground on which, during the previous war with Great Britain, General Solomon Van Rensselaer, at the head of an American force, was repelled by the British regulars, Indians, and Canadian militia. We rode northward, up the west bank of the river, then forest-covered, quite surprised that we were not deafened by the thun der of the cataract, the fame of which was so great. We saw the mist and spray rising above the trees. Alighting from our carriages, we ascended the steps at the west door of Forsyth s tavern, and, as we rushed into the hall, I inquired eagerly, " Where are the Falls ? " I was answered, " You will see them from the piazza." In a moment I was standing on Table Rock, and the majestic cataract, in its fullest breadth and height, and immense depth, confronted me. The scene had even at that time lost some of the awe with which it had impressed the spectator fifty years before, by the removal of the native groves which then surrounded it, and the substitution for them of utilitarian structures. We remained four days exploring the Falls and their surroundings; and then, crossing the battle-fields of Lundy s Lane and Chippewa, we recrossed the river at Fort Erie, and entered the long but straggling street of Buffalo. Here it was our good fortune to meet Judge Wilkeson, a very in telligent, vigorous, and enthusiastic pioneer of that place. He showed us the plans of the harbor which had been adopted by the canal com missioners, and my mind, for the first time, swelled with a large though by no means complete conception of the grandeur and beneficence of the system of internal improvements in which my native State was then so deeply engaged, but without support or sympathy from the Federal Government, although Washington had pointed out its value I 1824.] ORIGIN OF PARTIES. 5f and importance as early as when visiting Fort Stanwix in 1783. I took notice then, for the first time, of the facts that the Atlantic slope is only a narrow belt, although then containing four-fifths of the popula tion, wealth, and enterprise, of the Union ; that the vast material re sources of the country are in the region lying westward of the Alleghany Mountains ; that the trade and commerce of the country must soon be conducted across that range ; that a competition in the construction of such channels was then on the point of beginning between the various cities of the seaboard, each seeking by the nearest and most feasible route to bring that trade to its own wharves ; that ultimately the West would take away and hold forever the governing power of the country; and that that city in the East would become the most prosperous and powerful which should most effectually constitute itself the Atlantic seaport for the West. I took notice, moreover, that Georgia, Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, could reach the great Mississippi Valley only by making canals and roads over the Alleghany Moun tains ; but that this great range of mountains is pierced by the Hudson River at the Highlands, and sinks on either side of the Mohawk Valley, so as to afford a feasible, easy, and not circuitous inland navigation from the Great Lakes to the ocean ; and that such navigation could be easily extended to the sources of the Ohio, the Mississippi, and the Missouri Rivers. Whatever doubts I had before entertained in regard to the direction of my political course, I now determined to give my best efforts to the achievement of an enterprise which, while it would greatly exalt the State of New York, would tend to increase immeasu rably the wealth, prosperity, and greatness, of the whole republic. Our party lodged at Buffalo in a tavern which, while it had no pre tensions, was in all respects more comfortable, neat, and agreeable, than any I had before seen. The praises of our host were on the lips of every traveler, and the broad esteem and confidence that he then secured were an important element of the success which attended Benjamin Rathbun as a leader of improvement in the city of Buffalo, and which tempted him to the extravagance, followed by the painful catastrophe of crime, that obscured his brilliant career. He emerged from that cloud, and became a reputable hotel-keeper in New York, where he still resides. The road of progress is not always clear and direct ; and, therefore, parties are liable to mistake it. It happens, sometimes, that the way is entirely obstructed ; and, while earnest men are seeking to impel the nation forward, it nevertheless recedes continually. Much as party spirit, or partisanship, is decried, it is nevertheless true that every pro gressive movement begins with and is conducted by a party. Time is an essential element in the development of partisan in fluences which mark the progress of a nation. It may be easily seen, 58 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1824. now, though it was little understood at the time, that the American Revolution was the result of a long-ripening popular conviction that the colonial condition was incompatible with prosperity and progress. The colonies easily passed from the state of constitutional resistance to that of self-assertion and independence. Advanced as they were under British instructions in the idea of liberty and equality, it was more natural and easy for them to organize the republic than it could have been to constitute or accept a monarchical or imperial system. Through out the Revolutionary War the struggle of the new nation was con ducted and managed by a party more bold and liberal than its conser vative opponents, who insisted on retaining colonial relations, and on the maintenance of monarchy. The triumphant conclusion of the war brought the people to a unanimous acceptance of the principles of independence, liberty, and equality, for which it was waged. A new question then arose : What constitutional ordination would best pre serve, perpetuate, and transmit to posterity, the great boon which had been secured? The several States had conducted the great conflict to a conclusive success, with only the feeble cohesion prescribed by the Articles of Confederation of 1777. Under that frail national organization, the people, through the protection of their several State governments, en joyed a greater measure of personal liberty, and a greater exemption from the burdens of government, than any nation had ever before secured. Earnest, enlightened, and energetic men, however, early dis covered that a stronger, firmer, and more controlling national constitu tion would be necessary to preserve internal peace and harmony be tween the several members of the Union, secure the country against foreign aggressions, and develop the immense resources of the conti nent. They, of course, combined themselves into a party, and promul gated that great and necessary policy. They were resisted, from the first, by a class not less patriotic than themselves, who feared to exchange, without a longer trial, the liberty and equality the country then enjoyed for the hazards of a new and untried constitution, which they naturally apprehended would take a reactionary character, and endanger the advantages which the Revolu tionary War had secured. Thus the country was divided into two parties. Although the line of division was obvious, the character of each party was peculiarly complex and uncertain. The Federalists, who advocated the new Constitution, were, in one view, the party of prog ress, inasmuch as they proposed to the people a new and bold national advance ; but, in another view, they were reactionary, because they proposed that the people, who then regarded the State governments as the citadels of popular liberty, should weaken those citadels by trans ferring no inconsiderable portion of their strength and power to a Fed- 1824. J FEDERALISTS AND REPUBLICANS. 59 era], and therefore distant and independent, Government. The " Re- . publicans," for so their opponents chose to be called, were, in one sense, reactionists, because they refused to concede the necessity of reform and progress; but they were jat_ the same time progressive, because their refusal was grounded in a jealousy for liberty and equality. The controversy was earnest, but experience of the defects of the Confed eracy continually gave new advantages to the Federal party. In the organization of the Federal Constitution, by which they conferred greater benefits upon society in the United States, and upon the human race, than any other combination of men has ever bestowed, they achieved, virtually, not only their first but their last political victory. It was Governor Marcy s opinion that the basis of the two parties was, that the Republicans confided in the Constitution as permanent and reliable, while the Federalists, as he thought, feared it would go down in political convulsions. He would have been more correct if he had said the Republicans apprehended that the Federal Constitution would prove too strong for popular liberty, while the Federalists main tained that it must be upheld to save the Union. Popular sympathy with the now reduced and abridged State gov ernments, and popular jealousy of a central and therefore practically distant Government, remained. It needed only a new and consistent organization, with occasional excitements of debate, to obtain the assent of the people. The required organization was provided by Jefferson and Madison. The required excitement was derived from the French Revolution, which promised and for a time seemed to carry republican sentiments and principles to a success and extent which would leave the new American Republic far behind. In this way the two successive Federal Administrations of George Washington and of John Adams were gradually undermined, but not until they had been able to con solidate the Federal Government, with the powers and institutions necessary for its permanent preservation. Adhesion to Federalism, in its supposed antagonism to the State governments, now became conservative, and the declining Federal party lost, in the popu lar mind, all pretensions to be the party of progress. Adhesion to t/ie Republican party, in maintaining and enlarging the powers of the States, in antagonism to the Federal Union, convertibly became the principle of progress in popular liberty. The struggle was long and severe. How much longer it would hr.ve been, had not the incident of the foreign war of 1812 occurred, cannot now be determined ; but that war with Great Britain was declared by a Republican Congress, under a Republican Administration. A minor ity party always finds it practically impossible to discriminate between political measures of the party which it opposes. The Federalists, a minority, while they did not dare, nor even desire, to embrace the cause 60 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1824. of the public enemy, nevertheless gave their adhesion to the policy of the war with so much uncertainty, querulousness, and jealousy, as to lose the confidence of the people. They fought their last contest in the canvass of 1816, when James Monroe was reflected President of the United States. From that period the popular issues which had divided the country ever since the adoption of the new Constitution, lost their vitality, just as the issues which had divided the people during the Revolutionary War ceased to be effective in the establishment of national independence. Hitherto, strong convictions of the necessity of partisan combination had been sufficient to induce the Republicans to accept nominations of President and Vice-President at the hands of an assembly or caucus of the members who represented their party at Washington. For moral strength the Republican party now relied chiefly on its traditions, a source that, in a republic, time is sure, sooner or later, to exhaust. The class of statesmen who adhered to the party relying on that force, exposed themselves to popular jealousy, as in terested leaders. On the other hand, some great national ideas and sentiments were evolved by independent, bold, and far-seeing statesmen. These chiefly were the question of national protection of domestic manufacturers, clearer views of disseminating knowledge, more distinct ideas of alliance with the new American republics of Spanish America, an earnest and vigorous belief in the prosecution of internal improvements, with the necessary favor and protection of the Federal Government, and, finally, a jealousy in regard to the admission of new States into the Union, in volving the balance of political power. The projectors and advocates of these various opinions had at first no political combination; while the ideas themselves, promulgated, and in the main resisted, at Washington, rapidly worked a demoralization, sure to end in the disintegration of the Republican party. This new condition of public opinion produced a high political effervescence in the year 1824. The national election was to be held in that year, and the Republi can caucus had nominated William H. Crawford, of Georgia, a late Secretary of the Treasury, for President. Martin Van Buren, then a Republican Senator from New York, pledged the support of the party in this State to Crawford, contemplating, as was then alleged, the suc- c ession in his own favor. Many Republican members of Congress, in fluenced by the ideas I have mentioned, refused to join in the caucus, and withheld their adherence from its decree. A spirited opposition to Crawford s nomination manifested itself in most of the Northern tad Western States. Mr. Crawford s opponents, having no combina tion, were divided in preferences between John Quincy Adams, Clay, Jackson, and Calhoun. The State of New York then was under a Re- 1824.] THE ELECTORAL LAW. 61 publican administration, which had for its head the Governor, Joseph C. Yates. There was a Republican majority in both Houses of the Legislature, secured by their successful strategy in enlarging popular suffrage by the Convention of 1821. Yates had been elected by de fault in 1822. But Martin Van Buren was popularly regarded as the State leader of the party. The Federal Constitution provides that " electors of President and Vice-President shall be chosen in each of the several States as the Leg islature of that State shall direct." This power of choosing electors had hitherto been exercised in this State by the direct action of the Legislature itself. The Legislature was committed by its antecedents, and by its leaders, to choose electors favorable to Crawford. The opponents of that nomination, merging all preferences, combined in a popular demand upon the Legislature to surrender, then and thence forth, the direct exercise of the power of choosing electors ; and, thereafter, to restore it by law to the people. The Assembly was shaken, revolutionized, and declared its willingness to pass the electoral law. The Senate, consisting of thirty -two members, resisted firmly and obstinately, by a vote of seventeen. The Governor vacillated. Governor De Witt Clinton, the late leader of the opposition to the Republican party in the State, was then living in retirement from all public office, except that he retained, most justly, the honorary place of presiding commissioner in the Board of Canal Commissioners, who were then bringing to a triumphant conclusion the construction of the Erie and Champlain Canals, with which his fame is to be ever identified. The Republican leaders, influenced either by party spleen or by a hope of raising a new issue, on which they could retain discontented ad herents, carried through the Legislature a resolution removing the honored and veteran statesman from that inconsiderable and unim portant trust. The people were moved with indignation at this politi cal crime. They now more earnestly than before demanded the passage of the proposed electoral law. The Legislature adjourned till Novem ber. Public excitement became vehement ; the Governor yielded, and issued a proclamation requiring the Legislature to reconvene on the 2d of August, to concede the popular measure. The Legislature assembled on the day appointed. The Assembly passed the bill. The Senate, by its majority of one, resolved that the Governor s call of the Legislature was unconstitutional, and so the choice of electors remained with the Legislature, to be exercised at a future session after State elections should have been held. The Republican party, discarding Mr. Yates, nominated Samuel Young for Governor. The opposition, consisting in part of a defection from the Republican ranks, irretrievably hostile to Clinton, and of the entire mass of Mr. Clinton s friends, met by delegates in convention, 62 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1824. and after a vehement dispute nominated a ticket composed of De Witt Clinton for Governor, and his Republican rival, James Tallmadge, for Lieutenant-Governor. The election, held early in November, showed a majority of sixteen thousand for the new political organization. The Legislature, coming afterward, appointed electors by compromise of interests and preferences; and the electoral college cast twenty-six votes for Adams, four for Clay, five for Crawford, and one for Jackson. No candidate having a constitutional majority of all the electoral votes, the election under constitutional provisions devolved upon the House of Representatives, to choose between Adams and Jackson. Adams was chosen, with John C. Calhoun as Vice-President, and thus, in 1825, a national Administration came into power through an opposi tion to the Republican party, which had held unbroken control of the Federal Government for twenty-four years. While enlarging somewhat the sphere of my professional practice, I had an active though humble part in these political transactions. Uniting with the opponents of the Republican party, I spoke for the new movement, wrote resolutions and addresses, and acted as delegate in meetings in my own town and county. On the 20th of October in that year, my marriage took place with Frances A. Miller. She was then nineteen years of age, daugh ter of my partner and friend, Elijah Miller. Of fine natural parts, with modesty almost approaching to timidity, thoughtful but cheerful, she had been matured by training, first at an academy at Windsor, Ver mont ; then in an excellent school in her own county, conducted under the care of the Society of Friends ; and closing at the school which the late Mrs. Willard had recently established at Troy, New York, where, while accomplishments were not neglected, a course of study was pre scribed corresponding in extent and fullness with the curriculum of our colleges. Her father had been, from her infancy, a widower, and his consent to the union was given on the condition that she should not leave her home while he should survive. I thus became an inmate of his family. The joyousness of this event, after a short season, was broken by a serious illness of my own, from which, however, I entirely recovered. Subsequently her health gave way, and it was never fully and permanently restored. 1825- 28.] ADAMS AND JACKSON. 1825-1828. President Adams, Clinton, and Clay. A Southern Combination. The " National Repub lican" Party. A Night-Ride with Lafayette. Pageants in his Honor. Visit to De Witt Clinton. Adhering to Adams. Rejection as Surrogate. A Resolution about Of fice. Death of Clinton. Presidency of Young Men s Convention at Utica. IT was understood that the new President, Mr. Adams, invited Mr. Clinton to accept the place of minister to Great Britain ; but he de clined, from a conviction that his path of duty, as well as usefulness, lay through the State magistracy to which he had just been restored. Henry Clay, who had cast his vote in the House of Representatives for Mr. Adams, became Secretary of State. The Republican party, while they acknowledged that Clay, Jackson, and Calhoun, like Craw ford, were loyal members of their organization, yet believed, or affected to believe, that Mr. Adams, though he had been a consistent and uni form adherent of the party from his youth, and in that character had successively held all but one of the highest national trusts, was a " Federalist." They therefore charged Mr. Clay with political incon sistency and personal ambition in voting for Mr. Adams, and said that his appointment as Secretary of State was a reward for that act of " political treachery." The States of the South, under the influences of the institution of slavery, had now become sufficiently strong to induce a combination of all except Kentucky and Louisiana to recover the Southern ascendency, which had been broken by the election of Mr. Adams. This combina tion thereupon charged Mr. Clay, in addition to his other offense, with disloyalty to the interests of the section of the Union in which he lived. On the other hand, no such maturity of opposition to slavery, and no such community of interest, had occurred in the North as to render possible a combination in support of the Administration of Mr. Adams. At the very first meeting of Congress, therefore, the Republican party was vigorously reorganized, and resumed all its accustomed union and activity to defeat the new Administration. This activity continued, gaining more and more success, throughout the whole of Mr. Adams s Administration. Although that Administration was conducted with the greatest ability, with a measure of moderation unequaled, and with assiduous devotion to the highest objects of national policy, at home and abroad, it continually gave way under the attacks of its opponents. Perhaps this was due chiefly to the facts that the war with Great Britain had closed with the brilliant victory of General Jackson at New Orleans, affecting the popular imagination, and awakening in be half of the hero of the 8th of January, 1815, a profound sense of gratitude ; and that the nation, discovering how near it had come to 64 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1825- 28. paying its highest possible reward to him in the previous election, was now easily persuaded that it had been betrayed into the injustice of suffering his defeat by conspiracy or fraud on the part of Mr. Clay and Mr. Adams. For my own part, I adhered during that period to the Administra tion, because, while I believed in none of those charges, I felt myself obliged to adhere, through all chances and changes, to the new politi cal organization of 1824, as the party through whose agency the great interests of the State and nation, to which I had dedicated myself, could be promoted. The trial proved tedious, embarrassing, and often bewildering. The organization of our new " National Republican " party became torpid, and we continually declined in strength. There remained, indeed, true and faithful men in every county of the State of New York, with whom it was easy and pleasant to act in concert. But, notwithstanding the best efforts of this class, we were only able to save the reelection of Clinton in 1826, while our Republican opponents carried the Lieutenant-Governor, majorities in the State Legislature, and a majority of the Congressmen. Perhaps the earnestness of my speeches and letters, in aid of the national Administration, may have attracted some attention in this period of defection and decline. The pageant which we organized for the reception of Lafayette at Auburn, in 1825, was the most imposing that a village of two thousand could produce. We gathered, of course, all the military companies of the town and neighborhood, all the barouches, stage-coaches, and wagons, all the Freemasons, all the schoolboys and schoolgirls. We received the hero at the east end of the Cayuga Bridge, on a bright September morning. He had traveled, amid continual demonstrations, from the then distant banks of the Mississippi. Covered with dust, the tall, erect frame, with impassive countenance, seemed rather a monument than a man. A brigadier-general led the procession, and I, mounted as adjutant, brought up the rear. As we were entering Mason s Woods, three pedestrians coming from the other way were seen tum bling over trees and stumps, with eyes intently fixed on the procession, so that no part of it should escape them. Coming upon me, the last figure in it, they asked, " In which carriage is he ? " I replied, " In the barouche with six white horses." " Thank God ! thank God ! " said they ; " we ve seen him ! " We brought him under a triumphal arch, erected on Genesee Street, to a green bower. Colonel Hulbert, our most eloquent lawyer, ad dressed him a welcome in behalf of the people, and Dr. Lansing, our most eloquent divine, addressed him in behalf of the Freemasons. He answered in words which seemed pertinent and grateful, like those delivered everywhere on his journey. Thence he went to Coe s Hotel, where the ladies received him, and where he took each one by the hand, 1825- 28.]. LAFAYETTE. 65 saying something in imperfect English which they did not understand, and yet which I am sure no one of them ever forgot. At ten o clock he walked round the ballroom at the Centre House, saluting every member of the dancing-party, and then entered an open barouche, drawn by four horses, attended by the president of the vil lage and myself. Abstaining from conversation, we left him to enjoy such sleep as he could get, in a night that could not be long, and was to be crowded with festivities. The roar of cannon announced his entrance into Skaneateles at midnight. Every house was illuminated, and even the surface of the lake reflected the blazing bonfires. There were re freshments ; and then Lafayette slept until we rolled down the long hill into Camillus. There, too, were bonfires ; but the sexton of the church was caught napping, and we were amused at seeing his haste to set the church-bell ringing before we should get through the town. The day had not broken when we brought up at the village hotel at Onondaga Hill. Lafayette alighted, and was immediately conducted into the upper ballroom. There, by candle-light, he was addressed by Thaddeus Wood, the great magnate of the town, in behalf of the people of Onondaga. We were to wait an hour, so as not to come by surprise upon Syracuse, then a town of perhaps a thousand souls. Lafayette, taking advantage of this pause, requested me to join him in a walk for air and exercise. I conducted him along the summit of Onondaga Hill, and he keenly interrogated me as to the topography of the country. I pointed out to him the direction of Oswego, the course of the Oswego River, Onondaga and Oneida Lakes, the site of Fort Brewerton, Onondaga Castle, Oneida Castle, Oriskany, Fort Schuyler (Utica), Fort Stanwix (Rome), at which latter post he had commanded in the war, and then had become familiar with the character of the country, which he was now surveying in the morning twilight. He expressed deep interest in these observations, and adverted to the great military events which had occurred at Fort Stanwix and Oriskany. I had not even then a high appreciation of Freemasonry, nor did I understand what claim that order had to the prominent position which was conceded to it in this and in like political and social demonstra tions. The mystery was cleared up, though not with an increase of my respect for the fraternity, when Gad Bennet, a tinsmith and master of the lodge, still wearing the apron of the previous day s celebration, ap proached, and, overhearing Lafayette, said : " Yes, Lafayetty, this is a fine country ; it is a great country, and we owe it all to you, Lafayetty. You gave it to us, or we should not have had it. We are glad to see you, Lafayetty. You are a Royal Arch-Mason, Lafayetty, and so am I. You are our brother, and all Masons are glad to see you, Lafayetty." 5 66 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1825- 28, We returned down the hill in our carriages, and cannon-thunders soon proclaimed the nation s guest to the crowds who were awake, and moving about the few streets of Syracuse. As we struck upon the canal bridge, an Onondaga Indian, who was sleeping on the railing of the balustrade, awakened by the noise, gave forth a grunt, and rolled over in fright into the canal. Committees, orators, citizens, and ladies with floral wreaths, were in waiting. Here we surrendered our charge, and took leave of him. In January, 1828, 1 found that my professional business had steadily increased. I needed no office for a livelihood ; but I was tempted to believe that an honorable trust, which should harmonize with my prac tice of the law, might avail in increasing my professional reputation. My personal and political friend, Seneca Wood, Esq., was then holding the office of Surrogate of Cayuga County, under an appointment of Governor Clinton. Mr. Wood was desirous to resign. He placed his resignation in my hands, with a letter to the Governor, recommending me for the appointment. I visited Albany, and received my first initiation into partisan ways and usages at the State Capitol. I had come to regard Mr. Clinton with combined sentiments of reverence for the chief magistracy of the State, and of profound admiration for his eminent talents and learning. But he had the character of being stern and cold. I found him quite otherwise. He appreciated zeal and devotion to the political principles and interests he represented. He received me kindly and cordially. I have never been in a presence which commanded more of personal respect or inspired more confidence, I think, now, that his character for reserve and austerity was only acquired by the popular custom of contrasting him with his rival, the affable, amiable, and genial Daniel D. Tompkins. The habit I had acquired of viewing all public characters from the standpoint of a citizen, anxious to bestow his suffrage conscientiously, had entirely removed the blind feeling of partiality with which, at an early period, I had regarded the leaders of the political cause with which I was as sociated. Governor Clinton accepted the resignation, and sent a message to the Senate, nominating me for the vacant office, with a free and confident assurance that it would be confirmed. It was not until the nomination had been made that a political secret was divulged which at once con vulsed and astounded the State. The interests and ambition of Mr. Clinton had coincided with, and were now popularly identified with, the interests and cause of John Quincy Adams, the President of the United States. Mr. Adams s presidential term was to expire on the 4th of March, 1829, and Mr. Clinton s term as Governor was to expire at the close of the year 1828. Elections for both offices were to be held in November, 1828. General Jackson, as I have already intimated, 1826- 28.] DE WITT (. LINTON. 67 was the most popular competitor of Mr. Adams. Mr. Van Buren and the whole Republican party of the State had committed themselves to General Jackson. Mr. Adams became the subject of a " see-saw game " on the part of what remained of the defunct Federal party. One portion of that party declared themselves opposed to Mr. Adams, because he had left the Federals and joined the Republicans under Mr. Jefferson in 1805. Another portion of the Federal party gave their adhesion to General Jackson, under the belief that, as President, he would repudiate the Republican party, then under the established lead of Martin Van Buren. These and other political occurrences indicated, at that early day, a defeat of Mr. Adams in his reelection, which would, of course, involve the defeat of the party in our State, upon whose support not only Mr. Adams but Mr. Clinton had relied. At this precise juncture it transpired that Mr. Clinton had become recon ciled with his previously inveterate political foe, Mr. Van Buren, and given his adhesion to the support of General Jackson. The Senators divided on the line of their previous associations or present convictions of their public duty, a portion of Mr. Clinton s adherents going with him into the Republican party and the support of General Jackson, and a lesser number abandoning Mr. Clinton and adhering to Mr. Adams. The question whether to follow Mr. Adams and thenceforth aban don Mr. Clinton, or to follow Mr. Clinton and abandon Mr. Adams, was precipitated upon me, while my nomination lay unacted upon in the Senate awaiting my decision. As may well be conceived, I did not long hesitate. I appeared at a meeting held at the Capitol by the " National Republicans " of Albany, to consider the political dilemma thus produced. It was popularly represented to be a meeting to ex press the indignation of the National Republicans against Mr. Clinton for his defection from their cause, and his injurious coalition with Mr. Van Buren. In reality, however, it was rather a lamentation over Mr. Clinton s separation from the cause and the friends with whom his fortunes and fame were believed to be inseparably identified. The Senate rejected my nomination as surrogate. I regretted, not the failure to obtain the office, but my weakness in desiring to be nominated for a subordinate civil place at the hands of the Executive power. I saw at once how much the desire or the hold ing of such a place tended to compromise my personal independence, and I resolved, thenceforth, upon no considerations other than the safety of the State ever to seek or accept a trust conferred by Executive authority. That case occurred later, when I, with extreme reluctance, and from convictions of public duty, took the office of Secretary of State at the beginning of the civil war, and filled it until the restora tion of peace. 68 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1825- 28. So far as concerned Mr. Clinton himself, he escaped a trial of the consequences of the change of political associations which he had thus made. He fell dead of apoplexy in his residence at the capital, on the llth of February following. Universal grief banished from the public mind the agitation which recent events had begun to awaken, and he was mourned as (notwithstanding whatever failings and errors he had) he deserved to be, as, only next after Alexander Hamilton, the wisest statesman and the greatest public benefactor that in all her history the State of New York has produced. For myself, I persevered in follow ing the policy of Clinton now he was dead, not less than or separate from that of my other political leader, Adams, while living. A convention of the young men of the State, favorable to the con- tHraancB~oiHhe national and State Administration, was called at Utica; upon whose suggestion I do not now know, I attended as one of many representatives of Cayuga County. The convention consisted of three hundred and fifty-six members. I have since seen many representative bodies, legal as well as voluntary, ecclesiastical as well as political. I have never, however, seen any assembly which exhibited a greater fervor of sentiment, or more pure and elevated convictions of public duty. According to custom, a private preliminary caucus was held, in a basement-room, the evening previous to the public assembly of the convention. I had here my first experience in the troubles of political caucuses. The New York City delegation, twenty-five in number, if I remember right, with great unanimity insisted that its leading member should be elected president of the convention. Private solicitations and intrigues had been actively employed, during the afternoon, to win the rural members to that suggestion. The members from the country districts were of the opinion that a rural member ought to be elected president, to prevent the movement from losing its State character, and coming to be regarded as a merely formal demonstration of the young men from the city. This conflict of opinion was irreconcilable. Urban delegates threatened the defection of the city, while many country members, highly irritated, predicted the worst disasters from the suc cess of the city candidate. The debate grew angry and vehement, and neither party was willing to terminate it and come to a vote. Older and more experienced friends of the cause had been admitted into the caucus as spectators. They were alarmed by indications of a breach in the convention, in the attempt to give it a public organization. The debate might be overheard, and produce a scandal dishonorable to the character of the convention, and injurious to the cause for which it was assembled. At a late hour I took the floor, avowing my preference for the rural candidate, but, at the same time, my confidence in the candi date offered from the city, and, insisting that all should agree to acqui esce, I proposed a preliminary vote, pledging the minority to acquiesce, 1828- 29.] WILLIAM MORGAN. 69 and that the convention should then adjourn for the night, and come together at nine o clock in the morning, prepared to decide the question by an immediate ballot at that hour without debate. I do not recall either the thoughts or language of this appeal to the patriotism and good sense of the convention. The resolution I offered was promptly accepted, and the meeting separated. The next morning when pro ceeding to the hall, greatly apprehending a renewal of the stormy de bate of the previous night, I met the two rival candidates for the presi dency, with their more earnest friends, and was requested to delay my entrance until the meeting should be organized. As I entered the room, after that delay, I was received by the entire body standing, and unanimously pronouncing their vote for myself as president. 1828-1829. The Convention. Abduction of Morgan. Popular Excitement. The Antimasonic Party. Solomon Southwick. Smith Thompson and Francis Granger. Van Buren and Throop. Congressional Nomination. A Coalition and an Explosion. General Jack son s Election. Auburn Projects. Working for a Competence. Buying a House. THE convention, after a session of two days, adjourned, with the result of introducing new and great effect into the political canvass. The honor of being its presiding officer seemed to give me a prominent position throughout the State; and it has since been the habit of politi cal writers to assign that date as the beginning- of the political career which, with varied success, I have pursued. But I soon had occasion to know that the " course " of political advancement, like that of " true love," " never did run smooth." On the 14th day of September, 1826, William Morgan, an inhabitant of Batavia, in the county of Genesee, was arrested under a form of legal process for pretended petit larceny, and conveyed to the common jail of the county of Ontario, at Canandaigua. On the fact of his im prisonment becoming known, and exciting inquiry, the prosecutor failed to appear to substantiate his accusation ; while three or more citizens of Canandaigua procured a carriage, and caused him to be conveyed clandestinely through the country, confining him during the night in the public jail at Lockport, and conveying him the next day to Fort Niagara on the bank of the Niagara River. Here, for a time, informa tion concerning him ceased. Social and judicial inquiries afterward established beyond all reasonable doubt the facts that he was a member of the order of Freemasons, and, though of humble occupation, a sober and moral citizen ; that he had prepared for publication, and had in press, in a printing-office at Batavia, a volume containing the secrets of 70 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1828- 29 Freemasonry ; that the clerk s office at Batavia was robbed of papers under an expectation of obtaining the manuscript ; that the printing- office was forcibly attacked with the same view, and finally burned down in the night-time, to destroy the manuscript ; that his arrest and confinement at Canandaigua were made with a view to secure his person, and that his forcible removal from Canandaigua to Fort Niagara was a continuation of the same plot ; and that there a lodge of Freemasons was held to consider his case, which resulted in an abortive attempt to induce the Masonic brotherhood on the Canada bank of the river to receive him ; and that, on their refusal, he was taken from the fort in the night-time by members of the brotherhood, and drowned in the Niagara River. The inquisition of justice in the matter was hindered and delayed, so that public sentiment became vehemently excited, and the crime of his murder was charged upon the Masonic brotherhood with force and effect. The judicial authorities of the State succeeded in bringing to justice only three or four of the persons who were en gaged in this abduction, but failed altogether in bringing his mur derers to punishment. The people of the district of country in which these outrages happened thereupon organized themselves as a political party, demanding the dissolution of the Masonic Society, as subversive of order, and dangerous to the public peace and safety. This proceed ing brought about a wide and searching inquisition into the principles and practices of that society, which lasted several years. The new political party rapidly obtained a controlling majority in many of the counties lying west of the Cayuga Lake. While the organization was taking its form, the presidential canvass of 1828 came on, and it became necessary for the new party to declare its national preferences. Jackson, the candidate of the Republican party, was identified as being either a Freemason, or at least as having the support of the Republican authorities of the State, who were re garded as delinquent in the investigation of the Morgan affair, and shielding the Masonic fraternity from popular indignation. Mr. Adams, on the other hand, the candidate of the National Republican party, being inquired of, answered that he had not been at any time, was not now, and probably never should be, a Mason. The new organization, now assuming the name of the " Antimasonic party," inclined to sup port Mr. Adams ; but, in order to maintain a distinctive character, deemed it necessary to make a separate nomination of the candidates for electors, and for State and local offices. Electors were then chosen by the people in single districts. My activity in local assemblies and conventions continued during the summer. A " National Republican " State Convention at Utica, on the 23d of July, submitted to the people a ticket composed of Smith Thompson for Governor, and Francis Granger for Lieutenant-Go vernor. 1828- 29.] THE ANTIMASONIC PARTY. 71 The Republican party nominated Martin Van Buren for Governor, and Enos T. Throop for Lieutenant-Governor. The Antimasonic party, of whom I shall soon have occasion to make larger mention, quite generally accepted from Solomon Southwick the offer of his name as a candidate for the office of Governor. The National Republican candidate was an eminent and experienced jurist, but had had no recent connection with political affairs, and his name excited no enthusiasm. Mr. Granger, three or four years my senior, brought to the ticket great popularity, the fruit of imposing personal presence, graceful address, respectable abilities, and free and engaging popular manners. Mr. Van Buren possessed great amenity of character, and was sure of an interested support from the Republican party, all of whose members regarded him as the most skillful of political tac ticians. Mr. Throop, then one of the State Circuit Judges, was my neighbor, chiefly known to the public for his unquestioning devotion to the interests of the party and the fortunes of its leaders. Mr. South- wick was a restless and eccentric man of an age already past. The Cayuga Bridge seemed, for a time, an effective barrier against the extension of the Antimasonic party into the region east of the Cayuga Lake. It crossed the barrier, however, at last, and about seven hundred of my fellow-citizens of Cayuga County, scattered through the different towns, raised the standard of the Antimasonic party in the winter of 1827 28. Nearly all of them had been honored and esteemed associates of my own in the so-called " National Republican " party. They were honest, earnest, vigorous, and intelligent men. They in vited me to join their new standard. I endeavored to induce them, by high practical considerations, to remain with the National Republican party ; in the first place to secure, if possible, Mr. Adams s reelection, and await events to determine the wisdom of a " new departure." But I fully agreed with them in all their convictions of the duty of vindi cating the majesty of the law, and relieving the country, if possible, from secret societies. Thus it happened that, while they severed them selves from me, our friendship and mutual confidence remained they being as fully convinced as I myself was of the duty of combining all branches of opposition in the support of a common ticket for electors, Congressmen, and local officers. We agreed that, if possible, the two branches, the Antimasonic and the National Republican, though nomi nating at different times, should present the same names for candidates. But prudential considerations made them insist upon holding their con vention first in order of time, it remaining for me to bring the National Republican Convention, which should meet afterward, to accept the candidates of the coalition. The Antimasons, though rich in talent elsewhere, unfortunately had no men in their ranks in the county who were accustomed to speak 72 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1828- 29. or write on public affairs. They therefore, from time to time, came to me, and I confidently furnished them with drafts of resolutions, ad dresses, and speeches, which were given to the public in the name and through the hands of other persons, of their own organization. The coalition, as all coalitions must be, was covered during the preparatory stage with the veil of secrecy. They called their convention at the Court-House in Auburn. We agreed that they should nominate cer tain prominent and recognized National Republicans, who, though not Antimasons, should be free from complicity with Freemasonry. And, on my part, I agreed to use the considerable influence which it was as sumed that I enjoyed to induce the National Republicans to adopt the candidates thus to be nominated. Our choice for candidate for Con gress fell upon Archibald Green, an eminent, widely-known, and uni versally-respected citizen, who had been a pioneer in the settlement of the county, had held many of its highest trusts, and was of about the age of sixty. He had in early life joined the Masonic fraternity, but had long neglected attendance on its meetings, was now in consequence opposed to it, and his acceptance of an Antimasonic nomination would be equivalent to a renunciation of the order. I drafted and put into the hands of the Antimasonic leaders an address and resolutions suit able to the occasion, and especially laudatory of Mr. Green and the candidates to be associated with him. The address and resolutions were accurately descriptive of Mr. Green s virtues, claims, and qualifications. The day that the Antimasonic Convention assembled at Auburn I willingly availed myself of a professional excuse for a journey to the shore of Lake Ontario, not doubting but that the intrigue, if so I must call it, would be carried out. On returning, in the evening, I was ac costed by all my neighbors in the streets with the salutation, " How do you do, Mr. Congressman ? " The Antimasonic leaders hastened to in form me that their convention had proved impracticable ; that it had refused to nominate Mr. Green because it distrusted him, and had in sisted on nominating myself as a person that could be safely trusted ; while my standing with the National Republicans ought to render me acceptable to them. To fill the measure of my perplexity, and cover me with mortification, the proceedings of the Antimasonic Convention, with my own resolutions and address, so laudatory of the candidates, were already in type in the Cayuga Republican, and I read them the next morning verbatim, except for the material change that my history and praises of Mr. Green were appropriated to myself ! The public were not more amazed than I was when I found myself described therein, not as a young man of twenty-seven, four years an untitled and unhonored adventurer in the county, but as " one of the earliest pioneers of Western New York, matured by age," and " covered with the titles of official distinctions " I had enjoyed. The game that I had 1828- 29.] ELECTION OF GENERAL JACKSON. 73 played in the New York forum no longer availed me. Everybody rec ognized my own habitual style ih the apparently self-glorifying address and resolutions. I could not deny the authorship, and I even now sus pect that some of my Antimasonic friends innocently disclosed it. Ridi cule hastened and gave force to the unavoidable explosion. My Na tional Republican associates pronounced me an intriguer and a betrayer. I fell from my eminence so low that the counselors who succeeded to my place refused even to confer with me. They would have none of me for Congressman, in any case, nor Archibald Green neither. But they would have Charles Kellogg, reckless whether he was a Freema son or not, and whether the Antimasonic dissenters would accept him or not. The Antimasonic electors were indignant at this repudiation of my nomination, which they had made, as they thought, in a high spirit of conciliation ; and they would have none of Charles Kellogg, or anybody but myself or some trusted member of their own narrow association. Time, however, was running against the passions of these faction- ists of both classes. The National Republican Convention had been set for a day so near the election that I hoped there would be no time to organize an opposition. I remained a candidate, patiently enduring the odium and discord to which the position exposed me, until that convention assembled. Though not even allowed to be a delegate, and amid the hisses of many of its members, I advanced to the table of the convention, explained the unfortunate history of my nomina tion, laid it down at their feet, and announced my declination of any nomination whatever. They nominated Charles Kellogg for Congress, and, for district elector, Christopher Morgan. The Antimasonic Con vention at the last moment reassembled, and reasserted their self-reli ance by nominating Moses Dickson for Congress. True to their national principles, as well as their Antimasonic faith, the Antimasonic voters in the county cast their suffrages for Christopher Morgan, the National Republican candidate for elector ; but they at the same time cast 901 votes for Dickson, their own distinct candidate for Congress ; and thus it happened that, while the Adams elector was beaten by only 1,743 majority, the National Republican candidate for Congress was beaten by 2,447. Not only was the cause of the National Republican party lost in the county where these unhappy divisions had occurred, but it encoun tered a disastrous defeat throughout the State and Union. Mr. Adams had sixteen electors out of thirty-six, and on the final canvass in Congress was found to have had only eighty-three votes, while General Jackson had one hundred and seventy-eight. John C. Calhoun was elected Vice-President. For Governor, Martin Van Buren received 136,794 votes ; Smith Thompson, 106,444 ; Solomon South wick (the 74 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1828- 29. Antimasonic candidate), 33,345. These figures showed that, while an uncompromising feud between the Antimasons and National Re publicans gave an imposing triumph to the Republican party, the two contending factions had three thousand more votes than the success ful party. The result, however, was as injurious to the opposition as it was incurable. From that time the Antimasonic party, encour aged by the increase of votes it had received, determined to make no *- coalition or compromise ; and the National Republican party, discour aged by its failure, waned throughout the State and country. The * triumphant party thenceforward received accessions everywhere from the irresolute and the vacillating, and opposition to it found vitality only in the spirited and vigorous Antimasonic organization, which was chiefly located in the western counties of the State. It seemed to be hoping too much to expect that a party arising from a single issue, and that of a social, more distinctly than a political nature, confined as yet to a small section of the country, and deriving its weapons chiefly from its determination to vindicate the law through the courts of justice, could succeed to the position of one of the two great contending par ties of the Union. For myself, it was not necessary that I should expect, or even hope, for an ultimate and complete success of the new ^" fc organization. I saw the National Republican party, through which I had so far labored since my majority, practically dissolved and in ruins, not again to be restored. I had only the alternative of going with that one which not only agreed with me throughout in the principles and policy, State and national, that I cherished, but the peculiar object of which also seemed to commend itself to the support of all indepen dent and virtuous citizens. I saw, as I thought, not only the loss of our national system of revenue, and the loss of enterprises of State and national improvement, but also future disunion of the States, and ultimately a universal prevalence of slavery as the future fruits of con fiding the destinies of the country to Andrew Jackson, of Tennessee ; John C. Calhoun, of South Carolina ; and Martin Van Buren, of New York. Against the party whose success was marked by the formation of their coalition I planted myself sternly, in my own independence, willing to combine and coalesce with all who could be rallied for the * ^national safety, and indifferent to whatever delays and discouragements I might be called to endure. The rout and confusion of the National Republican party, in the first election of General Jackson, left me quite at liberty, during the year 1829, to give my attention to domestic and social affairs. It is now a matter of surprise to me, on recurring to the papers of that day, to find that I was employed often in the defense of criminals, having apparently obtained a reputation for astuteness and subtilty in expos ing defects in pleadings and evidence. 1828- 29.] BUYING A HOUSE. 75 The village and the county in which I lived were, at that time, in tensely moved by projects of local improvement. Among these were plans for connecting the lakes with the general system of inland navigation, and connecting Auburn with other parts of the State by railroads. There were also projects for colleges and other scientific institutions. In all these I took the active part which was assigned to me by my fellow-citizens. Politically there was little encouragement to activity. The National Republican organization had fallen to pieces, and the party virtually ceased to exist. Nearly all its more active leaders joined the trium phant Republicans, with a determination to oppose and utterly destroy the new Antimasonic organization, which now came to the foreground as the successor of the National Republican party, in opposition to the Republican majority triumphant in the States and the Union. The Antimasons contested the field in the limited district where they had demonstrated their greatest strength, but throughout all the other parts of the State of New York, including Cayuga County, the election of the Republican local tickets, in 1829, passed by default. Mr. Van Buren, on the organization of General Jackson s cabinet, was appointed Secretary of State at Washington, and the Executive office of the State devolved upon Governor Throop. There is an incongruity, which I cannot easily overcome, between the details of domestic life and the account I find it necessary to give of public and political events. My professional pursuits had, by this time, become sufficiently profitable to assure me a competence for the country life which, on all grounds, I preferred. But that competence could not reach an abundance, by reason of the drafts to which I was subjected. Relatives unfortunate in business had, naturally enough, applied to me for indorsements and loans. I cheerfully gave the re quired aid, but, in so doing, depleted more than one-half the entire property which I possessed. These charges upon an income derived from the practice of the law, in the country, left me without an assurance of the pecuniary independence which I had already found indispensable to the social and political independence at which I aimed. While my residence in the family of Mr. Miller, my father-in- law, was in every way pleasant and desirable, the construction of his dwelling proved a severe trial to the health and comfort of my wife. I therefore, with his consent, bought of William Brown the neat house and pretty grounds directly opposite to that of Mr. Miller. I paid one thousand dollars in hand, and secured the payment of the balance within five years, by my bond and mortgage, and removed to that dwelling with my wife and child (Augustus), then three years old. 76 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1830. Impatient under renewed experience of debt, I laid aside all my gains with a miser s prudence and care, and extinguished the bond and mortgage in fifteen months. 1830. Popular Elections. The Evening Journal. A Fourth-of-July Demonstration. Henry Dana Ward. The " Working-men." Granger for Governor. National Convention. Thaddeus Stevens. Judge McLean. Myron Holley. Elected to the Senate. No fault is more frequently found with our Constitution than that which is based on the periodical frequency of the popular elections. I am of a different opinion. Intelligence cannot be increased, and pa triotism cannot be kept vigorous, without universal activity of the pub lic mind. The elections of representatives serve this purpose admira bly. Moreover, while the safety and welfare of a state do not require frequent changes of its rulers, yet the popular contentment and acqui escence, indispensable in every state to the maintenance of peace and order, and more indispensable in a republic than in any other state, are secured by the recurrence, at regular and short periods, of elec tions which afford the opportunity of change. Thus all errors or evils of government are endured because there is an always-renewing hope of relief. The first year of a new Administration at Washington, or at Albany, is a season of popular rest. Exhausted energies and expecta tions, satisfied or disappointed, combine to produce a sentiment of pub lic indifference to politics. In these periods enterprises of material improvement, moral and social reforms, and religious movements, en gage the minds of the people. But the second year of a new Adminis tration at Washington finds the popular mind restored to vigorous ac tivity, and the elections held in that year are generally the beginning of a campaign, in which another presidency is to be decided. The year 1829, as has been seen, was one of relaxation and calm. The campaign for 1832 opened with the year 1830. The Republican party, now taking to itself the more radical name of "the Democratic party," announced with great unanimity its determination to secure the reelection of Andrew Jackson. The discomfited and overthrown .^-National Republican party practically withdrew from the field in most r of the Northern States, and left its vacant place to be filled by the new, vigorous, and enthusiastic Antimasonic party. Hitherto that party, within the State, had been a merely local one, practically con fined to Western New York. In 1830 it determined to strike out boldly for wider empire. A consultation was held, at the beginning of the year, at Albany, with 1830.] A FOURTH OF JULY. 77 this view. I attended this consultation, and, by a speech which I made, won the conBdence of the delegates so far as to be accepted as one of the leaders, in association with Thurlow Weed, Francis Granger, John C. Spencer, Frederick Whittlesey, William H. Maynard, and Albert H. Tracy, all of whom were deservedly distinguished for talents and influence. Our convention appointed fifty-six delegates to a United States Antimasonic Convention, to be held in Philadelphia in the following September, and we provided for the establishment of the Albany Evening Journal, on the 22d of March, as the organ of the party in the State, to be conducted by Thurlow Weed. At home, the coalition of a large portion of the late National Re publican party with the triumphant Republican one now called " Demo cratic " displayed an intolerance which I found unendurable ; and I gave myself up to an effort to break it down. Adhering to all my cherished " National Republican " principles and policy, I addressed myself to my fellow-citizens, in speeches and through the press, expos ing the violence which had been committed against law and order in the name and for the benefit of the Masonic Society, and in warnings against the errors and evils of secret societies generally. My opponents under-estimated these appeals, and visited my asso ciates and myself with derision and scorn. Aware of the effect of demonstrations of political strength on the public mind, I induced my associates to challenge a trial on the 4th of July. For two months we made preparations for the celebration of the national anniversary, with the full exposition of our party faith and principles. Our oppo nents made a counter-effort. Bands of music, military companies, and philanthropic and educational societies, as yet, were exclusively in the interest or under the control of the Masonic party. We obtained, however, not without much expense and trouble, the aid of a drummer and a fifer, and an old iron gun, which latter I kept carefully watched and guarded, on the night of the 3d, on my own premises, to prevent its being captured and taken away by my opponents. The great, the important day, " big with the fate of Cato and of Rome," opened auspiciously. The sun shone brightly. The salvo echoed through the chambers of the anxious and patriotic. A proces sion of two thousand electors paraded. Mr. Henry Dana Ward, of New York, a scholarly gentleman, delivered an elaborate oration. We cheered the day and drank success to our cause, not forgetting, in our denunciations of the Order, a contribution for the relief and support of the widow of William Morgan, and the day closed with a ceremony as exciting as it was novel. Colonel H. C. Witherell opened a "lodge " at the Court-House, and initiated Sam Jones, a poor blind candidate, as "entered apprentice," passed him to the degree of "fellow-craft," 78 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1830. raised him to the " sublime degree " of " master-mason," advanced him to the " honorary degree " of " mark-master," installed him in the chair as "past-master," received and acknowledged him as " most ex cellent master," and exalted him to the degree of " holy royal arch," to the edification of a large popular assembly. The impression made by the celebration was such as to leave little room to doubt that the popular sentiment of the county was revolu tionized. The Republicans, called now by us the " Masonic party," nominated for Governor the then acting Lieutenant-Governor, Enos T. Throop, of Cayuga ; and for Lieutenant-Go vernor, Edward P. Livingston, of Columbia County. The Antimasonic State Convention assembled at Utica on the llth of August. During the summer a class of persons in various parts of the State, who had at first been absorbed into the triumphant Republican or " Masonic party," in the general calm which succeeded the election of General Jackson in 1828, separated themselves from that majority, and combined under the name of " Working-men s party." Antimasonry was entirely repudiated in the city of New York, and generally throughout the eastern part of the State. But the dis contented " working-men " there might be impressed with the advantages of cooperation with the Antimasons of the west. To bring out the Antimasonic strength of the west, all that was needful was to nomi nate the most popular member of that party for Governor. It was a more difficult affair to secure cooperation from the " wording-men " of the east. It seemed necessary for this object to name a candidate for Lieutenant-Governor who resided in the city of New York, was identi fied with the " working-men," and free from the reproach of previous connection with the Antimasonic party. Samuel Stevens, a young, talented, and distinguished alderman of the city, was approached, and gave his consent to assume that place. Our State Convention assembled at Utica on the llth of August. In that convention two duties were assigned to me : one was, to prepare and report the creed of the new party, which must be presented with sufficient clearness and force to form a stable basis for action, and yet with so much moderation as not to unnecessarily excite" popular preju dice and hostility ; the other was, to convince the convention of the expediency and propriety of the nomination of Mr. Stevens for Lieu tenant-Governor. He was obnoxious to its prejudices on the ground of being only a " working-man," and, as yet, in no way identified with the Antimasonic cause. Both of these duties were discharged with success, although the latter one was embarrassing. Mr. John Crary, of Wash ington County, a former member of the State Senate, had been the Antimasonic candidate for Lieutenant-Governor at the previous election. The convention and the party generally indulged, not without much show of reason, a hope of success in the present canvass. The friends 1830.] NATIONAL ANTIMASONIC CONVENTION. 79 of Mr. Crary insisted on his renomi nation, both as an act of justice to him, and an act of loyalty to the cause ; while of Mr. Stevens it could only be said that, by his silent acceptance of the nomination, he would virtually become an adherent of the party. The debate was stormy ; but the nomination was carried by a decided majority. Mr. Crary pro tested, and appealed to the electors ; but his appeal was lost in the enthusiasm which followed the announcement of the nominations. A National Convention of the Antimasonic party assembled at Philadelphia on the llth of September. It was attended by ninety-six delegates from New York, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Vermont, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Ohio, Maryland, and Michigan. It was in this convention that I first met Thaddeus Stevens. I found existing between him and myself an earnest sympathy of politi cal views. An advocate of popular education, of American industry, and of internal improvement, abhorring slavery in every form, and rest less under the system of intrigue by which the Republican party at that day sought to maintain itself in power, bent on breaking up the combination between a subservient party in the North and the slave power of the South, he became a personal friend and a political ally. That relation remained through long years thereafter. Judge McLean, of the Supreme Court of the United States, was an aspirant to the presidency, and was understood not to be unwilling to accept the sup port of the new party. But we wisely decided to confine the proceed ings of the convention to measures adapted to the dissemination of our principles. Francis Granger, our candidate for Governor of New York, was president of the convention. Our principles, of course, were set forth in an elaborate address which came from the pen of Myron Holley, a ripe and eminent scholar and statesman, long connected with the politics of the State of New York. It devolved upon me in this con vention, as it had done in the Utica State Convention, to embody the party creed in the shape of resolutions, and to illustrate and enforce it in debate. When the convention assembled, its application for leave to sit in Independence Hall was rejected. The dignity and ability manifested in its proceedings caused this refusal to be regretted, and it was soon seen that the Antimasonic party was likely to become a power in the State of Pennsylvania. Hitherto I had only regarded my political attitude and proceedings for the maintenance and inculcation of cherished political sentiments as being without considerations of personal advantage. I was now to experience a change in that respect. While stopping at Albany, on my way to attend the Philadelphia Convention, Thurlow Weed, for the first time, made some friendly but earnest inquiries concerning my pecuniary ability, whether it was sufficient to enable me to give a por- 80 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1831. tion of my time to public office. When I answered my ability was sufficient, but I had neither expectation nor wish for office, he replied that he had learned from my district enough to induce him to think it possible that the party there might desire my nomination to the Senate. Giving no special thought to this matter, I proceeded to Philadelphia. On my return from the convention, and stopping" overnight at Bordeii- town, I found by the newspapers that I had been nominated, by my political friends, as candidate for Senator of the seventh district of New York. The faction of " Working-men," in the counties east of the Cayuga Lake, gave me an earnest and vigorous support, while the Antimasons in the western part of the district, cheered by the hope of success, rallied with more enthusiasm than at previous elections, and I was re turned for that office by a majority of two thousand in the district, of which my own county gave seventeen. This success, however, was not maintained throughout the State. The Democratic State ticket pre vailed, and Enos T. Throop became Governor of the State by a majority of 8,481, and Edward P. Livingston, Lieutenant-Governor. Antimasonic Senators were chosen in the sixth, seventh, and eighth districts, and "Jackson" Senators, as they were then called, in the other five districts. In the Assembly, thirty of the one hundred and twenty-eight members were Antimasons. My return to the Senate involved a change in my domestic life. My second son, Frederick W. Seward, was born on July 8, 1830, in the new house on South Street, which I had bought in the spring. I closed that dwelling for the winter, which I was to spend at the State capital, and in the last days of December, leaving my wife and two children with her father, proceeded to Albany by stage. 1831. Legislative Life. First Experience in Debate. Militia Keform. A Dream of William Morgan. Albert H. Tracy. William H. Maynard. N. P. Tallmadge. Imprisonment for Debt. Calhoun and Van Buren. General Jackson and the United States Bank. Breaking up of the Cabinet. The " Albany Regency." The Richmond Junto. National Policy. THE Legislature of New York had not then exactly the same consti tution that it has now. There were, indeed, thirty-two Senators then, as there are now under the constitution of 1846, but, for the choice of these Senators, the State was then divided into eight senatorial districts, each sending four Senators, one of whom was elected each year, to hold for four years thereafter. Senators are now elected in thirty-two sepa- 1831.] LEGISLATIVE LIFE. gl rate senatorial districts, to hold two years, and consequently a senato rial election is held every other year throughout the State. The Senate of New York had acquired and maintained, under the first State constitution, which continued from 1778 to !821, a very high prestige by reason of the elevated character of its members, not to speak of the greater importance which the several States had, pre ceding and during the early years of the Federal Constitution. This prestige was rendered the more enviable because the constitution of the Senate, like its prototype, the House of Lords in England, was, under the first two constitutions of the State, a court for the " Trial of Impeachments," and for the " Correction of Errors," that might be committed by the Supreme Court and the Court of Chancery, as well as all inferior tribunals. This high prestige had not yet been impaired, and it was a flattery often addressed to me, that I had become, at so early an age, a member of the legislative body so distinguished and potential. The House of Assembly has also undergone a constitutional change since that period. Though it consists of the same number of members, one hundred and twenty -eight, as before, and they hold their office for the same term of one year, they are now chosen in separate Assembly districts, and not, as then, by counties. In many respects I found this eminent position very gratifying. Although a large portion of legislative action then, as now, related to personal claims and local questions, yet the municipal laws involving the rights of the citizens, and affecting life, liberty, and property, were all the while undergoing modification and improvement. The fiscal policy of the State was a profound and important study. Education and internal improvement were subjects worthy the consideration of generous and enlarged minds. Even the broader and more comprehen sive questions of general policy, and those arising out of unsettled debates on the construction of the Constitution of the United States, came down to the State Legislatures for deliberation and discussion, which exerted a great influence upon the ultimate decision of Congress. The judicial responsibilities of the Senate especially fascinated me. I listened to great men, who argued great questions of law and equity, and I cast a vote, as a judge, in determining controversies and estab lishing principles fundamental in the administration of justice. The personal associations of the place were attractive. I had risen above the local jealousies of provincial towns and communities, but, while party spirit was not less earnestly exhibited by my associates in the Senate, it was tempered generally with moderation and courtesy. Only one sadness overclouded this new and elevated position. Every other member of the Senate, in my view, had the knowledge and ability which the station required. On the other hand, I had a 6 82 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1831. painful sense of incompetency. It seemed to me that while the people had exercised due deliberation and judgment in preferring the thirty- one Senators by whom I was surrounded, I had been sent there without popular thoughtfulness or reflection. At first it amazed me to see my associates on every side of the House rise, and, without embarrassment, submit projects of laws and debate political questions without showing any want of firmness in their posture, or embarrassment of speech, while my own knees smote each other and my tongue clave to the roof of my mouth whenever I thought of taking the floor. Reflecting on this difficulty, I did not fail to perceive that either I must debate and (act to the extent with which my immediate constituents would be satis- Vied, or that my election would prove, not merely a failure, but a re- broach ; and that the difficulty in the way of such success might be | found to be chiefly in the beginning. I considered what subject I could choose with the best hope of treating it intelligibly, without pro- 1 voking a debate, which I should not have courage or ability to main- \tain. The popularity of the militia system, which had come down to us from the Revolution, was now at its lowest ebb ; and it was proposed to render the system a merely nominal one by requiring a paper enroll ment, with a single annual parade. Thin wm QjTQr^fj^J^ a prjrHpIp whieh I had combated^\vith-zeai--Tiiid--pr^^ earliest experience ofpttfeKa affairs. When, inJ.SGljJJ te Executive Administration at Washington found themselves confronted by a gigantic rebellion, with only fifteen or twenty regiments to meet it, and obliged, in the first instance, to sustain itself by calling out the militia, it was an occasion of some self-satis faction that the first labored duty of my official life at Albany had been to direct the attention of the country to the utter defectiveness of the militia system, and to the necessity for revising it and adapting it, in view of an exigency which, so long before, I had foreseen, and which now involved the fate of the republic. I prepared an amendment to the bill, wrote a short speech in sup port of the amendment, committed it to memory as well as I could, and delivered it, or as much of it as I could remember, but scarcely under standing, when I sat down, what the Republican or Masonic Senator who replied to me had said. Certainly, I thought at the time that he had spoken better than I had, and probably had the right side of the question. Having nothing further to offer, my amendments were of course laid upon the table, and I think they might be lying there yet if the Senators, taking pity on my embarrassment, had not paid me the courtesy of directing them to be printed, a motion which implied a willingness to hear from me again. During this initiatory legislative experience, my acquaintance 1831.] MAYNARD AND TRACY. $3 among the people of Albany and with the visitors from various parts of the State became pleasant, although my party associations exposed me to much prejudice and depreciation. The representatives of our new and yet small party were continually reminded by the members of all older parties and factions that ours was an illegitimate one, that it was a political "infection," local, though contagious; that its aims and its principles were so unnatural and absurd that they could not be honestly conceived or entertained, but were assumed from sinister con siderations altogether. Especially was it the pleasure of the adherents of opposing factions to represent the entire tragedy, out of which the Antimasonic excitement arose, as a fiction, which Thurlow Weed and his associates were impudently attempting to palm off upon an unso phisticated community ; that William Morgan, instead of having been murdered by Freemasons at the Niagara River, was now living in Smyrna, supported by the funds of the Antimasonic leaders ; that the body washed up on the shore at Oak Orchard was not his, but that of Timothy Monroe ; that he was not abducted at all ; and, finally, that there was no William Morgan that he was only a myth ! I amused my new associates by giving them the experience of a dream, which was engendered doubtless under the warping influences of these sarcastic misrepresentations. I imagined that, in my new capacity as a Senator, I was entertained at dinner by our late candidate for Lieutenant-Governor, Stevens, in New York City, and surrounded by my new political friends ; that I was called from the dinner-table into a parlor, which seemed to be a private one. A stranger entered, who was short and square-framed, with a full, round face, having a parcel strapped upon his back. He met and accosted me with con gratulation upon my preferment. I asked who he was. He replied : " Do you not know ? I am William Morgan." I answered, horror- struck : " I thought you were dead ! How is it that you are alive and here ? Get out of my sight ! " He hung his head, abashed, and as he coweringly retreated he said, " How strange it is that Weed and Whittlesey have never told him ! " William H. Mayiiard was then in mature life. He had great talents and extensive information. His character for integrity and fidelity commanded the respect of all parties, and secured him the general con fidence of the people. Albert H. Tracy was a subtile and ingenious writer and speaker. He had come into the Senate the year before as an Antimason, under an excitement which left it possible for none other to obtain a popular vote in the western part of the State. For some considerable period after my acquaintance with him in the Senate, he betrayed no want of zeal or confidence in our new political association. But he hesitated, and finally fell from the confidence of the party when it became neces- 84; AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1831. sary for us to take ground against the national policy and measures with which Mr. Van Buren, the leading Republican manager in the State, was identified. These were the leaders of our small minority. Among the majority, Nathaniel P. Tallmadge manifested all that vigor, earnestness, and ability in debate, which distinguished him after ward in his brilliant career in Congress. N. S. Benton of Herkimer, subsequently so long distinguished for his uprightness, fidelity, and ability, in the fiscal administration of his State, was a busy and active though not popular leader ; while Henry A. Foster, of Oneida County, displayed, if less tact, yet great forensic power. The Legislature, upon the complaint of Antimasonic citizens, of the failure of justice in the trials for conspiracy and murder in the Morgan case, had directed that one of the Justices of the Supreme Court should preside on a further trial at Lockport. William L. Marcy had presided on that occasion, and conducted the trials with such a degree of firm ness, impartiality, and ability, as to win the approbation, not only of his own party, but of the Antimasons throughout the State. In conse quence of this success, he was appointed by the Legislature a Senator in Congress, and thus began the career in the field of national politics which, although considerably interrupted by his return to official posi tion in the State, constitutes the most important part in his political life. The Legislature this year made a great advance in the cause of humanity, by abolishing imprisonment for debt. The act passed re tained imprisonment only as a punishment for frauds committed by debtors, and forever prohibited the incarceration of debtors who, though unfortunate, were not guilty of dishonesty. In the constitution of 1821 a large mass of official patronage was reserved to the central Executive power in Albany. Deeming it important then, as I had before never failed to do, to secure a decentralization of the political power of the State, I introduced and urged an amendment of the con stitution, providing that the mayors of all the cities in the State should be elected by the people. This principle, some years afterward, was incorporated in the constitution of the State. On the suggestion of my early instructor, Dr. Nott, I exerted myself with much diligence to procure from the archives of foreign governments the documents tending to illustrate the colonial history of the State. Although this effort failed at the time, it was some years afterward crowned with success. In the Court for the Correction of Errors I delivered opinions in several of the causes. The Legislature of the State of New York, although constitutionally separated from all connection with national matters, nevertheless sympa- 1831. J BANK OF THE UNITED STATES. 85 thized continually, and often, perhaps, too vehemently, with parties en gaged in directing the affairs of the Federal Government. We have seen that, at the close of President Monroe s Administration in 1824, Federal politics sank to the level of a mere personal contest for the Executive succession, in which the parties were Crawford, of Georgia ; Adams, of Massachusetts ; Jackson, of Tennessee ; Calhoun, of South Carolina ; and Clay, of Kentucky. Neither the choice of Mr. Adams by the House of Representatives in 1824, nor the election of General Jack son in 1828, had the effect of closing this personal scramble. All that had been gained thus far was, that Mr. Adams had been, with the utmost labor and difficulty, advanced to the high station, and dismissed at the end of his term, to make way for the elevation of General Jack son, for whom a reelection was vehemently demanded ; while Mr. Crawford had disappeared from the arena. But there still remained Mr. Calhoun and Mr. Clay, while Mr. Van Buren had entered the field as the legitimate successor to Mr. Crawford s pretensions. The friends of Calhoun and Van Buren yielded to the demand of General Jackson for a reelection in 1832, and contented themselves with competition for the succession at the end of his second term. Mr. Clay, on the other hand, aspired to be elected in 1832, and thus was opposed, not only to General Jackson himself, but to the two rival aspirants for the succession. The strong will of General Jackson was equal to that of Cromwell. The Republican party, which had triumphed in his success, delighted in his prowess, not, indeed, in breaking merely images, but in breaking down institutions which came in conflict with popular prejudices and passions. The charter of the Bank of the United States was to expire in 1836. The system was the invention of Hamilton ; but, while all parties had heretofore admitted the necessity and the efficiency of the institution, a doubt as to the constitutional power of Congress to estab lish it had existed from the first, and had not been put at rest by the authoritative decision of the Supreme Court of the United States. The existing institution was obnoxious to the State banks, and especially those called the safety-fund banks of the State of New York, which desired to secure for themselves the pecuniary profits de rived by the Bank of the United States from the deposits, transfers, and management of the public funds. The Republicans of New York, under the lead of Mr. Van Buren, encouraged President Jackson in his premature demonstration against the bank, and thus raised a popular party issue for the approaching presidential election. Mr. Calhoun and his friends, if not agreeing, at least were silent. Only Mr. Clay stood a defender of the bank. The denunciation of the bank contained in President Jackson s message of 1830, and a similar denunciation made, by Mr. Benton in 86 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1831. the Senate of the United States, furnished to the Republican majority in the Legislature of New York, in 1831, an occasion which they quickly seized, and they passed a joint resolution declaring that, in the opinion of that Legislature, the charter of the bank ought not to be renewed, and about the same time they nominated, in caucus, General Jackson for reelection. Not at all sympathizing with the movers of that pro ceeding in their designs, and entirely unconvinced of the expediency of the measure, I opposed the resolution with what ability I possessed. A temporary gratification was enjoyed, later in the year, by those who, like myself, looked with disfavor upon these political machinations of the rival candidates for the presidency, by an explosion of President Jackson s cabinet, under circumstances which were calculated to excite scandal and disgust. President Jackson had called Martin Van Buren to the office of Secretary of State, while he had conferred the offices of Secretary of the Treasury and Secretary of the Navy, and Attorney- General, upon Messrs. Ingham, of Pennsylvania ; Branch, of North Carolina ; and Berrien, of Georgia, three avowed friends of Mr. Calhoun, and understood to favor his nomination at the earliest possible day for the presidency. The office of Secretary of War was filled by John H. Eaton, of Tennessee, a personal friend and devotee of the President. General Jackson, discovering that the wives of the Secretary of the Treasury, the Secretary of the Navy, and Attorney-General, did not exchange visits of ceremony with the wife of the Secretary of War, called upon the Secretaries to redress that grievance. When it was answered that the objection of those ladies was, that a cloud was rest ing on the character of Mrs. Eaton, and that, in any case, the question which the President had raised was a social one, and not at all a politi cal or official one, he persisted in demanding that the offending ladies should reciprocate courtesies and hospitalities with Mrs. Eaton, as a public proof of the harmony of his cabinet, under the penalty of the retirement of their husbands from office. Mr. Van Buren, however un happily for himself in other respects, was fortunate on this occasion in being unmarried, so that he escaped the censure of the President. The three cabinet officers whose wives had offended, accepted the penalty and retired from office, leaving the President at liberty to constitute a new cabinet, which, as he said, should be a unit. Mr. Van Buren was appointed minister to Great Britain. Mr. Eaton was appointed minis ter to Spain. An alienation occurred between Mr. Calhoun on the one side and the President and Mr. Van Buren on the other. This aliena tion was afterward to produce great and serious results. An unusually candid State historian, Jabez D. Hammond, has taken notice of the fact that Erastus Root, in the preceding year, on taking the chair as Speaker of the Assembly, was the first presiding officer who, in an inaugural address, recognized his partisan obligations. It 1881.] "STATE RIGHTS." gf is perhaps a proof of the low level to which the public sense of patriot ism had fallen in this period, that this proceeding was imitated by a President of the Senate, and even the Governor of the State, in 1831. The history of that period would be imperfect if I should omit to state that, from the adoption of the Federal Constitution down to this time, the partisan transactions in the several States were generally conducted by a small number of prominent and active politicians, who were understood not only to determine the political course which the Executive of the State should pursue, but also to exert an overpower ing influence in directing the political course of the Legislature. Whatever party prevailed, it had such an irresponsible committee always at the State capital. At first it was called a " Junto," and by this name the cabal which sat at Richmond always continued to be called. The similar Republican cabal which established itself at Albany came, after the year 1821, to be known under the name of the " Albany Regency." It may be easily conceived how these two irresponsible bodies, one exercising its strategy at Richmond, the capital of the then first State in the Union, and the other at the capital of the State of New York, just rising to that eminence, when combined together, constituted a co alition capable of exerting power throughout the Union. I do not know who was before myself in taking notice of the power of this coalition in the political transactions of 1824 and 1828. I saw it then, and my jealousy was excited by the fact that it seemed to me, even at that early day, to indicate a long period of national rule, in which the anomalous institution of slavery would be protected and strengthened, inasmuch as the support of slavery would be a condition on which Virginia was sure to insist ; while a concession in its favor would be the only concession in the power of the " Albany Regency " to make. I think those who may take the trouble to study my politi cal conduct at that time will find evidence of this jealousy in all that I wrote, spoke, and did. The student of general history will take notice that General Jack son not only denounced a renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States prematurely, and thus made opposition to that institu tion a partisan issue, but also that he vetoed the bill for the construc tion of the Maysville Road, upon grounds which denied to the Federal Government power to construct works of internal improvement in the several States, thus offering to the public another distinct political issue. Thus General Jackson s Administration, and with it the Republican party, advanced rapidly in the line of the policy of " State rights." They thus became a party of obstruction, while their opponents had no such cohesion or combination as would enable them to assert the more 88 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1831. enlightened and liberal policy which the early statesmen of the repub lic had adopted, and which in our own day has, though in the midst of many national calamities, been effectually restored. 1831. Oration at Syracuse. Railroads and Canals. Visit to John Quincy Adams. Baltimore Convention. Charles Carroll of Carrollton and Chief-Justice Marshall. William Wirt for President. Red- Jacket. Samuel Miles Hopkins. A Warning from Virginia. ON the 4th of July I pronounced, at Syracuse, a carefully-studied speech, in which, while I did not fail to set forth the peculiar principles of my own party, I exposed and denounced the tendency of the times toward the dangerous doctrine of nullification, which had then already been boldly avowed by Mr. Calhoun and his adherents in the slave States, without being authoritatively rebuked by any party, its organs or leaders. If I remember right, this was my fifth exercise of that description, and each one of them, as well as my commencement oration at college, was mainly devoted to the same important theme. Perhaps I need to say, in explanation of the frequency of my speech in this way, that the day of the popular extension of the press had not yet arrived, nor had the day of extended reports of debates in legislative bodies and political assemblies. The politician and leader addressed the people in the pamphlet form, borrowed from England, and in the 4th of July oration, which originated with the Revolution. Until 1830 every public man felt it necessary and becoming to speak out his senti ments on the 4th of July, and the practice, though it has fallen gener ally into disuse, was still maintained in the Southern States until the late rebellion. I cannot but think that it was a good practice, arid might wisely be adhered to. The first railroad constructed within the United States was the branch of the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad which extends from Balti more to Ellicott s Mills. It was opened this year. In the same year the Chesapeake & Ohio Canal, a worthy rival of our own New York canals, was opened from Georgetown to Harper s Ferry. My earnest advocacy of internal improvements made me distrust the policy of obstruction which, as I have shown, General Jackson s Administration had adopted. When the Legislature had adjourned I gratified a long-cherished wish by visiting John Quincy Adams, then in retirement at Quincy. In making this visit I had not only the motive of giving to that emi nent man assurances, little as they might be worth, of my constancy in the support of the principles of which he had been the exponent 1831.] JUDGE McLEAN. 89 and advocate, but also of learning from actual observation how far, in the capacity of wisely maintaining republican institutions, the State of Massachusetts had been carried by her excellent system of universal education in advance of the State of New York, which had adopted that system only within my own recollection. Both motives were gratified. I found Mr. Adams at home, alone, and intensely engaged on a polemic paper against Freemasonry. When I used some words of condolence or of sympathy with him, in regard to the cruel injus tice of which he had been the object during his Administration, he heard me through and made only this answer, " I have become callous, Mr. Sevvard I am callous." His vigor and resolution astonished me. He was at that moment an Antimasonic candidate for Congress, in his district, and he did not affect any want of determination to become a candidate for the presidency. Long years afterward, in times of politi cal depression and anxiety, I was accustomed to recur to this interview with the second Adams, and to derive fresh courage and vigor in the protracted contest with slavery. Mr. Adams vouchsafed me his friend ship at that time, and it continued through his life. I attended, as a delegate, the National Antimasonic Convention, held at Baltimore on the 26th of September. The convention was respectable in talent and numbers. Its proceedings were peculiarly grave and dignified. John C. Spencer presided. John McLean, former Postmaster-General, and then Justice of the Supreme Court, residing in the State of Ohio, had some time before this been quickened by aspirations for a nomination to the presidency. Some kind of commu nication on that subject had passed between him and my friend Thad- deus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, who had given to leading men of the party an assurance that Judge McLean would condescend to accept our nomination for the presidency. All that was wanting to secure for him a unanimous nomination was a letter expressing his willingness to accept it, which we were assured one of our members would receive from him. Mr. McLean was an exceedingly popular man, and it seemed to us that his name, identified with the Antimasonic party, would secure it consideration and respect throughout the Union. But " The best-laid schemes of mice and men Gang aft agley." The expected letter of Judge McLean was taken out of the post- office at Baltimore. It announced that he could not accept the nomina tion for President, and it fell as a wet blanket upon our warm expecta tions. Nor was the affliction rendered more comforting by the reason which was assigned, either in the letter or outside of it, that the writer had learned that it was Mr. Clay s intention to be a presidential candi- 90 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1831. date. The convention had turned its back upon its oldest and ablest and most distinguished champion, John Quincy Adams. It felt that it could derive no strength or prestige from a nomination of one of its own well-known and practised leaders. It needed a new name, not before identified with its history, and a high name at that ; and no such star shone forth from any quarter of the horizon. But the convention was an able one. Its leading members, John C. Spencer, Thurlow Weed, and others, were not only energetic but in ventive. While more youthful and inexperienced members, like my self, were studying the parts assigned to us in the presentation of the claims of the party, its principles and policy, those more experienced and practised gentlemen set themselves to work, inasmuch as we could not find a candidate, to make one. They respectfully waited upon the illustrious Chief -Justice Marshall, of the Supreme Court of the United States, who was then at Baltimore, and upon the distinguished and amiable William Wirt, who had been the Attorney-General in Monroe s Administration, and who then was residing in the city. They opened a correspondence with Charles Carroll, surviving signer of the Declara tion of Independence. In the evening previous to the public meeting of the convention we were gratified with assurances that we might expect the attendance of those great men at our convention the next day. Accordingly, the two former came, and the day closed with a letter which Mr. Wirt con fidentially addressed to the convention, in which he declared himself willing to accept the nomination upon the principles we had avowed, if we should think it desirable. No occasion in the progress of the Antimasonic party had ever so highly excited my pride or my enthusiasm as the sanction thus given to our cause by those two pure and eminent patriots, jurists, and states men. But it proved easier in this case, as it had in others, to find a new ~" candidate than it was to bring the convention to accept him. Mr. Wirt had been a Mason, and a large party in the convention were unwilling to assign him the place of standard-bearer upon a -conversion which they thought sudden and interested. ^ Others were of opinion that, notwithstanding Judge McLean s declining, we might safely force the nomination upon him. It was in the maintenance of these opinions \ that I found Thaddeus Stevens, of Pennsylvania, unreasonable and im- \ practicable. It was assigned to me to combat them in private caucus. We debated the subject until midnight, and adjourned under an appre- V hension that the convention would explode the next day by a refusal to nominate Mr. Wirt, or a fatal division on that question. I lodged that night in a room with Mr. Stevens. When I awoke in the morning, filled with anxiety which the last night s debates had left, 1831.] RED-JACKET. 91 I was surprised to find that my fellow-lodger was entirely calm and undisturbed. I remonstrated against his pertinacious adhesion to Mr. McLean, and so far prevailed with him as to obtain an assurance of his acquiescence in the nomination of Mr. Wirt, if that should be the choice of the convention. We repaired to the hall, and in an harmoni ous and general agreement made the nomination of that gentleman unanimous. These proceedings soon secured the cordial assent of the party throughout all the States, and Mr. McLean never afterward appeared as a candidate for its consideration or favor. The State elections which occurred in November, 1831, excited very little interest. The Antimasonic party held its own only in the sev enth senatorial district, while a general combination of the Freema sons of all parties gave to the Republican or " Jackson party " large majorities in other parts of the State. Eminent citizens who had before belonged to the National Republi can party, and who still adhered to Mr. Clay, made arrangements for a National Convention, by which he should be nominated for the presi dency. I now found that my official, professional, and political duties rendered it impossible for me to remain, with any constancy, in my new home at Auburn. I therefore returned, with my little family, to the dwelling of Judge Miller, which, with his leave, I then began to enlarge and embellish on the plans which have since been carried out. It was in the close of this year that the preparatory steps were taken toward the extension of the projected line of railroads from Schenectady through the centre of the State to Buffalo. The Oneida missionary, Kirkland, Fenimore Cooper, and others, of an humanitarian or poetical character, had deeply impressed public opin ion, at home and abroad, with an idea of the chivalry of the Indian race. I had occasionally seen Indians, belonging to the several tribes which anciently constituted the Six Nations ; but they were all, if not mendicants, vagrants, ignorant and debased. One snowy day in Janu ary word came to me that Red-Jacket, the last renowned chief and orator of the Senecas, was at the village hotel. Mr. Miller, my father- in-law, an early settler of the country, had seen Red-Jacket at the beginning of the century, and during the negotiations by which those Indians ceded their possessions in the State of New York. Mr. Miller was a gentleman of imposing presence and dignified bearing. I at tended him, thinking that whatever of character Red-Jacket had would be brought out in such an interview. We had not long sat down in the bar-room or office of the tavern when a large, robust Indian en tered the room, clad in part in our own costume, but with a blanket over his shoulders, without covering on his head, and with a medal sus- 92 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1831. pended on his breast. He advanced to the bar and took a dram, and then took his place in the centre of the room. Some of the specta tors, discomfited by his glare, rose and walked around the room, sur veying the Indian central figure. He looked down upon them com placently, and said : " I am Red-Jacket. You may look ! " This was his only greeting. The late Samuel Miles Hopkins was a most careful observer of men and manners. His long life was, in fact, contemporary with the with drawal of the Indians from the State of New York. A more benevo lent and humane man I never knew. When I related to him the story of my visit to Red-Jacket, his abrupt reception and contemptuous bearing, Mr. Hopkins said to me : " We may theorize as we please, and do all that we can for the Indian ; he will never be civilized. Men of every other race are practical. They will conform to the necessities of their condition, and to the customs of civilized life. But the Indi ans have now been our dependents and proteges two hundred years, and yet no one has ever seen an Indian in our prisons, convicted of any crime but one of force ; and no man has ever seen an Indian hold a white man s stirrup or blacken his boots." The reflections which I made upon these incidents, and others occurring in my experience with the Indian race, early reconciled me to the policy of the removal of the Indians from the white settlements to reservations provided for them at the West, which was at that time adopted by the administra tion of the General Government, and has been firmly pursued ever since, against much popular distrust and complaint. The year 1831 will be memorable, in the history of the country, for being the one in which the nation received its first practical and sol emn warning against the error of perpetuating African slavery. A savage outbreak of negro slaves occurred at Southampton, Virginia, and spread terror and consternation throughout the State. Although it was suppressed, and the revolutionists were executed, it left it no longer a matter of doubt that, if the Government should not provide seasonably for the removal of slavery, it would, sooner or later, be brought about by the violent uprising of the slaves themselves. It was this instruction which first stimulated me to inculcate, on all proper occasions and in all proper ways, the necessity of a peaceful reform of that great evil. It seems strange, at this day, that the country was indifferent, not only to the warning I have last mentioned, but also to another that occurred at the same time. Though less fearful, it was not less signifi cant. Good, earnest, and patriotic men, throughout the whole coun try, and especially in the slaveholding States, set on foot a plan for the ultimate colonization of the African race in Liberia, on the conti nent from which their ancestors had been brought. On the other 1832- 33.] RAILROAD COMPANIES. 93 hand, fugitives from the slave States made their way through the free States, and established a colony under the protection of the British Government in Canada. Although these two attempts at African colonization were very feeble, and served, perhaps, for the time, rather as safety-valves for the escape of a dangerous element in our society, and so did not at all disturb the system of slavery, yet they indicated a force antagonistic to it, which might even then have been seen to be irrepressible. The result of the State election of 1831 disappointed the sanguine expectations of the Antimasonic party ; but it at the same time showed that they polled an increased number of votes in the district where the chief contest occurred. This circumstance, taken in connection with the triumphant success of the party in Vermont, and the large increase of popular strength in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and some other States, furnished sufficient encouragement to continue the strongest possible efforts in the presidential and gubernatorial contests to occur in the succeeding year. The nomination of Clay, made in December by the National Republican Convention at Baltimore, on the other hand, showed that, unless the Antimasonic party should give up their candidate (which they could not do, inasmuch as Mr. Clay was content to remain an adhering Freemason), there could be no hope of effect ing a combination of all the opponents of General Jackson. There is, however, always some degree of uncertainty in calculations of politi cal events, even for the shortest periods. In any case duty, as well as necessity, for the time required perseverance in the Antimasonic cause. 1832-1833. Legislative Session. Banks. Railroads. Female Convicts. The Canal System. Debate on United States Bank. Van Buren rejected. Court of Errors." Citizen " Genet- Visit from Aaron Burr. His Reminiscences. A Long Chancery Suit. The Cholera. Jackson reflected. The Nullification Movement. THE sessions of the Legislature of New York which immediately precede a presidential election, like the sessions of Congress, are occu pied less with public business relating to State or local interests than with partisan politics. In 1832 my position was less embarrassing than in the previous year. I took an active part, though not a pretentious one, in the debates which occurred on questions of taxation, revenue, management of the public funds, and other matters of State adminis tration. Among these were the charters, or acts of incorporation, for railroad companies, which now became one of the most important sub jects of legislation. In the theory concerning railroads which I held 94 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1832- 33. I had no following in any quarter. I regarded them simply as public highways, like the older forms of thoroughfare, to be constructed ex clusively for the public welfare by the authority of the State, and sub ject to its immediate direction, as the canals of the State had been. And I held that it was right that, while the use of them by the people should be as free as possible, it should, at the same time, be subject to such charges as would not only keep them in repair, but afford suffi cient revenue to allow of the extension of the system throughout the State. I held the same theory in regard to works of material improve ment by the Federal Government, applying what is called the princi ple of " liberal construction " to the Constitution of the United States. In opposition to this principle the opinion universally prevailed then, as it does now, that the construction of railroads ought to be left to private capital and enterprise ; but, as there was no sufficient private capital and enterprise to be so employed, the Legislature ought to in corporate voluntary associations with powers adequate to combine the necessary capital, and provide for their remuneration by the profits to be derived from the use of the thoroughfares, in the shape of tolls or transit charges. The associations thus invited naturally sought the advantages of monopoly and of high transit-tolls, with long terms for their enjoyment. Yielding the individual opinion, before expressed, on the general policy of incorporation, I labored to exclude from rail road charters, as far as possible, the privileges of exclusive right of way, of high tolls, and of long duration of charters, and insisted, whenever I could, upon the private liability of the stockholders. While willing to encourage banking by increasing the number of chartered banks, I insisted on the principle of private liability of stock holders, and upon the keeping inviolate the safety-fund, derived from the contributions of all the banks, for the indemnity of bill-holders. Finding that, while the number of male convicted felons in the State penitentiaries exceeded twelve hundred, the number of female convicts was only seventy, and that all, though occupying separate cells, were imprisoned in the same penitentiaries and subjected to a common dis cipline, I joined my generous and enlightened associate in the Com mittee on State-prisons, in proposing and advocating the establishment of a separate prison exclusively for female convicts, and under the superintendence of persons of their own sex. This humane measure, though it failed at first, ultimately became incorporated into the peni tentiary system of the State. The State had already completed the great Erie and Champlain Canals. Before the invention of railroads was adopted, it was manifest that the benefits and profits of the two great works of improvement would be increased by the construction of branches or tributaries into distant portions of the State, and that these portions of the State could 1832- 33.] JACKSON AND THE BANK. 95 justly claim a right, by the construction of such branches, to share the benefits of inland artificial navigation. Prominent among these pro posed branches were : the Chenango Canal, to connect the waters of the Susquehanna with the Erie Canal and the valley of the Mohawk ; the Black River Canal, which proposed to connect Lake Ontario, through the valley of the Black River, with the Erie Canal ; the Oswego Canal, which should unite the Erie Canal with Lake Ontario at Oswego ; the Seneca & Cayuga Canal, by which navigation from the Erie Canal was opened into those two important lakes ; the Chemung Canal, which, by connecting the Susquehanna with Seneca Lake, would open a way to the coal-fields of Pennsylvania ; and, finally, the Genesee Valley Canal, which would extend similar communication to the sources of the Genesee River, at the base of the Alleghany range of mountains. In my mind the construction of each of these proposed canals was only a simple execution of one entire plan of inland navigation, which either was, or ought to have been, contemplated in the construction of the two profit able canals which had been already built, and I never doubted for a moment that the system, as a whole, would defray the entire cost of its construction. Unfortunately, these several proposed tributaries, while being urged upon the Legislature simultaneously, were presented sev erally, and !n rivalry with each other, by the citizens of that part of the State which was most nearly concerned in their construction. Thus a deep apprehension of the ability of the State to complete the system was excited, and this produced, on the part of the Legislature, an oppo sition to the construction of any one. The Chenango Canal, which promised the least, and which I believe has yielded the least, was the first one presented, and the one which was pressed with greatest pos sible urgency. In the Legislature of 1832, as in the year previous, I gave my support to that project, honestly and earnestly, although, of course, it was not unpleasant to me to find that the support thus ren dered by my political associates and myself, in the Legislature, was securing to the Antimasonic party a liberal consideration in the Che nango Valley. The majority, however, defeated the measure. Both Houses of Congress were known to hold majorities favorable to a renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States. The bank though, as has been mentioned, its charter was not to expire until 1836 presented a petition for renewal, misconstruing the Presi dent s reserve on that subject, in his message, so far as to suppose that he would either approve a renewal, or suffer it to pass without objec tion. The President was not misunderstood, however, by his friends, constituting the majority in our State Legislature. Mr. Dietz, a plain lay member, introduced a denunciatory resolution into the Senate. It was with much reluctance that the majority gave time for debate. Mr. Maynard, our leader, however, made a strong and able speech in oppo- 96 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1832- 33. sition, and I availed myself of the occasion to make an elaborate and exhaustive argument. We received support in this opposition from some Administration members of the Senate, and from Mr. Granger and others of our friends in the Assembly, but all without avail. The resolution passed. The act of renewal passed Congress, was vetoed by the President, and failed ; and thus the issue of a Federal Bank, or no bank, was not only brought directly before the people, but was brought directly home to the people of the State of New York. On that issue all the capitalists, who were interested in our own combined system of safety-fund banks, were brought in to the support of the dominant party, now most generally spoken of as the " Jackson party." It did not contribute to improve the position which was held by the minority on this issue, that the bank appeared in the political arena by zealous advocates, who were charged, in Congress and in the press, with having their interest derived from, or quickened by, fees or loans. In the Senate of the United States a majority was obtained by the union of Mr. Clay and his friends, Mr. Webster, then prominent as a leader of the opposition in the North, and Mr. Calhoun, a candidate for the presidency, and his friends, who already carried their peculiar politi cal tenets to the extreme of nullification. The rejection of Mr. Van Buren as minister to the court of St. James, by means of this coalition, produced the effect which, in common with discreet friends of the oppo sition, I had anticipated. Mr. Van Buren, who, if he had been left to the gratification of his tastes and fondness for society abroad, might have passed out of the thoughts of the people, was pronounced by his partisans not merely a martyr, but a martyr to his patriotic and per sonal devotion to the " hero of New Orleans," and came home to im part new inspiration to a party that was already sufficiently emboldened. I closed my legislative labors by preparing this year, as I had done in the last, the expose of the legislative and political situation, which the Antimasonic members of both Houses submitted to the people. I had need to do little more. My speech on the United States Bank question, and this address, were favorably accepted by the minority throughout the State. The Court of Errors proved still more agreeable and instructive than in the previous year. In listening to the arguments of such emi nent lawyers as Abraham Van Vechten, Daniel Cady, David B. Ogden, George Griffin, Henry R. Storrs, Elisha Williams, George Wood, Ben jamin F. Butler, and John C. Spencer, I found models worthy of all emulation, and I especially learned how far impersonal and unimpas- sioned reasoning surpasses in effect all attempts marked by fancy, humor, or sarcasm. Nor do I doubt that the commingling of juridical functions with legislative duties was effective in elevating the senato rial character. There are generally some greater men in the Senate of 1832- 33.] AARON BURR. 97 the United States than in the Senate of New York, and such states men in the former body at that period maintained of course a higher standard in debate. But, on the other hand, I have at no time seen the senatorial dignity and decorum so well upheld in the national Senate as it was at that time in the body to which I belonged. My occupations at the State capital brought me to the acquaintance of Edmond C. Genet, who figured in the period of Washington s Ad ministration as a turbulent minister of the then newly-born French Republic, and who defied General Washington and divided the country in his attempts to embroil the Government of the United States in the civil wars of France. When dismissed from office here, an offer for his head was made by the Directory of Robespierre. He wisely, there fore, determined to remain in the United States, married into the Clin ton family in this State, and became a vehement partisan of Jefferson And George Clinton. Having a cause pending in the Court of Errors, he sought my acquaintance, and treated me with extraordinary courtesy and politeness. It is due to him to say that he did not change this demeanor when, under conscientious conviction, I read an opinion, which was sustained by the court, adverse to his suit. My first chancery cause began with the beginning of my profes sional life, in 1823. It was a defense of freeholders and bona-Jide pur chasers of a military lot, under a title derived from a soldier, to whom it had been patented by the State as bounty-land. The bill was filed by a lawyer in New York, named Church, and was based upon title which bore strong marks of forgery and fraud. Mr. Church conducted his suit so negligently that I succeeded, in a year or two, in ruling him out of court. The complainant revived the suit by pleading excuses for his default, then employing Gilbert L. Thompson, a new solicitor. Mr. Thompson was no more effective than his predecessor, and I again ruled the cause out of court. It was now nine years old, when the complain ant came back again, now represented by Aaron Burr, who had returned from his long exile and disgrace in Europe, and resumed the practice of law in New York, and had already obtained an unenviable fame for success achieved by suspicious practices in desperate causes. Mr. Burr desired to be let into court, and to reinstate the cause. He appeared at Albany, and, by a courteous note, applied for an interview, which, of course, I could not refuse. He opened the interview with expres sions of sympathy in my political opinions, and then easily digressed into reminiscences of the Revolutionary War, of the disastrous attack upon Quebec, of the battle of Monmouth, of the military family of Washington, of his generals, Greene, Gates, Lafayette ; of Talleyrand, of Dr. Franklin, and even of his own great rival, Hamilton, whom he had slain. The interview was held in my family, on a Sunday. He suffered no passage in it to occur without addressing some pleasing 7 98 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1832- 33. compliment to my wife, and all the while held one or both of my chil dren on his knee. At last he came to the object of his visit. I thought I was wary, as well as firm in declining his request that I would facilitate his application to reinstate the chancery suit. He made his motion, with an affidavit, which detailed the proceedings at our interview in a manner which put me quite in the wrong, while I could not successfully impeach it, and so Mr. George Crowder was reestablished in court, with all the advantages he had twice lost. It cost some delay and much effort to procure, from time to time, persons in New York City competent to give perjured testimony of conversa tions held with my clients, on their farms in Cayuga, in which they confessed away their title and their rights. And so Mr. Burr suffered the same misfortune as his predecessors, and was twice ruled out of court, like them, and twice came back again, through the same means of affidavits, based upon gentle and seductive interviews with myself. I do not think that I derived any advantage from the political sym pathy and support he professed in these interviews. But his conversa tion was fascinating, and in one sense instructive, though on most sub jects prejudiced and insincere. He represented Washington as being entirely without independence of character and without talent, and completely under the influence of Alexander Hamilton. Burr said that Washington did not trust himself to write a billet of invitation or acceptance of a dinner, and therefore employed Hamilton to do it. He said Washington was formal, cold, and haughty. On the other hand, he especially admired Franklin, whom he represented as all suavity, courtesy, and kindness. He described him as more eminent in his time as a genial wit and humorist in the social circle than as a philosopher, and he placed Franklin always in the same category with Talleyrand. While he conceded to Hamilton great talent, he repre sented him as a parasite of Washington, unamiable and ungenerous toward all others. When I referred to the histories of the Revolution, and especially to Marshall s " Life of Washington," as differing from his own representations, he replied that the histories were all partial, interested, unreliable, and false. " I was myself present," said he, " with the army at a skirmish which it had with the enemy at Mon- mouth, New Jersey. Of course, I well knew what occurred there. I have read accounts of that battle in a dozen different histories, and, if it were not that the date of the battle and the place where it was fought were mentioned, I should not recognize in the description that it was the battle of Monmouth at all." He was severely satirical upon Jefferson, who, he said, he verily believed would have run away from Monticello if he had heard that he (Burr) had approached as near it as Alexandria or Georgetown. I closed my professional business in the Court of Chancery in the 1832- 33.J A POLITICAL COMBINATION. 99 year 1850. The last argument I made in the court was in that year. It was on the final hearing of the Crowder cause, and I am happy to say that the decision was in my favor. The Legislature had adjourned on the 26th of April. The Court of Errors had appointed to hold a term early in September, in New York. The cholera made its first visitation in the United States in the interval, preceded by a universal panic, which was but too well excused by the great mortality that followed. I was on my way to New York when I met the painful intelligence that William H. Maynard had succumbed to the disease in that city, and that the court was dissolved. The event, which awakened universal sadness, was an occasion for me of excessive concern and sorrow. I was in the Senate of New York, one of a minority of seven. Only Mr. Maynard, Mr. Tracy, and myself, took part in the debates. Mr. Tracy was eccentric and unreliable as a leader. I often needed protection and aid in my attempts to maintain the attitude which was forced upon me, in fact, by the entire party in the State, of opposition to the Federal and State Administrations. Mr. Maynard often led the way, and always with consummate ability, or, if it was left to me to lead, he came with equal ability to my defense and support. I was thenceforward to stand alone. It is needless to enlarge upon the story of the canvass. Our nomi nations throughout the State were judiciously made. Our State Con vention adopted the nominations of William Wirt and Amos Ellmaker for President and Vice-President, and submitted to the people the names of thirty-six electors who, if chosen, would give effect to that nomination. The ticket had at its head the amiable and virtuous Chancellor Kent, the most eminent member of the National Republican party in the State, and John C. Spencer, not less eminent as an Anti- masonic leader. Half the electoral candidates were, in like manner, chosen from each of the branches of the opposition, and all were men of distinguished character and worth. For Governor and Lieutenant- Governor the convention nominated our former candidates, Granger and Stevens. The " National Republican " Convention followed a few days later, ratified the nomination of Henry Clay for President, and John Sergeant, of Pennsylvania, for Vice-President, and recommended to the people the support of Granger and Stevens for Governor and Lieutenant- Governor, together with the same electoral ticket that had been recently submitted to the people by the State Antimasonic Convention. In the combination thus effected, it was plain to everybody that the National Republican party had accepted the gubernatorial candi dates of the Antimasonic party. But the question immediately arose, and was pressed with vigor by the party supporting Jackson, which of the two presidential nominations the electors, if chosen, would vote 100 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1832- 33. f or Wirt an d Ellmaker, or Clay and Sergeant ? The question was earnestly discussed, but, so far as I know, no public explanation was ever given. Perhaps I know all on that subject that was known by any one who was not a member of one or both of the State Conventions. In common with most intelligent persons in the State, I thought the chances about equal that the combined opposition might carry the State. I expected that, in that case, the electoral votes would be cast for Wirt and Ellmaker, unless it should appear from the results of the elections in other States that, being so cast for Wirt and Ellmaker, they should not be sufficient to secure their election, but would secure the election of Clay and Sergeant if cast for them. Political secrets lose their value with time, but I am sure I am betraying no secret in this case, whether worth anything or not, since none was ever confided to me. The electors were not to be brought to a test. The election resulted in a majority of thirteen thousand for the national arid State Administrations. This result showed that, while the Antimasonic party had stood up with its former majorities in the west, the coalition had been ineffectual in the eastern counties. In securing this general result the Administration party derived special advantage from a movement which they made just previous to the election, pledging themselves to the people of the Chenango Valley to adopt the construction of the Chenango Canal, and give it effect at the next session of the Legislature. My disappointment in the result of the election within my own State was only relieved by seeing that the cause had been even more signally defeated in most other parts of the Union. Only six States dissented, in the electoral colleges, from the reelection of General Jackson. There was, of course, as is customary, an earnest and thoughtful inquiry into the causes of this great failure. It was said that the result was due to the ill-conceived rejection of Martin Van Buren by the op ponents of General Jackson in the Senate ; that it was due to the un fortunate issue joined with him on the renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States ; and due to the unhappy differences which divided the opposition ; and due to the determination which one-half the people were understood to have made, that they would maintain, under General Jackson s Administration, the protective laws then in force ; and due, on the other hand, to the determination the other half were supposed to have formed, that that protection should give way to free trade, or at least to a revenue tariff. I looked upon the matter in a light different from all these speculations. It seemed to me that, so far as the popular mind was concerned, it had discovered, early after the election of 1824, that it would have been fitting in that election, as an expression of popular loyalty to the country, that General Jackson, who had closed with a brilliant victory the War of 1812 with Great Britain, should be elected President of the United States ; that, accord- 1832- 33.] THE "PLANTING STATES." . 1Q1 ing to the popular judgment, this error was corrected by his election in the year 1828 ; that, according to the same popular judgment, an in terested opposition appealed from the judgment of 1828, and demanded a reconsideration, and that the result of 1832 was simply the reaffirrnance of the popular judgment of 1828. It was this view of the subject that determined me to persevere in the political principles and sentiments I had adopted. It was certain that perseverance would be hard enough, and for a time, at least, must be maintained alone. It was clear enough that the Antimasonic party, by this fatal defeat, encountered after such long and strenuous efforts, could not be rallied again to challenge po litical power in the nation, or even in the State. It remained only to be content with the partial success it had had, in vindicating the laws and in exposing the evils and dangers of secret societies. Nor did this overthrow of the National Republican party, in a con test in which it enjoyed a virtual alliance, in this State, with the Anti- masonic party in the day of its strength, warrant any expectation that it could be successful at a future election, when the Antimasonic party should. have retired from the field. Nevertheless I thought I saw, in the early future, that the question of protection to American industry, the question of managing national revenues, the question of increasing the power and extending the sway of slavery, and, above all, the ques tion of preserving the integrity of the national Union, would remain open, and that I should be able to render more effective service to my country, on all those great national issues, by preserving our independent attitude, and not falling in with the mass to support the triumphant and dominant party. The national events which succeeded the reelection of General Jack son in 1832 were of such magnitude and seriousness as to cause those occurring on the smaller theatre of State politics to seem unimportant, if not trivial. Flushed by the great popular triumph, the President gave out, in his next message, an intimation of distrust of the security of the Government deposits in the Bank of the United States. These deposits had risen to an immense sum under the operation of the tariff law of 1828, and of the sales of public lands in the new States and Ter ritories. Thus accumulated, they were waiting the day when they could be lawfully applied to the discharge of what remained of the national debt, and it was already seen that a large surplus of treasure would remain after that debt should be extinguished. The slaveholding States, then popularly called " the planting States," because their great staple was cotton, within the last twenty years had come, with great unanimity, to the conclusion that the system of protecting American manufacturing industry was exclusively beneficial to the Northern or free States, and destructive of the prosperity of the cotton-growing or planting States. It mattered not that the North and South were ex- 102 - AUTOBIOGRAPHY, [1832- 33. changing their original grounds on this great and vexed question. Massachusetts and all the Northern States now insisted on upholding the " American system," as it was called ; in fact, the tariff protecting and fostering manufactures. South Carolina, on the other hand, at the head of the planting States, denounced that policy vehemently, falling back on the ancient legislative resolutions of Virginia and Kentucky, which declared the national Government to be only a compact among the States, in which any State, when aggrieved, may lawfully declare null and void any exercise of Federal authority, and may even lawfully secede from the Union in case of such grievance. A convention of the people of South Carolina was held, which adopted and proclaimed an " Ordinance," in which they pronounced the tariff laws of the United States unconstitutional and void, and absolved themselves from the obligation of those laws. This bold and high-handed proceeding was promptly met, by General Jackson, with a proclamation in which he maintained the binding obligation of those laws, denounced the ordi nance of South Carolina as seditious and treasonable, and announced his determination to execute the laws and maintain the integrity^of the Union. Mr. Clay s popularity consisted largely of two elements : one, that he had been the leader of the Administration party in Congress during the War of 1812 ; and the other that he was, above all others, the patron of the " American system " or protective tariff. Mr. Clay was now elected to the Senate from Kentucky. When, early in the congres sional session of 1832- 33, he saw the integrity of the Union menaced by the South Carolina ordinance of nullification, Mr. Clay, in the prac tice of that versatility for which he was so preeminently distinguished, conceived the purpose of averting the danger by a legal compromise, in which the ground of protection should be modified so as to remove the complaint of the planting States. Thus, " nullification," which cer tainly it is now proper to call "secession," when it first broke out vio lently was met, on the part of the Executive, with a defiant declaration of war, and on the part of Mr. Clay, in the Senate, by a bill of com promise, by which it was provided that duties, discriminating for the purpose of protection, should altogether cease, and that the existing customs should be reduced in the next six consecutive years, until they should uniformly stand at the rate of ten per cent. How painful the reflection is, that the way of patriotic duty is un certain, like the navigator s path on the ocean exposed just as much to winds and tempests, or unseen or misunderstood currents. Doubt less there is a purely logical line of policy for preserving and maintain ing the American republic, and, to a certain extent, each of the two great parties is animated by a patriotic desire to find and keep that line. On the other hand, we cannot but see that it devolved, at the 1832- 33.] SOUTH CAROLINA NULLIFICATION. 103 close of the Revolution, upon one class of citizens to construct, organize, and put in operation, the Federal Government. This class necessarily became a party, and they must establish the necessary institutions and adopt the necessary policy. The class of citizens left inactive and un employed were impelled, by a natural instinct, to question and oppose the dominating party, and so became themselves a party. Differences of opinion, with the lapse of time, became wider and more radical, until each reached an opposite pole. The Federalists feared that the States would sever the Union, unless it was fortified by the assumption of the State debts, by a Federal Bank to collect and disburse the revenues, a protective tariff, and a mint. These institutions being established, the Federal Government became vigorous and effective. The entire debt of the nation and of the States was on the eve of being paid, and uni versal prosperity prevailed. The opposition party, during the period of these achievements, were acquiring strength and boldness in assailing these beneficent institutions and measures. They sustained Jackson s arm while he struck down the Bank of the United States, and they sus tained South Carolina in her attempts to arrest the Government and dissolve the Union, for the purpose of compelling the relinquishment of the policy of protection. How could a patriotic citizen support General Jackson and the Republican party in his crusade against the Bank of the United States V How could a patriotic citizen withhold his support from General Jackson in his suppression of the South Carolina rebellion ? It was in consequence of this distraction of the public mind that Mr. Clay thought it wise to concede protection, for the purpose of demoralizing nullification. For my own part, I sought to mitigate party spirit. I gave my best abilities to quiet the dispute about the Bank of the United States to animate the Legislature and the country to support the President in repressing insurrection ; and, while I could not follow Mr. Clay in his line of compromise, I was silent and acquiesced when Congress adopted that measure. The passage of Mr. Clay s bill inspired Congress with new courage. Having put the incipient rebellion in the wrong, they came with great unanimity and courage to the high proceeding of arming the President with all the necessary power to suppress it. This act was called the "Enforcement Law." The combined measures proved effectual. South Carolina rescinded her ordinance, and secession, baffled in this first attempt, retired to gather new strength and wait for a more pro pitious occasion. My satisfaction with this result was much impaired by the discovery that the leaders of the Republican party, while they adhered to the President in this particular transaction, nevertheless practised a studied reserve on the abstract questions of the rights of the States to nullify laws of Congress and to secede from the Union. In addition to these labors I performed my customary task of pre- 104: AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. paring an address, in which, joining with my associates, we gave a review of the proceedings of the Legislature, and of the State and Federal Administrations. At no period in our history has any party ascendant in the State or the nation been stronger than the Republi can party then was. Seldom has any political party been weaker than that to which I belonged. Perhaps, however, the historian may ulti mately find that the small and then despised band of patriots with whom I acted were, even then, preparing the way and gathering the recruits for that great party which, in the culminating struggle, res cued the Union in its supreme contest, and established it on the im movable basis of universal equality and freedom. 1833. First Voyage to Europe. The Letter-Bag. A Lost Sailor. Liverpool and New York. Chester. Scenes in Ireland. The Merchant s Widow. Emmet s Cell. Emigrants to America. Scotland and Scottish Memories. Edinburgh. A Grumbling Legend. London Sights and People. Seeing the King. Malibran. An American Charge*. Joseph Hume. A Day in Parliament. Cobbett. Peel. Hay. O Connell. Stanley. American Reformers. Indians and Quakers. Paganini. Thoughts on leaving Eng land. MY father, at the age of sixty-five, although retaining all his intel lectual vigor and much of his characteristic energy, had become a valetudinarian, and determined on a summer voyage to Europe. I cheerfully attended him, at his request. We sailed from New York on the 1st of June. One cannot, without difficulty, conceive the inferior ity of the commerce and travel of the period to that of the present. New York, which, counting its extensions on Long Island and in New Jersey, has more than a million and a half of people, had then a popu lation of only two hundred thousand ; and Liverpool had not more. The only railroads in the world were the Liverpool & Manchester, a small section of the Baltimore & Ohio, and the Mohawk & Hudson, between Albany and Schenectady. No steamship had yet crossed the ocean. The travel between the United States and Europe, with the exception of an occasional merchant-vessel, was monopolized by a weekly line of sailing-packets. Our ship, the Europe, belonging to this line, was deemed a monster, as she had a tonnage of six hundred. She carried twenty cabin passengers and sixty-four in the steerage. Like all other ships, she had a letter-bag, and when we were approach ing our destined port these bags were emptied on the cabin-floor, and the letters, five thousand in number, were assorted by the cabin-passen gers according to their address. It was not surprising to me to find that far the largest proportion had very circumlocutory addresses for parishes in Ireland ; and that not a small number were directlv a,d- 1833.] LIVERPOOL AND NEW YORK. 105 dressed to his Majesty King William IV., of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Our voyage was the unusually short one of eighteen days. An occasional calm gave me the opportunity of a bath in the sea, or an excursion by small boat to study marine phenomena, a study in which I profited much by the aid of a fellow-passenger who was a dis tinguished naturalist. Small as the volume of interoceanic emigration then was, incidents occurred which awakened a deep interest and sym pathy with that subject. A widow woman brought her child to the ship s surgeon, to have him dress its face, wounded by a burn. I in quired her story. Her husband, a mechanic, had emigrated two years before to New England. A fire occurred, in which his house and shop were destroyed, and he los. his life. The wife was carrying home the bereaved child. We had scarcely left port when the first-mate, an experienced sailor, directed my attention to one of the ship s crew, a dull-looking, clumsy Englishman, of perhaps twenty-five years, saying that he had applied in New York to be employed as first-mate, and, failing in that application, had shipped as a common seaman, and that he was not even qualified for that. .Lfter being out two or three days, the mate directed this seaman, with others, to go aloft and furl a sail. He climbed to the top of the ratlines, and was unable to go higher. The mate mischievously insisted, and thus obliged the man to expose his ignorance and his inability. He did not even know one rope in the rigging from another. He was permitted to descend amid the derision of the passengers and crew. A day or two later the sailor was seen toiling amid the ropes above the ratlines, and, when we asked what he was doing, we received for answer that he had gone up on leave to try to perform the same task in which he had before failed. He slipped from his foothold in the ropes on which he was standing, fell upon a yard arm below, and thence dropped lifeless into the sea, the ship then going at the rate of nine knots an hour. Among the large crowd of plain and humble people who came on board when we entered the dock at Liverpool was the sister of that unfortunate young man. She had come down from her country home to meet him who had thus per ished in his emulous attempt to become a sailor. I compared the magnificent stone docks at Liverpool with the mean, rickety, wooden slips and quays of New York. The painful contrast still remains unchanged. I thought I found the scientific institutions, the charities, and the cemeteries of Liverpool superior to those of American cities. They have no such superiority now. In the library of the Athe naeum I turned over the pages of a British magazine, published during our Revolutionary War. It excited a smile when I read an account of the " rebel Congress " at Philadelphia, and learned that that treasonable 106 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. assemblage had beer brought about through the " agitation of a few leaders," among whom John Hancock and Samuel Adams were the two " most destitute of principle." I dined with William Brown, founder, I think, of the house of Brown Brothers & Company, which, although he no longer lives, has since lost none of its influence, wealth, or hospitality. I visited Chester, with its noble cathedral, its painted windows, quaint walls, and monastic statuary, and its ancient Roman castle and Caesar s Tower, now reduced to the " base uses " of a modern armory. I paid the usual fee to the housekeeper, and was shown, wondering, through Eaton Hall, the country-seat of the Marquis of Westmin ster, little thinking then that at a later period I should come to num ber its proprietor and his family among my personal friends. We crossed the Irish Channel. Of course the passage was rough, and the steamer narrow, mean, and uncomfortable. I believe that English coast-navigation has these discomforts everywhere. The Irish passengers made advances to me to enlist my sympathy in their hearty hatred of the English. I found the Irish porters as noisy, and the Irish peasantry as poor and loquacious, and the public edifices and streets of Dublin as majestic and melancholy, as they are usually rep resented. I remember even now the disgust with which I looked upon the beautiful Parliament-House of Ireland converted into a banking- house. Among the crowd who were waiting in the vestibule for the bank-doors to be opened, I was shown a poor woman. She was a mer chant s widow, left entirely destitute. She became mad with the idea that her husband had left a large deposit with the bank for her support. Every morning she presented herself, demanding the sum so necessary for her comfort, and went away astonished and sad at seeing everybody get what he asked for, while she, being no less entitled, was always refused. I had already seen the Mersey and the Dee, and corrected my false estimate of the English rivers. The Liffey, now chiefly used for sew erage, was altogether disgusting. I attended guard-mounting at the Castle, among a crowd of many thousand spectators, and met there a son of one of the jurors who convicted Robert Emmet. I attended him, with much of the sympathy that we bestow upon the memory of martyrs, to the cell in which he, the most chivalrous and the most unfortunate of the patriots of Ireland, was confined, the court-room in which he was tried, and the scaffold on which he was executed. I saw a curious theatrical entertainment exhibited on cart-wheels, in which one of the audience, a simple-minded countryman, interrupted the performance by expostulating with the clown on the folly of his wearing so grotesque a dress, and playing the buffoon for so wretched a compensation. 1833.] SCOTLAND. 107 My visit to the tombs of Dean Swift and Stella, of course, was not omitted. The rural districts in Ireland, seen from the top of the coach, in stead of exhibiting, as I had expected, beautiful villas and neat and comfortable cottages, seemed the abode of poverty and wretchedness. In the suburbs, the dwelling-houses of the peasantry were built of stone, and covered with thatch ; but farther in the country they were grouped into hamlets, and were constructed of mud, with mud roofs, and only a bar separated the different compartments occupied by the family, the cow, and the swine. The most cursory glance at a scene like this was sufficient to disclose all the evils of " absenteeism," and to show that the only remedy was emigration. Indications of the use of that remedy were all around us. Placards offering passages to Canada and the United States covered the walls in the streets of Drogheda and Belfast, and the deck of the Maid of Islay, a mere tug, which received us at Belfast, was crowded with squalid men, wom en, and children, with their few and miserable cattle and poultry, bent upon throwing themselves upon the shore at Glasgow, even if they should get no farther in the path of exile. In this visit to Ireland, made less than forty years ago, the population of that unhappy coun try was counted at eight millions. The effectiveness of emigration as a remedy for social evils is seen in the fact that the Irish nation is now only four millions. All this while a convict-ship lies at anchor in the harbor of Dublin, to receive those to whom the privilege of emigra tion is denied, except through the gateway of crime and conviction. My admiration of the Scottish people is excited anew when I re call the incidents of my brief visit to that country. Awaking on board the steamer at the quay of Glasgow, it was a pleasant surprise to see that every vessel on the river and every inn on shore bore a name which reminded me of the genius of Scotland s last great poet and novelist, Scott the " Lady of the Lake," the " Lord of the Isles," " Fitz-James," " Waverley," etc., etc. Even more honorable to the dis crimination of the Scottish people was the spirit which had dedicated a noble statue to the memory of General Sir John Moore, who fell at Corunna, and another to James Watt, the humble Scottish mechanic, who, although he let the invention of the marine steam-engine escape to our countryman, Fulton, nevertheless brought the invention of the land-engine to a condition of perfect adaptation to the wants of man kind ; and a third, more colossal than either, to their great and severe reformer, John Knox. I might be tempted here to describe the city of Glasgow, with its streets crossing each other at the central cross, its dilapidated, ancient, and lofty structures occupied by the poor, and its new, smaller, and more convenient dwellings occupied by the rich ; its Roman Catholic Cathedral, the only one in Scotland, perhaps, saved 108 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. from the vandalism of the Presbyterian reformers ; and its memorable battle-field of Langside. But a citizen of the modern town, compact, elegant, and extended over a district of five or ten miles square, would scarcely recognize a feature of his own home in the diminutive Glas gow which I saw in 1833. I may record it as honorable to the Scottish people that, although, under the influence of religious feeling, they abandoned their fair and chivalrous queen, after the catastrophe at Langside, they seemed to have come back now, when all religious asperity has passed away, to be unanimous in vindicating her memory from the suspicions and re proaches raised against her by her enemies. I visited Greenock, practically the port, and Paisley, a large and important manufacturing suburb of Glasgow ; examined the Grand Canal of Scotland, which unites the Frith of Clyde with the Frith of Forth ; the rock of Dumbarton with its castle ; traversed the beautiful little Leven Water ; revived my historical and poetical reminiscences of Scotland by an examination of Bothwell Castle, and Loch Lomond, with its yew-covered islands ; and Loch Katrine, with its lofty shores, the Trosachs, Callander, and Stirling. I wonder, even now, as I recall that tour through the picturesque but barren hills and valleys, at the social caprice which planted the most intellectual and enterprising people of Europe in a home so cold and sterile. If I could revisit Stirling, I should like now to look at the old ruined palace which the Regent Mar built during the minority of James VI., and see whether I could now decipher the grumbling legend, even at that time almost illegible, in which the builder recorded his protests against the censorious comments of his neighbors upon his larceny of the materials for the structure from the abandoned neighboring Abbey of Cambuskenneth : " Esspy . speik . furth . I . cair . nocht Consider . well . I . cair . nocht The . moir . I . stand on . oppin hicht My . faultis . moir . subject . ar . to . sight I . pray . at . lukaris . on . this . luging - With . gentle . e . to . gif . thair . juging." The geologist reads the history of our globe in the strata deposited in successive desolations. How often have I thought that the traveler reads the history of nations and races in the desolations of successive dynasties, conquests, religions, and states ! I suppose it was all right. But it saddened me to see that noble old Edinburgh is losing its own proper national pride, its proper pride as the capital of a great nation, and the glory of a great and unique people, in its modern loyalty to the British throne, more zealous than even London itself. I lingered long at Edinburgh ; left with regret, and gave up with 1833.] LONDON SIGHTS AND PEOPLE. 109 reluctance, at last, the study of its traditions, in its dilapidated castle, deserted Holyrood, Allan Ramsay s House, St. Giles with the pulpit of John Knox, the dark and vaulted tavern-cell in which Burns celebrated his revels, and Salisbury Craig, with its noble promenade, and the house of Jeanie Deans, embowered, as it ought to be, in shrubbery and roses. I passed through Berwick-on-Tweed into England, looked upon Alnwick, the home of " the Percy s high-born race," examined the col lieries at Newcastle, stopped at York and studied its noble and well- preserved ancient cathedral. I admitted the justice of a monkish legend, which still embellishes its walls, although I did not see the poetry of it : " Ut rosa phlos phlorum, Sic est domus ista domorum." In London the stage-coach stopped at the Saracen s Head. I do not now remember where that fierce sign-board was displayed. But after a drive of two hours, through streets almost impassable, we found our bankers, Baring Brothers & Company. They recommended me to take lodgings near Hyde Park, which, they said, were three miles distant. " Three miles ! " said I ; " that s out of town. That will never do." We compromised on Mrs. Wright s Hotel, Adams Street, Adelphi, just out of the dust and smoke of the city proper, and from which most of the monuments are accessible. It is a trait of the English character that intellectual power, in any department, is accompanied by mediocrity or meanness of art. The English drama, developed by Shakespeare, draws the visitor from every part of the world to the theatre. Co vent Garden and Drury Lane were dark and mean forty years ago, and they are so now. It is a memory which I would not willingly part with that I heard Mali- bran in " Sonnambula " at Covent Garden. My American pride was humbled at our reception by the charg e ^affaires who had been left by Mr. Van Buren. The legation was at the West-End, on the first floor over a fashionable tailor s shop. The charge was a young man of middle stature and dark complexion. He spoke English with a marked French accent, and had forgotten, if he ever knew, how to give his hand with the cordiality customary among our countrymen. He was attended by an American youth of twenty, who lounged, during our interview, in a damask-covered arm chair. Our conversation with our representative was cold and formal. The chargb seemed to have no interest in matters at home, while prudence forbade all allusions to political affairs in the country to which he was accredited. The notes I then made might have served, on my late visit, as a guide-book through Westminster Abbey, the Tower of London, St. AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. Paul s, the bridges over the Thames, and the tunnel under it, the docks and Windsor Castle, the Royal Academy, the Zoftlogical Gardens, and Newgate. Among the passengers across the Atlantic were a successful Mas sachusetts country merchant, named Baker, and his wife. We sepa rated at Liverpool, and I saw them no more until we met again on my return-voyage from Havre. They had made a tour as I had, and we compared notes. They asked me, " Did you see Windsor ? " " Yes." "The chapel?" "Yes." " The palace ? " " Yes." " The pictures ? " " Yes." "The forest?" "Yes." " Did you see the king ?" " Yes." " How did you see him ? " I replied that I had paid a crown to a beadle, for which I obtained leave to stand at the foot of the stair case in the vestibule, and stared at the king as he came down from his pew in the gallery. " Did the king salute you ? " " No," I replied. " I was ashamed of my own impertinence in staring at him, and bowed from mortifica tion." " Oh ! " said Mr. Baker, " we saw the king better than that. He was especially gracious to us." " And how did you come to see the king ? " " Well, we learned at the tavern at Windsor that the king was to ride out in the forest at four o clock, and that he would be in an open barouche, with outriders. So we took a hackney-coach, which was also an open barouche, stipulating with the coachman that he should point out to us the king s coach. There were a few private carriages on the road at the same time. As we came near the place where we were to pass, I saw that the persons riding in these carriages bowed when the royal carriage passed them, and his majesty returned the courtesy. I was so fearful that I might lose the sight of the king that I rose and stood bolt upright, staring at him. The king, thinking from this ex traordinary demonstration of respect that I was some friend or sup porter deserving special consideration, rose from his seat and stood bolt upright, looking at me. I bowed quite down to the floor of the carriage, and the king, not to be outdone in courtesy, bowed equally profoundly to me." " Well," said I, " we have both proved the truth of the adage that cats can look upon kings." It was my fortune in London to make the acquaintance of Joseph Hume, a man of great industry and worth, the leader of the Radical party, if there was such a party, in Parliament. Mr. Hume gave me a 1833.] A DAY IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS. HI place under the galleries in the House of Commons. I saw and heard Cobbett. He made a complaint to the House of a breach of faith practised by some unknown member of a committee to which he be longed, in exposing testimony which ought to have been kept confi dential. Knowing the vehemence which characterized him, I was sur prised at the prudence which he exhibited. He spoke very distinctly. When he alluded to the publisher of the testimony, who was not a member of the House, his epithets were severe and coarse. He called him " a spy." When, however, he reflected upon the delinquency of members of the committee, his language was calm, guarded, and quali fied. Just the reverse of this was the language of the members of the House who replied to him. They were respectful toward all outsiders, intemperate and abusive toward him. He replied to all at once, amid a storm of disapprobation, so coolly and clearly that it was evident that, though sadly in the minority, he was a man of vigor and power. Although the English people are continually disturbed by the ap prehension that they are to become Americanized, an incident which I am going to relate will show that political changes proceed much less rapidly there than in our own country. The House of Commons (then recently reformed) had passed the bill making important alterations in the government of the national Church in Ireland. The bill was then in the House of Lords, which threatened its rejection. The popular party were insisting that the king should create peers enough to pass the bill. There was a motion pending that the House be called next week to express their solicitude for the fate of the bill in the House of Lords, and adopt an address to the king if it should be necessary. The motion was sustained by Sir John Wrottesley, in a modest and well- conceived speech. A member, not yet of middle age, tall and slender, neatly -dressed, replied, giving vigorous battle against the resolution. He dissected the mover s argument and showed that its facts were doubtful and its assumptions unreasonable. He demanded: "Would not this measure be justly regarded as a menace to intimidate the Lords ? And would not this be an unprecedented as well as unwar ranted attack upon the constitutional independence of a coordinate branch of the Legislature ? " He appealed to the House of Commons, jealous of its own rights, " not to strike that fatal blow." Becoming impassioned and cheered by the favorable reception of his speech, he called upon the mover to withdraw the resolution. It seemed as if the bold demand would be sustained by the whole House. This speaker was Sir Robert Peel. His speech was simple, plain, and practical, with out pretension to learning or authority. Its effect was destroyed in a moment by a much shorter speech pro nounced by Colonel Hay (I wonder whether this is the present Sir John Hay ?). "I think," said he, in a blunt way, " that when a bill is under 112 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. consideration in either House of Parliament, so vitally important to the interests, and so deeply interesting to the feelings of the country, it is the duty of the members of this House to be at their posts. We know members are not here now. We know they ought to be here. And I hope, therefore, the mover will not withdraw his resolution." This speech, warmly cheered by the Whigs, restored the equality of the debate. A member who sat in the centre of the hall, and had a sturdy frame, and a broad, Irish countenance, arose, and the House was hushed at once. " I hate," said Daniel O Cormell, " all kinds of hypocrisy. A re formed Parliament professes to be the friend of Ireland, and of reform ing the oppression under which my country labors. This bill will do but little toward effecting that reform. But it is all that ministers have offered. Although it is only an installment of what I want, I don t want it thrown out of the House of Lords, because it is all that I can get. I want now to see the members of this reformed House of Parliament here, that their sincerity may be tested. It has been said that there is no precedent in the history of the Commons. How could there be a precedent, when, for the last century, the Commons have been only a department of the House of Lords, their nominees and representatives ? They dared not vote against their masters. I am as much opposed to this bill as anybody. But I don t want to see it thrown out ; I want to see whether the people are not stronger than the enemies of the people ! " Cries arose from all sides of the House, sufficient to stifle a less resolute speaker, " Why did you vote against the bill, if you want it to pass ? " " That," replied O Connell, " is a different thing altogether. I voted against the bill because I wanted a better bill. I hate all political hypocrisy. I voted against the bill ; but inasmuch as the Government, as a matter of grace, has proffered it, I want to see the responsibility of its defeat fall where it ought." Taunts and reproaches of the speaker for his inconsistency seemed, for a moment, to reconcile the friends and the enemies of the nation. The debate was continued by prosy and dull speakers on both sides; but their speeches revealed the fact that while the Tories, in opposition, deprecated the measure vehemently, the Liberal ministry and their sup porters were timid. Only independent and radical members gave the measure an earnest support. At last a member, apparently about thirty, who sat opposite to Sir Robert Peel, obtained the floor. He seemed too young to grapple in such a debate. His voice was musical, but feeble ; while his manner was graceful and self-possessed. Lord Stanley, Colonial Secretary, 1833.] PARLIAMENT AND CONGRESS. 113 afterward the distinguished premier, Earl Derby, presented clearly the true state of the question. He said, with great frankness and courtesy, that the ministry, of which he was a member, was embarrassed by the motion. If the Lords should reject the bill, the ministry positively would resign; and he ventured to express no strong hopes that the Lords would pass the bill. This failure of ministerial support, for a measure which the mover had introduced with a view to their advantage, brought upon the speaker a vehement attack from independent members. It was then that Lord Stanley rose, and, while he vindicated the ministry from all inconsistency, exposed with scathing severity the inconsistency of the assailants, and with keen satire rebuked O Connell as "an agitator, seeking not the peace or the advantage of Ireland, or the welfare of the kingdom, but confusion and disorder, destructive to both." O Con nell replied, more vehemently and contemptuously than before. The House divided ; the motion fell. I am not able now to recall the result in the House of Lords. It is apparent, however, that, whatever that result was, it left the state of the Church in Ireland substantially the same as before. Sir Robert Peel might be compared, as a parliamentary speaker, with Mr. Fessenden. Lord Stanley had the versatility of Clay, with the chasteness of Calhoun. Daniel O Connell, with the fervor of Thomas Addis Emmet, had all the boldness and vigor of Stephen A. Douglas, but without his indiscretion. I do not now know how it happened, but when the chamber was cleared, in order to the division, I fell into an anteroom, in which the members, as fast as they carne out, sat down to dine in groups. I found them social and communicative. On a subsequent day, I visited the House of Lords, but the Lord Chancellor was not on the wool-sack ; the House was thin, and the debate without interest. It was said that the Marquis of Westminster was to give a dinner that evening ; and this accounted for the early rising of both Houses. Such was the limited observation that time allowed me then to be stow upon Parliament. But it was enough to satisfy me that dig nity, decorum, as well as earnestness of attention, all are promoted by the arrangement of the chambers so as to bring the members in close proximity to each other. Neither then, nor at any time since, when I visited the House of Commons, have I witnessed such listlessness as generally prevails in the House of Representatives, when the subject of debate is uninteresting, or such confusion as prevails there when debate becomes loud and vehement. This difference must, in part, result from the use of seats and desks, which cause the members to be spread over so broad an area. But I think there is another reason. In England the Government is actually carried on in the House of Com- 8 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [183E. mons. Its measures are opened and decided there. The spectators, as well as the press, go there, to learn what the Government proposes to do, and to see it done. But, in the United States, the Government is carried on by the Executive Department. The press and people have its acts before them ; and they attend the two Houses of Congress to hear those acts considered and discussed. Nobody knows, beforehand, in London, what the decision of any question by the House of Commons will be. But I think that, since we have the aid of the telegraph, the people of Boston and the people of San Francisco know what the result of any motion, resolution, or law proposed in Congress will be, hours, days, and even weeks, before the vote is taken there. One of the social enigmas which have always puzzled me is the pro clivity which political reformers in our country have to go to England to promulgate their theories and develop their measures. I suppose that they have two reasons for this : one is, the greater safety with which a subject, unpopular at home, can be discussed there ; and the other, that reformers who find fault with the Government of their own country can easily enlist followers in a foreign and unfriendly land. We had Americans at that time who were busily engaged in present ing to the English public the argument for American emancipation. Eliot Cresson, an agent of the Colonization Society, was canvassing Great Britain and raising funds there for its enterprise. William Lloyd Garrison went to England as agent for the New England Anti- slavery Society, which insisted on immediate abolition of slavery. These two agents opened a debate in London on the merits of their respective societies. Into this debate I declined to enter while in Eng land. A citizen of Onondaga County, who, I believe, was partly merchant and partly schoolmaster, had brought to London four Onondaga Indi ans, whom he called " chiefs," and who, perhaps, might have been so if their tribal state had not been abolished fifty years before. He con tracted with these Indians, stipulating three conditions : 1. That they should keep sober ; 2. That, although they spoke English, they should sing Indian war-songs and dance Indian war-dances ; 3. That they should be content with their being supported at his expense, while he should have the profit to be derived from their exhibition. The Soci ety of Friends, always interested in the cause of humanity, took no tice of this transaction ; and, just as the adventurer was about to real ize his fortune, they drew the Indians aside and heard their complaints. The exhibition was arrested by a habeas corpus, sued out by the Friends, and a subscription was raised and the Indians sent home ta America, while the exhibitor was left to beg for contributions from hi& countrymen to get home himself. 1833.] ENGLISH, SCOTCH, AND IRISH. 115 At Drury Lane, as at Covent Garden, I found, not the drama, but a musical entertainment Paganini s performance on the violin. I knew that this instrument had vast depths and variations of sound. But it is impossible for any one to conceive the riches which he brought out from its strings. I think it is agreed that he has had no equal. I had gone to England, however, imbued with almost filial reverence for the high attributes of the parent-country. It was a disappointment that I found no Garrick, or Kean, or Siddons, presenting the tragedies of Shakespeare. The legitimate drama has been receding there and everywhere else since that time, while the opera has been everywhere coming into its place. Are we not to suppose from this that now, since reading has become universal, the drama, with its studied articu lation and its scenic aids, is too tedious a form of instruction and amusement ; and that henceforth music, with its quickness of ex pression and subtile sympathy with the passions, is to become the uni versal entertainment ? If so, the change will be no greater than the changes which the stage has undergone since the time when the Greeks enacted their poetic tragedies, or the Romans entertained themselves with gladiators at the Colosseum, or the monks in the middle ages pre pared the way for the modern stage by their presentations of religious " mysteries." Of course, like every other tourist, I tried the " Whispering Gal lery " at St. Paul s, and ascended the ball to obtain a view of the city. Of course, the city was covered with a dense cloud of fog and coal-smoke. But, when I had come down, half a crown secured me admission to a panorama which presented clearly the vision that had been denied to me. Of course, I was not alone in seeing these sights and witness ing these wonders. Although I had presented only a few letters, and had little time to secure the advantages which the delivery of those few offered me, I was all the while making acquaintances, which, though casual, were pleasant and instructive. I met a Russian trav eler, and struck hands with him in the dome of St. Paul s, and my Ger man acquaintances made in the theatre were intelligent and critical. And now I was to leave England. It was an occasion of sadness and regret that, of all the wonders which the country contained, and all the instructions that it offered, I had seen so few and gathered so little. I did not venture to think that I had correctly learned or even understood anything. I did store away some thoughts for future ref erence and examination : 1. I thought it worthy of reflection whether Ireland would ever acquiesce in British rule and conform to British laws, so long as the United States should keep open an asylum for the Irish exile. 2. I thought it doubtful whether the people of Scot land, educated and trained in the sentiments of John Knox, would ever hazard the danger of licentiousness in a republic. 3. I thought AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. that, while the English people were divided into reformers and Tories, there was no real party of progress there ; that, while the Tory grew more inveterate all the while, the reformer held back in fear from every advance he made. I have never been one of those among my countrymen who have thought, or have affected to think, that, as a people, we cherish an affec tion for, or sympathy with, the parent British nation. On the other hand, I have seen and known and felt that, whether it was for good or evil, we are always jealous and dissatisfied with the British nation. It was an object of inquiry with me on my first visit to England, as it has been ever since, to study how far this discontent of ours is reciprocated there. It seemed to me then that, little as we loved the English na tion, they loved us still less. Certainly, in establishing the republic, and demanding its universal acceptance, we made a bold claim on the respect and confidence of mankind a claim which might well have shocked our British brethren, even if it had been made with less of pretension and presumption. In England, during the time of my first visit there, political opinion, as well as the policy of the Government, was as yet determined only by the upper class. The middle class had only begun to organize itself. The lower class was without a voice. Cer tainly the upper class, under the circumstances, could not be expected to love us, even if we had been humbler than we were, and loved the British nation more than we did. A change of temper toward us in Great Britain was only to be effected by the reflection upon Great Britain of the experiences of her own people, who should emigrate and become absorbed in the United States. That emigration had then only just begun. Not only did the exiles whom we received, by their teachings and correspondence, produce no impression in our favor upon public opinion in Great Britain, but it may be remembered that, at that day, these emigrants were received with distrust and jealousy by our own countrymen. So slow is the process of political change, and so difficult is it to solve any political problem until it has been subjected to the development of time and experience. 1833. Crossing the German Ocean. Traveling through Holland by Canal. Dutch Towns and Thrift. Amsterdam and the Hague. Broeck. The Children s Patron Saint. Meeting an Army. A Woman s-Rights Question. Diisseldorf and Cologne. The Rhine. Coblentz. Bingen. Mayence. Frankfort. Heidelberg. Among the Swiss Moun tains. Young and Old Republics. A Tavern Adventure. Berne. Lausanne. Ge neva. An Unhappy Man. St.-Gervais. WHAT a romance was this journey that I was making ! I was alter nating drives and walks, through green fields and shrubbery, in July, 1833.] THE DUTCH CANALS. with summer voyages in northern seas. A trip by steamboat on the German Ocean, with its customary roughness and privations, was made an amusing one for me by the manifest reserve of the English and the phlegmatic and grotesque ways of the Dutch passengers. With what wonder did I look upon the rich landscape reclaimed from the sea, on both sides of the Meuse ! Rotterdam, with its lofty, narrow dwellings, canals traversing all its streets, its markets filled with flowers, even more than fruits and meats, its busy merchants dressed, though neatly, in fashions which had become obsolete elsewhere, its unbonneted mar ket women and children, making the pavements resound with the clat ter of their wooden shoes all was unique and peculiar. But the cholera was in Rotterdam. It was one of the caprices of that disease, when it first appeared in the West, that it clung to the banks of canals and marshes. Sixty persons died of it in the day we were at Rotter dam. I knew seventy-two persons to perish of cholera in a day, at Syracuse, on the Erie Canal, and nearly as many at Seneca Falls, on the Seneca Canal ; while there has never been a death from cholera at Auburn, which is elevated two hundred and fifty feet above those places. I have never enjoyed any form of travel so much as that of the canals in Holland. The canals are deep, and the water clear. The small boat, divided into two apartments, calls, like a stage-coach, at every village ; and you may rest on your journey at any place, and resume it at any hour afterward. Coffee-gardens solicit you at every stopping-place, and the banks of the canal are lined with tasteful villas, each of which has a kiosk, or tea-house, projecting over the water. The Dutch canals, unlike ours, do not have a towpath under the bridges. Of course, on approaching a bridge, the rope is cast off, and reattached after passing it. An attendant, generally a female, is in waiting at the bridge to render this service, who places on the boat s deck a little wooden box in which the passengers are expected each to deposit a stiver. When we were passing under a bridge we deposited the perquisites in the box, and gave it to the captain, who, instead of giving it to the woman, or even placing it on the bank, to my great disgust threw box with money and all into the canal. Just as I was raising a loud complaint against this discourteous proceeding, the woman s dog dived into the canal, brought out the box and delivered it to the woman. These painstaking Dutch people seem to teach the dog to do anything. They draw carts for marketmen and fishermen. But in these occupations they are not always steady-going, often stopping to bark and bite. On the banks of the canal, outside of the villages, are smooth, grav eled roads, ornamented with shade-trees. The fields and meadows of Holland have a neatness unknown elsewhere ; and it is not without AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1838. reason that the landscape artist chooses for his study the sedgy brook, the willow-trees, the cattle, and the poultry of the farmyard of a Dutch farm. And so, in this leisurely and idle way, we traversed the country of the Lowlands. I saw Delft ; spent two days at the Hague ; saw its wonderful Chinese collection, and its great museum ; looked through the Palace in the Wood ; and then Amsterdam, an illustration that a Venice can be reproduced by an enterprising race in a northern clime, with all its commercial success and effect, but without having a par ticle or a trace of the beauty, splendor, or poetry, of the original. Nevertheless, men and nations do not live for beauty alone, and Am sterdam is a marvel. Built on dikes, with the narrowest streets, the tall houses incline toward each other at their roofs, and no carriages are allowed to rattle at speed through the streets, for fear of shaking the tenements down. The Spanish, the Portuguese, and the French nation went about the world after the discoveries of Columbus and Vasco de Gama making conquests and Christianizing the natives, and establishing empire. The Dutch, on the contrary, went East and West with equal zeal and perseverance, content to make money. Spain, Portugal, and France, have saved little or nothing of empire, and effected little in the way of proselytism. But Holland has saved nearly all her acquired territory, besides laying up wealth which makes her a capitalist among the nations. Great Britain has only just now learned the secret from Holland, and begun to apply it in India. We saw Leyden and we visited Scheveningen. A year ago they showed me at Salt Lake, in the Tabernacle, their new organ, which they claim to be second only to that at Boston ; and at Boston they boast the largest organ in the world, except the one at Haarlem. That great one I saw at Haarlem, with its eight thousand pipes and sixty-eight stops. I could not perceive that it gave any finer effect than another instrument to the prescribed psalms and hymns of the ordinary service. But certainly it poured out the an thems, with which the worship began and ended, with a grandeur of volume that I have never known to be approached. I \vonder whether the good Lutherans at Haarlem still deny to strangers the loan of a chair to sit in during divine service, as they did then ? The chairs were very common and cheap. I think that I could buy at Richardson s shop a sitting as good and as large as those which graced the Cathedral of St. Peter at Haarlem, for fifty cents. Everybody who visits Holland ought to see Broeck, a suburb of three hundred villas, six miles out of Amsterdam. The travelers, with their vehicles, stopped outside of the town. Its streets are only foot paths, but each villa is embosomed in a parterre of flowers and statuary. No carriage or animal is allowed in its narrow streets; the wants of the inhabitants are supplied only by canals. No sound of hammer or shut- 1833.] UP THE RHINE. ;Q9 tie disturbs the repose. A motto, expressive of welcome or benedic tion, is over every door. Alas ! no door was open to me ; nor did I meet, in Holland, anybody for whom the golden hinges had turned. The Museum at Amsterdam is inexhaustible in richness and variety. Only one people in the world have been able to shape out, in imagina tion, a patron saint for children. That is the Dutch people ; and their creation is Santa Glaus. I think that only the people who could de velop a Santa Glaus could produce the expressive, grotesque, and hu morous art of the Dutch school. The Royal Palace, not now inhabited by the king, was interesting chiefly for its pictures, furniture, and statuary, reminding you of the brief and brilliant reign of Hortense and her husband, the unenter prising and unambitious Louis Bonaparte. But I must not linger longer in reminiscences of Holland. We struck across the country, by diligence, from Amsterdam through Saardam and Utrecht to Nimeguen, on the right bank of the Rhine. At that place we found an army, waiting command to march against the seceding province of Belgium. War, however, was avoided, wisely as well as fortunately. There is only one political experience to which Belgium, with its ambitious and flourishing cities, Brussels and Ant werp, could not reconcile itself, and that is, subjugation to Holland with its cities of Amsterdam and the Hague. Of course, the state of war required an examination of passports, and a close inspection of baggage. The former matter was easily settled ; but, when the Dutch officer demanded my trunk, I pointed it out to him, as it lay on the top of the huge diligence. He directed a young woman, who seemed not loath, to bring it down. Shocked at the idea of seeing such low and severe labor put upon a woman, I remon strated ; but she ascended the ladder. I rushed upon it to bring down the baggage myself. She contended with me, and I was soon obliged to give up to her superior strength, and the superior argument, which I came at last to understand, that she had a professional title to the fee for the service. It is of no use to contend with these German women. They are as tenacious of the rights of their sex as our own woman s- rights women in America, only they take a different view of what those rights are ! The tour up the Rhine, by steamer, was then the most attractive feature of travel in Europe. Small but strong steamers, adapted to the shallow and powerful currents, navigated the river every day ; while their movement was so slow as to allow a distinct and leisurely contem plative view of every hill, crested with its ruined tower or castle, and every dark and shaded valley, with its busy hamlet and terraced banks. Sitting on the deck, with a collection of legends in my hand, I studied 120 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833, the history of each villa, and castle, and ruined monastery, until the whole voyage seemed to me only the changes of a varying but not alto gether incoherent dream. I looked in at Diisseldorf, whose school of artists was just then lay ing the foundation of its fame ; at Neuburg, the very prototype of our own Newburg on the Hudson ; at Cleves ; then stopped, for a night and a day, at ancient, archiepiscopal Cologne. They told me that the cathedral, begun in 1248, was still in process of construction, and that, with the contributions of the pious, it would yet be completed. Contrary to what I supposed, I have lived to see it done ; and I think it, perhaps, the last that will be completed in Europe. I am coming to think it probable that these great ecclesiastical structures of Eu rope will yet be surpassed in America, where no church or religion enjoys any special political privileges. Here for the first time I found myself in the land of the vine. The famous vineyards of Rlidesheim, Johannisberg, and others, lay around me. I have never been quite able to understand why the manner of culture differs so much in the different climates propitious to the grape. In Italy, and the south of France, and Palestine, they leave the vine much of its natural shape and proportions, training it on trellises, or leaving it to spread over the trees. But on the banks of the Rhine the vines are planted about four feet apart, and are never suffered to grow more than five feet in height, nor to mingle their tendrils with each other. They say they produce more perfect fruit. Perhaps they ripen better under this discipline in a cold climate. Nevertheless, a cultiva tor in Italy once told me he was satisfied that the German culture was better than the Italian, and said that a grape-vine ought to be so low that you can step over it, instead of being so high that you can walk under it. Coblentz, with the stupendous fortifications of Ehrenbreitstein, gave us our first evidence that we had entered Prussia. Then, passing the ruined castle of Lahnstein, I surveyed the then principalities of Hesse and Nassau. I know not whether I was more interested in the little town of Bingen, known to everybody by that most pathetic of all songs, " Bingen on the Rhine," or in the vine-clad ruins of the castles of Ehrenf els and Rheinf els, whose legends revive the always attrac tive pictures of chivalry. Mayence, even then, might have interested me by its garrison and its trade. But I was interested more in the dwelling-house of Faust, and the palace which Napoleon occupied on the way to his disastrous campaign in Russia, not to speak of the tomb of the wife of Charlemagne. At Mayence I changed from the river back to the diligence, stopping at Frankfort-on-the-Main, and after ward at Darmstadt, the capital of the then Hesse-Darmstadt. Its little court was then abroad, and the town was as dull as I suppose it is now. 1833.] IN THE SWISS MOUNTAINS. 121 I admired much the little town of Heidelberg, its elegant bridge em bellished with statuary, and the river Neckar, covered with barges. Nor did I forget to look into the house, still standing, in which Luther slept when on his way to the Diet at Worms. We were now rising the mountain-slope into Switzerland. The country was fertile and beautiful. The crops seemed equally luxuriant, whether of grapes, Indian-corn, hemp, tobacco, oats, clover, or wheat. But I remarked everywhere that the labor was chiefly performed by women. The men had gone to the armies, or to plant new fields in the United States. Carlsruhe, surrounded with walnut-groves, was the beautiful capital of the grand-duchy of Baden, having in the back ground the Black Forest, and, as we ascended the mountain, we con templated with interest the ruined castle in which Richard Coeur de Lion was imprisoned on his return from the crusades. Here I began my pedestrian exercise, being able generally to keep in advance of the diligence. Reaching the summit I traced the now miniature Rhine up through a long, smiling valley, until I caught a view of the turrets of Basle. I was able to distinguish at once between the mountaineers of Switzerland and the peasant inhabitants of Germany. The accounts of disaffection in the canton of Basle toward the Swiss Republic led me to fear an immediate revolution. But this calamity was not to happen so soon. Is it true that no republic can exist except it embrace distinct and several republican states or can tons ? Is it true that, originally, these cantons or states must all be independent of each other until they are federalized, under the press ure of a common danger? And is it true that such confederations must always encounter the shocks of secession and anarchy resulting from a pertinacious adherence to the doctrine of state rights ? It is so, at least, in Mexico ; it has been so in the United States ; and it was so in Switzerland. The Protestant visitor at Basle will not fail to see the tomb of Erasmus. I followed a tributary of the Rhine through the cantons of Soleure and Berne to Berne. It was obvious that the people of Switz erland were very poor. The mountains were crowned with ruins, but these structures had generally been perpendicular, high towers ; not chateaux, like those which bordered the Rhine. The villages were dwarfed, old, and not cleanly ; the farmhouses dilapidated, generally consisting of one long, low stone or wooden building, whose roof covered not only the family dwelling, but also the barn, with stables for horses, cattle, and swine. The peasantry had as yet that marked uniformity of costume which only railroads obliterate. The scenery became exceedingly picturesque, the road, for leagues in extent, traversing declivities too sharp to allow dwellings. For the first time in Europe, I found the native forest and heard the stroke of 122 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. the woodman s axe, as I heard the music of waters in the deep ravines. The dwellings are isolated, with only a patch of cultivation. Some times the dwelling would be in a dingle, of which the eye would ob tain a glimpse at the angle of the road. At other times it would be on the hill, hundreds of feet above our heads. The horses of all vehicles, like those of our own diligence, had bells to warn the travelers of their approach. At night we rattled rapidly down a long, winding hill, at the foot of which we came to a solitary, rude stone structure of two stories. Leaving the horses in the basement, we climbed a ladder to the first floor. There were well-dressed ladies and gentlemen, but no servants visible. They were, in fact, a party who had come in before us, just in time to order their supper. One of the gentlemen was very active, arranging the table. To him I applied in English, being able to speak no other language, for coffee. He replied, out of a phrase- book, " You shall have coffee ; coffee is good at all times. I thought this waiter a more accomplished gar$on than I had before found. At length supper was served, smoking hot, on two long tables. The other party seated themselves at one, and our party of the diligence at the other. Poultry, venison, coffee, tea, wine, for every taste. My gar$on served me assiduously and exclusively, and when, in answer to another inquiry from the phrase-book, I assured him that I was entirely content, he laid aside his apron, assumed his fashionable coat, and took his seat with the other party, to the infinite amusement of the joint assembly of travelers, who had all found themselves indebted to a Parisian gentleman for a good supper, as well as a good joke, at mid night, in an auberge in the Swiss mountains. The way I discovered the joke was in his continually looking at me archly, and repeating the words, " Coffee is good at all times." Our night-ride was silent and cold. But, when the day dawned, we were slowly and carefully descending, by terraces, the declivity of Weissenstein, having on one side the rugged face of that mountain, and, on the other, scattered, scanty pasturages spreading out before a cottage which seemed inaccessible. Now we were in a valley, surrounded by mountains, and when we turned an abrupt angle one of the three beau tiful lakes of Morat, Neufchatel, and Bienne, spread itself out at our feet. In the Lake of Bienne we caught a view of the little Island of St. -Pierre, which Rousseau selected for his retreat in exile from France. Passing the summit beyond Bienne, I obtained a comprehensive view, which embraced the Jura, as well as a long range of the Italian Alps. Mont Blanc was there, but lost in the clouds. I am sure I shall never forget Berne, encircled as it is by the Aar. The palace of the Federal Government of Switzerland is there ; the fountains, full of health and cleanliness, are there ; the clock is there, 1833.] GENEVA. 123 which gives you a dramatic performance of a cock crowing, a cavalry- march, a parade, and a waking warder, every day at noon. Fribourg and Avenches exhibited to me their antiquities, then peculiarly interesting to me, because if the expression is not an anachronism all antiquities were new to me, especially the triumphal arch erected in honor of Vespasian. Lord Byron, before me, had celebrated, in " Childe Harold," the monument of Julia Alpinula, an " unhappy daughter of an unhappy land." I arrived late at Lausanne, and, though I found a good bed at the Lion d Or, how restless I was, when attempting to sleep on the shore of the Leman Lake, without yet having had a glimpse of its beauties ! The canton of Vaud is, I think, the largest of the Swiss cantons. The city of Lausanne contained then only about ten thousand inhabitants; and, though its streets were narrow and rough, yet it had been rendered very attractive by the villas of persons of wealth, learning, and refine ment, from all parts of Europe. The view from the shore gives you the Alps, as well as the Jura Mountains. While I remained at Lausanne, the Federal troops marched out, to suppress the insurrection threatened at Basle. Although they were only a militia force, they were well disciplined ; and an examination which I then gave to the militia system of Switzerland confirmed me in the opinions of militia reform which at that time I was assiduously attempting to inculcate upon the Legislature at home. But, though I found Switzerland in advance of the United States in its system of military defense, I found a compensation in the fact that the Government had copied the penitentiary system then recently adopted by the State of Pennsylvania. Of course, I did not leave Lausanne without visiting the garden where Gibbon wrote the con clusion of his splendid history ; and the chateau of Bon Repos, where Voltaire dwelt, and enacted his own tragedies, before going to reside at Sans-Souci with Frederick the Great. Recurring to the last in cident inclines me to review the opinion, uncharitable to Dickens, which I formed when he, in the United States, recited his own in imitable novels. Since Shakespeare acted parts in his own plays, and Voltaire in his, I am inclined to think, now, that the dramatist ought to be a good, if not the best, actor. The first acquaintance I made at Geneva was a Pole, more grave and serious even than his countrymen of the present day habitually are. He was now fifty-three years old. When young, he went to attend the nup tials of a very near friend. After the marriage ceremony, a scene of animated gayety came, in which this gentleman laid his hand on a mus ket, supposed to be unloaded. The weapon discharged in his hand, and killed the bride. The bridegroom remained always afterward un married, and the unhappy actor in the affliction became a wanderer. 124: AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. Except for its environs, Geneva was not then particularly beautiful. The Rhone, which flows in swift rapids through the city, is disfigured by wheels and laundry-apparatus. The town, at that day, maintained its strong fortifications, and kept its gates closed with as much jeal ousy, at night, as Peking in China. This inconvenience mattered less, as Geneva is without trade, and chiefly occupied in the manufacture of watches. I was glad to see that Geneva, although its population was chiefly French, had not been demoralized by its compulsory submission to the arms of republican France, in 1798, and consequent incorpora tion into the French Empire under the first Napoleon. I wonder if there has been any persecution for political, moral, or religious opinions, from which Geneva has not furnished an asylum ? One spends days there in following the footsteps of Calvin and Vol taire ; and, when I was there last, it was filled with " Communist " and " Imperial " exiles from France. On leaving Geneva, one abruptly enters the Sardinian territory. I remarked then, as I have on a later visit, that you leave the Protestant Church behind you in Switzerland ; and the Catholic Church univer sally prevails on the Italian side of the border. Chapels, crosses, shrines, and crucifixes, admonish you to devotion everywhere. The road to Mont Blanc follows the course of the Aar. At that day the dili gence stopped at Sallenches ; and thence the tourist proceeded in a one- horse cart or chaise. But now the stage-road has been extended to Chamouni. I spent a night at the baths of St.-Gervais, situated in a ravine which Rip Van Winkle might have mistaken for his home in the Catskills. I turned from the music of the concert in the evening, to be entertained by an English gentleman, who had intimated a will ingness to patronize, in that European company, the poor young American who could speak no French. He complimented me by ex pressing his surprise to hear me speak English as well as an English man ; assured me that he was gratified at being informed that there is an organized Episcopal Church in America; and condescended to hope that I might prove correct in a belief that the Christian religion can continue to exist in our country without a church establishment con nected with the state. In one opinion that he expressed I am induced to think him correct. When, in answer to a question, I told him that the population of New York was two hundred thousand, he replied it was a great city, but it would be a long time yet before it would be as large as London. I retired early to slumbers, to which I was lulled by the notes of the harp and the piano within ; the dropping of the rain, and the dash ing of the mountain-cascade, without. 1833.] CHAMOUNI. 125 1833. Chamouni. Mont Blanc. En Voiture. Politics in the Coupe". Paris. Scenes of Revolu tionary Changes. The Tenants of the Tuileries. Lafayette in the Chamber of Depu ties. Trying the Guillotine. Napoleon s Old Soldiers. The Orleans Family. The Pantheon. La Chapelle Expiatoire. Josephine s Cottage. I WAS earliest awake of all the inhabitants of St.-Gervais, except the chamois. But, though the rain had ceased, the weather was cloudy, and Mont Blanc refused to accept my homage. As I advanced up ward in the mountain-road, I noticed that the only cereals cultivated were wheat and oats ; that large stores of hay were gathered for the winter ; while every cottage had a little orchard of dwarf apples, pears, or plums. The cattle were dwarfish also. The peasants of both sexes were clothed in woolen habits ; and the women and children industri ously worked at their knitting and sewing while watching their cows, sheep, and goats, at pasture. I met not less than a dozen persons of both sexes of various ages, who were deformed with the goitre, a disease peculiar to mountainous districts. I think I cannot be mistaken, also, in thinking that idiocy prevails more in that mountain-region than in other parts of Europe. It was strange in those solitudes to see the truthful ness of church-architecture preserved amid so much poverty. It was in the hamlet of St.-Servoz. The church had its rude Gothic arches of wood, its turrets of coarse masonry. Its images were the work of some village sculptor, and its pictures the daubs of an untrained hand. It was the Catholic Church, as distinct from all others, as it is seen in Rome. At length I surmounted the last summit, and, climbing upon a steep rock, looked down upon the lovely narrow valley of Chamouni, some eight or ten miles long, and not more than a mile wide, depressed between the Aiguilles and the group of mountains known as Mont Blanc. On the declivities of the mountains, at my right hand, hung the glaciers, which have remained there forever. Still, Mont Blanc, although immediately above that line of glaciers, was invisible. The valley of Chamouni, far more elevated than the Leman Lake, is three thousand feet above the sea. Of course, I climbed the Mont- anvert, and descended from it with spiked staves upon the treacherous Mer de Glace. It was then majestic, and well deserved its name. When I revisited it, nearly forty years afterward, the mountain-sides and valleys had been stripped of their forests, and the soil exposed to cultivation. The Mer de Glace was shrunk, and seemed little more than a congealed torrent in the deep ravine. It was not until I reached St. -Martin, at nine o clock at night, on my way back from Chamouni, that the clouds rolled away and gave me a full view of Mont Blanc, its snows lighting my way. Returning to Geneva, I attended a concert of the National Music 126 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. Society, constituted under the patronage of the state, and heard the opera of " Fra Diavolo." I had the satisfaction to learn, before I left Switzerland, that the revolution which was breaking out at Basle when I passed through that place had been entirely suppressed. The special voiture was a pleasant mode of travel, which, I suppose, has disappeared before the march of railroads. The voiture has four inside seats, and two seats in the glass coupe in front. It is drawn by three horses, with one or more additional ones, obtained at post-houses, when necessary. The carriage traveled by day, and stopped at fixed distances for meals and lodging. My father and myself occupied the coupe ; and our fellow-travelers within were a young married pair of Belgians, and two very accomplished Genevese girls, going to join their parents, who had recently taken up their residence in Paris. Our route across the Jura Alps was over a military road, which had been constructed by Napoleon. As we traveled slowly, I walked nearly half-way to Paris, accompanied sometimes by other members of the party, more often alone. We stopped at Genlis and Dijon ; walked on the banks of the then dry canal of Burgundy ; rested at Auxerre, Joigny, and Sens ; admired, as everybody must, the vine-clad Cote d Or. While I found the landscape in France had not been exaggerated, it was painful to contrast the poverty and rudeness of the villages and hamlets with those of our own country, or of England. One might easily read the recent history of France in the monuments we passed. In one town, an inscription on the H6tel-de-Ville records its erection in the reign of Louis XVI. An inscription in another bore the date of the consulate. A gateway at Auxerre is surmounted by a group em blematic of the restoration of the Bourbons ; while on all sides and everywhere all the public edifices present the motto just then adopted by Louis Philippe, commemorating the recent expulsion of Charles X., " Liberte et Ordre publique" On one of these walks I had got so far in advance of the carriage that I turned back to see whether any accident had befallen it. The coachman, who had been one of Napoleon s veterans, said he had stopped through fear that the young Englishman was lost. I said, mildly " I am not an Englishman." " What are you, then ? " I replied, " An American." " Oh," said he, " that s all the same thing." " No," said I, " America is a quite different country from England." He still insisted it was all the same. I said, " Where do you think America is ? " " Oh ! I don t know," he answered, "where it is, but somewhere on the borders of England." 1833.] PARIS UNDER LOUIS PHILIPPE. 127 As we approached Paris I asked him who he supposed was ruling in Paris now. " I don t know," said he ; " Louis Philippe was king when I left Paris three weeks ago. God knows what they ve got there now ! " These episodes amused my fellow-passengers, but did not excite them so intensely as one which occurred in the coupe in relation to American politics. My father, who, I think I have mentioned, had trained me up in the Jeffersonian school of politics, had always distrusted the wisdom of my deviations from that path. He had seen, as I had, the disastrous defeat throughout the Union, in the previous year, of all the combina tions in which I had been engaged to defeat the reelection of General Jackson, and the success of Martin Van Buren, and his political associ ates in New York. He took advantage of a long morning ride, as we sat together in the coup&, to discuss the new situation, which, in truth, I saw in no very different light from that in which he presented it, as at present unpromising and hopeless. Dwelling, like all of that school of politicians at that day, on the impregnability, if not the immaculateness, of the Republican party, and upon the imprudence of longer fighting against it, he said that this temporary separation of mine from political transactions at home would give me pause for change, and earnestly recommended to me, on my return to the United States, to declare my adhesion to the triumphant party. At first, I expressed my dissent from this advice, and parried the argument with which he supported it with the calmness which filial reverence commanded. But, finding his earnestness increase to vehemence, I became earnest also. The con versation waxed louder, until all the passengers within became alarmed, and the French coachman thought it his duty to interpose. As none of them spoke English, we gave up the attempt at explanation, when we found that, besides an understanding of that language, our audience required an introduction into the mysteries of a system of politics en tirely above their comprehension. Paris was not then the most splendid city in the world, as it became under the reign of Louis Napoleon. Its spacious and shaded boule vards, indeed, were attractive, but all the other streets were low, nar row, rudely paved, and worse lighted, and thronged with vagrants and mendicants. Even the boulevards were then disfigured, bearing marks of the recent revolution. Everything here, as I had already noticed in the country, reminded me of the frequency and violence of political changes. It may not be remembered that the site of the celebrated column in the Place Vendome was originally occupied by an equestrian statue of Louis XIV. That of Napoleon, which succeeded it, was thrown down in 1814. Louis Philippe, at the celebration just held. :>f the anniversary of the Revolution of 1830, had restored the statue to its 128 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. place, with great pomp and ceremony, and again conferred the name of Napoleon upon the street. In looking upon that splendid work of art, which was constructed of the captured cannon, and recited, in its bass-reliefs and inscriptions, the victories of France in the most memo rable of her German campaigns, I could not but pity, as a weakness, the affectation which the founder showed in the inscription upon the base of the column, " Erected by Napoleon, Emperor Augustus." It would seem, from this, that the emperor fed his ambition with aspira tions to imitate the conquering Octavius, just as his less talented and equally unfortunate successor, Napoleon III., stimulated his ambition by his studies of the life of Julius Caesar. Napoleonism was manifestly the popular rage in Paris at this time. One might, even thus early, have forecast the second empire. Everybody that came to the Place Vendome bought pictures and descriptions of the column. " What is the price ? " said I. "Unsou." " Who strewed these immortelles over the pedestal ? " asked I. " Tout le monde," was the answer, and so indeed it seemed. At an early day I sought Galignani s reading-room, for American newspapers. Is it worth while to reproduce here the comments I then made, in Paris, on that morning s reading ? The angry controversies, the malicious political warfare, and the reckless party spirit, which distinguish our journals, and which at home excite more or less interest among all our citizens, sink into insignificance, except as a subject of regret and shame, when they reach us on this side of the Atlantic. I know nothing which does our country so much injury abroad as this everlasting obloquy, heaped upon the heads of patriots and statesmen of whom any nation might be proud. I am sure, could any one of our citizens who is in the habit of speculating so coolly upon the dissolution of the Union, and the establishment of other confederacies or states, but hear the alarm expressed, in every European .country, by the friends of free and liberal government, and witness the exulta tion of tories and loyalists, whenever anything occurs which indicates the disso lution, which to him seems so tolerable, he would feel a degree of remorse and shame which would go very far to recall him from the fatal delusion. It is not until one visits old, oppressed, suffering Europe, that he can appreciate his own government; nor is it until he learns, from the lips of patriots here, the con firmation of what he has so often heard at home, that he realizes the fearful responsibility of the American people to the nations of the whole earth, to carry successfully through the experiment which, with the prayers and blessings of the good and wise, is to prove that men are capable of self-government. And if he, in the folly of his heart, and under the excitement of supposed cause of complaint against the General Government, and false views of the importance of a member of the confederacy, dreams that a Northern or a Southern, an Eastern or a Western confederacy, or the independence of Massachusetts, or New York, Pennsylvania, Virginia, Carolina, or Georgia, would still be enough to ac complish this great purpose of proving the capability of man for self-govern- 1833.] THE TUILERIES. 129 merit, he would find that it is only as a whole, one great, nourishing, united, happy people, that the United States command respect abroad. Dissolve the Union, how or where we may, the experiment, so far as the rest of the world, if not ourselves, are concerned, is ended ; the members of it sink below the level of the South American states ; the cherished hopes of universal restora tion of power to the governed are lost forever, and the chains of tyranny, now half broken and ready to fall off, will be riveted too strongly to be broken forever. I devoted a day to the Louvre, which had only shortly before given back to the despoiled nations the treasures of art which Napoleon had stolen from them. And I visited the Tuileries. It was not so much the magnificence of that palace as its historical associations which in terested me. It seemed the central scene of the Revolution, begun in 1789, and, alas ! not yet finished. I remembered how it became the prison of Louis XVI. and his queen, after their short season of revelry and dissipation at Versailles ; how they escaped from it to the frontier, and were brought back in humiliation and shame by their exasperated subjects ; how they were removed from it when its security as a dun geon failed ; how they found a temporary refuge only in the halls of the National Assembly, and thence passed through the prisons of the Temple to the guillotine. I thought how Napoleon, at first, cautiously made it an official residence as consul, and afterward inaugurated it as the imperial palace. I thought of the divorce of Josephine, who graced it as no other woman could ; of the marriage of Maria Louisa ; the birth of the King of Rome ; the hopes that it excited ; the defeat of Napoleon, and the downfall of the empire ; the short and hurried but eventful hundred days during which the restored Bourbons were ex pelled, and the expelled Napoleon restored to the proud residence of kings ; then the setting of Napoleon s star forever ; and the successive revolutions which had caused the Tuileries again to receive tenants, chosen in a moment of popular excitement, and holding their possession at the fickle will of that versatile people. Louis Philippe occupied the palace then. When I next saw the Tuileries, after a lapse of twenty- seven years, the court of a second empire was there. In 1871 I saw it once more. It was in ashes, and I found a republican Government of France installed in the same palace at Versailles from which the populace of Paris had brought away the captured king and queen to occupy the Tuileries at the beginning of the great drama of revolution. Who can look at the ruins of the Tuileries, when this throng of reflections crowd upon his thoughts, without interest? Who that gives time to these reflections can for a moment doubt that, however unfit the French people may seem, however incapable of self-govern ment the French nation may have proved itself, vet the age of monarchy, and even the period of imperialism, have passed ? 9 130 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. I shall hardly oe believed when I say that, in my first visit to Paris,. I questioned the wisdom, not less than the taste, of the monumental boasting which pervaded that capital. Yet the notes I wrote censured the egoism of the monument in the Place Vendome, and deprecated further retaliation than Paris had yet suffered, in being compelled to restore the horses of St. Mark ravished from Venice, and the other trophies of Napoleon s Continental victories. One of these humiliations,, more painful than all the rest, I saw on my last visit to Paris, in the Place de la Concorde. It may be remembered that the Place de Grove was the scene of the most atrocious of the cruelties of the Revolution^ Every trace and relic of those cruelties having been removed, the Place de Greve received appropriately the name of Place de la Concorde ^ and at its several corners the first Napoleon erected graceful monuments, emblematical of the chief external cities of France, Marseilles, Rouen, Havre, and Strasbourg. When I came there in 1871, I found a black drapery drawn over the name and statuary of Strasbourg. Paris has one consolation in this respect. When I first saw the Arc d fitoile, which Napoleon had designed to be the most majestic of the monuments of Paris, it was in an unfinished state, and spoke less of the victories of Bonaparte than of his disappointed ambition. Louis Philippe was now completing it, according to its original design ; and the public sentiment required that it should be embellished with illus trations of the achievements of its illustrious founder. I know not by what good fortune the monument escaped serious detriment from the- German bombardment, and Communist violence, in the culminating calamities of France. In the Chamber of Deputies I inquired first for the seat of Lafay ette. This great advocate of liberty in the. two hemispheres had just separated from Louis Philippe, whom, as he suggested, France called to her throne. The breach occurred on the refusal of Louis Philippe to support a revolution in Poland, which refusal, Lafayette always rep resented, was a violation of a promise that the king gave as a condi tion of accession. Lafayette was then at the height of a popularity a third time renewed. Though infirm, he never failed to ascend the tribune when any profound political question was discussed. It was affecting, on such occasions, to see him painfully drag a feeble and trembling frame, worn by age and accident, hacked and marred like an old suit of iron armor. But when he had reached his ancient post he re sumed at once his vigor and his benevolent smile. That smile and that peculiar .utterance of his are indescribable. He preserved entire the chivalry, the courtesy, and the tact, of the ancient rkgime. But he combined with it the directness, the simplicity, and the sincerity, that we imagine to be characteristic of the ideal republic. Sometimes a modern parliamentarian, with a self-sufficient air, would select some 1833.] THE CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES. 131 Revolutionary incident, and, separating it from its true connections, would shape an argument from it for some untenable or objectionable measure or principle. It was then that Lafayette would reinvest the incident, thus seized upon, with its true historical connection and col oring, and thus by a simple narrative destroy the subtlest sophistry. Thiers was then in the ministry ; and it was amusing to see the great historiographer of the Revolution, in a debate of that kind, succumb before its great general, its living monument, Lafayette. While advo cating a treaty of amity and commerce with the United States he re marked : " It will be said that on this point I show myself an Ameri can. Gentlemen, that is a title of which I am proud ! It is a title dear to my heart. But no one will ever, I believe, venture to tell me that it has made me forget that I am a Frenchman." I noticed in the Chamber a man sitting opposite the tribune, seem ingly as old as the structure itself, his silver hair falling back on a black habit, which was girt up with a large tricolored scarf. This was the old messenger who had done the errands of the Legislature of France under all its changes of name and constitution since the com mencement of the Revolution, preserving all the while, as such inferior officers are accustomed to, a due esprit de corps. He delighted in speaking of " the good Monsieur de Robespierre." The only disease of his advanced age was his inclination to sleep, during this dull adminis tration of the juste milieu. He slept even when Mauquin spoke. But, whenever Lafayette rose to the tribune, the old messenger started in stantly from his slumbers, as animated as a cavalry-horse when he hears the bugle-call. Sweet recollections of youthful days revived ; and through the whole debate he eagerly inclined his hoary head to catch every word of the speaker. I think it is only the French who pass gracefully, as well as quickly, From grave to gay, from lively to severe. We found the house of the public executioner. He politely told us that we could not appreciate the guillotine s excellence without trying it ; and for that purpose it would be necessary for him to procure three assistants with one sheep, which would involve an expense of fifteen francs. We paid the money and saw, to his satisfaction as well as our own, the working of the instrument which had executed the fearful Revolutionary judgments upon Louis XVI., his heroic queen, Robes pierre, the inventor of the machine itself, and a thousand other vic tims. They still preserve at Mount Vernon the keys of the Bastile. I found a fountain, in the shape of an elephant, upon the site of that odious prison. A visit to the Hotel des Invalides was as instructive as it was inter- 132 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. esting. The inmates of this great military charity were allowed to in dulge all the esprit de corps of the actual service. I was allowed to enter all the rooms in the absence of their proper tenants, and to see the soldiers at their rations. No visitor could enter the ward where retired or decayed officers were dining. But soldiers and officers, all alike, were delighted with the opportunity to tell the praises of their great chief. They told me that Napoleon had planned to convert the large and beautiful court which lies between the Hotel des Invalides and the Seine into a garden, arid to have contrasted its foliage by thousands of marble statues of illustrious soldiers of France. This I thought at the time apocryphal ; but I came to believe it true after ward, when his remains were deposited there, in conformity to his dying request that he might be buried " on the banks of the Seine, in that beautiful France he loved so well." The Palais Royal, like the Tuileries, might serve as a text for a homily. In the centre of Paris, a monument of its builder, Cardinal Richelieu, the cradle of Louis XIV., and covering sixteen acres of ground, this splendid palace, with a reservation of a portion of the upper chambers for a private residence, was converted, by Philippe figalite, into a great bazaar ; and filled with merchants, shopkeepers, cafes, barber-shops, theatres, tailors, hatters, valets, and boot-blacks. Confiscated with its rents by the republic, on the execution of its pro prietor, and afterward appropriated by the empire, it was restored in the time of Louis Philippe to his family ; again seized by the second empire, and bestowed as a princely home on King Jerome, with suc cession by the Prince Napoleon. It was in 1871 reduced to ashes by the violent rage of the Com munists. At my first visit it had, for an American, one pleasing feat ure : its walls were graced with a series of elaborate paintings, pre senting marked incidents in the history of the Orleans branch of the Bourbon family. Among these was one which commemorated the re ception of Dr. Franklin at the Palais Royal ; and another, the return of the then King Louis Philippe, in 1814, from his exile in the United States. Louis Philippe was possessed, as everybody knows, of immense wealth. He was a man of exemplary morals, fine talents, and exten sive learning. He was, moreover, a careful manager of his estates and revenues. His opponents, I know not how justly, called him mean and penurious. In every country the throne is popularly regarded as the fountain, not only of honors, but of wealth. The virtue of a king is measured, not even by what he saves for the state, much less what he saves for himself, but by what he gives to his subjects. All political questions aside, I think Louis Philippe would have fallen before the complaint of avarice. Having, in later life, formed an interesting ac- 1833.] NOTRE-DAME AND THE PANTHEON. 133 quaintance with the Orleans princes of this day, it is not without pleas ure that I have reverted to the account which I wrote in 1833 of the Orleans family : " The king has done much to reform the grossest out rages against decency and public morals in the management of the Palais Royal, although enough is yet seen, from every window of the state apartments, to shock and disgust its inmates. The queen is above suspicion and reproach of any sort, universally respected and beloved. The young princes also are popular ; they attend the public schools and colleges, and they compete there with the plebeians an emulation in which, to their great credit it is said, they ably sustain themselves, by force of talent and application." I should like to know who invented, and how long ago, the table of the zodiac. In Notre-Dame I found it adorning the portal of the church. What a curious and yet speaking conceit it was, that the cir cumference contained only eleven of the signs, while that of Virgo was transferred conspicuously to the centre ! Many years afterward I found the table of the zodiac distinctly presented among the hiero glyphics on the ceiling of an ancient Egyptian temple. It varied from the modern table only in having some other figure substituted for Libra. Notre-Dame seems an enduring provocation to the Republican party. It suffered great devastation of decorations and relics in the Revolution of 1793; so again in 1830, when the Archiepiscopal Palace was demolished. In 1871 I found it protected by a military guard against the Communists. The delirium of revolution has left no monument so significant as the Pantheon. When founded, it was the church of St.-Genevieve, and dedicated to religion. The republic seized it, and, under the name of the Pantheon, inscribed upon its lofty pediment : " Dedicated^ by a grateful country, to its illustrious men." Marble sarcophagi, filled with the dust of statesmen, scholars, and warriors, were heaped up in its vaulted basement. Surrounded by these, but separated from them and from each other, when I visited the Pantheon, were two wooden coffins, elaborately carved, but even then falling into dust. One of these contained the ashes of Voltaire ; the other the remains of Rousseau. I have since read that both the coffins have been despoiled of their sacred treasure. On the restoration of the Bourbons the edifice was again conse crated by the Archbishop of Paris, as the church of St.-Genevieve. Public worship was celebrated there until 1830, when its Christian name was again abolished, and the heathen name of Pantheon restored. Christian worship was excluded from it, and the temple reverted to its republican use, a Westminster for France. I think no one who sees Paris fails to visit the Chapelle Expiatoire, 134 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. which covers the remains, real or supposed, of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette. On each side of the choir is a monumental altar. On one of these is inscribed that affecting piece of composition, so marked by Christian resignation, faith, and charity, the will of Louis XVI.; on the other, that no less touching memorial, the last letter of Marie An toinette to the Princess Elizabeth. When Paris is tranquil its people seem most humane and gentle. So far as I could learn, the whole French people regarded the violent fate of those monarchs with horror. It was a common expression that the Revolution was a season of universal madness. Perhaps it is ow ing to the strong influence of this sentiment that this little chapel has never been disturbed. In my wanderings through Paris I looked upon a scene which, al though it has since been entirely obliterated, I shall never be able to forget. In the Rue Chartreuse I passed through a wooden fence, pick eted with Roman fasces, up a long, narrow, shaded avenue, into a cot tage-house of octagon form, one story high, with only three or four rooms, and surrounded by .a neglected garden. It seemed to have been long closed; its walls, porches, and piazza, exhibited faded frescoes of consular emblems and ornaments. It was the dwelling which Napoleon occupied with Josephine before his political career began ; and the perishing adornments reminded me how the imperial system here, as in Rome, affected assimilation to the consular regime. At the end of the little garden was a small marble bust of Napoleon, the base of which bore this inscription : "In hac minima jam maximus plus quam maxima concepit" I looked in vain for the picket fence and its in- closure in my subsequent visits to Paris ; they were gone. The Jardin des Plantes was, I think, the model of institutions de voted to the cultivation of natural science, which have since become common in European capitals. No wonder that Paris, combining its admirable system of lectures with institutions of this kind, became a school for all nations. Paris had already a national opera ; and its theatre surpassed the English stage then not less than now. 1833. A Visit to La Grange. Lafayette s Affection for America. His Family. His Conversation and Habits. His Description of the Revolution of 1830. Views of French Politics, Past and Future. " I HASTEN to welcome you on your arrival in France, and I hope, with my family, to have the pleasure of receiving you at La Grange. Meanwhile, I expect to be in Paris on Wednesday next, for only one 1833.J A VISIT TO LAFAYETTE. 135 day, and will receive you there at my own house, or will wait upon you at your hotel, as may be agreeable to you." This was General Lafa yette s note received by post a few days after we came to Paris. We repaired to his house in the Rue d Anjou, St.-Honore, early on Wednesday, so as to anticipate his coming to our lodgings. A servant seated us in the antechamber, as expected guests. We waited there, however, nearly half an hour, but not without receiving from the gen eral an apology for the delay. When he came in, he said that the gentleman whom he had just dismissed was a Polish general officer, " who always comes to converse with me, when I come to town, on the condition of his unhappy country." Pressing my hands warmly, he said, " I am happy to see you again ! " Did the venerable guest of the United States actually remember the young militia adjutant, who attended him in his progress from the Oayuga Bridge to Syracuse in 1825 ? Or did he benignantly assume that, in the general acclamations with which he had been received in the United States, he had met every citizen who could by any possi bility come to Paris ? He conducted me at once to his bedroom. This apartment, as well as the antechamber, was furnished in the simplest fashion. On the wall hung a copy of the " Declaration of Independence." The ante chamber was graced only with two busts one of Washington, the -other of Lafayette. He walked with difficulty, owing to an old fract ure. His complexion was fresh, and he seemed more vigorous and animated than when in the United States. After inquiring concerning my voyage and health, he said, " And how did you leave all my friends in America ? " I replied, " The question is too broad." I could answer, however, for the continued health and usefulness of those who had given me letters to him. He renewed the invitation to visit La Grange. When I expressed a desire to decline it through a fear of trespassing on his kindness, he declared that he had a right, and his family had a right, to a visit from every American who came to Paris. I must go to La Grange. He would not have a doubt left upon it. He adverted to the then recent political convulsion in South Carolina, but took care to refer to no one of the politicians who had been prominent in the conflict. He said the suspense suffered by the friends of republicanism in Europe, on that occasion, was dreadful, and his own position exceedingly embarrassing. The reactionists of every country in Europe exulted in the anticipated overthrow of the United States, upon whose stability the liberals of the whole world had staked their all. He expressed himself in language of the highest friendship con cerning many statesmen, living and dead, who had belonged to dif ferent political parties. 136 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. It was only when seeing Lafayette at home that one could come to realize the truly paternal character which he held toward the American people. His affection and solicitude were for the whole nation, and he seemed unwilling to dwell on the party controversies with which it is disturbed. While listening to him I yielded for the moment to a belief that, if he could remain among us, his teachings and example would inspire us with mutual forbearance, and lift us to higher purity of purpose. Doubtless this was an error. Political controversies seldom or never yield to such soothing and redeeming influences. Even Lafayette, if among us, would retain only so much influence as he could exert by casting it on the side of one political party or the other. Nor is the case different now. We have " Moses and the prophets ; " if we will not hear them, neither would we " be persuaded though one rose from the dead." It was with not less of surprise than of gratification that I listened to the general, while he told the events of the three days Revolution in 1830, with as much simplicity as if the recital concerned only a vil lage commotion. "It has been said," he remarked, "that I made Louis Philippe king. That is not true ; it is true, however, that I consented he should be king ; and, without that consent, he could not have been. It was not without hesitation that I gave that consent. But what was to be done ? The people had achieved a revolution. In the Chamber of Deputies there was a large majority of Liberals " (Lafayette called them Whigs) ; " there were many Republicans among them, but such a horror of republicanism existed in France, resulting from the terrible scenes of the republic of 93, that nobody was willing to renew the experi ment so soon. It was the earnest desire of all to have the revolution ended, because, although the people had behaved with the greatest moderation and prudence thus far, yet painful apprehensions were en tertained that turbulence and anarchy would ensue, and the bloody scenes of 93 be ree nacted if a government should not be immediately established. " What was to be done ? " repeated Lafayette. " The only one of the Bonaparte family whom it would be practicable to call to the throne was the Duke de Reichstadt. He was a valetudinarian, a minor, in the hands of the Austrians, who had educated him. Naturally, it was be lieved that he was imbued with the principles and prejudices of that court. Besides, the name of Bonaparte awakened recollections of a military despotism. The throne of a new Bonaparte must be rendered secure by a return to the principles and policy of the empire, and thus there were insuperable objections to a restoration of the Napoleonic dynasty. We could not safely proclaim a republic ; we had no reliable 1833.] LAFAYETTE AND LOUIS PHILIPPE. 137 republican army ; nor could a government of this form at that time secure popular confidence ; and we knew well that, so soon as it should be established, we should have all Europe combined against us. Louis Philippe preoccupied the attention of all the actors in the Revolution. I was little acquainted with him ; I knew that, in his youth, he had been a republican ; that he possessed talents and information ; and, although a little too fond of money, yet that he had hitherto conducted himself with dignity and propriety, especially in America. The gen eral sentiment indicated Louis Philippe ; but it was agreed that before he should be created king he should be sounded ; and that he should be bound to a constitutional monarchy, which should be so framed as to constitute a distinct advance toward a republic. I left the people at the H6tel-de-Ville and visited Louis Philippe. The first thing he said to me was, General Lafayette, what is to be done ? I said, * You well know that I am a republican, and that I think the Constitution of the United States the best government ever devised by man. I think so, too, replied Louis Philippe, and any person who should be in America for two years, as I have been, must be convinced that the American Government is the best possible one. But what shall be done ? You know, continued he, the prejudices and fears that the people entertain against the republic. We cannot depend on the army. Half the troops are Carlists (friends of Charles X., just dethroned), and we shall have all Europe down on us as soon as we proclaim a republic. I answeredj continued Lafayette, I am aware of all this ; and I think, therefore, that insomuch as it is most desirable to consummate the revolution, and give quiet to France, it is best to establish at present a monarchy, with as many limitations as are possi ble, and to surround it with republican institutions, which will prepare the way for establishing a republic as soon as it can be done with pru dence. Louis Philippe declared, i These are indeed my own thoughts on the situation. " I returned to the H6tel-de-Ville, and announced to the people there that the sentiments of the Duke of Orleans accorded with our own ; and, as you know, he was then made king. We made him swear to a charter containing two fundamental principles : one, the responsi bility of the Government to the people ; the other, universal suffrage. He pledged himself that laws should be passed to begin the work of general education immediately. I did not wish to accept the office of lieutenant-general of the kingdom ; but it seemed necessary, to satisfy the people, and attach them to the Government ; besides, by declining it, I should furnish ground for a suspicion that I wanted to be king myself. I therefore accepted it ; and for a short time all went on well. Louis Philippe promised to support Italy, and the liberal cause throughout Europe. Excited by our example and success. said La- 138 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. f ayette, " the republican cause asserted itself in Poland, Belgium, and Italy. It met the resistance we had anticipated, and looked to us for support. Louis Philippe had not courage to support it, as he had prom ised. I remonstrated. He shrank from it, and finally abandoned the republicans of those countries to their fate. Then he became very desirous that I should resign. His supporters entertained, or affected, apprehension that the office I held might, in the hands of my successor, prove dangerous ; but they were unwilling to deprive me of it. I was more desirous to resign than they were that I should. Louis Philippe had already begun to lay the foundation of a new Bourbon dynasty, which should be perpetual ; instead of wielding the government in such manner as to bring in the republic, as he had promised me to do. In this I would have no part. I was a citizen of the United States, a republican. My name was associated with the cause of liberty and republicanism wherever that name was known. I never sought or held office merely for the sake of office, under any government. I could not now retain it without lending my sanction, whatever might be its worth, to the principles of the new dynasty. I therefore re signed. Louis Philippe has since said that he made no preparatory engagements with me concerning the principles of his government. As soon as I learned this reliably, I sent him word that I should no longer go to the Tuileries." La Grange adjoins Rosoit, a village of two thousand inhabitants, and distant thirty miles from Paris. The chateau, three stories in height, is built on the three sides of a square, and at each angle is flanked by a circular tower. It is surrounded by a moat, with military drawbridges. The front wall is covered with an ivy which was planted by Charles James Fox. Two small brass cannon guarded the staircase. They were trophies, taken from the royal troops, in the three days revolution, by the people of Paris, and presented to General Lafayette. The staircase was decorated with flags, tricolored and American. I was received by the general, Madame Maubourg his daughter, and two of his grandsons, in a parlor still more plainly furnished than the one in Paris. It contained busts of Washington and Franklin, and some American maps, and also portraits of all the Presidents of the United States. The library was filled with American books ; the sleeping- rooms had only pictures of American battle-scenes, on land and sea, Mount Vernon, John Hancock s house, and Quincy. Other members of the family soon appeared, and I had a welcome from all at La Grange. The general said : " I did not visit Colonel Burr, when he came to Paris ; he had lately conspired against one of my friends, Mr. Jerferson ; and had killed another, Colonel Hamilton." In making this remark, he indicated not the least consciousness of the mutual an tagonism of those eminent statesmen. He spoke again and more freely 1833.] THE FAMILY AT LA GRANGE. 139 of Louis Philippe ; and alleged that the king had distinctly engaged to him that the new monarchy should be surrounded by republican institutions, and be only temporary, so as to prepare the way for a Republic. " But," said Lafayette, " the king has chosen to build up a dynasty ; and so he has made a bad choice. Had he fulfilled his en gagements, he might have been king twenty-five years ; but, in trying to make his dynasty perpetual, he will lose all. In the former case, the Revolution of France would have ended in four acts ; now it will be five. Louis Philippe and his dynasty are sure to come down some time, and that not far off. I do not think they have twenty years to reign." If this prophecy was at fault in anything, it was in limiting the Revolution of France to five acts. It has already passed through five, and the end is not yet. At dinner we had the entire family, twenty-two persons. The general sat opposite the centre of the table, Madame Maubourg and Madame Perier at either end. The viands and the wine, with the ex ception of champagne and Madeira, were the products of La Grange. Lafayette entertained the party with an account of his progress through the United States, with vivid descriptions of the country. " I never think," said he, " of Niagara Falls, without feeling a wish to buy Goat Island, and live there." Madame Maubourg described to me the Castle of Olmlitz, and her stay there, with her mother and sister, during her father s imprisonment. She told, in the simplest manner, but with touching effect, how the agent of the Prussian Government came to the prison and offered Lafayette his release, on condition that he should renounce republicanism. " I will subscribe no declaration," said La fayette, " inconsistent with my duties as an American citizen." After an hour and a half, we retired to the drawing-room, where the evening was spent in cheerful conversation on books, music, art, and political events. Precisely at ten o clock each member of the family, old and young, kissed the general, and he retired. In taking leave of me for the night he said, " We breakfast at ten o clock." I found my bed room, in the upper story of one of the towers, daintily prepared ; the curtains were dropped, arm-chair and slippers before the fire, and the bed-coverings turned down. When I came to breakfast every one inquired if I had been out. The general, they said, always rose at six. All the gentlemen, and some of the ladies, had been abroad on the plantation. From break fast we repaired to a bower on the lawn. Mdlle. Clementine, a daugh ter of George Washington Lafayette, conducted me to an artificial lake, shaded by evergreens, where we passed an hour in rowing. The general met us on our return. He walked with us over the plantation, which contained eight hundred acres. It was in fine order, and man aged with perfect economy. All the animals were carefully housed ; 140 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833. even the acorns were stored for the swine. He had another larger farm in the south of France, on which his son resided. Regular daily accounts of both were kept at La Grange, and were examined and posted every Saturday, the domestic expenses being carefully super vised and regulated by the daughters. The morning closed with Lafayette s exhibition to me of his mu seum of American presents. Among these he seemed especially pleased with a vase presented to him by the officers of the Brandy- wine, and a volume published in New York in commemoration of his reception in the United States. This exhibition ended with a visit to the beautiful barge presented to him by the Whitehall boatmen of New York as a trophy of their victory over the Thames boatmen in New York Harbor. It bore an inscription, which recited the wager, the names of the victors, and the fact of its presentation to him. He had built a house over it, and inclosed it with an iron network, protect ing it even from the touch of visitors. "Tell the Whitehallers I have their boat safe," said Lafayette, " and it will last longer than I shall." I took my leave of the general and his family that night at ten o clock, preparatory to a departure at six the next morning. I was surprised, while taking my coffee before daylight, by a summons to his bedroom, where I found him, in a white-flannel undress, engaged with his correspondence, of which he showed me a letter he had just re ceived from Madame Malibran. I said to him, " We constantly cherish a hope that you will come back to the United States." " My dear sir," said Lafayette, " it would make me very sad to think I should never see America again, but you know how it is. I am confined to France for two or three years by my office, as a mem ber of the House of Deputies ; and in that time what may happen only God knows ! " With these words he threw his arms around me, and, kissing me affectionately, bade me good-by. He died during the next year. I think it a subject of great satis faction that I thus enjoyed a personal and even intimate acquaint ance with Lafayette, so heroic an actor in our Revolution, and the only one of the patriotic movers of the great Revolution in France who survived the first four acts of that yet unfinished drama, and who throughout all those vicissitudes was consistent with his own character and principles. 1833- 34.J RETURNING HOME. 1833-1834. Home again. Colonel S wart wout. Protecting Settlers in the Court of Errors. Jackson s Progress. Edward Livingston. Abolition of Slavery in the West Indies. Coloniza tion and Antislavery Movements. Kemovalof the Deposits. Dissolution of the Anti- masonic Party. MY journey from Paris to Havre was by diligence, resting at night at Rouen, whose monuments are so rich in the memories of the won derful story of Jeanne d Arc and the chivalrous campaign of Henry V. At dinner the passengers sat four at each table. Two young Englishmen talked so volubly and appropriated to themselves so large a share of the entertainment, that I asked them of what particular college at Oxford they were speaking. They answered Christ College, and politely asked whether I was educated there. On my replying in the negative they put me through a catechism as to the college I had been educated in, mentioning most of the colleges and universities in Europe. At last I said that I was graduated at Union College. As they had never heard of that, I told them that it was in Schenectady. " Sche-nec-ta-dy ! where is that ? " " In the State of New York." " New York ? " said one of them ; " why, that s in America ! Then you live in America ? " " Yes," I replied. " Why, Tom, only think of that ! Here is a gentleman who lives in America. Perhaps he has seen Niagara Falls. Have you seen Niagara Falls ? " "Yes, I live near the falls, and see them three or four times a year." " O my God ! " he exclaimed, " how I do wish I could see Niagara Falls!" We were close friends, those young travelers and I, from that time. After remaining a fortnight at Havre I sailed with my father, whose health had been somewhat improved, on the ship Sully, arriving at New York after a voyage of thirty-two days. The voyage was rough and stormy, and, with all my eagerness to get an early sight of the light at Sandy Hook at midnight, I was driven from the deck by the bleak ness of the blast. There was sunshine, however, when we reached the wharf the next afternoon. I saw the baggage quickly placed on carts. There were no coaches or hacks in waiting, and, as I had learned cau tion and carefulness in European travel, I mounted the cart with my baggage, and was first seen in that situation by friends and acquaint ances in the streets as I passed to the custom-house. The collector was Colonel Samuel Swartwout, who afterward fell AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [lb33- 34. into irredeemable disgrace as a defaulter. He was bland and cour teous, and his knowledge of my father and myself influenced him to give our trunks a quick clearance a compliment which had not been accorded to us anywhere abroad. My mother awaited us at my elder brother s, who then resided in New York. My first impressions on landing were discouraging enough. The public edifices and the dwellings of New York, built generally of brick and wood, seemed low and mean, the equipages cheap and vulgar, the streets narrow and dirty. The placards showed that the State elec tion was going on ; that my political friends were cowed and recreant ; and that the party of the Administration were enjoying an easy and complete triumph. I had time to spend only a few days with my family at Au burn before taking my seat in the Court of Errors. Addressing my self directly to my judicial duties, I heard all the causes, and took my part in the decision of them. There was one cause which gave me much anxiety. In the centre of the State around Auburn, the lands which had belonged to the Six Nations, when their possessory title was extinguished, belonged to the State of New York, and had been divided and distributed in lots, each of one mile square, to the officers and soldiers of the New York line in the Revolutionary War. Generally speculators had bought these lots for small sums of money while they remained wild, and had sold them at large advances to poor and humble men, who held them at prices continually advancing with the improvement of the country. A flourishing village in Onta rio County was built by such purchasers on one of these lots, every part of which had thus become very valuable. A custom had, at that time, universally obtained in the State in regard to the sale of land upon credit, by which the owner in fee entered into a conditional con tract with the purchasers, agreeing to sell them certain defined por tions, on credit of several years, but permitting them to enter into immediate possession, and derive from the improvement and cultivation of the lands the means to pay for them ; the deeds were to be given when the lands were fully paid for. A mercantile creditor of the owner of the lot in question brought an action in the Supreme Court to recover a debt due him, and he at the same time filed in the office of the Register in Chancery a bill to set aside the title of that owner for fraud, giving no actual notice of this litigation to the persons who had settled on these lands under contracts of sale. The litigation between these two original parties continued all the time during which the lands were being improved and the village was built. The creditor finally obtained a decree in the Court of Chancery by which the title of the owner was declared fraudulent and void. He then caused all the lands to be sold on execution, becoming the pur- 1833- 34.] THE ONTARIO SETTLERS. 143 chaser thereof, to satisfy his judgment. The occupants refused to leave the lands. He brought actions of ejectment in the Supreme Court, to recover the lands. He proved in these actions that he had complied with existing laws, by filing in the register s office of the Court of Chancery a written notice of lis pendens, that is to say, of the fact that he had instituted his suit in chancery. The Supreme Court, upon this showing, rendered judgment in favor of the complainant, and directed an eviction of the occupants of the land, who, in the mean time, having had no actual knowledge of the litigation, had made the payments stipulated in their several contracts, and taken absolute deeds, in fee, for the premises. The tenants brought a writ of error to the Court of Errors, to reverse the judgment of the Supreme Court in these actions. One cause was argued, to test the principle of all. On the hearing of this cause, it was the duty of the judges of the Supreme Court to inform the Court of Errors of the reasons of their judgment ; but they had no voice in the review. The Chancellor only, with the Senators, sat in review. The practice that obtained in the Court of Errors was probably derived from an analogous proceeding in the House of Lords in Eng land. The opinions of the Chancellor were generally accepted by the Senators in reviewing alleged errors of the Supreme Court, and, vice versa, the court accepted the opinions of the judges of the Supreme Court in revision of the decisions of the Chancellor. No case had ever occurred in which a majority of the Senate had disagreed with the Chancellor when he declared his opinion in favor of affirming a de cision which had been unanimously made by the Supreme Court. It was not a habit of the members of the Court of Errors to confer with each other with a view to obtaining an agreement in opinion, although, when a cause was argued, a member of the court would naturally state to others sitting near him the impressions which were made upon him by the arguments of counsel. In this way, I incidentally learned enough of the views of the Chancellor to satisfy me that his final opin ion, in the present case, would be in favor of affirming the judgment of the Supreme Court. Shocked at the hardship and injustice of evict ing the occupants of the lands in question from their dearly-earned and valuable possessions, upon a ground which was merely technical, while they were not only innocent but meritorious purchasers, and in a case entirely new, there being no precedent for it, I sounded my brother Senators, and found them all conscientiously aiYected as I was ; but each one declaring that he could not satisfactorily controvert the rea sons which the Chancellor was to give for affirming the judgment. In replying to them I said: "The case is entirely new. I think we can make an argument in which I can show that we may safely place the AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833- 34. tenant who is in actual occupation, under a written contract, on the footing of a grantee or mortgagee of record, entitled to actual notice, or not to be affected by the mere constructive notice of Us pendens." The Senators who were members of the bar declared their unwill ingness to make such a statement of reasons, but their willingness to concur with me if I should do so. Accordingly, I drew up an opinion, and confidentially submitted it to each member of the court who was a lawyer, and received his promise to sustain the opinion by his vote. It was a thrilling scene when the cause was decided. The Chancellor read a strong opinion, in favor of affirmance, and sat down by the side of the judges, all of whom looked a unanimous concurrence. Senator Levi Beardsley, sitting by me, said, "Now, Seward, call out the militia !" I, the youngest, not only of the lawyers, but of all the Senators, read the opinion which I had prepared, all the other members remaining silent. The roll was called, and the vote stood : For affirm ing the judgment of the Supreme Court, the Chancellor ; for reversing it, Mr. Seward and all the other members of the court ! It is due, perhaps, to the legal profession and the legislators of the State to say that this decision, so equitable and so beneficent, has ever since been acquiesced in, and continues, unshaken and unquestioned, as a conclusive and final precedent. From the Court of Errors I passed, on the 1st of January, 1834, to the duties of my last year in the Senate of New York. This year was marked by more than the usual political vicissitudes. Opening under circumstances of overwhelming embarrassment, it changed rapidly to scenes of high enthusiasm and hope, and closed in a disappointment which might well have deterred me from reentering the political field thereafter. Some important political events had occurred during my absence from the country, among which were the following : Flushed with the well-deserved praises of the party opposed to him in the Northern States, and a respectable portion of his own party in those States, for the boldness, vigor, and energy, with which he had wielded the Execu tive arm of the Government in suppressing nullification in South Caro lina, General Jackson, early in the summer, following the precedent set by President Monroe, began a popular progress through the Northern and Eastern States. His party, which had dropped all other names and assumed that of the " Democratic party," in the Northern States, while they rejoiced in the suppression of nullification, were by no means prepared for demonstrations of approval of that measure, which should be offensive and tend to alienate the nullifiers themselves from the party, and turn them over to the opposition. Jealousies arose from this cause when it was seen that the President was receiving too de monstrative and hearty a welcome from the opposition. 1833- 34.] MOVEMENTS AGAINST SLAVERY. 145 Owing to this, as it was said at the time, the President, at Concord, abruptly brought his progress to a close, and hastened back to the capital in the quickest and quietest manner possible. John Quincy Adams, always active, industrious, and vigorous, now released from all former partisan associations and obligations, threw himself into the lead of the Antimasonic party, arid addressed an able and powerful series of letters to Edward Livingston on the subject of masonry. Livingston was then Secretary of State, and arrived at the acme of his great fame by being recognized as the real author of the President s proclamation and other state papers directed against nulli fication. The form of Mr. Adams s address to Mr. Livingston in those letters was, " Edward Livingston, Grand High-Priest of the General Grand Royal Arch Chapter of the United States, and Secretary of State of the said States." Mr. Livingston was silent, and thus ignored this challenge. Other eminent statesmen, among them Richard Rush and Edward Everett, followed Mr. Adams into the same field. The Antimasonic party showed much vigor in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont. On the other hand, the President had, in a letter of com pliment to the Grand Lodge of Massachusetts, declared that, in his opinion, the Masonic society was an institution " calculated to benefit mankind," and he trusted it would continue to prosper. At the same time, in all those portions of the State of New York and other States into which the Antimasonic debate had extended, the institution sur rendered ; dissolving its chapters and lodges, devoting its halls and temples to secular uses, and selling its regalia ; so that Mr. Hammond, the impartial historian of that period, impressed by these facts, declared, in his history, published in 1842, that the institution " had, in point of fact, ceased to exist." The sixty years labors of the abolitionists of Great Britain cul minated, this year, in an act of Parliament, which abolished African slavery in the West Indies, and awarded an indemnity of twenty mill ion pounds sterling to the slaveholders. Three simultaneous move ments against slavery in the United States excited more or less atten tion : 1. Israel Lewis, with scanty subscriptions by scattered individuals, founded, in Chatham, Upper Canada, a colony of fugitive slaves, and occasionally this settlement received an immigrant by what later was known as " the Underground Railroad." 2. A very imposing official organization, embracing good and ear nest men of all parties and in all the States, had been made, under the name of the " American Colonization Society," which had for its ob ject the establishment of a free republic in Liberia, to consist of freed- men from the United States ; and contemplated nothing less than an 10 146 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833- 34. ultimate transfer of the entire negro element from the United States to its native continent. 3. William Lloyd Garrison, Arthur Tappan, Lewis Tappan, and others, justly, I think, conceived the idea that this plan of colonization was practically impossible, and that its operation would be to remove out of the United States only a few manumitted slaves, and so leave the great slave population without popular aid or sympathy. They, therefore, organized an antagonistical institution, which they called the " American Antislavery Society," and inscribed on their banner the watchword of " Immediate and universal emancipation." The first of these three movements was conducted without ostenta tion, and almost without publicity ; but, so far as it was known, was regarded as unimportant and harmless. The agents of the Coloniza tion Society and the Antislavery Society, who had repaired to London to obtain there favor and funds for their respective associations, came into conflict before the British public. The conflict begun there of course was soon reopened here ; and out of this conflict grew an agi tation in the great cities of New York and Philadelphia, that gave birth to mobs which, in a few instances, malevolently pursued and hunted down the negroes, and the leaders, preachers, and advocates, of the American Antislavery Society. These mobs seemed to consist of persons who apprehended that an immediate effect of antislavery debate would be an amalgamation of races. Prudence Crandall established a school in Connecticut for the in struction of colored children, and was brought to trial for that proceed ing, which was in violation of the laws of the State. A church in the town prohibited the colored pupils from attending divine worship in the meeting-house. Although South Carolina had repealed her ordinance of nullifica tion, yet the principle of nullification was avowed boldly, widely, and persistently, in many parts of that State and in Alabama. Edward Livingston resigned the office of Secretary of State, and was succeeded by Louis McLane. The President, on the 18th of Sep tember, 1833, overruling the advice of the Secretary of State, of the Secretary of War, General Cass, and the Secretary of the Treasury, William J. Duane, directed that the deposit of public moneys in the Bank of the United States should cease on the 1st of October, and be transferred to designated State banks ; and that the deposits then remaining in the former institution should be withdrawn as the exi gencies of the Government should require. The President read, in cabinet, a paper in which he assumed the responsibility for this act exclusively ; and assigned, as causes for it, that it was necessary to preserve the morals of the public, the freedom of the press, and the 1833- 34.] END OF THE ANTIMASONIC PARTY. 147 purity of the elective franchise ; and insisted that the Secretary of the Treasury should, on the spot, sign the necessary order. The Secre tary of the Treasury declined ; and thereupon the President sum marily removed the refractory Duane, and appointed in his place the then Attorney-General, Roger B. Taney, who proceeded at once to execute the President s mandate. The Bank of the United States prepared to appeal to Congress, and the country, against this bold proceeding ; and gave out that, if it should be carried into execution, it would be necessary for the bank to contract its discounts, to enable it to meet the new policy of the Government. Apprehensions of a commercial crisis arose ; and the President s proceeding was denounced, by his opponents, throughout the country, as an arbitrary usurpation of power, in violation of the laws of Congress, and of the true spirit of the Constitution. The annual elections, however, came on so speedily after this trans action, that it did not enter at all into the canvass. That canvass was everywhere languid, and practically the election was taken by the Democratic party, or friends of the President, by default, in the State of New York. Only one Antimasonic Senator was elected, and he by only a majority of one hundred where in previous elections the ma jority had been ten thousand. My own district was lost by a decisive majority. Only nine Antimasonic members came to the Assembly, instead of our former number, thirty-five. The election in other States was equally disastrous to the party with which I had acted. What was now to be done ? It was not difficult to convene the few more discreet members of our small delegation, and political friends, at the capital. Practically, at that moment, there was only one existing party in the country. That was now the Democratic party. The National Republican party, with whose policy we most nearly assimi lated, had become demoralized and hopeless, seeming to have no issue upon which to reorganize, except a personal one with Henry Clay as a candidate for President, three years in advance. After this disastrous defeat, not a particle of hope remained that the Antimasonic party could successfully challenge the political power of the country. We were obliged to admit that, in the two chief objects of its organization, it had failed. Its first object was to restore the supremacy of the laws of the State, by bringing to the judgment and punishment which those laws denounced the conspirators and murderers of William Morgan. With a larger experience since that time, I have become satisfied that no political movement, however successful otherwise, succeeds in accomplishing an object so simple and so definite as this. For a long time I agreed with those who thought that the late civil war would fail of one of its chief ends, if it should fail to convict Jefferson Davis, or other distinguished rebels, in 148 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1833- 34. a court of justice. The second object of the Antimasonic party was, the establishment of the principle that popular secret combinations, with oaths and penalties, capable of being directed to act politically, judicially, or socially, but secretly, ought to be condemned and made odious. This object also failed, while it seemed to triumph. If it was mortifying, a few years afterward, to see the institution of free masonry reappear, in its ancient life and vigor, after having been left for dead on the field of combat, it was some consolation to see that, if the warnings of the Antimasonic party against secret political com binations had been accepted by the people, the country would have been spared the shame of the pitiful "Know-nothing" conspiracy, and the dangerous order of the " Golden Circle " which claimed to in augurate the late rebellion. However we might think on this subject, it was now apparent that our occasion had passed by, and that to con tinue to flaunt the Antimasonic banner, when not a single recruit was to be gained, and 110 past defeat could be retrieved, would be to sink that noble and patriotic organization into a mere discontented, liti gious, retaliatory faction. These reflections brought us to a unani mous agreement that, so far as might depend on our action, the Anti- masonic party should be dissolved, and every member of it left at liberty to act as his judgment and conscience should dictate, without censure or complaint from his former associates. After reaching this conclusion, some naturally asked the others what use we should make of our new liberty. I answered, for myself : " While I see no present organization for combined action except the Democratic party, I see too much in the policy and principles of that party to think of giving it my adhesion. I have opposed it from its beginning, throughout its aggressive career, and in its public triumph, as entertaining principles and policy injurious to the public welfare, subversive of the Constitution, and dangerous to public liberty. If I shall prove wrong in this, I shall have no longer occasion nor justifi cation for political activity. If I am right in these opinions, time will show it, and necessity will bring round the associations with which I can labor for the welfare, safety, and advancement, of , the country." These opinions were accepted generally by my old political associ ates. A few, however, with more or less directness, availed themselves of their new freedom to join the triumphant Democratic party under General Jackson. 1834.] REMOVAL OF THE DEPOSITS. 149 1834. Last Year in the Senate. Speech on Removal of the Deposits. The Six-Million Loan. A Warm Debate. Honest John Griffin. Land Distribution. Improvement of the Hud son River. Beginning of the Whig Party. Eulogy on Lafayette. Searching for a Candidate under Difficulties. Nomination for Governor. Where Great Men live. Silas M. Stilwell. MY new political attitude proved convenient, and even pleasing. I was treated with respect and consideration by the members of the Senate ; and, indeed, all public men treated me with as much as I could claim. On all subjects they listened to me kindly, and adopted any just views that I presented upon questions which involved no differences of political opinion. Three or four weeks, however, was the limit assigned to my political indifference and inactivity. Congress was in session. A derangement of the currency, with a commercial panic, interrupted trade ; and failures of banks, corporate and individual credits, had followed quickly on the removal of the deposits from the United States Bank. Debates, never before nor since surpassed in earnestness and vehemence, divided and distracted the country. A majority of the Senate, and a minority in the House, denounced the conduct of the President as unconstitutional, destructive of the public welfare, and an illegal usurpation of power. The Senate called on him for a copy of the paper which he had read in cabinet on that occasion. He defiantly refused. The Democratic party, in the two Houses, adopted the language by which, in that paper, he had justified his assumption of authority to direct the removal of the deposits, and the reasons which he assigned for it. Adequate provision having been made for extinguishing the entire national debt, a large surplus fund was found in the Treasury. Con gress had, at the preceding session, passed an act directing the distribu tion of this surplus fund among the several States, to be applied by them to purposes of education and internal improvement. The Presi dent vetoed this act ; and insisted that thereafter the sales of the national domain should cease, and the lands therein should be ceded to the new States and Territories in which they lay. The State of South Carolina having rescinded its ordinance of nulli fication, the Senate of the United States debated a proposition of Mr. Calhoun to repeal the " enforcement law." The Bank of the United States appealed to Congress from the President s order removing the deposits. There were loud complaints of extravagance and corruption in the management of the Post-Office Department. The commercial crisis steadily advanced, spreading like a pestilence. Many State banks suspended payment and went into liquidation throughout the country, while applicants for bank charters 150 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1834. multiplied, tempted by the profits expected to follow from the transfer of the deposits to institutions of that sort. Immense meetings were held in the commercial cities to deplore the financial convulsion, and Congress and the President were beset on all sides by petitions and committees imploring interposition and relief. " Relief " and " stay laws " were passed in the State Legislatures. Propositions were made by Mr. Webster, in the Senate, for a renewal of the charter of the Bank of the United States ; and by Mr. Clay, for a temporary renewal. Counter-movements were made by the friends of the Administration in both Houses of Congress. There were other incidents intensifying public anxiety throughout the country, which, if I were writing a his tory instead of my own personal memoirs, it would be proper to relate. The Governor of the State, William L. Marcy, taking notice of the pecuniary distress, and the derangement of the currency and embar rassment of the banks, in his annual message, attributing those evils to an action of the Bank of the United States hostile and injurious to the State banking institutions, proposed to the Legislature to raise, by the sale of State stocks, four or five million dollars, and to lend the same to the banks to enable them to sustain themselves against the oppression of the United States Bank. It was under these circumstances that a member of the majority in the Assembly, with a view to procure the support of the Legislature of the State for the President, introduced resolutions in these words : " Resolved (if the Senate concur), That the removal of the public deposits from the Bank of the United States is a measure of the Ad ministration of which we highly approve. "That the Senators from this State be directed, and the Represent atives from this State be requested, to oppose any attempt to restore the deposits to the Bank of the United States. " That we approve of the communication made by the President of the United States to his cabinet, on the 18th of September last, and of the reasons given by the Secretary of the Treasury relative to the removal of the deposits. " That the charter of the Bank of the United States ought not to be renewed." These resolutions promptly passed that House, without debate, and with the dissenting votes of only nine members. It was understood at the time that none of the dissenting members had any experience or practice in legislative debate. They were passed in the Assembly on Friday. They were received in the Senate on Saturday, and the Sen ate, overruling my proposition for delay, and with strong intimations of a desire to avoid debate, and to press them to an early vote, made them the special order for the Wednesday following. We of the minority were only six. Public sentiment, outside of 1834.] A WARM DEBATE. the Legislature, vehemently demanded that the resolutions should be debated, although it was well understood that resistance to their pas sage would be unavailing. Mr. Tracy, who after the death of Mr. Maynard had been our recognized leader, peremptorily refused to speak, and strongly dissuaded his associates from debate. One other of our associates declared himself in favor of the more important of the resolutions. My three remaining associates were always silent members, but earnestly insisted that I should assign our reasons for our intended vote in opposition to the resolutions. On Thursday and Friday I addressed the Senate in opposition to the resolutions. It was not difficult to find the required arguments. The elaborate and exhaustive speeches of Mr. Webster, Mr. Clay, and others, in the Senate of the United States, were before me. But the time allowed was quite too short for an analytic and concise prepara tion. When I had concluded a speech, which had been listened to with profound and sympathizing interest by a large audience, the ma jority announced a change of tactics. Instead of desiring to arrest the debate, and press the vote, they insisted that I should be fully and elaborately answered. The duty of making this reply was devolved on Mr. Maison. He had scarcely opened his argument when he fainted and sank into his seat. Time was allowed for his recovery, and he resumed and completed his argument in the following week. In the mean time Mr. Dodge made a labored argument. The majority were dissatisfied with the exhibition of their cause which had thus been made, and it was determined that Mr. Sudani, recognized as the ablest of the Democratic members, should, after being allowed time to pre pare, close the debate for the majority. When the day assigned for him arrived, he was found in the morning confined to his bed with a brain-fever. Mr. Maison resumed and concluded his speech. The speeches of Mr. Dodge and Mr. Maison did not seem to me to have shaken the positions I had assumed. Both these gentlemen, however, were of that class of debaters who delight not so much in logical argu ment as in parrying the argument of an opponent, by diverting the attention of the audience with anecdote, and with allusions to the per son, position, or character, of their adversary. On this occasion, I for the last time yielded to the seeming necessity of a self-vindicating reply. My reply, I need hardly say, was even more popular than the original argument. But I did not fail myself to see that I had erred, in substituting myself in place of my cause. The agitation upon Federal measures increased throughout the State and country, constantly presenting new and incidental questions for discussion in the Legislature. I spoke with moderation upon these questions until a new one occurred, which required an effort as great as that which I had made in the debate before described. 152 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1834. This new subject was a bill introduced into the Assembly in ac cordance with the suggestion of the Governor in his message, and passed practically without debate, by which it was provided that- State stocks should be created, and sold to the amount of six millions of dol lars, and that four million dollars should be loaned to the State banks in the city of New York for twelve years, at five per cent., and two million more should be distributed in loans to the several counties in the State, for the purpose of enabling the banks and the counties to counteract the alleged oppression of the Bank of the United States. While all my associates disapproved of this measure, there was the same difficulty as before on the question of debating it. John Griffin, one of our members from Alleghany County, was a tall, uncouth, as well as unlettered man, who had acquired some skill and popularity in local rural assemblies, with rough manner and abrupt and intemper ate speech, but of fair and honorable character. Desirous, if I could, to avoid throwing my solitary gauntlet at the feet of so many com batants, it occurred to me that Mr. Griffin might make a skirmish ing attack, and leave me to come later into the debate. I applied to him to do so. He hesitated, and then said, " I don t know how to make a speech, but I can sometimes write down what I think and read that." I replied, " That would do exactly." He consented then to write and read, by way of opening the debate, a few thoughts, oc cupying, say, ten or fifteen minutes. I had no difficulty in procuring from the courtesy of the Senate the delay which he required for preparation. I did not think of asking him to show me his notes. On the day assigned, Mr. Griffin rose to read a maiden speech. It began with a violent vituperation against the President of the United States, the party leaders, and the opposing Senators, designating them as " minions of Executive power." The first sentence was a long one, incoherent, violent, and objurgatory, and in the succession each sen tence was more offensive in that respect than the last. The speaker, at no time lifting his eyes from the paper, continued to read this tirade two hours. At first Senators took notes, as if -intending to reply. But it would have been as possible to make points and reply to a continuous northeast storm of sleet. Long before the speaker ended the majority had consulted what they should do. They saw in the speech manifestations of declamatory power which they could not believe belonged to the speaker ; and, assuming that I must have seen and sanctioned the assault, they prepared, if possible, to hold me responsi ble. I was quite as much shocked as they, but quite as innocent of the offenses which Mr. Griffin had committed. The speech as it was served my purpose in requiring my opponents to enter the debate before me. In the end I came in, on the 10th of April, with my argument in reply to them. This reply, while it was temperate and 1834.] CLOSE OF LEGISLATIVE LIFE. 153 respectful, seemed to meet the wishes of the opponents of the meas ure, and served to stamp my name on the issue thus made. All was well, except that Mr. Griffin then came and desired to have his speech printed. He reminded me of my promise to revise it, and I could not refuse. When the manuscript came before me I found it impos sible, with such freedom as a critic had, to reduce the tirade into the form of an argument, and concluded it was best to relieve it of what little pretensions in this way it had. So, striking out the occasional gentle and soft words, and leaving the epithets and confused meta phors to jostle through an inextricable maze, without the interrup tion of stops or exclamation-points, I let the manuscript go to the press. The effect was extraordinary. Senators, seeing the printed speech, pronounced it entirely original, while the opposing party accepted it as a bold challenge to the Administration. For a long time it seemed doubtful whether they would not insist upon making "honest John Griffin," as they called him, a candidate for the highest honors which the State can bestow upon a patriot citizen. Of course, the bill passed, by nineteen to five, and became a law. In the same manner in which the Assembly had passed the resolu tions upon national subjects, which I have before noticed, that body further passed, and sent to the Senate, resolutions approving the Presi dent s veto of the act of Congress providing for a distribution of the proceeds of the sales of public lands among the several States for pur poses of education and of internal improvement, and of his reasons for his disapproval, and of the policy which was announced in that message. When these resolutions came into the Senate I challenged them, and insisted on being heard in opposition to them. Whether it was that the majority of the Senate only deprecated further debate on national questions, or that they were not yet prepared to sustain the President on the great question involved in the resolution, I do not know. But they came promptly to a compromise with me, in which they agreed that the resolutions should lie on the table. Simultaneously, I moved in the Senate a declaration on the part of the Legislature in favor of a bill pending in Congress for removing the obstructions to navigation in the tide-waters of the Hudson River an improvement of the class against which the President of the United States had committed himself before Congress. The majority shrank from the subject and evaded debate ; but a popular issue upon it was sufficiently formed. Piquancy was now imparted to the political dis cussions in the State Senate by a new and amusing incident : It was discovered, by some betrayal of confidence in the printing-office of the majority, that a form of popular petition to the Legislature had been printed in that office by direction of the party managers, copies of which had been sent out in large quantities to local leaders, with in- 154: AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1834. structions to procure signatures to them, and forward them to their rep resentatives in the Legislature. This was regarded as indicating an apprehension that the six-million-dollar bill, now called by the opposi tion a " monster mortgage bill," had suffered by the expositions of it in our debates. While, as yet, the secret of the concerted action at the capital concerning petitions of that sort was unknown, a memorial from a remote county was announced in the Senate and was read. I moved that it might be printed ; the majority opposed. When I said that I desired it to be printed, as legislative papers are, in order that it might be more conveniently read by the members, I was answered that the memorial was in print, as it came to the Senate, and could be examined by all the members at the Clerk s table. Two or three days afterward came another petition, the reading of which the majority proposed to dispense with. I insisted on its being printed. I then demanded the reading. When it was read I remarked upon the sin gular coincidence of persons, in different parts of the State, addressing the Legislature, not only simultaneously, but in language which bore a striking similarity. As petitions came in day after day from other parts of the State, I dwelt upon this same coincidence until I ex posed in that way, and obtained a reluctant confession from the ma jority of, the concert of action, which they had before endeavored to keep secret, because it tended to destroy the entire effect of the pro ceeding. In the midst of the great popular excitement which had been awakened by the debates on national policy in Congress, and in the State Senate, came the annual charter election of the city of New York, in which the opposition to the Federal and State Administra tions had assumed the name of " Whig." The Whig ticket secured a majority of four in the Common Council, and only failed of electing their candidate for mayor, Gulian C. Verplanck, by one hundred and eleven votes. This election was followed by town meetings, which everywhere indicated a revolution of opinion against the Administra tion and the dominant party. It became manifest to that party that it must expect a defeat in the charter election, which was soon to come off in the city of Albany, like that which it had suffered in the city of New York. Alarmed at the effect upon the popular mind which would be produced by defeats, not only in the metropolis, but in the State capital, the party man agers resorted to an expedient, then quite a novel one, to avert a de feat in Albany. They introduced a bill remodeling the city charter, and postponing the election a year, during which time the present in cumbents should hold over. This high-handed measure, partaking of the defiance of popular opinion which then distinguished the Admin istration at Washington, excited violent opposition in the city and 1834.] THE NEW PARTY. 155 throughout the State. I was relied upon to be the organ of that oppo sition ; and I challenged the proceeding as being a flagrant political abuse, and a violation of the spirit of the State constitution. If I failed in this speech, the failure consisted in my moderation. Chief- Justice Spencer, then a political actor, insisted upon my denouncing the new law as a violation, not merely of the spirit but of the letter of the constitution. Attempts were made at this session, as at the two previous ones, to repeal altogether, or to materially impair, the law by which impris onment for debt had been abolished. I constantly and strenuously resisted these attempts, and the law was left unimpaired. It was perhaps accidental that whatever countenance these attempts at re action against a great, beneficent, but recently-established reform re ceived, was given by members of the dominant party. Finally, the canals had been opened to navigation, and the State revenues exhibited an alarming decrease, foreboding still greater finan cial embarrassment than had yet been experienced. It was under these circumstances that the Legislature adjourned on the 6th of May, and my services as a legislator of the State of New York came to an end, leaving only the judicial labors required in the Court of Errors. General Lafayette died at Paris on the 20th of May, and I pro nounced a eulogium upon him before my fellow-citizens of Auburn on the 16th of July. I should be glad if I could think that I did histori cal justice to his memory. In the short period of four months a comfortable change seemed to have come over the country, pregnant with new, deep, and unantici pated interests and responsibilities resting on me. I had begun the ses sion without a party, without prospect of any, without hope of future advancement, and without a remaining chance of public service. On leaving the Senate I had a party which, although it was new, was full of spirit, of courage, and of hope. It remained not merely for this new party, but, in a large degree, for the dominant one, to develop its real political character. But I could not fail to observe that the Democratic party was becoming an obstructive party obstructive of education, ob structive of internal improvements, obstructive of emancipation, obstruc tive of commerce, obstructive of foreign intercourse, and embarrassed with disloyal traditions and combinations. On the other side, the Whig party, which had come into the field so suddenly, with all the vigor of youth, seemed to me capable of being impressed with all the compre hensive, liberal, and humane ideas which, through all chances, changes, and discouragements, I had cherished from my earliest experience in political affairs. I would have tried to invest the new party with a name of broader and deeper significance than that which it had assumed, for I had already 156 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1834. learned that names are often potential in the life of parties. But that was impossible. The small band of members who had remained faith ful during the session appointed me, as usual, to prepare for them an address to the people, in which the stirring and important events of the session were reviewed, with all my powers of criticism, but, if I remem ber rightly, with dignity and moderation. In signing that address, we for the last time used the descriptive name of " Antimasonic," and called upon the " Democratic citizens opposed to Executive usurpation " to constitute a convention at Utica, on the 16th of September, to nominate candidates for Governor and Lieutenant-Governor of the State. Our attention was immediately directed to the finding of some per son who should receive the first nomination, and thereby become the standard-bearer of the new party ; and he must be one against whom no violent prejudices would exist. Mr. Francis Granger, who had been so often defeated on the tickets of the National Republicans and Anti- masons, now, not unreasonably, preferred a nomination which should assure him an election to Congress, to a State nomination, with pos sible defeat, as a candidate for Governor. The judicious portion of the new party approved his declension. But where was the candi date ? We fixed our attention upon Jesse Buel, who was just then, in the violence of the new political shock, understood to be prepared to separate himself from his former party. Mr. Albert H. Tracy, Mr. Thurlow Weed, and myself, waited upon that distinguished citizen, at his elegant rural home near Albany, and held a conversation with him. Disclaiming all authority or intention to give pledges, in behalf of the new party, we obtained an expression of his assent to its policy and principles, and his willingness to accept its nomination for Governor if the convention should see fit to bestow it upon him. For myself, it seemed to have been understood, in the political circles at Albany, that my nomination as Lieutenant-Governor would be not only proper, but advantageous. I repaired to my home in Auburn, charged with the duty of dis creetly and quietly preparing the mind of the Whig party, in the west ern part of the State, for the nomination of Jesse Buel for Governor. I found this effort by no means an easy one. Mr. BuePs case was the same with that of Samuel Stevens and William Wirt. His conversion from the Democratic party was not yet known ; and it seemed, as it truly was, to be conditioned upon his receiving, at the moment of avowing it, the highest honors and confidence our party had to bestow. Nevertheless, I went on, in good faith, and, when I thought I had suf ficiently prepared the public mind at home, I reported to my friends at the capital, and urged a public announcement of Mr. Buel s adhesion to the Whig party, and a cautious preliminary suggestion of his name 1834.J SEARCHING FOR A CANDIDATE. 157 as a candidate willing to accept the nomination. This report of mine was answered by a summons to the capital. On arriving there, I learned, to the great discomfiture of all the hopes we had built upon Mr. Buel, that the " Albany Regency " (for so the managers of the dominant party were called) had anticipated the movement which Mr. Buel proposed, and had prepared to flank it, by reproducing from their leading journal an article written by Mr. Buel, within the year, in which he declared his approval and urged acqui escence in the policy of the President in regard to the United States Bank, and his violent removal of the Treasury deposits. Having as we thought satisfactorily verified this fact, Mr. Buel was instantly dropped out of our thoughts. Thurlow Weed, Frederick Whittlesey, and myself, hastened to New York, hoping to ascertain there that a nomination of that emi nent citizen Gulian C. Verplanck, the recently-defeated candidate for Mayor of New York, for Governor, would be acceptable to him, and satisfactory to the party in the eastern region of the State. On ar riving there, we ascertained that Mr. Verplanck would not listen to our proposition ; and that any other nomination, that could be conceived, would be more acceptable than his. We were now as deeply and as spasmodically in despair, for a gubernatorial candidate, as little Greece frequently is in want of a king. In the midst of our perplexities, our self-constituted commission adjourned across the river, to see some new mechanical invention, then on exhibition in the public garden of Hoboken. Sitting down there to rest, with ices, wine, and cigars, on the table before us, in the garden, surrounded by crowds of idlers, we came to a final consultation. In this debate we brought under dis cussion all the prominent men of our party throughout the State, stated the argument in favor of and considered the popular and other objections against them. They severally disappeared, when I laugh ingly said : " I believe that we are reduced to the dilemma of King James and the clown. When the clown learned that the king was hunting in the forest, he went out to look for him, and, meeting him alone on horseback, he mistook him for a courtier, and asked him where the king was. The king told him to mount behind him, and he would take him where he could see his Majesty. He told him he would know the king by his being the only person who wore his hat. When they came to the crowd, the courtiers took off their hats, crying * Long live the king ! James, turning to the clown, asked him if he knew which the king was now. The clown, seeing the king kept on his hat, and feeling the cap on his own head, answered, * Not exactly, but I am sure it must be one of us. " My associates concurred in the appositeness of the story, and de clared that nothing remained but a ballot to determine who should be 158 AUTOBIOGRAPHY. [1834, candidate for Governor. I nominated Mr. Weed. Mr. Whittlesey sus tained my motion. Mr. Weed positively and peremptorily declined. On the second ballot I voted for Mr. Whittlesey ; Mr. Whittlesey for me ; Mr. Weed gave the casting vote in my favor. We rose promptly from the table, and I was directed, by the majority of the commission, to hasten to Auburn, so as to be safely at home before the convention should assemble, to whom this arrangement should be submitted. The scene that awaited me at home was more curious still. I arrived there on Friday. The convention to appoint delegates from my county was to be held at Auburn on Saturday, and the State Convention was to be held at Utica, accessible only by stage-coach, on the next Tues day. Of course, a political career which had been for the last four years so successful as mine had not been run without exciting some envy, and bringing out many competitors. No one of my neighbors seemed to have heard my name mentioned as a candidate for Lieutenant- Governor. Certainly no one but Thurlow Weed and Frederick Whit tlesey had thought of me as a candidate for Governor. I had already, before leaving home on my late excursion, at the request of political associates, formally declined to be a candidate for reelection as Senator, and with equal formality declined a nomination for Congress, and had committed myself to other candidates. But, suddenly, some exchange newspaper, received on the day of the convention, brought before them the fact that it was contemplated, in other portions of the State, to nominate me for Lieutenant-Governor. That would be too much for my friends at home. The delegates appointed barely escaped from being instructed to vote against me for Lieutenant-Governor, by obtaining from me, and communicating to the convention, a promise, that I would not cause or permit my name to be brought before the Utica convention for Lieutenant-Governor, and my positive instructions to them to oppose such a use of it if it should be offered. My nomination for Governor by the State Convention was made with promptness and unanimity. When my nomination for the chief office was decided upon, it was thought necessary to take a politician of Democratic antecedents for the second office. Very properly the choice fell upon Silas M. Stilwell. Not without talent, and possessing untiring activity and perseverance, he, as a Democratic member of the Assembly from the city of New York, had introduced into the Assembly, and aided to carry through the Legislature, the benign law abolishing imprisonment for debt. The scene which occurred at the American Hotel in Auburn on the return of our local delegates was infinitely amusing. My politi cal friends received them with complaints and reproaches, saying : " You promised to oppose Seward for Lieutenant-Governor, and here you have let him be nominated for Governor ! The nomination is a 1834.] THE CANVASS. 159 disgrace to the State, and will be the ruin of the party ! " Mr. Jacobs, the orator of the delegation, attempted to reason with them : " Why, gentlemen, it is very easy for you, who have staid at home, to say all this. But, if you had been where we were, you would have found that we had nothing to do with making Seward the candi date, and we did all we could to prevent it. The people from the other parts of the State wouldn t hear of anybody else." " We don t believe it," they replied ; " they could have found a more proper man in every other county in the State." " Well, gentlemen," replied the orator, preserving his good-humor, " I have known Mr. Seward long, and thought him a bright and smart young man, but I never supposed he was a great man; but, when I came to Utica, I found that everybody inquired of me about him, and spoke of him as if he was the greatest man in the State." " Well," replied they, " the State must be in a strange condition if Seward is among its greatest men." " Gentlemen," answered the delegate, " I have learned one thing by going to Utica, and that is, that a great man never lives at home ! " The canvass was unusually animated and active. When it began, my new position did not excite any ambition, or even a personal ex pectation of success; but, at the immediate close, those on whose cau tious judgment I habitually relied, carried away by enthusiasm, gave me a confident opinion that the Whig ticket would prevail. Its fail ure, of course, after this, was a disappointment, though free from a sense of humiliation. The other incidents of the season preceding the election had no particular importance. It was for me a season of rest, since I remained silent and passive under the discussion which my principles and char acter underwent. MEMOIR, AND SELECTIONS FROM HIS LETTERS CHAPTER I. 1831. Home at Auburn. Journey to Albany. First Experiences of Legislative Life. Sketches of Character. Aaron Burr. Citizen Genet. Maynard. Tracy. Granger. Weed. EVERYBODY in Auburn, forty-five years ago, knew Judge Miller s house on South Street. A large, square mansion of unpainted brick, very substantially built, its exterior plain, its interior handsome, with a row of Lombardy poplars in front, and a grove of locust, apple, and cherry trees around, it stood not distant from the main street, and at the same time not very far from the outskirts of the little town. It was the first brick dwelling in Auburn. As land was abundant, and neighbors were few, five acres were occupied with the usual accessories of a rural residence barn, carriage and wood house, vegetable and flower garden, orchard, and pasture-lot. Here lived the owner, retired from active practice of his profession. With him lived his mother and a maiden sister. His two daughters had grown up under their grandmother s care. The elder, Lisette, whose sprightly vivacity made her a general favorite, had recently married and left the paternal home. The younger, Frances, was of unusual beauty, but extreme diffidence. She had a few years before married a promising young lawyer, her father s partner, named Seward. Opin ions had differed in the village as to his capabilities ; but the majority conceded that he was industrious in his profession, though many doubted if he was old enough, or grave enough, or wise enough, for the responsible position of Senator in the State Legislature, to which he had recently been elected. Two children completed the family circle. It is in this scene and with these surroundings that my earliest recollections of my father begin. It is in the same scene, with the 11 162 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. same surroundings, that the notes of his autobiography in the preced ing pages terminate. He was at that time over thirty years old, but his slender frame, of not more than medium height, his smooth-shaven face, clear blue eyes, red hair, quick, active movements, and merry laugh, gave him almost a boyish appearance. The house was always cheerful when he was in it. That was never for long at a time, for he was indefati gable in his toil at the little one-storied law-office on South Street, where he prepared his papers and received his clients. One evening that he spent at home, reading aloud, from Scott and Burns, is so vividly re membered by the children that it must have been a rare event. Auburn was about as distant from New York then as Omaha is now. The annual stage-ride to Albany to attend the session of the Legislature was a serious and important undertaking. Of my father s journeyings to and from the capital, and of his legislative life there, he has spoken briefly in his autobiographic notes. But the picture there presented is based merely on recollections of a later date. It will be more complete if supplemented by some extracts from his let ters, written at the time, giving more detail of persons, places, inci dents, and character ; for the autobiography he had no opportunity to revise or read, and the letters he never saw again after writing them. Long and closely written, those letters from the distant capital were eagerly read by the household at Auburn. Under favorable circum stances, they were three days on the road from Albany under unfavor able ones, a week. Sometimes they would come by post, sometimes by private hand, a favorite method of transmitting correspondence in that time of high postage and uncertain mail service. The postage on a letter from Albany was eighteen and three-quarters cents ; from New York, thirty-seven and a half cents. A traveler by stage-coach often had his pockets filled with letters and remittances handed him by his friends on the eve of his departure ; and these it would be his first duty, on arriving at his destination, to distribute. At the close of December, 1830, the newly-elected Senator was on his way to Albany. His first letters thus describe his journey and his entrance into public life : ALBANY, January 2, 1831. It was just seven o clock, on Wednesday morning, when I left the Ameri can Hotel at Auburn in a stage with eight other passengers. We had a dull, tedious ride of four hours to Elbridge, where we breakfasted, and at five o clock in the evening we arrived at Syracuse. I had not anticipated so warm a wel come as I met with. In the evening my friends gathered in to see me, and I promised to stay the next day, and write an address for their New-Year s Con vention. Next morning I undertook the task, but was interrupted and prevented ; and, the stage coming along at two o clock, I got into it, with Julius Rhoades, of 1831.] FIRST LEGISLATIVE EXPERIENCES. 163 Albany. We traveled all night, and arrived at Utica on Friday morning at six. Left there in a tremendous storm at eight, and slept that night at Fonda, forty- two miles from this city. Arrived here last night at seven, well, and sufficiently fatigued. Everybody had been keeping New- Year, and was as much fatigued as I. I found a room provided for me at the Eagle ; but it is as yet occupied by my predecessor, Judge Oliver, who will leave in a few days. I am temporarily in the room with my friend Senator Boughton. The Governor, Lieutenant- Governor, mayor, and ex-mayor, each had open house yesterday, and all the world went to see the dignitaries and drink their wine. -Of course I came a day too late. The Lieutenant-Governor has rooms at the Eagle, and I think his whole family with him. Sunday Afternoon. I have been to the Episcopal Church. It is a delightful house, and the cler gyman gave us a good New-Year s sermon. I have not yet been here long enough to know whether I shall be pleased or otherwise ; though I was last night visited with more recollections about you, and Fred, and Augustus, than you perhaps would give me credit for. All, as yet, seems pleasant, and there has been exhib ited no feeling of hostility on account of politics. The Supreme Court com mences to-morrow, and the Legislature will convene on Tuesday. I shall then have an opportunity of giving you some of the feelings with which I shall com mence the new career before me. From my windows I look out upon the Hud son, whose swollen waters cover the streets and stoops, between this house and the usual banks. The sun shines out brightly and genially this afternoon. Tuesday Morning. Whether this state of things is going to continue, I don t know ; but so it is, that my only time to write is in the morning. The incidents of yesterday were of no great importance. I went to court, staid until I found I had no hope of reaching any of my causes for a week, left the court-room and went about town delivering letters, paying over money, etc. Then came calls from Antimasons, of high and low degree. In the evening I called at the Governor s to deliver the letters I had for him. Two lamps before the door marked the marble house. I staid but a little time ; and wended my way to the Capitol, to see the cau cuses of the two parties. That business occupied till eight o clock. I went home with Tracy and staid till nine ; came down to my room, packed up New-Year Antimasonic addresses till ten ; then Weed came and we talked till twelve. Such is the routine of a day here, and such, as near as I can learn, is the dispo sition of time by most of our legislators. I hope to be somewhat more indus trious. January 5th. Yesterday at twelve o clock the Legislature convened. I took a seat posi tively among the conscript fathers of the land, feeling constantly in my pocket- book, to be quite sure that I had the certificate of election there. The roll was called ; no credentials asked for, and I answered to my name. A venerable gen tleman beside whom I had placed myself, and who doubtless thought that I was some impudent spectator who had thrust myself where " angels might fear to tread," turned around as I responded to my name and said, " Well, sir. I think it will be conceded that you are the youngest of us all ! " I went up to the desk, took the oath, and wrote my name in such a hand that, except for the recollec- 164 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. tion of the incidents and feelings with which it was written, I should not recog nize it again. After solemn and due annunciation, came Enos T. Throop Martin, with Enos T. Throop s message, delivered it to the Lieutenant-Governor, who with great dignity delivered it to the Clerk, who received from the Senate a dig nified order to read the same. All this took something more than two hours. Some few committees were appointed, resolutions passed, and the Senate ad journed till this day at eleven o clock. Thus ended the first lesson in my legis lative education. In the evening I went to the theatre with Mr. Boughton, whose term of ser vice in the Senate has just expired, and who leaves town to-day. It is but a poor affair. In coming home it was very dark and rainy ; we were walking arm in arm when we encountered a rope or wire, stretched by some thievish fellows across the road, doubtless to enable them to pick off our hats. Off came both hats simultaneously. Fortunately we recovered our property and arrived safe at the Eagle. Thursday, January 6th. Another day s labor is ended. No measure of importance, no debate of interest, has as yet occurred in the Legislature. I rise in the morning with the idea that I have nothing to do, till eleven, go to the House, am occupied at most two and a half hours, come home, dine ; and, after that hour, no man is allowed to be busy. As, for instance, after dinner to-day I came up into my room, wrote the first two lines on this page, was interrupted by a call, and continued receiv ing calls and dismissing visitors until about sunset, when I abandoned all hope of writing one more line, till everybody should have gone to bed. So, in despair, I sallied forth, went with Mr. Fuller of the Senate and called on Mr. Samuel M. Hopkins, spent half an hour with him, came down to Manchester s, took tea, called at Cruttenden s, spent an hour with Mr. Spencer in arranging our causes for argu ment in the Supreme Court, went across to bid good-evening to Mr. and Mrs. Tracy, dropped into Mr. Ellis s room, looked in upon Maynard, came down, ate supper, and find myself in my room at half-past eleven o clock. Now, how any man finds time to study, and make speeches here, is beyond my comprehension. I want to look into the salt laws and the canal laws, and two or three other matters, besides doing up some old business ; but in truth two letters from Seth Hunt lay on my table, reproaching my negligence. Tracy and Maynard say I must make up my mind never more to be worth anything for practice in the law. Doleful prediction for a poor man ! Adieu. Heaven protect you all ! January 8th. The State has furnished me with two quires of this beautiful pink paper, a dozen Holland quills, a pretty pearl-handled knife ; and why shouldn t I write to you every day ? Then, again, the State very generously pays me three dol lars a day. I have gone at her call, and she has dismissed me for the day, after a detention of just twenty-five minutes. This morning I have been, for the principal part of the time, employed in attending to errands and commissions intrusted to me, paying taxes for my friends, etc. The sun has come gorgeously forth ; the river is clear ; the country looks blue and inviting. There are my friends, my home, my loved ones, my all ; here I am alone, a stranger. January 9th. Sunday morning here is a sorry time. I have bowed to Miss Livingston and to Mrs. Clarkson once since I became a locum tenens in this house ; and, except 1831.] REV. DR. WELCH. 105 those ladies, I have not seen the face of a woman in it yes, I must except also Amy the housekeeper, who is old, and cleverer than old ; and, after a fortnight s absence from all others of the sex, seems to be not very ill-looking. I have not yet seen the face of a man from Cayuga, except our members. Manchester is with me about a third of the time, though he boards a mile off. The other Cayuga members u Regency " men, " whom we have put down, you know "- keep as far from me as if I carried pestilence in my march. It snows this morning, and all around is cheerless. After I had finished writing to you yesterday I went to call upon Mr. Sena tor Gary and his wife, from Batavia. Then I adjourned to the theatre for the purpose of meeting some of my friends from abroad, who had arrived in the afternoon. The play was, " The Eighth of January, or the Battle of New Or leans." The heroes of the play were the two opposing generals, Jackson and Pakenham. The only incident of any originality was not in the play as writ ten ; it was that, just as General Pakenham was to appear on the stage, he was arrested and carried off by a constable. I can hardly hope to make you understand how entirely the illusion under which I have labored in respect to the importance of my station has faded away. Seen through the vista of opposition, excitement, puffs, and abuse, the post of Senator of this great State seemed one of immense importance and dignity. One week has removed all the accumulating vanity of a year, and I find the whole a dull, every-day, and commonplace affair. The Chenango Canal bill I think will pass. The Committee on Canals in the Senate are decidedly favorable to the application. The table of the Assembly is covered with applications for banks. The dominant party give out that it is expedient and right to sacrifice party feeling, and not to suffer politics to interfere with the bank questions. The New York banks have all agreed to come into the safety-fund system ; they will doubtless all be renewed. Among the candidates for United States Senator are Sanford, Sudam, and Root. Marcy, it seems agreed, is to be the successful one. John C. Spencer is the great man of the House. The political aspect of the Senate is as follows : the Antimasons are, Mather, Maynard, Tracy, Lynde, Ful ler, Gary, and Seward. Porter from the Eighth is just arrived, and it is said declares he will vote with us hereafter. If so, we are eight. Wheeler, I under stand, says he shall vote with his old party this winter. McLean, of Washing ton County, is one of the Clay men, who supports his chief while voting with the Regency. All the rest are Regency men. Monday, January 10th. The Senate was occupied in legislative and judicial business to-day, from eleven till two o clock. I have learned by experience to consider my hold upon time, which passes in this place, so precarious, that I seize the first opportunity every day to write to you, lest by delay I might lose the time altogether. Last evening I had a call from the Lieutenant-Governor, who graciously condescended to mount two flights of stairs to call upon so unworthy a personage as myself. Then I went to the Baptist Church, where I heard one of the finest sermons I ever have listened to ; it was preached by Mr. Welch, the settled pastor of the congregation. The style of the sermon, the construction of it, the language, and even the delivery, were very much like those of the late Mr. Summerfield. 166 LI FE AND LETTERS. [1831. This morning the snow is three or four inches deep, the weather cold, the sky clear, the sun bright ; the bells jingle most merrily, and the city is enjoying all the fun, fashion, and flash, of sleigh-riding. I do not hear of any other gay- ety yet in the good society here, though I suppose it is going forward. The river is full of floating ice, forced slowly down by the current. A steamboat left this morning for New York, but I do not think another will arrive from that place. The weather indicates now that we must bring our desires, wishes, and thoughts, within the limits of this ancient town. January 12, 1831. Weed is very much with me, and I enjoy his warmth of feeling. A politi cian, skillful in design and persevering in execution ; whose exciting principle is personal friendship or opposition, and not self-interest that is just Thurlow Weed. How much more I like him than I should if he was selfish and avari cious, you know me well enough to form an opinion. He is warm in his attach ments. He gives for charity s sake, is generous to a fault, kind beyond descrip tion, open-hearted, and sincere beyond most men s sincerity. What a contrast to my legislative friend , who is morbidly ambitious ! He came here expecting to make a figure in the House ; but he fears to thrust himself into the arena, and yet is unhappy because he is not a victor without having the courage to enter the lists. His conversation is always upon his own disappointments. Maynard is a giant in intellect, indefatigably industrious, methodical, ori ginal, and persevering. He makes no protestations, exhibits no discriminating preferences for any one, is always uniform, reasons slowly, carefully, and wisely, upon every subject. His information is extensive, his power of application very great, his perseverance in study astonishing. No man can associate with him without admiring, respecting, and esteeming him ; and yet no man, so far as I am informed, professes a warm and distinguishing personal attachment to him. Albert H. Tracy is a different man from all these. He is a man of original genius, of great and varied literary acquirements, of refined tastes, and high and honorable principles. He seems the most eloquent, I might almost say the only eloquent man in the Senate. He is plainly clothed and unostentatious. Winning in his address and gifted in conversation, you would fall naturally into the habit of telling him all your weaknesses, and giving him unintentionally your whole confidence. He is undoubtedly very ambitious ; though he protests, and doubt less half the time believes, that dyspepsia has humbled all his ambition, and broken the vaultings of his spirit. I doubt not that, dyspepsia taken into the account, he will be one of the great men of the nation. Such are the characters of those in whose society I am thrown. And here my case is different from that in which I have heretofore been. Visit and re ceive visits, everybody must here ; because it is through the medium of such intercourse that we arrive at a fair understanding of the measures before the House. The above, from the top of the page, has been written on this Wednes day, January 12th, and it has been the work of three successive sittings. While I was painting Maynard, Tracy came in, and I went with him to call on Mr. Lynde. While I was delineating Tracy, Weed came in ; and nobody thinks of writing when he is here. This day has been the coldest of the season. Imagine the west wind blow ing a blast loaded with snow, down State Street the walks slippery, the air 1831.] MEMBERS AND ACQUAINTANCES. 167 piercing, and you may have some ideu of my experience of going to the Capitol this morning. The river is blocked up, doubtless for the winter, and all is cheerless without. Within, my coal-grate sends forth a comfortable heat ; the lodgers are all asleep. Bills, petitions, briefs, demurrers, and the whole mass of the world s perplexities, are laid aside. I finish this page, and then at mid night I must to bed, to dream perhaps of you, mayhap, O wicked world! of Morgan. Thursday, January 13th. The mail to-day brings no letters ; but I had a call from the Rev. Dr. Hop kins, on his way to Vermont. He brought me a great package of papers. Albany is beginning to be less thronged. The lawyers who came down to attend term are, one by one, going off. The young students who came for diplomas will squeeze themselves through the examinations to-night, take the oath and the diplomas to-morrow, and the town will, in a few days, be left to the possession of the members of the Legislature and the lobby. There are several classes of members here. I hardly know into which I shall fall. There is a school of which John C. Spencer is the most prominent, the members of which are continually studying everything. They shut them selves into their rooms, and seek out many inventions, in order to present them selves to the attention of the House, and, through the newspapers, to their con stituents. No bill is read, no motion made, no resolution offered, upon which they do not make at least one speech. They are often successful, but rarely popular. Another class is of those who hang round the Regency, and glory in the assurance they feel that they are in its confidence, and are destined to share in "the spoils." A third class consists of pure, good society gentlemen, who dress finely, dine out, make calls, and have a set form of words for making pretty motions in the House, always taking care never to go beyond their depth in grave matters. These doubtless have their reward, in their self-complacency. A fourth class embraces those who, under a sense of their responsibility, chast ened by true dignity and becoming respect for others, affect nothing, are not often in the way of the rest, speak seldom, and, when they do, speak wisely. I cannot claim to be of them. The last class consists of the multitude, who come here to say "ay" and "no," do nothing, read nothing, say nothing, and think less. What class do I belong to, do you think ? January 14, 1831. My letters and papers come addressed "Hon." and " The Hon ble," with the various changes of " Senator," " In Senate," and " Member of the Senate," etc. But this morning came one addressed in small, neat handwriting, bearing on it no image, and only the simple superscription of " William H. Seward, Albany," which I have read all over twice, and laid it up in my pocket for a "third read ing." Meantime, let me add that, as your letters arrive safely with that super scription, so let them be addressed ; only remember that they be not so " few and far between" that the postmaster will forget, between-times, that I am here. My errand to the Misses R was about the amount I had collected for them to pay the rent for which they are in arrear, and which, unless I contrive in some way to have paid, they never can pay ; and in consequence they must be turned out-of-doors, and stripped of their little furniture, so that their rich landlord s patrimony may be kept safe from the moth and the rust which corrupt in this 168 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. perishable world. I succeeded in getting some aid for them ; but they yet owe sixty-five dollars. God knows how it will be paid. Alas for the happiness of the poor ! January 15th. I awoke this morning late. It was snowing, and the wind blowing violently. I thought I should lose my ears in climbing to the Capitol. The Lieutenant- Governor was so kind as to give me a ride back in his sleigh. I came up into my little room. " Another week," thinks I to myself, " has gone. What good have I accomplished ? What pleasure have I enjoyed ? " I could remember no good I had done but that of writing daily to you. I could remember no pleasure I had enjoyed but that derived from recollections of, and reflections upon, home. I smoked a cigar ; wished for Gus and Fred to play in the smoke of it. I smoked another, and thought of the difference in enjoyment derived from innocent play fulness of one s children, and that of wordy controversy with one s political opponents ; and, believe me, I smoked another while I contrasted an open and cordial conversation at home with you, with the heartless, selfish, and parasitical attentions of the lobby-members. Mr. Gilbert, of Onondaga, called, and roused me from this reverie, by discover ing to me, without any intention so to do, that a resolution I had this morning introduced into the Senate, about the smuggling of salt at Salina, had thrown the " Regency " camp into confusion. I swallowed my tea, and sallied forth to con gratulate my u Anti " brethren on so happy a result. January IQth. I have told you nothing lately about my legislative career. Know, then, that when I came here I took my seat every morning feeling as awkward as you can well imagine. For the first ten days I sat like a stone in my seat, not daring to open my mouth among the " conscript fathers," and having no intercourse with them when not in session, except in visits to and from the " Antis." I had it especially in charge from the good folks at Syracuse to look into the manner in which the salt-affairs had been managed at Salina. (You must know that the State owns the salt-springs, and derives a duty upon every bushel of salt manu factured ; that during the year it has been discovered that salt has been carried off without paying duties, whereby a loss has been sustained by the State of not less, probably, than fifty thousand dollars ; that during all the time of these frauds the " Kegency " have had control of the springs, and that their officers are implicated, and two of them have run away.) I dared not bring this subject before the Senate, for, when I said " ay " and "no," I started at the sound of my own voice. Meantime, on becoming a little acquainted, I learned that all the political change in our part of the State was here attributed to me. Of course, they con descended to intimate that I was a good fellow that is, that I would be of use to them, and very plainly to say that I must now join them, and my political fortunes were secure for hereafter ; for my meekness in the House led them to think well of me, and caused the vain belief that I held myself ready to be pur chased. Do not call me vain, or I never will unfold my secret thoughts to you on political subjects again. Well, I had gracious looks, open hands, and ap parently warm hearts, at command. Night before last I said to myself: "Henry Seward, you are a fool to be afraid of your shadow. Show yourself a man. Bring up the salt business ; 1831.] AARON BURR. 1(59 and prove, to those who misconstrue your diffidence into meanness, that the one shall not seal your lips, and that the other attribute don t belong to you." So I drew my resolution, which you will see in yesterday s paper. I made out a brief of what I would say in favor of it, u screwed my courage to the stick ing point," consulted Tracy and Maynard. They approved ; and I went to the House, took my seat, my paper in hand. By the time that 1 could properly offer the resolution, I grew faint-hearted, thought I would postpone it till Mon day let the opportunity almost pass by thought once more of it ; and, with a motion of uncommon energy, I found myself on my feet. " Mr. President," said I, and thick darkness was before me, " I offer the following resolution." Imagine my consternation, while I heard the President announce in usual form "The Senator from the Seventh District offers the fol lowing resolution." It was read, while I was endeavoring to recall one word of what I had meant to say. To make my embarrassment tenfold greater, I discovered the Regency men took alarm. Two or three were on their feet at once, and moved that the resolution be laid on the table. I felt relieved, be cause I was released from speaking upon it for one day. I sat down, after con senting to the postponement. In the evening, Regency men came to know what I meant; the newspapers reported the offering of the resolution, and I was hailed by all the Anti-Regency men as a hero, for my bold determination to bring to light the peculations on the Treasury. I feel now as if I had surmounted the diffidence which has oppressed me ; and, unless all is dark before my eyes to-morrow, I shall be able to assign my reasons for the measure I propose. I think the Regency men dare not debate it ; if they do, I shall endeavor to defend it. Now, is all this interesting to you ? For the matters of political nature which it involves I presume you will not care, but, as it concerns my feelings, perhaps you will think it worth the space it fills in this letter. Monday, January Yltli. I ought not to forget to inform you about our debate in the Senate ; to-day I called for the consideration of my resolution. The Regency men betrayed warmth and agitation. Every device was resorted to to defeat it, without en countering danger in public estimation. Something of the debate is in Weed s paper this afternoon. "The party" voted us down, by the united vote of Re gency against Antimasonry. But I feel much relieved, by having surmounted the difficulty of making a debut. I can henceforth speak without fear, if occa sion requires me to say anything. A visit to Aaron Burr, in regard to the case in which he was coun sel, occurred about this time : He was at the Merchants Exchange, one of the fourth-rate houses of this city. I could not but think, as I ascended the dirty narrow staircase, to his lodgings, in a small two-bedded room in the upper story, of the contrast between his present state and that he enjoyed when he contended so long, even-handed, with Jefferson for the presidential chair, on the second election after the retire ment of Washington. He has lost property, fame, character, and honor. Once so gay, so fashionable in his dress, so fascinating in his manners, so glorious in his eloquence, and so mighty in his influence, how altered did he seem, as he 170 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. met me, drawing a coarse woolen surtout over his other clothes, his coarse cotton shirt and cravat struggling, by the form of modern fashions, to display the proud spirit of the wearer ! His few gray hairs, just filled with powder, put on as thickly as paste, wet down and smoothed over his head ; his form shriv eled into the dimensions almost of a dwarf; his voice forgetful of its former mel ody, while naught remained to express the daring spirit of his youth hut his keen, brilliant, da rk eye. He approached me with the air and demeanor of a gentleman of the old school, and, as I shook his shriveled and trembling hand, I felt a thousand recollections come to my mind of most unpleasant nature. Is this the same being who shared for years the confidence and did the bidding of General Washington ? Do I recognize in this lingering relic of an age gone by the man who was the ornament and delight of every fashionable circle? Is this squeaking, unsteady voice that instrument which wiled away the hearts of men? Is this tottering frame the same that commanded at his pleasure the stormy waves of a new and enthusiastic people ? Do these wretched habili ments cover him who was the second in honor and office in this nation, and whose sure ascent to the highest place was prevented only by his rash and dis honest ambition? Is this the same fascinating being who entered with the recklessness of a fallen angel into the peaceful and classic abode, and stole the confidence only to ruin and destroy the happiness of Blennerhassett ? Is this the same proud spirit which, determined to rule, raised the standard of treason, and attempted alone and almost single-handed the conquest of Mexico and the establishment of empire ? Do I actually grasp the hand which directed only too successfully the fatal ball which laid low Alexander Hamilton ? Miserable comment upon unchastened ambition ! Unhappy man, to drag out a dishonored existence among a generation which knows thee only by the history of thy crimes ; and judges thee without allowing the merit of purpose or the extenu ation of passion ! Wednesday Night, January 19th. You probably expect that I will give you an interesting dialogue as between Aaron Burr and myself. It would be so if I could convey its spirit and had room to communicate information enough about the object of our meeting to make the conversation intelligible. But pass we it by as one of those things which must be communicated when we meet face to face. Another person of historic note I yesterday met at our dinner-table, the famous E. 0. Genet, quondam French minister in the time of the Revolution ; who was sent here by one of the temporary governments of France, and preached republicanism and sympathy with the French, until it nearly convulsed the Government of this country ; was superseded in his office, on the elevation of a new and more Jacobinical dynasty in his native country ; was denounced, and dared not return to France ; married the daughter of George Clinton, and has ever since lived a poor but very republican citizen of this country. January 20th. After writing you last night I finished reading the "Water-Witch." It is a strange, improbable, absurd, and unnatural story, without the merit of one good character ; but yet one of the most bewitching books I ever read. The sea- scenes and incidents are not less beautiful than any which are described in the " Pilot," or " Red Rover." I will not again, this winter, be so much interested in a novel. 1831.] FRANCIS GRANGER. I went last evening to the Capitol, to witness the proceedings of the State Temperance Society. Heard two fine speeches, and became a convert to the principles of the institution ; but I shall not become a member ; I leave that work of reformation in the hands of those who have not taken hold of the Ma sonic evil. It is enough for me to practise temperance, which I intend to do, and have done. I have a cause of importance to argue in the Court of Chancery, at the term which will commence next Wednesday. I have delayed, ever since last summer, to make up my brief. I determined that I would do it this day. Now mark the glorious opportunity for study afforded by the incidents of one day. Rose at seven o clock ; read the newspapers, and was shaved ; ready for breakfast at eight o clock ; smoked a cigar ; set to work at half -past eight ; wrote letters on business till nine; sat down at my brief; went to the House three-quarters past nine ; Senate organized at ten ; I took French leave at eleven ; worked at my brief till half -past twelve. Enter Mr. P , who had tracked me from the House wants a new county. Some gentlemen from Cruttenden s, on the hill, were here to dine with us ; left the table at four ; went to the Register s office, called at the Tracys , and returned at five ; enter a bookseller s agent, refused to sign for his book, got rid of him at six ; went down to tea ; found Sacket ; brought him to my room ; talked half an hour ; enter Thurlow Weed ; enter Mr. Lynde, of the Senate, and Judge Dixon ; exit Mr. Weed ; enter Mr. James Porter, Register ; exit Mr. Porter ; exit Messrs. Lynde and Dixon ; enter Mr. Fuller, of the Senate, and Fillmore, of the Assembly ; exit Sacket ; enter Messrs. Andrews and Julian of the Assembly ; enter Mr. Van Buren of the Assembly ; exeunt Fuller and Fillmore; exit Van Buren; exeunt omnes at ten o clock. Down sit I at my brief ; clock strikes eleven ; write a letter, and throw myself into bed at twelve o clock. This is life legislative ! Francis Granger, who had been the candidate of the Antimasonic party for Governor, was one of its acknowledged leaders. Seward s first impressions of his appearance and character were given in this letter : January 23, 1831. Mr. Lynde, a clever man, Senator from the Sixth District, called upon me, and I went with him to call on " Governor Granger." I believe I have never told you all I thought about this star of the first magnitude in Antimasonry, and the reason was that, with a limited personal acquaintance, I might give you erroneous impressions which I should afterward be unable to reverse. He is 41 six feet and well-proportioned," as you well know, handsome, graceful, dig nified, and affable, as almost any hero of whom you have read ; is probably about thirty-six or seven years old. In point of talent he has a quick and ready apprehension, a good memory, and usually a sound judgment. Has no "genius," in its restricted sense, not a very brilliant imagination, nor extraor dinary reasoning faculties ; has no deep store of learning, nor a very extensive degree of information. Yet he is intimately acquainted with politics, and with the affairs, interests, and men of the State. He is never great, but always successful. He writes with ease, and speaks with fluency and elegance never attempts an argument beyond his capacity, and, being a good judge of men s character, motives, and actions, he never fails to command admiration, re- 172 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. spect, and esteem. Not a man do I know who is his eqnal, in the skill of exhibiting every particle of his stores with great advantage. You will inquire about his manners. His hair is ever gracefully curled, his broad and ex pansive brow is always exposed, his person is ever carefully dressed, to exhibit his face and form aright and with success. He is a gallant and fashionable man. He seems often to neglect great matters for small ones, and I have often thought him a trifler; yet he is universally, by the common people, esteemed grave and great. He is an aristocrat in his feelings, though the people who know him think him all condescension. He is a prince among those who are equals, affable to inferiors, and knows no superiors. In principle he has redeeming qualities more than enough to atone for all his faults is honest, honorable, and just, first and beyond comparison with other politicians of the day. You will ask impatiently, " Has he a heart? " Yes. Although he has less than those who do not know him believe him to possess, he has much more than those who meet him frequently, but not intimately, will allow him to have. He loves, esteems, and never forgets his friends ; but you must not understand me that he possesses as confiding and true a heart as Berdan had, or as you think I have, or as we both know Weed has. There is yet one quality of Granger s character which you do not dream of he loves money almost as well as power. And now you have the best descrip tion in my power to give of both the distinguished men, who, if Antimasonry becomes predominant, will be long the objects of their country s confidence, and in some sort the conductors of her interest. Which do you like best? I know you will say Granger, and yet, if you knew them both, you would yield your whole confidence, as between the two, to Tracy. But one thing is certain : you would, as I do, like Weed more than either. Tell me frankly if you do not care to have so much of my letters devoted to characters. I give them because I always prefer my letters should be trans cripts of my every-day s opinions and feelings. Next I went to call on Collier and his daughter. He is one of our cleverest fellows and great men recently elected to Congress. Not finding him, I left my card, and then called on Fuller and Fillmore ; staid there until half-past eleven and came home. At dinner to-day met Henry Webb. We have taken a great liking to each other ; went to his room, saw his bachelor comforts, and went with him to Dr. Sprague s church ; heard a good sermon to a congregation among whom there seems to be a revival. Came down State Street before the wind, and here I have been since telling you all the things I have seen and heard. Monday. Last evening Weed came in, and, anxious to know how far I was correct in my estimate of Granger, I could not resist reading to him that part of the foregoing page. He made me read it twice, made his comments upon it, and told me to make the following alteration : " Granger is not aristocratic ; the manner which sometimes makes him ap pear so is the result of education at Washington. But he is a democrat in all his thoughts and feelings." I think Weed correct ; so you have the two characters. I anticipate you may be disappointed in both. Nevertheless, very few men have fewer faults than either of them I mean, of course, political great men. 1831.] IN THE CHAIR. 173 January 25th. This morning I spent an hour and a half in the State Library, studying out my brief, so as to be ready for my argument in the Court of Chancery. Then went into the Senate, and having heard, with no little interest, the warm prayer of the chaplain for the health and happiness of the members, their wives and their little ones, sat down to the ordinary business of saying u ay" arid no." In the midst of it, the President was graciously pleased to call me to the chair, on going into Committee of the Whole. I manfully marched to the chair ; and, having been an attentive student, in order to learn the ritual on such occasions, I got, with some little embarrass ment, a seat in the red-cushioned chair, giving it a hitching motion to bring it up to the table. Imagine me seated under the full-length likeness of George Clinton, with a canopy over my head, representing the hollow globe, and the eagle resting his weary wing upon its summit, and hear me pronounce to the " grave and rever end signiors :" " The Senate is in Committee of the Whole, on the bill entitled An act for the relief of somebody or other " (then I gave my chair another hitch). " Shall the bill be read ? " u Ay," was the reply, and off went I reading through the bill and the peti tion (then having hitched my cludr too far, I rolled it majestically, with its in cumbent weight, backward) : " Gentlemen, the question is upon the first and only section of the bill, those of you who are in favor of the same will please to say ay ; those who are op posed will please to say no. It is carried. The question will now be upon the title of the bill " (which I began as I supposed to read, but found I was reading the first section over again. I hitched my chair up again to the table, and re trograded myself back to the title of the bill, which the Committee of the Whole was graciously pleased to be satisfied with). " Gentlemen, the question will be now upon the whole bill, and rising and reporting." Again the committee was satisfied. I rose, and the President took the chair. I bowed and thus spoke : " Mr. President, the Senate in Committee of the Whole have had under con sideration the bill entitled, etc., etc., have passed the same without amendment, and have directed me to report accordingly." Then the President lifted up his voice, and said to the Senate: " Gentlemen, Mr. Seward, from the Committee of the Whole, reports that the committee have had under consideration the bill entitled, etc., etc., and reports tlieir agreement to the same, without amendment." Thus ended the trial of my courage. And such is the journal of a day, of a man who receives, for his services therein, the sum of three hundred cents. January 27 th. The bright moon is pouring her silver rays upon me, just as she is pouring out of the abundance of the same treasure upon you, though distant from me so many long miles. My window opens to the east, and I have stood half frozen at the casement, looking at the sober moon, and thinking how many a happy evening we have watched it through the window in the room where you now are. Nay, I even fancy that the boys, fatigued with the arduous duties of the day, have gone to sleep to dream of the pomp and circumstance of the parade ground, and that you are writing the lines which shall cross these on the road. 174: LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. I have, just at half-past ten this Thursday night, dismissed the last of my visitors, who was the Attorney-General. As he bowed in, the Adjutant-General bowed out. It seems to be the fashion for the Regency to visit, once during the session, all the members of the Legislature. Three have been here now, and I believe the body corporate and sovereign consists of but six or seven. All these calls must be returned, but when shall I be able to do it ? I almost need a private secretary to conduct my increasing correspondence. I give myself but six hours of sleep, and yet, like the housewife s cares, my troubles are never- ending. I am becoming immersed in a swamp of letters, for laws, for canals, banks, insurance companies, and for appointments. I found twelve lying on my table to-night. Your little letter was worth the whole dozen. CHAPTER II. 1831. Albany Society. Dinners. Parties and Visits. Governor Throop. Samuel Miles Hop kins. Nathaniel P. Tallmadge. Levi Beardsley. Millard Fillmore. Philo C. Fuller. Lobbying. Election of Marcy to the United States Senate. Speech on Militia Re form. Troy and Schenectady. Mad Dogs. Reading Novels. ALBANY was noted at that time, as it has been ever since, for its hospitality and pleasant society. Early hours, however, were then fashionable, and French dinners were unknown. Friday, January 28th. I went to Mr. Hopkins s to dinner at three o clock. The company included Mr. Fuller and myself, of the Senate ; and Messrs. Lacey, Fillmore, Manchester, Percival, Knight, White, and Ashley, of the Assembly. Mr. Hopkins, of whom you have heard me speak, is a most intelligent, philanthropic man, Mrs. Hopkins an intellectual woman. Miss Julia, the eldest unmarried daughter, is about twenty-two, sensible and easy in her manners. Miss Hester is like her sister, except that she has more beauty. Young Mr. Hopkins is a clever, well-informed young engineer. I must add, also, that they are all very unostentatious, though Mr. Hopkins is an LL. D. Mr. Fuller, of the Senate, taught school at Florida when I was at school at Goshen, in 1809, and while there he lived at my father s. He is tall, well-pro portioned, and dignified in person, and is about forty-five years old. Fillmore was, ten or twelve years ago, a wool-carder in Summer Hill. He is popular and honest, and has more influence in the Assembly than any Anti- masonic member. He is now a lawyer of good reputation and talents. But I forget that I have left the company seated at the table without any thing before them, while I am writing this account of their characters. Mrs. Hopkins, at the head, has a boiled turkey. Miss Julia has charge of a boiled ham. Miss Hester presides over a dish of fried oysters, while Mr. Will iam Hopkins disposes of a pair of roast ducks. His father has a tremendous 1831.] WHO IS HE? 175 piece of roast venison. A flowing tureen of mock-turtle soup is first ladled out, and then come the other luxuries. Presently there appear upon the table bottles of porter and of cider, supplying the place of brandy. The meats are removed to make way for plum-pudding, apple, inince, and custard pies. Then come trifles, whip-cream, jellies, and custards. These are followed by nuts and raisins. Then common Madeira wine gives place to "Farquhar." The ladies drink one glass and are off, and the gentlemen leave the board at six o clock. I took a walk with Mr. Tracy to return Judge Conkling s call. He lives in Lydius Street, about a mile from the compact part of the town. It was by this time half-past four. I sallied forth to find Mr. Mancius s house in Montgomery Street. When I saw him before, he met me just as I was going out. Both were muffled in cloaks, and I knew I should not recognize him. I rang the bell ; a servant appeared. I asked, and was answered that Mr. Man- cms was at home. The girl went to the door at the farther end of the hall, and, as she opened it, disclosed a table, two gentlemen seated there, with bot tles and glasses. " A gentleman wants to see me ; where is he, in the hall, did you say ? " and forth comes a man with a kind of bewildered air and manner, which showed that I was no more known to him than a visitor would have been from Kam- tchatka. Presuming this to be my host, I extended my hand, and received his, which was reluctantly held out to me. " My name is Seward, sir," said I. " Seward Seward ; yes, sir, Seward, did you say ? Walk in, Mr. Seward." Then he glanced at me again, and opened a door which displayed a bevy of young ladies ; and I thought I was going to be ushered into the midst of them, when my host bestowed a bewildered look on my person as I divested myself of my cloak and hat, and then hastily, as if something were wrong, pulled-to the door of the parlor, and led me into the dining-room. " Major Schuyler, Mr. Seward. I think you said your name was Seward ? Take a chair, Mr. Seward ; " and so I was seated. I was perfectly satisfied that my name was Seward and as to who I was, but my host had no distinct idea on either of those points ; and I on my part was bewildered to know if he was Mr. Mancius or his brother. A third glass was filled for me. I soon discovered that Major Schuyler was indignant at my intrusion, so. in order to disarm him, I observed : " We have a prospect of more comfortable weather, sir." " Perhaps so," said he, gruffly. Mine host asked me to drink, but with an air which seemed to say, " I won der what the devil sent you here ? " Determined to know whether this was actually the man I came to see, I said, " I perceive you do not recognize me, Mr. Mancius ; my name is Seward ; I saw you at the Eagle Tavern." " Seward Eagle Tavern ; yes, sir, please to take another glass." And still it was evident he had no recollection even of my name. u You know, sir, that you spoke to me about a suit I was to defend, and I was to call upon you for some papers to send to Judge Miller." " Oh, yes ! now I know ; now I recollect you. You are Judge Miller s son-in- 176 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. law. Oh, yes, yes! do take another glass of wine. I beg your pardon for not remembering you, especially as I invited you to call. How are you getting on in the Legislature, Mr. Seward ? " "Why, very well, sir; we are disposing of the business as well as is usual." Then Major Schuyler relaxed his knitted brows, and said " Are you in the Legislature, sir ? " " Yes, sir," said I, very meekly. " Well, sir, I have a petition before your honorable body, and shall be obliged to you if, on examining it, you give it such support as you consistently can." " Oh, oh ! " thought I, " the weather is becoming more comfortable, after all." He went on to state the object of the petition. I assured him I should be happy to give it a favorable consideration, and added that I had not before heard of it. " Yes, sir," said he, " you must have heard of it ; it has been reported in the Assembly." " Ah ! " said I, " that is the reason I have not seen it." " Why, sir, that is the reason you must have seen it," said he ; " you are in the Assembly, I presume, sir ? " " No, sir," said I, " I am in the other House." " Now, sir," said he, " I beg to ask you, in God s name, how old you call yourself ? " u Twenty-nine years," said I, very meekly. " Well, I swear I never would vote for you for a Senator from your looks." " Ah ! " said Mr. Mancius, "that explains why I did not know Mr. Seward ; he was so young ! I thought it was some young gentleman who had called to see my daughters." I need not protract this little story longer than to add that we after this got to be on excellent terms ; and I departed, questioning with myself whether I had not better get a wig. Monday, January 31s. To-day the Governor commences his usual dinner-parties, You must know the thing is done after this wise : The Governor takes the alphabetical list of the members of both Houses, and dines a portion every third day until all have had the honor. Andrews, being first on the roll, has just gone to pay his hom age. We have had a dull day in the Legislature. Mr. Benton, Mr. Sherman, Mr. Throop, and Mr. Foster, have made speeches drier than brick-dust upon a ques tion drier than baked sand. It would amuse you to see the letters I receive from all classes of office- wanters. Among others last night was one from a man I never saw, but who says he is sure that, from my acquaintance with the Governor, I can get him the office of auctioneer for the city of New York. Alas ! poor fellow, he lit tle knows that, if he wants an office, the surest way to be defeated is to enlist me in his support ! Another writes that, in consequence of my having collected a note for him, he solicits my aid to procure for his brother the office of Quartermaster-General. A Regency man wants me to vote for the Penn Yan Bank because George Throop is opposed to it. Another lobby-man wants me to vote for a new bank in Geneva because he thinks we ought to have a railroad from Auburn to the 1831.] ALBANY SOCIETY. canal. One wants me to vote for a bank at Waterloo, because it will promote Antimasonry ; while another is urging my neighbor, Hubbard, to vote for the same bank because it will help to kill off Antimasonry. These artful lobby- members deem the members of the Legislature to be ignorant and stupid, and have no idea how easily their tricks are discovered, nor how much they operate to defeat the very purposes for which they are practised. They even go so far sometimes as to electioneer our landlords to obtain the exercise of their influence. Is it not passing strange that, for four years, I have not had so much time which I might devote daily to domestic enjoyments as I now occupy in writing a page for your perusal? And the time which I have had has been almost always snatched, with a feverish excitement, from perplexities and cares, which discolored most of the hours that might otherwise have been so happy. Well ! after all, perhaps I ought to have learned that it is the lot of no man to have more happiness. Of the various evening parties mentioned, it will, perhaps, be suffi cient to reproduce here the description of one, illustrating their gen eral character. Nearly all who then frequented the drawing-rooms of the capital have now passed away. February 1st. I have just come from Mrs. Van Vechten s party. I presented myself at the door at precisely a quarter before nine. The fashionable time is from eight till nine. I was shown into the library, where I divested myself of cloak, etc. Meeting there Mr. Bleecker, I went, arm-in-arm with him, jostling through the crowd, to shake hands with Ten Broeck Van Vechten, twelve years ago my classmate, and now one of the sober and staid housekeepers of this ancient city. Although it was contrary to college laws to marry, Ten Broeck fell in love with a Miss Roorback, a pretty little girl, ran away with and married her, and then asked and obtained his father s consent to the union. Once only I remember to have seen the bewitching beauty at Mrs. Schuyler s to-night I saw her leaning on her husband s arm, a matron of about thirty years. The apartments were two rooms, less spacious, though more elegant, than our own ; the style of the damask curtains in the best of taste. Into these rooms were crowded about seventy ladies and gentlemen, and they justified Al bany s reputation of having a large proportion of handsome people. Two fiddlers were playing for a cotillon in the front-room. I knew several of the gentlemen, and a few of the ladies, and so contrived to be at ease. At nine o clock the Lieutenant-Governor s daughters arrived ; and it was evi dent they were regarded as belles. In a few minutes came Governor and Mrs. Throop and E. T. Throop Martin. Waiters carried about lemonade, and sangaree, and cake. Madeira wine was in the gentlemen s dressing-room. Except that the ladies short sleeves were in the extreme of the fashion, the assembly was the counterpart of a similar one at Auburn. Dancing continued till ten, when there was a general rush of girls and boys up-stairs. I followed, and was able to see that the successful ones were doing honors to an entertainment of some kind. After the ladies had retired from the supper-room, the gentlemen gathered round the table, which bore a beautiful set of china, with pickled oysters, ice-creams, etc., with Madei ra, champagne, Burgundy, and Hock. I discovered that it was considered 12 178 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831, fashionable to retire at any time after supper, so being fatigued I came off with the Speaker of the Assembly at an early hour. The seat in the United States Senate that had been occupied by Chancellor Sanford was now to be filled by a new election : February 1st. "We held a caucus, the other night, for the purpose of nominating a candidate to be supported by the Antimasonic members ; which exhibited the peculiarities of all our great men. Spencer, always forward and assuming, had promised John Wood worth the nomination. Maynard, ever cautious and scheming, had a great anxiety for Al bert Gallatin s nomination. Tracy was opposed to Spencer s course, for many reasons ; probably the principal one was, that he did not care to let him take upon himself too much of the management of the party. Hopkins, who with a great deal of talent and learning has the unaffected simplicity and ingenuousness of a child, went to the meeting, by request of Maynard, to speak in favor of Gallatin. From a sense of what course was best for the party, I was opposed to all the above-mentioned candidates ; and of course fell in with Tracy, to sup port some third man, and we agreed upon James Wadsworth. Maynard made his speech in favor of Gallatin. Spencer made his in favor of Woodworth. Hopkins spoke in favor of Gallatin. Some one nominated Tracy, and some other one nominated Hopkins. I per severed in my course. Hopkins, convinced by my argument against his own, voted for Wadsworth ; and, after having successfully carried my point, I had the mortification to see Tracy and Hopkins defeat their preference and my own for Wadsworth, by con senting themselves to be candidates. The consequence was, we all had to give up, and then take Mr. Works s name, upon which all agreed. I laughed heartily at Tracy the next time I saw him. Wednesday, February 2d. Yesterday was the day for the appointment of United States Senator. The roll being called, and Judge Marcy, the Regency candidate, having a majority over Works, the Antimasonic candidate, a resolution was passed de claring William L. Marcy to be duly nominated on the part of the Senate. The Senate sent a message to the Assembly that they would meet the Assem bly, to compare nominations. An answer was returned. Thereupon the Presi dent of the Senate left his seat, and preceded by the Sergeant-at-Arms, with a drawn sword, and followed by the Clerk, led the way, the Senators marching in procession to the Assembly Chamber, where seats were provided on the right. It was quite an imposing exhibition. The object of the joint meeting was this : if the nominations did not agree, then we were to go into joint ballot. Judge Marcy, when thus chosen, was about forty-five years of age, and was the rising man of his party in the State. As Comptroller, and subsequently by the impartial discharge of his judicial functions in the Morgan trial at Lockport, he had won public 1831.] SCHENECTADY AND TROY. 179 esteem. He was now sent to Washington, and his seat on the bench was filled by the appointment of Judge Samuel Nelson. There were two towns that never lost their attraction for Seward Schenectady, the scene of his college-days, and Troy, where Mrs. Sew ard, not many years before, was a school-girl. Visits to both places were described in his letters : February 6, 1831. My visit at Schenectady was delightful. I saw Dr. Nott, who was pleased by my coming. He expressed gratification iii counting the number of "his boys " who are in the Legislature. It was with difficulty he would suffer me to leave him. Arriving at night and leaving early in the morning, I could not go to see Berdan s monument, but in the evening I made some calls, talked with the old Dutch lady, who was habited in short gown and petticoat, and with the pretty black-eyed Susan with whom I used to board. But there is change at Schenectady, as elsewhere. Young ladies took me by the hand and claimed my recollection, whom my memory could only recall as little girls when I lived there twelve years ago. I spent an hour with Mrs. Boardman at Troy, yesterday ; pleased and de lighted with her reminiscences of your and Lisette s sojourn there. She had garnered up Lisette s smart speeches ; and I sat a laughing auditor as she brought them, one after another, bright and pointed, from the stores of her capacious and faithful memory. Mrs. Warren appears to be living with elegance and taste in Troy. Her sister is now the reigning beauty in that city ; so appropriately cognominated after the city whose fate it was to be demolished after a ten years siege, to re cover a beautiful woman. I do not see that Troy has at all changed. The beaux who figured there in your day have become chastened by years and cares ; but their places are filled by a new generation, educated under the influence of their example, and copy ing, with admirable precision, their manners. While I was at Mrs. Boardman s, an old, very old lady, of whom I have no more recollection than I have of Mother Eve, came along, with trembling steps, to whom Mrs. Boardman introduced me. " Mr. Seward, Mrs. Jenkins. You don t remember him, I suppose." " Oh ! yes, I remember his looks and his voice, though I did not remember his name. He married one of the Miller girls." " Yes, madam," said I, with as much pride as old Demaree when asked to make a sangaree, " I am that man " For I thought that I have seen ten thousand girls since; but, if I had to make a choice now, I would choose one of the Miller girls for my wife, and the other one for a sister. How powerful is the sympathy, or the self-complacency, which opens our hearts to those who make us the objects of their regard ! In many instances it is impossible to determine to what cause to set down our friendship. But, with Thurlow Weed, I have no hesitation about it. It is not a little surprising that though he is one of the greatest politicians of the age, and is, in fact, the magician whose wand controls and directs the operations of the Antimasonic party, I never, or very seldom, have ten minutes conversation on politics with him. He sits down, stretches one of his long legs out to rest 180 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. on my coal-box, I cross my own, and, puffing the smoke of our cigars into each other s faces, we talk of everything, and everybody, except politics. This is a sorry world that will load down the rising of generous, kind affec tion ; that will eradicate, one by one, the feelings which only make it desirable. I am happy when I am relieved temporarily from its cares. I derive more pleasure and more joy from the love you bear me, from the frank, confiding friendship of Thurlow Weed, and even from the irregular burst of Tracy s esteem, than from the proudest station, or from the longest, loudest shout of popular applause. I have just called on Mrs. Gary, wife of a brother Senator, and it gives me great pleasure to speak of her she is so amiable and unaffected. This morning, as you will see by the paper, I proposed sundry amendments to the militia law. A long discussion took place. It ended in a victory for my friends, and for a necessary and proper amendment of the law. But I am com mitted to defend, as well as I may be able, the propositions I have offered ; and of course shall have to study. I am in hope to find time between sunset and midnight. But one is sure of nothing here. On Thursday morning he rose in his place in the Senate-chamber, to make his first labored speech (with what degree of self-distrust his autobiography describes). Carefully prepared, it was courteously and attentively listened to by his fellow-Senators. It was a plea for such reforms as should make the militia a theme of popular pride, instead of an object of popular derision, and closed with predictions which time has verified : " I have always felt that the militia system is a relic of the age of the Revo lution, too valuable to be idly thrown away ; that it is a strong and beautiful pillar of the Government, which ought not to be rudely torn from its base. But if no effectual remedy can be found in legislative wisdom, ... I shall trust to the exigencies of invasion, insurrection, or oppression, for a regeneration of the military spirit which brought the nation into existence, and will, if restored in its primitive purity and vigor, be able to carry us through the dark and perilous ways of national calamity, yet unknown to us, but which must at some time be trodden by all nations." Friday, February llth. Last night, after writing to you, I was employed in writing down the sub stance of my militia speech, as you will see it reported in the Journal. In lieu of the letter I was expecting from you came one from , the burden of which was to prove that Antimasonry was all a humbug and there was the comforting addition that I knew it to be so. I was provoked, and under the combined influence of disappointment at not receiving a letter from you, and of receiving such a one from him, I have written and sent him what will effectually silence his suspicions of my political integrity, if it do not cut at once the chain of personal friendship. I have no patience with anybody who knows me as he does, and yet can mistake me for a hypocrite. The good people of Auburn, who express so much surprise at my determina tion not to visit home during the session, have a right to my reasons. I am un- 1831.] READING NOVELS. 181 willing to follow the fashion of affected fondness for home at the expense of public duties. I hold a responsible post in the Government. I will not be absent a day when duty calls me here, and no one knows at what time my vote on any important measure may be wanted. Then in half-serious, half-playful strain of comment on Auburn news, he added : I would not be very much alarmed about the hydrophobia. People delight in excitements, and in no excitement so much as that of terror, and in no terror so much as the mad-dog excitement; and, although I know the captain s good sense and excellent feelings, I have seen so many alarms of like nature that I have come to believe almost as little in mad dogs as I do in witchcraft. I have not seen one number of the Patriot or Messenger since I left home, and so you will see I have had the enviable felicity of living more than three months without seeing myself calumniated in a newspaper. Indeed, what with Weed s and Gary s regard for me, and the favorable impression I have made on some others, I am getting quite into the belief of my own honesty and up rightness. The influence of novels upon the imagination was, at that day, quite as much as now, a subject of dispute. Giving his opinion upon it, at the age when he was still a reader of romances, he said : February \Uh. It is true that notions of human nature, derived from works of fiction, are a misfortune ; but it is not equally true that the matter-of-fact people, with whom the world abounds, are so much happier without them. I am inclined to think they have the worst of it. Unless one is so stupid as to be insensible, he will have emotion of some sort, and I apprehend you will find that those who derive none from works of fiction, and none from views of men and women through the medium of romance, have the distressing excitement of passion of some kind. And if there be no "bursting of bubbles" to make them weep, there is often the violence of anger, the pain of suppressed revenge, the malignity of envy, and the miserable craving of avarice. Among all your acquaintance those whom you would be least inclined to envy for their happiness would be those who have never been interested, charmed, or pleased, with works of fiction. Tracy has read to me some beautiful letters from Mrs. Sigourney, of Hart ford, the author of the admirable "Letter from the Ladies of America to the Ladies of Greece," and of so many fine poems, etc., in the annuals. These let ters were to his father and mother on the death of his sister, who was Mrs. Sigourney s intimate friend. February 16th. In the Senate the whole number of members is but thirty-two. The num ber present seldom exceeds twenty-eight, and is now but twenty-two. These become intimately acquainted, and, in most instances, personally friend ly to each other. Business is talked over at our lodgings or wherever we hap pen to meet. We seldom have more than a dozen persons for an audience, and so no man presumes to make a set speech ; but most of the discussion is carried 182 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. on in a colloquial and easy tone. In this I have obtained sufficient assurance, and have enough general information, to take a part. On the other page I have given you a rough draft of the Senate-chamber, that you may understand localities. If you look on the plan I sent you, you will find occupying seat No. 3, Mr. Benton, of Little Falls ; a man of five feet ten, well-proportioned, almost bald, near-sighted, rather self-asserting. He speaks on every question, and is said to be the leader of the Regency party of the Senate. He is about forty years old. The member in No. 4 is Mr. Tallmadge, aged about thirty -five or thirty-six ; short but corpulent, and of dark complexion ; has a brilliant imagination, a happy elocution, and a fine though rather florid style; speaks seldom, and never without preparation ; always commands respect ; is always clear and me thodical. He is of a friendly and kindly disposition, polite, and respectful, and entitles himself to the good opinions of everybody. I imagine him to be a man who has no enemies, and few but warm friends. He is a Regency man, and will always be an important man ; has considerable ambition, but not as sumption, and leaves minor matters to the care of others. Mr. Beardsley, a member from Otsego County, is about thirty-eight years old, with light complexion and light sandy hair. Unprepossessing but unpre tending, he is an amiable man, a sound lawyer ; diffident, and not particularly prominent in debate. I esteem him a candid, honorable, and highly -respectable man. He belongs to the Regency party. Philo C. Fuller occupies the next seat ; a fine-looking man, six feet high, aged forty-two or three ; sensible and discreet ; a plain man, who always speaks good sense and speaks often, but never at any length, and is rather ambitious to obtain office and promotion. After teaching school at Florida, he went west ward ; became, and yet remains, a clerk to General Wadsworth, of Geneseo. The Antimasonic State Convention meets to-morrow. It has brought along many of my old friends. Bacon has been with me all day. Woods, of Geneva, is also here. Fred Whittlesey occupies a chief seat in the tabernacle ; besides, there are politicians of all kinds, of whom I know nothing, except their zeal and apparent sincerity in the cause. My room is a thoroughfare, and I have less time for study than is at all compatible with my duty to my constituents or myself. February 24tth. Maynard concluded to-day his speech on the Chenango Canal question, one of the most masterly efforts I have ever heard. It was a demonstration of the power which may be arrived at by means of persevering, patient study. He has for this kind of subject, the finances, resources, and policy of the State, no equal in the Senate. It makes me homesick to see the sleighs bearing off lobby-members, whose business is done or undone, and members of the Legislature, who obtain leave of absence for three days and spend three weeks ; and it is no contemptible effort of one s resolution to remain here upon one s post, when one feels that among so many counselors the responsibility resting upon a single individual is extremely small. 1831.] VISIT TO THE SHAKERS. 183 CHAPTER III. 1831. Visit to the Shakers. Presidential Candidates. Calhoun. Chief-Justice Spencer. Rural Life. A Parent s Responsibilities. Banks. Edward Ellice. Trip to Orange County. A FEW miles from Albany is the Shaker settlement of Niskayuna. The neat, frugal habits of its people, their quaint dress and language, their enforced separation of the sexes, and their peculiar religious ob servances, attracted many visitors to the little community. Seward, in one of his letters, described his first impressions of them. With some of the leading members, a few years later, his acquaintance ripened into friendship. Sunday, February 21th. This morning Mr. and Mrs. Tracy, Mr. Andrews, and I, drove in the glorious sunshine to Niskayuna, to attend the worship of that singular but harmless people the Shakers. The house is perhaps fifty feet long by thirty-five wide, the walls neatly whitewashed, the floor clean as any dairy. There is no gallery, no pulpit ; there are no pews, no desk. The audience, if I may so call it, com posed of curious visitors like ourselves, had plain benches, occupying half the room. The worshipers occupied the other half. There were about forty of each sex. The dress of the Shakers is simple, neat, and uniform ; that of the females consisting of dark, reddish-brown homespun, made exceedingly plain, with nar row skirts and close sleeves, and presenting a singular contrast to the gay array of " the world s people," as they call us. No part of the person is exposed save the hands and face. The neck is covered even to the chin a plain white linen or silk handkerchief is pinned over the shoulders and bosom ; a cap, with no ribbons or other ornament, is fitted closely to the head, and drawn so far over as to conceal the hair. This, resembling the customary head-dress of a corpse, seemed at first to give a cadaverous and painful appearance to the coun tenance ; but that impression wore away, and was probably the effect of the association of ideas. Over this austere dress each had a plain drab mantle and Quaker bonnet. The men were habited in drab coats, trousers, and vest, in the style of a past age. All was silence, order, and apparently self-communing devotion. One, who seemed to be in authority, stepped forward to the centre, and addressed his " brethren and sisters " in an exhortation to have their hearts directed to the importance and solemnity of their present duty ; and then retired again to his place in the front rank. One, who seemed to be a leader of the music, then raised his voice in a kind of hymn. Instantly every voice joined in chorus ; each worshiper keeping time by a backward and forward motion of the body, though still keeping his position on the floor ; the arms extended forward from the elbow, with hands relaxed at the wrist, also keeping time by an upward and downward motion. The music was loud, clear, and harmonious; the words seemed to be a kind of repetition tbe tune something between the 184: LIFE ANI) LETTERS. [1881, sacred music of other denominations and the light and gay airs of a ballroom. It commenced with "They are marching on to Zion" then, continuing the action of their hands, the worshipers moved back and forth, in a succession of figures, one resembling in some respects the " promenade" in a cotillon. The Shakers having returned to their first positions, an elder then addressed the " world s people" in a few sensible remarks; the burden of which was that, whatever might have been the motives which led us hither, he would submit to us whether it was not expedient for us to turn our attention as they had done to the great affair of salvation ; that the principle of their association was to- pursue the road to heaven, as it was laid down in the Scriptures, by leading lives of self-denial and devotion ; that Jesus Christ and his disciples practised those virtues and inculcated them ; and that ambition, avarice, and all other worldly lusts, must necessarily be subdued and entirely overcome. He did. not give us any further illustrations of the creed of this inoffensive people. You will be surprised when I tell you that the effect of the whole service, upon myself and all others present, was serious and devotional. If, for a moment, the continued evolutions of the dance, together with the animating but simple chorus, brought back the olden recollection of " How oats, peas, beans, and barley grows, you nor I nor nobody knows how oats, peas, beans, and barley grows," yet my roving thoughts were chastened by the impressive devo tion apparent in the countenances of most of the worshipers. A few, however, did not seem inspired with the same enthusiastic spirit some of the girls cast ing furtive, smiling glances at the spectators ; and some of the men having sucli sinister countenances that it required liberal charity to consider them as suffer- iag penance. March 3d. Circumstances conspire to induce the belief that Mr. Clay will not be our candidate at the ensuing election. Calhoun, more than any other of the candidates, talks Antimasonry ; but the stain of nullification is too black upon his record to justify any belief that he can receive our support. McLean is capable and deserving, and withal, I believe, well inclined toward us, but we have not yet a decided expression from him. March UJi. To-day I went to see Chief -Justice Spencer, whom I found one of the kind est, as I have always thought him one of the most sensible, of men. On the way back I met Weed, who said he had been down to the Eagle to see me, and there heard a gentleman catechising my landlord about my being always out, and where I went to, and how I occupied my time, and all that. Upon that hint, I came down to my room ; wherein entered a lobby-member, who dwelt with me till nine o clock. Mrs. A wondered that I would not join her husband and go to New York to live. I read her a lesson upon domestic comfort and rural life, which surprised her and myself too ; you don t know how willing I shall be to remain in Auburn next summer. March Wi. After writing you last night, Weed came in with Andrews from the theatre, where the actors had been performing a play in which Weed was made one of 1831.] EDWARD ELLICE. 185 the dramatis persona. Like a good fellow as he is, he was unaffected by the attempts of our opponents to be witty at his expense, so long as he preserves the attachment of his friends ; but Andrews, who is a warm-hearted fellow, took the joke so seriously as to come home evidently dispirited, and declaring that we would have revenge. March 8th. I went this afternoon to see the experiments with repeating-guns, which the inventor wishes the State to patronize. I, having voted against the bill the other day, could do no less than examine the gun. It is a curious piece of mechanism, by which ten successive balls may be fired from the same gun with out the trouble of reloading. March llth. The Governor having gone through with the process of " dining the Legisla ture," as it is called, the Lieutenant-Governor now follows suit. Billets were received this morning, inviting a part of the Senators to dine with him on Monday next ; and others inviting the residue for Wednesday. He is a pleasant, plain old man, and I have been struck, on looking at him, by the reflection how little the people can or do know of the real character or merits of those whom they elect to rule over them. The press is always divided into two parties : the one lauds or magnifies the candidate beyond all justice or truth ; the other equally exaggerates his demerits, and it is only when the battle is lost or won, and we meet here, that we find each other neither so good and so great, nor so vile and so weak, as the press have labored to prove we are. March 12th. This day has been one of excitement and disorder ; opening with the last visit of the lobby-members of the Buffalo, Ulster, Madison, Montgomery, Penn Yan, and Oswego Banks, whose fate was to be decided this morning. Before the question was taken, a bill came up relating to aliens, its real purpose being to deprive one Edward Ellice, a foreigner, and now in London, of certain vested rights at Little Falls. It struck every one at first with astonishment to see such a bill introduced. Many opposed it ; but the persuasions of party leaders induced one after another to yield ; and, with some specious modification, each professed to be satisfied. It was plain that, on the third reading, the bill was to pass. It was almost the only occasion, since I have been here, that I have felt roused by the spirit of indignation against wrong. I rose with the accumulated embarrassment of long delay, and poured forth a torrent of honest feeling. I did not occupy the floor more than five minutes ; I knew not what I was going to say when I rose, nor what I had said when I sat down ; but the house was still, and the audience was on my side of the question, and responded to the declaration I made that the village of Little Falls, its rocks, and its waters might pass away ; but, with my vote, not one jot or tittle of the legisla tive faith of this State should be passed away or broken. The bill was adopted, but they were five honest and fearless men who voted against it. Then came the bank questions, and after that came a dinner given by tha successful bank applicants at this house. I appreciate your solicitude about your boy ; but I do not think you need apprehend so much danger to the early morals of the child from his associations 186 MFE AND LETTERS. [1831. at school. Preserve within him his love and confidence toward his parents, and, my word for it, he will escape the evils of communication with those children who become corrupted at school for want of sedulous and affectionate care at home. There lies the evil. Whatever of bad effects my early associations have left upon me, I can now trace to the weakened confidence and affection toward my father, caused by his severity ; whatever of good I have preserved, I am free and proud to declare, I owe to the affection which I still cherished for him, and the love and fear which I have ever entertained for my mother. March IGth. In the Senate this morning we had under consideration the bill relating to colonial records. A long debate was had, of which there is a brief sketch in the papers. My remarks occupied fifteen minutes. At four I went to dine with the Lieutenant-Governor. The ladies were Mrs. Clarkson and Miss Livingston, his two daughters. The guests were Mr. West- cott, Mr. Lynde, Mr. Sherman, Mr. Tallmadge, Mr. Throop, Mr. Todd, Mr. Quackenbush, and myself, of the Senate; Messrs. Fillmore, Otis, Andrews, Morehouse, and the Speaker, of the Assembly ; Mr. Cambreling, of Congress ; Mr. Van Rensselaer, the young Patroon, and Mr. Schuyler. When I came up to my room, at seven o clock, I found waiting for me Colonel Stone, of New York, editor of the Commercial Advertiser. He is a very intelli gent and agreeable man I was much pleased with him. His contributions to the annuals you may recollect. One of his stories is, I think, in the " Atlantic Souvenir," of which the scene is laid in Otsego. Tracy maintained to-night that he did not desire to win one hour of posthu mous fame he was willing to be forgotten as soon as the clods were upon his bosom ; and, said he to me, " Just dismiss the vague and indefinable belief which you indulge, that when men speak your praises after you are dead you shall hear them, and you would feel as I do." I assented, but added, " I cannot but shudder at the idea of leaving my wife and bairns to struggle with a world careless of them." The monotony of legislative life was now varied by a visit to the old home in Orange County. NEWBUBO, Saturday, \t7i. I am just off for Florida ; Mr. Fuller, of the Senate, is with me. It snows and is uncomfortably cold, but I am in exuberant spirits, owing to the escape from confinement at Albany and touching once more my native soil. We left Albany in the steamboat, at three o clock yesterday. . On board I fell into com pany with Dr. McNaughton, of Albany. Found him extremely intelligent and agreeable. Monday, 21st. I ought to tell you about the mistake I found my poor grandmother Jen nings laboring under. I had written a letter or two to my mother in an hour of sober thought, pouring out the affectionate feelings which, in a long ab sence, had accumulated in my heart, but in no wise alluding, except by way of acknowledgment of my mother s virtue and piety, to the subject of religion. These letters had been read to my grandmother, and forgetting the straitness of 1831.] SAMUEL S. SEWARD. 187 her Calvinistic principles, and with the confused perception of old age, she had found cause in them to believe me a man of " changed heart." When I was there she avowed this belief, and sought its assurance from me. Alas! poor sinner ! I had to undeceive her, though I saw the mistake had afforded un- mingled joy to her affectionate heart. I leave you to judge with how little patience I bore the lecture she addressed, to bring me to that state which she had fondly believed me safely moored in. I knew all the time she had the right of the matter. I could not question her right, or feel one uprising emotion of resistance. I believe I held the handle of the door half an hour, waiting a con venient pause in the lesson which would enable me to retire. Fuller saw this sheet lying on my table ; he asked to whom the letter was written; I told him. He said : " It maybe that you will continue to write such long letters to your wife till you are fifty years old; but I doubt it." Do you? CHAPTER IV. 1831. Maynard s Eloquence. Rev. Edward N. Kirk. Religious Belief. John C. Spencer. Bon nets. United States Bank. West Point and "Old Fort Put." Imprisonment for Debt. Closing Scenes of the Session. THE latter part of a legislative session is always a busy and hurried season. Again at his post in Albany, Seward resumed the narrative of its incidents : March 30, 1831. It gives me joy to think my stay here is limited to three weeks. I do not think I shall be disappointed in my hopes of passing the ensuing summer more wisely and pleasantly for you and for myself. If I can but learn to feel only an ordinary sense of responsibility in my professional business, I may have time enough to be not entirely a stranger at my own hearth. I may, for once, have time to read. Indeed, strange as it may seem, I have thought that I have retro graded during my winter here, and got back to the feelings of by-gone years. I am certainly younger here, where I am a boy among gray-headed men, than at home, where I am in some sense the responsible head of a party, and the deposi tory of important professional concerns. March 3lst. My father arrived here last night. I have spent with him all the time to-day not occupied with the sittings of the Senate. There is a singular youthfulness in his full years. Many of the boarders here supposed him to be my senior brother. Now that he is away from the patriarchal seat at the family fireside, he has thrown off the severity and rigor which used to awe me ; and I have thought many times to-day how strange it was that he, to whom the affection and confidence of wife and children are so welcome, nay, so indispensable, should have seemed to us, during a part of his life, so different from the buoyant and generous youth which my mother describes him to have been. 188 LIFE A ND LETTERS. [1831, April 1st. I was beyond measure gratified with the impression made by Maynard upon my father. In the course of the debate in the Senate on his favorite doctrine of canal revenues, Maynard took the floor, and for half an hour poured forth a torrent of sparkling eloquence, which drew the admiration of every one who heard him ; but withal so respectful, so kind toward his opponent as to disarm him of the power of reply. My father, who was an auditor, said, "Well! I don t think you have need to go further for a President of the United States, while you have Maynard." I told him I thought that such eloquence was worthy of the Senate of the United States, and would not compare badly with the efforts of even Daniel Webster. Next week, and probably to the end, we shall hold afternoon sessions, com mencing at four o clock. Sunday, April 3d. Went with Tracy and George Andrews to Kirk s church this morning. He is one of the most eloquent of pulpit-orators. Seventy-five converts were to be received to communion this afternoon. After church we walked, discoursing of religion, of skepticism, and its dan gers; and coming, of course, to no satisfactory conclusion why it was that mankind must ever differ upon the subject. I suggested that, perhaps, less difficulty would exist if we had no books except the four Evangelists, and that the controversies between different sects are based largely on the Epistles and Revelation. To this Tracy assented, and added that the internal evidence of the divine origin of the Gospels was far greater than that of the Epistles. By-the-way, did you ever read Locke s dissertation upon " The Faith neces sary to Salvation ? " He maintains that all that is necessary for us to believe is, that Jesus Christ is the Messiah ; and he enforces it by a reference to the preach ing of our Saviour, who, when asked, " What shall we do to be saved? " an swered, " Believe on me and ye shall be saved." The Rev. Edward N. Kirk was the youthful friend with whom Sew- ard exchanged orations when both were students in New York. He was now in the height of his reputation as a popular preacher. Very fine-looking, of medium stature, but of striking presence and graceful manner, with dark complexion, and profuse curling hair, he was, by his impassioned eloquence, drawing crowds to the Fourth Pres byterian Church, in Albany, greater than it could hold. April Gth. This morning Mrs. T was going to look at the new bonnets, and invited me to get one for you ; so her husband sealed up his letters, and forthwith we all started off, down Columbia, and North Market, and South Market Streets, to Miss Harris s, and there the bonnets were. But how could I make any choice ? Mrs. T thought she should prefer a " Dunstable " or a " diamond straw, 7 that being the fashionable as well as durable article; but the difficulty was about the shape. I looked on like a Yorkshire rustic, thinking all shapes pretty, but unable to say, in my own mind, that one was handsomer than another. 1831.] SPENCER, VAN BUREN, FILLMORE. 189 Finally, I told her to choose her own, and I would look at it after it was trimmed, and then make up my judgment, get one for you and one for your sister, and meantime I would write home for advice. All that I could treasure up about the bonnets is, that they give one a chance to look out, and are not so long and so small-crowned as was the fashion last summer. April Wi. This evening I have spent with John C. Spencer. I came away thinking of the influence of political prejudices upon our feelings. Such prejudices had predisposed me to dislike John C. Spencer ; and when I find him on the same side as myself, fall of zeal, and animation, and daring, in the same political cause, I find all my prejudices wearing away, and, instead of hating him, I am admiring him. Truly, this bachelor s life is one of very few charms. Here I am, alone in this little, dirty room, with a mean charcoal-fire, on this cold, dull evening. I have not heart enough left to go out anywhere. I cannot read a word, and there is nothing to think about but you and the boys ; and, when my thoughts range that way, they come back loaded with solicitude. Still, this is "life above-stairs," and I am to enjoy it, because thousands, under a mistaken notion, deem it enviable. April llth. You know the leading Van Buren measure is the nullification of the United States Bank. Well, those who are in favor of the United States Bank are de clared to be "Federalists," and those who are against it "Democrats." The Legislature of New York contains a large majority of Van Buren men, and, although Congress only can repeal the charter of the bank, yet the Legislature must, for Van Buren s purposes, now resolve that the bank ought not to be renewed. The order came forth; the Assembly, after a week s discussion, passed the resolution and sent it to our House to-day. In the Senate there are eight Antimasons and twenty-two Jackson men. But we found on counting that there were some Jackson men who would not go with the measure. So we moved to postpone the resolution indefinitely. This motion has now fifteen votes. We have made a well-contested battle, and have triumphed for to-day so much beyond our hopes that the Antimasons are holding a kind of festival. You will see the debate in the Journal of this evening. April 12, 1831. Last night I dropped into Fuller and Fillmore s room. Some half a dozen were there, and the discourse turned on the result of the town-meetings. I stated what I had heard from Cayuga ; another gave the news from Washing ton, and a third from Tompkins. At this stage of the conversation Fillmore came in. I saluted him laughingly with " How are you to-night, brother Fillmore ? " " Very well, I thank you ; but I have bad news from home." " Your family unwell ? " said I. He replied, " I have news of the death of my mother." After a pause I asked about her illness, then I rose to come away ; and, see ing that no one else was likely to follow, I thought it my duty to give a gentle hint: " Come, judge," said I to one, " are you going down-street? " 190 WFE AND LETTERS. [1831. " No," lie replied, " I was waiting to tell the news of the town-meetings in my county ; " and then he went on with the details of his local elections. I left him in the beginning of his story. What think you of such sensibility ? April \ZtJi. We had quite an episode this morning in our dull tavern-life an alarm that a child was lost. In five minutes the whole house was in an uproar. The Lieu tenant-Governor, Senators, Assemblymen, lobbymen, judges, ladies, grooms, porters, foresters, and rangers, kitchen-maids and hostlers, all were in hot pur suit. The house was searched from garret to cellar ; the docks were examined, the passengers stopped, the stage-men ran, the dull were quick, and the quick were in a frenzy, about the lost child. After three-quarters of an hour spent in confusion the child was found in a fruit-store, looking wistfully toward a box of oranges. To-day the Attorney-General called for me to go before the Chancellor and argue an appeal. It has occupied an hour of the morning and three of the afternoon. April Uth. Yesterday morning I went, with half a dozen friends, by steamboat, to West Point, where we landed at two o clock. We rambled over the grounds, descended to Kosciusko s garden, drank from its spring, and sat upon the moss-covered rock which bears his name, near the lilacs grown from those which the gallant Polish general set out with his own hand. You recollect to have seen old Fort Putnam frowning down upon you from its proud and defying elevation ? It is dilapidated, but as yet not in ruins. Built on a rock, almost inaccessible on every side the stone for its walls was blasted from the rock the brick and lime carried up by soldiers. The walls are yet standing, in some places eight feet in thickness, and from fifteen to fifty in height. We traversed the officers quarters, the magazines, the cells and the storerooms, and were astonished at the immense strength of the fortification. The chimneys were yet black with the smoke which the storms of fifty years have not washed away. What were our thoughts, as we looked upon these scenes familiar with the tread of Washington ! This impregnable fortress was the key to America ; on it depended the hopes of the republican cause. Here were the wassail and revelry of Gates and Putnam. Here, in its command, Arnold, burning with avarice and revenge, plotted its surrender, which would have left America a province, and our fathers, ourselves, and our children, subjects of an English king. Here was the amiable but unfortunate Andre brought, to await the decision of the American chief. From here General Washington sent, under safe-conduct, to the traitor Arnold, his wife and child. From the point below, the traitor escaped, in a boat, to the British ship, while Andre was left to suffer the punishment of a spy. What must have been the horror of Wash ington, Knox, Lafayette, and the whole company, when they first learned the awful treason ! What the misery (ay, the love too) of the unhappy wife as she sought the protection of her guilty husband! But I cannot stay to in dulge these reflections. I gathered as relics for you pieces of the stone from the walls of the fort, of the moss which covers the pavement, and a bit of the rose-tree which grows on the battlements. It was the De Witt Clinton which I boarded from a row-boat, at about 1831.] IMPRISONMENT FOR DEBT. 191 eleven o clock. "Not a berth is left," said the captain, to whom T was a stran ger ; and as I stretched myself upon a miserable mattress, from which the sheets as well as the blankets had been stripped by the sleepers around me, I had an opportunity to moralize on the deference paid to station. When I went down on board the North America as Senator, the captain was studiously polite. The chair at his right hand at the head of the table was reserved for me, and I was shown to it with great circumstance. Everything was done to interest me. When I came on board in the night without being announced, I was left to sleep, without a blanket, upon the cabin -floor. April r t th. You are right, my dear Frances, in the caution to avoid speculations on re ligious topics ; and right in saying there is enough given us, in the injunctions of the Scriptures, to lead us in the way of duty. I thought as I was retiring to my lonely room to-night, and gazed on the bright and beautiful stars, how little we can know of them, their substance, their uses, their destinies, their history, the millions who perhaps inhabit them ! Human reason might, by them, stand rebuked when, passing by them, it attempts to debate the character and the purposes of that Infinite Being by whom they and all other things were created. April tint. Everybody around me is hurrying and bustling, in the general preparation to evacuate the halls of legislation. Three days will bring our stay here to a close. How different are the motives, the feelings, the recollections, and the wishes, of these one hundred and sixty men ! There are some who have, with miserly hand, hoarded up the savings of their wages, and are counting the gains made out of the stipend of three dollars a day ; they will regret the termination of their public employment, because they will cease to reckon the daily addition of dollars and cents. Some there are who, in the dissipation of the past winter, have sacrified health and wasted treasure ; they will go home with sad retrospec tion of their prodigality. Other some there are who have busied themselves to acquire some distinction among their generation, and have reaped disappoint ment and chagrin; they will go home with a morbid disgust of themselves. Some, who have fluttered gayly upon the popular breeze for one year only, will go home to curse the fickleness which will leave them at the next canvass to the dull detail of private life. Others, having discharged, with what ability they might, the obligations imposed by their country, and having learned to hold the honors and pleasures of their station to be incidents in the tenor of a varied but well-ordered life, will return with loyal hearts and invigorated affections to those domestic and social circles where only earthly happiness dwells. April 22d. I had written as above, when Weed came in, and said I must write out my remarks on the resolution to amend the constitution. I forthwith went to work and continued until midnight. To-day I have spent the afternoon in a debate on the bill to abolish im prisonment for debt. This afternoon debate was one of the closing scenes of the strug gle over the great reform. The Antimasons had stood together in its 192 LI FE AND LETTERS. [1831. support. The Administration ranks were divided. Some of their leaders had taken the floor in earnest advocacy of it, others in un disguised opposition ; while many sat idly in their seats, watching the discussion with apparent indifference. Warned, however, by the rising tide of popular feeling, the opponents of the measure contented them selves at last with amendments to delay its passage, or to defer the time when it should go into operation. In answer to this class of propositions Seward said : If imprisonment for debt would be wrong ten years hence, why is it not so now ? It is wrong in principle to imprison for debt merely ; it is right in princi ple to punish fraud ; and both these objects are sought to be obtained in this bill. It was only in the last hour of the session that the bill was finally passed, upon the report of a conference committee, fixing the 1st of March, 1832, as the day when it should take effect. April 25th. The last letter ! It is exhilarating to think it is the last, and that I shall so soon follow it. To-morrow, at twelve o clock, I shall be released from public duties. I hope to take the boat at Schenectady at two o clock, on Wednesday, and in three or four days after shall be with you. CHAPTER. V. 1831. Fourth-of-July Orations. Captain Seward. A Militia Career. President-Making. First Eailway-Eide. Disraeli. Dr. Campbell. Judge Bronson. Gerrit Y. Lansing. Abram Van Vechten. Mrs. Hamilton. WHILE the republic was yet in its youth, Fourth-of-July orations were composed with care, and listened to with attention. The theme had not become trite, nor its expressions hackneyed. Public men availed themselves of the occasion to give philosophic views of the destiny of the country. " I send you," wrote Seward, in July, 1831, " my Syracuse oration, and will send you Holley s, and Whittlesey s, as soon as they come from the press. Hunt has sent me Timothy Ful ler s, and John Quincy Adams s, which is admirable." Six years pre viously (and before he was twenty-five years old), he had delivered another Fourth-of-July oration at Auburn. The same train of thought is manifest in both addresses, though ripened in the later one by more mature reflection. A passage in each referred to the problem destined afterward to convulse the nation. In the first he said : Those misapprehend either the true interests of the people of these States, or their intelligence, who believe, or profess to believe, that a separation will ever 1831.] A MILITIA CAREER. 193 take place between the North and South. The people of the North have seldom been suspected of a want of attachment to the Union ; and those of the South have been much misrepresented by a few politicians of a stormy character, who have ever been unsupported by the people there. The North will not willingly .give up the power they now have in the national councils of gradually complet ing a work in which, whether united or separate, from proximity of territory we shall ever be interested the emancipation of slaves. And in the second he added : Are we sure that the simple, beautiful, yet majestic fabric of our Govern ment can never be undermined ? Are we quite sure that neither we nor our children shall ever come to drink of the bitter waters of slavery ? By no means. ... It is ours to do all that in our day and generation may be done, that this catastrophe may be long postponed ; and, to that end, it is of the last impor tance to revive, renew, and invigorate the national feeling of the republic. . . . Dr. Franklin wished that he might be permitted to revisit his country at the expiration of a century after his death. Could he now return, after the lapse of much less than half that period, I fear he would find lamentable evidence of the decline of this national feeling since the Revolutionary age. Methinks Caro lina would throw away her pencil, and brush out her figures, should her eye encounter the stern look of the patriotic philosopher, while rashly calculating the value of the Union. In the early part of his life in Auburn, Seward, in conformity with what he believed to be the duty of a patriotic citizen, took part in the organization and drill of the rural militia force. About 1827- 28, he joined in forming a village artillery- company, uniformed, equipped, and drilled, in accordance with military usages; and from his own means largely aided its equipment. Seward was elected captain ; and the villagers took pride in watching the parades of the little body of citizen soldiery, gay with its uniforms of blue and buff, and caps surmounted with red pompons. It was an event in its history when a six-pound brass gun made its appearance in the ranks, having been obtained by Captain Seward through a special mission to the Ad jutant-General s office in Albany. This cannon rarely remained silent on any occasion of public festivity. In time the company grew to a battalion, Captain Seward was promoted to be its major, and its battery was enlarged by the addition of two or three iron guns besides the brass one. In 1829, with the battalion as a nucleus, a regiment was formed, comprising also companies from other portions of the county. Its officers were commissioned in August of that year : W. H. Seward, colonel ; John Wright, lieutenant-colonel ; Lyman Hinman, major ; Oscar A. Burgess, adjutant ; John H. Chedell, quartermaster ; Nelson Beardsley, paymaster ; Franklin M. Markham, surgeon ; Blan- chard Fosgate, surgeon s mate. In the old roster-book are the elaborate orders for elections, pa- 13 194 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. rades, courts, drills, reviews, etc., some in the colonel s own handwrit ing, some in that of his adjutant. There seem to have been about seven hundred men in the regiment. In an " order of the day," dated Scipio, September 18, 1829, the day of the annual muster for " county training," the colonel " avails himself of this his first opportunity of meeting the regiment under his command to congratulate both officers and men upon the complete organization of the Thirty-third Regiment under officers of their own selection in a convenient portion of territory. ... It is with great gratification that he perceives through the whole corps solicitude to improve in appearance and discipline, and he gives the assurance that no exertion in his power shall be wanting to effect so desirable an object." On assuming command of the regiment, their new colonel, having formed them in hollow square, addressed them, and it was a subject of no small exultation in camp that night that " now they had a colonel who could make them a speech, and a good speech, too." The orders continue through 1830 and 1831, to March, 1832. In that year Colonel Seward was promoted to be brigadier-general, which position he held two or three years, and finally was elected major- general, but declined the commission. He was succeeded in command of the regiment, in 1833, by Lyman Hinman, who had been from the first an experienced drill-master and tactician. Afterward Colonel Charles W. Pomeroy was its commanding officer from 1838 until its final disbandment, under some change in the militia laws, in 1842. At that day wine and spirits were considered indispensable ad juncts, not only at table, but in all social intercourse. A hospitable gentleman usually had a sideboard, or a decanter-stand, at his elbow, in his parlor or his business-office, and pressed his casual visitors to drink. Seward, though fond of conversation, had no liking for the convivial indulgence which many of his legislative colleagues found so attractive. In a confidential note in regard to his boarding-house during the coming session, he said : Weed, my good fellow, I am anxious to get, when I go to Albany again, where I can study more. What say you, my father confessor, to my taking lodgings at some boarding-house where they "touch not, taste not, handle not " the bottle ? If there be no reasons of state which require Antimasons to drink, then I propose to abstain. What say you to it ? Shall I lose your "nocturnal visits of the night," as the Irish orator said, if I quit the Eagle? The programme for the presidential campaign was now engrossing the attention of political leaders. A letter to Mr. Weed, after describ ing conferences with the prominent men of the party at Seneca Falls, Waterloo, Geneva, Canandaigua, Rochester, Buffalo, Lockport, Pal myra, and Lyons among them Messrs. Childs, Dox, Woods, Dwight, 1831.] FIRST RAILWAY RIDE. 195 H. W. Taylor, Granger, John C. Spencer, John Greig, George Andrews, Whittlesey, Tracy, Boughton, Cadwalader, and Myron Holley con tinued : Thus you will see that we have made the tour of " the infected district." Many and cheering were the greetings we received. Nowhere did we tind any ground of dissension, or feeling of disaffection. And whom, you will inquire, am I in favor of for President ? After a review of the whole ground, and compar ing all I have heard and seen, I think that Calhoun cannot in any event be our man. The free, the cold, clear, intelligent North is the field for the growth of our cause. Let us not jeopardize it by transferring its main stalk into the South Carolina sands. The three great States which we need, and must combine, are Pennsylvania, Ohio, and New York. In these Calhoun is lost. Two candidates remain. Of these I prefer McLean, because we may hope to concentrate more effectually public opinion in those States upon him. But I am ready to be con vinced, and to act in accordance with the best opinion of all our friends. What a ticket we could make Granger for Governor, Stevens for Lieu- tenant-Governor, and Maynard, Tracy, Whittlesey, or Spencer, for Vice-Presi- dent ! We should put a quietus upon the race of small men. In August the Senate was to hold a session as the " Court for the Correction of Errors." Seward s journey was by stage and canal, as usual, to Schenectady ; but thence to Albany the Mohawk & Hud^ son Railroad had now been opened. It was the first in the State. A letter narrating his trip over it shows the railway in its primitive form : August 24, 1831. We arrived at Schenectady at three this morning, and immediately were car ried, -in post-coaches, a distance of a mile and a half, to the present termination of the railway. There were in waiting three large cars, which the passengers entered. These cars differ not much, as to the construction of the body, from stage-coaches, except that they are about one-third larger, and have seats upon the top. The body is set upon very short springs, which cause bat little elas ticity of motion. The fore and hind wheels are equal in size, made of iron, and are about two and a half feet in diameter. They have rims four and a half inches in width, with a projection on the side next the carriage, which serves to keep the cars secure upon the rails not suffering the wheels to vary from the track. The car is divided into two parts by a high though not entire partition in the centre ; the door admitting into the forward compartment being on one side the carriage, and that admitting into the other on the other side. In each of these compartments were six passengers. On the top was the driver s seat, and one other, each holding three persons ; so that the car carried eighteen pas sengers, with all their enormous bulk of baggage. The railway is made by leveling, excavating, and elevating a road, so that, as far as the eye can reach, it is either entirely level, or with an almost imper ceptible rise or descent. Of course, there are embankments over ravines, and deep cuttings through hills, just like those on the route of the canal. Upon this plane surface are laid, at a distance of eighteen inches from each other, square blocks of solid stone, and upon these are laid two parallel timbers, about eight 196 LIF E AND LETTERS. [1831. inches square, which are fastened by rivets to the stones. Then, upon each of these timbers is fastened a bar of iron, upon which the wheels of the car pass ; and, as the inner side of the wheel projects about an inch below the bar, the car cannot get out of place. This is the simple construction of a railroad. Having mounted our vehicle, a fine large gray horse was attached to it, by shafts, exactly like those of a one-horse wagon. " Ready! " said the stageman; the driver whistled to the gray ; away went the car through hills and over val leys. Before we had done looking at our novel vehicle, the car was stopped to water the horse under a bridge ; and, on inquiring, we found we had come four miles in less than twenty minutes. The horse drank, and away we went two miles farther, and then a fresh steed was immediately put in place of our gray. I mounted the top of the car, and, standing up there, looking over upon the mountains beyond the river, was driven, in forty minutes more, to the present eastern termination of the railroad ; thus accomplishing the journey of twelve miles in eighty minutes, including stoppings. Only think of riding from Schenectady to Albany without jolting, jarring, or bouncing ! The railroad not being yet completed at the eastern end, we per formed the two miles remaining of our journey in a post-coach. Fifty-four pas sengers and their baggage were brought on the railroad to-day, by three horses. No private cars are allowed to travel on the road. The cars go at stated inter vals, and none are allowed to go in different directions at the same time. There are culverts, etc., and, in one place, a road passes under the railway. Of course I have seen those of our friends who stop at this house. Specula tions and communications relating to the presidency formed the subject of our conversation. Afterward passing up-street I found Gerrit Y. Lansing smoking his long Dutch pipe in a store ; went to his house and drank a glass of wine with him ; called from the window to Weed, whom Lansing thereupon politely invited to come in ; then I went to Ward s, read documents and talked till nine, and now am hurrying through this letter, so that I may be asleep at ten o clock, and rise at five in the morning, to study a cause I have to argue to-morrow in the Court of Chancery. Weed s condition excites my feelings very much. His arm is broken, badly set, and, though nine weeks have elapsed since the accident, he is still deprived of the use of his arm, and suffers greatly from the pain of the fracture. Disraeli was then commencing his public career, and a new novel from his pen had appeared : Have you got " The Young Duke " yet ? You may find it at Doubleday s. It is by the author of "Vivian Grey; " and, if it but half sustain the spirit of that work, it must be worth perusal. I have, as yet, found no time to read any thing. After disposing of my chancery business, I am listening with all the attention I can command to arguments in the Court of Errors. Sunday, August Mr. Azor Taber called this morning and took me to church, where I heard the Rev. Dr. Campbell address a beautiful sermon to the magnates of the city and State, among whom were Judge Spencer, Judge Sutherland, the Chancel lor, the Attorney-General, Edwin Croswell, etc. In the afternoon I went to 1831.] ABRAM VAN VECHTEN. MRS. HAMILTON. 197 the North Dutch Church, where John Ogden Dey showed me into Ilarmanus Bleecker s seat, and I listened to a sermon from the Rev. Dr. Ludlow. After church, Bronson, the Attorney-General, proposed to walk. We went up the hill and through the burying-ground, which afforded, of course, subjects for much moralizing. Passing over more humble graves, we noted those of the Clinton and Spencer families, and among them that of Mrs. Genet, wife of the minister plenipotentiary from the French Republic, and sister of De Witt Clinton. August BOth. Rose at five this morning, accomplished my work, and had time to spare to read. I thought when I came to shut up my book (the works of Bacon), as the bell rang for breakfast, that I would lose no more morning hours. This evening I called upon Abram Van Vechten, the father of the New York bar. He was sitting on his office-steps, smoking a pipe two feet long. I brought out a chair, and sat down beside him. We discoursed an hour on the dilatoriness of courts ; and I listened with great interest to the contrast between the judges of our day and those of the times when the State was young. I have somewhere read and admired the conceit that the world was not in its "antiquity," in the times when it was younger; but these are the older times, when all the years are accumulated. But, if I were to determine upon the testi mony, I should certainly believe that there is a growing corruption and impo- tency of public men ; and yet Mr. Van Vechten is no railer, no backbiter, no envious person. He is in a green old age ; and retains, not only unimpaired mental powers, but a confiding and affectionate heart, full of charity and good works. As it gradually became dark, he invited me into the office, closed doors and windows, produced a bottle of superior pale sherry, remarking that he seldom drank wine, and his wine was therefore good, and, relighting his pipe, we compared notes about the Court of Chancery till eight o clock. Bronson and I had a long and pretty animated debate yesterday about free masonry, and it ended with the conclusion, assented to by both parties, that, as we could not agree, we would not hereafter dispute ; so we set out this after noon arm-in-arm to go and call on the folks at the Eagle. September 6th. Having so ordered my business on Friday as to go to Orange County, I went off in the steamboat on a race, which continued for about an hour, during which we went part of the time fastened to our antagonist s boat, part of the time crowding, and part of the time being crowded on shore. There was some alarm lest we should all be blown up together. After we got below the shoals we were able to leave the other boat far behind us. We had the widow of General Hamilton on board. I talked an hour with her about the incidents of the stirring days in which she was the near associ ate of one of the greatest and most celebrated men of America. 198 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. CHAPTER VI. 1831. A New England Journey. A Steamboat Lottery. Indian Traditions. " Last of the Mo hicans." Providence. President Wayland. Boston. Eevolutionary Memories and Men. The Polish Standards. Eide to Quincy. First Meeting with John Quincy Adams. Down the Delaware. The Baltimore Convention. William Wirt. THE story of a journey to New England, in the fall of this year, was given in Seward s letters : September Mh. This morning I received a letter from Hunt, stating that a great deal of un pleasant feeling exists at Boston in relation to our intended nomination for President. On showing it to Maynard and Weed, they concluded that I must set off at once for Boston, calling at Norwich to see Tracy. NOBWICH, CONNECTICUT, September $tk. i arrived at New York at 5 A. M. ; went up Cortlandt Street and Broadway to the American Hotel. The streets were silent, and the great population had not yet left their slumber ; but, by seven, milkmen, porters, carmen, servants, and all classes of laboring-men were out, and the city exhibited the usual bustle and animation. I could not but reflect what vast changes time and circumstances had wrought upon the multitude, who a few years ago occupied the places, performed the duties, and enjoyed the pleasures, to which the pres ent race address themselves, careless of the recollection of their predecessors, or the thought that they soon must yield to another generation as active, as gay, as animated, as heedless, and as brief, as themselves. What I saw now failed to revive anything of past recollections except the pain. I was changed ; all my friends were changed. Berdan, who was the companion of my early residence in New York, was gone, and I saw nothing on which he had left any impres sion. Even my old landlady here, when I announced my name, had no distinct recollection of my character or conduct. From the idleness, the poetic feeling, the buoyant enjoyments of that period, how strange the change wrought in me; now seeking out, with anxious concern, associates for political action in refer ence to government ! I met various friends in New York Sam Stevens, who took me to his office ; then Foot and Davies ; then fell in with William Kent ; returning, found Hoi- ley ; but Ward had gone to Boston. Then I went and saw West s great picture of " Christ Rejected," now being exhibited at Masonic Hall. The scene is at the porch of the temple ; the gal lery is seen filled with the court of Pilate, his wife, Herod, and other distin guished visitors. In the foreground is our Saviour, the crown of thorns upon his head, while the deriding Jews are drawing over his shoulders the purple robe of royalty. At one side are the disciples. Never, I imagine, did painter more boldly, more truly depict conscious guilt then in the haggard, desperate faces of Barabbas and the two thieves. Never saw I a more beautiful face than that of John, "the disciple whom Jesus loved," supporting the weeping mother of the Saviour with manly, confiding, and affectionate expression. Colonel Stone came to dine with me, and introduced me to Colonel White, of Pensacola, a member of Congress, who has been to Boston on a similar er- 1831.] A LOTTERY FOR BERTHS. 199 rand with mine. At the head of the table sat a young man of thirty-two or thirty-three, of dark complexion and foreign dress, who Stone thought was Major Hamilton, the author of " Cyril Thornton," because he wore mustaches, but who turned out to be an attache of some foreign mission. On the right was a gray-headed, sensible old gentleman, in light-blue coat, with prodigious ruffles on his bosom and at the ends of his sleeves. This was the Baron Stackle- burgh, minister plenipotentiary from Sweden. Near him was Willis the poet. Thence I wended my way to the steamboat, and we were off at five o clock. It was a pleasant sail up the East River, into the Sound, leaving behind the city with its immense piles of buildings, passing Harlem and the beautiful shore of Long Island, with its villas and country-seats. We soon arrived at Hell Gate, but the tide was high, and we passed through without difficulty. Then I was summoned, with all the other passengers, into the cabin, to attend to the distribution of the berths. The manner in which this important matter is disposed of is ludicrous. About one hundred passengers were gathered, seated by request, in four rows. Then the steward came along between the lines and counted us ; after having done so he reported to the captain. Then the captain counted the tickets purchased and paid for. He observed the num bers did not agree. Then we were requested to have our tickets ready to deliver up as called for. The steward again passed the lines in review, and received the tickets, and carried them to the captain, who announced that still the numbers did not agree. Anon comes the steward, and counts us all over again. Still one ticket was missing. In a loud voice he inquired if there were any gentle man who had not delivered up his ticket. No reply was made ; but a sup pressed laugh was heard along the lines. " Go and get the list of passengers," said the captain ; " I ll count once more." It was done ; and there was not harmony of numbers. Then the list was read off, but no one confessed that he had suppressed his ticket. u Go," said the captain, " make another thorough search on deck ; there must be a passenger who won t deliver up his ticket." While the steward was gone on this searching expedition, complaints and laugh ter among the imprisoned passengers became rather free and tumultuous. He returned, and reported that he found no delinquent. The captain and steward summed up their book once more, and found,, to their gratification, that they had made a mistake of one ticket. This important business being disposed of, no other preliminaries occurred to prevent distribution of lodgings for the night. This was effected on the principle of referring it to chance. A number of tickets, equal to the whole number of passengers, were put into a hat ; of these a number said to be equal to that of the berths were prizes, the others were blanks. The steward drew them forth and distributed them. I, of course, had a blank ; but the captain, in kind recollection of Stone s introduction, took my blank ticket privately, and gave me a prize. Next morning I awakened at five, at the mouth of the Connecticut River ; landed at Essex, took the stage, and at eleven reached Norwich, which is one of the most beautiful towns I have ever seen. About as large as Geneva, it is built with great taste. The houses are principally of wood, but are spacious, and surrounded by trees and shrubbery. Dr. Tracy took me out to show me the town, and a picturesque view of Chelsea. Afterward, ascending a hill, we came to a little grove of forest-trees, marked by a few very rough, old-fashioned gravestones. We got out of the chaise, and 200 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831, went in. "This," said he, "is the burying-grotmd of the Uncases, the kings of Mohican." It is truly a spot for a royal resting-place. The little river makes up to its- very base, arched with forest-trees. Up this river the royal funeral procession used to come in canoes. You can imagine the scene when, quitting their canoes* the Indians, with their death-song on their lips, ascended the little mount, with the remains of "the last of the Mohicans." Many of the inscriptions are illegi ble. I was able to decipher two or three like this : Here lies y e body of POMPEY UNO AS, Son of BENJAMIN and ANN UNCAS, One of ye royal blood. Died May 12, 1741, In the Xtfc year of his age. Others were to the memory of " Samuel Uncas, second and beloved son of just John Uncas," and young " Caesar Jonas, a cousin of Uncas ; " and then; this epitaph on the grave of the chief celebrated by Cooper in his novel : 1757. Here lies Uncas, the king of the Mohicans. For beauty, wit, and sterling sense, For manners mild, for eloquence, And everything that is Wauwegan, He was the glory of Mohican ; And his death has caused great lamentation Both in the English and the Indian nation. These epitaphs are interesting as showing how easily the notions of the early settlers of Connecticut were imbibed by the honest and simple race of the Mo hicans. The poor Indians thus took the idea of the peculiar merit of royal blood, and transferred its praise, just as civilized men do, to the tombstones of those who, whatever other merit they have, acknowledge none so great as that of relationship to him who " rules by divine right." I was much and painfully interested by the doctor s story of a Mohican who- was educated, had property, married a white woman, had two daughters, waa exemplary as a man, a citizen, and a Christian, but whose death was hastened by the seduction of his two daughters by white men. What sin is there that white men have not committed against this simple race ? PROVIDENCE, E. I., September llth. Yesterday morning I took the stage, and arrived in this city at nine last evening. The country is rocky and uninteresting, resembling the rocky part of Orange County. Our route was from Norwich to Jewett City, thence to Plainfield, where we left Connecticut and entered this State, which I have traversed from west to east. This city contains about twenty thousand inhabitants, is situated on both sides of the Providence Kiver, is built principally of wood, but is beautiful, and is more rural in its appearance than our towns and villages. I came to the " Roger Williams Hotel," an excellent and spacious establishment. This morn ing I strolled over the town, up to the college-yard, and along the wharves, through streets well paved and perfectly clean, with buildings of granite, brick, and stone, all apparently new and in good order. There is nowhere anything to offend the eye. The wharves are clean ; even the shipping seems bright or newer than that in other towns. 1831.] BOSTON SCENES AND MEMORIES. 201 As I came along the wharves I saw a white flag rigged upon the mast of a schooner, called the Richard Rush, with the inscription " Bethel." A crowd of sailors and others were gathered on the deck, listening with close attention to a young preacher. I went on to the Episcopal Church, where I made my morning devotions. I could not but observe, as we came to the prayer for " all those who travel by land or by water," the advantages of the Liturgy over the often confused and extravagant prayers of other denominations. I need not tell you how strange it seemed to hear the clergyman, just before reading the first psalm, announce : "I publish the bans of matrimony between A B, of Boston, and D, of this town ; if any of you know of any just cause or impediment why these persons should not be joined in the bans of holy wedlock, ye are to make it known this is the first time of asking." Yet such is the form still observed here. After dinner I made my way to the door of a Baptist church, almost the largest I had ever seen (this town was settled by the Baptists). While stand ing at the door Dr. Wayland, the president of the college, came along. He having been a tutor at Schenectady while I was a student there, we imme diately renewed our acquaintance. He gave me a seat, and I heard him preach a most excellent sermon on the doctrine of " original sin," in which his argu ment was, not that we participate in Adam s guilt, or that we suffer punish ment for it, but that, in consequence of his sinning, we sin and suffer its fruits, unless we repent. After church he invited me home to tea with him. He was learned, clear, and rational ; and now, I think, he stands deservedly at the head of the clergy of his denomination. BOSTON, September \Uh. I left Providence yesterday at seven. The distance to Boston was forty-five miles. There were in the stage two ladies, one from Providence, and one from Boston, the husband of the latter, two Quakers from Bristol, New Jersey, and two other passengers. We discoursed on all subjects cities, politics, men, women, roads, bridges, stages, fashions, novels, poetry, printing, etc. They gave me instructions what to look at when I should arrive in Boston, commended me to the Tremont House, and showed an interest in my being comfortably bestowed and agreeably entertained at the city of their pride. We separated, with a hos pitable invitation from the gentleman to visit his house. The Tremont House is now "the rage" in the United States. Of course, I could not get into it, except into No. 96, containing six beds, with the promise of having a private room next day. Behold me, then, with my trunk placed at the foot of cot No. 6, in room No. 96, meditating how and where to begin my tour of duty and observation. The dinner was served with ceremony ; but who cares for dinners ? Not you nor I. So let it be noted that it was very splendid, and we pass on. I found, by the aid of the directory, the residence of my old friend Dr. Phelps, who was a delegate to the Philadelphia Convention. While we were sitting there, the noise of drums, trumpets, and clarions, an nounced the parade on the occasion of the departure of two elegant new stand ards, presented by the young men of Boston to Poland. We went forth to see it, and a fine spectacle it was; the military with "pomp and circumstance" and in strong force. The standards were rich in Latin and gold, and, as the assem bled ten thousand people shouted, one could not but share in the aspiration 202 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. that these encouraging gifts might reach the Poles before they should be sub dued. All the ladies of Boston were in the windows, and the gentlemen in the streets ; and all the rest of the people were there also. As I stood gazing at the parade, Dr. Phelps said, " You are now standing upon the ground on which was committed the Boston massacre, in 1V70 ; " and, truly, nearly every part of the town seems classic ground. After the procession, I called on several persons. I found matters, as con cerned my mission, more favorable than I anticipated. As to all that relates to this, I have reported to those who sent me here ; and you will not desire to be troubled with allusions to it, for, though a very good Antimason, you are, with all due deference be it said, madam, not particularly distinguished as a politician. In the evening I went to the Antimasonic committee-room, where, it being the anniversary of the abduction of Morgan, an energetic harangue was pro nounced by Dr. Porter, after which Mr. Walker made a very animated speech, announcing, at his conclusion, my arrival and presence, in very laudatory strains, and calling on me for some remarks. The chairman, a venerable man of seven ty, added the expression of a similar request, and I had to take the floor. I said some things, loose and desultory enough, I fear ; but the meeting were too civil not to express their gratification. I went home, laid myself down on cot No. 6, in room No. 96, and said to myself, " Harry Seward, is this your own self, preach ing politics in the city of Boston ? " This evening I found my oration in the newspapers of Providence and Bos ton, spread out with much commendation. I rose at half-past five, and dispatched my letters before breakfast. Dr. Phelps called for me, and we walked to the State-House. It fronts upon the Mall, which is a walk of forty feet in width, inclosing a park, containing seventy acres, in the very heart of the city and with good, large old elms shading a clear living pond of fresh water in the centre. The State officers politely showed me through the legislative halls and offices, all of which are not superior in appear ance to those at Albany. "We went into the cupola, from which is a picturesque and beautiful view. Every point, every side of Boston was within my sight the fine rivers, the bay, the ocean, and villages and villas for a dozen miles round, in every direction. On one side was Bunker Hill, through all time to be celebrated as the spot where the first great battle of the Revolution was fought. What a host of glowing memories passed through my mind, as I thought of the sturdy farmers and townsmen who, without an army, without arms, with out money, without generals, without organization, without determination of ultimate purpose, intrenched themselves on this height to resist the legions of Old England ! There was Charlestown, right before me, which was burned to ashes there was the place where the British army were encamped " There," said Dr. Phelps, " where you yesterday saw American troops performing a rite in the name and service of liberty, I myself saw General Gage march in, with the British troops, fifty and more years ago, to quell the factious spirit then called insurrection. " Off beyond was Lexington, that spot where blood was first spilled in the cause of liberty ; beneath us was the venerable mansion formerly inhabited by John Hancock, worth then a million, all of which was spent in the cause of freedom. Dr. Phelps said that Mrs. Hancock, who died but a few years ago, at 1831.] THE STATE-HOUSE. 203 the age of ninety, had often told him how, when the French fleet and army came to the assistance of America, notice was brought at two o clock one morning to her husband that the French officers would breakfast with him ; and how, on that short notice, she, good lady, sent out to her Whig neighbors for help and provisions ; and at eight breakfast was given to three hundred. Off on the right was the monument which covers the remains of the father and mother of Benjamin Franklin. Down in a low, obscure spot was the resi dence of Samuel Adams, who, with John Hancock, were the only two for whom Governor Gage refused to allow hope of pardon if they would surrender. Among the archives of the State-House are preserved a brass drum, a mon strous sword, a grenadier s cap, and a musket, taken from the Hessians at the battle of Bennin^ton, with the vote of thanks passed by the Provincial Congress of Massachusetts to General Stark for these trophies. Here, also, was a monu ment now taken from its place, but the slabs of which are preserved and placed in the hall, from which I copied for you the inscription : To . commemorate That . train . of . events . which . led To . the . American . Revolution And . finally . secured Liberty . and . Independence To . the . United . States This . column . is . erected By . the voluntary . contribution Of . the . citizens . of . Boston MDCCXC On the other side is a recapitulation of the leading events of that period, thus: Stamp Act passed, 1765 ; repealed, 1766. Board of Customs established, 1767. British troops fired on the inhabitants of Boston, March 5, 1770. Tea Act passed, 1773. Tea destroyed in Boston, December 16th. Port of Boston shut and guarded, June, 1774. General Congress at Philadelphia, September 4th. Provincial Congress at Concord, October llth. Battle of Lexington, April 19, 1875. Battle of Bunker s Hill, June 17th. "Washington took command of the army, July 2d. Boston evacuated, March 17, 1776. Independence declared by Congress, July 4, 1776 ; Hancock, President. Capture of Hessians at Trenton, December 26, 1776. Capture of Hessians at Bennington, August 16, 1777. Capture of British army at Saratoga, October 17th. Alliance with France, February 6, 1777. Confederacy of United States formed, July 9th. Constitution of Massachusetts formed, 1780 ; Bowdoin, President of CounoaL Capture of British army at Yorktown, October 19, 1781. Preliminaries of Peace, November 30, 1782. Federal Constitution formed, September 10, 1787. Definitive Treaty of Peace, September 11, 1783. New Congress assembled at New York, April 6, 1790. Washington inaugurated President, April 30. Public debts funded, August 4, 1790. 204 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. On the fourth side is the following inscription : Americans, While from this eminence Scenes of luxuriance, fertility, Of flourishing commerce, And the abodes of social happiness, Meet your view, Forget not those Who by their exertions Have secured to you These blessings. la a kind of temple, standing within the great entrance to the State-House, is a marble statue of George Washington, executed by Chantrey, which cost ten thousand dollars. Within sight from where we stood was the old South Church, where the people of Boston resolved that they would not receive the tea on which the British Parliament had laid the duty of three cents per pound. Just beside it was the place where the Whigs disguised themselves as Indians, and just before us lay the wharf where they threw the tea overboard into the harbor. Nor must I forget to mention that in the State-House are preserved pictures, made in 1740, of the governors and clergymen of Massachusetts; among others, that of Governor Winthrop, mentioned in " Hope Leslie." What think you of a clergyman with his hair cut off close, and a black cap over his head, or a gov ernor with mustaches, and one long tuft of beard depending from the centre of his chin ? We went next to Faneuil Hall, from whence proceeded the groans which aroused the sympathy of the colonies, the bold denunciation which startled King George and his Parliament, the manly appeals which gained the admiration of Europe, and the thunders which roused the people of America to resistance. I stood on the spot where Hancock presided, and where John Adams and Samuel Adams spoke. The room is decorated with a large portrait of General Washing ton, resting upon his horse and watching the passage of the Delaware at Trenton. It was executed by Stuart, and is said to be the best likeness ever made of the great man of the world. What would I not give to be able to say I saw Wash ington, as did the old man who had charge of the room ! He remarked, "The picture has one fault, Washington s knees were not so small." There was over the chair a portrait of John Adams, " looking just the same," said the old man, "as he did when I last saw him at Quincy, a few weeks before his death." There is a picture also of John Hancock, at his desk examining his ledger ; an excellent picture of General Knox, and another of General Washington, both painted by Mr. Copley, father of the late Lord Chancellor of Great Britain. Going down, this afternoon, to take the stage for Quincy, my guide pointed out to me a cannon-ball projecting from the wall of a church, in the very spot where it was lodged when thrown from a mortar in Charlestown, early in the Revolution. QUINOY, September 14A. Nothing I have seen is so beautiful as the environs of Boston. This place is distant from the city ten miles, and very rural in its appearance. The mansion- house, in which died one man who had been President of the United States, and which is now occupied by his son, who has held the same exalted station, is 1881.] JOHN QUINCY ADAMS. 205 a plain, two-story building, about sixty feet long, with a few venerable trees be fore it, and two doors of entrance in front. An old-fashioned knocker brought a servant, who said, "The President has walked up to his brother s, who is sick." Would he be in soon? " Probably not before nine. He walks there every evening, and stays one or two hours. He will be in in the morning ; he is always at home in the daytime." I left my card, saying I would call in the morning. A little girl about five years old, who was standing near, bade me u good-by." I happened not distinctly to understand her; she repeated it, and repeated it until she arrested my attention, just as I was going out of the gate. I asked her whether she would come and kiss me ? She ran and gave me a kiss, bade me good-by, and I left the house thinking of her venerable grand father, the most excellent but the most wronged man of the age. Wednesday. I spent my hours before breakfast this morning in a ramble through the churchyard, looking at the monuments. I discovered several substantial ones erected to the memory of his ancestors by a grandson, and a great-grandson, and a great-great-grandson (John Quincy Adams), whose name was not expressed ; and on one of the monuments it was stated of the deceased that he was "the father of John Adams," and " the grandfather of the lawyer John Adams." Thus the burying-ground gives, in the most unobtrusive manner, the geneal ogy of the Adams family, without a word laudatory of either of the Presidents. Having obtained the key of the meeting-house, I entered it, and there found the well-known inscription upon a plain marble monument in the wall, sur mounted by a bust of John Adams, and closing with the lines : From lives thus spent thy earthly duties learn ; From fancy s dreams to active duty turn, Let freedom, friendship, faith, thy soul engage, And serve, like them, thy country and thy age. And now from the dead we turn to the living greatness of Quincy. At nine o clock I was shown into the house, and waited in the parlor till I was an nounced. The house is very plain and old-fashioned ; no Turkey carpeting, no pier-tables, no " pillar-and-claw pianos." Very plain ingrain carpeting covered the floor, very plain paper on the walls ; modern but plain mahogany chairs, and a piano about like yours, composed the simple furniture of the room, ex cept an ancient portrait of General Washington, another of Mrs. Washington, one of Jefferson, and one of John Adams. A short, rather corpulent man, of sixty and upward, came down the stairs and approached me. He was bald, his countenance was staid, sober, almost to gloom or sorrow, and hardly gave indication of his superiority over other men. His eyes were weak and inflamed. He was dressed in an olive frock-coat, a cravat carelessly tied, and old-fashioned, light-colored vest and pantaloons. It was obvious that he was a student, just called from the labors of his closet. With out courtly air or attitude, he paused at the door of the parlor. I walked quite np to him, while he maintained his immovable attitude, and presented my letter of introduction from Tracy. He asked me to sit, read the letter, said he was happy to see me, sat down in the next chair, inquired with the earnestness of a particular friend concerning Tracy s health, my arrival, etc., expressed a strong LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. desire that he might see him, and then ensued a pause. I alluded to my busi ness of seeing the prominent Antimasons of Boston, and stated that I was to have heen a companion of Tracy. " Yes," said he, " Mr. Tracy was in the vicinity of the outrage in your State, and his attention was, therefore, early drawn to the subject ; and his principles are too honest and correct not to deter mine him to take the right side." u A fortunate coincidence of opinion," thought I, "both as to my principles and my friend." He spoke of freemasonry, said he had not wished to do anything which would injure Mr. Clay s prospect of ob taining the presidency, and had therefore been restrained. He had long felt an anxious desire to discharge the duty which devolved upon him in relation to freemasonry ; but, situated as he was, had hoped that other and younger men enough would engage in the cause to dispense with his exertions. But he was satisfied this was a crisis which required every man to do his duty, and he should not shrink from his. He regretted that Mr. Clay had not been advised by him and by Mr. Rush to abandon the order ; but he would not be so advised, and that was his misfortune ; but the right cause must not be sacrificed. He spoke enthusiastically of Rush ; said Rush sent him copies of his letters before they were published ; that he advised him to be a candidate for the presi dency, but he declined, and now he (Adams) regretted it. He said he should have more confidence in Rush than in Clay as President, and thought him, on the whole, superior to Clay. He spoke of Calhoun as a man possessed of great and splendid powers, having the capacity greatly to serve his country, but in sincere, and possessing " the sin of unchastened ambition." He hoped Calhoun would retrieve his condition, adopt better principles, and yet be useful to his country. He spoke of General Jackson and the Seminole War without one word of reserve, or bitterness, or unkindness ; thought his Administration ruinous, but still doubted not that he would be reflected. Of John McLean he spoke, though not warmly. Of himself, he said that he would not desire to be Presi dent of the United States again, though he should have the assurance of a unanimous vote. He had had the office ; he knew its duties, privations, enjoy ments, perplexities, and vexations ; but if the Antimasons thought his nomi nation would be better than any other, he would not decline. He had not, as a citizen, a right to decline; but hoped they would not mention him, except on the ground that he was the best candidate. He said he should write in favor of Antimasonry. He knew what the opposing party would say they would impeach his motives ; he did not care for that ; he was accustomed to it ; he was callous to it. He spoke with great freedom of Daniel Webster, as a very great man, etc. Our interview lasted three hours ; he was all the time plain, honest, and free, in his discourse ; but with hardly a ray of animation or feeling in the whole of it. In short, he was just exactly what I before supposed he was, a man to be respected for his talents, admired for his learning, honored for his integrity and simplicity, but hardly possessing traits of character to inspire a stranger with affection. Occasionally, indeed, he rose into a temporary earnestness ; and then a flash of ingenuous ardor was seen, but it was transitory, and all was cool, regular, and deliberate. When I left him he thanked me for the call, expressed a hope of seeing Tracy ; and, if he should come to Boston, he would call on me ; and so we parted ; and, as I left the house, I thought I could plainly answer 1881.] JOSEPH BONAPARTE. 207 how it happened that he, the best President since Washington, entered and left the office with so few devoted personal friends. September 19th. On returning from Quincy, I finished and dispatched my letter to you, after having received a dozen letters from everywhere. I went in the evening to the theatre ; saw young Kean and a tolerably full house. The next day Mr. Gassett called with a gig. I rode with him to the university at Cambridge ; traversed the halls, library, chapel, etc. ; called on Dr. Waterhouse, who cordially wel comed me. I told him how much I was pleased with his work on the subject of Junius. He showed me a congratulatory and beautiful letter from James Madison. I went home by the way of Bunker Hill; saw the half -finished monument and the scenes of many interesting incidents in the Revolutionary War ; at night, visited Mr. Odion, a merchant, who entertained a number of our friends with myself very hospitably ; talked politics till eleven, then went home to my lodgings. The next day I devoted to business ; had the pleasure of seeing it all do well ; dropped into the Athenaeum ; went in the evening to the theatre ; saw Hackett enter upon the character of Solomon Swap ; was called off to go to a political meeting ; spoke to them half an hour, by solemn invi tation. Next morning I took the stage at five o clock ; took the boat at Provi dence at one ; and yesterday arrived at New York. The Baltimore Convention was now at hand, and Seward went, as a delegate, to attend it. October 2d. I left Albany on Wednesday afternoon, reached New York the next morn ing, and set out at six o clock on the steamboat for Philadelphia. The weather was cold and wet, and the journey quite uncomfortable. Many delegates were on board. The route to Philadelphia is by steamboat, forty-five miles, to New Brunswick, on the Raritan River ; then twenty-six miles across the country, by stage, through Princeton to Trenton on the Delaware; thence down the Dela ware, by steamboat, about thirty miles, to the city of Philadelphia. At Bordentown, a few miles below Trenton, is the seat of Joseph Bonaparte, who has secured in this country an asylum from the storms of the Old World, and has brought with him wealth which, it is said, is used with munificence not unworthy of a king. You recollect that he was made, by his brother Napoleon, King of Spain, and was not an unimportant, though at times an ineffective, auxiliary in Napoleon s stupendous operations. It must be now fourteen or fifteen years since he came to this country to reside, during all which time he has demeaned himself as a quiet and inoffensive citizen ; and at no time has any aspiration on his part for a reentrance upon the busy theatre of French politics become public, save when, on the arrival of the news of the revolution in July, 1830, and at the time of the establishment of the new dynasty, he issued a manifesto, in which he asserted the right of the young Napoleon to the French throne ; doubtless in the hope that it might excite grateful recollections of the emperor among the French, and prepare the way for reestablishing the Bona parte family. The manifesto hardly escaped ridicule in this country, and in France fell upon a people who seemed to regard it with indifference. The Raritan River is little less than a bay, or arm of the sea, extending forty 208 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1831. or fifty miles into New Jersey, and flowing through low land covered with wild salt grass. The banks of the river are destitute of beauty. The Delaware, below Trenton, flows through a tract of finely-improved land, with few natural objects of sublimity or interest, but has several beautiful towns upon its banks, composed principally of summer residences of the inhabitants of Philadelphia. We reached Philadelphia at seven in the evening, slept at the United States Hotel, and were roused at five by the summons to the steamboat. We set off at six o clock, and floated down the Delaware till we reached the mouth of a fine ship- canal, of about fifteen miles in length, crossing which we were in Chesapeake Bay, where we found the Charles Carroll, a large and handsome steamboat. In her we proceeded down that beautiful sheet of water, seeming like a lake, twelve or fourteen miles wide, till, in a sequestered cove, we found stretched before us the city of Baltimore, of which the most prominent point is, as it should be, a monument to Washington. I found a room in the third story at Barnum s. Now, if it were an agreeable subject, I would describe to you all the bustle, excitement, collision, irritation, enunciation, suspicion, confusion, obstinacy, foolhardiness, and humor, of a convention of one hundred and thirteen men, from twelve different States, assembled for the purpose of nominating candi dates for President and Vice-President of the United States. But I pass over that, and the results you know already. The convention adjourned on Wednesday night at twelve. The next day I called, in company with several of the delegates, upon Mr. Wirt, and found him one of the most interesting, amiable, and intelligent men I have ever met. Thursday, October Qth. Do you remember my writing to you a long letter, last winter, about Colo nel Burr and Blennerhasset ? If you will look up again the old trial of Burr, you will find there the speech of Mr. Wirt, and, when you have read that, rum mage over your father s library until you find "The British Spy" and "The Old Bachelor," and look over them, and say if you do not share in the pride of the Antimasons in having Mr. Wirt for their candidate. It is cheering to them to find their cause manfully and zealously espoused by three so pure, so able, so illustrious men as John Quincy Adams, Eichard Kush, and William Wirt. I have never seen our friends when they felt so enthusiastic. I am almost the only one here who, wishing Wirt to be elected, am not sanguine in the hope that he will be. Coming up the river, the other night, a man fell overboard from the steam boat. There was a fearful moment of uncertainty as to who it might be ; and if every passenger on board the boat thought and felt as I did, he thought only of that person, nearest and dearest to himself, who was among the passengers. Tedious minutes elapsed until it was known. I cannot describe to you the intense, painful anxiety that bound in silence all the crowd, which looked upon the man, as he seemed to stand erect in the water, waiting, and waiting, and waiting for the boats to approach him. What a possession is human life, to be exposed to such hazards ; and what must have been the solicitude of that poor mortal, while the boats were getting toward him ! And yet, had he sunk be neath the waves, to rise no more, what would it have been but hastening for a few days, or months, or years, a catastrophe which is inevitable ; and how very soon would the surface of human society, momentarily agitated by the event 1832.] SPEECH ON THE UNITED STATES BANK. 209 like the face of the waters disturbed by his struggles, have become smooth and borne no trace of the commotion ! CHAPTER VII. 1832. Legislative Debates. Speech on the United States Bank. Railroads. General Eoot and the Regency. Boyish Memories. Ways of the Lobbyists. The Address. The Greeks. ANOTHER session was now at hand. Established for the winter, with his family, in Albany, Seward wrote describing their hotel-life : It has been intensely cold since we arrived here, the mercury standing, last week, at sixteen below zero. The wind has blown a hurricane for the two days past ; snow and sand filled the air ; nothing was to be seen from the windows but half-frozen men hauling wood at ten dollars a cord, except, indeed, that night before last a fire threw its lurid glare over the city, and yesterday, in the midst of the storm, the procession of a funeral passed before us. Nobody moved without-doors that could avoid it. Though our parlor is but twelve feet square, a bureau, two tables, four chairs, and a coal-scuttle, constituting its furniture, the wind whistled through the door-cracks, and we drew our table up to within two feet of the coal-grate to write, but between-whiles stopping to warm our hands. But to-day the wind has fallen, the sun shines, the bells ring, and the streets are enlivened by the cheerful gathering of people at church. The United States Bank question had begun to loom up as a com ing political issue. The petition of the bank for a continuance of its chartered rights lay upon the table of a Congress known to be fa vorable to its request. But the President s hostility had already been foreshadowed. The Jackson party, in the Legislature at Albany, followed the Executive lead, and a resolution denouncing the bank was introduced in the Senate. Maynard opposed it with his usual eloquence. Seward followed on the same side. His speech on the 31st of January was the prominent event of his legislative life during the year. His previous modest efforts on the floor had made a favorable impression, and the news that he was to make an elaborate speech brought an unusual audience to the cramped space allotted to specta tors in the chamber. He began : War, sir, is a grievous calamity. Consternation goes before, destruction attends it, and desolation marks its path ; and yet it is animating, exciting, and glorious. We love to dwell even upon its terrors. The poet of our own age, who excels all others in telling of the passions, has drawn his scene of most intense interest from the carnival of the dogs and vultures upon the field 14 210 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1832. of battle. Beauty delights to honor valor. Young ambition is emulous of its deeds, and poor human nature, dazzled and confounded, often sinks into hom age before the blaze of military glory. Well does the gentleman from the Third District (Mr. Edmonds) understand this infirmity of our nature ; for, in the very commencement of his eloquent speech, he converted this Senate-cham ber, ordinarily the forum of placid debate, into a battle-field, and having placed before us, as an enemy of huge dimensions, the United States Bank, he pro claimed a war which, " if God had given him the power, should be a war of ex termination." Raising high that standard, always equally victorious in the mar tial or the political campaign, he rushed with tremendous energy upon the foe. We cheered him in the fight, and could not without reluctance withhold the wreath of victory. Continuing in the same strain, Seward ironically proposed that the Jackson men should apply their doctrines to their own banks ; and, since they had declared war against " bank aristocracy," should begin with those in the State which they had been so liberally charter ing, and of which their own political friends were stockholders and directors. This " palpable hit " was received with some merriment. Much is said, sir, about the motives of this crusade against the bank, its disinterestedness and patriotism. I, too, am at least disinterested in relation to it. Like the poet who feared temptation, and therefore blessed his Muse u who found him poor and kept him so," I may be grateful that I am no bank-stock holder, either in the Bank of the United States or any other of the banks, nor have I connection or communion with those who are interested in either. After giving a history of the national bank, an exposition of its relations to the fiscal system of the country, and a summary of the arguments for and against its recharter, he proceeded to draw a con trast between the actual operations of the bank and the effects likely to result from its stoppage. In conclusion he said : I will conjure all the members of the Senate to reflect that he whose will is said to be the author of the mandate for the introduction of this resolution, and who it is avowed demands its passage, great, honored, loved, revered though he is, is nevertheless mortal mortal, therefore fallible and that his interests weigh but as the dust in the balance against the interests of twelve millions of people, and the thousands of millions of their posterity, to be affected by this legislation. Let their interests, not his glory, their welfare and prosperity, not his success in an election, determine our votes in this measure. On the 14th of February of this year a number of gentlemen, among whom were large landed proprietors, scientific students, and persons of prominence in political affairs, met at the capital to take into consideration the project of forming a State Agricultural Society. Le Ray de Chaumont was chosen its president, and Jesse Buel one of its secretaries. Among others who participated in the meeting were 1832.] NULLIFICATION MOVEMENTS. 211 Judge Conkling, Stephen Van Rensselaer, Isaiah Townsend, William James, Edward C. Delavan, Lieutenant-Governor Edward P. Living ston, Chancellor Sanford, Francis Granger, Peter Sken Smith, John A. King, George Tibbits, Daniel D. Campbell, and William C. Bouck. Seward was a delegate from Cayuga County. This gathering was one of the early steps toward organizing the New York State Agri cultural Society, since become so important and useful. Corporations were already engrossing much of the attention of the Legislature. In a speech, at this session, on a proposed charter to a whal ing company, Seward showed the injustice of creating monopolies, and urged, what was through life a favorite doctrine with him, that privi leges for commercial enterprise, in all its forms, roads, banks, railways, manufactures, and trade, ought to be thrown open to all citizens by general laws. In subsequent years this principle gradually gained more ground in the statute-book. March 18th. We have before us the great western and southern railroads. Last Monday the bill for constructing a railroad from Waterford to Whitehall, along the line of the Champlain Canal, was before the Senate. It was lost, receiving the votes only of the northern Senators on its line, and the western Senators on the line of the Erie Canal. All the North River Senators, except -Tallmadge, voted against it. It was at the same time distinctly avowed in debate by JSeardsley, who led the opposition, that there should be no railroad constructed on the line of the Erie Canal. The reason given was an apprehension of a diversion of canal-tolls. The consequence will be, that the western railroad will be defeated. Should there be a charter granted to construct a road from Schenectady to Utica, I think the road would probably be made. It is said it would not be possible to procure a subscription to the stock of a railroad from Utica or Schenectady to Buffalo ; but I would be willing to grant charters for roads from Buffalo to Schenectady, and from Lake Erie to Orange County. John A. King is not only an Antimason, but a clever, fine fellow, and very popular with the whole Legislature. April 2d. You doubtless have read General Root s attack upon the " Regency," and have observed the prompt denunciations which have been poured out upon him. The war is openly declared. I wish you could be here to see how much more violently the different factions of " the party " hate each other than they hate us. As yet the prospect gains ground that the Clay men in this State and in Pennsylvania will be content to support our tickets. You will have seen that the excitement growing out of the Cherokee question is postponed until next winter for the benefit of General Jackson. In the mean time Georgia will go on to survey the Cherokee lands in defiance of the Supreme Court. All private intelligence from Washington contributes to the belief that no arrangement of the tariff question will be made this winter : and that within the summer South Carolina, aided probably by Virginia, North Carolina, Georgia, 212 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1832. Alabama, and Mississippi, will hold conventions to nullify the tariff laws, and threaten dissolution of the Union. I am informed that it is probable that I have been nominated for supervisor. So far as concerns myself, I certainly would rather be run when I must be de feated than to run and be elected. I understood that you were opposed to my nomination, and I think you were right ; but it is a matter of not very great importance. I trust our friends would not push me upon the course unless it were for the best ; and, if it be for the best, I shall care very little for being beaten. In April he made another visit to Orange County, leaving Mrs. Seward there. A letter, written her on his return to Albany, said : How does Orange County appear to you? I do not mean in such dull weather as this, but when the sun shines forth, and winds are stilled, and the air is soft. It is to me a land of many charms from the associations of youth and habit. I love its mountains and vales, its brooks and groves. There are a thousand localities there which I do not recollect to have admired, when I lived there, for their sublimity or beauty, yet which are green and fresh and lovely in my remembrance, and with them every one there is the association of some in cident or feeling now recalled with pleasure. Let one speak to me of Mount Eve, which in truth, I suppose, is far from being beautiful in comparison with other mountains, and suddenly the green, forest-covered steep rises before me, with beautiful fleecy clouds resting midway on the ascent, now gathering form and proportion, now fading away over the summit, and with it is sure to come the recollection of the hundred times when I watched it, to see if there was cause to fear a storm might mar anticipated sport. I well remember once, when you were in Orange County, of your writing to me about strawberries in a meadow belonging to Mr. Curtis. I do not know that I had thought of the spot in twenty years, yet the distinct recollection of the grassy knoll, of my own hours passed in gathering the delicious fruit there, rises with all mi nuteness of time, circumstance, incident, and even conversation. The little brooks which you so much admired when we went over to the hill on which Chloe lives, are marked distinctly by the recollection of many a jocund laugh, many a fearful story, many a pleasant truant hour. The old butternuts that shade her humble habitation, how venerable they seem in my memory ! How many hours I ve spent, squirrel-like, in gathering, by slow labor, the nuts to lay in store for winter s evening enjoyment ! I think that this delight of the heart in ancient associations is the secret of the desire so common to return and close one s days, after a busy life abroad, in the scenes of youth. When I was studying law, I think at Goshen, there came a lecturer on the " Science of Mnemonics, or the Art of improving the Memory." His plan was this : He had a book of plates containing the pictures of many familiar objects a pump, a table, a carriage, etc. These were placed in regular order. The art consisted in forming an association between the fact or idea to be remembered and one of those objects, so that everything to be remembered should be, as it were, stowed away in the same room with one or another of the pictures, and whenever the picture occurred all the ideas associated with it came up in the memory. The plan was ingenious, but useless, because too artificial. Yet it THE UNIVEF, OF 1832.] THE LOBBY. 213 was amusing to see how soon the fancy supplied the desired connection between the arbitrary memento and the thing to be remembered, and in all after-life I have had the association come up involuntarily in my mind. On the same prin ciple it is that scenes acquire interest and preserve it by association. The striking of the clock admonishes me that I have spent an hour in this rambling letter. My anthracite is fading into stone. I will leave the residue till morning. April \tih. Weed called this morning, and announced as news, among other things, that Marcy was to be the candidate for Governor. John Birdsall called, and we discussed that part of the science of demonol- ogy which relates to the " blue devils." He was delighted with an opportunity to relate his experience, and a melancholy one it was. Who would think that so kind-hearted, unobtrusive, and amiable a man would be the victim of such horrid oppression ? The canal will be opened on the 25th, but for the first week we shall hardly be able to get along without being crowded out of all comfort. I set apart to-day to write the address of the Antimasonic members of the Legislature, locked my door, and went to work with great diligence. Having half finished it, I went up to converse with one of our leaders upon the subject- matter. He advised me to leave out all on the subject of antimasonry, and fill it with matters relating to the conduct and doings of the Legislature. Thus advised, I proceeded until our other leader came into the room at noon. I read it to him ; he wondered at the selection of such topics, and thought I ought to confine myself principally to antimasonry. Then I made up my mind to take my own way, as I found it impracticable to meet the views of both parties. At last I have gone through with the draft, and laid it aside in order to write to you, which I find vastly more easy, as well as more agreeable. Here is a bonmot of Granger s. A newly-married pair, both recently wid owed, have arrived on their bridal tour at Congress Hall. The Kanes sent them cards of invitation to their party, but the bride and the bridegroom came not. The Kanes asked Granger what he thought was the reason that they did not come. He answered that he "supposed it must be because they were both in deep mourning ! " April \th. The lobby are becoming corrupt and impudent. Yesterday, after I had made up my mind to vote for the Leather Manufacturers Bank, I received a let ter requesting me to vote for it, because it would be to " the interest of the writer." I threw the letter into the fire, and told Mr. Tracy that I was almost disposed to vote against the bank. The bank bill passed. To-day the gentle man appeared and told me that any amount of stock I wanted in the bank I could have at ten per cent. I told him I wanted no stock in the bank. He said he could not offer it before the bank bill passed. I told him it was useless to offer it to me, either before or after it passed. I have seen too much of these operations. " Give me," said Agur, " neither poverty nor riches! " and so say I. And yet, though I see those now flourishing who practise mean and corrupt ways, I cannot think it always was so, or always will be. If I thought so, Heaven knows I would soon be out of the line altogether. But it has not been so with me. For my years, I have had good speed, and as little reverse as 214 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1832. most ; and yet I have never given one vote from interested considerations, or attached myself to a party whose principles did not receive the support of my conscience. There is nothing bright, to be sure, in prospect, yet the way seems no more difficult than that through which I have passed. You recollect the friendly fraternal solicitude Weed manifested about the success of my effort on the United States Bank? Among all the compliments, all the praise that effort brought me and it brought me more than it deserved one from Weed gave me most pleasure. None but one of his delicacy of principle would have thought of it. " Seward," said he, " that speech will do great things for you. It will win you much favor, not so much for its merit as a defense of the bank, though in that respect meritorious, but because it may lead people to know and esteem your principles, and your feelings." I have run on in this strain of egotism, I know not how ; but to return : I think such prin ciples ought to distinguish our party from its opponents. Nine o clock P. M. I have been vigorously at work on the address. It has grown upon my hands. Thursday, April IMJi. You would give me joy, I know, if you were here. I have just finished the first copy of my address, after a labor of many hours. The feelings called forth in the composition of it are yet warm ; and therefore it seems to me a success ful performance. I will speak well of it now, for, before many days, it will seem " weary, stale, flat, and unprofitable." Tallmadge reads his to-night in the Eegency caucus. I am going to hear it, partly for the purpose of being prepared to answer anything in it that may require answer, and partly for the purpose of comparing my own with his, although the risk of being disgusted with my own is very great. Saturday, 21*. Yesterday was a day of caucusing. The Antimasonie committee were here to take into consideration the address. In the evening all the Antimasonie mem bers were crowded in the ladies parlor for the same purpose. It was submit ted, criticised, and approved. It only remains that it be copied correctly for the press, and then it is off my hands. Before this time, notwithstanding the rain and clouds, I suppose George and his bride have arrived. The heavens smile not on your festivities. Jove laughs, they say, at lovers prayers, but lovers, during the honeymoon, may laugh at his storms. I shall employ myself diligently in closing my concerns, so as to be off from Albany at the instant of the adjournment. Among the events of the year 1832 was the final adjustment, by the great powers, of the boundaries of Greece as an independent state, and the elevation of Otho to her throne. The news of her in dependence was welcomed by the friends of the Greek cause in Amer ica, though it hardly realized their highest hopes of Greek liberty. In February, 1827, when the tidings came that the fortress of Mis- solonghi, after long resisting the power of the Turks, had yielded, and 1832.] THE CHOLERA. 215 the greater part of the brave defenders had been massacred, Seward had joined, with youthful ardor, in the meetings and appeals for relief. Forty years later, when he made the circuit of the globe, and was received by every nationality with some demonstration of gratitude for remembered kindness, he landed one day among the isles of Greece. As he was setting sail at twilight from Syra, the town and hillside burst into a blaze of illumination, as for some festival. A deputation of venerable men came to say to him that the display was in his honor, and not merely for his renown as a statesman, but because they cherished with especial pleasure the remembrance of the young lawyer at Auburn, who, in years gone by, had so earnestly pleaded for help to the Greeks. CHAPTER VIII. 1832. Rural Fancies. Rev. Alonzo Potter. The Fire-King. Coming of the Cholera. Maynard s Death. Lieutenant-Governor Livingston. Jackson reflected. Governor Marcy. A Weather-Prophet. Rival Stages. The Price of Candles. Edwin Forrest. A Pre monition of the Civil War. ENJOYING at Auburn, after the adjournment, a respite from official labors, Seward, in a letter to Weed, alluded to that dream of rural life which was one of his favorite imaginings : Public life has produced a singular effect upon me. It is the desire to aban don active occupation altogether. It has produced disgust for my profession ; that is natural enough, but it has diminished my ambition for public service. I seem now to wish only for a farm, with sufficient revenue to save me from actual embarrassment. So you see, when you and Granger, Whittlesey, Maynard, and the rest, come to your kingdom, I shall be looking out upon you from the " loop-holes of my retreat." But there was little time for the indulgence of such fancies. This was to be a busy summer. It was the year of the presidential elec tion. In June the Antimasons were to hold their State Convention at Utica, and the Legislature was to meet in extra session to apportion congressional districts. Then, too, a new and comparatively unknown public danger was approaching. The cholera had made its appearance in America. Not only was that pestilence more dreaded than now, but it was fraught with more actual peril, for medical knowledge, in regard to its treatment, was scanty and imperfect. So vague and confused were many of the popular ideas about it that a story was told of a squad of men who went out from Albany,. 216 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1832, armed with sticks, to drive it back if they should happen to meet it on the line of the Northern Canal ! CONGRESS HALL, June 21st. I have drawn the red-covered table into the centre of "Letter B," and made ready to write you a good letter, telling you that I. have escaped upsets by stage, fire in the taverns, explosions by steam on the railroad, and cholera on the canal. As we anticipated, we arrived in Utica Tuesday evening. The next morning we took the Telegraph, which landed us at Schenectady at seven in the evening too late for the railroad-cars, so we concluded to remain there in preference to coming by night in the sjage. I went over the college-grounds, after which I called upon one or two friends and spent the evening in conversation, reviving old recollections. There is no cholera here, and none known to exist in the State, except at Ogdensburg, Plattsburg, and Fort Miller. I believe there was a solitary case at Mechanicsville, but it does not appear to have infected the place. I think we shall have a short session. June 21#. The alarm has greatly subsided. It disturbs no domestic circle, and, so far as I can learn, prevents no contemplated arrangement. Because the cholera has not yet come the people are quite well convinced it will not come at all, or, if it come, will be less fatal than was anticipated. The accounts now received from Canada induce the belief that its ravages are confined to the immigrants, of whom it is said twenty-five thousand have landed this year at Montreal, a number ex ceeding the entire population of that city. The Drowned Land road cause came up in the Supreme Court, so I had to attend there at ten. At eleven we went into session as a legislature, and spent the day till two o clock in passing a bill for the preservation of the public health. Its provisions, if they can be enforced, may be very useful, but it is rather re garded as an endeavor to quiet the public mind than as growing out of any exigency actually existing. Thus far all continues well. In the evening the delegates arrived from the Utica Convention, among whom were Tracy, Weed, Andrews, Gary, and Holley. They had an harmonious meeting, and made nominations which suit the Nationals, without compromitting the interests or principles of our own party. The fair prospect now is, that we shall combine in support of our ticket the whole opposition, and many entertain confident hopes of the election of Granger and Stevens, and our Wirt electoral ticket. Last evening, we steamed an hour at the Museum in, witnessing the exploits of the " Fire-King." They were marvelous enough to excite astonishment, but not sufficiently diversified to sustain the interest. The performance commenced with the operation of holding for five minutes a piece of white paper in the blaze of a candle, and preserving it unburned by means of blowing upon it. The next was eating liquid sealing-wax. Then " his majesty " poured liquid molten lead upon his tongue, and afterward swallowed boiling oil. He concluded with the feat of going into an oven, and remaining there ten minutes while he cooked a beefsteak. Of course there is nothing wonderful in all this, except the secret of the substances which he uses to counteract the heat. 1832.] CLAY AND WIRT. 217 Monday, June 25th. Yesterday morning I went to St. Peter s Church, where I heard a beautiful discourse from Alonzo Potter, of Schenectady. I came away satisfied that he is a fine scholar, as I had supposed when in college he would prove to be. In the afternoon I went to the Baptist Church, and was gratified, of course, with the impassioned sermon of Mr. Welch. William Fosgate came here in the afternoon, and we spent two hours in rambling over the graveyards searching for the grave of Clinton. It turned out that his remains were deposited in some vault, so that we were disappointed in our search. Consternation here about the cholera has ceased ; indeed, I wish it had kept up a little longer. The streets are offensive, but it seems to be thought probable that our State will escape the contagion. Tuesday, June 26th. After tea last evening, we had a caucus at Gideon Hawley s. Among those who attended was Judge Woodworth. On the way home he and I fell in with General Gansevoort, who extolled so highly his port wine, that we were induced to accept his invitation to taste it. We found the wine very good, and the general very hospitable. We talked about Indians in general, and the expedition to Chicago in particular. Next perhaps in importance was the call on Mrs. Livingston, the bride, who is domiciled at the Eagle. She made many inquiries about you and the boys, All seem to think, from the circumstance of your spending last winter with me, that you were enlisted for the whole senatorial term, and were to be expected here whenever the Legislature should be in session. If you were here you would enjoy Albany very much. The weather is warm, indeed, but morning and evening it is delightful. There are no lobby-men here, and nobody is writ ing speeches. I purposed while here to prepare an address to be delivered at Schenectady. I found the time passing rapidly away, and yet I was unable to select any sub ject, and so I read and wrote, not knowing " How the subject theme might gang ; Perhaps it may turn out a sang Perhaps turn out a sermon " until yesterday, when I became convinced that I had not and could not have time and opportunity to prepare such a discourse as would be satisfactory to my own mind. I burned the manuscript and abandoned the intention. Wednesday, June Vfith. Last evening I attended a joint meeting of the leading politicians at the Adelphi. The Nationals have declared their entire concurrence in the nominations made by the Antimasonic State Convention for Governor and Lieutenant-Gov- ernor and electors. Thus, after four years of reviling us, wasting their own strength, and embarrassing ours, to this end they are come at last, to take up onr cause and our candidates. I hope it may not be too late. Now followed an active and exciting presidential campaign. The union between the supporters of Clay and those of Wirt, it was be- 218 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1832. lieved, might be successful in overthrowing the party in power, who had renominated General Jackson. By the local convention of his party Seward had, this year, been chosen the chairman of the Central Committee in Cayuga County, his associates being J. H. Hardenbergh, George C. Skinner, Robert Cook, and A. D. Leonard. Their address of August 4, 1832, " to the Anti- masonic Republicans " of the county, called upon them to " make a renewed and vigorous effort " in the election, " in which they will for the first time have the privilege of voting for candidates of their own nomination for President and Vice-President of the United States," and invited the cordial cooperation of all who approved the Utica nominations. But their high hopes were destined to swift disappointment in November. At the election the Jackson men again carried the State and nation by overwhelming majorities. A session of the Court of Errors, held soon after, called Seward again to Albany, whence he wrote : November 10th. I am resting from the labors of my journey under the wings of the Eagle. The result of the election has been so signally overwhelming as to leave no cause for idle or unavailing regrets. I find myself among men who are, like myself, beaten, but not desponding, and so much beaten that they, like me, laugh at the delusion which could hope for a different result. Besides this, our opponents have achieved so destructive a victory that in common decency they are compelled, when in our presence, to suppress the ex pression of their exultation. Marcy came into the Senate-chamber this morn ing and received the congratulations of his friends ; but there was great deli cacy in the conduct of the ceremonies, for which, as for the least of mercies, we ought to desire to be grateful. I went last night, as soon as I arrived, to see Weed. He is still confined to the house. He sits up, however, and his house is a levee, continually resorted to by our defeated friends. I found John Birdsall and others with him. Weed sustains defeat with firmness and spirit. Birdsall is now the only associate I have here. I have come to esteem him very much ; he is honest, candid, and unsuspecting. Sunday Night, November llth. I was tempted to-day to remain within-doors, the weather was so cold ; but I gallantly surmounted the artifices of the Evil-One in this particular, although I have abundant reason to fear that his grappling-irons seized more strongly upon some other parts of my religious character. In the morning I went with Mrs. Tracy and Mrs. Gary to St. Peter s Church. The pews were meagrely filled. I went, intending to be interested at least in the service, but the wretched expedient of labor-saving, by employing a clerk to utter the responses which the people alone ought to express, destroys the whole system of audible worship by individuals. Now, I could well enough have joined with all the congrega- 1832.] AFTER THE DEFEAT. 219 tion, in so low a voice as to attract no notice, and yet keep my mind riveted to the subject-matter of the prayers ; but when I heard a priest saying one part of the service in a loud and melodious tone, and a clerk uttering the other part in a still louder nasal sing-song, the whole seemed a ceremony which I might listen to without having any responsibility upon myself. In the afternoon I went to Dr. Campbell s, where people actually were not too lazy to sing, and the clergyman spoke as if he was conscious that his con gregation had souls to be saved. The sermon was desultory, rather a lecture than a sermon ; but it was nevertheless one of the best I have ever heard from that amiable and eloquent preacher. Dr. Campbell had recently come to Albany from Washington. He was now settled in pastoral charge of the First Presbyterian Church the " Old Brick " whose walls had echoed the voices of so many elo quent men. Dr. Campbell was still young, and of striking appearance: tall, very thin, very pale, and spiritual-looking, with dark hair and eyes, he was always dignified and grave in the pulpit, though in soci ety his conversation never lacked genial humor. He had already grown very popular. Monday , November 12th. Every man I meet asks what we are to do next. How shall we proceed ? Shall we fight, or shall we surrender ? How and where shall we rally ? But no man pretends to answer the questions which all so eagerly propose. My friends give me credit for philosophical or stoical firmness in misfortune. "What do you think is my comfort now ? It is, that there is always some way out of the most intricate of labyrinths, and some relief in store for the most help less of conditions. How we are to get along I know not ; but, when the confu sion of our defeat is past, I doubt not that there will offer some course which can be pursued with honor and with advantage to the interests of our country honor which I shall never sacrifice, interests which I shall continue to cherish and to defend. Last evening I sallied forth to Little s book-store in quest of a book to re lieve the dullness of my spirits. I ransacked the inexhaustible treasures of Little s shelves annuals, bijoux, caricatures, comedy, and farce ; then the more rational stores of morals ; and, lastly, devout " Addresses to Persons in Afflic tion," " Thoughts for a Quiet Man," the " Religious Statesman," " Christian Solace in Season of Public Calamity ; " but I could be content with nothing, and at last in despair I seized upon Fielding s " Amelia," and bore it off to the Eagle. Kent came in, and we discoursed affectionately until midnight. When we parted I laid hands upon the novel, when lo ! I had brought the second vol ume only. Judge with what disappointment I retired to bed. Fortunately, I had employment enough in the morning. I have devoted myself to it with assiduity, and now " Richard is himself again." I spent three delightful hours to-night with Mr. Van Vechten. He was at times gloomy, always charming, and seemed prophetic in his forebodings. " What madness is in the people," thought I, " that cannot listen to the remonstrances of this venerable man ! " 220 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1832. I do not know but the prospect of repose, and of drawing comfort and pleasure from the recollection of by-gone days, is always delusive. When I went to Auburn first, I carried with me a full bushel of letters, which I prom ised myself at some leisure hour to assort and preserve for perusal, not doubt ing but that I should delight in the recollections which they would call up. In haste I deposited them in a drawer in the office. There they lie now, and have remained, untouched, untasted. Many a gloomy hour have I had, many a list less season ; but never have I seen the time that I would resort to their contents for support or for amusement. Nevertheless, I cannot but indulge the hope that there will be a time when I can withdraw from cares which harass me, and pursuits uncongenial to my taste and feelings ; and that then I shall derive pleas ure in renewing the incidents and feelings of this, which I would fain believe to- be the most busy and perplexed portion of my life. No record will remain of it but these hurried letters, that are written with all the freedom and thought lessness in which I could write or speak to no being on earth save yourself. But shall I laugh or weep when I call from its musty abode this record of chagrin and disappointment? In truth, as my old friend Mr. Van Vechten says, " That is to depend upon the chapter of chances." November Wh. From the conversation of the good society at the head of our dinner-table, I infer that the town is engrossed by the subject of the two great marriages, one of which took place on Wednesday, and the other yesterday. The first was that of Mr. Barker, son of Jacob Barker, to a daughter of William James ; the other was Colonel Barnard to Miss Walsh. I have been at Weed s all this evening. He has related to me with great minuteness the melancholy story of Maynard s illness and death. Weed says he was wild and bewildered, much of the time, and talked politics always, when he was out of his senses. When possessed of his powers he was silent, con scious of his danger, and undismayed about it. Weed describes most touchingly the ghastly but sublime appearance of his countenance in dying. Poor fellow ! he died most fortunately. The ruin of the political interests he had so much at heart would have consigned him to un merited and insupportable obscurity. November Wh. " The sufferings " of the Antimasons " at this time is so intolerable," that individuals cannot endure them alone and in silence. To this cause, doubtless, I owed a visit yesterday from Tracy and Birdsall ; they came in at three o clock, and determined to caucus. Was ever a patriot band reduced to num bers so thin and forlorn as our trio ? We canvassed and discussed the state of our political affairs until five o clock, when, having hit upon a plan of operations, we hastened to Weed to submit it. He fully accorded with us ; but, in the diffi culty of carrying out the details, we foresaw its impracticability, abandoned it, adopted a different measure, and separated ; the burden being imposed upon me of writing the manifesto by which the Evening Journal is to announce to Antimasons, all over the world, the policy which the party will pursue. November llth. I have now on hand the manifesto of which I spoke in my letter of yester day, besides an unfinished opinion, and two more cases to study, with many let ters, and some other business to transact. 1832.] STAGE-COACH TRAVELING. 221 This evening the Lieutenant-Governor gave me many details of his travels in France, his stay in Paris during the consulate of Bonaparte, his visits to the court, his introduction to Josephine, his dinners with Talleyrand, his interviews with Cambace"r6s, Massena, Junot, and others. November l$th. This day has been a worthless one. I feel wretchedly, always, when I have to retire to bed with the reflection that I have accomplished nothing I ought to have done, and learned nothing I ought to know. The Jackson men exult in the belief that Van Buren starts auspiciously for the presidency, and, although he has great opposition to contend with, it must be admitted that he has already more organized force than any other candidate. Wednesday, November 2lnt. About these days, when I think of little else but going to Auburn, I have become a constant weather-inspector. The accounts of the roads, for the last three weeks, have been disheartening. This morning was mild and moist, but before nine o clock I discovered the great golden fish which points the weather from the Second Presbyterian Church was scenting about for a change. He vacillated, now showing his nose down the river, now a little west, then rapidly resuming his first position ; but I at length had the pleasure to see him present, direct to the west, his open mouth, while his golden fins, displayed to my eye, indicated that he preferred colder weather. A flurry of snow suc ceeded. I shall hope to have sleighing before Thursday. November 22</. To-night the Regency have had their great celebration. They have fired one hundred guns, and feasted the populace, with which the populace are satisfied. I have come to be quite content and undisturbed amid the scenes which it was so painful to contemplate in prospect. November 23d. Mr. Adams s poem is called " Dermot McMarragh." I have tried, in vain, to buy one. All the copies received here have been sold immediately, and the booksellers say that the edition is exhausted. Nevertheless, as I suppose I shall go to New York next week, I hope to be able to bring one for you. In meas ure and style, it somewhat resembles Lord Byron s " Beppo." A part of it con tains a piquant satire on " princely marriages for convenience made : " " Long round the torch of Hymen Cupid hovers, The case is not the same with royal lovers." Less than a month intervened for a brief stay at Auburn, before it was time to return for the opening of the annual session. There was rivalry between two lines of stage-coaches, and Seward narrated some of the incidents which relieved the monotony of his journey to Albany: December 262A. Our ride to Syracuse was exceedingly tedious. There were, besides myself, four passengers, one of whom was a very rough old man, who had paid half a dollar more than he could have gone for in the other coach. He seemed to have supposed that this additional compensation would induce the proprietors to smooth the turnpike, and cover it with snow. 222 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1832. Two other passengers had come to Auburn in our coach and there stopped, with the intention of taking the other ; but, neglecting to order their baggage taken out, it came on with us, leaving the owners at the American Hotel in Auburn. Full of wrath, they overtook us on horseback, about a mile east of the village, and took seats in the stage, after sending their horses back to the " library " (as they described the place from which they procured them). These men, too, uttered nothing but complaints against the villainous stage-proprietors who did not take out their baggage, in consequence of which they had to pay, in addition to the stage-fare, one dollar to the keeper of the " library-stable." How edifying was the discourse of my fellow-passengers, you may judge. One of them surveyed my baggage -marks, and then asked if I lived at Auburn. This was a plain question, and admitted an easy answer ; but the second ques tion was a poser. " "What is the price of candles there ? " Being utterly unpre pared to answer, I said, " What did you ask, sir ? " hoping that the question when next presented would come in such a shape that I might " speak to it." But there was no such relief for me. Out it came again : " What do you pay for candles at Auburn? " Now, what was I to say? Acknowledge my ignorance? It seemed to me that would not do. A man might be pardoned for not knowing the price of wheat. Wheat is bought and sold as a matter of speculation. Corn, iron, cotton-goods, anything else, a man may be ignorant of the condition of the market, if he be not a professed dealer. But candles ! Who does not burn can dles ? Whether I was a merchant, or a lawyer, or a divine, I must have light, and how could I get it without buying candles, and how buy candles without learning the price? And I felt, too, that I ought to know I, a lawyer, a Senator, a man with a wife and two children, how could I make the inquirer understand how it could be that I did not have occasion to learn the price of can dles? In the eloquent phrase of Senator T , "it is a question which comes home to every burner of candles, and who in this land is not such ? " Never theless so it was, I could not answer. At first I thought I would excuse myself and say, " I burn oil ; " but the question then would come, " What is oil worth ? " and this would be no easier than the other. Then I thought I would guess the price of candles ; but the knowing look of the interrogator warned me from that purpose, and I finally acknowledged that I did not know the price of a pound of candles. My fellow-passenger sympathized in my confusion, and dispelled, in some degree, my mortification, by saying he was a tallow-chandler at Eoches- ter, which was the reason he inquired. The old grumbler then announced him self to be a butcher, and the two communed sweetly together, upon the mys teries of slaughtering, dressing, moulding, dipping, and soap-boiling. Albany, as usual, was enlivened by the approach of winter. Hotels were filled with guests, society was preparing for pleasure, and legisla tors and lobby for work. Se ward s next letters adverted to meetings with new and old acquaintances, and visits to the theatre to see a young tragedian of rising fame : December 2Sth. Wednesday evening I went with Thomas Y. How to see Forrest play Hamlet. Critics say he is not a first-rate actor, except in characters adapted for the dis play of great physical power, and in such parts he is admitted to excel. But he 1832.] EDWIN FORREST. 223 certainly played Hamlet with profound judgment and much effect. I was very happily disappointed in it. Even the ghost-scene, unnatural as it is, seemed less so, because the eye and ear were riveted upon Hamlet, terrified, dismayed, horror-struck, but firm of purpose to discharge the duties of a son. The inter view between Hamlet and his mother, in her closet, where he accuses her of murder and incest, and wrings from the lips of a mother, whose only remaining virtue is her love for her son, a confession of her guilt, was a scene of deep in terest. There is another part of the play which, on reading, always seemed to me to be mistaken in point of effect. I mean the representation by the players of a tragedy intended to be the means of discovering, by its effect upon the guilty King and Queen, the truth of the accusations by the ghost. But here again I was disappointed, and admired still more the deep discernment of Shakespeare. Hamlet, meditating upon this plan, says : " The play, the play ; yes, the play s the thing ; With that I ll catch the conscience of the king." Now, these lines I ve read a thousand times, without discovering that they had any meaning, or were of more use than to end the scene in rhyme. But, when Forrest so uttered the lines as to express the full meaning, I saw how true both author and actor were to Nature when the King started at the first suspicion that his guilty secret was out ; when Hamlet insidiously urged on to quick discovery, and the King, losing all self-possession, rushed from the cham ber, while the affrighted players dropped their curtain and fled. In my boyish days I kept a scrap-book, into which I transferred, as I thought, the finest passages of Shakespeare, and among the rest those which are found in " Hamlet ; " but Forrest s just perception showed me a thousand beauties and sublimities I never knew before. But I must not dwell longer on the the atre. To-night he plays Metamora. I am going to see whether the Indian char acter can be written and enacted. December 292 A. Day before yesterday Mr. Bronson announced, at dinner, that Mr. Van Buren and Governor Throop had called this morning upon the ladies, and left their compliments for all the gentlemen of the Court of Errors. Yesterday morning Mr. Van Buren came into the Court of Errors, and remained until the adjournment. Did you notice in the papers the death of Mrs. Henry Hone, formerly Caro line Burrill? "When you and I were first acquent," Mr. Burrill s three daugh ters were the theme of all conversation in the society in which I lived. Their beauty of person, powers of mind, and traits of character, were subjects of discussion in almost every circle. Mrs. Murray Hoffman was dignified, Emily was modest and lovely, Caroline was witty and satirical. All three were mar ried, had children, and died, within ten short years. Dignity, loveliness, and talent, though they possessed them all, have fled, and the earth covers the poor handfuls of dust which can no longer excite admiration or inflict pain. I cannot augur good of the proposed marriage to which you refer. But it seems always idle in such cases to advise. There is a disposition not to be ad vised, and, moreover, this is such a " clever " world that many people always advise lovers to follow their own inclinations ; being willing to believe that all 224: LIFE AND LETTERS. [1832. will be as it ought to be, very happy, if the person most interested wishes to believe so. This is a kind of complacency of which I have no share. But I confess I have seldom seen the friend who had firmness enough to advise another against marrying in accordance with inclination. I am grieved to say that our poor friend Weed is in a very critical situation. He can hardly hope to escape without loss of limb or life. It is horrible ; it de stroys all the happiness of his society. It is almost enough to make us repine at the dispensations of Providence. Never were men more honest, more pure in patriotic enterprise, than our feeble band of Antimasons. Yet the greatest and noblest is struck to the earth ; and another is prostrated ; and this comes simultaneously with the desolation of all our fair hopes ; while triumphs and festivities seem held in reserve for those who sacrifice their country to their party, and their party to themselves. But I had better tell you about Metamora than to fill up this page with mur- murings against the dispensations of Providence. Metamora is Philip, the last King of the Wampanoags. Forrest looks like an Indian, walks like an Indian, and talks as well as if he were not an Indian. The play would be no play if the hero did not speak, and unfortunately we all know that Indians never do make long speeches, or declaim like white men. This inherent but unavoidable defect in the tragedy renders the whole thing so absurd that no one can be interested in the first four acts. The last act, however, is filled with incidents which excite intense interest. His child is pierced by a bullet sped at his wife (the Indian woman, by-the-way, was acted to the life). The enemy are in hot pursuit. The tribe of Wampanoags are all cut off, and the chief, his wife, and their dead child, are in their cave. The alarm of the approach of white men inspires him with a sudden resolution. He points his wife to the sky tells her the great and departed of her race beckon her thither. She de spairingly declares she is ready. He stabs her, weeps over her, curses the white men the enemy discover him he bares his breast, receives a whole vol ley of musketry, and dies execrating the cruelty of pale-faces. It is impossible to witness the representation of the play, and not rise from it without a feeling of detestation of our ancestors and ourselves. This bloody tragedy is not fic tion ; it is a softer picture of more than a thousand massacres ; and yet we go on. The race is almost extirpated here ; we proceed to extirpate the remnant in their retreat. With the wrongs of the Indian and the negro races still fresh and ascending to Heaven for vengeance, little ground have we to hope to avoid civil war, and I sometimes think a just Providence overrules all efforts of the good and wise, that it may hasten the day of that calamity. 1833.] NEW-YEAR S VISITS. 225 CHAPTER IX. 1833. New-Year s Reflections. A Round of Calls. United States Senators. Silas Wright. N. P. Tallmadge. Christian Faith. South Carolina Nullification. Speech defending Jackson s Proclamation. A Mother s Illness. Voyage to Europe. January 1, 1833. WITH this New -Year s day comes the reflection that my term of office is half expired. One-half of those by whom I was surrounded when I first took my seat in the Senate have vacated their places : Stephen Allen, Mather, Fuller, and Maynard. I can truly say I feel no regret at the evidences that my official term draws nearer to its close. What is to be " the color of the times " dur ing the residue of my legislative term, I know not. At present there is little to encourage exertion. Our friends are desponding, the victors are arrogant, and the people sunk in too profound a slumber to be waked to a conviction of their interests. What new events may come, and what may be the operation of such events, no man can read. It is certainly not impossible that a reorgani zation of political elements may take place. The times indicate it, bat whether it will be one which will be fraught with weal or disappointment to those with whom I act, no one can even pretend to conjecture. January 2d. The Legislature adjourned yesterday, without receiving the Governor s mes sage, in order to afford opportunity for the celebration of New-Year s day in the usual manner. The military were out, of course, and the usual public demon strations were made. It is only of my own adventures that I can speak. First, I called on Lewis Benedict s family, who gave me an old-fashioned welcome. Here Birdsall joined me. We passed by Chancellor Sanford s dropped in at old Mr. Gregory s did not see Mrs. Wing, but Mrs. G. wished us a happy New-Year. Stopped at Congress Hall, called on Mrs. Gary, found Mrs. Tracy in the ladies parlor arranging a table for the entertainment of her friends. The new Lieutenant-Governor, and the ladies of his family, held levee in the dining-room, where there was, of course, a throng. Birdsall mingled with the crowd that pressed into the room of " the magician." Our next call was at John T. Norton s, where we found Mrs. N. the mother, Mrs. N. the wife, and Miss Tread well. Next we dropped in at the Chief -Justice s ; found Mrs. Savage as agreeable as formerly. Thence to Judge Sutherland s; him we found surrounded by his wife and half a dozen daughters. Our next call was at Mr. Weed s. Mrs. Bronson has fitted up the Hopkins House, so it seems to be a different establishment. We found the Chancellor at home with his family. Having now come down Washington Street, we went round the Academy Park. At Porter s, we met his late Excellency Governor Throop, Mrs. Porter, and Mrs. Lafarge. Then we called at Delavan s ; there we found ourselves in the crowd who thronged the halls of the new Governor. The sovereign people crowded, as idolaters always do, to worship the god they have just made. His Excellency was pleased to say he was very happy to see us. Mrs. Marcy occupied the draw ing-room ; the Adjutant-General and the aides of the Governor were in attend ance in uniform. 15 226 LIFE AND LETTERS. 1 1833.. Left my card at Congress Hall for Mrs. Julius Rhoades ; crossed to John Keyes Paige s, who was out ; then to the Recorder s, who was in. Then to the Surveyor-General s, and then to his son s. Went into the Misses Lovett s ; then made our way to Isaiah Townsend s, and stopped at ex-Mayor John Townsend s, who puts a good grace upon the loss of his election, and declares he is glad he is out. Gary, by this time, had joined us, and we went into Coming s ; thence to Wendell s. Never saw a handsomer girl than Anna Mary, or a cleverer matron than her mother. Was informed that Mrs. Blanchard did not receive company ; nor did Mrs. James King. Called at Rufus H. King s, Mrs. Brinckerhoff s, Mrs. Mancius s, Chancellor Sanford s, Judge Spencer s, the Bleeckers , Kane s, Baine s,, etc., etc. ; more than I can speak of in detail. We called at the new mayor s (Bloodgood s) ; his daughter is accomplished and elegant. While Cary and I were there, he happened to call me "uncle," at which they all started, and required explanation. I told them that it is a generic name applied to me by my Antimasonic brethren, who make me uncle to the whole party. On which the girls declared that they desired to be received as my nieces, and we all agreed that our family, though not the most numerous, was yet a very respect able and worthy one. January 4, 1833. Friday was the day appointed for choosing a Senator in the Congress of the United States. I went into Spencer s room on business on Thursday evening, and he told me there was to be a caucus of our friends at Bement s at seven o clock. I staid and took tea with him ; we consulted upon the matter, and finally agreed that it would be well for us to scatter our vote among our Antimasonic friends. When the meeting organized, Spencer submitted his views, and called upon me. I concurred ; some others opposed ; Birdsall joined us ; Cary as sented ; and finally all agreed in entire harmony and good feeling to the policy we proposed. This election was to fill the vacancy occasioned by the resignation of Judge Marcy, who had been elected Governor. There was no con test ; the Democratic candidate was the Comptroller, Silas Wright ; and as his political friends numbered three-fourths of both Houses, he was elected without difficulty. The Antimasonic members scattered their votes as had been prearranged. Sunday Evening, January 6th. This afternoon I went to St. Paul s, where I heard a sermon on the necessity of evangelizing the heathen. I never enter a church and hear the doctrines, hopes, and fears of our faith explained, but that I feel sensibly how much bet ter it is to believe, and to seek to act according to its precepts, than to be desti tute of religious faith and practice, hope and comfort. Happy are those who receive this religion in childhood, grow up in the faith, go through life without doubting, and die with triumphant hope ; and miserable is he who either be lieves or acts as if he believed that this span of life is the whole period allotted for his duration ! Monday, 7th. I have to tell you what will undoubtedly be most gratifying. Dr. McNaugh- ton was at Weed s yesterday and examined his limb ; he pronounced with muck 1833.] NATHANIEL P. TALLMADGE. 227 confidence that the disease was a mere enlargement of the ligaments, and prom ised him that he should be able to quit his house in a fortnight. I learned also that Dr. Williams s opinion is in accordance with Dr. McNaughton s. I would give half a kingdom (if I had a whole one) to be divested of my dis position to suffer under an oppressive sense of responsibility. I brought with me the papers to argue two cases in the Supreme Court. The argument was to be brought on to-day ; I labored yesterday, and for two days previous, in pre paring a brief, and was constantly depressed by apprehensions of failure. The day at length came ; I waited my turn in court with a state of feeling very much like that of a man about to be hanged. I rose, stated the case, read my notice, and looked round, when lo ! nobody appeared to gainsay my motion, and I took it by default in each case. Another Senator in Congress is to be chosen by the Legislature in February. Tallmadge and McLean are busily employed in canvassing. Tallmadge s chief opponent is Judge Sutherland. I incline to the belief that Tallmadge will suc ceed. Comptroller Wright has already been elected to the Senate ; Flagg, the Secretary of State, is to be Comptroller ; General Dix, the Adjutant-General, it is understood, is to be promoted to fill Flagg s place, which leaves the Adjutant- General s place vacant ; there is, however, nothing left for us to do but to look on. My afternoon was occupied with calls, among which was that of Judge Woodworth, who condoled with me over our defeat, and we both agreed we would never be so much excited again in a political controversy. It is doubtful whether either of us adhere to so wise a resolution. After a brief visit to Auburn in the early part of February, he re turned to Albany, bringing his family with him, and wrote thence to Judge Miller : February 10th. Our journey was as comfortable as we could reasonably expect. The chil dren seem to enjoy entire health. It will be something for them to tell of, if they live after a few years, that they sat on the knee of Aaron Burr. Yet it will be true. The old man spent the morning with me to-day. He had begun to tell me the story of the duel when Dr. Williams came in, and that broke off the narration. I would have given much to hear it from his lips. The chief incident which has occurred in the Legislature was the election of Tallmadge to be U. S. Senator. A question immediately arose as to the eligibility of Mr. Tallmadge. He was a member of the State Senate, and the Constitution contained a provision prohibiting any member of the Legislature from receiving " any civil appointment " from that body during the time for which he was elected. An animated debate ensued. Some of the political asso ciates of Mr. Tallmadge, having scruples about the legality of the election, asked to be excused from voting. The Attorney-General (Greene C. Bronson), to whom reference of the question had been made, gave an opinion that the constitutional provision did not apply to the case. Various minor questions entered into the discussion in 228 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1833. the two Houses, in which Messrs. Edmonds, Foster, Sherman, Tracy, Spencer, Livingston, and Morris, took prominent part. Se ward s closing argument was a careful presentation of the legal points in volved. Finally the election was approved and pronounced valid by a party vote. The country was now alarmed by the grave and exciting incidents of the nullification struggle, the resignation of Vice-President Calhoun, the passage of the South Carolina Ordinance, the memorable debate in Congress, Webster s reply to Hayne, President Jackson s proclamation, and the orders to the land and naval forces near Charleston. Of course the New York Legislature took cognizance of the crisis. A joint com mittee was appointed, who presented a report that became a subject of debate. A question of this character could not fail to enlist Seward on the side of the Union, regardless of party prejudices. On the 16th of February he addressed the Senate at some length, and introduced a series of resolutions, closing with this : Resolved, That the President of the United States, in his late proclamation, has advanced the true principles upon which only the Constitution can be main tained and defended. In his speech he said : The last resolution, sir, approving the principles contained in the procla mation, seems absolutely necessary, inasmuch as the committee either forgot, or evaded expressing, any approbation in their report. They set out to vindicate the President, but compliments supply the place of vindication, or even approval of the proclamation. But we are told that in order to maintain and preserve the " Democratic character " of the State, we must adopt the Yirginia and Ken tucky resolutions of 1798 and 1799. Have recent events brought suspicion on our " Democratic character? " If not, why is it now necessary to burnish it? And how is it to be effected? New York demurely resolves against nulli fication, but adopts the text-book of the heresy to show that she is not in earnest ! The resolution shows that we are opposed to nullification as practised by South Carolina ; but the report shows we can wink at it in the abstract, as indulged by Yirginia. . . . Sir, South Carolina and the great party who favor nullification at the South ask nothing more of us than to waive the Con stitution, and adopt those resolutions of Yirginia. and Kentucky. They are written in their hearts core. If we adopt them, the question is no longer whether nullification and secession are constitutional, but it is reduced to a ques tion of construction of your new text-book. Replying to the argument that the adoption of the resolutions was a tribute to Jefferson, "the second savior of his country," as they called him, he said : Sir, I remind you of the duty due to the first real savior of his country, the Father of his Country, under whose hand the Constitution has come down 1833.] A MOTHER S ILLNESS. 229 to us. Were his venerated shade to witness these deliberations, how, with a countenance " more in sorrow than in anger," would he remonstrate against the infatuation of surrendering that sure and only guide, to adopt in its place the crude dogmas of any man or men !....! protest against the exhibition of the servile spirit toward Virginia indicated by the uncalled-for adoption of these resolutions. I know it is a custom in this State, but I can say of it : " Though I am native here, And to the manner born, it is a custom More honored in the breach than the observance." To find himself a champion and defender of General Jackson against the " Jackson party " in the Senate, was a novel position for Seward. But the ground was so well taken, and the popular heart so fully in accord with his Union sentiments, that, although the commit tee s resolutions were adopted, and his own " postponed," yet he suc ceeded in making a break in the party vote, some of his Democratic colleagues, Sudani, Sherman, and Van Schaick, voting for his stronger indorsement of the " Old Hero s " proclamation. Hardly had the Legislature adjourned, at the close of April, when he was summoned to Florida by news of the alarming illness of his mother. He remained there until her convalescence. One of his let ters home spoke of the affection with which she was regarded : All the journey long I felt that I had never before realized how far I was living from a mother who had always loved me with more than ordinary mater nal affection. "When she became very sick, the front-gate was closed, and all access to her room was denied except to her children, physicians, and nurses. Billets of wood were laid on the west side of the street, to oblige people to pass as far as possi ble from the house, so that she might not be annoyed. All these precautions were calculated to excite prejudice, but the sympathy of the neighbors far and near has been strong and affectionate. I rode out this morning, and all along the road, at almost every house, some person came out to inquire concerning her. There is not one who does not love her ; and in all this region there is none whom Death can, in his caprice, select as a victim whose removal would excite so deep and general concern. As soon as her recovery was assured, preparations began for a summer voyage to Europe with his father, already described in his autobiography. There were, as yet, no ocean -steamers. At the open ing of June they embarked on the Liverpool packet. 230 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1833- 34. CHAPTER X. 1833-1834. Eeturn Home. The Wadsworths. Dissolution of the Antimasonic Party. Debate on Removal of the Deposits. The Six-Million Loan. Commercial Distress. A Depre ciated Currency. The Cholera. Freeman the Artist. Nomination for Governor. the summer and autumn of 1833, Seward s letters from Europe to his family and friends described the incidents of his tour. Weed, who had received some and read others, insisted that, though not written for publication, they were worthy of it ; and a reluctant consent was obtained for their appearance, without signature, in the Evening Journal. European life and travels were topics as yet fresh and novel to the American public, and the letters were widely read. As their substance is recounted in the autobiography, they may be passed over here. Returning home in the fall, the close of November found him again leaving Auburn for Albany, to resume his seat in the Court of Errors. CONGRESS HALL, November 22, 1833. The stage at Auburn was delayed quite an hour after the notice given me. The delay was occasioned, as I found, by the driver s having waked up Mr. Hills. Which was most vexed by a mistake thus occurring on a severe Novem ber morning the driver, my neighbor, or myself is very doubtful. Our jour ney was tedious enough to Utica, but a good fire, a good supper, and an inter view with one good and estimable friend, Devereux, made the evening pass pleasantly. Devereux, after hearing my first impressions of his unhappy coun try, interested me exceedingly in the detail of the political events which had occurred during my absence. He told me, among other things, that General Jackson had offered to Richard Rush the office of Secretary of the Treasury, and that Rush has the proposition at present under consideration. The object is supposed to be to enlist the Antimasons of Pennsylvania in favor of Van Buren for the presidency. All along the road during the day I heard from the drivers that Mr. Wads- worth, of Geneseo, with his family, were coming behind us in an " extra." We arrived at nearly the same moment, at Bagg s. Being entirely unacquainted with Mr. Wadsworth, but knowing him to have been an ardent, liberal, and distinguished member of our party, I thought circumstances justified me in making his acquaintance. He seemed to think so too ; he received me with warmth, and invited me to travel to Albany with them. In the evening Abijah Fitch came in from the State Temperance Convention. He was full of zeal in the great reform. A thousand recollections of intense interest crowded upon my mind when I lay down to rest in the same little room in the third story which you and I occupied when we visited Utica in 1828, during the sitting of the Young Men s State Convention. I reviewed my political course since that day, when it com menced to attract public attention, and reflected with pleasure that it had been 1833- 34.] END OF ANTIMASONIC PARTY. 231 marred by no act and no motive which brought self reproach. I reviewed the same period of our domestic association, and was sincerely grateful that the affection which then united us had only continued to increase and to make us both more truly happy. Our party in the " exclusive extra " consisted of Mr. Wadsworth, his daugh ter and son, and myself, with their servant. I hardly know a more interesting man than Mr. Wadsworth. He is about sixty-five, a gentleman of good educa tion, and extensive philosophical reading. He had traveled in Europe some twenty-five years ago, and was an observer of men and things. In personal politeness, in urbanity, and kindness, as well as in the ease of his manners, he resembles Colonel Mynderse. His daughter is one of those beings who cannot be seen without being loved. She seemed unaffected, sincere, modest, and affectionate. She is about eighteen or nineteen, and is not in good health. Her brother appeared to be of the same elevated and honest class of minds as his father. You will readily imagine how much I enjoyed the society of my fellow-travelers. The conversation, which was principally between the father and myself, did not flag during the whole journey. We compared recollections of the Old World, and agreed entirely in our views of things on this side of the water. The good old man, with all his shrewdness, had not yet seen reason to doubt the eventual success of political Antimasonry, and grieved when he heard me express a doubt whether it would be either possible, or even expedient, to attempt another organization. November 2Sd , I am once more established in my old quarters, and already too much en grossed with the subjects which always absorb the attention of public men when congregated here. It makes me melancholy to look around my chamber ; it is the same in which Maynard lived. Reminiscences of that great, estimable, and eccentric man crowd upon me, and I have mused in moralizing mood upon the incidents of my acquaintance with him. I remember well when I first saw him, how much influence he exerted in determining me to embark in a cause which had already enlisted my feelings, the intimate association which afterward existed between us, until, in his sudden withdrawal from earthly responsibilities, the cause suffered a loss which we justly deemed irreparable. Though I have often occasion to reflect upon the uncertainty of all political events, and the uneven and unsubstantial pleasures which are to be reaped in a field where such fiery competition is exhibited, I do not venture to doubt that I shall, from the force of constitutional bias, be found always mingling in the con troversies which agitate the country. Enthusiasm for the right, and ambition for personal distinction, are passions of which I cannot divest myself, and while every day s experience is teaching me that the former is the very agent which must defeat the latter, I am far from believing that I should be more happy were I to withdraw altogether from political action. November The visit of our members of Congress at this moment when the Senate is in session has brought about an interchange of opinion in regard to the condition and prospects of our party. All seem to agree that the experiment has been sufficiently made, and that it is proved that Antimasonry cannot succeed politi- 232 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1833- 34, cally. In a few counties at the west, if our friends are to be reflected, it must be upon Antimasonic grounds, and it is not a little amusing to see one of them insisting upon a general organization of the Antimasonic party throughout the State, in order to secure his own reelection next year, while he does not hesitate to tell us that the party cannot go further than through that election, and when it is disbanded he intends to go in for Van Buren, who will be elected. Weed seems, like John Birdsall and myself, not to have inquired whether there is a hope of defeating Van Buren, but determined by principle and con sistency to continue in the opposition. For myself, I have not been left to doubt for a moment what course duty dictates. Could I stop to calculate chances, I have seen too many instances in which political success has fallen to those who, to say nothing of talent or worth, had least of worldly wisdom, and too many instances in which the most acute have been disappointed in all their plans. I shall go on as always, adopting what my judgment and conscience approve. If my political career ends where it now is, I shall have enjoyed, if not all I deserved, as much of success as is my reasonable share. If success comes, as it heretofore has done, when I am laboring in what seems to me the right cause, it will be doubly gratifying, because it will bring no remorse of conscience. Sunday I went to church at St. Peter s. You may have understood that Mr. Horatio Potter, a brother of Alonzo, has been settled in that church. I have secured rooms for the winter at Bement s. The house is kept so clean and warm, and withal will be so quiet, that we shall live very pleasantly if we remain well, which I will hope, against past experience. Mr. Van Buren has the ladies parlor, at the foot of the stairs. He has his card upon the door, and a constant succession of visitors are seen repairing thither. He came into the Senate-chamber on Tuesday, bowed to me, and con descended to inquire of one of the Senators how old I was. I intend before I leave here to make the necessary attentions to him and to the other good people. January, keen and frosty, found the little family circle this year gathered round the fire in the parlor at Bement s. The legislative session opened, and Seward wrote to Judge Miller : January 7, 1834. You will have the Governor s message in the Journal of to-day. It is a war upon banks, which will probably be unsuccessful. The lobby is already here in almost as great force as both the Houses, and almost every member of the As sembly is committed for a bank. From Washington Fillmore writes that there is a decided majority of about twenty against the United States Bank. Not only all political but all commercial circles were agitated and disturbed this winter. The engrossing theme was General Jackson s removal of the deposits from the Bank of the United States. The subject came up in the Legislature soon after its meeting, when joint resolutions were introduced approving the President s course, and denouncing the bank. Seward took the floor in the Senate on the 10th 1833- 34.] PAPER CURRENCY. 233 of January. He began by remarking that it required " no soothsayer s aid to foresee that these resolutions will pass," but prayed the Senate to " remember that neither boldness of assumption nor superiority of numbers is always the test of truth." After recounting the history of the controversy, he adverted to the financial laws of paper currency : Sir, it is settled, whether wisely or unwisely, that the circulating medium of the country must be a paper currency. The condition of that currency concerns every man s weal in the land. When it is unsound, it produces those " hard times " which we have often only imagined, but are now experiencing. When it is sound, it produces those good times, the enjoyment of which makes us for getful of the cause that produced them. It adds to the value not only of the annual products of your farms, but of the farms themselves. Upon its condition may depend whether your merchandise shall be profitable or unprofitable ; whether your manufacturing or mechanical operations shall yield a reward for your industry ; whether you be able to collect your credits, or pay your debts. That currency has, until recently, been a long time sound and uniform, and the world bas never witnessed a scene of greater prosperity than has been exhibited in this country. That currency bas, at one period of our history, been diseased, and then it brought on a train of evils for which legislative wisdom in vain tried the efficacy of relief laws. So, sir, it will be now. . . . That currency obeys no administration ; the laws of its action are absolute and certain. It has none of the subserviency of secretaries, of political congresses, or of partisan Legislatures. Then, pointing to the results of the removal of the deposits, he continued : The reproof of your error now reaches you from every commercial city in the land. You know it will come, louder and bolder, and, ere you have closed your duties here, it will visit the homes of your constituents. Yes, you will re turn to them to witness the depreciation of farms and merchandise, and the general gloom which mutual distrust and individual apprehension can so effect ually produce. Your banks will close their vaults, and the applications for re newals and additional loans will be answered by the visits of the sheriff to the houses of the debtors. The usurer will be abroad in the country as he is now in your cities. You have disturbed and deranged that subtile currency, and its vibrations will shake and unsettle all business transactions. In the course of the debate some of his opponents charged him with having acquired his doctrines from " aristocratical associations in Europe " during his recent visit. He remarked, in reply, that if he had learned anything by foreign travel, it had been a different lesson ; that he had learned, " from the boldness, intelligence, and patriotism of the republicans of Switzerland, the value of that democracy which spends itself, not in lauding the servants of the people, but in watch ing their conduct ; " and that he had learned from his intercourse with Lafayette, in the shades of La Grange, " the value of a consistent and LIFE AND LETTERS. [1833- 34. enduring devotion to the principles of republicanism, not only when the people hail the champion of those principles as their deliverer, but even when they desert him in his solitude. Although there I have been exposed to the seductive influences of foreign manners, my hon orable friend may rest assured that I have returned to love my country better, and to understand better the value of her institutions." In his letters to Judge Miller, a few days later, he adverted to the signs of the coming period of financial trouble : February 16th. I think the session will be shorter than usual. Every member is interested in the existing pressure. Our accounts of the state of things at New York are of the gloomiest character, and no better condition is anticipated. The Aliens have resumed, but so crippled in power as to be unable greatly to relieve the merchants. Knower has gone to New York to raise one hundred thousand dollars, and has expectations of an additional one hundred thousand dollars from the four banks of this city. There is no hope of a change in Congress. March $th The United States Bank will go on curtailing its discounts. It is obvious that the banks here fear a general loss of confidence and suspension of specie payments. The operations of currency are so subtile that it is not impossible such a result may come, although it will not come immediately, unless by means of the direct agency of the United States Bank. March IftA. There is a state of excitement here such as I have never seen. Several cruel failures have taken place ; among them is that of our friends, B & R , who failed for twenty-five thousand dollars, having a full and clear balance of one hundred and ten thousand dollars. Other failures are anticipated, business is stagnant, and public feeling very much excited. The Jackson meeting was called by about eleven hundred men, the greater part of whose names are unknown in the city. On the list were five merchants, and, it is said, only seven or eight mechanics. I looked in upon the meeting, which, of course, was attended largely by members of the Legislature, of the lobby, and holders of public offices. The opposition meeting is called by twenty-six hundred names, embracing almost every merchant and mechanic in the city. It will be held in the City Hall, by daylight to-morrow. For that purpose the merchants and mechanics will close their doors. John Townsend will be chairman. How great the change here is, you may infer from the num ber who call the meeting. The aggregate vote of all parties, at a contested election, is four thousand. Tuesday, April 1, 1834. It was my intention to set out for home to-day, and we are all ready to go ; but the general and intense solicitude felt by all our friends here and in New York, in relation to the public business yet to be transacted in the Legislature, has determined me to remain here. The six million dollar loan bill will pass the Assembly to-morrow, and, it is said, will be acted upon in the Senate this week. 1833- 34.] CANDIDATE FOR GOVERNOR. 235 The history of the " six-million loan " project, and of the debate in regard to it, has already been narrated in the autobiography. In his speech of the 10th of April, Seward remarked that the relief proposed by the bill was merely local. " It is temporary, and cannot be ade quate." So it proved. The bill passed into a law, but the law never was put in operation. The next summer was a season of commercial distress. Writing in June, in the midst of labors for his clients, he said : God be praised, I am no merchant! The incessant labor in estimates of debt and credit, the devising of ways and means to pay debts, to save what was in danger of being lost, and to convert unproductive into productive property, in which I have been employed for the last month for others, wrought my mind to a point of excitement yesterday scarcely short of that at which delirium commences. I continued the detestable employment till tea-time last evening, but I went to bed at eleven, had a refreshing sleep, and arose this morning with a mind becalmed. Again in Albany, in August, on his way to attend the Court of Errors in New York, he wrote : ALBANY, August 20tA. I have just disposed of a cup of black tea and toast at Crittenden s table, and hasten to advise you of my safe arrival here. The moon (and it was one of the finest that ever looked down upon this wicked world) was shining upon de serted streets when we arrived, between nine and ten o clock. The appearance of the cholera does make people more careful in their habits. The disease, however, has not become epidemic here. Almost all the cases which have occurred here were among the wretched inhabitants of what is called "the Pasture," in the lower part of the town. It seems that in New York the num ber of cases continues to average about the same, twenty-three or twenty-four daily. Still there is no panic there. The disease there, as here, is confined to special localities. At Utica I met young Freeman, the painter, and engaged him to go to Auburn to take Augustus s picture. Then, from New York, he added : NEW YORK, August 22d. There was a difficulty at Albany that I was willing enough to escape from. In the uncertainty which hangs over the great political question of the Whigs, they all look to me as being able in some way to bring order out of confusion. This has been impracticable, and in the result speculations concerning myself have been pressed upon me, in such a manner that I could not encourage, nor yet, regarding the sources of them, resist. In this state of things I vras ex pected to prove either that your particular friend would or would not be the right candidate, and this was forced upon me by the conversation of Judge Woodworth, Judge Spencer, John Townsend, and such men. But the difficulty is about the same here. The idea is in the minds of many. Those who like to cherish it, naturally obtrude it; those who do not, because they have wiser judgments or other partialities, will doubtless hold me responsible for it. 236 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1834. In September the Whig State Convention was held, which re sulted in his nomination as the Whig candidate for Governor. In a note to Mrs. Seward he said: September \Wh. To-night a meeting is held at the Exchange to respond. It is said to be a large one, and to embrace all who have been dissatisfied. Weed has sent me an other long letter written in good spirits, in which he says that Root writes to him that "the nomination of one of the finest fellows in the State will revive Antimasonry and ruin everything." Hallet and Myron Holley warmly praise the nomination. A large meeting was to be held last evening at Masonic Hall, New York ; Gillian C. Verplanck was to preside. The New York American has a generous and handsome article. The Argus is yet silent. The New York Times says, " Our candidate is twenty- six, has red hair, and a long nose." " Our candidate " has received notice that a formal invitation will be presented to him inviting him to go to Syracuse and be introduced to the Young Men s Whig Convention, and of course make a speech. He has decided that it will not be wise to attend, and of course, if his views are consulted, the invitation will not be given. This letter brings the story of his life to the period when his auto biography closes. The two pictures thus given of his legislative ex perience in Albany are not without their value, for the opportunity they offer of comparing his opinions at the outset of his political career with those of the closing hours of his life. That the one should have a tone of youthful buoyancy, and the other of graver thought, is nat ural. That there should be no contradiction in regard to facts, theories, or principles, is the more remarkable when it is remembered that the letters and the autobiography were never compared by him. CHAPTER XL 1834. Campaign of 1834. Seward and Stilwell. " Young Man with Bed Hair." The Whig p ar ty. Election. " Mourners." Journey with Gary. New York Hospitalities. Charles King. Chancellor Kent. New England Dinner. End of Legislative Life. ON the afternoon of the 26th of September, the people who lived on the old turnpike-road, between Syracuse and Auburn, were sur prised by a novel sight. Carriages, coaches, and wagons, with music and flags, men on horseback with badges and streamers, filled the road, rattling and galloping by to the westward. There were several hun dred in the cavalcade. These were the members of the Young Men s Whig State Convention at Syracuse, who at the close of their proceed- 1834.] ORIGIN OF THE WHIG PARTY. 237 ings had formally resolved to go en masse at one o clock to visit their candidate for Governor, twenty -six miles distant. After a four hours ride, they were received and welcomed at the outskirts of Auburn by a similar cavalcade, which had gone out to meet them. Then, greeted by a salute of fifty guns, the combined body entered the streets in triumphant procession. Of course, the little village was alive with en thusiasm, as they passed on to the residence of the young candidate to severally take him by the hand, and assure him of their support. A brief interval for rest was followed by a " rousing meeting " at the Presbyterian Church, in whose proceedings prominent part was taken by Willis Hall, David Graham, Jr., Parliament Bronson, William C. Noyes, Mortimer M. Jackson, and W. H. L. Bogart. And now the campaign went on wifh vigor. The despondent and defeated little band of Antimasons of the preceding winter had plucked up new heart, when they began to carry town-meetings in the spring. They had combined with other elements of opposition under various appellations in different localities, calling themselves in one place 41 Anti - Jackson," in another " Ant i- Mortgage," in a third "Anti- Regency," but consolidating at last in State Convention under the name of " Whig," which they had derived from New England and the city of New York. The new party exulted in its name. The followers of every creed, religious and political, love to trace their doctrines back to those of the real or supposed founders of their faith. The Whigs of 1834 announced themselves as the true successors of the "Whigs of 1776," and found analogies between their cause and that of the rebel colonists. They called their movement a " revolution," directed against " King Andrew," as its prototype was against King George. They charged " King Andrew " with " tyranny " and " usurpation," and " denial of popular rights." They accused him and his followers of affecting regal state, of reveling in " marble palaces," with " wine- vaults " and " British gold." They pointed out how hospitably Van Buren had been " entertained at Windsor Castle " by the " king and queen." They raised " liberty-poles " again in the streets of Boston and New York. They chose, as emblems peculiarly appropriate, the national flag, live eagles, and portraits of Washington. They declared that the New York charter election was the " Lexington " where the first struggle of the new revolution took place. They stigmatized their opponents as " Tories." Mr. Webster added to their enthu siastic zeal by avowing himself in a letter to be " the son of a father who acted an humble part in establishing the independence of the country," and saying, " I have been educated from my cradle in the principles of the Whigs of 76 ! " The Democrats, who rightly felt that they had, in their own name, a tower of strength, replied by pointing to their chief, " the hero of 238 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1834. New Orleans," the "stern opponent of nullification," the successful "champion of the people" against the "monster bank." Strong in the prestige of past success and present power, they sneered at the " upstart party " with its high-sounding pretensions, recommended Stilwell to " stick to his boots and shoes," and pointed to the contrast between a mature and experienced statesman like Marcy, and his competitor, a " red-haired young man," without a record and unknown to fame. Of course the Whigs did not lose the opportunity thus offered to call upon all mechanics to observe the indignity shown to Stilwell be cause he was one. Meetings were organized in which not only all shoe makers, but all tinsmiths, hatters, printers, tailors, and men of every other handicraft, were exhortetl to "rally around him," as the repre sentative of "working-men" against the "Jackson aristocrats." As for the Whig gubernatorial candidate, elaborate biographies (one from the pen of William Kent) soon showed that, instead of being unknown, he had rendered " good service to the State ; " and William L. Stone, with felicitous humor, disposed of the other accusations in the Commercial Advertiser* He set forth, in an elaborate " Chapter on Young Men," how many of the greatest names in history were achieved in youth; how Charlemagne, Charles XII., Lafayette, Napo leon, Pitt, Burke, Warren, Hamilton, Jefferson, Rush, Jay, Byron, Mil ton, Mozart, Pope, Newton, Harvey, nay, even Henry Clay, De Witt Clinton, Daniel D. Tompkins, and John C. Calhoun, were " young men " when their deeds first made them famous. Then, in an equally exhaus tive argument, two columns long, headed "The Last Objection an swered," he pointed out how Esau, and Cato, Clovis, William Rufus, Rob Roy, and Brian Boroihme, not only " each had red hair," but were celebrated for having it ; how Ossian sung a " lofty race of red-haired heroes," how Venus herself was golden-haired, as well as Patroclus and Achilles, and closing with this peroration : Thus does it appear that in all ages, and in all countries, from Paradise to Dragon Eiver, has red or golden hair been held in the highest estimation. But for his red hair, the country of Esau would not have been called "Edom." But for his hair, which was doubtless red, Samson would not have carried away the gates of Gaza. But for his red hair, Jason would not have navigated the Euxine and discovered the Golden Horn. But for the red hair of his mistress, Leander would not have swum the Hellespont. But for his red hair, Narcissus would not have fallen in love with himself, and thereby become immortal in song. But for his red hair, we should find nothing in Mr. Van Buren to praise. But for red hair, we should not have written this article. And, but for his red hair, William H. Seward might not have become Governor of the State of New York ! Stand aside, then, ye Tories, and "Let go of his hair! " The rural press were divided about equally between the two parties. 1834.] CAMPAIGN POETRY. 239 In the cities the Evening Journal, at Albany, the Commercial Adver tiser, the American, and the Courier and Enquirer, in New York, waged hot battle with the Argus, the New York Times, and the Even ing Post, who supported the Administration. The mottoes and songs of a popular contest, while they reflect all its absurd exaggerations and personalities, also illustrate the principles involved in it. Such were the cries at this election in 1834 : " Seward with Free Soil, or Marcy with Mortgage," " the Monster Bank Party," and the party of " Little Monsters," " Bank Influence and Bank Cor ruptions," " Regency Spoils," " Perish Commerce, Perish Credit," " Marcy s Pantaloons," " Union and Liberty," " No Nullification," etc., etc., etc. Copper coins or medals were struck bearing the heads of the can didates, and one or another of these inscriptions. Campaign songs had not then acquired the popularity which they achieved at subsequent elections, but a verse or two will illustrate the character of some of those on the " Whig " side. One alluded to the neglected flats and overslaugh in the Hudson River, nicknamed " Marcy s Farm : " " Those who have land like Marcy s farm, Where naught but sloops take root, May pawn it and sustain no harm But free soil brings forth fruit." Another, a parody on " Duncan Gray," referred to Mr. Van Buren s recent visit to Western New York : " Van came here to woo the folks, Ha, ha, the wooing o t ; The infected district would not veer, So back again Mat had to steer, Ha, ha, the wooing o t." Irishmen were appealed to by an imitation of " Erin go Bragh," thus : " Against freedom s foe we unitedly go, On Seward and on Stilwell our votes we ll bestow, And Columbia s eagle in pride shall be seen On our own Erin s flag, with the shamrock so green." Again, the sneers at the Whig " boy " candidate were adverted to : " At Lafayette Cornwallis railed That boy, quoth he, is mine ; But soon to that same boy he quailed, In auld lang-syne. " Nominations for Congress and the Legislature this year embraced some names since well known in the political history of the State. 24:0 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1834. Among the former were Gulian C. Verplanck, Ogden Hoffman, James G. King, Dudley Selden, Adoniram Chandler, Samuel Beardsley, C. C. Cambreleng, John Cramer, Philo C. Fuller, Francis Granger, Gideon Hard, Gerrit Y. Lansing, Gideon Lee, Thomas C. Love, Levi Beardsley, Abijah Mann, Jr., Rutger B. Miller, John McKeon, Joshua A. Spencer,- and Peter Sken Smith. Among the legislative nominations were Luther Bradish, Austin Baldwin, Hamilton Fish, Joseph Blunt, George W. Patterson, Prosper M. Wetmore, James J. Roosevelt, Mark H. Sibley, Robert Denniston, and Preston King. Reports from elections in the other States now began to come in, inspiring the Whigs with fresh hopes. Though Pennsylvania had con tinued Democratic, Ohio had given a Whig majority of ten thousand. Baltimore had been carried by the Whigs. Elections in Delaware, Vir ginia, Louisiana, North Carolina, Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois, Rhode Island, and Vermont, all showed gratifying gains. Two elections of ominous significance for the future passed then almost unheeded ; those in Georgia and South Carolina, where the battle was between " Union " and " State Rights," the Union men in Georgia sending to Congress James M. Wayne, afterward the just and loyal Supreme Court Judge, and the " State Rights " men in South Carolina electing F. W. Pickens, who was afterward chosen Governor of that State under the " Con federacy." The " three days " of the election came, and the contest began. The Evening Journal, on the night of the first day, said : " The Whigs made a noble rally." The second night it expressed an appre hension that " the majority will be greatly reduced by the inattention of many of our friends." On the evening of the third day it briefly announced : " The Regency have carried the State, and probably by a majority equal to that of 1832." So Seward and Stilwell were defeated ; the new party had failed ; and the Democrats still remained masters of the field. The results of a State election at that period, when the horseback express was the speediest method of transmitting returns, were often in doubt for weeks. But in this case the triumph of the Democrats was too complete to allow the Whigs to entertain any false hopes. Marcy was elected Governor, and Tracy Lieutenant-Governor, by a majority of over eleven thousand. Every senatorial district had gone Democratic, except the eighth, and the Whigs had but a feeble minority of the Assemblymen. A few Whig Congressmen were elected among them Granger, Fuller, Lay, Hard, and Love. But most of the Whig majorities were in the old " infected district " of Antimasonry in West ern New York. In the strongholds of the Democracy, its sway remained unbroken. 1834. J THE WHIGS DEFEATED. 241 Its followers celebrated their victory with speeches and festivities, among them a collation of beer and cold meat in the hall of the Capitol. Two days after the election Seward wrote to Weed : Evil tidings fly fast enough. I shall not trouble myself to give them speed. You will hear all from those to whom they bring joy. So far as I have heard I give you the reported majorities in this county. Do not take any grief for this result on account of my feelings. Be assured that it has not found me un prepared. I shall not suffer any unhappiness in returning to private life, except that which I shall feel with all our political friends. Believe me, there is no affectation in my saying that I would not now exchange the feelings and asso ciations of the vanquished William H. Seward for the victory and " spoils" of William L. Marcy. If I live, and such principles and opinions as I enter tain ever find favor with the people, I shall not be without their respect. If they do not, I shall be content with enjoyments that politicians cannot take from me. Remember me with expressions of gratitude to all our friends who may take so much personal interest in me as to inquire how the defeat of our just cause is borne by him who they were willing should enjoy the best fruits of its success. A week later he wrote : I have cleared away the ground since the action ; after a brief visit to Albany I shall be ready to engage with a good heart in the labors of my profession and devote myself to them, and to the cultivation of what taste I have for study. Let me have your assurance that you have acquired the same philosophy. . . . Granger spent a day with me. He has had a fortunate escape from his dilemma, and I am rejoiced at it. He is a noble fellow ; and I am glad that, if we could not make him what we wished, we have been able to put him into a career of honor and usefulness. The Whigs drew some encouragement even from their defeat. Though they had not carried the State, yet the result of the election showed that they were stronger, on the whole, than the scattered oppo sition elements out of which they sprung had been in the preceding year. They were now a national instead of a local organization, and their successes in other States assured them that, with time, success was not impossible in New York. In Massachusetts their victory was as great as their defeat had been at home. The Whigs had carried that State, and elected nearly all its members of Congress, among them Abbott Lawrence, Caleb Gushing, Levi Lincoln, and John Quincy Adams. The political career of Seward had now drawn to its close. His legislative duties had ceased in the spring ; the governorship had been refused him in the fall ; it only remained for him to attend the remain ing brief session of the Court of Errors, and then to sit down in his law-office at Auburn and resume his cases in court. His letters described 16 242 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1834. Hs experiences on going to perform his final public duties in Albany and New York : UTIOA, November 20, 1834. The end of this day s journey will be TJtica, where this letter is dated, al though written on board the canal-boat twenty miles west of that place. Al though looked at by all the boys as a " dead lion," I find the majority of the traveling public are Whigs, and the " Tories," inasmuch as " he " is on board, abstain, from motives of commendable forbearance, from all kinds of glorying in their triumph. ALBANY, November 2&d. This journalizing mode of correspondence is, for many reasons, the best, but principally because it is most acceptable to you. On my journey hither I met Raynor, Brewster, and others of the earnest and patriotic politicians, and the interviews were painful to me. They were yet smarting under the sore discomfiture of our good cause, and it was evident that the only cure for their dejection must be derived from the healing hand of Time. The excitement of traveling had roused the Whigs on board the boat from the despondency they felt while they remained at home, and as I needed no introduction to persons, all of whom had so recently deposited their votes for me, we were soon very well acquainted, and had a pleasant voyage. I arrived here yesterday morning, and determined to take lodgings in our old quarters at Bement s. I found Caleb dejected, as were the whole household, but they were evidently gratified that I had adhered to them with the same tenacity they had to me. After having paid my respects to my old friend John the barber, whom I found willing to cut the throats of all the " Tories " for preventing my election, I went down to Weed s. I found him dejected beyond measure. Then I went up to the Capitol, where the Court of Errors were in session. Although I had: been the subject of much political action since I had last been among the mem bers, there was nothing peculiar in our meeting. They gave me a greeting neither unwelcome nor embarrassed. At dinner I found Mr. Caldwell; Dr. Beck was with him, and I congratulated both upon the tenacity with which they cling to the habit of dining together on Saturday. Gary went on with. his friend to New York. He is not yet returned. Poor Uncle Gary ! it must be very hard for him, at this time, to stay anywhere. He needs, as he deserves, to find his friends happy, in order that he may be happy himself. He finds nobody happy now but those whose happiness arises from the same cause which works all his woe. I found all the young men here who. were, as you recollect, so ardent and sanguine last spring, now dejected and desponding. My buoyancy of spirits had returned as soon as I left Weed, and I succeeded in bringing back their hopes and confidence. After dinner, Charles Kirkland, of Utica, and Cush- man, of Troy, came in, both in bad enough spirits. I found Weed and Tracy in my room ; both staid till eight o clock ; both unhappy. Mr. Benedict and Mr. Hart came in and staid till their equanimity, just recovered, was put to. flight. Went this morning to church. The new Baptist church is finished. I dined with Eathbone at the Eagle. I found at table three or four of my fast political friends ; they could not have been more melancholy if they had been attending 1834.] SHERIDAN KNOWLES. 243 my funeral. Henry Webb was with them, and was a sincere mourner. They were all astonished to find that I was not. In the afternoon went to Mr. Campbell s church, and heard a good sermon. I sat in Mr. Caldwell s pew, where I met the Misses Westerlo, whose acquaintance I made without intro duction, but presuming that I was their candidate at the last election. Alas, even these young ladies had bright hopes founded on the success of the Whig ticket ! I found none but Whigs, of both sexes, at this church. November 24th. On my way to the Capitol, this morning, I met Judge Spencer coming down to see me. He shares in the disappointment of our political labors. Judge Conkling fell in with us at the same time, having just come from my room. He, too, was a mourner, and I thought it best to pass on and not gather any more desponding Whigs in front of the " Regency " offices. November 26th. The aspect of society is changing so that, in a short time, many of your acquaintances will not be found here. John T. Norton is desirous of selling his beautiful house, and goes in the spring to reside on a farm in Connecticut. Mr. Delavan has grown enthusiastic in the temperance cause. They tell me here that, one or two weeks ago, he and Mrs. Delavan brought forth from their cellar seven hundred bottles of wine and poured the liquid treasure on the earth. Now they are selling their house, so that they may not be hindered in the great work of proselyting to temperance. Saturday, November 29th. I had with me at dinner to-day Mr. Willis Hall, the President of the late Young Men s Convention. He is a very intelligent and patriotic man, burning with zeal for a new contest, and, I confess, embarrassed me not a little by requir ing me to show him the way to renew the war with some hopes of success. To me there is nothing cheering in the signs. The success of the Democrats in this State was all that was wanted to rally a corps of adventurers round Mr. Van Buren, sufficient in number to fight his way through all opposition to the throne. Be it so, I have done my duty ; it is the part neither of philosophy nor patriotism to suffer this calamity to oppress my spirits or dishearten me in the performance of duties as a citizen. Last night Cary and I went to the theatre. It has been considerably im proved. The old drop-curtain has been substituted by a new one, pretty enough, and adorned among other devices with the coat of arms of this ancient city. Mr. James Sheridan Knowles played the part of Master Walter in his own piece of " The Hunchback." Although he is by no means a great actor, he plays with judgment and good taste ; and Mrs. Greene, although inferior in talent to Miss Fanny Kemble, was very effective in some of the most interesting parts of the piece. I have just finished the perusal of Bulwer s new novel, " The Last Days of Pompeii. I wait only for an opportunity to send it to you. There is some affectation of classical literature in it, but there is much of that rich philosophic vein which is especially pleasing in his other works. There are barbarous scenes, based doubtless on historic fact, but enough of talent, morals, religion, and phi losophy, to redeem all the defects of the work. LIFE AND LETTERS. [1834. Tuesday, December 2d. Again to the theatre last evening, this time to witness the performance of "The Wife," one of the dramas written by Mr. Knowles. The two principal parts were taken by himself and Miss Wheatley. The former fell far behind the merit evinced by him in " The Hunchback." The latter is a wonder. She is the daughter of an actress, and may almost be said to have been brought up on the stage. She is only thirteen years old ; yet her stature and person are so much developed that she seems to be held responsible to play her part, not as a child, but as a woman. This morning I saw Mr. Knowles at the American. His manner is some what theatrical, and declamatory withal, yet I was not repelled thereby, for who can fail to admire a great mind and a generous heart ? I will give you a puzzle in phrenology. His head and face are almost a copy of our worthy neighbor Mr. Garrow s. Fred Whittlesey came along to-day, on his way to Congress ; he dined with me, and was every way interesting to me. He was bound by a new tie, which had been woven by generous and manly support of my personal interest in the election. Mr. Miner, of the New York American, was with us also. We made a pleasant party. Afterward, meeting James Homer in the street, I went to take tea at his house. The copper-coin bearing my image and superscription was carefully preserved, and I traveled over again, to an audience who appeared to be willing listeners, my journey to Chamouni and the glaciers. Thursday, December 4th. I am performing the last act of the election drama. I have, as you know, many calls, and it would be churlish in me to withhold such attentions as it is in my power to bestow upon the generous and ardent partisans who have sustained me. I have some friends every day at dinner, and visitors every evening, if I do not go out myself. I know and feel that this is dissipation, of a fruitless kind ; but I console myself on that score by reflecting that I shall soon bring it all to an end. Mr. Rutherford, who carries this letter, goes to Auburn for the purpose of studying law in my office. His grandfather, Mr. John Rutherford, is a venera ble and excellent citizen of New Jersey, and has been one of its most distin guished men. December th. Rathbone sent up to me this morning Hannah More s " Letters and Life." I have commenced reading them. Although these letters are imbued with all that religious feeling which has deterred many from the perusal of the works of Hannah More, as from that of Young s " Night Thoughts," I have found it one of the most fascinating books I have opened for many years. The letters are full of bright, flashing, and interesting anecdote, and correct conceptions of the characters of many of the most illustrious men and women of England during the period when Johnson, Sheridan, Burke, Garrick, Montagu, and Barbauld, were living. The universal and perpetual reading of Boswell s "Life of John son " proves it one of the most interesting books ever written. You will be pleased with a similar work, in which Hannah More is the observer and scribe of the sayings and doings of so many brilliant personages. I shall send it to you by the first conveyance which offers. 1834.] TRUMBULL CARY. 245 The Court of Errors have to-day decided that they will take a recess from Thursday next for eight or ten days. Gary and I will go down the river, and probably to Orange County. Trumbull Gary, stout and hearty, with mirthful face and benevo lent expression, was a universal favorite. In later life his fine head was said to resemble that of Washington. His term as Senator from the Eighth District began and ended at the same time with that of Seward as Senator from the Seventh. President Jackson s message at the opening of Congress had now been received. A large part of it was devoted to the claims against France ; but the portions which had especial political significance, and were accepted as defining the position and future course of the Demo cratic party, were those relating to the National Bank and to internal improvements. As to the National Bank, the Whigs were not inclined to pursue the contest, but rather to accept the result of the election as having settled that question. As to internal improvements, while not disposed to insist on the powers of the Federal Government in that regard, they continued their advocacy of canals and railroads, and of assistance to them by the State, to whose development and prosperity they had now grown so necessary. NEWBUBO, December I6t7i. Mr. Gary and I came down the river to this place on Thursday evening last. We had many passengers ; among others, Mr. B. F. Butler, with his entire fam ily, on their way to Washington to spend the winter ; it appears they have never removed to the capital. Possibly the experience that other chosen cabinet coun selors have had of General Jackson s arbitrary conduct has rendered the At torney-General prudent ; but I think his prospects are now fair for holding his post much longer than his recent predecessors. On board we had a party of defeated Whigs. The severity of our disappointment has greatly mitigated, and we had as pleasant a season as a December trip on board a steamboat usually affords. After spending a night at this place, Mr. Gary and I proceeded by stage and private conveyance to Florida. We found the household tranquil and in order. The politicians, Van Duser chief among them, spent an hour with us at the hotel. We called at General Wickham s, Horace Elliott s, and Dr. Daniel Seward s, and declined invitations to dinner, tea, etc., for the entire period of our stay in Orange County. Thence we came to this place in a small stage with nine other passengers ; two of them were Mr. Wisner and S. J. Wilkin. It was our intention to go to New York last night, but the weather has been so severe that the river is closed as far down as Red Hook. The boats now run irregularly; there has been none here since we arrived. We expect one at about twelve o clock, and so Uncle Gary and I have withdrawn to our room, where we have a comfortable Liverpool-coal fire. He is reading " Peter Sim ple," and I am recording for you the journal of our wanderings. 246 LIFE A ND LETTERS. NEW YOBK, December 19^. We arrived and took lodgings at Bunker s on Tuesday evening. When three or three and a half arrives, I go to dine, and of course sit to a late hour. On Wednesday I dined with Patterson, Kent, and Hoffman, and spent the evening at a party at Colonel Stone s. One can eat only one dinner a day, and, being previously engaged at Van Schaick s, I disappointed two dinner-parties intended to include me : one at James G. King s, the other at this house. To-morrow we have a dinner here, and I am to visit Chancellor Kent in the evening. Monday is the New England dinner, at which they wish me to attend as a guest. I have been pressed to ac cept the compliment of a public dinner for Tuesday, the last day of our stay in town. I have half consented, provided it shall be converted into a private din ner, and everything in relation to it excluded from the newspapers. December Last Friday, Cary and I dined with Senator Van Schaick on Broadway. Kufus H. King, of Albany, was of the party, and my old master, John Anthon, was to be, but was detained in court. Mrs. Van Schaick is a daughter of John Hone. In the evening I went to a party at William Kent s in Bond Street. He is a gentleman delicate in taste, and of high honor, and I value him highly. I found Mrs. Kent an intelligent and charming woman, and we arranged that we are all to become acquainted next August, when they go to the westward. Chancellor and Mrs. Kent have, like yourself, and my father and mother, been so foolish as to believe all their son said of me in the flattering biography which he wrote, and the former caressed me with almost parental affection. Several of the gentlemen at Bunker s were desirous to have a small party on Saturday. It consisted of Charles King, Gulian C. Verplanck, Ogden Hoffman, James G. King, William L. Stone, William Kent, Nicholas Devereux, Patterson, and others. We had as spirited a convivial and intellectual meeting as I ever enjoyed. Charles King is rich in literary conversation, Kent animated, Patter son fastidious, Verplanck humorous, Hoffman eloquent and free, J. G. King agreeable, and Stone entertaining. Cary and I had an opportunity to vindicate Weed from the absurd slander of depriving Timothy Monroe s corpse of whiskers, to make it resemble Morgan a slander that had half preserved its credit until this time among some of the guests. Kent nobly espoused Weed s cause, and we placed him beyond reach of attack from that source. It was half -past ten when we rose from the table, and I had yet two engage ments at tea the one at Captain Keid s, the other -at Chancellor Kent s. I took a coach and drove to Laight Street, where I found the Eeids, made my apology, drank coffee, and at half -past eleven took my leave. My driver, pursuing my direction, erroneously copied from the directory, was unable to find Chancellor Kent s house. After having been driven half over the island, I gave it up and went home. Sunday morning I had only time, after a late breakfast, to reach Jennings s house before the hour for morning church, where I went with him and his fami ly, and saw him with four others ordained, with all formality, elders of the congregation. I could not look upon the service (badly as I thought it per formed) without feeling. 1834.] THE SONS OF NEW ENGLAND. 24T In the afternoon I went to church to hear Dr. Hawks. In the porch I met David Graham with his intended wife, Miss Hyslop. They gave me a seat with them, but Dr. Hawks had a substitute in the pulpit. Monday morning my table was covered with cards and billets to be disposed of, first to decline invitations to tea, next to accept an invitation to dine with the young men, then to answer the committee of arrangements of the New England Society, etc., etc. I wrote a letter to Chancellor Kent, telling my adventures in search of his house on Saturday night. I went to leave it at his office, in the event of his absence, but found him there, and made the explanation. He insisted upon having the letter to show his wife and daughter. December 28th. Mr. Gary and I, having accepted an invitation to dine with about twenty young men on Monday, at the City Hotel, came there at six, and met a very intelligent and agreeable party, of which Willis Hall was the chairman. After the cloth was removed, Mr. Hall made me a speech, and gave a toast in my honor, which was drunk by the company. I made a speech, brief and unstudied, in return, and gave for my sentiment, " The young men of the city of New York : they have committed but one error in political action, that of mistaking the justice of their cause for an indication of its immediate success. Their only reproach is, that they could not command the success they deserved." The vice-president toasted the Eighth District, and Mr. Gary responded. About ten o clock a committee from the New England Society appeared, and invited Mr. Gary and myself into the salon where the descendants of the Pil grims were celebrating their anniversary. We were received by the president, and took our seats upon his right. The spirit of the celebration was then at its height. I was called upon, and gave the sentiment which you have seen much garbled in the newspapers. It was received with marks of approbation, and soon afterward a toast was announced from the chair, and drunk with three times three, "William H. Seward, the independent politician, who received at the late election the largest New England vote ever given to any candidate in the State of New York." The toast was drunk with great cordiality. The party, of course, expected a speech, and I made one ; but I cannot recall more than the substance of it now. I told them I had no speech ready for the occasion, as I never anticipated such a compliment from the sons of the Pilgrims. It was the more gratifying to me inasmuch as the vote alluded to was given me over a son of New Eng land ; while I was not one of that honored race, and had not a drop of Yankee blood in my veins. ( " You have ! you have ! You are an adopted Yankee, anyhow," said they). I added that I had in public life given the evidence of my veneration for New England, by acting in accordance with the principles she had inculcated. I would only add that if any citizen of any other State was inclined to listen to aspersions on the character of the citizens of New England, or to think their principles unworthy or inferior to those of his own State, let him recollect who were the school-masters of the American people. Gary s toast in honor of Maynard was drunk with respect and veneration for the memory of that great patriot, exceedingly gratifying to us, who were his associates. We now returned to the party below, where I met for the first time in tha 24:8 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835, city our Lieutenant-Governor (that was to be) Stilwell. The party broke up at midnight. Your letter received this morning asks how the Courier came to announce me as having taken lodgings at the "Masonic Hall." I answer your question now, lest I may forget it. Webb wrote his article with the words " Mansion House " (meaning Bunker s on Broadway). The compositor who set it up made it read "Masonic Hall." The other papers soon set the matter right, but the most ludicrous part of the matter was, that it could not be corrected without giving the Regency papers a good opportunity for a hearty laugh at us. Tuesday morning was devoted to receiving visits, answering billets, and returning cards. At four o clock we went to Webb s to dine. There was a large party, a luxurious display, and a most fastidious taste ; the dinners at Pompeii were not more classical. From Webb s we came down-town and stopped at the Opera-House. It was the last night. The Italian Opera in New York has failed, for want of patron age ; the ton of the city were there to enjoy it for the last time, and we were there to see the ton. I had an invitation for Tuesday evening to a large party given by Mrs. D. S. Jones, the daughter of De Witt Clinton; a similar invitation on Monday to Mrs. Hicks, on Bond Street. Charles King had invited a supper-party to meet us on Wednesday night. James G. King had made a dinner for us the day we dined with Van Schaick. We declined, and tore ourselves away from the hos pitalities which pressed us on every side. At five o clock we went on board the steamboat, and arrived about midnight at Poughkeepsie. It was cold and tem pestuous, and we retired to sleep. On Christmas-morning, at six o clock, we took the stage and traveled comfortably enough, although the weather was very cold. We arrived at Greenbush about eleven o clock at night, and, after much ado, procured porters to carry our baggage across the river, and reached Bement s at midnight. I cannot yet say when I shall be able to leave. Albany, but I am making my parting arrangements. I need not tell you that I have become more than ever attached to Uncle Gary, and that here we are inseparable. Mrs. Cary, with her genuine kindness, has proposed to meet him at Auburn. They have it so- arranged that Wednesday of week after next, if there is sleighing, she will be with you. Mr. Cary will positively be there, and so will I. And so the part I have assumed among politicians has its inception, denoument, and finale ! CHAPTER XII. 1835. Eetum to Private Life. Law and Chancery Practice. Judge Miller. Seward and Beards- ley. Political Speculations. French Claims. Personalities in Debate. Attempt to assassinate Jackson. Advice about going West. Editorial Life. "Optimism." Henry Bulwer. RETURNING to Auburn early in January, 1835, accompanied by Mr. "Weed s daughter Harriet, he announced their arrival in a letter to her father : 1835.] GOVERNOR MARCY. 249 I am once more, thank God, and I hope for a long time, at home ; really, I was so weary of the unprofitable life I was leading at Albany, that I was unable to regret, as I otherwise must have done, that the time had come when a ter mination must be set to our long, confidential, and intimate association. Keep me informed upon political matters, and take care that I do not so far get ab sorbed in professional occupation, that you will cease to care for me as a poli tician. Resuming his place among the law-books and papers in the old white office on South Street, he resumed with it his industrious habits there, and worked early in the morning and late at night at the cases of his clients. His practice began to steadily increase and enlarge, though it was still confined to Cayuga and the adjoining counties in the western part of the State. He wrote : January 18, 1835. It goes with me, thus far, very much as I supposed it would. An entire week has passed, and I have found no leisure. All this would be comfortable enough if I were pleased with my employment. But I do not find that certainty in the results of long and painful investigation which compensates one for the trouble. " Eureka! " said the Grecian philosopher, when the key to his perplex ing problem presented itself to his mind. But in law there is no "Eureka." You search forever, and, instead of finding out the truth of the matter, you find out, at the end of a long and troublesome litigation, that you are all wrong, or that the court and jury are ; and the consequences to you and your client are the same in both cases. But I am not indulging any morbid feelings. I would rather pursue my pro fession than any other, and when I once get accustomed to it I shall find it go smoothly enough. Your hurried letter, written upon the blank page of Fillmore s, was rather melancholy. I am so selfish as not to be sorry that you were sad when Gary and I left you. I would not have you perform a shorter mourning than a widow s prescribed quarantine. It is a graceless world, my dear Weed, and we will soon enough forget each other. Meanwhile political affairs of some gravity were engrossing atten tion at Albany and Washington. But as this book aims to present, not the history of the times, but the story of an individual life, it will be sufficient to allude to a few events then transpiring, as news of them reached the quiet village home, through the newspapers or the letters of friends. From Albany came the annual message of Governor Marcy, able and clear, as all his state papers were. In it he reiterated the argu ments against the United States Bank, now become cardinal doctrines of the Jackson party. He felicitated the Legislature and the people that the commercial panic had passed, and confidence had been restored, so that it had not been necessary to make or use the six-million-dollar loan authorized at 250 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835. the previous session, the United States Bank having ceased its curtail ment of discounts. Its renewed expansion of loans was claimed to prove that its previous contraction had been made, not under the press ure of necessity, but for political effect. The Governor recommended the enlargement of the Erie Canal, in accordance with an almost universal public sentiment. He further recommended the suppression of all bank bills under five dollars, and warned the Legislature against granting State bank charters too lavishly. His party, in the Senate and Assembly, followed him in denunciation of the Bank of the United States, and voted to use a part of the canal-tolls to enlarge the Erie Canal, but took little heed of his warnings against new bank charters, which continued at this session to be dispensed among the eager lobby that awaited them, and, naturally enough, perhaps, applicants who were supporters of the State and national Administrations were especially fortunate in obtaining them. The Whig minority, hardly numbering more than one-third of the Legislature, had no disposition to continue the war in behalf of the Bank of the United States after their signal defeat at the fall election. To the enlargement of the Erie Canal they gave a hearty support, and directed their artillery chiefly against the distribution of the bank charters, proposing investigations of the manner in which it was done. These, however, were usually tabled by a decisive vote. Seward s letters, during this period, to Weed, sketch his domestic and business life at Auburn, with occasional comments upon political events : January Vlih. Charles King, when I saw him, was wanting Clay to decline in favor of somebody, and the only difficulty was, to select the man. None of those who protest against White and McLean seem to understand that Clay must decline in order to bring out anybody. The truth is, that we Whigs of 1834 are a very impracticable set of fellows. We are too independent to become good politi cians. We all agree that the Tories are ruining the country, and that it is our duty to avert the calamity. But each man must have his own way of averting it. January SQtk. Mr. Savage has brought my miniature. It is universally admired, except by the very fastidious personage for whom it was painted. She, forsooth, calls it hard names, says it is pert, self-complacent, etc., etc., just as if that was not the true expression of the original. There is a Mr. Goodwin here, who has spent two years in the village, paint ing everybody. The day before the miniature came, he called upon me. He had been diligently pursuing his art, as all artists must do in the country, until he was prepared to advance toward the city. He wished in the spring to make a stand in Albany, and was desirous to have a likeness of me, by way of intro ducing himself. Now, this painter had been a good and ardent Whig when it would have been better for him to have been a Tory. I assented, of course, 1835.] TROUBLE WITH FRANCE. 251 and that without having seen one of his pictures; and have been to give him my first sitting. I never was more gratified by any political movement than I have been in the extraordinary tact and talent exhibited by our minority in the Legislature since the commencement of the session. Sibley has made a fine debut. Young s resolution was rightly disposed of by our friends in both Houses. February 8th. Your long silence has produced much anxiety in our house. Harriet is apprehensive that you or her mother are ill. I do not so infer. But young ladies do not so well understand the difficulties which old fellows like us have in being punctual in our correspondence. I have not yet found time to read the Bank Commissioner s report, or the State-prison report. I take, perforce, your account of all these matters for truth. You will see how imperative your obligation is not to commit any of that offense which your sweet cousin of the Argus so often reminds you of in his amiable kind of way. But there are some things which I do read : Primo, all Mark Sibley s bold, talented speeches; secondo, your editorials; and tertio, all my dull letters from Paris. ... I think you are sustaining yourself with great success. You are yet, my good fellow, only at the threshold of your edi torial career. You will be at the head of the profession in a few years. As for my letters, I am glad the manuscript you have of them is nearly out. The last letter was written so carelessly that I am ashamed of it. The one in Thursday s paper was both carelessly written and printed, but the fault is more mine than the printer s. I am made to speak of " elegant prison-walls," instead of " elo quent " ones ! A great rage for speculation in real estate has arisen here. Property has advanced twenty-five per cent., and sells readily. This gives me reputation of an increase of property. Whether I realize it or not will depend upon whether I sell while the fever is upon us. I have real estate which I would be glad enough to sell, but the speculators pass me by to find those whose necessities they deem greater. Now came intelligence of the debates going on in Congress in re gard to the French claims ; and then that the French Government, taking umbrage at President Jackson s recommendation of reprisals on French commerce, had recalled M. Serrurier, their minister, and sent to Mr. Livingston, the American minister at Paris, his passports. Con gress, the press, and the public, evinced alarm at the prospect of war with France. But the next arrival from Europe tended somewhat to allay it, by the news that the French Government, after " vindicating the national honor from insult," as they said, by suspending diplomatic intercourse, immediately passed a law to pay the United States what was claimed. With this law, however, they coupled a proviso that they should have an apology from President Jackson. This condition neither he nor the American people were likely to comply with ; but the whole dispute, after a few months, was amicably arranged by the mediation of the British Government. Congress, with that curious 252 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835. inconsistency which sometimes characterizes legislative action, after being apparently unanimous in favor of appropriating means for national defense in the coming contest, differed about the amount to be inserted in the " Fortification Bill ; " and, as the two Houses were unable to reach an agreement on the night of the 3d of March, before the adjournment, the bill failed entirely. So the country was left with out any appropriation at all to meet the war if one had come. Two other affairs occurred, tending to strengthen General Jackson s hold on popular favor, by identifying him as personally bearing the brunt of all assaults upon the Government. One was an attempt by a lunatic to fire a pistol at him, as he was attending the funeral of a member of Congress at the Capitol. The other was the defeat of Colonel Benton s resolution to " expunge " from the Senate Journal its censure of the President in 1833 ; which defeat was followed by the prompt announcement of Colonel Benton that he would renew his resolution for such " expunctiori " at the opening of the next session. Strong as the President unquestionably was, he had been elected twice, and so could not be a third time a candidate. The Whigs in various States began to organize for the presidential canvass against his probable successor, Martin Van Buren. Judge McLean was nomi nated by a gathering at Columbus, in which the Whig members of the Ohio Legislature took prominent part, and Daniel Webster was simi larly nominated by a convention of the Whig members of the Legisla ture of Massachusetts. On these topics Seward said : Clay quits the field, and I have no ability to believe that White can get votes enough at the South to make a diversion from Van Buren. To run Webster as a candidate now is useless. I have seen no suggestion which pleased me so much as that which presents General Harrison ; certain it is, there is none so safe. We can give him all the votes we can to anybody. If we fail with him, we are a patriotic party and a great one. I agree with you that the charm of McLean s name is gone, unless he should resign his judgeship, and that, I think, he will not do ; and he would be very unwise if he should. I am serious in this Harrison business, and hope that, if you agree, you will exert yourself to give it a popular aspect. Let me know your best opinion, before I commit any overt act in regard to it. March 13, 1835. My conscience reproaches me for concurring with you in the disapproval of Webster s nomination. I cannot support it, and why ? Because he is too great, too wise ? But I cannot doubt that it is our duty to defeat Van Buren. To vote for Webster is, indirectly, to elect Van Buren. You are right about Harrison, but do not go too fast, too soon. The bold attempt to assassinate the President is an incident so unique and so full of horror that it made a deep impression upon a large class of voters. They anticipated the party papers in saying it was a " Whig conspiracy." They would shut their ears to evidence which should exculpate any member of the 1835.] THE LAW-OFFICE. 253 Senate, and abhor to be undeceived. While Harriet and I were waiting in the wagon, at the door of an hotel in Springport, we overheard a conversation be tween two old farmers, in which one said that he had always adhered to Jackson, and should, as long as Jackson lived. " Well," said the other, "you had like to have been discharged last month ; he came near being killed." " They can t kill him," said the first ; u they ve tried it more than once, and would again, but his time hasn t come. Thank God," said he, "they ve at last shown what they would do to get rid of the old hero ! " Now, I am very much inclined to believe, with this old man, that there is a destiny in relation to General Jackson. . . . The maniac who leveled his pistol at the President accomplished one step toward converting this Government into a monarchy. I shudder when I reflect upon recent indications, that mankind in Europe choose to be governed by kings. Even the people of this country set a higher value upon the life of their ruler than they do upon the safeguards of their own liberty. . . . My word for it, we shall yet see that the effect of the attempt has been greateAhan you, now believe. In regard to his business affairs he wrote : AUBURN, March Zd. It is a matter of astonishment to me, in view of my long neglect of my office, that its income should be so much as it is. I had bought a few despised village lots, several years ago, and had built dwellings upon them to rent. These are productive, and my unoccupied lots have risen in value. I am now doing a very fair business, dividing to my partner, as before, one-third. If I could continue to attend to it, as I have done since my return from Albany, it would be worth more than three thousand dollars per annum to me. I am endeavoring to accu mulate a reasonable surplus out of this, so as to be able to cast my books behind me, and take into my hands others that I like better. If our side keeps under, I shall make some money ; if it gets upward, my "spoils" may again be endan gered. (This consummation, however devoutly it may be wished, does not give me any alarm.) AUBURN, March llth. You are right on the French question, and have, in my poor judgment, been right from the beginning. It is neither patriotic nor wise to oppose the Ad ministration, when the question involves an issue between us and any European government. He was now steadily and diligently building up his law practice. At first he had encountered some jealous opposition on the part of older practitioners, who feared his rise in the profession might draw off business from their own offices. But this was now all past. He had pursued in court the same rule as in the Legislative Chamber. He dis regarded and ignored all personalities ; and with resolute self-possession addressed his arguments to the points at issue it is needless to say, with additional advantage from that self-control. His position was becoming an assured one ; and the engrossing of the prolix chancery papers, from his drafts or dictation, soon afforded labor for several clerks. Mr. Nelson Beardsley, who entered his office as a student in 254: LIFE AND LETTERS. [1836. 1828, was his chief assistant. He was taken into partnership, and left in charge of the business on Mr. Seward s departure to Albany, to enter upon his duties in the Senate. This relation continued during his senatorial term, and until 1836. The business of a country lawyer in those days, while equally labori ous, was much less methodical than that of a city attorney. All hours alike were considered by visitors for business or pleasure as open to them ; and legal advice, while freely solicited, was not expected to be paid for, unless under previous and definite contract. The old office on South Street continued to be Seward & Beardsley s place of business until, in 1835, the Exchange Block was erected on Genesee Street. Then the office was transferred there. It was a favorite habit of his then, as in later life, to concentrate all his attention upon the work in hand, and not allow himself to be di verted from it until it was finished. The custom of carrying forward several different sorts of work at one time (though often an indispen sable one, especially in official life) he always regarded as occupying more time, and as less productive of satisfactory results. This persever ing concentration enabled him to accomplish tasks with marvelous rapidity. Mr. Beardsley relates some incidents of their practice. One day, just as they were closing its labors, a client came in with a case in which success was hopeless unless an injunction could be obtained before eleven o clock the next morning from Judge Mosely, at Onon- daga Hill ; and to obtain it would require a review of the entire case, and an analysis of the papers, which his lawyer had told him would occupy at least a week. Seeing the situation of the affair at once, Seward said, " Beardsley, did you sleep well last night ? " " Tolerably well," was the answer ; " why do you ask ? " " Because I think you will have to sit up all night to-night." Lighting the candles, and closing the doors, the two partners set vigorously to work, Seward drafting, and Beardsley engrossing, until daybreak found them completing the last pages. A hasty breakfast and cup of coffee followed ; and then, taking a horse and buggy, Sew ard drove twenty-five miles to Onondaga Hill, obtained the injunction, and saved his client s case. On another occasion, half a dozen rural friends came into the office with disturbed and anxious looks, and, taking Seward aside, said to him : " Here is the Whig County Convention in session at the court house, and we have only just discovered that no resolutions or ad dress have been prepared ; and there is not a man in it who can under take the work. Besides, there is no time. If we adjourn without any we shall be laughed at, and the whole thing will be a failure. Can t you help us ? " 1835.] JUDGE MILLER. 255 Seward considered a moment, and said : " The convention will want its dinner, I suppose ? " " Yes," they answered, " of course." " Very well. Go back ; appoint a committee on resolutions, who ever you like, and then adjourn the convention for dinner. After dinner send the committee to me." " Now, Beardsley," turning to his partner, " Loco-f oco as you are, you will have to copy some good Whig resolutions, and an address." Going into the back-room, and locking the door, he commenced drafting as fast as pen could travel over paper Beardsley engrossing each sheet as it was completed. The convention reassembled in the afternoon, and were as much astonished and gratified with the address and resolutions laid before them by their committee as the committee themselves were at having done it. Judge Miller had gradually withdrawn from actual business in the office, though continuing to give his counsel in many cases, where his judgment and experience rendered it valuable. His tenacious and accurate memory of historical facts made him an authority on all ques tions of land-titles. A story is told of a case in court, involving title to lands, which had formed a part of " military lots," originally belong ing to old soldiers of the Revolution. It happened that a defective point in the evidence was the date of a battle where one of the pen sioners received a wound, which entitled him to a land-warrant. The old pensioners themselves were called as witnesses ; but their recollec tions were confused and conflicting. There were no books or docu ments at hand for reference. Just then the court-room door opened, and Judge Miller entered. He was, of course, ignorant of what was going on ; and was somewhat startled on hearing the presiding judge say, " Crier, call Judge Miller to the stand." The crier made proclamation accordingly. Judge Miller demurred : " What do you want of me ? I don t know anything about the case. I don t even know what the case is." "No matter," was the reply from the bench ; "take the stand." He took the stand, and was sworn. " In what year," asked the presiding judge, " did the battle of Mon- mouth take place ? " "On the 28th of June, 1778," replied Judge Miller, without hesita tion. " That is all, judge. The court called you because it knew that it could rely on your memory, and is much obliged to you." The almost interminable prolixity of bills in chancery, which were paid for " by the folio " (one hundred words), was a source of profit to lawyers, though a delay of justice to their clients. Yet the usages and 256 L IF E AND LETTERS. [1835. requirements of the courts rendered it difficult to omit any of the pro fessional tautology, without risking dissatisfaction of the client, or loss of the cause. It is related of Judge Miller, who abhorred indirection, that, coming into the office one day, he took a mortgage foreclosure just completed, and, counting the words, found that there were forty- five hundred. Taking his pen, he drew up one containing but four hundred and fifty words, which comprised everything required of law or facts that had been set forth in the one ten times as long. March I5th. Last evening I received an unusually interesting letter from you, and this evening I am quickened to answer it by the further obligation for the docu ments, reviews, and magazines, you send me. I regret continually that I have not time to write deliberately. I might, in that event, make our correspondence a poor substitute for the long tete-d-tete of by-gone days. But, in truth, I go floundering on, from Monday s sunrise until Saturday s expiring hour, hurried with occupation. You talk about building more political " cob-houses " with me. Pardon me, I have exhausted the entire interest of the game. No inducement would now prevail upon me to be reinstated in the Senate. I am happy in being out, with the consciousness that I got honorably out. AUBUKN, March 29A. Don t start, my dear Weed, at this long sheet of foolscap. I have not alto gether relapsed into barbarism. Harriet, like a dutiful child, has used the last sheet of letter-paper in writing to her mother. To-morrow will be a secular day, and then I can replenish my stock. I have "matter in excuse, though not of justification," as the lawyers say, of my long silence. When I have written to the foot of this page, I shall have completed the one hundred and fifty-second part of the amount of labor which I have bestowed, during the last ten days, upon a single " answer in chancery." Now, if you wish to understand how incompatible it has been for me to write a letter to you or anybody else while that pleasant occupation was in hand, I entreat you to take thirty-eight sheets of paper of this size, ruled as this is, write closely, as I do (and not scrawlingly, as you do your editorials), until you have a complete conviction that I could not by any possibility write to you before this day of sacred rest, and rest from folios in chancery. If you choose, the manuscript you produce shall be an epistle to me. I will preserve it as faithfully as the saints did those of the apostles. Granger and Whittlesey came here last Tuesday evening with William B. Kochester, Jewett, and Jared Wilson. They spent the night here. Granger, Whittlesey, and I, had a session (which commenced with a cup of tea at seven and closed at twelve), on the subject of the presidential nomination. You may show up the grounds of belief that we can succeed. " It never yet did hurt To lay down likelihoods and forms of hope." There are many difficulties ; I know not but insuperable ones. A propos, the improvement of the Journal is very fine. It is altogether the 1886.J FOREBODINGS. 25T handsomest paper in the State. I have an affection for it for your sake, and because quorum pars fui. AUBURN, April nth. Who reports your debates in the Senate ? I have been pleased with the skill manifested in the report of the altercation between Young and Hubbard. What an immense deal of learning the former has, and how little practical wisdom on this occasion ! No man ever appears to advantage in a legislative debate when he volunteers an issue relating to himself personally. Legislators, statesmen, and politicians, only appear great when identified with great popular interests, measures, or excitements. How admirably the French understand this ! Louis XVIII. understood it when he returned (on the downfall of Bonaparte), after a long exile, and, supported by foreign bayonets, he said, " Je la revois cette France, et rien n est change excepte qu il y a un Francais de plus." Seward always looked upon personalities in debate, or " rising to a privileged question," to repel newspaper attacks, as worse than use less. Members of the Legislature, he said, ought to understand that they can never safely bring their private grievances into the debates of the House. The confidence of their political friends is never shaken by newspaper calumnies ; and the dignity of legislation is compro- mitted by their efforts to retaliate. AUBURN, April 12th. The advance of spring in the country was always interesting to me ; and this is the first time I have enjoyed it in four years. I watch the development of vegetation with a lover s interest. I have my hot-bed in delightful success. My cucumbers are commencing their ramblings. The radishes begin to gather roughness upon the leaf. The sap starts from my grapes, and the polyanthus is in full bloom. To add to these pleasures, I have mastered the oppressive labor of my office, and left it last night with the proud satisfaction that its business was now behind me. We are yet undecided concerning our summer s journey. My mind inclines, if Mrs. Seward can endure the voyage, to a trip up the Mediterranean and to the Levant. Her sister protests, and we are without medical advice. It would, in my judgment, be the surest means of recovering her health, provided she should spend the next winter in Italy. But to make a voyage to Europe re quires the assent of all one s friends. I may as well, in this place, inform you that the professor of phrenology here has favored me with a chart of the geog raphy of my skull ; and that it is distinguished by two great mountains. Can you guess them? "Conscientiousness" and "Fondness for Foreign Travel ing! I have during the past week been speculating upon politics, and I will tell you my conclusions. It is utterly impossible, I am convinced, to defeat Van Buren. The people are for him. Not so much for him as for the principle they suppose he represents. That principle is Democracy ; and the best result of all our labors in the Whig cause has only been to excite them, while they have been more and more confirmed in their apprehension of the loss of their liberties by an imaginary instead of a real aristocracy. It is with them, the poor against the rich ; and it is not to be disguised, that, since the last election, the array of. 17 " 258 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835, parties has very strongly taken that character. Those who felt themselves or helieved themselves poor, have fallen off very naturally from us, and into the majority, whose success proved them to be the friends of the poor ; while the rich we " have always with us." Our papers, without being conscious of it, have been gradually assuming their cause ; not from choice, but by way of retaliation upon the victors. It is unavailing to discuss candidates. "We can support "White or Harrison or anybody. We can give them all our votes. But we can give no one any more ; and, what is the worst feature of all is, that this party of ours in its elements IB such that it cannot succeed until there is a time of popular convulsion, when- suffering shall make men feel, and because they feel, think ! Without by any means admitting that in the present instance the popular will is wx Dei, I be lieve and know it to be absolute. I make these observations because I am where you never are, in the country, among the people. You will ask me, " To what end are these speculations ? " I answer, they are for your use, the deliberate and mature judgment of a friend who has examined the ground. They are intended to guard you against the indulgence of dreams of political reform and retribution which will not come to pass. They mean no further. For myself, they lay the basis of this resolution AUBURN, April 19th. The church-bell last Sunday morning called me off from a rambling letter I had been writing to you. In the evening I thought, without reading it, that it was calculated unnecessarily to make you unhappyby the gloomy view it took of the political field. As I could not doubt that you enjoy more satisfaction in your vocation, while you indulge hopes of success, I thought it unwise to ob trude forebodings which would be of no avail. On Friday Mrs. Seward, who had read the letter, asked me why I did not send it. When I gave her the rea sons, she pronounced them insufficient. She insisted upon it that I should then add the " resolution," which, it appeared, was to be the conclusion of the letter. This was impossible, for the sufficient reason that the resolution was not formed.. So, in a merry mood, we concluded to send you the letter and leave you to draft a resolution to suit yourself ! I have now no resolution about the matter except this ; that for myself, my own interest, reputation, or advancement, I will not send out a single exploring wish over the political deluge. The safety of my friends, and their success and happiness, will afford motives enough to excite hopes and exertions if such hopes and exertions shall be expected from me. This letter, and others like it, hardly show him to be the " optimist >r that many thought him. Its predictions of adverse political fortune, in the next two years, were all verified as time rolled on. That he was seldom an over-sanguine counselor his private letters attest. That in public utterances he sought to animate and encourage his party, is not strange. No leader can expect success who begins by disheartening his followers. Nor were his cheerfulness and confidence assumed. They grew naturally out of his life-long belief that he was advocating principles destined to ultimate and permanent triumph. Yet he had 1836.J "GOING WEST." 259 always the presentiment that the struggle would be a fearful if not a sanguinary one. That presentiment appears in his first parliamentary argument, when he warned the State Senate to prepare their militia for " the dark and perilous ways of national calamity yet unknown to us." It reappears throughout his writings and speeches down to the day when he finally announced to the nation that its "irrepressible conflict " was at hand. May 3d. .... By-the-way, have you ever read Bulwer s " France " (Henry Bulwer) ? I think you have not. Imagine how much I was struck with the paragraph I am going to quote, which I happened to read just after perusing your letter : " No fault is so absurd, in a public man, as that of confusing the nature of hi position. As long as he is the decided enemy of one party, the decided friend of another, he never has any occasion to halt or to hesitate. He knows those from whom he may expect enmity, and those to whom he may naturally look for assistance. But the instant he complicates his relations, every action and consideration become uncertain. He has something to hope, something to fear, in either course he may adopt, and doubts as to the manner in which he may be most certain to succeed, prevent that concentration of purpose which is so es sential to success." The remark is in relation to Bonaparte seeking alliance with the legitimists of Europe after having acquired all his power by humbling them to the earth. The two friends were accustomed to counsel each other in regard to private affairs, as well as public policy. Advising Weed on the subject of going West, he said : May 1WA. I have read with more concern than my answers have indicated, the allu sions in your letters to a desire to leave Albany to emigrate to Michigan ; and they have brought on cogitations whether a change would be desirable. I have (I use a friend s freedom) been confirmed in the conclusion that you ought to indulge no thought of change. The Journal has now established so strong a hold upon the favor of the people, that it ig sure to support you, and yield you a surplus as long as you have health to continue. Make up your mind under no circumstances ever to be the editor of any other paper. The editorship of a city newspaper is a great capital, and that capital is like the usurer s, continu ally increasing with the lapse of time, if the investment is continued without change. You are now realizing a little surplus, and have dreamy notions about laying it out in Michigan lands. It is all wrong. You have astute friends among the merchants ; they will easily convert it into good stocks. You are not the man to buy lands. Only two classes of men ought to buy them : those who will go upon them and cultivate them, and those who have ample surplus funds besides their land investments. Neither class is likely to reckon you among its number. Do not neglect to invest because the sums you can command seem trifling. It will be either investment or waste. As I have been very free and plain in my advice to you, I will excuse the boldness by telling you my own calculations. First, I am, as rapidly as I can, converting my little means into an investment in some stores which I know will 260 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835. rent pretty well, and will be a property that will increase in value, as this town must increase. My impression is that this arrangement is safe ; and I shall thus be freed from the commercial operations which my soul abhors, of lending money, taking notes, buying and selling, etc. With just enough experience of success and disappointment to chasten my spirit, I begin to love Philosophy as a companion and friend ; and I begin to be restive under the restraints which deprive me of her association. It is this re straint which makes me dislike my profession. Your view of matters presented in your letter is correct and true. But I entreat you, " no more of Michigan, an thou lovest me." It is too late in your life to enter a new country, and live au sauvage. It is too late to abandon your profession. You cannot succeed in it so well, in any other sphere, as that in which you now are. You cannot be on the successful side in politics, under present circumstances, in Michigan, more than here. The delusion is, or soon will be, wide as the Union. If popular principles change, and ours come into vogue, it is likely to happen here as soon as there ; and, if they never change, you are the core in the heart of a generous, disinterested, great party; and you (as well as all of us) are far better situated, so far as your own happiness is concerned, in being in a minority, without responsibility, and safe from envy and malevolence. I preach the doctrine I practise in this respect. I have been during the whole of last week employed in preparing causes for the Circuit. Next week, the Circuit Court will be held. Next after that, our Court of Chancery ; and then I am off, with Frances and little Fred, in pur suit of health on the banks of the Susquehanna and in the shades of the Blue Kidge. CHAPTER XIII. 1835. A Summer Tour. The Pennsylvania Mountains. The Susquehanna Valley. Harrisburg. Harper s Ferry. The Valley of Virginia. Weyer s Cave. Natural Bridge. Slaves and their Masters. TOWAED the close of May the weather had grown propitious for the contemplated summer trip. A light, strong carriage, having two seats and an extension-top, was provided with a pair, of gray horses, " Lion " and " the Doctor." Mr. and Mrs. Seward occupied the back-seat. Only the younger of their two little boys could be taken, and he shared the front-seat with the colored driver, William Johnson. What little luggage was necessary was carefully stored in the boxes under the seats. A stout fishing-rod, and a few ropes and straps in case of acci dent, packed in front, and a tin cup and a pail hanging behind, for use at the roadside streams, completed the equipage for the journey, which was commenced on the 23d of May. The letters written at various points on the way described the inci- - V- OF IALIF 1835.] TOILING UP A MOUNTAIN. 261 dents and impressions of this tour. They give a picture of American rural life, at that day, in those secluded regions. Our first day s ride was to Seneca Falls, twelve miles. We spent the even ing with our old friend Colonel Mynderse, to whom our visit was a duty ren dered melancholy by the apprehension that it was probably the last one that we might make to him. The second day s journey was to Mrs. Seward s sister, at Aurora, where we spent the night. ATHENS, TIOOA POINT, May 28tk. I begin at half -past four this morning to write you a long letter. We had a delightful ride the morning we left Aurora, and enjoyed very much the lake- scenery. When we arrived at the bridge below the Long Point (I think you call it), we found a pen, made of the bay which the road crosses on a bridge ; and my old friend and client, Captain Avery, with a dozen men and boys, hav ing the bridge fenced in at both ends, were employed in performing the service of annual ablution of his thousand sheep, preparatory to taking off their fleeces. The captain was very kind to us, and inquired whether our horses would be afraid to go through the water below the bridge, in a tone so strongly marked by decided desire that I was induced to consent. But an athletic fellow, with a powerful and docile horse, was just behind us, in a one-horse wagon. Think ing his risk of much less importance than that of my freight, I indirectly sug gested that, as he was probably acquainted with the fording-place, we would give him precedence. But the gentleman bolted, and, finding that I was unwill ing to lead him, raised a clamor of remonstrance, which caused the captain speed ily to remove the obstructions he had thrown across the highway. We came on very comfortably to Calvin Burr s, and there we had A very agreeable visit. Mrs. Miller and Miss Julia were happy to see us ; their room was airy, their shrubbery beautiful, and the veal-cutlets and tea set before us such as we may not hope to find again in many a day. Mr. Burr broke a bot tle of champagne. Emily was sent for from school, and was presented to us. At five o clock we took leave of our friends at Ludlowville, and had a safe and comfortable ride along the lake-shore " in the gloaming." Spencer s house at Ithaca was airy and comfortable, beyond all our reasonable wishes. The next morning (Tuesday) we started at nine o clock, and rode two hours, so much enjoying the views of lake, hill, and valley, that we took no note of our road until we found ourselves closing the rear of a grand "moving" cavalcade, ascending a prodigious hill by a rough path. The movers were a very comfortable family of colored folks, who seemed to have been able to charter Caucasian men and horses. Our little barouche and horses fell so natu rally into this train that the lumbermen stared at the great grandeur of our establishment, mistaking the real owners of the caravan for our serving men and women. Great were our amusement and mirth over the mistakes into which the passers-by were drawn. And thus we pursued our rough ascent until we reached the last rise of the mountain, where we stopped to give our horses breath, and inquired how far it was to Spencer, our destination for that day. "Spencer," said the interrogated; "I should guess you are a good deal out of your way if it s Spencer you want to go to." And so it most assuredly was ; and I had the mortification of finding that I had followed this sable procession two miles and a half up a mountain, only to 262 LIFE AN & LETTERS. [1835. return again, unhonored, unnoticed, and alone. This accident made our morn ing s ride a long one. We stopped at noon at a secluded tavern ten miles from Ithaca, where, having brought with us some lemons, we were refreshed with lemonade. The landlady, an exceedingly smart and agreeable person, was a Swedenborgian. We discussed with her for an hour the mysterious and strange doctrines of that faith, and obtained a much better knowledge of it than I ever had before possessed. She had a little locker stored with ponderous tomes of the founder of the sect. So desirous was she to proselyte us that she proposed to lend us her books to read on our journey. I bought one, which she very much recommended, and it has already afforded us much instruction concerning the principles of the sect and the secret of its success. Swedenborg has a dreamy German romance of benevolent thought and action. He addressed the passion for the marvelous by what he claimed to be revelations, which, though deemed to be impious and false by other sects, would as allegories be considered to have much beauty. We reached Spencer at five o clock, and found a good house and pleasant family. William fitted up my fishing apparatus, and, as soon as we had taken our dinner, Fred and I repaired to the brook, where I drew out a dozen little fishes, weighing from two ounces to half a pound. We wrote letters home in the evening, and in the morning resumed our journey, which was through the valley of the Cayuta Creek, a branch of the Susquehanna Eiver. The road, for the distance of fourteen miles, is on the immediate bank of the creek, which flows through a dense forest. Some enterprising people, years ago, made this a turnpike-road, in the hope that it would become a thoroughfare for the travel ing between Tioga Point, in Pennsylvania, and Ithaca, Auburn, and Geneva, in our State. But the road was made so very narrow, and hangs so much over the creek, that it is a dangerous one. The travel has left it, and is now divided between the roads leading from Elmira and Owego to Tioga Point. The Oayuta has a continued succession of falls, and at distances of about every mile a saw mill. We met great numbers of wagons, loaded with lumber, which seems to be the only trade that the country affords. The only tillable land lies along the valley of the creek, and is very narrow. After riding ten miles, we came to a house which had once been a tavern ; and, as we were much wearied, we petitioned the old lady for shelter from the noonday heat. She bade us welcome. We brought out our store of oranges and lemons, but there was not an ounce of sugar in the house. Clear spring- water from the hillside was very good with lemon-juice; and, after having taken our rest, we resumed our ride. We gathered bouquets of wild-flowers, of every hue and form, and arrived, wearied with enjoyment and exercise, at this place yesterday, at 3 p. M. It is one of the brightest, greenest, and loveliest spots the sun shines upon. Athens is a very old village, situate at the junction of the Chemung and Susquehanna Rivers. Its inhabitants suffered much from the depredations of the Indians in the Revolution, and had the satis faction of ample retaliation when Sullivan arrived there with his brave little army. There are still shown the spots which were cultivated by the white men, when the Indians desolated the frontier. TOWANDA CBEEK, BRADFORD COUNTY, PA., May 29th. It is six o clock in the morning. While my companions are dressing for the day s journey, and the landlady is preparing our ham and eggs, and William U 1835.] THE SUSQUEHANNA AND LYCOMING. 263 rubbing down the horses, I have half an hour to tell you where we are. We secured a whole house of friends in our stay at Athens, and they all bade us a kind farewell at eight o clock yesterday morning ; when we took our departure, following the road down the west bank of the Susquehanna. It was a beautiful ride. The road is excavated along the steep bank of the river, and aeems like a shelf hanging over the broad bosom of the clear water. Some times we were twenty feet, sometimes one hundred feet, above the river, while above us the mountain rose almost perpendicularly to the height of one hundred and fifty feet, covered with a dense pine-forest with laurel underbrush. The roadway was so narrow that in many places the variation of one or two feet would have precipitated horses, carriage, and cargo, into the river. The beauti ful wild-flowers were more abundant than ever on the banks of the Oayuta Creek, and we decorated our wagon with the richest. Among them was a shrub honeysuckle, fragrant and redundant in flowers. We dined in one of the neatest of houses at Towanda, which is the county-town of this (Bradford) -{Jounty, and is on the bank of the Susquehanna. The town is laid down on the map by the name of Meansville. Having rested two hours there, we resumed our journey. We left the Susquehanna a few miles below Towanda, and fol lowed to this place the valley of the Towanda Creek. Writing next to his law-partner, Mr. Beardsley, he said : Monday, June 1st. It is not very easy to " affix a venue " more particular than the name of a county for the date of this letter ; but, if you will turn to any map of Pennsyl vania, you will find, in Lycoming County, a village of Pennsbrough, situated at the bend of the west branch of the Susquehanna. Six miles below that village, on the main road to Northumberland, is Shannon s tavern, with the sign of the " green tree ; " and in that tavern are my little family located at the date of this present writing. Our seventh day s journey brought us to the wildest and most romantic dell I ever saw. It was situated in the valley of the Lycoming, a distance of twenty- three miles from the place where we staid the preceding night. The eighth day s journey was twenty-eight miles, and brought us to Williamsport. Switzerland possesses no more romantic valley than those of the Towanda and Lycoming. These streams are, strangely enough, sent forth from the same fountain, situate on high ground in Lycoming County, and known formerly as .the place of " Seaver s Dam." The Towanda runs northwest, and discharges its waters into the north branch of the Susquehanna. The Lycoming takes a southerly direction, and swells the west branch. Our route was through the valleys of both creeks, ascending the Towanda from its mouth to its source, and following the Lycoming from its source to its mouth. The scenery of these two creeks is as diverse as their course. That of the Towanda is marked by rugged and rocky banks, of no very great height, and bounded by a cultivated region. The Lycoming passes through a narrow valley like some parts of the valley of the Rhine, always between steep, frowning mountains, which rise gradually to a height of one thousand or twelve hundred feet. The simple, half -formed road is forced to cross, alternately, from one side of the stream to the other. In a distance of about thirty miles we forded the Lycoming nine- LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835. teen times, and crossed it on five bridges. My fishing-line was sure to bring out the dainty little trout from the clear, cold stream whenever I applied it ; but I was not required often to do so, as the table has been set, at every meal, for the last three or four days, with this luxury, which is the cheapest provision of our hosts. The mountains are filled with coal and iron-ore ; the state of society is simple and poor ; the wolves were heard in the mountains, and our last meal in the Ly coming Valley was graced by vension, shot down in the road by the tavern-door. At Williamsport we were misdirected as to lodgings, and were placed in a room over the bar-room, at a very noisy hotel. Some drunken fellows were reveling over their cups at midnight ; and as the ceiling was of boards, and there was an aperture for a stove-pipe through the floor, we were disturbed by the noise so much that I rose, in the chilly part of the night, and effected a change of apartments. I have been concerned for you, in regard to the labor which must fall upon you, and would show my sympathy for you, if I knew what particular trouble is heaviest on your hands at this time. But it would be idle to conjecture, and I have learned this much philosophy, that both duty and interest dictate the un divided application of our powers to the immediate occupation. Mine is to save f the health of one without whose society and affection the most successful re- . suits of all my most diligent exertions would be valueless ; you must attend to the more profitable duties. Mrs. Seward, continuing the journal of the tour, wrote to her sister : HABBISBUBG, June 5th. Our road has been through charming valleys and along mountain-sides, through scenery everywhere attractive, though Fred and I thought it a little too solitary when we heard the wolves howling in pursuit of deer, and were many miles from any human habitation. William had heard many fearful stories of attacks by wolves, robbers, and rattlesnakes, but we came through the danger ous passes unharmed, and dined at Trout Run, where, of course, the trout were the principal attraction. Three miles from Williamsport we stopped at the door of Colonel Burroughs. He lives on a farm of five hundred acres, in a high state of cultivation. The house is a little low cottage, just large enough to accommodate an old couple and their friends when they come to visit them. They are both upward of seventy-five years old. He is very dignified and gentlemanly in his manners, and was one of Washington s commanders. He is a Whig, an Antimason, and warm in his regard. She is the personification of good health and good-nature, and really seemed to take the pleasure she said she had, in making us comfort able. They urged us to remain two or three days, but we could only stay to dinner. The next morning our ride to Milton was delightful. I cannot describe the picturesque scenery along the Susquehanna, the glassy appearance of the river, the blue mountains in the distance reflected by its smooth surface, and the beau tiful little villages on its banks. The fine, smooth roads and handsome bridges added to the interest of the scene. I thought we could not have chosen a more pleasant route. There is an air of quiet repose about these villages which, with the primitive appearance of the buildings, gives them an especial charm. The 1836.] A CITY OF REFUGE. 265 log-houses in this country are altogether superior to ours, and may be called cot tages with propriety. They are built of hewn logs, filled in with wood, and then plastered between the logs. The plaster is whitewashed BO as to make a white stripe between each two logs. They are generally kept very neat. Rose bushes are trained against the sides of the house and over the whitewashed fences. I never could have imagined a log-house so attractive as many I have seen here. We passed through Milton, dined at another small village called Lewisburg, and staid that night at Cumberland, where we found a comfortable tavern. Here the two branches of the Susquehanna meet and mingle their waters. A pretty canal runs along the bank of one of them. We continued to drive by the side of these united streams, passed through two or three small towns, and lodged the next night at Liverpool. Having be come impatient to get letters from home that we knew must be waiting us at Harrisburg, we rose at half-past four and commenced our journey. We dined yesterday at a place on a small island the Susquehanna is full of islands. The house kept by Mrs. Duncan, a widow, is large, handsomely finished and furnished, well conducted, and surrounded by beautiful grounds. There we met ladies and gentlemen from Philadelphia, and others from Sunbury. The dinner was a little too stiff, but everything comme ilfaut. Sixteen miles more brought us to Harrisburg. We arrived here weary, at six o clock, and found no letters. The mail came again last evening, but no letters! I will keep this open till to-morrow morning and hope in the mean time to be more fortunate. Harris burg, you know, is the State capital. It is larger than Auburn. The house we are in reminds me somewhat of Bement s ; the servants are all colored, and neat in their personal appearance. It is midsummer here, the honeysuckles, pinks, eto., are in full bloom, and there are ripe strawberries on the table. Seward, resuming the journal, wrote : June 12th. Our friends at Harrisburg are earnest for the nomination of General Har rison for the presidency, and have done much to prepare the people s mind for that course. WINCHESTER, VIRGINIA, June \ih. Monday morning, rested and refreshed, with spirits restored by receiving letters from home, we rode to Carlisle. The country there is highly cultivated, and exhibits the appearance of much wealth and ease. Carlisle contains about four thousand inhabitants, and is principally distinguished as the seat of Dick inson College. The aspect of the town is somewhat more staid and ancient than that of villages of equal population in our State. As far north as Carlisle the places begin to assume the peculiar appearance which belongs to southern towns all over the world. The public square, carefully preserved shade-trees, balconies, and verandas, indicate to the traveler that he is arrived in a more genial clime. The southern part of Pennsylvania discovers also a great augmentation of the negro population, with all its different shades of color. It is the emigra tion ground, or rather the city of refuge, of fugitive slaves, each of whom, once securely settled after the danger of pursuit is over, furnishes in his cabin a harboring-place for others who seek the same mode of emancipation in prefer- LIFE AND LETTERS. [1885. ence to waiting their deliverance at the hands of either the Colonization or the Abolition Society. We remained at Carlisle until late in the afternoon, and then proceeded ten miles on what is called the " Walnut Bottom road " to a country inn, where we lodged that night. At this place we saw a small vineyard, planted and cultivated after the European manner. I was curious to learn what was its productive ness, as I have long believed it feasible and desirable to introduce the cultivation of the grape. I sought the owner, and soon learned from him that he is very tired of the experiment. He finds, in the first place, no person competent to manufacture the wine ; and, in the next place, the wine being of that kind which, in Europe, is used as freely as we use cider at dinner, and in lieu of coffee or tea at breakfast, there is no sale for it in this country. The owner called his overseer to converse with me, but he could not speak one word of English, and I was quite as ignorant of the German. I tasted the wine, and found it was a good Burgundy, worth seventy-five cents or a dollar in Paris, but almost valueless here. Our ride on Tuesday was to Chambersburg, a border town in Pennsylvania, twenty miles from the inn whence we act out. It is decidedly handsome. It contains four thousand inhabitants, and has extensive manufactures, on a very small stream. The description I have given of the aspect of Carlisle is appli cable also to Chambersburg, except that there is much more taste and beauty in the latter town. We left Chambersburg at half -past seven on Wednesday morning, and about two in the afternoon, after traveling a very rough road through a limestone region, arrived at Hagerstown, in the State of Maryland. We were now in a climate which yielded us the early fruits and vegetables freely. The young chickens also are served up to us at every meal, and peas, strawberries, and cherries, are no longer new. Hagerstown has reached what seems the maxi mum of population for towns in that region, four thousand, and is stationary. It has the aspect of much wealth and some ostentation, as well as dissipation ; but, as regards the taste exhibited in its dwellings, is inferior to Chambers burg and Carlisle. At Chambersburg we came to the Baltimore turnpike, a continuation or branch of the great " National Road." It ii the finest road in America, and may very well be compared to the great roads in England. A delightful ride through a luxuriant wheat-country, upon this road, brought us in the evening to Boonesborough, ten miles distant from Hagerstown. Here we had clean, pleasant rooms, and enjoyed a repose which renewed our strength. Boonesborough is a small, obscure village. We set out again on Thursday, at 7 A. M., and at ten, after a pleasant ride on a turnpike-road, arrived at the north branch of the Potomac. One glance at the scene before us would have been sufficient to assure us, had we been ignorant of it, that we were on the border of the " Old Dominion." On the Maryland shore was a large stone tavern, with piazzas, which, however pleasant it might otherwise have been, was repulsive to us, the court-yard being occupied by swine and the piazza by lounging topers. There was an intense sunshine pouring down on us, a nar row, muddy river before us, on the opposite shore of which stood the village of Shepherdstown. It was obvious, at the first view, that a bridge might, with the greatest ease, and at a very small expense, be erected there ; but this 1835.] HARPER S FERRY. 267 would be too great an enterprise. A small ferry-boat, or rather a scow, was fastened on the other side, and the sable boatmen were enjoying the shade of the mill. After we had made ineffectual attempt to quicken their action, by sounding a horn, we sought a refuge for ourselves from the sun s rays, and waited there the due time of the negroes. At length we were "put across," the scow being propelled by poles which reached the bottom in every part of the river. Shepherdstown is an ancient, dull-looking place. We waited two hours there, when, the sky having become overcast, we again started. And now we discovered evidences on every side that we had entered Virginia. We no longer passed frequent farm-houses, taverns, and shops, but our rough road conducted us through large plantations, in which the owner suffered the wood to stand by the roadside. The road had been very little labored, and was as obscure as those in the newer parts of our own State. The farm-houses had as appurtenances low log-huts, the habitations of slaves, and the farms, now covered by wheat and rye, were of greater dimensions than we usually see in New York. We met many travelers on horseback, but few carriages. Almost every white man was dressed with some pretension, like that of those who are, or affect to be, of the higher class in our villages, and this circumstance, among many others, indicated that we were in a land where color determines caste. After winding our way through circuitous passes for eight miles, we came again to the Potomac. We climbed its bank until we were three hundred feet above the water. Here was a waste, broken tract of land, with here and there an old, decaying habitation. Then we plunged into a ravine, over lime stone-rocks that rendered our road dangerous and difficult. Finally, climbing the opposite side, we reached Jefferson s Rock, the position taken by him in describing Harper s Ferry ; and there was that scene, just as he has described it, the site of which he pronounces worth a voyage across the Atlantic to see. The Shenandoah was on our right, the Potomac on our left ; the rivers united almost beneath our feet, and flowed on through what is supposed to be a passage effect ed by their pent-up floods to the ocean. But, after all, the Potomac was a shallow, muddy stream ; the Shenandoah figures larger in description than in reality, and the violent abruption of the mountain seems too great a work to have been effected by their united power. Harper s Ferry is a village, as we had been told, of twenty-five hundred inhabitants ; and the directions given us assured us that, if on the right road, we must now be within half a mile of that place. But no towers, steeples, or other objects appeared, to relieve our painful doubts whether we had not lost the way, nntil we had descended, by a winding road, a hundred and fifty feet, when we found ourselves in the midst of a train of carts employed in carrying earth from the hill to form an embankment of the new railroad across the valley. The weather was dry, and the dust rose in a cloud. We were left no discretion but to continue in this disagreeable procession, without even being able to see the cart next before us, and trusting that we were right because we were in the oloud. We thus wound our way down the declivity, and in the lowest depth of the valley, in a dell, we found Harper s Ferry. Here it was our intention to remain until Monday, but we fell into disagreeable lodgings. The next day we made our escape. We lodged at Charlestown on Friday night, and yesterday Afternoon reached this village, Winchester, at an early hour, much gratified LIFE AND LETTERS. [1885, with the promise which the general aspect of the village, as well as fche hotel, afforded of a quiet, easy resting-place for the Sahbath. Winchester lays claim to antiquity as venerable as any settlement west of the Blue Ridge. It was " Fort Loudon " in the old Indian War, and is the spot to which Washington retreated after Braddock s defeat. It bears un equivocal marks of this antiquity. The style of architecture, not only here, but in all this region, is fifty years behind that in vogue in our State. It is substantially built of bricks and logs, and wears the appearance of consider able business, but not of enterprise. The house in which we stop is celebrated far and near in the " Valley of Virginia." Life in this part of Virginia seems marked by profusion of luxury at the table, and in dress, poverty, meanness,, and much uncleanness, in the style and ordering of the household. Winchester is destined, however, soon to experience a renovation of its for tunes. A railroad will speedily be completed to Harper s Ferry. This will give Winchester the advantage to be derived from the transfer of goods and produce from the railroad-cars to the great wagons. In our ride up the Valley we have met hundreds of these six horse-wagons, employed in the transportation be tween Baltimore and Eastern Tennessee. The road we traveled is a thorough fare that seems not unlike the Great Western Turnpike in our State before the construction of the Erie Canal. You will understand, not only our past progress, but our future wanderings, by taking the map of Virginia, and following the main road from this place, through the valley between, the Blue Eidge and the Alleghany Mountains. We seem to be continually in an amphitheatre. Whenever on a lofty eminence both these ridges are in sight, and to the eye appear to converge and meet, form ing a circle and blending with the horizon. We are npon the site of headquar ters occupied by Washington in the Indian War, and traveling in a region sur veyed by him. WOODSTOCK, SHENANDOAH COUNTY, VIRGINIA, June I5tk. We are thus far arrived in our journey to the Natural Bridge with as much of comfort as we could reasonably anticipate. I selected the Natural Bridge as our destination, because it is necessary in every journey, although it be taken for pleasure and health alone, to have some point before us, so that traveling may assume something of the character of employment, and for the further rea son that curiosity to see that wonderful work of Nature serves partially to keep down that feeling of sadness which Frances and all persons like her must have in traveling through a slave State. On our way we intend to visit Wey- er s Cave. Both these singular instances of the caprice of Nature are well de scribed in Jefferson s " Notes on Virginia," as you doubtless recollect. It was necessary that I should travel in Virginia to have any idea of a slave State. We have now penetrated about seventy miles into the interior, and our travels have been confined to the valley between the Blue Ridge and the North Ridge, or Alleghany Mountains, a valley celebrated as the most flourishing in the State. An exhausted soil, old and decaying towns, wretchedly-neglected roads, and, in every respect, an absence of enterprise and improvement, distin guish the region through which we have come, in contrast to that in which we live. Such has been the effect of slavery. And yet the people are unconscious, not merely of the cause of the evil, but are in a great degree ignorant that other portions of the country enjoy greater prosperity. 1835.] THE "VALLEY OF VIRGINIA." 269 Shepherdstown, on the Potomac, is an old dull town of fifteen hundred peo ple, apparently destitute of trade. Harper s Ferry is becoming a considerable town by reason of its commanding position ; but nobody there seems to real ize its advantages. It contains about two thousand persons, crowded together upon a shelving, rocky point, at the confluence of the rivers, and it seems as if Nature herself had set barriers to any further extension of the village. You are aware that it is the place of manufacturing fire-arms, under the authority of the General Government. I visited the armory and the manufactories. There are in the former about eighty thousand muskets and rifles. The manufactories form a vast establishment, turning out one thousand stand of arms monthly. Charlestown, the county-seat of Jefferson County, is a very dull-looking place, about as large as Ovid, but far behind it in its general aspect. To-day we have reached Woodstock, the shire town of Shenandoah County. I should do injus tice to neglected and abandoned East Cayuga if I were to bring it into compari son with this place, the only one of importance in the county. Henceforth you may place no reliance upon newspaper assertions of the political change here. Virginia is a Van Buren State, by a majority of five thousand or more; and the "caucus system," now barely received by her poli ticians, will, in the end, abolish her glorious system of self-nominations the true secret, heretofore, of Virginian political independence and power. To his law-partner he next wrote : NATURAL BRIDGE, VIRGINIA, Jitne 21, 1835. MY DEAR BEAKDSLET : If I cannot help you examine witnesses in chancery suits, or fight special motions, or build houses, I can at least prove that I am not forgetting you. Our route through the " Valley of Virginia " has passed a suc cession of wretched-looking and dilapidated towns, built half of bricks and half of logs, whose retrograde aspect is in melancholy keeping with the sterile coun try. The road, for a great part of the distance, lies upon naked limestone-rock, and is rough enough. The average value of land is sixteen to twenty dollars per acre. I had thought that this part of Virginia, by reason of its being less oppressed under the curse of slavery, was exempted, in a great degree, from the evils suffered in that part of the State lying east of the Blue Ridge. But the " Valley," as this region is proudly called, has participated too deeply in the infatuation, not to say the guilt, of purchasing slaves, and lies " under the same condemnation." The great, chivalrous, proud Virginia the mother of Washington, of Jefferson, and Patrick Henry is reduced to the humiliating condition of a breeder of slaves for the Southern and Western markets, and the staple of her commerce is young slaves of both sexes. It adds to my commiseration for her that I find too much evidence that her political virtue has fallen with her pride and power. Bnt there are monuments in Virginia which are unchanged and unchangeable. They are the works of the great God, who has stamped upon them something of his own sublimity. On Thursday last we visited Weyer s Cave, in Augusta County. It is one of the greatest curiosities of Nature. Situated in a mountain lying midway between the Blue Ridge and the North Ridge, the entrance to it is in the steep declivity of the mountain-side, about two hundred and fifty feet above 270 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1836. the plain. Over the roof of the cave, the earth and limestone-rock are two hundred feet thick. The spacious subterranean region is divided into about thirty different chambers, varying in form and dimensions, some very regular, and some constructed as if to show by their height and graceful proportions, and their variety of decoration, the vanity of human efforts in the production of the sublime. The roof is adorned with rich and varied magnificence of stalactites, and the chambers seem as if constructed to please the fancy of some Oriental monarch. The stalagmites rise from the floor in every diversity of shape, re sembling monuments and devices of architecture. The grand scene is that called " Washington s Chamber," which is two hundred and seventy-five feet long, and has a glittering roof ninety feet high. The floor is a uniform level. As you ad vance, you see rising, in the light of your glimmering candle, a solemn, colossal statue in solitary grandeur in the very centre, whose size and drapery cause it to be regarded as the monument of him whose name the chamber bears. Figures of various size and shape are ranged along the sides of the apartment, which it is difficult not to regard as having been placed there by human hands. Certain it is that human gratitude and human talent could not devise so fitting a sepulchral tribute to the memory of the worthiest of Virginia s sons as this- subterranean vault found in her mountains. NATURAL BRIDGE, June 21st. Leaving the cave on Thursday, we passed through Staunton and Lexington, two very handsome towns. The country began to assume a broken and moun tainous appearance, and we made our way very painfully by winding between the rocky hills. This morning we have visited the bridge, and are deeply im pressed with its sublimity. It is a stupendous arch, which appears to have been hewed out of one great living rock. This creek is about one hundred feet wide. The banks, being the abutments, are perpendicular, and rise under the arch to about the height of one hundred and eighty feet. The bridge seems to have been formed by excavating all the rock below it. There is no perceptible seam or fissure. It has all the regularity of work done with the chisel. It is fifty feet thick, and about forty to sixty feet in width. "We crossed it without the slightest apprehension in our carriage. We descended into the chasm beneath, and spent hours in the luxury of looking at the gigantic arch. The letters frequently refer to the scenes that greet a traveler through a slaveholding and slave-trading region. One of these he afterward described : What is this slave-trade that we must favor and protect with such sacri fices? I have seen something of it. Besting one morning at an inn in Virginia I saw a woman, blind and decrepit with age, turning the ponderous wheel of a machine on the lawn, and overheard this conversation between her and my wife: " Is not that very hard work ? " " Why yes, mistress ; but I must do something, and this is all I can do now, I am so old." "How old are you?" " I don t know ; past sixty, they tell me." 1835.] VIRGINIA SLAVE-LIFE. 271 " Have you a husband? " " I don t know, mistress." " Have you ever had a husband ? " " Yes; I was married." " Where is he now ? " " I don t know, mistress ; he was sold." "Have you children?" " I don t know, mistress ; I had children, but they were sold." " How many ? " " Six." " Have you never heard from any of them since they were sold? " " No, mistress." " Do you not find it hard to bear up under such afflictions as these ? " " Why, yes, mistress ; but God does what he thinks best for us." A still sadder spectacle was that at a country tavern on the way, where the carriage had arrived just at sunset. A cloud of dust was seen slowly coming down the road, from which proceeded a confused noise of moaning, weeping, and shouting. Presently reaching the gate of the stable-yard, it disclosed itself. Ten naked little boys, between six and twelve years old, tied together, two and two, by their wrists, were all fastened to a long rope, and followed by a tall, gaunt white man, who, with his long lash, whipped up the sad and weary little pro cession, drove it to the horse-trough to drink, and thence to a shed, where they lay down on the ground and sobbed and moaned themselves to sleep. These were children gathered up at different plantations by the " trader," and were to be driven down to Richmond to be sold at auction, and taken South. William Johnson, the coachman, came, very soon after arriving in Virginia, to say that he was stopped in the street whenever he went out after sundown. " But you are a free man, William." " I told them so ; but they say it don t make any difference, that I have got to have a pass." So, on inquiry, it proved. There seemed to be no special police- regulation, or person in authority, to control the matter ; only a sort of general understanding that no colored man was allowed to be out after dark without a written permit from some white man, presumedly his employer, and that anybody who chose might stop him and demand to see it. At several of the places where they stopped for the night, the door- yard and barnyard, near the house, seemed to be literally swarming with black children, naked for the most part, engaged in antic capers, and chattering like so many monkeys. It was a merry sight, but the precursor of dismal consequences. Virginia was then " raising " slaves for the Southern market ; and these, as soon as they were old enough, 272 LIFE A** LETTERS. [1835. and " likely " enough, were to be disposed of to " traders," who went about the State, very much as drovers do who gather up cattle for market. Mrs. Seward, writing to her sister, remarked : We are now in the land of "corn-bread and bacon," where people " reckon 7 instead of "guessing," and call stones "rocks." We are told that we see slavery here in its mildest form. The plantations are cultivated much like our farms, and the slaves are principally domestics. But, " disguise thyself as thou wilt, still, slavery, thou art a bitter draught." I often think over the wrongs of this injured race. The feelings I have in regard to it have always made me feel a strong disin clination to travel in the Southern States, but I have so often been told that I might go from Maryland to Florida without meeting anything painful, that I began to believe my own impressions were incorrect, and my opinions preju diced by education. So I consented to try the experiment, with a faint hope that my fears were unfounded. I can only say that I envy not the apathy of those who can see every natural tie severed, their fellow-creatures transferred from one owner to another like brutes, without the least regard for their suffer ings, and yet experience no painful feelings ! Scenes of this kind continued to multiply as they approached Rich mond. The travelers, therefore, willingly gave up their intended visit to that capital, and at the Natural Bridge turned their horses heads northward and homeward. CHAPTER XIV. 1835. Virginia Hospitality. The Blue Ridge. Monticello. Jefferson. Fredericksburg. Mount Vemon. The Washington Estate. The National Capital in 1835. Visit to "Old Hickory." Baltimore and Philadelphia. The Biddies. Sully. Dr. Phy sick. Joseph Bonaparte. Long Branch Life. Old Memories and Traditions of Florida. The " Moon Hoax." Death of Mrs. Miller. The " Neutral Ground." MUCH of the region they were now passing through was so sparsely inhabited, and so unfrequently traveled, that there were no taverns, in the ordinary acceptation of the term. Travelers, however, fared all the better for this. On inquiry, they would be informed that there were families of planters, living near the road, who " entertained strangers." This meant that they were willing to give passing way farers a dinner, or a night s lodging. Some desired no recompense, others would receive in return some suitable compensation on their guests departure. Usually, this was pleasant for both parties. The family in that secluded region, while not seeking to make money out of 1835.] TRAVELERS EXPERIENCES. 273 their guests, were quite willing to see such rare visitors, and to hear from them the latest news of the outer world. The travelers finding themselves taken into the family circle, seated at a table loaded with rural luxuries, and treated with hospitable kindness by the entire house hold, white and black, congratulated themselves upon having such com fortable quarters, instead of the usual rough and noisy experiences of a country inn. These houses had no signs or advertisements ; but, on leaving one of them, the traveler would be told where he would find the next. For mid-day refreshment, there were also occasional " cake and beer." shops the cake being fresh gingerbread, and the beer often a home-brewed mixture. Provender for the horses could be obtained at almost any house ; and the streams through which the road ran afforded opportunities enough for watering. The journal was continued by Mrs. Seward : "We left the Natural Bridge on Monday, drove fourteen miles to Lexington, where we spent the night. On Tuesday we went only eighteen miles to a Mr. Steele s, in the country, a nice log-tavern, where we were very comfortable. We were often told before we left home that we could not travel in Virginia with any pleasure, because the taverns were so poor ; but we have found it quite the reverse. With but few exceptions, and those principally in large towns, we have found the accommodations better than in our own State. The houses, to be sure, are not large, nor splendidly furnished ; but they are so neat, and the people so hospitable, that we do not feel these deficiencies. The little taverns in the country are just like private houses, no noise, no bustle, no dram-drinking. Few of them keep spirituous liquors to sell, and of course they are not annoyed with the crowd of loungers who frequent a tavern in New York. The ladies are always ready to talk with you when you are inclined, and do not persecute you in that way when it is not agreeable. From Mr. Steele s we drove on Wednesday about thirty miles, passing through Greenville and Waynesboro, crossing the Blue Ridge at the Rock-Fish Gap. We intended sleeping that night on the mountain-top, where there is a fine house, but we arrived there so early that we concluded to descend. There is a charming prospect from the top of the ridge. That night we staid at Mr. Brooks s, at the foot of the mountain. Having now come into what is called u Old Virginia," which signifies that part east of the Blue Ridge, there is a perceptible increase of the colored population, and a waiter at the back of almost every chair at table. The next morning there was a drizzling rain ; but it did not prevent our starting after breakfast. The appearance of the clouds hanging on the moun tain declivities was very beautiful. Sometimes the entire mountain-side would be enveloped in this fleecy covering, with nothing but the base and top visible. Thursday we arrived at Charlottesville. Here we passed the remainder of the day, for the purpose of visiting Monticello, where Jefferson lived and died. From here Seward wrote : The tavern at which we stopped was an immense, old-fashioned edifice, greatly out of repair. On my remarking this to our landlord, lie gave me its history, 18 274 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835. saying that it was built by Robert C. Nicholas, for a private dwelling. He pro ceeded to tell me of Nicholas s death, and the emigration of one of his sons with a brother-in-law, a Mr. Rose, to the " Genesee country." " On this hint I spoke," saying that I knew the family of Mr. Nicholas, and also knew Mr. Robert S. Rose. This brought to me within a few minutes Mr. Rose, of Charlottesville, a brother of our friend ; and after a few moments conversation it seemed as though our old friend Robert S. Rose was with us. From the chamber in our hotel we had a view of Monticello, distant three miles. The mount rises to a height of six or seven hundred feet, and is covered with a native forest. The western angle of the edifice is discernible be tween the shade-trees, and they show us very plainly the oak which shades the grave of the man whose character has so long agitated the discussions of his countrymen, and whose principles have exerted a greater influence upon hi& country s destinies, for weal or woe, than those of any other of her sons. We drove the same day to Monticello, making our ascent by a steep road winding up the mountain-side. Mr. Jefferson was prodigal in expenditures. His cultivated lands were in the valleys ; the mountain was retained in its prim itive condition. The estate, after passing through the hands of an intermediate owner, came to be the property of Mr. Levy, of New York, a lieutenant in the Navy. He is said to have bought for twenty-seven hundred dollars what had cost Mr. Jefferson and his ancestors seventy thousand dollars. On arriving at the summit of the hill we found every door closed, and were fain to be content with a view of the exterior. But we had before us one of the most glorious prospects I ever looked upon ; the view terminated on the west by the long range of the Blue Ridge, and on the south and east by Carter s Mountains. In the intervening distance lay a highly-cultivated agricultural country, here and there interspersed with villages and country-seats. The mansion is built in imitation of European villas. It was evident that money had been lavished with a reckless hand. The annual expense of keeping the edifice and its appurtenances in repair must have been great. So with the gardens and grounds. We walked through a long avenue of tasteful shade-trees r and noted the rich profusion of shrubs and plants, carefully reared and culti vated ; but desolation is now coming over the scene. From the terraces we descended the hill to the burying-ground. It contains the ashes of the philoso pher, his wife, daughter, and some few relatives. A plain granite obelisk, eight or ten feet high, surmounts the grave of Jefferson. It bears no inscription, except the dates of his birth and death. The wall around the graveyard is in a very rough, dilapidated condition, and the whole scene seems to imply that, while the walks are daily trampled by the rude feet of the curious, visits of love or affection rarely greet the spot. Monticello, as its name imports, is a small eminence. Although neglected, it is still a magnificent place. The summit of the mount is leveled, and was once ornamented with a variety of choice trees and shrubs. Many of these have been cut down ; many have been dug up and carried away by the inhabitants of the neighboring country. I could not look upon these ravages unmoved. It must occasion much pain to his surviving daughter, Mrs. Randolph. There was a fine terrace in front and on two sides, which is now in a ruinous condition, and a beautiful lawn below is converted into a cornfield. Everything bears marks of neglect, and no one can visit the place without feeling regret that hi& 1835.] MONTICELLO AND MOUNT VERNON. 275 loss of fortune compelled his immediate descendants to allow it to pass into the hands of strangers. The day after visiting Monticello we visited the University of Charlottes- ville, of which Mr. Jefferson may be regarded as the founder. I know not what the obstacles are to successful collegiate education in the South ; but I. am bold to say that the plan and system of education in this institution are superior to those adopted in any other American college with which I am acquainted. The buildings are spacious. They are constructed upon a scale which does honor to the State. In the library we found a portion of Mr. Jefferson s collection of books, and his entire museum of natural and artificial curiosities. Continuing the journal, Mrs. Seward wrote : Yesterday we came to Orange Court-House, twenty-two miles, and here we stay over Sunday. I have just returned from " meeting," where we heard a very absurd discourse from a young divine, who attempted to explain the chem ical process of the transformation of Lot s wife. Sunday morning the blacks are allowed some hours to dispose of any little articles of produce they may have, at the store, in exchange for goods. The streets were thronged this morning with them, although this is a very small town. Most of them were miserably clad, many disabled by age, accident, or infirmity. Of course such scenes do not attract the attention of the people here who are accustomed to them ; but to me they were the source of many unpleasant reflections. July U. We left Orange Court-House in the evening, rode ten miles, and staid over night at a small country- tavern. The next day, a ride of twenty-six miles over a wretched road (a turnpike, by-the-way) brought us to Fredericksburg. This is one of the largest towns in Virginia. It is well built, a city resembling, though not so large as, Auburn. Fredericksburg is sixty miles from Washing ton. The road lies through a barren, uninteresting part of the country. The traveling between the two places is chiefly by steamboats ; consequently the road was bad, and the accommodations were poor ; I may say there were none at all, and we were obliged to stop at a house which had once been a tavern, but was discontinued for want of custom. We were treated with much kind ness and hospitality, and made as comfortable as circumstances would permit. Wednesday morning we started early, having a long ride in prospect, as we were obliged to go some miles out of our way in order to visit Mount Vernon, and there was no tavern nearer than Alexandria. We found a place to feed the horses, and ate our own dinner in the carriage. It consisted of cold ham, chickens, and biscuit, put up for us by the kind old lady with whom we passed the night. William gathered some fine, large blackberries for a dessert, and Fred s little tin cup supplied us with water from the spring. About four miles from Mount Vernon we found a church, which Washington used to attend. Of course we stopped to examine it. It must have been a very expensive building at the time it was erected. It is now occupied only by the birds, bats, and hornets. It is situated in a beautiful retired spot, and the fact of its having been Washington s place of worship invested it with sufficient interest. The road which we took to Mount Vernon apparently had not been passed over by a wagon in a year. 276 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835. It was overgrown by grass in many places, and the dry leaves of the last year remained undisturbed. We thought many times that we had lost our way, but were finally reassured by meeting a gentleman in a carriage, who directed us to the house, which was then about three miles distant. The Washington estate at Mount Vernon was formerly four thousand acres. It is now reduced to twelve hundred. There is something imposing in the approach to the seat of a country gentleman in Virginia. You enter by a gate, sometimes two or three miles from the house, which is hidden by the intervening forest. In the present instance we entered one gate, and drove about two miles to a second, where we found the porter s lodge ; and here commences at this period the Washington estate. Another mile brought us to the house. It is built of plank, in a manner which so well imitates stone that we supposed it to be the latter material, until we were informed to the contrary. We found the old guide near the door of one of the numerous houses which are attached to a gentleman s residence, for the accommodation of his slaves. Here, as at Monticello, they were well built and rather an ornamental part of the establishment, which is not always the case. The old black man said he " was raised by Mrs. Washing ton, the mother of the President." His next home was with her son, the father of Judge Washington. He passed from the father to the son, and came here to live when Judge Washington took possession of Mount Yernon. The judge died six or seven years ago, leaving no children ; and Mount Vernon became the property of his nephew, John A. Washington. He also died two years ago, and his widow and children are the present proprietors. The old slave spoke with much affection of his former master, the judge, who, he said, had never sold one of his children, and had made provision for him in his well. But John, the nephew, did not walk in the steps of his uncle ; and, when he suc ceeded to the estate, he divided the slaves among his relatives, and sold some of the old man s children, retaining only a small household. Henry sent in a card requesting permission to see the house, which was very politely accorded, and we were shown through the lower rooms by the lady s maid, a smiling mulatto woman. The house is of two stories and painted white. A piazza on the east side runs the whole length of the building, supported by eight fine large columns. The Potomac is at the foot of the lawn, and is here about four miles wide. The view from the piazza is charming. The house is plainly furnished, but every thing is in perfect order. A large hall through the centre is ornamented with pictures and busts. On one side of it is the President s library, the books re maining much as he left them ; but all the other furniture is changed. I re gretted this ; I think they should have left one room as it was when he died. A fire was burning on the hearth in the library ; an easy-chair and a book seemed to have been very recently abandoned, probably by Mrs. Washington, who, if pictures are to be trusted, is a very handsome woman of fifty-five or perhaps younger. We walked to the summer-house, and to the vault which contains the remains of Washington, and went through the garden. Here was a beautiful collection of greenhouse plants, and a grove of oranges and lemons in large tubs. Having satisfied the maid, the gardener, the old guide, and the porter, with a douceur, we left the premises amid their wishes for our pleasant journey. Altogether Mount Vernon is a beautiful place. The large ornamental trees, which were planted nearly a century ago, give it an air of antiquity and mag- 1835.] PRESIDENT JACKSON. 277 nificence which we do not find in our more newly-settled country. We drove seven miles to Alexandria, where we remained that night. The next day we drove on to Washington by the way of Georgetown, as the old bridge across the Potomac is impassable, and the new one unfinished. It is a distance of eight miles by a tedious, sandy road. We crossed the river at Georgetown in a horse-boat. Georgetown may be considered a part of Wash ington, as they are only separated by a creek. Washington is one of the most splendid of cities in theory and plan ; but, unfortunately, the design has never been executed, and at present the houses are scattered over a wide extent of country, laid out in unfinished streets. There is a wide avenue for every State in the Union. But Pennsylvania Avenue is the only one which can be said to be built up, and this not very compactly. The others have buildings sometimes on the corners where they are intersected by cross-streets; sometimes a block of considerable size, then a long, vacant space intervenes. You can imagine how a town thus scattered would appear ; the prominent buildings are the Capitol and the President s house, or " White House," built in similar style, both of freestone whitened. The Capitol is on an emi nence at the eastern extremity of the town. From a plan of the city, I see it was intended for the centre. The President s house is a mile northwest from the Capitol. From these two buildings the avenues diverge in every direction. The Capitol is a magnificent building ; I could point out many defects, but we will criticise when I can talk longer. It is in the Grecian style ; large Corin thian columns support pediments on each front. The capitals of these columns, as well as those of the interior, were carved in Italy. Passing through the porch you enter the Rotunda, of which every one has heard. It occupies the whole centre of the building ; its circular cornice is supported by pilasters with Corinthian capitals. Four large pictures by Trumbull, delineating scenes in the Revolution, occupy spaces on the wall ; and there are yet four spaces unfilled, because Congress cannot decide upon what artist to confer the honor. Here I am at the bottom of the page, and the third page too, and have but just entered the Rotunda, have not even looked up through the vaulted ceiling to the immense dome above, nor described the effect of the slightest noise, even a low whisper sounding like the murmuring of many waters. I must leave it all until I come home. The statuary, the library, the Senate and Representa tive Chamber, the terraces, the lawns, the parks, the beautifully graveled walks, and the profusion of shrubbery, and even your old friend McLean, of Seneca County, I must leave him too (he came in just as we were leaving the Capitol), or I shall never arrive at the "palace," the abiding-place of the "greatest and best," as Jackson men say. Henry went to see Governor Dickerson, who, you know, is now Secretary of the Navy. He received him very cordially, and said we must go and pay our respects to the President the next day. He called at eleven o clock with his nephew, Mr. Augustus Canfield. We were soon whirled over the macadamized road to the place of destination. The Secretary gave me his arm, Henry led our little boy, and we proceeded, unannounced, "to the presence." I thought this very unceremonious, at the time, but, when I expressed this opinion to that consummate politician McLean, he laughed at my simplicity, and said Dickerson had undoubtedly had a previous interview with " his royal master." The Presi dent sat writing at a table filled with blank commissions, to which he was affix- 278 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835. ing his signature. His audience-chamber was rather fantastically decorated with [here Mr. Seward takes up the pen and finishes the description] a multitude of portraits, paintings, busts, and statues, the tribute of the idolatry of his reign. The President was dressed in black, wearing a bead watch-chain of variegated colors, on which was probably recorded, by some enthusiastic admirer, his superiority to all men of every age and nation. He rose, and in the most obliging and courteous manner took us all by the hand, and requested us to sit. No gentleman could have exhibited more true politeness than this stormy veteran, who has so often and so truly been represented as acting like a raging lion. This politeness was peculiarly and happily exhibited in his introductory greet ings, and inquiries concerning Frances s health, and his attentions to the little boy. The subject of our visit to Monticello was mentioned. You are to know, by-the-way, that Lieutenant Levy, the present proprietor of Monticello, has procured a bronze statue of Mr. Jefferson, to be made at Paris, and presented to Congress. The House of Representatives voted to accept it ; the Senate did not care to receive it, or, for some other reason, have not acted on the subject. The superintendent of the Capitol has put it up in the Rotunda on a temporary pedestal. I observed that Monticello was greatly dilapidated. The President replied that, as he was informed, there was a sufficient cause for it in the fact that the present proprietor has not the means to repair the place. Forgetting that Lieutenant Levy was doubtless a Jackson man, and that our information concerning him was derived exclusively from his Whig neighbors in Virginia, F innocently said that he did not appear to be very kindly regarded by the people there. " Why," said the general, with much earnestness and decision, " he has done very well, though, in relation to Mr. Jefferson. That statue he has presented to Congress is a very handsome thing, and cost about fifteen hundred dollars." Mr. Secretary Dickerson said he thought it was not a very good likeness. This opinion of the minister was expressed with much hesitation of manner. " There, sir," said the general, with an air of conscious infallibility, " is where I think you are mistaken ; it is an excellent likeness, sir." Mr. Dickerson did not pursue the subject. "And I tell you," continued the general, "that I think, after the House of Representatives had voted to receive the statue, the conduct of the Senate in refusing to act upon the subject was very reprehensible I " " Perhaps," said Mr. Dickerson willing to permit the Senate to escape denunciation on this occasion " perhaps the Senate did not think it proper that the statue of Mr. Jefferson should be obtained in that way." " Well, sir, then they might have bought it, or bought a better one. That is no argument." The conversation proceeded in this manner : he was earnest and dogmatical ; Mr. Dickerson contented himself with mere hypothetical suggestions of his own opinions, but in no case insisted on them, and left "the greatest and best" to infer that he was convinced. I inquired (prefacing an apology if the inquiry were improper) what would probably be the result of the French question, and said I thought Mr. Living ston s last letter was a very able and satisfactory one upon the point, now the only one in the matter. 1835.] WASHINGTON AND BALTIMORE. 279 The President replied that Mr. Livingston s letter was conclusive, and ought to be satisfactory. I asked whether Mr. Livingston had any intimation, before leaving Paris, on the point whether the French Government intended to be satisfied with the view presented by him. The President answered : " We don t know anything about that, and don t want to know. We know we are satisfied ; they must take their own course ; they ll get no explanation from us." He continued, with warmth and energy : " There is no other way, sir, in private life, but to act justly do right, let people be satisfied with it or not, as they please. If they are just to you, it is very well ; if not, you must resort to such means as you can to compel them to be so ; it is the same between nations. No, no, sir, we can t have the French, or any other nation, interfering in our consultations ; that will never do." Thus, on every subject, of whatever magnitude, the President was peremp tory ; and it must be added that, as far as his opinions were expressed, they were intelligent and perspicuous. I have given you the above dialogue, not on account of the interest of the subject, but to convey to you an idea of the President s manner. We were surprised, after leaving the White House with the impression that war must follow, and that the cabinet at Washington would enter into no further discus sion on the subject, to hear Mr. Dickerson say that " there would be no war. If the French Government should ask for an explanation, they would receive a temperate, conciliatory answer, which," as he added, after a pause, " would put the French Government altogether in the wrong." It requires very little astuteness to see the manner in which the President s cabinet act. They fall in with him, and seem to yield to his views ; but often overreach and defeat them by the manner in which they affect to carry them into execution. When this cannot be done, they leave it to him to take his own course on his own responsibility. We have been convinced that we have been in no respect mistaken in our opinion of the President [here Mrs. Seward takes the pen and finishes the sentence and the letter] ; we found him polite, firm, chivalrous, passionate, and petulant. From the White House we went to the Patent- Office, and then again visited the Capitol. We spent an hour in the library, where were many curiosities, then returned to dine with Judge McLean, whom we had invited the day before. This is Gadsby s, the house in Washington. All the people there seem impressed with the idea that they have arrived at the summit of human glory in living in Washington, no matter what their occupation. Mr. Van Buren is there at pres ent. The President and suite go on Monday to Norfolk, " to escape for a while, * .as he said, " the cares and perplexities of office." At Baltimore, Seward wrote : July 5th. We left Washington on the morning of the 4th. The road from there to Baltimore is as barren of interest as that between Albany and Schenectady. We were surprised by the desolate aspect of Georgetown, which appears to command enviable facilities for trade and manufactures. Its safe and accessible harbor, its canal along the Potomac, its mills and numerous warehouses, and its enterprising merchants, have been unable to prevent Baltimore from monopoliz- 280 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835, ing the commerce, a portion of which was once enjoyed by Georgetown. Des titute as Washington is of shipping, trade, manufactures, or other resource than the patronage of the General Government, and the profit of entertaining public officers, employes, and visitors there, it wears an air of prosperity contrasted with Georgetown. Arriving at Baltimore, after a hard drive of thirty-seven miles, at eight in the evening, the post-office was closed, and a grum voice growled at me as I politely tapped at the window, " We deliver no letters to-night." I persevered, and made my way into the den from which the salutation proceeded. I soft ened the heart of the postmaster, and brought away ten letters and copious files of the Evening Journal. Mrs. Seward continued the narrative : Stopping at Barnum s Hotel, we spent two days and a half at Baltimore, went to church, visited the cathedral, and traversed the long, winding staircase to the top of the Washington Monument. In the cathedral, which is so much celebrated, I saw one fine picture. There were many others of inferior merit. This was presented by Louis XVIII. The subject is the "Descent from the Cross." The body of our Saviour is the principal figure. It quite realized my imaginings. The three Marys, Joseph of Arimathea, Nicodemus, and the be loved disciple, are the other persons represented. The monument is of white marble, one hundred and seventy feet high, surmounted by a colossal statue of Washington. We ascended on the inside by spiral steps ; it was perfectly dark, the only light we had proceeded from a lantern which Henry carried. The air was warm and close. From the top we had a fine view of the city, which is very substantially and compactly built, but by no means beautiful. A new hotel was altogether the finest building I saw. We attended the Episcopal Church on Sunday, and heard an excellent sermon from Mr. Wyatt. Monday afternoon we drove seventeen miles to a house in the country, where we fared tolerably. The next day, fourteen miles ride brought us to Havre de Grace, where we crossed the Susquehanna at its mouth, a mile and a quarter wide. Here we had a view of Chesapeake Bay. I was a little afraid to go on the scow, and our horse "Lion" was still more so. It was with great difficulty that William Johnson could get him on the boat. However, we reached the opposite shore in safety. Mr. Seward added : Burning the town has not had the effect upon Havre de Grace which burn ing the fields is said sometimes to have. It has not " rise^i like a phoenix " from the ashes to which Admiral Cochrane reduced it. The fact is, that the trade once enjoyed by Havre de Grace has been usurped by a small village called Port Deposit, situate on the opposite side of the Susquehanna, four miles farther up. At this point, the lumber and produce brought down the river are landed, and thence carried to Baltimore and Philadelphia. Fifteen miles farther we were obliged to stop at a miserable little house, six miles from Elkton, the place we had designed to reach. After an uncomforta ble night, a drive of eight or ten miles the next morning took us out of Mary land and brought us to the State of Delaware, which at this point is fifteen miles across. We hurried on for the purpose of taking the steamboat at Delaware 1835.] DELAWARE AND NEW JERSEY. 281 City, a high-sounding name bestowed on thirty or forty houses at the head of the bay. The boat was to pass there at twelve o clock. The distance from our start ing-place was twenty-one miles. We drove across the State, but our efforts were of no avail. We arrived at Delaware City, warm and weary, with jaded horses, just fifteen minutes after the boat had left the wharf. So we must wait another whole day. We could get across the bay in no other way. But we found a comfortable resting-place, a cool, clean house, nice beds, and a charm ing prospect from the windows, looking over Delaware Bay and River. So we are waiting till to-morrow for the same boat. The little State of Delaware, which people seem to us to treat without any respect, as a mere passage-way between other and greater States, is a beautiful and apparently rich and contented country. The scene around us here is delightful. While we have been lamenting our detention, a thunder-storm has come up and caused us to rejoice that we did not have to encounter its drenching torrents in the woods of New Jersey. The Delaware & Chesapeake Canal, connecting the two bays, seems to be burdened with sloops, bringing wood from Virginia, and taking Lehigh coal in exchange for it. We saw also large quantities of lumber there, in rafts, which, having been brought down the Susquehanna, were now being towed up the Delaware to Philadelphia. Mrs. Seward continued the story : The next day the boat came at noon, and, cheating us out of our dinner, carried us, wagon, horses, and all, to Salem, in New Jersey, ten miles down the bay, on the opposite shore. We drove that night eighteen miles to Bridgeton, a pretty village, forty miles from Bargaintown. The next day our road was through a country somewhat resembling the Desert of Sahara, with the addition of some dwarf oaks and pines. The sand is so white that, in the evening, it has the appearance of snow. We passed but three or four houses in traveling twenty miles. No place offered where there was any probability of procuring a tolerable dinner, so we paused in such shade as we could find, fed the horses, and dined on biscuit and cheese. We walked a little occasionally, to gather whortleberries, which abound here ; but the day was exceedingly warm, and the sand rendered walking no slight exertion. It was six o clock when we came to May s Landing, and we were still twelve miles from Bargaintown. We had come nearly thirty, over a very fatiguing, sandy road, and the horses were tired ; but we were unwilling to remain with the prospect of rather a poor night s lodging ; so we took a fresh pair of horses and a driver, leaving William John son, "Lion," and "the Doctor," to come on the next morning. BARGAINTOWN, Wednesday, July 15th. We have had a pleasant visit here. Yesterday we spent in a very fatiguing though delightful visit to the beach, where all went to bathe in the surf. To morrow we leave for Philadelphia, where we shall be detained a week. The names of the villages and hamlets among which they were now passing were a subject of some amusement and inquiry, as doubt less they have been to other travelers ; for among them were Great Egg Harbor, Little Egg Harbor, Hospitality Branch, Innskeep, Seven- 282 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835. Cross-Ways, White Horse, Long-a-coming, Mount Ephraixn, Neso- chaque, Stockingtown, Jericho, Green Tree, Raccoon Creek, Skull- town, Shiloah, Cohansey, Good Intent, and Jobsville. Seward, writing to Mr. Weed, said : PHILADELPHIA, July 19, 1835. We came in yesterday in time to hear the note of preparation for the Living ston dinner, and the sufficiency of clamor with which it passed off. [This was the dinner given to Mr. Livingston on his return from his mission to France.] What mockery of feeling is the action of masses of men or communities ! A week ago this city, if one might credit the newspapers, was overwhelmed with grief for the loss of Chief-Justice Marshall. Yesterday it resounded with ob streperous feasting in honor of a diplomatist whose feet make haste to the same bourne where the object of the city s lamentation is lost. It provokes a smile to see our friends reckoning upon the probabilities of Southern votes. I repeat what I have before said, that the battle was fought last year. The " spoils " might be conceded without another impotent struggle. I marvel at the belief that Kitner s success will have a bearing in our favor on the presidential election. It will result in a compromise, giving a prodigious vote to Van Buren. To what good, you will ask, are these gloomy speculations? Only to show the folly of reckoning on any possible success at this juncture in our efforts against the immovable majority. You are altogether right about the alien question. I almost lose sympathy with our brethren, when I see them act so madly. But it was always so, New York City politicians act and reason as if the city was the entire country. The journal was continued by Mrs. Seward. PHILADELPHIA, July 19<A. We are comfortably lodged with Mrs. Lloyd, a Quakeress, on Third Street. The house is small, but neat, and quiet within-doors ; and the rattling of vehicles without is less than on the principal thoroughfares. Monday Afternoon. We have just returned from Fairmount Water-works, and a beautiful place it is with its fountains, statues, and other embellishments. After we had inspected the machinery which supplies the city with water from the Schuylkill, we visited the United States Bank, a handsome building of white marble, and then went to look in at Peale s Museum. It is raining fast ; we cannot pursue sight-seeing further. You recollect Willis Gaylord Clark ? He is here ; is editor of a daily paper, besides being engaged upon the Knickerbocker, and several other periodi cals. PHILADELPHIA, July 21th. At nine this morning we went to Sully s to sit for the portraits ; in the after noon walked up Chestnut Street. In all the shops in Philadelphia, at least in all I have visited, the clerks are women, which is very agreeable, except when you find one who does not choose to please, and then I would rather deal with six men than with one of them. However, I have generally found them very ac commodating. Chestnut Street is the Broadway of Philadelphia. The shops are not as fine as in New York, but the goods are not so high-priced. Philadelphia 1835.] PHILADELPHIA. 283 contains a large number of handsome public buildings, and many pretty public squares ornamented with trees. The dwelling-houses are built with great uni formity ; the streets cross each other at right angles ; but most of them are too narrow to admit of fine effect from the shade-trees with which they are orna mented. But the perfect cleanliness makes everything agreeable. The water from the Schuylkill affords such facilities for cleansing that the city in that par ticular has an advantage over all others in the Union. The ladies dress with more taste in general than those in New York. You see none of the excess which is so much practised there. My pretty dressmaker (she is English, by-the- way) said she had never seen a lady well dressed in New York, though many overloaded with color and ornament. Sunday Afternoon. We have been to church this morning, notwithstanding the excessive heat. We went to see Bishop White preach ; it is not easy to hear him. He is eighty- seven years of age, appears very infirm, and speaks so indistinctly that I hardly heard one sentence. He is a venerable-looking old man, with hair perfectly white. Henry was more fortunate (men not wearing cottage bonnets do not have their ears covered), and says he did not lose any part of the sermon, which was plain and sensible. Thursday, we went with Mr. James Biddle three miles out to his country-seat, where Mrs. Biddle is at present with her four children. The place is beautifully situated on the bank of the Schuylkill. Mrs. Biddle was agreeable, the children pretty, Mr. Biddle always full of mirth, the most incessant of talkers and some times very eloquent. Saturday, I went to the painter s at nine, afterward visited the Mint, and the Academy of Fine Arts. Dr. Physick has called several times. He approved of our design of sea-bathing, and advised a continuance of our travels, adding that it was impossible for him to advise further without detaining us here a long time ; advised us to get out of the city as soon as possible ; to get lodgings at a private house at Long Branch if we could, and to avoid excitement and over- exertion. Dr. Physick is prepossessing in his appearance, and seems very con scientious in his practice. He is between sixty and seventy years of age, and only acts now as consulting physician. He seemed hurried, and to have his time much occupied. With the other letters there was always one to the little boy who had been left at home. Writing to Augustus, his father related the incidents of their stay in Philadelphia, the sights seen at Fairmount and at Peale s Museum. One passage may be reproduced here, illus trating as it does his sedulous care to instill patriotic principles into the minds of his children : In the museum there is also preserved a sash of blue ribbon which General Washington wore when he was commander-in-chief of the American army, in the Revolutionary War. It was presented by him to the founder of the museum. There is also preserved a manuscript song, written by Major Andr6, in deri sion of the American soldiers, about two weeks before he was captured as a spy. You remember who Major Andre" was, and how he was detected, tried, and hanged as a spy ? 284 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835- We went also to visit Independence Hall, which is the same room in which the first Congress of the United States sat when they adopted the Declaration of Independence, on the fourth of July, 1776. You have read so much history as to know that the reason why people celebrate the fourth of July is, because on that day, 1776, the Congress of the United States separated this country from Great Britain, and pronounced the people to be no longer subjects of the King of Great Britain, but free and independent, having the right to govern them selves. The British king and Parliament sent a great many armies here, and fought our forefathers seven years, to make them subjects again ; but the God of heaven gave the victory to the Americans, and we have ever since been free. It is the duty of every man to love his country, to do all in his power to pro mote its prosperity and honor, and to lay down his life for it, in the fear of God, if necessary. I hope you will always remember this, and in order to do so you ought to read the history of the ^Revolutionary War, and the lives of General Washington, General Warren, Lafayette, and other great and good men, who fought so long, so bravely, and finally so victoriously, for the liberties of their country. The journal was continued by Mrs. Seward : LONG BBANCH, August 2d. We left Philadelphia on Monday morning, finding it so cold that I could hardly keep warm, though wrapped in shawl and cloak ; and this succeeded a day which had been so warm that the thermometer rose to 94 in the shade. From Philadelphia to Bristol is sixteen miles. The road is very pleasant, the land all cultivated, and the country thickly settled. Bristol is on the Delaware, opposite Burlington. We crossed to the latter place in a very tiny steamboat. From Burlington to Bordentown is fourteen miles, and here we found the road much less agreeable. Deep sand, which renders the country barren and the traveling unpleasant, abounds in the southern part of New Jer sey. It was six o clock when we reached Bordentown. The evening being fine, we concluded to visit the Bonaparte place at once. So, after taking off the baggage, and making other arrangements for the night, we drove on. The house or " palace," as they call it here, of the ex-King of Spain is about half a mile from the village, and can be distinctly seen from the road. It is built of stone, covered with stucco of a lead-color, the style somewhat peculiar for America. The roof is low, surrounded with battlements. Bonaparte, you know, is in Europe, or was ; for he is expected home daily. His house is under going repairs, so we did not enter. At each end are buildings of corresponding style, appropriated to domestic affairs. The servants all seemed to be enjoying a holiday during the absence of their master. The maids, dressed in their best apparel, were promenading the graveled walks in company with their visitors. The men-servants were amusing themselves with a game of billiards in a salon on the first floor. The house is approached by two broad graveled roads, ornamented at the side by choice plants in boxes. The house is about as far from the road a yours, so that but a partial idea of the beauties of the place is given to the passer-by. I cannot tell the extent of the grounds, as I was unable to walk half over them. We went as far as the observatory, which is perhaps a quarter of a mile from the house. 1835.] JOSEPH BONAPARTE. There were fine roads and walks in every direction, embellished by ornament al trees and shrubs. Tasteful little bridges and summer-houses meet the eye, and give a picturesque effect to the scene. At the foot of the observatory is the fish-pond. But the shades of night now gathering around us, and our own fatigue, admonished us of the necessity of returning. I left this charming place with much regret, and not without curiosity to know whether he whose wealth had created so much to admire had sufficient taste to appreciate or contentment of disposition to enjoy it. It is now about two years, if I recollect right, since he went upon some wild suggestion of a sick heart to London, and sent a petition to the court of " the citizen king " to be allowed to visit his country. During that time his beautiful villa has been in the keeping of servants, and shows dilapidation and waste every where. It is, nevertheless, even in its present condition, a magnificent dwelling, and bears some comparison with the hereditary chateaux of European princes. Wednesday morning we set out in a drizzling rain, which continued until noon, rather improving the sandy roads. We staid that night at Monmouth Court-House, where court was sitting. Consequently all the houses were full of mud and lawyers. We selected the most quiet, which we left early Thursday morning, and arrived at this place (Eatontown), five miles from the beach, about eleven o clock. We prefer lodgings here to the crowded and comfortless board ing-houses immediately on the beach. Mr. Seward added : Frances monopolizes the entire correspondence with you, so I have to tell my marvelous " traveler s tales " to less kind and credulous listeners. But, as I see she has left out a whole chapter, I will supply it. We stopped at Borden- town, at the fashionable house, set up for the accommodation of travelers be tween Philadelphia and New York. We had a bedroom ten by twelve in the second story. In the morning she was too sick to travel, and it was cold and rainy. I proposed a fire, and asked the landlord, " Where ? " He said, " In the parlor, up-stairs." There was none except that which was inscribed " family- room," which had a sofa and a snug little fireplace. The sofa and tables were strewed with dolls and other toys of little girls, and as I entered it I saw it evacuated by half a dozen, all of one size. I had a fine oak-fire made up, drew out the sofa, brought Frances, laid her on it, shut the windows to make her comfortable, sat down and began to write a letter, when in came a middle- aged lady, the mother of the hopes whose delights were scattered around me. She retired in so much haste as to indicate a raging passion, and in three minutes afterward by the Shrewsbury clock entered a venerable grand-dame. She advanced to the windows, threw up the sash, opened all the windows. "Have you a particular wish, madam," said I, "to have that window open?" as she came to the one over Frances s head. " I like to have light and air in the room, sir," said she. She seated herself with her knitting-work, and called the darlings one, two, three, four, five, six and romp, helter-skelter, went children and grandmother. I carried Frances and her bed into our bed room. There, after three hours, I succeeded in getting a fire, and there we staid during the rainy day in July. When we met the interesting family of the up-stairs parlor at dinner we discovered that the lady had "brought her own silver forks and spoons." 286 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1885. Can you guess the moral of my chapter ? Frances says she cannot. It is, that none but refined and amiable people carry their silver forks and spoons when they travel ! Continuing the journal, Mrs. Seward wrote : LONG BRANCH, August 9th. We have been to the beach each day. In the forenoon a drive of less than an hour takes us to the sea, where we bathe without the presence of " a cloud of witnesses." We return in time to drive, and in the afternoon ride or walk as we please in the woods, coming back to tea. Wednesday we drove out in the morning for the purpose of seeing some falls about two miles from here, where it seemed to be the fashion for all the people from the Branch to go, once at least. Our ride was pleasant ; as for the falls, after getting a man to show us where they were, we found one flat rock about twelve feet high, over which water might fall if there was any ; but, unfortunately, it is all used by a neigh boring mill. The principal attraction for the multitude we had seen pass our door, instead of the falls, must have been "the cake and beer shop." The cake was very good, certainly ; and we came to the conclusion that they were not so very unwise after all. We then drove to Red Bank, where the steam boats land from New York. It is on a small river called the Shrewsbury Inlet. The boat had gone, so we saw nothing but the red sand reflected in the bright smooth river, with a few houses and shops, most of them with vanes of some form, to ascertain the direction of the wind. This seems to be a prevailing cus tom here near the ocean. Thursday it rained " from dawn of day to set of sun " without intermission. Of course, we were housed all day. I employed my time in pulling to pieces and improving a dress they had spoiled for me in Philadelphia. Henry em ployed himself in reading " Don Quixote " and smoking poor cigars. I sat down and wrote a letter that I had promised, but had not before found a con venient season. It is much harder to write some letters than others, if you have ever observed it. Well ! this long day actually came to a close, and, contrary to our expectations, the sun shone brightly next morning. At ten o clock we proceeded to the beach. The sea was anything but a mirror that day. The waves came roaring and foaming against the shore with a degree of violence that was terrific. Saturday being another fine day we improved much in the same way, re turned to dinner, and rode out two miles into the woods and among the huckle berries. Saturday is a day when all the country-people go to the beach to bathe, and return to this place to eat, drink, and make merry. There were about thirty who dined here, and danced afterward. We lost all this sport by being absent. When we came home their wagons were all at the door, and the com pany was about departing. Sunday we rode to Shrewsbury to church, about two miles. The country about here is very pleasant. The house we are at is kept by an old gentleman, with a bustling young wife. He has sons much older than she is. We have four or five rooms at our disposal ; there is very little company, and the good nature and obliging disposition make up for all deficien cies. She seems to study nothing but our comfort ; and, if she does not kill us with kindness, I think our digestion may be considered wonderful. Car riages are passing constantly to and from the beach. We are told that the 1836.] LONG BRANCH LIFE. 287 people at the boarding-houses on the beach suffered very much with cold during those chilly, wet days. The houses are built expressly for summer visitants ; of course, no conveniences or comforts are provided for such seasons as the past week. We congratulate ourselves more and more on having found such com fortable quarters. We eat, drink, and sleep, when and how we please, have a fire in our room when the thermometer is at eighty, if we prefer it, without being questioned. We shall probably remain here until Thursday. While at this hospitable house there occurred an incident that Sew- ard used to relate with humorous relish. One day, while sitting after dinner in the shade, a benevolent -looking old gentleman said : " Excuse me, sir, if I ask you an intrusive question ; but I see by the papers that there was a candidate for Governor in your State last fall the one who was defeated whose name was the same as yours. Pray, was he any relative of your family ? " Mr. Seward had to admit that he was. " A near relative ? " " Yes." " Not your father was it, sir ? " " No, not my father." A pause ensued ; and then, overcome by curiosity, the old gentle- man returned to the attack. " Could it have been a brother of yours ? " " Well, Mr. T ," said Seward, " I may as well confess to you that I am myself that unfortunate man ! " " Dear me," said the other with unaffected surprise and sympathy, " I should never have thought it, And so young, too ! I am very sorry. How near did you come to being elected ? " " Not very near. I only got a hundred and sixty-nine thousand votes." " A hundred and sixty-nine thousand votes, and not elected ? " was the astonished reply. " Why, that is more than all the candidates to gether ever get in New Jersey ! A hundred and good Heavens, sir ! how many votes does it take to elect a man in New York ? " FLORIDA, ORANGE COUNTY, August 20th. We left Long Branch last Thursday. We put our horses and wagon on board the steamboat in which we took passage, and came directly to New York, passing through the Shrewsbury Inlet into the ocean at Sandy Hook, and thence through the Narrows and the bay. About half-way on the voyage a strong wind, with thunder and lightning, came on. A sloop just before us was capsized, scattering her load of peaches. We went with the steamboat to the relief of the boatmen ; but another boat from New York came up, at the signal of the telegraph, and took off two men and a boy. The third man on board the sloop was drowned. When we left her she lay on her side, with her mast and sail floating on the water. We did not stop in New York, but put our horses before the wagon and drove across 288 LIF E AND LETTERS. [1835. the city in the rain ; crossed the North Kiver in a ferry-boat, and landed at Hoboken. There we staid that night, and next day drove through Newark and Morristown to Mendham. We staid there on Sunday. His native county, the home of his youth, was always full of attrac tions for him, and he loved to take his friends there to show them the picturesque scenery associated with so many recollections of his early days. On these occasions the older people whom he met always had hearty greeting for him as " Harry Seward," the name by which he was called in boyhood. At Auburn, Judge Miller still called him " Henry," the appellation which Mrs. Seward always used. He was no one s namesake, the name William Henry being his mother s choice. One of his boyish recollections was, that when a child he asked her who he was named after. She told him laughingly she did not know, unless it was Mr. William Henry, a respectable neighbor and farmer. And in reply to further inquiry as to what he was remarkable for, she said, "For his wisdom about fence-posts; " for on one occasion he gave his opinion that " cedar fence-posts, if well put down, will last a hun dred year ; " and when asked how he knew the fact, he replied that " he had tried it many a time." There were still remaining some of those who knew John Seward, his paternal grandfather, who took part in the Revolutionary War. Many incidents were related by them, illustrative of his energetic character. A young man, residing in New Jersey, he was one of the earliest to raise a company to join in the struggle for independence. In command of this company he fought, under Washington, at the battle of Long Island, shared in the subsequent retreat, and in the battle at White Plains. He was again engaged in the battle of Prince ton. Promoted to a militia colonelcy, he was in the battle of Mon- mouth ; and, in 1779, aided the expedition of " Mad Anthony Wayne " for the storming of Stony Point. With a part of his regiment he joined in the ineffectual pursuit of Brant, after the battle of Minisink. The Tories in his neighborhood heartily hated and feared him, and a reward of twenty pounds was offered for his head, " dead or alive." One story was of an attempt to decoy him into *an ambush. It was, that as Colonel Seward was sitting in the evening in his porch, an ill- looking fellow, mounted on a cadaverous steed, which he guided with a rope-halter, rode up and delivered to him what purported to be a message from General Washington. Colonel Seward, suspecting some treacherous design, after questioning him, said, sharply, " General Washington never sent you on such a horse as that, with such a mes sage as that to me ; " and, turning about, took down his rifle, which hung over the doorway. The spy, seeing himself discovered, hastily turned, and, whipping his horse, started to warn his confederates ; but 1885.] FLORIDA. THE MOON HOAX. 289 before he could reach the gateway a bullet from the colonel s rifle brought him down. Some of the descendants are still living, in Orange County, of a Hessian soldier who, having been captured by Colonel Seward, pre ferred to exchange the service of King George for the more profitable and peaceful avocation of a laborer on his farm. One of the old pieces of furniture in the house at Florida was a tall, old-fashioned clock, surmounted by brass ornaments. At one time when a new house was built, and the clock was moved there, it proved to be about a foot too high for the parlor ceiling, and, rather than give up the clock, the owner caused a hole to be made through the ceiling in one corner of the room. For many years it stood there, sonorously ticking away the hours, with the upper part of its head invisible. Chloe Coe, occasionally referred to in his letters from Florida, was born a slave to Judge Seward, and was one of those who subsequently became free under the State law of emancipation. A playmate with her master s children, she always had a special regard for " Master Harry." She is still living in the cottage which he provided for her. The concluding days of the journey homeward were related in a letter to Mr. Weed : Thursday morning we set out for home in a dense fog. We dragged a weari some journey under a burning sun, through Bloomingburg to Monticello, twenty-eight miles. On Friday we passed through the residue of that part of our route which lay in this State, bivouacked (though not literally) at Damascus, on the west side of the Delaware River ; having, with all diligence, accomplished no more than twenty-three miles over the " everlasting hills " of Sullivan County. On Saturday we descended into the valley of Tunkhannock and slept at a country inn. Our ride that day was thirty miles, over hills quite as difficult as those in Sullivan ; we rested on Sunday. Our landlady was sister to Barnum, of the City Hotel in Baltimore, and we were most munificently provided for after she learned that we had the good taste to stay at her brother s great house. The next day brought us, through a comparatively level country, and through a cold northwest wind, to Binghainton. It was the first time I have met Collier since certain events. I thought at first that he liked me not much ; but my suspicions yielded to his earnest offers of kindness. We continued our ride through Broome County to Owego, making forty-two miles for that day. We left Owego next morning, just as the generous Whig citizens of the town had completed their preparations for exhibiting me as a lion. They were disappointed, and I was sorry for it. But a sick lady was not to be restored to health by such oppressive kindness. That evening we arrived early at Ithaca, where we found Richard Varick De Witt and his wife, as agree able and interesting as when we saw her moving in fashionable life in Albany. And now, in the villages through which they passed, and taverns at which they stopped, people were talking about marvelous discoveries 19 290 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835. in the moon recently made by Sir John Herschel. The story ran that, while at the Cape of Good Hope, having erected a telescope of great magnifying power, he found that the moon had inhabitants ; and that he was able to discern and describe minutely their appearance and oc cupations nay, even to distinguish tailless beavers walking on two legs, amid beautiful vales and crystal lakes ; majestic temples, built by men with wings and angelic countenances, who spent their happy hours in collecting fruits, flying, bathing, and loitering on the summits of precipices of amethyst and mountains of sapphire ! This was the celebrated " Moon Hoax," written by Locke with so much plausibility and apparent scientific accuracy that it went the rounds of the press, and imposed upon the credulity of a large portion of the community, until finally denied and exposed by the great astron omer himself. When approaching home on their return from this journey, intelli gence reached them of the illness of Mrs. Paulina Miller, the grand mother of Mrs. Seward. Eighty-three years old, she had still pre served rare physical and intellectual vigor. She had led an eventful life. The early years after her marriage were spent at Bedford, West- chester County, in the " Neutral Ground," during the Revolutionary War. Her husband was a captain in the American army. Her mother was a loyalist. She used to recall a vivid picture of those " troublous times" by her tales of skirmishes between the "Regulars" and the Americans and between parties of the " Cow-Boys " and the " Skinners," of which she was an eye-witness. One morning a troop of British light-horse dashed into the little village, scattering its panic-stricken inhabitants, and in a few minutes she saw the houses of all her neigh bors blazing, and finally burned to ashes. Early in the present century she had come to the West with her son, after the death of his wife, to take charge of his household, and of the care and education of his two little girls, who were almost too young to remember their own mother. Seward s letter to Weed said : On Tuesday night we arrived at Mrs. Worden s in Aurora. We came into Auburn the next day (yesterday). Here was a scene of afflic tion, upon which I may not dwell. Mrs. Miller, who has been the only mother Frances has ever known, is prostrated upon a sick and, as we fear, death bed. We are greatly alarmed ; and the physicians think her recovery very doubtful. My poor wife is in the most anxious state ; I fear her strength is insufficient for the duties and solicitude so unexpectedly cast upon her. But such a sufferer, tinder alarming illness, I have never seen as is the object of our concern. She is free from pain and excitement, is tranquil, submissive, and confident. Her mind seemed never so strong, her earthly affections never so ardent, and her speech is eloquence itself. " Henry," said she to me this morning, " this sick ness has brought, in my view, the two worlds very near together. I feared you. 1835- 36.] "INCENDIARY PUBLICATIONS" AND RIOTS. 291 would not bring my daughter borne to me before I died ; but I felt assured that we should meet in a very short time, in a state where we could never be sepa rated. Remember you have my treasure in your keeping. Take care of it while Providence leaves it in your charge." AUBURN, October Uh. I have been three days confined to the house, in watching the dying bed of our deceased relative, in ministering to the comforts and wants of mourners, and attending the funeral. She was buried to-day in the Episcopal burying-ground by the side of the only one of her children who died before her. Mrs. Miller was a Baptist. Fond of religious thought and inquiry, she undoubtedly imparted to her children and grandchildren many of her own ideas on sacred subjects ; one of the most prominent of which was her dislike of sectarian disputes and prejudices. Seward, educated in like feelings at Union College, whose name implies its religious pur pose, always found ready concurrence on the part of the household at Auburn, when he referred to the broad Christian teachings of Dr. Nott. CHAPTER XV. 1835-1836. Abolitionists. " Incendiary Publications " and Riots. The Auburn & Owasco Canal Project. Harrison and Granger. The " Loco-focos." Webster and Clay s With- iwal. The Small-Bill Law. Town and Country Life. THE j*ear 1835 was marked by an increase of popular discussion on the subject of slavery, leading to fresh organization of societies op posed to that system, and these in turn leading to popular outbreaks, mobs, and riots, by those who desired to repress antislavery opinions. The Charleston (South Carolina) post-office was broken open, the mails rifled of antislavery publications, and meetings were held approving of this lawless proceeding. Petitions were circulated throughout the North, to abolish slavery and the slave-trade in the District of Colum bia, and those engaged in their circulation encountered a storm of re proaches. In presenting these petitions to Congress, John Quincy Adams took a leading part. It was an illustration of the temper of the times, that the grand- jury of the county of Oneida, apparently without exciting any popu lar indignation, brought in a presentment of " antislavery publications " as " incendiary," and called upon the people to " destroy all such pub lications, where and whenever they can be found." Dr. Crandall, a brother of Prudence Crandall, of the Canterbury School, while visiting Washington to lecture on natural science, was arrested and thrown into jail, as " an antislavery agitator." A meet- 292 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835- 36. ing of the Boston Female Antislavery Society was broken up by a mob ; Mr. Garrison was seized and dragged through the streets by the rioters, and was only saved from further violence by being put into jail. George Thompson, the English philanthropist, who had taken an active part in the West India emancipation, having come to this coun try, as was presumed, to aid in similar movements here, was mobbed in Plymouth County, and threatened with violence if he should re main in Boston. Another riot in Utica broke up the meeting of the New York Antislavery Society, and they were invited by Gerrit Smith to his home in the little town of Peterboro , as the only place where they could hold their discussion in safety and peace. Even in the capital of Vermont, antislavery meetings, held in the legislative halls, were assailed ; and in other portions of the State they were broken up. In Pennsylvania twenty-five out of thirty meetings were inter rupted. Hitherto the antislavery movement had excited but little attention or interest on the part of the mass of the people ; its participators, having no connection with either of the great political parties, were regarded by some as Utopian philanthropists, by others as dangerous fanatics ; and even by those who sympathized in their purposes, as likely to accomplish little in the way of political action, however much they might achieve by works of private benevolence. But the occurrences of 1835 put a new phase upon the question, when the Government itself took ground against the right even to dis cuss it. The Postmaster-General, in his instructions to postmasters, encouraged and approved the suppression of antislavery publications in the mails, although he admitted there was no law for such action. President Jackson, in his annual message to Congress, called attention " to the painful excitement in the South," and suggested " the propri ety of passing such a law as would prohibit, under severe penalties, the circulation in the Southern States, through the mails, of incendiary publications, intended to instigate the slaves to insurrection." So be gan the epoch of popular and congressional debate, lasting in its vari ous phases, and with alternations of various fortune, for thirty years. The Democratic party as a whole, whatever might be the individual opinions of its members, was committed to the side of the slaveholders, by the action of its leaders, and their continued desire to secure the support of the South. The Whigs, being also desirous of a Southern following, were chary of accepting the issue thus tendered them by their opponents, or of committing their party to any positive support of the antislavery movement. Nevertheless, they were charged by the other side with sympathy in it ; and the charge was measurably true, as they were engaged in an attempt to overthrow the Administra tion ; and the drift of public events was compelling each party in that 1836- 36.] AUBURN & OWASCO CANAL. 293 contest to assume more advanced ground, for and against the mainte nance and spread of slavery. Seward, in a letter to Mr. Weed, said : The clamor against abolitionists will (as such violent efforts always do) pro duce reaction. It may probably be followed up by similar meetings, in the large towns and villages. The very fact that no honorable, or high-minded, or repu table man, in the North, even in the very excitement of mass meetings, will lend his sanction to the monstrous claims of the South, for legislation against aboli tionists, and the still more monstrous conduct of the Post-Office Department, prove that, if the South persist, the issue will be changed, fearfully changed for them. The abolition question can in no other way injure Van Buren, than in driv ing the South to the support of an exclusively Southern candidate, who acknowl edges the " divine right " to hold the negro race in slavery, and regards slavery as " a blessing." I think those err, who suppose that the efforts at the North to extirpate abolitionism will tranquilize the South. No such thing ; they will only add fuel to the excitement at the South ; and the period before the election is so short, that there will be no time for reaction. What is more probable is, that whatever is done in the North by abolition and antiabolition men, will be insufficient to break the spell of Jacksonism at the South. And, in sober hon esty, I dare not, cannot wish that Jacksonism should be thus uprooted from its hold, because the result will be a permanent geographical line between the par ties. I trust in God that the Van Buren men in the North will not attempt to enact " potent legal restraints " (against antislavery publications) ; but, if they do, their name will from that moment be " Ichabod." Those laws bring a ques tion of awful import home to every man s understanding and heart, and no party in the North can sustain itself after enacting such measures. It is dan gerous so far to encourage the abominable demands of the South. In this year an enterprise which had long been a subject of discus sion, at Auburn, ripened into execution. This was a project for a canal. Many years before, while the work on the Erie Canal was in progress, the people of Auburn had made unavailing efforts to have that great channel of commerce pass through the village. But the engineers, doubtless wisely, decided it to be more feasible to carry the line across the easy level of the Montezuma marshes than to try to bring it through Auburn, a town standing upon hills, and surrounded by them. When the Erie Canal was completed, and opened in 1825, Auburn par ticipated in the celebration, and sent its delegation of citizens to greet Governor Clinton, with salutes, bonfires, and fireworks, as he passed through Weedsport with his suite, on board of the first packet-boat, the Seneca. After the Erie Canal had proved a success, and while railways were, as yet, an untried experiment, the people of Auburn had come to believe that a canal was essential to their commercial advance ment and prosperity. Although debarred from the advantages of the main line, it was still believed that Auburn could easily share in them 294 LIFE ANI) LETTERS. [1835- 36. by constructing a lateral canal, to connect with it. This project, during the succeeding years, took various forms ; and was the subject of va rious meetings, surveys, and legislative applications, by the citizens of the village. In all these movements, Seward had taken the more or less prominent part assigned to him. Finally, in June, 1835, a company was organized and incorporated with a capital of one hundred thousand dollars, and a board of directors chosen, comprising John M. Sherwood, Elijah Miller, Henry Polhemus, Amos Underwood, William H. Seward, George H. Wood, Nelson Beards- ley, N. B. Carhart, and Henry Yates. The plan now adopted was to erect a dam, thirty-eight feet high, which would raise the Owasco out let to the level of the lake ; thus, in effect, extending the surface of the lake a distance of two and a half miles to the town, and securing a channel deep enough for steam navigation, throughout its entire length. Then the plan contemplated a navigable canal, from this dam to a basin and reservoir, some distance below, where the water would be dis charged into the river, as required for hydraulic power, over wheels thirty feet in diameter, thus largely enhancing the manufacturing facil ities of Auburn, while its commercial communication would be opened by building a railway from this basin to the Erie Canal. It was also deemed probable that the lake and canal navigation could be still further extended by connecting the inlet of the lake with the Susque- hanna River. It was believed that mills and manufactories would at once spring up in the town, and that vessels would bring lumber, grain, wool, etc., down the lake and canal, while, among the incidental advan tages, would be an ample supply of water for household use and for the prevention of fires. On the 14th of October, the corner-stone of the " Auburn & Owasco Canal," or rather of the great dam which was to create it, was laid with imposing ceremony. The inhabitants of the adjoining towns came, in large numbers, to join in the celebration. There was a pro cession of military and civic bodies, followed by cars on which the various mechanics and manufacturers were exercising their vocations ; the stone-cutters dressing the blocks of stone to be used in the dam, and the printers striking off and distributing among the crowd an ode celebrating the praises of the enterprise, and of " the fairest city of the West." There were prayers and benediction by the clergy, salutes by the artillery, an address by Seward, a dinner at the American Hotel, presided over by Elijah Miller, John Porter, U. F. Doubleday, and Colo nel John Richardson. There were toasts and speeches, enthusiastic and patriotic, and there was a ball at the Western Exchange to close the day s festivities. Seward s address described the plan of the work, the growth and resources of Auburn, the commercial and agricultural condition, and 1835- 36.J RAILWAY TO SYRACUSE. 295 probable future of trade, in the region of which it formed a part. It awarded due credit to the promoters of the enterprise, and shared in the anticipations of the benefits to result from it. It enunciated with boldness the views in regard to internal improvements which had gov erned his legislative action, remarking : If all the internal improvements required to cross this State were to be made at once, the debt which would be created would not impair the public credit or retard the public prosperity a single year. The expenses of a single year of war would exceed the whole sum of such cost. These doctrines seemed at the time rather ultra, even to his own political friends. But the experience of the relative cost of improve ments and of war, which the State had, during the next thirty years, proved his calculations not very far wrong. According to his habit of looking forward toward the national fu ture, he added : Wealth and prosperity have always served as the guides which introduced vice, luxury and corruption, into republics. And luxury, vice, and corruption, have subverted every republic which has preceded us, that had force enough, in its uncorrupted state, to resist foreign invasion. This was a warning against a danger which, to his rural audience, must have seemed by no means imminent. Events in subsequent his tory, however, showed it to be a real one. Adverting to the principle already announced as a cardinal one in his political faith, he remarked : The perpetuity of this Union is, and ought to be, the object of the most persevering and watchful solicitude on the part of every American citizen. And when called upon for his toast at the dinner, he gave : " The Union of these States. It must be preserved. Our prosperity began, and will end with it." The work on the dam was commenced at once. It was raised to a height of twenty-five feet, or twice the previous elevation. Here it paused. The further execution of the canal project was delayed until the public mind had come to learn the greater feasibility and cheapness of railways, and the canal was abandoned. Nevertheless, the benefits expected from the enterprise have nearly all been attained, although the enterprise itself failed. Since the construction of the dam, and the development of its manufactures, Auburn has gained the water-works, the railways, the trade, the population, and the channels of commerce, it then sought. Another projected improvement, though one regarded with much difference of opinion in the community, was a railroad to Syracuse. > 296 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835- 36. One of the primary motives for its inception was to effect communica tion between Auburn and the Erie Canal, then the great thoroughfare of trade and travel. That it would ultimately become a part of a long line of railway between the seaboard and the West was hardly yet believed. It was the third link in that great chain ; the Mohawk & Hudson Railroad having been the first, and the Utica & Schenectady Railroad the next. The Auburn & Syracuse Railroad was incorporated in 1834, and subscription-books were opened for the stock. But the engineering difficulties on the route (confessedly great), and the doubt as to the possibility of its ever doing a paying business, occasioned the enterprise to drag. Work was begun on the line in the summer of 1835. Projects for railroads from Auburn to Rochester, and from Au burn to Ithaca, now began to be canvassed. All these efforts in the direction of internal improvement, of course, had Seward s earnest support. November found the political situation not materially changed, the Democratic party retaining its supremacy, and the Whigs in almost a hopeless minority. Mr. Van Buren was in the field as a candidate for the presidency at the election of the ensuing year, having received the unanimous nomination of the National Democratic Convention in May, with Richard M. Johnson, of Kentucky, for Vice-President. The prob able success of that ticket was so generally acknowledged, that the fall election of 1835 aroused little contest, except in a few localities. The Democrats carried seven of the eight Senate districts in the State, and a large majority of the Assembly. In December the country was startled with the news of a great and destructive fire in New York, still memorable in its annals, which de stroyed what was then the chief business portion of the city, com prised between Wall and Broad Streets and the East River. Though less in actual extent than the conflagrations of later years in Chicago and Boston, yet its effect, both upon the city and upon the general business of the country, was relatively as disastrous and wide-spread. During the winter Seward continued steadily at work at profes sional duties. He found time, however, to give his aid, when called upon, to movements for local or public benefit. The Auburn Journal and Advertiser chronicles his attendance and participation as secre tary, chairman, committee-man, or commissioner, at the several meet ings held to establish a college to be located at Auburn. The vener able Bishop Hedding, and the Rev. Dr. Samuel Luckey, of Lima, were named among the trustees. The Methodist Episcopal Church took an especial interest in the enterprise, for, at that time, as they stated, they were not represented by a professor in any one of the colleges of the State. It was not to be a sectarian institution, however. The Rev. William Lucas, of the Episcopal Church, ex-Governor Throop, 1835- 36.] HARRISON AND GRANGER. 297 and leading members of other denominations, were also to be trus tees. The citizens of the town opened subscriptions to its fund. The commercial revulsion, which came a year or two later, checked and finally defeated the enterprise. The same journal also records the proceedings of village meetings, to extend the boundaries and amend the charter of Auburn, in view of the increase of its population. From this record it appears " that General William H. Seward had drawn up a charter, at the request of the trustees, which was then read by him and unanimously adopted." A new act of incorporation, framed in accordance therewith, and passed by the Legislature, went into operation in the spring of 1836. Cases in the Supreme Court, which was then held at the capital, as well as duties in reference to the village improvements, now called Seward to Albany. He wrote from there in January, describing his meetings with old friends, and alluding to " the immense snow-banks which lie between Auburn and the capital." This snow-fall was one of those memorable ones which " the oldest inhabitant " likes to recall. A two days storm of wet, heavy flakes covered the ground to the depth of four feet in the central part of the State. Roofs were crushed in, roads blockaded, stages ceased to run, farmers were snow bound in their houses, cut off from their cattle, and even from fuel and provision. The village hay-scales at Auburn recorded the pressure of the superincumbent mass upon it to be eighteen hundred-weight. The milkman, after three days suspension of business, at last made his round through the streets drawn by three yoke of oxen ; " as to other vehicles," remarked the Auburn Journal, " they seem for the time being to be annihilated." One of the subjects of conference with political friends, during this visit to Albany, was the plan for the canvass of the approaching presi dential election. There was little hope of obtaining a majority of the electoral votes ; but there was a possibility that the Whigs might carry States enough to throw the election into the House of Representatives. At all events, it was the part of wisdom to take such steps as would keep up the Whig organization, and would secure the largest number of local triumphs. So, instead of uniting in a national convention, the Whigs of different States made such nominations as they deemed strong est. Daniel Webster had already been nominated in Massachusetts, Judge McLean in Ohio ; Hugh L. White was nominated as an inde pendent candidate in Tennessee, Georgia, and Alabama ; and General Harrison was put in nomination by Whig Conventions in Indiana and Ohio. Born in Virginia, the birthplace of so many Presidents, the son of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, a youthful aide-de camp of Wayne, and holding his first commission from President Wash- 298 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1835- 36. ington, Harrison was a soldier who, like Jackson, had achieved vic tories in the War of 1812. He had served as Secretary of the North west Territory, then as Governor, and afterward was elected to the House of Representatives from Cincinnati, then to the Senate, where he took General Jackson s place as chairman of the Military Commit tee. He was a supporter of the Administration of John Quincy Adams, and was by him accredited as minister to Colombia, to enter upon diplo matic relations with President Bolivar, the " Liberator of Spanish America." To add to this unimpeachable record, he had lived of late years in retirement, and so had escaped identification with any of the conflicting factions at Washington. In December he was nominated at Harrisburg, with Francis Gran ger as candidate for Vice-President, by the Pennsylvania Whigs, and these nominations were unanimously indorsed by the Whig State Con vention at Albany in February. The friends of Mr. Clay in these States did not hesitate to give Harrison their support, as their own favorite this year did not seek a nomination in a contest offering so little hope of success. Meanwhile, there came news each week from Washington of stormy discussions in Congress, which, though they showed the strength, hard ly seemed auspicious for the continued harmony of the Administration party. Long and high debates ensued between Whigs and Demo crats, and between Democrats themselves. There was a debate upon the President s recommendation of a law to prohibit the sending of " incendiary publications " by mail, and Calhoun s report of a bill to exclude everything from the mails which any Southern State might deem " incendiary." There was a debate over the Southern demand of " penal laws " in Northern States against " agitators," and over the natural hesitation of Northern States to enact such laws. There was a debate over the right of petition, and especially the right to petition for the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia; a debate over the admission of Michigan as a free State, balanced by Arkansas as a slaveholding one ; a debate over the extension of the Missouri boundary, giving up an Indian reservation to the slaveholders. There was a debate over the hostilities now opened with the Seminoles in Florida, in regard to their lands, the fugitives whom they harbored, and the United States troops whom they massacred ; and a debate over recognizing the independence of Texas, now in successful revolt against Mexico. There were debates over questions of the distribution of surplus revenues, and the regulation of public deposits ; over the question of our claims against France for money, and the claim of France against us for an apology ; debates over the question of con firming Taney s nomination for Chief -Justice Marshall s place ; debates over the past issue of the National Bank, and the present one of Ben- 1836- 36.] THE "SMALL-BILL LAW." 299 ton s resolution to " expunge " from the record the censure of the President for his action in regard to it. Nor were the advices from Albany and New York without some interest. Governor Marcy had warned the Legislature in his messages against the increase of banks and banking capital as aiding an " un regulated spirit of speculation." Yet banks and banking capital continued to increase under legis lative sanction, until their expansion led to the formation of a new faction in the Democratic party, prepared to dispute its control, and avowedly opposed not only to all banks, but to all paper currency. This faction called themselves " Equal-Rights Men," but had gained the sobriquet of " Loco-focos," from a tumultuous meeting at Tammany Hall. On that occasion the regular Democrats finding themselves out numbered, endeavored to break up the meeting by putting out the lights, but were defeated by the prudent forethought of the " Equal- Rights Men," who had provided themselves with "loco-foco" matches to light them again, and so continued the proceedings. The name of " Loco-foco " was, however, soon used indiscriminately by the Whigs, who applied it to all factions and all members of the Democratic party. Letters to Mr. Weed alluded to the political outlook : AUBURN, February Vlth. I am daily told, but listen with incredulous ears, that the bank will save Pennsylvania. In truth, I think the bank will lose to us Pennsylvania. I do not believe that the bank has now such wonder-working charm as to convert its worst enemies. But there is no doubt in my mind that Pennsylvania would, in any event, " bank or no bank," go for Van Buren. February Nth. I am less sanguine than you of the result of Webster s withdrawal in favor of Harrison. In short, I am altogether incredulous. The downward tendency of things has not, in my judgment, been arrested, nor will it be. But why dwell on the gloomy side ? Heaven knows, not to induce a moment s relaxation of effort. Tell me about Granger ; how he looked, what he said, and what he thought. I am curious to know whether he is shaken from his coolness by the animating reports which he, like all other candidates, is sure to hear at Washington. I do, every day and every hour, see evidence that General Harrison is capable of be ing made, under any other circumstances than the present, an invincible candi date. But the time has not come ; the great issue is pressed upon us before men are ripe. One of the results of the " hard-money " theories now prevailing, was an act passed by the New York Legislature in 1835, called the "Small-bill Law." This prohibited the circulation of bank-notes under five dollars. It originated, possibly, in the desire to imitate the English practice of having bank-notes only for one pound sterling and 300 LIFE AND BETTERS. [1835- 36. upward, and in the belief that such a restriction would lead to the employment of specie in the minor business transactions of every-day life. While it lasted it gave rise to numerous petty inconveniences, one of which is alluded to in a letter of May, 1836 : I thought traveling by boat from Utica would be more comfortable, and so went on board the packet at six. It was a beautiful day, and the valley of the Mohawk smiled beneath the bright sun. The passengers were all strangers to me, but of course all Whigs, and I was, unfortunately, there, as I yet am doomed a little longer to be, a hero, for the lack of another or better. There was but one trouble : seven passengers insisted upon paying their fare in Michi gan three-dollar bills, the circulation of which is prohibited in this State ; they quarreled with the captain s agent, who suspected them of a design to pay him in depreciated paper. I finally quieted the excitement by taking their uncurrent money and giving them Auburn five-dollar bills in exchange, stipulating, how ever, that there should be no more words on the subject. NEW YOEK, May 20, 1836. Here I am at the City Hotel, in No. 46, which is small enough, and dark enough, and cold enough, to make me wish myself at home again. I fell into the city hurry as soon as I landed, and pressed forward to accomplish what I had to do in order to return last evening. There is, or ought to be, one man in the city whom I must see on a matter of business, and it seems to me I have seen everybody else. I met Auburn people, and people from everywhere. Some are talking of coming here to reside ; I marvel at such a desire. The population of so great a town is altogether too excitable; the feelings and customs which prevail are too factitious for my taste. The great topic of the town yesterday was the riot of the preceding night at the theatre, got up to settle the dispute about the conduct of Mr. and Mrs. Wood. Jn the print-shops on Broadway there is exhibited at every corner an engraving of Ellen Jewett. Another caterer for the vitiated taste of the metropolis has a likeness of Frank Kivers, " the supposed murderer of Ellen Jewett ; " and a third, not to be out done, has brought out a picture called " the real Ellen Jewett." It would be endless to detail all such incidents and observations. NEW YOEK, June \st. My law-business drags, and is protracted by circumstances and surroundings. I sit down and commence my labor by drawing up papers at nine every morn ing. Calls, messages, errands, letters, interrupt me every hour ; and, at last with little accomplished, the dinner-hour comes at half -past three. It is entirely the same, whether I dine out or dine at home. It is the business of the rest of the day. I must invite some to dine with me ; others invite themselves ; and the dinner and its engagements close at midnight. Everybody is here, and everybody is hospitable and kind ; and everybody will not let me be a churl. 1836.] GOING TO CHAUTAUQUA. 301 CHAPTER XVI. 1836. The Holland Land Company. Trouble with Settlers. A Fortified Land-Office. Se ward as Pacificator. Life at Westfield. A Night Attack. Geology and Science. Exploring Chautauqua County. GARY, Lay, and Schermerhorn, were in trouble with the settlers on their huge purchase from the Holland Land Company, and needed some man who, with legal skill, should combine tact, address, resolu tion, suavity, and courage, to go out among the settlers, and endeavor to allay the storm, which had already culminated in the destruction of the Chautauqua land-office, refusal to pay for lands, and open defi ance of the new owners. Weed was of opinion that Gary s senatorial colleague was the very man they wanted, who would save their prop erty from destruction. Then turning to Seward himself, he urged him to accept the difficult and responsible post as one in which success would lead to competence, and perhaps even to wealth. Gary, Lay, and Schermerhorn, fell in with these views at once, in vited Seward to go with them to their domain, and become their agent or partner. Before leaving New York he had nearly made up his mind to accept their offers. On his way home to Auburn he paused at Utica, where the Whig State Convention had just nominated a Har rison electoral ticket, and made Judge Buel the Whig candidate for Governor. AUBURN, June 14, 1836. Gary and I stopped at Utica overnight ; and just in time, the convention having agreed informally upon our nominations. I saw more or less of the delegates, and satisfied some who thought that my feelings might have been wounded. Works, Rochester, and others, made a point of my remaining and taking a seat in the convention, on invitation and making a speech. I declined, for the true reason, that I did not want to appear disposed to trade upon my nomination beyond the period and purpose for which it was made ; but I author ized all of them to say for me anything that they might think it important or desirable that I should say. I have, "for better for worse," declared to Rathbone and the others that I am ready to undertake the business. John Porter, of Auburn, now came into the partnership to take charge of the counsel business during Seward s absence in Chautauqua, and the sign of " Seward, Porter & Beardsley," remained on the door of No. 1, Exchange Block, for some years thereafter. On his way to meet the owners for consultation, he wrote : KOCHESTER, June I had no conception of the wretched condition of the roads when I left home. We left the stage-office at half -past ten at night ; traveled diligently all night, 302 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1836. and reached Geneva at half -past five yesterday morning. We narrowly escaped upsetting several times. At Geneva we determined to leave the main road. We took a stage. from that place after breakfast, and came to Newark, where we took the canal, and arrived here at eleven o clock last night, having spent twenty- four hours in traveling sixty miles. We found Schermerhorn and Whittlesey waiting for us, as well as John Birdsall, P. 0. Fuller, and Henry Webb, of Al bany. Birdsall seems to be much gratified with the prospect of having me for a neighbor. He has. given me an account, an intelligent and candid one, of course, of the condition of things in Chautauqua. He says that, if a liberal and just course is adopted toward the settlers, the difficulties can all be removed ; and he confirms my previous belief that the further continuance of the exactions hitherto attempted will defeat altogether the purposes of the proprietors. I am fully determined to have nothing to do in the matter, unless I have full authority and discretion, and am freed from all obligation to practise any extortion upon the settlers. BATAVIA, Tuesday Evening. I am arrived at last at this place, so distinguished in the records of the dis orders and commotions of the country, and am under the hospitable roof of our old friends Mr. and Mrs. Gary. Wednesday, 29^. Mr. Gary, Mr. Schermerhorn, Mr. Rathbone, and myself, have spent an en tire day in examining the concerns of the Ohautauqua purchase. The result has been, as often happens when great expectations are indulged, that nothing definitive is concluded. The contracts prepared for us, and the abstracts of the books, were all made out wrong. There must be new contracts and new ab stracts, and these are to be prepared by me, or under my direction. I proceed on the business immediately. Thursday. When I saw the Telegraph stage-coach pass my chamber-window, at six this morning, and reflected that, if I were a passenger, I could be with you in our little retreat at five this evening, I could not but think I was not necessarily to be "a banished man " from the home of my affections. I have seen enough of the affairs which call me here to know that they are much more deranged than I supposed, or than is understood by my employers. The whole tract of the Holland Land Company s lands, comprising seven coun ties, is in a state of great excitement. The disorganizing spirit is abroad, and men indulge fearful thoughts and dangerous purposes. There is a sub-land-office in each county, and the general land-office here. These offices contain the records and contracts. A desperate party have hereto fore dared to seek the destruction of all the records and contracts, and, through that means, to relieve their lands from the debts which encumber them. The Chautauqua office has long since been burned, with all its valuable papers. The agent is here, driven from his post by terror. The land-office here has been fortified. It is full of arms, and armed men keep guard. A block-house is erected on each side of it. Conventions of the people are held, almost weekly, in the different counties, in opposition to the company. This, however, is the dark side. If I read aright the indications around me, the excitement is passing off, and men will return to a more tranquil state. 1836.] THE HOLLAND LAND COMPANY. 3()3 Saturday, July 2d. This beautiful summer morning preludes another burning day. I have aa yet found no space to speak of Batavia or its inhabitants, although, as you may well enough imagine, I could not live long in this hospitable family without becoming acquainted with both. The situation of the village is rather unpre possessing. It is on a plain, and has no variety of hill or dale. It is, as you know, upon the bank of the Tonawanda Creek ; but the creek here lends little beauty to the scenery. The village is small, although there are some rich fami lies and many others ambitious of display and elegance. Mr. Evans and his family have a fine house and extensive garden and grounds. They are, in virtue of his great wealth and his great office, " General Agent of the Holland Land Company," at the head of the society. He is an unassuming, intelligent, and worthy man. Both he and Mrs. Evans grace their position by native modesty and the absence of all affectation. The Holland Land Purchase, in the settlement of whose affairs Seward had now been called to take part, is almost coeval with Western New York. The title to the wild lands west of the Genesee River during and just after the Revolution had been the subject, first of a controversy, and then of an amicable adjustment between the States of New York and Massachusetts. Robert Morris, the eminent financier of Philadelphia, then acquired from these States a tract containing four million acres, and after extinguishing the Indian title, in the year 1792, sold the greater part of it to a company of gentlemen in Hol land, since known as the Holland Land Company. Of course, the de sign of this company was to open the land to actual settlers, parceling it out into farms, and disposing of it by contracts of sale, at reason able terms, on long credit. As has not unfrequently happened, the execution of this design became attended, in the course of years, with disputes between proprietors and settlers, when the latter had become so numerous, and so long and firmly established, as to consider that their occupancy and improvements were what had given the land its actual value ; and that the claims of the original and distant proprie tors for interest, arrearages, and forfeitures, were unreasonable and oppressive. Foreseeing or experiencing some of these difficulties, the Holland company was not unwilling to divide its now gigantic trust with new companies of purchasers. Each of these took a portion of the tract, of course at an advance on the original cost, and continued the same system of selling it to actual settlers. Seward now wrote to Judge Miller, describing the present state of affairs : BATAVIA, July 3, 1836. As I anticipated, I have found the condition of things in regard to my agency here quite confused. The true state of them is about as follows : Messrs. Gary and Lay made a verbal agreement with Mr. Van der Kemp, at Philadelphia, the general agent of the Holland Land Company, for the purchase of all the interest and estate of the company in Chautauqua at about a million dollars. 304: LIFE A ND LETTERS. [1836. The purchase of the interest of the company in the other counties about the same time by other purchasers made a great excitement. All the other purchasers first, and Gary and Lay after them, undertook to raise the price by demanding a per acre advance upon forfeited contracts. This produced that commotion which has pervaded the whole country, and the outbreakings of which were seen in the destruction of the land-office at Mayville, and the irrup tion into this place for the purpose of destroying the land- office here. During the year 1835 the settlers paid largely and freely upon their lands. Almost a quarter of Gary s and Lay s debt was actually paid by the settlers. But the ex citement put an end to these payments ; and a set of demagogues and agrarians, taking advantage of the excited state of the public mind, have endeavored to induce the settlers to go in for an acquisition of their lands without payment for them. This was to be accomplished on the ground that the Holland Land Company had no title, and the means to be used were to nullify the judgments of the courts and destroy the records of the conveyances and contracts. In the mean time, Gary and Lay had not executed their contract with the Holland Land Company, although they have paid fifty thousand dollars out of their private funds, which, together with the payments derived from the lands, exceeds the first payment on their agreement. The indications are believed to be that the excitement is subsiding. A county convention has been held in Chautauqua, and has resolved that the pro prietors be requested to reestablish their ofece there. It was my intention to do so to-morrow, but I find it necessary now to have copies made of the books relating to the Chautauqua lands kept in this office, all the books having been destroyed with the office in Chautauqua. I have procured an extra force to be employed upon the books, and we hope to get them ready so that I can go next week to Mayville. To Mrs. Seward he wrote : July Bd. I am endeavoring to form habits from which I promise myself more health and comfort, and profitable study, than I have heretofore enjoyed. For instance, I rise at five. I could not, heretofore, have any regularity about this, because I had no right to expect to go seasonably to bed, or to sleep ; but I can here con trol both in a good measure. This early rising gives me the opportunity to write all my letters before breakfast, not with dissipated thoughts and exhausted feelings, but with the renovated powers of the early morning. Then I bestow my care upon my business concerns from breakfast till five o clock, allowing one hour for dinner. Then when the old symptoms of languor and stricture across the forehead come on, I throw by the accounts and other labor, and I find re sources in Mr. Gary s excellent library for enjoyment for the residue of the day. I break in anywhere upon the order of things to ride or to walk with Mr. Gary, or talk with Mrs. Gary, or visit with them ; because in this way I make myself less troublesome to them, and obtain some of that exercise of which I have so much need. I suppose you and the little boys are yet sound asleep, but perhaps dreaming that somebody is talking unintelligibly about let ters, habits, Chautauqua, and Batavia, etc., etc. On the morning of the 4th of July his letter began with this re flection : 1836.] CHILDREN AND "THE FOURTH." 305 This petty cannonading by the boys, commencing a little in anticipation of the end of Sunday, and disturbing the watches of the jubilee day, is it the out breaking of the spirit of freedom and patriotism, which the young republicans and future sovereigns have imbibed from our instructions? Or is it the work ing of their imitative faculty, by which they carry forward and perpetuate our practices and habits, be they good or bad ? Or is it anything more than the spirit of childhood making demonstration of boisterous mirth on a privileged occasion, to compensate itself for the irksomeness of tasks and constraint ? To his own little boys he used to write frequent letters. One from here will show their character : MY DEAR BOY : I have written a letter to Augustus, and I write one now to you. I write it with red ink so that you may know them apart. The people where I am staying are very nice people. But there is a boy here that does one very naughty thing. I saw yesterday on the mantel-piece a saucer filled with the shells of birds -eggs. Now, it is wicked to take away their eggs from the pretty little birds. It is different altogether from taking the old hen s eggs away from her. Hens -eggs are good to eat, and it is right to take them. The hen does not know how many eggs she has, and therefore does not feel sorry when you take them all away but one, and she is such an ignorant old creature that she would not know it if you should take away her last egg, and put a paper one in its place. But the little birds eggs are not good to eat ; they know how many eggs they have, and they are very sorry, and mourn many days if you take them away. This same naughty boy got up yesterday morning, took his gun, and shot a very pretty little yellow-bird. He brought it into the house, laid it on the table, and it lay there all the morning. At noon, he threw it away. Now, do you think the little boy was any happier because he had killed that harmless little yellow-bird ? Perhaps the bird has left little ones in her nest, and they must have died too before this time. Three weeks later he proceeded to Chautauqua County, to enter upon his new duties. He wrote : WESTFIELD, July 24, 1836. We had a rainy morning to leave Buffalo on Thursday, great confusion on getting on board a steamboat, a crowded boat, vessels racing up the lake, and, with all else, the disgusting scene of sea-sickness all around us. But our brief voyage had its end; as I hope did the sea-sickness of those we left on board. We landed in the rain at Dunkirk, at two o clock on Thursday. Dunkirk "is to be " a place of great importance, but it is now a miserable one. A half- hour s ride brought us to Fredonia, a very pretty village, on the great road from Detroit to Buffalo, and a little east of a line drawn midway through the county. As soon as we arrived, we were visited by several citizens, who expressed a deep interest in our effort to tranquilize the county. They, like people every where else, are engaged in building a great town, and were desirous to have the advantage of the location of my office among them. We spent the afternoon and night there, took breakfast the next morning with our old friend the Rev. Lucius Smith and his family, and left Fredonia with the most favorable impres- ion of the beauty of the village and the enterprise and hospitality of the people, 20 306 LIFE ^V LETTERS. [1836. and with a strong bias toward locating our office there. From Batavia to Buffalo is forty miles; from Buffalo to Fredonia, forty-five miles; from Fredonia to Westfield, fourteen miles. We took an extra stage to this place, and passed over the great thoroughfare, within two to four miles of the lake-shore. Cer tainly my eye never rested upon a finer country. It is not altogether new, nor yet so highly improved as the region in which we live. The ground is almost level, with a gentle slope toward the lake, which lay spread out before us, per fectly calm, and lost in the horizon, as it receded to the north. We found West- field still more beautiful than Fredonia. The place is distant a mile and a half from Portland Harbor, and the broad surface of the water is within our sight from any part of the village. Neither Westfield nor Fredonia is as large as Skaneateles, but both are improving and flourishing towns. We spent several hours here, and during that time drove down to the harbor, and heard all that was addressed to us in favor of locating the land-office here. Except that the location was more distant, I found it much preferable to Fredonia. At four o clock on Friday we passed over to Mayville, the county town, and the locality of the old office. It lies at the head of Chautauqua Lake. That lake is seven hundred feet above the level of Lake Erie, and sends ite waters into the Ohio through the Alleghany River. The road to Mayville crosses the ridge, which rises about four miles from the shore of Lake Erie, and stretches along the whole length of the southern shore. Nature has few more beautiful scenes than that which is displayed on this road. The lake is twenty miles long, and seems to rest in the bosom of a valley, formed by high hills, covered with forests on all sides. The village of Mayville contains scarcely more than fifty houses. We found a tavern and stores, a good court-house and clerk s office, and the ruins of the old land-office as they were left by the mob. Birdsall was very glad to see us, showed us the rooms in the court-house he had selected for my office, and the house in which I was to board. Neither he nor the other inhab itants of Mayville seem to have suspected that the office could be established elsewhere. My observation of Mayville resulted in the conviction that it would be a most uncomfortable residence, that it was an unprofitable place for the sale of lands, that its secluded position subjected it to the control of turbulent spirits who lived in the hills around it, and that, if I meant to be independent of the dictation of those who assume to direct the land agency by popular votes, I must avoid placing myself within their power. After hearing all that could be urged against these views, I decided to return to Westfield. It was a sad blow to Mayville, for the land-office was the princi pal source of its importance and business. Birdsall regarded it in a proper light, and behaved, as he always does, with magnanimity. Some of the other citizens were gloomy and excited. They warned me of consequences which they intended to produce. They assured me that I must be prepared for "agi tation." They are to call conventions, and submit the question to the people, and procure resolutions to be passed that they will pay no money into the office until it is established at Mayville. Of course, these threats only confirm my conviction of the correctness of the determination I had made ; nor did I find that conviction shaken by the menace that my office should not stand here two months. WESTFIELD, July 29th. What with the solicitude I have felt from the indications around me for th& 1836.] PACIFYING THE SETTLERS. 307 result of the bold undertaking to restore peace in this excited country, and tny preparation for future duties, I have suffered delay in writing to you. I wrote you that I had located here. This greatly grieved the people of Mayville ; they became very much excited ; and, although they had sustained the laws and denounced the riots while the office was among them, they now appealed to the passions of the people, threatened every obstruction to our business, and courted disorder and outrage. Birdsall s excellent good sense and valuable influence have aided me much in allaying this storm. I went yesterday to Mayville, and thence by steamboat on Chautauqua Lake to Jamestown, and have seen most of the respectable and influential men in the county, besides many of the debtors, and I do not now apprehend difficulties. A brief period was now spent at Auburn in closing up his affairs preparatory to his protracted absence. The birth of a daughter, Cor nelia, occurred in August of this year. A letter to Mr. Weed, in September, announced his return to his post : WESTFIELD, September 8, 1836. I have an unoccupied hour on a rainy morning, before the time that the good people of Chautauqua are accustomed to reach the office. You see, by the date and the preface, that I am in the scene of my new vocation. I found matters tranquil and prosperous here. The abortive effort to agitate the county has had a favorable reaction ; and I have already had many evidences that my residence among the good people is regarded with kindness. The public feeling is scarcely enlisted yet in the support of our noble and just measure, of distributing the public revenue. People seem, so far as they fall within my observation, to be unconcerned, as if entirely ignorant on the subject. This question of distribution of the surplus revenue was destined to soon occupy public attention widely and long. The national Treas ury was overflowing with the proceeds of the sales of public lands. The Whig leaders advocated the division of this surplus money among the several States, and its transfer to their coffers, to be used to pro mote education and works of internal improvement. On the other side, it was claimed by " strict constructionists " that the Constitution gave no power to make such use of the public funds. Remaining now in Chautauqua County, except when called to Au burn by business affairs, or by brief occasional visits to his family, he entered zealously upon the work of pacification of the settlers and the adjustment of their accounts. Just and fair dealing, tact and skill in business, courtesy of manner, and generosity of spirit, both in regard to public enterprises and individual cases, soon began to produce their proper effect. The people, at first hostile, became gradually mollified and quiet, and then by degrees appreciative and kind. Payments be gan to be made, at first in cautious driblets, and afterward more large ly and rapidly than the proprietors had ventured to anticipate. The 308 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1836. land-office became as popular as it had before been unpopular ; and, in stead of being menaced with destruction at night, was thronged with friendly visitors by day. His letters to Mrs. Seward described some of the incidents of his new life : WESTFIELD, Saturday NigM, September IWh. At the close of a very laborious week I am still surrounded by garrulous people, who distract me while I try to write. I have had experience enough this week in my new caUing to learn that, while it lasts, I am to enjoy little of that rest that I might have anticipated. From seven, and often from six, in the morning, until eight, or nine, or ten o clock in the evening, we are constantly transacting business in a crowd ; and my own cares of superintendence of our financial concerns, with other labors, engross all my hours except the few de voted to sleep. Nevertheless, I like it thus far better than the perplexed life I led at home. Our business is simple ; it involves no intricate study, and is at tended with none of that consuming solicitude that has rendered my profession a constant slavery. My health continues good ; and I feel that, if I derive no other advantage from the change, I am abundantly repaid. The excitement is fast subsiding around me ; and, if you could see me among the people here, you would almost suppose I had always lived happily among them. Among my visitors to-day was one poor fellow, who spent an hour in de ploring (to the infinite edification of a promiscuous audience) the error of mar rying a widow, two children, and one hundred and ninety-five acres of land ; the wife caring, as he says, all for the children and none for him, and the chil dren claiming and taking all the land. WESTFIELD, September llth. That was a good old custom of mine to write you a page every day. This land-office business must be made more accommodating, and not be allowed to break it up. I wrote you last night, weary with business and visitors. This morning I took one of the clerks, and drove the nice little grays to Mayville. It has been a glorious day, and the atmosphere of the summit, with the delight ful prospects enjoyed during the ride, was inspiriting. I dined with Mr. and Mrs. Birdsall, and made a call at Judge Peacock s. Monday NigTit. I mean to-morrow to take possession of my bachelor s hall, and I am very anxious that Nicholas and Harriet shall arrive before the equinoctial storm sets in. I believe I will sleep where I am until they move into the house, and then will go to Buffalo, to procure the necessary comforts for my new lodgings. Nicholas and Harriet Bogart, here alluded to, were two young col ored persons, then newly married, who were coming to Westfield, the one in the capacity of coachman, the other as housekeeper. Their long and faithful service which then commenced, lasted, with occasional intervals, throughout Seward s life. Who should drop in upon me, to-day, but old Mr. Sherwood, of Auburn, and his exceedingly round son ? He was sociable and friendly, and was glad, it 1836.] CHRISTIAN LIFE AND DUTY. 309 seemed, to find a neighbor. During his visit I was annoyed by a squatter, who had applied to me to purchase the land he was upon. I had offered it to him for nine dollars an acre, and he insisted upon having it at three dollars, no trifling difference, lie was drunk, and, after abusing me roundly in the office, he went into the street, and made a boisterous harangue to the multitude gathered round him, calling me all manner of names. Mr. Sherwood took up the argument in my behalf, and the " squatter," to the infinite mirth of the by-standers, took it into his head, from Sherwood s corpulence, that he was Wilhem Willink, or Gerrit Van Beeftingh, one of the mammoth proprietors from Amsterdam. Sherwood (who weighs about three hundred) humored the mistake, and so turned the sc on e into one of discomfiture for the " squatter " and great amuse ment to the spectators. Wednesday, September 14, 1886. Our business here is assuming every day a more regular and more propitious shape, but it exacts unremitting attention and consuming labor. From morn till night I scarcely step upon the sidewalk. I glean the newspapers, and, after writing to you, read myself to sleep over a poor novel. My life is without an incident of the dignity even of an appearance in a justice s court, and as desti tute of romance as a merchant s inventory. But, then (the Holland Land Com pany be praised), there is no perplexing study protracted at night, through trou bled dreams till morning, no harrowing fear of catastrophes, involving clients and friends in bankruptcy, and no pitiable stating of accounts by a fee bill. I said I was without incident, but I erred ; I am to have one. Parson Smith has by letter, graceful and full of fancy, invited me to attend the consecration of his church at Fredonia, on Saturday next, and dine at his house with the bishop, and, despite all the claims of the land-office upon my time, I have accepted the invitation. Besides, I have been favored with visitors. Asher Tyler, who holds a place in Cattaraugus somewhat corresponding to my own, dropped in upon me yester day afternoon. Mr. Patchin, of Jamestown, with hjs sister, came soon after, and I have devoted to them my stolen leisure. A letter written one Sunday morning, in September of this year, contained reflections on the subject of Christian life and duties : I read with particular attention your remark that you did not mean to say that your conduct or feelings were always influenced by religion or reason ; but that both are more frequently so than heretofore. I apprehend that this is the experience of every Christian ; and, indeed, it must be so, unless the doctrine of "perfection" is true. How much more frequently that influence is felt, and how much more powerful it is, are, after all, the questions upon which depend all our hopes of the blessings of religious life. I feel now, not perhaps as fully as I ought to feel, but nevertheless earnestly, that religious thoughts, discussions, and studies, are grateful to me, and that a gracious parental Providence has called me into existence, and keeps me here for the fulfillment of his own purposes indeed, but, with these purposes, is in perfect harmony my own happiness, now and hereafter, as well as that of those whose welfare is connected with or derived from me. I am not without the hope, as well as the purpose, that the greater leisure I 310 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1836. enjoy in this new occupation will enable me to cherish, still more, this growing interest in these important matters, and, most assuredly, it is a strong motive with me that I may enjoy with you that communion of sympathy in matters of religion that I do in every other way. Toward the close of this month came the crowd and confusion inci dent to the annual militia parade, called the " general training." WESTFIELD, September 20th. I am to amuse you now with the adventures of an eventful season. You know I went on last Saturday to Fredonia, and on Sunday to Mayville. These excursions left the young men two days to themselves. On Sunday night, Brad ley, being alone with me, told me of terrific intimations and menaces uttered in the office on Saturday ; and, among other things, that a person came from Kipley expressly to warn me that to-night or to-day a mob was to come to destroy the office. I discovered that they were both alarmed, but soothed their fears, and passed on. Yesterday morning, James Jackson, a merchant of great respecta bility in Ripley, called me out of bed at six o clock, to warn me that a mob was to come to-night from Gerry, to destroy my office and shoot me. He recom mended the suspension of all business to-day, and that I should take shelter in his house five miles distant. I grieved him by resolving to stay and be killed, which he said, truly, would be a dreadful thing. Having learned from him that the storm which he feared was to come from Gerry, I procured yesterday a confi dential person to reconnoitre there last night. I secured the attendance of the sheriff through the day, and at an early hour this morning caused all the most valuable papers and books to be transferred from the office to my private room. On opening the office this morning, two men came, fraught with the news of the intended assault. The militia assembled, and not less than a thousand peo ple, apparently to witness the parade. Business pressed us all day, for the peo ple availed themselves of the occasion to transact it. My messenger returned from Gerry, and reported that all was quiet and the people all satisfied. The crowd have dispersed, and Haight and Bradley have forgotten their fears in a sound sleep, as I shall do after having told you the perils of the day. Two days later he took possession of his new home, a pleasant house formerly known as the " McClurg Mansion," and surrounded by spacious grounds : Thursday Morning, September 22d. It would do your heart good to see me seated at my own table, in " my own hired house," with my own books and papers, and my own hired family, around me. In truth, I became very lonely and uncomfortable at the tavern. I yester day morning notified Sarah Scott that I could wait no longer, and forthwith I began to move. My wardrobe was soon removed from the trunks ; my papers were deposited in the hall. Just at this time John Birdsall called on me. I begged of Mr. Gale a loaf of bread and a bottle of Santa Cruz rum. Sarah found the pork-barrel, and pulled some green corn in the garden, and in an hour Birdsall and I sat down to a good dinner, with none to molest us or make us afraid. I know you will be delighted with the house when you come to see it in the 1836.] A THEORY OF MATTER. 311 summer. It stands in the centre of grounds of several acres, ornamented with trees and shrubbery. It has a double piazza in front of the centre or main building, and is two stories high. The arrangement of the rooms is this : In the centre, a hall about twenty feet wide; off this, in the rear, an octagon par lor, which opens into the shrubbery of the garden. There are five spacious bedrooms above. There are cellars, out-houses, smoke-house, garden, orchard, etc. ; everything well contrived. The flowers and the fruit hang around me in profusion, and the retirement of my dwelling invites me to it every hour that I have freedom. One of the episodes in the Chautauqua life was a meeting with some scientific gentlemen, with whom he was afterward to be brought into official relations: October Zd. Yesterday afternoon Dr. Eights, whom I knew at Albany, called upon me, with Prof. Vanuxem, of Philadelphia. They are two of a board of geologists whom the Governor has appointed under the law directing a geological survey of the State. They are exploring the territory hereabout on foot. I took them in my wagon to the lake-shore. The wind had been blowing a gale many days, and the majesty of the sea was armed with terrors. The waves dashed over the pier and rocks with great fury. Not a sail or a boat was to be seen on the broad expanse. I have never seen the lake at any other time without a number of vessels in the prospect. We rode along the shore to a gas-spring, which is very curious. We found that it has been dammed up so as to retain the gas and con duct it to the lighthouse at the harbor. The gas rises in bubbles from the water, and by the application of a torch these bubbles inflame. On taking the cork from the pipe a gas of offensive odor escaped. We applied our torch, and we had instantly a blaze, which would have continued till this time but for our again confining the gas. The two savants spent the evening with me, and we discoursed of philosophy and science over our fruit and champagne. Prof. Vanuxem has a curious theory. Philosophers, you are partially apprised, have discovered that certain substances or kinds of matter have the power of repulsion, while all other kinds have only the quality of attraction. The substances possessing the power of repulsion are light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and galvanism. These sub stances, or forms of matter, having no attraction, have none of the qualities by which we describe matter. They can neither be seen, felt, tasted, nor touched ; while all other matter has extension and gravitation. From this difference the doctor calls them u ethereal " or celestial matter or substances. He supposes them to be the substance of the soul, of the Deity, and of all that we call spiritual beings. The discovery with reference to the analogy between heat, the electric, and other " fluids," as they are commonly called, is recent, and, I believe, is established as a truth. The professor s theory is a new and bold one, and has no other evidence than mere hypothesis, which can never be demon strated to be true or false. It is marvelous to see how deeply he is imbued with this, and it is most curious to observe how dreamy his elucidations are. Men, he says, are good or bad according as the different matters, the ethereal and terrestrial, or gross, prevail in their constitutions. The ethereal matter is eter nal, the gross matter is liable to change and decay. The soul separating from 312 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1836. the body means no more than that the ethereal matter separates from the terres trial. Good is ethereal, evil is terrestrial. I suppose I must not suffer this idle page to go to you without a protest that, however his theological notions may be affected, there is nothing in his ingenious dreams which abates a jot from my religious convictions. October 4, 1836. Patience, that prodigal of time, is like to have enough of it to accomplish her perfect work during the present equinoctial, if she has any hard " chores " on hand. For my part, I am about used up. During the fine weather in Sep tember I was cheerful, for I had abundance of occupation. Money and bonds and mortgages crowded in upon me faster than I could dispose of them. The southwest wind blew my receipts down, and then all day long I waited upon people who brought no money at all. There appears to be a marked difference between debtors who come in fair weather and those who come in the mud. The former bring cash, pay it promptly, and go away satisfied. The latter come without money, to make discontented and querulous inquiries about how I would do, supposing they were to bring money. I don t know but my office will be pulled down over my head, if the storm lasts a week longer. Wednesday Night. I am in better humor with the weather to-night. There have been a few hours of sunshine and drying winds, and my business has revived. Friday, October 1th. Order begins to come out of the confusion into which the land-office has been plunged. The murmurs of discontent are dying away, and I think another month or two will bring the whole estate into a manageable condition. After that there will be no great cause of solicitude, and I shall be able to be more at home with you. Even now I am able commonly to leave the office at dark, and spend the evening here. I am reading the last volume of Brown s " Philosophy." I know not what I am to read after that ; and yet I cannot exist without books. The protracted storm has left a sea of mud around me here ; for cross and side walks are luxuries unknown in Westfield. There is nothing of interest here except that one of our citizens, whose name I do not know, is in a very unhappy state of mind. The cause is, that he has discovered a perpetual motion. Strange that despair should follow such a dis covery ! But the truth is, that he thinks the power is so great that he dare not set it in motion, because he will not be able with all the power he can get to arrest it ! Saturday Morning, October 8th. The sun has burst forth from his thraldom, and brought us a bright and genial morning. This change of weather and prospect calls up recollections of our shady home, and of the cheerful smile of all its inmates of the grape-vines and the jasmines, and the altheas, and the tasteful work I had designed to make our home more worthy of you, and more suitable to the study devoted to retirement, for which I labor by day, and of which I dream nights and Sundays. Saturday Night. My glowing recollections of home, which I was indulging this morning, were banished by the incursion of some half a dozen of the " settlers," wanting the 1836.] RURAL CHURCH EXPERIENCES. 313 terms of the redemption of their lands. A busy day followed, but it is over now ; the settlers have all gone home. I have had a pleasant excursion with the ponies, and I have received your long letter of last Saturday. I felt a new pleasure in reading that part of your letter which speaks of our little girl. When I left home she was only a week old, and had exhibited no one faculty of attract ing love or repaying care. It gratifies me much to hear that she has learned to smile. For, after all, the emotions we have generally concern things that do not inspire laughter ; and I think the earlier one s commencement at laughing is made, the longer is the period of childhood happiness to be enjoyed. I sup pose that the young lady, in obtaining the new accomplishment of laughing, has not forgot that one, with which all our race are born, of crying. But I must abide my time for enjoying my home. A thousand blessings on you both and all ! Monday, October I0th. A weary day I ve had. It was as I expected. The people who were kept back by the long storm have thronged the office, and we have four days business crowded into one. There is now about one-third of the purchase-money paid. The excitement has subsided, and there is really nobody to make mischief. Some few ignorant persons, prejudiced against me for political reasons, would like to have disorder ; but the intelligent men of the Jackson party, as well as of my own, are determined that there shall be peace. I am living quietly and pleasantly here. There is at present a continual immigration to this region from the east, and property is already rising in value. Wednesday Morning, I2tk. This morning is bright and sunny. The ponies are stamping the ground im patient to take me on a journey to explore Chautauqua County. I go to James town to-day, on the west side of the lake, and return to-morrow on the east. The excursion here alluded to was a trip through the principal townships of Chautauqua, for the purpose of looking at the lands of the Holland purchase and their surroundings, as well as of meeting, forming the acquaintance, and studying the character of their inhabit ants, learning their grievances, if any, and obtaining correct opinions on questions upon which he would probably have to pass. The early settlers of Chautauqua comprised many of New England origin. Among the good habits that they brought with them was that of building and attending churches. A little hamlet in a remote and sparsely-populated region would frequently have two or three houses of worship of different denominations. There was much earnestness of religious thought and discussion. Occasionally a grotesque incident would mar its solemnity. One Sunday while he was attending service at one of these churches, the clergyman gave out a hymn commencing with "Abraham, when the Lord did call." The choir rose to sing, and the leader began in a loud voice, " Abraham ! " and then suddenly stopped. Essaying a sec ond time, he enunciated, " Abraham / " and stopped as before. The 314 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1836. wondering congregation smiled, and, looking up, saw the choir-leader red in the face, evidently nonplussed by a word which would not fit the measure. A singer, on the other side, with a woman s quick in tuition, saw it was a case where pronunciation must yield to melody ; and in a treble voiced piped : " A-#ra-ham, when the Lord did call," and then the tide of song rolled along smoothly to the end. On one occasion, an itinerant lecturer on " Poetry and the Fine Arts " came to Westfield, and obtained the use of the Methodist Church for his first lecture, to be given without charge as a specimen of the course. It was an event in a quiet country village, and the lect urer, as he entered, was gratified to see that it had attracted an au dience filling nearly every seat. He was rather surprised to find, how ever, a venerable-looking man in black composedly sitting by the desk, as if to divide its honors with him. He proceeded with his lecture, which was liberally interspersed with quotations from the poets. The audience received these with satisfaction. Not so the old gentleman in the pulpit, who testified his disapprobation by loud coughs, sniff s, indignant looks, and even an occasional groan, all of which were incom prehensible to the poor lecturer, who thought he had made his selec tions with taste. When, in further illustration of his theme, he quoted the "witches scene " from " Macbeth," the curse of u King Lear," and a stanza from " Don Juan," the old man could stand it no longer. Rising with an air that riveted the attention of the audience, he advanced to the desk, and said in tones of outraged feeling : " Forty long years have I been a preacher of the gospel of Christ ! And what I have to say is, that if this that we have heerd here to-night is that gospel, it is not the gospel of our Lord and Saviour which I was edu cated to believe in and to preach." Here the audience began to titter, and finally broke up in confusion. Then came the explanation. The old clergyman, residing in a distant town, and happening to be in Westfield that evening, had been told by some mischievous practical joker that there was to be preaching at the Methodist Church, and that he was expected to be present and take part. He had been grieved to find that the other clergyman (as he supposed him) had neg lected to begin with either hymn or prayer ; but he was shocked and astounded at the recital of language which seemed immoral, blasphe mous, and profane. Whether he ever learned his mistake was not known, as he precipitately left town in one direction, while the dis comfited lecturer was leaving in the other. The new agent had now happily pacified the settlers, adjusted all complaints and quarrels, and there was no longer any hesitation on the part of the purchasers to complete their bargain with the Holland Company. Seward went to New York to close the contracts, and to 1836.] THE YEAR OF SPECULATION. 315 negotiate loans of the funds necessary to carry on so large an under taking. He was now to be admitted to share as a partner in the own ership of the lands, and in the risks and profits of the enterprise. CHAPTER XVII. 1836. The Year of Speculation. New York Schemes. Auburn Projects. A Complex Trust. Van Buren elected President. Thanksgiving-Day. A Christmas Sermon. THE year 1836 was one of great prosperity and commercial activity. It was an era of expansion and rapid development of speculative enter prises. The undue depression which followed the attacks on the Bank of the United States a year before, and its curtailment of discounts, was now succeeded by as unreasonable an inflation ; and this reaction was largely promoted by the rapid increase of banks in the State, under favoring legislation at Albany, and consequent rapid increase of banking facilities. A new impulse was given not only to all sound and legitimate enterprises, but to all manner of visionary schemes. Stocks rose to high prices ; real estate, in towns and in their vicinity, doubled and quadrupled ; farms were mapped out into imaginary city lots, and sold, at handsome prices, to purchasers who, a month later, sold them at an additional advance ; wild lands in distant regions were in like manner parceled out, on paper, into farms for prospective set tlers ; the city of New York not only displayed unwonted activity of trade in all its channels, and a great increase of public and private buildings, but also furnished capital for like enterprises elsewhere, even to the laying out of streets and avenues in imaginary cities expected to spring up in remote districts, to thrive by trade and manufactures not yet created, and to be occupied by inhabitants not yet born. Increase of business caused increase of travel. Stages and boats rejoiced in crowds of passengers ; new hotels were opened for their accommodation, and old ones put up prices. Railways and canals were prosecuted with vigor and sanguine hope of immediate profit. Nor were the advantages of the money plethora confined to capitalists. The farmer readily sold all his produce in the market at enhanced rates ; the mechanic found plenty of work at high wages ; and even the poorest laborer found himself growing relatively rich, with the apparent prospect of continuing to grow richer. Auburn, secluded inland town as it was, did not fail to share in the general spirit. Its merchants, mechanics, capitalists, and speculators, were active and prosperous. Houses and village-lots advantageously 316 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1836. located rose suddenly to seven times their former value. Long avenues were projected, running out into the neighboring farms, and expected soon to be lined with rows of dwellings. Land companies were formed to sell off these lots, and manufacturing companies were organized who deemed the auspicious moment had now come to utilize the abundant water-power. There is still extant a copy of an illustrated map of Auburn as it was to be, spreading over four times its previous space, with its broad Atlantic and Pacific Avenues, its spacious blocks of stores and dwellings, its Eagle Park, to be laid out on Fort Hill, its majestic college, to crown another eminence, its improved and enlarged prison, seminary, and hotels, and its Owasco Canal, in full operation, with canal-boats passing through locks, and steamboats coming down the lake to the city wharves. As the year went on, speculation grew wilder, and hardly any scheme was too visionary to enlist adherents willing to embark their fortunes in it. A natural consequence of the demand for money and credit was a steady increase in the rate of interest ; but even the usu rious price of two per cent, a month failed to deter borrowers, who expected to make a hundred per cent, before the year was out. The Chautauqua land purchase having been initiated in the previous " dull times," was now deemed infinitely more valuable and successful. Alluding to the pervading anxiety to enter into speculations, Seward described his meeting a friend when starting for a drive one day : T detained me while he told me that he lived several miles out of town, and had hurried in to claim a share of the " spoils " in the distribution of the stock of a new bank. He mourned over his error in having sold his canal shares ; sighed still more profoundly as he spoke of Dr. B s golden specu lations in selling lots, which he said might have been his (if he had only bought them a year ago) ; and then, imagining from the aspect of our party that we were bent upon some new speculation, he wound up by modestly asking, as we entered the carriage, the favor of being admitted to a share of its profits, al though he had not the remotest idea what its character or risk might be. It was an additional disappointment to him to learn that we were contem plating nothing more serious than a drive to see the falls and enjoy the fresh air. When Seward visited New York to close the contracts for the Chautauqua purchase, he found the journey had been shortened by the opening of the Utica & Schenectady Railroad. Writing after his arrival, he said : NEW YORK, Sunday, October 30th. We were so fortunate as to find a canal-boat at Syracuse, and arrived at Utica early enough on Friday for the morning car. It was certainly like a dream to pass through the valley of the Mohawk, the entire length of that beau tiful river in five hours, passing the towns and villages like milestones on our journey. In these times I defy anybody to live in New York, and keep cool and tran- 1836.] VAN BUREN AND HARRISON. 317 quil. Excitement seizes upon the nerves and stimulates the blood the moment one sets foot on the pavement. However, I found that, after all, there was no hurry or pressure about our affairs. Two or three days will be all I shall need at Philadelphia, and I expect to have nothing to detain me here on my return. His arrangements were successfully accomplished, and, though elab orate and somewhat intricate, may be briefly summed up. The pur chasers of the Chautauqua lands took them as tenants in common, in nine equal undivided shares, and executed written contracts therefor to " Wilhem Willink, Walrave Van Heukelom, Jan Van Eeghen, Wil- hem Willink the younger, Nicholas Van Beeftingh, and Gerrit Schim- melpfenninck Rutger Jan s son," who constituted the Holland Com pany. These contracts were made with and through their agent and attorney, John J. Van Der Kemp, of Philadelphia. By them, the Hol land Company agreed to convey the lands, on being paid the purchase- money in certain described installments. The moneys realized by sales and collections, before the expiration of the contracts, were to be applied to the credit of the purchasers ; and Seward, as agent or attorney for the vendors, as well as the vendees, was to take charge and conduct the estate. But to* make the payments, which would fall due faster than it could reasonably be hoped to sell the lands, it was necessary to negotiate a loan, which was accordingly done with the American Life Insurance and Trust Company. The Trust Company agreed to take the Chautauqua estate " on deposit " as security, and make the necessary advances. Three trustees, John Duer, Morris Robinson, and William H. Seward, were to hold the estate in trust for that company. They were to repay the company the amount it had advanced, and then, having done so, to convey the land back to its owners. So that Seward was to hold the diverse though not incompatible relations of partner in the purchase, agent and attorney, both of the purchasers and of the Holland Land Company, and also trustee of the American Life Insurance and Trust Company. Naturally enough, therefore, the chief care and responsibility of the business devolved on him. The presidential election was now at hand. The long session of Congress had terminated on the 4th of July. The opposition in the two Houses, though it had given well-founded warnings of the financial and political dangers toward which the country was drifting, and though it numbered, among its leaders, such men as Adams, Webster, and Clay, and had at different times, on different questions, the cooperation of portions of the Democratic members, was nevertheless unable either to defeat the measures or destroy the prestige of the dominant party and Administration. Mr. Van Buren, as Vice-President, and presiding officer of the Senate, exhibited the same tact and skill which had else where marked his course ; and, when forced issues were made in the 318 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1886.. Senate, with a view to compel him to commit himself by his casting vote, to some measure that would be unpopular, either in one section or the other, not only demonstrated his party fidelity, but maintained his conceded strength as the Administration candidate for " the succes sion." As the most prominent and successful manager of the Democratic party, to whom its success, both at elections and in administration, was largely due, he had been popularly assigned that position, even before General Jackson entered upon his second term. Except that the ex ample set by Washington rendered it impossible for any President to be a candidate for a third term, there was no reason to doubt that General Jackson was as strong now as he had been twice before ; and, since he could not himself be reflected, the next strongest candidate was the statesman of his own choice, his chief friend and adviser. The party had generally acquiesced in the selection, and had sanctioned it in national and State conventions. The Whigs had a hope rather than an expectation of success in the general result, while they were confident of ability to retain control of a few of the States, and perhaps to increase their number. In the State of New York they had nominated a Harrison electoral ticket in June, and at the same time put in nomination Jesse Buel, of Albany, for Governor, with Gamaliel H. Barstow, of Ithaca, for Lieutenant- Governor. To emphasize the selection of Judge Buel, as the " farmers candidate," the Evening Journal carried, at the head of its columns, a picture of a farmer " speeding the plough." The Democrats renomi- nated for these offices their incumbents, Governor Marcy and Lieutenant- Governor Tracy, with a Van Buren electoral ticket. The election came and passed off quietly. Returns came in slowly. Full returns, however, soon showed all Whig hopes to be illusory. The Democrats carried the State by nearly thirty thousand majority. Mr. Van Buren was elected President, receiving one hundred and seventy of the electoral votes, and carrying, at the election, all the States except Vermont, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, Ohio, and Indiana, which voted for Harrison ; Massachusetts, which voted for Daniel Webster ; and Tennessee and Georgia, which voted for Hugh L. White. The vice-presidency, as there was no choice by the people, was thrown into the Senate, and that body elected the regular Democratic candidate, Richard M. Johnson. South Carolina, which had already begun to manifest indications of restiveness as a member of the Union, threw away her eleven votes on Willie P. Mangum, who was not a candidate, and, in the choice of Vice-President by the Senate, her Senators declined to vote at all. The question of slavery, although it had now become a subject of congressional debate, occupied no prominence in the canvass. Efforts 1836.] THE POLITICAL FUTURE. 319 to introduce it there were made chiefly for the sake of gaining South ern favor. Adverting to and disapproving one such effort (the intro duction of a resolution denouncing the " abolitionists," at a Harrison meeting in Albany), Mr. Weed remarked in his Journal: This question of slavery, when it becomes a matter of political controversy, will shake, if not unsettle, the foundations of our Government. It is too fearful, and too mighty, in all its bearings and consequences, to be recklessly mixed up in our partisan conflicts. It was with a like feeling of dread of the introduction of so disor ganizing an element that the prudent and thoughtful throughout the North, however warmly they disliked " the institution," yet refused to take part against it politically, until forced to do so by its own political action. Two items of commercial intelligence, of that day, may be worth recalling here, as illustrating the changes that come with time. One was the declaration of a dividend of seven hundred per cent, on the stock of the packet-boat line on the Erie Canal ; and the other the an nouncement that forty thousand slaves were sold South from Virginia during the preceding year, yielding that State a profit of twenty-four million dollars ! Returning to Auburn, Seward wrote to Mr. Weed : ATJBUBN, November VltTi. I found here your letter, which crossed my path when I was on my way to Albany. It is full of forebodings of defeat in the presidential election, and of despair for the republic. Brighter prospects are now before us, and we are able to see that Van Buren s success takes place under such auspices as to afford encouragement to rally, once more, under a standard dear to us all, and so nearly victorious as to save not our honor only, but our strength. I, for one, am ready and willing to renew the contest, and I will never yield an inch of ground. I had an interview with Granger, whose equanimity I had great cause to admire. He will have possessed you of his views, and I think, rightly, will inspire you with new zeal for the " hero of Tippecanoe," as a candidate by continuation. But I am not willing to take counsel of either hopes or fears. I am sure that the duty of educated, honest men is to espouse and adhere to the cause of the Constitution and public morals. I believe it is destined to infrequent, par tial, and short-lived success for many years to come. But it is, nevertheless, a matter of duty to maintain it, and the self-approbation of maintaining it honor ably I count of more worth than all the spoils of inglorious partisan warfare. After a few days spent at home, he returned to his " winter quar ters." WESTFIELD, December 4fh. From Monday morning till Saturday night I have been continually employed in transacting " land-onice business." From eight in the morning till eight or 320 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1836. nine in the evening, with hardly half an hour even for meals, I have talked of nothing but contracts, expired and unexpired. The day assigned as the last day of grace to the settlers, you know, is the 1st of January. As that day "nears," the settlers rush in in crowds, and I have been nearly crushed with the welcome effort to pay and close contracts. Enough of "land-office business" for this day. Of domestic incidents I have nothing. At eight or nine o clock I have calls from some of the neighbors. We discourse upon politics, money-market, rail roads, and sometimes play a rubber of whist. I have unanswered letters from Weed, Granger, Kathbone, Willis Gaylord Clark, Silliman, and others. I shall endeavor to save some hours for them. Granger writes in real or affected good spirits, acknowledging our defeat. Weed writes as if his "heart was in the grave with Caesar," and he would ask me to " pause till it came back to him." Clark commends himself to your re membrance, as do all my correspondents. I have snatched time since I came here, at intervals, to read "Rob Roy; " and how much I have regretted that you were not here, that I might conduct you with me, describing the localities as we pass, and accompanying Frank Osbaldistone on his lonely ride to the Sunday sojourn with Campbell, at the well-recollected inn in North Allerton ; and taking into our escort that hopeful waiting-man, Andrew Fairservice, make our visit to the pavement of tombs around the High Kirk, and penetrate the gloomy shades which indistinctly rise around me of the Laigh Kirk, where we would have our mysterious warning from the unseen Rob Roy. The Tolbooth where poor Owen lay in despair until relieved by the vain but benevolent, the whimsical but philanthropic Baillie Nicol Jarvie. I could not describe, of course, half so well as Scott does ; but it would be a pleasure to tell you how just the description is. And then the shores of Loch Lomond and the rock, and the dilapidated house, the scenes of the Amazonian Helen MacGregor, and the Fort Inversnaid. How the recollec tions of these scenes are brought out fresh before me by the perusal of this work! WESTFIELD, December lltTi. Not Robinson Crusoe in his solitary island, or any prisoner in his cell, ever counted the slow progress of time more faithfully than I do the weeks of my absence from Auburn. I have a dilemma on hand which will excite your mirth I, that forswore my profession in the very moment of opening, or rather, ripening fame : Night before last two gentlemen from Fredonia came to ask me to undertake, as solici tor and counsel, a chancery suit of great importance to .them. Would you be lieve it, I agreed to do so ? They went away with my promise to draw and send them a bill on Monday. What motive induced me to do so you can scarcely imagine, nor can I remember. I believe it was that, after so long relaxation, the labor which once disgusted me seemed light and pleasant. December IWh. All this morning has been spent in counting over and over again the parcels of money which, for want of an opportunity to deposit, have accumulated until their proper sum total is a point which my cashier is as unable to determine as I am myself. I have, however, abjured, for the residue of the day, the world, the flesh, and the devil, so that I will not follow nor be led by them. 1886.J CHRISTMAS EVE. 321 Thursday I was prevented by the weather from going to Jamestown, but we managed, neverthless, to celebrate Thanksgiving-day. The Episcopal clergyman preached in the Presbyterian church, to the grati fication of both congregations ; but neither the solemnity of the occasion, nor the eloquence of the preacher, was sufficient to hold the audience in check, when in the midst of his most sublime flight, as he was saying, " Our name is honored in every clime, and our eagle is soaring amid his native stars " (here down went Bible, cushions, and manuscript sermon, to the floor ; a bustle ensued, the orator waiting till they were gathered up and readjusted, when he completed the sentence), " unchecked in his flight and undaunted in his glory ! " At four o clock, which, you must know, is my regular dinner-hour, Harriet served us a fine roasted turkey and a venison-steak. My party consisted of all the clerks in the office, together with the wife of one of them. Adverting to a mother s apprehensions in regard to her children, he remarked : When the mysterious ways of Providence are considered, it seems almost presumptuous to hope that all will be spared to us and we to them, during the period of their childhood and youth. But this reflection, while it ought, in the most effective manner, to excite our sense of responsibility, ought never to be indulged to such an extent as to produce morbid apprehension of undefinable evil. It is difficult, when we consider our own free agency, of which we are conscious, to understand how, out of all our action, results that greatest good which the Divine Wisdom purposed and approved ; but it is far easier to con ceive and confide in the belief that, whatsoever happens to our children or our- , selves, their happiness will be secure. December 21st. You might, with perfect safety, have expressed your wish that I would post pone reading the Waverley novels until you should come out. I have read "Anne of Geierstein," "Rob Roy," and "The Pirate," and I assure you that all have interested me far less than they would if I could have enjoyed their f perusal with you. There are a thousand things in them, as in Shakespeare, that one may enjoy more and much longer if one has somebody to converse with while dwelling upon them. Most of such beauties pass unnoticed in the hur ried perusal which one gives when, from beginning to end, not a word is articu lated. You would be interested to see what a busy manufacturing establishment I have made out of this humdrum, old-fashioned land-office. First, I myself am engaged in negotiating contracts with the settlers all day long. Then, two clerks are constantly occupied in casting up accounts; two in balancing and posting books ; two in making diagrams and descriptions of land to be inserted in deeds, bonds, and mortgages ; and three are engaged in filling up the blank papers for signatures. One is on a furlough because of ill health. Saturday NigU, December 24, 1836. Well, Saturday night Ohristmas-eve has come at last, and never did any one need an hour of recreation more than I. You can have no conception of the throng of people I have had upon my hands all the week, and the pressure 21 322 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1836. of business in the midst of it. My cashier, Mr. Bradley, has broken down, and George Humphreys will have to go away for his health. At five o clock this afternoon I closed the office, and gathered myself into my own house. My gueets were the Misses Grosvenor, Woolsey Hopkins, and George Humphreys, Mr. Plumb, my excellent friend, by whom I may send this letter, Miv Huse, the Episcopal, and Mr. Gregory, the Presbyterian, clergymen. Our dinner went off well and pleasantly, and we adjourned from the table to the church, which had been decorated and illuminated with the ambitious display of rural congregations. The Presbyterian clergyman lent the sanction of his presence. The sermon seemed to please the throng that crowded in every aisle and nook. I was glad enough to find that, with festivity at home, and services at church, I could forget that I have a land-office to keep. I must not forget one beautiful idea in the sermon to-night : " If we justly celebrate the achievements of con querors, and crown with wreaths the brows of those who have triumphed over our enemies, what honor is due to Him who conquered that enemy to whom Al exander, Caesar, and Napoleon, submitted ! " Returning home, reflecting on the recurrence of the great Christian festival, my thoughts took the turn that I deemed a truly philosophical Christian might advantageously give his argument on such an occasion. Eighteen hundred years ago in a remote and obscure province, and among a despised people, a child was born in a stable, and cradled in a manger, who was the offspring of parents the meanest even of their despised race. That child lived only to the middle age of men. He coveted no political power. He sought no alliance with the rich or the great. He avoided the only avenues ever suc cessfully pursued by aspirants to fame. He was denied even the advantages of education enjoyed by the more favored of his countrymen. He was proscribed through life, and died the death of a convicted disturber of the social institutions of his native land. He neither fought, nor wrote, nor in any way distinguished himself except by preaching extemporary lessons of import so humbling to the pride of men, that he was set at naught by the people ; and by doing offices of humanity and kindness to those who were beneath the sympathy of that age, and whose memory is below the dignity of notice in the history of their country. Yet this individual, who died disgraced and forsaken by his countrymen, be trayed by one of his twelve disciples, denied by the boldest, and forsaken by all others, left behind him, in the memory of a few obscure peasants, a code of morals and a system of religion so pure, so perfect, so original, that they have become the government of all that portion of the human race whose intelligence and cultivation combine all the moral and social improvement of the world. Out of the scattered truths which he left, and the truths, still less authentic, which those who communed with him professed to have derived from his im mediate instruction, has been prepared a system of human society which has triumphed over all the arts and arms of all nations, and constitutes the only bond of society and standard of moral action and religious duty. Was that individual of man or of God ? Who can hesitate, that compares the overwhelming result of his simple teaching with all that has been accomplished for the human race by any one or all of the warriors, the statesmen, the philosophers of any nation, or of all the nations of the whole earth ? Who has ever explained this phenom- _enon upon any other satisfactory ground than that he was sent of God ? 1837.] A YEAR OF MISFORTUNE. 323 CHAPTER XVIII. 1837. The Year of Financial Collapse. Busy Times at the Land-Office. Death of his Daughter. A Conflagration. The Ides of March. Van Buren. A Member of the Episcopal Church. General Banking Law. The Crash. u Shinplasters." Louis Napoleon. THE year 1837 opened with a busy scene at the land-office. Writ ing to Mr. Weed, he said : WESTFIELD, January 3, 1837. The 1st of January, which I had fixed as the last day of grace for the set tlers, has passed. They came singly and in pairs, by twenties, fifties, and hun dreds, on foot and on horseback, multitudes with money, and many without. Abating the few who mistook my good-nature for imbecility, and found their mistake before they left me, they came with fear, and went away with confi dence and satisfaction. They left me prostrated by absolute physical exhaustion. But you would like to know the result. Know, then, that one-half of the Hol land Company s estate is settled and arranged ; more than eighty thousand acres of land conveyed ; almost one-half the entire debt paid; and that the 1st of January, 1838, if no calamity occurs, releases me from service ! I am heartily glad you went with Granger to Philadelphia. It would have delighted me to be of the party. It is a lovely city, and one where life is not hurried on at the railroad velocity which you suffer in New York. New York is a good imitation of London in that particular. Philadelphia has all the free dom from annoyance that constitutes half the pleasure of sojourning at Paris. I rejoice that Frank comes out of this, as he always has done out of all unfortunate political elections, with increased reputation and honor. I would rather enjoy his place than that of the Magician. Can you send me the "Pickwick Club" and Davis s book? Make extracts from the former. It is rich. But in the midst of these active labors and bright anticipations came a sad summons. The infant daughter referred to in the preceding letters had been stricken with alarming disease, which the physicians pro nounced to be the small-pox. Traveling at once night and day, he reached Auburn only in time to see her expire. She died on the 14th of January. Poignancy was added to the grief by the subsequent discovery that the exposure to the fatal in fection had been not only unnecessary, but the result of carelessness on the part of a physician. A letter to Mr. Weed ran as follows : ATTBUBN, January 16, 1837. What a day was that which we spent in vain endeavors to support, by stimu lating food and medicine, the child, whose eyes had been four days sealed with blindness, that would probably have continued through the longest life we wished her to enjoy ! Marred, stained, and spoiled of every vestige of that 324 LIFE AN I> LETTERS. [183T. beauty that graces infancy, I resigned her to the grave, with only the consolation that her spirit is fairer and purer now than ever saint or prophet presented at the judgment of God. We have not yet awakened to a consciousness of the danger that hangs over our whole house. When I look upon the sorrowing mother, and the precious faces of my surviving children, our relatives and every servant of the family, and remember that my lost child was nursed and caressed with all the assiduity and constancy her sufferings required, while the very breath that proceeded from her was loaded with infection, I feel as if we are all encompassed with the shades of the valley of death. Shortly after the burial, Seward, feeling ill, had retired at night to his room, when suddenly the church-bells rang an alarm of fire. The ruddy light, streaming into the windows, gave warning, confirmed a few minutes later, that the fire was on Genesee Street, directly oppo site his own buildings, the " Exchange Block." It was a bitter cold night ; a northeast storm was raging, and the flames spread rapidly. The imperfect fire apparatus of the village proved inadequate to check the flames ; the water froze in the buckets and the hose before it could reach the conflagration. Building after building went down. In spite of all attempts to dissuade him, he started up and proceeded to the fire, and spent hours on the roof of the Exchange Block, directing the efforts of a hastily-gathered squad of assistants, with buckets of water and wet blankets, to extinguish the sparks as they fell. Though set on fire in a dozen different places, the block was saved, and the fire burned itself out, after destroying fourteen buildings. He came home with his clothes frozen stiff, and so exhausted as to be unable to take them off. A day later he was prostrated by the varioloid; and the son, who had accompanied him from Westfield, was soon after attacked with the same disease. A week afterward he wrote : ATTBTTBN, January 29, 1837. I avail myself of the earliest recovered strength to say to you that Augustus and myself are both convalescent. When the alarm of fire called me up, for the first time in my life, when I was where my aid might be useful, I shrank from going to a fire ; but I feared that, if I had any form of that horrible disease upon me, my death would cer tainly be the consequence of such exposure as the occasion called for on such a fearful night. The broad glare of flame that blazed almost in my face left me no hope that my property would be safe, and I rushed to the scene ; and such a scene to look upon, when it threatened to consume not merely my property, but my home ! I was imperfectly prepared for the exposure. From half -past eleven until three I worked in the thickest of the heat and melting snow, and sat down at last wearied and exhausted, but with the satisfactory reflection that, by my own exertion, the destruction of the Exchange Buildings and the further prog- of the conflagration were prevented. 1837.] HIS DAUGHTER S DEATH. 325 Recovering after a lapse of three weeks, he returned to his duties in Westfield. He wrote from there : Sunday, February 12th. We are again separated, my dear Frances ; I have returned to you the boy you lent me ; you now have both, all, in your keeping ; you have our living and our dead with you, and the home with which they are associated, and I am far away and all alone ; and yet you will be the mourner, for you are the stricken one, you are the woman, the mother. My feelings on leaving home are known to you ; I never was so reluctant to leave you ; I yet regret very much that I had not insisted on your coming with me, for I am afraid to leave you to mourn alone ; and yet I am without the means to console you. Indeed, I feel great need of consolation myself. The lightness that was in all my heart when I thought of you and your sanctuary, and those who surrounded you there, was the main constituent of my cheerfulness, for I was always thinking of you ; I am now always thinking of you, but I imagine you sitting alone, drooping, de sponding, and unhappy ; and, when I think of you in this condition, I cannot resist the sorrow that swells within me. If I could be with you, to lure you away to more active pursuits, to varied study, or more cheerful thoughts, I might save you for yourself, for your children, for myself. I must commend you, as all must do who would console you, to the offices and to the consolations of that religion you so highly appreciate ; and it will be in my power to meet you, night and morn, before the Creator, in asking him to make us both sen sible of the purpose of the affliction we have suffered. Let this, then, be under stood between us ; and it will perhaps enable us to bear with a more fitting sub mission the calamity which has befallen us. WESTFEELD, Thwsday. I found my clerks alarmed by rumors of threatened conspiracies; and I verily believe, but for my return, their indiscretion, combined with the advan tage my absence afforded to malcontents, would have brought about some effort at disorder. The pretext for the disturbance was, that the deeds which had been promised had not been procured. I had the people s money ; I was ab sent, and of course I had absconded! Think of such charity! and this in a community among which were five newspapers, each of which, with the friends I have, and all my clerks, published the fact that the visitation of death in my family was the cause of my absence. Fortunately, I brought with me from Bata- via, not only my bodily presence, but eight hundred deeds, and the clamor ceased. But I lose no time in saying that there is not and cannot be any cause of apprehension of evil. All former disturbances arose from the unsettled condition of the business of the office. Three-fourths of the people have re newed their contracts, the mass of the community are satisfied, and these little ebullitions of ill-will proceed from a very ignorant few, who have found all their own importance sink as good order and harmony are restored. Resuming his correspondence with Mr. Weed, he wrote : WESTFIELD, February 122A. If there was a time when I more than at other times needed the sympathy and communion of your friendship, it was during my late season of alarm and affliction at Auburn. You have no idea how the wound I have suffered in my 326 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1837. family has made me impatient to abridge this life of estrangement from them. How strange it is that I should be writing such thoughts, such feelings to you you, immersed in cares, and agitated and excited continually by the rough con tact with excited and ambitious men ! But I must talk about somebody and something else than myself. I hope you did not send Matt Davis s book (the " Life of Aaron Burr "), as I have, in that event, missed it altogether. I found one in the book-store at Auburn, and read it with all the interest I expected, when we conversed about it before it was published, and more than I expected after reading the reviews of the book in newspapers. Tell me, honestly, were the beautiful letters of his wife, as well as his own, the studied epistles of persons of high talents and education, each practising on the other ? or were they the ebullitions of a genu ine, and devoted, and exclusive passion ? If the latter, how could such deprav ity as his be associated with such a refined love ? I am anxious for the next volume. I think, by-the-way, that Davis has ex hibited great tact in arresting his pen at the eve of the election in 1801. I must remark, passim, that there is an obscurity resting on the political career of Burr, as it is described in the book. It proceeds, doubtless, from the difficulty of fill ing up, with dignity and action, the details. WESTFIELD, February 23d. I find the good people of Mayville quiet as usual. The citizens of James town, not satisfied with their agitation concerning the banks, have been having some mob-scenes, growing out of the abolition question. Though the commu nity, as a whole, is not rude, ignorant, and excitable, yet it contains very many of that class ; past success in demonstrations of that kind has emboldened them, and hence the spirit of insubordination appears to gain strength. I have, fortunately, so far settled affairs here as to have greatly diminished the danger from these mischief -loving individuals. February Vlth. I have laid aside my volume of Tacitus, which is my sole companion these long winter evenings, and am ready to converse an hour with you. Application has been made to me, on behalf of the Rochester & Batavia Railroad Company, to go to Holland for them this spring. The continued press ure for money in this country renders it probable that some one must go thither also to get our credit extended by the Holland Company on our Chautauqua purchase. The banks are already verging to a state of fearful danger, and I perceive not how they can escape the storm that threatens them. You are, at head quarters, as well skilled in the science of political economy as any of us, and better acquainted with the signs of the times. There were many signs this winter of approach of financial distress. In February occurred a demonstration, evidently based on ideas im ported from Europe, for there was nothing in the condition of either rich or poor in the United States that could be deemed an adequate cause for it ; this was a " flour-mob " in the city of New York. A meeting was held in the park, at which inflammatory appeals were ad dressed to a gathering of five or six thousand men, the enhanced price 1837.] GENERAL JACKSON S RETIREMENT. 327 of flour being chosen, probably because it was the best ad captandum argument, and not because flour was more exaggerated in price than other commodities, nor because there was any real scarcity of bread. Fired to fanatic enthusiasm, the crowd rushed down to Washington Street, broke into and pillaged the store of a dealer in flour and grain, breaking open barrels and throwing their contents out of the windows, until the street in front was covered a foot deep with flour. The mob then proceeded to a store on the east side of the city, to begin a simi lar outrage, but by this time the police had mustered in sufficient force to arrest the ringleaders and disperse the others. The season of high prosperity and speculation prevailing in 1836 had now culminated, and a reaction was setting in. The closing year of General Jackson s Administration had been signalized by his " Specie Circular," requiring payments for public lands to be made in specie instead of bank-notes ; and the banks, finding themselves called upon to meet a Western demand for specie, in consequence, were beginning to contract their loans and discounts. Still, no one as yet expected anything worse than a temporary stringency, and neither the outgoing Administration of General Jackson, nor the incoming one of Mr. Van Buren, nor their supporters in Congress, seemed inclined to deviate from the policy upon which they had entered, of discouraging and discrediting bank issues of " paper-money." The storm was gather ing, but had not yet burst. General Jackson, in his last message, de fended the " Specie Circular," and spoke of the " happy consequences " that were to ensue from it ; and, on the last day of the session, refused to sign a bill, passed by both Houses, allowing notes of specie-paying banks to be received. Colonel Benton achieved at last the success of his resolution for " expunging " from the Senate Journal its censure of General Jack son, in 1834, for the removal of the deposits. Mr. Van Buren was in augurated President on the 4th of March, and, as Chief-Justice Taney administered the oath to him on the eastern portico of the Capitol, General Jackson was said to have exultingly exclaimed, " There is my rejected minister to England, sworn as President by my rejected Judge of the Supreme Court ! " The triumph was undeniably complete ; the Democratic party had control of all the branches of the Government, the executive, the legislative, and the judicial. General Jackson s policy had been ap proved and his measures adopted throughout. He had overthrown the national bank; he had established the " hard-money" doctrine; he had suppressed the discussion of slavery ; and he had named his suc cessor in the chair. He was now to have the glory, and his successor to reap the bitter fruits. 328 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1837. WESTFIELD, March 7, 1837. The long-dreaded Ides of March are here. The celebration of the triumph "has passed by, and the victors are flushed with the anticipated division of the spoils. Yet the surface of things is unchanged, and all looks as fair for the per petuity of our free institutions as ever. Did it ever occur to you that there is the same error in our notions of national dissolution and decay that there is in our ideas of the working of death in the physical frame ? We know that the system is infected with a mortal disease; we anticipate a violent and sudden dissolution by convulsions ; and yet, the sufferer lingers and stays so long, the progress of decay is so often checked by the remaining energies of life, that we come at last to believe our former apprehensions groundless. And, when we have thus come at last to believe that all is well, suddenly and mysteriously the progress of the destroyer is fearfully accelerated, and death closes the scene. Such a consumptive death may be the fate of Liberty in this land, and not that violent end that more ardent patriots imagine. My brother Jennings came here on Thursday last, and made me a very grati fying visit. I had been anticipating his arrival, for I had matured a plan equally advantageous, I think, for us both, which would release me from my present pursuit and restore his powers to their proper direction. I tendered him an equal participation in my advantages here if he would come on with his family and grow up in the business, so as not to produce alarm by any sudden change of administration. You know his superior capability. It has been a severe struggle with the enthusiasm of his nature ; but he has assented at last, and will come in as my chief assistant on the first of April. The estate is already sub stantially settled. His great mercantile skill and industrious habits will enable him to carry it forward to its most profitable close. WESTFIFLD, March 12, 1837. So General Jackson has left his specie order in force, and by retaining the bill passed by Congress has perpetuated the evils under which we have suffered, I predict that " the Magician " will speedily suspend the order. I have just read Van Buren s inaugural. I confess that it seems refreshing to find the documents proceeding from the Executive imbued once more with the sense of responsibility, and distinguished by something of the dignity that pertained to similar papers previous to the accession of the late incumbent. Van Buren has certainly a very happy talent in such papers, but I think this superior to all his manifestoes during the canvass. I see that he appreciates the danger to which his Administration is exposed. March 15th. The young men in the office begin to look with alarm at the prospect of a disbanding, which will become necessary in a few months. After a hard win ter s work they see the business so nearly done that there must be a great dimi nution of their number. One is very busily engaged in that chief of all pleas ures courtship. It must be an unusual case if it can last much longer without resolving itself into coffee and toast for two. Of a clergyman in one of the towns of Chautauqua County, whose acquaintance he had made, he said : 1887.1 CHURCH MEMBERSHIP. 329 4 * He is a fast admirer of General Jackson, and, when we met at dinner about the 4th of March, I said, by way of closing a rather warm discussion on politics, " Well, you have put up your last public prayer for the old hero 1 " " Yes," said he, "and I sincerely regret that I shall not hereafter be able to continue that duty." " Well, well," said I, " you will doubtless, like all other Jackson men, wor ship the rising sun." " No," said he, seriously ; " I have been thinking on that subject, and I have come to the conclusion that I shall henceforth omit the prayer for the President of the United States, for I don t like Mr. Van Buren. I do not wish him prosper ity, and cannot pray for it." I remonstrated with him, setting forth all the arguments which naturally present themselves, but without success. He did omit the prayer, and his is probably the only Episcopal church in the country which does not every Sunday pray for a blessing upon " the President of the United States and all others in authority." Adverting to a lecturer who was expounding some extreme theories of abstinence and vegetarianism, in Auburn, Seward remarked : I hope he will leave common-sense enough among the people there to qualify them for getting the small portion of daily bread and water they will need, even upon his plan. What strange ideas people must have of the character of God 1 Some of them see, in the faculties with which he has endowed us, but the senti nels of alarm and terror. Others see, in our tastes and appetites, only the traitors of our souls and bodies ! Toward the close of March he wrote to Mrs. Seward : Sunday, March 26*A. The beautiful little poem of which you speak strikingly illustrates the benefi cence of the Creator. I have somewhere read that he who contributes to extend among our race the knowledge of the attributes of God accomplishes greater good than he who achieves the most perilous enterprise. To diffuse a knowledge of the works of God is the task of philosophy ; to learn from the knowledge thus diffused the true character of the Deity, is its chief value. It was during this month that he united with the Episcopal Church at Westfield as one of its members. He said : I received this morning, not without fear, but I trust in sincerity of heart, the sacraments of baptism and the communion. I was alone at the font. Yet I felt that it was a duty that my conscience enjoined, my judgment and my heart approved, and it had been too long postponed. I thought continually of yon and my boys, and our child-angel " that left her errand with my heart and straight returned to heaven." The news from Albany that a proposed general banking law was in danger of defeat aroused much popular feeling. Public meetings urged its passage. One was held in Chautauqua County, and Seward, as 330 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1837. chairman of the committee, drew up the memorial to be presented to the Legislature. It recited the financial and commercial condition of the country as viewed from the popular standpoint, closing thus : Your petitioners have deemed it their right as citizens, and their duty as a portion of your constituency, to present to you the true condition of the coun try, and the existing state of public opinion. They abstain from all discussion of the details of the several bills under consideration in the Legislature. It is not in the primary assemblies of the people that such details ought to be matured. They will only say that the passage of even the most imperfect of those bills would be better than the denial of all relief. The proposed general banking law was referred to the Attorney- General, Samuel Beardsley, who declared it to be unconstitutional, and that, if passed, such a statute would be absolutely null and void. His party sustained this view. A second bill, framed to meet his objec tions, was defeated in the Senate. So the projected measure of relief failed, and the financial crisis hastened to its culmination. WESTFIELD, April 3, 1837. On the other page is the memorial I drew for our meeting here. I deem myself fortunate in being out of the contagious atmosphere of Albany when the dark scene, I in other times foresaw, is drawing over the land. Even here, among business-men, there is evidently a growing alarm. We are doubtless to Buffer now the consequences of blindly following blind leaders. My heart fails me not, but I mourn that the good and the wise are involved in the punishment. April 10th. You are a sad fellow, Uncle Weed. It is doubtful whether I have rendered you any kindness in recommending the history of the Pickwickians to your perusal. The lives of those illustrious personages are to be improved to our advantage by reading them, not imitating them. I should delight to know, however, how you have cast the dramatis personce in your club. I suppose that Livingston, in virtue of his accomplishments as a presiding officer in by-gone days, is P. P. P. W. 0. Cutting, if not more guarded in debate in the club than the House, must frequently be compelled to apologize for violation of Pick wickian etiquette. The tide of popular opinion is growing fearfully stormy, and it finds no longer the popularity of " the revered chief " to resist its force. The country is yet to feel the pressure that seems to be passing over New York. The first payments for farms in this universal barter are generally in arrear : then comes the pinch. Meanwhile, the commercial panic had begun. It is never easy to +-o<3e pll the causes of a period of financial disorder, since each of its ejects Decomes in turn a cause of fresh disasters. And so the finan cial storm which swept over the country in 1837, bringing in its train ruin, bankruptcy, and beggary, has been ascribed, by its historians, to 1837.] THE CRASH. 331 as many and various causes as there were shades of political opinion or mercantile experience. Now that it is all so long past that the observer can look back upon it with impartiality, it seems to have been not only a natural but an inevitable consequence of the wild period of speculative expansion which preceded it. Both the one period and the other owed their existence, in a large degree, to governmental action, State and national, undertaken from patriotic motives, but with blindness to future results. The national and State governments had determined that there should be no United States Bank, with vaults containing the national treasure, but that there should be a multitude of local banks, among whom that treasure would be distributed. Of course, it was made by them the basis of vastly-expanded issues and credits. Then, having thus built up these banks in the commercial centres, the Government proceeded to undermine them by proclaiming doubts of their solvency, throwing discredit on their " paper-money," and requiring specie to be withdrawn from them to be used on the Western frontier. Financial credit is so frail and sensitive a structure that it trembles at the whispers of unfounded rumor. How could it fail to come down with a crash at the blast of official trumpets ? Money, during the winter, had commanded exorbitant and increas ing rates of interest, amounting to three and four per cent, a month. Early in the spring, firms in the cotton and sugar line in New Orleans suspended. Immediately similar failures occurred in New York. In April two hundred and fifty of the leading houses had stopped pay ment. By the close of that month there was a run upon the banks. On the 3d of May a New York meeting implored the President to rescind the " Specie Circular," and to call an extra session of Congress, giving as reasons that real estate in the city, within the past six months, had depreciated more than forty million dollars; that stocks had depreciated as much more; that twenty thousand men, depending upon daily labor, had been turned out of employment ; " and that a complete blight has fallen upon the community, heretofore so active, enterprising, and prosperous." A week later all the banks in the city suspended specie payment by common consent, and those in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston, as well as those of all inland towns, as fast as news reached them, fol lowed the example. The Federal Government itself was unable to pay a dollar, for during the past two years it had been proclaiming and enacting laws that it would receive and pay only in specie, and its specie, like that of individual depositors, was in the vaults of the suspended banks. Writing from Philadelphia, Seward said : No adequate conception can be formed of the pressure in New York. It is sweeping like a pestilence, and poverty and suffering follow in its train. It is 332 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1887. a season of perfect prostration of confidence, and everybody is oppressed with care. One after another all my " rich " associates fall into despondency, and some of them, I fear, into real trouble. I arrived in New York on Monday morning, spent a melancholy day amid the gloomy scenes of that ill-fated city, and then came here. My friends in the Chautauqua purchase are now all here. Sad as the times are, our business will be carried through the pressure without shipwreck, and I feel cheerful in this result. I have fallen in with Governor Morehead, of Kentucky. I met him first in New York. He is a manly, generous young fellow, about seven feet high. It is probable he will accompany me to Auburn on my return, if I do return this summer. Among the newspaper announcements of the spring was this : The French frigate AndromMe, with Louis N. Bonaparte, has arrived at Norfolk. The prince is banished to America for an attempt to excite a revolu tion in France. An exiled prince, however, was not so uncommon an affair as to excite great public attention, especially in a time of public calamity. Visiting one day at Chancellor Kent s, Seward met there " Mr. Bona parte," as he was called in New York. Probably it would have sur prised both the young men had they been told that they were des tined in future, not only to direct the international relations of their respective countries, but to come into collision in so doing, and to have the joint responsibility, more than once, of casting the die of peace or war in the Old World and the New. On reaching home after this expedition Seward found Auburn suffer ing, as all the larger communities were, under the effects of the commer cial panic merchants and manufacturers embarrassed, workmen thrown out of employment, business stopped, and all the attractive projects of tbe past year railroads, canals, factories, avenues, and parks brought to a dead stand. Real estate, when it now changed bands, was sacrificed at one-sixth its former value to satisfy creditors. The Legislature, just at the close of its session, had sanctioned the suspension of specie payments by the banks for one year, thus enabling them to avoid going into liquidation ; but it had failed to repeal the law prohibiting tbe circulation of bank-bills under five dollars. Unable to get specie, and denied the use of paper-money, the people of the State found themselves unable to buy or sell even their daily food, to pay wages, or to carry on tbe most common transactions of civilized life. There was no help to be hoped for from government, State or national, for the Legislature had refused it, and adjourned ; the Presi dent had called an extra session of Congress, but it was not to meet until September. In self-defense, individuals and corporations betook them- 1837.] "SHINPLASTERS. 333 selves to currency of their own making. It was an era of " shinplas- ters." Village trustees, merchants, manufacturers, hotel-keepers, and indeed any one whose name and credit would enable him to put them in circulation, issued printed promises to pay, which passed from hand to hand as money in the localities where the names they bore were known. They were of varied form and size. But the two or three subjoined will illustrate their character : TONTINE COFFEE-HOUSE. GOOD FOB 23 CENTS IN REFRESHMENTS. Caldwell tfe Kenyon. ASTOR HOUSE. Twenty-five Cents. I promise on demand to pay the bearer FOUR SHILLINGS. ALEX. WELSH. Good for One Dollar. F. BLANCHABD. Writing the next week to Mr. Weed, he said : ATTBTJBN, June 20, 1837. This month of June is so delightful ; our trees, our vines, and our shrubs, are all so green and grateful to the eye ; the locust-flowers produce almost a satiety of fragrance, and the mellowed light that makes its way through the foliage seems to hallow the dwelling for repose. All this is perhaps much misplaced composure when the community suffers around us, but I hope you will find, in my long and vexed absence from home, some kind of excuse for an Jo paean on my return to my plain and unpretending domicile. Auburn, sooth to say, is beautiful ; now, in this hour of her trial, more rich and more beautiful than ever. As yet there have been no failures, but I hear of troubles and embarrassments around us that, if not relieved, must produce all that wretchedness which iu other times we predicted. And how can there be relief, and when ? The gloom still hangs over the country, heavier and blacker than ever ! And what, you would ask, do I think of political feeling as it develops itself 334 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1837. in the country. I see now nothing but a subdued and dejected people. Every day brings home to these the bitter instructions of a necessity before unknown and unlocked for. However partisan newspapers may deceive their readers, it is certain that the mass of the people do most justly feel that the calamities which have fallen upon the country have resulted from the erroneous policy of the Government. The mass of the Jackson party feel that their own willful action has accomplished our ruin, and, instead of holding "the hero" to the responsibility he assumed, they mourn their own infatuation. I believe, not withstanding, that an election taken now would reverse all the majorities ob tained over us last year. An unfortunate expression in the columns of the Administration organ at Washington, the Globe, was, " There is no pressure which any honest man should regret." This declaration added bitterness to the popular feeling, and was promptly caught up and used in political arguments. - The financial policy of the Administration had been cautiously de scribed as an " experimental " one, to imply that it would be changed in case it should be found to work injuriously to public interests ; but unfortunately the projects seemed to fail one after another, until the public clamored for a cessation of experiments. In fact, confi dence in the wisdom and financial skill of the Jackson party had now received a rude shock. The supporters of that policy found themselves put upon their defense at public meetings and in the press. Less from any new-born faith in the doctrines of the Whig party than from daily-growing distrust of those of the Administration, voters fell away and transferred their allegiance. At the charter elections in Albany and New York the Whigs had achieved successes unexpected even by themselves. CHAPTER XIX. 1837. Chautauqua in Summer. Discourse on Education. Washington in the Extra Session. First Meeting with Clay and Webster. Calhoun s Speech. New York & Erie Kail* road Convention. Samuel B. Ruggles. A Political Revolution. Whig Exultations. Weed and the Clerkship. The Canadian " Patriot War." The Je/ersonian. Letters to Children. IN all enterprises of amusement or travel Seward liked to be accompanied by those who could share his pleasure. He not only enjoyed his family circle, but liked to have it a large one. Fond of traveling, his chief regret in making his journeys was, that he so often made them alone ; and whenever it was practicable he loved to trans port with him the surroundings of home. When, therefore, this sum- 1837.] A FAMILY JOURNEY. 335 mer it had become necessary to return to Westfield, he proposed and organized a family excursion thither. Starting from Auburn on a bright June morning, in a stage-coach of Sherwood s well-known line, designated, according to the usage of the time, as an " exclusive extra," they followed the western turnpike across the Cayuga Bridge. His letters to Mr. Weed described the trip : WESTFIELD, July 3, 1837. It has been a chasm in time since I parted with you at Utica. Your perverse nature has led you to take shelter behind a supposed uncertainty as to my whereabouts, and so deprive me of a single line under your hand. But the plea shall avail you no longer. Know, therefore, thou offender, that I have safely escaped the perils by flood and field, and am once more in my proper baili wick of Chautauqua, where I shall stay at least long enough to need the support of your letters, and yet so short a period that I shall speedily call you to account in person if you neglect my reasonable requirements. Monday morning, just one week ago, we set out in an extra exclusive, and arrived the same day at Canandaigua. There we found Mrs. Worden, brought her and her daughter with us through Avon, Batavia, and Lockport, to Buffalo, and then through the " Oattaraugus Woods," where the roads are noted as being the worst in the country, and are rendered almost impassable by mud even in midsummer. At Fredonia we went to look at Mr. Hart s garden, situate in a narrow street. My father and mother remained in the coach, while all the others went into the garden. The driver, in attempting to tarn, overturned the stage. My mother s arm was dislocated at the wrist. My father was considerably bruised, but he has altogether recovered. My mother s wound has been attended to with all care and skill, and seems to be doing well. We are all here, housed in my domi cile, or rather that which late was mine, but now is my brother s. A delightful place it is too, as we all hope to have an opportunity, before the resumption of specie payments, or the winter s solstice, to satisfy you. Our parents, notwithstanding my mother s misfortune, enjoy greatly the society of so many of their children and their own increasing health. Mrs. Worden finds comfort and convalescence in the Chautauqua air. The children are right glad to have green plots and groves for their intervals of school-hours, and I am once more altogether free from care. How long we all stay here we cannot tell, for I bar the question among ourselves until I get amends for my long pilgrimage at the East. John 0. Spencer and Mark Sibley called upon us at Canandaigna, and my entire evening was spent with them. I had but a hurried interview with Fillmore. Mr. and Mrs. Gary went with us to Buffalo, and our party was so large and unwieldy that I could not retard or direct its movements, except straightforward. Everything here looks well and improved, as I knew it would be under my brother s administration. The pressure seems scarcely to have reached this sec tion of the country. There is great relief in getting away from the associations that so utterly break up all cheerfulness at the East. Some weeks were passed in the " Mansion House " at Westfield. Labors at the land-office continued, but did not prevent him from 336 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1887. taking the whole party to see the various points of interest. Visits were made to the lake-shore, to Fredonia, and the wonderful gas- spring (an avant coureur of the yet undiscovered petroleum-wells), to Dunkirk, whose capacious harbor was fondly deemed a destined entre pot of great future commerce, to Mayville, with its county magnates and buildings, then down the beautiful Chautauqua Lake in a little steamboat just large enough to wind through the thicket and forest lined outlet to Jamestown, whose commercial relations were with the valley of the Ohio. WESTFIELD, July 10, 1837. Well, I am here for once, enjoying the reality of dreams. " Othello s occu pation," although not absolutely "gone," is still so relieved that I find time abundant for all things. I assiduously perform such labor as I have before me. I read much, I ride some, and stroll more along the lake-shore. My wife and children are enjoying a measure of health which enables them to participate in these pleasures, and, despite the thought of returning notes of hand, protests, and panics, I am at ease. Now, then, if you were here, and brought no "re ports of outrage and oppression with which earth is filled," we would enjoy pleasures that would have seduced Cicero and his philosophic friends from Tus- culum. July I2tk. I am glad you had a patriotic Fourth of July. I love that kind of celebra tions. I spent mine, however, quite pleasantly here, in the large family circle that are " round about me." I went to church to hear the Declaration of Inde pendence read by a Presbyterian clergyman, and an intemperate temperance address by a reclaimed drunkard. My brother, " Mr. Seward of Westfield," went to Fredonia, and delivered a Sunday-school address to the Sunday-school, where by I see he stirred up the old leaders of Tom Paineism. I have read with much delight Stephens s " Incidents of Travel." Dudley Marvin, Fillmore, and others, are at Mayville, attending the Circuit Court. I had a good long talk with Fillmore, and have had some opportunity with Gardiner. I spent an hour or two at court. By-the-way, James Mullet, here, is a noble fellow, both in the qualities of head and heart. WESTFIELD, July 17, 1837. It seems that the speed of our mails is in the inverse ratio of the improve ment of our roads. Yours of the 8th has just come, and meets me on my return from Jamestown and Warren, in Pennsylvania. I have been agreeably disap pointed in the condition and aspect of that part of this county, which I have now traversed for the first time. You have had a succession of enjoyments Granger, Kent, and Marryat. I think Granger can afford one year of absence from public life, and doubt not that it will be fortunate if his friends excuse him. I envy you so much of Kent s society as you seem to enjoy, and I am glad that you had an opportunity to make Captain Marryat s acquaintance. I always covet the opportunity to compare the real man with my estimate or standard derived from his writings. Fillmore was here the day after he had met Webster at Buffalo. He says that Webster was very much dejected on arriving at Buffalo. He began to feel. 1837.] DISCOURSE ON "EDUCATION." 337 the coldness with which the premature demonstration made in New York had been received in all the West. The committee expressly avoided the suhject ia their address to him. Nevertheless, the magnificent and imposing ceremonies of his reception at Buffalo inspired him with higher hopes and better feelings. I shall certainly go this fall to Washington. Are you going to be ready to bear me company ? WESTFIELD, July 27, 1837. Last Tuesday the principal of our academy, being about to have an examina tion and exhibition of his school, called with the trustees and requested me to address the people. I undertook to deliver a discourse last evening on educa tion. I set myself busily about my preparations, and had got into my second copy on Friday, when Messrs. Rathbone and Patchin arrived. On Monday I set out with Rathbone to traverse the county, and returned yesterday morning. I made out to get a tolerably readable manuscript, and read it last night to the whole people of Westfield, very much, if I may rely upon their expressions of that sort, to their satisfaction, and much more to their satisfaction than my own. This long story about a village-school exhibition will explain why you have not been visited with the infliction of a letter earlier this week. To finish that mat ter, I have two applications for a copy to print, both, of course, made by per sons who, as usual, do not know that such an affair appears better when deliv ered than when it comes addressed (by the devil s art which you practise) to the eye. I have the matter under consideration. This occasion drew to the academy not only parents and relatives, but many distant inhabitants of that sequestered region, to whom pub lic gatherings were pleasures highly valued, because of their rarity. The throng on that day gave unwonted life and activity to the little village. The notable characteristic of his discourse was that, in dealing with the subject of education, he stepped out of the beaten track of de scribing its individual advantages, social benefits, or scientific progress; and perhaps instinctively or unconsciously treated it from the stand point of the statesman, studying its influence upon the welfare of the State and the perpetuity of the Government. Taking his theme from the volume he had lately been reading, he quoted the remark of Tacitus in regard to his own countrymen. " The people," says that historian, " always politicians, and fond of settling state affairs, gave a loose rein to their usual freedom of speech. Few were able to think with judgment, and few had the virtue to feel for the public good." Proceeding then to inquire how far the same remark would be true in the United States, Seward described the effects of our too hasty and careless training of the citizens called to deal with public affairs : Our children and youth are generally dismissed from the schools, after some years of misimproved time, at the very period when their education has only been fairly commenced. Popular worki upon morals and government, adapted 22 338 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1837. to the use of schools, have scarcely a circulation in the country. If there be any truth in the language of all parties, or that of all calm observers, falsehood and error often pass current for truth and wisdom ; passion, prejudice, and local interests are often appealed to and not always without success instead of generous and enlightened motives. And our elections are too often rather embittered personal conflicts for place and rewards than the deliberate discus sion of great measures, or the discerning choice of honest, enlightened, and com petent men. Then, turning to the subject (which at that time had hardly begun to receive the popular attention since bestowed upon it) of female edu cation, he said : There remains to be noticed an error, scarcely less extensive or less per nicious than any I have mentioned. It is that which limits to a comparatively lower standard the education of the female sex. . . . He is a dull observer who is not convinced that they are equally qualified with the other sex for the study of the magnificent creation around us, and equally entitled to the happiness to be de rived from its pursuit ; and still more blind is he who has not learned that it was the intention of the Creator to commit to them a higher and greater portion of responsibility in the education of the youth of both sexes. They are the natural guardians of the young. . . . It is not, as is generally supposed, the female sex alone who suffer by this exclusion from their proper sphere. Whatever is lost to the other sex, of the advantages of their nurture and cultivation, is an additional loss to our common race. Called in September to Philadelphia and Baltimore, by some busi ness affairs, he availed himself of the opportunity to spend a few days at the Federal Capital. Congress was now holding the extra session, convened by President Van Buren, to take measures with reference to the financial crisis. WASHINGTON, September Vlth. I lodge at Gradsby s. Sibley and Ogden Hoffman [both M. C. s from New York] live here, and I take my meals in their parlor. I have made some inter esting acquaintances, especially that of Mr. Clay, Mr. Calhoun, and Mr. Preston. The House has not been in session since my arrival. A discussion of some in terest, however, is expected to-morrow in the Senate, in which Mr. Calhoun will take the lead. I am pleased with the appearance and manners of Mr. Clay more than I had anticipated, although I was prepared for most favorable impressions. Congress seems one wide scene of hurry, confusion, and uselessness. I heard Mr. Calhoun on Monday make his long- threatened speech, and was grieved to see one more of the great names I have venerated as superior in worth and mag nanimity destroy all those hopes that years had gathered around him. When shall I close the long experience of disappointed expectations concerning the great men of my time ? Perhaps, only, when I fall into the common error of old age, the suspicion of my race. UDASSTEISIL 1837.] CLAY, WEBSTER, AND CALHOUN. 339 PHILADELPHIA, September 20, 1837. I am once more returned to the city of right-angled streets, coats, and jack ets. I had a delightful visit at Washington. It was dashed only by the sorry spectacle of a great man sacrificing to a restless ambition the accumulated hon ors of years of patriotic and lofty action in his country s service. But who could expect well-regulated and consistent action in the apostle of Nullification ? His speech, all of which I heard, served to let him down at once from the proud and enviable distinction of the compatriot of Clay and Webster. After this experience, I scarcely dare to say that both those great men won upon my esteem and admiration, more than I had supposed was possible, after so much disappointment in men to whom I have yielded the enthusiastic devo tion of younger days. But I will confess that I was impressed with the plain, direct, and confiding manner of Mr. Webster, not less than the dignified yet ardent and fascinating discourse of Henry Clay. My whole heart was open to both of them, as men with whom I delight to labor for the good of my country. I forgot that they were rivals, and, when the recollection occurred to me, it did not abate my veneration for them, because I remembered that their ambition was generous. It is impossible to ascertain just now what will be the extent of evil result ing from Calhoun s defection. I saw many gentlemen from the South, all of ; whom said he would carry only two members of Congress with him, Mr. Pickens and another from South Carolina. Mr. Preston is open and decided against him. But you have seen the Richmond Whig? How strange that, when the Enquirer pauses in support of Van Buren, the Whig should go to his rescue ! The Conservatives at Washington, from New York, have lost the power to organize by waiting for an increase of their number. I told them I thought their case like that of the poor woman in the story. At a landing on the Missis sippi, a steamboat was just pushing off, when a little old Frenchwoman with a basket ran down to the wharf and hailed the captain, " Monsieur le capitaine, arr6tez-vous one petite minute." "What do you want, good woman? " said the captain, as he backed the wheel and neared the quay. " I have got leven egg," said she, " and ma poulette is making another ; if you will wait a minute or two, I will have une douzaine pour le market ! " I saw Fillmore, and had good reason to believe he will come out the leading member of our delegation. Mark Sibley is preparing to make a demonstration. He will succeed, if he do not fall into the error that has been unfortunate for Wise. Hoffman is a noble, generous fellow. I just saw Ohilds, and that was all. I dined with Clay on Monday, and received an invitation for the same day from Mr. Webster. I left Washington at five o clock on Monday, under the excellent management of our old friend, " the Spy in Washington," whom I came to like more than ever. I took the railroad-car from Washington to Baltimore, and arrived at that place at eight o clock. A hackney-coach carried me to my friend Dr. McCaulay 8 country-seat the same evening. It is a delightful spot, two miles and a half out of the city, on an eminence attained by a winding road, and embowered with shade-trees and shrubbery. Mrs. McCaulay had, waiting for me, a broiled pheasant and hot coffee. We passed the houre, unconscious of the night, until one. At five in the morning I rose, and after a nice breakfast rode to Baltimore, where I took the railroad, and as you see by my date I am here once more. 340 LIFE ^D LETTERS. [1837. You recollect how long and full of various incidents was our ride from Bal timore to Philadelphia two years ago ? Think now of accomplishing the same journey in seven hours ! This morning I resumed my negotiation with the much- abused monstrum horrendum of the Jackson party, Mr. Nicholas Biddle. It seems to be going on to a successful arrangement. I presume it will be brought to a close to-morrow. And now came on the election. Congress, when convened in extra session by Mr. Van Buren, had been urged by him in his message to adopt some measure to render the operations of the Treasury indepen dent of banks, either State or national ; each having, as he said, been tried, and each having proved a failure. But the members of Congress, like the constituencies they represented, had begun to distrust finan cial advice which counseled such frequent and radical changes, attended with such violent fluctuations. The more they debated, the more they became divided in opinion, and the Administration was no longer able to command the support of a majority in both Houses. The Whigs denounced the message as a fresh attack upon the banks and the credit system. The session closed on the 16th of Octo ber without agreement upon any financial measure, except the issue of ten million dollars of Treasury notes. Inspired by these signs of the waning strength of the Jackson party, the Whigs in the various States made their nominations, and entered upon the campaign with fresh hopes. The Cayuga County Whig Convention was in session at Auburn. Learning that Seward was again at home, Colonel E. B. Morgan moved a committee to wait upon him and invite him to take a seat in the convention. Accepting the invitation, he was warmly received and solicited to address them. His speech summed up the issues of the canvass, and contained a description of the condition of the country : The change has come. We no longer warn the people against impending evils and apprehended danger. The evils are here. . . . Our agriculture, rich in its productions beyond all preceding experience, languishes and is crippled. The commerce of our great cities has been struck down. Our manufactories are paralyzed. Our works of internal improvement, of paramount importance, are suspended. Our gold and silver, no longer performing their function as the support of our currency, are drained from us ; and the enterprising business-men of the country are falling under the exactions of the broker and the usurer. The Government, but recently disposing of untold revenue, is pledging its credit by issues of " continental money " to pay the salaries of its officers, and carry on a war, alike inglorious in success or defeat, against a miserable handful of Indians in the swamps of Florida. . . . The remedy must be effected by representatives to be elected by the people. On one side, we will offer to the people men who have had no participation in the causes of these evils men always careful to preserve rather than to destroy. On the other side, we see presented a divided party divided between leaders of 1837.] A RAILROAD CONVENTION. 341 two classes one class of whom allege that the cure of these evils is to be found in renewed " experiments," and another class who falter and shrink from further prosecution of such rash and dangerous measures. He wrote to Weed : AUBURN, October 9, 1887. The county convention assembled on Saturday, and the delegates were all willing, most of them pressed, that I should take a nomination for the Assem bly. I firmly declined, for reasons which I think you will understand and ap prove. The convention invited me to a seat, with which courtesy I complied, and at their instance T addressed them. In my remarks I spoke of myself as I thought was expected. Its local effect will be good ; but I have had to reduce it to get within the compass of the Auburn Journal. So it will not be worth copying. I believe I shall go next week to the New York & Erie Railroad Convention. AUBUBN, October 13, 1837. Reasons "thick as blackberries" remain for postponing my going to Chau- tauqua. I hope Ruggles will come this way. Although I have been three days engaged in preparing an address for the New York & Erie Railroad Conven tion, I feel that I need the stimulus his arrival would give, to carry me there. He must not decline the nomination for the Assembly. I have been again sorely tempted. Our friends here are awake to the im portance of carrying the Senate district and the county. They have required me to consent that Maynard shall resign, and the convention be reassembled and nominate me. They have good reason to believe Maynard will gladly re sign, as the nomination was forced upon him. But I have resisted the devil and driven him from me. I fear always such changing of front. I have good hope for our ticket. It is not quite so weak as the other. I shall be at Elmira on Tuesday and Wednesday, and return here. Judge Miller goes with me. I repeat my aspiration that Ruggles will come. This letter refers to an effort to revive a great enterprise which had been temporarily abandoned. The New York & Erie Railroad Com pany, which was incorporated in 1832, had its route surveyed, under direction of the Legislature, in 1834, with satisfactory results. Its stock was then largely subscribed for, and the Legislature in 1836 au thorized a State loan of three million dollars in aid of it. The work had been commenced, near the eastern end of the line. But the great fire in New York, and the commercial revulsion which followed so soon after, had embarrassed and ruined many of those who had subscribed to it. Corporate and individual credit were alike prostrated ; and a failure of its resources compelled the railroad company to desist from its operation. But now, in the fall of 1837, as there began to be signs of gradual revival of confidence, it was deemed a favorable moment to renew labors in behalf of the enterprise. A convention was called to meet at Elmira on the 17th of October for that purpose, and Seward was solicited to take part in it, and prepare its address to the public. 342 LIFE AND LETTERS. [183T Among those interested in the project, none had such undoubting faith in its success, or such ability to demonstrate it by facts and figures, as Samuel B. Ruggles, of New York. The kindred views entertained by him and by Seward laid the foundation of an intimacy for many succeed ing years, closing only with Seward s life. Whenever questions of in ternal improvement, commerce, and finance, were under discussion, Seward felt that he had one supporter upon whose statistical skill and careful judgment he could rely ; and his " lieutenant," as he styled him self in that cause, was as ready and eager to plunge into the requisite mathematical studies as most other men are to keep out of them. AUBTTKN, October 20, 1837. I left home in a blaze for Tioga. Ruggles and his wife reached here Saturday night. They met here Gary, Lay, and Schermerhorn. I went to bed after talking with them until two o clock. Sunday morning my chimney took fire, while I was shaving. I had this affair, and Erie, and Chautauqua, all on my hands at once. But for my going, the convention would have been a sad failure. I stirred out Charles Humphreys as I went through Ithaca. He served as president. It was three-fourths "Regency," and John Murnford espied some Federalism in my address ; we had much amusement out of him. All, however, went off well. Mr. Humphreys, here referred to, was the Speaker of the Assembly. Delegates were in attendance from Tioga, Livingston, Chemung, Broome, Tompkins, Cattaraugus, Steuben, and Chautauqua. A committee was appointed to report an address and resolutions. Upon Seward, as its chairman, fell the duty of drafting them. After a recess, the con vention having reassembled in the court-room, the secretary of the rail road company made a statement of its condition, and Seward read the address, detailing the history of the corporation, the aid it had re ceived, the embarrassments and difficulties it had encountered, the reasons for prosecuting the work and for believing that such a railroad would be not merely of local but of general benefit. He pointed out that it had two objects : first, " to open a convenient and speedy com munication between the commercial centre and an extensive and fer tile agricultural region of the State, destitute of such facilities ; sec ond, that of creating a thoroughfare for the trade and commerce be tween New York and the Western States." That opposition to such improvements arose " from an honest but often unwise application of republican economy " he conceded, and added : It is well to remember that the experience of human government affords not a solitary instance in which a state or nation became impoverished or subjected to an irredeemable debt by works of internal improvement. Ambition, revenge, and lust for extended territory, have been the only causes, and war almost the sole agent, in entailing those calamities upon nations. Palaces and pyramids, the 1837.] A WHIG TRIUMPH. 343 luxurious dwellings of living tyrants, and the receptacles of their worthless ashes when dead, have in every country but our own cost more than all its canals and roads. . . . Egypt, Rome, Netherlands, England, and France, and ven our own peace-loving country, have severally disbursed more in a single war than was required to complete a system of improvements sufficient to per fect their union, wealth, and power. And in conclusion he remarked : The work will proceed, but it ought not and must not proceed alone. The occasion is auspicious to the revival of the whole system, and to its prosecu tion, not with partial support and convulsive effort, but with the combined, wealth and united energies of the whole people. Resolutions of similar purport were adopted, and county commit tees appointed to promote, explain, and defend the work. Among the members of these were Charles Cook, of Chemung ; Daniel S. Dickin son, of Broome ; Erastus Root and A. J. Parker, of Delaware ; Edward Suffern, of Rockland ; S. S. Seward, of Orange ; John Van Buren, of Ulster ; Herman M. Romeyn, of Ulster ; and C. D. Chamberlain, of Alleghany. These well-known residents of the southern counties, though not all present at the convention, were all understood to be favorable to the railroad. The convention and its results gave a new impulse to the work. In regard to the election Seward now wrote : ATTBUBN, October 272A. I begin to take courage, and believe there is a day of retribution at hand for the long proscription we have suffered. If Buggies should be elected, as there seems no doubt he will be, I believe we can make a good, I will not say successful, demonstration this winter in favor of internal improvement. Mrs. Seward is busy with the trees and shrubs. We are garnishing our grounds, preparatory to a long repose of otium cum dignitate. I pray your pardon for the Latin. Freely translated, it means oceans of leisure in the midst of shrubs and flowers. I am preparing for a long withdrawal to Ohautauqua. I leave as soon as I shall have deposited my vote, there to remain until after the holidays. I go to-morrow to a Whig meeting in Springport, and next week to two in Sempronius, and one in Geneva. In the State of New York the election this year was for members of the Legislature and local officers. As soon as the polls closed it was evident that there had been a great change in popular sentiment, and as returns day after day kept coming in, it began to take on the character of a revolution. In six of the eight Senate districts the Whigs elected their candidates ; and out of the one hundred and 344 LIF E AND LETTERS. [1837. twenty-eight members of Assembly they elected one hundred and one. They carried a similar proportion of the sheriffs and county officers. Writing from Buffalo, on his way to Chautauqua, whither he was pro ceeding immediately after the election, Seward said : There is such a buzz of " glorious Whig victories " ringing in my ears, and I am surrounded by so many Whig brethren, that I have hardly time to think. The overthrow of the Administration is complete, and I am grateful for it, for the country s sake. God grant that it be not equally destructive of the victors as of the vanquished! We are yet short of news of New York, and have heard too much. I left Auburn on Tuesday morning, and my progress has been through crowds of happy men. Excitement here is ecstasy. Was ever such a result so quietly wrought ? What will be the course of the Administration ? Will it persevere or will it recede, and which is wiser for them and better for us? Writing again, he misdated his letter "Auburn," but added : WESTFIELD, November 17, 1837. Where the heart lingers, there the thought will be. I have had to strike out the lovely village and insert the name of my place of exile. I knew well enough that you were thronged with happy friends, and I won dered that you could do anything with the paper. I found my own time as completely absorbed while I was at Buffalo, and the excitement was unendura ble. God knows that they who delight in such ecstasy of popular feeling are welcome to monopolize it, for all envy of mine. I am not fearful of the result for one year. And, if the Administration is not more wise than it ever was or will be permitted to be, I have little appre hension for the next presidency. I deem it now certain that Mr. Van Buren can never again be elected by the colleges. I believe the time has never been when he could have been elected by Congress. I go somewhat reluctantly to Fredonia, to join in the celebration of the Whigs at that place. It is unpleasant to me to go into partisan feasts after a victory in which the country rejoices as it ought. My stomach for war ends with the capitulation of the enemy. Shall I confess to you that I am troubled about another matter, one alluded to in your letter ? You, I trust, know me well enough to know that I borrow no unhappiness from any solicitude about the nomination for next year, so far as it is an object of ambition or desire. I cannot affect to be ignorant of the demonstrations made to that effect by many of my friends, or those who, believ ing that such will be the result, desire to be so. As impossible would it be for me to forget Granger s position, or to know the speculations concerning him. Now, here is the trouble : You know the respect and friendship I entertain for Frank. Both, I believe, exceed those generally expressed for him by most of our friends. I admire him, because he has always been honorable, manly, and virtuous, in his political associations and actions as well as principles. He has been just, liberal, and true, toward me ; I will not consent to be otherwise tow ard him. I would find delight enough in the exercise of magnanimity toward him to compensate me for any sacrifice. As things are now tending, they look Jike arraying us against each other. This ought not to be, and must not be. 1887.] GRANGER AND BRADISII. 345 There is a right between him and me I ought to defer for him, or he for me ; not publicly or formally, but frankly with our friends. I am ready to do so for him if that is right ; and whether it is right I am willing to submit to you, or any others of our friends conversant with the ground and enjoying, as you do, equally the confidence of both. At all events, I must not be kept in position a day, if it is due either to him or the party that he should be preferred. My friends ought so to tell me, and I solicit the communication. On the other hand, if the right is the other way, then he ought to be so advised, and ought to act as I am prepared to do. It would be a miserable and disgraceful business to leave this bone of conten tion for " Loco-focos " to gnaw upon, aiding those who hate us both, and seek the ruin of both. I will stand or fall with Frank, not divide with him. I can get no time to finish this so, with earnest prayers for your having strength to carry you through the new responsibilities before you, I remain, etc. Referring to a movement of the " Conservative " allies of the Whigs in New York, in relation to the presidential election, he said : November 28d. I have your letter from New York, and am rejoiced that you were there to save the " Conservatives " from so fatal an error as that they were prepared to commit. Strange, is it not, how few minds are formed with sufficient stays and braces for times of success ? If croaking ever availed anything, or if it were not decid edly unamiable, I would say that I expect you will be continually busy in avert ing just such madness. How strong a propensity men have to dictate public opinion ! When I was, on Tuesday, at Fredonia, there was a man from Hanover who fastened himself upon me for the whole day, and the burden of his dis course was the presidential nomination. I thought he ought to be satisfied when I referred the whole matter to his better judgment. But he insisted upon my agreeing with him, so that all possible disturbance in the party might be avoided. Having at last, satisfactorily to all parties that is, to him and myself settled the presidential nomination, he proceeded to the State ticket for next year, and he inflicted upon me for hours his views, hopes, and fears, in relation to that subject. The passion shows itself in the same way among the " Conservatives," and their nomination just now in New York would have just as much weight in determining our nomination two years hence as the caucus held at Fredonia by myself and my friend from Hanover. Your " small bill " article was right, and the law ought to be introduced the first day. We have Bradish for Speaker, I suppose, and hope. Your letter admonishes me to a habit of caution that I cannot conveniently adopt. I love to write what I think and feel as it comes up. You will do well to destroy my letters. WEST-FIELD, November 26, 1837. I sympathize with you in the increasing burden of your responsibilities. The little patronage our friends will have to bestow has already excited much anxiety. You will have the responsibility heaped upon you, I am sure, since I do not escape from it in this very secluded nook. Take note that I commend to you, and through you to the kind consideration 346 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1837. of the Whig members of the Assembly, Mortimer M. Jackson, Esq., of New- York, for the office of Clerk of the House, and Jonas M. Wheeler, Esq., of Can- andaigua, for that of Sergeant-at-Arms. His letters home also alluded to the results of the unexpected Whig triumph : WESTFIELD, November 18th. I was greatly amused by your account of the incidents of the evening of the Whig celebration at Auburn. The good people of Ohautauqua are much excited and are preparing for a general celebration at Fredonia on Tuesday. I have a most urgent letter to be present, to which I have given an affirmative answer. What is expected of me I do not know ; but, doubtless, more than I shall have the ability to perform. This invitation was followed by billets printed on all manner of gay-colored paper, inviting us all to a ball at the Johnson House at five o clock p. M. If they expect any of us to discharge any active duty in that way, I think they will find themselves mistaken. Everywhere I find overtures and demonstrations indicative of an expectation that I will be the favored (and of course it is now supposed the successful) candi date for a very high office next year. It is by no means an indication to be relied upon, and in itself by no means affects me. But I have discovered that there will be an embarrassment from which I anticipate no pleasant consequences. Granger s candidacy for the vice-presidency is understood to have resulted un fortunately for him unfortunately not merely in the failure of success, but because the circumstances seem to forbid his being a candidate again. Of course, not only his friends, but those, whoever they are, that are opposed to me personally, would delight to bring him forward for the nomination in this State. For all this, as far as it concerns the result, I care nothing ; for I am disciplined, and will quit even with politics as a candidate, now and forever, when I can with the fair consent of the majority of my party ; but it does grieve me because it threatens to bring about a collision between Granger and myself. I want neither to enjoy a triumph over, nor suffer a defeat by, him. WESTFIELD, November 2Sd. The Whigs at Fredonia last week assembled " to celebrate the deliverance of the Empire State.* I went over on Monday evening, and met there a large gathering of the Whigs of the county, graced by the presence of the newly-elected Whig Senator, Mr. Mosely. The day dawned (as all such days must) upon a salute of I don t know how many guns. At two o clock we sat down to dinner. Then followed wine and sentiments. I was drawn out for a speech. I of course made it. I was conscious that I labored and drawled, for my spirit flagged with the close of the contest at Auburn. But the people all said, and I doubt not believed, that it was a good speech and great, and nothing will satisfy them but that I write it out. That is worse than all the rest. In the evening they sent up a beautifully illuminated balloon, which ascended in fine style. Then there was a ball, and a splendid one it was too, although it was given in Chautauqua. There were some seventy or eighty ladies, and of course a greater number of gentlemen. I made my bow to them all, and at eleven o clock went to bed, wearied so much that the noise and bustle of the ball scarcely disturbed me. 1837.] CELEBRATIONS. 347 Yesterday I left Fredonia and its Whigs with their reminiscences of the glory of the celebration. Of course, there are divers opinions on the subject. One lady told Parson Smith s daughter that she approved of the dinner and the balloon, but she was astonished that the people should dance, and thought that, if they would dance, the ball ought to be opened with prayer ; it being, as she said, a settled thing in her own mind that people ought never to do anything that they could not pray for a blessing upon. Thus much for the Fredonia celebration. Last night was ours. We illumi nated our village, and it was a beautiful scene. You can have no idea how pretty the cottages appeared, lighted up among the trees. It was a great occa sion, and our citizens felt that they had a responsibility of sustaining the honor of the westernmost town of the State. I threw open the land-office, and it was filled with a large and happy party, who spoke and sang until eleven o clock. There is now, I hope, an end of celebrations. I have heard nothing else since I left home. In one respect the demonstrations of that kind here have been exceedingly gratifying : they have shown that in the course I have pur sued, in my very delicate and difficult duties in this county, I have secured the approbation of the people, and have not embarrassed our political friends. Next week, if there come no more Whig jubilees, I mean to commence, in sober earnest, doing what I have to do. There was no immediate cessation of them, however, for in a letter of the next week he remarked : Well I I am here, where, if there were a corner of the world inaccessible to the thunder of the Whig victories, I should be allowed some repose, but in truth I am wasted and worn with celebration, exultation, and congratulation. Now, as I believe, my philosophy, both in success and defeat, exceeds that of most of the Whigi in the world, I take it for granted that those who are in the very focus of the blaze of Whig victories are pretty much exhausted. WESTFIELD, November 2,6th. A violent gale occurred on Tuesday, which has been productive of extensive damage at all the harbors on the lake, and of wide-spread destruction at Buffalo. The number of bodies found thrown up on the shore by the raging waves is already fourteen or fifteen. The storm closed with a cold northeast wind, which has given us six inches of snow. The occasions of excitement in this quiet little place are, as you know, few and far between. Our whole society was agitated yesterday and the day previ ous by the escape and recapture of the prisoners of the Mayville jail, who made their escape with chains on their legs. There was much to excite sympathy in the case of one, whose family live at Portland. He was traced to his house by his footprints in the fresh snow, and was followed by the same clew from his house to a neighboring barn, where he was found asleep. Referring to the estimable clergyman of the Episcopal church at Auburn, he said : 348 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1837. I regret to learn that Mr. Lucas s salary is raised with difficulty. Had I known it, I would have engaged in the duty while at Auburn. I added some thing to my own subscription, and, hard as it is, would do more if needful. I have never met a clergyman whom I more highly respected or esteemed. The catastrophe of the country has, however, been severely felt at Auburn. Few towns in the State have suffered more ; and I know many who are disabled from doing what they may desire. I will write to him. T find myself embar rassed with a new trouble. The business of the office is so nearly closed that it requires a much smaller force than heretofore ; and I am grieved at being com pelled to throw out of employment so many young men, who have made no calculation for the future. I have letters from Weed, who is involved in the responsibilities growing out of the success of the Whig party. Our friends in New York would overdo the matter of rejoicing, although the celebration was shorn of some of its pomp and ceremonial. Then a heady, thoughtless portion of the party, or rather portion of the other party cooperating with us, would per fas aut nefas nomi nate Mr. Clay, and thereby divide and distract our organization. One abuses too much, and others court too freely, the "Conservatives." Then a dozen want to be Clerk of the Assembly, and expect Weed to make them so, while more than that number insist that he shall be Clerk himself, to whom he says, " Get thee behind me, Satan." As many more expect him to make them Ser- geants-at-Arms, while the law allows but one officer of that distinguished rank. When I remember his trouble, I am very content to be as I am here, so far removed from the entire field. I have at last recovered something of regularity of habit. Marcia s k< blaek dwarf " wakes me at six, and leaves me a candle and a cup of hot water. I arrive at the breakfast-table promptly at the appointed hour. My daytime is spent in the office. I return to the house at seven or eight o clock in the even ing. There I pursue some grave reading, such as Bacon s works, until nine or ten, and, if weary, wind off with lighter matter. I am delighted with the works of Bacon, so profound, yet so brilliant, so universal in their learning, yet so accurate. But what do you think is my light reading? I stumbled the other night upon Dr. Spring s treatise on "Native Depravity," and read it all, every word. I have been, moreover, greatly amused and somewhat edified by a most able and satirical Presbyterian review of " Colton s Reasons for preferring Episcopacy." To-morrow is Thanksgiving-Day. I shall dine without guests. I have had so much of celebration and excitement that I am desirous of solitude. Referring to the unsuitable marriage of a friend, he incidentally observed : It may be a selfish and pharisaical remark I am going to make, but I will say, notwithstanding, that, after the deep commiseration which I felt, the reflec tion which next occurred and dwells with me is our happiness that our union it not cursed by the dissimilarity of taste, temper, and principles, which, when it does occur, destroys all connubial happiness. WESTFIELD, December 3d. Saturday night is a tedious season in my solitude. No wife, no boys to en joy the relaxation I always seek after the labors and cares of the week. Sunday 1837.] WEED AND THE CLERKSHIP. 349 is not altogether so pleasant here as it would be with you, whether I shared your more serious studies on that day, or attended you to church. Your letter of the 29th has been two days with me. If it would afford you pleasure, I am sorry you do not see the Whig newspapers. The proceedings at Auburn and at Aurora contain compliments to me similar to those received at Batavia, Buffalo, Dunkirk, and some other places. These are varied, of course, in manner, but the purpose seems to be the same that of expressing a partiality for my renomination next summer. I regard this as a matter altogether so un certain, and of so little consequence to my happiness, that I do not dwell upon it myself enough even to recollect to send you the newspaper. It involves, as I have before hinted, a possibility of collision with Granger, which I would will ingly avoid. It is in keeping with this that my correspondence swells, and the writers, of course, are seasonable, and not over-modest in their overtures. You would suppose, to look at my bundle of letters, that I have the entire patronage of the Assembly. Your letter implies a query why Granger should not have that higher nomi nation, which would be but a renewed expression of the confidence of the party. And yet I do not know that you take interest enough in politics to care for an answer. It may be stated, however, in few words. It is important, as the can didate for the presidency must probably be a Northern man, to have for the second place one whom the South will approve. And, of course, it is supposed a Southern man would be preferred. Many of our friends maintain that Weed should have the office of Clerk of the Assembly. He thinks he ought not to take it. I have written to him free ly, but he is so singularly disinterested that I fear I can scarcely get from him an answer in which he will do himself justice. He is worn down with the felicitations and exultations of his friends. You will excuse me for giving you the caution that this and similar letters should be destroyed or carefully secured. Although I write nothing that I would blush to see, or dying recall, yet such free explanations of political and personal relations are sufficiently exposed in Mr. Kendall s post-office. I have been reading Burr s life, the second volume. It is a crude and ill- concocted mass, yet full of interest. And now the candle sinks, and it is time for me to retire. To Weed himself he wrote on the same subject : I confess, most candidly, I would not have you Clerk unless it was needful. Then I would be for it. I want something better and higher for you. Candid ly, I think it could not add to your stature to be Clerk, and it might detract from that of the House, for the cry would be universal that you direct the move ments of the House. Hitherto the obligation of the party is to you ; let us take care how it be comes reversed. Now, my dear Weed, nobody can understand all this better than you ; and, fortunately, you are so constituted that your judgment will not be biased in favor of your interest. If you can only muster self-interest enough to take care of yourself, the whole difficulty is out of the way. You know my feelings about it. So, now, think wisely, and reckon upon me at an hour s notice, and give the grand hail- ing-sign accordingly. 350 LI ^E AND LETTERS. [1837, Let me know when Granger returns home. I want to write to him. Your article about the National Convention is right. Stick to that. WESTFIELD, December 6, 1837. It would he ungenerous in me to leave the matter of the clerkship where I thought it safe in my last letter to put it. I have been pondering the subject since that was dispatched, and really I begin to doubt the justice of the dubita- tion then expressed. Why should you not be Clerk ? No one deserves that or any other office a tithe so much. No other appointment would be half so pop ular with the Whigs, and, for that matter, with the Van Buren men. What harm would it do ? For the life of me I can believe none, except to contract for a season the space of the broad area you hold of public opinion. And, besides all this, a bird in the hand is worth two flying, unless you can shoot more steadily than most political marksmen. Let us think of this matter once more, therefore, and I pray you think of it, and, if you can make up your mind not to have it made up until I can reach you, write me, and I will take up my march to Albany, so as to be there seasonably to consult and prepare all necessary action. And you may as well be assured of what, I doubt not, you understand, that the appointment would be made at once, and with unani mous consent by the members, and the unanimous approbation of our friends in the State. Well, I am heartily glad that Congress has convened. For it is time that the junketing should cease. I would have preferred there should be no feast, not because I am unwilling to eat or allow others the luxury, but there are so many silly and juvenile conceits, published by our brethren in some places, I would avoid the occasion for them. You will have the President s message before this time. Have you rightly conjectured Marcy s? Will it offend Flagg and Wright? I trow not. So the New York banks are to be left to work out their own salvation. I regret this. I had hoped the time for resumption would be fixed. A summary stop, however, was put to the projects of Mr. Weed s political friends for his advancement, by his positive refusal to be a candidate. His letter was a characteristic one : ALBANY, December 4, 1837. MY DEAR SEWAED : I am equally vexed and mortified to think I have written so loosely as to leave the impression on your mind that I did not promptly and peremptorily reject the clerkship. I certainly only intended to let you know what had been proposed, and declined ; and yet this was so poorly done as to leave an apprehension on your mind that I only half put the thing away. It is not so, my good friend. There are a dozen different reasons for the course which I adopted. I would not touch it if it were worth twice three thousand a year. But I beg that you, who are always more careful of my interests than I ever hope to be, will not again afflict me by an intimation that you have been regard less of what, since I had the happiness to secure your good opinions, has been uppermost in your mind. But enough of this, which has occupied too much paper already. I neither want nor think of the clerkship, or the State printing, until objects of far greater importance are accomplished. 1837.] FUTURE LIFE. 351 After Tea. I have concluded to only half forgive yon, for thinking me weak enough to grasp for a paltry office, the moment that one came within the juris diction of our party. I have seen enough of that infirmity in others (about whom we have so often talked) never to become the victim of it myself. Why, Seward ! I would not be the means of darkening the hopes of the dozen good fellows who want it, for the emolument of five such offices. But not another word on this subject. Seward, in reply, said : WESTFIELD, December \\tfi. So I am left without excuse for attendance at Albany. I want you to take notice, Mr. Weed, that I do not go into the lobby upon any less occasion than to secure you the post of State Printer, or that of Clerk of the Assembly. It is by no means certain that your determination is wise in a pecuniary view, but for your permanent fame and self-respect it is altogether right. . . . I have no right to harass you, but I will say in self-defense that I don t think the way in which the matter, about which I wrote some time ago, is left, is the most comfortable or expedient. " Leave it " (say you) " to our party and friends." They must be a wiser party and less censorious friends than ever I saw, if they do not make a pretty quarrel about it, between our friend Granger and myself. Be firm on the subject of the resumption of specie payments. A friendship had now grown up between him and the Morgans, of Aurora. One of his early letters to Christopher Morgan ran thus : WKSTFIELD, December 8, 1837. I have not failed to remark the kind recollection of myself, at the Ledyard and Genoa celebration. I pray you make my grateful acknowledgments to your brother for the manly and generous support he has given me, in the recent politi cal events in Cayuga. I shall have somewhat to say to you and him when I meet, which may not properly be written. The return of Sunday naturally enough inspires this vein of reflec tion, in one of his letters home : WESTFIELD, December lOtk. Another week has passed. The lapse of time, always to be regretted if time possess value, is generally a subject of rejoicing. It is so because we " never are, but always to be, blest." My little boys rejoice because we have approached a week nearer to Christmas and the largess of St. Nicholas we, or I at least, because our reunion is a week nearer. Can it be that this succession of cherished and various hopes, continued through a period of four thousand weeks, more or less, is to be the whole of human life ? If we regard the desire of happiness and the constant pursuit of it, by all mankind, as indicative of a destiny of happiness (and not to regard it so is to suppose Providence made us for his own mockery), we must believe that there is a state of happiness beyond the grave ; for certain it is, this desire is never fully gratified here. There is another reflection of some weight on the question. The human mind, in all its anticipations or hopes of good, always imagines a good that is possible, that has existed, that would fall to our lot, if it were not for some unlucky obstacle or disappointment. In other 352 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1837. words, we imagine nothing but what is possible. But we can imagine, we can and do hope, and anticipate, a world hereafter. By analogy, then, that state is possible ; and, with God, nothing is possible but what is. He has made every thing that is necessary to the perfection of his works. Imperfect, indeed, must be his creation, if frail men can conceive an improvement, as that would be, which, being possible, yet is not, in fact or in future. But you will say that you are content to take the revelation of life and im mortality, without exploring the way to that awful truth through the dark path of human reason. Happy is the mind that is so constituted happy, doubtless, in its security against the fatal error of unbelief ; for experience shows that the torch of human philosophy often leads us into skepticism. Yet I delight in these reflections, which commend revelation to my credence. I have, however, built a discourse upon a mere truism, which happened to be my text, because it was the first thought while I was reducing this wretched quill to a practicable habit of recording my ideas ; so adieu to the grave ques tion of the soul s immortality. The population around me is waiting the arrival of the mail with impatient expectation of the President s message, or further events of the revolution in Canada. The message here alluded to was President Van Buren s annual communication to Congress. He devoted it largely, of course, to the financial situation, and the measures for its relief. Referring to the issue of Treasury notes as judicious and necessary, he stated with clearness and force the arguments in favor of the sub-Treasury system previously recommended. Not unmindful of the accusation that he was waging war on the State banks and on the credit system, nor of the manifestations of popular discontent in the recent elections, the President took occasion to disavow any such hostility ; but, returning once more to the old object of attack, he pronounced the action of the United States Bank, in continuing under a State charter, to be " a fit subject of inquiry." On the issues thus presented debate in Con gress had already opened. " The revolution in Canada " to which the letter referred was the beginning of the frontier troubles, afterward to assume graver pro portions. The " Liberal " or " Reform " party in Canada had sought radical changes under the lead of Papineau in Parliament, and with the aid of Mackenzie through the press. Failing to obtain them, they had organized a popular movement, at first undefined as to its ultimate purpose, but rapidly taking on the character of an insurrection. The " Patriots," as they were styled, had held a revolutionary convention at Toronto ; had issued an address calling on the Canadians to rise ; and had gathered a military force to make a demonstration upon that place. But this having been checked and dispersed, they appealed to sympathizers across the frontier in the United States, Mackenzie and Papineau themselves coming over to personally aid the appeal. 1837.] THE CANADIAN "PATRIOTS." 353 Numbers of unthinking citizens were found ready to respond with alacrity (as usually happens in such cases), stimulated by ambition or love of adventure, and still further encouraged by the strong manifes tation of popular sentiment in favor of Canadian independence or an nexation. Their proceedings, while nominally secret, were sufficiently open to attract the attention of the Governments on both sides of the line. Proclamations were issued by the Governors of New York and Vermont exhorting citizens "to refrain from unlawful acts," and preparations were actively made by the Canadian authorities to repel the threatened invasion. News now came that the " Patriots " and their American sympathiz ers had seized and were fortifying Navy Island, in the middle of the Niagara River, a few miles above the Falls, and that Colonel MacNab, with a body of loyal militia, was posted on the Canadian shore, directly opposite, to watch and, if need be, to repel them. Chautauqua County was so near to the scene of these operations that a lively interest was felt, ^Jid some of its young men, contrary to the advice of older heads, had gone to enlist under the " Patriot " banner. Again, recurring to the subject of the political prospects of the Whig party, Seward wrote : I had a fine letter of Friday from Weed ; yet it is all, as he is now, all made up of politics. He writes that he has had a free conversation with Granger, that Granger was anxious to have the nomination, but had spoken honorably and favorably of me, and did not doubt that all meant what is right, and that what is right would be done. I ought to add that Weed says I ought not to let the matter annoy me, but leave it to my party and friends. It would be quite amusing to you to read the various epistles I have about these days relating to this great subject ; greater, it seems, in the estimation of my correspondents than in my own. You know me well enough to understand what answers I make. WESTFIELD, December \Uh. The mail nowadays carries about half the letters sent me some distance into Pennsylvania. Your letter of the 16th of last month has just returned from an excursion of that kind. It is doubtless a great vexation to have your servants leave you at unseason able times. But, just now, I am suffering a trouble of the directly opposite character. I have five upon my hands, each of whom is unwilling to leave. I am actually unhappy under the evil, and can scarcely summon the requisite firmness to dismiss the supernumeraries on the 1st of January. On a review of my labors during the last eighteen months I can, with some satisfaction, contemplate the beneficial results of much that I have done, and recall without pain the motives of much more. In all this you have been a sharer of my confidence and my feelings. The commercial disasters of the year brought, as might be expected, urgent appeals from the sufferers, to those who had barely escaped the 23 354 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1837. storm, for aid and relief appeals so numerous as to render compliance with a tithe of them impossible. He wrote, December 17th : I am almost in despair. My troubles accumulate, and I am without the power of doing good. I have to dismiss three clerks ; they all seem near to me as children, and are almost as helpless. I am engaged in correspondence to secure them places. One of my friends is prosecuted for four times as much as he will ever be worth, on the score of a harbor speculation. Poor B mourns his approaching dismission from a position he had supposed permanent. Then Dr. H writes me that bankruptcy stares him in the face, and implores me to relieve him. M , in the plenitude of political success and glory, writes me that his property will be sold on execution unless I relieve him. Every other resource, he says, has failed. Besides this, Z expects me to melt the hearts of his creditors. Alas ! I could not do it without a stronger galvanic battery than that which melts rocks. The pecuniary embarrassments of the country, which spread so much desola tion in the East, have reached and involved this secluded region. It seems as if all the people here were expecting me to lend them money ; and all the Whigs in the State desiring me to make them Clerks in the Assembly. My heart fails me when I look upon this hopeless heap of anxiety and sorrow, and remember how little it is in my power to do to relieve it. I become sorrowful and grave daily; and not a little disgusted with the world, in which there is so little suc cessful accomplishment, so little of sincerity, and so little of security. Letters from Mr. Weed now announced that the success of the Whigs in the fall election had encouraged him in a new effort to strengthen the party and disseminate its opinions. This was the estab lishment of a weekly " campaign " paper to be printed at the Evening Journal office in Albany, and to be called the Jeffersonian. In behalf of the State Central Committee he had been to New York, and ob tained the requisite funds to commence the enterprise. In reply, Sew- ard wrote : WESTFIELD, December 24th. I rejoice in the success of your mission to New York ; complete success it is not, but Benedict can render it so. But I fear there is a part of the system not yet perfected, and without which the enterprise will fail. I mean the provision for obtaining readers, non-paying as well as paying subscribers, if this impor tant matter is left to the unaided action of our friends in the country. Here and there the prospectus will fall into the hands of an energetic and ardent man, who will procure fifty or a hundred subscribers in a county, most of whom will pay. Such a subscription would be inadequate to your great purpose. But it is all you may expect if some different effort is not made. Let me illustrate, by reminding you of the subscription to establish the Evening Journal. Our friends required two thousand dollars in all Western New York. I sent you four hundred from Auburn, and all you got from all the rest of Western New York was not more than twice that sum. Again, I have made an effort for the Jeffersonian. I was so fortunate as to find Plumb here the day I received your prospectus. He fell in with it, of course, took the prospectus to Jamestown, had 1887.] LETTERS TO CHILDREN. 355 it printed, sent me back twenty copies, retained twenty, sent ten to Mayville, and distributed the rest. I called a caucus, and subdivided the work here. We met the next evening to hear the reports of our committees. At the adjourned meeting we had twenty subscribers. Adjourned to next night. Then had fifty. To the next night. Then sixty, and that was thought enough. I insisted upon more. Adjourned to the next night with a resolution to have one hundred. We had them. Adjourned again to last night, and had then one hundred and fifty. And I hope to-morrow they will have two hundred. Now, this is no more than we ought to do ; but it is not more than your plan contemplates as necessary to be done. Yet it has been accomplished by unusual exertions. I have attended every evening, and have made the subscription to the Jejfenfonia/n the chief business as well as topic for a week. From my copies sent to other parts of the county, I have no return. You will ask me, " What then? " I answer, " You must adopt the plan pursued by the sectarists in religious controversies send missionaries." It was that which carried forward the temperance reform. It is that system which procures from a people, liberal and ardent, the supplies required for propagating opinion. The people delight to see and converse with a missionary. They place more confidence in his statements, and he comes to them imbued with an enthusiasm that is contagious. I respectfully suggest that you modify your plan, so as to afford sufficient inducement to twenty or thirty individuals, who for a few months shall visit the chief towns, and procure sub scriptions. It will not do to depend upon home exertion. There are few who have leisure to assume the duties you impose, and these few have not the requisite energy. I congratulate you upon the revelation made to you in New York, of your great reputation and influence. I was as well aware that you were unconscious of both as I was of their extent. Both have been fairly won, and, what is better, they are both in requisition for the best good of the country. I should have been delighted to be with you to have seen the paralysis you suffered at the Astor House dinner. For the real physically induced rheumatics in the legs (such as you had at Barnum s in Baltimore) I have not so much respect. They don t make you any more amiable ; when the fit is on, at least. But this kind of distemper, that comes from the unexpected disclosures of the respect and friendship of good men, has a marvelous influence in reproducing the very kindness in others which causes the evil. There were many affectionate letters to his children in this holiday season. An extract or two will illustrate their half-playful, half-in structive tone : I received yesterday morning your letter, and was greatly pleased with it. Black kittens mew so much and at such unseasonable hours, that I think it will be necessary the next time we purchase to select one of a lighter color. I am glad that you saw the Siamese twins. They are very nice young men, as I am informed. Would you like to see them when they are hunting? I wonder whether they both fire at once ? The snow I suppose has all wasted away, and if you play in the court-yard now it must be on the wet grass. All winter long there must be much snow and rain, so that the ground will be wet enough for plants and trees to grow 356 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1838. next summer. Do you know that the sap, which is the blood of trees, and shrubs, and plants, runs down into the roots in the cold weather and remains there invigorating the roots ? In the spring, when the warm weather comes, the sap ascends into the trunk and branches, and then they begin to put forth buds and flowers. Sap is taken from the maple-tree, in the spring, to make sugar, just as it is going up into the limbs. The sap rises, in some trees and plants, much earlier than in others. If you look at the lilac-bush in Febru ary, you will find that it will already be covered with buds. I hope that the Indian pony proved docile and fleet in the harness. Your ducks, I suppose, will furnish eggs and ducklings enough to pay for the corn and oats you have so liberally provided for them. This will be the last letter I shall write before I return home. But your Christmas sports will all be over before I return. I shall expect to find that my dear boys have made good progress in their studies. Studies are the chief business. Sleighs, ponies, bells, ducks, gardens, and such things, are only amusements of no real value ; but learning is an abiding and useful treasure. Adieu, my dear boy. CHAPTER XX. 1838. Auburn & Syracuse Eailroad. A "Whig Legislature. Small Bills and Specie Payments. An Ice- Ad venture. Ruggles s Canal Report. Charles King. Ocean-Steamers. Over-zealous Friends. Granger and Bradish. THE gloom which had settled upon the business community since the great revulsion of 1837 was partially relieved at the beginning of 1838 by some signs of the coming of " better times." Auburn was rejoicing this year over the opening of the Syracuse Railroad, though with much less enthusiasm than it had exhibited two years before over the Auburn & Owasco Canal. But if its anticipa tions, in the one case, were too sanguine, in the other they fell short of the reality of the benefits to the village, to accrue from the im provement. It was but an imperfect structure, even yet. It extended twenty- three miles to Geddes, where it struck the Erie Canal. One of the chief reasons for the inception of the enterprise had been the desire to put Auburn in communication with that great thoroughfare. The rails were wooden ones, and the cars drawn by horses. Colonel J. M. Sher wood, the public-spirited proprietor of the stage-line, aided materially in furnishing the " rolling-stock " by mounting on car-wheels the bodies of some of his stage-coaches, and furnishing the animals to draw them. Iron rails and locomotives were things of the future. Among the first passengers that accompanied him in his improvised train was Seward, who, with his family, was going eastward. 1838.] AN ICE ADVENTURE. 357 When the State Legislature met at Albany in January it was evi dent that the Whig successes at the election in November had not been without direct results. Luther Bradish was elected Speaker of the Assembly. Governor Marcy s message, while following the lead of the national Administration in behalf of an independent Treasury, recommended a general banking law as a remedy for evils growing out of the pressure, and urged the completion of the enlargement of the Erie Canal. The Whigs were ready enough to concur in the last two propositions ; and were zealously bent upon a third, the abrogation of the " small-bill law," which had added to the general distress by its prohibition of bank-notes under five dollars, and had led to the flood of " shinplasters." Having a majority on joint ballot, they elected Or- ville L. Holley Surveyor-General, and Dr. Barstow State Treasurer, and filled with Whigs the positions of Clerk, Sergeant-at-Arms, and Doorkeeper of the Assembly, which had been in such request. Mr. Ruggles, who had been elected a member of the Assembly from New York, in spite of his own declination, was assigned by Speaker Bradish to the chairmanship of the Ways and Means Committee, with general concurrence. Pausing at Albany only long enough for brief conference on politi cal affairs with his friends, Seward started for New York. The river was frozen but half -across, and the mild weather hourly threatened a break-up of the frail ice. It was necessary to row out, in a small boat, to the ice, cross it on foot to Greenbush, there take the stage to Hudson, and thence proceed by steamboat. It was a hazardous experi ment. ASTOB HOUSE, Tuesday Night, January 9, 1838. I should have written to you yesterday from Hudson " if I could have sum moned courage or resolution enough," as Charles Lamb said, "to dot my i s or comb my eyebrows," on such a dismal day. I wanted you and Harriet here to hear us descant upon the perils of our fearful passage across the Hudson. It was an occasion I shall never forget. Nothing doubting the trustworthiness of our guides, we embarked in the little boat, Frances saying in a melancholy tone, as she pressed my hand, " We are all together." When we reached the supposed solid ice-pavement the boat s weight pressed it several inches under the water. The boat on sleds was ready for us, but no persuasion could induce the mother to take passage on it, while her children were left behind in the hands of strangers. At this moment the tremulous motion and long low sounds of the crackling ice alarmed our guides, and they, losing all self-possession, hurried onward. We succeeded in reaching the shore, but, looking back, saw the ice breaking up behind us. Heaven forgive me for bringing into such peril those who ought not to be involved in the hazards of my irregular life ! It was a tedious day at Hudson ; but the boat came at last, and we arrived here safely. PHILADELPHIA, January 18, 1838. I found it impossible to write again in New York ; it was an unending eddy. 358 I^E AND LETTERS. [1838. Besides the excitement of my negotiations here, I have been every hour, when unemployed, and some of them were most unseasonable hours, too, in society. Messrs. Duer and Macauley have been partners in my parlor. NEW YORK, Friday NigU, January 19, 1838. The fog last night kept us at sea until five o clock. We came here in a heavy storm. It will be time enough when we meet next week for me to tell you about my negotiation at Philadelphia. Suffice it now that it assures all I need. Philadelphia is developing like this city ; decided bias toward Clay, Webster exists not there; and Harrison, wherever found, covers only preferences for Clay. On the other hand, the country (as I learn from members of the con vention) is all for Harrison. They urged me strenuously to see that delegates should attend at Philadelphia in November. NEW YORK, Thursday Evening, January 25, 1838. New York is suffering beyond measure, beyond conception, from the press ure. There is no business, no money, no confidence, besides a " fearful look ing " for untried evils to come. In this emergency both capitalists and poli ticians are restlessly engaged in seeking out expedients for temporary relief. During the week a precious effort was made to send the Whig Assembly into a general proscription and persecution of all the banks in the State. Better counsels, encouraged by myself, have limited the assault to the obnoxious city banks. For myself I believe that the banks ought to and must resume within the law, nor do I believe there is any relief but that consequent upon the resump tion of specie payments, the resumption to be made easy by the passage of the " small-bill law." The excitement in relation to the presidential nomination appears to have spent itself. All of the parties here have had their turn, and are now prepared to fuse. I have seen many here Noah, who appears right ; Webb and Stone, who are right. There is a gentleman of much capacity for mischief, who, I think, is disposed to make that article. But of that when we meet. Journeying then homeward, he wrote : AUBURN, February 22, 1838. Our party in the car was Wadsworth, Duncan, Schermerhorn, Strong and his wife, and young Ambrose Spencer and his wife. We were hindered by snow-drifts, so that we were until eight o clock in arriving at Utica. There Kutger B. Miller had prepared a set dinner for Wadsworth, Duncan, Schermer horn, and myself. It was a pleasant party, and detained us until twelve. Mrs. Miller (H. Seymour s daughter) pressed her husband to be as honest as she was, and confess himself a Whig. Agitation among our opponents but develops the wide difference of both opinion and interest among them, and hastens what might otherwise come too late, the schism in which their ascendency is destined to be lost. As for the operations of President and Governor making, be assured it would do you good to see the indifference of our friends to the discussion. The de- 1838.J THE SMALL-BILL LAW. 359 bate is chiefly among idlers, not the efficient corps. The unparalleled distress of the business portion of the people excludes such profitless discussion. Meetings in various towns in the State were held in encouragement and approval of the Whig legislative policy, especially in relation to the odious " Small-bill Law." The call for the meeting at Auburn was headed with the name of William H. Seward, and many of the others were ascribed to his direct or indirect influence, and that of his friends. In an address at the town-hall at Auburn in February, Seward stated the issue between the people and the Administration. The newspapers now brought important intelligence from Albany and Washington. The Whigs in the Legislature were redeeming their promise. The " Small-bill Law " was suspended for two years, giving immediate relief to the community from " shinplasters." Samuel B. Ruggles, as chairman of the committee in the Assembly to whom the subject of internal improvements had been referred, brought in a pro found and exhaustive report, whose conclusions, though demonstrated by facts and figures, seemed almost incredible. He showed that the immense value of the carrying-trade of the State and the West, if secured by the prosecution of works of internal improvement, would not only add to the prosperity of the community at large, but would reimburse the State itself for all advances made or contemplated. Nay, even if the State should expend forty million dollars upon those works, a quarter of a century s use of them at the current rates of toll would pour it all back into her coffers. Though the lapse of that time has now demonstrated the accuracy of Mr. Ruggles s statistics, and has confirmed his reputation as a leading statistician of the time, yet his report was then received by his political opponents with incredulity and derision ; and the Whigs, under whose auspices it had been intro duced, were charged with attempting to saddle a " forty-million debt " on the State. Nevertheless, the Assembly passed an Internal Improve ment Bill, almost unanimously, appropriating four million dollars for enlarging the Erie Canal. A General Banking Law was also passed by a large majority. The bill to repeal the " Small-bill Law " had been introduced in the Assembly early in the session, by Henry W. Taylor, of Canandaigua. That body passed it. In the Senate, the Administration party were un willing to face the popular displeasure they were sure to encounter if they longer withheld " small bills." Yet they could not, at once, give up the ground they had occupied so long. So they, by a party vote, amended the bill so as to suspend the obnoxious law for two years. The question hung between the two Houses for a time, but the Assembly finally concurred in the Senate s amendment. The Democratic leaders claimed that their party had met the popular wishes, and at the same time had preserved a consistent record. The Whigs rejoiced in the 360 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1838. fact that they had not only obtained the sanction of law to the " small- bill " circulation, but had also preserved the advantage of having the popular issue of repeal to fight for at the next election. Mr. Weed in one of his letters remarked: The Jeffersonian goes on finely. There are over eleven thousand subscribers, and the number increasing rapidly. It is, so far, the thing we want. Ruggles is overwhelmed with thanks and congratulations for his most admirable report. The "Patriot" war in Canada had culminated, and apparently ended. During the winter its events had been exciting and important. Colonel MacNab s militia, having seized at Fort Schlosser the supply- steamer Caroline, of the Navy Island assemblage, had set fire to her, let her drift down the rapids and over Niagara Falls. Great excite ment was produced by this event, and the stories of robberies and mur der with which it was said to have been accompanied. The President had ordered troops to the frontier, and in his message described it as " an outrage of a most aggravated character, accompanied by a hostile though temporary invasion of our territory; " and the Secretary of State, Forsyth, addressed the British Government, demanding explanation and redress. Congress had passed a law requiring the disarming and dis persing of the " Patriots." A warning proclamation was issued by the Executive, and General Scott was sent to the frontier, to see that it was complied with. Navy Island was soon evacuated, the arms and munitions of war taken possession of by the authorities, the leader Van Rensselaer arrested, and the "Patriot army" dispersed and scattered, for the time, though it partially reunited for subsequent operations on the St. Lawrence and the lakes. There were rumors and reports also of presidential intrigues, and of congressional disputes and duels, with incidents partaking both of comic and of tragic character. Alluding to these various items of news, Seward wrote to Weed: WEST-FIELD, March IQth. Thank you for an early adjournment, if it was advised upon grounds of gen eral policy for the party ; but if because you have had enough of the. blessing of a majority in the House, why then I thank you no less. For, when the day of your deliverance has come, I shall hope to see your scrawl once a month. So, so, Mr. Weed, now that the "Patriots" are dispersed, the leaders divided, and the general in jail, yon are becoming quite free in speaking as you ought. I trust your paper will fall into the hands of Chancellor Kent and his family. I had scarcely favor enough in their eyes to restore you, after your " patriotic n articles in the commencement of the affair. I have a long, good letter from Childs, all on the subject of presidential can didates. He thinks all prudent men are settling down upon the name of Harri son. A letter from R. P. Marvin coincides exactly, but substitutes the name of Clay. Now, I suppose that both are equally correct, and that, after all, the mem- 1838.] N. P. TALLMADGE. 361 bers of Congress will have less to do with the subject than anybody in the country. I am about worked down here. I shall leave for Batavia on the 20th, and shall soon thereafter be at Auburn. I mention this as an important item for the head of " movements in fashionable life " in your newspaper, not that I would be understood as at all intimating that I would take a letter out of the post-office from you. No, no ; I am like members of Congress. I hold no cor respondence with editors. I have recently been fairly converted to the doctrine that editors are not gentlemen, especially Whig editors in Albany when there is a Whig Legislature there. Referring to his own affairs at Westfield and Auburn, he remarked in a letter to Mrs. Seward : Sunday Night. Rev. Mr. Huse was absent to-day, and I have read service and a sermon for him, morning and evening. I had a respectable auditory. The exercise has con vinced me that clergymen enjoy no sinecure on Sundays ; and I always knew they did not on secular days, if they diligently prepared their sermons. Hurried as I have been with other things, I have on my hands the prepara tion of a discourse for the Young Men s Associations at Syracuse and Troy. One must answer for both. It must be finished, and it is yet in its roughest shape, and but half of it written at all. I have written to Granger that I will be with him next week. It is really quite a relief to be here. I hear no more of politics than is convenient, and what I do hear is from those whose informa tion is very ancient. Saturday, March Vlth. I propose to leave here on Tuesday, and then what a journey I have before me ! Two entire days to Buffalo, and three "to drag my slow length along" to Batavia for a resting-place. But I shall set out with more pleasure than I came here with. I think I shall be like " the Needy Knife-Grinder " when I meet the Young Men s Association at Troy I shall have no story to tell. My address has grown to ten pages, and then was hung up. When, where, and how, in my wanderings, shall I complete it? But I am going now to add to it some half a dozen more stiff sentences. I have been not without fear that you were sick. But the mail is now a week, making a funeral-like progress, and I will believe that it has, somewhere in the sloughs of these intolerable ways, a letter of warm feelings and your own clear and calm thoughts. Weed writes me a brief, but, as always, a calm and satisfactory letter. A letter comes from N. P. Tallmadge communicating hopes and fears, and asking correspondence on political matters. So strangely do things fall out in politics ! Mr. Tallmadge had occupied a seat in the State Senate at the time of Seward s entrance into that body, and had been elected by the Democrats to the United States Senate in 1833. He remained a firm supporter of General Jackson s Administration ; but, after Mr. Van Buren s accession, separated from the party, on the sub-Treasury issue, and thenceforward acted with the Whigs. 362 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1838. A letter from Granger, written before he received mine, says he is to leave on the 22d, but that a day or two would make no difference. I suppose that he will meet Mr. R , and will learn enough from him to anticipate the time when I can arrive at Oanandaigua. For reasons good, I hope he will wait for me. And now comes news that the u Patriot " general-in-chief is imprisoned in a vile debtor s jail, for no other crime but raising armies in one country to burn and pillage the people of another ; a fate they so well deserve because they pre fer to live under a government of settled order, instead of one that offers the glorious advantages of experiment. And Peter ! I imagine I can see him now, fresh arrived from Clutes, full charged with rumors that the " Campbells are com ing " from Navy Island and marching to the rescue. How voluble he must be ! Little ability has he had, I trow, to practise the great cardinal virtue he so much wants, temperance, in such exciting times. Peter Crosby, here alluded to, was an old servant of Judge Miller s, afterward employed by Seward in the care of horses and garden. Very fluent in conversation, he had an apparently inexhaustible store of reminiscences of his adventures, among which were some that are popularly supposed to belong to other men. He was a great favorite with the children, who used to sit on his knee in the kitchen winter evenings, and who learned from him with unquestioning faith that, before he buckled on his sword as a private in Captain Seward s artil lery, he had fought with Napoleon at Marengo, and Austerlitz, and Waterloo ; that he also had a hand in the skirmishes of the " neutral ground " in the Revolution; that he was a sailor once, and was wrecked on an island, but was providentially saved in time to be buried alive by a savage tribe, into whose hands he had fallen. If not steady in all his habits, he was in the one of conviviality on Saturday nights. This, though incurable, was overlooked on account of his years of faithful service, one incident of which had been his seizing a runaway pony, by throwing his arms around its neck, just as it was dragging, apparently to death, one of the little boys, whose foot was caught in the stirrup. He was, like most of those of his nationality, a warm sympathizer in the projected raids of the " Patriots " upon Canada, as the above extract implies. The Assembly now almost unanimously voted in favor of large ap propriations for the canals, in accordance with the views of the com mittee. The Senate, however, would consent only to the four millions to be expended in the current year for enlarging the Erie Canal. The General Banking Law passed the Assembly by eighty-six to twenty- nine votes, the Democrats generally voting against it. The bill was amended by the Senate, which finally passed it by twenty to eight. The Legislature voted to adjourn on the 18th of April. March l$th. It is most manifest that the revolution this time " goes no* backward." The 1838.] WHIG SUCCESSES. 363 town-meetings this spring are auspicious of a more complete overthrow of the political speculators than ever occurred in this country. I think the Whig party goes on with the same strength and power that distinguished Mr. Jefferson s complete triumph. Do you know, I never until now knew exactly the justice of your homage to Charles King? I have just learned from his beautiful and manly articles in the American what you knew so long ago. God speed the Jeffersonian ! I like every word in it right well. By-and-by, when I get at leisure, I will put a shoulder to the wheel once more, and the high conception of thirty thousand subscribers shall be realized, to Benedict s contentment. I look with eagerness for Ruggles s report. I know it will be good, and / shall value it more highly for its enthusiasm and magnificent conceptions. Let it come soon. AUBURN, March 27, 1838. I am rejoiced to see that the New York & Erie Railroad bill has passed, and with so great unanimity, and with the very opposition it received. What will be its fate in the Senate ? How can they refuse to pass it ? Thursday Morning. I am so little accustomed to be in a majority, and to encounter the annoy ances incident to my present position, that, but for your judgment or feeling, I should, before this time, have thrown up my hands and declared I would never be the candidate of an established majority, or for its nominations. Lit tle credit the world would give me for that ; but I should be as free and inde pendent as I love to be ; and I should possess my own conscience and be satis fied with my own place. Referring to a sudden change of Democratic votes in favor of the " Small-bill Law " and internal improvements, he said : AUBURN, April 2, 1838. It is most certainly a bold change of front ; but I was not unprepared for it. I did not see how the enemy would dare go into the next campaign under the fearful odds arrayed against them. I will not tease you with idle questions about the details. I shall see you sooner than you can give me answers ; but I am sure our policy is an obvious one, and is just and sound. Our town-meetings are supposed by us to be looking well throughout the county. We shall certainly have a great triumph here. We have never carried but two of the wards. It is now noon, and we are sure of three, and are ahead in the Fourth ; but the " Fourth Ward " here, as in your city, is the stronghold of the enemy. AUBURN, April 6, 1838. You have the town-meetings. Are they not beyond your most sanguine hopes ? We are even more successful than last autumn, and what makes it more satisfactory is, that a larger vote was polled than at any previous election. The Connecticut election almost turns the heads of our people here. But I pray you, if you can, repress the exhibition of such wild joy as marked the last fall triumph. Our friend Granger made a beautiful speech in New York. I have just read 364: LIFE AND LETTERS. [1838. it, and doubt not it was well received. I never saw anything of his that was better. He will be fortunate as before in being present at the rejoicing, and in being the bearer of the intelligence to Washington. I am in a thousand scrapes. Every man thinks I am a bank, and that I can not suspend specie or other payment. With scarcely ready money enough to plant my garden-seeds, I find all my neighbors, WhigB and Conservatives, requir ing my name and my money. This is bad enough ! But I have now before me two letters, one from Seneca Falls, and one from Batavia, from good political and of course personal friends, praying for aid. This is the most trying case I ever found. I would give them all I have, but that would be nothing ; and that they won t believe. I will be with you on Tuesday, though I had rather be drawn and quartered than expose myself at this juncture to the jealousies, and curiosity, and imperti nence, that assail me wherever I go. Tell Harriet and Maria that I have set out roses and woodbine, and planted bowers for them to enjoy this summer, and we expect them to come and enjoy them. A few days later he wrote home from New York : I occupy a quiet nook in the American Trust Company s office ; bnt how long I may be allowed to hold absolute possession I do not know. The world is always in a whirl here, and I am always in the thickest of it ; and just now it whirls more rapidly than ever. I am making some headway in my affairs ; none of my associates have yet arrived. Granger is here on his return from Washing ton. The Kents are all well, and very kind, as always. Granger and I went yesterday to Spring Lawn, and spent a delightful day with Mrs. Webb and the Colonel. Weed is here for two days. My room is a levee. April 26^. My life begins to be a little more quiet ; but I have not dined at home in a week. Sometimes I have taken two dinners, and occasionally a supper. On Monday I dined with Mr. Charles A. Davis; Tuesday with Mr. Philip Hone; Wednesday with Mr. Grinnell ; Thursday with Mr. Foot. To-day I dine with Gulian C. Verplanck ; to-morrow with Mr. Jones, and on Monday with Mr. Sidney Brooks. Last evening I spent at Mr. W. S. Johnson s. I have purchased two beautiful figures for the garden : one a gardener lean ing on his spade to talk with the visitor ; the other a flower-girl with her basket. Where will you put them ? To-night I am to go to the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge, and I find myself gazetted in advance with Governor Marcy, Governor Mason, and Mr. Bradish, for a speech, though I hardly know what I am to say. It was during this visit to New York that he found himself in the midst of the excitement and rejoicing which followed the announce ment that the Sirius and the Great Western were coming up the bay, thus, as one of the daily journals said, "satisfactorily proving the feasibility of performing the voyages of the Atlantic by the aid of steam." The Great Western had come in fourteen days and a half 1838.] THE GREAT WESTERN. 365 from Bristol, and brought sixty passengers. Congratulatory letters between the authorities and the British consul, collations and festivities on board the steamers, commemorated the event of such international importance with suitable ceremonies. Among the incidents of the time was a dinner given by the Mayor of New York to the Court of Errors, at which the chief dish was a chicken-pie baked at Bristol in England. A few days later the departure of the Great Western, on the 7th of May, on her return-trip, was a gala-day. Ten thousand people gathered on the Battery to see her off. The bay was thronged with all kinds of craft, the shipping gay with flags, and the air resounding with patriotic strains from the various brass bands, of " Hail Columbia " and " God save the Queen." The Great Western herself carried an ensign on which the flags of the United States and England were com bined, after the manner of quarterings on coats of arms. A large number of distinguished guests went on her down the bay, among whom were Governor Marcy and Mr. Seward. The Commercial Ad vertiser exultingly announced that " Neptune himself is believed to have retreated to his cave in despair, as he was not seen during the day, while the Tritons held fast to the shad-poles to keep from being swept away." NEW YORK, April 27, 1838 Friday Morning. The Baltimore election shows that the tide of our good fortune is not yet beginning to ebb. I congratulate you less for the gain we have made than the assurance it gives of continued prosperity of our cause. Give us the Fourth Ward, and I ask no more guarantee for the State. " Life in New York " has varied little with me since you left, except that it has become a trifle more tranquil. The unexpected hazard of the New York election brought a damper upon our confidence, and forthwith everybody began to give good reasons for the defeat we were to suffer in Baltimore. I noticed that you exercised your ingenuity in the same way. It is now passing strange that we have succeeded. The Great Western is almost worn out as a novelty. When you come down next week I shall be able to go on board with you quietly. Hitherto, access has been at the peril of life, limb, or drapery. I have an invitation to go on board to-day with the Common Council. But I have an engagement, as you know, at Verplanck s. I had a long visit from Tallmadge after you left, and saw his brother this morning. Fortunately, I think the Conservatives here are not prepared for a bold move, else they would precipitate everything. They will proceed cautiously, and will call a convention (after both the others) at Herkimer. Mr. Bradish came this morning. I paid my respects at an early hour. He appears well. I regret that he is likely to remain so short a time. Seward had been anxious, as his letters indicated, to relieve the Whig party at the coming canvass of any embarrassments on account of supposed rivalry or antagonism between himself and Granger. Ar- 366 LIFE ANI) LETTERS. [1888. rived in New York, he found that those who were accustomed to man age and decide such questions had made up their minds that his own nomination was desirable, and by many of them it was regarded as a sine qua non of success at the election. He wrote : As Granger came here last Saturday, and Weed on Monday, I thought the long-deferred explanation would come ; and I demanded of the latter that I be at liberty to withdraw if Granger was not inclined to do so. The explanation was had between them, the result being by agreement re ported to me. Other conferences followed, the upshot of which was that Mr, Granger and his friends preferred to go on with the canvass for the nomination, although prepared to acquiesce in the result of the con vention if it should be adverse to him, as they did not apprehend the loss of the State under whatever candidate, and believed that his (Granger s) strength with the people rendered it advisable to continue their efforts. Seward had been the gubernatorial candidate of the Whig party in 1834, the year when it had polled its highest vote. On the other hand, it was urged that Granger had prior claim, having been in 1830 and 1832 the candidate of the Antimasonic party, before it was merged in the Whig organization. Mr. Bradish, Speaker of the Assembly, was talked of in the north ern counties as a candidate for Governor. Like Seward, he avowed his readiness to withdraw from the field, if in so doing he could promote the harmony of the party or its success. In view of what had already occurred, however, it was deemed best by his friends that he should not discourage the efforts in his favor. Other candidates began also to be mentioned, though less prominently ; among them Judge Edwards, of New York. The Whig State Convention was called to meet on the 12th of September, at Utica. Seward wrote : I am sorry to hear that Bradish has set his heart upon what warm friends of both say ought to be my point of ambition. But I would be perfectly satisfied if he and the community, agitated by the question, could only know that in this competition I am compelled to sustain a part by the wishes of those whom, as a patriot, as well as friend, I am bound to respect instead of my own ambition or selfishness. I am already so wearied in it that, if left to myself, I should with draw instantly and forever. I am ill-fitted for competition with brethren and friends, although I lack no zeal in opposition to a common enemy, or firmness in encountering u a sea of troubles." The promised lecture - engagement for June was now fulfilled. Writing from Albany he said : I went to Troy on Monday, and found myself welcomed by a very hospitable reception. An invitation was immediately handed to me to a public supper to \ 1838.J A CANDIDATE S EXPERIENCE. 367 be given me by the Whigs of the city. My lecture was read, and received with somewhat more favor than I anticipated. I had a large and highly-respectable audience, filling their large court-house. This, considering the intense summer heat, surprised and gratified me. I made a call at Horatio Averill s. It was impossible to leave there until I had been presented to the good Whigs who called upon me in large numbers at eleven o clock yesterday. The tedious negotiations begun two years before to complete the purchase of the Chautauqua lands from the Holland Company were now drawing to a close. Seward and his co-partners met in New York and made the final arrangement. One of the partners had, in view of the changed financial condition of the country, grown anxious to re linquish his interest in the enterprise, and be released from its liabili ties. Seward, desirous to overcome all difficulties and discords, whether at New York, Philadelphia, Westfield, or Amsterdam, agreed to take the other s share in addition to his own. This business kept him two or three weeks in New York. Meanwhile, the canvass throughout the State for the nominations at Utica was going on with vigor, and not without asperity. One of his letters describes his own experience of it : NEW YORK, July 8, 1838. Politically all is quiet here. The excitement I lived in last spring has, hi a great degree, subsided ; and, except the officious intrusion of the subject of my nomination on all occasions, and the constraint which it imposes, I am without annoyance. But from Auburn, from Albany, from Canandaigua, from Roches ter, from Buffalo, and from Washington, I learn continually that there is a fierce excitement directed against me, and that friends are alarmed and rivals friends stimulated. These reports do not much annoy me. Stories are in circulation absurd and ludicrous enough. They accuse me of having compassed all the borders of the State, personally or by agents, to secure the honor they deem so great. They say that the "young man at Niagara" who moved my premature nomination was three days with me at Auburn. They accuse me of an unjust conspiracy to de stroy Granger. They allege that I seek the empty honor, with a pertinacious determination to attain it, even by a division of the party. They represent me as a speculator, taking advantage of the sufferings and embarrassments of the unfortunate to enrich myself. They allege that I persecute and oppress the settlers in Chautauqua, that I edit the Evening Journal, that I regulate the Bank of the United States, and that I control the movements of Henry Clay ! But with a clear conscience and greater magnanimity than is manifested toward me, I shall go safely through all this storm. 368 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1838. CHAPTER XXI. 1838. The Canvass. Whig Young Men s Convention. Whittlesey. Fillmore and Tracy. The Episcopal Diocese. Whig State Convention. Nomination of Seward and Bradish. " A Speculator." The Antislavery Interrogatories. The Election. A WHIG Young Men s State Convention met at Utica on the llth of July, Peter B. Porter presiding. Among those who took part in it were General Leaven worth, Gabriel Furman, Robert H. Pruyn, Mat thew Vassar, Harlow S. Love, F. H. Ruggles, John H. Martindale, Pal mer V. Kellogg, Cicero Loveridge, W. A. Sacket, and Jarvis N. Lake. The resolutions were reported by Horace Greeley, " the editor of the Jeffersonian" They were against the sub-Treasury, against experi ments in national finance, in favor of internal improvements, the credit system, and small bills, and pledged support to the nominees of the coming Whig State Convention in September ; the object of the Young Men s gathering being to stimulate interest and enthusiasm in the cause, but not to express preference for any particular candidate. The Democratic press, however, maintained, and not without show of reason, that this Young Men s Whig Convention meant that the Whigs should nominate a young man that it was " the machination of a clique, con sisting in part of the would-be candidate for Governor, and his fidus Achates of the Evening Journal, to forestall public opinion." The sub-Treasury debate had occupied a large share of the atten tion of Congress. The project was made a cardinal point of the Ad ministration policy, and became an issue in the coming elections, by the Senate passing the bill, and the House of Representatives laying it on the table. Governor Ritner, of Pennsylvania, had issued a proclamation, re quiring the banks of that State to resume specie payments in August. The Bank of the United States, having reorganized under a Pennsyl vania charter, had come to the relief of the Government by placing two millions at the disposal of the Secretary of the Treasury, through a purchase of its own bonds at par. Referring to these events, Seward wrote : PHILADELPHIA, July 14, 1838. It seems to me that "the Monster " has, in the last move, atoned for all the folly of his letter to J. Q. A. Ritner s proclamation was, as you will conjecture, previously understood, and all is agreed. The bank resumes on the 26th instant, and a full explanation (perhaps better omitted) will be made. If it be as wise as Ritner s proclamation, all will be right. AUBURN, July 29, 1838. My " garden," with its fruits and flowers, is so redundant of beauty that I have been constantly hoping you might be again transplanted into it to enjoy it 1838.] WESTERN NEW YORK WHIGS. with me before my departure. I have good promise of grapes, and will try to send some to you if they escape Jack Frost. By-the-way, I pray you, make my warmest acknowledgments to H G for that beautiful article in the Fredonia, Censor. I have never seen anything better timed, or hi better temper, or more discreet. I started from my chair as I read it, and said to myself, " No man could believe that this was written by anybody but myself." Its temper, manner, and the very facts used, seemed to be exclusively mine own. I have several days desired an opportunity to give you our plan of organization in Oayuga. We have a committee-room, always open ; and a clerk who spends all his time there. Every morning each member brings all his newspapers, documents, handbills, etc., and throws them upon the table. Then the clerk puts them up, severally, in blank envelopes. In the evening, at seven precisely, the committee are expected to meet. The chair goes to the most punctual, rather he into the chair. The towns are called in order, and letters, communi cations, and speeches, are read and heard from each. The more extensive and animating the correspondence, the more the committee-man who presents it receives the approbation of the meeting. The meetings are open to all Whigs, and they soon become interesting and efficient. We have twenty-two towns, and assign each to some one individual, who is efficient and knows most of the people in it. These twenty-two men meet, every night, in the committee-room, and superscribe and address the newspapers, documents, etc., to persons in their respective towns. This done, they are forthwith carried to the post-office. Finally, the same committee-men sit down and each addresses a letter to his town, giving the information received that night in committee, and soliciting further intelligence, thus infusing a spirit into the towns which returns to ani mate themselves. And thus we draw into service many men, in every town, who would otherwise be inactive. The same plan is carried out as to counties. Eight committee-men are ap pointed, one for each Senate district, who make report in the same way. If you think favorably of this plan, have it as extensively adopted as pos sible. BUFFALO, August 5, 1838. While at Canandaigua I made a call at Mr. Greig s, and received several visits. Conversation, now consisting chiefly of exciting matters in relation to the political question, is by no means pleasant or healthful, especially when it turns on the hundred suspicions and malicious calumnies that such a time brings forth. I thank Heaven that trouble will end soon. The stage called for me at 3 A. M., and set me down at Rochester at 9. I found earnest friends there in the persons of F. Whittlesey, S. J. Andrews, T. H. Rochester, and some others, and opponents as decided and spirited, though scarcely as wise, in some gentlemen who, at present, seem to control the affairs of our party there. Whittlesey accompanied me to Buffalo. We stopped at Albion, where we found among all the Whigs, of whom A. H. Cole is chief, the most decided, cordial, and unbroken feeling. We landed also at Lockport, where there were many fast and devoted friends. Our next stage was to Niagara Falls, by railroad. We staid there during the night, had a long walk over the forest- shore and Goat Island, made a brief visit to Clifton and Table Rock, supped, and slept, and the next morning came on to Buffalo. 24 370 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1838. I parted from Whittlesey in the afternoon at Black Rock. I leave for West- field to-morrow morning. I had a long talk with Fillmore. He affects or feels entire neutrality, hut expressed himself as both bound and desirous to inform me of the whole ground ; says that he believes Seward will be nominated, and has so told Tracy. He expects that, and, if I do not read him wrong, is favorable to it ; but the circumstances of his own position render him cautious, and he will not act. The American was filled, and the crowd seemed to represent the whole country. The first man I met was the Rev. Mr. Shelton, who was eloquent on politics. My arrival there called about me many friends, and also many who had but ill-concealed resentment ; and it was quite obvious that it would not be difficult to call up a feeling of party discord there. Let me say to you it is quite fortunate that these unprofitable discussions are soon to have their close. He added a note to C. Morgan : Our system of organization will be adopted forthwith in Ontario, and Mon roe and Seneca, and I have no doubt will engage the attention of our friends here. Let our friends with you demonstrate its practicability and efficiency by a vig orous prosecution of the system both in the towns and counties. Write to Mr. Bishop, Mr. Frederick Whittlesey, and Mr. S G. Andrews, Rochester ; to Mr. Fillmore, M. C., here ; also A. H. Tracy, Esq. Two or three days later, in a letter to Mrs. Seward from Westfield y he wrote : Preferring, as you know, the land to the sea, and night traveling to that of these heated days, I left Buffalo at half -past ten at night, and arrived here at one yesterday. It is a bright and glorious morning ; the scene is tranquil, and I, relieved from excitement, have commenced already the arduous labors to extricate myself from the huge undertaking that has so long engrossed so much of my care and atten tion. I suppose it is an idle dream ; but it often seems to me that, if we were all here, I might enjoy tranquillity and peace. Yet I know full well that it is the mind that makes peace or war ; that it is my temperament and constitution that attract the thousand cares, and these would as certainly call them round me here as elsewhere. My good friend Plumb is with me, and I am to go this afternoon to May- ville with him, and then on board " the splendid and fast-sailing steamboat William H. Seward " to Jamestown, to return in the morning. WESTFIELD, August 10, 1838. I went on Tuesday to Jamestown and had a delightful excursion on the lake. The boat was gayly decorated with all her colors. The captain and passengers were pleased in showing me this gay array and combination of my name upon her sides and on her flags. If it did not awaken my vanity, it did excite in me no small emotion of satisfaction, and ought to have excited the most grateful acknowledgments to a beneficent God, when I reflected how different 1838.] ST. PETER S AT AUBURN. 371 are the circumstances under which I visit this country now from those which appertained to it and to me when I first saw it in 1836. Last evening I spent at Mr. Reynolds s, who had a party in compliment to various friends from Buffalo. One of the ladies told rne an incident illustrative of some peculiarities of social life here that may amuse you as it did me. Mr. A married a widowed lady of Buffalo. He had at the time a servant-girl who, after the first Mrs. A s death, occupied the seat at the head of the table. When Mrs. A the second arrived this damsel was required to sit lower down, and when a party of friends visited them Mrs. A availed herself of the oc casion to exclude her from the table altogether. The next Sunday was ths com munion service. Mr. A and his bride were there the latter a communicant, as also was the girl, who took a seat directly in front of them. Just before the chief prayer she rose and audibly pronounced, " I desire the prayers of the Church for Mr. A and his family. I should think the present Mrs. A couldn t look with confidence upon the sainted Mrs. A if they were to meet here." The clergyman having omitted to comply with this affectionate and pious request, the girl rose again after the long prayer had been closed, and said : "It was the sainted Mrs. A s dying request that her husband would give greater at tention to religion, and her dying request ought to be attended to." The Convention of the Episcopal Church, which met in Utica in August this year, had before it the question of dividing the diocese the whole State of New York as yet constituting but one. Among the clerical delegates were the Rev. Drs. Hawks, Potter, and Whitehouse ; among the lay delegates, Washington Irving, John C. Spencer, and John A. King. It was decided at this convention to create the new Diocese of Western New York, of which the Rev. Dr. Delancey was afterward made bishop. Seward, as a delegate from Auburn, favored both these measures. St. Peter s Church at Auburn, which he represented and had always attended, was founded in the early part of the century as a missionary station. During succeeding years, as the town increased in size, the congregation grew in numbers and prosperity. The first building was destroyed by fire, but was replaced by a larger edifice of cut stone, Gothic in architectural decoration, and its pulpit was occupied in suc cession by Rev. Drs. Rudd, Lucas, and Croswell. Seward s pew was on the right of the chancel, and when in Auburn he was always to be seen in his seat on Sunday morning. He uniformly declined to take any share in the management of the secular concerns of the church, and would not accept the position of vestryman or church-warden. This was from no especial dislike to such duties, but was in accordance with his habit of declining official position in any corporation, whether religious, financial, educational, or municipal. He took no part, therefore, in any dispute over clergymen or church finances, though always ready to contribute liberally. On several occasions when the church subscription fell short of the required amount, he 372 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1838. would make up the balance from his own pocket. Of the cordial re gard that subsisted between him and the various clergymen who at dif ferent times filled the pulpit, his letters contained many evidences. Sermons he usually listened to attentively, and discussed their themes afterward at the Sunday dinner-table. Of course, with the ripening development of his own intellectual powers, he soon came to note how few were marked by original thought, and how many, even by estimable and worthy preachers, were trite and commonplace. He used to say that his reverence for the pulpit had been so carefully cul tivated in early life, that it was always a surprise to him when he found that the clergyman was preaching a discourse not so good as he could write himself. In August the various counties commenced choosing their delegates to the State Convention. The Whig Committee in Franklin County published a circular avowing their preference for Mr. Bradish, and ad verting to the other persons who had been named : Let the convention meet, and, influenced by public considerations alone, make a nomination ; and whether the candidate for Governor shall be Kent or Spencer, Duer or Ogden, Verplanck or Hoffman, Tallmadge or Root, Granger or Barnard, Seward or Bradish, or any other suitable man, the friends of Mr. Bradish, at least so far as we know, will give such candidate a cordial, firm, united, and vigorous support. The convention met on the appointed day, September 12th, at Utica. The delegates, on assembling, seemed to be nearly equally divided as between Seward and Granger ; but a considerable number from the north avowed their first choice for Mr. Bradish. Discussion developed the fact that the nomination of Seward would be one very generally acceptable to the Whig masses, as his legislative record and vigorous advocacy of internal improvements had made him well known throughout the State, and he had, in 1834, polled the highest vote ever given for a Whig candidate. The convention organized in the afternoon, at the Court-House. Hugh Maxwell was chosen president. Among the delegates were Mil- lard Fillmore, Alvah Hunt, Charles E. Clarke, Chandler Starr, Fortune C. White, Albert H. Porter, James K. Lawrence, Robert C. Nicholas, Henry Fitzhugh, Day Otis Kellogg, Henry Van Rensselaer, John May- nard, D. B. St. John, and many others since prominent in public affairs. The friends of Seward, believing that he was the choice of the greater portion of the Whigs throughout the State, had expected to find a majority of the delegates outspoken in his favor. When the convention assembled, however, it was found that delegates from sev eral localities were non-committal in their expressions, or prepossessed in favor of one of the other candidates. On the first informal ballot 1838.] NOMINATED FOR GOVERNOR. 373 the vote stood Seward, 52 ; Granger, 39 ; Bradish, 29 ; Edwards, 4 ; showing that, although having a large plurality, Seward fell short of a majority of the whole. Animated by this discovery, the friends of Mr. Granger made personal appeals in his behalf, the president, Mr. Maxwell, and Mr. Samuel Stevens, making strong speeches in his favor. The result was soon seen in the rapid increase of Granger s strength on the next ballot, which stood thus : Seward, 60 ; Granger, 52 ; Bra- dish, 10 ; Edwards, 3. On the third ballot Granger s vote ran up to the highest place, thus : Granger, 60 ; Seward, 59 ; Bradish, 2 ; Edwards, 2 ; blank, 1. Seward s friends saw now that exertion was necessary on their part, or they would be defeated. A formidable element of Granger s strength was the support he was receiving from the representatives of the region interested in the Chenango Valley Canal, an enterprise in which he had been the accepted champion. While conceding that Seward might be a stronger candidate in the State at large, they adhered tenaciously to the one most prominently identified with their favorite scheme of local improvement. "Weed," said Alvah Hunt, " tell me to do anything else ; tell me to jump out of that window, at the risk of breaking my neck, and I will do it to oblige you ; but don t ask me to desert Granger and the Chenango Valley Canal ! " Never theless, argument prevailed. Speeches and not less effective conver sational appeals brought back the votes which Seward had lost, and the tide turned again in his favor. Among these speeches those of Chandler Starr and Day Otis Kellogg were especially effective. It had now become evident also that the choice was narrowed down to the two leading candidates, and that the next ballot would probably decide it. The fourth ballot was taken, and resulted Seward, 67 ; Granger, 48 ; Bradish, 8. This settled the question. The convention adjourned till morning. The next day, on reassembling, the nomination of Seward for Governor was made unanimous, and Bradish was unanimously nominated for Lieutenant-Governor. The president and vice-presidents were ap pointed a committee to inform the candidates. Samuel Stevens, as chairman of the Committee on Resolutions, reported a series denouncing the Democratic party for " tampering with the currency," recapitu lating the war on the currency and credit system by the removal of the deposits and the building up of the " money power " of local banks, as well as the " sub-Treasury scheme," which, it was charged, aimed to " accumulate overbearing political influence "by " controlling pecuni ary interests." The true issue, they declared, was a "sub-Treasury or no sub-Treasury, with an equal, safe, and convenient currency." The abrogation of the " Small-bill Law " was indorsed, as well as the finan- 374 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1838. cial policy laid down in Ruggles s report on internal improvements at the last session of the Legislature. The resolutions closed by denouncing " experiments and expedi ents " and " specie circulars," and declaring that the Whig party sought " the restoration of the currency, of commerce, of prosperity, and tranquillity." An elaborate and carefully-drawn address was also reported, in the same vein, detailing the history, situation, and pros pects of the State, political and commercial. Speeches followed by Samuel Stevens, Millard Fillmore, and Charles E. Clarke. The result of the convention was received with cordial approval by the Wbigs throughout the State. Ratification meetings were held in the various counties, the meeting at the Exchange at Auburn being especially enthusiastic. The Whig press throughout the State gave the nomination an unqualified support, and in a few days a letter was published from Mr. Granger, saying that his parting request to a dele gate on his way to the convention was, that " if either Mr. Seward or Mr. Bradish attained a majority at the informal balloting, my friends would give the successful competitor their united support," and that in accordance with that request the motion was made for the unani mous approbation of the names presented. " In a contest like ours," he continued, " all personal feeling should be merged, and every Whig who may be honored with the public confidence of his party is to take the place assigned to him without a murmur, and to apply his best energies to secure a triumphant result." Mr. Weed wrote to the candidate this characteristic note : Saturday, September 15, 1838. "Well, Seward, we are again embarked upon a u sea of difficulties," and must go earnestly to work. You have heard from the good and true men who were at Utica all that occurred during the canvass. Let us now remember all that was fair, and forget all that was faithless. Maine has given us her cold shoulder, but we shall have time to recover and rally. My faith in Pennsylvania is still unshaken. But even should Pennsylva nia forsake us, I will not doubt the Empire State. Seward wrote on the same day to him : AuBtJKN, September 15, 1838. The members of the convention, from the west, passed through this place yesterday. The feeling was altogether as kind and harmonious as could have been expected. H. W. T., J. Q. G., and R. 0. N. and T. F., of Batavia, called, with thirty or forty others. All expressed to me their cordial acquiescence, and all expressed themselves uniformly in the same way to everybody, so as to dis sipate all alarm. M. F., of Erie, also exercised a happy influence. Hoxie and Inglis, and Mr. Corse and Mr. Lawrence, were with us. After two hours with me at home I went to the hotel and dined with them. The official communication was received last evening. I have sent my an swer this morning. I send you copies of both : 1838.] THE DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION. 375 UTIOA, September 13th. W. H. SEWARD, Esq. DEAE SIR : As President and Vice-Presidents of the Whig Convention assem bled at this place to nominate candidates of the Whig party for the offices of Governor and Lieutenant-Governor at the ensuing election, we have been directed by the convention to inform you of your nomination by that body as their can didate for the office of Governor. This nomination was unanimously made, and we have the honor to request that you would signify your acceptance of the same. Be pleased to address your reply to Mr. Maxwell, New York. We have the honor to be, very respectfully, your obedient servants. H. MAXWELL, President of the Convention. AUBURN, September 15th. GENTLEMEN : I have the honor to acknowledge the receipt of your commu nication announcing my nomination by the Whig State Convention, recently assembled at Utica, for the office of Governor of this State. Be pleased to make known to the members of that body that I accept the nomination, with a profound sense of the honor conferred upon me by this renewed demonstration of the confidence of my Whig fellow-citizens. I am, gentlemen, with sincere respect and esteem, your obedient servant, W. H. SEWARD. HUGH MAXWELL, Esq., President ; and ISAAC LAOY, LATHAM A. BURROWS, VICTORY BIBDSEYK, and JEREMIAH H. PIERSON, Esquires, Vice-Presidents of the Whig State Convention. AUBURN, September 2%d. My letters come thickly upon me, and, after making all allowances for inter ested motives and blind adulation, there is still enough to turn my head of gratu- lation from the good and the pure. AUBURN, September 27th. Has it never occurred to you, as an evidence of the feeling and spirit of the party, that this nomination is conferred upon our candidate without any one s asking his preference for President ? No such question has been asked, publicly or privately, although the nomination has been seventeen days before the people. Do not adopt the measure about the Chenango matter without grave reflec tion, and well ascertaining whether there is absolute necessity. Mark me ! The elevated vantage-ground we hold is weakened when candidates or their friends begin to explain or certify. It can rarely be done with safety, and always ought, where it is possible, to be avoided. The Democratic Convention met at Herkimer on the same day that the Whigs met at Utica. It renominated Governor Marcy and Lieutenant-Governor Tracy, adopted resolutions, and an address declar ing adhesion to the Democratic principles, but containing one expres sion which, however consistent with past avowals, was unfortunate, and ill-timed for present effect. This was a sentence to the effect that the Democratic party would cooperate with the general Administration, in efforts to suppress the circulation of bills under five dollars. 376 LIFE ^ ND LETTERS. [1838. The returns of elections in other States, during September and October, further inspirited the Whigs : they had carried North Carolina, Kentucky, Rhode Island, Indiana; had gained in Illinois, and had re- elected Governor Ritner in Pennsylvania. Personalities constituted, in those days, as unfortunately they do still, a staple element in a political canvass. Seward s connection with the Holland Land Company was thought to be a vulnerable point for attack. Newspapers led off by saying that the purchase in Chautauqua was " one of the specu lating concerns" with which Seward "had been connected and for which he had acted as agent," and that " the Bank of the United States afforded facilities for the scheme," winding up with the remark that if Seward " would surrender up to the settlers of Chautauqua the gains which he draws from their hard earnings, by selling their bonds to a foreign corporation, he might with a better grace ask them to vote for him." Of course, this attack brought out an indignant reply from the Evening Journal, showing that Seward " had not drawn a dollar or a dime from the hard earnings of the settlers, but on the contrary stood between them and their oppressors ; that he took upon himself the duties of pacificator, and put an end to the system of extortion pre viously existing." This defense was supplemented by assurances from Chautauqua that " the people of that county, without personal ac quaintance with Mr. Seward, four years ago, gave him a majority of over fifteen hundred for Governor. Now, having witnessed the ability and integrity of his administration of the land-office for two years, they will, in November, evince their estimate of him by a majority of two thousand." The accusation of being a " young man " was also renewed, though having less weight since he had grown four years older. The oppro brious epithet of " Locofoco " which the Whigs bestowed upon their antagonists was retorted to by the pun that the " Small-bill party " would not be content without " a little Bill " as candidate for Gov ernor. Contrary to the habit of his life in regard to personal accusations, Seward himself took notice of the charge in reference to Chautauqua, by publishing a letter to the citizens of that county, detailing the his tory of his connection with the Holland Land Company, and saying : You know that your farms and firesides have not been put in jeopardy by me, but in so much as a deed subject to a bond and mortgage, with ten years credit, is a more safe tenure than an expired and forfeited contract of sale, they have been secured to you ; and that you have not been delivered over to a " soulless corporation," but that your affairs have been arranged to secure you against any possible extortion or oppression. You will recollect that, in all the settlement of the estate, no cent of com- 1838.] ANTISLAVERY INTERROGATORIES. 377- pound interest or of costs has gone into my hands ; no man has ever lost an acre of land which he desired to retain, with or without money no arrears have been prosecuted no foreclosure instituted, and every forfeiture relin quished, upon an agreement to pay interest. He closed his letter by saying that it was written because due to their welfare, which would be affected by discontents about the titles, and that, however willing to leave his own conduct to the test of time and candor, he could not suffer their interests to be put in jeopardy. There is a class of men who go before a great reform as pioneers do before an army. With undisciplined strength and zeal they push eagerly forward, in straggling column, hacking and hewing at what ever comes, and so clear the way for the orderly tread of the disciplined battalions. They win no battles, but they open the way for battles to be won. They wonder, not without bitterness, at the slow movements of the general who insists on keeping the main body shoulder to shoulder. It would be asking too much of human nature, perhaps, to expect them to comprehend why the whole army cannot be pioneers. Such a class were the ultra-antislavery men, and such were their feel ings, during most of his life, in regard to Seward. The Antislavery Society, now grown to such proportions as to be able, in some degree, to affect the result of the election, propounded, through a committee composed of Gerrit Smith and William Jay, in terrogatories to the candidates in nomination. These interrogatories were three : 1. In regard to granting fugitive slaves trial by jury ; 2. In regard to abolishing distinctions in constitutional rights, founded solely on complexion ; 3. In regard to the repeal of " the law which now authorizes the importation of slaves into this State, and their de tention as such during a period of nine months." Seward, as the whole record of his life had shown, was an earnest opponent of slavery, and had, furthermore, the sagacity to foresee that to precipitate the issue prematurely in that canvass was simply to court defeat. He accordingly, in a calm reply, while avowing his firm faith in the trial by jury, and saying the more humble the individ ual " the stronger is his claim to its protection," and declaring his op position in clear and definite terms to " all human bondage," neverthe less refused to make ante-election pledges as to his action upon spe cific measures, until they should actually come before him for his deci sion. Of course, when the three subjects of these interrogatories came up, as practical questions of administration or legislation, Se ward s action was all and more than they had asked. But his replies before election, though avowing more advanced sentiments than the bulk of the Whig party were yet prepared to sustain, were only partially satisfactory to the antislavery leaders, who denounced them through the press. The greater part of their followers, however, were from the 378 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1838. Whig party, and did not hesitate to vote for Seward and Bradish, in preference to the candidates of the Democratic party, whose senti ments were avowedly hostile to their own. As the election drew near, the usual appliances of processions, meetings, handbills, and mottoes, were brought into requisition. Dem ocratic handbills flourished, in large black letters, such inscriptions as, " Resumption of Specie Payments," " Hard Money," " No Bank Rags," "Jackson Forever," "An Independent Treasury," "W. H. Seward, the Agent of the United States Bank and Holland Land Speculators," " The Money Power," etc. Those of the Whigs, in letters equally black and large, proclaimed, " No Sub-Treasury," " No Government Shinplasters," " No Separation of the Government from the People," * No Protests, Experiments, or Mortgages," " A Sound Currency," " Seward, the Poor Man s Friend," " Repeal of the Law against Small Bills," " Reform, Retrenchment, Education, and Internal Improve ment," " Prosper Credit, Prosper Commerce," " Small Bills redeemable in Specie, the Poor Man s Currency," etc. A Chautauqua County Convention adopted resolutions denouncing the statements in regard to Seward as unfounded imputations upon them, which they were called on to repel by their votes. By a happy omen, as the Whig newspapers said, election came this year on the anniversary of General Harrison s victory at Tippecanoe, the 7th of November. The three days contest was an exciting one. The polls closed. The votes were counted, and, as the returns came in, the Whigs grew more and more elated, till, on Saturday, the Auburn Journal was able to announce, " Go ring the bells, and fire the guns, and fling the starry banner out ! The Empire State is redeemed ! " The Whigs of Auburn moved in procession to Seward s dwelling, to congratulate him upon his election. They fired a salute of one hun dred guns in his honor on Saturday, and followed it up with another hundred on Monday, when the news came in from Chautauqua that that county had given Seward twenty-two hundred majority, more even than it had promised. Many days elapsed, as usual, before the complete returns of the State were received ; but, when they were, it was found that the major ity for Seward and Bradish amounted to over ten thousand. The Evening Journal, at Albany, was especially jubilant. One entire page was covered by the picture of an eagle, with outspread wings, bearing in his beak and talons such mottoes as, " As goes the Fourth Ward, so goes the State," "The Sober Second Thought of the People," " Victory ! " This bird was destined to play a part in all future celebrations of elections, being claimed by the Argus as a trophy to grace its columns whenever the Democrats achieved a victory, and flying back to its original perch on the Journal whenever the Whigs regained success. 1838.] THE GOVERNOR-ELECT. 379 The Whigs carried a large majority of the Assembly, though not yet enough Senators to change the Democratic complexion of that body. A majority of the congressional delegation were also Whigs. Among them were Francis Granger, Ogden Hoffman, Edward Curtis, Moses H. Grinnell, James Monroe, Christopher Morgan, Theodore A. Tomlinson, Thomas Kempshall, Harvey Putnam, Richard P. Marvin, and Millard Fillmore; among the Democrats, Gouverneur Kemble and John G. Floyd. The close of the contest brought the following note from Mr. Weed : Friday, November 9th. Well, dear Seward, we are victorious ; God be thanked, gratefully and de voutly thanked! Judge Miller will of course come to Albany with you. We want the aid of his experience and wisdom. A fearful responsibility is upon you. God grant you the light necessary to guide you safely through ! I go to New York thii afternoon to temper and moderate the joy and rejoicings of our friends. CHAPTER XXII. 1838-1839. A Busy Season. The " Kane Mansion." The Inauguration. The Message. A Legisla tive Dead-Lock. State Officers. The Oneidas. Geological Survey. "The Three- Walled House." The "Atherton Gag." Horace Greeley. Spencer. Dr. Potter. Canadian Raids. Secretary Poinsett. Foreigners. Colonel Worth. GREAT were the Whig merry-makings and festivities over the result. It seemed almost too good to be true that they had actually gained control of the State government at last. Eating and drinking still occupied a prominent place at political assemblages a custom doubt less derived from England, happily since fallen into disuse. There were festivals and suppers, with toasts and speeches, at Albany, at Newburg, at Coxsackie, at Whitehall, at Batavia, at Florida, and at other places. Occasionally these gatherings would be further inspired by the reception of letters or toasts from the party leaders. While his supporters were thus giving themselves up to merriment, the newly-elected Governor had plenty of anxiety and work. The seven weeks which intervened before entering upon the duties of the gubernatorial office were busy ones. The house at Auburn was of course thronged with visitors at all hours, seasonable and unseasonable, and the mails brought him each day an increasing avalanche of letters in regard to his new duties ; letters of congratulation ; letters of ap plication ; letters of solicitation ; letters of objurgation, and letters of advice. These honors (or annoyances, whichever they may be) are the experiences of every newly-chosen chief magistrate ; but the shower of them was in this case the more abundant because the Whig party was now, for the first time, realizing its long-deferred hopes of power. 380 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1838. The patronage at the disposal of the Executive, larger then than now> was sought for with appetites keen from long fasting, and, as every Whig had shared in producing the unexpectedly successful result, nearly every one in the eastern part of the State at least felt himself entitled to say how the fruits of the victory should be used. Seward subsequently said that he received in the Eighth District a majority equal to his entire majority in the State ; that during the short interval between his election and inauguration he received more than a thousand applications for office, and of these applications only two came from beyond Cayuga Bridge. There was an abundance of conflicting advice from a legion of ad visers, fearful lest some misstep might lead to the early loss of the power just gained. Never, probably, was a Governor s message sub jected by its friends to such severe scrutiny and anxious criticism, al though the issues of public policy upon which the election had turned were clear and well-defined ones. But those of the new Governor s friends who were timid were fearful that he would say too much, while those who were sanguine were afraid he would say too little. The Governor-elect prepared a complete draft of the important document with his own hands in his study at Auburn before submitting it to others, and then took it with him to Albany early in December. Chief among the advisers there was Mr. Weed, who made a few judicious suggestions of amendments, all of which were adopted. John C. Spencer, who was to be Secretary of State under the new administration, with that indefatigable industry and precision which characterized him, wrote and rewrote paragraphs enough to have made an entire new message, of which only a small part could be accepted. Samuel B. Ruggles was relied upon to furnish the figures for the esti mates cl the future business of the canals. Dr. Nott came over from Schenectady to assist in conference on the subject of education. John H. Beach assisted in the preparation of the financial statistics. One of the paragraphs referred to the site then just purchased for the State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, on a hill overlooking the valley of the Mohawk. Some one raised the point that Seward s description of the spot was too ornate. " Yes," said Judge Miller, with whom direct ness and brevity of speech were essentials, " strike it all out ; say the site is well selected." The suggestion was adopted ; but three weeks later Seward had a laugh at the expense of the proposer of the amendment, when an opposition paper pointed to this passage as being especially " curt and ungracious." Upon Mr. Weed, as chief adviser in all their party councils, the Whigs had already bestowed the sobriquet of "the Dictator." A letter to him said : Wednesday Morning, December UTi. I have denied myself the time to write to you. My correspondence consumes two hours a day, the message the residue. It begins to walk. 1838.J THE KANE MANSION. 381 I deny everybody I possibly can, and find I can work to good advantage much better here than even in the closet, where my imagination might dream the spirit of Clinton lingers. Pray tell me how long you think you can extend my fur lough ? You are right as to agriculture, but how J. C. S. would be surprised to see the message extended into an encyclopaedia ! If Marcy required six months to move into a house, and Croswell six months to move out, I, a countryman, may be indulged three weeks to get into mine. December 8th. V. B. s message is, I trust, not better than his successor s in this State may be; so you see I am " thanking God, and taking courage." I am so busy answering letters " of a certain description," that I scarcely have time to write to you. Don t decide upon the proposition of inauguration ceremony until you see the message. The character of that may not be conclusive upon the proposition ; but, if it is a failure, don t magnify it by ostentatious display. I incline to believe the ceremony better dispensed with. Friday Morning, December lUh. I had no idea that dictators were such amiable creatures. It reminds me of old Hassan s (Fatima s father s) expression, " My dear, terrible son-in-law," in " Bluebeard." I am sorry to say that I agree with Pruyn, King, and Greeley, in voting you down as to the emendation of the St. Nicholas letter. " I had a son," said the old man, " to whom on his setting out in life I gave this good ad vice : * Now, my son, there s always a right way to do things, and a wrong one. One or the other you must always take. Be sure and get the right one. And don t you think," said he, afterward, "the fellow was so stupid he would not take either way ! " I would like to go forthwith to Albany. But the truth is, it s no easy matter to find out all about the condition of the State, and set it down in a book to satisfy this fastidious generation of Whigs. A message I must have and will have before I leave this town ; for this reason, that if I were let alone at Al bany, I couldn t get my books, papers, and habits, fixed before the 1st of Jan uary ; and as to being left alone, how could I shut myself up in a house that everybody has been engaged in preparing, and therefore knows every access to it and every hiding-place in it ? I devote this day and to-morrow to this business ; Sunday to church for the last time here ; Monday, to funds, finance, domestic arrangements, etc. ; and then I shall reach the capital early or late next week. One of the first cares to be attended to in Albany had been to choose a suitable residence for the Governor. Of course it would hardly answer for the Whig Governor to take a house which had been bought for his Democratic predecessor, and which the Whigs had unsparingly ridiculed as " three-walled." Several others were proposed, but the decision was finally in favor of the " Kane Mansion," at the corner of Westerlo and Broad Streets the grounds around which were formerly those of a beautiful country-seat of that family, but were now beginning to be 382 LJFE AND LETTERS. [1838, intersected by city streets. The house was a spacious yellow-brick edifice, with broad wings, surrounded by a grove of horse-chestnuts, hemlocks, and pines, and with about four acres of grounds. It was in all respects well adapted for an official residence. A broad hall, fifty feet by twenty, ran through the centre, making an admirable reception- room for visitors, with a suite of parlors on one side, and family-rooms on the other. One wing contained a dining or ball room as spacious as the hall. The other wing nearest the street contained a room suitable for a library and business-office, with an adjoining room for a secretary. The old house lacked what are now called " modern improvements ; " but then no other house had them. Oil-lamps graced the gateway and the stoop without, as well as the chandeliers and mantels within. Candelabra were used on the dinner-table, and no one dreamed that there could be any light of more splendor. The great hall and the long dining-room each had one of Dr. Nott s newly-invented coal-stoves, and the parlors had grates to burn coal imported from Liverpool. Wood-fires heated the other apartments, or were supposed to, at an era when rooms were not expected to be warm except near the chimney. Water, clear and cold, was drawn from the depths of a great well that stood behind the house. The kitchen fireplace and brick oven were garnished with appliances which would now be deemed exceed ingly primitive, though feasts had been served up from them that were considered royal. The house had before been occupied by Governors Clinton and Tompkins. Some of the black servants, who had appertained to the former official households and were now reemployed, were full of tra ditions connected with the domestic life of those Governors. They pointed out the stairway where De Witt Clinton fell and broke his knee-pan ; the wine-cellar where Governor Tompkins stored his old madeira, and the lonesome dark passage-way through which wandered " the spooks " of some deceased persons, names and griefs unknown. When the announcement was made that the Governor was to live in the " Kane Mansion," the opposition papers, availing themselves of the cue given by former Whig denunciations, proceeded to call atten tion to the fact that even the " house which the Whigs called a mar ble palace was now not thought good enough for their Governor ! . . . He must have a palace, with park, and grounds, and avenues ! " The old house had been a stately mansion, but the cutting through of streets had shorn it of the splendor of " park and avenues ; " so the Whigs were able to defend themselves by pointing to these circumstances, and to the fact that Governor Seward was to pay the rent out of his own pocket. To furnish this house, and rent it for a single year, consumed about 1838.] AT HOME IN ALBANY. 383 twice as much as his salary for the entire term ; but it was his habit not only to expend, for the public benefit, all that he ever received from the public Treasury, but as much more from his private resources as they would bear. Housekeepers and servants were at once em ployed, and the household speedily organized. Seward went down to take possession ten days before the opening of his official term : ALBANY, December 21, 1838. If I was oppressed with labor and cares at home, I have not found a bed of roses here. Augustus and I came very pleasantly along with much less of salu tation or importunity for office than I expected. We came into our house last evening at five o clock. The carpets were laid in the nicest manner, the stove was heated, the lamps soon lighted, and some fine smoking-hot brook -trout were ready for our supper. After tea, Weed came in. We smoked and talked away the evening until twelve. This morning every wish was anticipated, and all our cares provided for. Thus far, although I have had company in abundance, the house has been quiet, and we are of opinion that you will be tranquilly located when you come here, notwithstanding all the cares that may beset me ; there is so much luxury in space, and so much comfort in the certainty that those you depend upon for the duties of servants understand and seek faithfully to perform them. Augustus is writing you a geographical account of the estab lishment. A day or two later, he wrote : I am beginning to see my way through. Mr. Blatchford is making a fair copy of the message. Mr. Gary is here, domiciled with me. I expect my father to-morrow. The town is full. They stay with me until twelve at night. After New-Year I shall begin to clear away the accumulating correspondence. I have one hundred and fifty unanswered letters to-day. We shall beat Weed, and keep the horses. " To the victors belong " their own horses! This alludes to a question which had arisen as to whether the gray ponies, capital little travelers as they were, were sufficiently " stylish," as well as sufficiently strong, to draw the handsome heavy carriage which a Governor must ride in. December 25th. Christmas will be fully honored in your domicile. Its observance has been very different in mine. The message has been a harder duty here than it was in Auburn. There I enjoyed the fervor and glow of composition, and I turned aside the less impatient friends with more ease than I can here. The ordeal of criticism here is more severe. I have bestowed no considera tion upon any thing else. It will be ready on Saturday, and I even now begin to be relieved. I have had some friends to dinner daily, and we go on but awk wardly, in some respects, for want of your presence and supervision. Mr. Bradish boards at Mrs. Lockwood s. His vindication of his course on the abolition question will appear in a few days. He shows it to Weed. I am proposing to invite him to divide the honors of the New-Year with me. It is doubtful whether I can find time to tell you the details of that occasion, but I will ask Blatchford to do it. Granger comes on the 15th. 384 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1838. ALBAJTT, Thursday, December 27, 1838. If you happen to get a paper that shall contain the Governor s message for 1839, you may read it with safety. It has been subjected to such criticism that I scarcely recognize a paragraph of the draft I read to you at Auburn, and yet there is not a sentence in it which is not my own handiwork. It is yet my morning s study and my "night s entertainment." A great warfare is going on about the ponies. Mr. and Mrs. De "Witt, John Townsend, Augustus and I and Nicholas, agree that we won t sell them to a hard-hearted purchaser. Weed insists upon the sacrifice to pride and vanity. I don t know how it will end. The calls thicken upon me ; they have been about one hundred so far, to-day. I should fail in the attempt to give you an inventory of the hams, beef-tongues, turkeys, etc., for New-Year s-day ; they are all being " fixed for a feast." There will be five thousand people in the house next Tues day. God grant us all a good deliverance ! Ten Broeck Van Vechten is smitten with the palsy ; his hands hang lifeless at his side, and his legs are useless. He is Judge- Advocate-General, under Gov ernor Marcy. He sent for me to-day to signify his desire to hold on, under me, his classmate ; and is actually coming to attend me on New-Year s-day, in a rocking-chair. The Governor-elect had some time before designated Mr. Samuel Blatchford to be his private secretary. Several of the military staff had also been already selected, and were to be commissioned by the Governor on New-Year s-day. They were : Rufus King, of Albany, Adjutant-General ; Jonathan Amory, of New York, Spencer S. Benedict, and John F. Townsend, of Albany, aides-de-camp ; Robert C. Wetmore, of New York, military secretary. Mr. H. G. O. Rogers, of Albany, was appointed messenger and door keeper of the Executive Chamber. At midnight the strains of a band of music from without announced to the Governor the commencement of his official term. The serenaders were invited into the hall, and so began the first reception of the day. At eleven o clock, on New- Year s morning, the Governor and Lieu tenant-Governor elect proceeded to the Capitol to be sworn into office. The ceremony of inaugurating a Governor at Albany was a very sim ple one. There were no processions or speeches. The Governor usu ally entered the Executive Chamber, already va.cated by his predeces sor, took the oath, and entered at once on his duties. On this occasion, however, the crowd to witness the ceremony was so great that the new Governor took a place on the landing of the broad staircase, in the hall of the Capitol, where Chancellor Walworth administered the oath of office. The Legislature met on the same day, and the new Lieutenant- Governor proceeded to the Senate-chamber, to enter upon his duties as presiding officer, for which his imposing presence and dignified bearing admirably fitted him. The private secretary was dispatched 1839.] THE FIRST MESSAGE. 385 with two copies of the Governor s message, to be delivered to the two Chambers. The official duties of the Governor, for the day, were now ended ; and the more arduous social ones began." Before taking his carriage, he wrote this brief note : EXECUTIVE CHAMBER, 11 A. M., | January 1, 1839. \ MY DEAR FRANCES : We are here. The ceremony is over. A joyous people throng the Capitol. This is the first message. Returning to his house, he found there a rapidly-increasing crowd of several thousands. At noon the doors were thrown open, and the eager throng poured in to shake hands, and congratulate the new Governor, who stood in the great hall surrounded by his military staff. The old-time custom of undertaking to feed the multitude on an occasion of public rejoicing was still in vogue at Albany. The carpets were all taken up, long tables were spread with a collation, and re plenished as fast as the surging crowd swept them off. The multitude, sans cer&monie, commenced festivities, orderly enough at first, though, as the day wore on, and the graver visitors were succeeded by others less dignified, taking somewhat the air of a saturnalia, but not an un friendly one. The rooms were so blocked that occasionally a move ment of the dense mass would bring down one of the tables with a crash. With the slender police force then in existence, it is only remarkable that so few scenes of confusion, disorder, or riot, marked these tumultuous assemblages. The scene was enlivened by the successive visits of military com panies with their bands of music, for whom fresh tables were spread in the hall above. As the crowd could not all get admission, turkeys, hams, etc., were passed over the heads of those within to those with out, while barrels of New-Year s cakes stood by the door and were handed out to all comers. At dark the doors were closed, a welcome relief to the Governor, who had shaken hands with three or four thousand people, and left standing around the house as many more. The "banquet-hall de serted " looked desolate enough, but no serious injury had been done, further than the attendants in the course of the next week could remedy. Meanwhile the Legislature had organized, the Lieutenant-Governor had made his speech to the Senate, and the newly-elected Whig Speaker, George W. Patterson, had made his to the Assembly. While the Clerks of the respective Houses were reading the mes sage, already in print, it was dispatched to the newspapers east, west, north, and south, forwarded by special engine over the Mohawk & Hud son Railroad, and sent by special messenger to New York. An Executive message is usually understood to be a mass of dry 25 386 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839, statistics and drier recommendations, without special connection, and forming several columns of very dull reading. It is praised by all the partisans of the Executive writer, and denounced by all his opponents,, but little remembered by either, except as they happen to approve or disapprove some one of its details. Governor Seward s message of 1839, however, had a unity and coherence of plan on as grand a theme as that of one of Homer s epics. Whoever studied it, if any did, might have predicted his future course on political questions, for it contained the groundwork of his political philosophy, and of the policy that guided him throughout his entire public career. In substance it was this : America is a land of latent, unappropriated wealth ; the minerals under its soils are not more truly wealth hidden and unused, than are its vast capabilities and resources, material, political, social, and moral. Two streams that come from the Old World, in obedience to great natural laws, are pouring into it daily fresh, invigorating energies. One of these streams is the surplus capital of Europe. The other is the surplus labor of the world. Both steadily increase in volume and velocity. It is idle to try to roll back their tide. It is wise to accept them and to use them. Instead of delaying about one great line of communication from the sea to the lakes, rather open three through the centre of the State, through its northern counties, and through its. southern ones. Instead of vainly seeking to exclude the immigrant, rather welcome him to our ports, speed him on his Western way, share with him our political and religious freedom, tolerate his churches, establish schools for his children, and so assimilate his principles, his habits, manners, and opinions, to our own. In a word, open as far as possible to all men of whatever race all paths for the improvement of their condition, as well as for their mental and moral culture. Can we. ask for other signs than we enjoy, " that our race is ordained to reach- on this continent a higher standard of social perfection than it has ever yet attained, and that hence will proceed the spirit which shall renovate the world ? The agency of institutions of self-government is indispen sable to the accomplishment of these sublime purposes. Such institu tions can only be maintained by an educated and enlightened people." In accordance with these principles as a basis, his recommendations in detail were to prosecute the work on the canals ; to encourage the completion of railroads ; to establish a Board of Internal Improve ments ; to encourage and extend charitable institutions ; to give more enlightened care to the reclamation of juvenile delinquents ; to improve the discipline of the prisons, separating the male and female convicts ; to elevate the standard of education in the schools and col leges ; to establish school-district libraries ; to provide for the education of the colored race, as well as the white ; to reform the organization. 1839.] APPOINTMENTS TO OFFICE. 387 and practice of courts, so as to lessen delays of justice, especially in chancery ; to cut off superfluous offices and unnecessary patronage, executive and judicial ; to substitute fixed salaries for artfully-multi plied fees ; to abolish the army of inspectors " who hinder the agriculture and the commerce they profess to protect ; " to repeal the " Small-bill Law," and no longer embarrass " the only currency which can be main tained, a mixed one of gold, silver, and redeemable paper ; " to authorize banking under general laws instead of special charters ; to apply rigor ous safeguards, especially in populous cities, for the purity of the ballot-box. He unhesitatingly accepted Ruggles s estimate that the canals would more than reimburse the cost of their construction and enlargement, paid a tribute to Clinton s wise forecast in founding the system, and recommended the erection of a monument to his memory. This message, whose predictions have now been verified by sub sequent events, and whose recommendations have in a great degree been adopted in the statute-book, was thought at the time, even by friends, to be a bold one, and criticised by opponents as a reckless and visionary one, though its ability was on all sides conceded. It is need less to reproduce here the newspaper controversies, or the legislative debates, of which it was long the subject as an exposition of the doc trines of the new party in power. The comments of the opposing press, indeed, were varied. They called it a " curious piece of patchwork," " the labor of several hands," "the effusion rather of the sophomore than of the statesman," con taining "the visionary schemes of theorizing politicians," "magnificent plans based on a false foundation," etc., etc. Now began a season of unremitting toil. The new Governor, as leader of the political revolution which had taken place, became the focus upon which concentrated the wordy war of legislation and the fierce struggle for office. Without any other clerical assistance than that of his indefatigable private secretary, without cabinet counselors, with a Senate politically opposed to him, with judges and all office holders appointed by his opponents, he had only the support of the Whig Assembly, and his Whig friends outside of the government, to rely upon. All the hours of the day were not numerous enough to give audience to impatient visitors. The appointments within the gift of the Governor, while they did not comprise the cabinet counselors (which the head of almost every other government is accustomed to select), yet embraced many offices since abolished or made elective. He was to nominate judges, surro gates, county clerks, masters and examiners in chancery, inspectors of prisons, wreck-masters, weighers of merchandise, measurers of grain, cullers of staves and heading, inspectors f flur, *f lumber, >f spirits, 388 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. of salt, of beef and pork, of pot and pearl ashes, of green hides and calf-skins, of sole-leather, of fish and liver oil, etc., superintendents and commissioners of various sorts, besides the port-wardens and harbor masters, notaries public and commissioners of deeds, which in later days form the bulk of his patronage. Yet, numerous as they were, they were not enough to satisfy one applicant in ten. They never are. And the most embarrassing feat ure of all was, when personal friends and political leaders, well entitled and well qualified, engaged in rivalry which made it impossible to satisfy one without disappointing the others. Applications came through every channel, through members of the Legislature, through Whig commit tees through meetings and conventions organized on purpose to recom mend them, through personal visits engrossing the Governor s time, and through shoals of letters amounting, in those days of high postage, to no small tax on his pocket. A few illustrations will serve to show the character of his replies, as well as the rules that governed his action. To Mr. Beardsley, of Auburn, he wrote : Whatever power I have to make appointments to office is altogether un pledged, and, in order that it may always be so, I in no instance form an opinion for myself until the exigency arrives when my action is demanded. When that time comes I seek always to find a suitable and qualified candidate of good character one whose selection would most promote the public good, and whose appointment would give the most general satisfaction. To John B. Murray, of New York, he wrote : Great as are the inconveniences resulting from misapprehensions, it is a rule from which I never depart that I cannot discuss, by correspondence, the pre tensions of candidates for office. An acknowledgment of an application, when made directly, is all. I make this statement because your letter desires a reply. I am always willing to hear the views and wishes of applicants and their friends, but the reasons why I cannot and ought not to answer them are obvious. To Seth C. Hawley, of Buffalo, he said: I thank you for the evident frankness and kindness with which you write, and, as it is both improper and impossible for me to discuss in my correspond ence the claims and pretensions of candidates, I can only say this in reply. To the chairman of the Whig General Committee in Brooklyn he said : I am willing to receive information in every manner, and from all sources, in regard to applications, and I do not object to receiving recommendations from Whig committees and county conventions where such bodies deem it important to address me. As the chief magistrate of the whole people, I do not hold such communications entitled to authoritative force, and from long observation of 1839.] A GOVERNOR S CORRESPONDENCE. 389 their practical results I regard them unfavorably, as tending to convert the appointing power into an engine of proscription for freedom of opinion. To J. L. Chester he wrote : I cannot be a party to an agreement whereby one individual shall resign his commission, that another shall be substituted in his place. To enter into such a stipulation would be to deprive myself of the right, indispensable to an honest and proper exercise of the appointing power, to inform myself of the merits and claims of all candidates. To W. Samuel Johnson he remarked, about a troublesome case: I, too, wish this affair were out of the way ; but it is a part and parcel of the entire burden that I put my shoulder under. It shall be in good time dis posed of, with a sole view to the public interests. To one who proposed to resign the place of Supreme Court Com missioner and retain those of Master and Examiner in Chancery, he replied, declining to advise, and saying: Far from being desirous that my power shall be increased by the recurrence of vacancies in the public offices, and unwilling by previous stipulations to em barrass myself, I leave this and all similar matters to the natural and ordinary course of events. To Andrew Williams, of New York, who had written, expressing surprise at receiving a commission, he answered : I can give no better apology for the liberty taken with your name than that at an early period of the session your name was suggested to me as a very suitable one for nomination to the office, by my recollection of your persevering diligence and success in your profession, and your ardent and eloquent vindica tion of principles. The correspondence of a Governor is an heterogeneous one. The pile of letters upon his table that greet him every morning on entering the Executive Chamber are of every size, shape, and style. One-third of them are devoted to the absorbing subject of appointments to office. Then there are official communications from public officers in reference to pending measures or accounts ; from sheriffs and district attorneys in relation to criminal cases ; from the various State insti tutions about their needs ; from brother Governors in regard to requisitions, or transmitting legislative resolutions, and the like. Be sides these legitimate subjects of official care, there are others not quite so regular. There are missives of advice on all sorts of subjects, from all sorts of persons, most oracular and positive on things they know least about. There are requests from people he has never seen, to be introduced to persons he does not know, for his position is sup- 390 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. posed to render him acquainted with everybody. There are claims and appeals for money, some piteous, some aggressive, among them details of cases of real hardship and worthy enterprises, yet amounting in all to enough to drain the State Treasury as well as his individual purse. There are invitations to attend all manner of commencements, celebra tions and balls, with honorary memberships in societies of fame and note in metropolitan centres, as well as obscure ones in remote village academies. Then there are authors, artists, and inventors, who solicit examination of their latest work, for a Governor is supposed, ex-officio, to have more taste and learning than other men. There are requests from autograph-seekers, most of whose notes betray their juvenile years. Then there is occasionally a letter from a happy father, inform ing him of a new namesake who is expected to imitate his virtues ; but this is counterbalanced by half a dozen anonymous scrawls accusing him of vice and crime. Last, and most painful, and most persistent of all, are the daily appeals from, or in behalf of, the innocent wives and children of guilty wretches undergoing punishment and wanting to be pardoned. Each of these letters, when received by Governor Seward, had a prompt, courteous, and considerate answer. The task of preparing these answers involved more than ordinary labor, in view of the un usual circumstances of the time in which he came to the charge of the Executive office. An applicant for a place, who sent with his letter some handsomely- bound volumes, received them back with this note : You will not misunderstand me. I by no means suppose any impropriety was intended on your part, and the present of a literary work might, under many circumstances, be proper and right. Yet I deem it necessary to adhere to my established rule to receive no gifts from applicants. The first official dinner given in the Executive Mansion was to three Indian chiefs who had come from the Oneida and Stockbridge tribes to greet the new " father," and lay before him the claims and the grievances of their tribe, at that time under State protection. The chief of the Oneidas said : Father, I address you according to the covenant of friendship of our fore fathers. After your race had increased and become greater than mine, your great chiefs were to be fathers to my people. I am pleased to find that you, though young, and just raised to be the father of a great nation, condescend to notice your red children also. You kindly invited us to eat, and to smoke the pipe of peace with you, which we have now done. I thank the Great Spirit above for his goodness in allowing us to have the social interview at this time, and for inclining your heart so favorably toward us. May lie be a Father to you and assist you to accomplish satisfactorily all the great work you will be called upon to do for your great nation, and give you many and happy days ! 1839.] VISITORS AND APPLICANTS. 391 Father, it is very probable that I ain the last of the Muhheconnew that will ever come on business to thig place. My present fireplace is so far removed toward the setting sun that it is really hard to come here ; but I hope you will not suffer me to come in vain. I wish to have the business of my nation with this government settled, then I shall be satisfied and willing to bid adieu to my fathers, brothers, and the land containing the bones of my forefathers. This is all I have to say. The Oneidas were living at this time, a part of them on their reser vation in the State, and the rest in their new homes in Green Bay, Wisconsin. Years afterward one of these chiefs, with a mournful shake of his head over the changes of the times, said, " The big kettle was always hanging over the fire for the Indian when Seward was the great father." Social life in Albany at this period has been so fully described in the letters of 1831 to 1834, that it is hardly necessary again to advert to it here. The town had grown since that time in population and in wealth, and there was an influx of new faces at and about the Capitol, but most of the resident families were the same, and the hospitable customs continued. There was in 1839 no such well-organized system of associations and asylums for the relief of the poor as now exist, and the tax upon the compassion as well as the pockets of the charitable was in winter an onerous one. Fortunately, the art of swindling, by cases of pre tended distress, was also much less completely organized than now. None were turned away empty-handed from the Governor s door ; and those whose appeals came by mail were treated with like liberality and given the benefit of all doubts, although both classes seemed, instead of being relieved by the bounty, to increase by it in number and impor tunity. Later, in writing to a friend, he remarked : I have thus far yielded to these applications to an extent which neither my public compensation nor private fortune will bear ; and I find it necessary in this as in some other matters to deny myself the pleasure of consulting impulses of generosity. There was no time or opportunity to ascertain the truth of their tales. The customary aims to them was at first a dollar to each, but their number multiplied so rapidly that it became necessary to reduce it to half or even a quarter. Among the letters was one from Edward Everett, then Governor of Massachusetts, who was distributing to the libraries of the several States a publication of great historic value, the " Journals of the Pro vincial Congress of Massachusetts " during the year that opened the Revolution. 392 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839 r On the very first day of legislative session the Whigs fulfilled their promises by attacking the " Small-bill Law." Mr. Taylor, of Ontario, brought in a bill for its unconditional repeal, and of course the Whig Assembly promptly passed it. The Democratic leaders showed they were now not ignorant as to which was the popular side of this question, by introducing a similar bill into the Senate. The obnoxious measure was speedily abolished by a vote almost unanimous, although Colonel Young, with proverbial consistency, and his colleague, Mr. Spraker, adhered to it till the last. As the Democrats had a majority in the Senate, they determined not " to advise or consent " to the nominations of the Whig Governor except in cases of absolute necessity. All removals, in order to make new appointments, were thus defeated ; and even officers whose terms had expired held over, the Senate declining to confirm any successors. In the midst of this pressure of business came the distressing intel ligence of the death of Seward s only sister, Cornelia. She died at her home in New Jersey, of a sudden attack of quinsy. Beloved by all who knew her, her death cast a gloom over the household at Albany and at Auburn. Writing a few days later to Mrs. Seward, he said : ALBANY, January \\th, I begin this letter with little hope that I shall be suffered to proceed through five lines before I am called away. Ever since that dreadful bereavement I have been unable to write. I could not write on that subject, and it was treason against nature and affection to write on any other. Our dear sister was brought to Florida. You know not how much this has soothed my grief. Death I no longer look upon as an unmingled evil, and the relief of its circumstances renders it less horrible. On the 26th of January died Stephen Van Rensselaer, at the Manor- House in Albany. He had been formerly Lieutenant-Governor, and was at the time of his death Chancellor of the University, President of the Canal Board, and senior major-general. His death was communi cated to the Legislature by special message of the Governor, and both Houses, with the State officers, attended his funeral. Among other communications received by the Governor was one making inquiry as to what could be done about colored seamen in prison under the laws which South Carolina had now seen fit to enact in reference to all who came into her ports. He replied : I am not aware that there could be any objection to the Governor s submitting such a case, when it occurs, to the Legislature of this State ; and I certainly agree with you that, when the party oppressed is unable to bear the expense of legal proceedings to recover his liberty, the State ought to assume the burden. New State officers were now to be chosen the terms of the Secre tary of State, Comptroller, Treasurer, and Attorney-General, having 1839.] THE STATE OFFICERS. 393 reached their expiration. All were to be elected by the Legislature. A caucus of the Whig members was held on the evening of the 31st of January to nominate these officials, as well as a candidate for United States Senator. As the Whigs would have a majority on joint ballot of the two Houses, no doubt was entertained of the election of the caucus nominees. John C. Spencer was nominated with general ac quiescence for Secretary of State, his talents and legal ability being acknowledged on all hands. Bates Cook, of Niagara County, a former member of Congress, and a leading Antimason of integrity and financial skill, was named for Comptroller, it being conceded that the Eighth District, the stronghold of the party, was entitled to that place. That of Treasurer was assigned to the river counties ; Jacob Haight, of Catskill, formerly a " Bucktail " Senator, and subsequently a firm fol lower of Adams, was selected. Over the attorney -generalship there was a contest between the friends of Joshua A. Spencer, of Utica, Samuel Stevens, of Albany, and Willis Hall, of New York. The high professional standing of the two former was warmly urged in their favor, but the New-Yorkers claimed with some justice that their locality was entitled to one of the offices, and, as Mr. Hall s legal learning and talent were unquestioned, the nomination was accorded to him. Adoiiiram Chandler was at the same time designated as candidate for Commissary -General. A printer by profession, he had served in the War of 1812, and was a member of the Legislature of 1838. Nathaniel P. Tallmadge, after some hesitation, was renominated for United States Senator, though not without dissenting voices that claimed an original Whig should be put in nomination, instead of one who had come in at the " eleventh hour." Elected to his seat in 1833 by the Jackson men, he had acted with that party until after Mr. Van Buren s inauguration, when he broke with them on the sub-Treasury issue. Those who followed him out of the Democratic ranks took the name of " Conservatives," and under his lead had held a convention at Syracuse in October, at which they formally pledged their support to Seward and Bradish. In view of the effective services thus rendered, and his confessed qualifications on other than partisan grounds, the ob jections were overruled, and he was nominated. On the 4th of February the two Houses, having gone into joint ballot, elected the Whig nominees for State officers and Commissary- General. The next day was set down for the election of United States Senator. The Democrats were especially hostile to Mr. Tallmadge s re election, viewing him as a deserter from their cause. They determined to avail themselves, therefore, of their control of the Senate, to defeat action. It being an essential preliminary to a joint ballot that each House shall first separately agree upon a candidate, the eighteen Democratic Senators, instead of combining their votes, scattered them so that no 394 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. candidate should receive a majority. The thirteen Whig Senators, of course, voted for Tallmadge. The ingenious plan of the Democrats once nearly miscarried. Two of them having voted for Samuel Beardsley, the Whigs all voted for him, which brought the Senate within one vote of a choice. Warned by this, the majority refused to vote any further, and took the ground that the choice ought to be made by joint resolu tion. As this was impossible, the election of Senator was blocked for that session. It is doubtful whether any political organization ever gains by such devices to thwart an opposing majority seeking only to exercise its con stitutional prerogatives ; for, if temporarily successful, they usually react upon their movers with damaging force at the next election. It was so in this case. The Whigs had an advantage in being able to parade in the next campaign a " senatorial black list " of eighteen names for popular condemnation. Replying to a friend who deemed one of the newly-appointed State officers an unwise selection, Seward remarked : ALBANY, February 15th. The cabinet appointed by the Legislature is, as a whole, as perfect as could be expected to be formed at once by any party coming into power. Be this as it may, while I appreciate your motives in your frank explanation of your views upon this subject to me, I am sure you will not expect from me a discussion of the merits of the appointment in reply. It was my duty to receive, not to make, a cabinet, and it is now my duty to secure its harmony and efficiency, not to prevent them. The cabinet proved an able and effective body of State officers, and entirely harmonious relations prevailed between them and their chief during their continuance in office. John C. Spencer was its best known and most active member. Rigid, stern, grave, with dark hair and keen eye, his appearance com manded respect ; and he rarely unbent except in the society of intimate friends. By them he was esteemed for his great abilities and his in domitable industry and energy. One of his associates said, " Spencer is not only ready, but wants to do all his own work and all of every body else s." On the 18th of February Samuel B. Ruggles was elected by the Legislature as Canal Commissioner to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Stephen Van Rensselaer. His earnest manner and wonderful memory of facts and figures already made him an authority on all canal- enlargement questions, and he had a happy faculty for striking illustra tions to adapt mathematical truths to popular comprehension. There was hardly a day in which the Governor and Mr. Weed did not meet. Their long intimacy and close political connection had al ready given rise to the designation of " Weed and Seward men," ap- 1839.] HORACE GREELEY. 395 plied to such of the Whigs as were supposed to be especially in their confidence and support. A story, frequently since published in the newspapers, must have originated about this time. It was to the effect that Seward was on one occasion riding on the driver s seat of a stage-coach to enjoy his cigar. The driver casually inquiring his name, and receiving for reply that he was Governor Seward, thought his passenger was endeavoring to hoax him, and would not believe it. Finding him still incredulous, the Governor offered to leave it to the landlord of the next tavern to decide. When they drove up, the landlord, a personal acquaintance of the Governor, was standing in the door. After exchanging salutations, the question in dispute was stated, and Seward said : " Now tell him. Am I the Governor of the State of New York or not ? " " No, certainly not ! " replied the landlord, to the great satisfaction of the driver. " Who is, then ? " queried Seward. " Why," said the landlord, " Thur- low Weed ! " Though the incident never occurred, the story was so accordant with his habit of riding outside to smoke, and with the popular understand ing of his relations with Mr. Weed, that it was generally accepted as true. Seward himself used laughingly to relate it, and say that, though it was not quite true, it ought to be. Occasionally, in his frequent visits at the Governor s house, Weed brought with him a slender, light-haired young man, stooping and near sighted, rather unmindful of forms and social usages, and yet singu larly clear, original, and decided, in his political views and theories. This was Horace Greeley. He had been brought up to Albany by Mr. Weed a year or so before, to conduct the Whig campaign newspaper, published under the auspices of the State Central Committee, and issued once a week from the Evening Journal office during the year beginning in February, 1838, and ending February, 1839. It was a journal of eight pages, of quarto size, and began its career with the characteristic declaration that, while selecting the name of Jefferso- nian, yet " in doing this we neither seek to cover any errors of our own beneath the mantle of Mr. Jefferson, nor to represent him as es pecially the god of our idolatry. We detest man-worship in all its forms and under all its devices. Error would find no shield from our opposition even under the great name of Thomas Jefferson." The Jeffersonian was devoted to politics, and gave what no other paper at that time sought to give, an accurate r esum e of political intelli gence. The editor, with the indefatigable industry that marked his char acter, used to pass one or two days of each week at Albany to make up the Jeffersonian, and the remainder in the larger city, where he was publishing the New - Yorker, making the trip between his two fields of duty by the night-boat. The Jeffersonian and the New - Yorker were 396 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. favorite journals in Whig families the one for its vigorous essays and political statistics, the other for its admirable literary taste. The editor was regarded by his friends as having great ability, great in dustry, much eccentricity, honesty, and singleness of purpose, and no political ambition save in his profession. Much interest had now been excited by the debate in Congress over the " Atherton gag " and its adoption by the House of Representatives in December. This was a rule imposed by a Democratic caucus, and pro viding that every " petition, memorial, resolution, proposition, or paper, touching or relating in any way or to any extent whatever to slavery, or the abolition thereof, shall, on presentation, without any further action thereon, be laid upon the table without being debated, printed^ or referred." It was an impolitic step for the Democratic party. Mr. Clay, speaking in the interest of the slaveholding States, counseled that it would be wise to receive and consider, and then, if need be,, refuse the prayers of petitioners, rather than provoke a popular issue by denying the right of petition. Mr. Calhoun and his followers, how ever, prevailed, and the right of petition became an issue between the Whigs and Democrats in the Northern States. The Assembly of New York promptly adopted resolutions denoun cing the " Atherton gag " as a violation of the constitutional rights of the people of the States, protesting against its continuance, and de manding its repeal. An incident of the debate at Washington had a dramatic interest, and strongly impressed the popular mind. A chained slave-gang, by accident or design, was driven past the Capitol while the antislavery debate was in progress ; and a resolution offered by Mr. Slade, of Ver mont, to prevent the repetition of such a spectacle, was decided to come under the provisions of the " Atherton gag," and to be therefore inadmissible. Not less dramatic was the sight of the venerable white-haired ex- President, John Quincy Adams, who now, on the floor of the House, " in season and out of season," was leading, animating, and encourag ing the supporters of the right of petition throughout this long and stormy debate. It was during its progress that he startled his hearers with the declaration that, in case of war, the Government would have power to abolish slavery, in order that the nation might be saved a doctrine so alarming that barely half a dozen men in the Chamber would avow agreement in it. The geological survey of the State, already commenced, found an earnest friend in the new Governor. In a message to the Legislature in February, he communicated the progress and condition of the work, and the reports of the several scientific men who had been employed. He remarked, " It affords me great pleasure to bear my testimony to J83(.] THE STATE GEOLOGICAL HALL. ;, .7 the ability and fidelity with which the duties of these persons have been discharged ; " and predicted that the " geological survey will abundantly repay the munificence of the State by numerous and lasting benefits." He suggested that suitable arrangements should be made for the preservation and exhibition of the collection of specimens, as the whole would form " a museum of the highest interest." His sympathy in the work was not limited to his public messages, but was manifested in a cordial and hearty cooperation with the sa vants in their labors. He invited them to his house for frequent con sultations, severally or collectively, audited and facilitated their ac counts, advised as to the preparation of their work for publication, and promised to prepare an introduction to it a promise afterward fulfilled by his " Notes on New York." The geological survey was more than its name implied, for it extended as well to other branches of natural science. The State was divided into four districts. The geological examination of the first was assigned to Wm. W. Mather ; of the second to E. Emmons ; of the third to Lardner Vanuxem ; of the fourth to James Hall. Dr. Lewis C. Beck was to prepare a re port on the mineralogy of the State ; Dr. James E. DeKay one on its zoo logy and ornithology ; John Torrey one on the botany ; and Tim othy A. Conrad one on the paleontology. A couple of draughtsmen were employed at intervals to assist in sketching animals, plants, and fossils. This was the working force to whom the world is indebted for the elaborate and exhaustive series of volumes on the " Natural History of New York." And the services these scientific gentlemen rendered were compensated at a rate considerably less for each than the wages of a day-laborer nowadays. The act authorizing the survey appro priated only twenty-six thousand dollars per annum during four years, and even the whole of this was not used. The survey originated in a desire to explore the mountains of the State for coal. It dispelled all the illusive hopes that a supply of that mineral existed in New York. But it resulted in a thorough examina tion and compilation of facts in regard to the natural history of the State in all its phases. There was on the corner of State and Lodge Streets, in Albany, a massive old yellow-brick building erected many years previous, and occupied by the State officers in the discharge of their official functions. The new cabinet were installed in this ; but, before the expiration of their terms, the more modern and commodious State-Hall, on Eagle Street, was completed and ready for their accommodation. The old building was then taken as a repository for the collection of zoological and geological specimens. It was used for that purpose for several years, until it was finally torn down and replaced by a larger structure devoted to the same object. 398 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. There was another building in Albany, however, which at this time was the subject of much greater political interest. This was the cele brated " Three-walled House." The Legislature of 1837 had passed a law authorizing the purchase of a suitable Executive mansion, and appropriating therefor twenty- thousand dollars. Mr. Edwin Croswell, editor of the Argus, and a leader of the Democratic party, had held for fifteen years the position of State Printer ; which, it was alleged by his Whig opponents, brought him an annual income from the State of thirty or forty thousand dol lars. Though these figures were exaggerated, yet the place was one whose value and importance rendered it a subject of warm contest between the two parties. The Whigs wanted the State Printer, and proposed to limit the office to a fixed term of years. In this they were unsuccessful, having control only of the Assembly, and the Demo crats in the Senate were able to defeat any law looking to Croswell s removal. It was charged in the Whig newspapers that, through his agency, the State had been induced to purchase for an Executive man sion, at a cost of nineteen thousand dollars, a house owned by him one of a row of dwellings opposite Academy Park, which proved to have been built against the adjoining one without an additional party-wall. It was claimed that better houses were offered to the com mittee at lower prices. As the block in which it stood contained the residences of several of the Democratic magnates, it received the nick name of " Regency Row." Endless were the jokes and ridicule about this " Three-walled House." One will suffice as a specimen : " This is the house the State bought ; These are the people all tattered and torn, The cobblers and tinkers, once held up to scorn, Who turned out the Regency all forlorn, Who had fattened so long upon the corn, In league with the man all shaven and shorn, With curls and cane so daintily worn, Who fingered the cash, being five thousand more, For three walls only, than would have bought four, Which was paid for the house the State bought." The old St. Peter s Episcopal Church was still standing on the northwest corner of State and Lodge Streets. Its congregation with pardonable pride traced its origin back to the days of Queen Anne, and treasured with care the old communion service which she had bestowed upon it when it was yet a missionary station among the Indians, as well as the tinkling bell sent over from England to summon the little congregation to worship. Grown now numerous and wealthy, they had called the Rev. Horatio Potter to be its rector. Governor Seward and his family attended there during his residence in Albany. 1839.] THE NORTHEAST BOUNDARY QUESTION. 399 The Rev. Dr. Potter at this time was still youthful, tall, thin, with the paleness even of an ascetic. His exceedingly grave and earnest manner rendered his sermons solemn, impressive, and often pathetic. Yet in conversation he was always genial, gentle, and humorous. The Typographical Society of Albany invited the Governor to their anniversary supper in March. In acknowledging the toast in his honor, he remarked : Whatever we possess of philosophy, of literature, of liberty, and religion, seems, if not to have been produced, at least to have been diffused among all our people by the art of printing. It is a law of our condition that we are constantly employing, for temporary ends and immediate advantage, agents whose powers are yet but partially known, and whose results will astonish future ages. Of no agent is this more true than of the press. There had long been an unsettled question as to our northeastern boundary, involving a piece of territory in dispute between Maine and New Brunswick. As it was, for the most part, uninhabited forest, no serious complication had grown out of it, until a party of lumber-men from New Brunswick commenced cutting trees there. The Maine au thorities sent out a land agent to disperse these trespassers, but the trespassers captured the land agent. The Governor of Maine called out the militia to march to the disputed territory, and redress the grievance. The Governor of New Brunswick ordered out troops to repel this invasion. Prisoners were reported to have been captured on both sides, and lodged in jail. Great excitement arose in Maine, and spread to other States, especially those on the northern border. Con gress, before its adjournment on the 4th of March, enacted provisions of law, giving the President additional powers for public defense, and authorizing the appointment of a special minister to treat with Great Britain. In view of these circumstances, Governor Seward sent a special message to the Legislature, saying that, while abstaining from interference with the duties of the Federal Government, there never theless were occasions when the States should make known " that we are a united people, jealous of our sovereignty, and determined to resist aggressions upon the rights or territory of the Union." In the present emergency he, therefore, recommended an expression of appro val of the measures adopted by Congress, and of concurrence in the policy of the General Government. The message was referred to a special committee in the Assembly. Although the proposed action was calculated to strengthen the hands of the national Administration, yet there were some members of its party who exhibited a preference for resolutions savoring more of " State rights," denouncing the New-Brunswickers, expressing sym pathy with Maine, and proposing to make common cause with her. 400 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. Ultimately, however, resolutions concurring in the sentiments of the Governor s message were agreed to by a unanimous vote of the Assem bly, and transmitted to President Van Buren. Under the judicious action and advice of the respective Governments of Great Britain and the United States, the provincial troops and State militia were recalled from the scene, the prisoners released, and so the war-cloud blew over, and the question of disputed boundary was remitted to its proper sphere of diplomatic negotiation. The official titles of the Governor of New York were, " Governor of our said State, General and Commander- in-Chief of all the Militia, and Admiral of the Navy thereof." The popular contempt into which the State militia had fallen, and the fact that the navy never existed, had made these titles subjects of more mirth than respect. A story was current that Governor Tompkins once was out with a fisherman in a sail-boat, in New York harbor, when they encountered a sudden squall. The fisherman hastily stepped forward to lower the sail, calling to Governor Tompkins, as he did so, " Quick, put the helm a-star- board ! " The Governor, hesitating, called out, " Which way is star board?" The astounded fisherman stopped short, ejaculating with indignant surprise, " Gosh ! Are you admiral of the navy of the State of New York, and don t know the starboard side of a clam-boat ? " The renewal of interest in the militia system and the reforms in its discipline, due in a considerable degree to Seward s efforts in that direc tion, had relieved the reputation of that branch of the service, and brought it into higher esteem. Uniformed companies, armed, equipped, and drilled in accordance with regulation standards, were now numerous. Many Canadian frontier troubles had grown out of the " Patriot War." Various raids, more or less successful, had been attempted by the " Patriots " during 1838. One party had boarded a British steamer, lying at an American wharf on the St. Lawrence ; and, doubtless in retaliation for the Caroline affair, had robbed and set fire to the boat. Another party had surprised and captured a troop of Canadian cavalry. In November, five hundred men with cannon had crossed the St. Lawrence, and attacked the town of Prescott, and, when repulsed, had taken shelter in a windmill, where they were surrounded, several killed and wounded, and one hundred and fifty captured. Still another party of four hundred had landed at Sandwich, Upper Canada, burnt a steamboat, and set fire to barracks, but were routed, and many were taken prisoners. Another proclamation was now issued by the President, warning the persons engaged in these raids that they must not expect any interference of the Government in their behalf. The Canadians, who had been expected to rise and join the misguided in vaders, rose only to repel them. Many had been captured, some exe cuted, and others transported to the penal colonies. 1839.] "PATRIOT 11 RAIDS IN CANADA. 401 The popular sympathy, which was actively excited by their punish ment, however deserved it might be, gave rise to apprehensions of new outbreaks. Seward was called upon, during the early months of his administration, for the exercise both of his civil and military functions in regard to them. He communicated to President Van Buren information received from Major-General St. John B. L. Skinner, who was in command of the New York militia at Plattsburg, of outrages committed at Alburg, Vermont, and at Rouse s Point, and requested information in regard to the rumored withdrawal of United States troops from that region. There came an answer from the Secretary of War (Joel R. Poinsett), saying : I beg to assure your Excellency that this department entertains no such inten tion. The troops of the United States now there will not be withdrawn from the Canada frontier in any event. Their presence and unremitting exertions to preserve the public peace will, however, be unavailing, unless aided by the efforts of those who have it in their power to exert a salutary influence over public opinion on that border. The President is fully aware of the great importance of your Excellency s aid in maintaining the good faith of the Government, and relies with confidence on your cooperation. To this Seward replied : Sincerely desirous of preserving the relations of peace and harmony so indis pensable to the prosperity of this State and the whole country, no duty resting on me in that respect will be omitted. In another communication he asked that the officers of the United States might be directed to give him the earliest information of any conjunction which should seem to render it expedient that arms should be furnished to the militia. Poinsett s answer was a promise of imme diate compliance, and the army officers were instructed accordingly. An active correspondence at once began between those officers and Governor Seward and his Adjutant-General, Rufus King. Colonel Worth, who was then in command of the United States troops on the frontier, reported the force subject to his orders and their disposition, and suggested the propriety of placing a portion of the State arms in charge of the United States garrisons, to be issued to the militia. The suggestion was at once complied with : three thousand stand of arms were sent to Vergennes, three thousand to Sackett s Harbor, and three thousand to Fort Niagara. The measures thus taken were effective. If any further move ments had been contemplated by the misguided " Patriots," they were .seen to be hopeless, in view of the combined action of the State and Federal Governments. 26 402 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839, The next step to be taken was one of humanity an effort to save some of the victims from the consequences of their own folly. To this Seward now addressed himself, and ultimately the Canadian authorities acceded to his representations. The Provincial Secretary of Upper Canada wrote to the New York Secretary of State : I have the honor to inform you that, on the receipt of your answer to my communication, in which you so forcibly express, on the part of Governor Sew ard, the high value which his Excellency attaches to the act of clemency in tended to be exercised toward the younger portion of the banditti captured in the recent attempt to invade this province, his Excellency, Sir George Arthur^ instantly determined to carry that merciful measure into immediate operation. ... I am accordingly instructed to acquaint you, for the information of Gov ernor Seward, that orders have already been issued to the sheriffs for the libera tion of all whose names were transmitted on the 28th. Some of the unfortunate men had been transported to Australia. Efforts were made by Seward in their behalf also. He wrote, among others, to Joseph Hume, then a member of Parliament, whose acquaint ance he had made in London, in 1833. He remarked in regard to one : Among the unfortunate individuals who were made prisoners in Upper Can ada, and are now in Newgate, is one named Linus W. Miller. He has written to his parents desiring to be furnished with letters certifying his reputation and circumstances at home. They have applied to me for that purpose. Your name is so well known in this country, as a friend of liberty and a philanthropist, that I have not hesitated to solicit your counsel and sympathy for the unhappy young man. The letter then proceeded with further details about Miller, who was a young lawyer from Chautauqua County. The interposition in his behalf was effective, but not until after he had reached Australia. He returned home, and subsequently published a volume descriptive of convict-life in Australia. The first veto of a chief magistrate is apt to be a subject of some solicitude, as he is usually accused of throwing down the gage of battle for a controversy with the legislative body. Seward s first veto, how ever, was not of this sort ; but was to no one more acceptable than to the originators of the bill. In the haste of preparing and passing a law for a turnpike-road, they had forgotten to state where the road was to commence, or whither it was to go ! When the bill was laid before the Governor for his signature, he discovered that, though it secured to the corporators the right of taking toll on the road when made, it did not secure the right of making it anywhere in particular. He returned it with these objections ; and the Legislature amended it accordingly so as to give the Masonville Turnpike " a local habitation and a name." The business of the Court of Chancery had so largely increased 1839.} A LEGISLATIVE DEAD-LOCK. 403 that a law was passed, in March, 1839, authorizing the appointment of a Vice-Chancellor in the Eighth District, and an assistant Vice-Chan cellor in the First. In April Murray Hoffman was nominated for the place in the First District, and Frederick Whittlesey for that in the Eighth. Although much time was spent in each branch of the Legislature, in the discussion of internal improvements, no important results were achieved, owing to the dead-lock between the Senate and Assembly. The Whigs claimed, and believed they had proved, that steady increase of canal-tolls would pour back into the coffers of the State all the money expended upon the enlargement. The Democrats denied that this was proved, and charged the Whigs with attempting to saddle a " forty-million debt " on the State. The Whigs said no burden was to be imposed on the tax-payers, while the Democrats insisted that, if the expenditures were persisted in, the money would have to come out of the tax-payers pockets. Accepting the recommendations of the Gov ernor, and the expositions of an able report by Gulian C. Verplanck, in the Senate, the Whigs had passed through the Assembly laws look ing to the prosecution of the enlargement of the Erie Canal, the con struction of the New York & Erie Railroad, and other similar projects. But these measures, on reaching the Senate, were promptly defeated or laid on the table, by the majority in that body, who were fortified in their position by the report of Comptroller Flagg, on his retirement from office, which showed that the work on the enlargement, compar ing the present calculation of the commissioners with the loose esti mates formerly made, would cost ten or twelve millions more than had been contemplated. Colonel Young, who led the opposition to internal improvements, as he had that to banks, declared, with evident sincerity as well as con sistency, that " bank -paper is a stupendous system of fraud, falsehood, crime, and suffering ; " that " the system of internal improvements is a system of utter folly, absurdity, and wickedness ; " and remarked that " the Pyramids of Egypt possessed one advantage " over our internal improvements, because it would cost no further sacrifice to keep them in repair; " and so they would not impose a perpetual tax, like profli gate railroads and pauper canals." When the Democrats, in their turn, introduced measures to reduce the size and cost of the canal enlargement, they encountered the same dead-lock, preventing them from making any progress, except in the Senate. This antagonism between the two Houses extended to all other political questions. Of the various measures which the Governor had recommended, only the " Small-Bill Law," the partial curtailment of fees of clerks of court, and a few provisions in aid of common schools 4:04 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. and the purity of elections, were able to pass the ordeal of the Senate. The other legal reforms, the changes in the terms of officers, the reduc tion of patronage, the improvement of prison discipline, the bill to secure trial by jury of fugitive slaves, and the resolution for the divis ion of the surplus revenue, all had a hearty support by the Assembly, but all came to naught in the Senate. So in regard to appointments : the Senate refused to confirm the Governor s nominations, even where the terms of incumbents had ex pired, and the Whigs, who had anticipated a lavish distribution of patronage, were balked by the tantalizing spectacle of the Democratic office-holders still remaining in place. This, however annoying to indi viduals, was on the whole an advantage to the party ; for it is the hope of patronage, rather than the possession of it, that conduces to party strength. One of the removals from office proposed by the Governor, and shown by special message to the Legislature to be needed, was that of the inspectors of Sing Sing Prison, who had been shown, by a legis lative investigation, to be lax in their supervision, and to have per mitted cruelty and inhumanity in the discipline of the prison, result ing, in some cases, in the death of convicts. In his message the Gov ernor said : It is quite certain that such inhumanity was never contemplated by the founders of our penitentiary system, nor has it been generally known by the people that it was practised. If our system of imprisonment with silent dormitories and social labor cannot be maintained without the infliction of such punishments as are disclosed by this report, then it was established in error, and it ought to be immediately aban doned. But such is not the case. Human nature has some generous and virtu ous motives left in its most depraved condition. Equality and justness, kindness and gentleness, combined with firmness of temper, would, with very few excep tions, secure the cheerful obedience of even the tenants of our State-prisons. . . . There is a constant tendency among those who are invested with power over their fellow-men to exercise that power capriciously and tyrannically. Among the vexatious cases arising under the refusal of the Senate to act upon nominations was that of the judges in Fulton and Mont gomery Counties. The new county of Fulton had been set off from Montgomery, and in it resided the judges nominated by Governor Marcy, though not yet confirmed. The Senate would confirm no new nomination by Governor Seward for Fulton, and the judges declined to act in Montgomery, though they would not resign their commissions, as this would enable the Governor to fill the vacancies. By this dead lock both counties were left that year without county courts. The law for school-district libraries was passed in April. The law of the previous year had appropriated fifty-five thousand dollars, and 1839.] FOREIGN-BORN CITIZENS. fifty-five thousand dollars more were raised by the counties. By the act of this year the trustees of each district were authorized either to purchase themselves such books as they deemed suitable, or to request the Superintendent of Common Schools to select the library for them. On the 18th of April occurred the semi-centennial anniversary of Washington s inauguration as President. The New York Historical Society held a celebration of the day, and invited ex-President Adams to be their orator. Regretting his inability to be present, Seward wrote them : The fame of Washington can neither be increased nor diminished ; but his principles may be more deeply impressed upon the nation. The celebration you propose is among the means of reviewing our original Constitution or of drawing the Constitution back to its first principles. On Saturday night, April 20th, a bright blaze in the direction of the river betokened a fire, which had broken out in a stable in the southern part of the city. It soon spread into a disastrous conflagra tion, destroying the Methodist Church on Herkimer Street, and shops and dwellings throughout an area of two acres. Numbers of poor families, thus suddenly turned out of their homes, sought refuge at the Governor s, who with his household spent that night and the following day in finding them shelter and food, and in making search for lost children who had become separated from their parents in the panic. Of course, Seward s views in regard to foreigners gave rise to much discussion, lasting throughout his administration, if not throughout his life. Most men are patriotic, but patriotism by many is held to include a large degree of prejudice against other nations. Seward s philosophy about foreign citizens was difficult for them to comprehend. Many of his opponents really believed him an artful demagogue seeking to cajole foreign votes by flattery. It was not half so ingenious a scheme as they supposed. One simple leading idea governed the whole of it. This was, that the American na ion, having been born of Euro pean immigrants and their descendants, would probably continue to grow and thrive by increase of the elements to which it owed its origin. It seemed to him, therefore, the duty of a statesman to accept the fact as he found it, and to endeavor, by the influence of republican education, to fit the people, who are certain to come, for the respon sibilities they are certain to have. His answers to the various letters addressed to him by representatives of different nationalities about this period illustrate his habits of thought in this regard. To a German association, who informed him of his election as an honorary member, he wrote : I trust that the labors of your society may be eminently beneficial m con tributing to the happiness and prosperity of the German immigrants who seek the 406 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. advantages afforded by the free institutions of our country. Such associations may be very useful, not only in maintaining those institutions in this country, but in diffusing the knowledge of democratic principles in Europe. To the Scotchmen inviting him to attend a St. Andrew s day supper he said : I owe a debt for Scottish hospitality, which I should be most happy to ac knowledge at your festival. I honor your countrymen, alike for the enterprise which leads them to seek the advantages of fortune in other lands, and for the veneration for their native country, to cherish which is one of the objects of your association. To the descendants of the Dutch settlers, inviting him to a feast in honor of St. Nicholas, he said : The assiduity, the love of peace, of order, of justice and equality, and the devotion to religion of the Dutch colonists of this State, were invaluable elements in forming the character and manners of a republican people. The history of the Netherlands is full of instruction to mankind. Holland has been the rival of the greatest states in arts and arms. She was fortunate in the proud distinction she attained, and more fortunate in her failure to obtain complete superiority. To the Englishmen inviting him to the celebration of St. George s day he replied : Be pleased to express to the society my acknowledgments for this mark of their respect and kindness, and my sincere congratulations upon the prospect of a continuance of the relations of peace and friendship between America and England relations indispensable alike to the prosperity of both countries, and to the general improvement of the condition of mankind. To the Irishmen he said : As our forefathers have done before us, so would I freely admit the people of all countries, and thus increase the moral and physical strength of our new and growing country. I would provide, as they did, for the security of repub lican institutions, and the ascendency of republican principles ; not by imposing new prohibitions upon any class of citizens, but by establishing institutions for universal education. I would plant free schools in the city, accessible to the children of the most humble ; and I would open their doors by the sides of our railroads and canals. This is an adequate, and will prove to be the only, safe guard of liberty. To adopted citizens in Philadelphia, of various nationalities, he wrote : It seems to me that there is enough of national interest, of national ambition, and of national pride, in this country, to enable us to banish all sectional feelings and all hereditary prejudices. I feel that I cannot err in inculcating philan- 1839.] THE BIBLE. 407 thropy even broader than patriotism, and a love of liberty as comprehensive as human society. News now came from Auburn that at the town-meeting this spring the village had given a Whig majority of 353. This marked the transition from the time when it was a stronghold of " Jackson " senti ments to the period during which it adopted those advocated by Sew- ard a period thenceforth continuing for thirty years. CHAPTER XXILL 1839. A Levee in New York. The Bible. Habits of the Letter-Basket. J. P. Kennedy. Hamil ton. First Diplomatic Question. A Canal- Journey. Visit to the Prison. Future Railroads. Animal Magnetism. Van Buren s Progress. Fourth of July with Sunday- School Children. THE Legislature adjourned on the 7th of May. Released from daily attendance at the Executive chamber, Seward was now able to make a brief trip to New York. It was in the line of official duty to person ally visit the different State institutions there. The Whig leaders in the city, somewhat discouraged by the untoward result of their char ter election, welcomed the prospect of an Executive visit to stimulate the drooping spirits of their followers. It happened that his arrival in New York was at the time when the American Bible Society was holding its anniversary meeting in the Broadway Tabernacle, John Cotton Smith presiding. Learning that he was in the city, the officers of the society sent a committee to the Astor House to urge his attendance. He complied with their wish, spent a part of the day on the platform, and made a few brief remarks in response to a call for a speech closing them by saying : I know not how long a republican government can flourish among a great people who have not the Bible. But this I do know, that the existing govern ment of this country could never have had existence but for the Bible. And further, I do in my conscience, believe that, if at every decade of years a copy of the Bible could be found in every family of the land, its republican institu tions would be perpetual. On the ensuing day, in accordance with what has been the custom of Governors before and since, he passed the morning at the Govern or s Room in the City Hall, surrounded by the portraits of his prede cessors, and received there a throng of visitors. Among them were personal and political friends, besides the usual gathering of those who, 408 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839, from mingled motives of patriotism, vanity, and curiosity, always want to shake hands with a Governor or a President. Although his name had now become a familiar one to the public, his face was as yet by no means universally known. While the crowd was passing, one of his friends, a large, fine-looking man, stood by his side conversing with him several minutes. Every stranger that came up during that time passed by the slender, youthful Governor, shook hands with his portly friend, and went off entirely satisfied. Seward used laughingly to refer to this incident, as showing that a portly figure and imposing presence were decided advantages to a public man, such attributes being unconsciously associated in the popular mind with the dignity which befits a ruler. " And these were advantages," he used to say, " that Granger and Fillmore had over me from the start." The levee over, he spent an hour at the Mercantile Library rooms, and in the evening attended a concert of the pupils of the Institution for the Blind, at Chatham Street Chapel. This asylum, as well as that for the deaf and dumb, was always a subject of special interest to him. " The philanthropy of our age," he remarked, in one of his messages, " seems gifted with powers almost divine. It brings to the deaf and dumb the joys of conversation ; to the blind the knowledge and uses of external relations ; calls back erring reason to its throne ; and even reclaims the guilty from ways of transgression." The next morning he returned to Albany, encountering there " a swarm of letters " which had accumulated during the latter days of the session. It was his rule that every correspondent was entitled to an answer, and a courteous one. But at this period, as well as often in later years, letters came in such numbers that to answer each as it was received became simply impossible. Accordingly, they were thrown each day into a large basket, and then the first day that could be spared from public questions or cares was devoted to them, beginning at the top of the basket and going down to the bottom, answering the letters seriatim. " But this is wrong," said one of his assistants ; " the last letter will get answered first, and the first last. Let me turn the basket upside down." " No," said Seward, " begin at the top ; then half of the letters will have a prompt answer, and the other half an apology for the de lay. But, if you begin at the bottom, the reply to every one will be behindhand." Many of his correspondents were doubtless mystified as to why their communications were so long unattended to, and yet were always answered ultimately ; but his intimate friends knew the habits of the letter-basket. It stood by his writing-table, held about a bushel, and "was often heaped to overflowing. 1839.] EXTRADITION QUESTIONS. 409 Among those written during this week of comparative leisure was one to John P. Kennedy, of Baltimore, afterward widely known by his literary works, and Secretary of the Navy during the Administra tion of President Fillmore. He was then in Congress, and had made a great speech. Seward wrote him : ALBANY, May 17, 1839. Your speech on the bill making appropriations for the civil and diplomatic service is a just, fearless, and eloquent exposition of the principles brought by General Jackson into the administration of the Government, and the character and temper of that extraordinary man. You have done the country service in the philosophical view you have presented of the causes of General Jackson s success, and of the influence that success has exerted upon the Constitution. Another letter was to a Whig committee, representing one of the movements already on foot in the interest of Mr. Clay and of General Harrison. Declining to take part in any controversy about men, while prepared to support whoever should be the Whig nominee, he wrote : ALBANY, May IT, 1839. I am satisfied that you will agree with me in the opinion that I shall best advance the ultimate success of Whig principles, and most effectually promote the harmony upon which that success depends, by leaving the discussion of the nomination without interference on my part. In the same spirit he wrote to Josiah Randall, of Philadelphia : In answer to your letter of the 20th I can only say that I neither write nor speak on the subject of the presidential election An answer to your let ter in the frankness which, if you were with me, I should use, would be a de parture from that principle rigid adherence to which, it seems, does not save me from misrepresentations. ... I cannot consent to be drawn into the dis cussion, even indirectly. Acknowledging a pamphlet from Alexander Hamilton, of New York, on the subject of banks and the currency, he remarked : You are right in saying that this is the right conjuncture in which to secure the country against the evils of a redundant paper currency. But the public mind on this subject takes its direction from the experience of the most recent evil, and hitherto all changes in public policy have been indicated by experi ence of evil, rather than a deliberate and well-considered purpose to make the currency safe, before it was found to be disordered. I am glad you have directed your attention to the subject, for, whatever may be the fortune of the reform measures you propose, it is certain that good must result from the discussion. As yet there was no extradition treaty with Great Britain, and vague ideas prevailed as to the surrender of criminals in foreign coun tries. The vexed and unsettled question of " State rights " tended 410 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. in this as in other matters to weaken both the coherence and the powers of the Union. The right to deal with extradition cases was claimed for the State and denied to the Federal Government. The Governor of Vermont had issued his warrant for the delivery of a fugitive on the requisition of the Governor of Upper Canada. Governor Seward, in the first case presented to him, took decided ground that both the right and the duty belonged to the Federal Government, and that laws and treaties should be made to recognize it. The District Attorney at Buffalo had written, requesting him to make a requisition upon Sir George Arthur, the Lieutenant-Governor of Upper Canada, for the deliver} 7 of a person indicted for crime. His answer illustrated the spirit in which he met the first question, in regard to foreign relations, ever officially before him: The law of nations recognizes the mutual right to demand the surrender of fugitives from justice. The right to demand, and the obligation to surrender, are reciprocal. I am satisfied that the authority necessary to the exercise of this right rests with the General Government and not with the governments of the States. The Constitution devolves upon the General Government the care of foreign relations. That Government has the sole power to make treaties with foreign states. Application was made to me in a case similar to that now pre sented. I considered it my duty to refer the applicant to the General Govern ment. The answer of the Secretary of State was, in substance, that, inasmuch as Congress had not passed any law on the subject, and there was no provision by treaty in relation to it, the General Government had declined to act. I can imagine no circumstance which would more seriously embarrass the General Government in its conduct of the foreign relations of the country, and more certainly tend to bring the public peace into jeopardy, than the discordant action of the several States in the exercise of this power. ... I shall deem it my duty, in a respectful manner, to bring the subject to the consideration of the President of the United States. Manufactures of woolen or cotton as yet maintained only a strug gling existence in any except the New England States. Some public- spirited citizens of Buffalo had erected a woolen-mill, on "the creek" in that city, as an experiment, and sent to the Governor some specimens of articles manufactured there. In his answer he remarked : With whatever degree of satisfaction we may regard the condition and pros pects of our country, it is certain that the highest attainable independence will not be reached so long as we remain tributary to Europe for productions conge nial to our soil and climate, and remain dependent upon European manufact urers to prepare them for our use. On the 24th of May he left Albany for a visit to Auburn, taking his family, who were to spend the summer at the latter place. A part of the journey was made by canal, in a manner now obsolete, and even then tedious, but not without comfort and quiet. The cabin of a. 1839.] A CANAL- JOURNEY. 411 " line-boat," as the freight-boats were called, to distinguish them from the " packets," was chartered, and the family, having undisturbed pos session of it, glided slowly on their voyage, eating and sleeping on board, varying the monotony by sitting on deck to read, or by an occa sional walk on the bank. As the horses slowly paced off their allotted two miles per hour, it was not difficult to walk on before them, and on arriving at a " lock," where there was sure to be more or less deten tion, one could sit down and wait for the boat to come up. For an in valid, as Mrs. Seward was, it was much preferable to the jolting of the stage, and cost but a day or two more of time. Leaving the canal at Syracuse, they spent Sunday there, and arrived on Monday at Auburn. Writing to Weed on that day, he said : AUBTJBN, Monday, May 27, 1839. We had a comfortable journey to Utica. The agent of the line-boat assured me we should reach Syracuse seasonably to take the two-o clock car from that place to Auburn. We had a nice cabin, pleasant party, and good accommoda tions. But we entered Syracuse just as the sun left it. We could not travel in the night, nor on Sunday, and therefore staid until this morning. The country appears very fine. Our home manifests, by some outward signs, that the hands that embellished it have been withdrawn; but I shall try to put it in order before I leave for the west. Of course, I am unable to announce my purposes as to the future. There are some bright spots and green, even in this thorny way. The first call I had to-day was from a negro, who came to say to me that I had conferred upon him a boon next to that of life. He was par doned after eleven years confinement in the State-prison, under sentence for life ; and his heart had dried up under an abandonment of all hope of liberation. It was the more gratifying to me to receive the poor fellow s acknowledgments, because the pardon was issued without petition or interposition from any person in his behalf, except a general representation by the chaplain of all the hard cases in the prison. I am writing with my window open into the shrubbery, and the air is redolent of sweets, and the birds are in full chorus. During this brief rest at Auburn he had a visit from the Secretary of State, Mr. Spencer. This, and the letters passing almost daily be tween him and Mr. Weed, kept him en rapport with the progress of public affairs in Albany. ATTBUBN, May 28, 1839. You see that the papers are again upon " Executive usurpation," as they call it. It is, I think, very well. You will do well to continue the popular views you present. Thankful that I have not been tempted to go into the defense personally, I see now additional reason for continuing the same forbearance. The canal is doing nobly. And it would be easy now to excite interest in behalf of a central railroad. What do you think of a convention on that sub ject ? I think I shall cause it to be suggested in the Auburn Journal this week. Did ever politicians, not to say statesmen, blunder as Wellington and Peel have done? Toryism is impracticable everywhere. Melbourne and Russell 412 LIFE AXD LETTERS. [1839. must exult in this strange and unlooked-for whirl, which threw them out of power only when their power was exhausted, and instantly restored them, with a vast increase of popular feeling. AUBUBN, Wednesday Evening, May, 1839. It has rained every day since I came here. It is a busy season. Few cares of state have followed me, and I have relieved my friends of the duty of call ing upon me by anticipating them, meeting them where they " most do congre gate," in the post-office, printing-office, and the street. Thus I have saved to myself much time, and am improving it by thorough devotion to my business. Altogether mystified to-night concerning the Virginia election, I gave it up to the Argus this morning, but claim it to-night on the strength of Horace Greeley, who is second to none but the Journal in such matters. Fortunately, there is consolation enough to balance any grief for either result. Thursday Morning. The Wednesday s daily is before me. Its answer is able and conclusive. I do not think anything better can be or need be said. Give my compliments to the adjutant for it, and my thanks. Mr. Spencer returns to Albany on Monday. He visited the State-prison with me. It was a visit under circumstances that awakened strange feelings within me. I saw a fine, tall, well-looking man r of less than middle age, lying upon his back in the hospital, with an arm from which he had on Saturday last chopped off the entire hand at the wrist. I asked him how the accident happened. He answered that he thought it was the will of God that he should cut off his hand. I asked him why he thought God required it ? He said because it would be the means of his obtaining a pardon. Poor fellow ! he was entirely ignorant that to the one that held con verse with him had been delegated the prerogative of mercy. R. 0. Wetmore is excused from the duty of military secretary. What think you of Henry Van Rensselaer, or J. G. Hopkins, of Ogdensburg, young Pumpelly, of Oswego, or young Church, in Alleghany ? AUBURN, June 5th. I had a long and profitable season with the secretary, and have consulted him upon many important subjects. We had yesterday a proud day at Syracuse for that town and this. About two hundred of our citizens went over with the locomotives to celebrate the completion of our railroad. We dined at Rust s. The party was pleasant, and there are many circumstances I should be pleased to communicate, but, like ex periments in " animal magnetism," they will not bear being written. The railroad had at last been extended to the village of Syracuse, and laid with iron rails. Two engines, the " Auburn " and the " Syra cuse," had been purchased for it, and a stone building erected for their shelter, where they received admiring visits from the people of the surrounding country. The dinner at Syracuse was enlivened with toasts and speeches, for one of which Governor Seward was of course called upon. His prediction that a few years more would see a com- 1830.] "ANIMAL MAGNETISM." 413 plete line of railroads from Albany to Buffalo was received with en thusiasm. A week later, a party of two hundred from Syracuse re turned the visit. " The meeting of the villages " was a subject of mutual rejoicing, and justly, for trade and intercourse between them then sprang up, which have ever since continued. Stimulated by this success, the Auburn & Rochester Railroad Com pany soon after held a meeting, examined the reports of the engineers, and resolved to push their work to speedy completion. Nor was the march of improvement to be confined to his own State, as Seward foresaw. He wrote to a friend on the eve of departure for Europe, in reference to its ultimate influence on the West : I am surprised by the information that you are so soon to embark for Eng land, although such announcements from one s friends are becoming so frequent, since the splendid success of steam, that the voyage seems to require less prep aration than it was customary to make, a few years since, for a journey from New York to Niagara. ... A new impulse is now to be given to European immi gration, by the successful establishment of steam navigation upon the Atlantic. Whatever opposition party interests may raise against the system of internal improvements, commenced in the different States, an enlightened mind cannot fail to see that the completion of our great thoroughfares through the State, and the corresponding improvements in the Western States, will be rapidly carried forward. AUBURN, June *lih. It does look like making a residence here for the season, and I feel, I confess, much reluctance about quitting the place, now the sun has condescended to look down upon it. But I have been busy ; with the private secretary to aid me, my official business will sooner or later be all done, and then I can rest. All next week will do it up. I ll get a breathing-spell here, and go to Albany for two or three days to appoint beef and pork inspectors, justice for Albany, etc., next week. The k animal magnetism " business was bad enough, but it vras not my "par ticular vanity," and I therefore have been able to look with a front of brass upon the laughers ; nay, I have even enjoyed the joke ; and the world is much more merciful than I should be if they do not have a merry season at my expense. What a beautiful letter is that of Spencer to the Canandaigua committee ! I never met anything of the kind so felicitous. My letters must be sent here unless the secretary will open them, which, but for busying him with cares foreign to his office, I should prefer. I don t know yet how soon I can send Blatchford back to Albany. Mr. Beach is better ; I shall go to see him this evening. The war is fairly opened, I see, about appointments. I trust the Secretary of State will defend us and he will merit ten thousand acknowledgments. The article of "Plowden" was very able; but it satisfied me that the argument is clearly with us. I have just been, with Mr. and Mrs. George Combe, of Edinburgh, through the Auburn Prison. Palmer will be a popular agent. 414 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. The allusions to " animal magnetism " refer to some exhibitions of "clairvoyance" arid "mesmeric passes" at a private residence in Albany. The subject happened to be then engaging attention in sci entific circles. Books and pamphlets on it abounded, and the news papers contained many stories of its marvels. One seance was attend ed by Governor Seward and his family, Dr. Nott, John 0. Spencer, Peter B. Porter, and one or two other members of the Legislature. A professor in the seminary conducted the experiments one of which was an imaginary clairvoyant visit to and through the Executive man sion. The spectators divided in opinion, as they usually do Seward being among the skeptical, as he generally was in such matters. Mr- Spencer was claimed among those rather inclined to believe ; while Dr. Nott, with his usual caution, contented himself with pronouncing the results " strange and unaccountable." Peter B. Porter sat himself down in a chair, and requested the experimenter to prove his science by putting him to sleep if he could ; and the professor spent half an hour in ineffectual " passes " though one glance at the resolute, wide-awake face opposed to his own might have warned him that his labor would be wasted. When it became publicly known that the Whig officials were attending such s&ances, of course the Democrats charged that the administration was " run by animal magnetism," and had many jibes and jokes thereanent. On the 18th of June a third son (William Henry) was born at Au burn. The close of the month found the Governor at his post in the Exec utive chamber. A letter to Mrs. Seward announced his arrival : ALBANY, Saturday Morning. The traveling by stage at night was, as it always is, wearisome. But I arrived here in twenty-one hours after parting with you. Nicholas has gone to the post-office to see whether he can find a letter there from Dr. Mosher, saying that you have continued to be as well as when I left you. I met Mr. Weed at the car-house, and he accompanied me "home;" so I am to call it, although the chief enjoyments that constitute home are left at Auburn. An applicant for an office in New York waited upon me while Harriet was preparing my dinner, and favored me with his company until night. The Adjutant-General and Mr. Lyman spent the evening. . . . Nicholas has kept matters very well. The ponies were brought up last evening from the pasture, and are now in the yard. They seem elated with their unbounded liberty. A committee had come from Harrisburg, in the spring, to confer with the authorities at Albany on the subject of a connection between the public works of New York and Pennsylvania. Charles B. Penrose, Speaker of the Senate of the latter State, was its chairman, and Wil liam Purviance (afterward member of Congress) was one of its mem- 1839.] THE APPOINTING POWER. 415 bers. The Governor had put them in communication with the Legisla ture. He now found at Albany their letter of acknowledgments. The specific plan this committee had in view was not carried out, but in a very few years an interlacing network of railways and canals connected the two States, and was deemed indispensable to their pros perity. That it was ever deemed wise or even possible to keep the two States from making such connecting links is now almost forgotten. There used to be a portrait in the City Hall at Albany, painted for the Common Council by Goodwin, of Auburn, during such hours as Seward could spare for a sitting, in the early part of this year. It is a full-length picture, representing him standing near a table strewed with law-books and papers. The heavy curtain is drawn aside from the open window in the background, through which is seen a railway-train trav ersing a valley. The face and figure are youthful, almost boyish, though the attitude is one of self-possessed dignity. It was the first of several portraits taken during his official term at Albany. The columns of the Argus and Evening Journal were now filled with sharp controversy over " the appointing power " and " Execu tive usurpation." The Democrats had been so successful in blocking the Governor s appointments during the session that they were disposed to pursue their advantage in the recess. The Governor, being no longer under the necessity of submitting nominations to the Senate, commissioned officers to fill the places of those who were " holding over." This was contested, his opponents insisting that his power of appointment was limited to new vacancies occurring since the adjourn ment. The appointment of Mr. Gray as flour-inspector in New York became a test case, the incumbent, Mr. Tappan, disputing his claim in the courts. Application was made to Judge Nelson, of the Supreme Court, for an order to compel the Governor, Secretary of State, and Comptroller, to reinstate the former Commissioners of the Lunatic Asylum, whom they had superseded by the appointment of new ones. The argument in the courts was vigorously supplemented in the news papers. In one of his letters to Mark H. Sibley, of Canandaigua, Mr. Seward said : I am glad you find the editor of the Journal, as we all believe here, on the vantage-ground, in his controversy with the Argus. Croswell is a most able and skillful editor, and it requires constant attention to watch and guard against his attacks. Ex-Governor Marcy was understood to be one of the assailants in the Argus, while Secretary Spencer occasionally supplied an article for the defense in the Journal. However, the courts settled the vexed question by sustaining the Governor s action as being in accordance with law. These decisions were highly creditable to the independence 416 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. and impartiality of the judges, since most of them belonged to the op posing party. The long, bright days of summer render it the favorite season for holiday and out-door gatherings in the Northern States. Invitations began to come thick and fast for the new Governor to take part in cel ebrations, reviews, commencements, and other festivities now at hand. Among these it was necessary to make a choice. Declining invitations to deliver addresses at Rutgers College and at the Mercantile Library, postponing a review of General Sanford s First Division of the Militia till September, regretting his inability to review that of General Lloyd, excusing himself from Fourth-of-July celebrations at Lansingburg, Albany, and Philadelphia, he complied with the request of Drs. Spring, Milnor, and Bangs, Daniel Lord, James G. King, and others, that he would attend a celebration which the New York Sunday-schools were to hold on Staten Island. July 2d. I am busy enough, and my business scarcely diminishes, although I am dili gent. Mrs. Spencer is very pleasantly situated, and her house looks very com fortable. The secretary returned last evening from the West. I go to-morrow to West Point, and by the evening boat to New York ; then, on the next morn ing, to celebrate the Fourth on Staten Island with the Sunday-schools ; and I hope to return on the next day to this place. I go without lightness of heart, because I feel it to be time lost from work ; and yet it is both proper and use ful, and therefore by no means to be omitted. I have refused to go to New York " to receive the President." But it is right to refuse, and I care not for consequences. After the noise of the Fourth, I shall, with the help of two hands, force off my business, and then look in upon you, and go to the west. Mr. Van Buren, consummate tactician and skillful political manager as he was, had nevertheless suffered himself to be persuaded by his friends into making a " presidential tour." Leaving Washington in the latter part of June, he traveled in his own carriage from Baltimore to York, Harrisburg, and other towns in Pennsylvania, receiving every where public demonstrations in his honor. He was expected soon to reach New York. In the ceremonies of the presidential reception there, under the auspices of the Gommon Council, the Governor was invited to participate. His reply was frank and courteous : It would be an unusual proceeding for the Chief Magistrate of the State to leave his duties at the capital to take part in such a demonstration, and, in view of the hostile political relations between himself and Mr. Van Buren, to do so now would afford evidence of inconsistency and insincerity. Neverthe less, should the Chief Magistrate of the Union favor the place of my residence with a visit, or should my duty call me into his vicinity, I should with cheerful ness and pleasure pay him all the respect called for by his public station, or properly due from mine. 1839.] THE STATEN ISLAND CELEBRATION. 417 So straightforward an answer disarmed criticism by either friends or foes. The one could not complain that he did not adhere to his po litical faith, nor the other that he was lacking in courtesy to the Pres ident. Fourth-of-July morning dawned bright and clear. The bay of New York lay calm and unruffled in the sunshine. Twelve thousand delighted children were safely embarked on four large steamboats and nine barges, which moved out from the wharves and down the bay in majestic procession. The steamboats and barges were furnished gra tuitously. The fleet was divided into two squadrons one starting from the North River and the other from the East River side. The Sandusky, as flag-ship, led the way, having on board the committees and the Governor. A band of music on her deck, composed of blind boys from the State Institution, struck up the national anthem. As its strains died away they were taken up and echoed from a distant barge by children s voices chanting an ode. This, as it ceased, was re sponded to from another boat ; and so, as the fleet moved on, each ves sel in turn took up the chorus the others listening in silence to the voices that came to them across the water. Meanwhile, the city be hind them, gayly decorated with flags, was lessening in the distance, the rattle of guns and crackers in its streets growing momentarily fainter and fainter, while all around the rapid movements of boats and steamers filled with excursionists, merriment, and music, lent addition al life to the scene. It was a novel spectacle, and one long remem bered by the children. The kind-hearted gentlemen who planned it for them set an example that was to be more widely copied than they dreamed of, for, ever since that day, Sunday-school excursions have become as common as, up to that time, they had been rare. Arrived at Staten Island, the army of children was landed and marched to a cedar-grove, not far from the Quarantine. The coincidence was ad verted to, that, on the 4th of July, sixty -three years before, the forces of Sir William Howe were occupying the ground on which this peace ful celebration was now assembling. The usual religious exercises took place, followed by Governor Sew- ard s address, in which he remarked : It is a purpose worthy of our coming here, to render ascriptions of praise and thanksgiving for the divine favor and protection, nor could any other cere monial of worship be so suitable as that you have adopted, of bringing hither the children and youth of your great city, to relate to them, beneath the forest shade, and upon the hillside, the wonders that God hath done in our behalf. Adverting then to his conviction that education, the education of the whole people, not merely of favored classes, is an essential element of national progress and safety, he added : 27 418 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. This is the work in which you are engaged. Seldom does it happen to any citizen to render to his country any service more lasting or more effectual than that which is accomplished by the teachers of such schools as these. Leaving the children at their collation, the Governor embarked on a steamboat tendered for his return. As he approached the old North Carolina, lying at anchor off the Battery, a courteous hail invited him on board. She was then in commission, and under command of Captain Ballard, who showed his guest the ship and her seventy-four guns, gave him an official salute with them, and sent him off in the " launch " to- catch the Albany evening-boat. This was the De Witt Clinton, then considered a palace among river-steamers, being the largest, and having added to her other appointments the unheard-of luxury of " state-rooms " on her upper deck. Captain Roe, then and for many years her commander, received him on board and sheered out of the usual course, to land him at Sing Sing. There he was expecting to spend the night quietly, at the country residence of one of his aides- de-camp, Colonel Amory, whose villa was on the bank that overhangs the Croton River, where it unites with the Hudson, a short distance above the town of Sing Sing. But in the evening a gathering of cit izens with a band of music came out to Colonel Amory s to serenade the Governor, who duly acknowledged the compliment. By morning the little town was in a stir with preparations to greet the unexpected Executive visitor. When he came down the road at ten o clock from Colonel Amory s,-he paused to examine the excavation then going on for the projected Croton Aqueduct, which was to supply New York with water. The workmen threw down shovels and barrows, and hastily gathered in crowds to give " three cheers for the Governor. * Then a military company met him at the outskirts of the village and escorted him to the hotel, where Mr. Albert Wells made him a speech of welcome on behalf of the citizens, to which he made suitable re sponse. The prison opened its massive doors for his inspection, and some hours were passed in studying the condition of the institution and its inmates, now become one of his chief responsibilities. A hospitable invitation to remain for a public dinner was declined, and then, taking a carriage, he drove to Peekskill, twelve miles, the nearest point at which the Albany boat could be reached, and there only by taking a ferry-boat over to CaldwelPs Landing. While the children s festival on the shores of Staten Island was passing out of popular remembrance, it had suggested to him a sub ject of anxious thought. It had led him to reflect that while those twelve thousand children were sharing enjoyment and instruction, double that number lurked, ragged and neglected, in foul streets and crowded tenements, who were growing up in ignorance and vice. Studying carefully the statistics of the schools, and invoking the coun- 1839.] THE PARDONING POWER. 419 sel of those experienced in educational affairs, he endeavored to find a solution of the problem thus presented. Out of these reflections and conferences grew the recommendation in regard to schools, in his next message, which was destined to be for years a " bone of contention," religious and political. There came, about this time, a communication informing him of his election as an honorary member of the " Horticultural Association of the Valley of the Hudson." This was from A. J. Downing, who had already begun to lead that improvement of national taste which has added so much to the beauty of nearly every American rural home. Writing on the same day to Henry Barnard, of Hartford, he said : Connecticut has an enviable distinction in having been the first of the States to found and adequately endow common schools. She is already enjoying rich ly, and the whole country participates largely in, the fruits of her early moral cultivation of the people. With like interest in all schools, he complied with the request of the trustees of the Albany Female Academy, to be one of the com mittee to examine the girls compositions, and award the prize of a gold medal to the best. The rough draught of the "report "is still pre served ; it is in the handwriting of Seward, and signed by the other two members of the committee, the Secretary of State and the Rev. Dr. Sprague. Evidently it cost the distinguished committee-men as much labor as some documents on much graver matters, for there were sixty-five compositions to be read, and they were trying to speak with kindly commendation of as many as possible. Professing inability to decide on the shades of merit between several compositions equally good, they recommended the trustees to give gold medals to half a dozen of the girls, which recommendation an interlineation in the hand of John C. Spencer, however, cuts down to " five ! " CHAPTER 1839. The Pardoning Power. Experiences, Sad and Grotesque. Going to Commencement. Mrs. Clinton. Henry Clay at Auburn. President Van Buren in Albany. A Requisition for Three Black Men. Tour through the Northern Counties. Conferences with Clay. A Clever Caricature. CASES of far more melancholy nature were now pressing for the Governor s judgment. There is a " black care " that rides on the shoulders of every Governor, that follows him by day, haunts him by 420 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. night, and will not be shaken off. This is the "pardoning power." There are two or three thousand poor wretches always in prison, or on their way there, or to the scaffold, and hardly one of them but has either a wife or a child, or a friend, to implore Executive clemency. Public opinion itself, which is an avenging Nemesis as long as the cul prit is at large, softens as soon as he is behind bolts and bars ; and not unfrequently the turnkey who locks him in, the public prosecutor who arraigned him, the jurors who convicted, and even the judge who sen tenced him, join in the appeal for his release. If legal and religious influence is wanting, there are always clergymen whose hearts incline to mercy, and lawyers with whom " stay of proceedings " is a part of their vocation. Yet, if the Governor weakly yields to the pressure, the same instinct of self-preservation in the community which sent the criminal to jail is aroused with fresh indignation by seeing him again at liberty in the. streets. But the suitors for mercy will take no de nial. How can they ? Their pleading letters come in every mail ; their piteous faces are ever round the door of the Executive chamber. They watch the Governor s path ; they wait in his hall ; they sit on his doorstep. If he be of a kindly, compassionate nature, disposed to listen to their " oft-told tale " of misery, he will have time neither to eat, nor sleep, nor write messages, nor make appointments. The appli cants and their applications are often unreasonable, grotesque, and absurd, yet always sad and always painful. One of Seward s early experiences of this sort was shortly after his inauguration. A well-dressed, lady-like woman, evidently in deep grief, was imploring the pardon of her brute of a husband, sent to State-prison for beating her. She staid during the whole evening, ex hausting all her powers of argument and entreaty, and deaf to any answer but a favorable one. Growing excited and frantic over the ill- success of her plea, she threw herself on her knees, and with sobs and hysterics refused to get up until her prayer should be granted. The Governor, while vainly endeavoring to calm her, was startled at see ing in the open doorway the sudden apparition of York Van Allen, his black waiter, arrayed in overcoat and cap, with a lantern in his hand. " What do you want, York ? " " I beg pard n, sir," replied York, with the dignified courtesy which distinguishes his race, " but I thought de time had arrived when you wanted me." "Want you? What for ?" " Governor Clinton used to allers tell me I was to take em away when dey began to go on like dat," pointing to the kneeling female, " and Governor Tompkins, too, sir, allers." Equally to the surprise and relief of Governor Seward, the lady seemed, like York, to take it as a matter of course. Rising and adjust- 1839.] CASES SAD AND GROTESQUE. 421 ing her shawl and bonnet at the mirror, she courtesied adieu, and went off to the hotel under the escort of York and his lantern. Yet there are many cases when the exercise of the pardoning power is not only judicious, but is followed by beneficial results. Such a one was that of Catharine , to whom Seward wrote : STATE OF NEW YORK, EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, ALBANY. Yours is a case of manifest and confessed guilt. You are pardoned. It is be cause you are young; because this is your first exposure to the law ; because you are a woman and a stranger, and it may in charity be believed that your virtue would have resisted temptation had not want and seduction combined to effect your ruin. If consigned to a State-prison, your good name would be irretriev able, and the associations to which you would be exposed would forbid all hope of reformation. I have thought it my duty to accompany the pardon, now freely sent to you, with the advice that you return as speedily as possible to your aged and afflicted mother ; that you justify this extraordinary act of mercy by humble and persevering assiduity in domestic duties, which is the only way to regain the respect and confidence of your friends and neighbors. If you will do this, you will carry consolation to the heart of your parent ; and I shall have the satisfaction of knowing that I have not done injustice to the public in yield ing for once to impulses of sympathy. One of the benevolent friends who had aided her happened to be journeying through a remote rural region a few years later, when he unexpectedly met Catharine there now grown an industrious, respect able woman, and regarded with esteem by all her neighbors. She took from her bosom the letter of the Governor, and said it had saved her from ruin ; and that she had carried it about with her ever since it brought her the welcome news of her release. Both those who solicit pardons and those who grant them are apt to look at the case of the individual sufferer, without bestowing much thought upon the interests of the community at large. Yet this is really of far more extended consequence. The habit of generalization in political study, which was always a characteristic of Seward, was not laid aside when he came to examine these cases. There is a bulky manuscript volume of his decisions. Each shows how careful was his examination, and how solicitous he was that every one should stand on the firm ground of general principle, rather than mere compassionate feeling. Some were thought stern, but none were unjust. Many were unexpected, for " influential backers " failed of effect, while the very friendlessness which seemed to shut out hope proved a passport to Executive kindness. A forger had been convicted in Dutchess County on evidence which left no doubt of the crime. But he was a man of property, and his high standing in the community and the church had brought him the help of learned counsel and sympathizing neighbors, to whom the ver- 422 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. diet of the jury was a surprise. So strong was the pressure of public opinion in his behalf, that the jury recommended him to the clemency of the Executive, and the court suspended sentence in order that the application might be made. In his answer the Governor said : These circumstances furnish gratifying evidence that the court and jury have discharged their responsibilities conscientiously, as well as mercifully ; but not that they entertained any doubt of the prisoner s guilt. I cannot yield to this application under the impulse of feeling, or from respect to the popular sympa thy, or upon consideration of the respectability of the prisoner s family and relatives, consistently with the principles which should control me. The appli cation is therefore denied. A rough in Catskill had committed an unprovoked assault in the street, and been sent to the county-jail for thirty days. Influential political friends asked his release. The Governor asked in return : Upon what grounds could Executive interposition be justified? To set aside the verdict of juries and the judgments of courts, where no error, injus tice, or oppression exists, would be to subject the entire administration of jus tice to Executive caprice, and to destroy that confidence in the certainty of punishment, and that salutary respect for courts of justice which, far more than the punishments inflicted, secure the peace and good order of society. To a father who had petitioned in behalf of his son, the Governor closed a kindly letter of sympathy by saying : It is a hard thing to deny the petition of a father and mother for the release of their son from imprisonment ; yet, the embarrassments of granting it are so great, that I cannot give a favorable answer. The crime for which your un happy son is now suffering was his second offense. His first and light punish ment failed to produce reformation. It would be contrary to the settled policy hitherto pursued, were I to interpose to mitigate the punishment prescribed by law upon a second conviction. It is possible that your son may be saved from his errors and become a useful member of society. I trust it will be so. But his pardon would be inconsistent with the interests of society, and I should very much fear that it would operate unfavorably for his permanent ref ormation. In another case he said : Sympathy for the prisoner s suffering family is the only influential consid eration presented in this case. Their affliction is a moving circumstance. But the consequences of crime, in most instances, fall heavily upon the innocent fam ilies of the offenders. There would be few tenants of the prisons if pardons could be granted in all cases where the sympathy of the Executive is excited. Offenses which endanger the general safety of life or property need to be strictly dealt with. A professional house-breaker s counsel pre sented ingenious arguments and elaborate petitions in his behalf. The Governor s adverse decision said : 1839.] "DISABILITIES." 423 The crime of burglary increases with fearful rapidity. It is a crime that justly spreads alarm and consternation in the community ; for it is most fre quently committed in the night, when persons and property are least efficiently protected. The welfare and security of society permit few to be pardoned who have committed this great crime. And in another case he desired his friends to remember that Every pardon tends to impair the efficiency of our criminal code, by shaking the public confidence in the certainty of the punishment it prescribes. " Tom," a black man, came to New York with his owner, an Arkansas planter. Falling into bad company there, they persuaded him to steal his master s money. He did so and divided with them, but was detected ; most of the money was recovered, and Tom was sent to Sing Sing. Then the master, desirous, perhaps, of regaining the services of his chattel, applied in that capacity to the Governor for his pardon. The latter denied it, briefly remarking : Under similar circumstances the Governor certainly would not pardon a free white citizen of the State. He does not see that the case is made stronger or weaker by the fact that the prisoner is a slave, and that his master desires his release. A widow s son, Samuel Burns, though hardly more than a boy, had been sentenced to undergo the full penalty of the law for a theft. Deciding it to be a case for Executive interference, Seward wrote : The prisoner is pardoned not because he was innocent, not because the pun ishment adjudged was too severe for the offense, but solely because he was of a very tender age when he committed his offense, and it is hoped that his severe experience of the consequences of crime will operate as a powerful admonition. There will remain, notwithstanding this pardon, a stigma upon the prisoner s name, and civil disabilities consequent upon his conviction. If he shall prove himself not unworthy of the discriminating favor now extended to him, these may be removed on some future occasion by more complete pardon. In regard to the " disabilities " adverted to, it was Se ward s practice to hold out the prospect of their removal as an additional stimulus to reform and good behavior on the part of the prisoner after his release. Speaking of this in a letter to a committee, he said : Pardons granted to persons in prison are always limited. They release the judgment, but do not remove the civil disabilities consequent upon it, except where the conviction was clearly unjust. The restoration to the rights of citizen ship is held out to the prisoner by way of encouragement, and is granted only after the expiration of a sufficient period after his imprisonment to test his ref ormation. There was one case that had a ludicrous side in its unexpected end- 424 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839, ing. A Frenchman and his wife who had just emigrated to this country were accused of theft, locked up, tried, convicted of grand larceny, and sent, the woman to the prison for female convicts at Sing Sing, the man to the prison at Auburn. On review of the evidence it turned out that the offense, on the woman s part at least, had some palliating cir cumstances, and that she had intended nothing worse than to make reprisals on neighbors who had plundered her. Ignorance of the lan guage had prevented the case from being fully and fairly presented in court. Governor Seward made out a pardon for the woman, and, taking it with him on one of his visits to Sing Sing, handed it to the warden, who forthwith released her, handed her the pardon, and she went on her way rejoicing. It happened that her name and her husband s (Franchise and Frangois) differed only in a letter, and the engrossing clerk had by mistake written his for hers. When outside of the prison she looked at the document which had been put in her hands and found there her husband s name. Not doubting that he had been pardoned also, she hastened up to Auburn and presented it to the warden of the prison there. It was in every respect correct, and so Francois was re leased also, and the pair started for Canada. The mistake was discov ered when the Governor next visited Auburn ; but the worthy French couple never came back to have it rectified. All these incidents, however, seem trivial when contrasted with those which attend the slow progress of the murderer in the grasp of the law inch by inch toward the gallows. After his lawyers have exhausted every subtlety in court, there still remains the last resort of an appeal to the Governor to stay his execution, and remit or com mute his punishment. One such case occurred before Seward had been a month in office, and another a few weeks later ; but in both the justice of the sentence was so clear that he declined to interfere. In April came the case of Conway, who was convicted of murder on his own confession, but the court and the prosecuting attorney becom ing satisfied that he was insane, recommended a commutation of his sentence. Seward granted their request, but decided that the lunatic asylum, not the State-prison, was the place where he should be confined. A case, curious in its details, occurred iii Jefferson County. A man named McCarthy had deliberately planned and accomplished the murder of his wife s father, concealed the body with adroit ingenuity, and invented and circulated stories to account for the mysterious disappearance. Detected at last, he was convicted and sentenced to be hanged. Then came a letter from the Catholic priest of the neigh borhood, a warm-hearted, unsophisticated man, and who, without at all excusing the crime, asked that he might be permitted to visit and administer the last offices to the condemned man in his cell. The jailer, construing the law according to its strict letter, had refused, 1839.] CHILDREN IN THE HOUSE OF REFUGE. 425 on the ground that no one could be permitted to hold conversation with the prisoner unless in the presence of the keeper, while the clergyman said that the rules of the Church required the confession to be a private one. The Governor granted the desired permission, saying : From time immemorial the judge has closed the solemn sentence of death with the prayer, u And may the Lord have mercy on your soul ! " A custom as old and as uniform has sanctioned the visits of ministers of the Gospel, to prepare the prisoner for that mercy which the judge implores. What Christianity en joins, our laws and customs both tolerate and encourage. It certainly is consist ent with the spirit of toleration which pervades our free institutions that the convict should enjoy the visits of ministers of his own faith. But now came a new phase in the case. The clergyman having heard the doomed man s confession, wrote to urge a commutation of the sentence, because the prisoner had stated circumstances which, to him, seemed to very much mitigate his guilt. His zeal to save his parish ioner s life even led him to overstep the rule of the Church, which for bids betrayal of the secrets of the confessional. The Governor, how ever, declined to be moved even by these, and replied : It is the law of the land that the prisoner s crime be punishable with death. It is not for me to abrogate or change this law. On the contrary, I have come under solemn obligations to take care that it is fulfilled. I hasten this reply, that it may, if possible, remove any groundless hope the prisoner may indulge. And I hope that he will prepare, with the aid of your pious ministrations, for that dread tribunal where, like him, we must all appear as suppliants for mercy. After McCarthy had been hanged, some political opponents of the Governor, getting an imperfect version of the story, thought to find in it material for denunciation, and so called for the correspondence. They received it at once, and with it a note, saying that the Governor cheer fully gave information relating to his official conduct when called for by a respectable number of his fellow-citizens, whether their views con curred with or differed from his own. It is hardly necessary to say that they did not find it of any use for their purposes. Youthful delinquents in the House of Refuge were objects of spe cial solicitude. In a letter to the superintendent, Seward wrote : ALBANY, July 16, 1839. I regret that you did not deem it important to answer my inquiries in relation to the situation and health of Frederick Becker. Unreasonable fears are often excited on the part of parents, and I am often able to relieve their solicitude, by obtaining such information. Mrs. Becker is a poor and afflicted but excellent woman. It requires a heart of stone to deny such a woman s petition for the pardon of a child thirteen years old, and at the same time to refuse to inquire whether the child is well and cheerful. A little girl of ten years had been some months in the House of 426 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. Refuge, whose managers declined to deliver her to her parents. The mother, moved perhaps by the loss of her child as nothing else would have moved her, renounced her idle habits, took the pledge, and joined the church ; and the father afterward followed her example, becoming in dustrious and respectable. Aided by the pastor of their church, they now petitioned the Governor for the little girl. But on addressing the managers he was informed that, in accordance with custom, they had apprenticed her ; the indentures were already made out and signed, and the master did not wish to give her up. The Governor replied : The parents, by their reformation and their perseverance, now some months, in a religious course of life, have removed the only ground upon which the laws could justify a denial of their parental care of a female child of such tender years. To doubt whether it is better to restore their child under such circumstances, than to leave her in the care of any stranger, would be to distrust nature. The suggestion of the managers is therefore accepted, and, in order to avoid all difficulty concerning the indenture, I herewith transmit a pardon of the little apprentice. Should the master refuse to surrender her, you will have the goodness to return the pardon to me, with information of his name and residence, that I may direct a writ of habeas corpus to be sued out for her release. The proposed monument to De Witt Clinton had not been sanc tioned by the Legislature. Party feeling was raised against it ; proba bly by the very zeal with which the Whigs claimed him as the pioneer and exemplar whom they were following in their canal policy. It was therefore considered a Whig project, although he was dead and buried years before the Whig party was born. In a letter to Edward C. Delavan, Seward wrote : The time has not yet arrived when the Legislature of New York will be ready to do full honor to her most gifted son and greatest benefactor. For the honor of the State I regret the failure. And now came a call from the " Alma Mater," whose pupil he had been twenty years before, and whose trustee he now was, ex-officio Union College. It came in the form of a letter from the president, his old preceptor, and was acknowledged thus : ALBANY, July 9, 1839. I Lave this morning received your letter, which reminds me of ray obligation to attend the commencement. I return you my thanks for the kindness with which it recalls recollections, always full of pleasure, tinged with melancholy, of my collegiate life. I am sure, my dear sir, you will believe me when I say that the circumstance which renders me indisposed to attend the commencement is that my official relations and duties may not permit the unrestrained freedom I have enjoyed in former visits. You are very kind to tender me a home in your deso late house. Prof. Reed was kind enough to invite me to his house. I shall be well contented with any disposition of myself that you and he may make. 1839.] MRS. CLINTON. 427 Honors and kindly welcome greeted him on commencement day in the field of old-time toils and struggles. The Adelphic Society, which once came so near striking his name from its roll, commissioned an artist to paint his portrait. The newspapers noted the fact that the "long procession of strangers, students, and officers of the college, was closed by Dr. Nott, in all the firmness and vigor of a green old age, supported by two of his former pupils and graduates of the col lege, now ex-officio trustees. On his right was the Governor, and on his left the Minister of Public Instruction." He always recurred with pleasure to recollections of college-life, and loved to meet old college friends and associates, whether professors or students. At the time of his graduation at Schenectady, Union College was yet in its infancy ; the classes were small, and the Faculty not large. Yet among them were many esteemed friends. His letters make frequent reference to his visits to Dr. Nott, his meetings with the Potters, both since bishops, Drs. Reed, Yates, Jackson, Tellkampff, Macauley, and Wayland. Among his own classmates were the Rev. Dr. L. P. Hickok, Tayler Lewis, Horatio Averill, Chauncey Dewey, William Kent, Archibald L. Linn, John C. Wright, and Robert Den- niston. He was of opinion that Dr. Nott had succeeded in making a college distinctively American ; for, instead of seeking to make profound stu dents, he sought to fit his pupils for the practical duties of the Ameri can pulpit, court-room, counting-house, or legislative hall. The toler ance of all Christian creeds and the union between Christian denomi nations implied by its name and exemplified in its Faculty were, as Seward thought, a recognition of the fact that it was educating boys to be citizens of a country whose fundamental principle was freedom of religion. Going up one morning to spend a couple of days at Saratoga, he met, at the railroad-office, the widow of Governor Clinton, with her daughter, an invalid, and they made the journey together. July 27, 1839. One of the things that I found myself required to do was to visit this resort of the grave, the gay, the lively, the severe. I submitted with reluctance, and came here yesterday. It is more endurable than I thought. Lionizing is so common here that an u Excellency " may pass comparatively unnoticed. It is a relief to forget titles of bills, pardons, appointments, and all the thousand troubles which annoy at Albany. The great " lions " have not yet arrived at this place. The President is expected in about a fortnight, and Mr. Clay at the same time. The latter will be at Auburn on Friday or Saturday. The ob served of all here now is Mrs. De Witt Clinton. You would be much interested in her. Toward the close of July he was preparing for a trip through the 428 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. northern counties. Lieutenant-Governor Bradish had already gone to his home in Franklin County, and Seward wrote him : ALBANY, July 27, 1839. MY DEAR SIE : You were unexpectedly expeditious in your departure. By way of paying "the respect due to your official station and properly required from mine," I called a coach, and, summoning the " Dictator," presented my self, at eight last evening, at your door. The waiter announced your departure. Happy man that you are, to be able to luxuriate during the dog-days at Elm- wood ! I thank you very much for your kindness in making a programme for my route. I hope now to take up my progression on Monday or Tuesday at farthest, and approach you with all the rapidity consistent with the character of a republican Chief Magistrate. Of course you, better than I, will know how long a time the journey will require. Mr. Clay writes me that he will be at Saratoga on the 8th of August. Henry Clay was making a summer "tour" through the State as well as the President. While the latter was traveling from east to west, the former was coming from west to east. He had visited Buf falo, passed a few days with General Porter at Niagara, and was now receiving from the Whigs of the various towns through which he passed demonstrations like those which the Democrats were bestowing on Mr. Van Buren. A delegation from Auburn on horseback and in carriages met him at Cayuga Bridge, and escorted him to the village, where ensued the formal speeches of welcome, hand-shaking, and cheers for " Harry of the West." One of his sons accompanied him, as well as his faithful body-servant Charles. The abolitionists endeavored to persuade Charles to accept the blessings of freedom. But he decided that his most comfortable place was to " stick to his master," of whose reflected glory he received no inconsiderable share. Mr. Clay spent the night at Seward s residence at Auburn and wrote thence to him. A note from the latter to Mrs. Seward said : ALBANY, July 27, 1839. The mail has just brought me Mr. Clay s letter, with your postscript. I am happy that you had an opportunity to see him. I was two days at the com mencement, but I cannot now write about it, for my work accuses me on all sides. I called on Thursday with the State officers 6n the President ; and spent half an hour at a party given him by General Dix. He returned my call on Saturday. He declined, very politely, my invitation to dine. This letter was commenced at five this evening. It is now eleven o clock ; and I have written every minute I have been alone ; so you see I am not favored with too much leisure. On Tuesday morning about an hour before the stage was to start, a man entered who was announced as Mr. Caphart, bringing a requisition from Lieutenant-Governor Hopkins, of Virginia. Governor Seward glanced over it and saw that it was a demand for the surrender 1839.] THE VIRGINIA REQUISITION. 429 of three colored men, whom it charged with having " feloniously stolen " a " certain negro slave named Isaac." Inquiring further as to the story, he was informed that the three men were sailors on board a New York schooner, and that, while she was lying in Norfolk harbor, they had secreted Isaac in the hold and brought him off to New York. " And where are the men ? " " They are in prison in New York, awaiting your decision on the requisition." Again looking at the requisition, he found attached to it a short affidavit of one Colley before a justice of the peace, giving the names of the parties concerned, but no details of the case. " And where is the slave ? " " Oh ! he was caught and taken back to his master, before the requisition was made." On the face of it, therefore, it was a demand to have three black men sent from New York, to be punished in Virginia because they had tried, though ineffectually, to help another to escape from slavery. The case was novel, the papers curt, the proofs defective, and the aspect of it repugnant. So, instead of directing the usual papers to be issued in compliance with a requisition, Seward decided to look further into the matter. Accordingly, he told Mr. Caphart and directed the private secretary, Mr. Blatchford, to give him a written memorandum to the effect that the papers were unsatisfactory and defective, that he should give the subject further consideration at Auburn, and furthermore that he deemed it his duty to give the three men an opportunity to be heard before he decided. Mr. Caphart took the memorandum and his leave. A copy of the same note was sent by the secretary to the Sheriff of New York, to be delivered to the accused. His letters home briefly described his journeying : ALBANY, July 30, 1889. I am setting out this morning for Auburn, by the way of Washington, "Warren, Clinton, Franklin, St. Lawrence, Jefferson, and Oswego Counties. I have been desiring long to see that part of the State, and it has now become a duty. I travel, of course, in the public conveyances, unheralded and unattended, except by the Adjutant-General. CALDWELL, LAKE GEORGE, Friday, August 2, 1839. Here I am, lamenting that you are not with me to make acquaintance with the glorious scenes of which we both have heard so much. My window looks out upon the head of Lake George. A beautiful green lawn stretches down to the lake-shore. The lake presents a silver mirror, a mile in width, for the forests to contemplate their own rich morning attire, as they do homage to the rising sun. The mirror is set in a circular mountain-frame. Its surface, as the eye glances off to the north, is interspersed with beautiful and various isl ands. It is, indeed, a scene to contemplate and admire for hours. How we came here must of course be narrated. General King and I left Albany on 430 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. Tuesday morning the hottest day almost of the whole summer in a post-coach, with nine other passengers. We passed Troy and Lansingburg ; and made na stop until we arrived at Pittstown. There the people were emulous in showing us the neat white house and still pretty shrubbery that mark the spot where once lived your ancestors. From Pittstown we proceeded through Cambridge and Salem to Granville, in Washington County. I was unwell all day, and was enjoy ing a sound sleep, at ten o clock, in the coach, when the loud cannonading an nounced our welcome to Granville. A young lady who lived in the village, and who had been pointing out to us objects of interest on our journey, and knowing nothing of us, expressed her surprise at this unusual excitement among her neigh bors ; but finally concluded that these were the preliminary demonstrations for a ladies fair which was to come off the next day. We drove up to the village and into a scene of wild and glad merriment. The cannon was loudly proclaiming, the church-bells responding ; the hotel was decorated with boughs inside and out, and finely illuminated withal ; and the boys, like our own urchins in Auburn, kept the night alarmed with fire-balls, shooting through the atmosphere in every direction. It was a joyous and unsophisticated welcome. I yielded to its in fluences until twelve o clock, and then went to a bed that had no sleep for one so weary and ill as I. The next morning we attended the ladies fair, and, after an hour of leave- taking, came on to Whitehall. There we were two hours, with a reception as frigid as that the night before at Granville was warm. Nobody knew we had contemplated visiting their town, and we knew not a soul in it. First, we were stared at as strangers of a curious gait and bearing ; then our incog, yielded to the inquisitive interrogation of the people at the tavern ; and then we were fol lowed and surveyed with curious and speculative eyes. Just as the boat was ready to leave, some gentlemen came and introduced themselves to us, desiring us to stay until to-morrow. We ought to have accepted the kind invitation to stay a day. But our time would not permit delay, even for the purpose of re ceiving honors. We embarked at one o clock on Lake Champlain, and landed at four, in a furious storm, at Ticonderoga. Here was only a solitary tavern, and that was ex hausted of its guests. The ground was wet and muddy, and I was too unwell to write at home or go abroad. The time wore away heavily until night ; but I slept, and rose yesterday invigorated and buoyant. I took a horse and rode over the old French forts, and the ground of the encampments of the hostile parties, who fretted their busy hours upon this scene some sixty and some ninety years ago. Then we took a beautiful little barge and spread our tiny canvas to the morn ing breeze, and came here. PLATTSBURG, August Zd. We left Lake George yesterday morning, called for an hour at Burlington, passed Elkanah Watson s house illuminated from "donjon-keep to turret-stone," and arrived here at ten last evening. To-day we attend church; to-morrow we visit the town ; on Tuesday we inspect the iron-works at Keeseville on the Ausable River. August tth. I find that Mr. Clay will pass up this lake to-morrow. I shall stay here till he ponies, and give him my greeting to-morrow evening. 1839.] A TOUR THROUGH THE NORTHERN COUNTIES. 431 OODENSBURG, August Wtk. General King and I have been the busiest men in the whole State since I last -wrote, and have been intent upon prosecuting our journey. We left Plattsburg on Tuesday morning before day ; arrived the next at Malone, where we met the Lieutenant-Governor ; spent a day with him in traversing Franklin County ; arrived here on Friday evening, and shall take our departure to-morrow morn ing for Sackett s Harbor and Watertowri, then by Oswego homeward. I meet everywhere unlooked-for and unsolicited kindness ; but it never leaves me alone. At various points on the journey addresses of welcome were suitably answered, with allusions which showed that he was studying the charac ter of the region through which he was passing. In his address at Ogdensburg he remarked : Late as it is, I accomplish a long-cherished desire in coming here to learn the resources, the interests, and the exigencies of this portion of the State, that I may be more able hereafter to contribute to its advancement. The " tour " occupied fifteen days, and on arriving at Auburn he found there a letter from Henry Clay. Referring to a hurried interview they had had on Lake Champlain, Seward expressed his regret that the engagements imperative upon each of them seemed to render it im possible to have a longer friendly consultation. You are the guest of the Whig party of this State, and I am right glad that they give you so warm and appropriate a welcome. You will soon pass beyond the greeting of the hundred thousand friends you find in the State, and will be able to judge then of the aspect of public affairs, and of your personal position in regard to them. Having passed through many points of your route, I have had an opportunity to learn the tone of the public mind after your departure. I have great pleasure in saying that among our friends in Essex, Clinton, St. Law rence, Jefferson, Oswego, and Cayuga, the spirit of the Whig party has been invigorated by your visit, and a feeling of more ardent and devoted kindness toward yourself has been widely extended. To Mr. Weed he wrote : AUBUBN, August 15, 1839. Well, here I am, with a wife once more well and cheerful, and boys growing so rapidly that I scarcely dare recognize them kind greetings and enthusiastic friends. How I wish I could rest among them a little brief space ! A delightful excursion was that in the north. I will not detail its occur rences ; but King will give you the particulars. From one end to the other there was no word of complaint, or of regret, or of want of confidence, except at Oswego, concerning the ship-canal affair. That is wrong; and I know not how it is to be put right. Of the presidential question I know lest than when I left Albany. I wit nessed from the deck of the steamer Mr. Clay s entrance into Burlington. I am unaccustomed to such demonstrations. It was enthusiastic as it was mag nificent. I believe, too, that it was chiefly or altogether felt to be made toward .Mr. Clay as a candidate. LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. I found the same thing and the same feeling in Essex and Clinton Counties. In Jefferson and St. Lawrence, however, I found that there had been what was supposed to be equal ardor ; but it was told me by actors in it that it was hom age to Mr. Clay as a, not the, representative of Whig principles. In this county it is Scott, but I did not hear anything elsewhere to that effect. Harrison seemed to be strong in Jefferson and St. Lawrence. On the other hand, Mr. Clay told me with frankness, and in a confiding man ner, that the demonstrations were of such a kind everywhere as to convince him that he was well with the people. I stated to him that all was right tow ard him, except the feelings of the abolitionists, and the fears, as they truly exist, predicated upon the supposed hostility of that class. He concluded me from that ground, by saying that there was nothing in either that many abolitionists had come to him confessing their abolitionism, but declaring their preference for and devotion to him. And then we were called off. I was at Elkanah Watson s (an old friend), at Port Kent, waiting for a boat down the lake. Clay came in the up-boat. He (at my instance) came to Wat son s and I received him there, then went on board his boat with him to Bur lington wharf, where I took leave of him and went on board the boat for Platts- burg. I thank you for the picture. It is well, but not so good as the article it illustrates. There is still extant a copy of this political caricature, one of the best of its kind. Its portraits were so good, and its humorous points so well taken, that both friends and foes had to join in the merriment it created. It was a lithograph, entitled " The Political Drill of the State Officers." It represented Thurlow Weed, as drummer, striding in advance, cigar in mouth, and vigorously beating a tune, to which all the others were trying to keep step. Behind him came the diminu tive Governor, also smoking, vainly trying to follow the footsteps of the long-legged drummer, and unconsciously imitating the movements of his hands. The Adjutant-General followed, arrayed in most gor geous and bewildering regimentals. Then came the Secretary of State and Comptroller, the former of whom evidently would not, while the lat ter could not, keep step. The Treasurer had fallen out of line, and with a determined air sat down on his strong box to protect it ; while the Attorney - General, sitting under a tree, was diligently conning his first lesson in " Blackstone s Commentaries." Mr. Weed, finding the caricature at the lithographer s, had sent a copy to Seward with this characteristic note : I send you a picture. The shop at which I found it was the scene of capi tal fun. The salesman proposed to furnish a. key. " This," said he, " is the Attorney-General. This fellow is Weed, who was a drummer in the last war, and an excellent likeness." By this time, a third person, who was standing by, very quietly inquired whether /considered it a likeness. The man and his clerk stared. Your uncle, " confessing the soft impeachment," stipulated for a reason able abatement of nose, and agreed that the thing was admirable. 1839.] A CLEVER CARICATURE. 433 The rascals have got that jockey great-coat that Tommy Lee made you. But the "Adjutant " looks magnificently. The figure intended for Haight is a striking likeness of Holley. I found the " Premier " in good-humor, and pre sented him a copy, with which he was delighted. He talked it all over with Dr. Nott, going to the Deaf and Dumb Institution. Years afterward the story of the origin of this caricature was told. One evening at the house of ex-Comptroller Flagg, the promising and popular young artist Freeman was making a call. The family circle were reading and laughing over a burlesque article in the Argus, pur porting to be a description of a drill of the newly-appointed State officers, in the vacant square in front of the gubernatorial residence. As Freeman sat listening, he took out his pencil and commenced sketch ing on a sheet of paper the scene described. While thus engaged, ex- Governor Marcy came in, looked over his shoulder, and, recognizing the likenesses, said sharply and indignantly: " That s libelous, sir ! Do you know, sir, that the man who makes such a picture can be prosecuted for libel ? " " Yes," said Freeman, looking up " yes, and what shall be done with the scoundrel who wrote the article ? " The general laugh that greeted this reply showed Governor Marcy that he was known to be the author. Freeman s sketch was pronounced so excellent that it was taken the next day to be lithographed. CHAPTER XXV. 1839. Visit to Western New York. The Amistad. The Virginia Controversy. Cole s Picture. Military Reviews. School Libraries. Morus Multicaulis Fever. No Coal-Mines. Church and State. Election of a Whig Legislature. Presidential Tours. Partisanship in Office. A HURKIED trip to Chautauqua occupied the latter days of Au gust. Just before starting, Seward wrote to Mr. Weed : ATTBUKN, August 17, 1839. The Richmond Whig wrote me down as a candidate for Vice-President. Wetmore thereupon writes his gratification with this, but his protest also. To this I thought it wise to respond, because the response will be widely promulgated in the right quarter. I therefore wrote him emphatically that it was an absurd ity, and that no circumstances, public or personal, could exist which would in duce my consent to be talked of for such a purpose. I find the caricature better by daylight. It is capital, and I will preserve it. The conceit of the writer is well sustained. 28 434 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839, From Chautauqua he wrote home : WESTFIELD, Sunday Evening. It is almost a week since I left you, and this is the first time I have been alone except upon a weary bed. I passed through Seneca Falls, but without stopping. At Waterloo I met several friends at Geneva all whom I cared to see. I had a very good visit with our sister at Oanandaigua. At Rochester, George Andrew s house was desolate. I did not enter it ; but Mrs. Whittlesey made me happy by plain, unostentatious, but winning kindness. Her husband was at Buffalo. At Batavia, Mrs. Gary was well, and cheerful, and affectionate, and so was her ex cellent husband. There was a demonstration of political feeling that could not but be gratifying. At Lockport it was dull. At Niagara Falls I wanted you. From nine until midnight I was strolling upon Goat Island by the side of rapids, cascades, and cataracts, listening to thunders when the world was hushed, and viewing the silvered waves as they made stars of their own, emulous of the sky above. Eapids by moonlight seen through a grove are beautiful, and more beautiful and wonderful is the lunar rainbow, which seems to throw itself as a proscenium before the mighty stage. At Buffalo there was a salute, a review, a feu de joie, a dinner, a supper, Fred Whittlesey and other friends, a thousand visitors, and a procession of five hundred firemen with torch-lights. The procession escorted me to the boat, and the people uttered loud and hearty welcome. His reception at Westfield was not a formal parade ; but, word hav ing gone out to the farmers, people began to come in singly and in families, on foot, on horseback, and in wagons. The long room of the Westfield House was filled during the evening ; speeches of welcome were made by R. P. Marvin, the member of Congress, Dean Edson, and others. In his reply the Governor said : You have been pleased to remind me that I came here three years ago a stranger, in a season of great excitement and unhappiness, to assume a trust in volving the peace and prosperity of the citizens of this country. That task has been finished. An issue was made up upon the manner in which that delicate trust was discharged. The case was tried, and the judgment was rendered during my absence from among you. I cannot forget that the people of Chatauqua on that occasion vindicated me from reproach, and defended my good name as if it had been a property of their own. I cannot forget that I owe them a debt of lasting gratitude. I desire not to act the orator. I would forget during the time I remain among you that I am a public officer. I desire to remember only that I have been your neighbor, and am your obliged fellow-citizen. WESTFIELD, August 25th. Well, Mr. Weed, this is what I did not expect from you ! I have hurried through the Seventh and Eighth Districts in less than a week, expecting to find letters from you at the end of the journey; and, lo! here I am without my re port. I presume I might as well abdicate and resume my land agency, as you have usurped the government. The news from Tennessee and Indiana have made you bold. I think Ibrahim Pasha, the Emperor Nicholas, and you, will soon be at loggerheads for the division of the world. 1839.J PRESIDENT VAN BUREN AT AUBURN. 435 The week having passed, Seward returned home through the south ern tier of counties. At Bath, Steuben County, alluding to the accu sation of exaggerated enthusiasm in behalf of public works, he re marked : The Erie Canal, the Ohamplain Canal, and all our other canals and railroads, were made under the influence of those who were called enthusiasts. We have yet to learn which one of them the people are willing to relinquish. Improve ments and inventions have often been effected by those who believed that more could be accomplished than was found to be practicable. But no useful im provement or invention was ever made by one whose prudence exceeded his en terprise. . . . There is nothing mysterious in the matter of canals and railroads. It has al ways been known that burdens are more easily carried upon the water than upon the land. It has been but recently discovered, or at least the invention has been but recently applied to practical purposes, that burdens are more easily and therefore more cheaply transported upon iron rails on graded planes than over the unequal and rough surfaces of common roadi. Canals and railroads are but improved roads adapted to the increased business of the community and the enterprise of the times. Reading the newspaper at Auburn one morning early in September, Seward saw there that much excitement had been created in New York by the report that several pilot-boats had seen a clipper-built schooner off Sandy Hook, which appeared to be full of negroes, and was sus pected of being a pirate. A few days later it was announced that the . " suspicious-looking schooner " had been captured and brought into port by a United States brig, and that the negroes proved to be a cargo of slaves who had risen on the voyage, murdered captain and crew, and were trying to steer back to Africa. This was the Amistad, whose case was destined to occupy so large a share of public attention in years to come. But the absorbing topic of the hour in Western New York was the presidential progress. Mr. Van Buren reached Auburn on the 9th of September, accompanied by his son, Smith T. Van Buren, and his Secretary of War, Mr. Poinsett. The people from all the surrounding country, to the number of several thousand, flocked into the streets to see the President, and the procession, a mile and a half long, in his honor. He was duly welcomed, much as Mr. Clay had been, though with a demonstration more imposing and more numerously attended, a circumstance which the Whigs in their lampoons and pasquinades en deavored to account for by the fact that the menagerie was also in town, having " a real giraffe from the White Nile," and drawing dis advantageous comparisons as to the respective " height " of the two " attractions." Mr. Van Buren s courteous and dignified manner, and judiciously-chosen remarks, would have tended to disarm partisan dis- 436 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. like if that feeling was open to such influences. His own political friends were delighted with the visit. Seward called upon the Presi dent and Secretary at the hotel, a compliment which they returned in the evening. During the few days which he now quietly spent at home he noted with gratification the signs which had begun to appear, of the return of better times. A continuous line of railroads now extended to Al bany, and Auburn was not only on the thoroughfare, but the termina tion of it, and so the point of transfer from cars to stages. Its hotels were full to overflowing, and new buildings were in process of erec tion. Business in shops and streets was showing more activity. Among the improvements that date from this summer was the introduction of a long passenger-car on the Auburn & Syracuse Railroad. It was de scribed in the Auburn Journal as a " Stephenson car, built on the lat tice principle." It had little diamond-shaped windows ; was partially subdivided into three compartments, a long aisle, however, running through the whole. This was the avant-coureur of the long cars which soon superseded the small English ones, and have now become the distinctive car of the United States. People at this time thought that the journey to Albany was made with marvelous speed and very little trouble ; and so it was, when con trasted with their previous experiences of stage and canal-boat. Yet the traveler had a journey tedious enough. Rising long before day light, he would take the cars at three o clock in the morning, and pro ceed at a speed rarely as great as twenty miles an hour, with numer ous long pauses at the various stopping-places. At Syracuse he would find himself required, not only to change cars himself, but go to the baggage-car, find his trunk in the confused pile, have it changed also, and " chalked " accordingly. The same operation was repeated at Utica, and again at Schenectady, for the four railroads were distinct corporations, and such things as checks, through-tickets, and express- trains, were as yet unheard of. The journey occupied thirteen hours, passengers arriving in Albany in time to take the night-boat. It was hailed as a bright invention when one or two of these boats advertised that they would go " through without landing " to New York. The 12th of September found the Governor at his post in the Ex ecutive chamber. The sudden changes of governmental policy in re gard to banks and currency had weakened confidence, at home and abroad, in all American securities. Capital is timid, and one alarm leads to another. English capitalists were beginning to talk of what would happen if the frontier Canadian trouble should lead to war be tween the United States and Great Britain. Writing to William Brown, of Brown Brothers & Co., Liverpool, Seward said : 1839.] THE VIRGINIA CONTROVERSY. 437 ALBANY, September 16, 1839. I can easily appreciate the solicitude foreign capitalists feel on that subject, although no person here even dreams .that our Government could be guilty of so gross a violation of faith as to confiscate, in time of war, money invested in our securities in times of peace. I have noticed a decline of confidence in American securities. Nothing can be more absurd ; but what absurdity does not gain a temporary influence in the operations upon Change ? In the same letter he referred to the postal reform, then under dis cussion in Great Britain : I rejoice in the indications that a reduction of English postage is about to take place. The policy is an obvious one, both for the purpose of increase of revenue, and, what is more important, the increase of intelligence and the pros perity of commerce. We shall come to the same measure ; but, I fear, not so rapidly as the English Government. Alarms of apprehended invasions are not without their benefits, since they set thoughtful minds at work to devise means for mitigating the horrors of war, or for strengthening the national defenses. There were many such topics of correspondence at this time. Writing to Major-General Gaines, he said : I thank you for the interesting explanation of the history of your plan for the defense of our ports. It is the result of our form of government that mili tary preparations will always be delayed till danger is imminent. Among the pile of letters awaiting him on his table was a formal communication from the Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, complaining that " although one full month had elapsed " he had " received no official intelligence " of the disposition made of the subject of the three black men " who did feloniously steal," etc, and calling his attention to the fact that the demand was founded upon " an offense peculiarly and deeply affecting the general interest of the good people of this Common wealth, recognized as felony and severely punished by our laws ;" and further expressing the fear that, "if longer delay is permitted, the offenders may escape altogether." Seward, the next morning after his arrival in town, proceeded to answer the Virginia Executive, recapitulating in detail the circum stances of Mr. Caphart s application to him, and of the disposition made of the accused by the Recorder of New York, and reiterating his opin ion that the papers in the case were defective. But, he continued : It is by no means my wish to protract unnecessarily the correspondence apon the subject, or to avoid a decision upon the important principle it involves. I need not inform you, sir, that there is no law of this State which recognizes slavery no statute which admits that one man can be the property of another, or that one man can be stolen from another. On the other hand, our consti- 4:38 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. tution and laws interdict slavery in every form. Nor is it necessary to inform you that the common law does not recognize slavery, nor make the act of which the parties are accused in this case felonious or criminal. The offense charged in the affidavit and specified in the requisition is not a felony nor a crime within the meaning of the constitution, and, waiving all the detects in the affidavit, I cannot surrender the supposed fugitives, to be carried to Virginia for trial under the statute of that State. In about a fortnight came a long and indignant reply from the Lieu- tenaiit-Governor of Virginia, feeling it to be his "imperious duty promptly to protest," " entertaining a fixed opinion that your doctrines are at war with the language and spirit of the Federal Constitution, inconsistent with the true relations, rights, and duties of the States, and calculated to disturb the general harmony of the country." After the declamatory portion of his letter came the argumentative part, elaborate and ingenious, invoking Kent and Vattel and the " Letters Rogatory of Switzerland," to prove that " the State of Virginia has an unquestion able right to devise its own system of jurisprudence, to declare what shall constitute property within her borders, and finally to declare what acts shall be considered felonious or criminal, and to denounce upon those who commit them such punishment as her Legislature may pre scribe." Finally, he rather pompously declared : "I do not mean to be drawn into a discussion of the abstract right of slavery, or to urge any arguments against the right or propriety of any nation or people to interfere with our domestic institutions. That is not with the people of Virginia a debatable question. Upon that subject, I need only add, Virginia knows her rights, and will at all times maintain them." To this communication Seward replied : I am not aware, sir, that in the letter which I had the honor to address you I manifested a disposition to invite you to a discussion of the rightf ulness, abstract or otherwise, of slavery. You will excuse me, therefore, for confining myself within the range required by my argument. Taking up the Lieutenant-Governor s elaborate reasoning to prove, from authorities on the law of nations, that the, men should be surren dered because they had committed a crime, he pointed out its fatal de fect, namely, that neither Kent, Vattel, nor any other authority on in ternational law, makes this offense a crime : On the contrary, however, I must insist, with perfect respect, that the gen eral principle of civilized communities is in harmony with that which prevails in this State, that men are not the subjects of property, and of course that no such crime can exist as the " felonious stealing " of a human being considered as property. . . . While I am required by the Constitution to deliver up any fugitives from justice, charged with having committed crime, I am also bound, as an executive magistrate, to respect the liberty and protect the rights of 1839.] PORTAGE FALLS. 439 citizens of this State. ... It seems my duty to decline to deliver the persons you demand, to be carried out of the protection of the State of which they are citizens. Meanwhile, the Recorder of New York had sent the Governor a statement of the case as it was presented to him, and of his action upon it. In this he said he had found that the slave was a ship-car penter, employed at Norfolk in repairing the schooner on board of which the three men were hands ; that, after the schooner sailed, the slave was not to be found ; that two agents of the owner hastened to New York, and were waiting there for the schooner when she arrived ; that they went on board and told the captain their sus picions, and that he, denying all knowledge about the slave, helped to make search for him ; and that Isaac, the slave, was found concealed among the live-oak timber on board, and this was all they could tes tify to prove that the three men had stolen the slave. The slave s own story was that one of the colored men observed to him that he was foolish to remain in Virginia, as he could get good wages North, and that this suggestion induced him to run away and secrete himself on board the vessel. " Satisfied," said the Recorder, in conclusion, " that according to the testimony neither of the prisoners had com mitted an offense even against the law of Virginia, and that the testi mony was not such as to authorize the detention of the prisoners, I therefore discharged them." Mr. Ruggles, who was chosen Canal Commissioner in place of Gen eral Van Rensselaer, had been this summer assigned by his colleagues to active duties on the Genesee Valley Canal and the western division of the Erie Canal. This was said by the Whigs to have been done in order to throw upon him the burden of responsibilities which his colleagues were unwilling to encounter. However this may be, the " silk-stocking commissioner from New York," as the opposition jour nals sneeringly called him, put on his cowhide boots and pea-jacket, and entered zealously and vigorously upon the duties of that post. The thorough manner in which those duties were performed attested that he was as familiar with the practical working as with the philosophic principles of the system of internal improvement ; and he had the satisfaction of reporting to the Canal Board, the first season, how they could save over half a million dollars. The engineering at some points of the line of the Genesee Valley Canal was daring and difficult. Near Portage, a short distance from the upper falls of the Genesee River, there towered up a tall, precipi tous cliff. Along its side it was proposed to hang the canal, six hun dred feet above the gorge below. But the rock proved too soft, and it was decided first to tunnel the cliff, and afterward to make an open cutting through it, to the required depth. A magnificent piece of 440 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. scenery was to be spoiled by a magnificent piece of engineering. The latter would remain as its own monument ; and the thought occurred to Mr. Ruggles that the former might be preserved in a painting, which would be a memento of both. He sent for Thomas Cole, who already occupied the first rank among American landscape-artists. The task was one congenial to Cole s taste, and the picture which he made was brought to Albany, and presented to Seward, as an illus tration of the great work proceeding under his auspices. It has hung for many years in his drawing-room at Auburn, reach ing nearly from floor to ceiling. It is one of the most characteristic productions of Cole s pencil. You look up toward the distant fall be tween huge, craggy cliffs, on the summit of the highest of which is perched the " Johnson Lodge," built round a pine-tree, for the occu pancy of the contractor, the Canal Commissioner, and the artist, while pursuing their respective work. In the foreground are the remains of a gigantic beech-tree, riven by lightning, while behind and around stretches away the illimitable, autumn-tinted forest. A storm is ap proaching over the distant mountain, and over the cluster of work men s huts above the fall. The visitor to Portage now will look in vain for cliffs, forest, or lodge. The completeness of the change which the canal has wrought attests the colossal character of the work. Autumn had long been the season established by law and custom for militia inspections and parades. The projected or postponed re views of different bodies of State troops were now in order. The citi zen soldiery and their officers had, not unreasonably, counted largely upon the countenance and favor they would receive from an Ex ecutive whose record showed him to possess a high regard for the value of such organizations, and to have aided in promoting the effi ciency of the system, both as a legislator and as a military commander. The latter experience was a fortunate one, as it enabled him to go through his ceremonial duties as commander-in-chief without any of those gaucheries which the wisest and most dignified civilian is liable to exhibit when he undertakes to " set a squadron in the field." Having passed through the various subordinate grades, his promotion to be com mander-in-chief was the next regular step from the major-generalship he had held a few years before. Complying, therefore, with the wishes of the troops, he wore the uniform of his rank and went through the prescribed routine, though it had lost for him all the attractions of nov elty. ALBANY, September I5th. The autumnal aspect of our grounds is vastly less bright and cheerful than their summer verdure. It is cheerless here, and the place needs a mistress, or a master less absorbed in State affairs than I. Well ! the Troy review has passed. "With the aid of kind friends I had collected a full equipment, and a charger with 1839.] MILITIA REVIEWS. glossy mane and curved neck was at my command. I rode to Troy in a barouche. My staff, numbering ten or twelve well-looking young men, were mounted. We were received at Troy with a salute and a very pretty escort. After spending half an hour at the hotel, I repaired to Mrs. Boardman s and waited there until called to the field. The day was a long one, but everything passed off well ; and, as far as I know, satisfactorily. After dinner I called with my staff at Mr. George Warren s and at Mr. Patterson s. We rode home in the evening, fatigued, you may well imagine. Tuesday, the 24th, is assigned for the review in New York. Some of our friends here are vexed by my having engaged to go there for a " demonstration," as it will, they say, be understood. Weed goes to New York to-night ; and, as Chancellor Kent said, "he ll know whether it is wise to go. 1 ASTOR HOUSE, NEW YORK, Monday, September 23d. I came into the city quietly and unostentatiously enough, I think unexpected by all but one or two friends breakfasted and dined here, and spent the day chiefly abroad. Have as yet seen very few of the citizens but Blatchford and Bowen. I am indeed very pleasantly situated with the latter, and learned to know him more and more favorably than ever before. The two colonels are busy in arrangements for the review, and the Adjutant- General will bring off the whole affair very well, I trust. The skies seem auspi cious. On Tuesday the review took place at the Battery. Major-General Sanford s division of artillery passed in review before the Governor. The day closed with a dinner at Niblo s, given by the officers to their commander-in-chief. Among the guests were Major-General Macomb, then in chief command of the United States Army ; and Adjutant- General Jones, of the War Department at Washington. A still greater review took place on the 4th of October in New York, when the entire infantry force of the city, under command of Major-General Doughty of the Thirty-first Division, Major-General Lloyd of the Thirty-second, Major-General Jones of the Third, and Major-General Stryker of the Twenty-eighth, paraded and were re viewed by the commander-in-chief. A fortnight later, the officers of the flank companies of the four divisions of infantry invited him to a public dinner. In declining this invitation he said : The recent reviews have enabled me to obtain a better knowledge of the actual condition of that military force upon which the authorities of the city must rely when the civil police shall be found insufficient to maintain public tranquillity, and which must always constitute an important arm of public de fense against invasion. . . . It is of vital importance to the existence of repub lican government. Another journey to New York was made on the 16th of October, for the purpose of visiting the public schools of that city. Received and accompanied by some of the trustees, he carefully studied the LETTERS. [1839. workings of the system, with a view to the statements and recommenda tions of his next annual message. The project of a library for each of the eleven thousand district-schools of the State was then a subject to which he was giving attention and hearty encouragement. The Legislature in 1838 had appropriated fifty-five thousand dollars to be distributed among the different districts and employed in the pur chase of books. Various publishers were compiling and issuing copies of such works as they deemed suitable for the purpose ; and the rivalry between them permitted the books to be obtained at very cheap rates. Opinions of State officers and savants were, of course, solicited ; and they, desirous to perform the duty conscientiously, compared notes in regard to the juvenile volumes. To the Harpers, who had published the most complete of these collections, Seward wrote : The works you selected are admirably adapted to the purpose for which they were designed. The enterprise produces a competition which cannot but prove beneficial to the community. The little red wooden case containing this series of fifty small vol umes, costing twenty dollars, was sent up to Albany for examination, and stood upon his office-table. It is doubtful if any school library has ever been submitted to such careful reading and criticism, by such matured intellects. The State printer quoted from the interesting abridgment of the " Life and Works of Dr. Franklin ; " and Gulian C. Verplanck said that he was so fascinated with the description of the Chinese Empire that he had been all day reading it, up to the hour when he had been invited to " chin-chin " the Governor and " eat rice, under the light of his celestial countenance." Nor was it merely the children whose education was thought wor thy of care by the State. A letter to the Rev. John Luckey, chap lain of the State-prison at Sing Sing, after thanking him for sugges tions, said : It is my purpose to call the attention of the Legislature to the expediency of making some legislative provision for the instruction of convicts in the prison, and I find myself sustained and enlightened, on the subject by your communication. In reply to Mr. Wiltsie s suggestion that, if he could be au thorized to do so, he would procure sixty or eighty spelling-books, I very cheerfully give my advice that it shall be done. A letter of the same date to B. F. Thompson, author of " History of Long Island," thanking him for his volume, remarked that he had read with attention many portions of it in the region whose history it relates, a remark that illustrates a habit which he had, perhaps un consciously, adopted, and which continued through life that of read ing only books relating to subjects he was studying at the time. The 1839. J INVENTORS AND INVENTIONS. 443 few intervals he could spare for reading were thus most advantageous ly occupied ; and so in the course of years, as successive subjects came before him for examination, his library increased, book by book, till it amounted to several thousand volumes, no one of which was bought because he might need it in future, but every one because he did need it at the time. One Sunday morning while visiting New York, he went with several of his staff to find an Episcopal church. They entered one on or near Broadway, to which friends had frequently invited him. It happened that the church was pretty full, and they looked in vain for seats. Proceeding down the main aisle, they found every pew either filled or presenting the owner s back, in evident objection to the intrusion of strangers. Walking slowly and gravely on, closely followed by his aides-de-camp, the Governor presently found himself at the chancel, and, perceiving an open door in the rear wall, he walked out into the church-yard ; then, holding a hurried council of war among the tomb stones, it was decided to return to the hotel. By this time wardens and vestrymen, who had been startled from their propriety by the sud den appearance, and as sudden disappearance, of the Chief Magistrate of the State, came out to apologize, saying that if pew-owners had known who it was, etc. But Seward declined to enter again, saying that he had no desire to visit a church which had a seat for a Govern or, and did not have one for a stranger. Inventors had then, as now, the practice of bringing their pro jected machines to the notice of men in public office, with the vague hope of some assistance. In reference to this class of applications, he wrote to Prof. Renwick, of Columbia College : ALBANY, October, 1839. Among the duties brought upon me by my public relation is that of hearing the explanation of persons engaged in the invention of improvements in mech anism. Although it is not so written in the constitution, I am expected to hear patiently all inventors, encourage the few whose labors seem likely to result beneficially for themselves and the public, and discourage that far greater num ber whose plans are unphilosophical or absurd. I am without the requisite sci entific knowledge and without the leisure necessary for such investigations. Your distinguished reputation induces me to inquire whether I may take the liberty to refer to you some of these numerous projects for your opinion there on ? I should undoubtedly trouble you, but among them all you might happen to find some worthy of a careful examination and discriminating favor. One of those seasons of excitement and enthusiasm on agricultural subjects which are, not inaptly, called " fevers," pervaded several of the States this year. This was the "Morns multicaulis" fever. The leaves of that species of mulberry being the favorite food of the silk worm, and it having been discovered that the tree would thrive even 444: LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. in northern soils, it was believed that the production of silk might be made a profitable branch of industry. Auctions were held, at which thousands of young mulberry-trees were sold at from twenty to fifty cents apiece. Farmers planted great fields with them. Families estab lished colonies of silkworms in their kitchens and bedrooms. Machines for reeling and weaving silk were introduced in factories and industrial institutions. In Kentucky and some other States legislative action was taken for the encouragement of the culture of the mulberry and the manufacture of raw silk. Savants and philosophers are proverbially careless of matters of detail in ordinary life and business. The Governor s methodical habits occasionally saved the scientific gentlemen of the geological survey from censures which, though unmerited, would probably have been made. His calls upon them for precise accounts and regular reports were, at first, thought unreasonable, but they soon came to see the wisdom of such action. Even if the geological survey had accomplished nothing else, it would have rendered an invaluable service by its demonstration that the position and character of strata preclude all hope of discovering coal north of the limit of the Pennsylvania coal-measures ; and that projects for coal-mining, therefore, were costly chimeras, to be avoided. On the 22d of October Seward wrote his first Thanksgiving procla mation, designating Thursday, November 28th, as the day for that time- honored festival. Its recital of the subjects of thanksgiving embraced political as well as material public benefits : He hath sent us abundant harvests to reward the labors of the husbandman and supply the wants of the poor ; hath averted from us the calamities of war and pestilence ; hath suffered us to maintain and more firmly establish republi can institutions, securing a larger measure of civil and religious liberty, social tranquillity, and domestic happiness, than has ever before been enjoyed by any people ; hath crowned with good success the means which have been employed by the State, by associations, and by individuals, for the development of the abounding resources of our country, the relief of the unfortunate, the reforma tion of the vicious, the improvement of education, the cultivation of science, the perfection of the arts, and the maintenance of the Christian religion. As to the ever-recurring problem of the relations of Church and state, his opinions were unchanged through life. In a letter of Octo ber 28th he said : No truth was ever more clear than that the connection between religious and civil institutions is calculated to degrade and corrupt both. ... I be lieve that no democratic government can stand but by the support of Chris tianity. I believe, also, that it is an essential principle of democracy that there should be unlimited freedom of conscience. 1839.] A WHIG SENATE. 445 A fresh shock to financial confidence and an increase of commercial embarrassment was caused by the suspension of specie payment by the United States Bank, now a local institution of Pennsylvania ; although, when Mr. Biddle had resigned its presidency in March, its condition had been stated to be eminently prosperous. The banks at the South and West followed its example. Speaking of these affairs, in a letter to William Brown, of Liverpool, Seward said : You will have learned, before this will reach you, of the suspension of our Southern banks. The New York banks, and other institutions in this State, will, I have no doubt, remain firm. If so, they will be able to assist the sus pended banks at an early day in resuming specie payments. Our general bank ing law requires amendments, but I entertain great confidence that with such amendments it will prove useful. We are now in the midst of our annual elec tion in this State. You will have the result by the same vessel that carries out this letter. The election, though less vigorously contested than that of the year before, yet was important, since upon it would depend the political character of the Legislature at the next session. As usual, a new As sembly was to be chosen, and a Senator from each of the eight dis tricts. In the Third District three were to be chosen, as there had been a death and a resignation during the year. The district, which contained Albany, Troy, Hudson, and Schenectady, was a doubtful one, and the election there excited a special interest. In the Seventh District, Chief- Justice Spencer was nominated by the Whigs, but declined. The Con servatives kept up the organization which had rendered such effective aid to the Whigs the year before. They held a convention at Syracuse on the 3d of October, warmly opposing the financial policy of the Gen eral Administration. The election-days came, and when they were over it was an nounced that the Whigs had carried both branches of the Legisla ture. The Senate would no longer be an obstacle to their control of the government. The three Whig candidates in the Third District were elected, Mitchell Sanford, Friend Humphrey, and General Root the latter by a majority of only four or five votes. The Whig nominees in the Fourth, Sixth, Seventh, and Eighth Districts, James G. Hop kins, A. B. Dickinson, Mark H. Sibley, and Abram Dixon, were success ful, so that the Democrats had but three of the ten. Mr. Van Buren s tour had been made in vain so far as New York was concerned. Presidential " tours " often lead to political disaster. A President is always solicited by his friends in different localities to travel in their region, and thereby add to the party prestige and power. He knows that the heads of other governments gain in popular 446 LIFE ^D LETTERS. [1839, favor by public progresses ; and he knows that he himself before his election has gained supporters during such progresses by his courtesy, tact, or eloquence. But there is one element in the calculation which is usually overlooked. The President of the United States differs from other rulers, in the fact that he cannot present himself before the people without being expected to appear at once in two different characters the one that of a leader of a political party, the other that of Chief Magistrate of the whole people. He cannot act both parts with success on public platforms before popular assemblies. If he maintains the dignity and reserve of his official station, he appears cold and chilling to his political friends. If he shares in the warmth of their party en thusiasm, he seems to have forgotten the proprieties of his high trust. Mr. Van Buren and Mr. Clay had both traveled through the State this summer, and were received with like demonstrations. So far as the impartial observer could perceive, they had both conducted themselves with propriety, had made speeches equally judicious and wise, and had been greeted with public enthusiasm in which, of the two, the President had the larger share. Nevertheless, the fact remained, and was confirmed by the election, that the party of Mr. Clay was strength ened by his visit, while that of Mr. Van Buren was weakened by his. Among the unsuccessful Whig candidates for Senators was Philip Hone, who was the first to urge the adoption of the name of " Whig " by the opposition party in New York. The Whigs of Albany cele brated their triumph in the State with bonfires, processions, and music. They were to hold a festive gathering at one of the hotels, and invited the Governor to participate. His reply defined the course that he pursued in regard to such matters : ALBANY, November nth. Since my election to the office I have the honor to hold, I have been invited, on several occasions, to meet assemblies of my fellow-citizens with whose political opinions my own coincided. I have in all instances declined such invitations, for reasons which I will state with frankness. I have always believed that the Chief Magistrate of the State ought to exercise his trust for the welfare and happiness of the whole people, and that he could not, without giving to a portion of his constituents cause of just offense, mingle in the par tisan controversies of the times. I think those by whose suffrage I occupy that high trust would not willingly see me depart from the rule I have pursued. Every year s experience strengthened his conviction of the propriety of this rule. I UNiVE ^^^Jj^oRHlL*^ 1839.] THE HARRISBURG CONVENTION. " 447 CHAPTER XXVI. 1839. The Harrisburg Convention. General Harrison nominated. Congress disorganized. R. M. T. Hunter. The Patroon. The Helderberg War. Story of a Youthful Friendship. David Berdan. Scotchmen. Gulian C. Verplanck. Frankenstein. IN the various congressional districts of the State the Whigs were now holding their local conventions to appoint delegates to the National Convention to meet at Harrisburg, on December 4th, to nominate a presidential candidate. Acknowledging a letter from Speaker Penrose of Pennsylvania, Seward wrote : It would afford me as much pleasure to communicate freely my views and feelings on the subject of the presidential election as it does to read your own ; circumstances, however, which you can easily conceive, have rendered it alike necessary and expedient, in regard to the public welfare in this State, that I should leave the discussion of the subject to others. Popular sentiment among the Whigs of New York was divided between Mr. Clay, General Harrison, and General Scott. Mr. Clay s talent, eloquence, and personal fascination of manner, attracted a mul titude of devoted supporters. General Harrison s strength lay in the fact that he was the most unobjectionable and therefore the most suit able candidate. Mr. Webster, though reasonably assured of the sup port of nearly all of the New England delegates, had little strength at the South and West, and had written from London, while making a summer tour in Europe, that he would not be a candidate. Mr. Clay was the favorite candidate of the masses of the party ; but leaders doubted his availability as a candidate in New England and the Middle States. An antislavery feeling urged the selection of some candidate not a slaveholder. Furthermore, there was a lesson taught by the Democratic success with General Jackson, which all parties had accept ed, and treasured up for future guidance. This was, that a general who had won victories for his country, and, by his calling, had been held aloof from its political controversies, was more likely to arouse popular enthusiasm as a candidate than any statesman of far greater capacity and fitness for the office. There were two generals between whom the Whigs might choose each of high military fame, and both understood to hold Whig principles General Harrison and General Scott. When the New York delegates left for Harrisburg, it was under stood that part of them would adhere to Clay throughout, and that the other part would go either for Harrison, Scott, or whoever should prove, on comparing views, to be the most available candidate to de- 4AS LIFE A ND LETTERS. [1839. feat Van Buren s reelection. When the New York newspapers were received in Albany, containing accounts of the assembling of the con vention and its preliminary proceedings, it appeared as if Mr. Clay had almost all the Southern delegates, and a decided and outspoken party among the Northern ones. He had nearly if not quite a majority of the convention. The other delegates were divided. Then it was an nounced that the several State delegations were meeting separately and comparing notes, through committees, and that the friends of Scott had finally agreed to support Harrison. The next day the steam boat brought the news that Harrison had been nominated. Then came the intelligence that Clay s friends were to be appeased by the nomi nation of a Clay man for Vice-President. He was to be a Virginian also, to conciliate Southern support for the ticket. The person select ed with such care to fill these conditions was John Tyler, who had been a Southern candidate for Vice- President in 1836. The usual meetings of ratification were held in the various cities. The Whig newspapers placed the names of Harrison and Tyler at the head of their columns ; the party leaders avowed cordial support. Mr. Clay s friends unhesitatingly pledged his concurrence. Nevertheless, the first feeling among the Whig masses was one of depression rather than exultation, arising, doubtless, from the disappointment of cher ished hopes in regard to Mr. Clay. The Democrats were correspond ingly elated, arguing that the Whigs had set aside their chief states man, and taken in his stead a candidate whom Van Buren had beaten once, and could again. They dwelt upon the fact also that Harrison would have no strength in the South, for four States, Tennessee, South Carolina, Georgia, and Arkansas, did not even send delegates to Har- risburg. The newspapers were now filled with details of what they called the " organization and proceedings of the House of Representa tives," the substance of which was, that the House had not organ ized, and was not proceeding at all. The two parties were so nearly balanced that it was doubtful which would elect the Speaker. Six seats claimed by Whigs five from New Jersey and one from Penn sylvania were contested by Democrats. When the members had gathered in the hall on Monday morning, December 2d, and the Clerk of the former Congress had, in accordance with usage, commenced to call the roll, he stopped when he reached New Jersey, and, saying that five of the seats from that State were contested, asked that he might make a statement. Immediately there arose a long, rambling, and sometimes violent debate, which lasted four days. On Thursday John Quincy Adams rose and reproved the Clerk for obstructing busi ness. For a few moments the House was hushed, to hear the vener able ex-President s opinions. A member moved that he should take 1839.] TROUBLE ON THE VAN RENSSELAER MANOR. 449 the chair, put the question, and declared it carried. Mr. Adams took the chair, and thenceforward acted as presiding officer. He decided that the names of the New Jersey members who had certificates of election should be called. Appeal was taken from this decision, and the debate was resumed with more method and order, though still with acrimony. Ultimately his decision was reversed. Meanwhile legislation was suspended. The Senate met and adjourned from day to day, and the President s message stood in type at the Globe office. Finally, at the close of two or three weeks, the New Jersey con tested seats were referred to a committee, and B. M. T. Hunter, of Virginia, was elected Speaker. Hunter was understood to be a Cal- houn man, opposed to the sub-Treasury, and had voted with the Whigs on the New Jersey case. He was elected by a combination of the Whigs with a portion of the Democrats. The President s message was received on the day before Christmas. It was largely devoted to financial questions, adhering to and enforcing by new arguments the policy previously adopted in regard to banks and the sub-Treasury. The year which had opened with the " wars and rumors of wars " of the " Patriots " in Canada, was not to close without a call to arms still nearer home. The ancient manor of Rensselaerwyck, which dated back to the time of the early Dutch settlers, had been handed down from father to son in the Van Rensselaer family, through a long line of " Patroons." While modern customs and innovations had gradually changed the aspect of the whole country, society, and government, the Patroon and his tenants were still continuing the old usages of feudal tenure, of perpetual leases, of rent payable in fowls and bushels of wheat, in personal service, and in quarter sales. The manor com prised a broad region of Albany and Rensselaer Counties, " extending northward up along both sides of Hudson River, from Barren Island to Kahoos, and east and west each side of the river backward into the woods, twenty-four English miles." It had now become well settled, cultivated, and improved. The tenants had gradually come to think that their long occupancy of the lands, and their improvements, had vested at least a part of the ownership in themselves, and that the rents paid during so long a series of years more than compensated for the wild land which the first Van Rensselaers had sold to the original tenants. This theory had been vastly strengthened by the neglect of " the old Pa troon," General Van Rensselaer, to make collections of his rents. When he died in the early part of this year, the manor had been di vided between his sons, Stephen taking the part in Albany County, on the west side of the river, and William that on the eastern side, in Reiisselaer County. A third brother, Courtlandt, took the real estate in New York City. It was in Albany County that the troubles with. 29 4-50 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. the tenants commenced, the young Patroon s lawyers having advised him that he might enforce his legal right to collect arrears. When this claim was made in behalf of the heir, the tenants very generally resolved to resist it as illegal and unjust. Legal measures were taken to compel payment ; but, when the sheriff went out upon the farms, he was met by gatherings of angry men, with threats and denuncia tions. Alarms were given through the neighborhood, horns sounded, tar-barrels fired, and the obnoxious writs seized and thrown into the flames, while shouts of " Down with the rent ! " were heard from the gathering crowd of rural rioters, who with brandished sticks and arms, and threats of personal violence, compelled the official to turn his horses heads toward home. Deputies sent on similar errands to vari ous localities had the same experience. There still remained the resource of the posse comitatus. The sheriff summoned six or seven hundred citizens to appear at his office on Mon day morning, at ten o clock. Great was the excitement and much the merriment in the crowd that gathered round the office, either in obe dience to his call, or from curiosity to hear the results. The merriment increased when Sheriff Archer came out on the sidewalk, and com menced to call the roll, which showed that he was no respecter of per sons, for among the names were those of ex-Governor Marcy, Recorder McKoun, John Van Buren, the presidents and cashiers of the banks, the Patroon s lawyers, and the Patroon himself. The posse proceeded on horseback, on foot, and in carriages, with the sheriff in command, twelve miles from the town, till they reached a hamlet at the foot of the Helderberg. But here the posse, summoned according to law, met another posse, not summoned at all, and defiant of any law whatever. The unlawful gathering outnumbered the lawful one, for it mustered fifteen or eighteen hundred men, and furthermore it had clubs, while the sheriff s posse had none. The sheriff became satisfied that his whole force was " entirely inadequate to overcome the resistance," an opinion in which his whole force unanimously concurred. So they retreated to Albany, in as good order as they went out of it. Only one alternative remained to vindicate the majesty of the offended law. That was to apply to the Governor, " according to the statute in such case made and provided," for a military force to enable the sheriff to execute the process. Governor Seward heard the story and requested that it should be put in writing, sworn to, and corrob orated by the proper affidavits. This was done, and the Governor summoned the Attorney-General, the Secretary of State, the Adjutant - General, and some discreet and respectable citizens of Albany, to a con ference. At this consultation, it was decided not to appeal to the " last argument of kings," until the legal resorts of republics had been exhausted ; and the Governor accordingly instructed the sheriff to 1839.] THE "HELDERBERG WAR." 451 obtain warrants and attachments, in due form of law, against the resisters, and to go this time with an armed posse to execute the pro cess. The sheriff summoned armed men to the number of one hundred and twenty, and on the following Monday they started in wagons for the Helderberg, or, as it was pronounced in those days in that region, "the Helderbarrack." Meanwhile, the Governor, to be prepared to furnish military force, if it should be actually required, gave notice to Major-General Sanford in New York to hold in readiness nine hundred men of the First Division of Artillery, and to Major-General Doughty to have in readi ness six hundred men of the infantry division, and to Brigadier-Gen eral Averill, of Montgomery County, to be ready to march five hun dred of his brigade. Hardly had the sheriff and his posse started, when a rain-storm com menced, which soon rendered the roads impassable. Toward night the rain increased ; the wind blew tempestuously. The city was full of rumors of disasters to the expedition, that they were hemmed in, that they were without food or shelter, etc. The Governor, after having dispatched Stephen Myers with two wagon-loads of bread and meat, waited till late at night, with the Adjutant-General, for the " express " that was to bring news from the sheriff. At two o clock a tap at the door announced the messenger s arrival. He brought a written report from the sheriff, that, although he had met no active resistance as yet, a large force of a thousand or more was assembling, " with cannon," for the avowed purpose of opposing him ; and, meanwhile, the effective measure had been taken of closing all places that could give accommodation to his posse, and that they needed an immediate supply of tents, provisions, and blankets. It was evident that the hour had come for Executive action. The private secretary was sent to summon the Secretary of State, Comp troller, and Adjutant-General, to a midnight council of war in the Governor s office. The aides-de-camp were dispatched with orders to the troops to move. The council remained in session all night ; and the dawn of day found them there, round the table strewed with papers, and with candles still burning ; but the night had not been idly spent. The staff found themselves in active service ; the Adjutant-General proved his West Point education of value in enabling him to accomplish that greatest proof of military skill, the massing of an effective body of troops at the shortest possible notice. Colonel Amory was already in New York to attend the movement of troops from that quarter. Colonel Benedict was sent " to the front " with orders that the armed posse should be organized into a military force, and information that reinforcements would be promptly supplied them. Meanwhile, the 452 L I FE A ND LETTERS. [1839. commissariat was supplied by wagon-loads of bread and meat, blankets, and tents. Major William Bloodgood was assigned to the command of a battal ion consisting of the Burgesses Corps, the Van Rensselaer Guards, the Union Guards, and the Republican Artillery, of Albany ; besides three Troy companies, the Citizens Corps, the Independent Artillery, and the City Guards. The various bodies of troops were ordered to move at once. In the morning a proclamation was issued by the Governor, enjoin ing upon the people of the country " to aid and assist the officers of justice in performing their duty," and appealing "to all who have taken part in these unlawful proceedings to reflect upon their nature and consequences, and to remember that resistance to the officers of justice is a high misdemeanor ; that, when such resistance becomes concerted or organized, it is insurrection, and that, if death ensue, the penalties of treason and murder are incurred ; that the only lawful means to obtain relief from any injuries or grievances of which they complain, are by application to the courts of justice arid the Legisla ture; " and saying: " I assure them that they shall receive every facility which the Executive department can afford, in bringing their complaints before the Legislature. I enjoin upon them, therefore, to desist from their opposition, and to conduct and demean themselves as orderly, peaceable, and well-disposed citizens justly estimating the invaluable privileges they enjoy, and knowing that the only security for the pres ervation of their rights consists in the complete ascendency of the laws." The privy seal was affixed to the proclamation, it was published in all the newspapers, and copies were struck off in handbill form, to be scattered broadcast in the insurrectionary region. The militia troops moved with a celerity worthy of veterans. It was on Tuesday morn ing that their orders were issued, and before noon the Troy companies passed through Albany on their way to the front, and were furnished with two field-pieces from the arsenal. By Wednesday evening, the brigade from Montgomery County arrived by rail, ready to be for warded to the field. Rapidity of movement achieved success in the " Helderberg War," as it so often has in greater campaigns. While the Governor was sitting at breakfast on Thursday morning, a bearer of military dispatches dashed up to his door on a panting horse, and handed him a packet from Major Bloodgood, dated at the headquarters of the expeditionary force at Rensselaerville. It stated that he had met a large assemblage of people at Reidsville, but halting on the hill, and forming his force in solid column, he had marched into the midst of them, and told the sheriff to do his duty ; that the sheriff had taken one prisoner who had been sent to the rear (greatly to his relief, as he had begged for quarter, under the impression that he was 1839.] RETURN OF THE TROOPS. 453 to be instantly shot). The major stated that the appearance of the troops, and the knowledge of the reinforcements so promptly hurrying forward, had made such an impression upon the inhabitants that there was no longer danger to his command ; that the troops would continue with the sheriff, and enable him to execute his process, as they passed through the country. Meanwhile, there came to the Executive man sion a letter from Azor Taber and Henry G. Wheaton, saying that leading citizens of the towns where the disturbance existed had come in to ask those gentlemen to make representations in their behalf to the Governor. They were desirous to avail themselves of the occasion presented by his proclamation to end the difficulties. They requested Messrs. Taber and Wheaton to assure the Governor that all resistance to the sheriff should be withdrawn, and that the assemblage of people should quietly disperse. Dispatches continued to come during Thursday and Friday, and finally they announced that the sheriff had now accomplished the ser vice of all his process ; that disturbance no longer existed ; that every purpose in view in calling out the military force had been effected. The major complimented his men, saying that he had never seen regular troops more manfully endure fatigue, exposure, and hardships. Orders were at once issued by the Governor for their recall, and sent to Rens- selaerville. General Averill s command on reaching Albany were re viewed by the Governor, informed there would be no occasion for their aid, and ordered back to St. Johnsville for discharge from service. Sunday morning there was a heavy snow-storm. In the midst of it, and while the bells were ringing for church, the sound of drums was heard approaching on the hill beyond the Capitol. It was the returning force who, wrapped in their blankets, had marched twelve miles since daybreak, plodding through the drifting snow, and bring ing their three prisoners in a wagon. The Governor sprang into his sleigh and drove up State Street, met, received, and welcomed the troops, under the shelter of the Schenectady Railroad Depot, and thanked them for their good conduct and patriotism. They cheered him in return and marched to their respective armories ; and so ended the first campaign of " the Helderbarrack." Quiet having been temporarily restored, the Patroon made a state ment to the public through the press, recapitulating the history of the grant and of the controversy. He stated what the tenants claimed to be their grievances, and what they proposed by way of redress ; griev ances which, he contended, were unreal, and claims which he considered unfounded. He narrated how, after the death of his father, the will was proved, and the usual call upon persons indebted to make pay ments was published by advertisement and handbills. Some of the representatives of the tenants had, in May, asked an interview with 454 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. him ; had stated their grievances to be the increase of rent caused by the increased value of the wheat, fowls, and personal service, in which it was paid ; the reservation of streams, mill privileges, mines and minerals, timber, and rights of way, and the " quarter sales " which rendered transfer of property difficult, and profitable sale of it impos sible. They asked that new leases should be given them instead of the old ; that payment should be in fixed sums of money instead of pay ments in kind ; that they should have the privilege of buying the fee- simple of their lands for such sum as the rent represented the interest of ; arrears, they thought, should be remitted in whole or in part. To this the Patroon had replied that he could not acknowledge their grievances ; that their claims for redress were inadmissible ; that their agreements had been voluntarily entered into, and had continued with out change of terms ; that he was willing to accept money instead of wheat ; that he was willing to sell the lands, and to arrange about arrears on such terms as should be suitable for each individual case. This reply had brought a rejoinder from the tenants, dated on the 4th of July, intimating their purpose to resist; and as they had continued to act in this hostile spirit, the troubles had finally culminated in the Ex ecutive call for troops to enforce the laws. The approach of the holiday season brought, as usual, invitations to festive gatherings. It will suffice here to quote an extract from one of Seward s letters the one to the St. Andrew s Society : When the history of this age shall be written, it must award to the people of Scotland the merit of patient and contented industry, incorruptible integrity, loyalty combined with indomitable love for civil and religious liberty, and dis tinguished success in intellectual philosophy, which is the most abstruse and difficult of all sciences, and in those works of the imagination which relieve the cares and cheer the way of human life. To the character of such a people I pay now and always involuntary respect and homage. "I think, Governor," said a delighted Scottish friend, on reading this letter, "that whatever they may say aboot your notion o Irish love o truth, they canna deny that you re vara right aboot Scotch love o metapheesics." The St. Nicholas Society urgently invited him to attend the annual festival in New York this year ; but his engagements at Albany obliged him to decline. It was at this meeting that his old friend Gulian C. Verplanck, whose rare humor and scholarly erudition admirably fitted him for the place, was installed as president. His inaugural address was in the style of that of the President of the United States, gravely summing up the state of its foreign relations, to wit, those with the St. George s, the St. Andrew s, the St. Patrick s, and St. David s Societies, in regard to all of whom he promised to maintain a " firm yet concilia- 1839.] A YOUTHFUL FRIENDSHIP. 455 tory policy," especially in regard to invitations to supper. Financial affairs were treated from a similarly high standpoint, and a comparison was drawn between the treasury of the St. Nicholas Society entirely free from debt and that of the United States, whose outstanding notes rendered its position so much less advantageous. The travesty was pronounced, by the Whig papers at least, to be superior to the genuine message of Van Buren. The same evening he remarked : " On this spot where our festive board is spread, in 1690, stood the humble, rose- embowered cottage of the good Dutch dominie, Everardus Bogardus, and here was born the loved, child of his old age, his sole heiress, Anneke, who, under her matron name of Anneke Jans, became the faithful mother not only of a numerous and worthy race, but of tnat famous and still continued litigation with Trinity Church, so magnificent in its amount, so rich in its black-letter learning, and so gloriously pro tracted in its duration." Lewis Gay lord Clark was the editor of the Knickerbocker. He had written in October to Seward to ask permission to publish in that magazine a manuscript in his possession. It was an address delivered by Seward ten years before, on the erection of a monument in the college-grounds at Schenectady, to the memory of David Berdan. Young Berdan and Seward were in college together, and studied law in the same office. This address had been the closing scene of one of those episodes of youthful friendship and affection, the memory of which is cherished through life with mingled feelings of pleasure and sadness. The two were close associates and warm friends, with tastes in common. They were the depositories of each other s secrets as they strolled through the college-grounds, sat side by side in the hall of the Adelphic, or plodded together through Kent and Story in John Anthon s law-office in New York. Long and closely-written letters passed between them when separated, and a favorite imagination with both was that of friendly companionship through life. The address told how their acquaintance commenced in 1817, and described Berdan as a youth then in his fifteenth year, with downcast air, unassuming deportment, and retiring manners. His temper was cheerful, his conversation animated and enthusiastic, and his disposition gentle and confiding. It went on to say that he gave evidence of in tellectual powers highly improved by study and reflection ; that he wrote and spoke with ease and elegance ; yet that collegiate honors never excited his emulation, nor did visions of public prominence. His taste inclined him to literary pursuits, and his pleasures were in the study of books and Nature. He was generous, warm-hearted, and in dependent. When, at the conclusion of their law studies, the two friends were separated, Seward went to the west to commence his practice, and Berdan determined to prepare himself for literary 456 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1839. pursuits. A letter to Seward urged him to join in a pedestrian tour : I am impatient personally to communicate to you a project which I have conceived. Do not believe I am jesting. I tell you seriously that I hope ere long to walk through part of France, Switzerland, England, perhaps Scotland, and withal to touch at Gibraltar. The plan is all matured. There will be three of us. We go in the plainest dress, partake of the plainest food. I now think that I shall realize the dream of my earlier years, and indulge myself with a view of those places of which I have read so much, and upon which I have dwelt so deeply. Shall I indeed see Kome the mistress of the world? and who knows but when there I shall see the face of Lord Byron ? Think seriously of going with us, and that in less than two months. Before setting out on this foreign tour, Berdan traversed, on foot, portions of the Northern, Middle, and Southern States, paying the hom age of enthusiastic devotion to Nature among the islands of Lake George and on the banks of the Niagara. " I saw him for the last time on this romantic excursion. We parted on the shore of the Cayuga Lake." The memoir went on to describe how the crowning of his wishes came at last, and he embarked for Gibraltar; landed there and traversed Spain and France, " not like other tourists, with the speed of the post, but rather after the manner of Goldsmith, conversing with the people in their own language, and lingering wherever monument or legend furnished any tradition worthy to be recorded ; " how he sought mate rials for history or romance, and wrote at Cadiz, while Irving was col lecting, at Madrid, facts for his life of Columbus ; how he passed the winter in Paris, " struggling with that insidious disease which seems to delight in producing premature development of the intellectual powers, that it may signalize its slow but certain triumph ; " how the returning spring brought as usual hopes of recovery, destined as usual to sad dis appointment ; " how he embarked on the Cameo for Boston, in exuber ant spirits but with an emaciated constitution, his rich and varied con versation, his modest demeanor, and the evident frailty of his hold on life," moving the feelings of the passengers ; and how on the twentieth day of the voyage he was found in his chair, expiring from an effusion of blood, the book which he had been reading fallen from his hand. The crew were called together, the burial-service read, and his remains com mitted to the deep. And so ended the dream of life, literature, ambi tion, and friendship. During life, Seward s favorite form of recreation was travel. Activity and motion seemed to accord with his temperament, and were the more grateful, perhaps, because his official or professional duties generally made his life a sedentary one. An hour s ride, a day s excursion, or a month s journey, that others would find dull or tedious, always seemed to have an animating and even exhilarating effect upon him. The 1839.J FRANKENSTEIN. 4.57 change of scene, the relief from care, the altered current of thought, and the opportunity for philosophic study of places and men, rendered travel and projects of travel always attractive. Occasionally, one of his excursions from Albany would be to visit his old friends, the Shakers, at Niskayuna. Here he was always sure of a hospitable welcome. Justus Harwood, Frederick Wicker, Aunt Clarissa, and other leading personages, came to greet him. There was general hand-shaking at " the store," and with all the members of the family ; and a bountifully-spread table, with the neatest of white cloths, standing on a floor that was polished till it shone, offered him every rural luxury. A young sculptor, erect and fine-looking, with dark, curling hair, came this month from Philadelphia at the request of some of the Gov ernor s friends to make a bust of him. Of German descent, but Ameri can education, modest disposition, but already showing high promise both as a painter and a sculptor, Frankenstein soon became a favorite with all the household. The Governor invited him to stay at the house, and he remained while his work was in progress. It was not easy to obtain sittings even under these circumstances, for there was no hour of the day that could be spared. However, Frankenstein set up clay in one corner of the office and modeled the features while the Governor was writing or conversing with his visitors. So the " counterfeit pre sentment " steadily grew without effort or thought on the part of the subject of it. This unusual method of proceeding had one advantage, since it enabled the artist to catch every expression. Frankenstein remained some months. He made a fine bust of John C. Spencer and one of Mrs. Seward, and painted a portrait of the Gov ernor for Colonel Amory. One of his paintings, the head of a child, was pronounced an admirable work of art. His fondness for poetry and music, and other congenial tastes, had made him and Willis Gay- lord Clark warm frjends. The closing days of December were devoted to the preparation of the annual message, or at least so much of them as could be spared from the flood of visitors now pouring in, increased as it was in num bers and persistence by the knowledge that there was now to be a Senate which would confirm the Governor s appointments. Frequently the only hours for work were those usually allotted to sleep, between midnight and breakfast-time. Two great green sofas which stood in the hall near his office would be drawn together to make an improvised bed, on which the Governor took a short respite from his labors, by an hour or two of sleep. This would suffice for the night, the lamps having been left burning and the servant having orders to call him at three o clock. 458 L IF E AND LETTERS. [1840. CHAPTER XXVII. 1840. The Whigs in Power. Appointments. Virginia s Threats. Antislavery Laws. The Schools in New York. The Old Writing-Chair. The First Daguerreotypes. Social Life. John A. King. Stephens. St. Patrick and St. George. Natives and Foreigners. The " Higher Law." NEW-YEAK S-DAY, 1840, opened, like its predecessor of 1839, with a midnight serenade and a bountiful collation ready for all comers, spread in the hall of the Executive mansion. The old Dutch customs of New- Year hospitality, visits, and good-wishes, were nowhere more carefully observed than at the State capital. Immediately after sunrise children began to perambulate the streets, to ring or knock at each door, wish the inmates a " Happy New- Year," and receive in return a New-Year s cake stamped with "pictures." Many thrifty housewives had a basket of these standing in the hall, to supply the juvenile demands. Before noon every lady was expected to be in her parlor to receive the gentle men, who, making the rounds of their acquaintance, were calling in rapid succession during the day ; the call consisting usually of a hasty interchange of New-Year s greetings and good-wishes, the visitors hav ing no time to sit down. A table loaded with refreshments often stood in the back-parlor. Every visitor was invited and expected to take at least a glass of wine, and a New-Year s cake. Before his peregrinations were over, if the former had not filled his head, the latter had filled his pockets, or had so accumulated in his sleigh that he could have the pleasure of sending a bagful to the Orphan Asylum, or of bestowing them in largess upon the street-urchins who were ever ready for more. Though shops and stores were closed for the holiday, the streets pre sented a scene of unusual activity and animation, for the walks were thronged with pedestrians, while the jingle of the bells of the sleighs, and the laughter of their occupants, added to the gayety of the hour. At the Governor s house the throng was great, though orderly, and less boisterous than the year before. All passed off with systematic ar rangement. Barrels of New-Year s cakes stood at the door, to be handed out to the children. The great hall and all the parlors were thrown open to accommodate the crowd, whose movements were facili tated by an improvised place of egress, steps having been added to the large window that reached to the floor of the dining-room. The Gov ernor, surrounded by his staff, received his guests in the drawing-room. The refreshment-tables were resupplied as fast as cleared ; and when the Common Council, the Burgesses Corps, or other military association, came in a body, they were ushered to another hall in the story above, where cold turkey and champagne awaited them. Fortunately, the Leg- 1840.J THE EFFECT OF CANALS AND RAILWAYS. 459 islature was not to meet until the ensuing Tuesday ; so there was a breathing-space for the tired Executive household. When the Legislature met, on Tuesday morning, the Whigs re- elected Speaker Patterson, in the Assembly ; while in the Senate, also, they had the satisfaction of seeing themselves at last in a majority. One of the first things to be done was to settle the respective terms of the Senators elected from the Third District. Three slips of paper were placed in a box, and offered to each of them, in turn, by a page. A suppressed laugh went round the Chamber, at the caprice of For tune, when it was found that Mr. Sanford, who had been elected by several thousand majority, drew the short term of a year ; while Gen eral Root, who had barely got in by a majority of four or five votes, rose and announced, " Mr. President, I have the full term, four years ! " The Governor s message was long and elaborate. It detailed the history of the Virginia controversy and the Rensselaerwyck Manor difficulties. The larger portion of the document, however, was de voted to the subject of internal improvement, narrating the history of the system of canals and railroads so far as prosecuted, since the time when Washington, standing at Fort Stanwix, in 1783, foresaw the capa bility of New York for inland navigation and its immense importance ; and when Jefferson pronounced " roads, canals, and rivers, to be great foundations of national prosperity and union." The message summed up the policy of the State in this regard. As to the results already accomplished, he remarked : Buffalo and Oswego, Binghamton and Elmira, which Nature seemed to have excluded from commerce with New York, now enjoy greater facilities of access than Utica did before the canals were made ; and Chicago, a thousand miles distant, exchanges her productions for the merchandise of the same city at less expense and with less delay than Oswego could have done at the same period. The wheat of Chautauqua County, on the border of the State, displaces that staple on the shores of the Hudson ; and Orange and Dutchess cheerfully relinquish its culture for the more profitable agriculture required to furnish the daily supplies of a great city. Lumber from Tompkins and Chemung, and ship- timber from Grand Island, supply the wants of the city of New York. Iron from the bankg of the Ausable is exchanged for the salt of Onondaga. The gypsum of Madison and Cayuga fertilizes the fields of Pennsylvania, and the coal of that State is moving to supply the place of the forests of the "West. Rail roads have immeasurably increased the facilities of intercourse, and expedited the transmission of intelligence. Political influence and power are distributed, and our State, from an inferior position, has risen rapidly to unquestioned as cendency in the Union. The legal reforms suggested in the message of the previous year were again urged among them, the reorganization of the Court of Chancery ; the doing away with unnecessary, prolix, dilatory, and eva sive pleadings ; the reduction of costs ; the removal of county patronage 460 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. from the control of judges ; and the abolition of the imprisonment of non-resident debtors, a class who had not shared in the benefits of former laws abrogating imprisonment for debt. The needs of the va rious benevolent institutions were then set forth, and the project of school-district libraries announced as having been carried into successful operation. The Governor further suggested that " provision be made by law for the instruction of convicts in the State-prisons, and for supplying them with such books as shall conduce to their reformation." In the same connection he recommended the improvement of the con dition of county jails, and the establishment of a House of Refuge in the western part of the State. But the paragraph of the message which was destined to excite most attention, and which was a theme for years of acrimonious discussion, was one of the various suggestions about education : The advantages of education ought to be secured to many, especially in our large cities, whom orphanage, the depravity of parents, or other forms of accident or misfortune, seem to have doomed to hopeless poverty and igno rance. . . . The children of foreigners found in great numbers in our popu lous cities and towns, and in the vicinity of our public works, are too often deprived of the advantages of our system of public education, in consequence of prejudices arising from differences of language and religion. It ought never to be forgotten that the public welfare is as deeply concerned in their education as in that of our own children. I do not hesitate, therefore, to recommend the establishment of schools in which they may be instructed by teachers speaking the same language with themselves, and professing the same faith. This suggestion was not the result of carelessness or inadvertence, though some well-meaning friends afterward sought to excuse it as such. It was the result of reflection and consultation, since the Staten Island celebration. The school-returns from New York during the pre vious year had shown that there were twenty-five thousand children in that city who did not attend school, but were growing up in vice and crime in the streets. Whatever the cause might be, whether neglect, or prejudice, or bigotry, on the part of their parents, there was the fact, and the Governor sought to find a remedy. He invited to confer with him on the subject two divines, each eminent for religious zeal and in tellectual power. These were the Rev. Dr. Luckey, of the Methodist Church, and the Rev. Dr. Nott, the Presbyterian President of Union Col lege. They visited Albany, discussed the subject from their respective standpoints, were solicitous to aid the Governor in finding a solution, and agreed that any form of education was better than none ; that the benefits of the common-school system should be impartially and fairly shared by all. The draft of that part of the message, while its funda mental idea remained the same, was more than once changed in phraseol ogy, and that which was finally adopted not only received the sanction 1840.] THE OLD WRITIXG-CHAIR. 461 of the two clergymen, but was thought by them to be a fortunate step toward the end so much to be desired, of getting the vagrant children of New York within the walls and under the influences of school-houses. A visitor who carne one evening to the Governor s retired study in the wing of his house to ask for office, related afterward that he retired abashed at finding there the stately form, venerable white head, and benignant face of the college president, and the active, black-clothed figure, keen gaze, and quick, practical utterance of the Methodist divine, both engaged in discussing themes, not of politics, but of philanthropy. At this season, except while receiving visitors, Seward usually sat in his writing-chair, pen in hand. Those two occupations consumed the whole of his waking hours ; there were no idle moments, no recrea tions, no hours for reading. The amount of work accomplished by this persistence was simply prodigious, as the manuscript drafts, still pre served, attest. Every communication, important or trivial, was an swered, and the answer was not a mere form, but drafted by his own hand. There stood in the Executive chamber a high-backed, old- fashioned chair, on one of whose arms was fastened a small writing- table, and the tradition was that this had been made for and used by De Witt Clinton. Stiff and ungainly as was its shape, it was not with out its convenience ; and an intelligent cabinet-maker, finding that Governor Seward used it, devised and constructed for him another of improved and modern pattern. This, besides having an easier seat, had the desk movable by pivot and screw, so as to be adjusted at any angle. It had also drawers for papers, with compartments for pens, inkstand, wafers, and the ashes of the inevitable cigar, as well as mov able slide and brass sconces for candles. It was an office-chair, as the inventor said, that was an office itself. Seward became so habituated to its use that he had others made, subsequently, for his law-office and library at Auburn, and adopted it as his favorite seat for work through out his whole life. His handwriting in his youth was remarkably clear, round, and firm, every letter being carefully formed. In the early years of his law- practice, clients said his conveyances were " plain as print." It was not a hand, however, that could be written with great rapidity, and, when it became necessary to draft letters and papers hastily, his writ ing grew more and more illegible. Yet it always retained an appear ance of neatness ; the first letter in each word and the first word in each paragraph would be clear and distinct, while the subsequent ones ran off in a hasty scrawl. During the turmoil of his official life at Albany, his equanimity was proverbial. His calmness and courtesy were never disturbed by trifles. He had patience with unreasonable people, and tolerance even for those who were unjust and unkind toward himself. 4:62 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840, The Whigs were now supreme, having control of all three branches of the State government. But power brings responsibility, and re sponsibility brings caution. Though ready and eager to carry out the policy they had so long at heart, they proceeded with more care, and less haste, than when they were held in check. Measures for enlarging and prosecuting the work on the canals, aiding the railways, and for carrying out the various reforms recommended in the Governor s mes sage, were drawn up, considered, and consulted upon. About one of their purposes there was little hesitation. That was, to avail themselves of their right to the places from which Demo cratic strategy had so long excluded them. Nominations were promptly sent into the Senate by the Governor, and as promptly confirmed by that body. The legislative caucus was held, and it was resolved at once to elect Mr. Tallmadge to the United States Senate, and to oust the State Printer from his position. On the bill for the latter purpose, a long and rambling debate took place. Messrs. Paige, Young, Hunter, Livingston, Sibley, and Root, took part. The act passed the Senate by a vote of more than two to one, and the Assembly by a large majority. The Governor hastened to affix his signature to a law which took prestige and power from the most pow erful opponent of the Whigs, and gave them to Thurlow Weed, who through his Journal led the Whig press. On the 14th of January the two Houses, by a party vote, reflected N. P. Tallmadge United States Senator, the Democrats making no nomination, but scattering their votes. Hardly had the message appeared, when there began to be mutter- ings of discontent at the recommendations about common schools. Sectarian hostility was excited ; prejudices against foreigners appealed to ; and the Governor was unsparingly denounced, not only by political opponents, but by members of his own party. The press reviled, and even the pulpit thundered at him. Handbills were printed and posted, holding him up to scorn, in the blackest of type and the largest of exclamation-points. As usually happens in such cases, the language he had really used was lost sight of in the debate, and garbled versions of it were quoted to prove his pernicious doctrines. He was accused of a design to subvert the school-system, to undermine the Protestant religion, to overthrow republican institutions. He was said to have urged the giving of the school-money to the Catholic Church, to have proposed the turning over of Protestant children to the priests. He was " sapping the foundations of liberty." He was a " betrayer of the innocent to the wiles of the Scarlet Lady." He was " in league with the Pope." He was " himself a Jesuit." He was "plotting the ruin of the State." The storm waxed in fury, and was long protracted. The outcry was eagerly fomented by the opposing party, which was 1840.] THE SCHOOL QUESTION. 463 only too glad of a pretext for stirring up discord in the Whig camp. Hundreds of well-disposed religious people, who neither knew nor cared about political matters, were roused to excitement by the fear that the work of the Pilgrim Fathers was all to be undone. So the question entered into the political arena, and became one of the issues of the hour. But there were also portents in the sky of another storm, longer in gathering, and destined to be of longer duration. In submitting to the Legislature his reply to the Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia, refusing to deliver up the three colored men charged with aiding the escape of a slave, Seward had expressed his surprise that it should be regarded as a new and startling doctrine that he should decline to surrender citizens of New York to be tried and punished for what was not a crime, either by the laws of New York, the common law, or the law of nations. And he added : Nor can I withhold the expression of my sincere regret that a construction of the Constitution manifestly necessary to maintain the sovereignty of this State, and the personal rights of her citizens, should be regarded by the Executive of Virginia as justifying, in any contingency, a menace of secession from the Union. This brought an outburst of indignation not only from Virginia, but from other slaveholding States. First came Virginia s rejoinder. This was over the signature of Governor Gilmer, who had now succeeded Lieutenant-Governor Hopkins, and who took up the controversy where his predecessor left off. He conducted it with more dignity of tone and more ability of argument. With his letter he transmitted the resolutions of the General Assembly of Virginia declaring it to be her " solemn duty to adopt the most decisive and efficient measures for the protection of the property of her citizens, and the maintenance of rights which she cannot and will not, under any circumstances, surrender or abandon," and authorizing the Governor to open correspondence with the Governors of other slaveholding States, requesting their coo pera- tion. Then came the co5peration thus asked formidable resolutions passed by various Southern States, and forwarded by their Governors. Many were couched in language far more intemperate and violent than that of aggrieved Virginia herself. They undertook to rebuke, not merely New York, but all States and persons in general who were "intermeddling" with their "domestic institutions." Two will serve as specimens. Missouri resolved that interference with slavery " was in direct contravention of the Constitution, derogatory from the dig nity of the slaveholding States, grossly insulting to their sovereignty, and ultimately tending to destroy the Union." South Carolina resolved that she would " make common cause with any State of this Confed eracy in devising and adopting such measures as will maintain, at any 464 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. hazard, those rights and that property which the obligations of the compact of the Union canceled as they then will be to us have failed to enforce." Finally, the newspapers of the South, and those of the North in their interest, joined in a unanimous denunciation of the New York Governor, who was " basely allowing " Peter Johnson, Ed ward Smith, and Isaac Gansey, to be at large in the streets. The pouring out of all these vials of wrath upon his head had little effect upon the apparently imperturbable person who occupied the Executive chair at Albany. He read each of the diatribes, and laid it aside, not without a smile, when he found himself gazetted as "a big oted New England fanatic," at the same moment that he was undergo ing such fierce fusillade from another quarter for his alleged desertion of Puritan principles. The official communications he received and acknowledged with courtesy, and submitted each of them to the Le gislature, with the usual formal message. In submitting that of Gov ernor Gilmer, he said : The proceedings of the General Assembly of Virginia manifest a desire to obtain the sense of the Legislature on the subject. . . . Altogether willing that the opinion of the Executive and of the General Assembly of Virginia may be considered under the most favorable auspices, and that my own may be subjected to the most rigid examination, I transmit herewith a report of a committee of the General Assembly of Virginia, in which the subject is ably discussed. The Legislature adopted Seward s suggestion, gave the communica tion from Virginia a careful and courteous examination in committee, and, concurring in his view, that the subject was one for Executive, not for legislative action, declined to comply with the request of Virginia. The Judiciary Committee, through its chairman, Mr. Simmons, so re ported, adding that they believed the position taken by the Governor to be " sound and judicious." Having now been invited, by sister States, to consider the slavery question in its bearing upon the rights of citizens, and of State sover eignty, the Legislature proceeded to give that subject attention, in a manner that showed a more scrupulous regard for the invitation than for the threats by which it had been accompanied. But no such invi tation had been needed. The national House of Representatives had stirred popular indignation by its tyrannical rule that no petition against slavery should be received or entertained. The Governor s views were well known, and the sentiments of other leading members of the party did not differ materially from his own. The Whigs had control of both Houses, and there was already felt a ground-swell of popular opinion which showed that such action as they contemplated would be sustained. Informal conferences were held with the Gov ernor, to decide upon the measures suitable for New York to adopt. With his aid, they were drawn up, and in a few days the members 1840.] ANTISLAVEKY LAWS. 465 respectively charged with their introduction brought them in succession before the Assembly. First, John A. King, son of Rufus King, who battled for New York against the Missouri Compromise, rose in his place, to introduce resolutions protesting against the denial, by Congress, of the right of petition. Victory Birdseye, as the head of a select committee, next brought in a bill to " more effectually protect the free citizens of this State from being kidnapped or reduced to slavery," and authorizing the Governor to send to recover those so kidnapped. Horace Healey, of Genesee, then brought in a bill repealing the law allowing slaves brought into this State to be held as such during nine months. Henry W. Taylor, of Ontario, brought in a bill from the Judiciary Committee securing a trial by jury to any person claimed as a fugitive slave. Measures were also prepared to prohibit the officers of the State from participating, and its jails from being used, in the business of recapturing fugitive slaves. There was but little debate, but there was prompt action, and the antislavery laws were soon inscribed upon the statute-book. Mean while, high debate was proceeding in the Hall of Representatives at Washington, John Quincy Adams leading the defense of the " right of petition," and Mr. Calhoun s supporters applying, with more or less suc cess, the doctrine of the " Atherton gag." Another event, appealing strongly to popular feeling, was the employment of blood-hounds in the Florida War to ferret out and bring down the Seminoles and the fugitive slaves whom they were harboring in their swamps. It was a favorite theme for opposition speakers and their press. One of the most effec tive caricatures of the time represented a regiment of blood-hounds drawn up in line, and presenting arms to President Van Buren, who, while reviewing the line, was blandly assuring them that he had no doubt this " experiment " would prove quite as successful as the others ! The blood-hounds were soon discovered by the Administration to be a mis take, and orders were issued discontinuing their use. Among the numerous petitions in regard to these subjects presented at this session, a noticeable one was presented by Senator Humphrey, of Albany, asking the extension of the right of suffrage to colored peo ple, the list of signers being headed by Thurlow Weed. The winter had its usual round of parties. The Governor gave a series of dinners and suppers, inviting all the members of the Legisla ture and other guests, to the number of forty on each occasion ; and Mrs. Seward had a few large evening parties, besides several less for mal ones. Mrs. Spencer gave a number of soir ees, and the residents of Albany had numerous and hospitable entertainments. Lieutenant-Gov ernor Bradish and his bride were honored guests on these occasions. There were many public men in Albany, this winter, whose characters and tastes made them pleasant additions to the society of the cap- 30 466 LIFE AXV LETTERS. [1840. ital. Among these were two who were afterward to occupy the guberna torial chair, John A. King and General Dix. There were also Chief-Jus tice Nelson, Speaker Patterson, Judge Bronson, Senators F. A.Tallmadge, Gulian C. Verplanck, Gabriel Furman, Daniel S. Dickinson, Alonzo C. Paige, Mark H. Sibley, John Maynard, Alvah Hunt ; and, among the Assemblymen, Henry G. Wheaton, Peter B. Porter, Robert Denniston, and others. Gulian C. Verplanck at this period was round, plump, short, and jolly as Santa Glaus himself ; save that his refined face and manners showed him to be a student and man of letters. His hair was slightly gray. In society he was usually smiling, rubbing his hands, and talking with gusto about the topics of the day. He was a great humorist, and alwaj^s loved a good joke. In religious matters he was a sturdy Epis copalian. John A. King, a fine-looking young man, with dark hair and pale complexion, was animated in conversation, defending his opinions with cheerful vigor. John L. Stephens, already well known as an author and traveler, was frequently at Albany. He was a few years younger than Seward, and, though a Democrat in politics, he had so many congenial tastes that a cordial friendship sprang up between them. One point in com mon Seward used laughingly to allude to, saying that, much as he abhorred all Democrats, yet his hostility was modified toward such as had red hair. Washington Irving occasionally, though rarely, visited Albany. A man of medium size, with full face and double chin, he was now wearing a wig, doubtless made in imitation of his own hair, which curled all over his head. He was genial, humorous, and modest, with easy and gentle manners, telling stories just as he would write them. Most authors are unlike their books ; but when with Irving, you might imagine that you were talking with Geoffrey Crayon himself. The parties of that day seemed brilliant and gay, though gas was not yet brought into use, and the drawing-rooms were lighted only with candles and oil. Dancing went merrily on, to the piano or the strains of "Johnny Cooke s Band," that furnished music to Albanians for nearly half a century. Mrs. Johnson, the stately, well-bred colored woman who came to prepare the dinners at the Executive mansion, remarked that she " had been out of office since Governor Clinton s death " until now, when she was reinstated in the position she held under him in the same house. How people in Albany ever kept warm in winter-time with only open fires, and without furnaces, double sashes, weather-strips, or any of the modern appliances for heating, will probably always remain a mystery to their descendants. 1840.] THE FIRST DAGUERREOTYPES. 467 Another portrait of the Governor was now on the easel Jocelyn, of New York, being the artist. It was half-length, in a sitting posture, and proved an excellent likeness. One day this winter an ingenious engraver in Albany brought to show to the Governor some curious pictures, about six inches square, taken on metallic plates, resembling engravings, except that the polished plate reflected objects like a looking-glass. It was necessary to hold them at an angle from the eye, in order to see what the subject was. There could be discerned an accurate though faint representation on one of a view of State Street looking up toward the Capitol, and on the other a view of the Museum, on the corner of North Market Street. But objects were reversed, and the signs read backward. These were the production, he said, of a new process devised by a Frenchman named Daguerre, and were the imprint of light itself, through a camera - obscura. Various were the comments which the new scientific discovery evoked. While some, among whom was the Governor, saw in it the beginning of a revolution in art, there were not lacking habitual croak ers who insisted that it was all a fraud ; that it was simply the transfer of engravings to the plates ; and that, even if it was the effect of light, the invention would never amount to anything, because it would be transient, and, as they justly observed, " You can t see much of any thing in them now, except your own face." They were fortified in this opinion when, a few weeks later, the pictures grew indistinct and seemed fading out entirely. One of the first uses Seward made of the appointing power, now within his control, was to nominate Abraham Gridley, of Auburn, to be Clerk of the State-prison ; and another was to nominate Trum- bull Gary, of Batavia, Chandler Starr, of New York, and John G. Forbes, of Syracuse, to be Bank Commissioners. Charles Fenno Hoffman, of New York, the poet, was an old friend. He had established the Knickerbocker Magazine, had been associ ated with Charles King in the editorship of the New York American, and was now engaged on his novel of " Greyslaer," which was founded upon the incidents of a tragedy of real life in Kentucky. Seward had been desirous to find a suitable place for him in the public service, but having the appointing power is one thing, and being able to appoint whomsoever one wishes is another. He wrote on the 19th of Feb ruary : MY DEAR HOFFMAN: It was an evil day for Governor Leisler s luckless successor, when New York became ambitious of diplomacy. I wish it were in my power to gratify one out of a dozen of my esteemed friends who are desirous of that foreign mission. You must permit me to deal frankly with you : it is not in my power to send you to England, consistently with the present condition of the question ; but I 468 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. will engage to make the refusal satisfactory to you whenever I have the pleasure to look upon you, and we will all go in to elect General Harrison. When that is done, you may command my poor influence, great or small, for a place in a mission to any part of the Old World. With the highest appreciation of your talents, and a sincere pride in your reputation, I am, etc. A happy selection among the candidates for health-officer at Staten Island was that of Dr. A. Sidney Doane. His upright and faithful service gave such general satisfaction as to be long remembered, and the friendship which sprung up between him and Governor Seward lasted through life. Acknowledging his letter of thanks for the nomi nation, Seward said : I am entitled to little of the gratitude it expresses. I became convinced that your qualifications, character, and habits, rendered you the more suitable candidate. Yet it was a difficult and embarrassing duty. I am sure that I most cheerfully abide all its consequences. A letter to another friend alluded to the embarrassments which, as may well be supposed, had arisen in endeavoring to distribute, among his many intimate and warm supporters at Auburn, the few places in his gift : Is it not hard that I must be compelled to select for advancement one from among so many generous, confiding, and faithful friends, and yet to be denied the privilege of explaining to each the circumstances as I understand them, which must control my decisions? Does it manifest an unpardonable infirmity that I shrink in anticipating the misapprehension that the disappointed must entertain ? I confess to you that the appointment to the one office of surrogate, in Cayuga County, gives me more pain than all my other official duties ; and yet I know that every feeling of kindness is entertained for me by the candidates. A more pleasant task was the compliance with the request of his friend and townsman, P. H. Myers, the author of " Ensenore," who asked permission to dedicate to him that poem, which was founded on a legend of Owasco Lake : If my name will, in your opinion, attract a single eye to your beautiful little poem, I give you the free use of it, and pray Heaven the poem may preserve the name. ... I have a good recollection of it, and have not the slightest fear of Executive responsibility in the matter. Two other requests for the use of his name were made about this time. The geologists having found an unnamed peak in the Adiron dack Wilderness, five thousand feet high, Prof. Emmons proposed to call it Mount Seward, a similar one having been named Mount Marcy after his predecessor. It stands near the southern boundary of Frank lin County, and overlooks what the Indians called " In-ca-pah-cho," or " Linden Water," now known by the less euphonious title of " Long 1840.] THE APPOINTMENTS. 469 Lake." And when a new town was to be made of a part of Sharon in Schoharie, and a part of Cherry Valley in Otsego County, at the re quest of the local authorities, it was christened the town of Seward, by an act of the Legislature. To Christopher Morgan, who was now representing the Cayuga dis trict in Congress, he wrote : I am overworked, but not careworn. Things go well here. We are growing stronger every day, and shall go through the appointments without harm, except in New York. In that city trouble must come. But it is trouble for me only. That I do not regard. The bank at Lyons was asking the appointment of a notary public. Different names being proposed, the Governor wrote to John M. Hoi- ley: I am satisfied, after all that has taken place, I ought to confer the appoint ment upon Coles Bashford. That the selection was a proper one was proved by the fact that Coles Bashford, less than twenty years later, was Governor of Wis consin. The Whigs, on the whole, were fortunate, or wise, or both, this year, in the disposition of their newly-acquired patronage, for among the ap pointments of the Governor and Senate were many whose names have since acquired honorable prominence. Charles Hathaway was appointed First Judge in Delaware County ; Nathan K. Hall, in Erie ; Daniel B. Cady, in Columbia ; Donald Mclntyre, in Fulton ; Thomas C. Chittenden, in Jefferson ; Archibald L. Linn, in Schenectady. Among the new sur rogates were Thomas C. Love, of Buffalo ; Harvey Putnam, of Gen- esee ; Dan H. Cole, of Albion ; David Rumsey, of Steuben ; William B. Wright, of Sullivan ; David B. Ogden, of New York ; Moses Patten, of Albany ; George H. Wood, of Auburn ; and Orson Benjamin, of Ontario. A magnanimous and manly letter from an unsuccessful applicant is a rarity ; yet, such there sometimes are. Replying to one, he wrote : I was so much pleased and gratified with the honorable and generous spirit it manifested, that I handed it immediately to several members of the Senate. Those desired leave to show it to others, and so it went around among our friends here, and did not return to me again until this morning. I need not assure you that I anticipated nothing less from you, and that, while it would at all times have given me great pleasure to oblige you, I now shall be more desirous than ever to do so. The appointments of the Governor were, as usual, the subjects of unsparing criticism by political opponents. For the most part they were such as could stand fire. Two or three were notably so. Mr. James Kane, who had not an enemy, and whose many excellent quali- 470 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. ties made him esteemed by all who knew him, belonged to a family who had once been great landed proprietors in Albany. Successive misfortunes had reduced him from affluence to poverty. The cheer fulness with which he adapted himself to his altered circumstances was a theme of admiring comment. No one would have imagined that the white-haired, rosy-cheeked gentleman, dressed with scrupulous neatness, with long cloth cloak and huge umbrella, and beaming a be nevolent smile through his gold spectacles, was so straitened for the necessaries of life as to live in a garret, and to be the sole purveyor of his frugal meals of bread-and-milk. When the chiefs and warriors of the Oneida tribe of Indians petitioned that a new agent be appointed, Seward asked Mr. Weed to find him a suitable person for that office. Two hours later he appeared at the door, bringing with him James Kane, to whom the salary was as unexpected and welcome a piece of good fortune as if it had been a shower of gold. When a collector was to be appointed at Montezuma, the most important office between Albany and Rochester, being at the junction of the Cayuga & Seneca with the Erie Canal, there was an outcry be cause the Governor had passed over all the "leading business-men " of Cayuga County, and appointed E. B. Cobb. It soon ceased, however, when it was discovered that Mr. Cobb had been in service under Com modore McDonough, and lost an arm at the battle of Lake Champlain ; and that " the leading business-men of Cayuga County " were all will ing to be his bondsmen. Early in the year Seward wrote to General Harrison in reference to the political situation in New York : I have had the pleasure of receiving your letter of the 16th, and I respect fully return you my thanks for the interesting information it contains. While the Legislature remains in session the people will be chiefly interested in questions of local interest ; but when that time shall have gone by you will have the pleasure of seeing demonstrations of feeling as ardent and generous as those in Ohio. . . . You will see accounts in our papers of the establishment of Tippecanoe clubs, the erection of log- cabins, etc. These, I can assure you, result from the spontaneous impulses of the people, without the suggestion of any central committee. One demonstration, however, it was deemed fitting and proper to make. Washington s birthday was chosen as a suitable occasion for a meeting of the Whig members of the Legislature at the Capitol, to indorse the nomination of Harrison and Tyler. Speaker Patterson of the Assembly presided ; the Clerk of the Senate, Mr. Andrews, acted as secretary; resolutions were adopted, and speeches made, promising the hearty support of New York to the Whig nominees. Washington s birthday was commemorated by some of the Govern or s friends who lived near his residence G. V. S. Bleecker, J. P. Dick- 1840.] FOREIGN-BORN CITIZENS. 471 erman, John Dickson, Thomas James, and H. G. O. Rogers. They brought him on that day a marble medallion of Washington, executed by Carew, an Albany artist. This he gave the post of honor in his collection. It hung over the parlor mantel as long as he lived in Al bany. St. Patrick and St. George had the usual festivals in their honor on the 17th of March and the 18th of April. The Governor was invited to attend the celebration of the Irishmen of Albany. On visiting their hall, he was received with one of those boisterous outbursts of en thusiasm in which Irishmen excel. In acknowledging it, he alluded half humorously to the charges of demagoguism made against him for speeches on similar occasions: I have been admonished that I must not speak of your country and your countrymen, lest I may be thought unduly desirous of your good opinion. Mr. President, I have followed a plain and simple rule thus far, and I think I shall not abandon it now. It is to speak my honest opinions on all proper oc casions, even when those opinions may be unpopular. However it may have been heretofore, we have now one Constitution to maintain, one country to de fend. You may exclude, from the calendar of your saints, ministers whose teachings I venerate ; and I may not revere all the Christian fathers acknowledged by your Church ; yet, whatever there is right in the creed, or pure and accept able in the worship of either, has the same divine authority, and is imbued with the same precious hopes ; and, as to all the points whereon we differ, we are alike inhibited from judging each other. Why should the native American in dulge prejudice against foreigners ? It is to hate such as his forefathers were. Why should a foreigner dislike native citizens ? It is to hate such as his children born here must be. Kindred sentiments were expressed in his letter to the English men on St. George s day : England and America are so closely bound together, that there can be no permanent alienation between them. Prejudices excited by mercenary traducers have sometimes occasioned irritation, and political questions have heretofore brought us into fearful contention. Yet the citizens of both countries rejoice in the same ancestry, the same devotion to liberty, the same reverence for the common law, the same language, and the same religion ; while commerce and arts, operating with equal advantages to both parties, are continually bringing us into more intimate relations. Notwithstanding her independence, America derives from her relations with England greater advantages than those hereto fore secured by her colonial dependence ; and England finds our commerce vastly more profitable than she could have realized had her sovereignty remained un broken. The public mind in every country is easily roused to dislike of foreigners. In the State of New York, just now, there was an especial sensitiveness growing out of the discussions in reference to the mes- 472 LI ^E AND LETTERS. [1840. sage. Whig friends, either because they shared in the dislike, or were apprehensive of damage to the party, remonstrated strongly against his course. He remarked, in reply to one of them : To be misrepresented by one s opponents, and to be misunderstood by one s friends, is inevitable by those in public service. The sentiments I have expressed in relation to foreigners may be erroneous ; they are not insincere. For myself, so far from hating any of my fellow- citizens, I should shrink from myself if I did not recognize them all as worthy of my constant solicitude to promote their wel fare, and entitled of right, by the Constitution and laws, and by the higher laws of God himself, to equal rights, equal privileges, and equal political favor, as citi zens of the State, with myself. Seward s belief in the " higher law " was not a new idea, hit upon in the heat of the Californian debate in 1850. On the contrary, it was a settled principle of his life. Although he used the very expression in this letter of 1840, it was at that time so unobjectionable that none were found to dispute its avowal. Ten years later it was denounced as " treason," and became the theme of a stormy controversy, whose echoes have not yet died away. CHAPTER XXVIH. 1840. A Talk with the Onondagas. Abraham Le Fort. New Railways and Canals. Registry Law. The D Hauteville Case. Manorial Tenures. Law Reform. Bankrupt Law. Silk Experiments. The Staff Snuffbox. Smoking. TURXIXG now from foreigners and their descendants to the real native Americans, the Governor held a conference, in March, with the Onondaga Indians. The once powerful Six Nations had gradually dwindled away to a mere remnant of their former strength. The Oneidas, the Onondagas, and the Senecas, retained their old names, and kept up the semblance of their ancient nationality. But the others were, to a great extent, merged with them, or gone with tribes who had emigrated from the State. A just and generous policy toward the Indians had borne its fruits in the exemption which the State of New York had enjoyed for half a century from Indian troubles, and they had come to regard the white man s government as their pro tector rather than their enemy. Abraham Le Fort came down to Al bany, to hold a council with the Governor. He was the last of the chiefs of the Onondagas. He was a tall, fine-looking man, thirty- six or forty years old (the son of Apenoquah, who fell leading the Indians at the battle of Chippewa in 1815), was educated, and a Chris- 1840.J A TALK WITH THE ONONDAGAS. 473 tian. He was clad in the white man s dress, but his swarthy counte nance and erect form gave unmistakable evidence of his race. Rising and fixing his eyes upon the Governor with a gaze at once grave, mild, and imploring, he began : Great Father, your children the Onondagas have sent me to you, and they ask you to open your ears to me, and hear the talk which they have sent by me to you. Father, your red children the Onondagas are in great trouble ; they feel that you can scatter the dark clouds that are collecting and thickening around them. He then went on to detail the trouble of the Onondagas how they were alarmed by what had happened to the Oneidas how the Oneidas had listened to bad men, and sold their lands received their pay for them, and spent it for strong-water how many had gone beyond the great waters of the West how they had become a poor, wretched, scattered, and wandering people and now how some of them had come back, and with " the little white foxes " were trying to persuade the Onondagas to sell their homes, and go out to the West to be led back to habits of hunting and drunkenness. The Onondagas, on the other hand, had given up hunting and strong-water had gotten oxen and horses, had cultivated their lands, and were fast getting into the ways of their white brothers. He closed his speech with this appeal : Father, you are young in years, we hope you are old in counsel; so our white brethren tell us, and we believe it. Your red children desire to know your mind. We wish to keep together, to possess the land which the Great Spirit in goodness has given us, to stay by the bones of our fathers, and watch the ashes here of those we loved ; to live by the side of those we know, whom we have tried, and who are our friends. We know our white brethren who surround us ; we know not those in the far West. Our white fathers here have taken us by the hand, and have been wise to us in counsel here. Who will be our fathers in the West ? Will they be kind to us, or will they strike us down ? We do not desire to sell ; we do not desire to receive the principal for what we have sold ; we only want the interest annually. We could not keep the principal. Our white brethren understand this matter much better than your red children. They have been honest with our nation, and always paid every year. Father, listen once more. The chiefs, and warriors, and women, of the Onondagas, have had a long council a talk of three days and their request to their father is, that he will shut his ears, shake his head, and turn his face away, from all talk to him about the sale of the lands of the Onondagas. So touching an appeal to be saved from relapsing into barbarism, and to be aided to achieve civilization, could not but elicit a kind response from the Governor : Say to your people that I heard their message with attention ; that I approve their determination to retain their lands, and remain under the protection of the 474 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. State ; that, so far as depends upon my exertions, the treaties made with them shall be faithfully kept ; that, if white men seek to obtain their lands by force or fraud, I will set my face against them. If red men propose to sell their lands, I will expostulate with them and endeavor to convince them of their error, and to persuade them that their true happiness would be promoted by retaining their possessions, cultivating their lands, and enjoying the comforts with which our common Father has surrounded them. The Onondagas may confide in me. Of course, the Whigs, committed by their whole record to the policy of public improvements, did not allow the day of adjournment to come without making due provision for their prosecution. On the 22d of February the two Houses proceeded to elect five Canal Commissioners Asa Whitney, S. Newton Dexter, David Hudson, George N. Bough- ton, and Henry Hamilton in the place of their Democratic prede cessors, Samuel Young, John Bowman, William C. Bouck, Jonas Earll, and William Baker. The Democrats had made gallant fight on behalf of the incumbents, and by debate and dilatory motions had staved off the election for a week. When this proved unavailing, they moved to adjourn in honor of Washington s birthday ; but the Whigs thought they could celebrate it by electing officers to carry out what they claimed to be Washington s policy. Bills were passed in aid of the enlargement of the Erie Canal, the extension or improvement of the Black River Canal, the Cayuga & Seneca Canal, the Champlain Canal, the Chemung Canal, the Chenango Canal, the Genesee Valley Canal, the Oswego Canal, and the purchase of the Oneida Lake Canal. Legislative aid and encouragement were given liberally to the New York & Erie Railroad, the Auburn & Rochester Railroad, the Albany & West Stockbridge Railroad, the Buffalo & Batavia Railroad, the Hudson & Berkshire Railroad, the Ithaca & Owego Railroad, the Lewiston Railroad, the Long Island Railroad, the Tonawanda Railroad, and the Schenectady & Troy Rail road. The rapidity with which internal improvements were going forward was shown by the fact that, although it was hardly more than twenty years since ground was broken for a canal, and not ten since the first iron rail was laid in the State, there were now nearly a thousand miles of railway completed or in progress, and nearly a thousand miles of canal in actual operation. The Whigs of New York came to the capital this winter with ear nest appeals for the registration of voters. Convinced that fraud had been used by their opponents at the election in the preceding year, they now urged a bill containing stringent regulations for a registry. This encountered warm opposition from the Democrats, who had no mind to see their power abridged in the city, and who had, moreover, a strong ground in their argument that it was unrepublican, and unjust to 1840.] THE D HAUTEVILLE CASE. 475 subject the electors in the city to restrictions which were not imposed on those in other parts of the State. Nevertheless, after a heated and bit ter debate, the Whig majority carried their point, and passed the bill. It was brought to the Governor for his approval. On examination of its details, many of them seemed to him objectionable. His views had always inclined toward free, uncontrolled, and universal suffrage. He drew up a veto message in which, while expressing his high approval of the policy of subdividing the wards into election-districts, and holding the elections on a single day, he apprehended that the bill would sub ject voters to unnecessary difficulties, and would reduce the number of votes polled in the city, not so much by preventing illegal voting as by hindering lawful voters. His message closed with the expression of a belief that the proposed law would disappoint the expectations indulged in regard to it, and lead to frauds and vexations which would at an early period induce its repeal. When it became known that the Governor contemplated a veto of the bill, his friends from the city were almost unanimous in endeavor ing to dissuade him from it. They urged that some such measure was of vital importance in the city of New York ; that this one had been framed with the light of the best talent, and recent experience ; that, if wrong in detail, it could be subsequently corrected ; but that, to reject it utterly, would be an undeserved rebuke and an unmerited disappointment. Moved at last, by these and kindred considerations, the Governor consented to suppress his veto, and allow the bill to be come a law. Its results justified his predictions, however, for the law was found so distasteful, after one year s trial, that it was repealed at the next session of the Legislature. The problem which it endeavored to solve has since received the attention of law-makers ; and, though progress has been made toward the solution, much still remains to be done before the purity of the elective franchise can be considered as sured in the city of New York. There was another veto message at this session which arrested one of those acts of inconsiderate legislation which, framed to meet an individual case, forget the interests of society at large. A Boston lady possessed of a fortune, traveling in Europe, met in Switzerland a Monsieur d Hauteville, of pleasing address and high family connec tions. As has happened in many cases, before and since, she married the attractive foreigner in haste, and repented of it at leisure. Im mured in an old chateau, and subjected to a series of petty persecu tions, she had one son ; and, separating from her husband, returned to the United States, bringing the little boy with her. Next appeared on the scene M. d Hauteville, in Boston, requiring that she should return with him, or, if she would not, then that she should surren der the child to him. He had the law on his side, but her friends, who 476 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. were wealthy and influential, thought they saw a way to save wife, child, and property, by procuring the passage of a law at Albany, under the protection of whose provisions she might take refuge in the State of New York. The sympathies of Senators and Assem blymen were moved in behalf of the unfortunate lady, when the story was told to them, and they hurriedly passed a general act providing that when a father, who is a foreigner, married to an American woman, shall undertake to carry his children out of the country, without the mother s consent, the Court of Chancery may interpose and take charge of the children and fortune. When this bill started in the Senate- chamber, it was a well-meaning attempt to rescue an injured woman from the supposed cupidity or malice of a persecuting husband. When it was laid on the Governor s table in the Executive chamber, and was calmly scrutinized by him, as a general measure affecting not one but thousands of foreign fathers and American wives and children, he saw it to be a dangerous innovation. He accordingly returned it, with a veto message, remarking that, stated in a more simple form The effect of the bill is, that, if an alien father shall, in any case whatever, at tempt or threaten to carry his own child to his own country, without the consent of its mother, he shall thereby forfeit his natural right to determine what is ex pedient for his child s welfare, and the Chancellor shall be substituted in his place with power over his property. I confess it does not seem to me that the natural wish of an alien parent to carry his child with him is so immoral that it ought to work a forfeiture of parental rights. . . . Undoubtedly cases occur where an alien husband unreasonably and arbitrarily requires a wife to leave her native country, and expose herself and children to the vicissitudes of fortune in a strange land. . . . But, on the other hand, there may be instances in which a wife may unreasonably or capriciously refuse to abide the fortunes of a faith ful husband in the country to which he belongs, and where his interests and duty may require him to reside. Unfortunately, the bill before me makes no distinction between these cases, and the perverse and delinquent wife may, equally with her who is injured and neglected, carry the controversy into the Court of Chancery. . . . Alien husbands and fathers ought to be subjected, while residing here, to the control of our laws ; but it is inconsistent with the spirit of the age to have one system of laws for our own citizens, and, like the Chinese, a different and more severe code for foreigners. . . . On receiving the veto, the Legislature at once saw its force, and the bill was dropped. The public wrong was prevented, and the private one, after a while, was adjusted by the operations of natural laws. The wife and child evaded the pursuit of D Hauteville, in a long and romantic chase through various frequented and unfrequented localities, until at last the boy came of an age to choose his own residence, and did so. He remained in the United States, and became a respected 1840.] LAW-REFORM. 477 citizen. The father procured a divorce in Switzerland, and remained there. At the close of the "Helderberg War," as the military demon stration at the manor was jocosely called, the tenants remained quiet in accordance with the terms of the Governor s proclamation. He took early occasion to bring the matter before the Legislature. In his an nual message he called attention to the subject as one not altogether new in the legislation of the State, a bill having been discussed in 1812, which was reported by three eminent jurists. The Governor urged that some measures should be now adopted which, without injustice to either party, should assimilate the tenures in the manor of Rensselaer- wyck to those enjoyed by the rest of the community, " which expe rience has proved to be more accordant with the principles of republi can government, and more conducive to the general prosperity and the peace and harmony of society." Upon this suggestion, the Senate called for information ; and the Governor responded by a special message on the 14th of March, detailing the whole history of the trouble. Petitions from the tenants poured in. The whole subject was referred to a select committee, of which William Duer was chairman. Toward the end of March the committee brought in an elaborate report, arguing that the tenures, and especially the quarter-sales, were contrary to good public policy. The committee, however, thought it would be well for the State to act as mediator, before having recourse, as a final resort, to a change of the tenures. They accordingly brought in a bill for the appointment of commissioners to examine into all grievances com plained of by landlord or tenants, and to use their best endeavors to effect a settlement upon some basis mutually satisfactory. This bill became a law without serious opposition. Seward had, while in the Senate, labored with success for the abo lition of imprisonment for debt. There was still a class of debtors not reached by that repeal those who were non-residents or were held by process issued from United States Courts. The present seemed a favorable occasion to make the reform complete. He had the satisfac tion, before the close of the session, of affixing his signature to a law removing the last of these ancient usages of oppression, which no one since has ever sought to restore. His other projects of law-reform were also pushed forward. The Senate passed, and the Assembly promptly concurred in, the repeal of the law associating the judges with the supervisors in the distribution of county patronage. But his favorite scheme of reform (that of reducing the costs and simplifying the proceedings at law) was not carried through without a struggle. A bill was introduced early in March, by Senator Maynard, who represented the Governor s own dis trict. In its progress through Judiciary Committees and Committees 4:78 LIFE AXV LETTERS. [1840. of the Whole, the bill encountered strenuous opposition, especially from lawyers, who saw in it, not merely a reduction of professional income, but a measure which would arouse hostility throughout the State. Nevertheless, the measure was so just and right in itself that it tri umphed over all obstacles, though it was not until the closing hours of the last day of the session that it was finally delivered into the Gov ernor s hands for approval. The State banking system did not spring suddenly into existence. Every such system must grow like a tree, not like a mushroom, and years are required to round out its full proportions. The general bank ing law was a great step in advance of the old system of charters. Yet, as Seward, its strenuous advocate from the outset, had predicted, experience continually showed the need of its revision and amendment. Two defects now discovered in it were, the lack of a plan for the re demption of notes at the centres of trade, and some further security for bill-holders of insolvent banks. These, and some other points need ing reform, had been adverted to in his annual message. There was no lack, however, of financial projects in either House there never is. The subject is always an attractive one to legislators ; and there is hardly any man who does not believe he can reform the monetary sys tem. Various measures were discussed and adopted, but conforming for the most part to the spirit of the Governor s suggestions. The fun damental difficulty in the way of financial reforms was not to be removed for many years to come. That difficulty was, the absence of a uniform national currency throughout all the States. Uniformity, however, was possible in regard to the relief of sufferers by commercial disaster. There were many such, at this period. The seasons of financial press ure, depreciation of prices, the derangement of exchanges, and loss of credit, had wrecked not only the rash, but even many of the most care ful and prudent. To give them an opportunity to recover activity and usefulness, a national bankrupt law was necessary. Various meetings were held, among them a large one in the city of New York, to urge upon Congress the performance of the duty assigned to them by the Constitution of " establishing uniform laws of bankruptcy." Seward laid the proceedings of this meeting before the Legislature in March. Warmly seconding the appeal, he said : There is no moral justice in holding under perpetual and hopeless con straint the debtor who, having contracted his debts without fraud, voluntarily relinquishes and surrenders to his creditors, when he is overtaken by unforeseen calamities, all the property he has in any manner acquired. The creditor so seldom derives any advantage from the power he retains over the insolvent debtor, who has honestly surrendered all his property, and the obstinacy of one creditor so often defeats all efforts for compromise advantageous to all parties, that society is without any equivalent for the privation of the labor and enter prise of that class of citizens. 1840.] EXPERIMENTS IN SILK-MANUFACTURE. 479 The Legislature, on receiving this communication, passed resolu tions urging the representatives of the State in Congress to use their efforts in behalf of such a law. Attention was also bestowed upon the prisons. A bill was intro duced by the Assembly committee on the penitentiary system, embody ing the recommendations of the Governor for reforms of discipline and management, as well as the suggestions of philanthropists ; and it be came a law. The Governor also directed that each prison should be supplied with one of the district-school libraries ; and arrangements were made for the instruction of such of the convicts as had the ca pacity or willingness to receive it. Inauspiciously as the spring of 1840 opened for business in the commercial cities, one form of enterprise in the agricultural regions continued to grow in popular favor, the silk-culture. It had now been demonstrated by experiment that the Morus multieaulis would thrive, and that silkworms could easily be raised in most parts of the United States. In New Jersey and Long Island raw silk had been raised, ex ported to Europe, and received there with commendation. Farmers in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Maryland, and many parts of New York, now be gan to embark largely in the business. As this disposition spread, it of course enhanced the price both of mulberry-trees and of silkworms - eggs, so that those who had begun early were now reaping handsome profits, with every prospect of their rapid increase. About Auburn the cultivation received a special stimulus. There had long been a jealousy of prison-convict labor among mechanics and manufacturers who found themselves in competition with it. It was a desideratum to find some occupation for convicts which would not compete with the trades, and yet would meet the prison expenses. It was now claimed that the manufacture of silk was such a one. The prison had abundance of operatives, and the State could af ford to establish machinery beyond the reach of private means. When thus turned into a silk-manufactory, the prison, instead of injuring the mechanics, would be benefiting the farmers of all the surrounding country, by furnishing a steady market for all the cocoons they could raise. The experiment was tried. Mulberry-trees were set out in the prison-grounds ; a silk-shop was established, with reels and throwing- mills, spindles and dyeing-kettles. In and around Auburn hundreds of acres were planted with mulberry-trees, and cocooneries were built or extemporized out of farm-buildings and rooms of dwelling-houses. The Legislature passed laws encouraging cultivation by bounties on cocoons; agricultural societies offered premiums ; newspapers and periodicals teemed with advice about hatching and feeding silkworms, and calcu lations showing how easily one hundred bushels of cocoons per annum 4-80 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. could be produced by every owner of an acre of mulberry-trees. Final ly, as if to set all doubts at rest, an advertisement appeared in which the agents of the Auburn Prison offered cash prices for cocoons and raw silk. Both began to pour into the market thus established, and for four or five years the manufacture went on. That it ultimately was dis continued was due to causes which had not entered into the calculation. Adult male convicts, however cheaply supported or easily superintend ed, lacked the delicate touch of women and children, and the skilled ex perience that comes to silk-workers by life-long training. Worms and trees, though both may be raised with success in a northern climate, yet cannot be so cheaply raised as in a milder region. So the enthusi asm for the new industry gradually died away. Of course, while the " fever " lasted there were many applications from friends and neigh bors who wanted assistance in what seemed a venture so sure of suc cess. One of Seward s letters to an Italian friend (who afterward won distinction in the War for the Union), in referring to the subject of silk-culture in the United States, contained also an allusion to his own pecuniary affairs, which had by this time become difficult and annoying: It is among the most painful embarrassments of stations such as I am called to fill, that they are necessarily supposed to bring with them pecuniary re sources ample for the comfortable enjoyment of the incumbent, and the pa tronage of merit in every form. The contrary is almost always the exact truth. You will better understand this, hereafter, when you come to learn that, in republican states, we confer our suffrages most generally upon those who are not favored with wealth, and that the economy of our system often re stricts the salaries of public officers to narrower bounds than their unavoidable expenditures. His worldly estate at this period consisted only of the small prop erty he had been able to lay up during his legal practice at Auburn, and the Chautauqua estate, which, though embracing a large extent of land, was hardly as yet paying the interest on the heavy debt incurred for its purchase. Harassed and worn with perplexing cares of the Executive office, he could not but smile to see how persistent is the popular belief that official life is a bed of roses, and that the direst threat is that of loss of office. A friend who had written, warning him of a proposed demon stration against him, received this reply : I have heretofore assured you that no consideration but a desire for the pub lic welfare could induce me to continue in public life. The citizens referred to in your letter as engaged in preparing an address to the public, showing that my continuance in office is not required by that consideration, will find me well disposed to yield them a cordial concurrence. A souvenir which he preserved with especial pleasure was a gold 1840.] SMOKING. snuffbox, simple in design, presented to him by his military staff, whose names were inscribed on the under surface of the lid. In his let ter of acknowledgment he remarked : It has been a source of great satisfaction to me, during times of much excite ment and wide diversity of political opinion, that the personal relations existing between the members of the general staff and myself have been kind, generous, and confidential. The enjoyments arising from the occupancy of places of public trust are to be looked for in the solaces which we may be able to carry into retirement, rather than in any absolute pleasure resulting from the exercise of power. This was a principle that he always dwelt upon, one which will per haps help to explain why, though willing to undertake official trusts, he was always ready cheerfully to lay them down. His view about an official career was, that it was like a sea- voyage, a proper thing to un dertake, and a good thing to have accomplished in safety, though full of discomforts and annoyance while in progress. The snuffbox he always afterward used. It traveled with him in his voyages, and at home occupied a drawer in his writing-desk when not carried in his pocket. Taking snuff, however, could hardly be said to be a habit of his at this period. An occasional pinch in the course of conversation, or of work, was all that he indulged in, having been advised that it was useful as a preventive of a catarrhal affection to which he had formerly been subject. Smoking was a life-long habit, especially during seasons of hard and laborious study. He usually lighted a cigar when he sat down to write, slowly consuming it as his pen ran rapidly over the page, and lighted a fresh one when that was exhausted. The number varied at different periods, though it rarely fell below half a dozen a day. There used to be a standing joke between him and Dr. Reed, profes.sor at Union College, to the effect that, once when the two were driving from Albany to Schenectady, sixteen miles, they found themselves out of cigars, and at the first tavern bought a bundle of twenty-five. On reaching their destination the cigars were all gone. Each acknowledged that he had smoked a dozen, but each insisted that the other had smoked the odd one ! 81 482 LIFE ANr > LETTERS. [1840, CHAPTER XXIX. 1840. Besults of the Session. Embarrassments of the Appointing Power. Six Thousand Disap pointments. The Kathbun Forgery Case. Outlook for the Presidential Contest. Escape of Lett. Establishment of the Cunard Line. THE Legislature adjourned on the 14th of May, after a session of more than four months. It had been unusually laborious, for this was the first Whig Legislature ; and, while the members and their constituencies were eager to accomplish many projects long cherished, the leaders of the party felt a grave responsibility. They were anxious to avert the danger which always threatens when a new party comes into power, that of legislating too much, too hastily, and too rashly. Three hundred and seventy laws were passed. The prosecution of internal improvements had been provided for, the redemption of bank notes secured, the cost of legal proceedings reduced, the abolition of imprisonment for debt completed, militia reforms accomplished, politi cal principles in regard to national affairs enunciated, the dead-lock of the previous year in regard to appointments removed, the Governor s nominations confirmed, the vacant United States senatorship and State offices duly filled by legislative election, and the usual mass of local measures scrutinized with unusual care, to avoid any just reproach. Besides the concurrent resolutions on the right of petition, the Legis lature also passed resolutions protesting against the sub-Treasury law, and in favor of limiting the presidential office to one term ; the latter principle being one that the minority always favors when it finds the majority proposing to reelect the incumbent. With no new State issue to embarrass them, with the growing unpopularity of the financial pol icy of Mr. Van Buren, and the growing enthusiasm in behalf of Gen eral Harrison, they separated, to go home and enter upon the political campaign. George W. Patterson s second term as Speaker closed with this ses sion. Dignified, courteous, and impartial, he was one of the most popular presiding officers that ever occupied the chair. The general concurrence in the vote of thanks at the closing hour was never, in his case, a mere form. A letter written this spring described Seward s feelings in regard to his appointments. This letter was called out by a generous and manly one from John B. Scoles, waiving his own aspirations for place if they should be found inconvenient or incompatible with other obli gations. Seward, after thanking him for it, said : I have never been vain enough to suppose that a trust so delicate and diffi cult as that devolved upon me last winter could be discharged without producing 1840.] MURDEU CASES. 483 much disappointment and misapprehension. The list of appointments made this winter is fourteen hundred, for all of which I of course am responsible, while in many if not most instances the circumstances under which the nominations were made left me without freedom of election. When I look over it now, and recall the trying circumstances under which I have passed, I am not surprised by any manifestation of disappointment or dissatisfaction. This only I claim that no interest, passion, prejudice, or partiality of my own has controlled any decision I have made. The applications for pardon during this year were as numerous as in the year preceding. The principles which governed the decisions were the same. Two or three are especially noticeable, as illus trating his habit of weighing the consequences of his action, not merely upon the prisoner, but upon the interests of the community. A watchman in New York (this was before the days of metropolitan police) had come upon some noisy men who were disturbing the streets at a late hour by a brawl, and endeavored to persuade them to peace ably disperse. They turned upon him, beat him severely, threw stones at his companions coming to his assistance, breaking the ribs of one, and seriously injuring others. After the arrest, conviction, and sen tence of the rioters, the friends of a leading one came to the Governor with the usual pleas of " highly-respectable connections," " drunkenness at the time of the offense," and " the suffering of an innocent family." His reply was brief and decided : Six months imprisonment in the penitentiary for such offenses seems to me a very moderate punishment. I should be very happy to relieve his family from the suffering he has brought upon them, but the effect of such clemency would be to encourage assaults upon the police-officers of the city. Jabez Fuller, who had murdered a woman with whom he lived, under circumstances of peculiar and horrible brutality, was sentenced to be hanged, but had friends and counsel to urge commutation of his punishment to imprisonment for life. The Governor, after a careful review of the disgusting details of the crime, closed his decision by saying : The apology for this barbarous murder is, that both the deceased and the prisoner were drunken and depraved persons, and were in some degree intoxi cated when the murder took place. I confess that these circumstances seem to me not to commend the prisoner to Executive clemency. If the maintenance of justice ever requires the example of capital punishment, this seems to me to be of all others a case in which public sympathy ought not to save the offender. The sheriff will make this decision known to the prisoner, so that false hopes may not interfere with his preparation for the great change before him. A rule which Seward had early established for his guidance in ex amining applications for pardon was, that in all cases he should be 4:84 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. furnished with the minutes of the testimony taken on the trial. It was of infinite value, both in showing him where mercy might properly be exercised, and in indicating reasons why pardons should not issue. But the case which most excited popular attention and sympathy was that of Benjamin Rathbun, the owner of the excellent hotel at Buffalo. He was one of the most esteemed and prominent citizens of that town, and had gradually amassed a fortune by active business enterprise. He was several years engaged in trade, and devoted a large portion of his means to the purchase, improvement, and sale of real estate. His operations gave employment to a great number of people, and an impetus to the business of the town. He had in his employ at one time two thousand laborers, besides one hundred skilled agents, assistants, superintendents, cashiers, and clerks. Several banks were more or less under his control, and his extended affairs required a finan cial agency in Buffalo and another in New York. Operations like these are seldom carried on without considerable resort to loans and credits, both in making payments and in receiving returns. The com mercial stringency through which the country had been passing had sometimes rendered the negotiation of paper difficult ; and, though he was prospering and making money, he found himself occasionally sub jected to unexpected annoyance and difficulty from this cause. In an evil hour he yielded to the temptation to save some paper from protest by the imitation of signatures. It was of no great amount, and he was, of course, intending to take up the paper. But success in one such case not only encouraged a repetition, but created necessities for further proceedings of the same sort. So gradually grew up a system of forged notes, into which his cashier, his nephews, and clerks were initiated, and ultimately were busily employed in mak ing, selling, and negotiating spurious paper. Sometimes there would be a great accumulation of it, and again it would nearly all be taken up. The names of between thirty and forty persons and firms were used for purposes of renewal, postponement, or payment ; and the whole amount of forgeries reached two or three million dollars. They were so accurately done that it was impossible for Rathbun himself to distinguish between his genuine and spurious paper without referring to private marks in his books. Incredible as it may seem, in inaugu rating this gigantic system of fraud, neither design nor apprehension was entertained that any one would be injured thereby. It soon grew, however, beyond the control of its projector, and the inevitable discov ery at last came. One note was detected as being a forgery. This caused suspicion and inquiry into all the others, and then the whole fabric toppled down with a crash. He was arraigned, convicted, and sent to prison. The first effect of the case upon the popular mind was to produce 1840.] THE RATHBUN CASE. 485 an indignant outcry at the crime and the prisoner, accompanied even with threats of violence during the progress of his trial. But once within prison-walls at Auburn, public sentiment took a turn in the opposite direction. It was remembered how largely he had benefited Buffalo, how irreproachable had been his conduct in all other respects. It was found that even his forgeries had ruined no one but himself ; and it was claimed that they were executed without intent to gain money, but only to gain time. A warm and widely-expanded feeling of sympathy for him sprang up. Letters and petitions poured in upon the Governor asking his release. One petition, signed by several thousand citizens of Buffalo, made a volume in itself, embracing the signatures of nearly all the lead ing men of the western part of the State. Even those who joined in the prosecution took part in the appeal for pardon, which was further strengthened by letters from the prisoner s numerous personal friends. The pressure was a strong one ; and, had there been nothing to consider but the individual case, it might have succeeded. But the reasons pro and con were stated in the Governor s decision, denying the prayer. After narrating the history of the case, and calling attention to the fact that there were six indictments against the prisoner remaining untried, on which he would be brought to trial, even if pardoned from the first conviction, the Governor went on to remark : Extraordinary as are the circumstances of Benjamin Rathbun s conviction, the sympathy of the petitioners in his behalf is by no means without cause. He has been for more than twenty years a citizen of Buffalo. While living there he rose by industry and energy from an humble condition to wealth, respectabil ity, and extensive usefulness. The wharves, streets, and institutions of that beautiful city furnish many evidences of his enterprise and public spirit. He was, until the forgeries were discovered, generous in all his transactions, courte ous and kind in all his relations, munificent to the public, and charitable to the poor. Aged and respected parents, and a wife even more eminent for her virtues than for her misfortunes, are involved in the consequences of his convic tion. The occasion does not require me to controvert the opinion expressed bj the petitioners, that the punishment the prisoner has already suffered by being arrested in mid-career, suddenly stripped of his dazzling honors torn from his family cast out of society degraded to the companionship of vileness and crime and finally stamped indelibly as a felon, is enough, without prolongation of his imprisonment, to reclaim him from his dangerous ways and effect his ref ormation. The criminal code has one purpose more important than the reformation of the offender. That purpose is the prevention of crime by the example of pun ishment. Pointing out, then, that Rathbun s offenses exceeded in magnitude those of all the convicts for similar crimes in the State-prisons, and that his education, experience, and condition in life, exempted him from the 4:86 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. necessities and temptations which they have to plead : impartiality demanded that a plea in behalf of one whom the world esteemed and respected ought to be equally efficacious for the most obscure criminal in his solitary cell. It would be altogether inconsistent with the pub lic welfare to pardon all those having excuses equally plausible. The decision concluded : For this reason I deem it certain that there is no other offender whose par don would so much impair the public confidence in the firmness, impartiality, and energy of the administration of justice. His conviction was necessary to maintain the sway of the laws and the rights of citizens, and to vindicate the dignity and honor of the State. I reluctantly add that it seems to be a case in which the effect of that conviction must not be impaired by the exercise of Executive clemency. The sequel of this remarkable case was perhaps as extraordinary as the circumstances which preceded it ; Rathbun endured the penalty of the law with resignation and firmness, gained the esteem of all the offi cers of the prison by his conduct while there, and, when liberated at the expiration of his term, was received and welcomed by his friends, and apparently reinstated in their confidence. Far from seeking ob scurity in distant lands, or by change of name, he began business-life anew, not only with vigor and energy, but prudence and success. His just and upright dealing again secured him public confidence, and he was a respected and esteemed citizen of New York until his recent death, at over fourscore years of age. The measures which Seward had proposed and carried through the Legislature, for the reduction of costs and the simplification of pro ceedings at law, continued to excite dissatisfaction among lawyers, while, on the other hand, the popular interest in them, though of course favorable, was not sufficient to induce any concerted or extended efforts in their behalf. One of the measures of law-reform was an act reorganizing the Court of General Sessions in the city of New York, which dispensed with the judicial services of aldermen. Some of the aldermen, reluc tant to give up their powers, continued to act as judges, in violation of the law, defending their action by saying that they considered the law unconstitutional. Opinions were divided in New York. The re sisting aldermen were fortified by the support of the recorder ; while, on the other hand, some of their colleagues were asking the Execu tive to interpose, remove the recorder, and punish the aldermen. His reply to Aldermen Baylis, Woodhull, Jones, and Graham, remarked : I confess my surprise that such functionaries should, in the present instance, be sustained in their illegal proceedings by an officer of such acknowledged abil ity and learning as the recorder. But the constitution prescribes a suitable 1840.] ESCAPE OF LETT. 487 mode for correcting every error and removing every evil in the administration of justice. It is true, as you suggest, that the constitution authorizes the Senate to remove judicial officers upon the recommendation of the Governor. Yet the recorder is acting as a judge, under the solemnity of a judicial oath, and no im proper or corrupt motive is attached to him. It seems to me, therefore, that it will accord better with the spirit of the constitution to leave the question for the consideration of the Supreme Court, than to employ the Executive power, and thus furnish a precedent for future invasions of the independence of the judiciary. Writing to Christopher Morgan, at Washington, in regard to the effect of the results of the session upon the political prospects of the Whigs in the coming canvass, he said : There are complaints loud and deep on the part of the banks against the Whig party for the reform measures. The lawyers are irritated and severely wounded. Complaints from these classes must command attention. Neverthe less, the heart of the Whig party is strong and confident ; and I believe that there never was, with the exception of the Jackson party in 1828, a party in this State so enthusiastic as ours. The general result of the legislation of the last session is benign. I do not fear the profession. Most of them will be both generous and wise. You have no idea of the perpetual labor which I undergo. It is now almost midsummer, and my table groans under accumulating business. It is my opin ion that General Harrison ought to answer nothing. I so advised when his let ter was submitted to me. I shall so advise hereafter. Accompanied by General King, and Rogers his messenger, he now went, for a few days rest, to Auburn. But there was no rest or quiet to be found there, or, if any existed, his coming dispelled it, for a throng of visitors soon poured in upon him. The front-room was turned into an office, General King into a private secretary, and Rogers exercised his functions as if in his accustomed place at the door of the Executive chamber in the Capitol. Auburn was thrown into a state of excitement about this time by the daring escape of Benjamin Lett, who, after blowing up General Brock s monument on Queenstown Heights, had made an attempt to blow up the steamboat Great Britain, at Oswego. Having been tried and convicted there, he had been put in charge of the sheriff, to be brought to the Auburn State-prison. At night, as the cars were pass ing through the woods, four or five miles from Auburn, Lett broke away from the sheriff and jumped off, although the train was going at the rate of twenty miles an hour. The train was stopped, but no traces of him were found, and he was believed to have secreted himself in the woods. The sheriff offered a reward of one hundred dollars, and at the request of the authorities the Governor issued a proclamation offering an additional one of two hundred and fifty dollars, for his recapture. 488 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. Scouting-parties went out from Auburn, attracted by the excitement of so novel a chase ; but all their search, through forest and swamp, was unavailing. Boston was rejoicing, this summer, in the establishment of the Cunard line of steamers. A public dinner was to be given to Mr. Cunard on the arrival of the steamship Britannia, and a committee, among whom were Robert G. Shaw, William Ward, Josiah Quincy, Jr., and Benjamin T. Reed, invited Governor Seward to attend it. He wrote from Auburn, regretting his inability to do so, while warmly ap proving their enterprise, and saying : What a singular change has come over the relations of the New World to the Old, within the last sixty-five years ! England was seen exhausting her wealth in 1776 and 1777, in sending troops and munitions of war to exact tribute from the citizens of Boston ; and each transport consumed a period of about two months. Now, Europeans compete with each other in sending steamships to secure a willing commerce, which enriches England a hundred times more than the statesmen of George III. anticipated from all their exactions. . . . We see, in the enterprise you celebrate, an evidence that we have not misestimated the trade of the Great West, to secure which has been a leading object in our policy. CHAPTER XXX. 1840. Cherry Valley Centennial. The World s Antislavery Convention. Georgetown wanting to get out. The Sub-Treasury Law. Prison Bibles. Utica Convention. Kenomina- tion. Webster at Saratoga. Caleb Gushing. Edward Stanley. Case of Cornelius. CHEERY VALLEY, in Otsego County, was settled in 1740. Its in habitants determined that, on the 4th of July, of 1840, they would cel ebrate both the national holiday and the centennial aniversary of their town s existence. Cherry Valley had clinging round it so much of his toric and personal recollection, that the approaching celebration cre ated interest in all the surrounding country. On , the morning of the 4th its streets presented a scene of unwonted animation. Farmers teams, bringing their families in holiday attire, thronged the winding roads which led into the picturesque valley among the Otsego Hills, once an important point on the turnpike that was the thoroughfare of western travel, but since left far at one side of the railway, which had superseded it. The prominent citizens, with due pride in their historic region, had prepared for the occasion with taste and care, and had in vited many guests to share in the ceremonies. Among those present were the Governor of the State ; President Nott, of Union College ; Hammond, the historian of the State government ; and Judge Camp- 1840.] CHERRY VALLEY CENTENNIAL. 489 bell, who born and reared in the valley had recorded its eventful story in his " Annals of Tryon County." There was a large assemblage. The exercises were impressive and interesting. An address was delivered by Judge Campbell, who re counted the tale of the hardships of the early pioneers the incidents of the Revolutionary campaign, the Indian massacre, and the scenes in which Brant and Sir William Johnson, Washington, Lafayette, and Clinton, had participated. At the dinner, which closed the celebration, the Governor was called upon to respond to some complimentary re marks. He said : I have always desired to visit this place, so long an outpost of civilization in the western forest, and I take especial pleasure in coming to it at a time when the discordant elements of party strife are hushed under the influence of recol lections of a common ancestry, and common sufferings in the cause of liberty. Only a hundred times has the scythe passed over this valley since your ances tors pursued their weary way up the Mohawk, and over these hills, and planted here the first settlement of the Anglo-Saxon race west of the Hudson. Yet, a hundred years is no unimportant portion of time. In a single century four thousand millions of human beings appear on the earth, act their busy parts, and sink into its peaceful bosom. Turning then from the effects of time upon the valley, he gave a rapid review of the changes in the world at large : That century dawned upon one broad scene of war, extending throughout Europe, into Asia and Africa, and even this remote continent. No nation es caped the tread of hostile armies, and few were exempt from revolution. Some maintained their sovereignty, some secured their independence ; but others had gone down forever. Yet, dark as the picture of the last century seems, it is relieved by lights more cheering than any that have shone upon our race in the previous course of time. The human mind has advanced with unparelleled rapid ity in discoveries, in science, and the arts. Civilization has been carried into new regions, and has distributed more equally the enjoyments and comforts of life. The education which, a hundred years ago, was a privilege of the few, is now aoknowledged to be the right of all. What were luxuries a hundred years ago are common enjoyments now. A renovating spirit is abroad in the world. The slave-trade, a hundred years ago regarded as lawful commerce by all Chris tian nations, is now denounced as piracy by most civilized states ; and the rights of man are secured by benign and wholesome laws. What could have been the condition of human rights before the days of Lafayette, Wilberf orce, Jefferson, Hamilton, and Washington ; what the science of law before Montesquieu, Puffendorf, Blackstone, and Bentham; what was natural science before Herschel, Franklin, Davy, Linnaeus, and Buffon; and what would our literature be if we struck out of it the writings of Rollin, Gib bon, Hallam, Hume, Stewart, Robertson, Cowper, Pope, Gray, Goldsmith, John son, Scott, Burns, Byron, and Goethe ! In the evening he drove over to Cooperstown, spent Sunday and 490 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. Monday with hospitable friends there, among them Judge Russell and Mr. and Mrs. Bowers, attending the different churches on Sunday, and on Monday, accompanied by a party of several hundred, making an excursion on the beautiful lake. At " Three-mile Point " an address of welcome by Lyman J. Walworth was followed by a picnic entertain ment. In June there had been a novel and remarkable assemblage, at a spacious hall in Great Queen Street, London, presided over by the ven erable Thomas Clarkson, the originator of the movement, in 1787, for the abolition of the slave-trade. This was the World s Antislavery Con vention, called by the British and Foreign Antislavery Society ; which, though principally composed of members from Great Britain and the United States, was also attended by delegates or visitors from the Con tinent, from the West Indies, from South America, and even from Ori ental lands. It was unanimous as to the end in view, the abolition of slavery. Its debates, resolutions, and addresses, therefore, were de voted to consideration of the means to promote that end. Its chief value was in the comparison of views held by residents in so many re gions. Daniel O Connell and Dr. Channing were among those who participated, either by speech or letter. Gerrit Smith, James G. Bir- ney, William Lloyd Garrison, and Wendell Phillips, were among the American delegates. Among the proceedings was the adoption of an address to the heads of governments throughout the world, a copy of which was duly forwarded to each sovereign, or chief magistrate. Gov ernor Seward received, toward the close of July, the one addressed to him, over Mr. Clarkson s signature. He acknowledged it in a letter to the chairman, saying : I concur entirely with the convention, and with enlightened and benevolent men, in all civilized countries, in regarding slavery as a great moral evil, as un just in principle, a violation of inalienable human rights, inconsistent with the spirit of the Christian religion, and injurious to the prosperity and happiness of every people among whom it exists. Entertaining these views, I have regarded, with deep interest and entire approbation, all the noble efforts which have been made in your country and in this for the abolition of slavery ; and especially those with which your name, and that of your compatriot Wilberforce, have been associated ; until those names have acquired an enduring place among those of the most distinguished benefactors of mankind. ... I have not the slightest hesitation in assuring you that at no time, nor under any circumstances, shall I fail to do whatever may be within the scope of my lawful power and rightful influence, and calculated in my judgment to promote, in the most effectual man ner, the great and philanthropic work of universal emancipation. The citizens of Georgetown, inspired by the example of Alexandria, and by the fear of the abolition of slavery, had become convinced that their prosperity would be promoted by a retrocession of their portion 1840.] CALEB GUSHING. 491 of the District of Columbia to the State of Maryland. They adopted an address, which they sent to the authorities of each State, asking them to instruct their representatives in Congress to give consent. But neither the Governor nor the Legislature of New York were at all inclined to entertain the proposition for the dismemberment of the District. It is a fresh illustration of human short-sightedness in poli tics, that the denial of the boon she asked, and the passage of the law she dreaded, have been the chief sources of Georgetown s safety and prosperity. An invitation was received, in August of this year, to a dinner to be given in Boston to Caleb Gushing, who was then a Whig repre sentative in Congress from Massachusetts, and had won popular favor by the vigor and ability he had displayed in the sub-Treasury debate. Seward wrote, expressing his regret at not being able to avail himself " of an occasion to manifest respect and esteem for that distinguished representative of the people." This versatile and accomplished statesman was then at the begin ning of his long political career. Though in accord on public ques tions at that time, he and Seward pursued widely divergent paths for years afterward. But when the war for the Union had commenced, they were reunited to render effective service in its defense, and cor dial relations thenceforth continued between them until the end. Generosity toward personal or political opponents is a rare trait, and one apt to arouse the jealousies of friends. The practice of it not unfrequently brings reproaches. Alluding to the subject in an swering a letter of Alexander H. Wells, of Westchester, he said : I have no pleasure in speaking, and I always avoid writing, concerning my own position or relation to the public and to political associates. Although I trust I am not ungrateful for personal kindness manifested toward me, and I feel that I have had a thousand times more of it to be thankful for than I have ever deserved, I have nevertheless always regarded equality, justice, and the public welfare, as paramount to personal friendship or gratitude. Hence, if I sometimes appear more ungrateful to friends than politicians are, I trust I am more forgiving to opponents. I do not know whether this is wise for myself, but I am sure that it is not injurious to the public or to the cause. I entertain no confident conviction of my fitness for my high trust, and therefore heresy on that subject by others has never seemed to me a crime. His expectations of being able to pass some time at Auburn were destined to disappointment. As the summer went on, cares multiplied, and now came the season of excitement and labor incident to the presi dential campaign. Tuesday Evening. You must make no calculations upon me. I am overloaded with cares and labors, besides the duty of perpetual audience and attention. 492 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. I wish the boys were here. There is a very handsome rifle company from New York here. They have pitched their tents in the park, directly in front of our house, and have converted that beautiful lawn into a martial scene of war. They have a fine brass band, and the music is very cheering to one fatigued and careworn as I am. August 25th. There is this difficulty in writing as often as I could wish : I cannot give you details of what happens to and around me. The week before last brought the Utica Convention. Its delegates began to pass through the city on Sunday. My time was occupied with them almost exclusively during that week. I went one day to the Helderberg, one day to Ooxsackie, and one day was devoted chiefly to reviewing and receiving the New York militia here. What could I write you about these things, unless all in the first person singular, and an account of myself as the person magnified ? Sunday I was at church. Mr. Verplanck was with me at dinner, and during the evening. Monday an address that I must not describe was rewritten, and given into other hands to be finished with the addition of what concerned myself. Mr. Webster had gone to Saratoga, jealous and unkind toward me. Wise and true men thought it was necessary that I should be there. I thought it due to him and due to myself to show him not less attention than I had to others last year. I went up on Tuesday. From the hour I arrived there I was never alone. The town was full of people, to the number of thousands. They were with me. They broke down the piazza upon which I met them, but fortunately no harm ensued from the accident. I returned here wearied beyond measure on Friday night. On Saturday morning I commenced rewriting my reply to the Governor of Virginia. It was begun with Willis Gaylord Clark in the house ; K. M. Blatch- ford came in the afternoon. The deplorable accident at the wharf occurred that afternoon, and the consequent funerals came on Sunday. Notwithstanding all these distracting circumstances, besides others too minute to be remembered or recorded, my letter to Governor Gilmer was finished yesterday morning, and laid out before me, forty-one foolscap pages in length. A letter requiring much care, to the State Convention, a vindication of the pardoning power as exercised since I came into office, a review on Friday next, a visit to Sing Sing Prison, are now before me. Besides these are other duties, such as ordinarily fall upon me. It became necessary for Jennings to go to Cin cinnati to see General Harrison; but it was desirable that it should not be known. I did not so write to you, lest it might transpire through the post-office. He will be here in a day or two. Mr. Stanley, a member of Congress from North Carolina, and his wife, spent two days with me. I have much to tell you of them. Few persons, entire strangers to each other, have so great curiosity concerning one another. Mr. Stanley and I had each been assured that the other was his counterpart in person. For myself, I was quite desirous to see how I did look, since my unfortunate person had brought me so many ungrateful atten tions, in opposition newspapers and speeches. I believe I will not tell you now what was the conviction of the truth of these disparaging reflections; time enough when we meet. My Virginia letter is finished ; my pardon document gone to press. I breathe more freely. The Virginia letter was a continuation of the correspondence about 1840.] EDWARD STANLEY. 493 the three colored men. Edward Stanley was already a prominent Whig member of the House of Representatives. The acquaintance thus commenced continued through life, and they were destined to act together more than once in times of public danger. The resemblance which mutual acquaintances remarked between them was at that period quite striking. Stanley was of about the same height, of rather slighter frame, with hair and features resembling Seward s more nearly than any of his brothers, and quite as much as some of his pictures. This resemblance grew less marked in later years, though both had the same genial manner and winning address, and their views on political questions corresponded more nearly than was usual at that day among the Whigs of the North and those of the South. During the early part of the year, both parties were watching with strong interest the progress of the sub-Treasury bill in Congress, and both anticipating marked effects upon the election. It had passed the Senate in the winter under the advocacy of Calhoun and Benton, and despite the opposition of Clay and Webster. It dragged in the House, but was finally put through, as Benton described it, by the "summary, silent, and enforcing process of the previous question," at the close of June. The President, to give it national significance, approved it on the 4th of July. Guns, drums, and bells, resounded in its honor, and speeches were made in its praise as the news reached different cities, in the fond belief that, the cure having been found, Whig complaints of the disease in the body politic would be overcome. But it was too late. The patient no longer cared to discuss the merits of the pana cea, and was only solicitous to change the physicians. There was not time enough before the election for the law to demonstrate its benefi cent character, if such it had. There was only time enough for the Whigs to inveigh more bitterly than ever against what they called a new "experiment." Judicious as many of its provisions were, and eager as Mr. Van Buren s friends in Congress had been to pass it, it prob ably gave more votes to his opponents than to him. In a political campaign the party press seldom scruples to seize an occasion for attack, whether grounded in justice or not. One of the themes for attack upon Seward was that he had abused the pardoning power, by reckless bestowal of it upon the unworthy and criminal on the score of their political affiliations, and in order that they might vote at elections. The incidents already narrated show what patient and labo rious care he bestowed on every case before a pardon left his hands. Under his direction an elaborate summary was now prepared, stating each instance in which a pardon had been issued, and the grounds upon which it was granted, since he took the oath of office. This statement 494 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840, showed that, although the number of convicts had increased, he had granted fewer pardons than any predecessor ; that Governors Clinton, Yates, Van Buren, Throop, and Marcy, each averaged more than one, two, or three hundred per annum, while he had granted during his first year but sixty-four, and during the second but seventy-two. It showed also that none had been granted on the mere application of friends, or without a careful examination of the minutes of the testimony of the case. It showed that those which were granted were usually recom mended by the judges, juries, or prosecuting officers who had obtained the conviction ; and finally that, so far from pardoning them in order that they might vote, it was an established rule to withhold the rights of citizenship until the pardoned convict had proved, by a year or more of good conduct, that he was worthy to exercise them. Among the many touching incidents connected with the exercise of the pardoning power was the case of Joseph P. Cornelius, of Newbury- port, Massachusetts. He was in prison under a conviction of grand lar ceny, upon his own confession. His wife s letter to the Governor said : It is with feelings of pain that I address your Excellency, to plead for one who is dearer to me than all earthly ties. It is true that he has violated the laws of God and man ; but still it is not an unpardonable offense. Your Excellency must be aware of the numerous temptations there are to young men in the city of New York ; therefore you will not be surprised that my husband has committed such a crime. Last fall his health was miserable, and what little writing he could do was barely sufficient to pay his board. My situation at the time was such that he knew I must have money, or suffer for the comforts of life. He knew that I had been brought up with care and tenderness, and had never known a want ; he could not bear to see me or my children want for anything, and, in an unguarded moment, yielded to the tempter. We are both young and have two children, one of whom is but three months old ; and now that my husband is confined, every means of support is cut off, and we are left destitute and penniless and en tirely dependent upon the kindness of his friends, for I have neither father, mother, sister, nor brother ; and, moreover, I have no blood relation in the world that I am aware of, so that I have no one to call upon for assistance. Therefore I beg and entreat you to be merciful, and do all you can to have him pardoned. His disposition is such that I have every reason to think he will never commit such a crime again. Naturally industrious, amiable, and affectionate, he could not be happy to continue such a course of life. God grant that all I have said in behalf of my husband may have the desired effect ! MARGARET CORNELIUS. The Governor in his answer said : The affecting case you have presented to me is by no means singular. I have almost every day to receive applications for pardon which I must not grant, and which it requires a hard heart to deny. I am favorably impressed concerning your husband, by so many evidences of his affectionate disposition, and the cir cumstances of destitution on your part, to relieve which he committed his great error. I think I see indications propitious to his reformation, in the sympathy 1840.] THE HARRISON CAMPAIGN. 495 your misfortunes and his have excited. I must bring that sympathy to aid his ref ormation, and make that aid a condition Of my interposition in his behalf. Whenever your husband s friends shall have found some employment for him, which the Hon. Mr. Gushing shall certify to me will in his opinion be sufficient for the support of your family and may be reasonably expected to be permanent if your husband continues to conduct himself well, I will grant the application for pardon. It was not long before assurances came, from the gentlemen at New- buryport who were interested in the case, that they had found employ ment for Cornelius in accordance with the Governor s requirement. The pardon was granted, and he returned to his family and to habits of industry and usefulness. CHAPTER XXXI. 1840. The Presidential Campaign. " Old Tip." Mass-Meetings. Speeches and Songs. The Conservatives. Bishop Hughes. The "Forty-Million Debt." The Glentworth Ex plosion. Reception at Albany. The Last Time a Candidate. THE presidential campaign was now in full blast. It was a memo rable one. Beginning immediately after the nomination of Harrison and Tyler, at Harrisburg, in the preceding December, the popular en thusiasm had rapidly increased. The Whig papers likened the move ment, not inaptly, to the spread of the "prairie-fires." The Whig leaders, of course, aided it with all the appliances that political skill or experience could suggest ; and the Democrats, as not unf requently hap pens to those on the unpopular side of a controversy, found their argu ments and even their ridicule of the Whig candidate turned to his advantage. Some one, alluding to pioneer habits in the West, had ad vised that Harrison be given a log cabin and plenty of hard cider to drink ; implying that that condition of life was more befitting for him than the White House. It was an unfortunate sneer for the Democrats, for it supplied the spark that only was needed to kindle popular sym pathy into a blaze. The Whigs fanned the flame. He became the " log- cabin candidate." The log cabin became the emblem of his pioneer life, of his military services, of his kindred feelings with the farmers, of his unrequited toil for his country. A log cabin sprang up in near ly every city a club-house and rallying-place for Whigs. Log-cabin raisings and house-warmings were held, with music and political speeches. Log-cabin medals were struck, and passed from hand to hand. Miniature log cabins were carried in processions and displayed 496 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. on platforms. Log-cabin pictures were hung in the bar-rooms and parlors. Log-cabin magazines and song-books found ready sale. La dies made log-cabin fancy-work for fairs, and children had little log cabins of wood, tin, and confectionery. The Whig State Committee got up a campaign newspaper, to be published simultaneously in New York and Albany, and named it the Log Cabin, calling Horace Greeley to its editorial chair, and it had a popularity equaled by no campaign paper before or since. For him it was the stepping-stone to fame and fortune ; for the energy and skill displayed in it, and its wide circula tion, opened the way for its successor, the Tribune. All the appliances and appurtenances of the log cabin came into favor. There was the barrel of hard cider, to stand by the door ; there was the coon-skin, to be nailed by its side ; there was the latch-string, to admit the welcome guest, and it was remembered that Harrison told his old soldiers they would never find his door shut or the latch-string pulled in. There was the rye-and-Indian bread ; and there were the strings of dried apples, and pumpkins, and bunches of corn and pep pers, hanging from the roof; and there was the broom at the door, typical of the purpose of the Whigs to make a clean sweep. Nothing was wanting to point the contrast between " the poor man s friend " and " the rich man s candidate," but to recount, as Whig stump-speak ers did, with gusto, the items of national expense for " gilt candelabra, porcelain vases, satin chairs, and damask sofas," in " Van Buren s palace," the White House at Washington. But the log cabin was not the only ad captandum argument at the service of the Whigs. Taking a lesson -from their own crushing defeats by the hero of New Orleans, they proceeded to hoist flags, fire salutes, and declaim panegyrics on the " Hero of the Thames," the " Defender of Fort Meigs," the "Victor of Tippecanoe." Tippecanoe, besides being the leading exploit of the military chieftain, was a good sonorous name for the orators to pronounce, ore rotundo, and clubs to sing in swelling chorus. For, by this time, the irrepressible enthusiasm had burst out in song ; campaign songs, campaign songsters, glee-clubs, and Harrison minstrels, were now in vogue. Popular airs and national an thems were pressed into service. English and Scotch ballads and negro melodies were adapted to new words. The familiar strains of the " Star- Spangled Banner," "Yankee Doodle," the "Marseillaise Hymn," " Scots wha hae," "Paddy Carey," the "Bonnets of Blue," "McGregor s Gathering," and " Old Rosin the Bow," resounded through halls and streets, to the words of political songs " The Buckeye Cabin," " The Hero of the Thames," " Old Fort Meigs," " Tippecanoe Gathering," "Old Tip," and Up Salt River." But the "song of songs" was .one which, having little music in it, everybody could sing. And nearly everybody did. This was : 1840.] "TIPPECANOE AND TYLER TOO." 4.97 " What has caused this great commotion, motion, motion, Our country through \ It is the ball, a-rolling on CHORUS. " For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, For Tippecanoe and Tyler too. " And with them we ll beat little Van, Van, Van Van is a used-up man ; And with them we will beat little Van." This chant was hummed in parlors and kitchens, sung by the boys in the streets, marched to in political processions, and was the grand finale of all Whig meetings, the whole audience shouting it through their thousand throats with as much fervor as French republicans chant the " Marseillaise," or Englishmen sing " God save the Queen." The song was capable of indefinite expansion ; for new verses could be extemporized for each locality, or each incident of the campaign ; thus : " Who shall we have for our Governor, Governor, Governor? Who, tell me ? Who ? Let s have Bill Seward, for he s a team, For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, etc. " Have you heard from old Kentuck, Tuck, tuck, tuck, Good news and true ? Seventeen thousand is the tune, For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, etc." Most presidential candidates have a nick-name ; and General Har rison, long before the summer was over, was universally known as " Old Tip." There were Tippecanoe banners, Tippecanoe clubs, Tippe canoe meetings. Steamboats were named after him ; children chris tened for him ; dogs were called " Tip ; " and spans of horses were "Tip "and Ty." Political meetings took on a new character. They were no longer forced assemblages in club-rooms, but spontaneous out-door crowds overflowing with enthusiasm. The journals which used to descant with pride, in large type, upon " Six Hundred Freemen in Council," now found themselves chronicling the gatherings of thousands with no need of exclamation-points. Whole counties were called to assemble in mass-meeting ; whole States were invited to assemble in mass-con ventions. Great meetings were held in cities, and obscure country towns became the gathering-points for thousands. There was a meet ing of three thousand at Martinsburg, of four thousand at Ellicott- ville, of five thousand at Auburn, of six thousand at Jamestown, of seven thousand at Niagara, of eight thousand at Fonda, of ten thou sand at Glens Falls, of ten thousand at Goshen, of twenty thousand at 32 498 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. Utica, and of sixty thousand at Syracuse. A grand Whig Convention of seventy-five thousand at Bunker Hill, with a procession five miles long, seemed to crown the series ; but even this was outdone by a mass-convention at Dayton, in Harrison s own State of Ohio, which the Whigs claimed was " one hundred thousand strong ! " One of the mass-meetings which excited most public interest was the Whig Young Men s Convention at Baltimore, held in May, at which fifteen or twenty thousand delegates were present from the various States of the Union. Intense popular indignation was excited by the murder of one of the marshals, by a blow from a ruffian, as the proces sion was marching through the streets. "How long is this procession?" asked a by-stander, of one of the marshals of the cavalcade at Erie, Pennsylvania. " Indeed, sir, I cannot tell," was the reply ; "the other end of it is forming somewhere in the State of New York." Finally, they took to measuring the size of meetings by the acre. At Dayton surveyors computed the throng by counting the number of men who stood on a quarter of an acre, and then a mathematical survey of the whole ground covered gave them the sum total of the mass. When no hall or church could hold the meeting, it gathered in some grove or in the fields, like a mustering army. The most eloquent speakers on the Whig side were called into requisition to address these assemblages, and traveled from point to point. Webster and Clay, Crittenden, Stanley, Tallmadge, Ogden Hoffman, Preston, Southard, Leigh, Legare", Rives, Corwin, Governor Call, General Wilson, and a hundred of lesser note, were on the stump. General Harrison himself made a speech at the Dayton Convention. His clear, sonorous voice was echoed by the im mense multitude, swaying to and fro, like the leaves of a forest in a strong wind. " Are you in favor of paper-money ? " they demanded. " I am," was the reply, and then the shouts of applause were deafening. Between the speeches there would be singing by trained vocalists, or a grand chorus by the entire assemblage. Covert and Dodge, the favor ite singers at mass-meetings, became known throughout the Union. Held by daylight, the meeting made a holiday for the whole sur rounding region. Farmers flocked in by all the country roads, bring ing their wives and children as they would to a Fourth-of-July cele bration. Delegations came by rail and steamboat from the adjoining cities. The meetings took various forms in different regions. They were not only meetings, but conventions, clam-bakes, barbecues, ex cursions, celebrations of historic anniversaries. Nothing attracts a crowd so rapidly as the knowledge that there is a crowd already ; and when it was known that there was to be not only a crowd, but music, festivity, flags, decorations, and processions, eloquence of famous men, and keen political humor, few could resist the infection. 1840.] MOTTOES AND PICTURES. 499 Never was there a political campaign so abounding in pictures. Wood-engravers and lithographers were busy. There were illustrated Harrison papers, Harrison almanacs, and lives of Harrison. In one picture he was welcoming his old comrades in arms at the door of his log cabin. In another, he was addressing Bolivar, the South American liberator. In another, he was driving his plough, as the " farmer of North Bend." In another, he was building the stockade for the de fense of Fort Meigs. In another, he was mounted on an impossible horse, leading his army to unheard-of exploits at Tippecanoe. His por trait not only hung upon walls, but was borne in procession and dis played by flags. Caricatures were at every street-corner. There was the rooster, emblematic of the Indiana elections, ironically labeled, " Tell Chapman to crow ! " There was the " ball " depicted as " rolling on " and over Van Buren and his cabinet. There was Benton, repre sented as the man who killed the goose that laid the golden eggs, in the vain hope of more. There was the canoe, with " Old Tip " as an In dian chief, paddling swiftly to the White House, whence Van Buren was escaping, as " the flying Dutchman." There was the log cabin arranged as a trap which had fallen, and the captured fox, with Van Buren s face looking out of the window. Flags and transparencies flaunted mottoes, proclaiming principles and purposes, or derision of opponents, thus : " Harrison, Seward, and Better Times," "No Standing Army," "No Reduction of Wages," " O. K. Off to Kinderkook," " Van Buren and Eleven Pence a Day, or Harrison with Two Dollars and Roast Beef," "Harrison and Reform," " One Presidential Term," " Where s the Promised Better Currency ?" " The Farmer of North Bend," " Protection to American Industry," " Liberty in Log Cabins rather than Slavery in Palaces." It was in vain that the Van Buren men tried to stem this current. Their speakers were able and eloquent, but they could draw no such audiences. They called Harrison " an old granny," styled the Whigs " coons " and " cider-suckers," but all with no avail. Leading minds among them declared, and continued years afterward to believe, that all this popular ferment was in the nature of a crazy fanaticism, stimu lated by adroit appeals to popular sympathy. There was some truth in this opinion, yet it did grave injustice to the common-sense of the American people, and gave undue importance to the power of politi cians. The Whig popular demonstrations bore the same relation to the underlying public feeling that the foam and spray of Niagara do to the deep, swift, resistless undercurrent which produces them. The people had grown tired of twelve years of the dominant party s rule. They had had " hard times," derangements of currency and prices, fre quent and ruinous. They believed, whether justly or not, that these were the direct results of experiments in finance, made by their rulers. 500 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. The overthrow of the National Bank, the suspension of specie pay ments, the passage of the sub-Treasury law, the refusal of protection by tariff, the tampering with the mails, and the denial of the right of petition, were all regarded with apprehension and alarm, not so much because of actual ill-effects as because they were proofs of the exist ence of arbitrary power at Washington, which, if not checked, might lead to still graver oppression. Nothing could be more acceptable to a majority entertaining such apprehensions than the nomination of a candidate known to be a patriot, and believed to be of a condition in life which would make his interests and sympathies identical with their own. They dreaded an aristocracy which might give them a King Stork ; they had no fear, even if their own candidate should turn out to be a King Log. It is quite probable that, with a different candi date, the Whigs would still have carried the election ; for the popular mind, as the last two years had evinced, was bent upon a change of rulers. That the results of 1840 were not produced by the arts of politicians, or the infection of excitement, is sufficiently shown by the fact that politicians, with their utmost skill, have never been able to imitate them, even in times of greater excitement, since. To this day, the highest praise that a party newspaper can bestow upon a great meeting is, that it was like the old scenes of " the Harrison campaign in 1840." Among the humorous light literature of the campaign were the let ters over the nom de plume of " Major Jack Downing." Improving on the themes of the log cabin, the major wrote a series of letters from the cabin itself at North Bend, describing his visit to " the Gineral," and his talks with him on politics, farming, and finance. As early as April, he announced : " The Ohio has riz and so has the whole West ern Resarve one by hard rain, and t other by hard cider." Every two or three days, as the campaign went on, the newspapers would announce that some prominent Democrat had left his party, and avowed himself for Harrison. Each renunciation stimulated fresh ones, and, as it drew near November, they came thick and fast. The Whig State Convention met at Utica on the 12th of August, and, like other gatherings of this extraordinary campaign, it was made the occasion of a mass-meeting. Instead of the few hundred people who usually assemble on such occasions, Utica was thronged with twenty-five thousand. There were, of course, processions, miles in length, speeches, music, banners, paintings, log cabins, schooners, balls rolling on, and all the other devices of the canvass. The business- meeting of the convention proper, instead of an assemblage for debates and votes, was rather an enthusiastic ratification of conclusions already arrived at. Peter R. Livingston was made its presiding officer. Gov ernor Seward and Lieutenant-Governor Bradish were unanimously re- 1840.] THE CONTEST FOR GOVERNOR. nominated by acclamation. A Harrison electoral ticket was agreed upon without a dissenting voice, headed by James Burt, one of the sur viving electors of Jefferson in 1800, and General Peter B. Porter, who fought at Chippewa in 1812. Resolutions and an address were adopted, a State Central Committee named with the same unanimity and celerity, and the convention, which had met on Wednesday morn ing, accomplished its business, and adjourned before Thursday noon. The address was presented and read by the Governor s neighbor, Chris topher Morgan. The Central Committee was composed of Lewis Benedict, John Townsend, Sandford Cobb, James Horner, Samuel Stevens, Robert Thompson, and John Taylor. Among the delegates were Joel B. Nott, John L. Schoolcraft, John A. Collier, R. P. Johnson, Francis H. Rug- gles, B. F. Rexford, Isaac C. Platt, William N. Tobey, Erastus Root, George A. Simmons, David A. Bockee, Lewis Averill, E. Minturn, M. O. Roberts, Francis Hall, E. W. Leavenworth, Alvah Worden, Phineas Rumsey, William C. Hasbrouck, Charles H. Carroll, John Whiting, John L. Overbaugh, John R. Thurman, and Henry B. Northrup. The Democratic State Convention met at Syracuse, and nominated for Governor, William C. Bouck ; for Lieutenant-Governor, Daniel S. Dickinson, and a Van Buren electoral ticket, headed by Samuel Young and George P. Barker. The Democratic nomination for Gov ernor was a strong one in one respect. Mr. Bouck had been a Canal Commissioner, a zealous, faithful, and prudent one. He had been re moved purely on political grounds, to make way for a Whig successor. The Democrats claimed support for him now as an acknowledgment due to a faithful public servant, who had been unjustly treated. Fur thermore, he could hardly be accused by the Whigs of hostility to in ternal improvements, since he had advocated and aided their comple tion, and he was commended to Democratic indorsement as one whose scrupulous economy and exact accounts proved him to be trustworthy. Seward had, therefore, in him a more formidable competitor for the vote of the State than General Harrison had in Mr. Van Buren. But there were other and still more potent causes for opposition to Seward s reelection. His recommendations in regard to law reform had excited hostility on the part of a profession that in every election is an influ ential one. His distribution of patronage, like that of every Executive who, while appointing one disappoints ten, had raised up opposers. The most effective weapon, however, against him was the misrepresen tation of his views on the public-school question. This was a two- edged sword : Protestants were urged to vote against him because he was giving undue privileges to Catholics, and Catholics were urged to vote against the Whig party because it could not be relied upon to carry out his recommendations. The recommendation in regard to 502 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. schools had been made after conference with Protestant divines, and with their concurrence. Though subsequently charged to have been adopted under Catholic influence, no Catholic had ever seen it, or been consulted in regard to it. That it would bring into the school-houses of the State children otherwise doomed to grow up in ignorance in the streets, was its chief motive. If Dr. Nott and Dr. Luckey had, in ad dition to this motive, any bias of sectarian feeling, it was the hope and belief that education in the public schools would be more likely to con vert Catholic children to Protestantism than to lead any Protestant child to Catholicism. The attacks upon the Governor not unnaturally attracted the atten tion of Bishop Hughes, of the Catholic Church. Warmly condemning their injustice, he sent word to the Governor, through a mutual friend, that he should be glad to visit and converse with him. Seward an swered that he should have great pleasure in conversing with the bishop on the subject, and would hear his views with respect, and communi cate his own opinions with frankness, " on a subject which ought to excite not only a patriotic zeal but Christian philanthropy." Soon afterward the bishop came to Albany, and called upon the Governor. He was at this time a fine-looking, well-proportioned man, with round head, blue eyes, high forehead, delicately-cut features, with the smooth face and close-cut hair of his order. The acquaintance thus began was continued during subsequent years. There were, as there always are, friends who would have had Sew ard explain away, withdraw, or recant the unpopular doctrine by some public avowal, in order to save his election. To all such his answer was firm and decided. He believed the principle to be right ; and not less so because it was unpopular for the moment. He should adhere to it, let the election go which way it might. Perhaps an extract or two from his correspondence on the subject will serve to illustrate this feeling. In a private letter to Major Mordecai M. Noah he wrote : I early learned the injury the State was suffering from the failure of our public schools to educate a large portion of the children of foreigners in our cities, and upon the public works. I discovered also, as I thought, that the fail ure arose from a want of harmony and sympathy between native and voluntary citizens. I have believed no system of education could answer the ends of a republic but one which secures the education of all. I ventured to promise myself that one of the chief benefits I might render the State was, to turn the footsteps of the children of the poor foreigners from the way that led to the House of Refuge and the State-prison, into the same path of moral and intel lectual cultivation made so smooth and plain for our own children. My first message to the Legislature contained a suggestion for that purpose, and in my last the subject was asserted more distinctly. If there was one policy in which J supposed all republican and Christian citizens would concur it was this. I 1840.1 THE FORTY-MILLION DEBT. 503 found, however, to my surprise, that the proposition encountered unkind recep tion. A press, that should have seconded it, perverted my language and assailed my motives. My surprise was followed by deep mortification when I found that a considerable portion of the press of the political party to which I belonged adopted the same perversion, and condemned the policy recommended. Never theless, 1 am not discouraged by all this. I am only determined the more con clusively to discharge the responsibility resting upon me, of doing what may be in my power to render our system of education as comprehensive as the inter ests involved, and to provide for the support of the glorious superstructure of universal suffrage the basis of universal education. This, I know, can be done without injustice or inequality ; but the details of the improvement must neces sarily be a subject of careful consideration. . . . The "Conservatives," who had rendered the Whigs useful help during the past three years, still maintained their distinctive organiza tion. They called a convention to meet at Auburn on the 1st of Octo ber. William C. Rives, of Virginia, and Hugh L. Legare", of South Carolina, came up to attend it, stopping on the way at Albany to breakfast with Governor Seward, and to confer with him in regard to the issues of the campaign. The breakfast was a pleasant and satis factory gathering, as was the convention itself on the ensuing day at Auburn. It was well attended, presided over by General Pierre Van Cortlandt, addressed by Messrs. Tallmadge, Rives, Legare", and others, and it indorsed all the nominations previously made by the Whigs at Utica. Seward, in accordance with what he deemed the proper rule of action for a chief magistrate, remained at his official post at Albany in the discharge of its duties, and declined to attend the popular meetings ; though, in response to numerous letters of invitation, he gave them his hearty concurrence and support, to displace " an Administration that substitutes experiment for experience." Log cabins, ingeniously made of various materials, were sent to the Governor by ardent Whigs. A committee, headed by J. C. Derby, greeted him with one on his arrival at Auburn just before election. This curious and pretty relic of by-gone politics is still standing, with " the latch-string out," in the old house at Auburn. It is a miniature cabin, two feet long, thickly incrusted with crystals deposit ed upon it by some chemical process, so that it glittered and sparkled like a cabinet of jewels. Time has crumbled away the crystals, and the rude logs assert themselves. Napoleon used to say that the French were the only nation that went to war for an idea ; but the Americans, in their political con tests, sometimes even join issue upon ideas having no foundation in fact. One of these phantasms was the " forty -million debt," which during the campaign of 1840 was assailed by the Democrats and de fended by the Whigs as if it were a real entity. There was no such 504: LI FE AND LETTERS. debt ; there never had been any such debt ; there never was to be any such debt. Nobody had recommended the creation of any such debt. But it was declared that there would be such a debt if the Whigs were left in power. Partisans in an active canvass lose no opportunity to secure votes, and convicts are equally watchful for chances of pardon. A curious illustration of both these points was the fact that, in the heat of the Harrison campaign, shoals of applications poured in upon the Govern or for the restoration of pardoned criminals to the rights of citizen ship, the inference being implied, though not expressed, that they would vote the Whig ticket. These projects the Governor nipped in the bud, by declining to consider the questions until after election. All eyes were now turned toward the elections in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and Indiana, which were regarded as foreshadowing the general result in November. The returns, when they came in, were full of auspicious promise for the Whigs. Ohio had been carried by a large majority ; Indiana seemed to have followed in the same direction. The strength of the Jackson and Van Buren men, in Pennsylvania, was evidently so reduced as to leave the result there in doubt, with a cer tainty that, if there was a Democratic majority on the local ticket, it was exceedingly small, indicative of a probability of a Whig one at the presidential election. Toward the close of October, while Seward was making a visit to Chautauqua, came the explosion of a political mine, of which the train had been ingeniously laid, and which was expected to seriously damage the Whigs in the election. Some politicians in New York arrested Glentworth, the tobacco inspector, brought him before the recorder and Justice Matsell, on a charge of having been an emissary to Philadelphia, in October, 1838, to procure illegal voters to help elect Governor Seward. It was alleged that he had been employed in this nefarious scheme by Moses H. Grinnell, R. M. Blatchford, Simeon Draper, James Bowen, and R. C. Wetmore, leading Whig managers ; and it was claimed that by these means Governor Seward had been elected, and had rewarded Glentworth with the to bacco inspectorship. The city rung with this astounding story. The press teemed with editorials, affidavits, letters, proofs, and denials. Handbills were struck off, and sent far and near, representing that Governor Seward had been arrested ; that some of his friends had fled from justice, and others were in the hands of the courts. Doubtless the tale was largely believed by Democrats, and even those who did not fully believe thought it would aid them in the election. The Whigs, though disbelieving, had serious apprehensions that such would be its result. Both were mistaken, for the public mind, even at that day, had learned to be incredulous of charges against candidates made 1840.] THE GLENTWORTH CASE. 505 just before election. When, afterward, the evidence came to be sifted, there was enough to show it was at least plausible. Glentworth had been sent to Philadelphia in 1838, by the gentlemen named, as they testified, to watch and check apprehended efforts to import illegal voters to New York. Whether he was tempted, by the insight thus gained into such frauds, and by the facility with which they could be executed, is not clear ; but, at any rate, his Whig employers became alarmed, on the last day of October, by the suspicion that he was em barking in some enterprise similar to that which he was to check. They had at once disavowed and denounced any such project, and ordered him to abandon it. The correspondence of October, 1838, was pro duced, and the evidence before the recorder attested the truth of the indignant denials of these gentlemen of any complicity in such frauds. No frauds, in fact, had been committed ; and if any had been contem plated, on either side, Grinnell, Blatchford, Bowen, Draper, and Wet- more, had frustrated them. A revulsion of popular feeling took place in their favor, and a procession of fifteen thousand people marched to Grinnell s house, and tendered him a nomination to Congress. The extraordinary proceeding culminated when Glentworth made affidavit that Democratic managers had persuaded and bribed him, by offers of money and of the consulate at Havre, if he would make state ments implicating Governor Seward and his leading friends in New York " in a charge of having countenanced frauds at the election in New York City, in the year 1838." Seward, to whom the whole story was a surprise, read it first in the papers while on his western trip. By the time he returned to Albany, the storm had not only broken, but cleared away ; and he learned for the first time from his New York friends of Glentworth s mission to Philadelphia in 1838, and of the part they had had in it. On his return from Westfield, traveling rapidly and unostentatiously, public demonstrations were as much as possible avoided, though he was everywhere received and greeted by friends who were busily engaged in the work of the canvass, and had already begun to enter tain expectations of victory. He paused a day at Rochester, where a review in the afternoon was followed by a meeting and speech in the evening. He reached Albany, as he had purposed to do, on the night before election. A committee waited upon him in behalf of a meeting of the citizens to bid him welcome. Jared L. Rathbone was president, and among the vice-presidents were Robert Hunter, John Taylor, Clark Durant, George R. Payne, James Gould, John White, and Jacob Lan sing ; and among the secretaries, Joseph Davis and Robert S. Cush- man. He answered them at some length, saying : It is a sublime spectacle to see a nation of twenty millions of free people in telligently and intently engaged in reviewing the policy and conduct of those 506 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. who administer their government, and rendering that solemn judgment in which all are bound to acquiesce. On such an occasion it must be expected, and it is right, that the severest scrutiny into the conduct of public men should be exercised, and the broadest latitude of examination be demanded. I rejoice in assurances from all quarters of the Union that the distinguished citizen of Ohio who is our candidate for the presidency is passing safely through the canvass, and that a grateful people have vindicated his well-earned fame. The nation will, I trust, now enjoy a season of repose and prosperity. . . . For myself, I have not desired to avoid scrutiny or circumscribe examination. He then proceeded to review the leading questions of that period, the measures which had been proposed or carried out, the difficulties encountered, and the progress made in regard to each. In conclusion, he said : I am well aware that, amid these and other difficulties, I have erred often from defect of judgment, but I have erred often, also, by reason of wrong infor mation, for truth is not always swift to enter the Executive chamber. When the excitement and the interests of the present time pass away, it may perhaps be allowed that I have sometimes been thought wrong by those who received their impressions through misrepresentation. Nevertheless, I have been sus tained by the reflection that I have been conscious of no motive calculated to sway me from equal and exact justice. . . . And I have been cheered by the hope that, when the annalist of our State shall write the history of its roads and canals, its schools and its charities, and its benign legislation, it may at least be allowed to me that I endeavored to act in harmony with the spirit of the age. Election-day passed off quietly. The next morning, the meagre returns from the vicinity of Albany, the river counties, and the city of New York, were not reassuring. Dutchess and some other counties had failed to come up to the Whig expectations ; but, as the day wore on, and returns began to come in from the north and west, the pros pect brightened. A day or two later success had become a certainty ; and the " Unionists," as the Whig association in Albany was called, turned out en masse to greet Governor Seward, and march around his house in a torch-light procession with cheers, bonfires, fireworks, and transparencies, congratulating him on his reelection, and proclaiming that the Empire State was safe " for Tippecanoe and Tyler too." Then came the reports from other States, which soon put Harrison s election beyond doubt. He had carried seventeen States, which would give him two hundred and thirty-four electoral votes, to sixty for Van Buren. New York had been carried for him by thirteen thousand ma-, jority. Seward, having been made the special point of attack by the opposing party, who had hoped to secure the State, even if they could not stem the tide of national enthusiasm, was reflected, but by a dimin ished majority of between five and six thousand. 1840.] WHIGS AND THE FOREIGN VOTE. 507 In regard to the Legislature, the Democrats were more successful, having gained enough members of Assembly to reduce the Whig strength to a bare majority of four. Of the eight new Senators elected this year, four were Whigs, and four Democrats. So the Whigs retained their control of that House. Of the members of Congress elected, twenty-one were Democrats and nineteen Whigs a Demo cratic majority of two. After eyery election comes the discussion of the causes which led to its results. The echo of the enthusiastic outburst of Whig rejoicing had hardly died away before there began to be expressions of disap pointment that, riding, as they had been, on the topmost wave of popu lar enthusiasm, they had not achieved a greater triumph in the State. The grounds of the special opposition to Governor Seward were again freely canvassed. His avowed antislavery opinions, and his sympathy with foreigners, were charged with having been the cause of the mis chief. It was said that if he had avoided the Virginia controversy, and had not encouraged " abolition " legislation, and had not made his rec ommendations about the schools, he would have had double the majority. " Depend upon it," political wiseacres said, u the Whig party will never get along until it cuts loose from all connection with the niggers and the Irish." So far as the " abolitionists " were concerned, this view of the case did them injustice. They had given twenty-five hundred votes to Birney and Gerrit Smith, but the growing antislavery sentiment act ually had a much larger following ; and at least one-half of the avowed antislavery men had voted the Whig ticket, because they believed the Whig party, on the whole, more opposed to slavery than the other. The law-reforms, which also cost Seward so many votes, were subse quently engrafted on the statute-book and in the constitution, and his views in regard to slavery are now universal. In his acknowledgments of numerous letters from friends, whether of congratulation or upbraiding, Seward s replies had but one tone. Writing to Colonel C. D. Barton, of Keeseville, he said : The victory in its general results is all that was ever hoped ; in its details, we have succeeded as well as it was reasonable to expect. For myself, I am abun dantly satisfied with the measure of public approbation awarded to me. It is perhaps more than I have deserved. Besides, it is quite unimportant to the public welfare whether that measure is full or scanty. To Benjamin Silliman, a warm-hearted and earnest friend, who, deem ing the adopted citizens ungrateful toward Seward, spoke of a policy of opposition to them, he replied : The adopted citizens, en masse, have long been opposed to the party to which I belong. They owed me no fidelity. True, I am, or mean to be, just to them. But I am the representative of a party that is unwilling to be so. They voted 508 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. against me, as such representative, deceived and misled as they were by Amer icans in both parties, representing me insincere and deceitful. . . . Remarking that the world is apt to judge wrongly the day after an election which does not go to their mind, he concluded : And here we will drop the whole matter at least I will, for I do not desire to inhibit you. I like so well to hear from you that I would rather read your wayward reflections upon Jesuitism than endure your silence. God bless you, whether you are Whig or Native American I So closes the record of Seward s share in the election of 1840, the last election in which he was ever a candidate at the polls. His national reputation had hardly yet begun, and he was destined for years to come to be a leader of national opinion, and an actor in public events with a following of millions, who voted in accordance with his counsels. But not one man of those millions, at any popular election, was ever to have on his ballot the name of William H. Seward. CHAPTER XXXII. 1840. Rush for Federal Appointments. Whig Jubilations. Antislavery Party. Virginia Con troversy continued. Thanksgiving. Murder Cases. The Electoral College. ALMOST before the printer s ink was dry that announced the elec tion of General Harrison, applicants for Federal offices were preparing their papers, and canvassing the chances for obtaining the coveted places. Writing on this subject to Seth C. Hawley, Seward said : Yon very rightly suppose that there will be an humiliating spectacle exhib ited in the multitudinous and eager applications for Executive patronage at Washington. My own experience teaches me that the part to be performed in the exhibition by citizens of this State will not be the least active. The Presi dent will need disinterested support through the fiery trial. . . . Behold, then, my course, not only until after the Legislature meets, but throughout. It is neither to look to the General Government for anything, nor to receive from it anything absolutely to refrain from interfering in any way with the dispensa tion of Federal patronage, and with the competition of my fellow-citizens for it, throughout General Harrison s term. A confiding support of the Whig Executive of the Union in his measures and policy, sustaining them with zeal and what ability I possess, allaying dis contents and soothing disappointments when they occur, as my own experience teaches me they must, and finally exerting my best efforts in cooperation with his and all others, to render the triumph of Whig principles beneficial to the country. 1840.] AFTER ELECTION. 509 The official returns showed that Mr. Grinnell, after the Glentworth excitement, ran ahead of the rest of the ticket " the only instance," said a Whig journal, " we can find, in the Union, where a local candi date has outstripped Old Tip." Shortly there was a new phase in the Glentworth case. The grand-jury in New York, who had been examining the witnesses, found no ground for indictment, but rather unexpectedly turned upon the recorder. He had charged them " deliberately to inquire, and true presentment make ; " and they presented his own proceedings, in the search and newspaper publications, as u making him a party to any illegality that may have taken place." During the preceding year dissensions had broken out among anti- slavery men in New England, on questions of organization and meth ods of action. Those in New York had urged the formation of a dis tinctive political party. Myron Holley and Alvan Stewart were active in this movement, which led to founding the Liberty party, and call ing a National Antislavery Convention at Albany on April 1, 1840, which nominated for President James G. Birney. Born in Kentucky, a slaveholder, he had manumitted his slaves and given up his home for the cause. Thomas Earll, a descendant of the Massachusetts Quakers, an editor in Pennsylvania, was the candidate for Vice-Presi dent. The candidates were personally unobjectionable ; but the dis cord among antislavery men, the manifest impossibility of success, and the conviction that to throw their votes away on Birney was but to aid the election of Van Buren, led the great mass of antislavery men throughout the Union to cast their votes for General Harrison. The Liberty party ticket, therefore, received but seven thousand votes in all the States. The month of November was one of Whig jubilation. As fresh returns came in, they were made fresh subjects of rejoicing. The column of figures showing the electoral votes that Harrison was to re ceive was styled "Reports from Old Tip s Keepers." The counties west of Cayuga Bridge were found to have surpassed their former majorities. Erie gave three thousand, Chautauqua twenty-six hun dred, Genesee thirty-three hundred. Very few days sufficed to show that Harrison was elected ; but the respective majorities given him by the several States became a subject of fresh interest. Vermont am} Kentucky each laid claims to be "the banner State," and to have given the largest majority in proportion to the popular vote. The " banner " was finally awarded to Kentucky on her twenty -five thou sand majority. Pennsylvania was in doubt for a fortnight, the vote being so close, but finally the official returns showed a Harrison major^ ity of three hundred. Usually the excitement of an election dies away when the bonfires 510 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. smoulder out on the night after the victory ; but this year the " great commotion " could not subside so easily. The log cabins continued to be dressed with flags, the cannons to peal salutes, the processions to march, and the songs to resound, long after the flag on the hickory- pole in front of Tammany Hall had been hauled down. Fresh melo dies were penned : " Up Salt River," " Farewell, farewell to Thee, Governor Morton," " Who killed Little Matty ? Who saw him die ? " etc. ; and the glee-clubs of Albany gave concerts at Stanwix Hall, of which the proceeds were devoted to the Orphan Asylum and other charities ; and the audiences seemed never to tire of rising to join in the grand final chorus, " What has caused this great commotion ? " In the letters of congratulation which covered the Governor s table day after day, there was mingled an undertone of regret that his majority had been reduced to only five or six thousand Whatever disappoint ment he himself may have felt on this subject, he expressed none in his letters. Mr. Greeley, in the Log Cabin, reflected a general sentiment in closing an elaborate article on the subject of the reduced vote, with the words : We have never penned a eulogium on William H. Seward ; we shall offer none now ; but at least in one earnest, ardent, indignant heart, he will henceforth b* honored more for the three thousand votes he has lost, considering the causes, than for all he has received in his life. But now there was other work to be done besides rejoicing, or grieving over the past. The accumulated business and correspondence of weeks was to be disposed of. First, and most important, was the task of replying once more to the Governor of Virginia. On the 9th of November, Seward finished and sent his third letter in this contro versy. In it he informed the Governor that the subject had been sub mitted to the Legislature, in accordance with Virginia s request, and communicated the action, or rather the non-action, they had decided upon, and their approval of his own course. The very next day brought fresh letters from the Governor of Vir ginia, written before this answer was received. In these Governor Gilmer remarked that Governor Seward was in error in understanding as a menace of secession the Lieutenant-Governor s threat that Vir ginia would " appeal from the canceled obligations of the compact to original rights and the law of self-preservation." To this disclaimer Seward said : Since your Excellency assures me that my inference was erroneous, I have great pleasure in acknowledging my satisfaction with the explanation, although your Excellency has, doubtless inadvertently, omitted to explain what was the true understanding of the expression misapprehended. 1840.] THANKSGIVING DAY. 511 Finally, he added : According to the views I have adopted, the true positions of the parties are these : The Executive of Virginia demands what is not authorized by the Con stitution, and the Executive of this State declines a compliance with the uncon stitutional demand. It is not without sincere regret that I perceive that in per sisting in this demand the State of Virginia protracts a question of deep and ex citing interest. When " the sere, the yellow leaf " begins to fall, every American household begins to think of the annual family gathering under the old roof ; every child begins to think of the feast of turkey and pumpkin- pie ; every clergyman begins to think of preparing the annual sermon in which he is at liberty to refer to things secular, and even, if he chooses, "to preach politics;" and every Governor begins to think that the time has come to make his annual proclamation, giving official sanction to these time-honored customs and observances. This part of his public duties was always a pleasure to Seward. His proclamations show that with him it was no mere form, but a hearty and earnest be lief that the American people have, above all the world, ground for thanksgiving ; and that he was already sharing in anticipation the en joyment of that high festival. His proclamation, this year, remarked : God has been pleased to preserve our lives during another year, and to bless our land, and to make it very plenteous. Health, peace, and liberty, have dwelt among us, and Religion has administered her divine counsels and consolations. No danger has menaced us from abroad, nor has any alarm of intestine commo tion, sedition, or tumult, disturbed the quiet of our dwellings. The clouds have not withheld from the earth their timely rain, nor the sun its genial heat. The plough has not been staid in the furrow, nor has blight or mildew diminished the abundant harvest. We have exhibited to the world the sublime spectacle of millions of freemen carefully discussing the measures and policy which concern their welfare, and peacefully committing the precious trust of their interests and hopes to the care of chosen magistrates. Far less attractive was that other duty, perpetually recurring, of listening to the appeals of counsel, or of relatives, to avert justly-de served punishment from hardened criminals. A murderer in Onondaga County was to be hanged on the 19th. In the denial of the commutation of his sentence, Seward alluded to the general fact, now forced upon him by official observation of so many cases, that illicit connections seem to lead directly toward the crime of murder. Not even drunken brawls are a more prolific source of it. Nine-tenths of all the murders committed are traceable to one or the other of these two causes. He closed his decision by saying : The prisoner s licentious life has led to a conclusion not unusual in such cases, 512 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840. and I could not interfere to avert the doom that awaits him without seeming to regard the extravagance of illicit passions as an excuse for reckless murder. Nevertheless, the murderer s friends seldom despair of thwarting the law, until the noose is actually fastened about his neck. In this case, they were back again at the Executive chamber, four days later, to ask that the execution might be suspended until February, so that they might, meantime, solicit the interposition of the Legislature. The Governor answered that, however he might personally rejoice in an es cape from this, the most painful of all official responsibilities, he could not conceive it right to submit to the Legislature a question properly belonging to the Executive, and absolutely vested in him by the con stitution. In another case of application for pardon for a wife-murderer, who was to be hanged in the Albany jail, he remarked : It does indeed happen, occasionally, that, without impairing the salutary force of example, a victim may be rescued from the gallows ; but who shall be left to the murderer s fate if it be not he who slays the mother of his children ? In this case, that of Jacob Leadings, the petition was based upon somewhat novel ground. This was that, notwithstanding the efforts of the clergymen and friends of the prisoner, he showed no signs of repentance, and he would therefore pass from time to eternity unpre pared. To this, the Governor answered : It is a fearful, and I earnestly hope it may be a mistaken, apprehension. But I can scarcely conceive the obduracy which the petitioners describe. However this may be, the plea, nevertheless, cannot be allowed ; for it would be to ex ecute the judgment of the law upon the penitent and broken-hearted, and save those whom neither conscience nor the fear of death, or of the tribunal beyond the grave, softens or subdues. Launcelot Waugh was convicted of stealing fourteen cakes from a colored boy in Schenectady, and sentenced to State-prison for two years. After he had been there one year, the boy from whom the cakes were stolen made oath that he was mistaken about it, and that no theft had been committed. The judge, the sheriff, the clerk, and the jury, thereupon united in asking Waugh s release. The Governor granted the pardon. Then came an outburst of indignation from some of the opposing party newspapers, who averred that Waugh was pardoned because he was a Whig. The files of the Executive cham ber were referred to, and a letter was found from the prisoner himself, which commenced thus : Mr. Governor Marcey Sir i have taken the oppertunity to rite these few lines to you. dear Sir, i got into a little quarrel with a neighbor the forth day of 1840.] THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE. 513 July last. Mr. Whig Kane gave him a warrant for nothing to have me taken. . . . Two more Whig men put their heads together and sentenced me to the Albany County jail. The Whig ofice holders is geting so, if a Jackson man. ... I was allwaiae was a good Jackson man. Mr. Gov. Marcey. If you would be so kind as to send me two or three lines to Mr. Williams, he will let me go. And this settled the question of the prisoner s politics. Colonel Amory having resigned the position of aide-de-camp, the Governor appointed James Bowen, of New York, to the place. Colo nel Bowen was one of the three intimate friends in New York whom the Herald not inaptly called the " clique." The Herald had already achieved a reputation as being the most " witty and wicked " of papers, especially at the expense of the Whigs. It was consistent in its opposition to Governor Seward throughout his administration, nor did it spare his friends. It said this " clique " generally took the Albany boat Saturday night, and spent the Sundays in plotting and scheming with the Governor. " We will not mention their names, but their initials are Draper, Blatchford, and Bowen." On Wednesday, December 2d, the electoral college was to meet at the Capitol. The forty -two electors began to arrive in town from their various districts early in the week. On Tuesday they met informally at the Executive chamber to exchange congratulations and political reminiscences with the Governor and with each other. Their senior member was Colonel James Burt, of Orange County, who commanded in 1814 the militia regiment of which the Governor s father was lieu tenant-colonel. Eighty years had shrunk and bent his soldier-like figure, and whitened his hair, but he was still hale and vigorous. Even more so was the erect and dignified Pierre Van Cortlandt, but a few years his junior, who had voted with him for Jefferson in the electoral college, forty years before. Archibald Mclntyre, who was one of the Madison electors, General Peter B. Porter, of Niagara, ex-Comptroller Jenkins, and Gideon Lee, were among the other men of historic note, besides several of legislative prominence. The Governor s table, that day, reached from end to end of the long dining-room. Other leading Whigs met the electors at dinner, or came in after the cloth was re moved, and the hours were marked by that unanimity which is possible to partisans in the brief interval of triumph after the election is over and before the struggles for place begin. The next morning, at half -past ten, the electors met in the Senate- chamber. The venerable senior member was presiding officer. All were present. After a prayer by Dr. Campbell, the tellers were appointed, and the forty-two ballots were cast, with all due formality, for William Henry Harrison for President, and then, with equal for mality, for John Tyler for Vice-President. When the tellers announced 33 514 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840., this result, the crowded lobbies burst into enthusiastic applause, taken up and echoed by cheers from the throng without, and then by the cannon pealing the salute of forty-two guns. Silence restored, the Secretary of State, John C. Spencer, laid on the broad table the three certificates, duly prepared for the signatures of the whole body. An hour or more passed, while the forty-two electors appended their names in the order of their districts. One certificate was to be sent by spe cial messenger to the President of the Senate of the United States, and Herman M. Romeyn, of Ulster, was elected such messenger, and returned his thanks. A second certificate was to be sent by mail, and a committee of electors was appointed to put it in the post-office. The third certificate was to be deposited with the United States Judge of the Northern District, and Albert Crane, an elector, was duly em powered to take it to him. A vote of thanks to the presiding officer, and his acknowledgment, closed the proceedings. That night there was a great dinner at Stanwix Hall, given to the college by the citizens of Albany, under the auspices of the State Com mittee. The hall was hung with banners and transparencies, and resounded with the familiar strains of the popular political airs, alter nately given by the brass-band and the glee-clubs. At the table, John C. Spencer presided, and toasts and speeches lasted till a late hour- Those of Gulian C. Verplanck and Gideon Lee were especially felicitous. When the Governor was called on for his speech, he gave the college his recollections of the mountainous and secluded little town in Orange County which was the home of their venerable President, and of the time when news came there that the Capitol had been laid in ashes by the public enemy, and James Burt tendered his services as a volunteer,, and set out for the field where he became the brother soldier of the chief whom they to-day had elected to the presidency. The Governor s toast was : " The recent election. It has conclu sively proved that the people are competent to the consideration of all questions affecting their welfare." Cicero Loveridge gave : "Clay and Harrison. The last shall be first and the first last " alluding to what was already considered settled by the Whigs, that Mr. Clay, having aided Harrison s election, should be his successor at the expiration of the " one term " to which he was pledged. An overflowing feeling of exultation pervaded the Whig party at this commencement of what they fondly believed to be a long lease of power. Monday, the 7th, was the day appointed for the meeting of Con gress ; but a great snow-storm had blocked the roads and impeded navigation in the rivers ; so it was three days without a quorum. On Thursday, members enough had gathered to begin the session, and receive the President s message. This document was largely devoted to the discussion of the financial questions which had occupied so 1840.] EDWARD EVERETT. 515 prominent a place in his Administration. Perhaps the fact about it that will be longest and best remembered to Mr. Van Buren s honor was that the closing recommendation of his official career was a strong and earnest appeal to Congress to take measures to suppress the African slave-trade. But the words of outgoing Presidents, whether for good or ill, fall upon unheeding ears. The faces of politicians, like those of Parsees, are turned toward the rising sun. The public attention was engrossed now not with what Mr. Van Buren might think, but with what General Harrison was going to do, about his appointments, his inaugural, and his policy. The newspapers were already busy constructing cabinets, and tearing them to pieces ; while the office-seekers were legion. Even to the struggle for offices in the gift of the State Executive, an added impetus seemed to have been given by the election ; and those who found or feared failure at Washington naturally enough turned toward Albany, and vice versa. In a letter to Thomas C. Chittenden, Seward described a year s ex perience in the dispensation of patronage : From the day the election closed last year, until the 1st of April, I received about ten thousand applications for fifteen hundred offices. With the exception of the time saved in the night, I surrendered myself entirely to the visits and explanations of those who interested themselves in this and other departments of my public duty. My correspondence swelled so entirely beyond all bounds, that it was not until last May that, with the aid of a private secretary, letters received in December were acknowledged ; and it was not until last month that the petitions and letters were filed and registered. Between the Yth of January and the 10th of April I nominated and appointed fifteen hundred public offi cers, being an average of one hundred a week, and fifty each executive day. No secular day passed, during that time, in which, from eight in the morning to twelve at night, my doors were not open and my hall occupied. You will per ceive that it will be vain for me to try to explain, to the vast number whose applications resulted unfavorably, the reasons for the selection of others. Congress, as usual, did little of importance before the holidays. The two chief events were the introduction by Mr. Clay of a resolution to repeal the sub-Treasury law, and Mr. Webster s calling attention to what in those days was considered a startling fact, that the national expenditures of the year exceeded the income by seven million dollars. Then came the adjournment for the season of social festivities. The Governor s table was again thickly covered with invitations to take part in these gatherings, but he declined on the score of pressing duties. A letter to the New England Society contained a toast, sug gested, perhaps, by recent sneers, in Parliament, at " Yankee degen eracy : " If it be not improper to mingle with homage paid to the Pilgrim Fathers 516 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. just acknowledgment to those of their descendants who illustrate their virtues, permit me to propose the name of one of our countrymen now in England, Ed ward Everett. The moat convincing proof our transatlantic brethren could give us of our " degeneracy " would be to send us a superior representative. CHAPTER XXXIII. 1841. Second Inauguration. A Prosperous State. Burning of the Caroline. Fox and Forsyth. The Legislature on the Virginia Question. The Colonial History. Brodhead s Search among Dusty Records. Cabinet-Making. Granger. No Secrets. Legislative Fun. John Duer. Death of his Brother. THURSDAY night the New Year came in as usual with a serenade at midnight, followed by another at daybreak. At nine the Governor and Lieutenant-Governor, attended by the staff of the former, went up to the Capitol to take the oath of office at the opening of the new term, administered this time by the Chief -Justice. Returning to the Execu tive mansion, the day passed off there much as in previous years, though with more order and quiet. The authorities and associations made their customary visits, and the house was thronged by several thousands. One old man among the visitors created amusement by the positive earnestness with which he insisted that " he had been voting the Whig ticket for over fifty years, having begun immediately after the Revolution ! " A heavy snow-storm in the afternoon brought the reception to an end. At five o clock came the State dinner the Lieutenant-Governor, Chief -Justice Nelson, Chancellor Walworth, Gen eral King, and Colonels Cannon, Austin, and Benedict, of the staff, being among the guests. The next day the Governor wrote to Christopher Morgan, now re- elected to Congress. Alluding to his relations with Granger, and warmly approving his selection for a cabinet office, Seward remarked : The world, however, will gossip about rivalry between Granger and myself. I cannot prevent that gossip. I can show to Mr. Granger the same justice and magnanimity that he manifests toward me. I should not be in that position if the members of Congress or General Harrison were left to suppose that I had interests or opinions inconsistent with Granger s preferment. . . . The positions assigned to him in the State by the Whig party, of candidate for Governor and Yice-President, were fairly his due, and were honorably maintained. . . . Gen eral Harrison can make no appointment that will be more satisfactory or more agreeable to me. ... I desire you to give this letter to Mr. Fillmore ; and it is free to any use he or Mr. Granger may wish to make of it. It was less easy, however, to adhere to his resolution about the 1841.] THE MESSAGE OF 1841. 517 minor offices in the gift of the new President, for which there was such a multitude of applicants among the Whigs of New York. He re marked : I feel sometimes in regard to appointments as Paul did about his bonds. It is hard enough to see one s worthiest friends struggling for what they eminently deserve, and not be able to render them any aid, or be allowed even to wish them success. Monday evening the legislative caucuses were held. The Whigs nominated Peter B. Porter for Speaker, and the Democrats named L. S. Chatfield. When the Legislature met, on the following day, the Whig candidate was duly elected, and the Governor s message re ceived and read. This message differed from his previous ones. They had recom mended great and sweeping reforms, which, aided by legislative action, had now been fairly inaugurated ; this message reported progress, and advised continuance, while recommending few new changes. Reviewing the condition of the universities, schools, and asylums, he noticed that the school-district libraries now contained a million books. The geological survey was to be completed in the summer, the State Museum to be fitted up, and the reports to be made next year, " a nobler tribute to science than any which has yet been offered in our country." The revenue from the canals was now over a million dollars, and the annual surplus, after paying the interest on the debt, was nearly half a million. In view of this result, he tendered his con gratulations upon the happy termination of past embarrassments. O the three great railroads he had advised in 1839, the central one was completed, or in progress, from Albany to within forty miles of Lake Erie. The southern one had pushed forward as far as Goshen, and the work was going on. The northern one was surveyed, and the reports were submitted. The repeal of the " Small-bill Law," the plan for the redemption of notes, and the general banking law, had had the bene ficial results of maintaining credit and circulation ; and, for the first time in thirty years, the Legislature was relieved from applications and complaints on that subject. The prisons, too, were improved. Discipline had been regulated, male and female converts separated, cruelty abolished, and books placed in every cell. The Auburn Prison was earning nearly seven thousand dollars a year over its expenses, and the Sing Sing Prison falling only six thousand dollars short of paying its way. The law reforms had proved successful, and others were suggested. Only one relic of imprisonment for debt remained, and of this he advised the abolition. Elections, he recommended, should be held upon one day, instead of three ; and towns should be divided into 518 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. smaller election districts. Turning then to broader questions of public policy, he submitted the papers in regard to the Virginia correspond ence and the anti-rent troubles. He reiterated his views in regard to immigration, education, and suffrage. Remarking that he had not rec ommended, nor did he seek, an education of any class in foreign lan guages, or in particular creeds of faith, he did desire the " education of all the children in the Commonwealth," and deemed our system de ficient in comprehensiveness in " the exact proportion of the children that it leaves uneducated." He renewed his arguments for the distri bution of the surplus revenue of the United States, and its applica tion, in this State, to education and internal improvements. Giving a r esum& of the history of canal enlargement, he remarked : That there was need of enlargement was attested by the simple fact that there is one boat every eleven minutes at every lock on the Erie Canal. The Western States are no hostile nor rival powers ; they are communities bound to us by interest as well as by consanguinity. Their prosperity is our prosperity. The Great Lakes, twenty-five hundred miles in length, may be regarded as a prolongation of the canal we have made across the isthmus which separates their waters from those of the Atlantic. . . . When we consider the vast amount and value of the agricultural productions received, we can form some imperfect conception of the interest we have in the success of the system of internal improvement in the Western States ; and when such conceptions be come as familiar as tbey are just, we shall manifest more of wisdom than even of philanthropy by lending our Western brethren all the aid in our power " to complete what none but free and enlightened States could ever have undertaken." The message was favorably received, both by the Legislature and the community ; for its statements of the progress and prosperity of the State were undeniable and gratifying. It was announced that the Governor s message had reached New York within twelve hours and a quarter " Dimick, who had charge of the horse-express, having driven down with it in a cutter, at the average rate of twelve miles an hour, making ten changes of horses on the way." A change in one habit of correspondence seemed now to have be come a necessity. Seward wrote to Isaac Sherman : The experience of a thousand misapprehensions of letters, written in ac knowledgment of applications for office, has at last obliged me to adopt the practice of all who have held stations similar to my own ; and it is, therefore, an invariable rule with me not to write in reply to letters on that subject. Jefferson, after like experience, adopted this rule ; and ever since his time it has been practised by the Executive at Washington. It is unquestionably a wise one. Though it may seem at first uncourteous, it is the only one that is impartially just ; nor is it more unsatisfactory than any other. Successful applicants need no answer, and unsuccess- 1841.] THE McLEOD CASE. 519 fill applicants will not find any answer satisfactory. The clerical force would need to be doubled to merely make acknowledgments, and the head of the Government will have no time for his duties to the com munity as a whole, if he stops to give reasons to each as individuals. Now came from Washington the published correspondence between the British minister, Mr. Fox, and the Secretary of State, Mr. For- syth. The minister wrote that he was informed that Alexander Mc- Leod, a British subject and an ex-sheriff, had been arrested on the 12th of November at Lewiston, and that he was waiting trial in February for murder and arson. He called upon the Government of the United States for " prompt and effectual steps for his liberation." The destruction of the " piratical steamboat Caroline " was, he said, " the public act of persons in her Majesty s service obeying the orders of their supreme authorities ; " and, therefore, could not be made the ground of legal proceedings against individuals, and could only be a subject of discussion between the national Governments. Furthermore, he stated that McLeod was not engaged in that transac tion. To this Mr. Forsyth replied that the jurisdiction of the several States was independent of the Federal Government ; that the offense was one against the laws and citizens of New York, and within the competency of her courts. " The act itself was an unjustifiable inva sion in time of peace, involving destruction of property, murder, and outrage. Such offenders cannot have impunity, under the plea of orders of superior officers." As to the question whether the courts or the Governments should discuss the subject, he reminded the British Government that the case of the Caroline had long ago been brought to their attention, and redress of the outrage asked. No answer had been made. " If the act was done under orders of her Majesty s Gov ernment, no such admission had been made by that Government to the United States." When this correspondence was laid before the House of Represent atives, a warm debate arose, involving the inevitable question of State rights. Mr. Fillmore said : " McLeod would have a fair trial. If guilty he would be hanged ; if not guilty, acquitted." Mr. Granger said : " New York proposed to do her duty. The Caroline was destroyed in 1837. It is now 1841, and the British Government has made neither reparation nor reply." Excitement on the frontier followed this news. The Governor hastened to send Commissary-General Chandler to Buffalo, to consult with the commanding officer of the United States troops there, to ascer tain the extent of the grounds of alarm, and to take efficient measures to secure the arms and other public property lying exposed in that quarter. This duty was promptly performed. Among the first nominations sent in to the Senate by the Gov- 520 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. ernor, and at once confirmed, was that of Egbert Benson, of New \Tork, to be inspector of tobacco, vice Glentworth, removed. Hugh Maxwell and Gary V. Sackett were nominated and confirmed as com missioners to settle the disputes growing out of the manorial tenures ; William Kent and Gideon Lee had been previously named, but had declined. In the Assembly the question of capital punishment was brought up by the introduction of a resolution, by Mr. O Sullivan, requesting the Governor to postpone the execution of persons sentenced to death until after the adjournment, on the ground that there might possibly be a law abolishing the death-penalty. Mr. Duer and Mr. Hawley insisted that this was an unwarranted interference with the pardoning power. It received support from opposition members, not so much, perhaps, be cause it was adverse to the death-penalty, as because it was supposed to be adverse to the Whig administration. General Hubbell, the chairman of the Committee on Militia in the Assembly, brought in a report recommending various reforms of the system in accordance with the Governor s suggestions. In the course of the next week resolutions were introduced, par tially approving and partially condemning the Governor s course in the Virginia controversy. Animated debates ensued during the next three weeks, until finally the Assembly indefinitely postponed the reso lutions, implying its disposition to leave the question where it belonged, in the hands of the Executive. Early in 1839 Seward had sent a message to the Legislature, calling attention to the memorial of the New York Historical Society, praying for a law to authorize the appointment of an agent to visit Europe to transcribe documents remaining in the public offices of England, France, and Holland, relating to the colonial history of this State. Adverting to the efforts made by other States in the same direction, the Governor warmly advocated the measure, and, in accordance with his recom mendation, a law was passed in May. The names of several gentle men, of literary or political prominence, were presented as candidates for the agency ; among them, John L. Stephens, the celebrated trav eler ; John Howard Payne, the author of " Home, Sweet Home ; " Charles Fenno Hoffman, the novelist and poet ; and Colonel William L. Stone, of the Commercial Advertiser. Circumstances, unnecessary to detail here, led ultimately to the selection of John Romeyn Brod- head. He was of Dutch descent, and his familiarity with European languages especially fitted him for the trust. Mr. Brodhead s description, after his return from the scene of his labors, of the way in which they were prosecuted, illustrates some of the difficulties of the historian s task, and explains why its results are often so imperfect : 1841.] THE COLONIAL HISTORY. 521 At the Hague, upward of four hundred volumes, and bundles of papers, many of them old, decayed, and worm-eaten, were examined. Most of the docu ments were written in perverse and obscure characters, common in the seven teenth century. At Paris, enormous cartons, or portfolios, in which are placed loosely, and without the slightest attempt at arrangement, a vast mass of original documents, were to be examined ; and a task more appalling to the investigator could scarcely have been proposed. Dusty, decayed, imperfect, without order, often without a date, a paper relating to Dieskau s defeat jostling a dispatch of Count Frontenac, an account of Montcalm s last effort at Quebec pell-mell with a letter of Governor Dongan the expedition of 1619 mixed up with the attack on Fort William Henry De la Barre and Duquesne, the Hurons and Manhat tans, Boston and the Ottawas, side by side, in the most admirable confusion. But worst of all was the mortification and regret on finding, at the West India House, at Amsterdam, that the valuable papers of the West India Company, re lating to the New Netherlands, though preserved till the year 1812, were now irrecoverably lost ; eighty-one thousand pounds weight of them having been sold at public auction, at some trifling sum per pound. Scattered and dissipated through Holland and Germany, used as wrapping-paper by shopkeepers and tradesmen, or ground up in paper-mills, the destruction of these priceless old memorials has left a chasm in the original materials for the illustration of our history which we look in vain to any other source to supply. Nevertheless, the nine great quarto volumes of documents relating to " The Colonial History of New York," published by the State, are an enduring record, showing how faithfully he accomplished that work. State officers were again to be elected by the Legislature. Bates Cook, the Comptroller, resigned toward the close of January, and was nominated by the Governor for Bank Commissioner. The Legislature elected John A. Collier Comptroller in his place, reflected Jacob Haight to be State Treasurer, and Orville Holley Surveyor-General. While the State cabinet was thus undergoing change, speculations about the national one filled the newspapers ; and, two or three weeks before the inauguration, it was announced that the cabinet would consist of Webster in the State Department, Ewing in the Treasury, Bell in the War, and Badger in the Navy, with Crittenden as Attorney-General and Granger as Postmaster-General. A reference by Mr. Starkweather to the innuendoes of those who thought him insincere as regarded Mr. Clay, led Seward to say in his reply: I was not unaware that some persons affected to speak of me as you describe. But I can well enough afford them their full indulgence ; no man speaks so of me who knows me well. Quite the opposite of concealment, I trust, is the error of my character as a public man. Every mortal being is at full liberty to reveal any word, verbal or written, he has from me. You will find it all consistent with itself, and with my letter to you. 522 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. The characteristic here referred to was a marked one. He had no inclination or capacity for double dealing or political intrigue. Partly, perhaps, because of natural frankness, partly from habits of thought acquired during ten years of opposition to secret societies, he was averse to stratagem or hidden contrivance in his political action. Never reserved, either in conversation or correspondence, he early learned that it was wise to say nothing that might not be repeated, and to write nothing that might not be published. The same trait ran through his private life. He seemed to have no secrets. He locked up no private papers. It is not within the recollection of his family that he ever had a locked drawer, or carried a key. His letters when confidential were only so because those to whom they were addressed desired it. He used to dislike even to have secrets confidentially imparted to him, since that implied an obligation to maintain a reserve that was foreign to his nature. Although, as these letters show, Seward was not only in political accord, but on terms of mutual respect and friendship, with Granger, Fillmore, and Collier, a feeling of hostility to him was already begin ning to grow up among some of the Whigs who preferred their lead to his own. The origin of this feeling is now easily traceable. Seward was the junior of these Whig leaders, not only in years, but in the public service ; and it was natural, perhaps, that their friends, on seeing him the recipient of confidence and advancement at the hands of the party, should think that he was preceding those w T hom he ought to follow. An opposition paper jocosely remarked that, under Governor Sew- ard s administration, " going to State-prison was not so burdensome, since one could have good clothing, substantial food, exercise in the open air of the stone-quarry, and the volumes of Harper s Library for amusement. The only wonder is, that the Governor did not recommend hard cider in each cell." Early in February, while McLeod was in jail at Lockport, an attempt was made to bail him out, which created a disturbance and threatened riot. In view of the popular excitement the bondsmen withdrew their bail, and he was put in confinement again to await his trial, and shortly after was indicted for the murder of Amos Durfee, at the time of the burning of the Caroline. Seward wrote on the 27th of February to Secretary Forsyth, ac- knowleding the receipt of a copy of the correspondence between the two Governments. He then proceeded to detail the circumstances of the case. McLeod was indicted for murder and arson, and would be tried at the next term. The Governor concurred in the views taken by the General Government, and the public authorities of the State would support his action in accordance with those views. Solicitous 1841.] LEGISLATIVE INCIDENTS. 523 to preserve harmony with Great Britain, the State must, nevertheless, regard the transaction at Schlosser as an unjustifiable invasion in time of peace. The crimes committed in the aggression fell under the juris diction of the State ; and McLeod, having come within that jurisdiction, was arrested, and would be brought to justice in the same manner that citizens of the State were. Now came the final phase of the Glentworth business. The At torney-General (Willis Hall), to whom the Governor had referred the charges against Recorder Morris, gave an elaborate opinion, sustaining them. Upon this the recorder was removed by the Governor and Sen ate, and Frederick A. Tallmadge was nominated and confirmed in his place. Fault having been found with the Governor for not removing Glent worth before, the Evening Journal replied : The Senate met on the 5th day of January at eleven o clock, and at precisely five minutes thereafter, by the Shrewsbury clock, that body received the Gov ernor s message recommending the removal of James B. Glentworth. A letter on the 22d of February to William Robinson paid a tribute to an old friend : You ask me to speak of Mr. Duer as I think. This is an easy and grateful duty. I was his pupil, and he has been my patron and friend. Taking into consideration his intellectual powers, his learning, his moral principles, and hon orable sentiment, Mr. Duer combines more high qualities than any man I have ever known. If I could mark a character for my children to attain, I should set before them that of my old master, John Duer. In a letter to Marshall O. Roberts, who had named a son after him, he said : There is, I am sure, no higher expression of confidence. I am in a perilous walk now ; but I, too, have children who must bear my name. For their sake and for yours, and all who love and respect me, I will endeavor to take care that the name shall bring upon those who bear it no reproach. The legislative session did not pass without some of those ludicrous incidents that mark every such season of grave debate. In the Senate, General Root one day introduced a resolution directing an inquiry into the expediency of furnishing each of the colleges and academies of the State with a centigrade thermometer. The resolution, as usual, was laid over for a day. Lieutenant-Governor Bradish was stately, precise, and courteous. His pronunciation was as faultless as his dress, and his manners those of Sir Charles Grandison. After the adjournment he suggested to George Andrews, the Clerk, that he had made an error of pronunciation 524 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. ID reading the resolution, and repeated once or twice for his instruction the correct French name of the instrument. Andrews, who was a wag, saw an opportunity for a joke; and so, promising compliance, waited till the subject came up next day. Then, with great unction and so norous voice, he read the resolution : " To furnish each of the colleges and academies with a sonteegrad tairmomate." General Root was on his feet in a moment. " Stop, sir ! What is that ? Read that again." Andrews complied: " To furnish each of the colleges and academies with a sonteegrad tairmomate" The old general, red with indigna tion, declared he had never introduced any such resolution, and de manded to see it. When the little page ran to place it in his hands, he glanced at it, and said with supreme contempt : "I thought so centigrade thermometer, Mr. President, if you had a Clerk that knew how to read the English language." A. B. Dickinson, in the Senate from Chemung County, an able de bater, with strong common-sense, though without the advantages of early education, soon took rank as a Whig leader. One of the Demo cratic Senators, eulogizing Mr. Van Buren, had compared him to Quintus Curtius, " who had leaped into a gulf to save his country." Dickinson, if not familiar with classics, was with politics. "I don t know anything about the Mr. Curtis the gentleman speaks of. I know Edward Curtis and George Curtis ; but I never heard of that one. All I can say is, that Mr. Van Buren did just the contrary ; for he tum bled the country into a hole, and then wanted to be saved himself." The Lieutenant-Governor s gavel was necessary to restore the Senate to order after this retort. General Harrison was now on his way to Washington, receiving ovations at Wheeling, Pittsburg, and other towns. Seward had stead ily refused to address him concerning appointments, but wrote him : "With some little experience of the perplexities attending the dispensation of Executive patronage, I have, at least, thought it was my duty in no way to con tribute to your embarrassment in the performance of your responsible and deli cate duties of the same kind. He adhered to this rule throughout the disputes between rival per sonal claims, only departing from it in a few cases, where an appoint ment seemed demanded by some important public consideration. The general arrived at Washington ; was welcomed with speeches and fes tivities ; and dined with Mr. Van Buren, in accordance with the good old custom of interchange of courtesies between the retiring and the incoming Presidents, which had not yet fallen into disuse. Great preparations were making for the inauguration ceremonies. Washing ton was already filled to overflowing with Whigs, and the general s doors were beleaguered, night and morning, by people who had made 1841.] HARRISON INAUGURATED. 525 speeches for him, written articles about him and biographies of him, organized meetings, controlled conventions, built log cabins, drunk hard cider, marched in procession and sung songs for him each think ing he had acquired a special claim thereby to his favor. One of Seward s sons was lying dangerously ill, when, on the last day of February, came news of the sudden death of his elder brother. Jennings, recently married, was on his way to Chautauqua ; had stopped at Florida to visit his parents, and had died after a few days illness. Seward had the melancholy duty of proceeding to Orange County to console his parents and bury his brother. Jennings was in his forty-sixth year. " Estimable and benevolent," said Seward, " I believe he has left more friends than any man of equal range of acquaintance ; while I should be surprised to learn that he had an enemy." He left two sons, the elder of whom had completed his collegiate course and was studying for the ministry. The younger, Clarence, came home with his uncle, and thenceforward became one of his family. CHAPTER XXXIV. 1841. New Administration at Washington. Appointments. The McLeod Case. General Scott. Crittenden. Virginia Search Law. Trial by Jury of Fugitive Slaves. Crisis at Richmond. Irishmen and Father Matthew. Death of President Harrison. Funeral Solemnities. THE 4th of March witnessed an imposing inauguration of the new President at Washington, attended by an immense crowd. The enthu siastic interest in the occasion extended even to other cities. In Al bany there was also a celebration with salutes, procession, and fire works, closing with a ball at Stanwix Hall. Some of the members of an opposition club in one of the wards had prepared an effigy of the new President, which, in derision, they placed after dark at the door of the log cabin. Some of the Whigs happened to pass, and, discovering the trick, resolved to retaliate. So, changing the dress of the figure somewhat, they took it over, and, attaching it to the halyards, ran it up on the hickory pole of their adversaries. Then before daylight they industriously circulated the rumor that the Democrats were going to hang Van Buren early in the morning of the 4th, to show that they had abandoned him. When the passers-by found the rumor apparently verified, there was much indignation. The mystery as to how it hap pened remained unsolved. 526 LIFE AND LETTERS. [184L The papers were now filled with accounts of the inauguration, and speculations as to the intentions of the new President. Harrison, in his inaugural address, reiterated the principles avowed by the Whigs during the campaign, promised to seek to restore the Government to its former relations, to check the undue increase of Executive power, to use the veto rarely and cautiously, not to attempt to control the press, or to use the appointing power for persecution, and not to be a candidate for reelection. No President has since come in with such an overwhelming popular support, and none apparently had ever commenced his official career so auspiciously. At the executive session of the Senate the new cabinet was confirmed, Mr. Webster unanimously for Secretary of State. At the White House the office-seekers literally took possession some, it was said, even sleeping in the halls and corridors in order to have the first chance in the morning. " The latch-string was always out." The doors were always open, and night and day Harrison was besieged by the crowd. Presidents from the Democratic party, having the advan tage of that name, were always at liberty to order their day and hours. Those of the opposing party were deemed to be obliged to disprove the charge of " aristocracy " by erecting no barriers between themselves and the people. Toward the close of the month the President s proclamation was received, calling an extra session of Congress on the 3d of May, and giving as a reason that the condition of the finances was such as to require congressional action before winter. Meanwhile appointments were made rapidly, yet acceptably, and none were objectionable to Seward and his friends. Philo C. Fuller, his former legislative col league, and subsequently Speaker in the Michigan Legislature, was appointed Second Assistant Postmaster-General. Elisha Whittlesey, of Ohio, was appointed Auditor of Post-Office Accounts, and Edward Curtis Collector of the Port of New York. General Solomon Van Rensselaer walked into the Albany post-office to resume duties from which he had been relieved two years before. As regarded the foreign question, in which the State and national Administration had common interest, the outlook was not so encour aging. Early in March the steamer President had arrived, with news of a warlike debate in the British Parliament, the opposition demand ing action, and the Administration promising to vindicate the national honor. There were rumors that the British minister would demand his passports in case McLeod should be executed. Naval and military preparations were said to be on foot in England, and great popular feeling excited. The English newspapers spoke of McLeod s trial as a "judicial murder." A squadron was said to have been ordered to the coast of America, and infantry were under orders for Halifax. On the 1841.] THE DESTRUCTION OF THE CAROLINE. 527 Canadian frontier there was much alarm at the prospect of threatened hostilities. The Secretary of War, John Bell, opened communication with the Governor in regard to providing the proper defenses for the harbor of New York, and putting the forts and batteries on Staten Island in an effective condition. General Scott was directed to pro ceed to the Niagara frontier, and, in passing through Albany, to confer with the Governor. Attorney-General Crittenden was directed by the President to attend the McLeod trial ; and also to confer at Albany with the Governor. To all these communications Seward replied, promising cheerful and prompt cooperation. General Scott arrived in Albany on the 16th, accompanied by his aide, Captain Anderson ; but crossing the river on the ice, late at night, on foot, the veteran commander slipped and fell heavily, receiving severe contusions. He walked with difficulty to the Columbian Hotel, where he remained under medical attendance for several days. This, however, he would not allow to interfere with his military duties. He proceeded to arrange for the possible campaign. He submitted to the Governor his instructions, from which the latter learned that an attempt at invasion from Canada was apprehended ; and the general was authorized, should circumstances demand it, to make requisition for a portion of the militia of the State a requisi tion which, the Governor assured him, should be at once met. The next day, however, came a letter from Chief-Justice Nelson, announcing that McLeod s trial would not come on the next week. Mr. Crittenden accordingly stopped at Albany, and, after dining with the Governor and holding a long consultation with him and with Gen eral Scott, returned to Washington. Seward now addressed Mr. Webster, and, referring to the changed aspect of the correspondence between the two Governments since the British Government had formally assumed the responsibility of the destruction of the Caroline, and had demanded the surrender of Mc Leod, said : It seems proper for me respectfully to state, for the information of the President, that the views contained in my letters to Mr. Forsyth have undergone no change ; that, in accordance with the opinions previously intimated in the letter of Mr. Forsyth to Mr. Fox, the question of the responsibility of McLeod individually, for what is now maintained by the British Government to have been a public duty, is one exclusively of judicial cognizance, and can be deter mined by no other than a judicial department, either in the Federal Govern ment or that of this State ; and that, in the present condition of the proceed ings against that person, it must be decided by the court having charge of the indictment against him. I cannot, consistently with a proper regard for the rights of this State, omit the opportunity of renewing the expression of my anxiety that the most prompt and decided measures shall be taken to obtain from the British Govern- 528 LIFE ANr > LETTERS. [1841. ment suitable reparation for the outrages committed in the burning of the Caro line, the responsibility of which that Government has now taken upon itself. On the 17th of March there was a novel celebration in Albany of St. Patrick s day. A large temperance procession of Irishmen, with medals, banners, shamrocks, and other embroidered emblems, marched through the streets to the Capitol, bearing the motto, " Long life to Father Matthew ! " whose zealous efforts and impassioned oratory had brought about the great reform, a labor in which the Catholic clergy of Albany had heartily cooperated. Similar demonstrations were oc curring in several of the large cities. There was a great meeting in the City Hall Park in New York ; in Baltimore there was a temperance society numbering three thousand, one-half of whom were said to be reformed drunkards. On the 10th of March Mr. Worden reported a resolution to amend the State constitution, to allow colored men to vote. While the de bate was proceeding, came the welcome intelligence from John Quincy Adams at Washington, " The captives are free," for the Amistad ne groes had been released by the Supreme Court of the United States. Neither of these were gratifying items of news at Richmond ; and shortly afterward the Governor of Virginia adopted a new measure in the pending controversy with New York. In answer to a requisition for the surrender of a man charged with forgery, he refused compli ance until the Governor of New York should surrender the three col ored men, Johnson, Smith, and Gansey. He said that the forger should be detained six months, " a period sufficient, it is hoped, to enable the authorities of that State to determine whether the Constitution and laws under which this demand is made are of as binding force on the State of New York as on the State of Virginia." But from this the Richmond Whig dissented : " Do two wrongs make a right ? If New York violates the Constitution, does that authorize or excuse Virginia in doing it ? " The next day brought to Albany news of an unex pected crisis in the Virginia Legislature. The House of Delegates had passed resolutions censuring Governor Gilmer, and saying, " He ought to surrender fugitives, notwithstanding the refusal of New York so to act in a similar case." Governor Gilmer retorted with a message, justi fying his action and tendering his resignation. A struggle between the two parties in the Legislature ensued, the Democrats desiring to accept his resignation and elect a successor. But they finally ad journed without action. Meanwhile Governor Seward sent in a mes sage to the New York Legislature in regard to the refusal to surrender the forger, and with it a copy of a non-intercourse act which had now been passed by the Virginia Legislature. This was a law entitled " An act to prevent citizens of New York from carrying slaves out of the Commonwealth, and to prevent the escape of persons charged with the 1841.] VIRGINIA NON-INTERCOURSE LAW. 529 commission of any crime." It subjected all New York vessels to inspection and bonds, and to fines and seizure, in case of non-com pliance. The law was to be suspended, however, whenever New York should surrender Johnson, Smith, and Gansey ; and should repeal the law extending trial by jury to persons claimed as fugitive slaves. In his message, Seward said : Believing that the right is invaluable as a protection to personal liberty, is peculiarly proper in cases where persons are exposed to the loss of liberty with out even a charge of crime, and that it is important to every human being within our jurisdiction, in proportion to the humbleness and defenselessness of his condition, I cannot recommend the repeal of the act. If I supposed, as certainly do not, that any disposition existed in the Legislature to repeal the act, I should deem it my duty to remonstrate against the measure. I deem it proper to repeat, in the most solemn manner, that the humble individuals who are pursued by the Governor of Virginia as felons, for the offense of being sea men on board a ship in which a negro had secreted himself in order to escape from slavery, if they yet remain in this State, are under the protection of its constitution and laws, and cannot be surrendered to the State of Virginia by Ex ecutive authority, on the pretense set up for that purpose, without a deliberate violation of both ; and that this conviction, adopted, after most mature and im partial deliberation, and strengthened by subsequent reflection, is in no degree affected by the recent proceedings of the authorities of Virginia. At the same time he submitted, without comment, resolutions sent by the Legislature of Mississippi, pronouncing his action " an outrage upon the chartered rights of Virginia, and a precedent full of danger to all the slaveholding States," and declaring that " Mississippi would make common cause with other States in any mode or measure of re sistance or redress." The Virginia papers led to an animated debate in the State Senate, Senator Paige leading the Democratic side, with ability and address, dwelling on the constitutional obligations to perform the duty de manded. Verplanck replied, insisting that property in man was not in our laws, and not in the Constitution. The next week, news was received that the acting-Governor of Virginia would surrender the forger ; and by the close of April further correspondence was published, comprising the letter of acting-Gov ernor John M. Patton, surrendering the forger, and renewing the de mand for the three colored men. Governor Patton was the third who had entered the field in behalf of Virginia. Governor Seward, in his reply, remarked : Your compliance with this requisition is made in your communication a ground for asking a reversal of my decision upon a similar process of your pred ecessor, demanding the surrender of Peter Johnson and others. Although the candor you have avowed is by no means questioned, it is a matter of some sur prise that you have treated the cases as altogether analogous. 34 530 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. It was not unforeseen that difference of opinion must arise between the Xieutenant-Governor and the Executive of this State. It was obvious that the former would assume, in conformity with opinions known to prevail in Vir ginia, that men of a certain race and condition may be and are property and chattels, the subjects of purchase, sale, devise, and theft. The Executive of this State, on the contrary, would have been faithless to the spirit of its con stitution and laws if he had not maintained that all men, of whatever race or condition, were men, and of right ought to be freemen ; that every remedy for duress of a human being regarded him as a man, and not as property ; and that it was as absurd, in this State, to speak of property in immortal beings, and conse quently of stealing them, as it would be to discourse of a division of property in the common atmosphere. . . . The authorities of New York have not been the actors in any transaction tending toward a derangement of the relations between this State and Virginia. New York has done nothing, and has spoken only when and so often as she was appealed to by Virginia, and then always in the language of respect and affection. New York has made no novel nor question able demand, complained of no wrongs, offered no rewards for violations of laws of Virginia, passed no vindictive acts, made no menaces, nor has she endeavored, in any manner, to excite her sister States against Virginia; although, she doubts not, there are many and enlightened States among them which cherish her own principles, and respect her decision. Although not loud and frequent in profession, New York is constant in works showing her attachment to the Union. Her history presents no instance in which she has questioned its value ; nor has she ever indulged speculations concerning that after-state which sometimes engages the contemplation of those whose estimate of the value of the Union is not fully settled. You are pleased to remark that this State is pursuing a course calculated to render her territory an asylum for felons and runaway slaves. "Waiving all exceptions to the spirit of this remark, I trust I may be permitted to reply that the experience of the people of this State has proved, at least to their own satisfaction, that neither public virtue nor public prosperity has received any injury from extending, so far as has yet been done, equal justice to every class and every race of men within her limits. Seward, writing to John Quincy Adams in April, said : Our mutual friend Mr. Gales has written me that you have bestowed some consideration upon the discussion which has recently taken place between the Executive authorities of Virginia and myself. I return you my thanks for your kind permission to him to communicate to me the opinion you have ex pressed. As the subject is one of growing importance, and likely to excite much interest, I take the liberty to send you copies of all the papers. Permit me to express to you my sincere acknowledgments for your high and honorable efforts in behalf of human liberty in the case of the prisoners in the Amistad. Writing to Jabez D. Hammond, the historian, on the 20th, he said : I fully appreciate the generous impulses which dictated your letter. And I am gratified with the direct and incontrovertible argument it contains in support 1841.] DEATH OF HARRISON. 531 of the position I have taken in what the Virginians call " the New York and Virginia controversy." It has been a trial of my fortitude to stand so much alone in the matter. But there are now abundant indications that the doubti of men who ought to understand and to support the right are wearing away. ... I thank God the time has come at last in which, while we acknowledge we have no right to in terfere with the sovereignty of slaveholding States, we can assert also that those States shall not interfere with ours. ... I have received to-night a noble letter on the subject from President Adams, approving my views. Acknowledging this letter of Mr. Adams, he said : Even in this State the subjection into which the minds of many of our citi zens were brought in regard to every question which might in any way seem to affect "the peculiar institution of the Southern States," has rendered them slow to appreciate our own deep interest in the maintenance of the position I have assumed. The influence of many wise and good men has been in favor of the extraordinary demand of Virginia. Although this influence daily diminishes, I shall gain much strength from your sanction of my decision. . . . With the same respect and veneration which, some years ago, conducted me to your retreat at Quincy to obtain the honor of your acquaintance, I remain, etc. On the 1st of April it was reported that President Harrison was seriously ill, and that his disease was pleuro-pneumonia, caused by cold, constant occupation, and excitement. Since his inauguration the White House had been overrun with visitors, and the President had neither time nor rest. On the 2d a consultation of physicians was held, and all visitors excluded. On the 3d he was thought to be improving. On the 4th he was worse, and it was publicly announced that his condition was very critical. On the 5th news came to Albany that he was not expected to survive the attack. Early in the morning of Tuesday, the 6th, the New York boat brought news of the President s death, casting a gloom over the city. Flags were hoisted at half-mast ; the courts and Common Council adjourned. When the Legislature met at nine, a message was received from the Governor, saying: This event brings a form of trial through which our Constitution has not yet passed. The Chief Magistrate has been removed at the very commencement of his constitutional term of public service, at a moment when he was preparing to meet the Congress of the United States at a session called in an extraordinary exigency of public affairs. The Legislature will, it is presumed, adopt some form for the expression of the sympathy of the public authorities of this State with their fellow-citizens, and their respect for the deceased, although all must feel that public honors are as unavailing to assuage a nation s grief as they are superfluous to perpetu ate the wisdom and the virtue of the great and the good. The Legislature appointed committees to pay suitable honors to the memory of the deceased President, and adjourned. The newspa- 532 LIFE ANI) LETTERS. [1841. pers were filled with details of his sickness, and of the scenes at the White House. The cabinet, in the absence of the Vice-President, made public announcement that Mr. Tyler was at his home in Virginia, but would be at once sent for. Mrs. Harrison was at North Bend. Harrison s last words were reported to have been : " Sir, I wish you to understand the true principles of the Government ; I wish them car ried out ; I ask nothing more." At Albany Adjutant-General King directed that minute-guns should be fired by all artillery commands in the State ; that officers should wear crape on their arms, and that standards should be draped in mourning, by order of the commander-in-chief. The Senate and Assembly passed resolutions to wear badges of mourning. The Governor was requested to transmit the legislative resolutions of condolence to the family, and to the State and Federal authorities. While the funeral was taking place at Washington, the bells of all the churches were tolled in Albany. Minute-guns were fired from sunrise to sunset at the Capitol Park. Flags were lowered and places of business closed. Similar ceremonies took place in other cities. For a day or two the great national calamity absorbed all attention. It was the first time a President had died in office. A discourse was ordered to be delivered before both Houses of the Legislature on Sunday, the 25th. The city authorities ordered a funeral ceremonial on Friday, the 9th. Minute-guns were again fired, church-bells tolled, and after eight o clock no merchant had door or window open ; flags were shrouded in crape ; hotels, public buildings, and churches, were draped in mourning. There was a procession a mile in length, of military companies, State and municipal authorities, and benevolent associations. A chief feature in it was the funeral urn, followed by the riderless horse, with trappings of a general officer. All denomina tions united. There were dirges and anthems ; Dr. Potter read the burial service, Dr. Sprague delivered a discourse, and Dr. Wyckoff offered prayer. The next evening there was a torch-light procession of firemen, by whom . the funeral urn and mourning emblems were borne in red glare to solemn music. So closed the year of processions, mass-meetings, and public gatherings a striking epoch, culminating in brief power and sudden fall. 1841.] TYLER INAUGURATED. 533 CHAPTER XXXV. 1841. Tyler sworn in. Whig Hopes. The Tribune. The State Printing. The "Nine Months Law." Sunday-Schools. The Public Schools in New York. The Blind and Mute. The Oneidas. McLeod s Arrest. Correspondence with President Tyler. THE Whigs were startled and grieved, but not politically disheart ened. They still had the Government ; they had a Vice-President who would doubtless carry out the views of his chief ; they had a cabinet with Webster at its head ; they had a Congress with a Whig major ity ; and they had a candidate for the succession already settled upon, and that candidate was Henry Clay. They did not yet dream that the death of " Old Tip " was but the beginning of their troubles. The Governor, in communicating the resolutions to Mrs. Harrison, in accordance with legislative request, added, in his letter of condo lence : Reluctant as I am to protract my intrusion upon sorrows which I know full well must have higher consolations than even the condolence of a great nation, I shall nevertheless discharge my duty very unsatisfactorily if I leave it to be inferred that these expressions of sympathy of which I am the organ are mere ly conventional. The Legislature are not ignorant of the domestic virtues of the departed President, nor of his tender affection toward yourself and all oth ers to whom he was intimately allied. Death has made final, so far as this world is concerned, a separation which you had reason to hope and expect would be brief and temporary ; and the painfulness of the dispensation cannot be sup posed to be relieved, even by the remembrance of the distinguished public honors of which he was the recipient. In these circumstances the thoughts of all our countrymen turn toward you with affectionate tenderness and solicitude, so soon as their emotions of surprise and grief subside. The National Intelligencer soon announced that Vice-President Tyler had arrived on Tuesday, had taken the oath of office as Presi dent before Judge Cranch, had entered upon his duties, and had re quested the cabinet to continue in their offices. Shortly after his address was received. It was brief, appropriate, and indicated a disposition to pursue the policy already entered upon by the Whig Administration. He issued a proclamation for a national fast-day, in conformity with the general expectation and feeling. A great Whig meeting in New York, Moses H. Grinnell presiding, responded to the sentiments of Tyler s address, and expressed their confidence that he would carry out the measures of his predecessor. It was noted as a coincidence and fortunate omen that John Ty ler, the father of the President, succeeded Benjamin Harrison, the father of President Harrison, in 1781, as Speaker of the Virginia 534: LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. House of Delegates. Then it was announced that President Tyler had removed to the White House, and held his first cabinet meeting ; that he had appointed Harrison s son-in-law to be postmaster at Cin cinnati, and his nephew to be Register of the Land-Office. The Sec retary of War placed his two grandsons at West Point ; and it was remarked that the general s relatives fared better than if he had lived, as it was his intention to appoint none of them to office. The Whig members of the Legislature held a meeting expressing their approval of Tyler s address, and his continuance of the cabinet, and tendered him their confidence and support. All appointments made and to be made, it was believed, were to be " Harrison men." Yet there were some disquieting political signs. Many of the town meetings had resulted in Whig defeats. The Whigs had carried Albany, but by a reduced majority ; the Democrats had carried New York, and elected ex-Recorder Morris to be mayor. Furthermore, the Democratic newspapers were praising the new President. "Why should they?" was the natural inquiry among the Whigs. A new newspaper now made its appearance in the mails and in the hands of Whig readers. It was the expected successor of the Log Cabin, was edited by Horace Greeley, and called the New York Tribune. The Evening Journal warmly commended it, and Whigs throughout the State began to subscribe for it. Early in April the Democrats in the Assembly devised a project to make the State Printer s position as uncomfortable as the Whigs had sought to make that of his predecessor. Mr. Chatfield introduced a resolution calling for a statement of all printing, and of all the prices charged for each item. The Whigs, though knowing this to be a hos tile move, could not refuse to vote for it. They laid it over for one day for consultation. The next morning Mr. French, a Whig member, offered an amendment to the resolution, proposing to carry the investi gation still further, and to require a comparative statement of the amounts received and prices paid to Weed and to Croswell, and a statement of what Weed would have received if he had been paid at the same rates that Croswell was. This turned the Democratic guns against themselves. They strenu ously opposed the amendment, but the Whigs carried it, and adopted the resolution. A few days later, Weed s report was presented, and it showed a saving of several thousand dollars to the State since his ap pointment, as compared with previous rates. On the 16th Mr. Worden, from the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly, reported in favor of repealing the law permitting persons visiting the State to hold slaves during nine months. A new phase of the McLeod case occurred in the Assembly, on a motion by an opposition member to direct a nolle prosequi to be en- UN1VEK OF 1841.] THE NEW YORK SCHOOLS. 535 tered. A debate followed, in which Messrs. O Sullivan, Hoffman, Swackhamer, Richmond, Hubbell, Chatfield, Hawley, Duer, and Culver, took part. It was continued until, on the 25th, Mr. Simmons brought in a bill providing for a special circuit for the trial of Alexander McLeod, to be held whenever deemed expedient by the Chief -Justice. The ground taken by the Whig members was that, if McLeod was in nocent, the jury would acquit him ; if he was guilty, British power could not and ought not to rescue him. Some official changes were made this month. Robert H. Pruyn was appointed Judge-Advocate-General, to fill the vacancy occasioned by the death of Van Vechten. Day Otis Kellogg, of Troy, was appointed Paymaster-General ; Dr. James McNaughton, Surgeon-General ; Spencer S. Benedict, Quartermaster-General. The Governor also appointed to be trustees of the new State Lunatic Asylum at Utica, Colonel William L. Stone, Nicholas Devereux, Charles B. Coventry, Willett H. Sherman, and Theodore S. Faxton. A message was sent in, in regard to the Madison County judges who were accused of judicial abuse of the naturalization laws. Instead of absolutely removing them, the Governor laid a careful summary of the facts before the Legislature, saying : Under all the circumstances, I am of opinion that the exposure of the pro ceedings of the judges in the present case will be sufficient to induce a correc tion of the practices complained of, and to prevent an imitation of them by other courts. ... I believe it would be better, for the permanent interests of the country, to confer the right of suffrage upon all who ask it, and who have not rendered themselves unworthy of it by crime, after a period of residence less than that prescribed by the naturalization laws. But these are opinions, not laws, and judges and magistrates are bound to execute the laws, not as they sup pose they ought to be, but as tbey are. A letter to George H. Thatcher, concerning the influence of Sun day-schools upon the morals of the people, said : Our country is full of literary and benevolent associations, established with a view to improve the morals and elevate the character of society, and they are generally benign and efficient in their operation. If obliged to choose whether all these associations should be abolished, or the Sunday-schools should be dis continued throughout the land, I should not hesitate to say, " Spare the Sunday- schools." John C. Spencer, who, as Secretary of State, was Superintendent of Schools, made an elaborate report upon the memorials and projects in regard to common schools in New York. He showed that the school- moneys for the city of New York, and the control of public education there, had been vested, since 1826, in a corporation called " The Pub lic School Society." This society had provided commodious school 536 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. houses, good teachers, and a well-arranged system of instruction, with praiseworthy zeal and devotion. Nevertheless, many complaints came from people having no share in the management of the system. These said that duties of public administration ought not to be devolved on a private corporation ; that all tax-payers had a right to a voice in regard to taxes and the employment of funds; that the society was neither elected nor appointed by public authority, and formed a perpetual cor poration, choosing trustees and officers without regard to the wishes of the public ; that while aiming to avoid sectarianism, it was sectarian, because it was made up of wealthy men of a few denominations, while others were left no alternative but to establish schools of their own, and pay for them in addition to the taxes paid to the Public School Society, and that many poorer persons were not sending their children at all. Spencer argued that the true remedy, and one consistent with our system of government, was absolute non-intervention by the State in matters of religious teachings, and that the school system of the State ought to be extended to the city of New York, letting each school dis trict choose its own officers and teachers, raise its own taxes, and use its own share of the funds. Thus every citizen would have a voice ; all religions would be tolerated ; and the local majority would govern as it does in all other public affairs. He added that the Public School So ciety, though eminently useful and benevolent, was not an official body, and was liable to defects and objections inevitable in view of that fact. Recommending the extension of the general school laws of the State to the city, he maintained the positions of the message of the Governor and its recognition of the equal right of all citizens to participate in the schools. Toward the close of the session the act thus perfecting the common- school system came to a final vote, a strong speech of A. B. Dickinson, for " universal education," giving it effective aid. The nomination of Major Noah for Judge of General Sessions, and of Hiram Ketchum for Circuit Judge, had been sent in by the Governor to the Senate. Major Noah was confirmed without opposition. While Mr. Ketchum s nomination was pending, he came to Albany and ap peared before the Senate committee in behalf of the Public School Society of New York, opposing Mr. Spencer s report, and the Govern or s recommendations in regard to the public schools. The Governor deemed that he could no longer, with consistency or due regard to his own convictions, present him as a candidate, and accordingly withdrew the nomination, and sent in the name of William Kent instead. Kent was confirmed, but the withdrawal of Ketchum imbittered the disputes going on in the Whig ranks. The opponents of the Governor on the school question declared that Ketchum was persecuted for opinion s 1841.] THE ONEIDAS. 537 sake, and that the Governor was arbitrary and unjust. The breach widened as time went on. In the Legislature, this year, the advocates of internal improvement derived fresh encouragement from Verplanck s report, demonstrating that the work on the canals might safely go on by loans as before recommended, if the natural and certain revenues of the canals were applied to the payment of interest, and gradual repayment of prin cipal. The State institutions of New York came as usual for aid. The Governor directed the small-pox hospital to be enlarged at the quaran tine, the dock to be extended, and various repairs to be made. An ex hibition of the pupils of the Institution for the Blind, held in the As sembly chamber, showed their special proficiency in music, and in making paper boxes, mats, and willow-ware ; while in their studies, prosecuted by reading with their fingers, they were apparently as ad vanced as other pupils of their age. The Governor occupied the chair during the exercises, having previously entertained teachers and pupils at his house. The pupils of the Deaf and Dumb Institute also visited him, and by the marvelous rapidity of their pantomimic descriptions, and their answers on their porcelain slates, proved themselves well de serving the aid they were seeking from the State. Another class of the wards of the State claimed Executive atten tion through Moses Schuyler, the gray-haired chief of the Oneidas. Of all the Six Nations only the Oneidas were faithful and friendly to the Americans during the Revolutionary War. A mere handful of them were now left, and their old chief had come to the house of the Gov ernor to talk about the sale of the lands of the tribe, and their removal from the State to Green Bay on Lake Michigan. Seward answered him : I have listened to your talk with deep interest. The departure from time to time of the several portions of your tribe is always regarded by me as among the most affecting events in our history. The Oneidas have always been protected and cherished by the public council of the State. Their welfare, their improve ment, their civilization, have been our constant care ; and I have indulged a hope that a remnant, at least, of the nation might remain among us a monument of the justice and generosity of our people. But the Great Spirit does not will it to be so. You know how reluctantly I have consented to the sale of your lands. I have now given the reason for it. The council-fire of the Oneidas will soon be extinguished. It is well that no enmity can be raked from its ashes. Brother, your request is complied with. The agent who has been just to you and to us shall accompany you until you pass the boundaries of the State. Brother, I shall always listen anxiously to hear the reports concerning you in your new settlement. I hope to bear tbat your people are contented, prosper ous, and happy. Brother, you are an old and good man. You have seen the 538 LIFE AND LETTERS. [184L desolations which the fire-water has produced among your people. Admonish them now to banish that fatal enemy from their new home. Brother, I bid you farewell. May the Great Spirit guide you on your way, defend your people from every danger, and enlighten them with the knowledge that leads in ways of virtue and happiness ! Peace be with you and your chil dren! This Moses Schuyler commanded nine hundred Indians under Gen eral Scott during the War of 1812. Two granddaughters of the famous Skenando were also among the departing tribe. They embarked at Buffalo on a vessel chartered for them by the State government, and went to their new home in the West. Early in May McLeod was taken to New York, passing down the river on the steamboat Swallow in charge of the Sheriff of Niagara County, upon a writ of habeas corpus, granted by Judge Bronson, to be brought before the Supreme Court. In that tribunal the counsel who appeared in his behalf was the District Attorney of the United States. Governor Seward addressed a communication to President Tyler, saying that As the Attorney-General of this State, and the District Attorney of Niagara County, have charge of this prosecution in behalf of the people of the State of New York, the unseemly aspect is presented of a conflict between the Fed eral Government and that of this State, which I respectfully submit to you is not calculated to inspire confidence among the common constituents of both, nor to challenge that respect from Great Britain to which our institutions are entitled, and which it is so essential to preserve, particularly in the present state of the controversy with her. Answer was made to this, that the United States District Attorney was acting without orders from Washington. Further correspondence ensued. In a letter of May 20th, Seward said : When her Britannic Majesty s minister protested against the detention of McLeod, the President of the United States, as the organ of New York and her sister States in their foreign relations, replied to the Government of Great Brit ain that the offense with which the accused is charged was committed within the territory and against the laws and citizens of this State, and was one that came clearly within the competency of her tribunals. The President of the United States, having made these declarations, became constitutionally bound to maintain them, and to guarantee, defend, and justify the State of New York, with the power of the nation if necessary, in " the vindication of the property and lives of her citizens." New York was steadily and regularly pursuing that course of vindication, when the British Government peremptorily demanded the discontinuance of the proceeding. It is at such a moment that the President informs the State of New York that the Govern ment of the United States has no interest in the proceeding in which that State is engaged. I beg leave most respectfully to assure you, sir, that the declara tion will be received by the people of New York with surprise and disappoint- 1841.] DEBATE ON THE McLEOD CASE. 539 merit. It is held on my part that the State of New York cannot, without dis honor, especially under what must be construed as a menace by Great Britain, retire from the prosecution by which she is vindicating the property and lives of her citizens. This letter brought a reply from President Tyler, reviewing the subject and adhering to his previous view that he ought not to inter pose nor forbid the United States District Attorney from acting as McLeod s counsel. In support of this view the President argued that every accused person was entitled to defense, and that it is one of the rights of attorneys to plead for whom they choose. To this Seward rejoined, on the 1st of June, at some length. In the Legislature the debate went on with some vehemence. One orator said that, if McLeod should be hanged, one of the vultures that came to tear his carcass would be the fitting emblem to take the place of the American eagle. The Whigs defended the Governor s action. The papers were called for by resolution ; they were sent in, and in the accompanying message the Governor said : The Assembly is further informed that the prisoner is now before the Su preme Court of this State on a writ of habeas corpus, sued out, as it is under stood, by himself, with a view to his discharge from custody. The Attorney- General of this State was thereupon immediately instructed to resist the motion for a discharge of the prisoner ; and at the same time the President of the United States was respectfully informed that the appearance of the District Attorney of the United States, as counsel for the prisoner, was deemed incon gruous with official duties and injurious to this State. The Attorney-General is now engaged in the duty assigned him. An incidental correspondence on the subject of the imprisonment of Alexander McLeod having arisen between his Excellency the Governor of the Canadas and the Executive of this State, a copy of the same is also laid before the Assembly. The letter to Lord Sydenham, here referred to, was one acknowl edging his courtesy in complying with a request to surrender a fugitive from justice, and saying : I regret to learn, from an allusion in your letter, that your Excellency labors under some misapprehension concerning the detention of a British subject in this State. Whatever may have been the character of the original transaction in conse quence of which that person was arrested, he had the misfortune, before any affirmance of that transaction by the British Government, to be indicted in one of our courts, and, as is said, upon confessions of his own, for the crimes of mur der and arson committed in this State. His detention is solely to answer that indictment. The opposition newspapers and leaders in debate, quick to perceive their opportunity for fomenting discord among the Whigs, and array ing the State and national Executives in antagonism with each other, 540 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. warmly seconded the views of President Tyler, and condemned those of Governor Seward. In a private letter to Thomas Ewing, Secretary of the Treasury, Seward wrote : When Mr. Crittenden was here, he was met with frankness, and unreserved communications were made to him concerning our views on the McLeod and Caroline questions. We expected similar confidence to be reposed in us, more especially as the questions have a local bearing and local interest affecting this State. No communication on that subject has been received, except the President s reply to a letter of mine concerning an incident connected with the proceedings in the Supreme Court of this State. I should have been wanting in the frank ness that I desire always to manifest, if I had not made known to the President that the surrender or discharge of McLeod, with the seeming agency or consent of the General Government, will have a most unhappy effect. I fear that I shall be thought one of those who take pleasure in fault-finding. I assure you, however, that if I were constitutionally disposed that way, I have had experience enough of being found fault with to save me from that category. He also wrote, on the 31st of May, to Attorney-General Crittenden, saying : I welcome the news of your return to Washington. You will see that, dur ing your absence, a correspondence, not more unpleasant than unprofitable, has taken place between the President and myself, concerning the offense of Alex ander McLeod. Although I feel that I am injured in this matter, in the house of my friends, I care nothing for that. I cannot but believe that the confusion into which things necessarily fell, for a time, at Washington, in consequence of the death of General Harrison, and your absence from Washington, in a season when your explanations would have been useful, have contributed to this result. My object in addressing you is to call your attention to the subject, in order that you may now do whatever shall seem to you to be useful. I do not ask your interposition. I do not ask you even to acknowledge this communication. I should deem it improper for you, as a member of the cabinet, to write me on the subject, except in support of the President. But I think it well, in this informal way, to suggest that the talent and wit of a Whig Administration might be more profitably exercised in some other manner than in an unavailing effort to drive me from a course which, in my poor judgment, is required, not less by patriotism and the honor of this State than by devotion to the Administration itself. McLeod s application for discharge came up in the Supreme Court, and was argued before Chief -Justice Nelson, Judges Bronson and Cowen ; the Attorney-General of the State opposing, and the District Attorney of the United States advocating the application. The latter, while de fending McLeod, defended also his own course in assisting him. He said that McLeod was his client before he received his appointment as 1841.] MICHAEL HOFFMAN. 541 District Attorney. While nobody could doubt the truth of his state ments in this regard, there was a general impression daily strengthen ing in the public mind that he was acting, at least, with tacit approval of the President, and the correspondence now passing between Tyler and Seward clearly indicated that the General Government would be quite willing to be relieved from diplomatic entanglement, by McLeod s discharge. The court, however, ordered McLeod to be recommitted to the cus tody of the sheriff. CHAPTER XXXVI. 1841. Proposal to stop Work on the Canals. Whig Assembly turned Democratic. Willis Gay- lord Clark. The Senecas. Tyler s Message. The Georgia Correspondence. The Anti-rent Troubles. Trip to New England. Bob, the Mocking-Bird. McLeod Excite ment. Supreme Court Decision. A NEW and bold step was taken in May by the opposition in the Assembly, under the lead of Michael Hoffman. This was a movement to arrest the work upon the enlargement of the Erie and the construc tion of the lateral canals, apply the revenues of the canals to pay ment of the canal debt, and levy a direct tax for the support of the government. A long and exciting debate ensued, the Whigs gen erally arraying themselves on the side of the enlargement, and the Democrats on that of stopping the work, on the ground that the State was running dangerously in debt. Upon the questions in reference to the Northern and Erie Railroads, the Democrats took a like view of the necessity of economy in public expenditures, while the Whigs favored the internal-improvement system ; with this difference, how ever, that some of the Democratic representatives, from regions through which the roads were to pass, joined with the Whigs in their advocacy. The appropriation bill finally passed, authorizing the expenditure of three million dollars upon the public works. The New York delega tion recorded their votes almost unanimously against the enlargement of the Erie Canal, although their opponents in the debate reminded them that it was to that channel of commerce the city owed its com mercial supremacy. The State-prisons, by their success in the mechanical arts, brought up another subject for legislative debate. Memorials were presented complaining that the cheap and forced labor of the convicts was a competition necessarily injurious to those engaged in similar employ- 542 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. merit. There were difficulties on both sides. Convicts must not be left in idleness ; honest mechanics outside ought not to be injured by a system intended for the punishment of rogues. In a message accom panying some of these memorials the Governor suggested that " there are many kinds of manufactures, not now carried on in this State, which might be made profitable in the prisons." The session was now approaching its close. The Evening Journal, summing up legislative action taken since its party came into power, enumerated the important measures of last year the currency laws,, militia reforms, legal reforms, and abolition of imprisonment for debt. This year the act for the promotion of agriculture had passed ; and those regulating elections, extending the common-school system, and enlarging the amount of property exempt from execution, probably would pass before the adjournment. Two days before the adjournment came, however, the Whigs met an unexpected discomfiture. The sickness, death, or absence, of sev eral Whig members, deprived them of the majority } small at the best, which they had counted upon ; and the Assembly, supposed to be their own, proved Democratic in the last and most important week of the session. The exemption bill was rejected. The mechanical-labor re form in State-prisons was defeated. The Black River Canal shared the same fate. Several bills, matured for final action, were lost for want of concurrence. Nevertheless, some were saved. The repeal of the " Nine Months Slavery Law " was adopted and signed. The election reforms were carried. The common -school system was adopted. On the 26th the Legislature adjourned. As they were dispersing to their homes, they met or passed on the way the members of Congress going to Washington to enter upon the duties of the extra session. The Whig members had high expecta tions, for they had heard that they were to elect a Speaker and Clerk, were to have a brief and sound message from a President whose cour teous and unaffected manners all were praising, were to repeal the sub-Treasury law, establish a sound and uniform currency, and go home assured of triumph in the coming fall elections. A convention of " Liberty party " men from ten States met in New York in May, and nominated James G. Birney and Thomas Mor ris for President and Vice-President in 1844. The people of Franklin County were now excited over new discov eries of iron-ore. Prof. Emmons went up to make a special examina tion. The Governor, in acknowledging some specimens of the ore, wrote : " If the expectations which are now indulged concerning this ore shall be realized, your portion of the State, so long overlooked, will contribute more to the increase of national wealth than could be derived from the richest gold-mine." The ore was not only found to be 1841.] INDIANS AND WHITE MEN. 54.3 rich, but some points in the geologist s report had encouraged the in habitants to believe would be abundant. The act to amend the common-school law, drawn in accordance with Spencer s report and Seward s policy, was now published. It was in substance the foundation of the present system. James Wads- worth, of Geneseo, had actively assisted in the preparation and passage of the act. The bill extending it to the city of New York, however, had failed in the Senate. Strong opposition was manifested by a part of the press of the city. The Journal of Commerce, commenting on Spencer s report, said, " The proposal to cut up the city of New York into school districts would be death to our schools." Seward, writing to Benjamin Birdsall, remarked : While I am by no means wearied or disheartened in the cause I have under taken, and in which at the same time I have boldly offered myself to the preju dices of native citizens against foreigners, and been made to feel in my own person the retaliation by foreigners of those very prejudices, in my policy concerning education and naturalization, I am accustomed to look, not to the present hour, but to the future to that period, not a quarter of a century dis tant, when the population of this country shall have swelled to thirty-five mill ions, and that of our own State to four or five millions. You can easily con ceive, therefore, that I can cheerfully submit to temporary misapprehension and misrepresentation, which perhaps would be less endurable if any benevolent action was ever carried forward without encountering both. Glentworth was indicted in May for bringing illegal voters to the polls from other States in 1838 and 1839. On the trial the jury dis agreed. The District Attorney took occasion to say that he did not charge any of the respectable gentlemen mentioned, Grinnell, Blatch- ford, Draper, Bowen, and Wetmore, with any participation in his at tempt to obtain fraudulent voters. A petition was received from citizens of Suffolk County, praying for the commutation of the sentence of death pronounced against Samuel Johnson, who was convicted in May of the murder of his wife. In denying the request, the Governor observed : It is contrary to the letter and spirit of our laws to excuse the murderer because he has voluntarily deprived himself of his reason by drunkenness. Of eighteen convictions for murder which have been reported to this de partment since my connection with it, there have been eight cases of the mur der of wives by their husbands, and in five of these the excuse of intoxication was presented as a ground for Executive interposition. Jacob Harvey had written, asking his opinion concerning the treaty made by the United States with the Seneca Indians. In his answer he sketched the experience of the State in this regard : The history of the several Indian nations which have dwelt within our bor- LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. ders shows many coincidences of painful interest. Each nation has in its turn been surrounded and crowded by white men. White men have always wanted more room while an Indian reservation remained, and the Indians have there fore been obliged to contract their hunting-grounds. Indians have been igno rant and confiding, and white men shrewd and sagacious. Indians have been reckless of the value of property, and have always found avaricious white men among their neighbors. White men have sold intoxicating liquors, and Indians have too often surrendered themselves to drunkenness. Indians have generally neglected, if they have not always despised, agriculture, and white men suffered inconvenience from the neglected condition of the Indian lands. White men have coveted those neglected lands, and the community has been benefited in consequence of their acquisition. The effect is that we have now among us only some wasting remnants of half a dozen of the Indian nations. But no humane or enlightened citizen can wish to see the expulsion of the Senecas by force or fraud. It is a fearful thing to uproot a whole people. It is peculiarly so when a large portion of them, relying upon the protection of the laws and the justice of their white brethren, have become the cultivators of the soil and of the affections and habits of civilized life. Such is the condition of a large portion of the Senecas. Injustice to the Indians is repugnant alike to the settled policy of this State and the feelings and sentiments of its people. Toward the middle of June came news of the death of his friend Willis Gaylord Clark. A letter to Joseph R. Chandler described their acquaintance : Eighteen years ago I established myself as an attorney in the village of Auburn. It was not then the beautiful town that now induces the traveler to linger. The place, although not unknown, was unimportant. It contained a population less than half of its present number, and of course it afforded very limited advantages for literary studies. It was a busy town, filled with advent urous spirits, but everything was new and unprepossessing. The Cayuga Re publican, one of the two village newspapers, was brought regularly to my door by a modest, bright-eyed lad of fourteen, who, like other newsboys, occasion ally stopped on his rounds to converse with his patrons. I was a subscriber to several of the reviews and magazines, and a reader of the new publications of the day. The newsboy timidly asked for the loan of Blackwood, and, when that was read and punctually returned, he enlarged his reading, until it em braced all the publications in my possession. After some time my newsboy disappeared and was forgotten. Nine years afterward I had occasion to visit Philadelphia. My newsboy presented himself, a full-grown youth, full of spirit and with rich literary acquirements. He had, with much effort and painful sacrifices, acquired an education at a country academy ; had become an author, and was engaged in writing for American and English periodicals. He had made new acquaintances in Philadelphia, and was by no means unfit for the office he assumed, of showing me its monuments and embellishments. Unknown as I was, I found my name gazetted with un merited praise, and I could not fail to recognize in it the hand of my partial friend the newsboy, who was no other than Willis Gaylord Clark. He showed me some kind and encouraging letters from novelists and poets 1841.] WILLIS GAYLORD CLARK. 545 in England, and opened to me his young heart, full of hopes of literary fame ; and he said he was indebted to kind words spoken by me, when he was loiter ing on his way in the delivery of his newspapers, for the earnest direction his mind had received, and his young ambition was first called into action by the publications I had lent him. Undoubtedly he exaggerated the kindness he had received at my hands. . . . Nevertheless, the conviction was sincere, and thus an incident altogether unimportant, and which I should never have remembered, became tke cause of our life-long friendship. As a poet and prose writer, as editor of the Knickerbocker Maga zine, and of the Philadelphia Gazette, Clark had already acquired a national reputation. He died at his residence in Philadelphia. Seward, in another letter to his twin-brother, Lewis Gaylord Clark, said : Your brother was indeed very near to me. I know not why, but he attached himself to me with respect and affection, and he persevered through good and through evil report in defending me against every injury and unkindness. I felt always my poverty in being unable adequately to reciprocate his kind offices. I know and always knew how devoted was the affection he bore toward you, and I know from experience how invaluable are a brother s aid and support in the varied duties of life. I give you my sympathy, although I know it to be unavailing. President Tyler s message at the opening of the extra session was succinct and brief, expressing the public sympathy and regret in regard to Harrison, recommending the repeal of the sub-Treasury law, urging the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands, invoking the atten tion of Congress to the subject of the currency and the tariff. The message was generally accepted and commended by the Whigs. The Northern Whigs were for protection. The South was strongly com mitted against it. But, as the exhausted Treasury required revenue, it was expected the two sections would agree upon a tariff. The House duly organized by electing John White, of Kentucky, Speaker, and Matthew St. Clair Clark, of Pennsylvania, Clerk. Secretary Ewing s report on the Treasury was brief and business like. He recommended a national bank. The reports of Secretaries Bell and Badger, and Postmaster-General Granger, were received and commended. And the session opened with a debate on the repeal of the sub-Treasury law. Mr. Clay reported a bill establishing a United States Bank. The House passed a bill giving Mrs. Harrison one year s salary of the President. Debates on the bank question and the McLeod business continued through the month. At the beginning of the session Mr. Adams had moved to rescind the twenty -first rule against anti slavery petitions. A warm debate ensued, as usual, on that question. The rule was finally rescinded by to 104. But a few days afterward the question was reconsidered, 35 546 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. and the petitions were again refused admittance the Southern Whigs, this time, uniting with the Democrats. Nor was the slavery question to be allowed to rest between the State Executives. The Governor of Georgia sent on a requisition for one John Greenman, with affidavits. On its receipt, Seward, examining the papers, found that Greenman was charged to have committed two lar cenies, one of them being " the stealing of a negro woman-slave named Kezia," the property of Robert W. Flournoy, valued at five hundred dollars ; and the other being of certain frocks, shawls, and finger-rings. Seward, in his answer, said that he declined compliance with the requi sition, on the ground that there was no accurate or legal evidence that a larceny had been committed: I have heard the statement of the agent charged with the requisition. I have learned from him that the accused was a transient person, a seaman, who spent some months in the vicinity of Mr. Flournoy s plantation, distant about seven miles from Savannah ; that he engaged a passage to New York in the ship Wilson Fuller ; that when the vessel was about to sail it was discovered that the slave had ab sconded from her master, and that, pursuit being made, she was found concealed on board the ship under the care of the accused, and was recaptured and re stored to her master. There is reason to believe she was persuaded to seek her freedom by the accused, who represented to her that if she would go North with him she could live there in the enjoyment of all the privileges of freedom. The agent further states that the accused in no other manner took the clothing and ornaments of the fugitive girl than by enticing her to escape, and aiding her in the accomplishment of that purpose. Instead of his having committed larceny in two instances, as your Excellency has, undoubtedly through misapprehension, been led to suppose, the acts complained of constitute one and the same transac tion, which is not divisible into two crimes. Again, if the facts be as thus stated, your Excellency will perceive that the goods mentioned, instead of hav ing been feloniously stolen, taken, and carried away by the accused, were the apparel and ornaments of the slave, and were worn upon her person in her attempt to escape from servitude ; and that the accused did not, in fact, take or carry the articles in question ; but, on the contrary, they never came into his possession, nor did he manifest any intention to deprive the slave of them, or to convert them to his own use, without which possession and intent he could not be legally charged with larceny. It may, perhaps, be unknown to your Excellency that while the kidnapping of a person by fraud or violence, or his abduction against his will, or any unlaw ful seizure of him, or abridgment of his liberty, is regarded in this State as a high crime, it is held that the relation of master and slave in other States does not constitute a property in the person of the slave so as to render the slave a subject of theft from the master. Without, at this time, making this position a point in the case, it is obvious, if the transaction be correctly stated by your Ex cellency s agent, that there was in fact no taking or carrying away of the slave ; but, on the contrary, that she voluntarily left her master, and walked of her own free-will to the ship. It is true that this was done under the protection of the accused, and in consequence of his persuasion ; but in thus persuading and aiding 1841.] THE GEORGIA SLAVE CASE. 547 her he asserted no pretense of property. I cannot suppose that, however de sirous to bring the fugitive to justice for his real offense, your Excellency would adopt the charge of stealing the slave, when she was not in fact taken or carried away, but, being of full age, left her home of her own free-will. Nor can I believe for a moment that your Excellency, apprehensive that, under the circumstances, the accused could not be lawfully surrendered upon the charge of stealing the slave, would desire the indirect accomplishment of that object by means of a constructive charge that the accused had stolen the clothing and trinkets which the slave wore in her flight. In a reply to Lieutenant-Governor Rutherford, who was now the acting-Governor of Virginia, Seward remarked that the historian who in future times should be turning over the pages of her statute-book " will pause with wonder at the page on which Virginia has impeached the citizens of her sister State ; nor can he omit, in passing judgment on the libel, to notice that at the very moment it was written New York was engaged in expunging from her code the only provision then remaining which tolerated human bondage." A private letter to Christopher Morgan, at Washington, said : You will have seen that I have announced that I am not and will not be a candidate for reelection. Few will understand the grounds of this decision. They are, however, such as commend themselves to my judgment, and are con sistent with patriotism, as I trust. Why announce it now ? I answer that the world may know that it is voluntary, and that it is my own act, and that the party may have the advantage of a fair consideration of my policy and meas ures, separated from that which always weighs against any policy or measure, the supposed ambition or selfishness of the projector. There are other considerations. My principles are too liberal, too philan thropic, if it be not vain to say so, for my party. The promulgation of them offends many ; the operation of them injures many ; and their sincerity is ques tioned by about all. Those principles, therefore, do not receive fair considera tion and candid judgment. There are some who know them to be right, and believe them sincere. These would sustain me. Others whose prejudices are aroused against them, or whose interests are in danger, would combine against me. I must, therefore, divide my party in a convention. This would be unfor tunate for them, and, of all others, the most false position for me. And what have I to lose by withdrawing and leaving the party unembarrassed ? My principles are very good and popular ones for a man out of office ; they will take care of me, when out of office, as they always have done. I have had enough, Heaven knows, of the power and pomp of place ! All that can now be worthy of my ambition is to leave the State better for my having been here, and to entitle myself to a favorable judgment in its his tory. There was now a brief respite from official cares, of which the Gov ernor availed himself to make an excursion to New England. Leav ing Albany with his family on the 17th, they went by the boat to New York, and were met by Mr. Blatchford and his daughter at the New 548 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. Haven boat at six in the morning. Reaching New Haven about eleven, in a brisk shower of rain, they proceeded immediately to Hartford by railroad, having time only for a passing glimpse at New Haven, with its elm-lined streets. At Hartford they remained long enough to visit the State-House, the Charter-Oak, and Asylum for the Blind ; then drove up the valley of the Connecticut, fresh and beauti ful in the bright sun of a June morning. At Springfield they found Major Whistler, then actively engaged in constructing and superintending the new " Western " railroad be tween Boston and Albany. Accepting Major Whistler s invitation, the Governor stepped with him on the locomotive, while the rest of the party took the car, and they went on to Worcester. Here one of the aides of Governor Davis met them, and invited them to his house, a plain, neat dwelling, about half a mile from the centre of the town. Governor Davis s integrity and sincerity had gained him the name throughout Massachusetts of " Honest John Davis." Between him and Seward a feeling of warm regard sprang up. Sunday morning Governor Lincoln, erect, grave, and dignified, called to invite them to go to the Unitarian church. He had retired from the Executive chair a year or two previous, having been Governor of the State for more than a dozen years. The difference between the customs of New York and New Eng land impressed the travelers when, on Saturday night, they heard the bells tolling for church, and on Sunday night found that the setting of the sun was the signal to commence social visiting and secular en joyments. The large fields, stony and filled with buttercups, daisies, and sor rel, seemed an unfavorable contrast to those of rich, waving grain from which they had come. But the neatness, brightness, and taste of all the villages excited perpetual comment and praise. Governor Lincoln, who was collector of the port, accompanied them to Boston. At that time the railroads in Massachusetts were much superior to those in New York, having greater solidity of construction, and having the T-rail instead, of the strap-rail on a wooden bar. The trains made twenty-five miles an hour, a speed not usually attained in New York. The visit to Boston and its environs was full of interest. Among its incidents were a drive to Mount Au burn, the first, if not the only, tastefully laid-out cemetery in the coun try at that period ; a walk through the library and grounds at Har vard with the venerable Josiah Quincy, its president ; an excursion to Bunker Hill, where the granite blocks of the monument were being lifted into place by steam-power ; a morning passed in the State- House, and an afternoon at the Athenaeum and Historical Society, with their Revolutionary relics, swords and flags, letters of the colonial 1841.] A VISIT TO NEW ENGLAND. 549 patriots, and a sealed bottle of tea. The old gentleman who was point ing out the curiosities said : " Here is some of the tea which was thrown overboard in the harbor. A broken chest floated ashore near the residence of an old lady, who, though a patriot, thought it a great pity that so much good tea should be wasted, and so locked the treasure- trove in her closet. She was forced to use it sparingly and privately, however, to avoid the observation of her neighbors. So it was not all gone before the event became historic and the tea a precious relic. This is some of it." Just as he was saying this, the bottle slipped from his hand and broke ; the tea was scattered on the floor. Hastily gathering it up, and putting the parcel back upon the shelf, he re marked : " There is none lost, and it won t be hurt by it ; but since the bottle is broken, Governor, you might as well take half a dozen grains as mementos of Boston." The precious leaves were put into a diminutive vial and taken to Albany. Next was a visit to the Asylum for the Blind with Dr. Howe, where they saw the little deaf, dumb, and blind girl, Laura Bridgman, whose name has since become so familiar to all scientific inquirers. A visit to Quincy closed their stay, and, leaving Boston by rail, they returned to Springfield, there remained all night, and the next morning at six continued their journey to Chester, twenty-eight miles distant, and as far as the road was completed ; then by stage over the mountains to Pittsfield, and through Lebanon to Albany, where they arrived late in the evening of Thursday, the 24th. Here, when the State officers and the " Dictator " came to welcome the Governor back, there was much amusement over the story they had to tell him of a proposed usurpation by the Lieutenant-Governor. The Commercial Advertiser had announced that, during his ab sence from the State, by the constitution, the Lieutenant-Governor was acting-Governor. It demanded, therefore, that acting-Governor Bradish, then presiding over the Court of Errors in the city of New York, should call a session of the Senate and renominate Hiram Ketch- urn as Circuit Judge. The Democratic papers, and some of the dis affected Whig ones, delighted with the idea, were giving the project hearty support. But Governor Bradish steadfastly refused to take any notice of the greatness thrust upon him. Seward wrote to George Bliss, at Springfield : I congratulate the directors and the country upon the prospect of a speedy completion of the Western Railroad. If I had at any time entertained a doubt of the immeasurable public advantages to result from the improvement, that doubt would have given way when I became acquainted with the enterprise and industry of the people of Massachusetts. While, as a citizen of New York, I shall continue to urge upon my fellow-citizens the construction of a railroad 550 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. from New York to this city, as a measure necessary to the prosperity of this State, I rejoice in the belief that the enterprise of the citizens of Boston will be crowned with a rich reward. I trust that the time is near at hand when the chain of railroads which now binds together the valleys of the Merrimac, the Connecticut, the Housatonic, the Hudson, the Oswego, the Genesee, and the Niagara, will reach the Mississippi. Nor do I believe the day is far distant when the country lying on the northern shores of the Great Lakes may be opened to the inland commerce of the United States. There was a new inmate in the old mansion at Albany, and a noisy one ; this was a fine mocking-bird, " Bob " by name. His new owner wrote to his old one, Mr. Gray : He seems to be aware of his obligation to magnify your kindness in sending him to me, and evinces a very prudent desire to establish himself favorably in my household. He began to show off his powers as soon as his food and water were replenished. I believe he must have formed his opinion of me from the current conversation of your great city, for he evidently intended to commend himself by showing that he, too, was a demagogue. He began with the notes of the wren, passed rapidly through the gamut of the robin, the jay, the blue bird, quail, snipe, crow, and woodpecker, and ended with a serenade of un known but exquisite melody. In the night there was a cry of fire in the streets; I threw up the sash ; the sound of the alarm-bell and the fireman s horn waked his imitative spirit, and he joined lustily in the clamor. I have found but one cause of complaint against him. He is evidently in favor of the Public School Society s exclusive privileges, for, when the Roman Catholic Lord Bishop of Nantes paid him a, visit to-day, he would not be prevailed upon to open his throat. Hugh Maxwell and Gary V. Sackett had been appointed by the Governor commissioners to effect the adjustment of the Manor of Rensselaerwyck difficulties. After hearing both sides, they agreed upon a basis which they recommended for adoption, looking to a gradual extinguishment of the troublesome tenures by payment of some fixed and definite amount to obtain the fee, thus securing the manorial proprietor against pecuniary loss, and giving the tenant a clear and untrammeled title. Although some were obstinate, the ten ants for the most part signified their willingness to avail themselves of the plan. The Patroon, under what subsequent events proved to be mistaken advice, declined to enter into the proposed arrangement, and so the matter was left, for the time, unsettled. Governor Seward continued to execute the law without encounter ing serious resistance, during the remainder of his term. The discon tent of the tenants, however, year by year, increased ; nor were the friends of the Patroon pleased that the State should have entertained any question in regard to the justice of his claims, or the wisdom of their vigorous enforcement. 1841.] THE SUPREME COURT OX McLEOD. 55! The Canadian newspapers by every mail were now full of indigna tion about the McLeod case. " Lies, forgery, scoundrels, dregs," etc., were among the epithets freely used. McLeod s counsel, sending a commission to Canada to take testimony to prove an alibi, found wit nesses refusing to testify, alleging that it was derogatory to the Brit ish crown to give evidence in such a case. The correspondence between Mr. Fox and Mr. Webster was pub lished. Mr. Fox, in March, had declared the burning of the Caroline the act of the British Government, and demanded McLeod s surren der. At the same time he defended the act as a justifiable employ ment of force to defend British territory from unprovoked attack of " British rebels " and " American pirates." The 4th of July was celebrated in New York by a grand review of the First Division of Artillery on the Battery. The Governor mounted his horse, rode down and along the line, and then, returning to his headquarters at the Astor House, received the marching salute as the division passed in review, led by General Sanford, its commander. The day was cool and pleasant, the streets thronged. The next morn ing he visited the North Carolina at the Navy-Yard, accompanied by Adjutant-General King and Major-General Sanford and staff. Com mander M. C. Perry was then in command of the North Carolina. He received the Governor with a salute and naval honors, and afterward accompanied him to the Fulton and the Navy-Yard, then commanded by Commander Sands. In the evening the North Carolina lay in com plete darkness, until at nine o clock a gun was fired. Instantly she seemed to burst into glittering light, her ports being simultaneously thrown open, her whole interior illuminated, and rows of lights deline ating masts, spars, and rigging. The other United States vessels were similarly illuminated. Returning to Albany, he wrote home : ALBANY, July 10, 1841. I had a visit from an old collegiate friend, who spent the evening, night, and morning, with me. Since he left I have scarcely had a visitor, and the contents of my box diminish, while with Rogers s help I have succeeded in dispatching a peck of letters to the post-office. I need my secretary. Street declines. I have written to Mr. Underwood to send me either of his boys. Circumstances now indicate that an issue will be raised in this State upon the McLeod question Mr. Tyler, Mr. Webster, and the Whigs generally, on the side of the British Government; myself and the " Loco-focos " on the Ameri can side. If the " Loco-focos " bring this question to the polls, it is not easy to know what will be the effect upon the stability of the Whig party. ALBANY, July 12, 1841. We had, or rather I bad, yesterday, a visit from Blatchford, Bowen, and Colonel Webb. The conversation was all upon the gossip at Washington. I have prepared a letter vindicatory, and my friends are to go with it on Friday. 552 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. The secretary shall send you the papers, and Lewis Gaylord Clark s beauti ful and touching article on the death of his brother. ALBANY, July 13, 1841. I am busy to-day in replying to the Governor of Georgia, amid many inter ruptions. The Supreme Court has maintained all my positions and overthrown Mr. Webster s in the McLeod case. It is to me just now a useful vindication. Time favors me much; he has only to expedite his progress and settle the school question for me, and I have no more to ask in regard to my public policy. News had come that the Supreme Court at Utica, on the previous day, had denied the motion for the discharge of McLeod. An elab orate opinion was delivered by Judge Cowen, concurred in by Chief- Justice Nelson and Judge Bronson. The motion had been argued, on the part of the State, by Attorney-General Hall, who said : We cannot allow, as an act of defense, the willful pursuing of even an enemy, though dictated by sovereign authority, into a country at peace with the sovereign of the accused, seeking out that enemy and taking his life. Such a deed can be nothing but an act of vengeance ; can be nothing but a violation of territory a violation of municipal law, of the faith of treaties and the law of nations. He must be remanded to take his trial. Before England can law fully send a single soldier for hostile purposes, she must assume the responsi bility of public war. Admitting that counsel might, by the aid of England, get up an ex post facto war for the benefit of McLeod, this cannot be done in contradiction to the language of England herself. It is said that McLeod is anxious to go to a jury. It is believed that, if left alone, he would before this have proved to the satisfaction of the court and jury that he bragged himself into the scrape ; would have been acquitted, and so ended the matter. But the two Governments were not content to allow the matter to go off in this quiet, unostentatious way. The question was national ized. The position of England now seems to be, that she denies that she is nationally responsible for burning the Caroline, and refuses to let any of her subjects be made individually responsible. Great public interest was taken in the case. An express locomotive started immediately with the opinion, and a special messenger was dis patched with it to Albany. The Supreme Court next granted an order, changing the venue of McLeod s case, and appointing his trial at Utica in September. Writing to Morgan, Seward said : Out of the city of New York opinion is unanimously with the court. In that metropolis it is about as unanimous against it. Nothing could have been more unkind or unwise than the course pursued toward me by the General Govern ment in relation to the McLeod affair. It was not merely unkind, it was un generous. They enjoyed my full confidence ; they showed me none. Until I received the President s second letter I supposed that nothing had been decided upon at Washington, and, although I extorted from him a disclosure of a purpose to abandon the State, I was left to learn the ground taken by the Administration 1841.] DR. CAMPBELL S SERMON. 553 from the published documents accompanying the President s mewage to Con gress ; and even then my communications were withheld from Congress. It has been somewhat oppressive upon me, personally, to have Mr. Webster roll over upon us the weight of his great name and fame to smother me. But the result restores me. There is but one Whig paper in the State out of the city of New York that does not fully approve the ground assumed by the Supreme Court. The acqui escence of the British minister, and of the Federal Government, will soon silence the presses in the city that so perversely play into the enemy s hands. ALBANY, Sunday Evening. I have had a day of comparative repose and abstraction from harassing cares and perplexities. Desirous to be more cheerful, and to carry refreshed powers to business to-morrow, I have concluded to enjoy rest to-night. Mr. Blatchford was here at breakfast. Went to Dr. Campbell s church and heard a very happy sermon upon the text, " Seek not great things." The doctor lectured us upon the folly of ambition and avarice. In his prayers he was earnest that our chil dren might never lose the advantages of education, intellectual and moral, and especially religious. He did not forget the President and Congress in his prayers, and kindly commended me to the illuminating grace of the Ruler of nations. When we were coming out of church he was surprised to find me among his auditory, and told me that the moral of his discourse, so far as I was concerned, was, that I must not seek to be President of the United States. He said he would have given me a more searching reproof if he had known that I was among the hearers of his discourse. I thanked him for remembering my com mon schools. He said he prayed for the dissemination of education, but not of Catholic education. I told him that he described my project of education ex actly, and that I felt much encouraged by finding I had his prayers in aid of my labors. Mr. Verplanck has sent me his speech on the school question. You must read it. It will be published on Tuesday or Wednesday. The first reports from New York upon the McLeod question are received. The papers, with the exception of Greeley s and the New World, are all with Mr. Webster. They dispute the decision made by the Supreme Court, and prom ise their readers on both sides of the water that the cause shall go to the Court of Errors, and from that tribunal to the Supreme Court of the United States. Mistaken men ! The decision made by the Supreme Court would be unanimously confirmed by the Court of Errors ; and the Supreme Court of the United States will never have it in their power to lay hands upon the case. We have nothing definitive from Washington relating to the subject. My belief is, that the Federal Government will be now advised that the prisoner be left to take his trial. 554: LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. CHAPTER XXXVII. 1841. Whig Troubles at Washington. The Georgia Correspondence. Stealing a Woman. Re fusal to be a Candidate. Extra Session at Buffalo. Lyell. Murder of Mary Rodgers. Webster and the McLeod Case. The Vetoes. Clay and Tyler. Breaking up the Cabinet. EAKLY in July, news was received that the House of Representatives had taken the bill for the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands out of the Committee of the Whole, where it had been debated for a fortnight, and where its opponents meant to keep it through the dog-days. A bold movement, led by Edward Stanley, had forced its consideration, and had passed it. A few days later came the intelli gence that the bank bill and the bankrupt bill had passed the Senate. But now it was said that President Tyler was beginning to give dissatisfaction by refusing to make Whig appointments in lieu of Dem ocratic incumbents, and there were rumors that he was not in accord with his party on the bank question. Writing to John A. King, Seward said : What do you think of matters and things at Washington? The whole con cern baffles my efforts to understand it. Nevertheless, being naturally sanguine, and confiding in the good intention of the Whigs, I hope for the success of Whig measures, without seeing how they are to be accomplished. In Van Buren s time we had a Northern man with a Southern cabinet. We have now a Southern man with a Northern cabinet. If the evils of the former Administration are not cured by the present, we must come to the conclusion that the South cannot be satisfied with any other order of things than one in which she will have the whole Government. I have seen letters from D. W., saying that they have no assurance that the President will sign the bill, and manifestly revealing their fears of a veto. They say further that, in that event, there will be an explosion. This catastrophe, not more ridiculous than unnecessary, should be averted. I would go to Wash ington, if it were proper, and if I supposed that I might do anything to bring about an explanation. A letter to Mrs. Seward said : ALBANY, July 21, 1841. You will be surprised, as many others at Auburn are, that I delay so long my return there. My brother s death cast upon me all the business I have been accustomed to depend upon him to transact for me at Auburn, in Chautauqua, and in New York. We are very quiet and staid here. I have brought the breakfast-hour back to seven, and I rise at six. My morning hours, until twelve, are devoted to business at home. I spend two hours in the departments. Weed comes after dinner and stays an hour, and then I return to business until the mail arrives 1841.] THE GEORGIA CORRESPONDENCE. 555 at seven. The short warm evenings I occupy with reading, writing to you, and in walks about town. The unfortunate attitude of the cabinet at Washington is leading to a loss of confidence in regard to them. The great question about the banks is the cause of discord. If I were to judge from the reports that reach me, I should despair of any harmonious result. Clay is undoubtedly right, and the President wrong. If we support the President, we oppose Whig measures ; if we support Clay, we oppose a Whig Administration. I have seen quite enough to know that, badly as I have succeeded in this difficult business, I shall have little to fear in com parison with those who have, during the winter, complained of and embarrassed me. Granger writes me courteous letters when occasion offers. I of course return them in the same spirit. The decision of the Supreme Court in McLeod s case embarrasses the Whig party, especially the press. They had gone unhesi tatingly with Mr. Webster, and now it is hard to return and acknowledge that one so much distrusted as I was right, and the man in whom we have all so long confided was wrong. If you see the papers you will be afraid that I shall mani fest some ill feeling toward the Federal Government. Do not fear this. I want only occasion and cause to speak well of them. The latter cannot but come, unless everything fails in Congress. The former I can make. I mark this day with a white stone. There has not been a beggar at the door, and but one woman suing a pardon for a husband convicted of bigamy. To Weed he wrote : So, instead of going to Washington, you went to the Mountain House? I am glad you did so, although I am still of the opinion that you could have done good at Washington. A. B. Dickinson gives a sad account of affairs at that capital. I wish you had seen him. According to his account, the President will veto the bill. " Gude save ua ! " If he does that, there will no longer be cause of regret that I enjoyed not the love of the President or his cabinet. Maynard, Morgan, and J. C. Clarke, will speak out on the McLeod affair. A. B. D. seems to have had warm talk with both the President and Mr. Webster. I have made up my mind that their displeasure is to be endured. He performed his customary duty of attending the commencement at Union College this year. Among those who delivered addresses there before the literary societies were, George Bancroft, William Kent, -and B. F. Butler. Bancroft and Charles Lyell, the English geologist, were made LL. D. s. His answer to the requisition of the Governor of Georgia had brought a long reply from that Governor, insisting that the affidavits were sufficient, the requisition just, and the duty of the Governor of New York imperative to return the fugitive. To this Seward again answered, adding: It cannot be necessary now to consider the hypothetical cases you have put, or to answer questions which, by putting such cases, you have thought proper to raise, whether the luring of a slave from the master, by awakening her hopes of freedom and assisting her to escape from bondage, is an act to be classed in 556 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. the same category with the act of tempting a neighbor s horse with a bundle of hay, and appropriating the animal to the use of the wrong-doer these, and other questions propounded in your communication, and upon some of which I might perhaps have the misfortune to differ in opinion from your Excellency, need not now be discussed, because they are not involved in the case you have submitted. Regarding unnecessary discussion of such questions between the authorities of the several States as of questionable advantage, I must be excused for declin ing to enter into such a one until your Excellency shall present a case requiring an examination of these grave and interesting subjects. Whenever such a dis cussion shall become a duty, I shall not hesitate to engage in it, with an anxious solicitude to arrive at the truth, and to maintain the inalienable rights of man, the sovereignty of the States, and the integrity of the Federal Union. A committee of colored men, Messrs. Austin Pray and Thomas Paul, wrote to him from Toronto, expressing their gratification at the measures he had adopted, and the principles he had maintained, in regard to that portion of the African race residing in the State. He remarked that No tribute of approbation could be more acceptable to me. If there be one reproach which I should, above all others, most deprecate, it would be that of having used the high powers confided to me to check the efforts put forth by that people to rise from that debasement in which slavery has left them. It is not alone the degraded race that suffers. Slavery has brought a thou sand evils which affect the whole American community, and will long survive the cause that produced them. I congratulate you upon the indications that the time draws nigh when slavery will be numbered among the obsolete crimes of the human race. In a letter to P. P. F. De Grand, of Boston, he said : I thank you for your kind expressions concerning my intended retire ment. All my life long I have known that there would arrive occasions in the life of every public man when he could better promote great public meas ures as a private citizen than by attempting to use the influence of an official station. He who consults always the public welfare and improvement, and seeks to promote those great objects by wise measures, need not fear the want of due consideration. He who either does not devote himself to such ends, or adopts injudicious means to accomplish them, does not deserve the public favor. In retiring from my present post, after four years of duty, I shall only pursue the course I have always pursued, that of relieving my efforts to advance great public interests from the weight of supposed personal ambition. You yourself, I am sure, would not dissuade me from such a course. The Evening Journal reiterated the determination of Seward not to again be a candidate. The newspaper press generally throughout the State, especially in the rural districts, expressed regret at his with drawal from the candidacy. 1841.] THE "PATRIOTS" STEALING CANNON. 557 He had issued a proclamation calling an extra session of the Sen ate, to meet August 16th, at Buffalo, to fill vacancies which the public interest required should not be left unfilled until the next session. Meanwhile he wrote to Dr. Torrey, suggesting that the gentlemen associated in the geological survey should give a kind reception, and all the information in their power, to the eminent geologist Lyell, who was expected to arrive in New York early in August. He wrote to Weed: AUBURN, August 6th. I came through TTtica, seeing Walker, Ostrom, Faxton, and Shearman, and had a pleasant sojourn among them. I spent the night there. The attraction of home increasing as I approached, it overcame my purpose of stopping at Syra cuse on the way. I met James B. Lawrence in the street. Auburn chilled me by its silence and repose ; yet it is very beautiful ; and now men and women come about me, I am quite delighted with it. There are many kind greetings here from persons from whom I have long been separated. The town has evidently passed through the most oppressive stage of the pressure, and is already recovering. August 12, 1841. We leave to-morrow morning for Buffalo by the way of Niagara. There ia nothing from New York or Albany concerning the circuit judgeship. There is some reason to believe the " Patriots " are engaged in taking the public ordnance and arms, with a view to some new demonstration. I am doing what is prudent in regard to the movement. Information had been received that two cannons were stolen from Auburn, another from the town of Cato, and a fourth from a depot in Buffalo. It was surmised that the thefts were accomplished by persons engaged in an effort to renew frontier disturbances. The Governor communicated the information to Colonel Bankhead, the United States military commander at Buffalo, and instructed the Adjutant-General to " issue orders to the commandants of artillery regiments and de tachments, requiring them to take necessary means to protect the ord nance belonging to the State ; to recover that which had been stolen, and further directing the commandants to give information to the dis trict attorney of the county where such depredations were committed. Early in August the papers were filled with the story of the mys terious disappearance of Mary Rodgers, the subsequent discovery of her body at Hoboken, the coroner s inquest, and the circumstances which strongly indicated that she had been murdered. In accordance with the request of the New York authorities, the Governor offered a reward for the discovery and apprehension of the murderers. As to the McLeod matter, he wrote to Morgan : AUBUKN, August 9, 1841. I have long since been of the opinion that love was not to exist between the premier and myself. I regret it sincerely. The loss of his kindness is, how- 558 LI ^E AND LETTERS. [1841. ever, another of the misfortunes occasioned by a course which, in my judgment, could not be compromised without injury to the public welfare. Daniel Web ster has the most powerful intellect in this land ; and yet one possessed of much less wisdom might have been expected to consult so important a party as New York ; and at least when he found her protest on record, he might have thought it worthy of notice. I go on Friday to Buffalo to meet the Senate, and shall probably be there ten days. The promoters of the temperance movement published this week y among their correspondence, a letter from Seward addressed to their president, E. C. Delavan, in which he said : I rejoice most sincerely in the many indications of the success of this move ment ; indeed, there is nothing more remarkable in modern times than the firm, steady, and unparalleled progress of the temperance reformation. The result is full of encouragement to the Christian and to the philanthropist. There was interesting and important news from Washington. The House of Representatives had passed the revenue bill, and had given a favorable vote on the bankrupt bill. The new United States Bank was to be located in the District of Columbia ; the United States was to own one-third of its stock ; States, and individuals, and corporations, two-thirds. Nine directors were to be appointed by the President and the Senate ; six were to be selected by the stockholders. Its name was to be the " Fiscal Bank of the United States." No mem ber of Congress was to be allowed to borrow money of it. But coupled with this news were rumors that it was feared the President would veto the bill. A question of State rights was said to have arisen in regard to allowing branches in States without their consent. A compromise was finally adopted in this form : " Branches may be established with the consent of the Legislature, or without it when necessary, or the bank may employ other agents, banks, or officers, instead of branches." This section was justly enough pronounced " muddled," being made up of amendments piled one upon another. While some Southern men thought it did not sufficiently guard the rights of States, Mr. Adams opposed it as containing nullification doctrines. Finally, news came that the bank bill had passed, and gone to the President for approval. At the same time the House had repealed the sub-Treasury law. For a week the public mind and the press were full of uneasiness about the fate of the national bank. Nothing was heard from the President. Weed had now been summoned to Washington, and wrote thence that members of the cabinet faintly hoped, but that members of Con gress despaired ; that he had been laboring all day to soothe excited feeling among the Whigs ; that Clay and Tallmadge were highly in dignant ; that Stanley, Stewart, and Botts, were trying to dissuade the President, but that a veto was " inevitable." 1841.] EXTRA SESSION AT BUFFALO. 559 On the 18th the suspense was suddenly terminated. President Tyler returned the bill with numerous objections. He said he had been for twenty-five years opposed to the exercise of such a power, if any such power existed. He objected to the discounting provision as un necessary ; to the compromise clause as an infringement of State rights. He thought the bill calculated to create a conflict between the State and Federal Governments. Public opinion divided. Judicious Whig leaders were disposed to deprecate a conflict between the President and Congress. They re gretted the difference on this question, but hoped for agreement on others. It was not soothing to the feelings of the Whigs when the Democrats in Albany had a grand procession in honor of the veto. Mr. Wise, and three others, who had broken from the Whig party, and were acting independently, received from their associates the nick name of the "cab party." Two days later came intelligence that a caucus of the Whig mem bers had been held, and they had agreed to pass the bankrupt bill and other Whig measures, including a " National Exchange Bank," which should take custody of the revenue without power to discount. Accord ingly, the bankrupt bill was passed and was signed by the President. The " National Exchange Bank " bill was introduced into the House. While these events were transpiring at Washington, the State Sen ate and Executive had gone to Buffalo. Seward s letters described the journey and the session : NIAGARA FALLS, August I5tk. Here we are, so far on our way. It is a "powerfully hot" morning. The ladies, with the young gentlemen, the Attorney- General, and the Speaker, have gone on a pilgrimage into Queen Victoria s dominions. I had written my programme of proceedings for to-morrow, and sent it to Buffalo. To-morrow morning we shall all be there. General Root is here with Mrs. Root. It is very clear that the Whig party is perfectly unsettled in its purposes of peace or war, after knowing the fate of the bank bill. All expect the veto. General Porter obviously prefers an open breach if the bill be not signed. BATAVIA, August 22d. I have been immersed in dissipation, and unable even to give you a sign of my where- and what-abouts during almost a week. Your letters from New York, Philadelphia, and Washington, have reached and enlightened me. I suppose that by this time your steps are homeward, and that this greeting may not be unseasonable upon your return to Albany. 1 bave been satisfied that your views concerning the events at Washington were right. Having been among the people, I have had good opportunity to witness the operation of the veto upon the public mind. I confess my surprise at tbe unanimity of the Whig party in favor of the bank. The veto has dis- 560 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. gusted everybody with John Tyler, but not with themselves and their party. The Whigs will retaliate the injury Tyler has done them. But these speculations are not very necessary or profitable. I went to Buffalo. As you will have noticed, I proceeded immediately to business. I had a conversation on Monday morning with all the Senators, which resulted in their unanimously advising the renomination of William Kent. I never knew more good feeling. There was but one Senator who seemed dissatisfied. I continued to send nominations to the Senate until Thursday afternoon, when, the business being disposed of, the Senate adjourned. The citizens of Buffalo are manifestly much gratified by the visit of the Senate and the Court of Errors. The house of some worthy citizen is opened every night to the strangers. The Senators and the ladies attending them are enjoying themselves very much. The gentlemen of the staff arrived on Friday. We had a very handsome review ; and it closed, as I believe, to the entire satisfaction of all parties. We passed from Buffalo to Rochester through this place, and yesterday morning at tended the ceremonial of the reinterment of the bones taken up in the Genesee Valley. I feared that there would be a failure in the affair. But I was agree ably disappointed. All the world was there, and it was opportune that we were there too. We left there last night, and are spending the day quietly and pleasantly in the hospitable home of the Carys. A part of the staff have set their faces home ward. All the ladies go on to Auburn to-morrow. At the same time Bowen, Blatchford, and I, go to Chautauqua. I must not omit to say that S. 0. Haw- ley has done everything man could do to make our stay in Buffalo agreeable. I wanted Ruggles along very much, and have yet a lingering hope that he may come. The tolls received on the Erie Canal during the year were now pub lished, showing an increase of two hundred thousand dollars over the corresponding period of the preceding year, and an annual increase since 1837, that justified Seward s recommendations and policy in re gard to the enlargement, as well as the estimates of Spencer, Ver- planck, and Ruggles. The session of the Senate had been held at the Buffalo Court-House. A long list of appointments sent in, and during the week confirmed, comprised, among others, those of Benjamin Pringle, for Judge in Genesee ; A. P. Jacobs, for Superintendent of Montezuma Salt-Springs; Isaac Platt, of Poughkeepsie, for notary public ; John Young, of Gene- seo, for Master in Chancery ; John M. Bradford, of Geneva, for Ex aminer in Chancery ; Lyman Truman, for notary public ; and Harlow C. Love, of Buffalo, for Brigade Inspector. The Senate, after transacting this executive business, had pro ceeded to hold a session as Court of Errors. They then voted to visit Lockport and make an inspection of the public works of that place. Toward the close of the month came news from Washington that the " National Exchange Bank " bill had passed the House. There came also a letter from Weed presaging disasters, and saying that Everett s 1841.] TYLER S VETOES. nomination for the mission to England was opposed, and possibly might be rejected. Southern Whig Senators had joined Democratic ones in opposing his confirmation, the latter having produced letters written by him to abolitionists. The President desired a postponement of the bank bill, and was already beginning to receive harsh denunciation in debate by some of his former Whig supporters. Mr. Clay had taken the floor, and his vigorous attack on the veto message was published. On his return to Albany, the Governor was met by dispatches from Washington, saying that there was reason to fear an anticipated rescue of McLeod. He wrote to Weed : ALBANY, September 1, 1841. I left Westfield on Friday, passed through Buffalo, and slept under General Porter s hospitable roof that night. On Saturday yielded to persuasion and the inducement of the Lieutenant-Governor s and George Andrews s company, and came by the Ridge road, arriving at Rochester just half an hour after the east ern car had left the depot, leaving me to spend Sunday at Rochester. I arrived at Auburn on two o clock of Monday. Tuesday Mr. Webster s missives met me, with notes, emendations, and enlargement, by you and the Secretary of State. I remained at Auburn twelve hours ; then came on, arriving at Utica night before last. I dispatched Sands Higginbotham from Oneida, on the railroad, to Oneida Castle, with a summons to the District Attorney to meet me the next morning. The secretary disturbed the repose of the village of Whitesboro by leaving a similar summons there for General White, the first judge, and Sheriff Moulton. Yesterday morning I held counsel with all tbose functionaries, and with the District Attorney and the Circuit Judge ; resulting in arming and equipping all the people of Whitesboro, and magnifying Alexander McLeod to the heart s con tent, I hope, of Mr. Fox. We then rode to Trenton Falls. Returning in the evening after a supper with Devereux, we took the cars at nine and found our way from the railroad depot to the Executive mansion this morning, through a dense fog that stopped the steamboats all night. There you have my private and public journal. I much want, and I doubt not I very much need, your elucidation of the strange history of the Adminis tration of John Tyler. Nevertheless, I read it with some success, and I wonder that any man of fifty years experience should have fallen into such errors. I will not speculate about the future. As news continued to come, of affairs at Washington, it was evi dent that the situation of the Whig party was rapidly growing worse, instead of better. The bill for the distribution of the public lands had passed both Houses, and had been sent to the President. The new bank bill had passed the Senate. But here was another disappoint ment: the President would not sign it, although it had been prepared on purpose to meet his objections. The Whigs in Congress were chafing, the Democrats exulting. Buchanan and Calhoun were praising Tyler, and Clay retorting. In one of his speeches he gave a dramatic scene. He described Calhoun, 36 562 MFE AND LETTERS. [1841 Linn, King, Benton, and Buchanan, as visiting and addressing con gratulations to the President. In his description he imitated their manner, and put in their mouths quotations from their past speeches. The galleries and the Senators generally appreciated the joke, laughing and applauding. Calhoun and Benton, however, took it in sober ear nest, and rose to declare and protest that they had not been near the White House. Encouraged by the success of their demonstrations against Mr. Everett for his " abolition proclivities," some of the Southern Senators opposed the appropriations for the contingent fund of the Post-Office Department, on the ground that Granger was an " abolitionist " at the head of the department through which the " diabolical principles of that gang of fanatics might be brought into a most dangerous conflict with the safety of the South, and the existence of the Union." To complete the discomfiture of the Whigs, it was also announced that Tyler was not going to remove Democratic postmasters in the cities, merely to put Whig ones in their places. Furthermore, it was said that Mr. Van Buren, whom the Whigs had worked so hard to de feat the year before, approved of Tyler s vetoes, and was elated with the policy of his Administration. Toward the middle of September came his second veto. This was qualified with an expression of regret : It has been my good fortune and pleasure to concur with them in all meas ures except this ; and why should difference on this alone be pushed to extremi ties ? It is my anxious desire that it should not be. As an earnest of this good disposition, the law for the distribution of the public lands was signed by the President, and published. Congress now adjourned. It had passed the bankrupt law, the revenue law, the land-distribution law, the fortification law, and the home-squadron law. Simultaneous with the adjournment came rumors that the cabinet was breaking up, that Ewing and Crittenden were going, and that Clay had advised all the members of the cabinet to resign. Speedy confirmation came. Harrison s cabinet had dissolved. Ew ing, Bell, Badger, and Crittenden, had resigned, and subsequently Granger. Webster alone remained. Forward, McLean, Upshur, and Legare, were nominated to the vacant places ; and Wickliffe was to be nominated to that of Granger. Ewing and Crittenden published letters, assigning their reasons for going. Webster wrote to Ketchum, giving his reasons for staying. He said that he regretted the differences between the President and Congress as deeply as any man, but had not been able to see in what manner the resignation of the cabinet was likely either to remove or 1841.] A CHANGE OF CABINET. 563 mitigate the evils produced by them. On the contrary, he said, his reliance for remedy was on the union, conciliation, and perseverance of the whole Whig party ; and added that his particular connection was with another department, and there was, so far as he knew, an entire concurrence of opinions between himself and the President, in reference to foreign relations. He saw no reason, therefore, to run the risk of embarrassing the Executive by sudden or abrupt proceed ings, especially as questions were immediately pending affecting the peace of the country. Seward s letters to Auburn detailed his occupations : STATE OF NEW YORK, EXECUTIVE DEPARTMENT, ALBANY, September 10th. I began an official document, but my conscience smites me so that I will change it into a letter to you. It was a pleasant visit that I had at Auburn, and I found things here very much as they were left. Mr. Blatchford had set his successor in the way of copying my ancient letters, and was on the eve of embarking for New York. He has gone a youth of splendid talents, good principles, and affectionate dis position. Mr. Underwood is very attentive, and bids fair to be useful and agreeable. We are again cheerful, with an occasional lay from Bob the mocker. He has his new coat adjusted, and is continually engaged in trying to clear his throat, and remember his notes. He seems, however, to be unable to recall any but the lower notes. Dr. and Mrs. Doane have sent a green turtle, that is to be here on the 25th, to greet you on your arrival. The Helderberg troubles open badly. Despite the ridicule heaped upon them, they will attract notice, and blood will yet flow in a cause that has, thus far, moved only derision. The President s second veto is here. He has at last played away the con fidence of a great, generous, and confiding party, and won nothing but the con tempt of the opposition. The Governor of Georgia has replied to my rejoinder. His communication is even less convincing than John Tyler s second veto. I have much more to write you, but my time is precious ; I must defer fur ther gratification of this kind until to-morrow. Tuesday Morning. Mr. Webster goes into the new cabinet with Tyler, and against Clay and his friends, now the mass of the Whig party. There will be loud denunciations of both, and open feud. ALBANT, September 15, 1841. I received last evening your letter of Sunday. Poor Brown ! her relief has come, and it may not be doubted that she is blessed. How foolish to wish to stay in such a world of trouble and pain as this I I am glad that she was able, through your kindness, to die at home. 564 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. I am yet plodding through business accumulated during my long absence. Nobody has yet come on from Washington. I am thankful that I have no responsibilities concerning the new order of things. I incline to believe it will be disastrous to both factions. Mr. and Mrs. Fillmore are spending the day with me. Maynard is here and dines with me. Morgan has not yet come. ALBANY, I saw many of our friends in New York. Few of them were prepared for the sudden movement by which the President and his cabinet were cut off from the confidence and support of the Whig party. Messrs. Curtis and Lyman are, even now, in Washington, endeavoring to induce the President to adopt a course suitable to regain the lost confidence of his party. It is "love s labor lost." The uncertainty of our friends in New York, on the subject, arises solely from a reluctance to abandon Mr. Webster. The evil, however, is irremediable. ALBANY, Tuesday Evening. I am occupied incessantly with " wars and rumors of wars," and my corre spondence is oppressive. It is quite uncertain whether I can leave here. Indeed, I am almost sure I cannot. The Comptroller and the Secretary of State are both absent, the latter for several days. John C. Spencer is to be no more of us here. He has received an informal invitation to be Secretary of War, and went last night, with all our best wishes, to Washington. There will be such a crowd at Utica about McLeod s trial that I think you will find it necessary to come directly through. I shall look for you in the Saturday s train that leaves Auburn at three in the morning. The Whig members of Congress were now returning home. An address of the Whig members to their constituents appeared, headed by Berrien, Tallmadge, J. P. Kennedy, Mason, Horace Everett, Clark, and Raynor, saying that the President had forfeited public confidence, avowing their determination to persevere in Whig measures, recom mending reduction of Executive power, limitation of the veto, one term of office, the election of the head of the Treasury by Congress, the subjection of the appointing power to restrictions, and the estab lishment of a national bank. This was regarded as an open declaration of war, and as betokening the final separation between Tyler and the Whig party. The defeat of the Whigs in Maine was the first discouraging omen of the new era. The Whig newspapers opened bitter war against " Captain Tyler," as they called him ; but the office-holders were in a quandary. If they went with their party, they would lose their places ; if they kept their places, they would forfeit the confidence of their party. The fruits of the great triumph of 1840 had turned to ashes in the victors grasp. 1841.] "THE LATCH-STRING PULLED IN." 565 The Washington papers announced President Tyler s regulations, as to the days and hours upon which he would receive visitors. They went the rounds of the Whig press, under the caption of " The Latch- string pulled in ! " CHAPTER XXXVIII. 1841. Spencer in the War Department. Trial of McLeod. An Alibi. The Election. A Demo cratic Victory. Letters to Adams and Scott. The Prince de Joinville. Lord Mor- peth. Opening of Boston & Albany Railroad. Josiah Quincy. O Connell s Opinion. THE political outlook was neither very clear nor very encouraging. But the State Central Committee, in accordance with usual custom, called a Whig State Convention, to meet at Syracuse on the 6th of October, as they cautiously said, " to adopt such measures as may be deemed expedient." On the 28th, after a protracted conference with the Whig leaders and State officers at Albany, Seward wrote to Mr. Webster and to President Tyler, in regard to the appointment of John C. Spencer as Secretary of War. Spencer had received an intimation from Washing ton that the President was desirous to confer that position upon him, and before replying he had desired to consult with his political and official associates. The question presented to these was twofold : first, whether Mr. Spencer s acceptance would be advisable for his own interests ; and, second, whether it would promote the harmony of the Whig party. The latter view of the case would make his appointment a wise political step, both for himself and for the country. After weighing the various possibilities, the conclusion was finally arrived at that, if he could not convert Mr. Tyler, at least Mr. Tyler could not pervert him, and that his presence in the cabinet would have a salutary influence at Washington, and tend to promote harmony of feeling be tween the State and Federal Governments. It was understood that Mr. Webster was in New York, holding somewhat similar consultations with his friends. An interesting letter was received from Mr. Morgan, whose seat in the House of Representatives was next to that of John Quincy Adams. He inclosed a manuscript copy of Mr. Adams s poem, " The Wants of Man." Its history was said to be that General Ogle, of Pennsylvania, had informed Mr. Adams, in July, 1840, that several young ladies in his district had requested him to obtain Mr. Adams s autograph. The latter wrote this poem in twenty-five stanzas, each upon a separate sheet of note-paper. 566 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. The murder of Mary Rodgers still remained a mystery, and the Governor now, at the request of the authorities in New York, offered a pardon to any accomplice in the crime who should turn State s evidence, so that the others might be ferreted out and convicted. Still no one appeared to claim either the amnesty or the rewards. The trial of McLeod had been set down for the 27th of September at Utica, Chief -Justice Nelson presiding ; the Attorney-General for the prosecution, and the United States District Attorney for the defense. But it began to look as if those engaged in the frontier troubles were desirous not to let slip the opportunity presented by the international dispute to stir up fresh hostilities. There were rumors of " Patriot " movements at various points on the frontier. Information came that bands of marauders were organized along the Canada line under the name of " Hunters Lodges," and these were supposed to have stolen the missing cannon. The newspapers in the Canadian interest charged that Governor Seward was a " paying member " of one of these lodges. Meanwhile, he was promoting as actively as possible the search for the lost guns, and taking precautions against any outbreak. He issued a proclamation offering a reward for information which should result in the conviction of the persons who stole the two cannon in Cayuga County. He instructed the sheriffs and military commanders in the various counties, and gave the War Department and the United States civil authorities such information and assistance as they desired. A proclamation was also issued by the President in regard to the lodges and clubs ; exhorting the participators to abandon their projects; assuring them that the laws would be executed, and that, if captured by the British, they would not be reclaimed. Among the rumors was one that some persons had a cannon on Navy Island, and were preparing to attack the Canadian shore. An attempt was made at Allenburg to blow up the locks of the Welland Canal. James Grogan, of Lockport, was seized near St. Albans, Ver mont, by twelve or fifteen men, wounded by a bayonet, gagged, and dragged away, having been accused of complicity with the incendiaries in the late troubles. The party engaged in the outrage were said to be dragoons and volunteers from Canada. Later, it was reported that he was in Montreal Jail. Utica was full of visitors and strangers, attracted by the State prosecution. The Court of Oyer and Terminer was duly opened, Judge Gridley presiding ; and on the 4th the trial commenced. W. L. Mackenzie, the so-called General Southerland, and other participators in the frontier troubles, were in attendance. For the prosecution there appeared the Attorney-General, assisted by S. C. Hawley, and District- Attorney Wood ; for the prisoner, United States District-Attorney 1841.] THE TRIAL OF McLEOD. 56T Spencer, Hiram Gardner, and A. C. Bradley. The court-room was crowded. After the jury was impaneled, Attorney-General Hall opened the case. Witnesses were called, who testified to the attack at Schlosser, the burning of the steamboat, the murder of Durfee, and the wounding of others. The next day further testimony was adduced to prove McLeod s presence and participation, and his subsequent boasting of having killed Durfee. A special messenger was dispatched each day to the Governor at Albany, with reports of the progress of the trial. This messenger came by an extra locomotive from Utica to Schenectady, and thence drove to Albany in a sulky, making the sixteen miles one day in fifty-five minutes. The first day he brought a private note to the Governor from the counsel for the State, saying that an embarrassing question had arisen about the payment of expenses of witnesses, the judge being of opinion that the expense ought not to be paid by Oneida County ; that several witnesses were either unable or unwilling to attend in consequence. The Governor answered this with an assurance that the expense should, at all events, be paid. Another letter was from Judge White, giving information of the measures to preserve the peace in Utica during the trial. Seward replied : I am much pleased with the indications that the trial will pass off without any outbreak of popular discontent. The result will, I trust, vindicate the au thorities of this State, not only in regard to their desire to secure to the pris oners a fair and impartial trial, but also in relation to the right of the State to try the prisoner for the crime laid to his charge by the grand-jury. The testimony for the prosecution having closed, Spencer opened for the defense, and called witnesses to prove that the destruction of the Caroline was under the orders of the British Government, to whom alone the State should look for redress. McLeod was only their ser vant. He also called witnesses to prove an alibi. These testified that McLeod was at Stamford, five miles off ; that he went the day before, staid all night, and never heard of the destruction of the Caroline until ten o clock the next morning. Judge Gridley ruled out the documentary evidence in regard to its being a national act, following the decision of the Supreme Court, and holding the question to be one of McLeod s individual responsibility. Intelligence now came from Montreal, tending somewhat to allay popular excitement ; this was, that Grogan had been released, that his seizure had been pronounced illegal, and that he had been safely escorted back to the United States. The next day a deposition was read from Allan McNab, who was 568 LIFE ANI) LETTERS. [1841. the commander of the British forces in the attack on the Caroline. He testified that he had no knowledge or belief that McLeod was con nected with the affair. Four more persons swore that he was five miles away, and a dozen swore positively that he was not in the at tacking party. The counsel summed up, and the judge charged that, if there were doubts about the alibi, the prisoner must be given the benefit of them. The jury retired, and in thirty minutes returned with a verdict of acquittal. McLeod, under the Governor s direction, was safely and quietly taken to the frontier. Thus the threatening national question was disposed of, and the war-cloud dispersed. There was no longer a pretext for outbreaks or outrages on either side. The Whig journals, while commending the " wisdom and firmness of the Governor," remarked that he had " saved the General Government from itself." A few days later it was announced that McLeod, under the pro tection of the Sheriff of Oneida and two army-officers, had reached St. John s, Lower Canada, and had gone on to Montreal. Excitement on the frontier calmed down when the disturbing cause was removed. The missing cannon were reported to have been found in Ohio City, oppo site Cleveland, where the United States officers would take possession of them and send them back to the State. Meanwhile, information came from Washington, raising alternate hopes and fears among the Whigs. It was feared that the Presi dent s last veto was for the express purpose of causing a rupture, be cause the bill had been prepared at his own suggestion and conformed to his own views. On the other hand, the appointment of John C. Spencer as Secretary of War revived confidence to some extent. He was known to be the intimate friend and associate of the Whig lead ers at Albany, and it was believed his appointment might restore the party harmony. It was recalled that in Congress, in 1817, he was chairman of the Committee on the United States Bank, of which John Tyler was a member. He left Albany early in October to enter upon his duties at Washington. The Governor s duties, apart from the question of the frontier troubles, were now less onerous. A deputation of the chiefs of the St. Regis Indians waited upon him. Answering, he said : Brothers ! I am very happy that you prefer receiving your annuities instead of having the principal paid at once. With industry and temperance your peo ple may derive abundant support from the lands which they enjoy. The annui ties may be very useful in enabling you to support a school and a church, and procure useful implements for tilling the earth. The Surveyor-General will ascertain the boundaries and conditions of the isl ands and meadow-lands which you want to sell to the State. It would be much 1841.] WHIGS AND DEMOCRATS. 569 better for you to keep the lands altogether, and study to improve in agriculture, and in the manners and customs of the white men. The lands will never be worth less than they now are, and you would best promote the welfare and hap piness of your children by leaving to them the entire inheritance you received from your forefathers. Brothers! I commend your chiefs, and also the old men and the young warriors, and the women and children of the St. Regis nation, to the blegsing of the Great Spirit, who, though he hath made red men to differ from white men, nevertheless equally cherishes them all as his children, and commands them to do good to one another. From the Whig State Convention at Syracuse, which met October 6th, came reports of harmonious councils, if not enthusiastic hopes. George W. Patterson presided ; leading Whigs from the various coun ties participated. Speeches were mads by John A. King, Alvah Wor- den, David Graham, Daniel D. Barnard, Duer, Clarke, Fillmore, and Tallmadge. An address and resolutions were adopted, reiterating ad herence to the former Whig policy, approving the action of Congress, condemning Tyler s vetoes and dissolution of the cabinet, but saying they were anxious to give Tyler a hearty support, and that it would be wholly his own fault if they did not. They indorsed the course of Clay and intimated a preference for him as the coming presidential candidate. The county and district conventions of the two parties were actively at work, during the month, making nominations for the Legislature. Among those of the Whigs were Daniel Lord, Henry A. Livingston, Killian Miller, Allen Ayrault, Gideon Hard, Gulian C. Verplanck, Azor Taber, George A. Simmons, Nelson J. Beach, John C. Hamilton, James W. Gerard, T. C. Flagler, William J. Bacon, Amos F. Granger, and Levi Hubbell. Among those of the Democrats were Erastus Corning, John A. Dix, Michael Hoffman, Lemuel Stetson, Arphaxad Loomis, John A. Locke, Horatio Seymour, David R. Floyd Jones, Sanford E. Church, Levi S. Chatfield, George R. Davis, Calvin T. Hulburd, and Theron R. Strong. Political meetings were held, but they were tame affairs on both sides, compared with the great gatherings of the preceding campaign. The logs of the log cabins still remained in place, but they no longer rang with the enthusiastic melody and oratory of the year before. The issues at the election between the parties, as stated by their conventions, seemed to be, that the Whigs were for a national bank, with increased currency and credit, the distribution of the proceeds of public lands, a protective tariff, and a general bankrupt law, and for the State an increase of the school system and of internal improve ment. The Democrats opposed internal improvements, State or national, when involving public debt ; opposed a national bank and protective tariff ; were in favor of the sub-Treasury and hard money, strict con 570 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. struction of the Constitution, and direct taxation for the public works and payment of debt, rather than financial schemes looking to loans to be repaid out of future revenue. In New York City the school question entered into the political canvass. A " Free-School ticket " was nominated, its candidates being selected from the tickets of both parties already in nomination. The political phrase of " pipe-laying " originated about this time in New York, probably from observation of the numerous pipes that workmen were laying under the streets for carrying the Croton water. They suggested an analogy with political jobs and subterfuges. For some years a favorite phrase among New York newspapers and poli ticians was the charge of " laying pipe." Glentworth and his employ ers were especially characterized as " pipe-layers " to bring voters from Philadelphia by secret and underground appliances, as water was brought from Croton Lake. The election in Albany passed off quietly. Whigs there, as else where, seemed discouraged or indifferent. None were surprised by the announcement in the evening that the city had gone Democratic. A day later the great eagle appeared in the Argus, with the tidings that the Democrats had carried the State, had gained the Assembly by a majority of thirty or forty, and would also have a majority in the Senate. So the Whig control of both State and national Governments, triumphantly secured in 1840, had in a single year drifted out of their hands into those of their opponents. Each day brought confirmation of the change. The Whigs would have but fifteen Senators, the Democrats seventeen ; while in the As sembly the Democrats had more than two-thirds of the whole ninety- five to thirty-three. Mr. Granger s election to Congress, which had been assumed as a certainty in Ontario, was achieved by a majority of only five hundred. Sanford E. Church was elected to the Assembly from Orleans, the first Democratic member from the " infected district " in many years. This was a subject of much exultation. It had been a standing joke with the Whigs that in Democratic legislative caucuses, when a committee was appointed, consisting of one from each district, the eighth either had none or a " transplanted " one. Seward wrote to John Quincy Adams, November 6th : The mails have borne to you the news of a disastrous overthrow of the "Whig party in this State. There will be much speculation, and, as usual, very little wisdom in it, concerning the causes of this popular change. History is not very accurate in her judgments upon the causas rerum, but contempora neous commentary is never just. I am, my dear sir, very much gratified by the kind consideration you express concerning my public action in the difficult place assigned me. If I were to define the ruling motive of my political con- 1841.] DEFEAT OF THE WHIGS. 571 duct, in and out of place, it would be that of solicitude to avoid doing or saying, under the pressure of the times, anything which, in all time to come, should require vindication. Such, you will permit me to say, has always appeared to me to be the moral of your distinguished life. I early determined not to be a candidate for a third election to my pres ent place. As for the future, I await its developments without concern, con scious that if my services are needed they will be demanded ; and, if not needed, that it would be neither patriotic nor conducive to my own happiness to be- in public life. His Thanksgiving proclamation had been issued on the 25th of October, designating Thursday, December 9tb, as the day for the fes tival. As yet there was no unanimity among the States in regard to it. The Governor of Ohio had designated December 21st ; the Gov ernor of Rhode Island, November 25th; and it was remarked that by diligent travel, from State to State, one could find a Thanksgiving in progress somewhere on each Thursday between election and Christmas. Among his correspondence was a letter from General Scott, in reference to the presidency, which he acknowledged, saying : " It is a frank and manly paper. The events of the next three years are uncer tain. But, let the end be as it may, you have this proud advantage over your contemporaries, that you have already achieved a fame that will reach the great future without further acknowledgments from the present generation." Among the expedients suggested by Whig friends to save some portion of the public patronage, which seemed to be slipping from the party s hands, was the plan of convening the Senate, and making appointments to fill vacancies that would occur during the next year. Seward answered : Such a proceeding, however desirable it might be upon party grounds, could not be adopted consistently with the spirit of the constitution and laws of the State. None can doubt that I lament, as deeply as any one of the two hundred and twenty thousand citizens who brought me into a situation of high respon sibility, a result that, besides all other public consequences, deprives me of the power of preferring sound and patriotic men to places. But since that result has come, it must be met with firmness ; and while there shall be no deviation from consistency on my part, I cannot question, much less endeavor by extraor dinary means to defeat, the desire of the people, constitutionally declared. There was danger, moreover, of a greater loss than that of patron age in the State. The opposition were beginning to hint a disposition to avail themselves of the power they had acquired to stop the enlarge ment of the Erie Canal. Mr. Clay s retirement from the Senate was now announced. His proposed resignation was approved by his political friends : because, if he should remain in the Senate, he would be embroiled in collisions and 572 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. strife damaging to his presidential prospects. But, if he remained two years in retirement, the people would go to Ashland for him, as they did to North Bend for Harrison. As if to once more revive illusory hopes, rumors came from Washington that the President himself was now preparing a plan for a " fiscal agency " to submit to Congress. The Democratic newspapers, encouraged by a more favorable out look of political affairs, were beginning to talk of Mr. Van Buren as a candidate in 1844. The leaders of his party, at Albany, were already planning for the resumption of the power in the Legislature which they had lost three years before. Congress met on the 6th of December. A plan apparently ac ceptable to the Whigs was to be submitted by the Secretary of the Treasury a financial scheme which the President thought would "meet the requirements of the Government and the wants of the people." The message repudiated the theory of a purely metallic currency, and advocated one of paper, redeemable in specie. Its views on the tariff were in accord with Whig doctrines. It recommended the establish ment of a Board of Control at Washington, with agencies at prominent commercial points, for the safe-keeping and disbursements of public moneys, and the substitution, at the option of the public creditor, of Treasury notes in lieu of gold and silver. The Whig papers generally approved the message. Committees were appointed in Congress, with ex-President Adams at the head of that on foreign affairs, and Mr. Gushing at the head of that on the President s fiscal plan. The new Secretary of War presented an able report, promising an early and successful closing of the tedious Florida War, and commend ing the proceedings of Colonel Worth. Thirty-five of the Amistad Africans were embarked in a ship for Sierra Leone. Before leaving they sent, through Lewis Tappan, a grateful letter and a handsome Bible to John Quincy Adams. The Prince de Joinville, having arrived in his vessel, La Belle Poule, was now entertained in New York and Boston with great fes tivities. There was a ball at Faneuil Hall. Among the guests was the Countess America Vespucci, a lineal descendant of the great discoverer from whom the continent was named. Some years before it had been proposed in Congress to give her a township or a county in the West, to be called by her name ; but Congress turned a deaf ear. Among the guests at the dinner given to the prince in New York was Lord Morpeth, the heir to the earldom of Carlisle, who was already favorably known in America by his liberal speeches in Parliament. He was now traveling through the United States, and was received with much hospitality in New York and Bost6n. Pausing at Albany to study the workings of an American State government, he remained a few days. During his visits to Governor Seward, he found they were 1841.] LORD MORPETH. 573 so much in accord on many public questions, notably those in regard to Ireland and slavery, that their intimacy ripened rapidly. He was appar ently about the age of Governor Seward, with hair just turning gray. He was staid, dignified, and courteous, and won the esteem of public men of both parties whom he met. After an evening visit to Seward, the latter offered to accompany him to call upon some of the other State officers. As they walked, unattended, through the dimly-lighted streets of Albany, he said, " You are quite like the Caliph of Bagdad in the * Arabian Nights, walking out this way, unknown, among your subjects." " Not quite," answered Seward, " for you must remember that in this city there are forty thousand caliphs, and it is I who am their subject." He observed that it was a surprise to Lord Morpeth to find that the Democracy in this country were not the " Exeter Hall radicals " which their name seemed to imply, and that the Whigs, stigmatized by their opponents as the " aristocratic " party, were really the party of most advanced views. Lord Morpeth told an incident of his western trip that had much pleased him. Going one evening into a theatre at Rochester where a company of indifferent players were performing, he found, when the curtain fell between the acts, that on it was painted an accurate pict ure of his own place, Naworth Castle. The British residents of New York gave him a dinner, to which the Governor was invited, who, in his answer, gave the toast, " Honor to the English statesman who de votes his talents, learning, and influence, to an amelioration of the condition of Ireland." December was signalized by several evidences of railway progress. A new winter route was opened to New York. This was from Albany to West Stockbridge by rail ; then twenty -two miles by stage to West Canaan ; then by rail down the Housatonic Valley to Bridge port ; thence by steamboat to New York a total distance of one hun dred and ninety -four miles, but an improvement in point of time upon the tedious stage-ride down the post-road along the bank of the Hud son. Another route was also opened before the winter was over, en tirely by rail and steamboat, and occupying thirty-two hours. This was via Springfield, Hartford, and New Haven, the " Western Railroad " being now completed. The opening of the railway to Boston was considered as the begin ning of a new era in commerce, and was greeted with appropriate demonstrations. On the 27th the first through-train from Boston over the Berkshire Hills arrived at Greenbush in the evening, and was wel comed with rockets and cannon on both sides of the river. The Speaker of the Massachusetts House of Representatives, the Common Council of Boston, several of the editors and citizens of that 574 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. city, and the directors and officers of the railroad, were on board ; were received at the ferry by the Common Council of Albany, and escorted in triumph by military and fire companies, with torches and music, to Congress Hall. The next morning there was a formal reception by the city authori ties at the City Hall, and an exchange of congratulations. Afterward they waited on the Governor at the Executive chamber, and visited the Court of Errors. At five in the afternoon three hundred guests sat down to dinner at Landon s Stanwix Hall, the mayor presiding. The toast of " The city of Boston " was responded to by Mayor Chapman ; that of " The State of Massachusetts " by Attorney-Gen eral Austin. When " The State of New York " was toasted, and Governor Sew- ard called out by cheers and applause, he spoke briefly of the progress of internal improvements, and said : I will, with the permission of the company, read a letter, which perhaps has an interest as the record of an arrangement made with a view to an im provement of the internal communication between New York and Massachu setts. It bears date " Fort James " (now the city of New York), " 27th Decem ber, 1672," just one hundred and sixty-nine years before the arrival of our guests from the Bay State by a railroad journey of eleven hours. The letter was written by Colonel Francis Lovelace, then Governor of this colony, to the Gov ernor of Massachusetts. It stated that his royal Majesty King Charles com manded that the colonies should enter into a close correspondence with each other, and that to accomplish that purpose Governor Lovelace had established a post to proceed on horseback once every month to Boston, allowing two weeks for the journey and an equal time for returning ! Se ward s toast was: " The States of Massachusetts and New York : they have combined in the prosecution of the Western Railroad ; may they become as united in maintaining the faith and the integrity of the Union ! " The hall where these festivities took place was handsomely lighted, and decorated with the arms of Massachusetts and New York, of Bos ton and Albany, and portraits of George Clinton and John Jay. When the Attorney-General of Massachusetts referred to De Witt Clinton as the pioneer of internal improvements, the whole company rose to their feet with cheers. Josiah Quincy, Jr., on behalf of the Western Railroad Company, told the story of the King of Spain, who said of the proposed canal to Madrid, " If it was the will of the Almighty that a water communica tion should be there, he would have made one." The same, he said, was the case of the Berkshire Hills. Having found a place in them just wide enough for a railway to go through, they came to the opin ion that the world in ^er.cral, and Berkshire County in particular, had 1841.] BOSTON RAILROAD CELEBRATION. 575 been made with express reference to the Western Railroad. He had always known that " a good name was better than riches ; " and the company had found it true when they had the power of obtaining great riches by simply presenting good names on a piece of paper to Mr. Olcott at the Mechanics and Farmers Bank. On such an occasion Quincy was inimitable. His wit and humor kept the table in a roar, and seemed to be prompted by the incidents of the hour. Colonel Webb, in his speech, remarked that they might almost attribute the presence of Yankees in Albany, who twelve hours before had been in Boston, to the " witchcraft " once said to be very prevalent among that distant people. Quincy retorted, " There are yet witches in Massachusetts that are said to be able, by the power of their charms, even to turn a Dutchman into a Yankee." In one remark, Quincy almost predicted the telegraph. " These iron bars," said he, " that extend from one capital to the other, will in time of peace trans mit the electric spark of good feeling and good fellowship." General Dix, in his speech, adverted to the fact that the Mayflower started for the Hudson River, but by the ill-will or the ignorance of the captain blundered on the rocky, barren, and inhospitable shore of Plymouth. However, the mistake was now corrected, and the descend ants of those who came by the Mayflower had reached the Hudson River at last. Croswell toasted the Massachusetts poet : " It will be long before we look upon his fellow" John Q. Wilson gave : " Bos ton enterprise, that has discovered a Northwest Passage." Randall, of New Bedford, promised that town would grease all the wheels and light all the lamps of the new railroad. Weed gave : "Massachusetts, the cradle of philanthropists, statesmen, heroes, and historians. Keep it rocking." The last toast was the hope that our neighbors "may return us railing for railing;" and Quincy s closing salutation was, " See what Massachusetts and New York can do when they lay their heads together." At midnight the party broke up, but adjourned to meet the next day at Faneuil Hall. There was a like celebration there. On the table was bread made of flour which was in the sheaf, brought in a barrel that was in the tree, at Canandaigua two days before. Sperm-candles, made by Mr. Penniman at Albany in the morning, were burning in Faneuil Hall in the evening. Salt was on the table which thirty-six hours before was three hundred feet underground at Syracuse. When General Law rence presented this in a humorous speech as having been brought from the cellar of New York, he was answered that it smacked rather of the " Attic." In return, the Bostonians promised that fish swimming in Boston harbor in the morning should grace dinner-tables in Albany in the even ing, and gave the sentiment, " May their best breadstuffs follow their 576 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1841. best-bred men to Boston ! " General King replied that " with such facilities for getting (y)east the breadstuff s of Western New York must speedily rise." Mayor Chapman gave a humorous report of the Yankee expedition of the day before to the western wilds, returning in triumph with one hundred and fifty captives, the head-men and chiefs of the tribe. To that Mayor Van Vechten replied that his " worst fears were realized ; he had been warned that the Yankees would take them in, and now they had, clear into Boston." Troy was toasted : " A wooden horse was the destruction of the old Troy. May the iron horse be the making of the new ! " Canaan Gap was the subject of various puns that it led " to a feast of the passover," and that being overrun by Jews was nothing to being overreached by Yankees. Quincy toasted : " The four mayors present. With such a team, who could want a locomotive ? " Judge Van Bergen spoke in Dutch. Another guest gave: "Boston, known for one tea-party and sev eral dinners." The allusion to the tea-party brought out a series of jokes, and led to complimentary allusions to the ladies. John Q. Wil son closed them by giving, " The Yankee ladies may every one who comes to New York catch a Dutchman ! " to which Quincy retorted, " May they not, in catching a Dutchman, catch also a Tartar ! " Amid the laughter created by this sally the assemblage broke up. The foreign mail brought O Connell s opinion of the McLeod case as delivered at a recent " repeal meeting." He said that the British had had a happy escape the Americans had had the best of the con test; that the American nation had vindicated its own honor, had vin dicated the law of the land against a supposed murderer, and had done so in defiance of England. " Americans had decided that, whatever might be the power of a nation opposed to them, should the blood of an American be shed, no other power should be suffered to screen the murderer from justice. This was a triumph for America, and an im portant lesson to the governments of Europe." 1842.] THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. 577 CHAPTER XXXIX. 1842. The Temperance Reform. Opposition Plans and Discords. The Right of Petition. Sir Charles Bagot. Dickens. Lord Ashburton. A Revolutionary Reminiscence. Letter to Greeley. Battle between Senate and Governor. Expunging Messages. ON the closing day of the year, the newspapers announced that the Governor, in his preparations for New-Year s celebration, intended to substitute lemonade and cold water for punch and wine a bold innova tion. He deemed that the temperance cause had a right to claim an example from those in authority. This was in accordance with the popular feeling of the time. The temperance reform, led by Father Mathew and the Washingtonian Societies, was regarded as a benevolent and praiseworthy enterprise, entitled to the help and encouragement of all good citizens. At public dinners, as well as in private houses, it was rapidly growing to be the custom to dispense with wine and spirits on festive occasions. At the railroad celebration, and at the dinner on Forefathers Day, the new custom was also adopted. As yet, there had been no question of prohibition by law, and the subject of temperance was not regarded from a partisan point of view. The Governor laid aside the amount he had formerly expended on such occasions, and gave it to the Orphan Asylum. Some of the advocates of temperance, however, had engaged in a public controversy, which was deemed unfortunate. It grew out of a proposal to banish wine from the communion-table. Up to this period, action in regard to it had been harmonious ; henceforth it was to be marked by disputes, recrimination, and shades of difference in opinion, profitable neither to the disputants nor to the cause. Another illustration of the progress of the temperance reform was the announcement that twenty-five hundred dollars had been paid out to the sailors on the receiving-ship at Boston, in lieu of grog, which they voluntarily relinquished. On Monday the members were arriving from the various counties. From the Senate, Verplanck, Lee, Maynard, and Sibley, had gone out. Most of the veteran Whig members of the Assembly had also gone ; while those of the Democrats remained. There was an active can vass for the speakership between the supporters of Davis, Humphrey, and Chatfield. The Legislature met on Tuesday, at noon. Among the new Sena tors were Morris Franklin and Isaac L. Varian, of New York ; A. Bockee, of the Second District ; Erastus Corning, of the Third ; and Gideon Hard, of the Eighth. Among the new members of the Assembly 37 578 LIF E AND LETTERS. [1842. were John A. Dix, of Albany; Lemuel Stetson, of Clinton ; William A. Bird, of Erie; John A. Lott, of Kings ; Thomas T. Flagler, of Niagara ; Horatio Seymour, of Oneida; Sanford E. Church, of Orleans ; George R. Davis, of Rensselaer; Calvin T. Hulburd, of St. Lawrence; John Cramer, of Saratoga ; and Theron R. Strong, of Wayne. The Assembly organized by electing L. S. Chatfield Speaker, and John O. Cole Clerk. The Whigs gave their thirty votes to George A. Simmons, of Essex, and P. B. Prindle, of Chenango, the former Clerk. Committees were duly appointed to wait upon the Governor, and inform him of the meeting of the two Houses. His message was im mediately sent in by the hands of Mr. Underwood. It announced that the new State-Hall was completed, the asylum at Utica ready for the reception of inmates, the geologists arranging their cabinets, and the colonial documents in process of collection. He laid before the Legislature the law of Virginia, aimed at New York commerce, as well as the correspondence with the Governor of Georgia. He recommended the replenishing of the safety -fund ; called attention to the Six Nations, who complained they had been defrauded out of some of their lands ; advised the division of the election districts into smaller ones, and that the election should hereafter be limited to one day. He announced that the prisons were paying their own expenses, and warned the Legislature that the substitution of imprison ment for life for the death -penalty would be unsuccessful without some modification of the pardoning power. He gave a history of the anti- rent troubles, and of the McLeod case. The literature and common- school fund, he remarked, now amounted to several millions, and there were nearly eleven thousand school-district libraries a happy contrast to the resolution of the colonial Assembly just before the Revolution, declaring that the report that they intended to levy a tax of five hundred pounds to promote learning " was a slander." A statement of his views on the subject of New York schools fol lowed, presenting the questions whether the schools should be placed in the hands of a corporation or in those of the government, and whether all the children in New York should be educated, or only a part of them. The principal portion of the rest of the message was devoted to the history, the condition, and the needs of the public works ; presenting arguments against the threatened stoppage, warn ing the Legislature of its consequences, and showing how closely the welfare of the State depended upon their prosecution. It was evident, as soon as the Legislature had assembled, that the predominant party realized and were disposed to use their power. At the same time, success had sowed, as it usually does, the seeds of dis trust between those who, while in a minority, were in entire accord. The terms of the State officers were to expire this winter ; the Legisla- 1842.] AN OPPOSING LEGISLATURE. 579 ture was to elect new ones ; but there were predilections in favor of different candidates. There was a distrust of the wisdom of restoring 1 the sway of the old " Regency," and a doubt whether Croswell, having become the president of a bank, was a safe guide for an " anti-bank party." Aggressive steps in reference to the Governor were canvassed in the evening at the hotels, and a plan was talked of for repudiat ing his sentiments on the Virginia question, and for declaring that Virginia was right. In reference to the McLeod case and the school question, some of his own political party were confidently counted on to oppose him. On the 10th of January, Senator Franklin proposed a resolution avowing a determination to maintain inviolate the State credit, in view of the repudiating movements in other States. Democratic Sen ators offered a substitute and amendments, declaring that, as the pres ent system of finance had contributed to the general excitement and alarm, and, if further continued, would be ruinous, therefore the Legislature was resolved to have no further debt. This was felt on both sides to point to a stoppage of the work on the canal enlargement. Similar resolutions were similarly met in the Assembly, and so the issue between the two parties was gradually made up. Debate now began, and continued long in both Houses, participated in by all the leading speakers of both parties ; the Whigs presenting arguments in favor of the maintenance of public faith, and the promotion of public benefits ; while the Democrats with equal ability urged those of rigid governmental economy, and "strict construction." The pending ques tion in Congress on the repeal of the bankrupt law also came in for a share of legislative debate. Among the Whigs, Messrs. A. B. Dickin son, Nichols, Franklin, Root, Rhodes, Furman, Hard, and Simmons, were prominent. Among the Democrats, Foster, Loomis, Hoffman, Stetson, Davis, Humphrey, and Swackhamer, took a leading part. In the Senate, a motion of Mr. Foster to vest the appointment of committees in the majority was acquiesced in by the Whigs, but A. B. Dickinson and others opposed a further modification of the rules in tended to provide against the accident of a temporary Whig majority, which might confirm some of the Governor s nominations. But the rule was adopted in spite of their opposition. The act of the previous session relating to the appointment of receivers of moneyed institutions was repealed, and the power of such appointments taken away from the Bank Commissioners, who were Whigs, and given to the Chancellor, who was a Democrat. In the Assembly, war was at once opened on the State Printer, and resolutions introduced to have no printing done, unless by the special order of the House. 580 LIF E AND LETTERS. [1842, From Washington came discouraging news for the Whigs. Whig Senators were taking ground against the currency plan of the President. Mangum, of North Carolina, had made a speech against it. Tallmadge and others were trying to pass some bill that would meet the wishes of the Whigs, and at the same time secure the approval of the Presi dent. About the middle of the month, a tumultuous debate in the House of Representatives over the bankrupt law was reported as in progress, with points of order, dilatory motions, and callings of the roll. On the 21st came news that the House had voted to repeal the law. The Whig members from New York had opposed the repeal, but had been overborne. Its fate in the Senate was doubtful. Seward, writing to Spencer, described the political situation : The Congress was so fortunate in the extra session as to retain the confidence of the Whigs, while the President lost public favor. That confidence is now being destroyed by the mad repeal of the bankrupt law. It seems as if the Whig party were now doomed to every form of disappointment. Our concerns here are interesting. We are once more to see a division among our opponents upon the ground on which they split before Their party is without leaders, and without, as yet, the power to combine upon any common ground. The Argus and its friends go for stopping the public works, and no tax. A large portion of the members are for prosecuting the public works, with a tax, while there are some who will insist upon prosecuting the works without a tax. Their confidence in carrying the State next fall diminishes, although ours does not revive. I have the pleasure to inform you that we are speedily to have our vindica tion on the school question. The bill will pass without considerable opposition. On the 28th the newspapers announced a " row on the abolition question," " a motion severely censuring Mr. Adams," " exciting de bates." Two days later came the details of the stormy scene. It was the memorable debate on the right of petition, occasioned by Mr. Adams s presentation of a petition for the dissolution of the Union a debate which he led with such tact, eloquence, and success. The financial outlook was not a cheering one at the opening of the year, either as regarded railroads, canals, banks-, or State credit. Mary land, Michigan, Indiana, and Illinois, had failed to pay the January interest on their bonds. The safety-fund of the State banks was nigh exhausted. The national-bank scheme was growing every day more hopeless. The canals were menaced with the stoppage of work, and railroad enterprises suffered from the general distrust. Nevertheless, such as had been built were more than justifying the expectations of their projectors. The Utica & Schenectady Railroad was doing a profit able and increasing business. So was the Boston & Albany road. The Auburn & Rochester Railroad had declared a dividend of nine per cent., and the canal-tolls had been confessedly beyond all estimates. 1842.J SIR CHARLES BAGOT. 581 Early in January came information that Sir Charles Bagot, the new Governor-General of Canada, had arrived at New York in her Majesty s ship Illustrious. The next week he arrived at the Eagle Tavern, in Albany, with his suite. Very sensibly he had chosen this route to Canada, possibly under instructions from the Colonial Office, in order to have unofficial and private conference with Governor Seward, as the latter had desired, in reference to the prevention of frontier troubles. On the 7th, Sir Charles went with the Governor to visit both Houses of the Legislature, the Supreme Court, Court of Chancery, and the State Library. In the evening the Governor gave a dinner, at which many of the prominent public men of the capital were present. Sir Charles was a fine-looking man of sixty, of portly figure, wearing the glittering star of the Order of the Bath. His frank and courteous manner, and judicious views, made a very favorable impression in Albany, which was, doubtless, of service in aiding to restore cordial feeling. Another British celebrity was now coming to the United States, whose arrival had been eagerly anticipated, and for whose entertain ment hospitable preparations had been made in the larger cities. On the 25th, news was received of the arrival of the Britannia, twenty- eight days from Europe, at Boston, after a stormy passage, and that among her passengers were Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickens. Festivities in Boston greeted the favorite novelist ; citizens vied with each other in hospitable attentions, and the newspapers took up the theme of international copyright, which, for the moment, seemed to acquire popularity. Still another English visitor was on his way, whose mission was one destined to be of permanent and substantial benefit, both to England and the United States. This was Lord Ashburton, who was coming on a special mission to settle all existing differences between the two countries. On the evening of the 19th, the State Agricultural Society met in the Assembly-chamber its president, Joel B. Nott, delivering the address. After the meeting the members went from the Capitol to the City Hotel, where they had a " temperance supper," the Governor being a guest. Brief speeches were made by him, by General Leland, Mr. Coleman, Alderman Joy, and others. The Irish Repeal Association had addressed the Governor, offering to enroll his name as a member. He declined on the ground that it would be inconsistent with his official relations, although he shared in their wishes for the restoration of constitutional liberty in Ireland. In his letter he recalled an early incident in American history : " The Continental Congress assembled in Philadelphia in 1775, soon after the shutting up of the town of Boston by the royal troops. Among the 582 LIFE A ND LETTERS. [1842. early measures of that venerable body was an address to the people of Ireland. The Congress, after recapitulating the oppression suffered by the colonies, and announcing that they had adopted an act sus pending all trade with Great Britain, assured the people of Ireland that it was not without the utmost reluctance that the Congress discon tinued commercial relations with that country. Your Parliament, said they, { have done us no wrong. You have ever been friendly to the rights of mankind, and we acknowledge with pleasure and grati tude that your nation has produced patriots who have nobly distin guished themselves in the cause of humanity and America. On the other hand, we are not ignorant, said the Congress, that the labor and manufactures of Ireland, like those of the silkworm, are of little moment to herself, but serve only to give luxury to those who neither toil nor spin ; and it moreover gives us some consolation to reflect that, should the measures we have adopted occasion much distress, the fer tile regions of America will afford you a safe asylum from poverty, and in time from oppression also an asylum in which many thousands of your countrymen have found hospitality, peace, and affluence, and became united to us in all the ties of consanguinity, mutual interest, and affection. " The Liberty party was making a fresh movement. A State Con vention was held at Peterboro on the 19th and 20th. Gerrit Smith was nominated for Governor, but declined, and the name of Alvan Stewart was substituted. The Cooper libel-suits, which were to occupy a prominent place in court proceedings during the next few years, had now commenced, seven declarations having been served upon Mr. Weed in a case of alleged libel. Mr. Samuel Blatchford, the former private secretary, was admit ted to the bar at the January term of the Supreme Court. Mr. S. G. Andrews retired from the clerkship of the Senate, but followed by the good wishes of all its members. The law transferring the appointment of receivers of moneyed insti tutions to the Chancellor instead of the Bank Commissioners was laid before the Governor for his signature. He returned it to the Senate with a message, remarking that he had approved the law of the previ ous year in regard to these appointments, believing that it would have a salutary effect ; and that, while it was the duty of the Governor to veto measures infringing upon constitutional provisions or indi vidual rights, yet he could not interpose objections to less impor tant bills, upon the mere ground of a difference of opinion concern ing their expediency, without assuming an undue share of legisla tive responsibility. " Applying these principles to the present case, I have not thought it my duty to embarrass the action of the Legislature, 184-.J A BATTLE WITH THE SENATE. 583 but, cheerfully confiding in their wisdom, have approved and signed the bill, availing myself of this occasion to submit an explanation, inasmuch as the proceeding involves an apparent inconsistency, which might lead to misapprehension concerning my views of the policy of the measure." It is not easy to understand, after the lapse of so many years, why this message, apparently unobjectionable in tone and temper, and not referring to any of the great questions upon which parties were divided, should have been selected as the point on which to begin the attack upon the Executive long before determined upon. Perhaps between legislative parties, as between armies, when it has been decided to wage battle, a trivial incident is as good as any to give signal for its com mencement. At any rate, on the succeeding day the storm commenced. It was moved in the Senate to expunge the message from the min utes. " He had no right," said the Democratic Senators, " to spread his reasons on their records. It was only when he vetoed a measure that his objections to it were to be recorded. In this case he does not recommend anything, or object anything. It was an innovation, dan gerous and inconvenient." The Whig Senators, Furman, Dickinson, Root, and others, defended the Governor s action. It was in accordance with precedent. Like messages were on record from Governor Clinton, from Governor Tomp- kins, and even from Governor Marcy, his Democratic predecessor. If the message was struck out, what record would there be that the law had been approved ? How could it be proved that it was a law at all? The debate went on, not only with vigor, but with acrimony, and charges were freely made of " discourtesy," " unparliamentary trifling," and "insult," Finally the motion to expunge was carried, by a party vote, four teen to thirteen. The next day the Governor sent in a second message, saying : It is not my purpose to complain in any manner of the proceeding upon the ground of its injustice. But it is a solemn duty of the person administering the government of this State, at all times, to preserve, as far as may depend upon him, the constitutional power of the department assigned to him. I do, there fore, with extreme regret that such a proceeding has become necessary, and with the most respectful deference, inform the Senate that the suppression of the communication referred to is regarded by me as a dangerous invasion of the rights of the Executive department, unwarranted by any precedent in the his tory of the government, and without any justification in the circumstances of the transaction. When this came in, it set the Senate into a blaze of excitement. It was declared " an insult." " The Governor had no right to rebuke them." "Does he think he can browbeat a Democratic Senate?" A 584: LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. motion was made to reject it ; to refuse to receive it ; to send it back to him. The Whig Senators who undertook its defense were charged with being inspired and controlled by the Governor in the debate. Dickinson was accused of having a resolution in the handwriting of the late private secretary, and of having that functionary sitting by his side, prompting him. The motion to return the message to the Gov ernor was carried through, by a party vote, fifteen to eleven. The next day, when the Clerk was reading the minutes, the inquiry arose whether the message appeared on the journal. The presiding officer replied, "Yes as component part of a resolution offered by Mr. Root ; " for the general, in submitting a resolution referring to the subject, had recited the words of the message, thus putting it back into the journal. On this arose furious debate, lasting five hours. Mr. Strong moved to amend the minutes, so as to exclude the message. Foster, Strong, Hard, Furman, Dickinson, and Root, all took part. The Whigs con tended that the Senate was stultifying itself and mutilating its own records, by not only suppressing an Executive message, but by altering a Senator s resolution. However, the vote was taken, and resulted six teen to eleven. So the second message was suppressed. The day after this, when the journal was read, General Root, find ing that his resolution had been so inserted as to exclude the message, rose and insisted that the rest of it should not be put in. " The Senate had no right to mutilate his resolution. If they insisted on suppressing what he said, they had no right to put him on record as saying what he did not." Again followed fresh debate, and motions to amend. The presiding officer having decided that Root s resolution should be en tered in full, as he had written it, Mr. Foster appealed to the Senate, and on this question the debate lasted all day. On the morning of the 29th, Root returned to the attack. Fortified by a precedent of Governor Marcy s time, he introduced a resolution incorporating the message in extenso, and followed it with another, approving the transmission of the message. So the message again went on the journal, amid hearty congratula tions from the Whigs to the veteran legislator, whose vigor had secured a triumph after his long battle. But this was not to be the end. The next Tuesday the Clerk read his report to the effect that, " in obedience to the resolution of the preceding week, he had waited upon his Excellency the Governor, and showed him a copy thereof, and tendered to him the message therein referred to. Whereupon the Gov ernor was pleased to say that it was a paper which seemed to him to belong to the Senate, and he was not aware that he had any right to the custody thereof ; and that he therefore declined to receive it. " Senator Rhodes immediately offered a resolution concurring in this 1842.] A MAMMOTH PETITION. 585 view, and reciting the words of the message, so as to again place it on record. The President decided this to be in order. Appeal was taken, de bate followed ; the appeal was sustained, and the decision overruled by a party vote, seventeen to eleven. So the second message was excluded from the journal. The next morning it was moved to strike out the report of the Clerk s conversation with the Governor. It was argued that the Senate had sent no one to hold a colloquy, but simply to per form a duty. An amendment was offered, merely stating that the Clerk had carried out the instructions of the Senate Dickinson retorted, in the debate : " You not only undertake to amend the messages of the Gov ernor, but now you propose to amend the report of your own messen ger, so as to make him say he did what he did not do." Furrnan said: " This is a curious proposition. The amendment says the Clerk deliv ered the message to the Governor, but the Clerk tells you expressly that he did not deliver it, because the Governor would not receive it." Further debate ensued. There was another appeal, and the decision overruled again, by sixteen to twelve. Finally, the debate was termi nated by Senator Foster offering a resolution reciting the history of the controversy, and reaffirming the position of the majority. This was placed upon the journal and adopted by a party vote. It is a curious fact that the message sought to be excluded from the record now appears in it twice. Though suppressed in the usual place, it ap pears in full in Root s resolution, and reappears in Foster s. CHAPTER XL. 1842. A Mammoth Petition. Change of State Officers. South Carolina Search-Law. The "Fis cal Agent." Passage of the New York School Law. Seward s Policy adopted. Meet ing of the Legislatures of Massachusetts and New York. "Honest John Davis." General Herkimer. WHILE this contest was going on in the Senate, Mr. Maclay had created a marked sensation in the Assembly, by presenting a petition asking that the common-school system of the State should be extended to the city of New York. The mammoth document was signed by upward of fourteen thousand names. It was borne into the Assembly-chamber by three men. It was headed by John Anthon, Aaron Vanderpoel, and James T. Brady. The reading of the petition was called for, but it was found that, if the document was unrolled, it would extend the whole length of State Street, from the Capitol to the Exchange, and that the 586 LIFE AXD LETTERS. [1842. reading would occupy several days. It was accordingly dispensed with. This movement in behalf of the school bill was made under Democratic auspices. Simultaneously came a significant change of tone in the Democratic press. Their leading journal ceased its censures of the Governor and Bishop Hughes, and now gave hearty support to the policy they had advocated, of the election of school trustees and com missioners, and the extension of the system to the city of New York. This was welcomed by Seward and his friends as indicating a salu tary change in public sentiment ; especially as Maclay announced that some of the most estimable citizens of New York, of every class, sect, and party, were among the signers of the petition. The State officers were now to be changed, and members of the dominant party installed in their places. The office of Secretary of State was vacant, by Mr. Spencer s resignation, and its duties had de volved temporarily upon Archibald Campbell, one of the most faithful of public officers, who had been deputy secretary for more than thirty years. S. S. Randall, the Deputy Superintendent of Common Schools, was acting as Superintendent. The terms of office of the State Treas urer, Attorney-General, and Commissary-General, were about expir ing. A bill was introduced to provide for the election of a new State Printer, and on the 3d of February the Assembly voted to remove the Comptroller, Surveyor-General, and Canal Commissioners. In the evening a Democratic legislative caucus nominated A. C. Flagg for Comptroller, Samuel Young for Secretary of State, Thomas Farrington for Treasurer, George P. Barker for Attorney-General, Nathaniel Jones for Surveyor-General, and George H. Storms for Com missary-General. At an adjourned meeting the next day they nomi nated for Canal Commissioners, Jonas Earll, James Hooker, George W. Little, Daniel P. Bissell, Benjamin Enos, and Stephen Clark, all of whom the Whigs said were " anti-improvement men," though acknowl edging them to be men of strict personal integrity. All were duly elected by the Legislature on the 7th and 8th. The Governor now had political opponents in control of both branches of the Legislature, and each department of the Executive government. The Senate did not neglect to make use of their power to reject the Governor s nomi nations, on political grounds. The Whigs, if they could no longer hope for offices, still had some prospects of success in regard to measures. The change in the election laws, so as to have the election on one day, and to have smaller election districts, which the Governor had re peatedly urged, was now favorably reported upon in the Assembly, and both parties appeared to favor it. Mr. Furman introduced a bill to provide funds for carrying on the public works, the main feature of which was a loan of three millions. There was such evident difference 1842.] SOUTH CAROLINA SEARCH-LAW. 587 of opinion among the Democrats upon the subject of the public works that the Whigs counted confidently upon the cooperation of some por tion of the opposing party, looking to the completion of the enlarge ment. Comptroller Flagg published a report on the condition of the finances of the State, as viewed from his party standpoint. Both Whigs and Democrats were not very far wrong in their logic, although the an tagonistic theories with which they started were such as to lead them to inevitable collision. The Democrats said the State was running in debt for works that did not pay for themselves. The Whigs said that ultimately they would pay. The Democrats had the actual fact on their side. The Whigs were true prophets, but they could only prove it by lapse of time. Mr. Flagg said, " In the judgment of the present Comptroller, the debt of the State, direct and contingent, has already been carried beyond the point of safety." He recommended a sinking- fund, to be created by direct taxation, if there was no other resource, and also proposed measures to extricate the finances from embarrass ments immediately pressing. Resolutions of inquiry about the geological survey were introduced in the Legislature, apparently under the impression that it was a cost ly enterprise, furnishing sinecures for favorites, and of little public value. Never was there a more mistaken idea. The little force of scientific men was hard worked and poorly paid, and the results of their labor were of incalculable value. On the llth Seward sent in to the Legislature an act of South Carolina in regard to the search of New York vessels and imprison ment of colored seamen, with his reply to the Governor of that State as to the questions involved in the Virginia controversy. The threatened search law of South Carolina was to go into effect on the 1st ot May, unless Governor Seward should surrender the per sons claimed by Virginia and the Legislature should repeal the " trial- by-jury " law. A few days later he sent in, with another message, some resolu tions received from South Carolina, announcing her determination to refuse her share of the proceeds of the public lands, and requesting the cooperation of other States in annulling and repealing the law, her argument being that " the United States is a body corporate, distinct from the States as political bodies, and that the property in the public lands does not vest in any or in all the individual States for partition." He recalled attention to the position of South Carolina in 1832, when she proposed to annul the tariff law, and de clared that national sovereignty remained undivided and undiminished in the several States, while the United States was merely a confedera tion, without absolute independence or sovereignty ; but remarked, 588 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. " Happily it is not necessary to decide between these certainly very incongruous expositions of the same text by the same respected au thority; " and said that, " having always approved and often recommend ed such a measure, I cannot now commend the views of South Carolina. On the contrary, I ask you to uphold the law." The legislative discussions over the questions raised by South Caro lina, the election law, and the canal question, lasted many days. The Senate, on the 24th, repealed the registry law, the Whig vote dividing, some for and some against it, so that there were only eight votes in its favor. The Governor signed the repeal of the registry law, but ac companied the bill with a message making suggestions of further ac tion in the same direction, and specifying the defects which it left un- corrected. Maclay, from the committee to whom his monster petition had been referred, brought in a report on the school question, varying somewhat in detail from Verplanck s, but substantially adopting the same gen eral principles ; and in his speech quoted from the recommendations of Governor Seward and Secretary Spencer in behalf of the same princi ples. After long debate, the bill finally received a majority vote. The Whigs divided, some for and some against it. Most of the Democrats voted for it, but some declined to vote at all. The common-school system, so bitterly opposed, and regarded with such deep suspicion, was successfully carried through. In principle and in substance it has remained ever since a part of the statute-book of the State. Modifications, suggested by experience, have, from time to time, perfected it; and its plan of " cutting up the city of New York into school districts," instead of " being the death of the schools " of the metropolis, has rendered them models for imitation throughout the world. Intimations were freely given out that it was the intention of " the Regency," or rather of that portion of the party which claimed to be its descendants and representatives, to suspend the public works, and devote all funds at command toward paying the debt, at the same time passing laws not to increase it. While public questions were thus actively contested at Albany, the issues at Washington were confused and uncertain. The bill repealing the bankrupt act, which had passed the House, was nearly carried through the Senate. The vote stood twenty-two to twenty-four, so the repeal was defeated, and the law remained on the statute-book. In the United States Senate debates were going forward with ear nestness over the veto-power and the tariff, the revenue and the cur rency. Mr. Gushing had reported a bill for an " exchequer plan " sub stantially embracing the views of President Tyler, but from this the other members of his committee dissented. 1842.] THE TEMPERANCE REFORM. 589 But the portion of the Washington news that excited most inter est at Albany was the struggle in the House of Representatives over the right of petition, and it was hailed as a triumphant vindication of the " old man eloquent " when the resolution censuring him was laid upon the table by one hundred and six to ninety-three. Among the military promotions now gazetted from Washington were those of some officers destined to future prominence, beyond, per haps, even their ambition. First-Lieutenant E. V. Keyes was pro moted to be a captain, and Second-Lieutenant William T. Sherman to be first-lieutenant in his place. Lieutenant Robert Anderson was also promoted to be captain, and Major Joseph P. Taylor, commissary, to be lieutenant-colonel. In the Legislature, Mr. Dickinson brought in a bill to make the New York & Erie Railroad, like the Erie Canal, a State work, to be owned and controlled by the government. Resolutions introduced by Franklin, and counter-resolutions brought in by Sherwood, sought to define the position of parties. The Whigs labored to show that New York was able and willing to pay her debt. The Democrats mag nified the debt, and capitalists already began to feel nervous anxiety about the State stocks. European holders, since the repudiation of the debts of other States, were distrustful even of the credit of New York. Many sent their securities home for sale ; and prices, of course, dropped lower and lower. The result was that a strong feeling began to grow up in Wall Street in favor of the Democratic policy of stop ping the work on the canal enlargement, and incurring no further debt. The temperance reform seemed to be gaining in volume and force. In portions of the western part of the State, the popular interest in it seemed to equal that of a political campaign. Mass-meetings were held at Penn Yan, Palmyra, Seneca Falls, and other places. Churches were thrown open, and filled with eager audi ences. Many thousand names were enrolled. At the levfo held on the occasion of the marriage of the President s daughter, no wine was given. Hotels in various towns closed their bars, and announced that hereafter they would be conducted on temperance principles. A Legis lative Temperance Society was organized, with the Speaker at its head. A temperance meeting was held in the Assembly-chamber, the call having been signed by thirteen Senators and seventy Assemblymen. At Syracuse a temperance ball was given. It was announced that the pledge had been signed by four thousand people in that city, and by fifteen thousand in the county. Some Catholics, to give it more bind ing force, wrote it in the form of a cross. Many of the temperance societies took the name of " Washington Temperance Society," and " Washingtonians." One in Salina celebrated the 22d by burning the 590 LIFE A^V LETTERS. [1842. liquors of a public-house on a bonfire in the street, the proprietor hav ing joined the society, and reopening his establishment as a temperance house, with a temperance oyster-supper. Temperance celebrations of the 22d, in various towns, with processions, orations, banners, and ban quets, rivaled in enthusiasm even the festivities of the 4th of July. Charles Dickens was now having a triumphal progress among his readers and admirers. Crowds nocked to greet him, welcome him, and invite him. At Boston there was a great " Boz " dinner. In New York there were preparations for a still greater " Boz " ball. The Gov ernor sent his good wishes, while regretting his inability to be present. In March the Legislature was to meet the Legislature of Massachu setts at Springfield. This was to be the official celebration of the com pletion of the railway between Boston and Albany. The 4th of March was deemed an appropriate day for the inaugura tion of the line. The morning opened wet and unpropitious, but later, cleared off serene and balmy. At seven o clock the Governor, accompanied by his staff and some of his family, found on board the ferry-boat about one hundred members of the Legislature. Starting from East Albany in the special train, they climbed the heavy grades till they had ascended fourteen hundred feet, and then, descending the eastern slope of the Berkshire Hills, ran smoothly and easily down into Pittsfield. The State line was marked by a station, and jokes flew thick and fast when the party passing it found they had gone into a foreign jurisdiction where their power ceased. The train reached Springfield about mid-day. Forming in procession at the Hampden House, they moved under a discharge of artillery up to the Town-House, where the assemblage from the east were already await ing their arrival. Entering the great hall, the Governors, legislative presiding officers, and other public functionaries, of both States, pro ceeded to the platform. Governor Davis, of Massachusetts, rose, and, in the name of the Commonwealth, bade the New-Yorkers a cordial welcome. The two Governors joined hands, amid thundering cheers given by the assembled legislators. The cheers having subsided, Governor Davis made a brief address, alluding to the impressive and extraordinary character of the meeting, the useful effects of this reciprocal interchange of civilities, and the magnitude of the interests involved in the enterprise, one of mutual advantage to both States. Governor Seward responded in similar strain, remarking that Mas sachusetts had hitherto seemed a distant country : The morning sun was just greeting the site of old Fort Orange as we took our leave, and now when he has scarcely reached the meridian, we have crossed our hitherto impassable mountain-barrier, and have met you here on the shore of the Connecticut. 1842.] MEETING OF MASSACHUSETTS AND NEW YORK. 591 On many occasions, in all ages, States, nations, and empires, have come together. But the trumpet heralded their approach ; they met in the shock of war, one or the other sunk to rise no more, and desolation marked the scene of the fearful encounter. How different is this scene ! Here are no contending hosts, nor even the pomp of war. Not a helmet, sword, or plume, is seen, in all this vast assemblage. Nor is this a hollow truce between contending States. We are not met upon a cloth of gold, and under a silken canopy, to practise de ceitful courtesies. We have come here, enlightened and fraternal States, with out pageantry or even insignia of power, to renew pledges of fidelity, to culti vate affection, and all the arts of peace. At the close of his speech, the entire auditory rose and gave six hearty cheers. Josiah Quincy, Jr., the President of the Massachusetts Senate, occupied the chair for the day. Then the company paired off, the two Governors leading the way, and each Massachusetts man arm- in-arm with a New-Yorker. Proceeding to the dining-hall, they found it decorated with flags and mottoes. There were long parallel tables, covered with a collation, and by each plate a cup of chocolate and a glass of water. The guests were standing, for there was no room for seats. The Governors and presiding officers occupied an elevated place at the centre of the east side. After grace had been said, the chairman observed that he had never heard before of a standing Committee of the Whole, but he nevertheless begged them to proceed to the discussion of the sub jects laid before them. Laughter, applause, a clatter of knives and forks, and merry conversation, followed his sally. By-and-by, remark- , ing that the time had come for sentiments, though he feared on this occasion they might be thought little better than toast-and-water, he brought down the house again by giving " The president and directors of the Western Railroad, who, notwithstanding the financial difficulties of the times, have contrived to make both ends meet." Then followed speeches by Colonel Bliss, of the railroad ; and Mr. Paige, the acting President of the New York Senate, who humorously described the hesi tation with which he and others of the land and lineage of Diedrich Knickerbocker had ventured among the dreaded Yankees ; nay, how his political alarm had been excited lest, as Locofocos, they might be over powered, and now they were conquered by the kindness and courtesy of their reception. Here Quincy characteristically remarked that "the Yankees who didn t like such Dutch should have French leave to walk Spanish." Mr. Walley, of the Massachusetts House, followed in a playful speech in which he questioned a decision of the chair. He was called to order for it and directed to take his seat, which he de clined to do because he hadn t any. Mr. Taylor, the acting Speaker of the New York Assembly, followed. General Root, being called out as " the father of the New York Legislature," doubted if the Legislature 592 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. would acknowledge the paternity. In his speech, he described how he had been a New England boy, and had quit his native land only when there seemed to be no longer room there. He gave " The happy union of the sturgeon and the codfish. May their joyous nuptials efface the sorrowful remembrance of the departure of the Connecticut River sal mon !" Toasts, pleasantries, and bon-mots, occupied the time until the hour of separation, and President Quincy gave them the parting Scriptu ral injunction, when in the cars, " not to fall out by the way." Seward was one of those who took the eastern train, having ac cepted the invitation of Governor Davis to pass the night at his home in Worcester. The next morning, accompanied by some gentlemen from Boston, Seward proceeded to Lowell, where a day was spent in an examination of the factory system there, modified and improved by all the appli ances for labor-saving, neatness, and comfort, which New England in genuity could suggest. Returning to Albany, the Governor was at his post early in the following week. The legislative contests were resumed. Among the messages sent in was one recalling the attention of the Legislature to the fact that " Congress, previously to the establishment of the Fed eral Constitution, passed a resolution requesting the State of New York to erect a monument to the memory of Nicholas Herkimer, a patriot general, who died of wounds received in the battle of Oriskany on the 6th of August, 1777. The expense of the proposed monument was fixed at five hundred dollars, to be paid out of the treasury of the Confederation. This resolution was forgotten in the excitement of the Revolutionary conflict, and it remains to this day unexecuted." There was one class of pardon-cases which seemed to have a radi cal difficulty. Young men convicted of minor offenses in New York would often, by their excellent behavior in prison, evince a sincere desire to amend ; yet, when released by pardon or expiration of sen tence, they would fall back into bad companionship and habits, ending in fresh crime. He endeavored to prevent this by annexing condi tions to the pardon. Thus in regard to one he wrote : The information which I have received concerning him is such as to impress me with many fears that he could not long resist the temptation to which he would be exposed in the city of New York. While, therefore, I am now willing to pardon him, it seems to me proper to impose, as a condition, his removal from this State for a period not less than four years. In another case he said : Fearful of trusting him again to such trials as met him before, I have di rected Judge Lynch to retain the pardon until you shall have made arrange- 1842.] THE "STOP-AND-TAX" POLICY. 593 ments which will secure your husband some permanent and respectable employ ment. When that has been done, you will take the pardon and release him from his imprisonment, and may God bless you and him 1 CHAPTER XLI. 1842. St. Patnck and Father Mathew. Congressional Temperance Society. The " Stop-and- Tax" Policy. Aldermen as Judges. The Liberty Party. Gerrit Smith. Closing Scenes of the Legislature. Trial by Jury of Fugitives. New York Riot. Election Law. GREAT preparations had been making in Albany for the celebra tion of St. Patrick s day under the auspices of the " Albany Catholic Total Abstinence Association." The display was an imposing one. Father Mathew, in revolutionizing national habits in Ireland, had pro duced a corresponding effect here. Four thousand Irishmen in Albany had taken the pledge and joined the society. The other citizens were delighted to assist on such an occasion, in honoring St. Patrick and Father Mathew. At nine in the morning an immense procession marched to the City Hall, headed by Chancellor Walworth. The Gov ernor came over from the Executive-chamber, and took a seat on the stage. A temperance medal, set in white roses, was presented to him, and in his brief speech of acknowledgment he tendered his hearty congratulations on the progress of the great reform. The Washing- tonians and other temperance societies joined in the demonstration. In the evening the Hibernian Provident Society gave a temperance supper at the American Hotel. The Governor, mayor, and several members of the Legislature, were present. A few days later the Legis lative Temperance Society held a meeting in the Assembly-chamber, and Dr. Nott delivered an impressive address. News was also received from Washington of the organization of a Congressional Temperance Society. They had held a meeting in the Hall of Representatives. Many members had taken the pledge, and two or three announced themselves as " reformed drunkards." A project for a railroad between Albany and New York was under discussion this winter ; but it was considered very doubtful whether such an enterprise would ever be profitable, in view of the competition of the steamboats. Some of its warmest opposers were residents along its projected line. The expected " stop-and-tax " movement in the Legislature now came. Michael Hoffman introduced in the Assembly a tax bill "to provide for paying the debt, and preserving the credit of the State," 38 94 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. and suspending the further prosecution of the public works. It passed the Assembly by a party vote, and, after some debate, received the sanction of the Senate on the 28th of March. In commercial circles, in New York, there was no small rejoicing over the success of Hoffman s bill. True, the canal enlargement was stopped ; but the check to Western trade seemed remote, while the restoration of financial confidence was immediate, and the imposition of taxes raised State stocks to par, giving the banks who held them a handsome profit. The aldermen of New York had, up to 1840, exercised magisterial functions. Charges of frequent abuse of this privilege led the Legis lature to take it away from them, by a statute reorganizing the criminal courts. Strenuous efforts had been made to defeat this law, by con testing its constitutionality. These failing, a bill to repeal it was hur ried through both Houses. The Governor thereupon sent in his veto. In it he remarked : Shall we repeal a constitutional law, because a subordinate municipal coun cil denies its constitutionality? Or, because persons whom the act divests of judicial power, angrily contend with those to whom that power is transferred? We have the aid of experience in reviewing the decisions which the Legis lature of 1840 made upon induction only. The greater number of trials, and smaller number of cases, and the increase of convictions and diminution of recognizances, seem to show, if not the excellence of the court, at least the superiority of the present over its former organization. Meanwhile, the Whigs at Washington were waging their contest about the tariff and finance. Mr. Clay had made his great speech on the 1st of March, exciting even more than usual attention, because it was believed to be his last one in the Senate. Tyler s message, about the condition of the Treasury, and the Secretary s report, had been received, but did not tend to clear the difficulties from the path of the Whigs ; and, finally, when his special message came in, recommending the repeal of the land distribution law, the censures of him, by his former supporters, were loud and deep. The antislavery men had now come to a better understanding of Seward s sentiments. Convinced by his course in the Virginia and Georgia controversies, the trial-by-jury act, and by all his letters and speeches, that he was an earnest opponent of that institution, they sought to enroll him under their own banner, as " a straight-out abo litionist," tendering him a prominent place in their councils and nomi nation on their ticket. While freely conceding and appreciating the honesty and single ness of purpose which guided Gerrit Smith and his political associates, Seward frankly told them that he believed the way he had chosen was the one in which he could render most patriotic and effective service, 1842.] THE ABOLITIONISTS. 595 even to the cause of antislavery. The destinies of a nation are deter mined by one or the other of the two great parties that alternately gain control of the Government. They are not determined by the smaller factions, who, though they may educate public sentiment, never ac complish practical results, because never strong enough to carry an election, or pass a law. To Gerrit Smith he said : March Wth. I know Mr. Leavitt somewhat, and his writings much more. Hig suggestion, concerning a seat in Congress, arises from great kindnes, but it is for many reasons impracticable. I have read, with much surprise, the accounts the newspapers give of Judge Story s decision, concerning the provisions of the Constitution relating to fugi tive slaves. The startling doctrines propounded will awaken a profound sensa tion throughout the country, and the advantages that slavery gains from them will be dearly bought. To Lewis Tappan he wrote : I have received your kind letter of the 18th instant, and beg you to be con vinced that I am grateful, not only to your correspondent, Mr. Chase, for his favorable opinions, but to yourself, for communicating them to me. I have read, with much pleasure, the address of the Liberty party s State Convention in Ohio. It is written with marked ability. I am right glad to see the argument for abolishing slavery placed upon the impregnable and yet popu lar ground of the evils resulting to the whole country from the maintenance of a system of compulsory labor in the Southern States. Every day will win listen ers and favor conviction, under such arguments as these, while the moral ques tion encounters prejudices, the growth of centuries. As if in illustration of these views, debate on the slavery ques tion now broke out in the Legislature, Democratic members attacking Seward s position in the Virginia controversy and Whigs defending it. The recent decision of the Supreme Court of the United States upon State laws, in regard to fugitive slaves, brought up the question whether the New York " trial-by-jury law " was valid, or a dead letter ; whether it ought to be repealed, whether it could be enforced, whether the decision of the Supreme Court applied to it, or was merely obiter dictum. The bill taking away from the Governor the power of appointing the Bank Commissioners, and vesting it in the Legislature, had little to commend it to favor, except on party grounds. It was accordingly passed by only a party vote. The Governor vetoed it, saying : The bill under review proposes to transfer the power of appointing and re moving those officers to the same hands which confer the banking privileges and the fiscal trusts, and would thus bring the banks and the Treasury into close conjunction with each other and with the Legislature. Such a conjunction 596 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. cannot be contemplated without apprehension for the public credit, the public morals, and the successful industry of our fellow-citizens. The Governor s veto of the State-Printer bill was also sent in. He deemed that it violated the constitutional restriction in regard to con tracts. Attack was now opened on the Executive vigorously in regard to the Virginia controversy. Resolutions were adopted in the Senate, by sixteen to fourteen, disapproving the Governor s action, and requesting him to transmit the legislative censure of himself to Virginia. A bill was also reported to repeal the law granting trial by jury to fugitive slaves. In the debate the Democrats claimed that the decision in Prigg vs. Pennsylvania was applicable to that law. The Whigs took issue with this, but the bill was ordered to a third reading. Two days later came the Governor s reply in a special message : I am requested by that body to communicate their preamble and resolution to the Executive of Virginia. In proper cases I cheerfully comply with the requests of the Senate and Assembly, but I cannot do so when a request con flicts with constitutional duties. I could not transmit the resolution in the pres ent case without silently acquiescing therein, and thus waiving a decision to which I adhere. Cherished principles of civil liberty forbid me equally from recognizing such a natural inequality of men as the resolution of the Legislature seems to assume, and from contributing in any way to perpetuate the inequalities of political con dition, from which result a large portion of the evils of human life. The Senate and Assembly will therefore excuse me from assuming the duty which an assent to their request would impose. The bill to repeal the " trial-by-jury law " passed the Senate, six teen to fourteen, one Democrat, Bockee, voting against it. When the message about the Virginia resolutions was received, the Senate laid it on the table by a party vote. In the Assembly, unfavor able reports as to the public works and the canal enlargement were agreed to. Twelve o clock, the hour fixed for adjournment, arrived, amid much confusion and excitement, the supply bill not having passed. A joint resolution was adopted extending the session until three o clock, that the Senate bills might be acted on. Three o clock arrived, but the hand of the clock was seen to move backward by some unseen power. Finally, in the course of an hour, the Assembly adjourned. After the adjournment the story of the Virginia resolutions and the bill to repeal the trial by jury came out. The Democratic leaders, willing to show their party fidelity, had allowed them to be introduced ; but, preferring to avoid the responsi bility of voting for them, delayed till twenty-four hours before the ad journment, trusting that then some Whig would avail himself of his 1842.] CANAL ENLARGEMENT STOPPED. 597 privilege of objecting. As one objection would require the matter to be laid over one day, it would necessarily prevent final action. But the Whigs, determined that they should place themselves on record, made no objection ; so the bill passed the Senate. In the Assembly it was referred to the Judiciary Committee, an indirect method of stran gling it ; and now, as the Governor refused to send the resolutions, Virginia received no aid or comfort from the Legislature whence she had confidently expected it. The vetoes of the bills legislating out of office the judges of the New York criminal courts, the Bank Commissioners, and the State Printer, not having been overruled in the Senate, they remained in office. Two columns and a half in the State paper were taken up with a list of the Governor s nominations, rejected or laid on the table. The address of the Whig members of the Legislature was published on the 14th. Its chief topic was the stoppage of the public works, which it deplored as a calamity to the State. They also addressed a letter to Henry Clay, referring to his course, thanking him for his national services, especially in the protection of American industry, and tendering their good wishes on his retirement. It received a courteous and appropriate acknowledgment, the whole correspondence implying, though not expressing, the Whig determina tion to nominate him for the presidency. The Democratic members also published their address to the peo ple, saying that the practice of contracting large State debts was dan gerous to public liberty, subversive of free government and repugnant to maxims of Jefferson. The Erie Canal had now been enlarged between Albany and Wa- tervliet. It was a handsome work, costing more than a million dol lars, and its completion was celebrated with festivities. But these few miles were comparatively useless, until the other sections were enlarged. The enlargement work was now stopped. The Black River and Gene- see Valley Canals were deserted. The work on the New York & Erie Railroad was abandoned. The Ogdensburg & Lake Champlain Rail road was left unfinished. In all parts of the State unfinished arches, embankments, culverts, and bridges, were seen, while the tax-gatherer, always an unwelcome guest, was knocking at every door for money to pay for them. The New York & Erie Railroad made an assignment of its property. In strong contrast to this sudden decay of works of improvement in New York, the Albany & Boston Railroad was doing a rapidly-increasing business through the thriving farms and busy vil lages of Massachusetts. Its directors exultingly announced that they now had " two daily trains," and that their receipts were one thousand dollars a day. At the charter election in Albany the Whigs were beaten this 598 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. spring. In the city of New York, Morris, the Democratic candidate for mayor was elected, the Whigs, however, carrying the Common Council. At about two o clock in the afternoon a gang of fighting characters known as the " Spartan Band " of the " bloody Sixth " Ward, and claiming to be in the interest of Tammany Hall, had a fight with some Irishmen, which led to an attack upon the Sixth Ward Hotel. Having sacked this, they proceeded to Bishop Hughes s house in Mulberry Street, and with loud vociferations and threats smashed his windows, and apparently were proceeding to destroy it. As the news spread through the streets, the Irish assembled in large numbers to protect the bishop. The mayor and Justice Taylor now arriving with the police force, the mob withdrew, though not till they had smashed the windows of the Irish porter-houses in the vicinity. They then rushed to Prince Street, and commenced throwing brick bats to smash the windows of the cathedral. The Irish again assembled to defend the cathedral, the men with clubs, the women, some armed with brickbats, some on their knees in prayer. A troop of horse sent by the city authorities now arrived on the scene, dispersed the mob, prevented further damage to the cathedral, and kept the peace by patrolling the neighborhood for several hours afterward. After care ful examination into the casualties of the riot, it was found that no persons had been killed, though several had been severely wounded. Very seasonably, in view of these events, the new election law was now published, dividing towns and wards into smaller election-dis tricts, abolishing the three days election, and fixing the Tuesday suc ceeding the first Monday in November as the election-day throughout the State. It also contained provisions to prevent illegal voting, and to secure the freedom of access to the polls. This reform, which Sew- ard had urged ever since he came into office, was at last consummated during the closing year of his term. CHAPTER XLIL 1842. Lord Ashburton. " The Dorr Rebellion" in Rhode Island. Prigg vs. Pennsylvania. Virginia Search Law. Protestants and Catholics. Extradition. Jenny, the Fawn. Dickens. Spencer. Wickliffe. Hammond. LORD ASHBURTON was reported, early in April, to be at Annapolis, in the British frigate Warspite, commanded by Sir John Hay, after a voyage of fifty-two days. Received with a salute on landing, he pro ceeded to Washington, where he took the house of Mathew St. Clair 1842.] REBELLION IN RHODE ISLAND. 599 Clark, and enter; d upon his negotiations with Mr. Webster, in accord ance with his instructions, to settle " the various questions in dispute between the two countries," in reference to the unsettled questions of boundary, naturalization, fisheries, and unadjusted claims. Lord Ash- burton was the second son of Sir Francis Baring, and commenced a mercantile career in early life in Amsterdam. He came to the United States in 1796. In 1798 he married Miss Bingham, daughter of a United States Senator, whose hospitable house had open doors for the exiled French nobility in this country. He was thus brought into acquaintance with the Duke of Orleans, who had now become Louis Philippe, the King of the French, with Talleyrand, and with Washing ton, Hamilton, Madison, Adams, Pinckney, and Jay. After passing five or six years in Philadelphia, he returned to England, and became a partner in the house of Baring Brothers. He withdrew from busi ness in 1831, leaving his son in his place, and had since been often in Parliament, and long in public life. His appointment to negotiate with the United States was regarded as eminently judicious. The " anti-rent " troubles this year broke out in Schoharie County among the tenants of the Livingston Manor. The Governor issued a proclamation, offering a reward of seven hundred dollars for "persons convicted of unlawfully and forcibly resisting the execution of legal process in Schoharie County, by tumultuous bodies of disguised and armed men," and giving notice that the power of the law would be put in exercise to prevent the recurrence of the transactions, and to bring the offenders to punishment. Early in the year there were rumors of serious trouble in Rhode Island. A party there was aiming to make a change in the form of the State government, which still retained features prescribed by the royal charter in colonial days, and restricted the right of voting by a property qualification. This party, having failed in peaceable efforts, was now threatening force. There was great excitement in the State, and Governor King had issued a proclamation calling on all good citizens to sustain the constituted authorities. A few days later it was stated that he had sent commissioners to Washington, invok ing the aid of the President to sustain the State government against attempts to overthrow it by violence. The President had answered, promising to aid and support the existing government until the peo ple should have legally framed a new constitution. The election in Rhode Island took place on Monday, the 18th. The nominee of the " Law-and-Order " party was Governor King, while the revolutionary, or " Free-suffrage " party, as they called themselves, nominated Thomas W. Dorr. They further declared that, notwithstanding the President s letter, they should persist in holding an election under the pretended new constitution which they had framed, but which had never been, 600 LTFE AND LETTERS. [1842. legally adopted. At this election, under the so-called " People s Con stitution," a large vote was polled for " Governor " Dorr. Governor King now called an extra session of the General Assembly at Providence. The Legislature promptly authorized the Governor to take measures for the public defense, and to appoint a Board of Coun cilors. They empowered the major-general to enlist volunteers and provide for their payment. Various projects were proposed and dis cussed for another convention to frame a constitution, the right of voting to be extended to all taxed for one hundred and fifty dollars. In April, a meeting at the City Hall, in Albany, demanded an amendment of the Constitution in view of the decision of the Supreme Court in Prigg vs. Pennsylvania. This decision in the Prigg case was one that occupied a prominent place in all future discussions in regard to fugitive-slave laws. Briefly it was this : Edward Prigg, as the agent of a Maryland slave-owner, seized a runaway slave-woman, Mar- garette, with her children, one of whom was born some time after she had made her escape. He returned her to bondage. For this he was arrested, tried, and convicted, in Pennsylvania. Appealing from the courts of that State to the Supreme Court of the United States, the argument there turned upon the constitutional provision relating to " persons held to service in one State escaping to another." Judge Story pronounced the decision, which was, that Congress had exclusive power to legislate concerning fugitive slaves ; that the States had no power to legislate on the subject, either for or against ; that the owner might take his slaves wherever he could find them. Judges McLean and Thompson were of opinion that the owner must prosecute his claim ac cording to the provision of the act of 1793. The other judges held that the slave might be seized and removed, with entire disregard of the laws of the State. But the main point was, that fugitive-slave catching belonged exclusively to the Federal Government, and that the States had no right to interfere with it. While the laws of Pennsylvania in regard to fugitives were thus declared null and void, the time had arrived when New York was to receive her punishment by Virginia for a like offense. The non-inter course act of Virginia was to take effect on the 1st of May ; Governor Seward not having delivered the three colored men, and the Legislature not having repealed the " trial-by-jury law." The Virginia act pro vided for the search of all vessels coming from or belonging to New York. To make sure that no slave should be concealed on board, the vessel was to be seized and held by the local authorities until the mas ter or owner had executed a bond of a thousand dollars to the Com monwealth, to satisfy any judgment growing out of the violation of the act. For every neglect to comply with the act a fine of five hun dred dollars was imposed. For these fines the vessel was made liable. 1842.] THE VIRGINIA SEARCH-LAW. 601 Inspectors were stationed at Richmond, Petersburg, Norfolk, Hampton, the mouth of the James, the York, the Rappahannock, and wherever else the Governor should think proper, to watch New York vessels, and to collect fees from them for this surveillance. The tendency of the whole enactment was to discourage New York vessels from coming into Virginia waters. Affairs in Rhode Island soon reached a crisis. The insurgents or " Free-suffrage " party had announced that on the 3d of May they would induct their Governor, Thomas W. Dorr, and his Legislature, into office ; Governor King declared his determination to enforce the law against all attempts to usurp the government. The insurgents sent out invitations to various military companies to march to Provi dence "to perform escort-duty on Tuesday at the inauguration of Gov ernor Dorr." General Wool, meanwhile, had arrived at Fort Adams, in Narra- gansett Bay, with three hundred United States troops. In Providence no opposition had been made to the election held by the " Free-suf frage " faction, who polled 6,989 votes. On the Wednesday succeed ing, at the regular election, 7,152 were polled by the " Law-and-Order men," who claimed that they were " not a party," but " the gov ernment." Intelligence next came that on Tuesday the Dorr party had marched in procession, sixteen hundred strong, about half of them armed, from a tavern to an unfinished foundery -building in Providence, with music and banners. There they proceeded to organize a " Gen eral Assembly." Sixty-six members of the " House of Representa tives " answered to their names, were sworn in, and elected a Speaker and Clerk. The towns were then called for votes for Senators and general officers. Everything went off quietly without interference. Meanwhile, the Constitutional Legislature met on the same day at Newport. Two days later came tidings that the usurping Legislature had adjourned till July. The regular one remained in session, recalled the State arms from the military companies, counted the votes for Governor, showing that King was elected by a large majority, and discussed resolutions asking the assistance of the General Government in their difficulties. There were rumors that the sheriff was in pursuit of Governor Dorr to ar rest him, but could not find him. A manifesto of the revolutionists declared : " The people of Rhode Island are now struggling for con stitutional liberty. They appeal for sympathy and assistance ; they have arrayed against them the concentrated wealth of their own State, and are threatened with the armed force of the United States Govern ment. They solicit contributions of arms and ammunition, muskets, rifles, pistols, and swords." LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. Soon after Governor Dorr s whereabouts was explained. He and other leaders of the revolution were in New York, in conference with sympathizers there. One evening they honored the Bowery Theatre with their presence. A national banner was displayed, bearing the in scription, "The democracy and patriotism of New York will throng the Bowery this evening to give their champion a welcome." Some of the members of the revolutionary party, alarmed at the crisis to which affairs were evidently tending, now renounced their association with it, and the Rhode Island papers contained several res ignations of the so-called " representatives." On the other hand, Governor Dorr, encouraged by the support given and promised in New York, issued his proclamation, appealing to the people, expressing his opinion that the contest would become national, with the State as the battle-ground of ancient freedom, and adding, " No further arrests will be permitted, and I hereby direct the military promptly to prevent the same, and to release all who may be arrested." This was signed by Dorr, as Governor and " Commander- in-Chief of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations." On his return from New York, Dorr was received at the depot by eleven hundred men, partly armed. Escorted through the streets, he made a violent speech, brandishing his sword and saying that he " would die rather than yield," etc. He ordered the military to be ready at an hour s notice, called a council of war, established his head quarters at a Mr. Anthony s house, on the hill, defended by two field- pieces and an armed force. There he defied the government to arrest him. Governor King issued his orders, calling the military companies under arms, the bells ringing an alarm about midnight. Wednesday morning the insurgents marched, in full force, to the arsenal, Dorr at the head, demanding its surrender. Colonel Blodgett, its com mander, refused, and was evidently prepared to defend it. No assault was made : the insurgents apparently having expected that their mere demonstration would have made it yield. At this point, the tide seemed to turn. The confidence of the " Law-and-Order " men rose : that of the Dorr men rapidly abated. Governor King dispatched his troops to the principal points of the city, of which they rapidly took possession. The Governor and sheriff went to Anthony s house, to arrest Dorr, but found him absconded, and his supporters dispersing or surrendering. The so-called "People s officers," who had been elected, published their resignations, disavowing Dorr s acts, and say ing that "they never contemplated resisting the General Govern ment." The close of the troubles now seemed at hand ; especially as the " Law-and-Order " party announced their readiness to make a liberal 1842.] THE "DORR WAR." 603 extension of the right of suffrage, and to hold a Constitutional Con vention, in a lawful and peaceable way. Quiet was once more restored in Providence, though the war of opinions continued to rage in the newspapers within and without the State. No one knew whither Dorr had fled ; but there were rumors that Governor King had issued requisitions for him on the Governors of adjoining States. On the 26th Dorr issued an address, dated nowhere in particular, in regard to what he called his " withdrawal from headquarters," and explaining why his cannon did not go off when ordered to be fired at the arsenal. He said " they were found to be plugged with wood and iron ! " He stated that " the" absence of friends " and the " paralyzing effect of the publication of resignations " obliged him to withdraw. He said there had been no compromise, and that he still considered his constitution and government the only ones to be recognized, though omitting to tell where they were to be found ! Governor Seward s attention was called to the question by a requi sition for the surrender of Dorr in case he should take refuge in New York. With this he promised to comply. Insurrection, though some times a necessity in monarchical countries, he never believed justifiable in the United States. He held that the opportunity given by our political system, through the press and the ballot-box, was ample to achieve all reforms. Although he sympathized in the desire of the Rhode Island reformers to make their State government more repub lican, he steadfastly opposed all their revolutionary proceedings. So, in the anti-rent excitement, though he concurred in the dislike to feudal tenures, he discountenanced everything that savored of riotous resistance to legal authority. Advices from Washington continued to grow more and more dis couraging for Whig harmony. The rejection of nominations by the Senate widened the breach between the President and the friends of Mr. Clay. Negotiations between Lord Ashburton and Mr. Webster were more satisfactory. They were going on at the State Department, and were promising to settle all the points in dispute. The Florida War, through the perseverance and activity of Colonel Worth, had apparently been brought to an end after seven years skir mishing. Orders were issued for the withdrawal of the troops. One hundred and fifty Indian warriors were captured, and one thousand old men, women, and children had been sent beyond the Mississippi. The Indians, however, were still left in possession of several fastnesses. The war had cost forty million dollars. As no extradition treaty yet existed, American and British Gov ernors had to rely upon each other s courtesy, or sense of justice, to 604 k!FE AND LETTERS. [1842. obtain the surrender of criminals for punishment. Seward wrote to Sir Charles Bagot in reference to one : .... He is a notorious offender, well known to the police in most of our cities. I have no right to demand from your Excellency a surrender of the fugitive, but, supposing that it would be agreeable to you to relieve the Brit ish Province of such felons, I beg leave to say that, if you should think proper to cause him to be surrendered, the proceeding would be regarded by me as an act of international courtesy. In a letter to an earnest friend in Canada he wrote, in regard to the Protestant and Catholic religions : There will be errors of religious belief, as there will be of opinion upon questions of moral truth or abstract science. These are to be tolerated until they are corrected, and they can only be corrected by kindness, persuasion, and conviction. No man, I think, more clearly sees the errors of the Church of Rome, or regards them as more inconsistent with the simplicity and beauty of Scriptural revelation, than I do. None values more highly the political, and moral, and social advantages the world is deriving from the Reformation. Yet I should esteem myself an unworthy Protestant and no Christian if I forgot that the Catholic holds fast to the Christian faith that I deem essential, and that every man, no matter of what race, clime, or complexion, is my brother, and has a right to worship according to the dictates of his own conscience and the faith of his forefathers. A young fawn had been sent to Seward by a friend. Playful and docile enough to be a household pet, she for some months enjoyed the liberty of the grounds about the Executive mansion ; but, unfor tunately for her, the day came when she grew large enough to clear the board fence at a bound. On the evening of the day on which Mrs. Seward had gone to Auburn for the summer, he wrote : Tuesday Evening, May 24A. When I reached the house this morning, on my return from the cars, I found a multitude of boys, almost as great in number as Governor Dorr s " invinci- bles," and presently Nicholas and a stout apprentice came in at the gate, bringing Jenny, the fawn, a captive. The poor, foolish creature, lonesome and broken hearted, I suppose, because Fred and Willie had left her, leaped the inclosure, and commenced a most improbable search for sympathy in the thoroughfares of the capital. The dogs pursued her, and the boys became allies by force of natu ral instinct. She came back, bleeding from her wounds, and " weeping/ in deed, like an innocent that had been stricken. She is now in the cellar, and since she cannot be restrained, if you will send for Colonel Richardson and get him to show John how to make an inclosure, I will, as soon as you let me know that the prison is ready, send the foolish creature to you. The house ia solitary, and I am quite lonely ; but the day has been turned to good account in examining and assorting old papers that have been too long neglected. I am thinking about a study when I go home. Unless I can sell some real estate, of which there is now no probability, I can scarcely afford to build ; and 1842.J PLANS FOR DOMESTIC AFFAIRS. G05 jet it seems almost unendurable to take my books and exclude myself from the dwelling of my family. Besides, I have now an accumulation of really valuable books and papers for literary purposes, and they would be exposed to accident and to depredation in the crowded part of the town. Bob is whistling away in solitude in the hall. I grieve to see him alone there. Shall I not send him to you by the first man kind enough to carry him to you and the canary-birds too ? Abby will take better care of them than w can. This afternoon I dropped into Mr. Brown s studio. His heads of Dr. Nott, Dr. Potter, and others, almost speak. He is making a marble bust of Mrs. Wil- lard. By- the- way, he told me that Jocelyn s picture of me was the best that had been made. ALBANY, May We have a fine bright morning here, and I trust that you have had sufficient repose after your journey to begin to enjoy the pleasures of rural life. I met Mr. Huntington, of Troy, a few days since. He enjoys, perhaps, more perfect health than any person in our acquaintance. He gave me an account of his mode of life. One feature in it seemed to me worthy of notice. He saya he never takes his breakfast without some previous exposure in the air, with ex ercise, if possible. Nothing he thinks worse than going from the toilet straight to the breakfast-room. I have, since you left, endeavored to commence a habit of rising half an hour or an hour before breakfast, with a view of going out. I have advices this morning from Colonel Pitman. Governor Dorr is not found in New York, and it is said has not been there since his grand flourish ing exit, when on his way from Washington. The colonel writes me that the information he receives from Rhode Island is altogether of a pacific kind. As my retirement from my present situation approaches, and I look abroad upon the world which I am to enter without an income, and even without any arrangements for supporting a family, already expensive and becoming more so, my spirits have become depressed when I have reflected upon the probability that, for a season at least, I should have to struggle with pecuniary embarrasg- ments resulting from the universal derangement of financial concerns in the country. But, after all, this depression has not unmanned me, and I have begun to try to profit by it. On the 9th of May I determined to keep a memorandum of my resolution and purposes, and thus to strengthen myself in the proceedings which the present emergency seems to require. It is very doubtful whether such matters can be changed and corrected after one is forty years old. I have, how ever, determined to try ; and, since a fortnight has passed, I find myself so suc cessful thus far that I feel I may safely communicate with you. I am studying retrenchment in every form, and at the same time continuing in every way to make the most out of what we have, and to make preparations for a comfort able settlement of my affairs with all possible dispatch after I leave the city. You will aid me all you can in this matter, I know. If I had only had your prudence years ago, I should now have less to accomplish. ALBANY, Saturday Morning, May 2Sth. I wish you could be in the grounds here this bright morning. The chestnuts are in full bloom, and there is a humming of bees in their foliage, like the music of a distant waterfall. 606 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. By-the-way, I am going to have an artist take a view of the place. It is not so pleasant in your eyes as in mine. Still, you will like to have it ; and it will be more valuable because, within two or three years, the groves, and even the fine old mansion-house, will give place to rows of dark brick walls. ALBANY, Tuesday, May Slst. The blasting of the bud of treason in Khode Island is very gratifying. Read the Dorr address, and see if you do not admire his coolness and dignity under his disgrace. He is manifestly a superior man. Do not wait for me in regard to the mineralogical cabinet. Consult your own taste where my letter is unin telligible. I am impatient to see a beginning of a return to the old condition of things. I shall be cheerful enough if I know you are so. Hammond s second volume was delivered to me this morning. I will send it to Judge Miller this evening. ALBANY, Thursday Morning. So Dickens has cheated us outright. I ll punish him for it, by reading the last chapter of "Little Nell," and finding out how a beautiful story has been spoiled. A party attends him on the steamer to his ship, when he embarks on the 7th. After her long imprisonment, Jenny, the fawn, has been released into the yard to crop the grass with her own minute teeth, during the day. I venture to trust the foolish ingrate, but not without fear of her flight. ALBANY, Friday Morning. I had last evening a visit from Mrs. Quincy, the wife of the President of Harvard University, her son Josiah Quincy, Jr., the humorous President of the Massachusetts Senate, and of the " Boz " dinner, his wife and sister. They had preserved pleasant recollections of your visit at Boston, and were apparently gratified with their reception here, regretting your absence at home. It had been made known to me that the Postmaster-General, Mr. Wickliffe, and his daughter, would arrive in town last evening. So I presented myself at the Eagle. I found him a very fine-looking, sensible, unaffected man, manifestly vigorous in mind, and of right judgment. I have seldom been so much pleased with a public man on first acquaintance. His daughter was an exceedingly in teresting young lady ; but, there being no ladies in this domicile, she was not attracted here. Her father came with two or three other gentlemen to supper at ten. We had a not unpleasant, but quite unprofitable discussion, of the con dition and prospects of the Whig party. John C. Spencer has invited me on the President s authority, or rather with his gracious assent, to visit Washington. Morgan had told Mr. Spencer that I wanted to come, but was apprehensive of an unkind reception ; and so the Sec retary thought my reception would be. This he reported to the President, who said : " No, no, why should he not come ? I should be glad to see him." Where upon the Secretary tendered to you and me a cordial invitation. I shall, of course, excuse myself, having no appetite for the entertainments at the Capitol, and undervaluing them as much as they are overvalued by those who bestow them. Bob s fame in the art of music has gone abroad, and he has set up a singing- school. He has one pupil, who was brought here by a bright-eyed boy, and in stalled at Bob s feet to learn the gamut. He has made no effort to instruct his 1842.] JENNY, THE FAWN. 607 pupil yet, and is preparing to lay aside his flute for the season, I think. Jenny, though " a hind let loose," is content within the inclosure, and gives no sign of a desire to rove again. The poor creature has lost much flesh during her im prisonment in the cellar. ALBANY, Saturday Myrnwg, June teh. " I never nursed a dear gazelle To glad me with its soft black eye, But when it came to know me well And love me, it was sure to die." I came in yesterday from the State Hall. Harriet announced to me that Jenny had been exploring the cellar, and was found eating the poisonous feast that you had cruelly prepared, before leaving here, to diminish the rat family during your absence. Jenny was walking about for half an hour, then sank down upon the grass, and no caresses nor dainty food that we could offer roused her from her drooping state. There was a deep and mournful sadness throughout all our little household. But she is well this morning. ALBANY, June 6, 1842. Yesterday was so very fine a day that I spent its hours chiefly under the trees. Mr. Greeley has sent you a sheet containing a printed copy of his poetical effusions, which have not been published. It will go to you to-day, in a bundle of newspapers. Jenny revives, and I hope will henceforth eschew arsenic. In "maiden meditation fancy free, * she seems to be studying to give her experience of the medical effect of mineral poison. Bob becomes ambitious. The lady-canary has devoted herself, at last, with becoming assiduity to hatching the eggs she so long neglected. We have an addition to our aviary in the form of a blue bird, with golden-striped wings. My time is so precious that I must be brief. ALBANY, June 10th. You will find the papers to-day quite rich, in Governor King s proclamation, offering a reward for Governor Dorr ; in the trial of Colonel Monroe Edwards ; and in the diplomatic dueling correspondence between Stanley and Wise. I am studying geology somewhat, by way of preparing to write the introduc tion to the " Geological Survey." I have made free use of the specimens for a day or two, and become quite interested in the study. ALBANY, June 16, 1842. What a day I have had ! I was sitting on the piazza, smoking my cigar and reading the news, when Mrs. M , widow of the late dyer, who had done so many things for us in his way, came for a pardon to release her son from the county jail. While engaged in hearing her appeal, came a woman, eight months in a peculiarly interesting state, poor, and with no place to lay her head, for the pardon of her young husband, a watchman, who had committed burglary in New York. She was crowded away by a maiden lady, whose only brother is in the State-prison at Auburn for forgery. She gave place to a poor, broken-hearted creature, whose honey-moon was scarcely passed before her husband was dis patched to Sing Sing. And when she left me, I received a grocer s wife, whose husband was consigned to the penitentiary in New York, for a larceny. And to these appeals was soon added one for a pardon to Thomas Topping, convicted of the murder of his wife. From these applications for Executive clemency, I have had to change to issuing warrants for the arrest of Governor Dorr. (308 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. CHAPTER XLIII. 1842. End of Ehode Island Eebellion. Dr. Vinton. " Notes on New York." Opening of Cro- ton Aqueduct. Collapse of United States Bank. Presidential Nominations. Guber natorial Candidates. Extradition. The Ashburton Treaty. . THE Rhode Island troubles were not yet entirely over. About the 1st of June the Supreme Court in Providence had found indictments for treason against the members of the pretended "General Assembly." Meanwhile, it was announced that Dorr was in Connecticut, enlisting men, collecting munitions of war, and issuing scrip, preparatory to a second campaign. The General Assembly, toward the close of June, called a convention to frame the new constitution. Meanwhile, a force of three or four hundred insurgents was reported to be assembling at Chepachet, and committing various depredations and disorderly acts ; stopping passengers on the highways, etc. The uniformed companies of Newport, Providence, Warren, and Bristol, were again called under arms to oppose this demonstration. The young rector of Trinity Church, Newport, Francis Vinton, when the volunteers from that town were assembling to proceed to Provi dence, prayed with them, and as soon as the solemn service was over, said, " I have prayed with you, my fellow-citizens, and now I am ready to fight with you ; " " and no man," remarked the Courier, " among them, perhaps, was so well qualified, for he was educated at West Point, and was in the army before he took orders in the Church." On the 28th came news that the Governor had proclaimed martial law in Providence ; that families were leaving the city. Governor King had issued a proclamation, calling on all the adherents of Dorr to throw down their arms and disperse. " Governor " Dorr issued a counter-proclamation, calling out his military forces to " resist des potism," and summoning his General Assembly to meet on the 4th of July. But this campaign was destined to be brief. It was on Thursday that Dorr returned to Rhode Island ; on Friday he reviewed and harangued his forces at Chepachet ; on Saturday he issued his civil and military proclamations ; on Sunday he waited the popular response ; on Monday he received news that the forces of the State government were approaching from various directions to surround his encampment. He issued a notice that his military force "was dis persed," and then incontinently fled, accompanied, it was said, by about fifty men, to Connecticut. There was no conflict, though some individual encounters. A number of prisoners were taken, principally stragglers from Dorr s camp ; and so ended the " Dorr rebellion." Seward, during the progress of hostilities in the little State, had 1842.] u NOTES ON NEW YORK." 609 sent two members of his military staff to Providence to keep him ad vised of the progress of events, and to tender to Governor King the assurance of such sympathy and aid by New York in the work of maintaining law and order as one State could properly extend to another. They were accompanied thither by Mr. Weed, whose letters to the Evening Journal gave a graphic sketch of the campaign. As his letters show, Seward had commenced the preparation of his " Notes on New York," which were to form the introduction to the " Geological Survey." Anxious to avail himself of the most authentic information of the progress of the sciences and arts in the State, he addressed letters to leading men, without distinction of religious or political opinion. The facts thus gathered enabled him to pre sent a summary worthy to precede the great work. Thus, he con sulted Chancellor Kent in reference to the legal profession; Dr. Horace B. Webster, about the history of science ; Prof. Mahan, about military science and engineering ; the Rev. Charles Anthon, about classical lit erature ; Colonel Stone, about Indian history ; Prof. Renwick, about mechanical science and invention ; Luther Tucker, about agriculture ; Gabriel Furman, about antiquities ; Rev. Dr. Hawks, about sacred literature and ecclesiastical history ; Mr. Crittenden, about school- books and female education ; Prof. Redfield, about natural philosophy ; the Rev. Dr. Campbell, about polemic divinity ; A. B. Johnson, of Utica, about philosophy and finance ; Prof. Weir, about arts of de sign ; George Folsom, about the Historical Society ; Gideon Hawley, about colleges and academies ; B. F. Butler, about civil polity and codification ; S. B. Ruggles, about roads and canals ; M. M. Noah, about the drama and the stage ; Rev. Dr. Nott, about clergymen ; Dr. Francis, about medical science ; Edwin Croswell, about the history of the press ; Dr. Dekay, about zoology ; Dr. Beck, about chemistry and mineralogy ; Dr. Torrey, about botany ; President Charles King, about political history and the biography of public men ; Charles Fenno Hoffman, about fiction ; C. N. Bement, about cattle ; Joseph Blunt, about navigation ; Judge Conkling, about law and government ; Hor ace Greeley, about trade, manufactures, and arts ; Orville Holley, about geography and typography ; A. J. Downing, about horticulture ; Dr. Hun, about surgery and physiology ; Prof. S. F. B. Morse, about science and arts of design ; William Jay, about slavery ; John L. O Sullivan, about the penal code and public charities. The summer brought, as usual, to Albany old and new friends, who paused in their tours of recreation to call upon the Governor. Hard ing, the artist, who in summer used to lay aside the pencil and palette for the rod and fly, sent over by the new railroad a string of Massa chusetts brook-trout. Stephens, the traveler, had been during the preceding year explor- 39 610 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. ing the ruins of ancient cities in Central America, accompanied by Mr. Catherwood, the artist, and had just returned, laden with the ma terial for his two interesting volumes. The Vincennes, the flag-ship of the Exploring Expedition, which had sailed in August, 1838, and had ever since been exploring the Pacific Ocean and islands, arrived this summer. Among its officers were several with whom Seward was afterward to be brought into inti mate relations Commodore Wilkes, Lieutenant Oliver H. Perry, Lieu tenant A. L. Case, Lieutenant Edwin J. De Haven, Lieutenant Alonzo B. Davis, Lieutenant William M. Walker, Lieutenant William M. Mau- ry, Titian R. Peale, naturalist ; James Alden, commander ; Joseph S. Sandford, acting master. The Croton Aqueduct, so long in progress, was now completed. The gates at Croton Dam were opened at five o clock, Wednesday morning, and the stream, ten inches deep, commenced its flow through the aqueduct toward the city. Some of the commissioners and engineers accompanied the water down. Part of the time they were in their barge inside of the aqueduct, and part of the time on the surface above. They arrived at Sing Sing, eight miles, in about six hours ; started again at noon, and so continued their gradual progress with the water to the Harlem River, where it arrived on Thursday morning. When it was known in New York that the waters of the Croton were actually beginning to pour into the receiving reservoir at York- ville, an immense crowd gathered, said to be fifteen or twenty thou sand, and among them were hundreds of ladies. Every avenue reach ing to the reservoir was black with vehicles. The Court of Errors, which was in session in the city, went up in a body to witness the novel spectacle. The mayor and Common Council, of course, were present. There was a military display, and a salute of thirty-four guns was fired, one for each mile from the Croton River to the reservoir. The last link in the railway between Boston and Buffalo was fin ished this summer, the road between Buffalo and Attica having been completed. The United States Bank had now finally collapsed. It had over thrown both of the political parties : first, that which opposed, and afterward, that which supported it ; and then ended by destroying itself. There were many sad incidents of individual misfortune attending its fall ; for, while prospering, everybody had been eager to grasp the stock, believing no other so safe. One man, living in Philadelphia, had invested his whole property, forty thousand dollars, in it. His wife had twenty thousand in her own right, which they also put in. A legacy, the next year, of ten thousand, was also deposited, and then the bank collapsed ; they lost every farthing, and he became a day- 1842.] EXTRADITION. 611 laborer. Two children who, in 1837, were left a fori me of eighty-two thousand dollars, were now living in a hovel, their guardians having invested the entire sum in United States Bank stock. A sea-captain, after fifty years service, retired with fifty thousand dollars, which he invested in the bank, and ended as a pauper in the lunatic asylum. The German immigration, which up to this time had been but small, was rapidly increasing, and a story was circulated that one entire vil lage in Hesse was about to come over, bringing its lawyers, doctors, school-master, and clergyman. The Clay movement continued with unabated vigor. Mr. Clay s portrait was in the windows of book-stores and print-shops. On the 9th of June a great barbecue took place at Lexington in his honor, and his speech on that occasion was eagerly reprinted and read by the Whigs throughout the Union, as the key-note of the coming presi dential campaign. Mr. Tyler was charged with the design of seeking a renomination from the Democrats, and also of attempts to build up, by the use of official patronage, a party of his own. If such was his object, it was attended with no success. Those who held office under him were called the "Tyler guard," and they comprised the bulk of his support ers. The Democrats praised his independence, and defended his acts, in their speeches and newspapers ; but they evinced no disposition to swerve from their own organization or candidates. Writing to Christopher Morgan, Seward said : ALBANY, June 10, 1842. You see, we have the presidential campaign already set. The nomination of Mr. Olay, made as it virtually is by the press, and by Congress, and several Legislatures, brings Mr. Van Buren forward as the opposition candidate. The reports from the Western States, of Mr. Van Buren s progress there, are inspir ing his friends here with much hope. We must now carry this State this fall, or the prospect of the presidential election will be dark enough. The discussion of the gubernatorial nomination has commenced. The three most prominent candidates are Bradish, Collier, and Fillmore. I cannot properly speculate on that subject, being satisfied with the three alternatives. Either will command all the votes, and be personally agreeable, so far as my feelings are concerned. The Democratic papers, in like manner, were discussing their most available candidate. Among the principal names mentioned were those of William C. Bouck, Samuel Young, Michael Hoffman, George R. Davis, and Charles Humphrey. The echo of public opinion from England, in reference to the McLeod case, now brought by the foreign mails, showed a calmer and more judicious temper. The Edinburgh JReview said : When McLeod voluntarily entered the territory of New York, he knew, 612 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. or must be held to have known, what were its laws ; and he .acitly engaged to be governed by them. England has always refused to deviate from her laws, on the requisition of a foreign power. She ought not to have complained that America followed her example. In reierence to the extradition of fugitives from justice across the frontier, Seward wrote to President Tyler : JWM U. I formed an opinion) on examining the subject, that the power in such oases was a national one, and did not reside in the State government. The decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in the case which went from Ver mont, if it did not establish that constitutional principle, at least rendered the right of the State so doubtful that the power could no longer safely be exer cised. Nevertheless, the Canadian authorities, in pursuance of the provincial laws, and as acts of courtesy, have, until recently, surrendered fugitives. On the 21st of May last I applied to his Excellency Sir Charles Bagot, Governor- General of British North America, to surrender a fugitive from this State ; and I learn, from his reply, that doubts have arisen on the part of the Imperial Government whether the power can be legally exercised by the colonial au thorities. The subject is of such great importance that it seems proper to submit it for your consideration. I beg leave to suggest whether it would not be expedient to give it a place among the subjects of negotiation between the United States and Great Britain. And in writing on the same subject to Sir Charles Bagot, he said : The importance of a mutual surrender of fugitive criminals between the con tiguous countries we represent has always been acknowledged by your Excel lency s predecessors, and mine. And it is now increased by the greater facili ties of intercourse between this State and Canada. . . . The power of demand ing and surrendering fugitives, when a foreign state is concerned, is an incident to the General and not to the State government ; and, inasmuch as no law or treaty for this object has been made by the Federal Government, the question is in abeyance. Impressed with these convictions, I have thought it my duty to bring the subject to the consideration of the Government of the United States, nnder a hope that it may receive attention in the pending negotiations between the two Governments. The question about schools for colored children, to which Seward had referred in his messages, was one which, while attracting little attention from the public in general, excited the sympathies of the benevolent, among whom none were more active than the Friends. Writing to David S. Thomas upon the subject, he said : .... I heartily approve the object, and wish it abundant and complete suc cess. It is an occasion of deep regret that the prejudice of the day, which, I think, cannot last long, often excludes persons of African descent from our schools, and especially from the higher seminaries of learning ; and it would 1842.] TYLER AND CLAY. 013 be altogether better if the advantages of education, which all our institutions of learning offer, could be rendered available to all persona without distinction of birth or caste. Under the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands, the share now due to New York was over eighty-four thousand dollars. The Governor wrote to the Secretary of the Treasury on June 30th, designating Lewis Benedict as the agent of the State to receive the money. His letters home narrated his occupations at Albany : Saturday Night, July 2d. There is much news of extreme political interest. The President has fallen at last into the arms of our opponents, thus giving us a first instance of an Ex ecutive Magistrate deserting the party that elected him. He has for his excuse the refusal of the Whig party to support him ; but he caused the desertion by deserting their measures. There is much speculation about a change of cabinet, but I have nothing authentic. His cabinet have probably, with the exception of the Secretary of the Treasury, gone with him, yet can they hardly commend themselves to the leaders of the party into which the President has gone. There are rumors about Mr. Spencer. I think he will not be sacrificed, but may proba bly be transferred to another department of service. These events at Washington bring Mr. Clay prematurely and prominently into the canvass for the presidency, and we are now all in the campaign with him. Those who love him best and most wisely would have preferred delay until action could be effective and less liable to disappointment. The Rhode Island mission was very grateful to the good people of that lit tle but great State. Mr. Dorr is now said to have escaped to Canada. July 1th. Blatchford is with me. I am dictating and he writing the " Introduction of the Geological Survey." When this work will be done Heaven knowg. It grows upon my hands, but it will be, I think, a very good affair when done. We have had a sad time with the canaries. One of the horses knocked their cage from its loop, on the chestnut in the grove. The structure fell and was crushed; the nest was scattered and the tiny eggs broken. Dick was stunned and deprived of speech. Jenny hopped out unharmed, and, pleased with liberty, flew from place to place, then to the lower limb of the tree, and ascended, as she became used to the exercise of her wings, to the topmost branch. Toward night Dick recovered his voice, and his partner, weary of fasting, was persuaded by him to return to his bed and board, in the temporary lodgment we had assigned him. ALBANY, July 15, 1842. I have floundered through a wearisome week, in which I have lost sight of everybody and remembrance of everything, except engrossing studies. My memoir of the progress of knowledge in the State ought to be a useful work, but, written in so much haste and mental perplexity, it may disgrace ita author and the State he so much desires to serve. However, the first pages lare in the press, and the labor is chiefly performed. There is relief, there- LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. fore, from the task, or at least a mitigation of it. I am to read a part of it two days hence before the commencement at Schenectady. The whole must be printed, pressed, and bound in the first volume of the Geological Report, before the Legislature assembles on the 16th of August. My message for that occasion is almost prepared. Last evening I attended a very interesting exhibition. The young ladies who graduated last year at the Albany Female Academy formed an association of alumna3, and now had a semi-public, semi-private celebration of their anni versary. The young ladies sat together by the side of the stage. The stage was occupied by the trustees and patrons of the institution. An address, writ ten by one of the young ladies, and a poem, the production of another, were read by the officers of the academy. It seemed to me that the occasion marked an advance in the progress of female education. When the commencement at Schenectady ends, I shall take the car and pro ceed thence to Auburn. ALBANY, July 17, 1842. It is a bright and lovely Sunday morning. I wish you and the boys were here, or I once more at ease with you at Auburn. My occupation here dis tracts and has wearied me. I had a visit from John Greig, his wife, and sister, the other day, on their return homeward from the East. There are all manner of conspiracies at Washington, among which one is, as I learn, to expel Philo C. Fuller from the Post-Office Department, that one more yielding to the pur poses of the President may take his place. I am disgusted with politics, yet how long will I remain so ? ALBANY, July 19, 1842. I am in the hands of the printers, who so slowly drag along that they chain me here, I know not how long. I have written and printed forty quarto pages, and have one hundred and sixty more to print, a little more than half of v^hich is ready for the compositor. The " book " is made, and its making is already deeply regretted. Nearly every one that has seen the proof has pointed out to me errors of facts, compo sition, or typography ; and of this painful and irritating criticism I have already had so much that I think I shall never attempt, at least gratuitously, another enterprise of that sort. Nobody can conceive the labor and sacrifice it has cost me ; yet, if it could have waited for a careful revision, I should have had cause to be proud of it. At the meeting of the " alumnae " of the Female Academy, referred to in his letters, the Governor had been called upon for some words of encouragement. He said : Your plan is a novel one, but it is not therefore wrong. Our system of gov ernment is experimental, and the progress of society is continually disclosing extraordinary results of that system. We have undertaken to educate, not one ex, but both sexes ; not one class or portion of society, but the whole com munity ; and since we desire universal female education instead of the refine ment of a portion of the sex, why should we reject the aid of those who, like you, have received so great a blessing, in extending its enjoyments to others? 3842.] THE ASHBURTON TREATY. 615 A letter of the 5th of July to Mr. Edwards and others, on the sub ject of the observance of the Sabbath, said : Every day s observation and experience confirm the opinion that the ordi nances which require the observance of one day in seven, and the Christian faith that hallows it, are our chief security for all civil and religious liberty, for temporal blessings, and spiritual hopes. I shall be most happy to cooperate in any proper measures which the friends of that sacred institution may adopt. In regard to New York citizens held as prisoners in Australia, he addressed Mr. Webster : You will recollect that, in the season of disturbances on the frontier of this State in 1837, a number of Americans who made inroads into Canadian terri tory were captured, some of whom were afterward executed, and others were transported to New Holland. The excitement in the Canadian provinces has subsided ; the hostile mani festations and feelings on this side of the frontier have passed away. There is now no ground whatever to apprehend their return. It has occurred to me that her Majesty s Government might think it not unworthy the dignity, nor inconsistent with the security of their country, to extend clemency and pardon to the prisoners remaining in New Holland, if their attention should be called to the subject. I beg leave to submit the subject for the consideration of the Executive, and to request that, if it shall be compatible with the relations of the countries, some expression in behalf of the prisoners may be made to the Government of Great Britain. The showing of such clemency as I have suggested would, I am sure, have a tendency to increase the feelings of kindness and friendship which it is so desirable should exist between the people of this State and her Majesty s subjects beyond our borders. Mr. Webster gave a dinner to Lord Ashburton on the occasion of the settlement of the Northeastern boundary question. The guests were the President and cabinet, Lord Ashburton and suite, Mr. Fox, and the other members of the British legation, the commissioners from Maine and Massachusetts, some leading senators, and the gentle men engaged in the boundary survey. Mr. Webster toasted " Queen Victoria," Lord Ashburton toasted " The President." The President gave " The commissioners, blessed are the peace-makers." The Secre tary of War, when toasted, said his business had been spoiled by the commission. The Whig meetings in the various wards in Albany, to choose dele gates to the State Convention, adopted resolutions denouncing Tyler, indorsing Clay, approving the administration of Governor Seward, and pronouncing in favor of the nomination of Bradish for Governor, and Collier for Lieutenant-Governor. Several county conventions adopted the same course. Mr. Clay continued to be nominated with more or less formality in various places. LIFE AND LETTERS. [1848- The evidences that the Administration had cut loose from Whig associations, or rather that the President would no longer bestow office upon those who no longer supported him, began to increase and multi ply. The post-office advertisements were taken away from the Whig papers ; postmasters were removed. A Tyler General Committee was organized in the city of New York. A Tyler State Convention was held at Columbus, Ohio, indorsing his course, and implying that they deemed his position a favorable one for a coalition with the Democrats. A mass Tyler meeting was also held in New York, and the " political guil lotine " was said to be at work in the custom-house and the depart ments at Washington. Congress continued in session, the tariff and land - distribution law occupying the principal part of the time. In the votes upon it, while the Democrats were nearly unanimous, the Whigs were divided, The mass of them supported, but some of the Southerners opposed it. It was passed at last, but promptly encountered the Executive veto. Though the Whigs could hardly have expected anything else, they broke out into loud condemnation of the President, who had " betrayed his party and deserted his principles." A committee of thirteen was appointed to report upon the course which the House ought to take. Ex-President Adams brought in an elaborate report, severely reprobating the President s action. Never theless the votes but too plainly indicated that the tariff could not be passed over the presidential veto. The House adopted the report by one hundred to eighty, and the resolutions against the veto by ninety- eight to ninety. In the veto, the President had stated as a ground of objection that the bill united two objects : the one, taxation ; the other, land distribution. As a last hope, the Whigs struck out the land-dis tribution clause, put tea and coffee among the free articles, and made various other amendments, in order to induce the change of individual votes, and in this shape passed it. In this amended form the bill now went to the Senate. Finally, on Saturday night, the Senate passed it by one majority ; the Northern Whigs all voting for it, and having the help of three Democrats, Bu chanan, Wright, and Sturgeon ; the Southern Democrats all voting against it, but the Southern Whigs dividing, Morehead and Crittenden going with the North. Then the land-distribution bill was also passed by both Houses with some modifications, and the adjournment was fixed for the next Wednesday. Lord Ashburton, having completed his diplomatic labors, was now about to return in the Warspite from New York. Before his de parture he made a visit to Albany. The treaty having been duly signed, was already on its way to Great Britain by the Great Western, in the hands of a special messenger. The Senate at Washington had ratified 1842.] THE EXTRA SESSION. 617 it by a vote of thirty-nine to nine, and the next day it was published. It was dated August 9, 1842. Two points of especial interest to Gov ernor Seward were, the tenth article, providing for the surrender of criminals over the frontier on requisition ; and the eighth and ninth, providing for combined action of the two Governments in regard to the slave-trade. Lord Ashburton arrived at Albany on the 29th from Bos ton, accompanied by Sir John Hay, the commander of the Warspite ; Seward, with Chief-Justice Spencer, spent the evening with him. The next day he left for New York on the morning boat. It was now reported from Rhode Island that some of the disbanded revolutionists, acting upon a chemical hint in one of the New York newspapers, "how to produce combustion in hay without detection," were setting fire to barns in the vicinity of Providence, and the name of " Barn-burners " was soon applied to all who sympathized, or were supposed to sympathize, in the Dorr movement. Seward, while giving his support and sympathy to the " Law-and-Order " party, warned them that it was unwise to allow the Dorr party to occupy high van tage-ground in favor of the extension of suffrage, and advised them to favor a more liberal constitution. CHAPTER XLIV. 1842. The Extra Session. Stoppage of Public Works. Repudiating State*. Carlin. The Hutch - bisons. The Millerites. Webster and Adams. Bradish and Bouok. Address at State Fair. Education of Farmers. THE Legislature had been called to meet on the 16th of August. The special purpose of this extra session was to divide the State into congressional districts in accordance with the new apportionment law. The 15th found the capital in active preparation for the session, and the Governor s message prepared and ready for delivery. The Legis lature met at the appointed day and hour. The members of the ma jority immediately proposed to confine the action of the session to the congressional apportionment, and thereupon arose a debate as to whether the customary message of the Governor should or should not be received. The message would be imbued with Whig doctrines, and recommend legislative action of some sort. The Democratic leaders neither wished to listen to the doctrines nor to take any action, except that for which they had been specifically called. In this debate Michael Hoffman, McMurray, and Swackhamer, took prominent part. Meanwhile, the proceedings of the New York 618 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. & Erie Railroad Convention at Owego were presented. The Senate laid them on the table by a party vote. Then the committee on appor tionment of districts presented their report. Then followed debate on the request to receive a petition for aid to the Erie Railroad. If they refused to receive it, they would be charged with denial of the " rights of petition." If they commenced receiving petitions, they would have begun legislative business. It was found before long impossible to hold a legislative session at the State capital, and at the same time refuse to hold the customary communication with the other branches of the government and with their constituents. Besides, wise as it might be in the leaders of the party to make the session brief, party discipline was hardly strong enough to induce members to vote for that policy when each of them had a constituency behind him, who were expecting him to act and speak in their behalf on a variety of subjects. Seward, in his letters to Auburn, noted the progress of these events: Executive Chamber, Tuesday Noon. Here I am, once more in controversy with the Legislature. The Assembly has sent me a message that they have convened to transact the business for which they adjourned. By annexing this qualifying clause, it is supposed they do not mean to receive, or perhaps that they will refuse to read, a message. To that communication I answered that I would transmit a message to both Houses when I should be informed that the Senate was convened. In the Senate, a motion was made to raise a committee to announce to me that the Senate was convened. Mr. Strong moved to amend the resolution so as to state that they had convened for the special object of adjournment. Upon this a debate has arisen, and it is not likely to end in some time. In the mean time the printers have the message. Quarter before one : the committee are coming, and the message goes in. They read it, and so the petty oppugnation ends. When the Governor s message was delivered and read, it was found to be short, but explicit in its recommendations of public policy, which were based upon the same principles as those which had gov erned his preceding messages. In regard to the suspension of the public works he said : For the first time in the quarter of a century which has elapsed since the ground was broken for the Erie Canal, a Governor of the State of New York, in meeting the Legislature, finds himself unable to announce the continued prog ress of improvement. The officers charged with the care of the public works have arrested all proceedings in the enlargement of the Erie Canal and the con struction of the auxiliary works. The New York & Erie Railroad, with the exception of forty-six miles from the eastern termination, lies in unfinished fragments throughout the long line of southern counties, stretching four hundred miles from the Walkill to Lake Erie. 1842.] THE LAST MESSAGE. 619 The Genesee Valley Canal, excepting the portion between Danville and Roches ter, also lies in a state of hopeless abandonment. The Black River Oanal, which was more than two-thirds completed during the last year, has been left wholly unavailable. As if this were not enough, two railroads, toward the construc tion of which the State had contributed half a million dollars, and public- spirited citizens large sums in addition, have been brought to a forced sale, and sacrificed at an almost total loss to the Treasury. The objects which the Legislature had in view in directing the suspension of the public works were declared to be, to pay the debts of the State and preserve its credit. The means of paying the debts are derived from revenues and taxes; but the State, so far from diminishing, has increased its indebtedness by becom ing liable to contractors for heavy damages, while, by discontinuing the neces sary enlargement of the Erie Oanal, the increase of revenues hitherto so con stant and so confidently relied upon for the reimbursement of the debts, is checked, and must ultimately cease. The fiscal officers of the State are not now able to negotiate loans, even at seven per cent. Previously to the present session of Congress, when as yet only one State had omitted to pay the interest on its debt, I called the attention of the Federal Government to alarming indications of a general failure by the indebted States, and invoked the constitutional efforts which that Government might effectually make to avoid such a catastrophe. . . . State after State, some with unavailing struggles, but others without any, have neglected to perform their fiscal engagements, and thus a dark stain is dif fusing itself over the escutcheon of our country. Under these circumstances 1 must adhere to the views before submitted, and invite their reconsideration ; and, to avoid any misapprehension, I recommend that the Legislature rescind the law directing the discontinuance of the public works. Referring to the Virginia search and seizure law, he renewed his re quest for authority to test its validity in the courts. The case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania, he was aware, was cited as favoring the cap ture, even without legal proofs, of persons claimed as slaves, but he said : The authority of the decision cannot be extended to cases presenting facts materially varying from those which marked the case thus adjudicated. It is, therefore, believed that the privileges of Tidbeas corpus and the right of trial by jury as yet remain unimpaired in this State, and that we are not obliged to retrace what is justly regarded as an important advance toward that complete political and legal equality which, being conformable to divine laws, and essen tial to the best interests of mankind, will ultimately constitute the perfection of our republican institutions. Finally, he added : In closing this, my last general communication to the Legislature, it would evince singular insensibility not to anticipate my retirement from the trust which I have received from my fellow- citizens. Far from indulging a belief that er~ rors have not occurred in conducting the civil administration of a State embrac ing such great and various interests, I am, nevertheless, solaced by the reflec- 620 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. tion that no motive lias ever influenced me inconsistent with the highest regard for the interests and honor of the State, and with the equality justly due to all its citizens. It may be that, in seeking to perfect the differences of knowledge, or in desiring to raise from degradation or wretchedness less favored classes, unjustly depressed by the operation of unequal laws or adventitious circum stances, or in aiming to carry into remote and sequestered regions the physical and commercial advantages already afforded to more fortunate and prosperous districts, I have urged too earnestly what seemed to me the claims of humanity, justice, and equity ; yet, remembering the generous appreciation which those efforts have met, I shall carry with me into retirement a profound sense of obli gation and a spirit of enduring gratitude. In the Senate, the Whigs lost no time in introducing measures to compel their opponents to give up their project of restricting the busi ness of the session to the apportionment. Tariff resolutions were in troduced by Dickinson, distribution resolutions were introduced by Root. Resolutions were moved for the relief of the Erie Railroad. The question of apportionment was referred to a committee composed of one Senator from each district. The Assembly referred it to a select committee of sixteen. In the Senate Mr. Faulkner introduced a resolution that the Comp troller should bid in the New York & Erie Railroad at the sale adver tised to take place at the Capitol, on the 1st of December, at an amount not exceeding the State mortgage. Mr. Ely moved to postpone the sale till the first Tuesday in May, which was adopted by a party vote of fifteen to twelve. Having thus voted on the Erie Railroad, it became difficult for the Senate to refuse to vote on other subjects. The Assem bly, however, continued a few days longer the restriction against any- other business but the apportionment, and this restriction itself occu pied many hours of tedious debate. Finally, on the 27th, the Assembly opened the restriction, and decided to consider the household-exemp tion act. The apportionment debate continued throughout the month. Mr. Carlin the artist, a deaf-mute, after having had instruction abroad, was now in Albany. He had just completed his illustrations of Irving s " Sketch-Book." He spent some time at Governor Seward s while painting his portrait. His talents and estimable character and disposition won the affection of the household, and the friendship thus formed was long continued. This summer, a family, consisting of three brothers and one sister, gave a concert in Albany, at Knickerbocker Hall, where they attracted special interest by the harmony of their voices and the judicious and patriotic taste of their selections. These were the Hutchinsons, who subsequently had a long and brilliant musical career. A gathering which excited more public attention was that of the believers in the Second Advent. It was held at a great tent on Arbor 1842.] THE PRISONERS IN VAN DIEMEN S LAND. 621 Hill, and lasted a week ; Miller himself was expected to be present. Elder J. V. Hines and others said that the object of the meeting waa to arouse the Church and the world to a sense of their peril, by sound ing the midnight cry. There was no room for debate on any subject ; time was growing shorter and shorter every moment. " All who love the appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ are requested to rally at this feast of tabernacles, where there will be preaching at ten, two, and seven o clock." The Senate and Assembly continued their debates on the details of the apportionment, each party desirous, as they usually are at such times, to secure such arrangement of districts as would help to obtain as many representatives as possible. On the 1st of September the Senate again voted down the proposal to relieve the Erie Railroad. On the 6th the two Houses finally concurred in a conference report upon the apportionment. This closed the principal business of the session, which came to an end by an adjournment on the 7th. Writing to Sir Charles Bagot in regard to extradition cases and the treaty, Governor Seward said : I have to return you my thanks for your persevering attention to the requeita for the surrender of fugitives from justice. I deein it a matter of congratulation that the new treaty will happily place this important subject on a basis which will be advantageous to both countries. The misguided Americans who had taken part in the " Patriot War," and were now prisoners at Van Diemen s Land, had been a fre quent subject of Seward s correspondence with the Government at Washington. Moved by his representations, and by various consider ations which showed the present to be a favorable opportunity for obtaining their release, Webster urged it in a letter to Lord Ashburton. Early in September the House of Representatives received a mes sage from the President, saying that he had signed the revenue bill. The land -distribution bill he still retained in his pocket. He also sent a protest, based on the report of the committee on the subject of his last veto. It recalled the similar case in 1834, when General Jackson sent in a protest, and the House had passed resolutions against receiv ing it, and for these resolutions Tyler had voted. Botts now moved the readoption of the resolutions of 1834, which was carried ; then the Congress adjourned. A committee of a hundred Whigs from Philadelphia met the mem bers at Wilmington with a steamboat, on which there was a dinner, followed by congratulatory speeches, as they proceeded up the Dela ware. At Elizabethport the next day several were received on a boat sent to bring them in triumph to New York. At Albany on the following 622 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. day the Whigs assembled to give the Whig members a fresh greeting. They arrived by the boat from New York, and amid salutes, music, and ringing of bells, were escorted to Congress Hall. In the evening they went to the Capitol, where a meeting was organized ; but, the Capitol proving too small, the meeting adjourned to the park. There Willis Hall welcomed them ; Fillmore, Caruthers, Thompson, and oth ers, made speeches in reply. The Whigs generally exulted in the belief that they had at last, and definitely, settled the national policy, on the basis of protection to American manufactures the policy so long and eloquently advocated by their leader, Henry Clay. Seward, while sharing in their satisfac tion, did not fully share in their hopes. In a letter to S. Newton Dex ter he wrote : .... I congratulate you upon the passage of a tariff bill. Although confi dence cannot rapidly revive while public credit is prostrate and we continue to suffer the evils of a want of currency, I nevertheless look to see a speedy im provement in trade, and the commencement of a rise in the value of lands, in consequence of the impulse which manufacturing industry will receive. Mr. Webster had also his ovations on his return home to Massachu setts, for a season of rest, after closing his labors on the English treaty. But perhaps the most enthusiastic reception of all was that of John Quincy Adams by his constituents. A great concourse at Weymouth thronged to the church to greet the " old man eloquent " with a pro cession, with music, and speeches of welcome. Mr. Adams, in his address, referred to Webster s continuance in Tyler s cabinet. Pointing to his success in dealing with the great for eign questions, the boundary, extradition, etc., Mr. Adams added : Upon being consulted by the Secretary of State as to the course he ought to pursue, I advised him to remain in his position, and I have never had cause to regret that he had done so." On the 7th the State Conventions of both parties assembled at Syra cuse. That of the Whigs nominated Luther Bradish for Governor, and Gabriel Furman, of Kings County, for Lieutenant-Governor. While the convention was in session, General Root moved the nomination of Clay for President, and it was made by unanimous acclamation. Reso lutions were adopted indorsing the public course of Seward ; they sai 3 that he " had proved himself worthy of the suffrages and confidence of the people whose interests he had labored with great assiduity and ability to promote." At the Democratic Convention, the candidates of 1840, Messrs. Bouck and Dickinson, were again nominated for Governor and Lieu tenant-Governor. Political meetings and conventions and the organ ization of Clay clubs went on actively throughout the State. 1842.] AGRICULTURAL ADDRESS. 623 Toward the close of September a long-promised military review took place at Troy of the One Hundred and Fifty- fifth regiment, commanded by Colonel Darius Allen. The Governor arrived about twelve o clock, accompanied by his staff and a numerous military party, among whom were Generals Viele, Cooper, Ten Eyck, Townsend, and Richardson, with their respective staffs. The review was preceded by a collation at the house of Le Grand Cannon, and followed by a military dinner at the Troy House. The State Agricultural Fair was to open toward the close of the month, and its chief feature was to be an address by Daniel Webster. The steamboats Swallow and Columbus had come from New York loaded with fruits, vegetables, and flowers. Great preparations were making at the grounds for the trial of agricultural implements. A ploughing-match was to take place in the spacious field attached to the Bull s Head Tavern, on the Troy road. Two days before the appointed time, the managers learned that Mr. Webster would be prevented by indisposition from coming ; so that there would be no address. In their perplexity they came to Seward to ask his help. There was no time for careful thought or study, but he cheerfully promised to deliver such hasty written and desultory remarks as he could have in readiness, rather than permit the Agricultural Society to have the mortification of a public disappointment. He went immediately to work at it. On the 29th it was duly delivered at the Capitol. In it he re marked : .... Thirty years before the Revolutionary War, at a celebration in Massachu setts, the matrons and maidens of Boston appeared on the Mall, each industriously plying the busy spinning-wheel. Need it, then, excite surprise that our sister State now excels with the shuttle, and extorts wealth from the floods, the ice, and the rocks? The character of a people maybe studied in their amusements. The warlike Greeks fixed their epochs on the recurrence of the Olympic games. The husbandmen of Switzerland at stated periods celebrate the introduction of tho vine. Well may we, then, continue ovations in honor of agriculture, which, while they give expression to national rejoicing, promote the welfare of our country and the good of mankind. In the course of the address he adverted to some of the popular fallacies current at the period, especially among the farmers. Thus in regard to the education of the rural population : .... There is not, as is often supposed, a certain amount of knowledge which it is profitable for the farmer to possess and dangerous to exceed. Learned men sometimes fail in this honorable pursuit, but not in consequence of their acquire ments ; and the number of sucb is vastly less than of those who fail through ignorance. It is a fact which, however mortifying, cannot be too freely con fessed or too often published, that an inferior education is held sufficient for those who are destined to the occupation of agriculture. . . . The domestic, so- 624 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. cial, and civil responsibilities of the farmer are precisely the same with those of every other citizen, while the political power of his class is irresistible. .... Let it be the task of individual effort to awaken the attention of our fellow-citizens to the importance of keeping the common schools open dur ing a greater portion of every year ; of a more careful regard to the qualifica tions of teachers ; of the introduction of the natural sciences into the schools ; of allowing the children of the State, at whatever cost, to persevere in the course of education commenced ; and, above all, of removing every impediment and every prejudice which keeps the future citizen without the pale of the pub lic schools. . . . CHAPTER XLV. 1842. The Croton Water Celebration. Spencer and Tyler. Election. A Whig Overthrow. Phi losophy of Defeat. The Murder of Samuel Adams. Case of John C. Colt. THE citizens of New York determined to celebrate with imposing ceremonies the introduction of the Croton water, the reservoirs and pipes for its distribution throughout the city being now complete. Seward accepted the invitation to be present, and became the guest of Mr. Ruggles, at his house on Union Square. On the morning of the 14th, the day appointed for the celebration, the new fountain in the square began throwing up a copious jet of water, and was sur rounded by an admiring crowd to witness the novel spectacle. That in the City Hall Park was similarly attended. It was a gala-day in Broadway. The procession marching down occupied two hours and a half in passing. The military portion of it was reviewed by the Gov ernor at Union Square ; then followed the fire companies, in apparent ly interminable succession, having engines decorated with flags and ribbons ; then came platforms with workmen carrying on their various trades, hammering, sawing, pipe-laying, etc. The printers, carrying Franklin s press, were presided over by Colonel Stone, as one of the oldest members of the craft, seated in Franklin s arm-chair, while the journeymen were striking off an ode written for the occasion by George P. Morris. The devices were varied and ingenious. There was a boat with children, representing the water-sprites of Croton Lake. There was a car with the miller and his men in dusty white coats surrounding the hopper, with a boy on horseback carrying the grist to mill. There were iron-workers constructing steam-engines ; butchers in great numbers on horseback, with sleeves and aprons ; tem perance societies innumerable, one with a banner on which was painted an upset decanter, with the inscription, " Right side up ! " One large car had an old-fashioned well-sweep and bucket, with 1842.] CROTON WATER CELEBRATION. 625 which a farmer was drawing up cold water and distributing it to the crowd. On another was a model of a Hudson River steamer, followed by Captains Brainard, of the South America ; McLean, of the Swallow ; Roe, of the De Witt Clinton ; Schultz, of the Utica ; and Vail, of the Albany. On one car the Croton workmen were in uniform, wearing hat bands inscribed " Pipe-layers." All day long bells were ringing, cannons firing, fountains playing, and balloons going up. In the evening the Astor House was illuminated, with a candle to each pane. A ball was given at Washington Hall, which was attended by the Governor and the mayor. There were toasts and speeches, of course. In his re marks Seward said : .... A new feature has been stamped upon the face of our metropolis. But yesterday it was the dusty trading-mart, unattractive and unadorned ; to day the pure mountain-stream gushes through its streets and sparkles in its squares. To the noble rivers with which it was encircled by Nature, is now added the limpid stream, brought hither by art, until in the words of the Roman poet, alike descriptive and prophetic, her citizens exult " Inter flumina nota, Et fontes sacros." .... This stupendous aqueduct, and these splendid fountains, so worthy of being enjoyed, are equally worthy of being paid for. They owe their existence to that mighty engine of modern civilization, public credit. Is there one among us " with soul so dead " as to doubt that this debt will be paid to the utmost farthing ? Is there one among this assembled multitude who would enjoy the benefit, yet basely shrink from the burden ? I give you, " The city of New York : one American community which, through a trying crisis, and amid discouraging embarrassment, has prosecuted the system of physical improvement, at the same time maintaining its credit and completing its works." The Whigs were destined this year to alternations of hope and fear. After their crushing disappointment at Washington, following Harrison s death and Tyler s vetoes, they had, nevertheless, under the inspiriting influence of Clay clubs, mass-meetings, and congressional oratory, come to believe that all was not yet lost ; that they might yet retain their sway in the State and in Congress, until, in two years more, the triumphal election of " Harry of the West " would restore them to their former power. Mr. Webster, on reaching Boston, had made a great speech at Faneuil Hall, in which he announced that he would not leave the cabi net at present ; that he opposed Tyler s vetoes, and claimed to be as good a Whig as any in Massachusetts. He urged his friends to sup port Tyler s measures so far as they were consistent with Whig prin ciples. " Where am I to go ? " was his question then, so often echoed and quoted since. 40 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842, Meanwhile, Mr. Clay was writing letters to various Whig conven tions, all graceful and clear, enforcing the well-known Whig principles with new illustrations, especially adapted to each region. It was a serious damper to enthusiasm when, a few days later, news came that, notwithstanding all their magnificent demonstrations, the Ohio State election had gone against the Whigs. About the 20th of October John C. Spencer, the Secretary of War, arrived in Albany. He was on an official tour, had been visiting West Point, and was on his way to the Watervliet Arsenal. Stopping over night at Congress Hall, he was visited by some of his old associates, with whom his personal relations were as yet undisturbed, although events seemed to menace their political ones. That night the Capitol was resounding with political music and oratory ; its halls illuminated, the streets blazing with fire-balls, and cannon echoing from the distance, for the Democrats were holding a mass-meeting there. The next night Horace Greeley was to speak there before a Whig gathering. The Secretary of War declined to participate in the demonstrations of either party ; though one felt that it had a claim upon his past, and the other upon his future. A day or two later a letter from him appeared, de fending the measures of President Tyler s Administration. Whig newspapers denounced it as an abandonment of his party. Mr. Web ster s speech at Faneuil Hall had not been received with favor, yet it had given the Whigs some comfort. But, while they half approved the Secretary of State, they had only condemnation for the Secretary of War. Washington Hunt was nominated for Congress in the Niagara dis trict, Christopher Morgan in the Cayuga one. Among the senatorial nominations of the Whigs were Willis Hall, in the Third District ; Thomas A. Johnson, in the Sixth District ; William K. Strong, in the Seventh ; and Harvey Putnam, in the Eighth. On the evening of the 7th, the night before the election, the streets in Albany swarmed with torch-light processions. Meetings and speeches lasted till midnight. Handbills were distributed in huge black letters,, calling the attention of voters to the fact that this year the election was for one day only. The election came and passed off quietly. By the evening of Wednesday the Whigs found that they had carried Albany City and County, and were elated with their triumph; but the next morning told another tale. Returns poured in, and nearly every report brought news of defeat in the various counties. The Whigs were beaten in the State, not by a meagre majority, but by an avalanche. They had saved only about thirty members of the Assembly and one Senator ; possibly nine or ten Congressmen. The Whig counties had given greatly-reduced majorities, and doubtful ones had gone Democratic. 1842.] THE PHILOSOPHY OF DEFEAT. 627 Even the Eighth District showed a great falling off. The official re turns showed that Bouck s majority was 21,982, although he had re ceived less votes than in 1840. This showed a falling off of forty thou sand in the Whig vote. To Christopher Morgan, a few days later, Seward wrote : ALBANY, November 12, 1842. Well, ray dear Morgan, you are beaten, although your efforts, not less than your high qualities, deserved a better result. I hope that you did not succeed in raising your confidence as high as you did mine, or rather as my affection did. It is not a bad thing to be left out of Congress. You will soon be wanted in the State, and that is a better field. I would have had you escape a defeat, not for its effect on your permanent success, but for your pride. But do not mind that ; one defeat hurts nobody, if the knight bore himself generously dur ing the combat, as you did. Jefferson and Jackson, Adams the elder and younger, had one defeat. Defeats are bad for the end of a political life, but not bad in the beginning. November 15th. Your letter of the 14th was received this evening. I am very glad to know- that you are recovering from the depression which a defeat in a popular elec tion produces, notwithstanding all our philosophy. Fortunately, you have not the mortification of having exposed unreasonable solicitude, but, on the con trary, was a candidate on compulsion. One of the vivid pictures given by Dickens, in his " Notes," was the description of his visit to the New York House of Detention. The keeper, who, like everybody else, had done his best to be courteous to the distinguished author, was distressed to find himself presented in quite another light. A friend wrote to Seward, and he replied : ALBANY, November 18, 1842. I have looked over Dickens s " Notes " of his visit to the New York House of Detention, and am satisfied that, while the faults in the conduct of that prison are not exaggerated, nor the dialogue untrue, it nevertheless tends to give unintentionally a wrong idea of the keeper. I do not doubt that Colonel Jones was his guide. He is one of the most candid of men, so you see he de nied nothing and concealed nothing ; nor did he prevaricate, but told the truth in a homely way. I recognize some of his customary expressions. But Dick ens so turns the dialogue as to make Jones appear bold, swaggering, and row- dyish. On the contrary, notwithstanding his vulgar forms of speech, he is gentle, modest, and respectful, and it would be easy for one who knew him to discover, by his answers, that he was abashed. Thanksgiving-time had again arrived, and he issued his usual procla mation. In it he adverted to national grounds for gratitude : Commotions which threatened to involve a sister State, and even the whole American family, in the calamities of civil war, and thus repress the growing 628 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. confidence of mankind in their capacity for self-government, have peacefully subsided, and our controversies with a European nation have been adjusted by a treaty securing reciprocal advantages, and directing the efforts of both states to the removal of a great reproach of Christendom, by the extirpation of the slave-trade. Replying to a note of apology from an invited guest, he said: When Nicholas was told who were to be my guests on Thursday, he selected a nice sirloin, ample for a judge, and delicate enough for you, my most fastid ious friend. On that day you did not come, nor did the Hon. William Kent, circuit judge, nor any other circuit judge, the Chief-Justice, nor any justice of the Supreme Court, by whom as well the said sirloin, etc., or certain pumpkin-pies, etc., and other etc., could then and there be tried by you, as be fore said ; whereupon the process between the parties is continued until the next Thursday, at the said dinner-table, etc. A few months before, the community had been horrified by the bloody details of a great crime in New York. Samuel Adams, a job- printer, had mysteriously disappeared. He had been traced as far as the business-office of John C. Colt, for whom he had been executing some work, and there trace of him was lost. Colt was a man of re spectable character and connections ; no quarrel was known to have existed between them, and suspicion of him seemed to have been pre cluded. After long, unavailing search, a box was found in the hold of a ship about to sail for New Orleans, from which a noisome odor pro ceeded. It was opened, and found to contain human remains, which were identified as those of the missing Adams. Step by step, and link by link, the clew thus found was pursued, until it was proved beyond possibility of doubt that Adams had gone to Colt s office, and, for some reason unknown, had been killed by him ; that his remains had been carefully packed in a box which Colt had addressed to some real or pretended persons in New Orleans, and had endeavored to send off by the ship. Arrested and indicted, he was brought to trial in New York, in January, Judge Kent presiding. He was defended by Dudley Selden and Robert Emmet. The dramatic incidents of the affair engaged universal attention. The newspapers teemed with facts and speculations. It was an absorbing theme of conversation. Medical experts were called to testify to the nature of the wounds, and the instrument by which Adams s skull had been re peatedly and horribly fractured. After his conviction and sentence to death, Colt s own version of the affair was given, describing the quarrel which was about an account of a few dollars, the murder, and his subsequent proceedings ; how he had thought of going to his brother, of going to the magistrate, of escaping, of firing the building, and finally of adopting the box as the surest and speediest method of concealing the deed. 1842.J CASE OF JOHN C. COLT. Colt was described as being about five feet eleven inches in height, firmly built, though slender, fine-looking, with light-brown, richly-curl ing hair, thirty-two years old, of courteous manners, gentle voice, dark- brown hazel eyes, and mild expression. He was a man of education, had many friends, and during his imprisonment had excited great pop ular sympathy. His life and his letters during his imprisonment were published. In this sketch it was stated that he had published works on book-keeping, as a teacher of which he had some celebrity. And now began to come appeals to the Governor for his pardon, or the commutation of his sentence. In answer to one of them, Sew- ard observed : The sympathy for convicted persons is not unnatural, and those who indulge it forget the danger to which it leads. When blood has been shed the whole community is alarmed ; every citizen rushes forward to apprehend the fugitive, and bring him to justice. The vindicatory spirit continues its work until the offender is convicted and sentenced, and then that spirit reposes and is satisfied. The opposite or antagonist spirit rises then, and, at first, timidly and appre hensively, approaches the Executive power, but, gaining confidence, becomes more and more importunate, until it happens in most cases that the Governor who conscientiously declines to pardon murder judicially established, and per haps unrepented of, comes to be regarded as himself the only manslayer in the transaction. My table groans with letters from gentlemen and ladies of acknowledged respectability and influence ; among the former are gentlemen of the press, and of every profession, recommending, urging, and soliciting the pardon of John C. Colt. Colt had been sentenced to be hanged on the 18th of November. As soon as the sentence was made known, the letters and petitions began to pour in upon the Governor. Nearly every morning s boat from New York brought visitors who had come to urge the same re quest. The pressure increased as it became manifest that the Gov ernor was indisposed to interfere with the due course of law. Alluding to the case in one of his letters home, Seward said : ALBANY, Saturday Afternoon. This has been a day of consuming anxiety. It seems that the fates have com bined against Colt to pervert his own mind and those of his counsel. His con fession, which it appears he prepared immediately after his arrest, and which was evasive and unsatisfactory, was suppressed until the proofs were closed, and then read to the jury. His counsel have been first before the Circuit Judge, then before all the judges of the Supreme Court at Rochester, and, defeated there, they applied to the Chancellor. Refused by him, they applied to me thirteen days only before the day of his execution, and the papers he submits show him a depraved man. His friends have been before me most of the day, and the rest has been spent in examining the papers submitted. 630 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. A week later he wrote : ALBANY, Saturday. You can have no idea of the fatigning weariness of the week spent in hear ing every form of application for pardon to Colt, and in studying the voluminous papers submitted. It is over now, and I have just time to give you a haity note before the mail closes. You will find the decision in Colt s case in the Journal. In this decision the Governor said : The proof on the trial left no doubt that Adams suffered death at about three o clock in the afternoon, on the 17th of September, by the hands of the accused in his apartments, in the second story of a spacious granite edifice on the corner of Broadway and Chambers Street, no other person being then present. It was rendered quite certain that the meeting of the parties on that occasion was neither preconcerted by them, nor anticipated by the accused. It was equally clear that he had made no preparation for so dreadful a deed ; and that until that time the parties had maintained amicable relations, and the accused had manifested no malice nor even unkindness toward the deceased. These circum stances bore strongly in favor of the accused. But, on the contrary, the deceased was a meek and inoffensive man. He was unarmed, and visited the prisoner, although under some excitement, yet without any hostile purpose ; and when the remains of the deceased were found, the head, fractured, with certainly five, and probably more, wounds, no longer retained the human form. . . . These wounds were manifestly the result of blows inflicted with a hatchet. A hatchet, which was one of the usual form, and in weight exceeded seven teen ounces, was found in the apartment, and identified as belonging to the ac cused. Each of the wounds would have been mortal, and whichever of them was first inflicted must have instantly deprived the deceased of consciousness and all power of resistance. Such a homicide could not have been accidental, or necessary for self-defense. It was committed with a deadly weapon in a cruel and inhuman manner, upon a defenseless and powerless man. Reason and law agree that the homicide could not have been innocent, justifiable, or excusable. Society could never exist if human life could be destroyed in such a manner with impunity. It was, then, a felonious homicide, and the jury had only to ascertain the degree of crime which had been perpetrated. By a presumption of law, that crime was murder, and it remained for the manslayer to show that the deed would bear a milder designation. The accused could show this only by proving that Adams was perpetrating or attempting to perpetrate a crime or misdemeanor, or that the wounds were inflicted without a design to effect death, in a heat of passion, in an attempt to resist murder, or self-defense against some great personal injury, of which the accused was in immediate danger. No such proof was given or offered. But since no other human eye witnessed the deed, nor human ear heard anything but a confused sound and a heavy fall, the jury were required to suppose it possible that Adams had assailed the accused, and that the crime was committed in self-defense. Even if this could have been assumed, it must also have been assumed, not only that there were an assault and an affray, but that the accused was in imminent danger, and in the heat of passion, suddenly excited, intense, uncontrollable, and allowing no time for reflection, and that he did not design, 1842.] THE EXECUTIVE DECISION. 631 to produce death, and was unconscious that such a consequence might follow his violence. But Adams was unarmed. He had never heen known to menace the ac cused or assail any other person. In strength, Adams at most did not excel the accused. If there was an affray, there would probably have been an outcry by one of the parties, unless the first blow terminated the strife by rendering one of them speechless as well as defenseless. If the accused had been in imminent danger, he could possibly have shown wounds or marks of an assault ; but he exhibited none. On the contrary, he carefully concealed a small and unimpor tant discoloration of the skin, accidentally discovered by Caroline M. Henshaw on his neck on the merning after the deed was committed. And even if an affray had been proved, could it be supposed that the passion of the accused had no time to abate, and his mind no time to relent, when the first blow had relieved him from the assailant, and each subsequent blow fell upon an unconscious and unresisting victim ? Whatever was the degree of crime, it was complete when life was extin guished, and could not be changed by the subsequent conduct of the accused. Yet his subsequent conduct was legitimately opened to the jury, for the light it might reflect on the deed he had consummated. The house was filled with tenants from the base to the roof. The narrow room of the accused was sepa rated only by thin folding-doors from an occupied apartment, and looked out on the corner of the streets. Even without leaving the presence of the dying or dead man, the accused could have instantly summoned a multitude ; but he in voked no witnesses. On the contrary, according to his own acknowledgment, he closed the only aperture through which he might be observed, stripped the deceased of the clothing by which the person might be identified, and without aid, and almost with superhuman efforts, wrapped the body in canvas, con tracted it with a rope, and deposited it in a box three and a half feet in length, and, standing upon the protruding knees, pressed them down by dislocating the limbs, until the box could be closed. After this was done, and night had come, the accused, with hands unaccustomed to such labor, washed the fioor, and carefully stained it with oil, and ink, and tobacco, to conceal blood which had been shed. He clandestinely cast the clothing and articles of property found on the person of the deceased, except his watch, into a sink, repaired to a bathing-house and washed the stains from his own dress, and then retired to his lodgings. Early next morning, before the usual hour for going abroad, he returned to the apartment and resumed his efforts to remove the evidences of the fatal transaction. He carefully fastened the box, labeled it with the ad dress of an imaginary person in St. Louis, to the care of imaginary persons in New Orleans, and carefully removed it from his apartment, and caused it to be conveyed to the ship which was expected to depart immediately to that port, and delivered it to the master, and took a receipt for it as for a parcel of merchandise. He had many associates in this city. To none of these persons did he reveal what had happened or what he had done. On the contrary, upon mature reflection, as he says, he avoided his brother, and took counsel only with himself. He gave Caroline M. Henshaw a false explanation of the reasons of his late return on the night succeeding the crime, and of his early absence on the next morning. To the persons who occupied the adjoining rooms he at first denied, and afterward falsely explained, circumstances which had excited sns- 632 L IFE AND LETTERS. [1842. picions, and day after day, while the friends of the deceased and his fellow- citizens were engaged in anxious inquiries concerning his fate, the accused visited the place where the deceased was accustomed to transact business, and remarked on his mysterious absence like a sympathizing friend. Nature suggests a mode of proceeding in every exigency, but not the same mode in exigencies so entirely dissimilar as those of guilt of murder, and con sciousness of having committed other forms of homicide. Guilt seeks conceal ment, misfortune sympathy, and innocence vindication. If the homicide had not been felonious, the first impulse of the accused, when he discovered the fatal consequences of his violence, would have been to invoke aid to the sufferer if living, or at least advice or sympathy for himself. If the blood which had been spilled did not accuse the prisoner, he would not have endeav ored to remove the stains it left. It seems impossible to suppose that an indi vidual guilty of only such a crime, and exposed to only such hazards, would go on for hours and days accumulating for his own destruction such a mass of the peculiar evidences of murder. . . . Society has been deeply shocked and justly alarmed for the security of life in the metropolis. A deliverance of the prisoner by Executive clemency would be an encouragement to atrocious crime. He wrote to Mrs. Seward : ALBANY, November 17, 1842. Now that the last act is done, and only the event remains to be contem plated, I find myself suddenly sinking from a state of excitement. It will never be known, and cannot be conceived, how much I have heard, read, thought, and felt, on that painful subject ; and yet how unjust and blind are human sym pathies ! In the jail at Lockport there is lying a condemned malefactor waiting his death, yet incapable of distinguishing day from night, and thus counting the hours as they carry him along toward an inevitable doom, and no one thinks of him. He is poor, a stranger, and an outcast. Colt has connections, relations, and associations, with the educated class. I believe you know the substance of his application to me. When the judge* refused him a new trial, his friends came with Willis Hall and delivered me sev eral letters. I detained Hall, and spoke freely with him as a friend and former counselor. The next day I learned that he was acting as an advocate. Then Judge Spencer came into town, and called to inform me that Colt was unjustly condemned. Dudley Selden and others met here Lewis Gaylord Clark, and three surgeons from New York, who brought a head and a hatchet, and demonstrated preparatively before the medical faculty of Albany ; after which rehearsal they demonstrated to me how Adams might have deserved to be murdered. The next day Eobert Emmet, David Graham, Willis Hall, and Samuel Stevens, appeared with witnesses newly discovered. The decision was promulgated on Friday. On Sunday I heard and denied an application for a respite. On Monday I lis tened to appeals from wandering philanthropists without knowledge ; and with especial attention to a phrenological professor who demonstrated that Colt was a murderer, but he was so because society had cultivated the wrong bumps ; and therefore society ought to be hanged, not he ! Yesterday came the application from a seditious meeting of the bar in New York, which was decided and of course overruled. This morning it appears that Colt s counsel have endeavored / THE V f UNIVERSITY 1842.] SEQUEL OF THE COLT CASESv,^ ^ to intimidate the sheriff, and that all manner of inflammatory appeals have been made to the populace. I think the sheriff will perform his duty ; but he has long since entered his protest with me against the execution of the sentence on the ground of the injustice of the verdict. If he refuses, I shall have further and painful duty. Among the mass of letters appealing in Colt s behalf were many anonymous and some threatening ones. One ran as follows : You have time to grant a pardon to him whom your prejudices are about to deprive of a life as dear to him as yours is to you. Yes, you have full time, but not the disposition ; you thirst for the blood of a fellow-being, and you may drink it to the last drop ; but, by the Almighty God, into whose presence you usher a poor soul with a load of sin upon his head, by the hopes I entertain of immortality hereafter, I swear that one who has lived for him, and will at any time die for him, holds you responsible to the very tittle for what may happen to him ! Should he suffer an ignominious death, his corpse shall not be interred before your life pays the forfeit, and you follow him to an eternal hell ! You may disbelieve me now, but too soon, perhaps, will death cause you to regret the past. As for Kent, his fate is sealed, provided John C. Colt is hanged. I say BEWAKE ! November lUh. I must still continue the tragic story that ran through my last. The day after I had refused to depart from the course of the law, an application was made to the Chancellor to reconsider. He denied the same. Colt spent that day (Thursday) in writing, some say a review of my opinion ; others say a paper to remain sealed until his child arrives at age. He was particularly disappointed in my second decision. The counsel had procured, strangely enough, the insertion of their protest in the Tribune of Thursday morning ; but when it was discov ered that public feeling was excited by this dangerous attempt to overawe the sheriff, they suppressed the paper in their city edition, and sent it only into the country. It came back upon them from the country yesterday morning, and roused a very hostile feeling against the Tribune. The warrant directed the execution to take place " between sunrise and sunset." Colt asked that it might be postponed until four o clock, and the request was acceded to. At twelve o clock Caroline M. Henshaw visited him, and they were married. A few minutes before four, he asked to be left alone fifteen minutes, and Saturday NigU. I was interrupted in my narrative, which I wrote from verbal intelligence. My letter is delayed, and the newspapers will now tell you the whole. It is a wild and fearful tragedy calculated to disgust us with humanity. The morning boat had brought the sequel of the tale. Up to eight o clock on Friday morning, .Colt and his friends had been confident that the respite would be obtained ; but the sheriff, notwithstanding the protest of Colt s counsel, was reluctantly proceeding with the prep arations for the execution. During the morning, Colt s brother and his counsel had passed some time in his cell. In accordance with his LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842. request, the execution had been deferred until the last moment ; and at noon he was married to Caroline M. Henshaw, by the Rev. Mr. An- thon, who remained with him till two o clock. Colt, having taken leave of his friends, then requested to be left alone. Just before four o clock, the sheriff, with his deputy and the clergyman, went to the cell. They found Colt on his bed, with a dirk thrust between his ribs into his heart. The doctors pronounced him dead. At that moment the cupola of the prison was discovered to be on fire. The cry went out, " Colt has committed suicide, and the Tombs are on fire ! " Speedily thousands were added to the thousands already surrounding the prison, whose dome was in flames. Soon the fire was extinguished, and a coroner s inquest was held over the body. The fire was believed to be designed to create such alarm and confusion, at the hour appointed for the exe cution, as would allow the prisoner s rescue or escape. There was great excitement throughout the city, many theories and stories, that an attempt had been made to bribe the keepers to let Colt escape in female attire ; that he had so escaped, and that the body found was one of a dead convict substituted for his own. Great suspicion was, not unreasonably, created by the conduct of the keepers in leaving him alone for an hour and a half. A day or two later came additional details. When the volume of smoke and flame burst from the cupola, there was a tremendous rush of those inside to get out, and of those outside to get in. The City- Hall bell struck the alarm at precisely the hour of execution. The engines were on the ground, but could not reach the cupola, and it burned until the whole was consumed down to the roof. There seemed no good ground for believing it the work of an incendiary. The watch man was in the habit of keeping a fire there, and, on that day, had made a large one, and then went out to see the execution ; the stove pipe had become red-hot and set fire to the roof. The coroner s inquest elicited nothing as to how Colt obtained the knife with which he killed himself. At the inquest, the clergymen, doctors, turnkeys, and the brother and wife of the deceased, were ex amined; but there was no clew to the knife. The jury rendered a ver dict accordingly. The body was given to the friends for interment, and the tragedy closed. For months afterward, perhaps even for years, there were many who were incredulous of the suicide, and believed Colt to be still living in some foreign land. The Rev. Dr. Anthon published a statement of his interview with Colt ; and said he had left him impressed, by his language and behavior, that he was repentant, was prepared for death, and would submit to the sentence. He had believed him when he said that "he wished to be left alone in order that he might pray." Sheriff 1842.] NEW YORK AND THE PUBLIC LANDS. 635 Hart submitted to the Board of Aldermen an anonymous letter re ceived by him on the 17th, signed W. W. W., inclosing ten one-hun dred-dollar bills, asking him to refuse to hang Colt, and saying that an equal amount would be sent to him afterward. Dr. Hosack, who conducted the post-mortem, examination, found that the suicide had been premeditated and arranged with mathe matical accuracy. A circle two inches in diameter had been cut out through his clothing, so that nothing might interfere with the knife, and its point penetrated the heart in its centre. ALBANY, November 25, 1842. You need have no concern about the right in Colt s case. Had he died after the manner of a Christian, he could not have raised the least distrust on my part of his being a murderer. After all my efforts to study the case thorough ly, I did not fully realize the size and depth of the wounds. Five mortal wounds with such an instrument, when the first must have deprived his victim of the power to defend or supplicate ! Yet I think that, with some reserva tions, he made himself believe that he was not a murderer, making a definition of murder to suit himself, and in no respect conforming to the law. So he said that he inflicted the death in self-defense ; but he was unable to show any form of attack which rendered such a defense necessary. Read his statement to Mr. Anthon ; you will see that he spoke only iu general terms. He has never given any history of the affray in detail, as an innocent man might. It is horrible, but not more so for me than to resist the importunities of a poor, forsaken wretch with whom none sympathized, and for whom no efforts were made. But, thank Heaven, I am through with those painful duties ! CHAPTER XL VI. 1842-1843. Last Month in Office. Dr. Sprague. Colonel Webb. A Christmas Pardon. Lewis Tap- pan. Half a Cord of Papers. Case of Philip Spencer and Mackenzie. A Week at the Eagle Tavern. Governor Bouck. CONGRESS met on the 5th of December. The exchequer scheme, the bankrupt laws, the relations between Congress and the President, the British treaty, and the hostilities between Texas and Mexico, all continued to engross attention at Washington, and consequently throughout the country. Lewis Benedict, who had been appointed by the Governor to pro ceed, as the agent of the State, to Washington, to receive New York s share of the proceeds of the public lands, returned from the national capital with eighty-four thousand nine hundred and seventy-four dol lars, the first fruits of that measure, and the money was paid over to Comptroller Flagg, to be deposited in the Treasury. 636 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842- 43. Writing to Lewis Tappan in regard to the reclamation of a kid napped person, Seward said : I know no one who would more willingly undertake, or more perseveringly pursue, the labor of benevolence asked in the inclosed letter, than yourself. Since my coming into office a law has been passed which authorizes the Governor to appoint agents to reclaim citizens of this State sold into slavery in other States. I do hereby appoint you agent for the purpose of restoring the person described in the letter to his freedom, if you shall find satisfactory evidence that he is a citizen of this State. This appointment will secure your indemnity for your necessary expenses. George W. Patterson, the former Speaker of the Assembly, had now taken up his residence at Westfield, Chautauqua County, and had consented to accept the charge and management of the Chautauqua purchase. He had entered upon the duties of the agency, and was gradually but steadily winding up its business, receiving the final pay ments from the purchasers of the lands, and giving them conveyances of title. The American Life and Trust Company, having become em barrassed, and forced to go into liquidation, had made an assignment of its property. The securities it held, payable by the owners of the Chautauqua purchase, were now transferred to its English bondholders. The Rev. Dr. Sprague, of Albany, had a fondness for collecting autographs, and the Governor s extended and promiscuous correspond ence offered an ample field for such researches. In answer to a note from him, Seward said : I am too much of a philosopher to suppose any human passion is extirpated by resistance, or by experience of injurious consequences. My correspondence shall be open to you as " melting charity." You will find no exploding guns concealed in bundles ; and you may be assured that, whatever errors you may commit, you will never find my autograph in the shape of a hostile communi cation. Just now, and until the close of the year, I shall be engaged in arrang ing my papers. I shall remain here a few days after that, and thus you must come and spend a quiet day with me, and I shall be able to extract more of sweet philosophy from your conversation than you will derive from all the au tographs of all the politicians in the country. Colonel Webb had not fully recovered from the wound received in his duel with Marshall, before he was indicted for accepting the challenge. The indictment was based upon an old and very stringent statute, enacted after the death of Alexander Hamilton by the hand of Aaron Burr. That event had, more than any law, contributed to the revul sion of popular sentiment in the State against the practice of dueling, and the law had slumbered, nearly forgotten, for over thirty years. Colonel Webb having pleaded guilty, the next phase in the case was the appearance, one morning, of a couple of gentlemen who came 1842- 43.J LAST MONTH IN OFFICE. 637 up from the steamboat to the Governor s office, accompanied by a cart bringing a barrel. This, when unloaded and opened, was found to con tain a mammoth petition for Webb s pardon, with many thousand sig natures, headed by the name of ex-Governor Morgan Lewis, who, as the occupant of the Executive chair, had signed the law under which Webb was now convicted. For convenience in carrying, and as the only practicable mode of reading it, the petition was mounted on two rollers in a frame, and by turning a crank each sheet was passed in succession under the eye. Mr. Hoskins, the assistant editor of the Courier and Enquirer, who came with it, said that the names were gathered hastily, nearly everybody signing to whom it was presented, political opponents, as well as friends and even the judge and jurors ; and he had no doubt that if there had been more time many other thousands would have appended their names. Similar petitions, large, though of less dimensions, were brought from Hudson, Troy, Cherry Valley, Geneva, and elsewhere. The Governor issued the pardon on the following Wednesday. It was based upon the condition that he should not again violate any of the laws designed to prevent dueling. The pardon recited its reasons, viz. : Because he was not the challenger : because the challenger, though holding a high representative trust, has not been brought to justice, and is not amenable to the laws of this State : because the combat was not mortal, and the chal lenged party sincerely manifested a determination to avoid depriving his adver sary of life, and he was unharmed : because the said James Watson Webb vol untarily submitted himself to justice, waving all advantage of legal defense, etc., etc. : wherefore, it is represented to us that it would be partial and unequal to enforce in the present case penalties which may have been regarded as ob solete. Two or three days later, the Courier and Enquirer contained a card from Colonel Webb, publishing the pardon, expressing his grateful ap preciation of the sympathies exhibited by his friends and fellow-citizens, and his acknowledgments to the press. The Evening Post, a few days afterward, contained a poetical travesty of the pardon., attributed to the pen of Bryant, whose humor ous points none appreciated more heartily than the Governor at whom it was aimed. Few pardon cases could now be disposed of. While not desirous to throw upon his successor any responsibility which more properly devolved upon himself, Seward could not take premature action. Ap plicants for pardon, like those for office, turn their faces toward the "next Governor," of whom they know little, and therefore hope for much. The last pardon that he issued while in office was one accompanied by a letter to the daughter who had solicited it, in which he said : 638 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842- 43, I have directed your mother to be released from the prison on Christmas-day. If you shall be able to visit Sing Sing on that day, you will have the pleasure of conducting her to her home. She will be indebted to you for a great mitigation of her punishment. I hope she will prove herself, hereafter, to be worthy of the respect and affection of her children, and they may never again be subjected to so severe a trial as that through which they have passed. Seward now commenced preparations for leaving Albany. His family had already preceded him to Auburn, except one of his sons. His private secretary was busily aiding him to close his correspondence, to arrange his papers, and turn over the business of the department to Governor Bouck. His letters to Auburn described the occupations of his closing month of official service : ALBANY, December 1st. Webb is pardoned, for reasons and on conditions which, I doubt not, will soon appear in the public prints. He writes in a grateful spirit. I will send you to-morrow a pamphlet containing real or pretended conver sation of Colt s, in which he attributes my action to pique and resentment for political abuse of me four years ago, when I was a candidate. This is the first I ever heard of it. ALBANY, December 2d. Yesterday I met Governor Marcy at the Court of Errors. Feeling drawn toward him by recollections not unworthy of either, I was courteous to him. He mentioned that I procured the degree of LL. D. for him in 1839, and I have invited him to sit for his bust in 1842. December 5th. I am at work busily, though quietly, preparing to leave this place in the first week in January. We are all buried in the snow, as of course you are. Prof. Keed, of Schenectady, came over on Saturday night. I attended him to Troy yesterday, and heard him preach twice. We dined at George Warren s. Jenny has gone, and we are all sad. She had become so gentle, and since the grass withered and the twigs dried up she has been so domestic, that I loved her more than ever. I got two crockery crates this morning, inverted one over the other, lashed them together, supplied the cage with a floor and soft bed, furnished her with a loaf of bread in pieces adapted to her teeth, and she went off eating and unconcerned to the boat. She goes to a kind master. ALBANY, December ^th, I am much occupied. As I told you, it was necessary to examine, arrange, and preserve, all my papers. This is no slight affair. When closely filed, they will be almost as large as half a cord of wood. These duties, with the ordinary official labors, confine me very closely, and will extend into January, perhaps. A new view of the subject of my future occupation has occurred to me to day. The staying about Albany seems now more disagreeable to me than the discomforts of business at Auburn. I now think that I shall be content to go into my old office at Auburn, and take direct hold of such law-business as shall come to me. To supply myself with occupation of a higher order than the prac tice of the law, for such spare time as I may find, I think I can employ myself 1842- 1 43.] GOVERNOR BOUCK. in writing a commentary upon American government, politics, and law, which would be a work not unworthy of the consideration I have acquired. I have consulted nobody about this plan, and may change it to-morrow. I need not say that I shall cling to it fondly, because it will leave me liberty to remain with you and such of the boys as we can keep with us. Weed has gone to Saratoga, to defend himself in one of Cooper s libel-suits. He returned only on Monday night. It is among the pleasing reflections upon my retirement from public life that I shall be able to be useful to him. Such generous, faithful friendship as his deserves not to be always taxed. Mr. Mooney has completed his picture for the City Hall. I am not sorry that you cannot see it ; you would not like it ; it is as stern as " Old Hickory." Fred, Henry, and Rogers, all were surprised to see a presentment of me in such a character ; but Rogers undertook to ascertain whether the picture was just. He was with me when a man insisted on a pardon that I thought it wrong to grant, and Rogers acknowledged that the picture was just to my official appear ance. The artist has made for you a picture presenting a more gentle aspect, which I think you will be pleased with. ALBANY, December 17, 1842. The staff gave me a dinner on Thursday. To-day I have, strange to tell, resolutions most laudatory and enthusiastic from the Whig Young Men s Gen eral Committee in New York, the same body which elected their chairman out of spite against me, and last summer turned my poor bust out-of-doors. It seems to be working so, and I am like to have atonement for the unkindness I have heretofore suffered from those who owed me better feelings. I am at work more busily than ever, and still looking with impatience to the end, when I shall go straight to Auburn, and make my home there in con tent. Governor Bouck has not yet come to town. He will find trouble enough before he gets through his first term. ALBANY, December 25d. The signs of the change that the New-Year brings in multiply. Governor Bouck arrived here on Saturday ; on Tuesday he called upon me. His manners are easy and fascinating, and I think that he lacks neither dignity nor grace ; but my taste, you know, differs from the prevailing one. He is evidently a kind, honest, amiable, and sagacious man. He was at first quiet, reserved, and manifested a sense of restraint. I told him much that it was important to know, tendered to him every explanation and aid, and assured him that, do as he might, I would never write at him in the newspapers as my predecessor had written against me. The good man relaxed, went with me to the Geological Museum and the several departments, where Colonel Young and Mr. Flagg dis cussed political questions in my presence, and with such deference to my opin ion that my successor forgot I was an opponent. His house is neatly furnished with Mrs. Dix s furniture. Mrs. Bouck came to town a day or two since ; 1 call upon her to-morrow. The Governor and Lieutenant-Governor Dickinson called here to-day while I was calling on Governor Marcy. We all met there ; and, having killed off so many Governors, I concluded to give no quarter ; so I, to-night, called at Congress Hall to return Dickinson s visit ; thence I paid my visit to Mrs. Bradish, and to him that should have been the Governor. 640 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842- 43. "We are doing great execution in the moving line ; books, maps, papers, etc., are going into boxes. The carriage-house at Auburn will receive all that is valuable next Saturday or Monday week, and the auctioneer will have the rest. 1 shall be able to follow my affairs in a few days at farthest. Seward was always averse to lingering near the capital after the expiration of his term of office. He compared the public men, who re mained at the seat of government when their functions had ceased, to actors " lagging superfluous on the stage," or ghosts revisiting old haunts, where they can accomplish nothing, and are in the way of the survivors. He was impatient to start at once for Auburn at the close of his official term. About the middle of December, the United States brig Somers arrived at New York, and immediately the startling news was spread that, soon after her departure from the African coast, a mutiny had broken out on board, headed by Midshipman Spencer, a son of the Sec retary of War, which had drawn off forty or fifty of the crew. Spencer and two others were sentenced to death and hanged, by Captain Mac kenzie s order, at the yard-arm. It was further stated that solemn oaths had been entered into by the conspirators, who signed papers drawn up by Spencer, partly in Greek letters. Spencer was only nine teen years old, had received his warrant as midshipman in November of the year before, and was in the spring attached to the Brazilian squad ron. The commanding officer of the Somers was Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, a brother of John Slidell. The first-lieutenant was Ganse- voort, of Albany, and there were five or six midshipmen among them two sons of Commodore Perry, and a nephew of Commodore Rodgers. For a week the papers were filled with details and conflicting opinions ; some accepting with credulity the story of Spencer s guilt, others severely denouncing the captain, charging him with having yielded to absurd fears, and having committed unnecessary and wanton murder, when he might have brought the accused home for trial. A long and scathing article in the Madisonian in regard to the case, signed " S.," was attributed to the pen of the agonized father himself. As further intelligence came out, most of the stories first put in circulation were found to be grossly inaccurate. The Government ordered a court of inquiry, consisting of Commodores Stewart, Jones, and Dallas, with Ogden Hoffman as judge-advocate, to commence their sittings on Wednesday the 28th, on board the North Carolina at Brooklyn. ALBANY, December 23d. You have read all that has transpired concerning the awful calamity that has befallen the Spencers. Was ever a blow more appalling? I, of course, knew Philip only as friends know our children. I should as soon have ex pected a deer to ravage a sheepfold. There are all manner of reports from Washington concerning the manner in which the parents receive this last sad 1842-43.] END OF OFFICIAL TERM. blow, but I have no curiosity on the subject. I know that Nature has given no- firmness to resist the immediate shock to the mother, but time may heal and obliterate the wound. The card which Mr. Spencer has published (or rather his communication) shows that his iron nerves were proof. Mr. Weed is at Washington, but I have no information from him. ALBANY, Sunday, December 25th. Weed writes from Washington that Mrs. Spencer is heart-broken, and her husband scarcely less. That article in the Madisonian was MB. Weed says that the papers sent to Washington do not show a necessity for the execution, and that the conduct of Mackenzie, as ascertained from these papers, appears to have been cowardly and murderous. This may all be, and yet the name and fame of Spencer be as irretrievable as his life. Mackenzie married a daughter of Morris Robinson, one of my Chautauqua associates, and brother-in-law of John Duer. I called yesterday on Mrs. Bouck. She has a daughter who was educated at the Crittenden School here, and who will soon be a belle. The nearer I come to Auburn, the more I foresee the necessity for a library and study in the house. I will keep a law-office in connection with somebody ; but nights and mornings and Sundays I must have a place. I would not have clients there, nor clerks ; but only desire it for a private study. To-morrow morning I remove to the Eagle Tavern. EAGLE TAVERN, ALBANY, December We are so far on our way to Auburn. The mansion is deserted by all but Nicholas and Harriet, little Harriet and the mice. The furniture will leave here on Monday next ; we follow as soon as we can. At the Eagle Tavern, with writing-chair and papers, he occupied a parlor as his office for the remaining days of his term. It was thronged with visitors, but not unwelcome ones. Those who visit Governors from motives of interest or selfishness no longer troubled him, for their attention was turned to the " rising sun." Instead, his visitors now were friends or strangers who came, not to solicit favors, but to give assurances of esteem, express regrets for his retirement, or good wishes for his future. " On the whole," he remarked, " I have never found my official position so endurable, or received so many gen erous and kindly words, in the whole four years that preceded, as I have in the last four weeks." Mr. Underwood, his private secretary, had carefully filed in alpha betical order, or bound in volumes, his private correspondence and documents, and all was arranged for shipment to Auburn. At such times the absence of missing volumes from the library is noted, and the Governor asked General King to put a paragraph in the Evening Journal, saying that he had lent a folio volume from his set of Michel Chevalier to some friend, but to whom he had forgotten, and requesting such friend, if the paragraph should meet his eye, to return it. The next evening General King walked in with the volume 41 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1842- 43. under his arm, saying : " Here, Governor, you see the benefits of the advertising system. After I had written and published the notice in the Journal yesterday, I went home, and, looking over my book shelves, found I had borrowed your volume myself." The Whig newspapers now came to him by every mail, with grace ful and kindly editorial tributes. A farewell letter to Weed closed the year : ALBANY, December 31, 1842. The end has come at last. My successor and the New-Year come together. He has the keys and the seal, and I have only recollections and reflections. Those which crowd upon me are different from what I anticipated ; I looked for ennui, if not for regret ; but there is nothing of these. The thousand perils through which I have passed, the thousand enemies by whom I have been opposed, the hundreds by whom I have been causelessly hated, and the many whom I have unavoidably or imprudently offended, rise up before me ; and yet I am safe ; and if friends who never nattered when I had power are not false now when I am powerless, I am more than safe. My public career is success fully and honorably closed, and I am yet young enough, if a reasonable age is allotted to me, to repair all the waste of private fortune it has cost. Gratitude to God, and gratitude and affection toward my friends, and most of all to you, my first and most efficient and devoted friend, oppress me. Without your aid how could I have sustained myself there ; how have avoided the assaults to which I have been exposed ; how have secured the joyous reflections of this hour? But I did not mean to say any of these things. I felt that I could not leave you to suppose what, after all, you would not suppose, that I did not feel as I ought. When Seward descended to breakfast on Sunday morning, it was with an unmistakable air of cheerfulness, almost of exultation, at find ing himself once more a private citizen. The guests at the table of the Eagle were most of them Whigs ; they had therefore deemed the day not one to be rejoiced over, and, until he entered, were silent and dull ; but long before the meal was over he had infused his own good spirits into the company, and was humorously imitating the querulous tone in regard to public officers that had been adopted so often toward himself. He occupied his accustomed seat at St. Peter s, and passed the remainder of the day quietly in his room. The next morning, Monday, was to be celebrated as New-Year s-day. At ten o clock Nicholas brought the horses to the door, and drove the ex-Governor to the side-door of the Capitol for the last time, accom panied by his adjutant-general and private secretary. The hall was thronged with people to witness the inauguration. Rogers was still at the door of the Executive chamber, and going in they found there Governor Bouck with his personal friends, Lieutenant-Govern or Dickinson, the Secretary of State, the Chief-Justice, and others. After a brief exchange of greetings, both parties proceeded to the 1842- 43.] THE NEW GOVERNOR. 643 head of the staircase in the great hall, where the Chancellor adminis tered to Governor Bouck the oath of office. As he laid down the book, Seward stepped forward, and, shaking him by the hand, congratulated him upon the high distinction conferred on him by the people, and ex pressed the hope that his administration might redound as well to his own honor as to the prosperity and happiness of the State. Governor Bouck thanked him for his courtesy arid good wishes, and, exchanging bows, they separated. So unusual had any such proceeding hitherto been, that the audience, taken aback, stood in open-mouthed surprise at the spectacle of such an exchange of courtesies betweeen a Whig and a Democratic Governor. The custom thus introduced, however, commended itself at once to popular good taste; and since then the in coming and the outgoing Governor exchange brief salutatory speeches. Governor Bouck and Lieutenant-Governor Dickinson went over to the gubernatorial residence on Washington Street, where a concourse of visitors was already awaiting them ; and the reception of citizens and strangers, civic and military, with its hand-shaking and compliments, continued through the day. At the Eagle, the ex-Governor s parlor, on the first floor, was also thronged throughout the morning. Personal and political friends, strangers and opponents curious to see how he took the loss of power, helped to make up the crowd. Many interesting and some pathetic scenes occurred, for with many it was their farewell interview with a friend they had learned to esteem and admire. The Burgesses Corps and the Military Association came, to visit their ex-commander-in-chief . The Legislature met on Tuesday morning. The Lieutenant-Gov ernor took the chair in the Senate. The Assembly organized by the election of George R. Davis, of Troy, as Speaker ; the Whig minority voting for Willis Hall. The Argus of the morning announced the Governor s staff and other appointments. The evening usually brought Weed, Benedict, King, and other prominent Whigs, together in the parlor at the Eagle. These evening hours were devoted, as Seward used to say, " very largely to smoking and scandalum magnatum" During the day he passed such intervals as occurred between visits in answer ing letters and preparing for final departure from town. The prevailing topic in political circles was the message of the new Governor, and the action of the dominant party in the Legislature. The opinions of Whigs and Democrats were, of course, irreconcilable on the subject of the suspension of the public works ; but it very soon be came manifest that opinions, even among the Democrats themselves, were not entirely harmonious. A considerable portion of the party had begun to doubt whether the stoppage was not an unwise step. Governor Bouck, in his message, endeavored, as judiciously as pos sible, to ward off conflict of views, while adhering to the platform laid 644 LIFE A ND LETTERS. [1842- 48. down by the convention which nominated him. He said : " That the State has the ability eventually to complete all her works which have been commenced, cannot be questioned. But great caution should be observed in increasing the State debt, already too large." Much interest had been felt in what Governor Bouck would say about the delicate and difficult questions of the Virginia controversy, the antislavery laws, trial by jury, etc. But on these he took un equivocal party ground, that such laws were repugnant to a faithful discharge of constitutional obligations ; adding, " I submit whether these laws ought, any longer, to have a place upon the statute-book." Adverting to the decision of the United States Supreme Court in the case of Prigg vs. Pennsylvania, he expressed his concurrence in the opinion that stealing a slave in Virginia was a crime for which the offenders ought to be delivered up by New York. So, on all questions involving State rights and Democratic doctrines, he went with his party. On those which were not the subject of party controversy, he recommended wise and proper legislation. No reference was made to the Virginia search-law. The colored citizens of Albany held a meeting in the vestry of the Hamilton Street church. Among them were Primus Robinson, the Pauls, V. Latimore, Stephen Myers, and W. M. Topp. A well- written address accompanied their feeling resolutions, in which they remarked that it was " not for vain ostentation, but that they deemed it their duty to thank their benefactor in behalf of those who cannot speak for them selves, and who have so few advocates to speak for them." Seward, in his acknowledgment, said : Only time can determine between those who have upheld and those who have opposed the measures to which you have adverted. But I feel encouraged to await that decision ; since, in the moment when, if ever, reproaches for in justice should come, the exile does not reproach me, the prisoner does not exult in my departure, and the disfranchised and the slave greet me with their salu tations. In reply to a similar letter from colored men in New York, J. Mc- Cune Smith and others, he remarked : I may say, without egotism, that I shall cherish among the pleasing recollec tions of my public life the remembrance that I received the thanks of those whose protection required a sacrifice of some personal advantage, and a conflict with prejudices matured by age, and sustained by political combinations. The Evening Post and some other Democratic papers dissented from several points in Governor Bouck s message. It was becoming evident that the slavery question, as well as the canal question, might be a source of future discord in the Democratic ranks. 1848.] AT HOME AGAIN. 645 Some of the leading citizens of Albany tendered a public dinner to Seward. The list of signers was headed by H. G. Wheaton and Samuel Stevens. Among the others were, Friend Humphrey, Rufus H. King, Archibald Mclntyre, James Horner, J. L. Schoolcraft, Teunis Van Vechten, Robert Hunter, Henry L. Webb, William Parmelee, Herman Pumpelly, Visscher Ten Eyck, James and John Taylor. A day or two were now spent in a round of farewell visits on foot to some of the many families in Albany to whom he was indebted for hospitality. When Lewis Benedict came one evening to the Eagle, he related with some indignation how he had met an acquaintance in the street, who asked him, " What is that old Seward doing here so long ? " to which he had retorted that Governor Seward had as good a right to be in Albany as any other citizen, and that he was attend ing to his private affairs. The ex-Governor laughed, and said : " No, your friend was right about it. A public officer when he goes out of office ought to go home, and not linger around the capital. The peo ple have willed that some one else should attend to public business, and they do not want him to be meddling or appearing to meddle. I think, as your friend did, it s time that old Seward went home ! " CHAPTER XL VII. 1843. At Home again. The Law-Office. A Struggle for Independence. The Mackenzie Inquiry. The Virginia Question. The City-Hall Portrait. " WILLIAM H. SEWARD, Esq., left the city this morning for Auburn, his former and future residence, carrying with him the unfeigned and heart-felt wishes of thousands of our citizens for his happiness and prosperity." So chronicled the evening paper the departure of the ex- Governor. Arriving at Auburn on Saturday night, he at once began talking of projects for resuming his profession. He converted one of the rooms into a study, and arranged his books and papers for business. He had brought with him in the train some of the first numbers of Ali son s " History of Europe," of which an American edition was in press, and he remarked that it was a pleasure to be able to read again in the evening. He had found no time at Albany even for history or philosophy ; as for novels, he had not looked into one in four years. He left off when he laid down " Nicholas Nickleby," in 1838, and he now took up " The Neighbors," a translation of which had just been published by Mary Howitt who thus introduced Miss Bremer to the 646 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1843. American reading public. Books, papers, and pamphlets, were placed on the shelves and in the cases of the new library, and it was found necessary to create another " little library " before all could be stowed away. It was never his habit to destroy letters or papers, though they were frequently allowed to accumulate without systematic ar rangement. Old friends and neighbors dropped in to visit and welcome him. Among those from a distance were Trumbull Gary and Judge Sackett ; and, after a Saturday evening conference with them, he settled the question about his la w -office, by sajdng that he should resume busi ness in the old place on Monday morning. On Monday the old tin sign, " Wm. H. Seward," was nailed up at the foot of the stairway in the Exchange Building, and the Auburn Journal contained this : " NOTICE. The subscriber will attend to any business which may be confided to him in the courts of law and in the Court of Chancery." He sat down to wait for clients. During the morning an occasional visitor looked in, usually a Whig friend. But no business offered until, the next day, a farmer came in, who, having heard that he was going to practise law, had brought to him his case, which was a suit in regard to a broken fence and " breachy oxen," the whole sum involved in which would amount to perhaps five or ten dollars. As he looked over the bills and notices of protest which lay scat tered on his table, and thought of the interest on his notes for the Chautauqua purchase, his huge debt of four hundred thousand dollars, he involuntarily paused to calculate how many breachy oxen per diem it would take to meet the problem that was staring him in the face. However, everything must have a beginning, and he would begin with the suit in the justice s court, in the hope that there might some day be an end of the financial embarrassment which four years had gathered around him. The mail from Washington brought the National Intelligencer, with a kindly notice from Mr. Seaton. In the same mail came a letter with a black seal from John C. Spencer, in reply to one written to him. I ought sooner to have acknowledged your kind and feeling note of sympa thy in the horrible calamity which has overtaken me and my family. I now do so, with my grateful assurances of the consolation it has afforded ; but Mrs. S and myself are well aware that we must look to a higher than human source for that balm which only can heal the wounds of our bleeding hearts. From the State capital came news of warm debate over the public printing bill, ending on the 20th, with the passage of the law taking the State printing away from Weed ; and on the following day the two Houses, in joint ballot, elected Edwin Croswell to be State Print- 1848.] THE DEMOCRATS IN POWER. 647 er, the Whig minority giving a complimentary vote for Horace Greeley. A bill had also been introduced to repeal the " trial-by-jury law," by the chairman of the Judiciary Committee of the Assembly. The Richmond Inquirer , Richmond Whig, Charleston Mercury, and other Southern papers, had received with decided approbation Governor Bouck s message in regard to the Virginia controversy, and contrasted it with that of his predecessor with much satisfaction. Seward s letters to Weed now described his life at Auburn : AUBURN, January 13, 1843. All excesses leave a train of penances. Sad as the times are, and huge the undertaking, I will try to meet all debts, with as long a time to work in as Walter Scott had to pay his creditors. I feel especially bold, now that I prom ise to keep the accounts of my dilapidated estate myself. I have spent the whole time since my arrival here in unpacking and arrang ing my books and papers. From present indications I shall not need an office in the village to attract business, as heretofore, as my success will depend on how well I prepare my briefs. For that purpose my old arm-chair and my quiet home are indispensable to me. Greeley has notified me that he is to be prose cuted by Cooper. I shall make it my business, at an early day, to prepare my self for that contest. January 19, 1843. One would think from reading your letters that we had led a life of dissipa tion and profligacy while I lived at Albany. You have " eschewed champagne, and oysters, and deserted taverns," you tell me. I think it is less my absence than that of Hawkins and Hunt that is entitled to the merit of your reforma tion. Whatever the cause may be, I hope it may continue. You will be sur prised to find what a comfortable place I have made for myself here. You are welcome to sign a release for me of public life. I shall get acclimated to retire ment, so that I shall be no burden to political friends ; but I warn you that you will find no suppers and no cards when you visit my Tusculum: we are all reformed. The Democrats here begin to manifest knowledge of the feud at the capital, and to divide into factions. What will be the end of it is uncertain. The Whigs, since the commencement of the new order of things at Albany, are weak enough to believe that they can succeed here next fall, even with the pres ent organization. Nothing could be more absurd. This schism will strengthen Van Buren in 1844, but exhaust and disturb their party immensely after, I think. Being now free from responsibility, he will be able to rise above the contentions of his supporters. A fine article that, of King s, on the life of General Arcularius. I see it traveling around the country, and hear many persons speak of it. AUBUBN, January 21, 1843. I have just been reading Fillmore s report. It is clear and able. How strangely our friends at Washington forget that John Tyler was elected by (548 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1843, "Whigs, and that proving him a knave or a fool does not answer any desirable purpose ! I have just received a very clear letter from Benedict, giving me the key to the recent proceedings concerning the State Printer, which I needed. Has Gov ernor Bouck no reliable and disinterested adviser ? I think he has not. I shall be mistaken if the party do not eschew the first agricultural Governor sooner than the Whigs fell out with his unlucky predecessor. I have opened my old office, and am for the present alone; but have arranged with young Beach and Underwood to join them in April or May. As yet I have no business ; but my friends are around me so warm-hearted and affectionate that I have no fears about the future. I have done little since I came here but make alterations and repairs indis pensable to my family and myself, under our present circumstances. To-day I have spent like a lawyer in my office engaged, however, as most lawyers are, in giving gratuitous advice. Mr. Croswell, for once, has lost something of his coolness. He should have been content with his triumph, without reproaching his opponents. Van Dyck might have been left alone, and Bryant won back ; but both, with all who have aided them, will war upon the victor, because he has struck them after they were down. This, however, will not render you nor me unhappy. With affectionate regard to Mrs. Weed and the young ladies, I remain yours, W. H. SEWAKD, Attorney, in propria pertona. To THTTELOW WBKD, Esq., Late Printer to the State ; late Dictator, etc., etc. ATTBUBN, January 24, 1843. I hope that no supercilious creature bought my carriage, and that the horses have found a humane master. I am glad to know the loss, for I am seeking to get at the aggregate of that commodity. I shall yet be able to balance it, I hope, if Providence shall be only half as kind as heretofore. Whittlesey has written me a letter that cheers and delights me. It is full of generous sentiments and kind and affectionate feelings, delicately and beautifully expressed. I could not acknowledge it as he deserved. I fear that unlucky, ill-starred Congress will make short work. Morgan writes that there is no hope of resisting the appeal in the Senate, and I suppose, moreover, that, in their madness, two-thirds of both Houses will even pass the bill, if it shall be vetoed. Heaven be praised, we are near the end of hope ; and in two months we shall be in the hands of our enemies, safe from further loss by the folly of friends ! It is as I supposed : our friends in the Legislature, noble and in the main dis creet, will present an organized front. T shall not suggest a thought to the con trary. Yet, I regret that we should do anything to bind a mass of opponents o ready to fall asunder. AUBURN, Saturday. I received this morning your letter, simultaneously with a half-bushel of let ters about that unfortunate subject, the New York artist. The question cannot be delayed ; the postage on letters from friends of the 1843.] RESUMING LAW PRACTICE. 649 artist would ruin me ; besides, delay would operate as it always does in such cases. Neither Mr. Weir nor any other artist would volunteer or consent to stand between me and the profession. I had better decide here and without more information than in New York with all the aid I could get. My private opinion is most favorable to Inman. I have seen his pictures. I am told that Harding is pronounced superior ; but I never saw his pictures. Let the right, real right, prevail. If Harding is the superior artist, let him have his right. I send you the paper, that you may record your vote in it, and send it to Minturn if it suit you. So much for that. I answer your inquiries very generally. I spend my days in my law-office : I charge reasonable counsel-fees, and they are thus far cheer fully paid. Everything is gratifying, so far as the public feeling and sentiment are known to me. My earnings, thus far, have been equal to the salary for an equal period while in office. My expenses are vastly diminished. I do not work hard, and especially devote myself as counsel ; have no partner, and only one clerk. I may earn five thousand dollars this year, in this way, if business continues as it has begun. I have commenced paying interest on all my debts. The principal is too great to be affected by my sinking-fund, unless I shall earn more. I spend my evenings in gathering those state papers. They are richer and better tohan I thought. King wants a review of the Virginia critic. It seeing to me that the very best review that can be, is my second letter to Rutherford (in documents accompanying the Governor s message, 1842). I think it is the second. At all events, it is the letter which contains the passage that is some times quoted. I make this blind reference because the documents are not within my present reach, I am happy enough, much more so than while I was in Albany, because I have recovered a sense of pecuniary independence ; and I suffered more from the privation of that than anybody knew while I was in Albany. For the future I am thoughtless. If forgotten, I shall still be content. My ambition has reached beyond the lines of my contemporaries as well as my own. All present praise cannot secure me that which would be posthumous; and oblivion now could not deprive me of a hope that I should be remembered for some good as time and truth roll on. So give yourself no thought for me. Only, when you have nothing else to do, take a railway-car, and spend a Sunday with us. ATTBTTBN, February \teh. The hurly-burly of a circuit week, even though you have very little business, is exciting and distracting. Thus far, by advising parties to compromise unfortunate suits, I have kept out of court, and am trying to do so, for, having no fear that I shall not ulti mately have business enough, I wish to get into the display exercises of the profession with modesty and moderation. I wish I had been incog, at Washington while you were there. Bowen wrote some amusing things about the despotism reigning there concerning a great question. That book makes up very slowly. I spend the whole day in my office on the main street giving advice, sometimes for pay, and oftentimes gratuitously, and entertaining as well as I am able the quidnuncs whose curi osity is reasonable, and who have claims upon tne for old friendship s sake. 650 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1843. At night I make briefs, or draw bills in chancery ; but, since Mr. Blake holds on, I must return to the book, leaving law with the canine race, where some body proposed to " throw physic." I will send the prospectus to Whittlesey, as it is time to let him decide whether he will be willing to be printed there. He spent two days with me. You ought to have met him here. You seldom see him at Albany when both of you are enough at ease. A visit here is quite another affair. He has acquired great learning in his judicial studies and prac tice. I seldom meet a lawyer who makes me feel insignificant, or a judge either ; but I found him so profound, so extensively learned, that I felt alto gether incompetent in discussion with him. I should have forsworn political ambition as a seductive jade, if he had not shown me his lecture. You ask me when I am going east. Heaven bless you, I do not think of such a thing ! I am resolving myself into a village lawyer ; the thought of the expense of time and money which a visit would require appalls me. Why, I am wearing out old clothes, burning tallow-candles, smoking a pipe instead of cigars, economizing fuel, and balancing my cash-book, night and morning. Don t think of asking me to travel on the railroad until the canal opens and the second-class cars are on the road. If I have occasion to visit Albany, as I may by-and-by, I think I shall strike across the country on foot to Goshen, and arrive at Albany by one of Newton s steamboats, which always convey me gratis. Our opponents here are much divided and alienated concerning their ap pointments ; it would not interest you, however, to know the effervescence of the teapot, so let it pass. The business at the law-office gradually began to revive and in crease. Soon the days, instead of seeming long, had not hours enough for the work. Seward threw himself earnestly into the labors of his profession, was as much confined to his office as in former years, and hardly gave himself time for his meals and sleep. His pe cuniary affairs, indeed, demanded extraordinary effort, if they were ever to be relieved from embarrassment. The heavy debt for the Chautauqua property brought incessant calls for interest. His mod erate personal estate had nearly melted away in the four years guber natorial life at Albany, which had involved lavish expense. Friends suggested that the easiest, perhaps the only practicable, way was to accept the bankruptcy that seemed inevitable ; to wipe out all old ac counts and begin again. But to this suggestion he would not listen. He would rather struggle to pay off the debt, whatever amount of work it might involve. Indeed, the amount of work in any case rather seemed to stimulate than to discourage him. It was to be a hard strug gle and a long one; but he believed that, if his health should be spared, he would, by zealous attention to his profession, and the practice of strict economy, meet every demand for interest, and in due time cancel every obligation for principal. This was the task now before him. It was a favorite saying of his that, in human affairs, nothing is so bad but that there is some way out of it. It illustrated the habit of 1843.] HABITS IN MONEY MATTERS. G51 his mind never to give way to despondency, but, accepting the worst, to endeavor to find some cheer or consolation. He had left Auburn in 1839 in easy circumstances ; he came back in 1843 in debt. He had almost consumed his property, and had made no new investments. His advocacy of internal improvements was always based on the ground of the benefits they would confer on the community at large. His own interest in such enterprises was that of the citizen, not that of stockholder or bondholder. It is doubtful if he ever owned a hun dred shares of railroad stock in his life. When he had saved a few hundred dollars out of his professional earnings, he would generally invest them in improving house or land. The exceptions to this habit were when he joined his neighbors in subscribing to some work of local improvement ; and this class of investments, however they might benefit the town, seldom brought any pecuniary return. Though he never lived extravagantly, he loved to live hospitably, to spend and give freely. When out of office, he usually lived up to his income ; when in office, he made it a rule to always spend more than his salary, determined, as he used to say, that " the public should never put a dollar in his pocket." Habits of thrift and economy in regard to details were not natural to him ; they could only be acquired by an effort. He used to remark that it was not until middle life that he ever took any pains in regard to the calculation of interest on accounts due to himself, although he was scrupulous in the payment of it to his creditors. He had been accustomed to deem it a matter of trivial importance, and, instead of claiming it from his debtors, was glad enough to get the simple prin cipal. However, in the effort now making to regain pecuniary inde pendence, he adopted rather more systematic habits in regard to ac counts and investments. He had no taste for bargains, or chaffering about prices. He would not pay extravagant prices if he knew them to be so, but would mere ly decline to buy. In like manner, when offering anything for sale, he did not have an " asking price " and a " selling one." On one occasion, when about to be absent from Auburn for some time, he undertook to dispose of a horse, an unusually good animal for family use. A neighbor learned in horses came round to look and buy. The horse was brought out of the stable, and Peter put him through his paces. Thereupon the wculd-be purchaser began to point out defects, and to show, after the manner of horse-dealers, that something was wrong about the poor animal s flesh, wind, speed, bottom, gait, hoofs, hocks, pasterns, shoulders, etc., with a view to a reduction of price. Seward answered nothing, but quietly told Peter to take the horse back to the stable, which was done. The neighbor looked astonished, 652 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1843. and asked what that was for. "If he has half the faults you say he has," replied Seward, " he is not worth your buying nor my selling, so let that be an end of the business." The horse-dealer pondered a few moments, and finally said he guessed he d take the horse at Seward s price, but he d never seen anybody sell a horse that way before. Seward had dropped his title of office, and reminded his friends, when they continued to use it, that it no longer belonged to him. But the old habit was too strong upon them. He found himself still ad dressed as " Governor Seward " in his letters, referred to as " Govern or " in the newspapers, and accosted by the familiar title of " Govern or " by his friends in conversation. In the State of New York at least, he was always called so. No other title ever seemed to come so readily or appropriately ; and for thirty years after he went out of the Execu tive chamber he was " Governor Seward " still. From Albany now came news of especial interest for him. The As sembly, on taking up the Virginia question, showed an evident desire to avoid the discussion of the search-law. When the question of print ing a report in favor of acceding to Virginia s demand came up, there was a division of opinion among the Democrats. Finally the report of the Judiciary Committee was published. They said nothing about the Virginia search-law, but recommended the repeal of the " trial-by- jury law," because the United States Supreme Court had, in the Prigg case, decided all such laws to be unconstitutional. At Auburn, the engrossing topics of the time, apart from politics, were the Mackenzie trial, the silk -manufacture in the prison, and the Millerite or " Second- Advent " meetings, which were proceeding with much earnestness. The court of inquiry on Mackenzie, after a long sitting, and voluminous testimony, came at last to a decision in favor of the commander, practically accepting his version of the events on the Somers. The opinion was approved by the President ; but, not withstanding, a court-martial was ordered. Public opinion divided in regard to this governmental action, which it was freely charged was taken to screen Mackenzie from just punishment, and was the fruit either of favoritism shown to him, or of strong influence at work in his behalf. The agent of the Auburn Prison, Henry Polhemus, reported this winter about the silk-manufacture, which was commenced there in 1841, on the suggestion of Governor Seward. As it was experimental, only a limited number of convicts were employed at it. Up to Janu ary, 1843, the net result had been a profit. The manufacture had reached such success that thirty-six yards of gros de Naples silk was exhibited, heavy, lustrous, and of fine texture, which had been made at the prison. And, as a further illustration of the ease with which silk might be made in Central New York, it was stated that one lady in 1843.] THE CITY HALL PORTRAIT. 653 Ontario County dressed in silk which had passed, in all its changes, from the leaf to the loom, through her own hands. At the " Millerite " meetings the lecturers demonstrated, by elabo rate pictures of " the great beasts " described in Daniel s dream, and by careful computation of the periods symbolized by the horns, that the end of the world was at hand. The column of figures thus set down, when added up, always amounted to 1843, which was deemed by the lecturer, if not by his audience, to be conclusive. A newspaper pub lished in Albany, called the Midnight Cry, and a pamphlet entitled "The Warning Voice," called upon all sinners to abandon world ly avocations, and betake themselves, during the brief period remain ing, to repentance and preparation for the last day. The 13th of March was fixed upon as the day when the world would end. But " a sign in the heavens " appeared. This was a comet, of extreme brill iancy, visible by night and even by day. Thereupon Miller fixed the 23d of April as the day for the final consummation. Some of the de luded even went so far as to give away their property, and others were employed in preparing white " ascension-robes," to be put on when the end should approach. As not unfrequently happens in a time of re ligious excitement, some of the believers lost their intellect, and were sent to the lunatic asylum ; and others, in momentary frenzy, committed suicide. Even those who were incredulous about the judgment-day were exercised in spirit about the rapidly-approaching comet, the probabilities of its striking the earth, and the question, " What then ? " Scientific observers made calculations of its movements with accuracy while it was visible. But who could tell whence it came, or whither it was going ? Business affairs called Seward to New York for a few days, at the close of February. One of the subjects demanding his attention there was the question of art referred to in his letters. The Common Coun cil desired a full-length portrait of him, to hang in the Governor s Room at the City Hall with those of his predecessors. But no artist had been designated. His friends were divided in opinion. So, when Sew ard came down, he was invited to visit many different studios to look at pictures of men, women, and children, innumerable. Messrs. Min- turn, Draper, Ruggles, Grinnell, Blatchford, and others, finally con cluded to gratify all the conflicting preferences by inviting five artists Inman, Harding, Huntington, Page, and Gray each to paint a por trait of the ex-Governor. The Common Council might select which ever it chose, and his personal friends would themselves take the others. In accordance with this arrangement, Harding was to begin, and would be at Auburn early in March. On his return home, Seward brought also the news that Governor Bouck had appointed a new set of State-prison Inspectors, at Auburn, 654 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1843, to replace the Whig ones ; that Mr. Forward had resigned the Treasury Department, and John C. Spencer was to succeed him ; and that the National Intelligencer announced a Whig National Convention to meet at Baltimore, on Wednesday, May 3, 1844. While the Whigs were united for Clay, the Democrats seemed to be dividing between several candidates. From Virginia, Michigan, Maryland, and other States, came intelligence of movements against Van Buren and in favor of Calhoun, Johnson, and others. Members of Congress were return ing home, the Whigs in full belief of coming success with Henry Clay. CHAPTER XLVIH. 1843. War at Albany. "Old Hunkers" and "Barnburners." Harding. Abolition Nomination. Greeley and Fourier. Law and Gardening. Proposed Constitutional Convention. Sydney Smith on Repudiation. O Connell on Slavery. AT Albany the threatened war in the Democratic camp broke out. The new faction represented by the Atlas, and opposing the State Printer, was composed of the more radical and progressive members of the party. They stigmatized their opponents as "Old Hunkers," in view of their ultra-conservatism. The "Old Hunkers" retorted by calling their opponents "Barnburners," a name perhaps borrowed from that of the revolutionary destructives in Rhode Island. Lieutenant-Governor Dickinson was leading the " Old Hunkers," and Colonel Young, the Secretary of State, was at the head of the " Barnburners." As the floor of the Legislature was not open to them for debate, they resorted to the press ; Governor Dickinson assailing Young s financial theories, and Young defending his " strict construc tion" and "rigid economy." Dickinson accused Young of favoring the doctrine of repudiation. Young retorted by charging him with extravagance. Dickinson claimed that he was defending the public faith ; Young that he was guarding the public Treasury. Foster, the Democratic leader in the Senate, took ground with Dickinson. Michael Hoffman, the confessed leader in the Assembly, sided with Young, say ing he was not able to discover anything in his doctrines which could tend to impair the faith or credit of the State. Young, in a communi cation to the Legislature, said there was not "the shadow of a moral obligation " on the people to redeem the four millions of public stocks loaned to incorporated companies. The debate waxed hot in the Senate and Assembly. There were quarrels and recriminations between Dem ocrats, which lasted throughout the session, and bade fair to last con siderably longer. 1843.] HARDING. 655 Silas Wright was strong enough with his party, notwithstanding its incipient distractions, to be reflected United States Senator without serious opposition ; the Whigs dividing their votes between several candidates Fillmore, Collier, Simmons, Patterson, Bradish, and Ver- planck. There was also dispute as to what should be done with New York s share of the proceeds of the public lands. Virginia had rejected her share, because she deemed the measure unconstitutional. Some of the leading Democrats wanted New York to do the same ; others concurred with the Whigs in desiring to use it for the schools or for the canals. Meanwhile, Seward s relation to all these matters was now that of a distant spectator interested, but without power to control. He spent his days in his law-office or in the courts, sparing an hour or so for a sitting to Harding, who was a guest at his house, and a genial and hearty companion. Harding s studio became a favorite resort for the little circle at Auburn who were interested in art. His pictures and his conversation won the esteem of the villagers, and parties were made in his honor. Harding s massive figure seemed as if fitted for athletic exercise. It was what would have befitted a commanding general. He was six feet three inches high, with large face, hands too large for ordinary gloves, eyes too broadly separated for ordinary spectacles, a fine-looking man, of evident vigor and energy, but the last person a casual observer would suspect of delicate handling of palette and pencil. Seward had come to esteem him highly. " One cannot help liking him," he said, " even when he is declaring his prejudices ; he is so honest in enter taining them, and so manly in defending them." After his brief visit to Albany Seward resumed his correspondence with Weed : AUBURN, March 25, 1843. I received your letter of the 17th, but my little law business has so engrossed me that I have been unable to respond till now. It is about as well, for there has been no intercourse between our town and the great world. Three mails from Albany are now due. I regret your disappointment in losing the melancholy pleasure of following poor Hunter s remains to their resting-place. One can have so few such friends, that he may safely do the utmost of the last offices of friendship, when one is removed. I, too, had I known that the remains were passing through the place where I lived, would have paid, to those who bore them, the tribute of my respect and sympathy. Harding left me on Tuesday. He has what all my neighbors say is a good picture. I thought so. He will have shown you his " Conkling," which is ad mirable ; and the portrait of Judge Miller is even better. He was here just long enough to receive and give such assurances of personal interest and regard as one might know he would deserve and make. 56 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1843. AUBUBN, April $th, Sunday. The last ten days have been to me a season of confusion. My excursion to Rochester; Harding s visit and Webb s, and their leave-takings; my trudging through snow-drifts and mud to Port Byron, to try a cause there ; A. B. Dick inson s hurried visit here last night all these things made the week seem more like the life I led at Albany than the calm and steady course I am desiring to lead here. You are mistaken, I think, in supposing that Van Buren is losing the party in this State, at least so far as your inferences are drawn from observation in the country. There is indeed no enthusiasm for him ; but there is certainly no sign of infidelity. Possibly the breach between the new factions may become so wide, that he will be left on one or the other side. But the indications of that must be found in Albany, not here. Mr. Greeley wrote me, by no means discouragingly, of Connecticut, before the election, although he lamented that the Whigs would not make the tariff an issue. The result is sufficiently disastrous for every purpose, except to induce an examination of the cause. He laments your despondency, and wishes opportu nity to convince you that the prospects for 1844 are cheering. Your pupils, like some of mine, soon grow wiser than their teacher. George Dawson still pre serves practicability ; but he is alone. Dickinson wanted me to write the address. I scarcely know how to do it here, and I cannot afford to go to Albany for the purpose. If I must do it, notes must be sent me. An address, this year, is not important, otherwise than to render just praise to our members who have conducted so well and wisely. After reading Senator Ruger s exposure of the " dictation " to the Governor by Ely, Foster, and Scoville, do you not congratulate yourself that your opera tions in that way during the last four years escaped legislative investigation ? AUBUBN, April 14, 1843. What has become of you ? You have been lost, I suppose, between the excitement of public events and the increase of private cares, in view of your European excursion. The result of the election in Albany shows a triumph ; but the manner of the contest proves that our only citadel cannot long hold out. I have formed my connection in business, got my counsel- chamber in a good condition, and, though we have had but three or four days of spring, my garden and grounds exhibit abundant evidence of reform and improvement. By de grees these humble labors and cares become " attractional," as the Fourierists say ; and the political excitement of the last four years is leaving me rapidly enough. Mr. N the other day, conscious that this is the season of Lent, and there fore similar to that in which the devil showed our Saviour all the kingdoms of the earth and offered them to him, tendered me the Abolition nomination for Presi dent by letter, which I respectfully declined upon the ground, generally, that I have gone to the end of my ambition and sense of duty, not to speak of my obligations to that portion of the people to whom I am indebted for all honors. Pray, tell me what day you fix for your departure from this " Loco-foco "- ridden country. I must see you out of the bay, though you need not fear that I shall want to attend you any farther. 1843.] THE LOCUST BORER. 657 Mrs. Seward was now at Rochester. Letters to her contained fre quent reference to the garden : AUBTTRN, April 22, 1848. I am tempted to visit you to-night, but so many cares have fastened upon me that I fear I shall be unable to execute my half-formed purpose. Things in the house are much as they were, except that the birds are delivered from their long imprisonment in the basement, and are unbounded in their joyousness. You will scarcely recognize the place when you see it with so many of the trees cut down. I am making wild havoc in the court-yard. But it has an end. The slower and more toilsome work of renewal proceeds with diligence. I took Augustus with me and two laborers into the woods, and brought home fifteen fine, thrifty elms, which have supplied a part of the chasm the worms had made by destroying the locusts. I have engaged also fifty ever greens and a few mountain-ash trees. I am laboriously fertilizing the grass plats and cultivating the fruit-trees. We have also set out choice gooseberries and raspberries in large quantities. The hot-beds already exhibit promise of precious fruit. While these congenial labors are carried on so zealously, I have necessarily neglected my law-business, but it grows withal. On the 25th I am to be at Albany, and thence shall go to New York to attend the Supreme Court. AUBUBN, April 25, 1843. The crocus has flourished its bright-yellow flowers, and is drooping beneath the gaudy rivalry of the daffodils, which burst upon us in full splendor with the rising sun this morning. The little border-flower, with the pretty name that I cannot remember, disclosed its petals at the same time. The lilac-buds are bursting, and the gooseberries almost in leaf. Spring advances so fast that I can scarcely keep even with her in my gardening operations. You will find unsightly stumps when you return, but there will be much to compensate for all the ravages of the locust-worm and my saw. So I shall not tell Mrs. Bowen that our little retreat is despoiled. The fruit-trees which I set out four or five years ago have been totally neglected. More than one-third are lost. I am supplying their place with choice trees, and am cultivating what remain. AUBUBN, April 27, 1843. I was expecting my parents, but uncertain when they would come. After breakfast this morning I received a card, " Samuel S. Seward, at the Ameri can." There, this cold, northwesterly, blowing, and rainy morning, I found them. My dear mother is comfortably bestowed in our little nursery-parlor. My father seems quite vigorous and cheerful. The locust had been a favorite tree in Western New York. Its rapid growth, beautiful foliage and flowers, commended it for orna mental purposes ; and its hard, valuable timber seemed to farmers a probable source of profit. Many acres in Cayuga County were planted with it. But there now appeared a destructive insect, black and horny, which bored into the heart of the trees, and all the locusts began to droop and die. Various expedients to check the pest were tried and found futile. Dead trees, when cut down, were found riddled and honey-combed. Seward tried to save some of the stately old locusts 42 (J58 LIFE AND LETTERS. that surrounded the house by cutting the tops and branches. One day he saw from his window that an unexpected ally had arrived. This was a red-headed woodpecker, hitherto rarely seen at Auburn. Fond of the study of natural laws and the habits of animal life, he spent an hour in watching the bird, who was thrusting his long bill into the trees, and ferreting out the " borers " by the score. At dinner he announced that the war in defense of the locusts was over. Nature had interposed a check, and henceforth the " borers," instead of the locusts, would be exterminated. The prediction was verified, for, be fore the season was over, woodpeckers were almost as plentiful as rob ins. The trees which had been spared grew and throve undisturbed, and the " borer " became a thing of the past. The woodpeckers grad ually diminished in number as their food gave out, and the locust probably might have been successfully replanted. But its popularity had ceased, and only a few stragglers remained to recall the memory of the conflict of natural forces. Seward s ordinary hour for rising at Auburn was six o clock, and he spent the interval before breakfast in walking in the garden. When he came in to the table he would announce that the hyacinths were in bloom, or that the bluebirds had come, or whatever other change the morning had brought. He wrote to Weed : AUBUBN, May 13, 1848. I lead a busy life. I have been in the woods to-day dragging up huge trees and transplanting them around the house. The worms destroyed a hundred trees, and the sun and floods many more, during my four years dissipation at Albany. To-night I sum up one hundred and seventy which I have replaced. I am making myself a bed to repose in, and mean to have a long sleep. My father and mother are with us for the summer ; they are very infirm, hut cheerful. AUBUBN, Sunday, May 14, 1848. I went with my parents to church this morning, and, when I left them to come to the office, my mother reminded me that I was required to do all my work in six days. Even she, however, would allow me the indulgence of writ ing to you on the seventh ; but you keep up such a tramping up and down the river that one has no good chance to arrest you at any place. I wish your garden was bigger, but not your debts. If either had half the magnitude of mine, you would he more domestic. Do not forget to tell me, imprimis, what luck you had in getting contributions for your unlucky editorial friend. The judicial abuses and the bigotry of the profession are quite enough to make one a " Loco-f oco." We want a social reform ; and I am sorry that Greeley can not contrive a better one than Fourier s plan by joint-stock companies. Lawyers are always necessary for such associations. u Nextly," what does Blatchf ord tell you about Webster s resignation ? Have you seen Bowen in any of your visits at New York ? I am quite desirous to know what he is doing with the railroad. The times are unexpectedly becom ing propitious. 1848.] THE "TYLER GRIPPE." 659 AUBURN, May 19, 1848. I do not know which to envy most, Schoolcraft or yourself, in your Euro pean trip ; and I rejoice that, like Blatchford on his late Southern excur sion, Schoolcraft will have an opportunity to see how, by reading my lessons abroad contrariwise, I contracted some of those heresies which have marked me out as an object for attack. But you say nothing of Harding. How is that? I do justice to your sententious style ; but, after all, you never explain. A dash or a stroke tells the presently material thing, but circumstances and details are never hatched under your incubation. You won t want my letters ; but I will bring you Mrs. Seward s book thereof ; also Carter s ; also all my guide-books, which are many, and my traveling-map. I will how how you must study French ; but I fear you have so long played the part of magister, that you will prove a dull scholar. When shall I go down with Morgan to see you ? If you write to Morgan, you must address him by title, " M. 0." Every postmaster does not know that Morgan is yet, and some of them wish he never had been, a member of Con gress ; hence, for the want of the magic words, he is liable to suffer loss. AUBUBH, May 28, 1843. Your two letters were put in my hand last night on my return from Ovid. I went to try an action for breach of promise. Sibley was the defendant s coun sel ; but he determined to put off the trial. I found Maynard there, supreme in the confidence of the bar and the people, as he deserved. I was employed in every cause of importance after my arrival. Popular feeling was with ray clients, and there was kindness toward me; so I succeeded in all my causes, and came home weary, but cheered with good auspices. My feelings have chiefly been excited against the ingratitude of our own friends, who have thought it their duty to assail and injure you, while suffering so much for nc cause but eminent service. Well, well, it is out of such persecution that strength and power are to be acquired. I shall go down with Morgan, or anticipate him. I will prepare a letter tc O Oonnell, which you will use or not at your discretion, Harding is with us, and will finish his picture in two days. Already the supporters of Van Buren and Calhoun were taking an attitude of rivalry. The Van Buren men proposed to hold a conven tion in December, 1843 ; the Calhoun men wanted one called in May, 1844. It had been reported from Washington, some weeks before, that a species of influenza had become epidemic. Shortly after it appeared in New York, and later it spread throughout the country. It was not fatal, but very persistent, troublesome, and sometimes alarming. Few escaped it ; nearly everybody was coughing or snuffling. It dif fered from the ordinary influenza in degree rather than in character. Borrowing a name from France, it was called the " grippe ; " and as it was the custom to associate the name of the President with things that were unpopular, it very soon acquired the title of the " Tyler grippe.** It has never since recurred as an epidemic to the same extent among 660 HFE AND LETTERS. [1848 the human race, but it, or something like it, has occasionally afflicted all the horses or all the dogs. Endeavoring to dispel some unfounded apprehensions of a friend in regard to his health, Seward said : Do not be unduly alarmed about what the doctor thinks may be possible. It is characteristic of the profession, and especially so of him, to magnify all such symptoms. They give hard names and bestow long descriptions upon them, and, if we suffer our fears to take complexion from their prognostics, we should never be well nor cheerful. With the best intentions in the world, he vill keep you subjected to medical treatment all the rest of your life. As his father was at one period a physician of large practice, Sew ard came very early to have, like the children of most doctors, an under standing of the vis medicatrix naturae, and a modified faith in the ma- teria medica. Some knowledge of drugs, and of the effects often pro duced by their ignorant and mistaken use, aided to confirm his opinion that care, nursing, and encouragement, were more indispensable in sickness than prescriptions. " Sleep and starvation," he used to say, he had found " the best of all remedies in ordinary maladies." When attacked by a disease, he would refuse to eat or drink, and, retiring to his room, would sleep as many hours as he found practicable. The result seemed to vindicate his judgment, for in most instances the dis order would succumb to such treatment. However, so far from having any bigoted attachment to his theory, he always made it a point to call in a medical adviser promptly whenever any of the household were ill. In the judgment of his old friend and family physician at Albany, Dr. Williams, he had much confidence. A letter from William Jay, May 7th, announced his removal from office as first judge of Westchester County, which he had held for a quarter of a century, having been appointed by Tompkins, Clinton, Throop, and Marcy. He had been removed for his avowal of anti- slavery opinions. He said the reason assigned was, " my reappointment would be calculated to prejudice the Democratic party in the eyes of our Southern brethren." The Virginia search-law was now in operation in regard to all New York vessels. A Norfolk paper announced, with some disgust, that, " although Virginia had passed an efficient law, Yankee ingenuity has discovered a way to evade it. New York vessels now clear from Jersey City, go to Virginia, discharge their cargoes, and, returning, clear again for Jersey City." An address was published by John Quincy Adams and other mem bers of the House, in regard to the annexation of Texas. Opinions adverse to slavery extension began to gain favor in the minds of many at the North who had hitherto kept aloof from discussion of the sla very question. If they were bound to tolerate the existence of slavery 1848.] O CONNELL AND SLAVERY. 661 in the States, where it was already, no principle required them to sanc tion its extension into new Territories, the common property of all the States. The Bunker Hill monument was to be completed and dedicated on the anniversary of the battle, the 17th of June. Mr. Webster was to deliver the oration. Great preparations were in progress at Boston for an imposing celebration. The new common-school law, so long advocated by Seward, was now published, and went into effect. It proved in operation so wise and beneficent that opposition to the system began to die away almost immediately; and no portion of the community have since been willing to avow the wish to see it abrogated. A State Convention of Deputy- Superintendents of Common Schools was in session at Albany in May, in which S. S. Randall, the State Superintendent,, took the leading part, and read a letter from Seward. The " Barnburners " now made an important move. After due con ference had been held among their leaders, their organ, the Albany Atlas^ advocated a convention to revise the constitution of the State of New York. The " Barnburners " took the bold ground that radical changes were needed, and needed at once ; and that the whole people were as competent to say whether they wanted changes this year as their representatives could be year after next. It was revolutionary; but it was peaceful revolution, and nothing would be done except in accordance with the fundamental republican principle that the majority should rule. The proposition gradually gained adherents among the Whigs and even among the " Old Hunkers." The latter s chief objec tion to it was the source whence it originated. From Ireland came news that proposed constitutional changes were not proceeding so peaceably. The movement for the repeal of the union with England, and for the restoration of an Irish Parliament, had aroused an excitable people to enthusiastic demonstrations. O Con- nell, its leader, addressed meetings, where thousands were gathered. Though he avowed his loyalty to the crown, his denunciations of Sir Robert Peel s ministry gave ground for charging him with treason. Troops were sent to disperse the gatherings, and to check apprehended riots. O Connell and his son were removed from office as magistrates. Between seventy and eighty thousand people were computed to have assembled at the Curragh of Kildare. The repeal movement was watched with interest and sympathy in America. Many meetings were held in the cities. At the Washington Hotel, in New York, early in June, a crowded meeting assembled. Seward, who was in the city to take leave of Mr. Weed on his depart ure for Europe, was urgently solicited to attend, and when he entered the room was loudly called to the chair. LIFE AND LETTERS. [184&. It did not contribute to lessen the popular feeling against England when news came from the Pacific that the British flag was floating at Oahu, which was understood to signify the provisional cession of the Sandwich Islands to the British crown. Mr. Weed sailed on the 7th of June for Europe, in the packet-ship George Washington. Isaac Newton had placed a steamboat at the disposal of his friends to accompany him to Sandy Hook. Among the other passengers were Bishop Hughes, Bishop Purcell, Father De Smet, John L. Schoolcraft, of Albany, and George Leitch, of Auburn. The Evening Journal of that day contained Weed s farewell to his readers. As Seward was reading it at the breakfast-table on the fol lowing morning, his eye fell upon a tersely-expressed paragraph in the same paper, which he read aloud, remarking that it was just and de served. This was Sydney Smith s " humble petition to the Houses of Congress," drawn out by Pennsylvania s refusal to pay the interest on her bonds, some of which he was unfortunate enough to hold. . Probably none of the censures of repudiation touched the American heart so closely as these words of Sydney Smith. To rebukes from po litical opponents, denunciations by foreign newspapers and statesmen, many had grown indifferent; but these plain, simple words of a rural clergyman, an honest man, who had put his little savings into the care of a great republic, with undoubting faith that it would keep its prom ises, showed the American people that to repudiate such a debt was not only a disgrace, but a crime. Soon after came another startling rebuke. O Connell, in a letter to tee Irishmen of America, said : Americans attempt to palliate their iniquity by the excuse of personal inter est ; but the Irish, who have not even that excuse, and yet justify slavery, are utterly indefensible. Once again, and for the last time, we call upon you to come out of the councils of the slaveholders, and to free yourselves from participating in their guilt. Irishmen ! I call upon you to join in crushing slavery, and in giving liberty to every man, of every caste, creed, or color. This was signed by O Connell, as chairman of the committee of the Dublin Repeal Association, and was in reply to a Cincinnati associa tion, who had written justifying " the Irish support of the pro-slavery party," alluded to by Lord Morpeth. 1848.] WEED IN EUROPE. 663 CHAPTER XLIX. 1843. Weed in Europe. Letters from America. Bunker Hill Monument. Death of Legar6. Van Buren, Cass, and Calhoun. Change of Professional Employment. Patent Case*. The End of the World. RETURNED to Auburn, Seward wrote to Weed : AUBUBN, Friday, June 9, 1843. Here I am, nearly four hundred miles distant from the place where I parted from you ; and you have probably added an equal space to our distance in so brief a time. Mrs. Weed and Harriet repressed their feelings quite well, and left me for home under kind care. I followed yesterday morning. Benedict came in from the parting scene deeply affected, and bestowed him self at once upon his neglected correspondents. I stopped only an hour in Al bany, and failed to see King. I am glad I went to STew York. I had not con ceived such general yet delicate kindness. I came home loving mankind in general better than ever. Your farewell in the Journal subdued many stubborn prejudices, and revived much the affection of friends. It was admired by all, and most by the most intelligent. Mrs. Seward and my father and mother make me tell the story all orer again every time I enter the house, about the imperturbable seamanship, the clinging steamers on either side, the collation, and the parting. When Judge Miller comes home, and Harding, it must be done again for them. Mr. Oroswell was on the steamboat when I came up. He spoke of you with respect and kindness. The True Sun noticed your departure in words of simple truth ; I cannot send it. The article said that you had gone for health and pleasure; that you were attended to the wharf by many and distinguished friends ; that the public mind was greatly divided about you, many cherishing devoted affection and re spect for you, and others, especially since the effort to nominate Scott in 1839, regarding you as an evil and dangerous man. But your absence will remove these prejudices, and if the public interests do not require you to offend existing combinations on your return, you will enjoy a popularity that would be danger ous to any other than a moderate man. But I must not bore you with politics. Our State affairs will soon sink ia importance, and even our own national questions lose their exciting interest and an old abbey or desolated castle, or long-ago battle-field, will excite senti ments more overpowering than the succession in our republican dynasty. Be sure to look on the sea, to study it carefully when it is lashed into storms, making it resemble a wintry snow-scene ; when it is so calm that you can realizi the beauty of the superstition that Venus was born of it ; in the morning when the rising sun kindles its waters with effulgence ; at evening when he leaves you to its depressing gloom. The sea and the sun, the sublimest creations of God, you can never be satisfied with the contemplation of either, after you have been accustomed to see both together. You left some valuable letters. I committed them to Blatchford, who said they should be sent by the steamer. Thus we have discovered that sailing-vea- LIFE A:NT]D LETTERS. [1843 sels are better than steamships for passengers who wish to leave their letters or baggage behind them. The corporation, the military, etc., are making arrangements for the recep tion of the President and his suite. Assuredly there is a boldness in this deter mination to enjoy the homage of the people when they have so much reluctance in rendering it. The Bostonians are very ambitious, and the personal friends of Mr. Webster anticipate an effort on his part which will regain for him the affections of New England. They manifest no reluctance to the aid of the Presi dent s visit in that respect. England is glorious in June, is it not ? You see, I am imaging this letter arrived. But you will be in danger of forgetting the loveliness of June every where else. Even here, these dark forests which overhang the canal, the free and broad lawns of the Mohawk Valley, are beautiful. Take care that you for get not their loveliness, if you value our affection. Then for the moral scenery. Who so poor that he may not own land, trees, flowers here? or, if he own them not, is not every man a commoner of them ? But Where you are men are worth less than acres, and the trees of the rich deny their shade to the children of the poor. AUBURN, June 12, 1843. Since I wrote you on Friday, there is nothing new. Benedict is engaged al ready in administering your political as well as fiscal estate. He appeals to Morgan and Hawley to rouse themselves for the great work he has assumed. Whittlesey passed through Auburn last night on his way to Kochester, leav ing a kind and generous letter for me, chiefly saying that, while the storm my repeal demonstration made was not less than he had foreseen, yet on the whole, after reading the speech and hearing comments, he had become almost satisfied that the proceeding was judicious, and would result well. I would not weary you with politics, since I know how glad you will have become to forget them long before this will reach you. Patterson accompanied me from Albany thus far on his route homeward ; J. B. ISTott as far ; and we had Colonel Barnard from Syracuse. Harding is yet at Seneca Falls, where he had spent a week painting Sackett. He received your farewell epistle. I write to him to-day. AUBUBN, June 18, 1848. By this time you have wearied the steward, and tried the patience of the captain, with repeating the silly interrogations which he hears from every landsman on every voyage. You have become wearied of nine-tenths of the passengers, and more out of patience with yourself than with them. Even the sea has showed all its phases and phenomena which it reveals to fair-weather passengers ; and you would rejoice to be assured that your printing-office had not stopped its operations, your family were yet in health, and your bosom friends were steadfast. But it will be a week yet before you can receive any tidings, and then a world new to you and whose novelty consists in the antiquity you have venerated, without ever seeing it, will, for a time, banish all solicitude con cerning all you left behind. I know not the times and seasons of the packets, and, if I did, I could not conform. So you must take my letters written at my convenience, not theirs. If they ever find you, and if they assure you that I am still faithful, they will accomplish all that I expect, though they may not convey to yon the early intelligence you would be glad to receive. 1848.] THE BUNKER HILL MONUMENT. 665 That repeal meeting operated as every effort of a similar kind has done. Greeley went manfully in, and manifestly with much advantage. In the coun try, the Whigs were amazed, rubbed their eyes, asked what I was after now, and went to sleep again. Rufus King had, as I hope you will see, a gallant de fense; after which I wrote him to drop all notice of me in the matter. I think that in New York there is a general expression that the savings of four years have been lost by my indiscretion. In the country there is a doubt whether it is not probable that my sentiments are just, and action wise. Mean time, the Whig Mayor of Utica has presided at a meeting, and some Whigs, united with many more influential men of the other party, have called a meet ing in Albany. The subject will soon rest, unless fresh excitement is raised by intelligence from the other side of the Atlantic. The 17th of June has passed. Judging from the number of pilgrims I have met, the holy shrine of Mecca never witnessed more ardent worship. The world has all gone to Bunker Hill ; and, since Webster spoke, there could be no disappointment. How enviable is his power 1 How absolute it would be, if combined with discretion 1 Blatchford, I suppose, has spent the week at Marshfield. Frank Granger is in Ohio on his annual visit; A. P. Granger in the West. There are no signs of political life, although there is abundant faith. Greeley is confident; but even the triumph of " Association " seems as improbable, and likely to be as speedy. John Davis has been wise ; Briggs s nomination was made in a spirit that seems auspicious. Vivus W. Smith, who has returned from Ohio, is con fident of much success for our Congress ticket there. We number the days of your voyage, and measure your progress a subject upon which I exhibit astonishing knowledge. Indeed, I am quite an oracle among your friends since I discourse profoundly of the northern passage, the Gulf Stream, the banks, and the rates per hour of navigation. If this finds you in London, or indeed in Great Britain, and you shall have marked out the programme of your travels, do not omit to give it me. It will enable me to keep Mrs. Weed s and Harriet s eyes on the route, following your progress before your letters arrive. You will see by the papers that there is an epidemic influenza. It has thrown me upon my back three times, but I am now wearing it out. Scarcely any one escapes. It seems quite certain that the President is to visit Niagara as well as the Springs. Since the day of railroads has reached its meridian, our little town of Auburn is too obscure to detain such distinguished tourists. In passing through France, I used to inquire of the conductor, when we approached or were passing a place which seemed to contain five or six thousand people, what town that was. (" Quelle mile est-ce Id f ") u Ge n est pas une mile, settlement un village," he would reply. ("It is not a town, only a village.") Ineffable was the con tempt he felt for villages. John Tyler will find villages as unendurable, since they will furnish him no parasites. I promise you, by-the-way, no more French anecdotes until you have commenced your studies on the Continent. The President and cabinet went to Bunker Hill to attend the cele bration. People flocked toward Boston from all parts of New England, and even from the West and South. Revolutionary soldiers, military LIFE AND LETTERS. [1848, companies, and " Boston boys," were especially welcome. In different cities, all over the country, salutes of twenty-six guns were fired at noon, one for each State, calling up before the " mind s eye " of those who heard them the vast concourse at Charlestown, gathered around the towering shaft, listening to Webster s matchless oratory. These glowing feelings received a check by the intelligence of the death at Boston of Hugh S. Legare", the Attorney-General. The President and the remaining members of the cabinet gave up their tour, and returned with the body to Washington. June was cold and rainy, and the influenza showed no sign of abate ment. On the contrary, it seemed to be spreading. In the cities whole families were suffering with it at once. Occasionally, shops would be shut because there was nobody to attend them. The country news papers were all talking of it, for it had spread even into rural localities. Ships came into port having the captain and half the crew laid up with it. AUBURN, June 24, 1843. It is Saturday night once more. I have indulged myself in the luxury of even a regalia, and thrown aside special pleas and meaner labors to give you a narration of the week. How much more cheerfully should I do this if my letter could leap into your hand just as you reach the wharf at Liverpool, instead of being weeks, perhaps months, lying by in some banker s counting-room, waiting your arrival at a stopping-place ! I have a mournful story to begin with. I rejoiced this morning in the gather ing clouds, for the earth was parched, and my young trees and shrubbery were drooping. A hurricane preceded the rain. When I went home to dine, two noble shade-trees of my neighbor s had been upturned, and lay in all their glori ous foliage stretched upon the ground. I had lost only what the worms had spared of a sickly acacia. Another storm came on, and still another. When I went home in the evening, there was mourning over Jenny, our canary, who was drowned in her nest, having protected her eggs until the last. The male canary, and Bob the mocking-bird, had been exposed in the rain-storms, and were drooping. Now, a canary-bird of either sex is easily supplied, but that bird was one of many beautiful remembrances of our pleasures and enjoyments at Albany ; and now that the responsibilities, cares, and griefs of that residence have passed away, and thick fancies of other accidents and troubles crowd upon me, my so journ at Albany seems like all former periods of life, bright and happy. But this is enough for an obituary of a canary-bird, to be sent to a gentleman who, for his sight-seeing and wonder-hearing in foreign lands, forgets the glories of his native mountains, the music of the forests, and all save the love and affection of wife, children, and friends. I went last Friday to Canandaigua, and there argued a cause in the United States Circuit Court, before Judge Thompson of the Supreme Court. Granger returned from Ohio while I was in Oanandaigua. I called at his house, but missed him. Sibley is building a fine house, and preparing for the marriage of hi daughter. 1843.] ENGLISH ART AND WEALTH. 667 I have spent three days in preparing special pleas for Greeley, in two libel oases brought by Cooper. I tempt the Supreme Court somewhat ; but, if I do not overrate my work, I shall, by means of it, acquire an opportunity to get an adjudication, by the Court of Errors, upon the law of libel, as it affects the free dom of the press. You will have seen accounts of the death of the late Attorney-General and Sec retary of State ad interim, Mr. Legare. He had so conducted as not to become particularly obnoxious for the measures and policy of the Administration. It is evident that his loss will not be felt in the cabinet, though such were his talents and acquirements that the country holds his memory in high respect. The President and survivors of the cabinet returned immediately to Washington. The Democrats did all that was needful to make their progress splendid and agreeable. The Whigs kept aloof. Mr. Webster s speech at Bunker Hill is called and regarded as a great produc tion ; yet it is inferior to the mighty efforts he has heretofore made. It will, nevertheless, revive his personal popularity in New England. How strange that such a man should not know that generous appeals to the patriotism, national pride, and sympathies of the people, like this, and his former Bunker Hill speech, tell upon them with a thousand-fold greater effect than discussions of financial schemes and commercial treaties ! These embarrass and enfeeble him. Those renew his strength, and rekindle the affection and gratitude of the country. John M. Clayton, of Delaware, has published a letter declining to be a can didate for the vice-presidency. It is wisely done ; but, after all, there are likely to be as many for him as for anybody. The repeal question has gone as all its predecessors of the same kind did. The city press of the Whigs came out earnestly against it. The Democratic press are strongly in favor ; and now our indiscreet friends are defending them selves against accusations of distrust of the capacity of man for self-government, and anti-national sympathies with the English. This was to be so in any event. O Oonnell has made a noble speech against the pro-slavery proclivities and as sociations of his countrymen here. It does him infinite honor; but existing prejudices and connections are too strong to be broken by even his mighty spell. Seven and eighteen are twenty-five. To-day, perhaps, you are looking with disappointment at the narrow flood of the Mersey, and contrasting its muddy beach at low tide with the glorious bay, flush and full, pouring its waters against the islands of New York ; and turning from the contrast, so agreeable to Ameri can pride, you are admiring the villas and gardens, groves and cottages, which surround Liverpool. Well, English art and English wealth will amaze you; but not so much as the grandeur of Nature, here, astounds the children of the petty island that rules the world. But the greatest disappointment is yet to come. You are a politician, and have swayed the councils of your native State, and put forth an influence that has been felt in the national Government. When you come to see the abode of royalty, the halls of Parliament, the commercial marine, and the navy and the army of Great Britain, the monuments of national triumph, and the trophies of conquest, you will for a time, though most unjustly, feel as if the powers of government you have seen in exercise here, the interests affected by them, and the destinies which they were fulfilling, were mean and 668 LI FE AND LETTERS. [184& unworthy of a high ambition. After this mistake has been corrected by just re flections upon the character and destinies of the American people, you will come home more than ever in love with your native land, more than ever proud that you are an American citizen, and deemed not unworthy a voice in the coun sels of your country. AUBUBN, July 1, 1848. A wearisome week draws to its close ; and one more exciting will follow it. You are happily free from the cares that will grow up around one where his family and his treasure are. May you enjoy it 1 Blatchf ord has taken a six-years lease of the country-seat of the late Mr. Prime, at Hell Gate a magnificent dwelling. He writes a glowing account of his visit to Marshfield. His affections, and those of his intimate associates, cling as close as ever to Mr. Webster. Blatchford says that the New England speech will bring back to him two-thirds of his alienated friends in that region. In- man writes me that he is coming up, in the next fortnight, to take his chance for that picture. I spent last evening pleasantly with General Granger and Raynor, at Syracuse. The Maine Democrats have appointed State delegates to their National Con vention, and nominated " the Sage of Lindenwald." My business grows lux uriantly, and my garden likewise. In the humid atmosphere of England you can scarcely conceive the intensity of the sun that ushers in the month. AUBUBK, July 9, 1848. President Tyler has returned to Washington, and appointed Mr. Upshur Secretary of State ; Mr. Henshaw, of Boston, to the Navy ; and John Nelson, of Maryland, Attorney-General. The two latter were always Yan Buren men ; the former you know. Rumors are rife that the Secretary of the Treasury has had a falling out with the President. But I know no grounds for believing it authentic. It is whispered, also, that the Postmaster-General is in collision with the financial premier. All these things are probable, and must happen some day ; yet I doubt their reality now. On the other hand, the Whigs pursue steadily their course. Delegates have been appointed in Illinois, favorable and instructed to vote for the Kentuckian. The great subject of the week has been the new incident in regard to the question of Irish repeal. The action of our city friends, and the arts of our op ponents, were operating effectually to turn that excitement to the account of Yan Buren. But O Connell s great speech on slavery has exasperated the South, and the Democrats have for once lost their temper. Denunciations of O Con- nell necessarily chill their ardor for the repeal ; and the Whigs being right and sound on the question of slavery, and therefore unmoved by sympathy with the South, have, by peculiar good-fortune, retained their position. The effects of this cannot but be beneficial to Ireland and to America. You will see that in Philadelphia and Baltimore the Democrats have denounced O Oonnell; while the Repeal Association in Charleston has dissolved itself, and appropriated its funds to domestic charities. The Supreme Court at Utica convened on Monday. I was there, but did not reach my causes. I return this week. On the 4th of July I went with the . Chief-Justice to Trenton Falls, and we had a very nice time, talked everything, and enjoyed the communion of free and generous spirit. 1843.] CALHOUN AND T1IE PRESIDENCY. 669 There is, I think, a great pleasure in taking care of one s shrubbery and trees in this delightful month of July. My own flourish, and will surprise you when you visit us next spring, which I sincerely hope will be the period of your return to America. Do not become impatient. A premature return will always be re gretted. UTIOA, Jitfy 14, 1848. As you see, I am here again. To-day I made my debut in the Supreme Court. My cause has no special interest or importance, and I endeavored to avoid pre tension. So it seemed to pass off well enough. The clique who congregated here at the July term, so much to your annoyance and mine, are here now ; but the scene is altogether different, and it shall not be my fault if jealousies are ever permitted to do so much mischief hereafter. The Attorney- General is here, kind, friendly, and communicative, as ever. Dr. Nott came up yesterday and spent a day with me. We conversed much, but you can imagine all. John Quincy Adams is at Saratoga. I am almost tempted to steal away from this dull place to commune with the sage. But it would not be lawyer-like, and I suppose it would cost some money, so I return to the wheel and sigh not. Dr. Nott had a conversation with J. 0. S , in which he gave full confirma tion of all our speculations. He does not expect to be the candidate at the next election ; but he does trust in his present policy to defeat Yan Buren and pro mote the election of Oalhoun, a Southern man, whose counsels will be swayed by the same bold course now pursued by the Secretary. Indeed, the Secretary will be premier. The South, having had another President, will be satisfied ; and, in the regular course of things, S will be the Democratic candidate five years hence. How singular this delusion is! Our good Mends, having done up the presidency for a certainty, are looking for a second. The debate waxes earnest. K P. T is in Wisconsin. Fillmore has been in Detroit. Both excite some interest in the West. There seems to be repose in Albany. The good peo ple are, however, well employed in breaking up the inclined planes between their city and Soheneotady. One is already replaced by a plane feasible for locomotives, and the other will be. The Barnburner Central Committee have formally assented to postpone the National Convention ; and the Argus is soothing the Charleston Mercury, so as to secure the cooperation of the South in the support of Van Buren after he shall be nominated. How I ramble through the news of a week I And yet it is not quite certain that the details will not be tedious. Certainly, if other correspond ents are as prolix, you will not willingly read all the letters you receive. And then, how old this news will be ! Before this finds her Majesty s post-office, you will probably have shaken the dust from your feet, and bidden adieu to London. Well, if you have not practised some French or Dutch, you will on the Continent be glad to find something you can read. AUBUBN, July 22, 1848. The Caledonian has arrived. Your letters are distributed, and your friend* are full of enthusiasm. Your letter from the sea, Cork, and Dublin, reached me first. jSText day came a letter from King, rejoicing with exceeding great joy, and announcing the forthcoming of your letters in the Journal, and to-day Andrews displays your letter to him in the Rochester Democrat. These letters are all like yourself, and will elevate you much among the 070 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1843. statesmen as well as editors of the country. Go on with them in entire confi dence. They will do mnch good to our country, and to the emigrant from other lands. Even the Argus is softened, and invites attention to yonr "inter esting letter " in the Journal. Do not trouble yourself to write to me. Bestow all your time on the Jour- nal, and other correspondents. Your letters for the public eye will be interest ing to me. Let me be neglected, if anybody must. By-the-way, Taylor Hall has signalized his originality by making a dead set to convert the Journal of Commerce to love you and me. There is enterprise for you ! The election in Louisiana is a total rout of the "Whigs. But the Whig papers assure us that it is all right ; that our time is not to come until 1844. They even read homilies to all who they think are impatient. Well, I shall be glad to see the Whigs victories when they come. Indiana comes next ; and I sup pose that Mr. Mendenhall will reply audibly through the ballot-boxes, then, to that most effective speech addressed to him last year. The Governor has completed his Eastern pilgrimage, but I think has softened none of the asperities of the two contending factions. The Democratic Con vention comes off in September. It will appoint delegates to the National Con vention, and they will all be Van Buren men. Governor Oass is said to have made a very effective speech at the Miami celebration about the war, patriotism, and hostility to the English. He has, moreover, become a repealer, and an advocate for the immediate occupation of Oregon. I am working under a large mass of professional business, which increases daily. James G. Wilson was at this time the owner of the patent-right of a planing-machine. Happening to be in the United States court-room at Albany, he heard Seward arguing a cause which he brought to a successful result. Wilson, who had not before met him, was much pleased with his argument and his manner of conducting the case. As soon as he came out, Wilson introduced himself, and offered him a retainer in a patent cause. Seward explained that he was not familiar with that class of cases, and that the sciences of mechanics and mathe matics had never been among his favorite studies, so that he doubted his ability. " I ll take the risk of that," said Wilson ; " if you ll only argue my case as well as the one I have just heard, I shall be satisfied." Seward still hesitating to accept the retainer, Wilson laughed, and said, " You d better take two hundred dollars. You will earn all that, and more too, for there is plenty of work to be done." The business relation, thus accidentally opened, continued through several years. The planing-machine was so popular and profitable an invention that there were many infringements on Wilson s rights, and contestants of his claims. It led ultimately to a change in the character of Sew- ard s practice. Before, he had been engaged almost wholly in the State courts of law and chancery. The tact and success with which he 1943.1 JOHN Q. ADAMS AT AUBURN. 671 managed Wilson s suits brought to him inventors, or holders of patent- rights, of steam-engines, valves, car-wheels, etc., all of which were tried in the United States courts, not only at Albany, Canandaigua, and Utica, but in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, and even Cincinnati, St. Louis, and other Western cities. Henceforth, his practice, instead of confining him to his office at Auburn, took him away from it, involving long journeys and frequent absences from home. Knowledge of the law of patents, and familiarity with the principles of machinery, soon came with study and experience. He found, rather to his own surprise, that mechanical science, which he had doubted his ability to deal with, was a study for which his keen perception and logical habit of mind gave him a peculiar aptitude. Not the least important consideration was, that it was a far more profitable branch of the profession than those he had hitherto been en gaged in. With industry and perseverance, it offered a ready escape from the " sea of debts." Among the army and navy news from Washington was a long list of promotions, mentioning, among others, Cadet W. S. Rosecrans, to be second-lieutenant ; Cadats J. J. Reynolds, Peck, and Hardy, assigned to the artillery ; Cadets Augur, U. S. Grant, Steele, and Dent, to the infantry ; Rufus Ingalls to the riflemen ; Cadet Wm. B. Franklin, the head of the class, was assigned to the Topographical Engineers. Meanwhile the time appointed for the end of the world had come and gone, but the world continued to roll on. CHAPTER L. 1843. John Quinoy Adams at Auburn. Prediction about Slavery. Inman and Harding. A Friendly Contest. Father Mathew. Chancellor Sent. Opinions vs. Commentaries.- Weed s Letters." Hunkers " and " Barnburners " in Convention. JOHN QTJINCY ADAMS, who had been traveling to Albany, Saratoga, Montreal, and Niagara, was returning eastward. Seward wrote to his friends in regard to suitable public demonstrations of welcome. No hint was needed, however, for the western part of the State was full ot his admirers, some dating back to the time when he was a presidential candidate ; others more recently enlisted under his banner as defender of the right of petition. At Buffalo he was received with a public demonstration, and an address by Mr. Fillmore ; at Rochester with another demonstration, and another at Canandaigua, and an address by Mr. Granger. On Friday, July 28th, Seward and Judge Miller went to 672 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1848 Canandaigua to meet him. Arriving at Auburn in the evening, he was met by a torch-light procession, which escorted him to Se ward s resi dence. Ascending the steps, Seward introduced him to the people, and Mr. Adams addressed a few words to them before entering the house. Much fatigued, he declined eating, drank a glass of wine, and retired to his room as soon as it was prepared. At five o clock in the morning, he rose, and at six went over to visit the State-prison, returning to break fast at eight. The conversation turned naturally upon the condition of public affairs, and the political outlook. The question of slavery hav ing been broached, the customary opinion of the times was expressed by one of the guests, that the institution was a colonial inheritance from Great Britain, incongruous with our republican system, which must eventually disappear. To this Mr. Adams seemed to assent. One of the gentlemen said : " But do you not think, Mr. Adams, that it will be peacefully and legally abolished perhaps twenty, perhaps fifty years hence ? " Mr. Adams had sat with head bent forward, apparently in reverie. The inquiry roused him in a moment. With a keen glance at the speaker, and unusual animation of voice and manner, he said : " I used to think so, but I do not now. I am satisfied that it will not go down until it goes down in blood" A pause ensued, and then some body remembered that it was time to proceed to the church, where Mr. Adams was to have a formal public reception at nine o clock. The citizens of Auburn and their families had already filled the edifice to overflowing. When the distinguished guest arrived, Seward addressed him ID their behalf, saying : A change has come over the spirit of your journey since your steps have turned toward your ancestral sea-side home. Kumors of your advance escape before you, and a happy and grateful community rise up in their clustering cities, towns, and villages, impede your way with demonstrations of respect and kindness, and convert your unpretending journey into a triumphal progress. The homage paid you, dear sir, is sincere, for it has its sources in the just senti ments and irrepressible affections of a free people, their love of truth, their admiration of wisdom, their reverence for virtue, and their gratitude for benefi cence. We seem in this interview with you to come into the presence of our de parted chiefs. The majestic shade of Washington looks down upon us ; we hear the bold and manly eloquence of the elder Adams ; and we listen to the voices of the philosophic and sagacious Jefferson, the refined and modest Madison, and the generous and faithful Monroe. The praises we bestow are already echoed back to us by voices which come, rich and full, across the Atlantic, hailing you as the indefatigable champion of humanity not that humanity which embraces a single race or clime, but that humanity which regards the whole family of man. Such salutations as these Of-- THE UNIVE i 1843.] HENRY INMAN. 673 cannot be mistaken. They come not from your contemporaries, for they are gone. You are not of this generation, but of the past, spared to hear the voice of pos terity. The greetings you receive come up from the dark and uncertain future. They are the whisperings of posthumous fame." Mr. Adams replied, expressing his thanks for the courtesy shown him, his good wishes for the future of the village and its citizens, but without touching upon any of the public questions of the day. A short time was then spent in introductions, shaking hands, and conversation. The hour fixed for his departure drew near, and at eleven he left the railroad-station in a special train amid the acclamations of the gathered crowd. " Governor," said a friend to Seward, a short time afterward, when some allusion was made to the startling remark in regard to slavery, " Mr. Adams is a very great man, but he is growing old. Don t you think he is rather despondent, discouraged, perhaps, by what he sees at Washington ? " "I think," answered Seward, " that he is wiser than any of us on that subject ; but I shall not give up my hope of a peaceful solution so long as any such solution is possible. At any rate, it is our duty to labor for such a one." Mr. Adams, after leaving Auburn, was received with ovations along the whole route. The Whigs hoisted flags in honor of his coming, and had special ceremonies of reception at Herkimer, Little Falls, and Schenectady. He reached Boston three or four days later. A charac teristic expression of a steamboat captain, with whom he traveled, illus trated the popular feeling. He said, " Oh, if you could only take the engine out of the old Adams, and put it into a new hull ! " Harding, who had now completed his painting, took his leave. A few days later, Henry Inman arrived to enter upon his work. Both were high in public esteem, occupying the first rank among American artists ; yet they were in strong contrast. The new-comer, Mr. Inman, showed in every look and action the fruits of a life of artistic culture, ease, and taste. Graceful and engaging in his manners, fluent and im aginative in his conversation, he had almost a boyish fondness for fun, and a keen eye for the beauties of Nature. He had not been an hour in the house before it seemed as if he were an old acquaintance. He told one of the boys that he would go out with him into the Morello cherry-trees, whose fruit was just hanging red and ripe, and promised the other that he would go with him to the Owasco Lake for boating and perch-fishing ; both of which promises he fulfilled before the week was out. " Music, Mrs. Seward," said he, as he was sketching the outlines of Seward s face in crayon " music, I think, must be the vernacular in heaven. They may have some other language there for grave intel lectual and religious topics ; but, for the small-talk, I think they prob ably use music. Now, Mr. Seward, wait one moment before you an- 43 674 LJ FE AND LETTERS. [1843. swer. I want to catch that expression I see on your face, before you move a muscle." In accordance with promise, Seward continued to write once a week to Mr. Weed, during the latter s European tour, noting the salient points of passing public events, with occasional allusion to the scenes in the Old World through which his friends were passing. Weed s first letters to the Evening Journal described his passage over. The George Washington had made a tolerably quick run, having been only twenty - one days at sea. His next letter was from Dublin, describing his visit to and dinner with Daniel O Connell, and his attending a great repeal meeting, addressed by the " Liberator " at Donnybrook Green. ATJBTJBN, July 31, 1843. Although the Journal gives us two or three letters, and glorious ones they are too, every week, yet they do little to advise us of your progress. It is like firing at vacancy, to write to a man in universal Europe. But you must be indulged. The business of writing up for you the record of the week has gone over to Sunday, instead of being done up on Saturday, according to the com mandment. The newspapers, if you see them, will advise you that some of our clergy have brought about a schism in the Episcopal Church, that affords aliment to the many classes of religious people who wait, not patiently, for a cause of cen sure against her. Puseyism has discovered itself in the Eastern Diocese of this State. TVo clergymen here protested, and the popular side is waging war with the ecclesiastics. Louisiana has gone ; and Greeley writes me to look for defeat in North Carolina, probably in Tennessee, and perhaps in Indiana. Warning we gave a year ago, but it fell unheeded. The week has been signalized by demonstrations to John Quincy Adams, which will gladden your heart. He set off a month ago on an excursion to Lebanon Springs, then made his way to Saratoga, and to Montreal, and returned by the way of Niagara. When he reached the old " infected district," the spirit revived and hailed him with enthusiasm. He has had a triumphal progress. But you will see all this in the newspapers. I had him at my house, but not alone. It was a pageant. Saturday, August 5th. This sheet has lain by unfinished until now ; but I believe no packet has been lost. I have now the pleasure of acknowledging your second letter, which shows you domiciliated in the capital, and abated in -glory by necessary econ omy. This is perhaps wise, though I would delight if you were able to enlighten me about the high political circles in Great Britain. King writes me that your letters from Dublin have excited much ire among some of your subscribers ; all this is natural. But you will not regard it. The same kind of people have cursed John Quincy Adams bitterly for being an antimason, and have "pitied him" for his "madness" on the subject of sla very. Now, they bring laurels in such profusion as almost to exclude the offer ings of those who shared his trials and abided his fortunes. By this time you will have got out of the vicinity of O Connell, and your letters will be acceptable to your fastidious friends. Do not indulge the least 1843.] WEED S TRAVELS. 675 misgiving about your letters in the Journal. They are all that your best friends could d. sire; and they are eagerly copied by various very respectable papers. AUBURN, August \\th. Well, uncle, so you write Mrs. Weed that you are coming home in Septem ber. If so, I trow your face must be already turned toward the setting sun. But I won t believe a word of it. Stay until spring, I enjoin and entreat you. Do not be flattered, nor vain. We have learned to do without you. We man age newspapers, politics, and other matters, very well without your help. When I told Mrs. Seward that you proposed so speedy a return, she expressed her great surprise and regret. Do not hasten. You are doing in Europe for the paper what you could not do at home, and are wearing out jealousies by absence, which your presence would increase. My journal of the past week is barren. There has been a circuit court here, and I have been the chief pugilist in the melee. Weary of it am 1. But my courage is not abated. Inman has been a week with me, taking his sketch for his prize-picture. He is admitted on all hands to have a strong likeness ; but it is generally said that it is not a pleasing one. On the other hand, it is conceded that Harding has a most grateful picture, while its fidelity is questioned. But such a picture as I have of Mrs. Seward it would surprise your imagination to conceive. George Weed says he is most heartily glad that you have got out of Ireland ; that your friends in Albany are nearly overborne on account of your letters from Dublin. Greeley droops in the fear of an unwelcome result of the next cam paign. The Journal, I hope, gratifies you by its increasing zeal and confidence. Where will this letter find you ? I guess at Geneva. You see the Rhine, of course, the beautiful and glorious Rhine. I stole away yesterday afternoon with wife and bairns, and auntie, to the shores of the Owasco. We sailed, and fished, and bathed, and I dreamed of being with you in that long, exciting, and delight ful excursion through the Rheingau to Basle, and held converse with you in the valley of Chamouni. Do not come home until you have seen Switzerland and Italy. AUBTJEN, August 20, 1843. The Hibernia is here, and though two mails have dispersed the news she brought, I have no letter from you. So I must address myself to you, as defend ants are summoned to the Court of Chancery, " wheresoever you may then be." You can scarcely imagine the occupation I leave to write a letter to you. Behold, my pen yet contains a portion of the ink with which it was filled to write the vindication of the Rev. Washington Van Zandt, against the verdict of a jury and the censures of the Evening Journal ! " To such base uses do we come at last, Horatio." Before this letter shall have set out on the long trans atlantic voyage I shall be at Lyons, maintaining that tenants induced by their landlord to settle lands, under expectation of purchase, are entitled to notice to quit. I look with surprise and dismay upon the mass of professional business I have drawn down upon myself in the fe\v months of my retirement. Then, again. I look across to Saratoga, where I see the ex-President, ex-Postmaster- General, and ex-Lieutenant-Governor, exhibiting themselves to the ambitious and the gay, and I wonder why I alone of all the decayed dignitaries should be doomed to the tread-mill. 676 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1843. The "Barnburners," really in earnest for Colonel Young, have held a meeting in New York to adopt measures for calling a State Convention to amend the con stitution. R. H. Morris presided, and, strange to say, Albert H. Tracy, John C. Spencer, and Gerrit Smith, were among the invited guests. What a conjunction! We have had an Episcopal Diocesan Convention here. I saw Andrews, Bough- ton, and several others. Your letters furnish the staple of nearly every newspaper in the State. Pray, think of me for a dedication when you publish your first work. How little you dreamed of becoming an author! Hammond will have to rewrite your character, and Disraeli s "Curiosities of Literature" will be enriched by a note. AUBURN, Sunday, August 27, 1843. After almost a week s hard work at Lyons, at the Circuit Court, I came home in the night, spent several pleasant hours with Seth C. Hawley, whom I found here ; then found my office affairs here in great confusion ; and to-morrow I am to leave them so, to make my first appearance on Tuesday in the Court of Errors at Albany. At Lyons I saw William H. Adams, and John M. Holley, and Judge Spencer. They are somewhat despondent about political affairs this fall, but confident of triumph next year. Webb is read out of the Whig party by the American Citizen, at Albany, for counseling inaction. Greeley has been reproved by the same high authority. I shall see King on Tuesday, and endeavor to save the Journal from excommunication. It is pretty difficult to make up an issue with yon. Your last letter con tained your criticism of Webster s Bunker Hill speech, which has been forgotten here long ago. So I suppose my references to your letters will seem like far- brought reminiscences. The abolitionists assemble this week at Buffalo, in a Millerite tent, to nomi nate a President and Vice-President. I have now for the third time declined the former honor. They will have a meeting which will recall many recollec tions of the antimasonic movement. The Whigs seemed never to tire of demonstrations and tributes to Henry Clay. Their long-continued enthusiasm for "Harry of the West " rivaled that of the Democrats in preceding years for the " Old Hero " of New Orleans. Clay associations, Clay clubs, and Clay meet ings, were incidents in almost every village. The new tariff, largely due to his efforts, had proved to be a substantial advantage to manu factures. Factory stocks in Massachusetts rose rapidly in value, and it was stated that at Lowell the manufacture of muslin-de-laine would be commenced on a large scale, with a prospect of successful competition with the French fabric. A letter from Mr. Clay himself, in reference to agriculture and the tariff, helped to stimulate the popular feeling. The " Life and Speeches of Henry Clay " was published, and had a rapid sale. The Madisonian, the presidential organ at Washington, called for organization of the friends of Mr. Tyler, urging them to lend their efforts in opposition to 1843.] INMAN AND HARDING. 677 Mr. Clay. At the South, movements in behalf of Calhoun s nomination were in active progress ; while, at the North, Mr. Van Buren, when he presented himself at Saratoga, Albany, or elsewhere, was received with evident marks of Democratic favor. A noticeable commercial fact was the great reduction in the amount of wines and spirits imported, which was attributed to the effects of the temperance reformation. Portraits of Father Mathew were printed for popular circulation, and many anecdotes told of his unpretending manners and his persuasive eloquence. He was now fifty-four years old, with hair a little gray, of slight build, and usually wore in public a long surtout, with high, old-fashioned boots over his pantaloons. His administration of the pledge to a large number at once was an impres sive spectacle. He would make them all kneel down, hold up their hands, and solemnly repeat it after him, with an invocation for God s help to keep it. Then he would give each a medal and his blessing. The Episcopal Convention of the new Diocese of Western New York held its session in Auburn during August. For a week the village was full of clergymen, who were the guests of the different members of the congregation of St. Peter s. Among the three who staid at Seward s house was the Rev. Dr. Whitehouse, then of Rochester, and after ward Bishop of Illinois. It happened to be the anniversary week also of the Presbyterian Theological Seminary, and, it was remarked at table, " nearly every other man you meet in the streets here has spec tacles, or a white cravat." " I see, Governor, that you are being paint ed in a white cravat," said one, referring to the portrait upon which Inman was engaged. " Are you adopting the theological custom ? " " No," said he, " that is the artist s taste." Inman added : " I never paint a man in a black cravat if I can help it. On canvas, especially with a dark background, it looks as if his head was cut off." Inman remained two or three weeks in Auburn, and finished there the study from which the full-length picture for the City Hall was to be painted. He succeeded so well in catching Seward s expression while engaged in conversation that his portrait became the favorite one in the family, and it still hangs in its original place in the parlor. Some time later the committee met in New York, who were to decide between the two portraits, that of Harding and that of Inman. Both were so excel lent that the committee, after careful examination and comparison of opinions, declared themselves unable to say that either was better than the other. When this was announced to the painters, Inman, with his usual cheerful vivacity, laughed, and said to Harding, " Let s toss up for it." Harding assented, and Inman, drawing a half-dollar from his pocket, threw it up in the air with " Heads or tails ? " Heads came up and Inman won. His picture was formally turned over to the Com mon Council and hung in the Governor s Room. The " pipe-layers," 678 LIFE ANI) LETTERS. [1843. who had originated the competition, had already determined that which ever picture was not taken by the city they would purchase and pre sent to Mr. Seward s children. They did so, and Harding s was in trusted to the care of Seth C. Hawley, who in due time delivered it. When the family moved to Washington, Rev. Dr. Campbell, on behalf of the Trustees of the State Library, asked that it might be left at Albany until their return. For many years it has occupied the central space in the row of portraits at the library. While the Supreme Court was holding the July term at Utica, it was casually mentioned that Chancellor Kent, who was still hale and vigorous, would arrive at the age of fourscore on the 31st of the month ; and it was determined to hold a meeting of the bar in his honor. Attorney-General Barker presided. Complimentary resolu tions were adopted, and a committee appointed to invite him to a pub lic dinner ; the committee comprising lawyers from each county. Gov ernor Seward and Judge Richardson were appointed for Cayuga, Daniel Cady for Albany, Henry Wells for Yates, and judges and leading ad vocates from other counties. The Chancellor, while declining the in vitation, sent a charming letter in reply, in which he remarked: You have, gentlemen, met me in the midst of my own descendants, down to the third generation. " Et nati natorum et qui nascenturab illis." I am living literally among my posterity, as well in professional as in domestic life. My contemporaries have nearly all departed, and, although during my official career I was familiar with the bar and with the courts in every part of this great State, I have no personal acquaintance with most of the gentlemen who have done me the honor to unite in this invitation. When I first entered public life as a mem ber of Assembly, in 1V90, there were but sixteen counties in this State, and now this invitation comes from members of the bar who are distributed throughout fifty-eight of them. Seward, who had enjoyed the friendship of the venerated Chancel lor almost from boyhood, regarded him with affectionate esteem, and took pleasure in relating incidents that showed his activity, mental and physical, and his quick, youthful manner. On the bench he could be grave and stern ; off it he was often merry and -careless as a boy. On one occasion Seward had a perplexing legal question, arising out of the settlement of an estate. Taking the papers with him when he next went to New York, he consulted Chancellor Kent, asking his opinion about it. The Chancellor listened, sat a few moments in thought, and then gave his opinion in the matter. " But, Chancellor," said Seward, "your Commentaries, which I have carefully looked into, take the other ground. They say that the contrary view is the correct one." " Do they ? " said the Chancellor ; " let s get down the book and see." The book was taken down, the passage read, and the Chan cellor emphatically gave his decision. " The book is right. I may 1843.] THE "VHIG" PARTY. 679 guess wrong now, but when I wrote the book I knew. Always go by the book in preference to me." The newspapers were now discussing the possibility of cheap post age reform. "Penny postage," having been tried in England, had proved not only a benefit to the people, but a pecuniary advantage to the Government. Seward joined in urging its adoption. On the 1st of September it was announced that a Jersey City schooner had been stopped by the inspector at Norfolk, under the law against New York shipping, which apparently was now to be extended also to vessels from New Jersey, on the supposition that they were really New York vessels, attempting to evade search. It was regretted that the Legislature had refused to adopt Willis Hall s resolution, in structing the Attorney-General to bring the question by a test-case be fore the United States Supreme Court. Conventions were meeting in September to appoint delegates to the Whig National Convention, to meet at Baltimore in May. Upon many of the Whig handbills the heading was " Democratic Whig meetings," etc. This was an attempt to regain some of the prestige which it was felt the opposing party acquired merely by its name, especially among foreign voters. Every new-comer from Continental Europe was familiar with the word " democracy," and knew that it expressed his views ; while, as Seward used to say, " though our principles are the more democratic of the two, the name 4 Vhig, on a German or French hand bill, is more apt to discourage than to captivate." Only indifferent success attended the complex title, for the essence of party enthusiasm is simplicity and singleness of purpose. One of the illustrations of the Clay feeling was an incident in the lecture of a phrenologist, at Utica, who was holding up and commenting upon plaster-casts of the heads of distinguished men. When he held up that of Henry Clay, the audience rose and gave nine cheers. The Democratic feud was increasing in bitterness. The State Con vention met at Syracuse, and, the " old Regency " having a strong majority, chose Governor Marcy to preside. The " Old Hunkers " counted seventy-nine votes, and the " Barnburners " polled forty for Colonel Young. The next day it was reported that though the " Old Hunkers " had the control they were desirous of conciliating the " Barn burners." Delegates were chosen to the National Convention at Balti more, in May, and resolutions adopted recommending Van Buren for the presidential nomination, and indorsing Governor Bouck, Lieutenant- Governor Dickinson, and other State officers, but heading the list of delegates with the name of Samuel Young, the " Barnburner " leader, while taking care to secure a majority of the thirty-four for the "Old Hunkers." The Democrats in the Cayuga County Convention, on the other hand, 680 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1843, the " Barnburners " being in the ascendant, refused to indorse either the Governor or Lieutenant-Governor. In Columbia County the Lieu- tenant-Goveraor was formally read out of the party. And so the con test raged through nearly all the county conventions, the " Old Hunk ers," in a majority of instances, maintaining their supremacy. CHAPTER LL 1843. Van Buren, Bouck, and Webster. State Fair. A Dramatic Scene. Checks and Balances- " Puseyism." Morse s Telegraph. A Candidate for no Office. Fillmore and the Vice-Presidency. Weed for Governor. CONTINUING his letters to Weed, Seward wrote : AUBURN, Saturday Night, September 2, 1843. I happened unfortunately to arrive in Albany just in time for a caucus, con cerning the State Convention ; and, more unfortunate still, I advised against it. Although my opinions accorded with theirs, every Whig Senator there who was impatient of your dictation and mine did not like this. AUBURN, September 9, 1843. I have just received your epistle penned at Abbotsford. You had forgot ten that a sight of Abbotsford was denied to me. Melrose gladdened my eyes neither at glaring noon nor " by fair moonlight." You are happy in the free dom of will, though checked by that laggard leg. Before this time the determination concerning your return is fixed. I hope you have decided to winter abroad. Besides your own comfort and enjoyment, I like the rough trial to which I am exposed in your absence. I harden well and fast. I grow more and more a lawyer, and doubt now your power of fas cination to withdraw me from the money-seeking occupation in which I am en gaged. There is here and there a sharp angle, but I have turned them all safely thus far. The Democrats have had their State Convention, and it disclosed a broad and irreparable seam in the party. The strength of the respective factions wa shown in the election of a president. Governor Marcy had seventy-nine votes, Colonel Young forty. The few delegates from New York favorable to Calhoun protested. They were easily disposed of. The intelligence from Vermont is propitious, and may be regarded as furnish ing proof that the Whig party will, partially at least, recover ground at the presi dential election. Your letters are quite the rage among all parties. Everybody reads them ; and your opponents, especially, delight in showing me their magnanimity tow ard you. You have been reviewed in the New World, I hear. But I have not een the article. It is either retaliatory, or it is twaddle. You know that there if a circle of exclusive literary men. A politician a man of the world like you 1843.] A DRAMATIC SCENE. 681 has no right to invade their domain. You are an intruder. On the other hand, I see that every remark that you make takes effect. You are quoted in every part of the Union, and your letters very liberally republished. I hear, and learn from the papers, that Bowen has resigned his office as Vice- President of the Erie Railroad Company. But I hear nothing from him, and doubt whether the information is authentic. It is, at least, quite time that Bowen should leave that great enterprise to try its fortunes with the corruption that it was rescued from by our and his efforts. AUBURN, September 17, 1843. I have just returned from Avon Springs, where I have been trying a hotly- litigated cause for William and John Beach. I met Fillmore at Rochester, and had a pleasant interview with him, which was fortunate. I freely told him I was of opinion that he ought to be, and would be, nominated for Vice-President. He replied that he did not want it, but did not disclaim. He said he had cast the horoscope, and thought the place would fall to me, to which he should most cheerfully assent. I absolutely dis claimed, assigning reasons. The Calhoun men in New York are arraying themselves for battle, and the whole Democratic party in other States exhibit signs of division. In Maine it is probable no Governor is elected by the people. In Massachusetts the State Convention has adopted the " district system," and it is now probable that not a State in the Union, except New York, will adhere to the general-ticket plan. So you see that the indications of the contest are cheering enough, if we look only to the condition of our opponents. I cannot omit again talking about your letters. They are in every country newspaper. In truth, you have already written yourself out of all remembrance of the thousand offenses with which you had wounded politicians of all parties. I write to-night to require King to examine proofs more closely. He suffered your beautiful account of kirk-going in Glasgow to be spoiled by converting the "Tron Church" (the Throne Church that is, the Episcopal Throne Church) into an " Iron " Church. What an outrage ! Mr. Miller saw Daniel Webster in his law-office in Boston, talking about his farm with composure. He is referred to now as a man of immense tal ent, but not particularly, etc., etc. So it is to be eclipsed ! I agree to this at the very moment when the community is rife with reports tending, if not designed, to make me appear hostile to the great luminary which eclipses Webster I Enjoy while you may the precious relaxation of travel. AUBURN, September 24, 1843. Your flying epistle from Havre, Rouen, and Paris, came opportunely last night to revive me from the exhaustion of a week of great labor and excite ment. The information that your purpose as to the time of your return is unsettled relieves me somewhat, since I hope that the seductions of Rome, the winter in Rome, may prevail. The Agricultural State Fair came off at Rochester last week. I had de termined not to go there. Our Court of Common Pleas was in session. On Tuesday morning Mr. Van Buren and my respected successor were here on their way to the fair. A few Whigs (John A. King among them) were here, and the Whigs became anxious that they should be represented. I visited the 682 LIFE A N D LETTERS. [1843. ex-President and the incumbent State Executive, and attended them during their stay here. They returned my visits. Not a u Barnburner " approached the Governor, except to deride and insult him ; and even Mr. Van Buren was treated with marked neglect because he was in company with the u Hunker " Executive. They went on, and the next morning brought Mr. Webster to the cattle-show, there to make a speech, to undo the Baltimore " anti-tariff speech." I felt that it was due to him to sustain and cheer him, and that there would be kindness, if not magnanimity, in my doing so. I followed him to Rochester with Morgan. At that place there were fifteen or twenty thousand people, men, women, and children. Van Buren and Bouck were re ceived there much as here, Webster with all the enthusiasm that such intellect ual power ought to kindle. He was at first disquieted, moody, and morose. No one attended him but Coleman of the Astor. He authorized himself to be announced to speak in the field at three o clock. Meantime a supper was ar ranged for the same night. All Western New York turned out at three to hear him. Mr. Van Buren and the Governor retired, through fear of the effect of contrast. The audience sent forth their shouts for "Webster!" "Web ster ! " but he came not. The messengers went for him. He pleaded sick ness, and the people called out for me to speak in his stead. It was kind in them, and they received what I said in kindness. At night Webster came out at the supper, among a hundred and fifty of us, in one of his great and overpow ering speeches. His heart was warm, and his mind aroused. He enraptured us all. I answered, and cheered him with a hearty welcome. His great soul rose under this excitement. He grasped me by the hand, and, turning to the company with his full, manly, and impressive eloquence, tendered to me the friendship and support in all after-life of all the great New England confed eracy! It was a scene such as the stage seldom exhibits, and how it told upon all no one can describe. We parted friends. He returned eastward to enjoy his triumph, and I hurried back to the court to defend my clients in the General Sessions. Yesterday (Saturday) was the day of our nominating county convention. I attended and renewed my ancient association with the Whigs of Cayuga. I was reading your letter in the evening, when A. B. Dickinson and John May- nard came in to ask me to go to New York, and endeavor to resuscitate the New York & Erie Railroad Company. After a long discussion I convinced them that the time had not yet come. I am wearied with labor, and exhaust ed. But it is Sunday, and its soothing influences are upon me. There is a manifest revival of Whig sentiment and feeling, and, though it is all directed blindly, there are a thousand evidences that it lays hold upon the Whig policy and principles as promulgated at Albany during the past four years. These are consolations for you and me. The year 1848 is already anticipated in the very hour of the enthusiasm which has until now looked to 1844 as the last struggle, and the contest of that year is felt to be only preliminary to that of the next trial. The Repealers have had their national convention, and made Robert Tyler their president. Their efforts will tell here, and may do good across the At lantic. But they are about as blindly directed as those of the modern Abolition party. 1843.] REFUSING NOMINATIONS. 083 AUBUBN, September 30, 1843. June, July, August, September four months less a week since our friends on board the steamboat made me their organ to tender you wishes for a pros perous voyage and speedy return. The week s gossip throughout the State and country L.-jS been the Agricult ural Fair at Rochester. The impression has gone abroad, as I anticipated, that Van Buren and Bouck went to Rochester in search of popularity, and were eclipsed. You know it was the 7th of June that I presided at a repeal meeting in New York. The indefatigable u Old Hunkers " have burrowed out at last a repeal letter written by Mr. Van Buren on the 20th of that month. I cannot forbear to notice that no paper of either party has censured him for doing what they found an unpardonable offense in me. WEST POINT, October 8, 1843. At last we are here, and I employ the last hour of a delightful visit to pre serve the punctuality you have so good a right to exact. We have been here three days, and enjoyed our boy s society much of the time. lie is quite suc cessful in his studies, and his disposition has won the esteem of his teachers and fellows. We spent a night at your house on the way down, and found your family all well, and expecting your return by the next steamer. The political elements are gathering. The Calhoun men threaten to plant themselves on the district system, and organize the convention by receiving only delegates elected on that plan. It is apparent that Mr. Van Buren has re peated the blunder of 1824. Whether it will be equally disastrous is doubtful. But the doubt arises from counterbalancing blunders of our own. Instead of having laid and left a platform broad enough to invite all dissentients, we have narrowed it so that only one man can gain a foothold upon it ; and we are watching to exclude all others. Webb has nominated Webster for Vice-Presi- dent. . . . My name has been rung in changes for that nomination, as well as for Governor of New York. But I have abruptly ended them by answering, through the Courier, that I would be a candidate for no nomination, State or national. . . . I return to-morrow evening to Albany, and thence to Auburn, not even securing the indulgence of a day with the "pipe-layers." Business forbids. "We are packing and leave-taking, so adieu. His letter to the Courier said : I am not, and shall not be, a candidate for any office, State or national, in the canvass of 1844. Far from seeking further preferment, I have had enough already to call forth profound gratitude. That gratitude I expect to manifest by leaving the Whig party to bring forth its candidates without interference on my part, and by yielding to them my zealous and faithful support. Returns now began to come in from the October elections in other States. The Whigs had carried Ohio, Georgia, Maryland, the city of Philadelphia, and had a prospect of success in the States of Penn sylvania and Delaware. In New Jersey they had been defeated. The last days before the election were, as usual, largely occupied by public 684 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1843, meetings and speeches, Seward attending some of those in Cayuga and the neighboring counties. His avowed antislavery opinions had always been considered objectionable by many of his own party. Some of the dissatisfied Whigs even charged him with lack of fidelity to Clay. Three days before the election, he wrote to John C. Clark : AUBURN, November 4, 1843. The two State Central Committees, at Albany, in August last issued a circu lar recommending the appointment of delegates by district conventions during the present autumn, and recommended further that the delegates so to be ap pointed should be instructed to vote for Henry Clay as the candidate of the Whig party, already spontaneously nominated and universally acknowledged throughout the State. These recommendations have been adopted in every electoral district. I venture to state, without asking previous leave of the com mittees, that those recommendations were made by the Central Committee on my suggestion, and in my own language. The letter was published and created some amusement, as it showed that those who were accusing him of defection had all been following his advice, without knowing from whom it emanated. November 7th was election-day, and the evening was spent by Sew ard at the newspaper office receiving returns. The Whigs had carried the county and district, which seemed to give hope that the State had not been lost. But on the 10th decisive returns came in. The State had gone Democratic. There was a falling off of the Whig vote in the western counties, partly occasioned by the drawing off of votes for the Abolition ticket. As each succeeding day brought fuller returns, the news grew more and more adverse. The Legislature, it was ascer tained, would consist of a Senate of twenty -six Democrats to six Whigs ; the Assembly, of ninety-two Democrats to thirty-six Whigs. The next step after every election is to determine, each party for itself, what policy to pursue in view of the result. The Whigs abated no jot of hope, or of purpose to continue the support of Mr. Clay, though it had become evident at least so far as New York was con cerned that there was danger of a loss of many votes on account of the abolition question. The supporters of the distinctive Abolition organ ization were largely drawn from the Whig ranks. When remonstrated with that their votes would be unavailing, and if thrown away on the third candidate would help to defeat the Whigs, and so elect the pro- slavery candidates, their answer was that they were voting for a prin ciple, and could give no support to either of the two great parties. And this, in substance, was the point of difference for many years be tween two large classes of enlightened men at the North, both opposed to slavery, both desirous to restrict or abolish it ; but the one believing they should build up a third party, the other that they could act more effectively through the great parties already organized, and holding 1843.] "CHECKS AND BALANCES." 685 alternate control of the Government. Men s minds are not all cast in the same mould, and there always will be some who find that the prac tical way to accomplish results is through cooperation arid waiver of minor differences ; while others prefer to satisfy their love of inde pendence by acting alone, or with the small body who can agree to think alike in all things. The Democrats, so far from being united by their victory, grew more and more divided. Hitherto Democratic sentiment, North and South, had seemed to be divided between two presidential candidates, Calhoun and Van Buren. From Pennsylvania now came the suggestion of a third (Buchanan), who, it was thought, might reconcile existing differ ences. When the official vote of New York was counted, it showed that the Democrats had polled 177,000 votes ; the Whigs, 156,000 ; the Aboli tionists, 15,672 ; the Native Americans, 8,712 ; so that, if the three parties opposed to the Democrats had cast a united vote, they would have carried the State. The problem before the Whigs, therefore, was, how to combine that vote, if, as was claimed, the two minor factions were made up of discontented Whigs. Yet even the 177,000 Demo cratic votes were not an assured element. Among them were many who, though acting hitherto with their party, were restive under its pro-slavery lead. Then, upon the financial question, the debt, and internal improve ments, the Democratic party, though they voted together at the polls, were divided into two antagonistic factions when it came to legislation. The problem for the Democrats, therefore, was, whether they could con tinue to combine these opposing elements, or whether one or the other of them, separating from the Democratic party, might not combine with the Whigs. There were rumors from Washington of a new and grave issue which might unsettle all political calculations. The question of the annexation of Texas would probably come up at the next session. It has been claimed that the especial merit of the American Gov ernment is, that it is " a government of checks and balances." If so, it seemed at this period in complete and successful operation. The President was held in check by a Whig Senate, and that in turn by a Democratic House. The New York State government was balancing between " Old Hunkers " and " Barnburners," who in turn were held in check by apprehensions of the Whigs, who were themselves check mated by the Abolitionists and Native Americans. This year witnessed the beginning of an important era. The Madi- sonian announced, in the summer, that Prof. Morse was about to begin laying the wires of his electric telegraph along the line of the Baltimore & Washington Railroad. The wires were to run in leaden 686 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1843. pipes a quarter of an inch in diameter. But this announcement, though of vastly greater importance, did not attract half the attention that was bestowed upon Queen Victoria s and Prince Albert s visit to France in their yacht. Of this event the papers were full of descriptions. Another topic of discussion, especially in the cities, was Dr. Pusey and the "Oxford Tracts." "Puseyism" became the term to designate everything that looked toward changes of ceremonial observance in the Episcopal Church ; and all manner of descriptions were given of the contemplated improvements in the ritual, one of which was gravely said to be the sacrifice of a lamb every Friday evening. Among other subjects of popular interest was the seizure of slavers on the African coast by British vessels. The descriptions of the hor rible condition of the poor creatures on board, the arrangement of the hold, etc., helped to remind the public that the nefarious traffic was still going on. Early in November came intelligence of the arrest of Daniel O Con- nell by the British Government. It was no surprise, but had been an ticipated, though it served to add fresh stimulus to the repeal move ment. It was proposed, as an effective demonstration, that the Repeal Associations should hold simultaneous meetings all over the world on the first Wednesday in January, 1844. At a meeting held in Auburn at the town-hall, on the 25th of No vember, Seward was called to the chair, and submitted a letter, which he had prepared at the request of the Association, to O Connell ; which was read, signed by the citizens present, and sent to the " Liberator." It commended him that, under his guidance, the masses "are not merely patient and pacific, but profoundly submissive to the laws, how ever unequal, and to the throne, however inaccessible ; " also that they had " rejected all military preparations," and that while " you are vol untarily in the power of the law, meeting the oppressors of your coun try in her civil tribunals, and not a hostile arm has been raised nor a drop of blood been shed either in turbulence or by accident." Another subject of importance to Ireland and the United States was attracting the attention of scientific inquirers and of the agricultural and commercial community. This was a disease before unknown, which had attacked the potato-crop. It was first noticed as a black spot. The "pink-eyes," then a favorite species, had especially suffered, many farmers losing their entire crop, and some losing in addition the cattle and swine to whom they had been fed. Mr. Weed had already embarked on the Ashburton, October 26th. The ship was more than a month at sea, and Seward, who was in New York early in December, attending court, was in time to greet him on his debarkation. Weed had gone to Europe, leaving the party infected with so many jealousies and rivalries that it was an unexpected 1843.] WEED FOR GOVERNOR. 687 and agreeable surprise, on his return, to find that he had grown popu lar; that the press, not only of his own, but of the opposing party, was full of kindly expressions ; that he had been impatiently awaited, to advise about the legislative policy and the presidential campaign ; and that some of his zealous admirers were proposing to make him the Whig candidate for Governor at the next year s election. In sending him a letter from an enthusiastic friend, on this subject, Seward added this postscript at the bottom of it : I have written to Strong that you would not accept, and that you desire the matter to be dropped. But it is not to be easily dropped. Everybody is up for it. I have written an article for Oliphant next week, which 1 think you will find help to relieve you, as it will probably be understood to come from me. Still, you will have to hear the sound of the cannon. Quite a number of the Whig newspapers were strongly urging him as a candidate. When some of his friends came to talk with Seward about it, he, knowing Weed s repugnance to any such project, did not encourage them. " But why not ? what reason is there why he should not be made Governor, whether he wants it or not ? " " Plenty of reasons," answered he. " Well, give us one," said they. " Well," replied he, " one reason is, as you know, that, if Weed was Governor, he would pardon all the rascals out of State-prison, and then get in himself, for pipe-laying ! " The peremptory refusal of the " Dictator," on his return to his post of duty at Albany, after his half-year s absence, finally put the ques tion to rest. Referring to his article in the Auburn paper, Seward wrote : I have noticed that whenever a county convention nominated me for Gov ernor, or President, or Vice-President, I was not consulted at all about the mat ter ; but the Evening Journal, the next day, would emphatically decline in my behalf. One good turn deserves another, and, as you were not here, I thought I might as well decline for you in the Auburn Journal. 88 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1843- 44. CHAPTER LH. 1843-1844. Postal Reforms. Simultaneous Repeal Meetings. The Law s Delay. Prescott s " Con quest of Mexico." Mocking- Bird Moralizings. Legislative Battles. Clay Meetings on Washington s Birthday. Auburn Speech. Fillmore and Seward. The Texas Issue. AT the opening of the session of Congress, the Postmaster-General s report was followed by discussions in Congress and in the press on the propriety of prohibiting express companies from carrying letters. They were now engaging in this enterprise, and the letters were car ried more rapidly than by mail. This led, naturally, to the question whether the post-offices, backed by the Treasury of the United States, could not afford to transmit letters as cheaply as a company of private individuals. Mr. Rhett, of South Carolina, introduced a resolution in the House to repeal the tariff, which was rejected, one hundred and seven to seventy-seven. Mr. Adams again offered antislavery petitions. When the Speaker decided one of them to be excluded under the twenty-first rule, " Bring it back," said Adams ; "I will put it with the rest. I have a houseful that I am preserving for some future day. I have the petitions of a hundred thousand of the people, excluded from a hearing by this House." As the time for holding the Democratic Convention approached, candidates for the presidency multiplied. The New York Standard hoisted the name of General Cass. Governor Dorr, who was now in prison, was elected delegate to the Democratic National Convention, and some curiosity was expressed to know whether he would be re leased, in order that he might attend. The Whig delegates were usually instructed to vote for Clay. Fre quently, there was also instruction on the subject of the vice-presi dency, and several of those from the State of New York were charged to go for Clay and Fillmore. During the first week in January, Seward was on the road to Al bany again. He was to attend the repeal meeting there, which he had promised to address ; and, subsequently, his cases in court would de tain him there during the rest of the month. His letters home de scribed this gathering : ALBANY, Saturday Morning. I was fortunate in extending my first day s ride to Utica. The residue of the journey was a light task the next day. After paying my respects to General Root, whose public life has closed, I devoted the next day to a revision of my speech for Ireland. The day was cold and snowy, yet there were three thou sand persons in the procession. They came past the Eagle, and I stood in the window of my room for nearly two hours, receiving their salutations. The 1844.] SIMULTANEOUS REPEAL MEETINGS. 689 assemblage at t .ic Capitol was the greatest I ever saw in this city, and the pro ceedings were spirited und becoming. Mr. Stevens, although not an early con vert, made a capital speech. We adjourned at eleven. The crowd formed a procession, and escorted me to the Eagle, where they left me with kind greet ings. Some gentlemen had a supper waiting, which was given in honor of Weed s return from Europe. I occupied the next day with writing out the speech, and spent yesterday in studying my cases for argument in the Supreme Court. The meeting was one of the series of simultaneous repeal meetings held on the same day in the various cities throughout the Union. A few days later the reports of their proceedings were brought by the newspapers. The one in New York was held at Tammany Hall, and addressed by Mr. Greeley and others ; at Syracuse, General Leaven- worth and B. David Noxon participated ; at Rochester, John Allen presided ; at Buffalo, George M. Clinton. ALBANY, Saturday Evening, January \Wi. If I had been able to calculate on the chances of the calendar, I might have spent two or three days with you. On Monday morning next the court will be as near to me as they were on Monday last, and no nearer. But I have em ployed my time profitably. My habits of study are pretty well understood, and I have few visitors. The Senate and Assembly are engaged in warm debates concerning the wisdom of my administration of the government a question which has lost power to excite me. I suppose, a generation hence, it will be settled, with more impartiality than now. It has been my purpose to spend to-morrow in Troy, but, as the day ap proaches, I fear the loss of time in going there to-night. My invitation is from George B. Warren, who is a Whig member of the Assembly, and an earnest friend. A young gentleman called on me to-day, who is a student at Schenec- tady, and whose bright locks, fair face, and graceful contour, proved him, as he was, a brother of Miss Bowers. I called last evening on Mrs. Porter, as you wished, and found her very agree able ; but when I attempted to perform your commands, by giving her the vil lage news, I failed, being totally destitute of all information concerning occur rences at Auburn. I am reading Prescott s " Mexico," a most interesting work. I hope to finish it and send it to you on Monday. It will be a much better book for you to read than the " Mysteries of Paris," and, though it is history, you will find it almost as exciting. John C. Spencer is nominated by the President for judge, but his confirma tion is doubtful. The Democratic party here are in much distress, and the two factions are beginning to think the Whigs worthy of some attention. Mr. Croswell has just paid me a visit, and expressed no little surprise (but not designedly) that the Whig party manifested no disposition to affiliate with the Governor s especial friends. 44 690 LIFE AXD LETTERS. [1844. I took tea last evening at Dr. Sprague s, whose simple New England habits and forms of entertainment always please me. But I quit my letter to attack my chancery case, which must be in readiness on Monday ; and I am endeavoring to keep the good resolution of abstaining from labor on Sunday. ALBANY, Sunday Night, January 14ih. I wrote you last night, indeed, but it was at the close of a week of thought ful anxiety and exhaustive study. This has been a day of rest and refreshment, and I am moved to commune with you a while before its fleeting hours bring on the renewal of cares that make one selfish and neglectful. I have read the rest of Prescott s history. I am impatient until you have the enjoyment of it. It, however, loses its interest, or rather diminishes in interest, toward the close. Your hopes for the escape of the Mexicans, or at least for a modification of their subjection, for some alleviation of the miseries of conquest, give way, and the cruelty they suffer becomes painfully distressing. The sub jugation, slavery, and almost extermination, of a race who have done no wrong, but have possessed themselves of the gold-dust in their streams and the gaudy feathers of their birds, and have ever freely divided them with their covetous enemies, are not to be contemplated without excitement, and a swelling desire for their revenge. That revenge they had not. I am troubled with a new political movement that promises long animosi ties and contentions. Last year, as you know, it was determined well and wisely that even if I could I must not and should not be a candidate for public office. With Mr. Fillmore for Vice-President, and Willis Hall for Governor, the Whig party could have no occasion to call for me, while in peacefulness and quiet I could contribute to its restoration through their election. I explained these views to both of them, and they were, as well they might be, content. Hall is prostrated with illness, and Fillmore only is left. The Whig party wants some one in Hall s place, and indications, as I am told, are plain enough, that, if there be not some one, I must step in the breach, to be ruined equally by suc cess or defeat the latter most probably. Fillmore is wanted, therefore, to come down to Hall s place. This he will not willingly do, and I feel that he ought not to be compelled. Yet what I see convinces me that he must, and that at least efforts will be made to bring him there, unless I consent to be a candidate a thing for a thousand reasons impossible. Hence he is to upbraid me with the whole, and with insincerity to boot, though I am faithful and just. Monday Evening. I have just laid aside complete the brief upon which I have been all day engaged. The court has hardly approached me, but I have a hope of a hearing in our cause to-morrow. Have you noticed the polemics going on between Dr. Potts and Dr. Wain- wright ? It is published in the Commercial, but extracted into the Express and Tribune. It will amuse and perhaps instruct you. I asked A to come into my room to smoke. He proposed we should have our after-dinner smoke in his room. I said, " No ! Don t let us smoke in the presence of the women." " Dear me," said Mrs. A , " I wonder where you find the women f 1 " 1 Mrs. A- obviously thinks that ladies are not women. JFor my part, I like the old English names of " folks," 1844.] MOCKING-BIRD MORALIZING. 691 and especially now, as all common dames are " ladies," those who have refine ment may well be content to bear the appellation of women. I wasted a part of yesterday in reading the now first-published correspond ence between Burns and Clurinda. She was a bold, vain woman ; Burns little better than a villain. But she had no right to complain of him, if women have any obligation to protect their own virtue. She had some talent, but hardly enough to make her letters worthy of going down to posterity with Burns s poetry. The Democratic party, notwithstanding their triumphant success in this State last fall, manifest much alarm. Mr. Van Buren evidently drags, and I should not be surprised if in May he is cast off. How unwise it was of a great man to seek restoration ! Few statesmen, however, have the virtue of modera tion, and few have it in so great a degree as Mr. Van Buren. ALBANY, January 2lst. If it were in my nature to despond under small vexations, I should have a sad day. Here I have been, day after day, repairing to the court-room at ten in the morning, and leaving it not until eight at night, and this attendance pro tracted through three weeks, and not a cause of mine has been reached. Then I was engaged to go to Troy to-day, and the thermometer is below zero. But I will let these things pass. I have followed what seemed and was the way of duty thus far, and abided its consequences. So I will do now. One year has brought me into the court ; another, if equally auspicious, will give me suffi cient occupation among its actors. I sent you the first volume of Prescott by Henry Underwood ; I now send the two others by Judge Conkling. I think I am not mistaken in supposing that you will be deeply interested in this delightful book. ALBANY, January 25, 1844. I go to-night to Mrs. Peckham s ; and, since I find no leisure in the hours which intervene between dinner and midnight, I may as well write now. Fame told me of your party, before your letter advised me of that event, so troublesome to the matron who gave and so joyous to the young people who received it. I am glad to hear that it was pleasant, especially to Frances ; as for Willie, he deserves a party every day ; and Clarence, I hope, will continue to enjoy them as much in after-life. There is a mocking-bird in the bar-room which greets us all with a roundelay adapted to our taste and disposition every morning. His notes sadden me, for they recall recollections of Bob, and remorse for my vile habit of smoking, which shortened his days, I fear. I study this bird intently, nevertheless. His notes are like, and yet not altogether like, Bob s. I should know him, of course, to belong to the class and species, yet I can easily discriminate between his strains and those that so long were music to me. His attitudes and motions are similar, yet I can remember peculiarities of Bob s which this warbler has not. Instinct, then, like reason in man, works out like and yet not exactly similar results in the animal creation ; and a refined ear, perhaps more refined than any human ear, would discern inequalities as great in the mocking-bird as between a Catalina and a New England ballad-singer ; and the dull, untaught listener would find the whole concert of a thousand of those musicians of the sunny clime a jargon of dissonant sounds. Well, who shall say that, in the 692 LI FE AND LETTERS. [1844. judgment of superior intelligence, the eloquence of a Webster and the music of a Handel are not more widely different from the rude speech of the barbarian than the notes of the leader of the forest-orchestra from his imitators ? Let the mocking-bird go on with his song ; it is an interlude for the taverners, dearly purchased at the expense of the slavery of the musician, his neglect, and pre mature death. Mrs. Bouck has sent me an invitation for to-morrow evening. I shall go. We are now within apparent reach of some of my causes ; but we have been in sight of them so long that my hopes of reaching them are by no means san guine. It is a waste of time and happiness, but so is the world made up, and we must endure it. I would take a turnpike-gate rather than thus linger at the bar ; but turnpike-gates are neither to be sought nor declined, and, like the presidency, they seldom offer when you most want them. Partisanship is apt to run to extremes, and all the measures of Se ward s administration were now denounced in the Legislature. The " Colonial History," which one might suppose harmless and inoffensive enough, was freely censured as being composed of " useless documents of frivolous character." A committee, in their report, remarked that the Erie enlargement and the geological survey " are wild and visionary projects of past legislation," originating " in a very peculiar state of the times," afterward described as " mania." Early in February Seward returned to Auburn. The news followed him there of the continuation of the warm debates at Albany over the public works and Constitutional Convention. But a more exciting topic was a discussion which had now arisen, in which it was charged that, but for Seward and Weed, Clay might have been nominated in 1839 in stead of Harrison, and so would have been President instead of Tyler. The Tribune gave a detailed account of the proceedings of the Whig National Convention at Harrisburg, in 1839, which was copied in other journals. Some papers, however, continued to charge " Whig duplicity toward Clay." Meanwhile, everything seemed going in the Whig ranks, not only favorably, but unanimously, for Clay s nomi nation in the coming canvass. All delegates that had been instructed at all were instructed to vote for Clay, and all that were not, it was understood, would vote for him without instructions. A letter from Mr. Webster was published, requesting his friends not to present his name at the Whig Convention, and saying that his opinions on public affairs were unchanged and well known ; that he thought the election of next fall would involve the same principles as that of 1840, and that he should support the same cause. Whig local conventions were called to meet in the various counties throughout the State simultaneously on the 22d of February, to appoint delegates to Baltimore. Mr. Weed, in his Journal, again formally stated that " Governor 1844.] GREELEY, CLAY, AND UARK1SON. 693 Seward will, under no circumstances, be a candidate for Governor," and also that " Mr. Weed will not tolerate for a moment the use of his name for a station to which he does not aspire, and for which he knows himself to be totally unfit." Seward s letters to Weed described his occupations : AUBURN, February 3d Sunday. On my arrival I fell upon a mass of invitations to Clay clubs and mass-meet ings to be held on the 22d, which it has taken a whole day to decline in a be coming manner. The rest of my time has been engrossed with professional business, which flows in upon me now very steadily. To-morrow I attend a Court of Chancery here, and the next day the Court of Common Pleas in Bata- via. Next week we have the Circuit Court here. I lose much in the loss of your conversation, but I find house, family, books, and trees, more than ever dear to me. I perceive that the Daily and the Citizen are down upon you. I could teach them a game worth two of this. Let them go in and make you Governor, and your ruin would be complete and speedy. It is difficult to know what to do in these times. The Clay men are mad if you work, and mad if you don t; shoutiog the "Mill-boy of the Slashes" is very effectual with a large array of voters. But then there are parrots of more practised and wider throats ; while to talk of principles, which might be useful to the lukewarm, is to compass the king s death. AUBURN, February 18, 1844. The 22d of February is here. I have invitations from Dan to Beersheba, and all the intervening towns. The exclusive friends of Mr. Clay have spent a year here in endeavoring to make the people believe that I was opposed to him, and are quite desirous that I should go abroad. I may as well put an end to that matter, now as ever. Warren Hastings, who had overborne all his ene mies and attained to high renown in India, got himself impeached on his return to England. He could not learn the ways of politics at home. This is some thing like my case. But I am trying to learn. The public mind is receiving most kindly your article on the "forty-million debt," and it is a good sign that politicians, on both sides, are conceding that the charge was fraudulent. Greeley who moulds hundreds of thousands of minds Greeley wrote me querulously, because I and you (i. e., you and I) suffered ourselves to be not only silent about the abuse of him, but to keep friendship with its author. Greeley wrote also that it was reported all about New York that I sent my brother to Harrison, iu 1839, to promise him the delegation at Harrisburg from this State, if he would promise me the patronage of the Federal Government in this State, and that they refer to a son of General Harrison, at Cincinnati, for authority. Greeley desires me to come out and charge this to be a falsehood, and call on them to prove it. I answered that I must be excused from taking any notice of it, but, for Mr. Greeley s own satisfaction, assured him that I had no communication with General Harrison, or anybody else, about his nomi nation. The Whigs of the various counties held their conventions on the LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. 22d. Those of Cortland and Cayuga Counties met at the Court-House at Auburn, where Seward addressed them. He said : Every man s memory is a depository into which no other man can look a depository of pleasures and pains, joys and sorrows, precious to the owner be cause they are all his own. These rise unbidden whenever the mind is excited, and with them come up from the heart fears, hopes, and affections, as peculiar as the character and fortunes of the individual to whom they belong. After an interval of almost seven years, I am again in a general gathering of my old po litical and personal friends. A thousand well-remembered voices call me to resume long-suspended duties, a thousand faces beam upon me with all that ancient kindness which always cheered me. The two great political parties occupy equal vantage-ground. Neither has announced its leaders, and yet the leader of each is known, and waits only the ceremony of announcement to enter the field. It is as certain as any human event that Henry Clay will be the Whig candidate for the presidency. Through out the length and breadth of the Union not a delegate has been chosen who will not give his voice to Henry Clay ; nor is there a Whig, North or South, or East or West, who will not, by his vote, affirm with heart and soul this unani mous choice. Henry Clay is a statesman in self-sought, contented retirement, after a career in which almost every stage has been distinguished by acts identified with the defense, or with the advancement, of this country. His wisdom sustained and animated his countrymen in war, and his moderation and equanimity were em ployed to secure the blessings of an honorable and lasting peace. His influence in the public councils mainly restored the American currency when it had been unwisely abandoned ; and every mechanic, artisan, farmer, and laborer through out the land hails or might hail him with reverence as the restorer of the pros perity of his country. . . . AUBUBN, March 17, 1844. It is Sunday night, and if Benedict or King is not with you, I suppose you are feeding your mind with some novelty of literature. I almost envy you the misfortune that gives you so much repose. Harassed with cares and studies which are irksome, I watch with eagerness for every hour that I can take for pur suits more congenial. I am grieved for King and the bereaved children of our excellent friend Mr. Elliot. How vast the changes a year makes in our circle of friends, and yet how little we notice their progress ! It is only a year since I left Albany, and the family has lost both its estimable and honored parents. The President has at last found a successor to Judge Thompson. I suppose the Senate will confirm. Was ever man so blest with occasions to make friends and strength as Tyler? Was ever fortunate man more prodigal? Strong called on me on his return from Albany. He was alarmed lest Mr. F might lose the nomination for Vice-President, and the misfortune be charged by him and his friends to you and me. I told him I really did not know what more I could say or do. I had signed off everything, put my political estate into liquidation for the satisfaction of all my creditors, and now had indorsed Mr. F as fully as anybody could ; that he would be nominated if it was best ; and, if not, it would be from no fault of mine. Would it not be well to move the people to petition Congress not to dis turb the tariff ? 1844.] EXPLOSION OF THE "PEACEMAKER." 695 AUBURN, Saturday, March 24, 1844. From early morn on Monday until last night I was engaged in the altercations of a trial about the building of a house. The contention was painful enough, but it is more painful still to note how much sand has run out from the hour glass now that the hour has come. I hardly know what has happened in the world around me during the time. I perceive that a crisis is supposed to be reached in the Texas question. I cannot believe that the Michigan Senators will be false to the interests of humanity and the sanctions of wisdom. But after this abatement I am inclined to believe the statement of Greeley s corre spondent. If such a crisis is at hand, we have need for all our wisdom and all our moderation. If the evil is to burst upon us at once, I think we have three things to take care of: 1. That we place our opposition to the annexation solely on the ground of opposition to slavery; 2. That we give not occasion to charge us with pusillanimity or favor toward Great Britain and Mexico ; and f 3. That, being loyal, we leave the responsibilities of dissension upon the South. If ever man has reason to petition for salvation from his friends, Willis Hall has that cause. It is horrible to see the New York committee bringing him be fore the people with that crutch. They will not allow him the repose he seeks and needs, for only so few weeks. Ten days ago, I thought the excitement would weaken the abolitionists. I have no cause for thinking otherwise, except that I see they are using very energetically all the artillery Mr. Clay s past indiscre tions have furnished them. We shall see what are the prospects in this respect when our town meetings here come on. If the third-party men give a full vote* the sixteen thousand will all appear in the fall. CHAPTER LIII. 1844. Explosion of the " Peacemaker." American Destiny. Calhoun and Annexation. Native American Movement. Whig National Convention. Clay and Frelinghuysen. Greeley and Cooper. Legislative Address. Characteristics. A VISIT of three days to Albany, during the first week in March, brought Seward into communication with Whig members. While there, the gratifying intelligence was received that a favorable vote on the right of petition had at last been obtained in the House of Repre sentatives. Moved, perhaps, by this example, the Assembly reconsid ered its previous decision, and adopted Stevens s resolution in favor of the right. Another point upon which Seward encouraged the Whigs to persevere was, to insist that the State should take the eighty-four thousand dollars, its share of the proceeds of the public lands ; and on this they made vigorous debate in the Senate. Early in March the country was startled by the news of a fearful calamity at Washington. The President, with his cabinet and invited guests, had gone on board the steamer Princeton, to witness a trial of 696 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. a huge gun named the "Peacemaker." While they were gathered near to observe the firing, the gun exploded, instantly killing Mr. Up- shur, the Secretary of State ; Mr. Gilmer, the Secretary of the Navy ; Commander Kennon, David Gardner, and Virgil Maxcy. Colonel Ben- ton had been stunned ; Captain Stockton, the commander of the vessel, burned ; Mr. Phelps and others knocked down and bruised. The Presi dent had been more distant, and fortunately escaped. It was the ab sorbing theme for several days. The journals were filled with mel ancholy details of the calamity, and of the public demonstrations of grief which followed it. The President sent a message to Congress. The Houses passed suitable resolutions. The White House and de partments were draped in mourning, flags placed at half-mast, and minute-guns fired. Funeral services were held at the Executive Man sion. The five coffins were laid side by side in the East Room. On the day of the funeral, the stores were closed, the avenue hung with black, while the five hearses, each surrounded by pall-bearers and fol lowed by family and relatives, proceeded to the congressional burying- ground, where the clergyman read the committal service, repeating, after a pause, five successive times, " Earth to earth." Next came the news that the obnoxious twenty-first rule had, after all, been retained ; the South having demanded, in caucus, that what was done on Tuesday should be undone on Wednesday. Absentees were sent for, members induced to stay away, others to change their votes, and finally the whole subject was laid on the table by a vote of eighty-eight to eighty-seven. Mr. Calhoun was called to the cabinet as Secretary of State. It was rumored that the President had concluded a treaty for the annex ation of Texas. This led to earnest discussion among the people and in the press. Mr. Webster addressed a letter to the citizens of Worces ter, saying that his judgment was decidedly unfavorable to the project. Five members of the cabinet were said to favor it all but one being from slaveholding States. Resolutions were introduced in the Senate at Albany, by Mr. Rhodes, opposing the annexation. In the Assembly, a , resolution protesting against it was laid on the table. The Democratic press divided on the question, the majority of them advocating annexation, but the Evening Post, and a few others, opposing it. The two Democratic factions in the several counties were beginning to have separate organs the Argus leading at Albany for the " Hunk ers," and the Atlas for the " Barnburners." Both sides were as yet understood to be supporters of Mr. Van Buren for the presidential nomination. Local conventions passed resolutions and chose delegates in his favor. Seventeen adventurous gentlemen in New York published a call, 1844.] AMERICA AND THE WORLD S PROGRESS. 697 inviting the friends of John Tyler to meet at the City Hall, to advance his reelection. The foreign mails now brought the close of the Irish state trials. Daniel O Connell, Barrett Duffy, John O Connell, Steele, Ray, Gray, and Tiernay, had been found guilty of " unlawfully and seditiously conspiring to raise and create discontent and disaffection among the queen s subjects," etc. O Connell s address to the people of Ireland had been published, warning them, and discountenancing all outrages, such as the burning of corn, hay, and implements, " as exceedingly wicked and egregiously foolish ; " but advising them to persevere, in quiet and tranquillity, in support of their political principles. There had been a great dinner to O Connell at Covent Garden Theatre, and an enthusiastic reception and demonstration of sympathy by Englishmen at Birmingham. Seward, declining an invitation to Albany, quoted Lord Bacon s saying that " the practice of the law drinketh up much time that I would willingly devote to higher purposes ; " but took occasion to sum up his views in regard to the relations between Americans and the rest of mankind : We are accustomed in early life to suppose that the opinions we approve are nniversally accepted. Long years occurred before I dreamed that mine were at all peculiar. But I found that the bias of early sentiments had brought me in conflict with opinions so deeply cherished and so widely prevalent, that many of my countrymen felt obliged to question at once my orthodoxy as a Protestant, my patriotism as an American, and my sincerity as a man. Next to truth and knowledge, I love peace and harmony with my fellow-men. I have, therefore, reconsidered my early impressions with candor, during a repose not unfavorable to the performances of such a duty. . . . The rights asserted by our forefathers were not peculiar to themselves, they were the common rights of mankind. The basis of the Constitution was laid broader by far than the superstructure which the conflicting interests and prejudices of the day suffered to be erected. Those who erected that superstructure foresaw and provided for its gradual enlargement, and looked forward to the time when the same foundations would receive and uphold institutions of republican government ample for the whole human race. . . . The Constitution and laws of the Federal Government did not practically extend these principles throughout the new system of government ; but they were plainly promulgated in the Declaration of Independence. Their complete development and reduction to practical operation constitute the progress which all liberal statesmen desire to promote, and the end of that progress will be com plete political equality among ourselves, and the extension and perfection of in stitutions similar to our own throughout the world. . . . He is an indifferent observer who does not perceive the upheavings of the principles I have described, in every part, at least, of the civilized world. Here they are moving continually to a more complete equality of suffrage, to univer- 698 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. sal education, and to the abolition of slavery. They are moving in England to the reduction of the aristocracy ; in Scotland, to the emancipation of the Church ; in Ireland, to domestic legislation responsible to the people ; and in France and Germany, and throughout Western Europe, to the abridgment of executive power, and the enfranchisement of the masses. This progress is very unequal, but it is nevertheless certain and irresistible. Everywhere its origin is traced to the United States. . . . To the oppressed masses in France, in Greece, in Poland, in Italy, in England, and Ireland, the United States of America is the Palestine from which comes a revelation effectual to political salvation. . So, too, when a revolution occurs in Europe, whether tempestuous and con vulsive, or moral and pacific, the uprising masses turn at once to the United States of America for succor and support ; and such is the mysterious fellowship produced by the love of liberty, that the sympathies of the American people have always been found irrepressible. Ought it to be otherwise ? Who would not blush for his country if it were not so ? In the Legislature, the long debates seemed to be at last approach ing a conclusion. A select committee was instructed to report a bill for submitting to the people the question of a Constitutional Conven tion. Another select committee reported on the petition of the tenants on the manor of Rensselaerwyck, submitting a bill allowing the tenant to have the cash value of his rents, covenants, and conditions, ascer tained by three appraisers, and, on paying the amount, to have the land. A bill was introduced in the Assembly to regulate excise and the sale of intoxicating liquors, the entering wedge of a long contro versy over the question of securing temperate habits by law. The Whigs were encouraged by success this spring in the Con necticut election. The town and charter elections of New York also resulted, on the whole, auspiciously. The Albany charter election showed a Whig majority. The New York charter election had gone adversely. Mr. Harper, the Native American candidate, had been elected by a large majority, and twelve out of the seventeen aldermen were pledged to appoint none but native Americans to office. Mr. Clay had been received with ovations and speeches in Georgia and South Carolina, had written a letter to Rhode Island congratulat ing the " Law and Order " party on its restoration. His birthday was celebrated in New York. The Whig members of the Legislature met on the 13th at the Eagle Tavern, and passed resolutions favoring the tariff, and opposing the annexation of Texas on the ground that it would endanger the Union, and extend slavery and the slave-trade. A Clay medal was struck, bearing his profile. While his popularity seemed unfailing among the Whigs, it was, nevertheless, encountering increasing danger from the abolitionists, whose papers declared " they could not support a duelist and a slave holder," and all the enthusiasm at the South only tended to strengthen 1844.] HENRY CLAY NOMINATED. 099 this prejudice at the North. The Whigs defended their candidate by referring to his once having advocated emancipation in Kentucky, but especially by the argument that, of the two great parties, one or the other of which were certain to have the control of the Government, the Whigs were far the more consistent opposers of slavery. The first delegate from Ohio, Colonel John Johnson, of Miami, was reported to have already started on horseback for Baltimore, passing through Columbus, and glorying in his errand. Seward wrote to Weed : AUBURN, April 5, 1844. Our town-meetings, here and in Onondaga, show improvement, but I fear that it is not enough. Certainly, it is not the tempest of 1824 or of 1834, or that of 1837. We are at the flood, our opponents at the ebb. They must im prove in zeal and in fortune. Mighty efforts are necessary to secure the State. From all parts of the country came indications that the Whig en- thusiasm would make such efforts. Clay clubs were multiplying, and seemed animated with fresh zeal. Mr. Clay himself was said to have written a letter from Raleigh, avowing opposition to the annexation of Texas. A throng of enthusiastic delegates and spectators were wend ing their way by steamboat, stage-coach, and railway, to Baltimore, to participate in the great convention. Meanwhile the news from Washington foreshadowed questions with Mexico. Claims against Mexico were talked of in Congress. There were rumors of terms of Texas annexation, the United States to as sume her debts, Texas to keep her lands, her army and navy to be in corporated with those of the United States. A treaty on these or similar terms was reported to have been already signed. Pennsylvania had become very properly restive and uncomfortable at the position in which she found herself. The eyes of the world were upon her as a repudiator of her debts. She could not long con tinue to refuse payment, endowed as she was with ample resources of fertile soil, productive mines, industrious and increasing population. Her Legislature this year were already discussing measures for the re sumption of the payment of her interest. On the 1st of May the Whig National Convention assembled at Baltimore. Never was such a gathering more unanimous. Henry Clay was nominated at once by acclamation. Then came the question of the candidate for Vice-President, the New-Yorkers presenting the name of Millard Fillmore, and the Massachusetts men that of John Davis ; but the ballots finally resulting in the choice of Theodore Frelinghuy- sen, of New Jersey. The resolutions adopted were brief. The dele gates separated, and returned home in high spirits, full of hopes, which the enthusiastic unanimity of the party, and the divided counsels of their opponents, seemed to justify. As the news of the nominations 700 LIFE AND LETTERS [1844. spread throughout the country, they were received with salutes, meet ings of rejoicing; and flags were flung to the breeze, inscribed with the names of " Clay and Frelinghuysen." For a year preceding the convention some of the political friends of Seward had been urging him to permit his name to be presented for the vice-presidential nomination. He had discountenanced all such efforts. There were various reasons for this. Perhaps the most potent was his disinclination to occupy any position which should seal his lips on the slavery question, the great issue of the future. Another was his unwillingness to reenter public life while personal affairs demanded his constant care. And the reason which he accepted as finally closing all doubt on the subject was the candidacy of Mr. Fillmore. Certainly, it was not wise that New York should have two candidates for that honor, and fidelity to past relations required, as it seemed to him, that he should rather aid than hinder his political colleague. To this it was answered that he could obtain the nomination, while Fillmore would fail to do so. But this he declined to believe. Writing to Mr. Weed on the 7th, he said : So the convention has passed, and all is well. Clay s nomination was as felicitous in manner as propitious in circumstance. What a glorious oppor tunity he will enjoy to stamp a new and lasting impression on the history of his country and on the age ! Will he do it ? I hope so. I almost wish I had never known great men personally. I am continually mistaking the public from too much knowledge of the private character of statesmen. I delight to contemplate Clay as he is shadowed forth, not by his personal acquaintance, but by the popular enthusiasm which his public life has awakened. It is so that we conceive Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton. How fortunate that we came on the stage too late to know the infirmities they shared in com mon with ourselves ! You thought it unfortunate that I was not fully agreed in your notions about the vice-presidency, and in the respects you touch upon it was so ; but I have read (not in Machiavel, but in another less unprincipled and equally wise) that it is good for a statesman to let others pass by him without envy, if they wish, while traveling the same road. I am studying Greeley s Cooper case diligently, to argue it the last of this month in New York. Mr. Greeley had been prosecuted for libel in 1842 by Cooper, the novelist, and, as he said, " employed no lawyers, not realizing that I needed any." No witnesses were called ; he admitted the publication, and accepted responsibility for it, and made his own defense. How it resulted was characteristically described by himself in his subsequent " Recollections of a Busy Life." The tedious debates and recriminations in the Legislature at Al bany over canals and constitutional amendments drew at last to a close, 1844.] A RESUME OF THE POLITICAL SITUATION. 7Q1 and on Wednesday, the 8th of May, the Speaker s hammer fell, as he announced the adjournment sine die. The alienation and disputes of the majority encouraged the Whig minority to believe their turn was coming socn. In accordance with annual custom, they wanted an address to their constituents, and Sew- ard was urged to prepare it for them. He complied, and sent them down from Auburn a resume of the political situation, which they adopted and published. It was the last of these documents, probably, that he prepared. It commenced by remarking that the Whig mem bers had been in such small force that for the most part their services had " necessarily been advisory and preventive rather than direct or effective. The majority have been so divided that the session has been consumed rather in efforts of the respective factions to baffle and defeat each other than in maturing measures for the general welfare," After referring to the condition of the State debt, it described the condition of affairs thus : In the darkest hour the State has ever seen, the Whigs performed every con tract without taxation. Their successors, with the aid of a tax of six hundred thousand dollars, have broken contracts on which they have already subjected the State to eight hundred thousand dollars of damages, and the future aggre gate of this ruinous expenditure cannot yet be conceived. We would, if we could, state the policy of the present administration in re gard to finance and the public works ; but in truth no policy exists. The ma jority unanimously agree that the contracts must be broken and damages must be paid, which it is apparent will equal the whole cost of bringing the enlarged Erie Canal into use, thirteen hundred thousand dollars. But one portion strenu ously insists on resuming the works immediately, the abandonment of which has cost so much, while the other insists on rendering the abandonment com plete and perpetual by amending the constitution for that purpose. An expenditure of one million three hundred and fifty thousand dollars would complete one line of enlarged locks, and furnish an abundant supply of water from Albany to Buffalo, whereby the capacity of the canal would be en larged threefold ; yet not one dollar has been appropriated for the purpose. Along the whole line of the canal, bridges, aqueducts, culverts, and other structures, have remained in an unfinished and decaying condition since the doom pronounced upon them in 1842. Large amounts of valuable materials lie scat tered upon the banks and in the vicinity of the canals, scarcely known or cared for as public property, subject by the irrevocable decrees of the act of 1842 to be lost to the State by exposure and pillage. . . . As to amendments of the constitution of the State, the address then proceeded to take decided grounds in their favor : Changes in the organic law ought not to be rashly made ; yet, in a growing country, and a progressive state of society, such an exigency must often happen. The judiciary is confessedly incompetent to a perfect and speedy administra tion of justice and equity. . . . The spirit of the age condemns the narrow pol- 702 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. icy which, by a property qualification, disfranchises a small portion of the peo ple ; the power of the people to choose many public officers, now otherwise selected, might be safely and wisely extended. The inspection laws, too often designed and always mainly used to reward politicians for partisan services, by exactions on agriculture, trade, and com merce, remain without material modification, except that a new oflicer has been created in the city of New York with the formidable title of " Inspector-Gen eral," whose sole powers consist in distributing the spoils among the subalterns. Then, turning to national subjects, it proceeded : Nothing has been done or even said by the Executive or by the Legislature to induce the States of Virginia and Georgia to rescind their unconstitutional laws, by which New York vessels are subjected to visitations and pitiful exac tions, as a retaliation for the laws of this State extending the trial by jury to persons claimed as slaves. The session of Congress seemed to open propitiously to the advancing cause of human liberty. The stern and inflexible Adams seemed at one time about to obtain a recognition of the right of States and citizens to petition the na tional Legislature on the subject of slavery. We appealed to our brethren in the Legislature to join us in protesting against the flagrant violation of the Constitution, by which that inviolable and inalienable right had so long been denied. . . . The party bonds were found re laxed, and the majority generally and nobly sustained our appeal ; but with the night that followed came considerations of personal objects and political advan tages, and the next morning the action of the previous day was rescinded, and New York was made to speak in language so evasive as to cover her free citi zens with humiliation and shame. . . . We would not be discourteous toward our adversaries, yet truth and justice bid us say that such legislation is unwor thy of American freemen. Not merely were Seward s views on political subjects comprehen sive, but the same characteristic prevailed in all his dealings. He liked toleration better than polemics, and in business matters had an aver sion to petty stipulations. Once, in early life, he gave one-half of all his little property to a friend, to save him from bankruptcy. His habit was to labor hard and long, travel hard and long, give liberally and spend freely. The Chautauqua enterprise attracted him by its breadth and scope, and did not frighten him by its complications, for he liked to overcome difficulties. When one of the copartners became alarmed by a financial panic, he offered to take his share. When, a few years later, it seemed to him that the company s creditors were to be unfairly dealt with by a plea of usury, he refused to join in making it, and pro* tected their rights by placing his whole interest in trust for their benefit. So in regard to political preferment. He was ambitious of achieve ment, not of office. He sought no place, and was reluctant to accept any, if he saw that in so doing he was crossing the ambition of friend 1844.] CHARACTERISTIC TRAITS. 703 Or associate. He would have preferred to leave the field to Granger in 1838, and did leave it to Fillmore in 1844. Always free in conver sation, yet what he said of friends and enemies behind their backs might have been repeated to their faces. He put generous construc tion on their conduct, never exulted in an advantage, could not strike an opponent when down, and, when a victory was gained, would take no part in the triumph over the vanquished. " The war is over with me," he said, " when the enemy lays down his arms." He had no great respect for the vox populi, for he knew it to be a voice given to hasty utterances and frequent contradictions. Yet on the ultimate sound judgment of the people he always relied. His own speeches and acts, so far as they were shaped to gain popular appro bation, sought to appeal to the calm impartiality of future years, rather than to the excited passions of the passing hour. When revising his speeches, he would say of some expression which he was warned would subject him to attack, " Well, I think that will stand." Whenever he prepared an address or important public communica tion at home, he liked to read it aloud to Mrs. Seward ; and though her suggested corrections were not frequent, they were usually in refer ence to some point of taste or principle that commended itself to his judgment. When away from home, he would in like manner read to some intimate friend. In this case it was perhaps not only for the sake of criticism, but for the suggestions which the process of reading aloud would make to his own mind. He was not sensitive to the attacks of opposing newspapers, and, so far from being galled by them, generally made them the subject of pleasant remark. " The newspaper will have the last word," he used to say ; " and it is not seeking for truth, but for triumph." Unde served abuse he always believed would, in the long-run, injure its author more than its object. Misapprehension by friends he would endeavor to correct by kindly word or letter ; but he would not allow himself to be drawn into a controversy with either friend or foe on merely personal grounds. He lightly esteemed the value of personali ties as a weapon of either offense or defense in political warfare, but addressed himself to the measure or principle involved. He believed the public would only take lasting interest in questions that concerned their own welfare. Whatever temporary mistakes they might fall into about individuals, their calmer judgment would sooner or later modify. His imperturbability under such attacks was not the fruit of stolid indifference, but rather of that equanimity with which one listens to hasty words that he knows will afterward be regretted. Not unfrequently his friends thought him too lenient in judgment when he excused his adversaries by explaining the probable motives or inducements they had for apparently malicious acts. Magnanimity is 704 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. a trait difficult of appreciation by those who do not possess it. With the mean it passes for meanness ; by the timid it is ascribed to cow ardice ; by the cunning, to selfish design. It was often ludicrous to see what motives were ascribed to him by opponents, and how ingen iously they would undertake to prove his acts to be the successive steps of some deep-laid scheme, when, in reality, they were the natural fruit of generous impulse or straightforward sense of duty. Trifles are often the best, because the most unpremeditated, illus trations of character. His love of decision, breadth, and vigorous energy, in all things, showed itself in the details of daily life. He liked a large house, and plenty of people in it ; a good fire, and a large fam ily-circle round it ; a full table, strong coffee, and the dishes " hot and sweet and nice." He preferred long rides, long and fatiguing walks, bathing in cold water or strong surf, working steadily for hours, and even taking recreation with determination and perseverance. No one ever saw him listless, or complaining of ennui. His habits of life were in literal compliance with the injunction, " Whatsoever thy hand findeth to do, do it with thy might." CHAPTER LIV. 1844. The Law-Office. Eecollections of a Student. A Church Quarrel." Third Parties." Philadelphia Riots. Adams s Report. Democratic National Convention. Polk and Dallas. ON resuming the practice of his profession in 1843, Seward had formed a partnership with William Beach and George Underwood, each being the son of an old friend and neighbor. The new firm took an office in the second story of Beach s Block, on Genesee Street, in Auburn. Messrs. Beach and Underwood were attorneys, Seward usually conduct ing the cases in court. Young men soon gathered round him, from near and far, to become students in his office, some of whom are since dead, while others have risen to prominence at the bar or in public place. Among them were William W. Shepard, Theodore M. Pome roy, Charles Fosdick, Charles A. Parsons, James R. Cox, Calvin Huson, Horace T. Cook, Myron O. Wilder, John Sessions, Cornelius Cole, Messrs. Hosford, Davis, Horton, and Ogden. One of these, Mr. Cox, recalls some incidents of that period. " Two rooms constituted the office. In the front one, only acces sible by a narrow entry from the back-room, * the Governor, as we always called him, and as he was ever familiarly known at home, sat in his writing-chair, busily at work, and usually accompanied by one 1844.] RECOLLECTIONS OF A LAW-STUDENT. 705 of his partners. In the back-room were we students, with our papers and books. His business had grown so rapidly, and become so large, that there was always abundant occupation for all, in copying pa pers, etc. " Of course, we studied his conduct, and most of us profited by it. Did an ignorant farmer come in to have a deed or a contract drawn, the Governor would betake himself to it, and finish it, with all the interest and care which we would expect to-see laid out in more im portant business. And occasionally he would drop some remark, sug gesting that no legitimate business which belongs to the profession is ever to be refused or trifled with. People come to a lawyer, he would say, because they have reason to believe that he understands affairs better than they do. And they pay him for " writing," as they call it, more than they pay others, because they have a better right to rely upon professional knowledge than upon the ability of an ordinary pen man. And, he would say, you will remember, young gentlemen, that while, as lawyers, you have the right to charge more for such services than an ordinary scrivener, yet, as responsibility is assumed by you in drawing papers, which is not incurred by the mere scrivener, the privilege is balanced by the responsibility. The scrivener makes a mistake, and is not answerable for it in damages. He is not a pro fessional man. But you are lawyers ; and if you make a blunder in drawing important papers, where an ordinary knowledge of your pro fession, and ordinary care, would have avoided it, ignorance or neglect is answerable in damages to the party injured. And then he would refer us to some adjudicated case upon that doctrine, and bid us look it up and read it. " Constantly interrupted during the day by the visits of inconsider ate friends and village politicians, his most efficient labor was generally done at night. He would come into the office after supper, sit down in his writing-chair, and rapidly throw off the leaves, which would drop on the floor around him like the leaves of the forest. They were all paged, however, and we would gather them up and proceed to copy them. Knowing the subject-matter, we succeeded in deciphering them pretty well. " We students, although ordinarily diligent, could never copy as fast as the Governor would draw papers ; and about ten o clock one after the other would retire, intending to fetch up in the morning. But how often, when we came into the office in the morning, would we find a batch of manuscript the last pages of the chancery bill we were working on hastily gathered into a pile on the chair, and the floor covered with manuscript of another bill in equity, as long as the first, but with different parties and subject-matter ! " His endurance was as astonishing as his industry. We never 45 706 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. knew him to be fatigued, or to claim allowance for exhaustion. Yet, while thus laboring in the duties of his profession, he was all the while studying, with profoundest interest, the political condition of the coun try. The antislavery agitation was rapidly assuming proportions which the utmost efforts of the pacifiers were unable to withstand. In the summer of 1844 we students took great interest in the presidential campaign, and among us was represented each of the political parties, the Democratic, the Whig, and the antislavery, or abolition. The Governor was a Whig, and strongly opposed to slavery, although ear nestly advocating the election of Mr. Clay. But, differing widely from the radical antislavery orators and writers, he never forgot that the statesman must take men as they are, and must with them accomplish what of good for his country he can. Nor did he agree with those who left the Whig party at that juncture and enrolled themselves among the political abolitionists. About that time there was much ferment ing in many of the Christian churches throughout the State. Some antislavery men could not continue to be members of a church which, as they said, joined hands with the slave-power, and admitted slave holders to communion. Several neighbors and friends of the Governor in Auburn had withdrawn from church-fellowship, and they were call ing upon me to follow their example. The Governor knew very well that I was an abolitionist, and desired, above all things, to make my life count against slavery. I therefore consulted him upon the sub ject ; reminded him that the church with which I was connected was, to all appearance, a bulwark of slavery ; that all expression of anti- slavery truth was discountenanced and suppressed ; that slaveholders were found occasionally in our pulpit at Auburn ; that several mem bers had withdrawn, and desired me to follow ; and whether or not it was best for me to do it was the question. This conversation was in a retired spot at the south end of the Governor s garden. It was a fine summer evening, and the Governor was in an unusually communi cative and philosophical mood. He gave me a lecture which I shall not soon forget. Said he : * If you had the power, would you regard it as wise to abstract from the Presbyterian Church of this country all its antislavery element ? or, would you desire to add to it all the anti- slavery reinforcement you could command? How much better off would that Church be with all you antislavery men out of it ? How much better off, to do any good, would you be if all withdrew ? Would you thereby gain any more personal influence than you now have? Look at the Whig party of to-day. Everybody knows that I am an antislavery man. Whenever I write a political letter, or make a po litical speech, my words are reproduced in every Whig paper in the country, and reach the eyes and ears of everybody in the land. But it is because I remain in the party, and consequently enjoy their con- 1844.] YOUNG MEN AND POLITICS. 707 fidence. They will hear me and consider what I say. But should I leave the Whig party, and join the radical antislavery party, although my speeches and writings would doubtless be read by that class who do not need my influence, they would not reach the much larger class who do need to know the truth. No ; I think I can do more good where I am. To-day Mr. Clay really stands the candidate of the pro gressive party in this country. Everybody knows that he disapproves of slavery. His whole life hitherto has shown it. Throughout the South, by Democratic papers and orators, reviled as being lukewarm in the cause of slavery, he is still more bitterly denounced by you abolitionists of the North, because he tolerates evils which he cannot with a word destroy. And I therefore think, he continued, * that you should stay in the church where you are. By identifying yourself with your fellow-members you can have an influence to exert for good, which you would lose entirely by withdrawing. As I think about the Whig party, so it is with your church. Stick to the ship, and work away. In a few years you will see that we antislavery men in the Whig party will not have labored in vain. Do you be as faithful in your church as I will try to be in the Whig party, and you will see that, if you would do your fellow -men any good at all, you must not withdraw yourself from their association because you think you know more or are better than they are. " Within a day or two after this, as we were all in the office to gether, the Governor lectured us a little. He had observed that we were constantly debating on political matters, and, upon this occasion, he remarked substantially : Young gentlemen, as you come forward into the struggle of life, are admitted to practice, choose your places of residence, and take your stand among your fellow-men, it will be well for you to identify yourselves at once with one or the other of the principal political parties of the country it makes very little difference which (and these words, from such a partisan as he was regarded, struck me at the time with amazement). * In every republican government par ties are necessary for the preservation of the rights and the promotion of the best interests of the people. And it is desirable that political parties should be nearly equally balanced. In such cases, each watches the other, and the necessity is forced upon each to present their best men, and their best measures, for the support of the people. If you look for office and preferment, it will be vain to identify yourselves with any third party, for, long before that third party can gain power, it will become merged in one of the others. " But, while thus desirable that you should ally yourselves with one or the other of these parties, allow me to advise you that, if your attention is attracted to office, if you strive for preferment and politi cal power, it will be at the expense of the sacrifice, in great measure, 708 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1S44. of professional success. You cannot be a good lawyer, distinguished in jour profession, and at the same time a seeker of office. " As for me, he continued, my political aspirations are more than gratified. The people of my native State have been very indul gent and partial to me ; and I have nothing to complain of. But I have sacrificed, as a lawyer, all that I have gained as a statesman. The pursuit of office and of power is a thorny path. If you value domestic happiness, the pleasures of home, and a life of ease and quiet, keep out of that path by all means, for you will probably never succeed in attaining your ideal ; and, meanwhile, you must part with much that renders life most pleasant and most useful. " One day, among letters which he gave me to copy, envelop, and direct, was one to a somewhat well-known local politician, who had been a member of the Legislature the winter before. I had enveloped and directed it George W. Smith, Esq. and, with my letters in hand, was starting for the post-office. Something impelled the Gov ernor to look over the letters, and, in doing so, he quickly remarked the indiscreet direction. This will never do, said he ; the American people are fond of all the titles they are authorized to expect. You must direct this over again, " The Honorable George W. Smith," etc., because usage justifies the title ; and he might think that his dignity was overlooked, which would be more of an affront than if willfully disregarded. " One peculiarity was frequently to be noticed in the Governor s policy, in the management of his clients affairs. His judgment was rarely warped or diverted from the principal subject by the attractive presentation of a lesser advantage placed within reach. Unlike the fabled goddess, he never stopped in the race to pick up even apples of gold. On one occasion, when in consultation with a client about a patent-suit, his associate remarked, in reference to a course suggested, * You know a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. No, said the Governor, promptly, I know it is just the other way the bird in the bush is generally worth the most ; but shortsighted and impatient people are always grasping after the nearest, and losing sight of the value of the other. " About the summer of 1844, a controversy arose in a neighboring town, which gradually spread among the people, engrossed their atten tion and arrayed them in partisanship, until, at last, it culminated in an action at law, either for libel or for slander, with a demand for large damages. Good old Dominie E had preached for years in the Dutch church in that town, and held tenaciously his points of faith, strictly according to the Heidelberg Catechism. Among the most active of the Methodists of the town was Dr. B , a physician of distinction and merit, who was quite as sincere, in reference to the 1844.] A CHURCH CONTROVERSY. 7(J9 Methodist views, and a good deal more fiery than Dominie E . For several months the quarrel, although originating about points of faith, had degenerated into a fierce personal controversy, and each party had published a number of i statements, replies, and charges, implicat ing the other. These were seen posted on the highways, placarded upon barns and stables, and stuck up in the toll-gates. It was in one or more of these that the alleged libel and slander occurred which occasioned the excitement in the peaceful vale of Dutch Hollow. Nobody could be neutral in this controversy everybody was drawn into it. ** At last the court opened, and the court-room was filled with the parties and their friends ; all were witnesses, all were parties. As in the famous border feuds of England and Scotland, or the wars of the Guelfs and Ghibellines, each party was there with all his retainers. The cause stood low on the calendar ; but, day after day, they came steadily up to court, and occupied the benches all day, to be ready when the important cause should be called. The indications were that it would occupy at least three weeks in the trial. After a while the judge, Hon. Bowen Whiting, having learned something of the nature of the action, the immense number of witnesses to be examined, and the length of time required, proposed to the respective attorneys that the case should be referred, and, after some reflection and delay, it was he, I think, who proposed the name of Governor Seward as the referee. " Each party was surprised when the other promptly approved the proposal, and after some hesitation the Governor reluctantly accepted the office ; not, however, without stipulations by which his functions were enlarged into the power of an arbitrator, rather than restricted by the laws of mere reference. He appointed a day on which the great trial was to commence. " Meanwhile the voluminous pleadings, handbills, pamphlets, and other papers of both parties were placed in his possession, to enable him to prepare for the investigation. " Upon the trial-day, the office was besieged from seven o clock A. M. until the Governor made his appearance. The room was so crowded with parties and witnesses that it was almost impossible even to begin. It was then that the Governor gravely announced that he had con cluded to recommend that the trial should commence not in the usual way, by speeches of counsel and the testimony of witnesses, but by his own personal examination of the plaintiff and defendant, without the presence of any other person, so that he might more exactly under stand the difficulty, and that the witnesses would be notified when to appear at a future day. " Thereupon the crowd gradually withdrew, until at last the arbi trator, Dominie E , and Dr. B , were left alone in the room. 710 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. What took place then has never transpired to my knowledge the Governor was always reticent about it ; but, after about an hour, he dismissed them to return during the next week, when he would fur ther consider the matter. " At the appointed day they appeared again with their usual troop of retainers and witnesses ; but the fervor and fire of the principal parties were evidently considerably cooled, and a less bitter state of feeling seemed to prevail. As soon as everybody was quiet, Mr. Sew- ard, holding the bulky papers in his hand, commenced his remarks. " He spoke first of the necessity of legal proceedings, and of their value to the community, distinguishing us from the condition of sav ages in having tribunals to which differing parties could with confi dence compel a resort, to hear and determine matters in difference. " He stated that he had perused the documents, and made personal examination of the parties, and he was delighted to find, at this stage of the controversy, that each of them respected the Christian character of the other, and that the real difficulty between them appeared to be, which of their respective Christian organizations, the Reformed Dutch or the Methodist Episcopal, was most entitled to Christian confidence and support. He further said that, having arrived at this conclusion, and he himself having been personally acquainted with both gentlemen for a number of years, he had concluded that this unhappy controversy should be terminated in a manner to reflect credit upon both the parties concerned, no less than upon the different churches of Christ with which they were identified. " He then remarked that he believed it was agreed among all Chris tian denominations that charity, which he explained as meaning Chris tian sympathy, love, and respect, was the necessary fruit and result of all pure Christian faith ; citing the authority of St. Paul, that this charity was the greatest virtue, and adding that that particular Chris tian denomination which exemplified this virtue in the highest degree was evidently the most entitled to the general respect and confidence. He then briefly recapitulated the noble history of the Reformed Dutch Church for three hundred years ; the fidelity of its adherents to the true doctrine of the Bible, and to religious and civil liberty ; the purity of its morality and the abundance of its fruits, both in Europe and in this country, concluding with an earnest panegyric upon the faith and steadfastness which had ever distinguished that Church, and making mention of many of its foremost preachers and statesmen, "And then he took up the subject of the Methodist Church; its lowly origin, its self-denying clergy, their persecutions, sufferings, their patience and their triumphs ; pointed out the vast influence for good which that Church had ever exerted, both in England and in our own country ; its adaptation to the sacred work of preaching the gospel 1844.] END OF THE QUARREL. 711 to the poor, and the abundant evidence of the approbation of the Di vine Master upon its efforts. " During this address the room, full of witnesses, was entirely silent. Mr. Seward had become interested in his subject, and poured forth his reflections with unusual ardor, and before he ceased he had completely enlisted his entire auditory. Their temper was changed. The spirit of strife and litigation had disappeared ; each party was delighted with the vindication and eulogy of its own particular denomination which they had heard, and the Christian charity to which the arbitrator had adverted, as the highest evidence of divine influence and grace, began to exert its power. " In conclusion, the Governor remarked that, as they had probably anticipated, he was now prepared forever to settle this controversy, and that, in his judgment, there was no further occasion for testimony ; that, in the composition and publication of the censorious remarks con tained in these papers, the one party had evidently lost sight of the true requirements of charitable consideration ; and that the other party, in commencing and prosecuting this action for damages, had also neglected the same duty ; that this controversy had gradually enlisted a very large portion of the neighborhood on one side or the other, and had grown into dimensions of serious concern, affecting the interests and threatening the peace and the effectiveness for good of both these Christian denominations ; that it was of much more importance to both churches that the difference should be adjusted, ended, and healed, than that it should be decided in any particular way as between the parties ; that it was not alleged that any pecuniary damages had been sustained, and that therefore he should decide this cause by rendering his award as follows : this action to be discontinued without any costs to either party ; and the plaintiff and defendant to join their hands in token of reconciliation, and mutually promise each other that the past should never be disturbed again ; that their only strife for the future should be to see which should hereafter best exemplify that Christian charity which was inculcated among all Christian denominations, and especially by the Dutch Reformed and the Methodist Episcopal Churches. " No compensation was required by the arbitrator, and the meeting was dismissed in peace. We heard no more of the celebrated quarrel." Texas now stood at the gates of the Union awaiting admission. The treaty for her annexation, so long expected and urged, had been made in the State Department by Secretary Calhoun. It had been sent by President Tyler to the Senate, and that body, with closed doors, was debating it in secret session. Even before its details were published, public opinion had commenced to divide. At the South it 712 LIFE ANJ) LETTERS. [1844, ~was warmly advocated by the majority of both parties. At the North it had the support of the Democratic organization, though not without the dissent of many members ; while the Whigs loudly opposed it through speeches and the press. Both the support and the opposition were felt to be in a great degree grounded, not on the mere question of increase of territory, but on the general belief that it was a measure undertaken in the interest of slavery, and with the purpose of its ex tension. Mr. Calhoun wanted a presidential candidate pledged to its support. Colonel Benton was known to oppose it, on the ground that it would lead to war. If Mr. Clay should take ground against it, he could gain the support of the now hesitating antislavery men, though he might lose strength in the Southern States. There was another exciting political topic. The organization of a political party opposed to foreigners had achieved little success in the rural regions ; but in the great cities where immigrants land there is always an unassimilated element of the population whose presence leads to such divisions. The " Native American " party had carried elec tions both in New York and Philadelphia. In May the newspapers were filled with incidents of bloody riots that had broken out in the latter city, originating in disputes between " Native American " or ganizations and Irishmen and Germans. Churches were burned, houses pillaged, men, women, and children killed. Hostile companies met and shot down their victims in the streets, and for a time the munici pal authorities, even with the aid of police and military organizations, seemed powerless. The picture of the "No Popery" riots in London, so vividly depicted by Dickens in " Barnaby Rudge," was in the hands of American readers at the very time when their counterpart occurred in the United States. Referring to these and other incidents of the time, Seward wrote : AUBURN, May 12, 1844. What bloody instructions these Philadelphia riots have read to the bigotry of the country ! And yet they are all lost, as instructions given to religious and political intolerance always are. You do well to give the Whigs the full benefit of Mr. Frelinghuy sen s religious beneficence. I see you are helping Collier beyond anything you promised, or he asked. Well, I think he must be satisfied now that he might as well have consulted you earlier. The blows you are dealing the third-party people will bring many to their senses. Did ever such a cause fall into the hands of such men? Will our good friend Greeley learn at all that he was born for an editor, not for a party leader ? He is letting his adversaries recover all the advantages they lost in the winter. The " third-party people " were the abolitionists, whose meetings and conventions were proposing to keep aloof from the great political 1844.] WEST POLNT. parties, and to present distinctive candidates of their own. Mr. Clay was a slaveholder, and the party that placed him in nomination had a large number of adherents in the Southern States. " No union with slaveholders " was announced as a rallying-cry for antislavery men at the North. Some of them, in excess of zeal, even called for dissolution of the Federal Union on that ground. But these were a small minority. In another letter Seward said : When I was thirteen or fourteen years old I first saw a book-store. I envied the boy whose felicity it was to enjoy such facilities for obtaining knowledge as his master s shelves incidentally afforded to the clerk, though designed for the public only. But the boy grew up a dull, unintellectual man. My few shillings produced me greater benefits from the literary warehouse than he secured, to whom all its treasures were free. I think, sometimes, that it is so with news paper-editors. Catering for the taste of the day, they overlook the grave wants of the future. I confess I grow weary of partisan excitement, and addicted more to studies of general polity and science. Now, I venture a conjecture, that you have passed by without reading the crowning work of John Quincy Adams his grand, majestic report on the resolves of Massachusetts ; for it falls before the pub lic at a wrong time to be generally read. I wish, nevertheless, that the here-and- there subscribers of the Journal, who would read it even now, might have an opportunity to do so. But I want you to read it for the sake of the vindication it affords of that grand old man, and for the sake, still more, of your own im provement and confirmation in the liberal, comprehensive theories of popular government that you so faithfully advocate. I have been a Democrat, a univer sal suffrage Democrat, a universal education Democrat, a slavery-hating Demo crat, and all these characters constitute an inveterate Whig. But I never before saw so conclusive a justification of my principles as this report affords me. I send you one. Read it, and see the chart of progress to emancipation as deline ated by Jefferson, and renewed and perfected by John Quincy Adams. In answer to the invitations now pouring in upon him at Auburn, to speak at Whig meetings, Seward wrote letters pointing out what seemed to him to be the path of patriotism. Thus, to the Whigs of Orleans County, to the Whigs of Troy, of Cleveland, and of various other localities, he enforced the same views with fresh illustrations. Professional duties now called him to Albany and New York ; and in a hasty note from West Point to Mrs. Seward he said : May 25th, Saturday Night. I am here, indulging not very pleasant fancies, and I may as well impart them, since they will not aifiict you. I intended to spend the day at Albany with Weed. But I soon discovered that those who were charitably disciplining him by stopping his paper were liable to be so much irritated by my visitation to him that he wished me the speediest possible voyage to this place, prom ising to visit me on Monday at New York. So I landed here, at two the hour, and Saturday the day of days, to visit our boy. I sent to him immediately after 714 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. my landing, and in due time the boy came. I strolled with him all that re mained of his relief, and we have parted he to his bed at " taps," and I to wait till midnight for the boat. He is well and in good spirits, and confident that he will retain his present standing at examination, and do better yet next year. The Military Academy was at this time under the superintendence of Major (afterward General) Delafield. He was a stout, heavy-featured man, of pleasant manners, thoroughly versed in military and engineer ing science. Captain Thomas, the commandant, erect, soldierly, and handsome, with a clear ringing voice, had supervision of the parades, drills, and discipline of the cadets. Among the other instructors were Prof. Mahan, who was engaged in preparing for the press a mathe matical work ; and Prof. Weir, in whose studio was stretched the great canvas on which he was painting his historical picture of the " Embarkation of the Pilgrims " at Delft Haven, afterward to occupy one of the panels in the rotunda of the Capitol at Washington. Sew- ard s occasional visits to the Point brought him into agreeable acquaint ance with all these gentlemen, which, with some of them, was ex tended by official relations in subsequent years. The Democratic clans now mustered, in their turn, for a National Convention at Baltimore. It was appointed for the 27th of May. But they had a very different task from that of their Whig op ponents. Instead of mere formal sanction to a nomination already unanimously agreed upon, they had to reconcile conflicting opinions of policy, and choose among conflicting candidates. Mr. Van Buren was foremost in the favor of his party, and had, or was claimed to have, a majority of the delegates. General Cass was next strongest. But Colonel Johnson and Mr. Buchanan had also eminent supporters. President Tyler was not averse to a nomination ; and Secretary Cal- houn was a candidate, not so much in the hope of obtaining the nomi nation as in that of obtaining control of the convention. Before the balloting commenced, the " two-third rule " was adopted. This was the first step toward Mr. Van Buren s defeat. Seven ineffectual bal- lotings consumed Tuesday ; the votes being divided among seven can didates, with no other result than the gradual transfer of the highest place from Mr. Van Buren to General Cass. That night, the nomina tion of Colonel Polk, former Speaker of the House of Representatives, was projected, it was said, under the auspices of Mr. Calhoun, who was determined to have a candidate favorable to the annexation of Texas. For the same purpose, a gathering of Tyler s friends, office-holders principally, had been convened at Baltimore, who resolved to support Tyler himself for reelection, unless the Democratic nominee should be one favorable to the policy he had inaugurated. On Wednesday morn ing the Tennessee delegation brought forward the name of James K. Polk ; and after the first ballot the Van Buren men went over to him 1844.] NOMINATION OF JAMES K. POLK. almost in a body, to defeat General Cass ; and the Cass men followed, in order to be on the successful side. Polk received not only two- thirds but four-fifths of the whole vote. The several factions acqui esced in the new name more readily than they would have done if either of the preferred candidates had been chosen. The Van Buren men were to be still further appeased by the proffer of the nomination for Vice-President to Silas Wright ; but he declined it by telegraph. George M. Dallas, of Pennsylvania, was then nominated. The platform, if not the work of the master-spirit of the hour (Cal- houn), reflected his views. It declared for the annexation of Texas " at the earliest practicable period ; " asserted title to the whole of Oregon ; opposed the protective tariff, a national bank, or any distribu tion of the proceeds of the public lands ; conciliated the Tyler men by a resolution approving his use of the veto-power ; and the Van Buren men by a resolution of confidence, affection, and respect. It further declared that Congress had no power to interfere with slavery, de nounced all efforts to " take incipient steps in relation thereto," as " calculated to lead to the most alarming and dangerous consequences." CHAPTER LV. 1844. The Presidential Canvass. Calhoun s Policy. Texas and the Tariff. Addresses at Union and Amherst. Whig Mass Meetings. Incidents of the Campaign. Jealousies and Forebodings. Ash and Hickory. The Alabama Letter. Clay s Defeat. WHEN the news spread abroad, the country was astounded at Polk s nomination. The Whigs jeered at it. Many Democrats declared they had never even heard of him, and looked upon the convention as a fiasco. But when the delegates began to arrive home, and explain how the nomination had united the party, and would conduce to suc cess at the polls, the enthusiasm and hopes of their followers began to revive, and they entered upon the work of the campaign with vigor. The issues of the presidential canvass were now made up. The Democrats had made explicit declarations of their policy. They had at Baltimore sacrificed all their chiefs in order to carry out that policy. The Whigs had adhered to their trusted and honored leader, and reit erated their past doctrines. The abolitionists preferred to give their votes to a third candidate, even without the hope of electing him, im patient at what they regarded as an effort of the Whigs to stave off the great issue they desired to bring on. Yet it was coming coming faster than the most ultra-abolitionist dreamed. 716 L I FE AND LETTERS. [1844. Some of the New York Democrats of the school of the Evening jPost, finding themselves placed in a position of some difficulty by the pro-slavery action of the Baltimore Convention, determined to publish a joint letter, declaring their purpose to support Polk and Dallas, but rejecting the resolution concerning Texas, and agreeing to support can didates for Congress concurring in their views. Not only politicians, but churches also, had begun to grow restive under the prospect of slavery extension. Long and earnest debates in Methodist conferences foreshadowed that it was a subject that might prove an entering wedge to rive that denomination asunder. Meanwhile, at Washington, the Administration and Congress were taking such action as would tend to force the issue. Ships-of-war had been ordered to the Gulf, and troops to the Texan frontier, in view of the coming annexation. Day after day the Senate debated the treaty in secret session. Finally, they voted, and the count stood sixteen to thirty-five. The treaty was rejected. The Whig Senators, Northern and Southern, voted against it. The Democrats did not give a full party vote in its favor. Colonel Benton, for one, declared himself in favor of annexation; but not without the assent of Mexico, nor without excluding slavery from the northern part of Texas. So that question went to the people, to be decided at the presidential election. The improvement of rivers and harbors, which had always been favored by the Whigs, entered into this canvass as a local rather than a distinctive party issue. Two bills had been passed, the one mak ing appropriations for the improvement of rivers and harbors at the East, and the other for those of the West. President Tyler approved and signed the Western bill, but vetoed the Eastern one. Seward wrote to St. Lawrence County in reply to an invitation from Benjamin Squire and others to come there to attend a Whig gathering. After referring to his vivid remembrance of the hospitalities bestowed on him during his visit to the banks of the St. Lawrence in 1839, and the instruction derived from it, he went on to say : It was long a question with me how it was that John Quincy Adams was bolder, more resolute, and more devoted in the cause of ^humanity, than all of his contemporaries. I found the explanation in the motto impressed upon the seal of a letter from that illustrious statesman, " Alter i seculo" So it may be allowed me, my day of public service being past, to consider not alone what is the sentiment prevailing this day or this year, but what principles will abide the test of time and the judgment of posterity. . . . In the tour to which I have adverted, I observed that the counties of Clin ton, St. Lawrence, Franklin, and Jefferson, were largely colonized by natives of French Canada, Ireland, England, and Scotland, whose devotion to liberty had induced them to erect their log cabins on the southern instead of the northern side of the St. Lawrence. There was some confusion of tongues, and the cross of the Catholic church 1844.] MEMORIES OF CHERRY VALLEY. 717 was seen side by side with the spire of the Protestant temple. It was impos sible to distinguish whether the fields had been sown by Protestant or by Catholic hands. The same sun and showers ripened the fields of both. Contentment and harmony seemed to prevail everywhere. ... I said to myself, " Let him who distrusts the instincts of freedom, and the capability of men born under op pression, to become true and worthy citizens of a republican state, come here and learn the truth, yet widely discredited, though it was taught by the Great Master of human reason, and was practically adopted by the great expounder of American democracy, that liberal naturalization is an element of empire." . . . I am sure no man pretending to be a statesman could fail to receive instruc tion from the scenes and from the people of the valley of the St. Lawrence. There the truth must break in upon every candid mind, that the great political question between the contending parties of our day is, whether the national peace shall be put in jeopardy, the national honor be forfeited, and the national wealth and treasure be expended, to give enlargement, security, and perpetuity, to Southern slavery, which forever drags us down to the earth ? Or whether impartial public councils shall leave the free and vigorous North and West to work out the welfare of the country, and drag the reluctant South up to par ticipate in the same glorious destinies ? . . . It had already begun to be discovered by leading Whigs in other Northern States, as well as New York, that the antislavery movement was likely to draw off many votes from the standard of Clay and Fre- linghuysen. To meet this danger they turned naturally to Seward for help. While a steadfast Whig, his antislavery course had already made him widely known throughout the North. He, it was believed, was the one who could persuade the antislavery Whigs to remain in the party, if any one could. He could show them that a Whig vote was the only vote that could be effective in preventing the threatened extension of slavery, and his own record would prove that his reasonings were just and his convictions sincere. Many of his letters at this period, there fore, were in reply to such requests. In answer to the Whigs of Michi gan he spoke of " the deplorable error of adding bulwarks to the fall ing institution of slavery, which is the chief cause of all our national calamities, and the only source of national danger." And, writing the same day to Vermont, he said : " Renew your declaration that the extension of human slavery is at war with the principles of the Whig party, and that emancipation is among the great works to which that party is devoted." But to Cherry Valley he sent his excuses for not attending a politi cal barbecue. His engagements elsewhere prevented, and he wrote to James Brackett and others : ATJBUBN, June 7, 1844. I will frankly confess to you why the circumstance is unattended by regret. . . . The anniversary of our national independence in 1840 found me seeking ome place where my presence \\ould not provoke unkindness or disturb the becoming solemnities of that interesting occasion. An invitation from your 718 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. village announced the purpose of its citizens to honor the memory of their forefathers by celebrating on that day the centennial anniversary of the planta tion of Cherry Valley. I accepted the invitation because I believed that, under those circumstances, there, if anywhere, party animosities would for a day be hushed into profound repose. My visit was afterward extended to Cooperstown, the capital of your rich and beautiful county. The long procession ; the oration of William W. Camp bell, a gifted descendant of one of the founders of Cherry Valley, rich in affect ing domestic reminiscences and historical instructions ; the paternal greetings of your ancient pastor, the Rev. Dr. Nott, bestowed on the survivors of his flock ; the temperate but joyous repast under a rustic bower ; the cordial greeting of the people and their hearty responses to my unstudied speech ; the cavalcade that attended me to Cooperstown, and on my descent to the valley of the Mohawk ; the mimic voyage on the beautiful lake ; the scenes of the adventures of the pioneers of Cooperstown, illustrated by the renowned proprietor of the " Hall ; " the visits to the various houses of Christian worship ; my hospitable entertainment by distinguished citizens in several villages, and the varied festivi ties that effaced for the time the memory of public cares and duties all these are indelibly impressed upon my memory ; and the hills and valleys of Otsego are never recalled by me but as scenes luxuriant in fertility, gladdened by the ripening influences of the midsummer sun, and abounding in all the elements of social happiness. There was no voice or memory of politics on that occasion, and the people of Otsego are unknown to me as politicians. I would not efface these impressions. I desire that there may be one community that I may remember in all after-life as free from the political acrimony which often poisons the springs of hospi tality and friendship. I admit my obligation to bear my full part in the politi cal discussions of the day, although I am removed beyond the incentives of personal ambition. But the State is a broader field than I could traverse if I should devote myself exclusively to political agitation. Let others, then, labor in Otsego County. Let me cherish still longer, and long as I live, the recollec tion of the one green spot in the State of New York where, when my char acter was most misrepresented and most misapprehended, amid the excitement of the most exciting of political occasions the country has ever known, I was received, not only with kindest candor and respect, but with magnanimity. Continuing his correspondence with Mr. Weed, he wrote on the 20th : AUBURN, June 20, 1844. So you went to Boston to meet Schoolcraft. I hope you found him well, as I doubt not he was happy. For truant as we become, in wandering over for eign lands, one is always happy in reaching home again. I too have had a holi day as pleasant as unlocked for. Uncle Cary required me to go to Batavia to draw a bill in chancery. I arrived there on Friday, was detained, waiting for his adversary until Monday ; then in two hours negotiated a compromise ; and then had an idle season among my friends. It is wonderful what an impulse that nomination of Polk has given to the abolition sentiment. It has already expelled the other issues from the public mind. I was at a Clay club at Byron, and arrived at a very late hour at the 1844.] FILLMORE, WEED, AND THE JOURNAL. 719 mass-meeting at Warsaw. There one of the banners, and the most popular one, was a white sheet, on which was Polk dragging a negro in chains after him. When I returned here I found that our Whig Central Committee, who a year ago voted me out of the party for being an abolitionist, had made abolition the war- cry in their call for a mass-convention. I don t know, certainly, how this change is going to affect the Whig party throughout the Union at this time. It would be marvelous if abolition should curry the country at the first effort. But, however this may be, the battle for the next four years is already set, and we are safe and right. God grant that the question be peaceably met and settled ! I met Mr. Fillmore at Warsaw. He had delivered a great tariff and anti- Texas speech before I arrived ; but its praise was in the mouths, and its princi ples in the hearts, of all the people. I had no conversation with him concern ing his expectations. Dawson tells me that he had a long and free conversation with Fillmore, who was receiving frequent letters from Rochester and other places, advising him that you and I were urging his nomination for Governor for his destruction, and that Fillmore was not unlikely to be induced to decline. I suppose Mr. Fillmore a cool and well-balanced man in such a crisis. Yet I do not believe the nomination for Governor of New York would be declined by him. If I could have an ungenerous wish, it would be that he would yield to the heated remonstrances of those who are trying to abuse his mind. But I do not want so great a misfortune to befall the Whig party. AUBURN, Jime 22, 1844. 1 am astounded by your announcement of a purpose to leave the Journal. You will survive, the Journal will survive, and you will be restored to each other in a better and more prosperous period. But the explanation, in the best form it can be made, will not save the party from the consequences. When you retreat, there will be no hope left for ten thousand men who hold on for their confidence in you and me ; and they look to you for all that we both think and design. I think Fillmore will decline when you have resigned. He wants promotion, and cannot bide his time. But he is fearful and apprehensive. For a few weeks the Democrats are going to take the lead ; perhaps, exhibit the most zeal and spirit all the way through the campaign. They are doing so here, as they well may. They have an emblem ; ours is worn out. They have a nickname, a new one ; ours has worn as long as poor jokes can. They have occasion to rally ; we have had our arms in hand a long time. All this does not alarm me. I think it necessary to the success of the Whig party to keep it from vaporing away all its strength ; and the great agricultural and mechanical classes are too deeply affected to be misled. But the Whigs are, and will be, alarmed. I think you cannot leave the Journal without giving up the whole army to dissension and overthrow. I agree that if, by remaining, you save it, you only draw down double denunciation upon yourself and me. Nor do I see the way through and beyond that. But there will be some way through. I grant, then, that, for yourself and me, it is wise and profitable that you leave. I must be left without the possibility of restoration, without a defender, without an organ. Nothing else will satisfy those who think they are shaded. Then, and not until then, shall I have passed through the not unreasonable punishment for too much 720 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. success. But the party the country ? They cannot bear your withdrawal. I think I am not mistaken in this. Let us adhere, then. Stand fast. It is neither wise nor reasonable that we should bear the censure of defeat, when we have been deprived of not merely command, but of a voice in council. Do you not know that there is not a Whig, not one Whig in the State, ex cept in our own (now very small) circle, who looks to any future election? They want Clay, now. But they believe that is the end of all human effort ; and they feel as if all their fortunes were concluded in that event. Therefore they suspect us of a design to share with them ! Spending some time at Utica, in July, in attendance upon the term of the Supreme Court, he wrote home : UTICA, July 6, 1844. I have argued two causes in the court, made and written out a speech, and yet my room has been a levee all the time. This morning I thought I should spend the Sunday with you, but the last car left before I was ready. I spent the Fourth of July in a ride about the country with Chief -Justice Nelson. We visited Clinton, Paris, and the villages and manufactories in the valley of the Sauquoit Creek I spoke last night to a thousand people, leaving out-of-doors another thou sand who could not get access, and I asserted my opinions concerning the Phila delphia riots in a way that will for long put me out of favor with a portion of my countrymen. If it would relieve me from further invitations to address Whig mass-meetings I should rejoice ; but I shall be allowed to work for Mr. Clay nevertheless. Mr. Clay has written out his speech at Raleigh, and in a single short paragraph expressed himself so strongly against his abolition allies as to lead many to declare him unworthy the confidence of his party. To Mr. Weed he wrote : UTICA, July 6, 1844. I have at last shown the Whigs that I cannot accept their favor on condition of even an amnesty for my offenses. Now I am even with our good friends, as you have been all summer long. They cannot " stop my paper," though, as they do when you offend. I am to speak at Mexico on Tuesday, in Morrisville on Friday, and in Syracuse on Saturday, if court and engagements forbid not ; then by-and-by in Cortland and Jefferson. That is all, and by much too much. It is hard to be the draught-horse under whip, while the lead-horse is stroked and caressed for kicking back ; but fidelity is safest after all. Our time will come by-and-by. " Go home, Mr. Mendenhall, and mind your own business," was bad enough ; but " I refer you to Mr. Mendenhall for my views on emanci pation " is worse still. Chief-Justice Nelson has given me the history of the negotiation between Van Buren and Tracy in 1834, by which the latter was pledged to vote for the resolution against the United States Bank, which plot was exploded by my ob stinacy. The details were curious and interesting. G. P. B is here ; went to Chenango to address the Democrats, and, though called on, refused to speak for Texas. He is restless, and declares that he shall cut loose if the party do not cut loose from Texas. Mrs. Seward said that the Otsego letter was a very good one for me to send, 1844.] ADDRESS AT UNION COLLEGE. 721 but not a good one to print, because it was all about myself. Even good letters may be too egotistical. I am not anxious for the publication of what ought not to be, or even what ought to be printed. You and Benedict ought to come this way. The word runs for John A. King for Lieutenant-Governor. Can t you draw him out on the suffrage and school questions ? He is a noble fellow, and that would be the making of him. UTICA, July \\tli. I argue a cause here to-day, speak in Madison County to-morrow, next day at Syracuse, and reach Auburn Saturday night. I return here perhaps late next week. The Greeley cause is low on the calendar, and I come back for it. Collier goes with me to Hamilton ; Jordan and Spencer, and I know not how many more, to Syracuse. Our lawyers are all becoming zealous. He had been invited to address the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Union College at their annual meeting during commencement week, and also to address the literary societies at Amherst on a similar occa sion a few days later. At intervals of his occupations in Utica he was now writing an essay that would be suitable for delivery at these col lege gatherings. It aimed to present a succinct and philosophic view of the elements of strength of the American Government ; its advan tages and its dangers, and the true method of rendering them most effectively beneficial to mankind. It was a comprehensive theme, but a favorite subject of thought, and the reflections he now hastily com mitted to paper were the basis and substance of a more elaborate pre sentation of the same theme four years afterward in his oration on " The True Greatness of Our Country." In one of his letters to Auburn he remarked : UTICA, July 21*Z. Of all the intellectual efforts I ever tried, the only one that I have been obliged heretofore to give up in despair was the literary essay which specula tive men find so vastly easy. Well, I found myself on Thursday morning with out anything but a page beyond the day before at Auburn. To-night I am Armed with what seems to me dull as Erebus, but what you would probably tell me was better than half the essayists could produce. I wish you were here or I with you, that you might tell me so, for I am going to Schenectady rather distrustful of it. My speech is long enough if good, and too long by half if bad. I have not left my room except for an evening walk in the four days. I return here on Thursday, hoping then to go home, but may be detained if there is a prospect of reaching the Greeley case. I have snatched an hour or two to read Carlyle, and I have become bewitched with him, but not with the foolish philosophy he teaches. I go to Albany to-morrow, to Schenectady Tuesday. Immediately after the delivery of the address at Schenectady he proceeded to the western part of the State, to speak at Whig meet ings. During the next three months the larger part of his time was devoted to this kind of political labor. His letters to Weed were fre- 46 722 LIFE AND LETTERS, [1844. quent from the different points to which he called to advocate the claims of " Clay and Frelinghuysen." In these letters he noted the varying aspects and incidents, hopes and fears, of the campaign. AUBURN, July 24, 1844. I have been in Genesee, Wyoming, and Ontario, and am on Saturday to be at Kochester. I am apprehensive of doing wrong, doing ill, or doing too much. Write me freely at Utica, or meet me there next Tuesday, if you think I ought to stop. Our good friends are covetous of my little grace with classes they have hitherto despised. This is their motive. Shall I not offend against forgiveness by working so much, that they will falsely and unjustly impute to me the very ambition I so truly repudiate and disavow ? Wright has begun, and Folk s defeat would direct all Democratic thoughts toward the discreet and generous friend of Van Buren. This is unfortunate in respect to our success in 1848. But that is too far ahead to dream of. We must make the election of 1844 safe, and let the future provide for itself. Patterson writes me, and says, " For God s sake don t let Weed retire ! " AUBURN, July 28, 1844. On the 5th of August 1 shall hope to arrive with Mrs. Seward, Mrs. Worden T and Frances, at Albany, at about 4 p. M. The ladies will take the next morning s boat to West Point. I shall, God willing, take my departure in the car for Spring field, whence I may reach Amherst on Tuesday night the 6th, perform my en gagement there on Wednesday the 7th, and return to Springfield on that or the next day. Here are very urgent letters reiterating the Springfield invitation, and saying the day (the 9th) was fixed to suit my convenience. I have also letters from. Harding, pressing me to stay with him, for which he has my thanks, as our good Springfield friends have for their kind invitation. It seems I am nearly circum vented. It has seemed to me all along, and never more so than now, that in this stump oratory I do not well, and that it "is not my best part." Lyman Cobb has written to me for some speeches for his new "American Reader." Will you cast over in your mind and tell me what I shall send him I Strange, he asks for the Staten Island Sunday-school speech ! Here are abusive, anonymous, " Native American " letters; and, in the same bundle, warm, glowing, grateful letters, from men unknown. There is a mas& of letters from many places in this State, and from other States, inviting me to speak, and expressing deep conviction of the truth, philosophy, and patriotism, of my published opinions on the Constitution, the operation of our system, and ther rights of the people under it. Chautauqua County wants me presses. How on earth am I to get along, with this ? I am landlord there. I ought not to be, I never was, a partisan there. A letter, such as it becomes me, and such as every impulse of gratitude and affection would force me to write, would be better. AUBURN, August 1, 1844. I am sailing along with less trouble than I feared. I like Wilkin for Lieu- tenant-Governor. Please say to King that I have engaged to go in September to all the northern, counties, and have written to J. Q. Adams. 1844.] CLAY MEETINGS AND SPEECHES. 723 AUBURN, August 23, 1844. I was obliged to leave the bishop here on Wednesday, and we met on Thurs day only to part. But the interview we had was pleasant, and useful, in making me more intimately acquainted with him. It was a great meeting at Ithaca, at least equal to or exceeding the Syracuse one. All was pleasant enough, especially so for me. General Root attempted an argument with a brief, before fifteen thousand men, in broad mid-day. They could not hear. He told them so, but they could not hear that either. At night they had a meeting in the town-hall, and he held forth two hours. I am at least as tired as you of mass-meetings. But they will go on. There will yet be time for work, if the disposition to work remains. I am now booked only for Cortlund and the northern counties. I am home for two days and a half. One day and a half has been spent in my law business. In the remaining day I must bring up my correspondence, and deferred political and literary studies. Need enough that I leave the mass-meet ings to take care of themselves ! It is quite clear that the lion of Democracy is roused, and will contend for victory. The " Agricultural Governor" goes by the board. Silas Wright seems about to be chosen. His nomination is the fatality. Election or defeat ex hausts him. Will Mr. Webster go to Utica ? If so, I can excuse myself there. I have assumed that he would. " Declare ! " as the lawyers say when they put inter rogatories. KOCHESTER, Tuesday Morning, August 27, 1844. By this time you will have seen what I see so often, a real " mass-meeting." I doubt not you are in the midst of a vast assemblage. I have accustomed my self to regard these popular demonstrations as very indicative of a favorable re sult. They certainly prove that the great political questions have taken deep hold of the sedentary and generally cold masses. It seems certain that the Whigs must make up their minds to beat their op ponents, giving them the suffrages of the naturalized voters. No sooner was my foot set upon the porch last night than the Whig managers appealed to me to make a tariff and Texas speech to that class, saying that they were all against us. It is a sorry consolation for this ominous aspect of things that you and I are personally exempt from the hostility of this class toward our political associates. Mr. Fillmore is here, and in good spirits. I have seen Whittlesey, but not yet alone. He is presiding in court. I write early, before my occupation in his court, or the necessary preparation for it, will put an end to such pleasures. BUFFALO, Friday Morning. I shall close my argument here to-day, attend a mass-meeting to-morrow, and shall go east as soon after as may be. AUBURN, September 2, 1844. You fancy short letters. This must be such a one. On arriving yesterday morning from Rochester via Bath, I heard,. from Florida, that my mother was ill, and my father quite ill, but better. Having heard nothing of later date, and not being expressly required to go to Florida, I have waited in great and pain ful perplexity until now. I may decide to go to my mother s bedside, even with the hope that grows within me for her convalescence. I may wait, alas ! per haps too late. To be too late at the sick-bed of a mother, and such a mother ! 724 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. I found panic in Bath, and the mass-meeting, which was wonderfully ani mated and kind, dispelled it. But I met that letter at Geneva, and thence here, and until now everybody droops, despairs. It jeopards, perhaps loses, the State. But that was thrown away in the beginning. Is there any other way but to go through to the end, more devotedly than ever? We are approaching the State Convention. Morgan is a delegate, and will be instructed to prevent, and have full power to prevent, my nomination as an elector. The people, I believe, are thinking of it in many places. Here those who were reading me out of the party six months ago insist upon it. Despond ency and despair are produced by Clay s letter. A. B. D expects you to decide for him whether he shall be nominated for Canal Commissioner or Senator. He would prefer the latter, but will be advised. He had not seen Clay s letter when I left him. I had an agreeable and profitable time with James A. Hamilton and his daughter, Mrs. Schuyler. She is a wonderfully fine and intelligent woman. There was civility and there were respect and kindness toward me at Koch- ester. Those who have made mischief are now willing to forgive me for it, but find it embarrassing to consult me, except concerning mass-meetings. So all was right. I take new courage since Hamilton told me an anecdote about Washington s dependence on his friend. He has a letter acknowledging the receipt of the draft of the " Farewell Address," and asking how it shall be given to the pub lic by pamphlet, or through the newspapers, or how ? You see this letter is not short. Prefaces should always be written after the text of the book. I do not go to Cortland or elsewhere by reason of my uncer tainty about Orange County. AUBURN, September 15, 1844. Covert threw me into anxiety on Friday morning by telling me that Harriet denied Mm at your door on the previous day. I thought that you were only sick of an Ashland letter. But Covert replied that you had been sick all day, and I remembered that medicine out of the political materia mediea cus tomarily paralyzed instead of exciting you to violent nausea. I was much alarmed. I have a presentiment always that you are to drop off first. What I despise myself for is that the selfishness you have nourished within me makes me more unwilling than I ought to be that you should have your own way in this. Sterne is the only philosopher who resolves for me what I feel to be my art of living. " We get forward in the world," says he, "not so much by doing services as by receiving them : you take a withering twig and put it in the ground, and then you water it because you have planted it." But Sterne is an authority as lightly esteemed among the schoolmen as among the divines. If the Whig party be to succeed, the arrangements at Syracuse about elec tors are as unfortunate as you suppose. The grace and favor of democracy were expressly disdained by the rejection of Father Burt. If I had not con fided in his nomination I should have insisted on the name of Philip King, a fighting Whig of 17Y6, and a " Bucktail " " Antimason," for elector. The concession to the awakening spirit of philanthropy that has already distracted the Whig party was as wise as it was generous. That last letter will do its mischief unnoticed and unthought of. The former 1844.] TOUR THROUGH NORTHERN NEW YORK. 725 ones irritated our friends, bat they have become inured ; and they complain not of tho lust, because complaint is unavailing. But the effect will be calam itous. The State Conventions of the two great parties had now presented their respective candidates. The Whigs nominated Mr. Fillmore for Governor, and Samuel J. Wilkin, of Orange County, for Lieutenant- Governor. The Democrats nominated Silas Wright for the first office, and Addison Gardiner for the second ; nominations which promised to command the united support of the two warring factions of " Hunkers " and "Barnburners." Hitherto, the Whigs of the State during the progress of the cam paign had been gathering confidence from the mass-meetings and other evidences of popular enthusiasm. But the " Alabama letters " of their nominee, so unfortunate for his prospects, were now published. It was at once perceived that the probabilities of success, in New York at least, were diminishing. AUBURN, September 18, 1844. S. S. Randall (in the office of Secretary of State) has just sent me his excel lent book, " A Digest of the Common-School System." I find in it my vindica tion of the school question, extracted from the message of 1841. It seems as harmless as it is cogent. AUBUBN, Monday Morning. Our friend Clowes has not come. I wish the party could understand how much more his rugged, perverse directness (there is a paradox for you) is worth than the smoother but unequal and unsafe aid of many they prefer to him. Wright was a strong man the day before his nomination for Governor. He fell far, and if left alone will be not, what he might have been, George I. to William of Orange, lineal heir to Jackson, through Van Buren. The wise acres in New York speak of him with compliment, " this distinguished states man ; " yet they bring all their small artillery to bear upon him, and give notice that he is demolished. The praise they bestow is very ill concealed, but lesi injurious to us than their warfare, conducted in their mode. The latter part of September was devoted by Seward to the politi cal tour through the northern counties which he had promised to un dertake. Accompanied by Seth C. Hawley, he started from Albany, and traversed Saratoga, Warren, Essex, Clinton, Franklin, St. Lawrence, Lewis, and Jefferson Counties. At the principal towns they addressed large and usually enthusiastic meetings. Seward briefly noted the prin cipal points of the route in his letters. OODENSBUBO, Sunday, September 80th. We have come thus far in our long and uncomfortable journey. We left Albany on Monday morning, dined at Saratoga Springs, and slept at Glen s Falls. The next day we dined at Whitehall, after a very interesting ride through Sandy Hill and Fort Anne, a route memorable as the road traversed by Burgoyne in his progress to Saratoga. We slept on Tuesday night at Burlington, and the 726 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. next day attended a mass-meeting at Keeseville. Thence we rode through the sand, after nightfall, to Plattsburg, where we rested in General Macomb s quar ters during the siege of that place. The next day was spent in traveling through the gloomy forest named the " Chauteaugay Woods," from which we emerged at nine o clock. Resting that night, we came the next morning to Malone, the capital of Franklin County ; and held a meeting there in the open air, so in clement as to deprive everybody of all comfort. We slept that night at Law- /ence, and yesterday morning reached Potsdam, where we had our first meet ing in this county. Thence a ride of twenty-eight miles brought us to this town. We speak, to-morrow, at Gouverneur; on Tuesday, at Carthage, in Jefferson County ; on Wednesday, at Martinsburg, in Lewis County ; on Thursday, at Lowville, and then our mission will be ended. The meetings are immense, the kindness of the people overwhelming. You may expect us on Saturday. The meetings were attended by thousands. Farmers came into town from all the surrounding country, bringing their wives and chil dren with them. Young people came to the mass-meeting as they would to a holiday festival or a circus. Idlers of all sorts were at tracted by curiosity, and thinking men could not keep aloof in what was felt to be a national crisis. Many of the emblems and appliances of the contest of 1840 were renewed in that of 1844. Instead of raising " log cabins," the Whigs now erected " ash-poles." Huge ash-trees were cut down, and spliced together to make a rough pole, fifty or a hundred feet high, on which to display the banner of the statesman of Ashland. Campaign songs and songsters, glee-clubs, and choruses, for " Harry of the West," emulated those for " Old Tip." Processions by day and by torch-light, flags and caricatures, were again abundant. But this time the Whigs could not claim a monopoly of the enthusiasm. The Democrats had their mass- meetings also, their songs and their " hickory -poles," their processions and their banners, and in all these demonstrations they claimed to equal, if not eclipse, their opponents. Deep popular interest was felt in the election. It was the greater, perhaps, because party divisions and subdivisions threw so much doubt over the result. The Democrats had to persuade "Hunkers" and " Barnburners " to drop their rankling animosities, and go cordially to gether to the polls. The Whigs had to use every effort to prevent the loss of votes, for both " Abolitionists " and " Native Americans " were recruiting from their ranks. As regarded persons, there was but one commanding central figure. That was Henry Clay. He was the em bodiment of the issues. Over him the battle raged. Speakers and newspapers talked of the probabilities of " electing Clay," or of " de feating Clay." Other candidates, on either side, attracted little atten tion in comparison. The canvass really turned upon principles and prejudices, not upon personal merits. Yet orators made Clay their favorite personification, both for support and for attack. 1844.] A PREDICTION ABOUT SECESSION. 727 As the chief advocate of a protective tariff, and of the distribution of the proceeds of the public lands, Mr. Clay actually was the best per sonification of Whig doctrines. Yet there was another question un derlying the contest, about which Whigs talked less, but thought more. That was the annexation of Texas and the consequent extension of slavery, and on this the position of the Democratic candidate was clear, while that of the Whig nominee was dubious. For obvious reasons, stump-speakers of both parties handled this issue with caution. At the North, Democratic orators would not declare, probably would not even believe, that they were laboring to extend slavery, but claimed that they were enlarging the " area of freedom ; " and Whig orators, while expatiating fluently on the financial issues, found themselves in danger of offending their own associates by saying too little or too much about the important question of all. Seward s hostility to slavery had been open and avowed for years, and nevertheless he supported Clay, sup ported him on antislavery grounds. It was the knowledge of this fact that now made his arguments attentively listened to, and his presence earnestly called for, far and wide, even by men who, if they believed in his sentiments, were not yet prepared to avow it. In his speech at Syracuse he said : Friends of emancipation ! advocates of the rights of man ! I am one of you. I have always believed and trusted that the Whigs of America would come up to the ground you have so nobly assumed. Not that I supposed or believed they would all at once, or all from the same impulses, reach that ground, but that the progress of events would surely bring them there, and they would assume it cheerfully. You have now this great, generous, and triumphant party, on the very ground to which you have invited them, and for not assuming which, pre maturely, you have so often denounced them. But you will say that Henry Clay is a slaveholder. So he is. I regret it as deeply as you do. I wish it were oth erwise. But our conflict is not with one slaveholder, or with many, but with &lwery. Henry Clay is our representative. You are opposed to the admission of Texas, and you admit and assert the duty of resisting it by the right of suffrage. Will you resist it by voting for James G. Birney? Your votes would be just as effectual if cast upon the waters of this placid lake. He closed this speech with a prediction deemed, even by many Whigs, extravagant. Time has verified it : Democrats, Liberty-men, and Whigs, by whatever name you prefer to be called ! the issue presents itself alike to all. Texas and slavery are at war with the interests, the principles, the sympathies, of all. The integrity of the Union depends on the result. To increase the slaveholding power is to subvert the Con stitution ; to give a fearful preponderance which may, and probably will, be speedily followed by demands to which the Democratic free-labor States cannot yield, and the denial of which will be made the ground of secession, nullification, and disunion ! 728 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. In his Yates County speech, in October, one of the last of the can vass, he summed up the issues thus : Heretofore they told us that we had nothing to do with slavery ; that it was no concern of ours. But now the slaveholder has brought it home to us. It is our concern now, God be praised! It is a national concern. The annexation of Texas to enlarge and fortify the slave-trade is, forsooth, " a great Democratic measure." Democracy is brought to a test that no mock pretensions can abide. True democracy is equality and liberty. The democracy of the Texas party is aristocracy for the white, and bondage for the black. Slavery is now on trial before the people, and must go down, and with it every power that interposes to protect and uphold the institution, accursed of God and man. And now, how stand the parties on this great question of peace and war of the Constitution as it is, or of the Constitution subverted of union or disunion ? The one party pronounce the treaty a great national measure ; the other de nounce it now, henceforth, and forever, while slavery denies the beautiful terri tory that solicits their acceptance. Shall I be told that Henry Clay s position is not so strong as this ? Be it so. I regret it. I would that Henry Clay were in the vanguard of emancipation. I should honor him ten thousand times more than I can now. But Henry Clay s election is the only alternative so far as the presidency is concerned, and he is only the leading personal object in the fore ground of the scene we have been contemplating. Let him come into the presi dency under such pledges as will prevent Texas from coming into the Union while he is there. We will look out for the future. Present safety being thus secured, we will take care that Texas do not come in afterward, or ever, until she casts off the black robe that hangs around her, and thus renders herself worthy of adoption by the American sisterhood. Fellow-citizens, the time for mass-meetings has passed away. This is the last occasion on which I shall address any portion of the people in regard to the approaching election. I desire to say that, as I have spoken here, I have every where spoken, not as a mere apologist of the Whig party, or of its leaders, but as an advocate of the interests and honor of my country, paramount to the interests of all partisans and of all parties. Not unfrequently the public speaker on these occasions would en liven his dry argument by some direct " appeal to the ladies " who formed so large a part of the audience. At one meeting, Seward began his discussion of the tariff by saying : Good housewife from Otisco, if your bread was ready for the oven, and you had one, would you bake at home, or send it to your neighbor s ? and if you had no oven, would you change works with your more fortunate neighbor who has one, or would you send to the distant market-town? You would do it at home, and always as near home as possible. Of course you would. Now, the principle of home-industry applies just as well to the making of our own leather and of our own boots, our own cloth and of our own clothing, of our own salt, of our own knives and forks, of our own shovels and tongs, and of our own spinning-jennies and steam-engines, as to the lowly example I have set forth. But the European baker cannot compete with the housewife, while the Eu- 1844.] WOMEN AT MASS-MEETINGS. 729 ropean mechanic, tanner, shoemaker, spinster, weaver, blacksmith, iron-founder, and iron-monger, can. We must, then, have duties which shall secure equal advantages to our own mechanics. On another occasion, at one of the meetings in the northern coun ties, he followed a speaker who had devoted his remarks chiefly to the question of protection : I have listened with attention to my friend s argument. It was clear and convincing, as all his arguments are. I reflected, however, that after all it was an argument addressed to the pocket. And I determined that, when my turn should come, I would appeal, not to your pockets, but to some nobler thought than that of dollars and cents. But now that I am up, and look around me, I see that every man of you has pockets in his coat, pockets in his overcoat, pockets in his vest, pockets in his pantaloons, pockets everywhere, and, not content with that, has huge pocket-flaps to call attention to them. So I believe I will give up trying to make impression upon the men. I will turn to these front seats, where the women are ; for I see that not one of them wears pock ets, or, if she does, she keeps them out of sight. Laughter greeted this allusion to one of the popular fashions of dress, and he continued : Our opponents insist that women have no place in political assemblies. But I will tell them the secret why women are here, and why they will remain here. A question of peace or war is thrust upon us. They, by their teachings of the young, and by their persuasions addressed to all, influence the decree of the ballot-box. You who are mothers and daughters, you who are sisters and wives, I ask you not to count up in dollars and cents what a war for Texas will cost ; but I tell you that it will cost the blood, the lives, of your fellow-men. Are you ready nay, I know there is not one of you that is ready to counsel her father, her husband, her brother, or her son, to go out to battle, when the bat tle is not in defense of his country s flag, but for the extension of human slavery! To you, then, I will address what I have to say. Continuing his letters to Weed, he said : AUBURN, October 7, 1844. I found all well at home on my return on Saturday night, but my business sadly out of joint. Thank Heaven, the sacrifices are nearly over! The Whigs of the northern counties are a noble and generous set of men. The party is struggling like a strong man. We shall see whether they are too deep in the morass to extricate themselves. I have missed 0. M. Clay altogether. I could see him by going to Cortland to-morrow, but I must go to Penn Yan. The Maryland election ! what is its omen ? Do not go to boasting, unless well assured that you will be vindicated by the result. All onr friends must revise their local estimates, if we are to have good fortune. I found three young girls, all of a birth, six days old, at Carthage, and named them Frances, Cornelia, and Harriet. The mother blessed me ; and the 730 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. father, who knew no way to reward me but by voting, promised as many votes as if the children were to be electors. Do not give this letter to the Argus, as Greeley did Mr. Clay s to the News. This letter was not made to lose. Time, which saps the foundations of most edifices, had now weak ened the fabric which the " Millerites " had raised. " The Ides of March " had come and gone ; the day fixed for the destruction of the world had been changed at different times ; but it had been agreed that it would be some time in 1843 or 1844. After the discouraging arrival of sunrise and sunset with their accustomed punctuality all through those years, the sect began gradually to decline. At one time the 23d of October had been fixed upon. AUBURN, October 22, 1844. If to-morrow should be the last day, what relief would it bring to millions of spirits too gentle for the bufferings of the world! But the designs of Provi dence in regard to the temporal condition of mankind are not yet accom plished ; and so the bridegroom will not come, though the virgins trim their lamps and go out to meet him with whatever confidence that the tarrying in ended. Well, I have been at Rochester ; went up on Sunday night and returned to day. Being on the ground at the opening of the court, I defaulted my adver saries, and saved myself the necessity of longer tarrying there. Greeley s case goes over now to January. I believe you know that I defend slander and libel suits always by delay as far as practicable. There is nothing for a plaintiff, in such cases, like haste ; nor is there any advantage for a defendant like time ; that diminishes the grievance complained of. But you are not a law -student, and so I may spare my lecture. Watchman, what of the night ? Our friends swear they are confident, and mean to be so until the end. But I think they are not sanguine now, and will lose confidence as the election approaches. They all say that New York City, by giving us five thousand majority, will save the State for Clay. But their conversation shows distrust of this. Whittlesey thinks Clay s chances better than Folk s, but reckons Pennsylvania, rather than New York, as the State which is to secure the election of the Whig candidates. Strange to say, this is the prevalent opinion; and our friends, by expressing it, virtually confess that New York is lost ; and if you are right about Pennsylvania, then all is lost. Mr. Fillmore was an exception among all I met. He is confident of Penn sylvania and New York. Yet he claims only 2,600 in Erie, and gives rea sons why we shall not get a larger majority. Our friends in Rochester say they expect 1,000, but show that they are not expecting more than TOO. There is manifestly some gain from the abolitionists ; but if our friends see the matter as it truly is, the gains are few, perhaps inconsiderable. On the whole^ I believe our friends look for salvation through a miracle to be worked by the " Native Americans " in New York. They are willing to take it in that way, though they declare that it will be disastrous for all time to come. I have been persuaded to go to Palmyra on Saturday. 1844.] POLK AND DALLAS ELECTED. 731 AUBUBN, October 25, 1844. Mr. John Lee, of Maryland, brings me a letter from Mr. Clay, the contents of which will be stated to you by Mr. Lee. On his suggestion, I have written auch a letter to our distinguished friend in New York as was desired of me, and Mr. Lee will deliver it. Now, further, I cannot go to New York. You can do in that quarter all that I could, and more. Will you not go with Mr. Lee and make the effort to secure such action on the part of our friends there as will be proper and effec tive ? The election is too important and too critical to permit any relaxation of exertion. But I need not urge you, who are so much the main-spring of all political action in this State. Sitting, one evening, in conversation with some friends at Auburn a short time before the election, Seward was listening to their various hopes and fears in regard to different localities. " Let us make an estimate," said he, " of the vote in the State by counties." Pencil and paper were put in use, the names of the counties set down in alpha betical order, and against each was set the majority it gave for or against the Whigs in 1842. Then, carefully weighing the probabilities of change in each, another column was made of the estimated majori ties in 1844. It was frequently his custom to calculate in this way the probable results of a canvass. Noting the present drift of public sen timent, and knowing, from habit and experience, the probable extent of its variation, his estimates were seldom far wrong. There would be errors in regard to localities, but these would counterbalance each other. Neither victory nor defeat, therefore, took him by surprise. In the present case, after the figures were added up, the column showed a majority of several thousands against the Whigs in the State. It was discouraging ; but all attempts to obtain a better showing proved in vain ; and at midnight it was laid aside until election -day. The campaign had now approached its end. The closing meeting had been held ; the last torch-light procession had marched ; the chal lengers had been appointed, the ballots distributed, the polls opened Tuesday, the 5th of November, for the conflict ; and the country in suspense awaited the result. But there was not long to wait. Three hours after the polls had closed scattering returns from adjacent towns began to come in. All showed a falling off in the Whig vote. The next day returns came pouring in by mail and telegraph. Polk and Dallas were elected beyond a doubt ; Silas Wright was to be the next Governor. The jubilant Democrats fired feux de joie, and their shouts of exultation around their hickory-poles recalled the days of " Old Hickory " himself. The " Liberty party " men also walked the streets erect and exultant. They had polled a vote exceeding their own an ticipations ; one, in fact, that would have turned the scale had it been cast for Clay. They had " rebuked the pro-slavery parties," they said, 732 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. and shown the strong hold their principles had upon the Northern heart. Only the Whigs were crushed and dispirited. For the ardent supporters of Henry Clay it was no ordinary defeat to be retrieved next year ; it was gall and bitterness ; it was a life-long disappoint ment. They had fondly believed for years that, if their favorite could be fairly placed in the field as the Whig national candidate, his elec tion to the presidency was assured. The experiment had been tried under the most favorable circumstances, and had failed. It could probably never again be repeated. His defeat rung the knell of future hopes to so many that it was common to hear men say that, since Clay was defeated, they " had no more interest in politics." CHAPTER LVI. 1844. Southern Exultation. Clay defeated by Abolition Votes. His Letter to Seward. Gerrit Smith. Weed in the West Indies. Birth of a Daughter. Death of his Mother. Stage-coach Accident. A Dislocated Shoulder. John Stanton Gould. A WEEK or two later came the echo of rejoicing at the South. Nashville and Charleston, Mobile, Savannah, Richmond, and New Or leans, were reported to be in " a blaze of Democratic triumph," with salutes, festivities, and speech-making. It was a " Calhoun victory," a Southern victory." The annexation of Texas was assured. It was an ominous sign for the abolitionists that they were found rejoicing in the same hour with the slaveholders ; but the warning it conveyed fell, for the moment, upon unheeding ears. By the close of November the official vote of the State was ascer tained. Polk had a plurality of 10,000 over Clay, while 15,000 votes had been cast for Birney. Silas Wright was chosen Governor by a like plurality over Fillmore. The vote stood : Wright, 241,090 ; Fill- more, 231,057 ; Alvan Stewart, the Liberty party candidate, 15,136. When full returns from all parts of the Union had been received and compared, they showed that Polk and Dallas had 170 electoral votes against 105 for Clay and Frelinghuysen. The popular vote (in all the States except South Carolina, whose electors were chosen by the Legislature) was 1,335,834 for Polk, 1,297,033 for Clay, and 64,653 for Birney. After the election Seward wrote to Weed : AUBURN, November 7, 1844. Well, the end has come ! and how terribly it has come to those who would not tolerate the counsels of prudence ! The whole town here are amazed by the ~> 1844.] LETTER FROM HENRY CLAY. 733 exhibition of my estimates foreshadowing the precise defeat, made before the election, but withheld until it was wanted to compare results, and to deter mine the measure of hope that might be indulged. Your visit here was most agreeable to me, though the weighty matters of the law intruded, and broke off our communication. Excuse me to King and Taylor Hall for withholding my estimate of Cayuga. I could not summon resolution enough to be frank with them on that point, when they were making such efforts that ought not to be discouraged. When must you go southward? It seems a hard thing that I am to go through a long winter with the ordinary intercourse between us suspended ; but Harriet s health demands and justifies every sacrifice. Your own, I fear, would not endure the rigor of our season ; so go, and be happy. To Gerrit Smith he wrote, in regard to the result and his future course : You do me no more than justice in supposing that I shall continue the con test, or, rather, my exertions in the contest for human rights, with as much zeal as ever ; but I am confounded for the moment by the magnitude and immi- nency of the perils to which the cause of freedom is exposed, by the sad result of the recent election. It would be unavailing for you and me to dispute about the responsibilities for that result. The same wide difference of opinion that has hitherto existed in regard to our respective courses remains, but we have, nevertheless, a common devotion to the common cause. All the efforts of all sincere lovers of freedom will be necessary to overtake the triumphant spirit of slavery, and trammel up the consequences of the sanction of the conquest of Texas by the American people. You are committed to the Liberty party s mode of proceeding. I find the Whig party like what I always loved to imagine it, firm, fearless, resolved, in the very hour of its defeat. I believe it willing, and yet capable, to take the cause of freedom into its keeping. As yet I see no reason, and much less apparent reason now than heretofore, to distrust its in stincts of liberty and humanity. Under these circumstances I shall cheerfully abide its destinies, and wait for the development of circumstances and occa sions which will show in what quarter, and in what manner, the great war in which we have lost so important a battle is to be recommenced. The great statesman who had been overcome in the contest bore himself with a dignity befitting his reputation. He wrote to Seward on the 20th this manly and generous letter : ASHLAND, November 20, 1844. MY DBAB SIR : I duly received the two letters which you did me the favor to address to me, one written immediately after the interview of Mr. Lee, of Maryland, with you, and the other on the 7th instant, after the termination of the presidential election in New York. I feel greatly obliged by your prompt attention to my request communicated through Mr. Lee. Throughout this whole political campaign I have never doubted your good intentions, and have been constantly persuaded of your having employed your best exertions. The sad result of the contest is now known ; it is also irrever sible, and we are only left to deplore that so good a cause, sustained by so many good men, has been defeated defeated, too, by a combination of the most ex- 734 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. traordinary adverse circumstances that perhaps ever before occurred. But it is now useless and unavailing to speculate upon the causes of the unfortunate issue of the contest. We are also too much under the excitement which it pro duced, and under depression created hy that issue, calmly and deliberately ta look through the gloom which hangs over the future. It will be time enough to do that after the public has recovered from the disappointment which it has just experienced. As for myself, it would be folly to deny that I feel the severity of the blow most intensely. I feel it for myself, but, unless my heart deceives me, I feel it still more for my country and my friends. I had hoped to have been an hum ble instrument in the hands of Providence to arrest the downward tendency of our Government. I had hoped, to have it in my power to do justice to those able, valuable, and virtuous friends, who have been so long and cruelly pro scribed and persecuted. But it has been otherwise decreed, and my duty now is that of resignation and submission, cherishing the hope that some others more fortunate than myself may yet arise to accomplish that which I have not been allowed to effect. You are in the prime of life, endowed with great ability, and I trust that you will long be spared in health and prosperity to render great and good ser vice to our common country. Such will continue to be the prayer of your friend and obedient servant, H. CLAY. As usual, after a defeat, there were not wanting malcontents who sought to charge responsibility for it upon those who had labored to avert it. Some of the journals and politicians in New York, who had for a year before been inveighing against " Weed and Seward " for luke- warmness in regard to Mr. Clay, now accused them of having done too much, especially of having brought on the disaster by their affiliations with " foreigners " and " abolitionists." To be sure, the figures of the official canvass told a contrary tale ; but of what avail are figures to counteract deep-seated prejudice ? Mr. Weed was about departing with an invalid daughter to spend the winter in the genial climate of Santa Cruz. In his letters Seward referred to this voyage : AUBURN, November 12, 1844. I was in a very prosperous law -business in May, when the great political commotion arose. It took me out of my business. I had no reliable substi tute. One way and another I have got through the campaign, and what busi ness I have retained crowds upon me with the necessity of meeting my profes sional adversaries in all quarters and in every way, now in New York, now in Buffalo, now at Utica, now in Albany, and now at home. That is, all at once. Nor are they men of straw, but men of mettle. I confess, then, that I cannot go to Albany, even to see you, before your departure, much less go to New York to take leave of Harriet and yourself. Yet I cannot let you depart without seeing you. Pray meet me at Utica on Saturday night. I will leave at 2 p. M. and spend Sunday there. You have a very right article in Monday s paper. 1844.] DEATH OF HIS MOTHER. 735 AUBURN, November 26, 1844. Your flying epistle, written where you were waiting for the chill blast that petrifies us, while it wafts you to sunny climes, was received this morning. I, like you, am suspected of treason to the Whig chieftain, because responsi bility must be cast off upon us by those who led. Silence is interpreted guilt, sympathy as hypocrisy, frankness in considering the causes of our defeat as exultation. Happily, the judgment to be passed upon both you and me will be delayed until reason takes the place of shame and mortification on the part of accusers, and sympathy and despondency on the part of our judges. I believe you are now not only editor of, but proprietor in, the Evening Jour nal. It is a happy settlement. The country press grows strong. If it had been so in years past, what a catastrophe would have been avoided ! I am on the tread-mill here, determined to keep my foothold. In haste and in much contusion I send this brief letter, hoping it may be in time for the first packet. Swift upon the heels of the public calamity came intelligence be tokening domestic grief. On the 14th a letter from his father an nounced the prospect of a fatal termination of his mother s disease. Taking the train the same afternoon, he went immediately to Florida, whence he wrote on the 16th to Mrs. Seward : FLORIDA, ORANGE COUNTY, November 16, 1844. I was so fortunate as to find a day-boat on the river, and thus we were able to reach this place at six last evening. My mother, it appears, became worse immediately after I left on my last visit, and continued sinking until last Sunday, when they thought she would soon expire of strangulation. She ral lied again on Monday, and it is a great satisfaction to me that I find her not only living, but rational, free from pain, and cheerful. I shall wait here until Monday, and then I must go to New York. If I hear nothing to alarm me while there, 1 will return to Albany by the middle of the week. But if, as I now anticipate, my mother s symptoms should become more unfavorable, I shall wait for the end. Her bedside is instructive since she exhibits all the meekness and all the affection that might be expected from one whose life and character had been so blameless and amiable. NEW YORK, Wednesday, November 20th. My business here is closed. I hare received a letter from Florida, saying that my mother had a relapse, and they had no expectation of her surviving. I shall return there this afternoon. A temporary recovery, however, followed ; giving rise to delusive hopes of her restoration to health. Seward returned to Auburn, pass ing a month in professional duties. During this period occurred the birth of a daughter, who was named Frances, after her mother. Meanwhile, the air was filled with news of public events in the dis tant capitals. The electoral colleges of the various States were meet ing and recording their formal suffrages for Polk and Dallas. Con gress had assembled, and was arranging its programme for the annexa tion of Texas, and the revision of the tariff ; while the quidnuncs and 736 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1844. newspapers were busily engaged in constructing a cabinet for the new ly-elected President. Uneasy doubts were afloat as to the possibili ties of war with England about the Oregon boundary, and of war with Mexico about Texas. But it seemed agreed, by the Administration men and opposition alike, that governmental action on these questions was a foregone conclusion ; that Texas must be taken, and that Oregon must in no case be given up. Another summons to Florida now called Seward from home. He wrote: FLORIDA, December 20, 1844. I could scarcely describe to you the tedious journey I had from Auburn. Of course I was detained at night. The river was closed and I was shut in at Albany until Tuesday afternoon. I took the steamboat at Hudson, and made my way through the ice, and after a change of boats reached Newburg at two o clock on Wednesday morning. There I learned that I was quite too late for the sad occasion which called me from home. The stage delivered me at Goshen, and I arrived here on Wednesday evening. My dear mother s remains were committed to the vault on Sunday with all the observances that respect and affection could suggest. I went into the house of the dead yesterday morning. On opening the coffin, the remains were found in perfect preservation, and the triumph of death appeared to be only the sweet est and soundest sleep. I could not resist the belief that the closed eye was just about to beam upon me, and the lips seemed ready to break out with a blessing. I lingered there until the majesty of death seemed to be offended by so long an intrusion. My mother retained her memory, senses, and affections, until the last. Her last inquiry was whether there was a letter from me, and whether you had safely passed through your crisis, and she spake audibly within five minutes of her last breath. She died without convulsion, and apparently without pain. I shall certainly leave here on Monday, and be at home within three days. Perhaps this letter may come later than I to our common destination. I can find nothing here to banish recollections of you and relieve the solicitude I feel about you and the babe. The river was closed for the winter, and it was necessary to return to Albany by stage-coach. One evening in the following week, while the family at Auburn were awaiting his coming by the evening train, the mail brought instead a letter to Mrs. Seward, in a strange hand. STOOKPOBT, four Miles from Hudson, December 26th. I am detained here for ft day or two by the upsetting of the stage. A dislo cation of the right shoulder obliges me to trust my surgeon to write for me. The dislocation has been reduced, and I am not otherwise injured. Do not think of coming or sending for me. The anxiety and alarm which this produced were hardly relieved by the more circumstantial account of the accident that the next mail brought, from a kind-hearted Quaker friend : 1844.] A DISLOCATED SHOULDER. 737 STOCKPORT, COLUMBIA COUNTY, December Nth. By request of thy husband, I write to inform thee that, as he wrote yester day, he was thrown from a seat on the stage with the driver, by the breaking of the axle-tree. He was removed, without much pain, to the house of Ezekiel Butler, who has treated him with much kindness. The arm was dislocated and the hip somewhat bruised. The dislocation was reduced immediately by Dr. Rush, a surgeon of the neighborhood, who seemed quite competent to perform the operation. Since then, Drs. W. and G. H. White have visited him, and in stituted a very thorough examination, which resulted in the conclusion that no other injury than the dislocation of the arm had been inflicted. The examina tion is to be resumed to-day ; but he has no doubt, from his increasing comfort, that the above opinion will be confirmed. He desires me to say that he is doing as well as possibly can be expected, and has no doubt that he will be able to return home before long, and he desires that thou wilt not think of coming or sending, as everything necessary is done for him, and as the exposure would therefore be unnecessary. William Wood knows the location of the house where he is, which is about four miles from Hudson, and ten miles south of Kinderhook. Thy father will know William Wood, of Grover Street. Very respectfully thy friend, JOHN STANTOX GOULD. The newspapers also brought details more or less authentic. He had been riding, as was his custom, on the upper seat with the driver, in order to smoke and look at the country. The ground was frozen hard, with but little snow ; and when the stage broke down the fall was severe. Happily, the other passengers escaped with slight injuries. His own, though very painful, and involving probably a stiffened arm, wo-uld not cause its loss. It was his right shoulder and hip that were disabled. On the Sunday following the disaster he contrived to write a few lines with his own hand : STOCKPORT, Sunday, December 29tk. You will recognize my hand, I hope, in this irregular scrawl, and will derive confidence in my speedy recovery. My right arm gradually submits itself to my wiD, but I cannot yet rest upon it, or make it effective with a cane. At the same time the severe sprain of the muscles of my right leg has rendered them even more useless and more painful than the disabled arm. In consequence, I have not been able to get in or out of bed, to lift myself into a sitting posture, to turn over, or aid myself in any way. My severest suffering now consists in the electric-like shock of my wounded limb whenever I cough. But I am going along nicely. Every day I am a little better, and I shall certainly reach home by Thursday or Friday, I think. I want Mr. Morgan to write to the Chief- Justice, care of S. Stevens at Albany, stating my misfortune, and have me ex cused from attending the term of court for two weeks. This family and com munity are kind to me beyond description. Every want is anticipated, and the whole county vie in manifestations of sympathy and offers of aid. The family nurse me here tenderly. . . . [Here it becomes illegible.] Friends from Albany, among them Lewis Benedict and Rufus King, hastened down to Stockport to visit the sufferer, and do what 47 738 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1845, they could for his relief. In each of their letters, as well as in his own, he reiterated his request to Mrs. Seward not to think of leaving home in her present enfeebled condition, and assuring her that he would soon be able to make the journey homeward. King, his former Adju tant-General, was to remain in the vicinity, having gone with a com pany of volunteers as a part of the military force under the proclama tion of Governor Bouck to suppress anti-rent disturbances in Columbia County. CHAPTER LVII. 1845. Convalescence. At Work again. The Greeley and Cooper Case. Folk s Administration. The Antislavery Movement. Letter to Chase. House and Grounds. Birds and Bogs. EARLY in January, Seward was removed to his home in Auburn. His injuries proved to have been more severe than was at first sup posed, and a long time elapsed before he had completely recovered from them. Impatient to resume work, he insisted upon making the painful effort to reach his law-office, on crutches, at the earliest mo ment. His first use of his arm was, of course, to write, but many months passed before he was able to lift it to his head, or even enough to fasten his cravat. It was not until March that he was able to write to Mr. Weed, who was yet at Santa Cruz : ATJBUEN, March 3, 1845. God knows whether this reply to your kind salutation from the orange- groves, in mid-winter, will reach your retreat before you have taken flight, with the bobolinks, for these more temperate climes. Still I cannot deny myself the pleasure of writing. We are all rejoiced to hear such good assurances of Harriet s recovery ; and we try to think that you suppress all mention of your own disease because it is forgotten in convalescence. Nevertheless, we know you too well for that. I was indeed sorely bruised, and the casualty was most unfortunate. Two months confinement in a sick-chamber, following six months abstraction from business, was in my circumstances a great, though, God be praised, not an irretrievable disaster. But I am now well, and working in the midst of business accumulating beyond my powers. I have lost my mother, but she has gone to the regions of the blessed ; and I would not let the birds and flowers charm her back if they could. Our house is cheered with the advent of a daughter a blessing long and graciously deferred. The newspapers tell you more about politics than I could prudently write. After illness he was never willing to spend a long period of con valescence in the sick-chamber. He was always out rather earlier than 1845.] AT WORK AGAIN. 739 either the nurse deemed prudent, or the doctor thought wise. Once out, he would be at work, even at the risk of a relapse. One of the inconveniences of this accident was that, for a long time, he was unable to shave himself. He had naturally a very strong beard. In his youth it was the inexorable fashion for every gentleman to be closely shaven, and beards or mustaches were thought to imply either a foreigner or an adventurer. Though the fashion changed, he adhered through life to his early custom of shaving, at least once and sometimes twice a day. He looked with little favor upon the innovation since become so general. When asked about it, he used to relate with a smile that, once in his youth, he was beguiled into raising a pair of whiskers, but when they grew he found they were red, like Mr. Van Buren s, and so shaved them off immediately. While always scrupulously careful in regard to shaving, etc., he bestowed little attention upon his dress, further than to see that it was neat, and conformed to the general usage. He habitually wore a black suit, though he occasionally substituted gray clothes for traveling. After laying aside his crutches, he was still obliged for some time to use a cane. When completely recovered, he did not relinquish it, but usually, though not invariably, took it when going out to walk. He was accustomed to say that it was a convenience after reaching forty-five years to have a cane at night to warn him about steps and curbstones ; and, though he had no use for it by day, he carried it then in order to remember to take it at night. It was also at about the age of forty-five that he put on his first pair of spectacles, having been warned that the effort to do without them, especially in the evening, would prove injurious. Always after ward it was his habit to use them when at work, but he took them off when conversing or otherwise engaged. He never used them to look at people, or at distant objects. For such purposes his eyes always re mained sufficiently good without assistance. He had one pair of light- framed gold spectacles, and another, with still lighter steel frames, kept in reserve when the first should be lost. But in this respect he was fortunate, as they were seldom mislaid, perhaps because the frequency with which he took book or pen brought the habit of keeping the spectacles constantly at hand. Political events were absorbing public attention this spring, for they were of high importance. The joint resolution for the annexation of Texas had passed both Houses of Congress. While receiving the support of the Democrats in general, and encountering the opposition of the Whigs, yet neither party was quite unanimous. Twenty-three Dem ocratic representatives had had the independence to vote against it, and four Southern Whigs in each House had voted for it. President Tyler affixed his signature in approval of it on the 1st of March, and 74:0 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1845. the next day dispatched a messenger to Texas to obtain her assent. In three days more his Administration and the Twenty-eighth Con gress ended. But they gave place to successors equally determined to make the annexation an accomplished fact. Toward the close of April, Seward wrote to Weed : LYONS, April 28, 1845. The mail of last night brought information of your arrival. I left Auburn at sunrise this morning, and so I have had no earlier opportunity to bid you wel come. You are very wise, and I doubt not have properly left Harriet to a few more weeks exemption from our fitful northern winds. I think that you will find political affairs here in a way of quite as much prosperity as our impulsive and short-sighted friends could endure without danger. But of this we will discourse when you shall have sounded the ground. It is vacation with Fred, who attends the academy at Auburn, with Clarence, who is a Freshman at Geneva, and with Mary, my brother s daughter, who is a pupil at Auburn. I have brought them all here to enjoy a balmy country ride in April. Confining myself to the cause I came here to try, I hope to leave this town to-morrow, and after a day or two to take you by the hand in Albany on iny way to New York. What strange work you have made of our correspondence during the winter ! It is fortunate for you that you did not let me know where letters would find you. If ever mortal man had cause to sink into despondency and gloom, it was my case in January when left to the solitude of rny sick-chamber. But it is all over. Although I cannot lift my hand, even to greet your return to your native land, I am prosperous and cheerful. Called again to New York the first week in May, Seward spent some time there in attendance upon the Supreme Court. There were several causes which he was waiting to argue. The most important of them was the libel-suit of Greeley ads. Cooper. ASTOR HOUSE, May 13, 1845. I have spent, as usual, an unprofitable season here. Every morning I have gone to court at ten, expecting that I should that day reach and argue my cause, and have come away at three, when the court adjourned, without having scarcely seen an approximation to my first case. It would not be easy to give you the impression that is made upon me by what befalls me. It is far less kind and courteous than it once was, and yet there is a great melioration of the prejudices and passions excited during the past three or four years. I am at No. 11 of the Astor House, in the second story, a room combining the comforts of a parlor with that of a dormitory. The everlasting clatter of Broadway has become familiar music. Bowen is with me ; we breakfast together in my room, and I see little of the crowd that fills up this huge caravansary, for I have dined at home but twice, and only once at the table-tfhote. I have seen Mrs. Bowen, who has renewed her health and beauty, the Doanes, warm-hearted and grateful as in the first hour, the Blatchfords, the Minturns, and made an excursion to Paterson, with a party who visited Ros- 1845.] THE GREELEY AND COOPER CASE. 741 well L. Colt at his magnificent palace. By contrast with this I dropped on Saturday night into the quarters of Horace Greeley, where I witnessed the efforts of a speculative philosopher to convert the present modes of civilization into an anticipation of the simplicity and frugality of the Fourier system. The Greeley case stands at eighty-six, and the court are now hearing fifty- five. I hope to be heard to-morrow or the next day. I have read the " Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation," and shall bring it with me for your perusal. It is a book, valuable at least because it is a compendium and summary of the instructions given by astronomy and ge ology down to the most recent date. It teaches a bold and startling cosmog ony, and invades the existing theology in a manner which draws down upon its author the anathemas of the clergy. Its theory is that there was an origi nal design in creation, and that the universe gradually assumes its constitution by fixed and invariable laws and in consequence of them, and that the prog ress is certain and inevitable in accordance with the purposes of the divine mind. Of course, it clashes with the doctrine of a special superintendence and constant regulation by Providence, and is said to tend toward pantheism. I am constantly thinking about the repairs of the garden and the grounds, and have at last hit upon a plan for enlarging our parlor, which I shall be happy to submit to you when I reach home, and which I hope we may carry into effect this summer if it meet your approval. The " Vestiges of Creation " here alluded to was the pioneer of several works based upon similar theories, which have attracted more or less of public attention, and which culminated in what is now known as the Darwinian theory. It had as yet gained no very strong party of adherents, though it had excited some curiosity and much criticism. The improvements at Auburn referred to were a continuation of the projects of former years. The study of such improvements to house or grounds was a kind of recreation, recurring each season when he had leisure hours at home. Two or three different plans for the enlargement of the house had been considered, but, as one objection and another presented themselves, had been laid aside. Meanwhile he continued each spring to add to the shrubbery and trees, which, as they grew, were beginning to transform door-yard and garden into groves and thickets. One plan adopted this year had long been a favorite one. This was to take away all the interior fences, and to surround the grounds with a high, dark -green lattice. The argument in the Greeley case came on at last. A brief ex tract from his speech in behalf of the defendant will show its tenor : The undesigned encroachments on personal rights in the law of libel have at length brought a conflict between the judiciary and the press. The press is a necessary, a potential institution in our democratic system. It is the agent by which the people acquire the information they need in re gard to the conduct of every department of the government, the judicial as LTFE AND LETTERS. [1845. well as the legislative and executive authorities. All these departments, as well as the public conduct of all citizens, are subjected to the scrutiny of an all-powerful and all-controlling public opinion, ascertained, collected, and pro nounced, by the public press. That public opinion is higher than courts, and will, when it is necessary, correct even judicial errors. The conductors of the press have legitimate functions to perform, and if they perform them honestly, fairly, and faithfully, they ought to be upheld, favored, and protected, rather than discouraged, embarrassed, and oppressed. Under such circumstances it is neither wise, nor will it be successful, to enforce on an honest, enlightened, and patriotic journal the rules of libel established in the worst of times in Eng land, that, if a publication reflect upon any man or magistrate, it shall be pre sumed, without proof, and against all rational presumption of candor and fair ness, that the error was intentional, malicious, and malignant, and that vindic tive damages shall be awarded where an honest but unsuccessful effort to justify is made. Far wiser and better would it be to open the doors wider to defense in such cases, and to restore the ancient English law. If this course is not taken, the action of libel will, more and more, be relinquished by good men for whom it was designed, and be left to fall more completely into the hands of litigious and corrupt men, as an engine of extortion and oppression. The argument was published on the 22d of May, and Seward was left free to return to Albany. On the 26th he wrote to Salmon P. Chase, Samuel Lewis, and oth ers, in reply to an invitation to a " Southern and Western Convention of the Friends of Constitutional Liberty." The result of the presi dential election of the preceding year had shown that the votes cast for Birney had been ineffectual in stopping the annexation of Texas and the extension of slavery, as they perhaps might have done if cast for Clay. Wiser counsels were now prevailing among leaders of antislavery sentiment, and they perceived the necessity of broader and more comprehensive action. The letter to Seward informed him that the convention would not be composed exclusively of members of the Liberty party, but would be open to all who were resolved to use every constitutional and honorable means to effect the extinction of slavery in their respective States, and its reduction to its constitu tional limits in the United States. In his answer he remarked : Men differ much in temperament and susceptibility, and are so variously situated that they receive from the same causes very unequal impressions. It is not in human nature that all who desire the abolition of slavery should be inflamed with equal zeal, and different degrees of fervor produce different opin ions concerning the measures proper to be adopted. Great caution is neces sary, therefore, to preserve mutual confidence and harmony. I am far from denying that any class of abolitionists has done much good for their common cause, but I think the whole result has been much diminished by the angry conflicts between them, often on mere metaphysical questions. I sincerely hope that these conflicts may now cease. 1845.J THE SLAVERY QUESTION. 743 In many of the free States there is a large mass of citizens disfranchised on the ground of color. They must be invested with the right of suffrage. Give them this right, and their influence will be immediately felt in the national coun cils ; and, it is needless to say, will be cast in favor of those who uphold the cause of human liberty. We must resist unceasingly the admission of slave States, and urge and demand the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia. We have secured the right of petition, but the Federal Government continues to be swerved by the influences of slavery, as before. This tendency can and must be counteracted. Amendments to the Constitution may be initiated, and the obstacles in the way of emancipation will no longer appear insurmountable. The slavery question was not only beginning to be a disorganizing element in politics, but was entering into religious discussions. The Methodists, North and South, were becoming arrayed in two antago nistic organizations. The Presbyterian conventions and General Assem bly were debating, though not dividing, and there was an uneasy feel ing among other denominations as to the path of religious duty on the subject. The disputants on both sides were earnest, and doubtless generally sincere. Each found, or thought they found, in the Script ures, warrant for their belief. The antislavery men were clear that to hold a fellow-being in slavery was incompatible with the golden rule of the New Testament, while the pro-slavery men intrenched themselves behind the anathema of the Old Testament, " Cursed be Canaan." Albany remained the scene of Democratic discord up to, and even after, the adjournment of the Legislature. When that body finally sep arated, it was evident that the " Barnburners " had gained ground in the struggle. The Constitutional Convention project had been adopted. Governor Wright had vetoed the canal bill, and was claimed to be in entire sympathy with that faction. He had even addressed a letter to a " Barnburner " meeting. Each party issued an address to the people, recapitulating the events of the session, and justifying their own action. Affairs at Washington were moving rapidly and steadily on in the direction given to them at the presidential election. Mr. Folk s Ad ministration was dispensing patronage amid a " rush for spoils," and vigorously pushing the Texas scheme. The Oregon question con tinued to excite apprehensions of difficulty with England. Two im portant measures had been inaugurated, however, about which there was no party dispute. One was the construction of lines of telegraph along the lines of the principal railways. The other and kindred meas ure of progress was cheap postage, which was now to have a trial. The rates were reduced to five and ten cents for short and long dis tances. Immediately the volume of letters in the mails began to per ceptibly increase. Inventors, too, found a new field in devising deli cate scales for ascertaining the half -ounce weight. 744 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1845. One evening this summer Mr. and Mrs. Seward were gratified by a visit from their old friends, Governor and Mrs. Davis, of Massachusetts, who paused over Sunday on their way to Niagara. Next morning they resumed their journey, with mutual regrets that they did not live nearer together, where they could meet oftener than once in a twelve month. Among other visitors with whom he exchanged civilities, while passing through Auburn this summer, were Mr. and Mrs. Abbott Law rence, who were on their way to spend Sunday at Mr. Granger s, and to go thence to Niagara. Auburn was at this period on the main line of travel from Albany to Buffalo; and, as it was a convenient half way point in the two days journey, many travelers preferred to stop overnight. The hotels were doing a prosperous business, which dimin ished as the facilities for more rapid travel increased. Seward s house was seldom without guests in the summer season. The welcome which always awaited his friends, and the various political or professional questions upon which he was engaged, brought so many visitors that it was not unfrequently a puzzling question where guests were to sleep. It was partly from this cause that the house was so frequently enlarged by additions. Each summer since he came from Albany he had been making repairs and improvements. Some of his friends looked with regret upon these evidences of his intention to continue to reside per manently at Auburn ; and several, at different times, endeavored to convince him that the State or national capital, or the city of New York, offered a far more convenient and congenial field for professional or political effort, and urged him to change his residence. But his preference for Auburn grew deeper as time went on ; and, for the resi due of his life, he always regarded it as his only real home, and the one to which he was always intending to return. Mrs. Seward s strong attachment for the home of her childhood doubtless had great influence upon his purpose. He used to humorously tell her, however, that by- and-by it would be she who would wish to move away. "Your boys will grow up, and, like the rest of the world, will go to the West. Would you be content to live away from your children ? No ! You, like a good mother, will follow your boys ; and I, like a good husband, shall have to follow you." The completion of the high, green fence, and the two square col umns of rough stone at each side of the gate, the gravel- walk along the front, and the putting of new roofs upon the buildings, it was con cluded, would be enough of improvement for the present year, and the plans for interior alteration were deferred. There was never a time when the house at Auburn was without its dogs and cats and birds. Though not a connoisseur in any species of pet animals, he liked them all, and had no aversions. His letters occa sionally refer to them by name. A favorite project of his, though 1845.] BIRDS AND DOGS. 745 never carried into execution, was to construct an aviary in the garden, " if he should ever be rich enough." Dick and Bob, the canary and mocking bird so often alluded to, had been great favorites at Albany, and were brought hence to Auburn. Both were fine singers. Their cages used to hang, in sum mer, on the branches of a tree in the garden. Their winters were passed either in the library or hall ; and the former never failed in his chirp of welcome to his master in return for his greeting. " Snip " was a reddish-brown spaniel, who had come to the house under circumstances leading to the suspicion that he had been harshly treated in his former home, wherever that might be. He had learned various tricks of standing, sitting up, begging, jumping, climbing, etc., and was, of course, at once a great favorite with the children. Great was their consternation, one day, when a boy appeared, who announced himself as Snip s owner, and led him away by a rope. But three hours later Snip reappeared with a huge piece of iron dangling from his neck, intended to keep him from jumping the fences, but which had failed of its purpose. Not long after followed the owner, to reclaim his " fugitive from service." But Seward, willingly yielding to the children s entreaties, bought the dog. Thenceforward Snip remained a member of the family for life. The grounds about the house, in fact, were always, more or less, a city of refuge for unfortunate animals. Stray dogs or cats, finding food and shelter, were much inclined to take up their permanent abode there. The birds very early learned that no fowling-piece was allowed on the premises, and the consequence was that the trees were vocal with matin and even song of robins, sparrows, cat-birds, and orioles. The city grew up around the grove, but the birds never forsook their accus tomed haunt. Swallows twittered in the chimneys, and blackbirds chattered in the tree-tops. It was one of his especial pleasures to sit on the terrace at sunset to watch and listen to the birds returning to their nests. On one occasion he invited his guests to rise with him at daybreak on a May morning to solve a doubt which had arisen as to whether the morning voice of birds was really, as poets fancy, a hymn of praise, or was merely family squabbling as to who should get up first and get breakfast. The events of the summer had some features of interest and impor tance. Nearly every week brought conflicting reports from the national capital : one day, " rumors of wars," and the next, assurances of peace through diplomacy. But, in any case, it was asserted, Texas was to be annexed, and Oregon to be retained. The discussions about Oregon, and the probability of ordering troops 746 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1845. thither in view of frontier troubles, had the effect of stimulating emi gration to that region. Trains of covered wagons, loaded with fami lies and household goods, were already in motion from the Western cit ies, on the long and weary journey across the Plains toward the Colum bia River. In the State, the Whig newspapers called attention to the fact that Seward s policy in regard to the New York common schools, which was, a few years before, the theme of so much contention, was now in successful operation, creating hardly a ripple of dissent. The temperance reform continued to make progress. The Astor House was to be put on the temperance plan. A new temperance hotel was to be opened in Albany, under the title of the " Delavan House." The question of "license or no license" was to be determined by the residents of each town, and it was confidently expected that, in the rural districts, the sale of liquor for intoxicating purposes would thus be prohibited, and licenses only permitted in the larger cities. A novel enterprise, having the flavor of the romances of the " Pi rate s Own Book," was in progress this summer, at the foot of the Dun- derberg, on the Hudson River. The steamboat captains pointed out as they passed the spot where dupes of the project were wasting their money upon a coffer-dam, derricks, etc., in the vain hope of getting more from the bottom of the river. There, as the tale ran, the pirate Captain Kidd had sunk a vast amount of gold, silver, jewels, and other booty. One day in June a case at Oswego called Seward there to court. Taking a light wagon, and accompanied by one of his sons, he drove over from Auburn, crossing the Seneca River, and skirting along the beach of Lake Ontario. The long summer day was just drawing to a close as they entered the streets of Oswego and found the villagers gazing expectantly toward the fort on the heights overlooking the har bor. At sunset the guns pealed forth a funeral salute to the memory of an ex-President. The death of General Jackson had just been offi cially announced from Washington. 1845.] WESTERN TRIP. 747 CHAPTER LVIII. 1845. Trip to Lake Superior. Cleveland. Detroit. Lake Huron. The Chippewas. The Mani- tou. French Missionaries. Mackinac. Henry R. Schoolcraft. Sault Ste. Marie. Down the Rapids. Wigwam-Life. THE opening of July found Seward arranging his professional af fairs with reference to a protracted absence. He had decided to accom pany his friends Bowen and Hawley up the Great Lakes, for a summer excursion. Mrs. Bowen was to remain with Mrs. Seward, at Auburn, while their husbands were absent on the trip. Mr. Hawley was to join them at Buffalo. The story of his journey was given in the letters which he wrote home from various points on the way. AMERICAN HOTEL, BOTFALO, July 9th. The steamship waits impatiently, and the omnibus is at the door ; in another hour we shall be on the wave. Our party remains without enlargement, Colonel Bowen, Mr. Hawley, and myself. We shall touch at Fairport and at Cleveland, and reach Detroit to-morrow morning ; thence to Mackinac, where we go to the Sault Ste. Marie. Our plans are not fixed further than this, but will be modi fied by circumstances and regard to time. We had a visit of six hours at Canan- daigua, arrived at Rochester at three this morning, left there at eight, and dined here. Adieu, till you hear of us in the West. CLEVELAND, Thursday, July 10th. Our noble boat, after making great speed to this port, atones for it by loiter ing eight long hours under the sandy bluffs of Cleveland. The weather is in tensely hot. We have killed two hours by a ride through the town, and one by dinner. I could sleep, I suppose, but it seems much better to write a flying note to you. Night closed upon us, a bright and balmy night, as we passed Point Albino. The lake was as smooth as a meadow. I was weary, and found my bed early ; and such a bed ! it would tempt even you to an excursion on the Lakes. The Wisconsin is a floating palace, two hundred feet long. It has, besides accommo dations for freight and steerage-passengers, three long cabins or saloons, and forty or fifty state-rooms. One of them, as large as my own bedroom at home, is set apart for the captain s use. It has a large French bedstead, with a mat tress ; and there are a table, and sofa, and three mahogany chairs. The room opens to the air, and is perfectly ventilated abaft the wheels. It is quiet and secluded. I looked out this morning upon a smooth sea, which had no landmarks. At eight o clock we dropped in at Fairport, the haven of Painesville, at the mouth of Grand River. Three hours afterward we made this harbor. Cleveland was a village of twenty-five hundred people when I was here in 1829 ; now it num bers twelve thousand, and rejoices in the franchises and fame of a city. 748 L IF E AND LETTERS. [1845. The streets are sandy, but imperfectly paved. The town is at the termina tion of the Ohio Canal, which connects the Ohio River with the lake, a wedding of the Mississippi with the St. Lawrence. I have never seen a neater or more beautiful town than Cleveland, and yet it is not a novel sight to the New York traveler. It is built like the New York towns like Rochester, Buffalo, Geneva, Auburn, and Syracuse. It affects New York manners and taste. Imitation of New York meets you everywhere. The merchants display this ambition very ostentatiously: "New York & Ohio Line," "New York Emporium, 1 "New York Grocery Store," etc., etc. Colonel Bowen, Mr. Hawley, and I, rode through the streets, parks, and beautiful suburbs, looking upon the lake, and then returned to the boat to dine. Here I have been visited by an occasional caller, and now we are impatient to renew our travels. What a power there is in steam ! Since Monday morn ing there have been four days. I have been at Auburn, at Utica, at Auburn again, at Canandaigua, at Buffalo, and here, two hundred miles from the latter place ; have slept every night, and had many hours of rest in every place. Our boat bears one passenger who exhibits himself as a " reformed gam bler," and is of course quite a lion. He delivered what he called a lecture, in the cabin, this morning. It consisted, chiefly, in giving an account in detail of low and cunning frauds, practised by him upon dupes before his reformation. And he illustrated by exhibiting the modes of cheating at cards. How very un suspecting this world is ! I could plainly see that he enjoyed a high and pleas ing excitement in narrating his villainies ; yet his simple audience were satisfied that he was a saint not excelled but by St. Paul. "We leave the wharf here at eight to-night, and in eight hours will reach De troit. I shall be abroad early in the morning to see the straits at Maiden, and the river that stretches from the lake to Detroit. We remain at that place only three hours, and those too early to allow us to visit anybody. We are obliged to go on in order to secure an entrance to Lake Superior. STEAMER WISCONSIN, ON LAKE HURON, ) Saturday Morning, July V2fh. f We have reeled off seven hundred miles, and still our course is onward. Lake St. Clair is separated from Lake Erie by the river Detroit, which is a majestic stream about fifty miles long. The part of the river below Detroit is filled with beautiful islands ; the shores are low and often marshy. Above De troit the river has several courses, flowing through an almost boundless marsh. At a distance of seven miles there are sand-bars which, offer an ineffectual barrier to the floods of Lake Huron. As we approach Lake Huron, the channel is very narrow, and the course of vessels is indicated by stakes, fixed in the sand-bars, and projecting above the water. Passing these, we found the river contracted into a narrow, deep, rapid flood, with a current of five miles an hour. Surmounting this, we emerged upon the vast flood of Lake Huron. We came up the St. Clair with a south wind under the fierce blaze of a July sun. As we floated into the Lake, a strong north wind saluted us with revivifying sternness. We kept within a mile or two of the American shore, and- for hour after hour saw the British shore recede from us, until only a wide waste of waters lay at our right hand. A road presses the river-bank of the St. Clair on either side, with habitations and towns less elegant 1845.] THE FRENCH MISSIONARIES. 749 than those we see in our older regions, but still evincing a respectable degree of improvement. Fort Gratiot is at the mouth of Lake Huron, and presented the neat, quiet Aspect of a military post in a time of profound peace. We have now followed six hundred miles the line which separates our country from the sister republic that is content to remain a dependency on a European state. At some places the shores of the two countries are seventy or eighty miles apart ; at others the people can hail each other across the channel. Our hospitable steward spread for us last night a supper of woodcock, oys ters, and lobster. Of course, we made a late sitting. When we awoke this morning we had passed Saginaw Bay. The Thunder Bay Island, Presque Isle, and the western shore of the lake bay, stretched out at our left hand. Before us, and on our right, was a boundless sea, and behind us the waves were lighted up with the blaze of the sun. At ten, last night, we passed a fire on the shore, and since that the spy-glass discloses no sign of human habitation. Northern Michigan lies off at our left, an unbroken forest of vast extent. We are now following the shore as it winds to the northwest, and three or four hours sail will bring us to the straits of Michiliinackinac. It is a hundred and seventy years since the white man reached these straits. He came in the character of a missionary a Jesuit. He found the red children of the forest worshiping the unknown god, the Manitou, and Lake Superior was the home of the divinity, and the Greater and Lesser Manitoulin Islands, in Lake Huron, the Olympus, where he loved to be worshiped, and to reveal his will to those who sought him. The Jesuits planted the cross on those favored spots, and re vealed to them that Jehovah was the Manitou ; that he had descended to the earth in the far-distant regions where the sun rises, had taken upon himself the nature and form of man for his redemption, had again put off mortality and ascended to the skies, and had sent the white man to his red brother to win him from the savage rites of the forest to the abodes of bliss by the practice of virtue. How persuasive was the first mission of the white man in this northern region ! How different from the spirit in which Christianity came to the red man in the southern regions of the continent ! There it came with chains, fire, and sword, and it waged a war of extermination. Here it came in the prayers of the mis sionary and the martyr. The Jesuit shrived the savage who felled him to the earth with his tomahawk. The southern missionary and the northern taught the same faith the Latin creed. But the missionary to Peru was a Spaniard ; the missionary to Huron was a Frenchman. Can it be that the national charac ters of these people made this strange difference ? But where now is the French missionary? He sleeps in the valleys of the West. And the simple races into whose wondering ears he poured the mysteries of Christ s incarnation ? They have been driven with the elk and the buffalo be yond the Mississippi ; and the white man is crowding all into the Pacific. SATJLT STE. MARIE, Tuesday, July \th. I have come from the little crowded tavern on shore to the steamboat, that lies at the foot of the Sault, to take leave of you before I resume my pilgrimage to Lake Superior. The passengers have all gone ashore, the deck of the boat is clear of obstruction, and Betsey, the half-breed chambermaid, has brought out 750 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846, from the cabin a mahogany stand. I have promised her that, for all this kind ness, she shall have all that the new post-office law saves me in postage on this letter. Well, here we are, at the foot of the Rapids of St. Mary. Tradition and imagination are entitled to half the merit of all the importance they own. Jf you can find a map at all perfect, you will find that there is a west passage on the eastern shore of Lake Huron, between Drummond Island and Sugar Island. We sailed from Mackinac across the lake, and entered this passage, which is the debouche of the St. Mary, and we floated up its strong current, now wide as Tappat Bay, and now contracted to the width of the Oswego River passing a thousand beautiful islands, and seeing a hundred nameless hills, which take the importance of mountains, while the national flag, seen floating from the battlements of Fort Brady, signified to us that we were at the Sault. Happily General Brady and his suite were on board the boat. They had come for the annual inspection and review. So we landed, under a salute given to the general from the fort. This place has from time immemorial been a station of the Hudson Bay Company, of the American Fur Company, of the Catholic and the Protestant missionaries, and it has therefore happened that the banks of the river, for a mile or more on both sides, are crowned with rude farm-houses and assume some appearance of civilization. The Rapids of St. Mary are less majestic than those of the Niagara, and more imposing than those on the Mohawk. They reach the length of one mile, and, above that distance, the river flows, as we are told, in a broad, deep current. It is twenty miles from the head of the rapids to the lake. There may be fifty dwellings here, chiefly of French and Indian half-breeds. We slept last night nine in a room, and our table at the hotel was of the rudest kind. Last evening I walked into what is called " The Bower," a wood that lies along the rapids on the American shore. I found it filled with Indian wig wams, and their tenants a harmless, inoffensive people, ignorant of our lan guage, and not offended by our intrusion into their circle while they were pre paring their rude evening meal of potatoes. An hour afterward an Indian half-breed gentleman, and a young lady of the same race, from Green Bay, in vited me to walk with them. Under their conduct I returned to " The Bower." They saluted the inhabitants kindly, in the Chippewa and in the French lan guage, and instantly Indian hospitality was unlocked, and men, women, and papooses were free to garrulity. I found they looked upon the half-breeds as persons of their own race, fortunately elevated, and were flattered by their attention. I spent a long hour in traversing this strange camp, in which each family occupied a wigwam made in circular form of birch-bark. Here they spend the summer in taking white-fish, herring, and trout. In the winter they return to their dwellings in the recesses of the forest. The pertinacity of these people in clinging to their Indian customs is astonishing. No one can tempt an Indian child from his home, or, if so rare an event occurs, the educated savage returns to the life and society of his people. Each family has a delicately-formed birch canoe, a spear, and scoop-nets of larger and smaller size. The aged patriarch and the immature boy of twelve years, each, in turn, paddles this frail bark into the very centre of the rapids, and then, while one holds it in its unstable moor ings, the other throws the net, happily, if in a long day s waste he brings to shore a dozen white-fish, which are immediately sold and packed for a market along the lower lakes. 1845.] ON LAKE SUPERIOR. 751 General Brady invited us this morning to attend his review at the garrison. We found the officers leading an indolent life, neither enterprising nor intel lectual ; but we were kindly received, and our news, now a week old, was eagerly sought. Mr. Schoolcraft, the superintendent here, has furnished a boat, filled it with a tent and provisions, and manned it with five native voyageurs. It has already gone up to be launched abore the rapids ; I wait the summons to follow it to that place of embarkation. In an hour we shall be on the bosom of the Ste. Marie, above the region of its disturbances, and to-night we shall encamp half-way from this place to the lake. To-morrow morning we expect to look out upon Lake Superior. Our ar rangement contemplates a voyage, to be performed with sail or oar according to circumstances, one hundred and twenty miles to the Pictured Rocks. This, the great imaginative attraction of Lake Superior, will, it is said, gratify our curiosity and leave us to return to the lower regions where our lot is cast, re spectable for all after-life ; although, as good Christians, we cannot expect it will, like the pilgrimage to Jordan, insure our salvation in the next. The voy age will detain us five days, it is said, or somewhat more if the winds be ad verse. No human habitation disfigures the majestic solitudes which we seek, but rocks and forests that never heard the woodman s axe will afford us our bed and curtains. One might speculate profitably here on our national character. Here are fifty or sixty persons waiting for a passage up the lake. Except our selves, all are going to explore the country for rumored mines of copper and silver. We alone, of this great caravan, seek mere pleasure, information, or to commune with Nature. Returning from the lake, we shall go back hastily to Mackinac; descending Lake Michigan from that place to Chicago, we shall spend a day there ; thence cross the peninsula of Michigan to Detroit, and return with dispatch to our long-forsaken homes. We have arrived at a point, I think, about on the forty-sixth parallel of latitude. The mid-day sun is enervating, but the evening breezes are cool and salubrious. The strawberry ripens now ; the chestnut is unknown here ; the currant has just acquired hardness enough for the kitchen-use ; the season for roses has come ; and, while we are spared the pestiferous heat of July, we are enjoying June for a second time. STEAMBOAT GENERAL SCOTT, RIVER STE. MARIE, { Friday, July Vlth (on our Descent to Mackinac}. \ Through the politeness of Mr. Schoolcraft, and of the officers at Fort Brady, we were fitted out on Tuesday afternoon with all necessary appurtenances for an excursion to the Pictured Rocks the great curiosity on Lake Superior. Our boat was an open vessel, having a sail as large as a sheet, with four oarsmen and a pilot in command. The wages of these men were one dollar each per day, and their provisions. The officers at Fort Brady lent us a tent, and we supplied our selves with provisions. Our craft and stores were carried beyond the rapids ; we followed them on foot, the distance three-quarters of a mile. At five o clock in the afternoon we put our oars into the water, and bore off against the current, our royageurs being half-breeds and Chippewa Indians. The river is everywhere as broad (above the falls) as the Hudson in Newburg Bay. The sun poured down upon us intense heat ; but, full of expectation, and excited with so much that was wonderful, we shared the exhilaration of our boatmen, who signalized our departure with the melodious boat-songs in their 752 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1845. several languages. Night met us at a distance of seven miles from the Sault, and we encamped on a peninsula called Point aux Pins (Pine-tree Point). Our barge was sheltered in a beautiful little bay ; the shore was of clear sand, fringed with a border of Michigan roses, wild-snowballs, and sweetbrier. Inland the ground was covered with grass, and everywhere we gathered winter-green ber ries, wild-gooseberries, and raspberries. In ten minutes our voyageurs had pitched our tent, kindled a brisk fire at the door, spread our mattress, and, in twice as many more, they set before us our supper of white-fish, trout, ham- and-eggs, tea, and biscuits. Until a late hour we strolled on the beach, and slept, after a long contest with the mosquitoes, who revenged themselves upon us when fatigue wearied us out of our power of resistance. The place of our encampment exhibited the ruins of a fort or breastwork, the history of which is unknown to us. Our guides had promised to awake us at sunrise, and as soon as day dawned we heard a crackling fire, and soon afterward the cheerful songs by which the voyageurs fulfilled their promise. Half an hour sufficed to strike the tent, and remove it and its contents to the boat. On we went, passing Point aux Chenes, and arriving at seven o clock, by the power of the oars alone, at Gros Cap, which, as well as our encampment, was within the dominions of Victoria. Gros Cap (Big Cape) is a towering peninsula on the coast, crowned with a thick forest. As we approached, we discovered a canoe, perceptible at first only to our voyageurs, who have practised eyes. By-and-by, Indians were seen on the eminence, regarding our approach with much curiosity. When we came within reach of voice, our voyageurs sent forth loud greetings in the Chippewa dialect, and these were returned with the same peculiar shouts. We landed on a beautiful, rocky shore, and found the whole population contained in two wigwams. There were aged men and women, those of middle age, and children of all sizes among them an idiotic girl. Her sister, a pretty-looking girl of sixteen or eighteen, stole away in her rough attire, and presently returned arrayed in a nice calico jerkin and other garments, which contrasted queerly enough with her naked feet. We made our toilet on a rock, Lake Superior being our ewer and mirror. After breakfasting here, we set forth again, and about noon landed on Isle Parisien, within the American waters. The lake was unruffled by the gentle breezes that wafted us thereon toward White-fish Point, a promontory project ing far into the lake. We read, conversed, laughed, wrote letters, and amused ourselves with contemplating the stillness and solitude of the scene around us. Wearied with excitement, and being somewhat ill, I fell asleep, leaving the scene so calm that an infant would have smiled upon it. I was awaked an hour or two afterward by the heaving of the waves. The lion with which we had played ao long was roused, and soon gave us a touch of his nature. Thunder and light ning truly heralded a violent storm. We were in sight of the desired haven, but for five hours were driven off from it by the winds our slight bark taking in water from the lake, while the clouds poured it in copiously from above. In truth, we were alarmed, or rather would have been, but for the admirable pres ence of mind of our iioyageurs. Night came at last, just as we had gained the shore, and such a shore ! It was the White-fish Point ; but more dreary than any place I had ever seen was that haven for which we had contended with the elements. The cape has been formed by drifting sands ; for four miles not a tree breaks the prospect ; some 1846.] WIGWAM LIFE. 753 scattered blades of wild grass scarcely gave it a green mantle. Indian wigwams to the number of thirty were scattered over the barren plain. Rude sheds, formed of boughs of trees, covered the barrels prepared for the Ohippewa fish ermen. Our boat had been observed in the contest with the tempest, and the Indians were gathered on the shore to witness our debarkation. It rained violently. I was shivering with an ague. The beach was strewed with herring, cast upon the shore as useless, and with the heads and fins and entrails of the white-fish and trout which had been cured during the summer. The wind blew a hurricane, while our tent was stretched over the twelve feet of sand we ap propriated. An old Frenchman invited me to " his house," because I was sick. I accepted his invitation eagerly, and followed him assiduously, expecting to find the abode of a civilized man, although the garb and language of my host warned me to the contrary. Guess my grief, as well as surprise, at finding " his house " an Indian wigwam, made of birch-bark, without any semblance of the home of a white man ! It was dark. He raised a curtain at the door, which was the only de signed aperture, except one for the smoke at the top of the hut. I stooped and entered. The fire was dying away, and I could only distinguish a platform, raised six inches from the floor, and going quite round the interior of the wig wam. Some explanations in the Ohippewa language caused the sleepers on this platform to move, and give me a seat. The fire was rekindled. The matron of the family, a squaw of fifty-four, drew herself forth from the bed; the tea kettle was supplied with tea of my own store ; a huge mass offish and pork was fried, and my supper was set before me on a box that served for a table. I ate but little. A bed was prepared on the platform my hosts using my own blanket and pillow for its construction. I sank to sleep, and slept until aroused at day light by the crackling fire. Morning revealed to me that the wind had a thou sand accesses to this humble lodge, and that I was one of ten persons who had been indebted to it for shelter from a storm that none could have endured under the open sky. I paid my entertainers, and, reinvigorated by my sleep, returned to the tent, where I breakfasted with my friends, who reported an ex cited night, disturbed by the insane ravings of the lovers of " fire-water." The wind was adverse to our expedition, and, until noon, too high for our yessel to go forth. We strolled on the beach, gathering pebbles marked with every variety of form and color, including, now and then, a beautiful agate, and a richly- variegated carnelian. The western shore received the flood from the whole extent of the lake, and we rejoiced in beholding the majesty of Lake Su perior. The steamboat returns to the Sault only once, next week, from Macki- nac, and that on Tuesday. Of course, unless we reach the Sault before that day, we might not hope to leave it until Tuesday of the succeeding week. We must, therefore, relinquish our voyage to the Pictured Rocks, as there is no reasonable hope of reaching them and returning before Tuesday. Accordingly, after taking dinner in our tent, we spread a timid sail to the breeze, and following the shore we found our returning way to the Sault. We rested for supper on the Isle Iroquois, the shore of which was bright with roses and sweetbrier ; and sailing thence at nine o clock, rocked to sleep by a still stormy sea, we arrived at three o clock at the head of the rapids. We waited there for daylight, and then, our voyageurs, all alert and watchful, plying the oar 48 754 LIFE AND LETTERS. [184*. and helm with caution and dexterity, we glided over the boiling rapids, and through the thick spray they sent upward ; and, by a voyage scarcely longer than the time I am describing it, the savage shouts of our boatmen proclaimed to the sleepers at the Sault, and to the fishermen who were thus early abroad in their bark canoes, that we had descended that stormy tide in safety. Hence, one night in Chicago, and then by a quick journey homeward. On returning home, Seward wrote to Weed : ATOUBN, July 27, 1846. Bowen will have told yon the long tale of our excursion, brief in time, but long in space. I am at home once more ; again, I trust, in health to the full value of the cost richer in knowledge, of which I was in much need. Ohio is a State of moderate dimensions, but vast capacity and facilities. Michigan is crippled by bad statesmanship. Wisconsin may overtake her. The defeat last year has left a universal despondency in the West. New York, of course, is censured, and given over hopelessly to the enemy. In Ohio the Legislature passed bank and registry acts. The Whig party is called to ac count, and evidently despairs. In Michigan there was no thought of even nom inating a ticket. They rail at Birney, and yet seriously propose to make default, whereby Birney would take the Whig party of the State. I advised otherwise. Judge McLean is the talked-of candidate in Detroit. I was assured that it was otherwise in Ohio, and I think I perceived a hope for Oorwin, with an expectation of resting on John M. Clayton. We had inexpressible satisfaction for our wonderment in the great expanse of lakes, the virgin shores of the Ste. Marie and of Superior, the simplicity and romance of the Christianized yet uncivilized Ojibways. There i* inexhaustible mineral wealth on the shore of Lake Superior. But each and every one of the copper companies is a fraudulent swindle upon the credulity of the dupes in the cities. The Boston Company is the best of them, and indeed the only one that pretends in earnest to work mines. Before long all the stock of even that company will get into the hands of irresponsible specu lators at atrocious prices, and the mining operations will stop. The history of the lead-mining operations at Rossie is prophetic of the present operations on Lake Superior. When this fever shall have passed off, copper and silver will be found in large quantities; but at present the only money made will be made out of the gulls in the cities. The Supreme Court has rendered judgment half for Cooper, and half for Greeley, I perceive. I have not had time yet to see how it leaves the cause. I fear Dr. Nott will think hard of me for leaving the commencement. But it was best I should go elsewhere. I thought that the loud drum-beat would recall enough, who will be indifferent hereafter, when I am zealous. This visit to the habitations of the Chippewas gave Seward an op portunity to observe their habits of life. Noticing a squaw s evident fondness for one of her children, he asked her what was its name. She made no answer, but burst into a merry laugh, as if she thought it an excellent joke. He was informed that Indians are not named, as white men are, in infancy. An Indian earns his name, by some exploit or prominent incident in his life, which is thus commemorated. 1845.] RUMORS OF WAR. 755 He used to relate that, while among the Chippewas, he saw a young Indian stand under a tree and imitate with such precision the call of a bird, that the bird answered with the same note, as he came hopping down from twig to twig expecting to find his mate a striking illustration of Indian skill in woodcraft. The commencement at Union College, which he was reluctant to miss, since his presence there had been expected and counted upon, was the semi-centennial of the existence of the college, and was at tended by many of those who, during the half -century, had as teachers or pupils trod its halls. While at Detroit, on this trip, he met some of the army officers then stationed at that post. Among them was Colonel Joseph Taylor, who had married a daughter of Judge McLean. The casual acquaint ance here begun was afterward to ripen into intimacy at Washington. CHAPTER LIX. 1845. Texas annexed. Rumors of War. Policy of the Whigs. Governor Throop. Free Suf frage. John Van Buren. Fillmore. Governor Wright. Whig Discords. Seward, Morgan, and Blatohford. The S. S. Seward Institute. EVENTS transpiring at Washington all pointed toward the conclu sion of the Texas scheme. Texas had accepted the terms. The an nexation was formally proclaimed. The Mexicans were displaying imbittered feelings, and making military preparations. In the South there were celebrations of the annexation. Shipment of slaves to the newly-opened market had already commenced. It was evident that the country was hastening toward the crisis with rapid steps. Rumors foreshadowing war with Mexico now came thick and fast. They told of disputes on the frontier, of activity at arsenals and navy-yards, of movements of ships and troops toward the Southwest, of the massing of Mexican forces under General Ampudia. Stories of hostile encounters were circulated one day, to be contradicted the next. It was reported that ten thousand Mexicans were marching to the Rio Grande, that Americans were volunteering in New Orleans to meet them, and that regular troops were landing in Texas. Learned specu lations and " authentic statements " of governmental plans were given out by those who knew nothing about them, and a chaotic jumble of reports from Vera Cruz, Matamoras, Havana, and New Orleans, about Santa Anna, Ampudia, Almonte, and other Mexican leaders, helped to make up the column of "important Mexican news," most of which LIFE AND LETTERS. r !846. was unreliable in detail, and only reliable at all in that it indicated the way that events were drifting. "What should the Whigs do?" was the next question. Should they oppose the war throughout, cripple the Government, and so aid the enemy ? Such, at least, seemed to be the opinion of some of the zealous and obstinate members of the party. Seward wrote on this point to Weed : BOOHESTEB, August 11, 1845. The papers seem to foreshadow war with Mexico. I presume I need not counsel about your course on that question, and I am by no means confident that my advice would be right. Still, you will excuse me for say ing that your letters from Santa Cruz last year pointed out the policy that seems best now. The people had war with Mexico before them, in the election last fall. We thought best to avoid it, but they are supreme ; and the battle must be fought with all our energies. We go for the country, at all events. The war will be ended the sooner, and the more safely, if we do not fall into the folly of faction. From Albany the news was less important, though of some interest. The Constitutional Convention was to be held in the following year. Parties were practically united in favor of holding it, though in con siderable uncertainty as to its probable effect upon their own interests. Canvassing for delegates was going on in the different counties ; and, as a general thing, men qualified by thought and experience were nominated, in preference to mere partisans. An anti-rent outbreak created much feeling, as it was the first that had been attended with fatal results. A sheriff, while in the discharge of official functions, had been murdered. A revulsion of sentiment, among many who had favored the anti-rent movement, was the imme diate consequence ; and the popular demand was unmistakable that, whatever might be the grievances of the tenants, there was no justifica tion for bloodshed, and that the murderers should be punished. Gov ernor Wright issued his proclamation to that effect, and the anti-renters, for the time, lost half of all the popular sympathy they had gained. Again engaged in professional duties, Seward wrote to Mr. Weed : EAGLE TAVEBN, BOOHESTEB, August 18, 1846. You have another anti-rent outbreak, I see, in Delaware. The Senators are here, but there is a calm in politics. All men are looking, without power to penetrate the future. The convention alarms the very " Barnburners " who authorized it. The seditious spirit is still strong, and will have boldness enough to display itself this fall. BOOHESTEB, Wednesday. After a brief relaxation, I am again at this post of expectation rather than of duty. My next cause is No. 15, and the court is eogaged hearing No. 14. It seems reasonably certain that I may be heard to-morrow. 1846.) WHIG DISCORDS. 757 I had a nice voyage by steamboat from this place to Lewiston, and taking the car there I arrived at Niagara early on Sunday morning. The weather was intensely hot, but I found coolness and comfort in the afternoon on Table Rock, which was wet with the spray of the cataract. It seemed to me I had never had so fine a view of that stupendous wonder. On Monday I went to Buffalo, closed my business there yesterday, and was again in my bed at midnight. I staid at Hawley s, took tea at Mr. Fillmore s, spent an evening at the theatre, and met many friends. EOOHKBTEB, August 22, 1845. There is undoubtedly a goodly number of persons here who love neither you nor me, and we do not at all divide the opinions of men between ourselves ; but both are objects of love or hate by the same individuals. Querulousness, in re gard to both of us, wearied the public mind, and I think we may safely go where we will without exciting any especial anger. So I hope that you will come out while I am here. Whittlesey and I are much together, and when we find fresh trout, woodcock, or new fruit, or enjoy a moonlight night, each expresses his regret that you are not of the party. My first case has been argued acceptably to my client. I note this because, while all the world seem to regard me as an old professional stager, I am con scious that I am subjected to the trial of obtaining a place at the bar. The multiplicity of labors necessary for this is especially oppressive to one so near forty-five, who has so long rested from all similar pursuit. But thus far I have had good success. There was a division of sentiment in the Whig party, somewhat like that in the Democratic party, though less marked and more unequal. It had not yet reached a stage to prevent concert of party action, nor had the opposing forces any distinctive names. Seward s friends used to claim that there was no division, further than that made by a few malcontents or disappointed aspirants, who opposed " Seward and Weed," because they had not been rewarded with coveted honors. Yet this, perhaps, was not quite just. Such disappointed men would naturally take sides against those who held, or who they fancied held, the reins of power in the party. But, besides this element, there was an opposition to " Weed and Seward," in the Whig ranks, based upon differing theories of government. The Whig party, having its origin in New England and the metropolis, had, at the outset, been a party favoring liberal construction of the Constitution, in opposition to the " strict construction " of the Democrats. It had favored banks, State and national, schools, colleges, railways, canals, and sought to promote the public welfare by enterprises of public benefit. This trait had attracted to it many of the wealthy, the educated, and the refined. It was sneered at as the " gentleman s party," the " silk-stocking party," the " rich man s party ; " while the Democratic, as its name implied, was the " poor man s party," and champion of popular rights against aristocratic oppressors. 758 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846 Heartily sympathizing in all the " liberal construction " sentiments of his Whig associates, going even beyond them in his zeal for internal improvement and education, Seward was, nevertheless, a thorough democrat, in the broader sense of the word. "Weed and Seward" aimed to make the Whig party a popular one, and to free it from all aristocratic tendencies. Its more conservative members saw and dis trusted this radicalism, and believed that Seward s appeals in behalf of schools for immigrants and votes for negroes savored of demagoguery. The division of feeling, hardly perceptible at first, grew gradually. As yet, it manifested itself principally in discussions as to candidates. The division between radicals and conservatives in the Democratic party had begun earlier and developed more rapidly. The conservative wing held fast to ancient affiliations with the South, and consequently to the national patronage. The radical wing adhered tenaciously to the Jacksonian theories of " strict construction," " hard money," and antip athy to governmental aid to corporate enterprises. Their conservative opponents called them " Barnburners," and likened them to the stupid man who burned his barn in order to destroy the rats. At one of the first distinctive conventions of the radical faction, Colonel Young, in his speech on taking the chair, accepted the opprobrious nickname. " They say we are barnburners, gentlemen. Thunder and lightning are barnburners, but they are also great purifiers of the atmosphere. And that is what we propose to do with the political atmosphere of our State ! " They styled their opponents in return " Old Hunkers," in allusion to their alleged fondness for spoils and place. One of the letters of this summer briefly refers to a visit from another ex-Governor. Governor Throop, now retired from political affairs, was living on the shore of the Owasco Lake, about four miles from Auburn. Fond of rural life, and skilled in horticulture, he took pleasure in planting trees, laying out drives, and cultivating with his own hands the fruits and flowers for his table. The pretty cottage, and the spacious farm around it, grew in course of years, under his judicious taste and management, and that of his nephew and niece, Mr. and Mrs. E. T. Throop Martin, to be a beautiful country-seat, ap propriately named "Willowbrook," from the stream which traversed it. The acquaintance between the two families ripened, during the years Seward spent at Auburn, into a warm friendship, and thencefor ward, whenever he returned home for rest or study, a frequent excur sion was a drive to the hospitable shades of " Willowbrook." A picnic or fishing-party on the Owasco Lake was a favorite sum mer amusement with him. On these occasions he liked to have only his family, and one or two guests or friends. Larger and more formal excursion-parties he was less inclined to, as savoring rather of work 1846.] UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE. 759 thao of relaxation. At these times he would take an oar, or a fishing- rod, in the boat, or stroll along the beach, or lie under the shade ; and was always in vivacious spirits, ready even to engage with the children in skipping stones, culling wild flowers, or guessing conundrums. He had a dislike to fashionable watering-places. When called by business or political conferences to meet friends at Saratoga, Avon, or Long Branch, he always made his stay as brief as possible. The crowd of busy idlers, with their ennui, their gossip, and their social ostenta tion, was distasteful to him. He loved the sea, the mountains, the lakes, and the forest, and every summer sought recreation among them. Above all, he enjoyed visiting them i-i his own conveyance, or in his own boat, and in lodging where he would have something of the pri vacy, comfort, and independence of home. The debate over the annexation of Texas, though it had resulted in a triumph of slavery extension, had given new impulse to men s thoughts about emancipation and constitutional rights. The attempt to proscribe and crush John P. Hale, by the Democrats of New Hamp shire, and the attempt to suppress Cassius M. Clay s newspaper by mob violence in Kentucky, strengthened the growth of antislavery feeling. The Constitutional Convention, now to be held in the State of New York, would have to deal with questions of popular rights, as affected by race and color. The Whig delegates for the most part, it was be lieved, would lean, in these respects, toward the liberal views of Sew- ard. The " Barnburners," or some of them, would take similar action, A letter to Mr. Weed referred to some of these questions : AUBUBN, August 80, 1845. Having a respite from the Court of Errors, from Friday night until Monday morning, I am at home to-day and to-morrows The assiduous attendance upon court results in producing desultory habits. By-the-way, one of the choicest triumphs of my whole life was when I found John Van Buren, at Rochester, making up his mind, slowly and reluctantly, to consent to answer the people of color favorably on their demand for the elective franchise. You will see the whole party break under this demand. The western Whigs in all the counties are sound, and I have heard nothing like hesitation since the events in Kentucky. I saw Fillmore at Buffalo. He finds it difficult to sit squarely, about these days, on the Conservative and Prog ress steeds when they draw so widely apart. He had a letter from the colored people, and wanted to answer it by saying he would dispense with the property qualification, and substitute one of capacity to read and write. I told him the convention would go to universal suffrage, and that it was as inexpedient as I thought it wrong to hesitate in his reply. Governor Wright and his friends despair of weathering the anti-rent storm. His proclamation would have been needless now, had mine commanded tha support it deserved. When a ship is wrecked those who have worked hardest at the 760 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1845 pumps usually come in for a large share of the fault-finding by the idlers, who merely looked on, or stood in the way. Such was Sew- ard s experience, after his long and earnest efforts to save the Whig party from the crushing defeat of 1844. His published speeches show their extent ; his private letters attest their sincerity. Mr. Clay s manly acknowledgment after the election showed that he, at least, appreciated them. Nevertheless there were Whigs, especially in New York, who, having throughout objected to his antislavery opinions, now resolutely shut their eyes to the figures of the official canvass, and charged the defeat upon " Seward, Weed, and Greeley." Weed and Greeley replied through their respective papers, the Evening Journal and the Tribune. Seward contented himself with a brief letter in an swer to the assertion that during the campaign he " made what the public felt and knew to be anti-Clay speeches." He remarked : The late election seemed to me to involve the stability of domestic industry, which had been restored so recently and with so much difficulty; the continu ance of peace, indispensable to the welfare, happiness, and advancement of the American people ; the preservation of the public domain for the general use of the country ; the maintenance of good faith with the weakest and the strongest nations of the earth ; the security of free States against the unconstitutional encroachments of the slaveholding parties in our confederacy ; and, finally, the prospects of a peaceful and speedy abolition of human slavery, the chief evil in our country, and the great crime of our age Moved by these considerations, and stimulated by sentiments of duty and gratitude to the Whig party, I engaged in the contest at its beginning, and re mained in the field until the disastrous termination of the conflict. Mr. Olay was the candidate of that party, and his election was indispensable to the success of its cause. I claim to have labored with singleness, sincerity, zeal, and assiduity, and to have devoted to the success of that cause, and of Henry Olay, whatever influence I enjoyed, and all the knowledge and ability I possessed. Of course the press, metropolitan and rural, took up the controversy, and it raged through many columns for several weeks, each side re maining unconvinced by the other. The increase of his law-practice, this fall, rendered additional help necessary. He invited his old friend Christopher Morgan, and his for mer private secretary, Samuel Blatchf ord, to join him ; and the sign of the new firm of " Seward, Morgan & Blatchf ord," was displayed on Genesee Street. This change greatly facilitated the labors of the law- office, leaving Seward free to travel, far and near, to argue his cases in the various courts in distant cities, while his partners remained at Au burn, and kept the office-business proceeding with regularity and dis patch. Mr. Blatchford removed with his family from New York to Auburn, and remained a resident of that place while the partnership continued. 1845.] THE S. S. SEWARD INSTITUTE. 761 Among his cases this year were some involving a question of the patent-right of Jethro Wood s plough, then and since in such general use. An important decision affirming the rights of his client was pub lished in October. His success in patent-cases surprised even himself. They began to multiply upon his hands, and soon formed the principal portion of his practice. He wrote to Mr. Weed : AUBURN, October 4, 1845. Either Pope or Dean Swift said that no resident of a city was ever known to express a disappointment that his country friend did not visit him more frequently. If I were to judge by the irregularity of your replies, I should think that you received a& many letters from me as were agreeable. Samuel Blatchford is to be here to-night. I believe that he and Morgan could enable me to right my affairs in three years. Perhaps Blatchford could alone, and thus leave Morgan to assist you, who need aid nearly as much. But this we cannot know until we try. Meantime, the efforts I am making cost me much health and strength. To add to my embarrassments, my father, sick, nervous, and melancholy, writes me urgently to drop all my business here, and come to him, adding that what if made here by " pleading law " is less than what would be saved there. His father wished him to come to Florida to take charge of his busi ness affairs, and those of the " S. S. Seward Institute." This was a school which had long been a favorite project of its founder, who built the edifice for its use directly opposite his own gate, on the main street of the little village, endowed it with a fund, and was now looking for suitable teachers. That it would afford a seminary for the education of his grandchildren and of the children of his neighbors, would develop and stimulate the growth of the village so long his home, and would be an appropriate work of benevolence for his declining years, were the motives which impelled him, when near fourscore, to undertake an enterprise that a younger man might well shrink from, and that, in a business point of view, seemed hardly consonant with his usual shrewd ness and sagacity. However, its ultimate success justified his pre visions. He was now desirous to have it opened and in operation before the winter should set in. In accordance with this summons, Seward started for Florida, and gave the aid required, though declin ing to change his residence from Auburn, or to give up his professional occupations. 762 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846. CHAPTER LX. 1845. Rural Cemeteries. Constitutional Changes. The Anti-Kenters. Organizing a School. -A Pair of Ponies. The Telegraph. Hudson Eiver Kailroad. Congress and Slavery Ex tension. Going to Washington. TOWARD the close of October Seward wrote home : ALBANY, October 25, 1845. I left court on Saturday afternoon at six o clock, weary enough, flung myself into a carriage with two friends, and got a glimpse of the Albany Cemetery be fore night. I returned to town expecting to spend a long, quiet evening with Weed at his house alone. When I returned to my room after tea, I found James G. Wilson, and soon Gibson entered with half a dozen men. They worked me until ten at night, when I left them. Sunday morning I went to St. Peter s, and after church James Horner took me with him to dinner ; then I went to Weed s, and after two hours there went with him to the Governor s all which brought nine o clock. I have risen this morning refreshed, and am using the candle to aid the twilight. The cemetery here has a beautiful location. It surpasses Mount Auburn and Mount Hope. There are plain and hill, and shade and lawn, brook, lake, and dis tant prospect. The forest consists of evergreens, interspersed with oak. As the grounds were opened only two years ago, the place has acquired little of the embellishment to which it is destined. As graveyards, these cemeteries seem to have one defect. The beauty and the instruction of the graveyard alike arise from the fact that there the rich and the poor lie down together. But the aris tocracy seem to take these places, set them apart, and shut out the poor. Yon enter the little inclosure of one of the families, and you might imagine yourself in its drawing-room, only the upholsterer has given place to the stone-sculptor. There are some fifty or sixty monuments of every kind and magnitude, such as might justly grace the resting-place of a Washington, a Howard, a Milton. Yet each bears either no name, or one known only for a few years, and not long ago, as a prosperous man of business. But let us come away from the grave. Contrary as it may seem to his usually cheerful temperament and buoyant spirits, he always liked a stroll in a graveyard. The study of its inscriptions, so suggestive of historic events and traits of character, always attracted him. He rarely visited a new place without spending an hour in moralizing among its tombstones. He used occasionally to repeat some quaint epitaph that had struck his fancy. Gray s " Elegy " he frequently quoted ; and in one of his visits to England he took a day to visit Stoke-Pogis, the spot where it was written, and where the re mains of its author rest In one of his letters to Mrs. Seward, he spoke of a vault as " that miserable artifice of pride in death," adding : I pray you, if, as is not improbable, I should pass away before you from this world of mockeries, have me buried in the churchyard at Anburn beside the 1845. J THE CONSTITUTIONAL CONVENTION. 763 dust 01 our little one, with space enough beside me for your resting-place. I would not be exposed to the intrusion of the curious or profane in a charnel- house. Once more the season for conventions and nominations had come round, though only members of the Legislature and county officers were this year to be chosen. The Whigs held their local conventions with no great hope of success, except through the increasing dissen sions in the ranks of their opponents. A new publication startled the politicians of both parties. Mackenzie, former leader of the Canadian patriots, had been appointed to a place in the New York Custom-House. While there, he came upon a mass of private correspondence upon political affairs which a former collector had neglected to destroy or take away. Among the letters were those of Van Buren, Wright, Marcy, and others. They were written with entire freedom, contain ing many careless expressions which, when published, were repre sented as betraying insincerity, recklessness, or hypocrisy. This dish of political gossip was long a staple of conversation and news paper comment. Its allusions to the management of past campaigns and details of administration were claimed by the " Hunkers " to be especially damaging to the " Barnburners," and vice versa, while the Whigs declared them damaging to both. The voters of the State at this election were to pass upon the ques tion of holding a Constitutional Convention. The indications were of a favorable public sentiment, but it made its way rather by its own merits than by the usual appliances of oratory, public meetings, and personal zeal. Some of the county conventions, among them those of Cayuga, Oswego, and Wyoming, passed resolutions indorsing and approving the public course of Governor Seward. This was an unusual political proceeding in regard to a public man neither in office nor a candidate for it. It was doubtless brought about by the attacks made upon him in the discontented Whig journals, and, coming directly from popular gatherings, was the most effective reply to them. The anti-renters, learning wisdom by experience, were now turning their attention to political movements, instead of riotous resistance to law. In several localities they agreed that they would give their votes unitedly to such parties or candidates as were most favorable to their claims. The trials of persons concerned in the anti-rent outrages in Dela ware County terminated in the conviction and sentence of the leaders. Their close in this manner was received with popular approval, as showing that the jury -system could be relied upon to punish crimes even when high political feeling and partisan interest ran in favor of acquittal of the wrong-doers. The election came on the 4th of November. As had been expected, 764 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1845 the Democratic preponderance of the preceding year was maintained, though in some districts the Whigs made slight gains. The result was claimed as a popular indorsement of the policy of the Administration in regard to Texas and Oregon, " the extension of the area of freedom," " and the whole of Oregon or none." One gratifying feature of the canvass was the overwhelming majority of one hundred and eighty thousand in favor of the convention to amend the State constitution. As soon as it was definitely settled that the constitution was to be revised, suggestions and arguments in reference to proposed changes began to engross public attention. Each of the parties or factions had favorite theories which it hoped to have ingrafted upon the funda mental law. The especial themes of discussion were, the provisions in regard to canals and the State debt, the reorganization of the courts and Legislature, capital punishment and the pardoning power, the banking laws, and the extension of the right of suffrage to colored men. In his conversations, and in his letters to friends who were consult ing him in regard to their course, Seward insisted that a favorable opportunity was now presented for securing universal suffrage. He maintained that colored men should have the same right to vote as white men, and that all discriminations against adopted citizens should be removed, so far as the naturalization laws would permit. The reor ganization and simplifying of the courts had long been, in his judgment, a needed reform, and he had urged it in his messages. The policy of general laws, instead of special acts and charters, he had advocated, not only for banks, but for all corporations. In these respects he and his friends now hoped for success, since many of the liberal members of the Democratic party entertained similar views. Upon the ques tions of the State debt and canals there was little hope of any such accord, as the " stop-and-tax policy " of 1842 was diametrically opposed to his own. The project of an elective judiciary had his cordial support, though upon this point many of his own party differed with him. In regard to feudal tenures, codification of laws, abolition of superfluous offices, reduction of costs and fees, and, in general, all measures tending to simplify the cumbersome machinery of government, he was even more radical than the " Barnburners," who claimed to be radicals par excel lence. Upon questions of internal improvement, singularly enough, the "Old Hunkers" were the progressive, and the "Barnburners" the conservative, branch of their party. Various suggestions concerning the rights of married women, and homestead exemption, were also talked of. In reference to them he remarked in a note to Mr. Weed : Statesmen must follow in the wake of philanthropists, and each step of human progress seems at first visionary and dangerous. We are in danger of 1845.J RIDING AND DRIVING. going faster than will be safe ; but it seems to me that the public mind is ripened for one great and beneficent measure a law to act only prospectively, securing to the wife and children a home which, if honestly bought and paid for, and devoted to that purpose, shall not be liable for debts, unless specifically mort gaged. The Texas constitution adopts such a principle, or an approximation to it. Toward the close of the year, in accordance with his father s wishes, Seward made several visits to Orange County to aid in the establish ment and organization of the S. S. Seward Institute. He had asked Miss Parsons, of Albany, to become its principal. Pausing at Pough- keepsie to attend to some professional business, he wrote thence to Mrs. Seward: POUGHKEEPSIE, Sunday. Mr. Stevens having come from Albany to this place, I followed him here, where I have done my business, and am going to Florida to-morrow morning. I found Miss Parsons just breaking up her school, and on the wing for the South. Her brother joined me in thinking the Seward Institute might be better for her ; so she came with me in the boat last night. Here I found a gentleman who has given me a nice pair of bay horses for a counsel-fee, and they are in the harness at the door. Borrowing a wagon, I start from here to-morrow, with Miss Parsons and my own horses, for Florida. Be not surprised if you hear of my figuring in this distant region with a lady and horses, neither of which the public know to be my own. Mr. Webster is here. I dine with him to-day. I have engaged to go to Washington, in Decem ber, to attend the United States Supreme Court- Two days later, at Florida, the school was duly organized, to the satisfaction of its patron and founder. Seward returned to his profes sional work, sending the ponies by steamboat and railway to Auburn. They were a serviceable pair, good and rapid travelers, though rather too spirited, as was attested a few months later by accidents to wagons and sleighs. Nevertheless they were general favorites. They were trained for use under the saddle, as well as in the harness ; and for some months he used to enjoy a morning gallop upon " Charlie " before breakfast on the occasional days that business allowed him to be at Auburn. He liked his horses as he did his birds and dogs. He was fond of carriage-excursions. He would take the reins himself, when neces sary ; but driving was never one of his pleasures. He was not a con noisseur in horses, and cared nothing about their speed, except when in haste to reach some destination. He liked to get rapidly over the ground, though he probably never took the trouble to time the speed of any horse by his watch. Congress, at its meeting on the first Monday of December, received President Polk s message stating the policy of his Administration. Its cardinal points were that Texas and Oregon should be held, even 766 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1845 at the risk of war with Mexico and with England. But it expressed a confident hope that hostilities with those countries would be avoided. The new Congress, like preceding ones, began its deliberations with a proposition to adopt the "gag-rule" against antislavery petitions. Then, early in the session, opened a period of memorable debate. The Texas and Oregon measures involved the question of the extension of slavery, and this was developing into a national issue. The estimates for national defense foreshadowed expectations of war. Remonstrances were presented against the admission of Texas as a slave State ; and the votes, on their reference, showed that the Administration would have the support of a strong majority of Congress, though not without encountering sharp criticism and opposition. Mr. Douglas, as chairman of the Committee on Territories, reported a joint resolution for the admission of Texas. The previous question was ordered, to cut off debate, and it went through the House by a majority of eighty-five. Three Democratic members joined with the Whigs in opposing it Preston King, Bradford R. Wood, and Horace Wheaton, all from the State of New York. When it reached the Senate, Mr. Webster placed on record an emphatic protest against it ; but the resolution passed by a majority of seventeen. Before the year closed, President Polk appended his signature, and Texas was a State. The press throughout the country joined in the debate over this extension of slavery. As a part of the argument, there began to appear, in the columns of Whig and Democratic journals, paragraphs hitherto confined to abolition newspapers. Auction-sales of slaves, stories of fugitives, and cases of individual suffering, were cited to show the character of the " peculiar institution " which, instead of being left to gradually die out, as the North had fondly hoped, was to be taken up and extended into the new Territories, in order to keep up a perpetual equilibrium between the free States and the slavehold- ing ones. Hopes were entertained that the dissensions among the Mexicans themselves might prevent collision with the United States. It was an unfounded expectation, since all the contending factions in Mexico were alike hostile to what they considered a dismemberment of their republic. The extension of the lines of telegraph in an unbroken chain from New York to Buffalo was an enterprise which was exciting much atten tion this fall. In December was published the prospectus of the first daily newspaper in Auburn. The invention of the magnetic telegraph proved to be a great advantage to the country press, as it enabled them to give their readers foreign and metropolitan news in advance of the city papers. 1846.] A MONTH IN WASHINGTON. 767 The railway also made a step in advance. There were henceforth to be two passenger-trains daily. The law-office, on its new footing, was doing an increased amount of work. AUBUBN, December 20, 1846. Our business here begins to take a satisfactory shape. Blatchford is prodi giously effective as an attorney. For the first time, I begin to feel, as well as to enjoy, the dignity and ease of a counselor. I eat Thanksgiving dinners like a Christian, and even attend Mrs. Seward to parties occasionally, like a husband. On Thursday next, God willing, I go to Albany, and, after staying there a half -day or so, proceed to Washington, in entire uncertainty concerning how long I stay there, but expecting to spend all the month of January. I shall learn something at Washington. Do you know that I have seen more of the British Par liament, and of London, than I have of Congress and of Washington ? When I am to see anything new, or learn anything, there arises instantly a desire for sympathy with others. So I have invited Mrs. Seward to visit the capital ; but she declines. Next, I wish, for a thousand reasons, that you could be where I could compare notes with you. That is impossible, I suppose, since the inter ests of the Evening Journal require you to be at Albany when the Legislature shall assemble. Moreover, the quidnuncs would believe that we visited Wash ington as conspirators. I think I am not the most discreet man in the world ; but then I have had no such knowledge of the strange atmosphere of the na tional capital as to learn that safety can only be secured by silence and reserve. Did you go to New York ? If you did, you left thunderbolts for one or two daily discharges from your editorial throne. So we are to buy California of Mexico. Mexico, a youthful state, a youthful American republic, has reached maturity, and is now declining to dissolution. The lesson is full of instruction. General Oass has appropriated all the glory of war and Oregon. It will in spire his candidateship prematurely. But that is not all. These warlike demon strations will, contrary to his expectations, awaken no opposition among the Whigs to the action of the Administration. CHAPTER LXI. 1846. Washington Life. Causes in the Supreme Court. The Oregon Question. Stanley. Washington Hunt. The Adams Family. Mrs. Gaines. Mrs. Maury. John M. Clay ton. Judge McLean. General Scott. CALLED by his clients to argue their causes in the Supreme Court at Washington, Seward found himself at the capital in the midst of an important and interesting period, the session which was to determine the questions of peace or war with England and with Mexico. The claim for " the whole of Oregon or none," and " 54 40 or fight," had awakened the popular love of aggrandizement ; and, while 768 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846 there was coupled with it the dread of a war with England, yet the Administration party found it difficult to withdraw from their position without incurring, possibly odium, and certainly ridicule. But the feeling in favor of Oregon was, to a great degree, a Northern one. At the South the Texas question was of paramount importance. The Administration would be pardoned there for a change of front, and even for humiliation, in the Oregon matter, if that course was proved to be necessary to assure the retention of Texas, and the maintenance of slavery there. The first step, however, toward asserting claim to Oregon, would be to give to Great Britain the required twelve months " notice " of intention to discontinue the existing provisional arrange ment. This step, it was confidently expected, would be taken at once. Among the cases in the Supreme Court in which Seward was en gaged were those involving the patent-rights of the Jethro Wood plough and of the Woodworth planing-machine. Chief in public con sequence, as well as in interest to himself, was the Ohio slave-case, which had been set down for argument at this term. Washington was, as usual, thronged with winter visitors. Seward had never previously remained there for any lengthened period, and many of the scenes around him had the attraction of novelty. His let ters home contained descriptions of his life there almost minute enough for a diary, especially when supplemented by his frequent notes to Mr. Weed, describing the progress of political affairs. WASHINGTON, Jawuary 1, 1846. All around me I hear salutations of the New-Year. Few of them rest with me, for I am a stranger. I gather up a thousand of these greetings and speed them to her whose joys and sorrows are mine own, who cannot be happy with out making me glad, who cannot be grieved without making me disconsolate. It is only two hours that I have been awake at Washington, and therefore I have little to say of the capital. I will begin back at the commencement of my long journey. Miss Darling proved an intellectual and agreeable companion ; the weather was mild, and the road so fine that we scarcely noticed the flight of time until the day dawned upon us at Syracuse. We found breakfast at Utica; and then I discovered that in leaving Mr. De Zeng s, at Skaneateles, the night before, I had brought away a cloak similar to but not my own. This is somewhat inconvenient, for I think the exchange an unequal one. James Homer, with his broad, round, benignant face, met us at the depot at Albany, and took Miss Darling to his house. I repaired to the Eagle. The next, day I did what was needful to be done at Albany ; and on Saturday morning 1 received your note about the lost carpet-bag, just as we were going to the cars. I dispatched a hasty note to you, and we left directions for the lost bag to follow us to New York. The snow-storm delayed us, so that I had not time to visit Maria Weed at Springfield. We had three hours at New Haven. I called upon Judge Daggett, and, with Mr. King, visited the family of Mr. Ingersoll. Mr. Collier was on board the boat with us to New York, loquacious, com- 1846.] JOURNEY TO THE CAPITAL. 769 placent, civil, and attentive. It was half-past four in the morning when the boat moored in Peck Slip. At seven I found myself snugly located in No. 11 at the Astor House. Taylor Hall came to breakfast with me, and we were soon joined by Bowen. We dined with the latter. I spent the afternoon at Webb s. The hours passed very pleasantly until Mr. Blatchford called for me, and in an hour I was surrounded by the shades of night and Hell Gate. Mrs. Blatchford made me tea, gave me a nice bed and breakfast, and I enjoyed them exceedingly. They expect to take lodgings at the Astor House before my return to the city. I saw Greeley, Roe, and some others, and left on Monday evening for Philadelphia. It was night and lonesome when I arrived at Jones s Hotel, in that city. At eleven o clock, on glancing at the register, I found the names of Mr. and Mrs. Edward Stanley, of North Carolina. I saw them early next morning. Mr. Stanley accompanied me to dinner at Mr. Josiah Randall s, and to the theatre in the evening, where we had the greatest possible dramatic enjoyment, in seeing Mrs. Kean (formerly Ellen Tree) personate Viola in " Twelfth Night." Mr. and Mrs. Marvine are staying at the Markoe House. He had some of his friends of both sexes to receive me at one of the city assemblies. I repaired there at ten o clock, after the play ; but there was misunderstanding among the servants, and I was informed that Mr. Marvine could not be found. I gladly availed myself of the just apology, and returned wearied to my lodgings. An hour afterward Mr. Marvine found me, in night-dress and slippers, but it was too late to go abroad in quest of occasions of gallantry. Mr. and Mrs. Stanley came on to Baltimore, where I left them. He is an agreeable and excellent man, modest and moderate in his aspirations. He gave me a pamphlet containing a belligerent correspondence, in which he has recently won a diplomatic victory over his successor in Congress. I sent it to you for your amusement. I am a great misfortune personified, and so I never travel single. Mrs. Stanley brought me into communication with an eccentric English lady Mrs. Maury who is the wife of Mr. Maury, of Liverpool, whose father was forty years the American consul there. Although the mother of eleven living chil dren, she is traversing the United States from the St. Lawrence to the Rio Grande as a tourist and philosopher. She is attended by a lad of fourteen years ; is highly educated and sensible. The lady and her son came, under my care, to Coleman s. But I was even more fortunate than this. There was a plain, meek-looking female in the reception-room at Barnum s Hotel, Bal timore. When all other persons had withdrawn, she spoke to me, told me a story of much truth and some deception, I think. She was the widow of a merchant, who died years ago, at Utica, leaving her with an infant child. She was a dress-maker. Her mother-in-law was harsh, and besides was determined to train up the boy (now eleven years old) in the Presby terian Church, while the mother was a Catholic. She fled, with little money. Thus far, I think, she told the truth. She lost what little remained in the car coming from Philadelphia (you may believe this or not, as you please) ; she was now destitute, and appealed to me, a stranger, for advice. I begged her off at Barnum s, paid her expenses to Washington, and her passage to Richmond, and she left us immediately on our arrival here. I found Mr. Hunt, last evening, on my arrival ; he was just going to an assem- 49 770 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1948. bly. This morning, at breakfast, I found Mrs. Saunders (the eldest Miss Bleecker, of South Pearl Street, Albany), recently married, and now with her husband on a bridal excursion. I attended Mrs. Maury to the door of General Yan Ness s honse, and returned to my lodgings. All the world are abroad, paying homage to Mr. and Mrs. Polk, to John Quincy Adams, to Mrs. Madison, and to Mrs. Hamilton. Although I cherish just respect for these illustrious persons, I prefer the privilege of re porting my progress to you, above the attractions of the court. I shall not go abroad to-day. I have not seen anybody from whom to learn anything about the probable length of my stay here, but will inform you on that point to-morrow. Ooleman has provided for me very pleasantly, and the dining-hall and bar rooms show me many familiar faces. Draper has gone to New Orleans. I called at his house, but for once it was cheerless. I found Greeley, and had a brief but satisfactory interview with him. He sent S. McC. Smith to me. I explained to him where the danger lies, engaged him to write privately to A. S , of Utica, and to prepare and publish an appeal, such as that we contemplated. It will be done, in due time. He went to L. T , of New York, who in formed him that third tickets would hardly be raised anywhere but in Madison County. I think all this business will be well attended to. Mr. Hunt and Mr. "White, with their families, are staying at Ooleman s. I have seen no other New York members in the House. Mr. Culver and Mr. Holmes have called upon me, as also Mr. E. Robinson. These make up the extent of my congressional acquaintance thus far. Of course I have no news nor speculations to write you. You will see Mr. Hunt s speech, which was dignified, moderate, and re spectable. At Philadelphia I saw Chandler and Mr. Morris. The former was looking about for a candidate for President, to bring forward. He spoke of General Scott, and discussed McLean, without any partiality. There were kind things said to me by the Quakers, who are abolitionists. I promised to stay there a day, if I could, on my return. WASHINGTON, January 2, 1846. Time hurries on so rapidly here, amid civilities and excitement, that 1 am obliged to economize it, even at the expense of writing to you less often than I wished. My letters must be broken up into a diary. Last evening I spent three hours in the drawing-room. There were sev eral agreeable persons, but only one character. That was Mrs. General Gaines, a young, voluble woman of forty, wife of a superannuated field-marshal. She is literary, and lectures (to promote her husband s fame) on the arts of fortifica tion, as I understood. Besides this, she is distinguished for litigation, involving estates of almost inconceivable wealth. At eleven o clock this morning I went into the Supreme Court room, and found the learned judges listening to a very clear argument ; but the question was not interesting, and there was no audience. Then I passed into the House of Representatives, where, in an hour, I made acquaintance with nearly all the Whig members. Mr. Adams received me kindly, and I engaged to visit him this evening. One of the soundest and wisest men 1 have found here, thus far, is John M. 1846.] CLAYTON POLK ADAMS SCOT! 1 . 771 Clayton, who has won rny high respect. He was in the library. I was casually- passing, and was introduced to him by Hunt. He declared that he was exceed ingly gratified at my arrival, wanted to see me alone, withdrew Hunt and myself to a private apartment, closed the door, and then unfolded a web of sagacious policy, designed to defeat Calhoun in his purpose of making the Whigs extri cate the Administration party from the difficulty into which they were falling in regard to Oregon. He apprehended that Mr. W would be wrong, and appealed to me to use what he thought would be effective influence with him. Thus I found one statesman, of sound judgment, agreeing with the suggestions you so wisely made. But he feels fearful that the Whigs will be impracticable. I need not say 1 will do what I can to secure his views in this great emergency. From the Capitol I went to the White House, and was honored with a pres entation to the President. He is a gentleman of fifty, of plain, unassuming manners and conversation, and does not at all inspire awe or respect. I cannot describe the impression he makes upon me better than by saying that I miss the dignity and grace of our reception by General Jackson. After visiting the President I paid my respects to Governor Maroy, now Sec retary of War, and to General Scott. Both those gentlemen treated me with much kindness, especially the latter. Thus ends the business of a day, and now to dinner. Saturday Morning, January Bd. I spent last evening most singularly. Mr. Adams had made a speech, in which he demonstrated that the true way to secure peace was to show an undi vided front of the whole country in maintaining our claims to Oregon, and a readiness to defend them, which would form the proper ground on which nego tiations could be conducted with the aid and support, at least, of the Whig party. The Democrats applauded him to the echo. The Whigs straggled from him, stumbled, and fell. The evening brought all the New York Whigs to my room for consultation. They concluded unanimously to sustain him, bnt the Whigs of the other States are panic-struck. Still the like counsels prevail in the Senate, and will be supported by all the Whigs except Mr. Webster. After that caucus I went to Mr. Adams s house, and had a very delightful evening tete-d-tdte with the venerable statesman. You will see Mr. Adams s wise, sagacious, and noble speech. You will see that the New York Whigs, in the main, stand by him. They all will do so. But Massachusetts, Connecticut, Ohio, and Kentucky Whigs are as credulous as all are honest. There is great danger that they may falter. The only way to secure peace, or save the Whig party, is to show harmony and unanimity in as serting our rights and in readiness to defend them. The responsibilities will break down those who lead to danger, and we shall be able to negotiate safely. Oalhoun and Webster are trying to effect an ill-starred coalition of nullifiers with Whigs, to save slavery and free trade. WASHINGTON, January 4k I rose at six this morning, and commenced my studies in my great slave case. It is about bedtime, and I have scarcely withdrawn from my books. It is a great case. I shrink from it. Yesterday I dined with General Scott. He is now in full chase of the presidency. His "Life and Times" is in the press, and I have just read the proof-sheets of several chapters. The prevailing sen- 772 L A** 1 * LETTERS. [1846. timent here is that he is to be the candidate, although that opinion has no very great influence upon the result. This evening I made a call on Mrs. Madison. That lady lives very pleas antly near the White House. She is tall, dignified, easy, and quiet in her car riage, neither as handsome nor as intelligent as our dear grandmother, who had never seen a court. I had little opportunity, however, to judge of Mrs. Madi son. But her dress, conversation, air, and everything, showed me that she was a woman to whom fashion was necessary in old age. I go to my books again. So good-night. No, no. I forgot to say that I called last evening on Mrs. Davis and her husband, " Honest John." They inquired particularly about you, and were very agreeable. WASHINGTON, January 6, 1846. I have informed you that General Scott s " Life " is in the press. His nomi nation for the presidency is quite as near as the publication of his memoirs. I was solemnly invited into a council last night to mature that event. The mover was Mr. John M. Clayton, who, though the wisest man here, could not see that in just that way had been brought about the ruin of his friend Mr. Clay, who, he now insisted, must be thrown overboard. Washington is full of ladies, and ladies, too, of Whig friends. Yet I scarcely ever enter the drawing-room at our own hotel. Jethro Wood s patent- papers have just come on, and I am becoming as fully occupied and as entirely a recluse here as at home. But I am a fustian old fellow, and nobody will care much. It amazes me to see with how little study and how little learning men who have ambition to figure on this great stage are content to arm themselves. I paid my respects last night to Mrs. Davis again, and to Mr. John M. Clayton ; and sought to find Judge McLean, but he was abroad. Business carried me on these visits, for I had not energy enough otherwise. I met for the first yes terday Mr. George Evans of the Senate, and Mr. Winthrop of the House. They are very able and distinguished men, the latter an elegant man. Legislative bodies are all alike. It is quite doubtful whether the counsels of Webster and Winthrop will not prevail in bringing the Whig party into their lineal position as heirs of Federalism The majority are breaking down before the demonstrations of support the Administration receives from us. The North and West are already deserted by their unprincipled Southern allies. The Journal has little authority here, the Tribune still less. The Herald, the Courier and Enquirer, and the Commercial Advertiser, are potential. The iciness has thawed off from the members, and I am now intrusted with a partial insight into the political arrangements for .the next four years. Under the lead of Clayton, Crittenden, and Mangum, of the Senate, Mr. Clay is pro nounced hors de combat. General Scott is the Whig congressional candidate for President, and Mr. Corwin, of Ohio, for Vice-President. I was invited into a select circle last night, and the question was put on the proposition to announce, in some authoritative way, the general as the chosen candidate, with such dispatch and formality as would quiet the public mind, and prevent its being misled or confounded. Of course I advised otherwise, and the gentlemen were kind enough to say my reasons, drawn from the state of things in New York, were satisfactory. But they will not remain so long. I have but one rock of hope, which is Mr. Clay ton s confidence in my prudence and sagacity. I shall see him alone. 1846.] McLEAN BENTON MANGUM CRITTENDEN. 773 How bitter will this desertion be felt by Mr. Olay! And how strange that the friends who forsake him so prematurely do not see that he will grow stronger by their defection ! Mr. Hunt is in the confidence of the general s friends, and reckoned as on of the leaders of the movement. I told him to-day that he had better try the effect of moderation. WASHINGTON, January 8, 1846. Yesterday morning I went before the Supreme Court, which is a very digni fied and imposing tribunal. They preserve the forms and ceremonies of the British courts, and the judges wear robes of silk, not ermine. The crier pro nounced his proclamation with commendable solemnity, giving great effect to the words "oyez! oyezl " and closing with "God save the United States, and this honorable court ! " After being admitted and sworn, I made a motion for leave to make an oral argument in the Woodworth patent-case, and this is contrary to the rules of the court, from which it was said they never departed. The court took time to ad vise, and this morning, to the surprise of everybody, granted the motion. We are to make a great case of it. All the causes involving the same ques tions are to be brought on together, and there will be a grand array of counsel. I have the honor to be associated with Mr. Webster, Mr. Reverdy Johnson, Mr. Latrobe, Mr. Henderson, Senator Phelps, etc. The day for argument is to be fixed this evening. I have just begun to grasp the Ohio slave-case. It is like to be reached in two or three weeks. My old friend Senator Morehead will be my antagonist. I have made a pleasant acquaintance with Judge McLean, who is a very agreeable, high-minded man. Last evening I attended a party at the Rev. Mr. Pyne s. It was a crowd of finely-dressed ladies and gentlemen. My acquaintance was so limited that I scarcely enjoyed it. On Monday next I dine with Mr. Adams. I hope that you enjoy such balmy weather as we are blessed with here. WASHINGTON, January 9th. You have indeed had a series of visitations from the king of terrors in our small social circle. They must have checked the joyous excitement which pre vailed when I left. Alas! I no longer grieve for those who fall. I am so sure that rest is a blessing to any mortal that I sorrow not greatly when friend or neighbor enters the grave. Where did I leave off with my rambling narrations ? I have avoided all society as far as possible, and have been even more secluded and more studious here than at home. Well, I have told you about Mrs. Maury, the English traveler, with her little boy. I attended her yesterday, at her request, to call on Mr. Packenham, the British minister, to whom she had letters from the ministry hi England, and I introduced her also to Colonel Benton. The colonel was not displeased. He summoned his wife, a modest, venerable lady, and Mrs. Fremont, his daughter. She is the wife of Lieutenant Fremont, whose expedition to Oregon has excited so much attention. There was also a Miss Benton. Then I had a visit from Mr. Mangum, an excellent Whig, of the Senate, and from Mr. Crittenden, who has not remembered that he owed me an explanation for his leaving me to the tender mercies of the cabinet here about the McLeod affair. 774 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846. In the evening I had a consultation with all of Wilson s counsel in that patent-case, including Mr. Webster, Keverdy Johnson, Mr. Latrobe, Mr. Hen derson, and others, which closed with a supper, at which Mr. Webster was in the highest degree felicitous. I attended church ; sat with General Scott, dined with him ; called at Mr. Marcy s, but Mrs. Marcy was sick ; called on two members of Congress ; visited Senators Crittenden and Corwin, and Butler King, and other members of the House ; and arrived here this evening at nine o clock to receive your sorrowing letter. General Scott had ascertained that Augustus had passed his examination safely, the general said " very creditably." Governor Marcy, who is now kind to me, spoke of the severity of the ordeal at West Point. WASHINGTON, January 12, 1846. After making two printed volumes, I am, at last, to argue my patent-case orally, and to speak to certain parts of the case at large, leaving to others many topics over which I have labored. I am studious as ever, and I scarcely get time to look abroad. One of our friends is here, endeavoring to persuade the Whigs to sacrifice the interests of the party, to save the value of stocks in Wall Street. He succeeds in showing the Whig members that I am wise, but dishon est (politically), as he thinks, and I am quite able to prove that he is unwise, however honest. My patent-case comes on the 26th of January. I hope to be tolerably pre pared ; but it is an ordeal to take a part in a debate with Phelps, Henderson, Latrobe, Johnson, and Webster. If I do it well it may be useful to me. The slave-case will come I hardly know when. Last night I attended a party at Mr. Seaton s (the mayor). It was a gentlemen s " sociable." All the Whigs, mem bers of Congress, judges, statesmen, etc., were there; Mr. Adams, General Soott, Judge McLean, all our friends but Mr. Webster. The occasion was very pleasant. E. M. Blatchford writes me that he will be here to-night. WASHINGTON, January 15, 1846. My brief in Wilson s patent-case is just completed. I breathe an hour or two before I resume the herculean task of preparing the argument in the slave-cause. We have reached that cause on the calendar, and if Governor Morehead were here I should begin it to-morrow, although my brief is in the roughest form. He is detained at Columbus by sickness. I have had the cause reserved, so that it can be argued when he arrives. On Monday I dined with Mr. Adams. His wife, his daughter-in-law (a widow), and her daughter, were the ladies. Mrs. Adams seems much younger than her husband, is tall, straight, lady-like in her carriage, and dignified and sensible in her conversation. All treated me with much respect and kindness, and repeated to me the kind accounts he had given them of his stay at Auburn. Mr. Adams had Mr. Corwin, Mr. Winthrop, and several other friends to meet me. Mr. Corwin is apparently about forty, perhaps forty -two or forty-three, of a very dark complexion, a free, generous, unpolished man, with a great deal of gentleness, and a countenance which wins your trust and confidence. He is regarded here as among the competitors for President, and is therefore adopted for Vice-President by the friends of General Scott. I think I told you I met the Whigs at Mr. Seaton s. It was the most intellectual 1846.] COR WIN HUNT SEATON. 775 social party I ever met, and there were a thousand delightful things about it. There was, in the centre of the room, John Quincy Adams, the cynosure of all regards. Every one saluted him with respectful veneration. I was honored most delicately hy being placed next him at the supper-table. " Come, sir," said I, " you will need rest when this term of Congress shall end. Will you not come quietly to Western New York once more? " " Why, my dear sir, a mem ber of our House to-day, in answering me, said the time had come when our young men saw visions, and our old men dreamed dreams. It would be a deli cious dream, indeed, if I could dream that I should ever come to see you again." Yesterday Mr. Hunt, of Lockport, made a dinner for me. He brought together Senators Orittenden, J. M. Clayton, Mangum, Berrien, Greene, and others, and Butler King and other members of the House of Representatives. It was a pleasant gathering. We discussed "notice" vehemently, for the edifi cation and guidance of Senators. R. M. Blatchford arrived night before last with Edward Curtis. He lodges with Mr. Webster. I am to dine there to morrow. This evening I go to Mr. Tayloe s, who gives a party to the gentle men in Washington. I did not attend Mrs. Tayloe s party last week. Mrs. Folk s first " drawing-room " comes off next week. I hear of balls announced by the ministers and secretaries, but I have avoided all those dignitaries, and shall probably keep out of the way of compliments from those in authority. I can now see to the end of my sojourn here. My progress will be rapid when I once set out for home. I am already weary of long absence. I wish I could know something of your occupations, your studies, your conversation, and your thoughts. Among the objects of art just now at Washington is a picture copied from Titian s " Venus of the Bath " at Florence. I meant to say something of G-reenough s "Washington," but Blatchford and E. Curtis have just come in. So adieu. WASHINGTON, January 16, 1846. I am going to-morrow morning to Richmond. Shall spend Sunday there, and go to Baltimore on Monday, and return to this city on Tuesday. Last evening I visited Mrs. Adams and her children ; and, at nine, went to a large gentlemen s party at the Tayloes. It was a congregation of the distin guished men of the day Mr. Adams, Mr. Oass, Mr. Buchanan, Mr. Oalhoun, General Scott, Mr. Clayton, Mr. Crittenden, Mr. Benton, and others. Mrs. Tayloe appeared and performed the honors in a most graceful manner. The debate on Oregon has been postponed in the Senate until there is time to hear from England. The resolution for "notice" will pass the House by a large majority. The Whigs approach it by cautious steps, each beginning with modifications ; but they will go the whole in the end. In the Senate, I now think that Mr. Calhoun, with Benton s aid, will try to defeat the motion altogether, or pass a resolution so pusillanimous as to be equally calamitous. Crittenden s resolutions are a ground of compromise, but the Southern Whigs won t come up to them. They will fail altogether, and I look to see Calhoun take the Whigs with him. They all know my dissent, and they con fess it expedient, but they are affrighted. It is in vain that I tell them that if " notice " passes in the House, and is defeated in the Senate, the Senators will LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846 be instructed, and the obnoxious peace-offering will be the signal of a tempest that will sweep them all from their places. You will see, if our friends assume a false and untenable position, within a day or two, a compromise that will harm them, and do no good. I live like a hermit by day, and am in the fashionable drawing-rooms at night. My patent-case comes off on the 26th. At last I am ready for it. Our Ohio case is the next, but Morehead is still detained on the way. I hope to argue it next week. R. M. Blatchford and E. Curtis are here. I urged them both to show Mr. Webster that he ought not to let Mr. Oalhoun win his prizes. But but Cur tis was wiser than I, and Wall Street wiser than the sage of Quincy, or the new apostle of Delaware. General Oass has sunk by being for war, he being a soldier. General Scott gains strength by being for peace. CHAPTER LXII. 1846. Trip to Eichmond and Norfolk. The Happiest People in the World. Benjamin WatMna Leigh. President and Mrs. Polk. Mr. Buchanan s Ball. Governor Marcy and the Diplomats. Colonel Benton. The Calhouns. Mrs. Madison. Mrs. Hamilton. The Oregon " Notice." BABKHM S HOTEL, BALTIMORE, Wednesday, January 2lst. IP you will take up a map, you will see, in tracing my course, that I have had scarcely time enough, since I left Washington, to send you any words of greeting on my flight. I left Coleman s at ten o clock in the evening, having dined in a very quiet way with Mr. and Mrs. Webster. We slept, or tried to sleep, on the boat at the wharf until the hour of departure (three) next morn ing. Whom should I find on board, to my surprise, but Harvey Baldwin with his wife ? Others there were, known to me, but not to you. The boat surrendered ns to the railroad at Fredericksburg a place you may recollect resting in when we were in the South. The cars conveyed us to Richmond across a consider able part of Old Virginia. Here and there I saw a clean, neat, and thrifty- looking plantation, with a large dwelling surrounded by negro-huts. But, gen erally, the land was sterile, the fences mean, and a universal impress of poverty stamped on all around me. We reached Richmond at twelve o clock, and I took a room in the basement, while Mr. Wilson roosted in the attic, of an hotel apparently almost as spacious as the Astor. The Legislature and courts were in session. There are few hotels, and they, of course, were crowded. Without scarcely waiting to look at my toilet, I set out for the Capitol to see the Legislature of the Ancient Domin ion. On the route I stopped at the Whig office, and was told I would find Mr. Gallagher, the editor, at the Capitol. I repaired there, sent for and brought him from his reporter s desk. He showed me a seat, and soon after left me. The Capitol at Richmond stands on a hill that overlooks a great part of the town, the James River, and, beyond its banks, a long tract of beautiful country. i846.] VISIT TO RICHMOND. 777 north, west, and south, highly cultivated and embellished. I know no situation more decidedly beautiful in America. The Capitol is a Grecian structure, after the Parthenon, with a porch and Ionic columns, without turret, steeple, or dome. In a rotunda, which may perhaps be as large in diameter as the dome of our Court-House, was a statue of Washington; not like Greenough s and others, dressed in Roman costume, but in the dress of a Virginia gentleman. The House of Delegates consists of one hundred and thirty-four members, who are crowded into a room not so large, I think, as our court-room at Auburn, with a small gallery, and without ventilation. Across the rotunda, I found the Senate-chamber in a hall of dimensions contracted in an equal degree. The Senate consists of thirty-two members; and I thought that the intelligence, capacity, manners, and tone of the debates, as well as the dress and carriage of the members generally, were quite similar to those in the New York Legis lature. Indeed, I thought they rather excelled our own. Yet the House of Delegates was engaged in debating the foundation of a system of common schools for white children, leaving the African race excluded, of course ; while the Senate was discussing the construction of a Macadam road as a great work of internal improvement. I soon became satisfied that, in a country where nearly half of the population are doomed to ignorance, it is not possible for the privileged class to m.sintain common schools. I entered the Execntive-ch amber without finding a porter to introduce rne, and I had no letters. Three gentlemen were sitting in an apartment as large as the hall of the Capitol at Albany. I selected and addressed the more prominent person as Governor Smith, saying that my name was Sew- ard. I was of "New York, and, being in the city, had called to pay my respects. The person thus selected introduced me to a man of rather shabby exterior as the Governor. He genially asked me to be seated, and treated me with marked respect. He argued with me the danger of amalgamation at the North ; and when I told him that commerce of the races was less fre quent there than in the South, he forgot the question. Yet he was sagacious. In defending myself, I said we had learned what abolition we had from Wash ington and Jefferson. He replied, "No; they did not teach it." I in sisted. " Oh, yes," said he, " but it was all kept within the covers of a book, then." On the way I visited Benjamin Watkins Leigh, to whom I took a letter from Mr. Webster. Mr. Leigh is upward of sixty. He seemed to me to look like Abbott Lawrence, and to be a man of capacity and sincerity. But he had learned to look unfavorably on everything, because everything worked contrari wise. He spoke despondingly about the dangers of war, and the decline of freedom. Of course, we might have debated such questions, but I deferred, and acquiesced when I could without sacrifice of principle. He showed that he had read the entire history of the masonic outrages on William Morgan, and solemnly argued that, although there was such a man as Morgan, he was never imprisoned, nor even abducted, and of course was never murdered. He did not answer where he thought Morgan was. Mrs. Leigh was a daughter of Mr. Wick- ham, one of the counsel of Aaron Burr. She is graceful and lady-like, and her children appeared very well there were seven or eight of them. The evening wore away rapidly during the pleasant hours I spent in this intellectual and agreeable society. 778 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846. The next morning I went to church, and afterward surveyed the town. Richmond is situated on the rapids of the James River, at the head of sloop- navigation. It is built on the summits and the declivities of several hills. The buildings are of brick, substantial and elegant. There are many very tasteful and handsome dwellings and gardens. The population is about twenty-five thousand. There are many flouring-mills, and several factories. The city re sembles Rochester in bustle, spirits, and activity. It is a Northern hive trans ferred to a Southern clime. I noted one flouring-mill that manufactured one thousand barrels of flour daily. The operatives in the mills are negro children. "What wonder that Virginians think the manufacturing system at the North is a slave system? I spent the evening with James Lyons, Esq., a lawyer of Rich mond, and member of the Legislature, a clever, excellent man, who had a wife and five children, all very agreeable and sensible. Occasionally they would require me to censure the agitation about slavery in the North. But I told them frankly I owed it to consistency and truth to declare myself an agitator, though not of the third party. Gradually we learned to forbear discussing topics on which we could not agree. Several other gentlemen of consideration visited me at Richmond. On Monday morning we bade adieu to the city at an early hour, and it was soon my good-fortune to discover the happiest people in the world. You will be surprised to learn that, after traversing so many regions, I should have found the happiest people in the world inhabiting Old Virginia, so long forsaken, as she has been, by the spirit of her ancestors. It was in this wise : There were a dozen, more or less, cabin-passengers. I saw a well-dressed white man lead on board, from the wharf, into the steerage-cabin, a long retinue of young men, young women, and small children of both sexes. They appeared neat, in shabby, second-hand clothing. All seemed smart, and each had a bag, bundle, chest, or bandbox, containing evidently all their worldly gear. I heard a gentleman in the cabin observe, to a modest and pretty young lady under his care, that u we have seventy-five negroes on board ; " and she replied that they were "not pleasant fellow-travelers." As the boat left the wharf, and the cab men, porters, and others, returned to the town, I saw persons adjusting and carrying away handcuffs, which had been worn by some of those " unpleasant " people. The seventy-five wretches, huddled together on the lower deck, looked with puerile curiosity and gratification at all that surrounded them. They saw a steamboat und trod its deck for the first time. They were traveling, and had the excitement of novelty, of change, of knowledge newly acquired. We floated many miles down the river, till we reached the port of entry, where ships anchor. There lay a broad, capacious ship waiting to receive our "un pleasant " fellow-passengers, and carry them to New Orleans, there to be held in the slave-market until sold out to such purchasers as their well-trained, vig orous limbs, and meek and gentle countenances, might attract. There were already one hundred and twenty-five on board the infernal barge, which, lashed to ours, received its contribution. A man of fair complexion and fashionable exterior now left us, and, assuming the office of captain of the ship, gathered in its cargo. As I stood looking at this strange scene, a gentleman stepped up to my side and said : " You see the curse that our forefathers bequeathed to us." 1846.] "THE HAPPIEST PEOPLE IN THE WORLD." 779 I replied, "Yes," and turned away to conceal manifestations of sympathy I might not express. " Oh," said my friend, "they don t mind it; they are cheerful ; they enjoy this transportation and travel as much as you do." " I am glad they do," said I ; " poor wretches 1 The lengthened file at last had all reached the deck of the slaver, and we cut loose. The captain of our boat, seeing me intensely interested, turned to me and said : " Oh, sir, do not be concerned about them ; they are the happiest people in the world ! " I looked, and there they were slaves, ill protected from the cold, fed capriciously on the commonest food going from all that was dear to all that was terrible, and still they wept not. I thanked God that he had made them insensible. And these were " the happiest people in the world ! " The sable procession was followed by a woman, a white woman, dressed in silk, and furs, and feathers. She seemed the captain s wife. She carried in her hand a Bible ! Whether she was partner in the accursed traffic, I knew not ; but I hoped, for her sake, for humanity s sake, for woman s sake, that she was a volunteer minister of consolation. WASHINGTON, Friday, January 2Sd. My last epistle took a sudden flight from Baltimore. I had told you already all I had to say about my excursion in Virginia. But I must not omit to say that far down the river, below the place where I found " the happiest people in the world," the river wound round toward the east, presenting directly before ns a bold shore. On the right, quite near the bank, was a modern, substantial, brick farm-house, of respectable dimensions ; on the left was an antique brick cottage, weather-beaten and dilapidated. Midway between them was an arched doorway, the ruin of the church built by the English colonists, the life of whose chivalrous captain was saved by Pocahontas the church, for aught I now know, that witnessed the baptism of the Indian maiden. This is James town. This is all that remains of the first settlement of Virginia. When we had passed this, a Democratic Virginia Senator on board in vited me to go home with him. And where do you think was his home ? At Yorktown ! I was within ten miles of Yorktown, offered a ride there, enter tainment there, conveyance away from there and yet I oould not go. We passed on until we entered the broad basin of Hampton Roads, formed by the junction of the James, Elizabeth, and Nansemond Rivers. And these roads have a gate. The "Rip Raps" and "Old Point Comfort" are the lintels which contract the passage, and they are fortified. Passing up the Elizabeth River we landed at Norfolk, a thriving town of fifteen thousand people. Ports mouth lies on the opposite bank. It is about as large as Auburn, bnt is de clining. The navy-yard is at this place. I found the officers hospitable and civil. They showed me everything, and sent me back to Norfolk in their boat. One-fifth of the navy of the United States was lying at Norfolk, needing re pairs, but neglected, while Congress was discussing the expediency of seizing the whole of Oregon, and defying the whole world ! "James Grey s Private Jail" was ostentatiously spread out in large letters, on an edifice as large as the jail at Auburn. This was the dungeon for offend ing slaves, for whom there is no writ of habeas corpus, no jail-delivery, but the cupidity of their masters. Time would fail me to tell of hospitalities at Norfolk. We left that city at five o clock ; were overtaken by a snow-storm in 780 LIFE AND LETTERS. [184ft Chesapeake Bay ; lost our way, and got on soundings ; bnt accidentally regained our course, and reached Baltimore at nine, the next day. I am again at home at Coleman s. It has been a profitable and instructive excursion. There is a judicial blindness concerning slavery throughout Virginia. But the subject is too broad for discussion here. The South is panic-struck concern ing war with England ; and boldness is regarded as madness and guilt. The commercial influences are prevalent here, and I hope little from the wisdom of our friends. You will have seen Mr. Eockwell s speech. Our excel lent friend G has been made to write to me ; and he has written, of course, an ill-tempered letter, charging me with supporting Allen, of Ohio, and war. I suppose this letter the opening of a large correspondence, got up by our friends here to control me. Hunt says he thinks Crittenden s resolution will pass the Senate. But while our own friends are acting so unwisely, there is, thank Heaven, some indication of fluttering on the part of the Administration. Brother Jonathan can threaten Bull, when he is held by a Tory premier. But a Whig premier can safely give the ferocious animal rope enough to let him take an assailant upon his horns. Since the arrival of the unexpected intelligence from Europe, the President s counselors are understood to whisper caution and apprehension. u Notice " was peace before. Now they fear it may be war. The Western " Oregon men " are easily excited, and have been very suspi cious of the President and his Cabinet. They gave me a princely welcome at Norfolk. I did not remember, until I arrived there, that it was the scene of the abduction of the poor, shivering slave, by his three freed brethren, which produced the sad breach between the State of New York and the Old Commonwealth. The people there seemed to believe I had been wrong, but firm and honest. It is now probable that the Van Zandt fugitive-slave case will go over until next year, because of the sickness of Governor Morehead, who is of counsel for the plaintiff. My great patent-cause comes off on Monday next, and will continue a week. Duer s vindication brings up fresh to my mind the laborious arguments I held, to convince him of positions which he now maintains with ability and grace. WASHINGTON, Saturday, January 24ZA. I have spent the day in walking and driving about town, leaving cards in re turn for the civilities bestowed upon me by the l)eau monde. There is half an hour before dinner. I give it to you, since it is the only way of dividing with you what pleasurable excitement I find here. On Thursday, the day after my return from the South, I dined with Governor Marcy. His guests were Mr. Packenham, the British; Mr. Bodisco, the Russian ; Don Calderon tie la Barca, the Spanish ; M. Paget, the French minister ; with some other diplomats. The ladies were Mrs. Marcy, Mrs. Walker, the wife of the Secretary of the Treasury, Mrs. Tayloe, and I must not forget the presence of Mr. Secretary Walker, Sec retary Bancroft, and Mr. Tayloe. It was a pleasant party for me. Governor Marcy entertained the company with reminiscences of passages in New York politics. He lives in the past already, and evidently feels that he is descending the ladder on which he mounted so rapidly, so high. The party will follow its Southern, not its Northern leaders. " See, my son," said Oxenstiern, " with how 1846.] MR. BUCHANAN S BALL. 781 little wisdom mankind are governed." The foreign ministers were all amiable, polite, respectable gentlemen. Mr. Bodisco is a very general favorite in the fashionable circles. These representatives of the chief states in the world rose at no time during dinner to the discussion of a question higher than the great ball to be given by Mr. Buchanan, except an aside conversation between Mr. Bancroft and Don Calderon, in which the latter asserted the despotism of public opinion in Amer ica, and the former admitted the soft impeachment. Yesterday was signalized by Mr. Buchanan s party. It was on a new prin ciple, or new at least here. He is a bachelor of sixty, and keeps house ; but, on this occasion, he hired Carusi s saloon the assembly-room of the city and gave a general ball. It was given by, and in the name of, the Secretary of State alone. He sent out thirteen hundred cards of invitation, and denied applica tions, direct and indirect, for two hundred more. Ever since I came here every body that arrived in town seemed to be engaged, directly or indirectly, in soliciting the honor of an invitation. And so the great affair came off at last. I thought there were seven hundred persons present, but others estimated the crowd at a thousand. And a brilliant scene it was. Most of the ladies I thought overdressed. I am sure I see more beauty in a village dancing-school than was permitted by fashion to reveal itself here. But the celebrities of toilet and character were there in great force. Bancroft, the historian, and even Web ster, the orator, wandered at times unknown and undistinguished in the multi tude. I attended Mrs. Marcy to the ball, and acted as her constant cavalier until she retired. I thought this disposition of myself most proper and becom ing. You often jest me for my great reverence of the sex. I must confess my faith in them was tried on this occasion. There was a stage, or elevated plat form, at one end of the hall, upon which fifty or sixty persons might stand. I attained this eminence with Mrs. Marcy ; and the presiding divinity there was Mrs. Madison, who cannot be less than eighty years old, a widow, relict of a founder of the Constitution, of a President of the United States. All the world paid homage to her, saying that she was dignified and attractive. It is the fashion to say so. But, I confess, I thought that more true dignity would have been displayed by her remaining, in her widowhood, in the ancient country mansion of her illustrious husband. Descending from the stage which I have described, and passing toward the porch, midway, on a sofa elevated so as to lift its occupant somewhat above the crowd, was the widow of Alexander Hamilton, the daughter of Philip Schuyler, mother of many children, ninety years old, they say ; dressed Heaven be praised ! not with plumes, but with antiquated starched ruff and cap receiving the salutations of a crowd of friv olous persons whom curiosity brought around her. Mrs. Webster appeared admirably. She has under her care Miss Jaudon, of New York. Mr. Bodisco presented me to madame. He is a Russian, of fifty or more. He found her a child at Georgetown, very beautiful, and married her as soon as she was mar riageable. This was, perhaps, four years ago. She has grown large, but some youthful sweetness and beauty remain. She visited Russia with him, and now excites the envy of her sex by appearing with brilliant necklace, bracelets, etc., of diamonds. From this lady and her suite I turned to Mrs. John Adams, a widow, and daughter-in-law of John Quincy Adams. I attended her to the table ; she is a diffident, amiable lady. My arm was then taken by Mrs. Walker, 782 LIFE AND LETTERS. [184ft wife of the Secretary of the Treasury. I led Mrs. London, of Charlestown, from the room, and Mr. and Mrs. Hunt brought me home. Thus ends the account of the ball the grand ball of the season. Sunday, January 25th. I paid my respects yesterday to about all my acquaintances in the city, chiefly, however, by pasteboard, for it was a sunny day after the snow-storm. I had the honor to make acquaintance with Mr. Calhoun, his wife, and nieoe. They are kind, plain, well-disposed persons. Greatness like his is seldom more full of condescension. Honest John Davis has been quite sick ; Mrs. Davis was out when I called there. I hope to bring on my cause to-morrow ; it will last some days. The opposition of the Whigs to Woodward was effectual. I did not care that it should be so, because I know no reason to hope that any better man will be presented by the President. The injunction of secrecy will be taken off. It will appear that every Whig voted against the confirmation, while twenty Demo crats voted for it. Even Archer voted against it. The news from England is so unexpectedly indicative of a pacific disposition on the part of John Bull that our managers here will wax bold enough to dis gust sensible men everywhere. But, unhappily, just by so much as they bluster will they fail to excite Bull, while they will terrify our commercial city friends, and the few allies we have in the South. Look out, then, for boldness on the Democratic side, and for pusillanimity on ours. Our New York friends here have shaken the Whigs of the Senate much. Orittenden s resolutions will hardly be acceptable to the Democrats now, while our Southern and some of our New England friends will stick a white feather into them, pacific as they are. You see that the General Committee of New York are instructing the Whig mem bers of the Legislature to vote down the resolutions of instruction. The heart of the Whigs here is good, but the flesh is weak. Webster and the National Intelligencer both talk peace. When I go away, the foundation of all the firmness of our few wise friends may be shaken. Let the New York instruc tions come ! If the legislative Regency refuse to pass them, let the Whigs send them. I have suggested to Hunt to take them and offer them as an amend ment. I think he will adopt this course. I trust I have done something to arrest the folly of premature nominations for the presidency. I have shown the old body-guard of Clay that their leader was at Elba, not at St. Helena. I dined a few days since with Governor Marcy. He speaks of the blunders of Wright, and predicts his fall and total overthrow. He hears much of Scott, and sees the mistake he is making, for he said to me without prompting, " Clay will be your candidate next time." The people say that what I have said has strengthened Mr. Clay very much, which is not very much liked by the Scott men. It has only shown that he had strength, when they thought him powerless. S. McOune Smith hardly caught the one thought to which all others pre sented in his address are auxiliary. But the question is going very well. I wish I had been able to prepare a report of rny speech here. It would have answered every purpose at home. The audience seemed to understand and concede my position, not as a favorer or flatterer of Ireland, but as an advocate of universal emancipation and suffrage. Since I wrote you I have extended my acquaintance, chiefly among Demo- 1846.] CALHOUN WEBSTER BENTON. 783 crate, who, strange to say, show me more respect than my own friends. I have met Buchanan, Oalhoun, Ingersoll, Walker, Bancroft, etc. Our slave-cause is like to go over. I regret this. It was a fair case for argu ment that would tell on the country. Our patent-cause is expected to come on to-morrow. Monday Morning, January 2WA. Stevens is here, and we are ready for our argument in the patent-cause ; but the court has let in a privileged State cause before us. We may get it to morrow or next day. An amendment to Orittenden s resolution was offered by Mangum, and, pro voking opposition to negotiation by arbitration, will close up this best avenue to peace. Fatal mistake! Butler King is to introduce it in the House. Ash- mun and all our friends are to go for it, except the New-Yorkers it is said. The Oalhoun men are to go for it, and then we are to make the ill-starred coalition, and be beaten on it; for the Administration " notice " will pass in both Houses. WASHINGTON, January %lth. The court still keeps before me, but my time is fixed. I shall have a hear ing next Tuesday. There is little to be said that would interest you, although the city is full of excitement. Mr. Buchanan, the Secretary of State, retires to the bench, which renders a reorganization of the cabinet needful. It is sup posed that a Southern statesman will take the cabinet; and so we come to a pacific state. Mr. Oalhoun is a frank, unsuspecting man. He has no secrets. He sat down by me to-day, and in twenty minutes told, without reserve, all his thoughts and speculations, about Texas and Oregon, as if I had been of his party. I went last night to call upon Mrs. Polk, who is praised by all people here as a fine person, of unobjectionable ways, and excellent deportment and manners. She is rather quiet, and she is certainly handsome. Colonel Benton made a very able, and another Senator a very ridiculous, speech to-day. The political situation is becoming infinitely complex; Woodward s rejection brings Buchanan on the bench. He was to be nominated to-day, and I suppose has been, but I am not advised. I am told that this is a very agreeable way of getting rid of a Northern man who is for 54 40 , and no less. Mason, now Attorney-General, or some other Southern peace man, will be appointed Secretary of State at which the North west will be angered. I am able to say to you, but to no one else, that the British ministry may be expected to offer (have done so) arbitration, by crowned or uncrowned heads as an alternative. Mangum and Butler King block up the way, by offering an amendment instructing the President to arbitrate ; which the majority will regard as a Whig "Hartford Convention" measure, and vote down. Voting for "no tice" with such an alternative is voting against "notice." Yet it is beyond my power to hold our friends from committing themselves to it, at least many of them. Clayton, Cor win, and Orittenden, stand firm, and are much out of pa tience with Mangum. I believe that I have satisfied Mr. Webster that he has a duty. He has engaged to bring Ashmun, Truman Smith, and Huntington, to see the arbitration as I do. If he keeps right on, as now, all will be very 784 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846 right. But peace-partyism doth readily beset him, and the bankers in Wall Street hold him by strong sympathies. Benton is a great man. He made a sensible and effective speech to-day, against a war-equipment of the navy. Judge McLean spent last evening with me, talking wisely. He specially desired me to go to him to renew it, as I shall do to-morrow. Be sure that now the Oregon question is iu a way of being settled. Gree- ley fails once again about this "notice." Why cannot any sensible man see that if the President wishes to arbitrate, and must arbitrate, he can do so easier without congressional dictation than with it ; that Whigs voting for it oblige Democrats to vote against it, and thus we lose everything? Thursday, 29z5A. The case of Rhode Island vs. Massachusetts was begun in Supreme Court to-day, and it was half opened. The counsel agree, with a majority of the judges, to let me in to deliver my speech before Massachusetts replies. Here is trouble about Buchanan s appointment ! It is said that Vroom, of New Jersey, and Green, of Pennsylvania, are candidates. HOUSE OF KEPRESENTATIVES, January 30, 1846. Of all uncertainties, that of attending the court here is the most perplexing. The letter I have sent to Morgan and Blatchf ord will inform you of the deci sion of the court which keeps me here until Thursday. Mrs. Davis made a nice little sociable last night. I believe it was for myself. It was a very pleas ant evening. Mrs. Alexander Hamilton was of the party. She told me she was eighty-eight years and upward. She talked sensibly of her husband and her papers ; but her memory of current events and contemporaneous persons has ceased altogether. She forgets in a minute what is said to her. I am listening, as well as any member, to a speech by Mr. Hague, of Illinois, for Oregon, and " all of Oregon." The Oregon question begins to drag. The panic of Wall Street has begun to wear off there. It will appall some of our friends here a while longer, but I think we are safe from the peace-party attitude being forced upon us by the Democratic gamblers. President-making is the business of both parties here, and there is a con venient number of candidates. Mr. Buchanan expects to go on the bench, and renounce the field. The "Hunker " party are here from New York, in the persons of Seymour* Bosworth, McVean, and others. John Davis is right about Oregon. So is our excellent friend Dixon. WASHINGTON, February 2d, Monday, p. M. The Rhode Island cause was not finished on Friday. The Chief-Justice was iick this morning. The counsel in that cause were not willing to go on in his absence. We were ; so the court heard me. I have opened on the first three points in our cause, and then the court adjourned. I am to resume and close to-morrow, and leave here so as to be at Auburn on Saturday night. As soon as his argument in the patent-case had been concluded, he returned home the Ohio slave-case having been postponed. At Auburn fresh responsibilities awaited him. 1846.1 WYATT S CASE. 785 CHAPTER LXIII. 1846. Wyatt s Case.- Winter Journey to Florida. The Van Nest Murder. A 31oody Mystery. Popular Excitement. Attempt to lynoh Freeman. A Solemi Appeal. THERE was a convict in the State-prison at Auburn, named Wyatt, who, since his imprisonment, had killed a fellow-convict, and was lying under indictment for murder. Without friends or money, he was un able to procure counsel to defend him on the trial, which was to take place in February. Two days before the appointed time, he sent a message to Governor Seward, imploring his aid. Seward went over to the prison, found the manacled man lying upon the floor, and asked what he could do for him. " Only to see, Governor, that I get a fair trial for this," said Wyatt, holding up his fettered hands. Seward conversed with him about his life, the details of his crime, and his own crude notions about its justification, and finally promised to see that he had competent counsel. Returning home, and thinking over the case, he decided to undertake it himself. About the homicide there was no question ; the facts were admitted, and the evidence was clear. But various incidents of his prison-life, as narrated by keepers and fellow-convicts, seemed to warrant the belief that the morbid state of mind which led to the commission of the deed was actually insanity. Careful study of this phase of the matter satisfied Seward that Wyatt ought to be examined by medical experts, and their testimony as to his sanity would probably determine his fate. But the prisoner had no means, and the law provided none for this purpose. Seward wrote to physicians at the Utica Lunatic Asylum and elsewhere, and at his own expense secured the attendance of the necessary scientific witnesses. The trial occupied eight days, Seward conducting it to the best of his ability in behalf of the accused. The jury went out, but were divided in opinion, and could not agree upon a verdict. They were discharged, and Wyatt was remanded to prison to await another trial. In response to a summons from his father, who desired his aid in business matters, Seward left Auburn immediately after the Wyatt trial, to go to Orange County. It was a tedious winter journey, the most available route being a circuitous one through New England. He wrote after his arrival : FLOBIDA, February 24, 1846. Alter perils by storms and calms, by snow on the earth, and by snow in the air, we arrived here just in time. We left Albany on Friday morning in a severe snow-storm. By dint of perseverance wo reached Pittsfield at midnight, after being fifteen hours on the road. The next morning found us fifteen miles farther OB our way. We arrived at Springfield at noon, and at New York at six, on 50 786 LIFE ANI > LETTERS. [1346. Sunday morning, having lost just twenty-eight hours. We crossed to Jersey Oity, and went to Paterson by railroad. Then, at the cost of twenty-two dol lars, I took a sleigh to bring us to this place ; but the horses gave out, and left me at Polidore s at eleven o clock that night. I arrived here at an early hour yesterday morning. My father is as well as usual, but he is very infirm. The school flourishes, to the great satisfaction of all parties This is the day of sale of the real estate. It is cold and clear, with a bright sky. He remained at Florida until about the 14th of March, when he went up to Albany. On that day he read in the papers a brief an nouncement of horrible and unaccountable murders, said to have been committed near Auburn, by a negro, named Freeman. Apparently without any provocation, or any desire for plunder, he had killed Mr. Van Nest, a respected farmer, living on the shore of the Owasco Lake, and several, if not all, of his family. In the course of a few days came further details. The newspapers described the bloody scene, the fright ful wounds of the victims ; gave a diagram of the house, and a picture of the murderer ; narrated his flight, pursuit, and capture, and the pro ceedings of the coroner s inquest ; but could give no explanation of the motives that led to the deed. He had been wounded in the bloody struggle ; had stolen a horse to escape, stabbed him, and stolen another; had stopped at the house of a relative thirty miles from Auburn ; was easily traced, captured, carried back to the house where the crime was committed, and confronted with the wounded survivors ; had not only acknowledged the crime, apparently without remorse or compunction, but had even laughed in the faces of his captors and his victims. The sight of the murderer, and the story of his cold-blooded indifference, had inflamed the popular indignation to the highest pitch. When the sheriff had undertaken to bring him down to the village, and through its streets to the jail, the gathering throng in wagons, on horseback, and on foot, had pursued him with cries for vengeance. Some had hastily prepared a rope to hang him to the nearest tree, and all had clamored for his instant execution without waiting for the tedious forms of law. Only the sheriff s swift horse and prompt dexterity had been able to elude the mob, and lodge Freeman safely behind the bars of the jail. Such was the startling tale from Auburn that reached Seward at Albany. A day or two later came a letter from Mrs. Seward, saying : The occurrence of that fearful murder has made me feel very much alone with the little ones. You have, of course, read all that the newspapers can tell about the frightful affair ; nothing else has been thought or talked of here fcr a week. There is still something incomprehensible about it, to my mind. I cannot conceive it possible for a human being to commit a crime so awful without a rtrong motive, either real or imaginary, for the act. In this case no such motive 1846.] A BLOODY MYSTERY. 787 has been discovered. Bill Freeman is a miserable, half-witted iiegio, but re cently emancipated from the State-prison, and did not know by sight the mem bers of the family he has murdered. It is supposed that some one by the name of Van Nest was instrumental in sending him to prison ; but this does not appear at all certain, though his imprisonment is all the reason he assigns for the com mission of the horrible deed. He says he should have murdered others, had he not been disabled ; and, also, that it was his intention to set fire to the house. He manifests no remorse or fear of punishment. If it was an act of revenge alone, why so long delayed? He sought no peculiar opportunity, but walked into the house in the evening, while most of the inmates were still up and all awake ! He has been out of prison six months, and has had the same oppor tunity every night ; and then, when he first left the prison, would have been the time that any other man, believing himself the object of an aggravated in justice, would have chosen to wreak his vengeance upon an enemy then, while smarting with the severity of prison discipline. No 1 I believe he must have been impelled by some motive not yet revealed. There was a terrible commo tion in the village as he was carried through ; it is a matter of wonder to me now that, in that excited state of popular feeling, the creature was not mur dered on the spot. Fortunately, the law triumphed ; and he is in prison await ing his trial, condemnation, and execution which so many felt unwilling to defer for an hour. I trust in the mercy of God that I shall never again be a witness to such an outburst of the spirit of vengeance as I saw while they were carrying the murderer past our door. Rumors now came thick and fast to explain the tragedy. It was said that Freeman had an enmity against the Van Nest family ; that they were witnesses against him at the time he had been sent to prison ; that he had received former injuries from them, etc. But each of these, when carefully sifted, proved to be utterly without foun dation, and the mystery grew deeper instead of clearer. That he was not in his right mind few were willing to believe, especially when they remembered how methodical was his action, both in planning and ex ecuting his crime, and how eager he seemed to be to escape from its consequences. Then, too, came into play that instinct of self-preser vation which thrills through every community where a murder is com mitted ; bringing, as it does, to every household the appalling thought that the crime may next be repeated in their midst. Of such feelings were born the impatient exclamations, heard everywhere in Auburn, that " the brute ought not to live another hour ! " Furthermore, he was a negro, and a degraded one, a convicted thief. Why prolong his worthless life, and endanger the safety of the community? If he was crazy, it only made the danger greater ; and, whether crazy or not, "hanging was too good for him." Nobody dreamed that he would escape prompt conviction and execution ; but people chafed to think that the law interposed any delay before that desired consummation. The funeral of the victims at the " Sand-Beach Church," on the shore of the Owasco Lake, was an occasion of deep and thrilling inter- 783 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846. est. A multitude of people flocked thither from Aulurn, and from the surrounding farms. Four coffins were ranged side by side in front of the pulpit, and over them the clergyman preached a sermon which closed with an appeal : If ever there was a just rebuke upon the falsely so-called sympathy of the day, here it is ! Let any man in his senses look at this horrible sight, and then think of the spirit with which it was perpetrated, and. unless he loves the mur derer more than his murdered victims, he will he must confess that the law of God which requires that " he that sheddeth man s blood by man shall his blood be shed," is right, is just, is reasonable. . . . The wretch who committed this horrid deed has been in the school of a State-prison for five years, and yet comes out a murderer ! Besides, it is an undeniable fact that murder has increased with the increase of this anti- capital-punishment spirit. It awakens a hope in the wretch that, by adroit counsel, law may be perverted, and jurors bewildered, or melted by sympathy; that, by judges infected with it, their whole charges may be in favor of the ac cused ; that, by the lavishment of money, appeals might be multiplied, and, by putting off the trial, witnesses may die. Why, none of us are safe under such a false sympathy as this! ... I appeal to this vast assembly to maintain the laws of then: country inviolate, and cause the murderer to be punished ! Every word of this appeal, made under such solemn and mournful circumstances, fell upon the ears of the excited gathering like words of inspiration. It was fervently responded to, talked over, and praised was printed, and thousands of copies scattered gratuitously far and wide. CHAPTER LXIV. 1846. St. Patrick and Ms People. Convention Delegates. General Taylor marching to the Rio Grande. Oregon Compromise. Webster and Adams." 54 40 , or Fight I " BEFOEE Seward had concluded his business in Albany, St. Patrick s day came round, and nothing would satisfy his warm-hearted friends among the Irishmen but that he should attend their national festival. He went to the dinner, and proposed to remain a quiet spectator of the proceedings ; but presently a toast was offered recounting his praises, and thereupon the impulsive and enthusiastic company broke into round after round of applause, and rose to give cheer after cheer. The din grew greater until, with a smile, he rose and said : " It is manifest, Mr. President, that I shall be allowed to be silent no longer." Then, alluding to the toast, he remarked they had exer- 1846.] SILAS WRIGHT. 789 cised their " national privilege to flatter and mistake," and that at least he was "fortunate in his misfortunes." Then, turning to the Governor, Silas Wright, who was also one of the guests, he asked him whether the most fortunate event in the life of a Governor of New York was not his retirement, and " whether I am not more fortunate than himself, in having earlier passed through the storms with which he is buffeting, and in having found a calm and secure harbor ? " To this Governor Wright, smiling, bowed assent. Seward then alluded to the history of Ireland, from the time when St. Patrick found its people heathens and barbarians. He referred to its hundred years of struggles ; its five ancient kingdoms Leinster, Munster, Ulster, Connaught, and Meath; its divisions of the people into tribes; its con quest by Henry II.; its Parliament; and its devastation by the Lords Lieutenants, who, as Queen Elizabeth was assured, " had left little to reign over but ashes and carcasses." He described the code inter dicting religious faith under penalty of disfranchisement ; its mere shadow of a constitutional legislature, and the final subversion of that ; its trade, so poor that " even now, when the country is visited by a famine, not a cargo of corn from America can reach that unhappy country, except it be unloaded on the docks of England;" and its laborers, " whose landlords are in England or in Italy." Avowing his desire that the Irish people should have free and equal suffrage, in the choice of representatives in Parliament, he said : I may be told that Irishmen are incompetent to govern themselves. Let them try. It is certain they could not govern themselves worse than England governs them. . . . But I am asked, " Would you give the ballot to every man learned or unlearned, bond or free ? " Yes. ... I would indeed prefer that the school-master should precede the ballot-box ; but universal education is sure to follow universal suffrage. He closed by giving as his toast, " Suffrage and education." Toward the close of the month, the decision of the Supreme Court of the United States, in favor of his client, Wilson, in the suit in regard to the planing-machine patent, was announced. It was an au gury of success, as well as an encouragement to perseverance in that branch of legal practice. His professional occupations kept him closely engaged in his room or in the courts, and he had but little time to look in upon the Legislature, now in session at the Capitol. The chief subject of legislative debate, this year, was the question of constitu tional amendment. The longer the debate went on, the more the breach between the two Democratic factions seemed to widen. Gov ernor Wright, anxious to preserve the unity of his party, had endeav ored to pursue a middle course, and avoid becoming identified with either " Hunkers " or "Barnburners." But the drift of events drew 790 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1840 him gradually toward the side of the radicals, or, as they now named themselves, the " Progressive Democracy." The Whig minority, though apparently powerless, during these years of Democratic discord gave their support alternately to which ever faction most nearly accorded with their own views. Thus, in regard to internal improvements and finance, they and the " Hunkers " acted together ; while in regard to slavery, popular rights, and reforms, they were frequently combined with the " Barnburners." There was no formal coalition at any time, but by concert of action any two out of the three parties could for a time sway the Legislature. Occasion ally, the two Democratic factions would combine, especially upon ques tions of patronage. The Constitutional Convention, which had received the popular sanction at the fall election, was to assemble during the coming sum mer. Already the politicians in the various counties were discussing their candidates for delegates, and projects of amendment which they should be instructed to support. Seward s Whig friends naturally came to him, both in Albany and in Auburn, for advice upon these subjects. He counseled them to adhere to the ground they had advo cated in regard to internal improvements and State finances ; to aid in reforming the judiciary system, in diminishing official patronage, in modifying and ultimately doing away with the feudal tenures ; and especially to labor for free schools and universal suffrage. Personal friends urged that he and Mr. Weed should take part in the proceedings of the convention in person, and offered to nominate both for seats. They claimed that they could elect Mr. Weed a dele gate, even in Albany ; and that Seward could be chosen from some locality in the western part of the State. Yet, while such action would give an opportunity to place himself again on record in behalf of constitutional reforms, that would be all. It would be unavailing, so far as achieving those reforms was concerned, for those sharing his views in regard to the canals and free suffrage would evidently be in a minority in the convention. But a more fatal objection still was the probability that the presence of " Weed and Seward " in the conven tion would stimulate fresh discords among the Whigs, discordant enough already. Writing to Alvah Worden about this, he said : AUBURN, March 28, 1846. The demonstration in favor of Weed, which you speak of, would indeed be useful ; and if the triumph at the polls could end the consequences, it would be wise. But the convention must follow, and the appearance there of the person referred to would be the signal, I fear, for organizing a faction against him and us, that would defeat the great purposes of that august assemblage. It does not seem necessary that he should have his vindication in that way, or that it should come now. 1846.] THE NATIONAL FUTURE. 791 And a few days later, writing to Weed, he said : AUBURN, March 28, 1846. Buggies writes me, offering a nomination from Ohautauqua to the conven tion. I shall of course decline, as soon as I get time. The world are all mad with me here, because I defended Wyatt too faithfully. God help them to a better morality ! The prejudice against me grows, by reason of the Van Neat murder. He availed himself of the opportunity to give, in his letter declining the Chautauqua nomination, his views in regard to free suffrage and the national future : A part of the community hesitate to adopt the principle of universal suf frage, and weakly imagine that democracy in the State of New York can be wisely clogged a little longer. The opponents of universal suffrage have fallen back upon the plea of the hopeless debasement of the African rats. With the aid of mistaken philanthropists, they hope to defeat the enfranchisement of the colored man, by the artifice of submitting an article for that purpose to the people, separately from all other amendments to the Constitution. . . . We have reached a new stage in our national career. It is that of territorial aggrandizement. The people have instructed the President to maintain the American title to the whole of Oregon. The President thereupon requires the consent of Congress for the proper notice to Great Britain. Congress debates and hesitates until the effect of the notice is altogether lost. It is slavery that " doth make cowards of us all," and justly so. New York, without a discontented citizen or subject within her borders, would be stronger alone than all the twenty-eight States. Massachu setts defied England seventy years ago. She has only one statesman who would dare to commit her to such a conflict now, and he belongs to the Revolutionary age rather than to this. I want no war. I want no enlargement of territory, sooner than it would come if we were contented with " a masterly inactivity." I abhor war as I detest slavery. I would not give one human life for all the continent that re mains to be " annexed." But our population is destined to roll its resistless waves to the icy barriers of the north, and to encounter Oriental civilization on the shores of the Pacific. The monarchs of Europe are to have no rest while they have a colony remaining on this continent. France has already sold out. Spain has sold out. We shall see how long before England inclines to follow their example. It behooves us, then, to qualify ourselves for our mission. We must dare our destiny. We can do this, and can only do it by early measures which shall effect the abolition of slavery without precipitancy, without oppression, without injustice to slaveholders, without civil war, with the consent of mankind, and the approbation of Heaven. The restoration of the right of suffrage to freemen is the first act, and will draw after it, in due time, the sublime catastrophe of emancipation. Meanwhile, intelligence from Washington showed that the Texas question was rapidly coming to a crisis. The Administration, in Jan- 792 LIFE ^D LETTERS. [1848 uary, had ordered General Taylor to cross the river Nueces, which had been understood to be the Texan boundary, and to march to the Rio Grande, thus occupying the broad strip of territory between the two rivers, which, even in Texas, had been regarded as debatable ground. In obedience to these orders, General Taylor had promptly marched from Corpus Christi to the Rio Grande, a distance of a hundred miles or more, and his army was now called the " Army of Occupation." Mexico had protested against the annexation of Texas, as a hostile act. This seizure of two thousand square miles more of Mexican territory, it was at once felt, must provoke war, unless the Mexicans were ready to surrender their whole country piecemeal. As the head of the column of the " Army of Occupation " pressed for ward, the Mexican garrisons hastily fled across the Rio Grande. Gen eral Taylor s troops at once erected batteries to defend their position, which commanded the public square in Matamoras on the other side of the river. General Ampudia, the commander of the Mexican fprces, requested General Taylor to return to his former position on the Nueces, " while our Governments are regulating pending questions relative to Texas." Of course, General Taylor replied that he was acting under the orders of his Government. Among other news came reports that the Ameri can consul at Matamoras had been imprisoned ; that the American squadron in the Gulf, under Commodore Conner, had orders to co5perate with Taylor in the struggle ; and, further, that John Slidell had been sent by the President on a special mission to Mexico, to endeavor to adjust the national differences, maintain peace, and hold Texas. As to Oregon, the Government was committed apparently to a simi lar course, and, if consistent, would now order troops to march to the parallel of 54 40 . The debate on the proposal to give notice to Great Britain of the termination of the joint occupancy of Oregon resulted at first in a disagreement between the two Houses. A conference committee, however, adjusted a form of compromise of the "notice," which was adopted by Congress, and approved by the President, toward the close of April. But it had already become mani fest that the Administration, while intent upon securing Texas for the extension of slavery, even at the cost of war, was by no means so tena cious of the northern territory, where slavery was not likely to go. It began to be rumored that the Administration was willing to recede from " 54 40 or fight," and take, instead, a compromise-line on the forty-ninth parallel. In April a letter to Weed announced a proposed Western tour : AUBURN, April 5th Sunday. Wilson ha8 summoned me to meet him at New York, or Washington, to at tend him to Cincinnati. I am crowded for time, weary of waiting in Albany 1846.] THE OREGON QUESTION. 793 and the East, and have concluded to go westward from this point. Thus is one of the dreams of my life realized a visit to the Mississippi. I have now an opportunity of securing its -accomplishment. I wish that you could he with me ; but we are buckets one drops into the well as the other rises to the earth s sur face. The nomination of you by the Albany County Convention was fortunate and honorable. I am glad that you declined. We must bring the Whig party into complete ascendency before they will forgive us. The convention has been precipitated by the feuds of the Democratic party, and finds us not quite prepared for the suffrage question. It will ripen soon, however. I am alarmed by the fear of the Oregon question coming back upon us, and finding us unable to resist its weight. If I know anything aright, I can not be mistaken in supposing that it is right, as it is wise, to cement an alliance with the West. You may think me poetical or imaginative, but I believe time will rapidly vindicate my notions. I think it needful to make, now, our separa tion from the Webster and Southern Whigs on this head. It seems necessary for us, to protect ourselves against responsibility for our allies. I shall probably land at Erie, take stage-coach ninety miles to Beaver on the Ohio, thirty miles below Pittsburg, ascend to that place, descend then five hun dred miles by steamboat on the Ohio to Cincinnati, appear there in court before McLean, and then descend to Lexington, and, I hope, to New Orleans. I go to-morrow evening at nine. I hope to manage so that no notaries public will resume correspondence with you, on my account, during my absence. But, if they do, you need not fear them. The Oregon question was approaching its conclusion, through the evident determination of Congress to make the "notice" a prelimi nary to negotiation, instead of a step toward hostilities. The will ingness of the Administration to compromise with Great Britain upon the forty-ninth parallel was now apparent. Great Britain having claimed to the Columbia River, and the United States to 54 40 , this line of 49, it was now urged, was about midway between their respec tive demands, and therefore might be accepted by both. At the opening of the Administration, the Democratic party had asserted the title of the United States up to 54 40 to be clear and unquestionable. Mr. Webster, Mr. Crittenden, and Mr. Benton, in their speeches on the question, counseled avoidance of war with Great Britain, and inclined toward a peaceable solution by concession. In this they gained favor at the South, and among conservatives at the North. But Mr. Adams, and the antislavery Whigs, had preferred to offer no opposition to an effort to secure free territory. They said that if the Administra tion was sincere, and its claim was just, then it was entitled to patri otic support by men of every party. If its claim of 54 40 was a mere pretense, it was right that the responsibility of backing down from it should rest upon the Administration, rather than be thrown upon the Whigs. 794 J^E AND LETTERS. [1848 CHAPTER LXV. 1846. Western Tour. Pittsburg. The Ohio River. Wheeling. Cincinnati Louisville. Lex ington. Cassius M. Clay. Henry Clay at Ashland. Southern Indiana and Illinois. Vincennes. Vandalia. The Prairies. Butler Seward. St. Louis. Steamboat-Life on the Mississippi. Memphis. New Orleans. Volunteers for Mexico. War proclaimed. Palo Alto and Eesaoa de la Palma. The Future. A PEW days later Seward was on his way to the West. His letters home, as usual, described the journey and its incidents. EBIE, PA., Wednesday, April 8, 1846. Thus far my route is familiar to even your untraveled eyes. Hawley will accompany me to Pittsburg. Franklin is situated sixty miles from this place, on the Alleghany River Pittsburg seventy miles lower down, as you know. We have information, not altogether reliable, that steamboats at this early season ascend to Franklin. The road to both places is one, until you reach Meadville. I should be very glad to take a trip down the Alleghany, as the country is nearly connected with Western New York, and is comparatively unknown to me. With this view we leave this place, reserving a decision as to our route from Meadville until we shall have more accurate information con cerning the condition of navigation. The voyage from Buffalo here was ob structed somewhat by ice in the harbor, and a high wind, which arose as we approached this port. The boat was small, and I was glad to part with the capricious god of the shallow sea. PITTSBUEG, April 11, 1846 Saturday. The route from Erie brought us comfortably along the turnpike-road through a country quite new, and marked with no extraordinary evidence of enterprise. A ridge of less than ten miles extent intervenes between the valley of the Alle ghany and the lake. Meadville is a large, well-constructed town. We hurried through that place and Mercer, an old shire-town in a thinly-inhabited region; thence through a still more quaint-looking place, called Harmony, in Butler County, where our road clambered continually across, and along, and around, stupendous hills, the uneasy cradle of the Alleghany River. These elevations, not unlike those in the southern part of Onondaga County, were more frequent and confused until we arrived within a few miles of this extraordinary place. It was nightfall ; we rose on an eminence of three hundred feet. Before us, at that depth, lay Pittsburg, wrapped in a cloud of dense smoke, through which streams of fire broke forth irregularly, marking the site of the " Iron City." With all caution in the application of the brake to the wheels of our ponderous carriage, we rattled down the steep declivity, entered a covered bridge, passed over the Alleghany River, and through long streets filled with forges and shops, and brought up at the St. Charles Hotel. Our journey had been thirty-six hours ; we slept five at Mercer on buffalo-robes spread upon the floor, all the beds being occupied by persons attending the County Court. Mr. Wilson ar rived at the same house, after a journey of four days on the Southern route, and met me at breakfast. 1846.] PITTSBURG AND ITS MANUFACTURES. 795 Pittsburg and the adjacent country are inhabited by a population unlike that of New York or New England. They are colonized by people from Eastern Pennsylvania (mostly Germans), and from Southwestern New York. When you arrive within five miles of the city, you discover excavations in the hill-sides a hundred or more feet above the town. These are the entrances to coal-mines. They bring that valuable mineral from any hill-side down into the valley. The Alleghany comes in a southwesterly course at the foot of a high, abrupt ridge; its waters transparent and wholesome. The Monongahela, drawing its floods from a more southerly ridge of the Alleghany Mountains, pours a turbid stream into the Alleghany. The two are the long arms with which the Ohio grasps the States of New York and Virginia, and, in spite of all political obstructions, binds them together in an indissoluble union, if not of affection, at least of interest. The calamity which fell upon Pittsburg a year ago, when a large part of the city was reduced to ashes, is yet fresh in the memory of its citizens. But the town has repaired its losses in a good degree. There are only ruins enough re maining to indicate the locality, though not the extent, of the desolation. The friend of national industry can find no place on the continent, I think, more full of interest. There are eleven large founderies where iron is cast in every form of utensil, or is rolled and manufactured. I have spent hours in visiting these great establishments. I saw them yesterday prepare the mould and cast a Paixhan gun of seventy -pound shot. The mould is contained in two iron covers, each of the shape of half a cannon cut longitudinally. Each of these is filled with wet sand. A wooden frame of wood is impressed in this sand, and thus it is made to take a hollow form of the shape of the ordnance. When these moulds are thus prepared they are nicely adjusted, and clasped with strong iron bands. The whole is then lifted by a crane, and let down endwise into a pit in the f oundery, the largest end downward. Then an iron tube, coated with sand on the inside, is stretched along from the furnace to the mould; the liquid metal is admitted into this tube, and, passed into the mould, fills up the entire space, and remains cooling there four days. Then the mould, and the iron con tained within it, are lifted by the crane from the pit. The solid iron mass, un covered from the mould, is transferred to an iron bed. An auger is applied to the small end of the casting, and this, constantly propelled by steam-power, bores the cannon. This boring operation requires a week, and is done with the use of two augers, the last larger than the first. After this process, the opera tion of smoothing and finishing the cannon takes place. Then it is tested, and is ready for delivery. Among other curious things here are a wire suspension bridge over the Mo nongahela, and a wire suspension aqueduct across the Alleghany. The wire is small, but is formed into a strand of perhaps a thousand threads, and thus is made to resist any conceivable pressure. The whole is painted and protected from the weather. I went through an extensive glass-manufactory yesterday. The operation of blowing glass is familiar to us all, but we are not so well acquainted with that of pressing the glass into the shapes it assumes on our table. This is done by iron moulds, applied while the glass is yet fluid. You know that the cutting ia performed by the grindstone. I no longer wonder at the expense of cut-glass after seeing the labor of bringing it to perfection. Since I began this desultory letter, I have had a walk of a quarter of a mile 796 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846 through subterranean coal-fields. The vein is horizontal. It opens into a side- hill, and an aperture is made about six feet high and six feet square. This is drained by a ditch that leads the water to the surface. Planks are laid down over the drain. The collier has a small, low car, which will hold about twenty bushels. He harnesses two stout mastiff dogs to this car, puts a lamp into his hat, whistles to his team, and they draw the car along the subterranean railroad until he comes to the diggers. There they blast the coal from its bed, shovel it into the car, and the dogs draw it out again, and then claim their well-deserved meal. The dogs, always docile, resented the intrusion of strangers into their horrid den. We leave this place on Monday morning for Wheeling. I have found collegiate friends here, who have made my visit very agreeable. But I must arrest my pen. STEAMBOAT HIBEBNIA, ON THE OHIO, | Wednesday, April 15, 1846. \ If you will look upon the map, I think you will find a place named Gallipolis, about three hundred miles below Pittsburg, which will indicate my route. We left Pittsburg on Monday afternoon, in a small boat that trades between that place and Wheeling. It delivered us at the latter place at daylight on Tuesday morning. The Ohio is a clear, shallow stream, flowing between high banks, and is scarcely wider than the Mohawk at Schenectady. The banks are well culti vated, and you can scarcely imagine, as you glide past the pretty farm-houses and brick villages, that you are nearer the Mississippi than the ocean. There are many islands, but none so beautiful as the gems of the Mohawk. Wheeling contains about ten thousand people, is ambitiously built, and is, I think, more prosperous than any town in Virginia, except Richmond. Several citizens, among whom was the mayor, called upon us, and spared no effort to make our visit agreeable. We visited the iron-manufactories, glass-furnaces, and other establishments, and were amazed by the exhibition of so much capital so effectu ally employed. The boat Hibernia, descending from Pittsburg, received us last evening at sunset in a rain-storm. Night soon closed in upon us; and, when I awaked this morning, we had passed Blennerhassett s famed island, and Marietta, the cradle, if I remember rightly, of Ohio. I have heard much of the splendor of steamboats on the Western rivers, but my experience thus far does not justify their praises. Here is a vessel of eighty feet ; all the lower deck is devoted to machinery, freight, fuel, and a steerage-cabin. Ascending a flight of stairs, you enter a saloon, sixty feet long, at the forward end of which is a baggage-room, and at the aft end a ladies cabin. The sides of the saloon are occupied by state-rooms, with a promenade on the outside. There is a dry deck-roof. In this small space are crowded a hundred passengers. The rooms are badly ven tilated, and the table defies description. We are now below latitude 39, lower than Cape Henlopen. The weather is damp and uncomfortable. The forest is yet dreary ; but the elms, willows, and sycamores, are green ; the peach-trees and cherry-trees are in full blossom. One may easily see how "snags" and "sawyers" are multiplied in the Western rivers. The banks are composed of a sandy soil, without rocks, or even clay. This river rises twenty-five feet high, and washes the earth away from the roots of huge trees. The subsiding flood leaves the base of a tree exposed. Every year removes the earth between it and low-water mark; and at last it falle 1846.] CINCINNATI AND THE OHIO RIVER. 797 into the river, and is carried down toward the sea. Perhaps it fixes its rooti in the muddy basin of the river, while it lifts its head almost to the water s edge. Boats, passing it, sharpen its branches, and at length it becomes a pointed stake, which penetrates the hull of some passing boat, and then there are affliction and mourning. We are promised that we shall reach Cincinnati to-morrow morn ing in time for breakfast. I hope you read the passages in the Senate between Mr. Ingersoll and Mr. Webster. I think Congress hardly excels the Legislature of New York. April 19, 1846. My last letter was an attempt at one, committed on board of the steamer descending the Ohio from Wheeling. We lost much of the pleasure, or the "luxury of the voyage," as tourists describe it, by reason of the cold weather, which drove us into the crowded cabin, with its monotony of feeding the pas sengers. It was at Pittsburg that I first observed a peculiarity in the Western towns as to their appearance from the river. It was not until we came to Gallipolis that this peculiarity became distinctly understood. Instead of finding the town brought down close to the river, and crowding its channels, you see a wide, long, open space, paved, extending one-third or one-half the length of the city ; and the stores and houses are built on the aides of this area. As the Ohio flows between high banks, and is now twenty feet lower than high-water mark, this space is much wider at this season. This is the " Levee " of which we read in descriptions of New Orleans, St. Louis, and Cincinnati. In the busy season it is crowded with merchandise waiting delivery from or to the steamboats. There are no sailing-vessels on this river. Commerce is carried on exclu sively in steamboats. With an immense manufacturing population, in Pittsburg, Wheeling, and Cincinnati, there is not one mill operating with water-power. Bituminous coal supplies steam at a cheaper cost than water-power is obtained in our towns. There was a story about a locality called "Hanging Rock," on the Ohio side, which called us all up from the tea-table. There was a neat, spacious dwelling- house, with buildings appurtenant. The story ran that, fifteen or even more years ago, the owner, being about to die, appealed to his wife to promise him that she would not marry after his death, which she refused. He made his will, that he should be placed in a stone coffin above-ground, so that his presence might deter her from giving her hand to a second lord. This was executed. He remained thus, sleeping in the garden, until last year, when the coffin was lowered into the earth, and a monument is now being erected over the grave. The wife is still a widow. The wild mountain scenery nicely adjusts itself to this queer little romance. Cincinnati is a great town, a beautiful city. It is Rochester tripled in popu lation and in proportions. I think it numbers eighty thousand people, and swells every year. It is bounded on the north by high hills. One-fourth of the peo ple are Germans ; nearly all the servants and laborers are so. The business-men in all professions are, in large proportion, natives of New York. Colleges, acad emies, and theological institutions, meet you on every side, and there are sixty or seventy churches. Sandford is a druggist here. He joined fortunes with Park, from Oneida County. They set up their shop here four or five years ago, 798 LTFE AND LETTERS. [1846 and have been successful. They bought a farm of three hundred acres in Ken tucky, five miles from this city. There they have erected a beautiful brick cottage, and fitted and furnished it tastefully. They have employed any number of Germans, who are converting its declivities into vineyards, of which they will have a hundred acres ; and there they are engaged in making the Catawba wine, and raising peaches and strawberries for this market. I spent a night there pleasantly. I found Frankenstein completing your bust. He is a very accom plished artist, and his landscapes are in high estimation. My room is so full of company that I have scarcely a moment s leisure. I have seen many of the gentlemen of all parties here, and they are very civil. I am, moreover, engaged in "Wilson s patent-business, which exacts much time. Mr. Garniss is one of the men of wealth and fashion here. He has been very civil to me. So has Judge McLean. And whom should I meet here but Mrs. Maury, who is engaged in her ambitious pursuits, and visits clergy, laity, and all public institutions? I have to argue a motion for an injunction for Mr. Wilson some day this week. That matter disposed of, I shall go to Lexing ton, then to St. Louis, and then to New Orleans. LOUISVILLE, Sunday, April 26th. Hurried as I am when separated from Mr. Wilson, and engrossed with his business when with him, I cannot even write to you without the utmost diffi culty. The people of Cincinnati were exceedingly kind to me. A public dinner was offered and declined. I took passage in a steamboat, with Hawley and Smith, for Maysville, a small city on the south side of the river. It was a balmy, beautiful day. Civil friends, of whom the elder favored me for my support of Mr. Clay, and the younger for principles that are working deeply in the public mind, made the voyage agreeable. I was displaced from my seat at the dinner-table, on board the boat, to make room for a "lady," who had been overlooked. When she came forth, lo ! it was a chamber-maid of the hotel where I lodged at Cincin nati. I resigned cheerfully, and rejoiced inwardly at the tendency of civiliza tion, which, beginning with the gallantry of the chivalric age, may be expected to promote, by-and-by, the courtesy which can spring only from a due estima tion of the natural rights of man. Maysville is half as large as Auburn, but it is a town where slave-labor excludes the voluntary system that is building up great towns in Ohio. I visited a manufactory of hemp, which is there con verted into bagging and ropes. On Thursday morning we set out for Lexington, sixty-three miles distant. We traversed a land of unequaled fertility, over a road of great smoothness and beautiful curves. We all rode on the outside of the coach. The planters near the Ohio cultivated hemp and tobacco; farther on, wheat and maize; and, near Lexington, hemp chiefly. Paris, in Bourbon County, is a fine, substantial, and pleasant town, founded during the Revolution. The town and county received their now unmeaning names as an expression of gratitude to France and Louis XVI. for their aid in the Revolutionary War. The name of Lexington was bor rowed by Virginians, about the same time, from the scene of the first strife for liberty in Massachusetts. Having heard so much of the beauty of the environs of Lexington, I persevered in keeping my outside place through a heavy rain, which greeted us as we entered the town. 1846.] AT LEXINGTON AND ASHLAND. 799 Immediately after passing from the State of Ohio, the echoes of freedom and emancipation died away ; the praises of Cassius M. Clay were lost ; and civilities and kindness attended us everywhere only because we are recognized as pilgrims to Ashland. I heard no mention of the young reformer until we were driving down the turnpike into Lexington, when the driver said to me : "I reckon you have heard of Oassius M. Clay ? " "Yes," I answered. u That is his house," said he. As soon as I had breakfasted I strolled up the street. The negroes, with evident alacrity, pointed out the way, and the gate of their friend. I entered a beautiful park, in the centre of which was an elegant stone cottage embowered with shade-trees and shrubbery. A gentleman of thirty-five, fine, straight, and respectable in his look, came forth in a wrapper when I rang the bell. u Have I the pleasure of seeing Mr. Olay ? " " That is my name." " Mine is Seward, from New York. I have come to see yon." "Not William H. Seward?" " Yes, sir. I expected to see an older person." * And I expected to find one of more youthful aspect." We were soon "well acquent." I had not much misconceived him. My visit seemed very grateful to him. I found him sensitive, and not a little grieved by the alienation of friend*, neighbors, and virtually the whole com munity. He accompanied me to town to find Hawley and Smith, to invite them with me to spend all the time we could here at his house. We found them riding out with Mr. Smith. That gentleman was one of the mob that over threw the press; and he, with his polite neighbors, finding that this means had not been successful in converting Mr. Clay to the peaceful way in which he should walk, had concluded to taboo the advocate of emancipation. Thus it soon became apparent that, in Lexington, there was no neutral or common ground. I must either drop Cassius M. Olay, or elevate him, in my demonstra tions of respect, to an equality with the sage of Ashland. You will readily believe that I did not hesitate. I closed gladly up to his side, rode with him, walked with him, dined with him, and made my visit to Ashland under his auspices. We found Henry Olay, just arrived from the South, healthy, vigorous, gra cious, and impressive. He is evidently looking forward again to another trial for the presidency, and yet, by habits of thought, action, and association, in creasing the obstacles in the way of his ambition. Ashland is a fine old manor, and the mansion is one of easy and graceful hospitality. We did not see Mrs. Clay. There is no communication between 0. M. Clay and J. B. Olay. I saw nothing of that young gentleman, and, indeed, received no calls from any per son but his father and General Coombs. It was evident that I was no very welcome guest at Lexington ; nor did I need anybody to explain to me that I am regarded with distrust, or a more unkindly feeling, by those who are inter ested in defending slavery. But I am not seeking praise of men, and certainly not theirs. I wish you could see the forests of this county at this season. There is a heavy growth of beech and maple ; but the woods are embellished with flower ing trees, the white blossoms of the buckeye and the dogwood, of the wild- 800 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846 cherry and the wild-plum, mingling with the brilliant purple clusters of the Judas-tree. I leave to-morrow morning for St. Louis, and break off here to consult about the route. From that place I descend to New Orleans, and return home by the .way of Washington. VINOENNES, LNDIAHA, April 29th. I arrived here this afternoon at half-past one, and am sitting on the bank of the Wabash, waiting for the stage, which, at five, will carry me over the prairie to St. Louis, with a digression of fifty miles to the home of the Sewards, in the centre of Illinois. I left Louisville yesterday morning at five, and have traveled through the southern part of Indiana. The country is new, and more than half the way the roads are indescribably bad. Indiana, at least the part of it I have seen, has a medium soil and genial climate, a population dense, but very poor. The stage is at the door, and I am off. VANDALIA, ILLINOIS, Thursday, May, 1846. There is a blank in the date which I cannot fill without an almanac, or an arithmetical calculation too severe for a wearied traveler. I let fly a hurried note from Vincennes, but gave you only information of my route. The portion of Kentucky that I saw excels in fertility and improvement any region in the West. Louisville is at the falls of the Ohio. The larger class of vessels never ascend beyond that place; but there is a broad, deep canal, two miles long, which admits the mass of vessels into the Upper Ohio, and, in very high water, boats descend, and perhaps ascend, through the natural channel. Crossing the river by a ferry, you land at New Albany, a county-town in Indiana. You climb wearily up a long, winding road until, at the distance of three miles from the river, you reach the summit. A turnpike-road has been constructed through the country for forty miles. The resources and credit of the State failed to complete the road farther, although it is mostly graded to near Vincennes. Seneca County, New York, or rather Romulus, at the date of your earliest memory, was more populous and highly cultivated than any part of the region through which I have passed after leaving New Albany. Greenville is a poor, small village. Paoli, fifty miles on the way, is a little more respectable. The country is what is called "rolling," and the roads horrible from that place to Vincennes. The farmers are chiefly from Kentucky and the Carolinas, unable to work well without slaves, and deprived of that resource. The houses are rude log cabins, old and comfortless. For three hundred miles I have scarcely seen a new house, or cabin, or farm. The church has log edifices for worship, and, as for school-houses, I have been able to distinguish but two. A county is twenty-four miles square, and has one central village, with here and there another settlement. A whole county, if populous, has as many inhabitants as the village of Auburn. The soil is a light loam, underlaid by metamorphic lime stone. Southern Indiana is pronounced very poor, but I am inclined to think that the inferiority of the region results from the character of its inhabitants chiefly. The rain overtook me, a solitary passenger in the stage-coach, half-way on my route to Vincennes, and has followed me ever since. The journey has left no point in Indiana impressed on my memory but Vin cennes, situated on the Wabash, which is navigable to that place for small steam boats in quite high water. We are told that Vincennes was built in a prairie, 1846.] ON THE PRAIRIES. the first of those wonderful formations that you reach. But long cultivation has given to the locality the aspect common to all towns built on plains. Vin- oennes may have five or six hundred inhabitants. An ambitious school, two banks, and few pleasant and tasteful dwellings, contrast with spacious streets vacant of people. The Wabash flows between low banks, which, on the west ide, are quite inundated by the early and the latter rains. The coach-boy, abandoning the ponderous and top-heavy stage-coach, drove up a wagon, roomy, and covered with Russian duck, well oiled. I was the only passenger; the hour of departure was four. The weather was sultry. I was heated with the exercise of traveling the streets of the "city," and took an out side seat for coolness, and to catch the first possible glimpse of the prairie. Our way lay, for a mile, over an embankment raised above the floods, with frequent luice-ways covered with dilapidated and dangerous bridges. My driver, a young, married man, was born in Goshen, and graduated as a stage-driver under Sher wood. He had never seen nor heard of me ; but he was an exile, mourning to return to his native land. My heart went out to him, and he drove me, Jehu- like, in return. The prairie in April, and near Vincennes, was the very oppo site of all that I had dreamed. The last year s grass was standing in stubble ; the new crop was just above the ground ; the rain had filled the whole ground with standing water ; the " timber " crowded the great meadows on all sides, and they were fenced into lots, and disfigured with the dried corn-stalks of last year. I gave the driver a douceur at parting, and walked on. He replenished himself and the next driver with rum ; and when the latter overtook me, although a native of New York and a pupil of Sherwood, he was too drunk, out of regard for me, to be able to tell me his story. The wind changed. I rode until nightfall; went into the wagon, shivering with ague, which was followed by a fever. I borrowed a buffalo-skin, and stretched myself under it, and so slept away my first night on the prairies. When I awoke in the morning I was at sea on a vast meadow of stunted grass filled with water, which also filled the road. Here and there a few miniature flowers were seen. At length we reached a "timber." The habitations there were mean, and the women mourned their destiny, which had sent them there to suffer themselves, and to bring up weak and sickly children in a far-off and unwholesome climate. Such as this was, with one exception, the story of every woman I have met. But, on the other hand, either they were thriftless, or their husbands were, and lost their homes in their native lands. They come to Illinois, where the farm lies subdued and prepared to receive them. A month s labor supports a family well during the whole year. The men become indolent, listless, slovenly, careless. There is neither excitement for them, nor society. They lose ambition, pride, self-respect, and become mere drones. We passed no town worthy of mention until we arrived at Salem, half-way from Vincennes to St. Louis ; I stopped there, and the stage went on. I inquired for my cousins, Butler Seward and Israel Seward, whom I have not seen since 1812 or 1814. Everybody knew them, spoke highly of them; but, sad to say, everybody spoke of the former as " the old man." and told me of the endless multiplication of my cousins of other generations, until I was fatigued with an effort to remember the branches of this very recent shoot from the genealogical tree of the Sewards. My extremest energy and liberality procured a wagon, to bring me from Salem to this place to-day ; and here they failed. To-morrow 51 02 LIFE AND LETTERS. morning I take Butler Seward s stage to Hillsborougb, where the family live, distant twenty-eight miles from here, as this place is distant twenty-eight miles from Salem. To-day I have traversed the Grand Prairie. Its expanse and its greenness, its scattered "timber" (small groves) looking like islands, and its solitary trees looming up like ships on the sea, have filled me with delightful amazement. The carpet, though now too wet to tread, is beautifully fresh and verdant. It is covered with flowers of various hues ; but, like those which are known to us at this season at home, they are low and delicate. I counted twenty kinds in blossom, and many more, which these copious rains, with sunshine following, will call out from their hiding to-morrow. Cattle and horses roam the praries with apparent freedom ; the dove, the sparrow, the clamorous jay, the shrill lark, the wren, the blackbird, the oriole, the prairie-hen, the quail, the pheasant, the wild-goose, the turkey, the buzzard, and how many more I cannot remember, dwell peace fully on this broad expanse. The common idea of the prairies is or, at least, mine was that they are lowlands, and that the small groves which they encircle are elevated, and like islands. The reverse of this is true. Rivers, and streams of smaller note, traverse the prairies, and of course seek their lowest levels. The forest clusters on the banks of the rivers. Here I must close this long epistle. I go to-morrow to the home of the Sewards. After one day, I pass to St. Louis, sixty miles thence ; and, within one or two days, I shall be floating downward on the great Mississippi. Heaven bless you and Fred, and Clarence and Willie, and the wee one, and grandpa, and preserve you and me, until I meet you and recount the wonders of "my journey ! " ON THE MISSISSIPPI, BELOW MEMPHIS, TENNESSEE, ? STEAMBOAT WHITE CLOUD, May 8, 1846. i If I remember aright, my last was from Vandalia. I left that town, on the first day of May, and passed on to Hillsborough, at which place I arrived in the vening. My cousin Nancy, who was of Jenning s age, and my cousin Jane, who is only one year my elder, live there. I found Hillsborough a pretty, flourishing, country village, as large as Ovid, and a pleasant contrast to all that I had seen in Indiana and Illinois. I presented myself at the door of a respectable dwelling, and was met there by a lady looking and speaking, for all the world, so like Mary Evans that I knew she was my cousin, although I had not seen her since 1814. She brought me to the acquaintance of her hus band, Mr. Glen, a very sensible, affectionate man. My fever and ague being exorcised by brandy-and-coffee, I went with my cousin Glen to see Mrs. Nancy. She had brick house and "things to suit," all her own, and enough to attract another husband. When told who I was, she embraced me, and said : " Why, my dear cousin ! How you have grown ! " I spent the evening pleasantly with these friends ; and next day we all set out on a family ride, in a nice covered carriage, drawn by mules. Two miles from Hillsborough we found my cousin Maria (now Mrs. Burnap) delightfully situated on a farm, with a husband and six children. Mr. Burnap harnessed his mules, and overtook us at Israel Seward s, a short distance ahead. Here our party, taking in Miss Burnap, ** Uncle John," and " Cousin Israel " and his wife, pro ceeded to Butler Seward s, where we found that person with a wife and eight 1846.] RIDE TO ST. LOUIS. 803 children, a farmer of great enterprise and notorious wealth. We lined there, made arrangements for my journey to St. Louis, and then returned. I remained that night at Israel Seward s. He and Butler severally own whafc is called a " mound " or eminence, on which they have erected very respectable dwellings, and extended their farms into the prairies at pleasure. Their children have been coming to manhood successively, and each plants his dwelling on the side of the mound, and runs his fences as far as he sees fit into the prairies. This is the whole operation of making a farm in that country, except the labor of first breaking the prairie soil, which is not severe. Indian-corn, and horses and cattle, are the chief products. The country is fertile, and the climate agree able. But the same complaints of fever and ague prevail everywhere. Quack doctors and quack medicines figure in all conversations. The market of this region and Hillsborough is at St. Louis, and I am sorry to say that prices are exceedingly low. A bushel of corn is worth a " bit " (twelve and a half cents), and a horse which in Auburn would be worth one hundred and twenty dollars is worth sixty. On Monday morning, at eleven, I took leave of all these affectionate kinsmen and kinswomen, and, departing with Butler Seward, in his great market- wagon, filled with brooms, deer-skins, and dried beef, not forgetting supplies for our selves and horses, I set out for St. Louis. Our ride was chiefly over the prairies, and nothing could be more beautiful. These great meadows were of various widths. The broadest was fourteen miles. They were enameled witn flowers, and their wild inhabitants started continually from before us as we drove along. The mystery of this extraordinary formation of smooth meadow-land is, that from a period earlier than the settlement of the country by white men, or even the memory of Indians, great fires occurred, which swept off whatever of wood or timber was growing on these plains, and left only the trees standing on the banks of the rivers. These fires have annually recurred, and have prevented trees and shrubs from taking root. I am satisfied that this is a true explanation, because the fires still continue to recur. If a hillock, or other space, is spared by the fire, as sometimes happens on a change of wind, oaks and walnut-trees spring up, and grow until the next annual conflagration destroys them. The farmers fence in their lands, and, earlier in the season, burn a space around them, which prevents the fire of the autumn from entering their inclosures. The forest appears spontaneously and luxuriantly when the farmer permits and saves it. I need not detain you with an account of the rain-storm, and the abominable roads which delivered me on the bank of the Mississippi. I approached it through a long vista on the very level of the river, and often overflowed by it. The river was a mile wide, turbid, even muddy, strewed with misshapen trunks and fragments of trees, and flowing with a rapid current. On the opposite side, on an eminence of forty feet (here called a " bluff"), the city of St. Louis lifted its towers and spires. It was just at sunset as this vision extended itself before me, and I thought I was satisfied with it; but far off in the horizon there arose a cloud, the last of those which had spent their wrath upon me. It gathered itself into the shape of a castle, with dome and turrets. The setting sun lent them his glorious gilding, and I imagined that this gorgeous scene lay beyond the Kocky Mountains. " How do you do, Governor Seward ? " said half a dozen not unfamiliar voices, as soon as I appeared in the Planter s Hotel. St. Louis, it was clear, was 8Q4- LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846 an Eastern colony, in which New York had a full representation. Among those whom I found here was Dr. Morgan. The doctor has a practice, a fashionable and reasonably profitable one. His daughter is just verging to womanhood ; his son a student in college. St. Louis has about thirty-five thousand people, and seems, at length, begin ning to realize the glowing anticipations which have attracted immigrants for nearly a hundred years. The imagination lags when you attempt to conceive the greatness and capacity of the region tributary to its trade. At the " Levee" or wharf lay, perhaps, forty or fifty steamboats. Lead, cotton, corn, beef, whiskey, sugar, and tropical fruits, covered the wharf, and a more discordant mass of human figures was never seen than the boatmen and draymen. No boat from below passes St. Louis. So it is a place of universal transshipment. You would think yourself in a seaport to see and hear the bustle of trade : steamboats departing, not merely for New Orleans, but for the Ohio Eiver, the Illinois, the Upper Mississippi, Iowa, Wisconsin, the Missouri, and the Yellow stone. Here, as one is accustomed to suppose, at the head of navigation on the Mississippi, you see, with wonder and amazement, steamboats arriving from voyages on this river and its tributaries of one to eight or nine hundred miles ; and yet Iowa and Wisconsin are Territories, Illinois a thinly-settled State, Mis souri but partially colonized, while none but adventurers have entered the Western Territories. What a change will a century bring over this bewildering scene ! ON THE MISSISSIPPI, Saturday, May QtTi. The distance from St. Louis to New Orleans is something over twelve hun dred miles. There are no regular packets exclusively for passengers. Boats are continually passing. They carry vast freights on the lower deck, while the passengers have a saloon, surrounded by comfortable state-rooms, on the upper deck. The boats arrive and depart without regularity or precision. I left St. Louis on Wednesday at 4 p. M. It is now Saturday at nine. We have floated at the rate of ten miles an hour down the river, which is attaining its height, being more than twenty-five feet above low-water mark. We have left the State of Missouri far behind us, bid adieu to Kentucky, and are passing be tween the banks of Arkansas and Mississippi. The river is unlike anything I have ever seen. The waters are turbid, strewed in all directions with logs and driftwood, green as well as dry. The banks are alluvial, and there are more than one hundred islands of various sizes. The current of the river is four or five miles an hour, and the channel is irregular. You seldom find it in the centre, but, on the contrary, the flood is continually wearing off one bank, and carrying earth, timber, trees, and sometimes houses, to the other. In August and September, when the river falls twenty or thirty feet, the water is deficient, and boats often fasten upon " snags " and " sawyers," and are ingulfed in the river. But at this season the navigation is quite safe. The banks of the river are generally low, and often overflowed. At the dis tance of one to twelve miles you may find natural embankments, and where these do not exist artificial dikes are thrown up to save the low country from devasta tion. Occasionally the natural embankments crowd the river, and then you have a precipitous "bluff" rising fifty, sixty, or eighty feet above the water. All In diana is covered with beech, maple, and trees generally like our own. Illinois and Missouri, as far as I saw them, produce chiefly oak of many species, and walnut 1846.] ON THE MISSISSIPPI. g05 of various kinds, black hickory, and pecan trees. Descending into Tennessee and Arkansas, the hanks of the river exhibit everywhere a growth chiefly of " cot- tonwood," a species of poplar, and cypress, a lovely evergreen. The precarious condition of the bottom-lands prevents, generally, any considerable improvement of them, and so the voyage is mostly through a forest, broken only by clearings made in procuring wood for the steamboats. But when you get a glimpse of a plantation on higher ground, you find that it is oftener surrounded by the tall canebrake or reeds, and the ground is covered with crops of corn, cotton, and tobacco. The planter s house is a low, neat, white, wooden edifice, spacious, with outer kitchens and other offices detached ; and, at a distance, small buildings of framed timber, or logs, neatly constructed for the slaves. In the county through which we are passing in Mississippi, the slaves are almost as numerous as the free inhabitants. On all the Mississippi and its tributaries, there is not a vessel driven by the wind ; steam is the only agent. From St. Louis you descend about three hundred miles before reaching the mouth of the Ohio. That river, comparatively clear and free, pours its flood into the Mississippi through a broad channel, and the contest for mastery is kept up for many miles, when the turbid flood prevails. At the mouth of the Ohio, there is an attempt to build a city, named Cairo. But the floods, and the poverty of Lower Illinois, prevent its success. Nothing appears on the voyage, thus far, to relieve the monotony, except that, on a high bluff, in the State of Tennessee, rises up before you an infant city at Memphis. It presents an imposing aspect, and is the emporium of the cotton-trade of that State. We are now below the mouth of the St. Francis, and I leave this dull record to look out for the mouth of the Arkansas. Our voyage, at the present rate, will end Tuesday next, when, after a single day in New Orleans, I shall proceed with all dispatch to rejoin you, profited by my survey of the great central region of the country, and hoping to compensate for long absence by renewed assiduity. NEW ORLEANS, May 13, 184t>. Our little boat was by no means so swift as the name imported. The Bal loon would have beaten it, and the White and even the Black Cloud left it out of sight. We arrived here at three o clock yesterday, having been five days and twenty-three hours on the voyage. Here, at length, I am on the thirtieth par allel of latitude, lamenting that the season of strawberries has passed, and con soling myself with green peas, new potatoes, fresh oranges, and other luxuries of the climate. It is all well ; but sickness is in every exhalation that rises from the earth, and at night I creep under my mosquito-bar, and adjust it tightly to exclude the insects that assert their title so clamorously to all the land around me ; while here and there an alligator is seen in the river contesting the dominion of the waters. I can add little of interest to my description of the Mississippi. The excur sion I have made has been only a creeping along the trunk, with a pause at each of its mighty branches to look indistinctly at the ramification of the tree. My voyage was twelve hundred miles long, but the Ohio and Alleghany extend the navigation imperfectly twelve hundred miles eastward. The Wabash, the Kas- kaskia, and the Illinois, reach to the very rim of the basin of Lake Michigan. The Mississippi stretches its arm to the borders of Superior, while the Missouri LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846 receives the floods which descend from the Rocky Mountains. Then there is the Arkansas, little thought of among us, navigable, and approaching Mexico. Of the capacity of this vast region I can give no just idea. Its climate is mild, its soil everywhere fertile ; a horse or a mule draws the plough for the deepest furrow, and a woman or a child may guide him. This would seem to assure New Orleans of the commercial, and Louisiana of the political, ascendency of the continent. Yet the city is secondary, and the State unimportant. For reasons why? The navigation of the Mississippi and its branches is hazardous and expensive, and can never be rendered otherwise. New Orleans is unhealthy, and not likely to be made salubrious ; but, above all, commerce and political power, as well as military strength, can never perma- aently reside, on this continent, in a community where slavery exists. The Mississippi flows through a channel worn in upon a ridge elevated above the surrounding country. This mysterious formation was described to me, but J could not realize it. The evidence here is irresistible. The river is diked here. The city is built upon lands reclaimed from swamps. Every drain and sewer in the town conducts its filthy waters not to the river, but to the surround ing swamps. The city seems as flat as a meadow or thrashing-floor. Memphis is a large town on the east bank of the river, and very prosperous. They describe Nashville and Baton Rouge as very beautiful, but I passed them in the night. New Orleans and all Louisiana are filled with martial excitement, arising from the breaking out of war in Texas. Everywhere trade seems at a stand-still. Huge flags, suspended from the windows, sweep the ground with a proud defi ance of the Mexicans. The Exchange is nightly crowded with mass-meetings, inflamed by the oratory of patriots, who seldom forget to stimulate volunteers through the lust of conquest and of spoils. Companies of volunteers parade the streets. You wake to the music of the drum and fife, and are put to rest at midnight by the undying notes of the same clamorous instruments. I shall follow this letter within two days, straight and fast. Events had been hurrying on the Mexican War. Slidell s mission had proved a failure. He had been refused a reception, and had re turned. The Army of Occupation had trained its guns to bear on Matamoras ; the fleet was assembling in the Gulf. Then came the cor respondence between General Ampudia and General Taylor ; the stealthy attacks upon American outlying parties ; the death of Colonel Cross, and presently the requisition of the American commander upon Louisiana for four regiments of infantry. It was in answer to this call that New Orleans was in a fever of military excitement when Seward arrived there. On his journey homeward he read in the papers the news that war with Mexico had actually commenced ; that President Polk had sent in a special message announcing that fact, and asking Congress to provide men and money ; that Congress had responded, and that, in the debate, Clayton, Crittenden, Morehead, and other leading Whigs, while deploring the war, declared their determination to " stand by their country, right or wrong." 1846.] THE MEXICAN WAR. 807 Every nation that goes to war feels its position stronger if it can show itself to be the party attacked. The President claimed that " Mexico had invaded our territory, and shed the blood of our citizens on our own soil ; " and Congress indorsed this view of the case by almost unanimously agreeing to the declaration that, " by the act of the Republic of Mexico, a state of war exists between that Govern ment and the United States." Men and money were freely voted ; and it was evident that even at the North, where the opposition to the war and the extension of slavery was strongest, there was a general feeling that it would be unpatriotic to thwart or defeat the Govern ment when engaged in actual conflict with a foreign power. Then, too, the love of military triumph, of victory and conquest, and the natural sympathy with friends and neighbors going out to battle, under their country s flag, strengthened the war-feeling, and made the country, for the time at least, practically unanimous. The few men of advanced opinions, in behalf of peace or freedom, who expressed dissent or proposed action to embarrass the Administration, were charged with being " Mexican sympathizers, and aiders and abet tors of the public enemy." In all the Southern cities through which Seward was now traveling the war-fever ran high. Volunteers were flocking to places of rendez vous; flags were stretched across the streets, and impassioned oratory stimulated the populace. The air was full of thick-coming rumors of skirmishes on the frontier of the dangers to which Taylor s little army was exposed in its advanced position. There were reports that sick ness was decimating them ; that Mexican armies were outnumbering and surrounding them; that their supplies were cut off; that they were driven back and in need of succor all of which tended to in flame the popular excitement and hasten the organization of reinforce ments. From the Mexican side came Ampudia s proclamation, accepting battle, but insisting that Mexico was invaded and assailed, quite as earnestly as Congress had insisted on the contrary opinion. On the night that Seward arrived at Auburn, extra editions of the newspapers brought intelligence of actual engagements and victory at Palo Alto and Resaca de la Palma. The community were divided between exultations over the success of American arms and anxiety for the fate of individuals, as they scanned a long list of killed and wounded. Taylor s dispatches, a few days later, were pronounced models of military clearness, brevity, and modesty ; and the Mexican accounts, which came still later and claimed partial successes, were pronounced utterly unreliable and untrustworthy. At West Point the <jlass about to graduate felicitated themselves that they were at once to have an opportunity for active service, and the succeeding class were 80S LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846 hoping that the war might last a year, to give them a like opportunity. Civilians, ambitious of military glory, found even a shorter road to it, by obtaining, through political influence, commissions at Washington, or earning them by active efforts to organize regiments. There was still some uneasiness about the possibility of trouble with England ; but these apprehensions diminished as it became manifest that the cabinet would compromise. The Whig papers seized the opportunity for jest and ridicule at the expense of their adversaries, who had so boldly and defiantly declared " Fifty-four, forty, or fight ! " and who were now content to step back to " Forty-nine," expressly to avoid the " fight." But public sentiment was lenient. It saw that dis cretion was the better part of valor in such an emergency, and had no disposition to demand so Quixotic a policy of the Administration as two foreign wars at once. Mr. Webster s course and his speeches on the subject had gained great popular favor, and a public dinner was given to him at Philadelphia. The returns were now in from the election of delegates to the Con stitutional Convention. The Democrats had a large majority. The list was published, and showed that among those chosen were many who had before been prominent in the councils of the State : Ex- Governor Bouck ; John Tracy, of Chenango ; George W. Patterson and Richard P. Marvin, of Chautauqua ; Ambrose L. Jordan, of Columbia; George A. Simmons, of Essex; Michael Hoffman, of Herkimer; Charles O Conor, Robert H. Morris, Samuel J. Tilden, and John A. Kennedy, of New York ; Charles S. Kirkland, of Oneida ; Robert C. Nicholas and Alvah Worden, of Ontario; Gouverneur Kemble, of Putnam; James M. Cook and John K. Porter, of Saratoga ; James C. Forsyth, of Ulster ; William B. Wright, of Sullivan ; and Edward Dodd, of Washington. Altogether it was a public body containing an unusually large number of experienced men. The convention was to meet on the 1st of June, and the journals were filled with discussions of what would or ought to be its action. That action, it was plain, would be chiefly swayed by Democratic theories. Indeed, the Democrats, both in the State and Federal Gov ernment, felt that the declaration of war had given new strength to their party, now identified with the cause of the country. Its members were elated, and the Whigs correspondingly depressed, for they saw themselves obliged to support and aid a war they had done their best to avert, and one which, if successful, would be claimed as the tri umph of Democracy and of pro-slavery men. It was felt that the slaveholders had gained an advantage, which would protract for years, perhaps indefinitely, any efforts in the direction of emancipation. " This war has put the country back twenty years, materially and mor ally," was a common expression of feeling. Seward s letters after his 1846.] RETURN TO AUBURN. 809 arrival at home reflected his views in this season of depression and dis aster to the cause with which he was identified. AUBURN, May 88, 1846. I thank you sincerely and earnestly for the frankness and candor with which you exposed to me the adverse aspects of my political position. I doubt not the accuracy of the picture you have drawn. Why should I ? The emancipa tion question has not ripened ; I saw that. I saw the Whig party, as well as the abolitionists, would be unfaithful, while the Democratic party would be boldly base. I wanted to stand before the country and the future faithful. Of course I expected and strove for the denunciation of the faithless. If that ques tion shall have no day in my lifetime, then I am to have none, as I certainly want none. If there be a day for the rights of man, then all is safe ; while, in any event, I am sure that I have written and reasoned as was due to the con sistency of my own character. I do not expect to see the Whig party successful hi overthrowing an Admin istration carrying on a war, although only against Mexico, and a negotiation for Oregon, in which the Whig party and its statesmen are found apologizing for our national adversaries. I cannot go with such friends, for my sense of patriotism forbids, even more than policy. If they will go their way, I certainly must follow mine. I do not want more preferment ; but I am determined to live and die faithful to all my past life and opinions. I cannot, I will not change, to win the highest honors of the republic. CHAPTER LXVI. 1846. The Trials for Murder. Public Feeling. Wyatt. Arraignment of Freeman. His Counsel. His Story. Sane or insane ? Witnesses. John Van Buren. The Argument. Con viction and Sentence. Seward s Epitaph. GRAVE and stern duties now required immediate attention. A spe cial term of the Court of Oyer and Tenniner, ordered by the Governor, was to be held by Judge Bowen Whiting, to dispose of the cases of both Wyatt and Freeman. Shortly after the first trial of Wyatt, and during Seward s absence at Albany, the Freeman murder had been committed, and now on his return from his Southern trip he found that the excited state of popu lar feeling had taken on new phases. The public mind, unbalanced by the second and more horrible crime, was no longer able to reason im partially about either criminal. Instead of the doubt about Wyatt s mental condition, reflected in the verdict of the February jury, there was now an almost universal belief that he was sane, and his offense willful, wicked, and deliberate. His counsel had come in for a share of the popular animadversion. It was pronounced a wanton and wicked 810 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846. misuse of his intellectual powers by Governor Seward that he should have tried to screen such a murderer from the gallows. It was freely stated that he was in one sense to blame for the crime of Freeman ; that Freeman had been one of the auditors in the court-room during Wyatt s trial, and had learned there how easily he might commit mur der and escape punishment. Of course, this story was not only false, but impossible ; yet it served its purpose of arousing public indigna tion against Seward to the highest pitch, when it was rumored that, besides continuing in his defense of Wyatt, he was also intending to take charge of that of Freeman. Threats of personal violence against him were freely indulged in ; and the friends who met him at the rail way-station on his return from New Orleans were apprehensive that he might not be able to reach his home in safety. Arriving there, he learned that the feeling against him had been temporarily appeased by the assurance of his law-partners that he would not engage in the defense. No one else was likely to undertake that task, in the face of a storm of public opposition ; and the negro would be hurried to the gallows as swiftly as the merest forms of law would allow. When he at once declined to yield to the popular demand, and ex pressed his sorrow to find the city of his residence hurried away by such mad unreasoning passion, the storm broke out afresh. There was but one topic in the streets. He was denounced in public and in pri vate. He was declared to deserve to share the fate of those whom he defended. His friends remonstrated with him, pointing out that the task was thankless, and hopeless. Even if Freeman were insane, they said, nothing could save him ; and to attempt his defense was only to incur popular odium. In a letter to Weed, he remarked : AUBURN, May 29, 1846. There is a busy war around me, to drive me from defending and securing a fair trial for the negro Freeman. People now rejoice that they did not lynch him ; but they have all things prepared for an auto-da-fe, with the solemnities of a mock trial. No priest (except one Universalist), no Levite, no lawyer, no man, no woman, has visited him. He is deaf, deserted, ignorant, and his con duct is unexplainable on any principle of sanity. It is natural that he should turn to me to defend him. If he does, I shall do so. This will raise a storm of prejudice and passion, which will try the fortitude of ray friends. But I shall do my duty. I care not whether I am to be ever forgiven for it or not. It is not likely that I shall be asked for advice about the convention, and I certainly shall not volunteer it. If I were to advise, I should insist on the Whigs going for universal suffrage ; and I am satisfied a large number of the Whig delegates will not. I should the more strenuously insist on doing so myself if I had a seat there, though I should vote alone. On the 1st of June, when the special term opened, Judge Whiting 1846.] ARRAIGNMENT OF FHEEMAN. 811 and the associate judges took their seats. The court-house was dense ly packed with an eager and excited auditory. The crier made procla mation in the usual form, and the judge directed the sheriff to bring in William Freeman for arraignment. When he obeyed, bringing up to the bar the stolid-looking negro, spectators leaned forward and jostled against each other in their eagerness to get a glimpse of so brutal an assassin. District-Attorney Sherwood arraigned him, in the usual form, upon the several indictments for murder. There was a pause. Then Seward rose, and tendered in his behalf a plea of insanity. Judge Whiting, after listening to remarks pro and con, by Seward and Sher wood, reserved his decision as to the proper method of determining whether he was insane or not. The district attorney had urged that he was sane, and that the court would probably be satisfied of that fact, as he was, by personal examination. Seward suggested a trial by jury. He, like the district attorney, had made personal examina tion of the prisoner, and had been convinced by it of Freeman s in sanity. The judge remanded Freeman, who apparently had heard nothing that had been said, back to jail ; and so the question, for the present, went over. As yet, Freeman had no counsel. Should the court de cide that he was insane, he would need none, for he would not be tried. Seward had taken such steps as it seemed necessary that some one should take in such a case, and which, it was evident, no one else would. He visited Freeman in his cell, endeavored to converse with him, and found him hardly more than idiotic. Unwilling to rely solely upon his own impressions, he asked his friends to go to Freeman s cell and bring him a report of such conversation as they found they could have with him. They did so, and their experience confirmed his own. Freeman was deaf, was stupid, was unable to talk connectedly, or to any sensible purpose ; had an idiotic laugh upon his face ; and, ap parently, was ignorant of, or indifferent to, his own situation. Pursuing his investigations among those, white and black, who had met or known Freeman, and among his family and friends, Seward grad ually learned, little by little, the whole of the poor wretch s miserable history. He had been a few years before a bright, intelligent boy, had worked as a laborer for various people, had been arrested on suspicion of stealing a horse, thrown into jail, tried, and sent to State-prison for the offense, upon the testimony of a negro, who afterward turned out to be himself the thief. Overwhelmed with grief, astonishment, and indignation, at his unjust conviction, Freeman had asserted his inno cence to constables, justice, jailer, and keepers, and to whoever else would listen to him, begging, of course vainly, for release from prison. So persistent was he in his declarations that he " had done nothing," and " didn t want to be punished," that the keepers deemed him insub- 812 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846. ordinate, shirking, or quarrelsome. One of them, in an altercation, struck him on the head with a board. The blow split the board, and left him deaf ever afterward, or, as he expressed it, " knocked all the hearing off, so it never came back again." Thenceforward, he ap peared downcast, sad, sullen, and stolid. Repeated scoldings and flog gings failed to arouse him to either mental or bodily activity ; and when his brother-in-law and mother took him home from prison, at the expiration of his sentence, in September, 1845, they found him weak, foolish, and deranged. Brooding over his unjust imprisonment, how to obtain redress for it became his besetting idea his monomania. He went about, seeking, as he said, " to get his pay." He went to the justice s office for a warrant, but was unable to co herently explain his errand. He went to Mrs. Godfrey, whose horse he had been accused of stealing, but, forgetting his grievance, was ap peased by a morsel of cake that she gave him. Finally, as the mania grew upon him, he sought reparation in a way that could find lodg ment in no brain but a lunatic s. He had been wrongfully imprisoned five years by the State. The State would not pay him, and so he would "kill them all." He stealthily set out to commence this wild massacre by killing an innocent family of utter strangers to him, and, after his capture and imprisonment, explained with difficulty to his in terrogators that he had only just " begun his work," that he meant to kill more, had not his hand been disabled. Perhaps the most appalling feature of the ghastly deed at Van Nest s was, that, instead of its be ing the end he was seeking, it was but the beginning. Wyatt s trial now commenced. All the past doubts in his favor seemed to have been supplanted by positive belief in his guilt. Each of the two cases reacted upon the other. Wyatt was guilty, because Freeman had imitated him. Freeman was guilty, because he imitated Wyatt. As Wyatt s counsel, Seward saw that an impartial trial there was no longer possible. He sought postponement and change of venue, with out effect. The Attorney-General, John Van Buren, had been sum moned to aid the district attorney, and the impaneling of a jury- began. The process was long and tedious. Up to the 15th of June only two jurors had been obtained, and more than half the peremptory challenges were exhausted. At last the court decided to permit jurora to be sworn, even though they confessed an opinion in regard to the prisoner s guilt ; and, by this process, at the end of the third week, a jury was obtained. In a hasty note, Seward said : CouBT-HousE, Wednesday Morning. In this court I am fighting a battle in which I ask no sympathy or sup port. The court will convict Wyatt, by breaking down rules established by the 1846.] WYATT FOUND GUILTY. 81 Supreme Court, and the conviction may ultimately be reversed. Freeman i* a demented idiot, made so by blows, which extinguished everything in his breast but a blind passion of revenge. He should be acquitted at onoe, and with the public consent. Meanwhile the doctors came, whom Seward had invited to examine Freeman s condition, and to testify what they thought of his case. Among them was Dr. Brigham, then in charge of the Utica State Lunatic Asylum. His opinion was clear and decided that Freeman was not only insane, but that his disease, as not unfrequently happens, had now taken the form of dementia, nearly approaching to idiocy. Dr. McCall and others concurred. Dr. Doane, the former Health-Officer at New York, was also among them, and shared in their opinions. The testimony in Wyatt s case was brief. The homicide was ad mitted. The defense rested upon the single point of the prisoner s insanity, and that had been prejudged by court and jury. On Monday, the 29th, Seward occupied ten hours with the defense. Most of the following day was occupied by John Van Buren s able speech for the prosecution. The judge charged the jury very strongly against- the prisoner. One of the jury, supposed to be favorable to Wyatt, fainted during the charge. But the verdict was brought in, unanimously, in less than half an hour. In a letter to her sister, Mrs. Seward wrote : They have brought in a verdict of guilty. "Wyatt is made to answer for the murder committed by Freeman ; and it ia more than probable that Freeman, although insane at the time he perpetrated the horrid deed, and now rapidly sinking into a state of idiocy, will be another victim to satisfy popular vengeance. The village is said to be full of joy in anticipation of Wyatt s execution. He received his sentence this morning in the presence of a thousand men and two or three hundred women. The day of execution is the 18th of August. The next movement of the court is to hurry on the trial and sentence of Freeman. Henry is, of course, advised to cease all efforts to prevent so desirable an end. He will do what is right. He will not close his eyes and know that a great wrong is perpetrated, without offering any remonstrance ; and yet, this is the course advised by many who call themselves his friends. I can conceive of no spectacle more sublime than to see a good man thus striving to win, to deeds of mercy and benevolence, the perverse generation among whom his lot has fallen. Even before Wyatt s sentence, haste was made to proceed with the trial of Freeman. The judge announced, on the 24th, his decision to try the question of sanity or insanity as a preliminary issue by a jury. The Attorney-General and district attorney appeared as counsel for the people Seward with his law-partners, Morgan and Blatchford, for the prisoner. They had also an accession of strength, in the person of David Wright, a philanthropic lawyer, an old friend of Seward, who, like him. volunteered his gratuitous services. The iury was impan- LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846 eled, the witnesses called, and the trial proceeded. It lasted a fort night. Freeman s relatives and acquaintances were examined, and tes tified to the difference in his character and behavior, before and after he came out of prison, his foolish talk and laugh, his moody brooding over the idea of pay for five years enforced labor. Drs. Brigham, Cov entry, Doane, McCall, and the other medical witnesses, pointed out the methods by which science distinguishes real from pretended insanity, and unhesitatingly affirmed Freeman s deranged mental condition. Searching cross-examination failed to shake their testimony. There was an array of witnesses on the other side whose testimony showed that they did not believe, or did not want to believe, that he was insane ; though, necessarily, they had few opportunities to watch his behavior, and most of them were little learned in that branch of medical science. Nevertheless, great as was the weight of evidence on the side of his insanity, it was more than counterbalanced by the over whelming desire for his execution that pervaded the community. The close of this extraordinary preliminary trial was described by Seward : That jury was selected without peremptory challenge. Many of the jurors entered the panel with settled opinions that the prisoner was not only guilty of the homicide, but sane ; and all might have entertained such opinions, for all that the prisoner could do. It was a verdict founded on such evidence as could be hastily collected in a community where it required moral courage to testify for the accused. Testimony was excluded upon frivolous and unjust pretenses. The cause was submitted to the jury on the 4th of July, and under circumstances calculated to convey a malicious and unjust spirit into the jury-box. It was a strange celebration. The dawn of the Day of Independence was not greeted with cannon or bells. No lengthened procession was seen in our streets ; nor were the voices of orators heard in our public halls. An intense excitement brought a vast multitude here, complaining of the delay and the expense of what was deemed an unnecessary trial, and demanding tlie sacrifice of a victim who had been spared too long already. For hours that assemblage was roused and excited by denunciations of the prisoner, and ridicule of his deafness, his igno rance, and his imbecility. Before the jury retired, the court was informed that they were ready to render the verdict required. One juror, however, hesitated. The next day was the Sabbath. The jury were called, and the court remonstrated with the dissentient, and pressed the necessity of a verdict. That juror gave way at last; and the bell which summoned our citizens to church for the evening service was the signal for the discharge of the jury, because they had agreed. Even thus a legal verdict could not be extorted. The eleven jurors, doubtless under an intimation from the court, compromised with the twelfth, and a ver dict was rendered, not in the language of the law, that the prisoner was "not insane," but that he was " sufficiently sane, in mind and memory, to distinguish between right and wrong " a verdict which implied that the prisoner was at least partially insane. On the following morning, the 6th of July, the district attorney rose and moved that the prisoner be brought into court and arraigned. 1846.1 TRIAL OF FREEMAN. 815 The judge overruled all objection, saying that it was for the court alone to say whether they were satisfied that the prisoner was sane, and that the verdict, although not precisely a verdict of sanity in form, had satisfied the court that the prisoner should be tried. Once more the sheriff brought the prisoner to the bar. His idiotic smile, wander ing gaze, and stolid insensibility, might have convinced an unbiased observer that he knew and cared nothing of the purport of the solemn scene in which he was the central figure. The district attorney, shouting in his ear, bade him rise, and, read ing to him one of the four indictments, asked loudly, " Do you plead guilty or not guilty to these indictments ? " Freeman. "Ha?" District Attorney. (Repeating the question.) Freeman. " I don t know." District Attorney. " Are you able to employ counsel ? * Freeman. "No." District Attorney. " Are you ready for trial ? " Freeman. " I don t know." District Attorney. " Have you any counsel ? " Freeman. " I don t know." District Attorney. " Who are your counsel ? " Freeman. " I don t know." The prisoner responded with a stupidity that astonished even his prosecutors. " Will any one defend this man ? " inquired the court. There was a pause of death-like silence. David Wright arose, and declared he could not consent longer " to take part in a cause which had so much the appearance of a terrible farce" The spectators looked at each other in breathless silence, broken only when Seward, pale with emotion, but with inflexible determination in every feature, rose and said : " May it please the court, I shall remain counsel for the prisoner until his death." A murmur of indignation ran round the crowded court-room at this continued defiance, as it was regarded, both of pub lic opinion and of public justice. The trial at once went on. As Freeman was incapable of pleading either guilty or innocent, the judge directed the clerk to enter a formal plea of " not guilty," in order that the case might proceed. Seward moved a postponement of the trial till another term, when a calmer state of feeling might prevail. The motion was denied. He moved that the indictment be quashed, interposing a plea to that effect. The plea was overruled. He challenged the array of the panel. The court overruled the challenge, and ordered the prisoner to be put upon trial. The jury was impaneled. The district attorney opened the case, 816 LIFE AND LETTERS. [1846. and the witnesses were called. The horrible scene of the murder was reproduced by their descriptions in all its bloody details. The neigh bors of Van Nest testified to the shocking sight that greeted them at the house, and their passing glimpses of the flying murderer. Helen Holmes, the young girl who was staying with the family, described how she was roused by the fearful attack. The wounded man, Van Arsdale, pale and enfeebled, narrated the struggle of the encounter which had nearly cost him his life. The doctors described the gaping wounds in the bodies of the slain. The constables testified to the pur suit and arrest of the murderer. There was no denial of any of this proof ; already the case seemed made up. Mr. Wright, who at the solicitation of the court had again con sented to take part in the case, opened for the defense. Witnesses were called, who demonstrated the prisoner s unsoundness of mind. Ethan A. Warden, president of the village, John R. Hopkins, Rev. John M. Austin, Ira Curtis, Justice Paine, Warren T. Worden, James R. Cox, and other prominent citizens of Auburn who had known Free man, or who had had interviews with him in prison since his crime, described his confused replies, his idiotic look, his lack of all remorse, or even of consciousness of his condition. Their testimony was fortified by that of the doctors. Auburn phy sicians among them Drs. Fosgate, Briggs, Hermance, Bigelow, and others pronounced him insane. The medical gentlemen summoned from abroad, to whom were now added Drs. Hun and McNaughton, of Albany, strongly corroborated their views, and pointed out the indica tions which, as experts, they deemed infallible. Then followed the touching evidence of his mother, Sally Freeman ; of his youthful asso ciates, Deborah and John Depuy, and Mary Ann Newark ; and of his friends, David Winner and Aaron Demun. All were straightforward and truthful in their narrations of such incidents in domestic life as betray insanity to intimate friends. That the whole case might be clearly laid before the jury, the prison-keepers and others were sum moned, who narrated his unjust conviction, five years imprisonment, flogging, deafness, loss of intelligence, and monomania on the subject of " getting his pay." All the proceedings were followed by the crowd, not only within, but all around the court-house, with close interest. There were no dis putes or outbreaks of violence, for the gathering was nearly all of one mind, and intensely anxious for the prisoner s condemnation and exe cution. Maledictions and denunciations of his counsel were common enough ; they, and the little body of friends who had come by this time to believe that Freeman was insane and that Seward was right, were like an isolated group of prisoners in a hostile camp, needing to guard their utterances. The counsel for the people were under no such 1846.J DR. BRIGHAM. 817 restraint. Every word of scorn, invective, or ridicule, they chose to bestow upon the poor fool or his defenders, found ready echo in the breasts of audience, jury, bench, and bar. Their sallies of wit were applauded ; their dogmatic assertion accepted as convincing proof. The Attorney-General, keen, able, and adroit, was the popular idol of the hour ; to him the community looked for protection against assas sins and their defenders. The torment of witnesses under his scath ing cross-examination seemed actually to give pleasure to the admiring throng. One witness, however, was more than a match for his exam iner. Dr. Brigham, who had passed so many years of his life in firm yet kindly dealing with an asylum full of lunatics, was not to be dis turbed, even by rebukes and pungent witticisms from an Attorney- General. His equanimity was unruffled. With clearness, precision, and polished courtesy, he seemed not to tire of again and again pre senting scientific facts that were invulnerable to attack. Each time his cross-examiner would ingeniously seek to draw him into contradic tion of some previous statement, his reply would be an illustration that made the matter clearer. " Suppose, doctor," said the counsel, with a sneer, " that I should go out and steal a hundred dollars, and then come in again and sit down here, would you swear I was insane ? " " I think I should," calmly replied the doctor. " Why should you swear so ? " " Because it would be so contrary to your character." " Do you consider yourself a better judge of insanity than Squire Bostwick ? " " I think I can judge of it better than one who has observed it " Don t you believe his mother, who is a common drunkard, is un safe evidence ? " " No. If drunkards were never to be believed, a great many peo ple would never be permitted to testify." " Is suicide contagious ? " * I think it was in the French army until Napoleon put a stop to it. w A titter in the audience, and the Attorney-General renewed the charge. " Are hysterics contagious ? " " They seem," said the doctor, placidly, " to be catching." Adverting to the escape as a proof of sanity, the Attorney-General said, " Does not the celerity of his getting thirteen miles in fourteen hours strike you as being speedy under the circumstances ?" Answer. "I do not think it was very fast traveling on horse back." The doctor was said to be a New England man, and, in the course of the cross-examination, the Attorney-General said, "Is not the ask- 52 818 LIFE AND LETTERS, [1846. lag of many questions peculiar to a certain class, to the Yankees, as they are called?" Answer. " I think not .peculiar to the Yankees, although it has been o stated. I, however, think it a slander. The English, as a general rule, ask more questions than we do." " How is it with the Turks ? " Answer. " I have no acquaintance with them." " How do you know that the prisoner s smile is without a prompting motive?" Answer. " I am not omniscient, and therefore do not know." "Suppose he should happen to think of hooking eggs, sixteen years ago, might he not smile ? " Answer. " Yes, he might ; but I regard his constant smiling as in dicating insanity, rather than a recollection of hooking eggs." " Suppose he thought he was blowing us all up in this trial, would he not smile ? " Answer. "If he knew what was meant by such a remark, he might." rt Would not a sane man, if he thought so ? " Answer. " I think a sane man, situated as Freeman is, would not be yery apt to say so, nor to smile at it." So, day after day, the weary, unequal contest went on. It drew at last to an end in the closing days of July. Seward s argument, the most impassioned that ever passed his lips, fell upon unheeding ears : For William Freeman, as a murderer, I have no commission to speak. If he had silver and gold accumulated with the frugality of Oroesus, and should pour it all at my feet, I would not stand an hour between him and the avenger. But for the innocent, it is my right, my duty to speak. If this sea of blood was innocently shed, then it is my duty to stand beside him until his steps lose their hold upon the scaffold. I plead not for a murderer. I have no inducement, no motive to do so. I have addressed my fellow-citizens in many various relations, when rewards of wealth and fame awaited me. I have been cheered on other occasions, by mani festations of popular approbation and sympathy ; and where there was no such encouragement, I have had, at least, the gratitude of him whose cause I de fended. But I speak now in the hearing of a people who have prejudged the prisoner, and condemned me for pleading in his behalf. He is a convict, a pauper, a negro, without intellect, sense, or emotion. My child, with an affec tionate smile, disarms my careworn face of its frown whenever I cross my threshold. The beggar in the street obliges me to give, because he says, " God bless you," as I pass. My dog caresses me with fondness, if I will smile on him. My horse recognizes me when I fill his manger. But what reward, what grati tude, what sympathy and affection can I expect here ? There the prisoner sits. Look at Mm! Look at the assemblage around you! Listen to their ill-sup pressed censures and their excited fears, and tell me where among my neighbors 1846.] THE ARGUMENT. $1 O, or my fellow-men, where even in his heart, I can expect to find tLe sentiment, the thought, not to say of reward, or of acknowledgment, but even of recog nition. . . . I would disarm the injurious impression that I am speaking merely as a law yer speaks for his client. I am not the prisoner s lawyer. I am, indeed, t volunteer in his behalf; but society and mankind have the deepest interests, I am the lawyer for society, for mankind ; shocked, beyond the power of ex- preasion, at the scene I have witnessed here, of trying a maniac as a male factor. . . . Gentlemen, yon may think of this transaction what yon please, bring in vf hat verdict yon can ; bnt I asseverate, before Heaven and you, that, to the best of my knowledge and belief, the prisoner at the bar does not at thia moment know why it is that my shadow falls on you instead of his own. . . . An inferior standard of intelligence has been set up here as a standard of the negro race. Indications of manifest derangement, or at least of imbecility, approaching to idiocy, are therefore set aside, on the ground that they har monize with the legitimate but degraded characteristics of the race from which he comes. You, gentlemen, have, or ought to have, lifted your souls above the bondage of prejudices so narrow and so mean as these. The color of the prisoner s skin, and the form of his features, are not impressed upon the spirit ual, immortal mind which works beneath. In spite of human pride, he is still your brother and mine, in form and color accepted and approved by his Father, and yours, and mine ; and bears equally with us the proudest inheritance of our race the image of our Maker. Hold him, then, to be a man ; exact of him all the responsibilities which should be exacted, under like circumstances, if he be longed to the Anglo-Saxon race ; and make for him all the allowances, and deal with him with all the tenderness, which, under the like circumstances, you would expect for yourselves. . . . Is there reason to indulge a suspicion of fraud here ? Look at this stupid, senseless fool, almost as inanimate as the clay moulded in the brick-yard; and say, if you dare, that you are afraid of being deceived by him ! Look at me You all know me. Am I a man to engage in a conspiracy to deceive you, and defraud justice? Look on us all! Is any one of us a man to be suspected? The testimony is closed. Look through it all. Can suspicion or malice find in it any ground to accuse us of a plot to set up a false and fabricated defense ? I will give you, gentlemen, a key to every case where insanity has been wrong fully and yet successfully maintained : gold, influence, popular favor, popular sympathy, raised that defense, and made it impregnable. But you have never seen a poor, worthless, spiritless, degraded negro, like this, acquitted wrong fully. I wish this trial may prove that such a one can be acquitted rightfully. The danger lies here. There is not a white man, or white woman, who would not have been dismissed long since from the perils of such a prosecution. . . . An excited community, whose terror has not yet culminated, declare that, whether sane or insane, he must be executed to give safety to your dwellings and theirs. I must needs, then, tell you the law, which will disarm such cow ardly fear. If you acquit the prisoner, he cannot go at large, but must be com mitted to jail to be tried by another jury for a second murder. Your dwellings, therefore, will be safe. If such a jury find him sane, he will then be sent to nil fearful account ; and your dwellings will be safe. If acquitted, he will be re- 820 LIFE AND LETTERS. ^1846 manded to jail, to await a third trial ; and your dwellings will be safe If that jury convict, he will then be executed ; and your dwellings will be safe. It they acquit, he will still be detained to answer for a fourth murder ; and your dwellings will be safe. Whether the fourth jury acquit or convict, your dwell ings will still be safe : for if they convict, he will then be out off ; and if they acquit, he must, according to the law of the land, be sent to the lunatic asylum, there to be confined for life. You may not slay him, then, for the public secu rity, because the public security does not demand the sacrifice. No security for home or hearth can be obtained by judicial murder. . . . When the prisoner was discharged from the State-prison, two dollars, the usual gratuity, was offered him, and he was asked to sign a receipt. " I ain t going to settle so." For five years, until it became the ruling thought of his life, the idea had been impressed upon his mind that he had been imprisoned wrongfully, and would, therefore, be entitled to payment on his liberation. This idea was opposed " ~by the judgment and sense of all mankind." The court that convicted him pronounced him guilty, and spoke the sense and judgment of mankind. But still he remained unconvinced. The keepers who flogged him pronounced his claim unjust and unfounded, and they were exponents of the " sense and judgment of all mankind." But imprisonment, bonds, and stripes, could not remove the one inflexible idea. The agents, the keepers, the clerk, the spectators, and even the reverend chaplain, laughed at the simplicity and ab surdity of the claim of the discharged convict, when he said, " Pve worked foot years for the State, and ain t going to settle <?." Alas 1 little did they know that they were deriding the delusion of a maniac. Had they been wise, thej would have known that " So foul a sky clears not without a storm." The peals of their laughter were the warning voice of Nature for the safety of the family of Van Nest. . . . There is proof, gentlemen, stronger than all this. It is silent, yet speaking. It is that idiotic smile which plays continually on the face of the maniac. It took its seat there while he was in the State-prison. In his solitary cell, under the pressure of his severe tasks and trials in the workshop, and during the so lemnities of public worship in the chapel, it appealed, although in vain, to his taskmasters and to his teachers. It is a smile never rising into laughter, without motive or cause the smile of vacuity. His mother saw it when he came out of prison, and it broke her heart. John Depuy saw it, and knew his friend was demented. Deborah Depuy observed it, and knew him for a fool. David Win ner read in it the ruin of his friend Sally s son. It has never forsaken him in his later trials. He laughed in the face of Parker while on confession at Bald- winsville. He laughed involuntarily in the faces of Warden and Curtis, and Worden and Austin, and Bigelow and Smith, and Brigham and Spencer. He laughs perpetually here. Even when Van Arsdale showed the scarred traces of the assassin s knife, and when Helen Holmes related the dreadful story of the murder of her patrons and friends, he laughed. He laughs while I am pleading his griefs. He laughs when the Attorney-General s bolts would seem to rive his heart. He will laugh when you declare him guilty. When the judge shall pro ceed to the last fatal ceremony, and demand what he has to say why the sen tence of the law should not be pronounced upon him, although there should not 1846.] THE SENTENCE. 821 be an unmoistened eye in this vast assembly, and the stern voice addressing him should tremble with emotion, he will, even then, look up in the face of the court, and laugh, from the irresistible emotions of a shattered mind, delighted and lost in the confused memory of absurd and ridiculous associations. Follow him to the scaffold. The executioner cannot disturb the calmness of the idiot. He will laugh in the agony of death. . . . I have heard the greatest of American orators. I have heard Daniel O Con- nell and Sir Robert Peel. But I heard John Depuy make a speech excelling them all in eloquence : " They have made William Freeman what he is, a brute- beast; they don t make anything else of any of our people but brute-beasts; but when we violate their laws, then they want to punish us as if we were men !".... Although we may send this maniac to the scaffold, it will not recall to life the manly form of Van Nest, nor reanimate the exhausted frame of that aged matron, nor restore to life and grace and beauty the murdered mother, nor call back the infant boy from the arms of his Saviour. Such a verdict can do no good to the living, and carry no joy to the dead. If your judgment shall be swayed at all by sympathies so wrong, although so natural, you will find the saddest hour of your life to be that in which you will look down upon the grave of your victim, and " mourn with compunctious sorrow " that you should have done so great injustice to the " poor handful of earth that will lie mouldering before you." Seward was followed by the Attorney -General, who summed up in a long, elaborate, and powerful argument. The judge s charge to the jury was accepted as leaning strongly toward conviction, but the jury needed no additional spur. They went out, and promptly returned with a verdict of " Guilty." The judge announced that he would pronounce sentence upon the prisoner the next morning, at half -past six o clock. The sun had hardly risen on the morning of July 24th, when the impatient crowd gathered in and around the court-house for the last time, to hear the doom pronounced, and be assured that their wishes were accomplished. It was a grim spectacle for a summer morning. The poor idiot, roused from his cell, was brought into the court room, and ordered to stand up. As he was so deaf, the judge directed him to be brought close to his side, and, leaning over from the bench, said to him : " The jury say you are guilty. Do you hear me ? " " Yes," replied Freeman. " The jury," repeated the judge, " say you are guilty. Do you un derstand ? " " No," said the negro. " Do you know which the jury are ? " inquired the court. " No," answered the prisoner. "Well, they are those gentlemen down there," continued Judge Whiting, pointing to the jurors in their seats ; " and they say you are guilty. Do you understand ? " 822 LIFE A* LETTERS. [184d "No." " They say you killed Van Nest. Do you understand that ? " "Yes." Did you kiU Van Nest ? " "Yes." "I am going to pass sentence upon you. Do you understand that?" "No." "I am going to sentence you to be hanged. Do you understand that?" "No." It was so manifestly a mockery to address a sentence of death to a creature who could not comprehend a word of it, that the judge, de parting from the usual form, addressed it over his head to the audience. Speaking of the prisoner at the bar in the third person, he informed them that Freeman, on Friday the 18th of September, would be taken to the place of execution, and hanged by the neck until dead. The vast crowd dispersed exultant, and the only one in the court-room who was unconscious of the result of the trial was taken to his cell to await the time when he should be taken to the gallows. Seward walked sadly to his home, though he had anticipated no different termination. In his argument on the preliminary trial in ref erence to Freeman s insanity, he made allusion to the feeling which had been kindled against him for his fidelity in a cause where he was doomed to defeat : In due time, gentlemen of the jury, when I shall have paid the debt of Nature, my remains will rest here in your midst, with those of my kindred and neighbors. It is very possible they may be unhonored, neglected, spurned 1 But, perhaps, years hence, when the passion and excitement which now agitate this community shall have passed away, some wandering stranger, some lone exile, some Indian, some negro, may erect over them an humble stone, and thereon this epitaph, " He was faithful ! " More than a quarter of a century has passed since these painful scenes. Judge and culprit, prosecutor and defender, all have gone to gether to their long account. The passion and excitement which agitated the community at that hour have long since passed away, and he from whom this appeal was wrung sleeps peacefully in their midst, not unhonored or neglected, for no day passes that his grave is not visited by reverent hearts, or strewed with flowers by loving hands. On the marble above him is carved the epitaph of his choice : "HE WAS FAITHFUL." OF THE UNIVERSITY RSITY 1 INDEX. A. PAGE. Abolitionists 594 Albany Atlas 661 Albany Evening Journal established. ... 77 Albany Female Academy 614 Albany Lobby 213 Albany Regency 87 Albany social life 177 Albany Typographical Society 399 Anti-Masonic party 71, 147, 231 "Anti-rent" wars 449, 450, 453 Anti-alayery interrogatories 377 Anti-slavery laws 465 Ashburton treaty 614 Auburn and Owasco canal 293 Auburn and Syracuse railroad 356 Auburn, President Van Buren s visit to. 435 Adams, John Quincy, mention of, 55, 60, 62 63, 64, 06, 70, 85, 88, 89, 90, 144, 192, 208 221, 306, 405, 448, 465, 529, 531, 545, 565 570, 572, 580, 616, 622, 627, 660, 669, 671 674, 688, 713, 722, 770, 774, 775, 781 Adams and Jackson 63 Alden, James 611 Alexander, Major William, of Georgia, 39 Allen, Darius, of Troy 623 Allen, John, of Rochester 689 Allen, Stephen, of New York 225 Amory, Colonel, mention of.... 41 8, 451, 457 513 Anderson, Robert, U. S. A 589 Andrews, George 523, 561 Andrews, S. G 582 Anthon, John 417, 585, 634 Anthon, Rev. Charles 609 Arthur, Sir George 410 Ashburton, Lord, mention of... 581, 598, 603 615 Ashmun, George 783 Austin, Rev. John M 816, 820 Averill, Horatio 427, 451, 453 Averill, Lewis 501 Ayrault, Allen , 569 B. Baltimore Anti-Masonic Convention. .89, 94 " Barn-Burners " 654 Boston and Albany Railroad celebration. 575 Boston, scenes in and memories of 201 PAGE. Bucktails, the 50 Bulwer s "Last Days of Pompeii" 243 Bunker Hill monument 665 Bingenon the Rhine 120 Bacon, William J 569 Bagot, Sir Charles, mention of, 580, 604, 612 621 Bancroft, George 555, 780, 783 Bangs, Rev. Nathan 416 Barker, George P 501, 586 Barnard, Daniel D 569 Barnard, Henry 419 Barings Brothers & Co 109 Bashford, Coles 469 Beach, John H 380, 681 Beach, Nelson J , . . . 569 Beach, William 681, 704 Beardsley, Levi 144, 182 Beardsley, Nelson, mention of. 193, 240, 252 263, 269, 294, 301, 388 Beardsley, Samuel 330 Beck, Lewis C 397, 609 Bell, John, mention of.... 521, 527, 545, 564 Beinan, Rev. Dr., of Troy 38 Bement, C. N 609 Benedict, Lewis, mention of... 225, 242, 500 612, 635, 643, 645, 648, 663, 694, 720, 787 Benedict, Spencer S 384, 451, 535 Benjamin, Orson, of Ontario 469 Benson, Egbert, of New York 520 Benton, N. S., of Herkimer 84 Bentou, Thomas H., mention of. .85, 252, 327 493, 562, 696, 712, 716, 773, 775, 783, 7S4 793 Berrien, John M 564 Biddle, Nicholas 340, 445 Bigelow, Dr., of Auburn 816, 820 Bird, William A., of Erie 57S Birdsall, Benjamin 543 Birdseye, Victory, of Onondaga. . . .375, 4<i5 Birnev, James G., mention of.. 490, 503, 542 727, 732, 742 Bissell, Daniel P 5St> Blatchford, Richard M., mention of, 504, 5! 3 543, 547, 551, 553, 560, 653, 658, 665, 6ri$ 740, 769, 774, 775, 776 Blatchford, Samuel, mention of, 383, 384, 429 492, 563, 582, 613, 760, 761, 767, 784, 813 Bliss, George, of Massachusetts 549 Bloodgood, Major William 452 Blunt, Joseph 240, 609> 824 INDEX. Bockee, A 577 Bockee, David A 501, 596 Bonaparte, Joseph, of Bordentown, 207, 285 Bottsf JohnM 558 Bouch, William C., mention of, 211, 474, 501 611, 622, 638, 642, 644, 648, 679, 682, 738, 808 Boughton, George N 474 Bowen, James, mention of 504, 513, 543 551, 560, 658, 681, 747, 754, 769 Bradford, John M , 560 Bradish, Luther, mention of . . .240, 345, 357 365, 372, 373, 383, 384, 428, 500, 516, 523 549, 611, 615, 622, 639 Brady, James T 585 Briggs, Dr. Lansing, of Auburn 816 Brigham, Dr., of Utica, mention of, 813, 814 817, 82C Broadhead, John Romeyn 520 Bronson, Greene C 227, 540, 552 Bronson, Parliament 237 Brown Brothers & Co 436, 445 Brown, William, of Auburn. 75 Bryant, William Cullen 637 Buchanan, James, mention of.. 561, 775, 781 783, 784 But.1, Jesse 156, 210, 318 Burr, Aaron, mention of.. .97, 169, 170, 227 326 Burr, Calvin 261 Burt, James.... 500, 513 Butler, Benjamin F., of New York, men tion of 96, 245, 555, 609 C. Campaign poetry 239 Canadian patriots " 353, 527 Canal enlargement stopped 597 Canal system . 94 Constitution of New York 763 Conventions: National Republican of 1833. 99 World s Anti-Slavery, in London, 1840. 490 Christian life and duty 300 Church experiences 313 City of Cincinnati 797 " Clintonians," the 50 Croton water celebration 625 Cady, Daniel 96, 469, 678 Calhoun, John C., mention of, 60, 62, 63, 73 74, 85, 96, 184, 206, 228, 298, 338, 396 Campbell, Rev. Dr., mention of 196, 513 553, 609, 678 Campbell, Judge W. W., of Otsego.489, 718 Cannon, Le Grand B 623 Carroll, Charles 90 Carroll, Charles H 501 Cary, Trumbull, mention of... 181, 216, 226 242, 243, 245, 246, 301, 335, 434, 467, 560 646 Cass, Lewis, mention of... 146, 670, 688, 714 715, 767, 775, 776 Catherwood, artist 609 Cambreling, C. C 240 Chandler, Adoniram . . 240, 393 Chandler, Joseph R 544 Channing, Rev. William Ellery 490 Chase, Salmon P 742 Chatfield, Levi S., mention of, 517, 534, 569 577 PAGE. Chedell, John H., of Auburn 193 Chitteuden, Thomas C 515 Church, Sanford E., of Orleans.. ,.569, 578 Clarke, Charles E . 374 Clark, Lewis Gay lord, mention of.. .455, 545 552, 632 Clark, John C 684 Clark, Matthew St. Clair, of Pennsylva nia 545, 598 Clark, Stephen 586 Clark, Willis Gaylord, mention of ...282, 320 492, 544 Clay, Cassius M 729, 759, 799 Clay, Henry, mention of.. 60, 62, 63, 64, 85 89, 93, 96, 99, 100, 102, 103, 150, 184, 206 298, 338, 396, 409, 428, 431, 446, 448, 493 498, 515, 533, 545, 555, 561, 571, 594, 597 611, 613, 615, 622, 626, 654, 676, 688, 692 694, 698, 700, 706, 712, 717, 720, 723, 726 728, 731, 733, 760, 772, 7S2 Clinton, De Witt, mention of, 35, 48, 50, 55 61, 62, 63, 66, 67, 238, 382, 420, 426, 494 574, 660 Clinton, George M., of Buffalo 689 Clowes, Thomas 725 Cobb, E. B., of Montezuma 470 Cobb, Lyman, author "Cobb s Read ers" 722 Cobbett, William Ill Cole, A. H., of Albion 369 Cole, Cornelius 704 Cole, David H., of Albion 469 Cole, John 0., Clerk of Assembly 578 Coleman, Robert B., of " The Astor" . . 682 Collier, John A., mention of 501, 521, 611 615, 655, 712, 721, 768 Colt, John C 628, 630, 635 Colt, Roswell, of Patterson 741 Conkling, Judge Alfred, mention of, 175, 211 242, 609, 691 Cook, Bates, of Niagara 393, 521 Cook, Horace T., of Auburn 704 Cook, James M., of Saratoga. 808 Cook, Robert, of Cayuga 218 Coombs, General Leslie 799- Cooper, James Fenimore, mention of, 91, 582 639, 667, 740, 754 Cook, Charles, of Chemuug 343 Corning, Erastus, of Albany 569, 577 Corwin, Thomas, mention of... 498, 744, 754 772, 783 Coventry, Charles B 535 Cox, James R., of Auburn 704, 816 Cramer, John, of Saratoga 578 Crane, Albert 514 Crandall, Prudence 146 Crary, John 78 Crawford, William H., mention of. . .60, 62 63, 85 Crittenden, John J., mention of 498, 521 527, 540, 562, 609, 616 Croswell, Edwin, mention of. . .196, 381, 398 415, 534, 575, 609, 646, 648, 663, 689 Croswell, Rev. William, of Auburn 371 Curtis, Edward, mention of, 379, 524, 526, 564 775. 776 Curtis, George 524 Gushing, Caleb ,..491, 588 Cushman, Robert M 505 Curtis, Ira, of Auburn 816, 820 IXDEX. 825 B. Daguerreotypes first made 467 Democrats again in power 647 Davis, George K., mention of, 569, 577, 578 611, 643 Davis, Governor John, of Massachu setts, mention of.. ..548, 590, 664, 699, 744 772, 782, 784 Davis, Joseph, of Albany 505 Davis, Mathew L., " Life of Aaron Burr " 326 Dallas, Commodore; Brig "Somers" court of inquiry 640 Dallas, George M 715 Dawson, George, mention of 656, 719 De Grand, P. P. F., of Boston 556 De Haven, Edwin J 610 De Joinville, Prince 572 De Kay, James E 397, 609 Delatield, General, Commandant of West Point 714 Delavau, Edward C 211, 243, 558 Delancey, Bishop 371 Denuiston, Robert 427 Derby. Earl 113 Derby, James C., Chairman of Auburn Committee 503 De Smet, Father 662 Devereux, Nicholas, trustee State luna tic asylum 535, 561 Dexter, Chauncey 427 Dexter, S. Newton, Canal Commissioner. 474 Dickens, Charles 581, 590, 627 Dickinson, Daniel S., mention of... 343, 466 501, 622, 639, 642, 654, 679 Dickinson, A. B., mention of. . .445, 523, 536 555, 579, 583, 585, 589, 620, 656, 682, 724 Dickson, Moses 73 Disraeli s new novel 196 Dix, John A., mention of. .227, 466, 569, 575 578 Doane, Dr. A. Sidney, mention of, 468, 563 740, 813, 814 Dodd, Edward 808 Dorr, Governor Thomas W., of Rhode Island, mention of.. 601, 604, 606, 613 the Dorr war 603 Doubleday, Ulysses F., of Auburn. 196, 294 Doughty, Major-General 500 Douglas, Stephen A 113, 766 Downing, Andrew J... 419, 609 " Downing, Major Jack " 500 Draper, Simeon, mention of , 604, 513,543, 653 Duane, William J 146 Duer, John, mention of 47, 523, 641 Duer, William 477 Durant, Clark 505 E. Eaton, John H 86 Eaton, Mrs. John H 86 Earll, Jonas, mention of 474, 58*5 Earll, Thomas 509 Edwards, Monroe 607 Ellmaker, Amos, mention of 99. 100 Emmet, Robert, mention of 628, 632 Emmet, Thomas Addis 113 Emmons, Professor 542 Enos, Benjamin 586 Evans, George 772 Everett, Horace 564 PAGE. Everett, Edward, mention of.. 145, 391, 515 560 Ewing. Thomas, mention of... .521, 540, 545 562 F. Federalists and Republicans , . . 59 Female convicts 94 Financial crash of 1837 331 Foreign-born citizens 405 Forty million debt 503 Farnngton, Thomas 586 Fosgate, Blanchard 193, 816 Faulkner, Senator 614 Faxton, Theodore S 535 Fillmore, Millard, mention of ..174, 186, 189 232, 336, 339, 369, 372, 374, 379, 408, 516 519, 522, 564, 569, 611, 622, 647, 655, 669 671, 681, 688, 690, 699, 716, 723, 725, 730 757, 759 Fish, Hamilton 240 Fitch, Abijah 230 Flagg, Azariah C., mention of.. 227, 403, 433 586, 635, 639 Flagler, T. C 569, 578 Folsom, George 609 Forbes, John G 467 Forrest, Edwin 224 Forsyth, James C 808 Forsyth, John, mention of 519,522, 527 Forward, Walter 562, 654 Fosdick, Charles 704 Foster, Henry A 84, 584 Fox, British Minister, mention of. ..519, 529 551, 561 Francis, John W 609 Franklin, Benjamin 98 Franklin, Morris 577, 579 Franklin, William B . 671 Freeman murder case ^^i- Freeman, William, trial of SW Fremont, John C 773 Freeman, William, mention of, 786, 787, 8QJi -"- 812. Frelinghuysen, Theodore, mention of, 22, 699 712, 717, 732 Furman, Gabriel, mention of. ..466, 578, 583 585, 609, 622 Fuller, Philo C., mention of.... 182, 526, 614 G. Georgia slave case 547 Glentworth case, the 505 Greeley and Cooper case 741 Greeley s "Log Cabin" 496 Gaines, Major-General 437 Gallatin, Albert 178 Gardner, Hiram 567 Gardner, David 696 Gardner, Addison 725 Garrison, William Lloyd, mention of,114, 146 292, 490 Garrow, Nathaniel 244 Genet, Edmond C., mention of.. 97, 170, 197 Gerard, James W 569 Gilmer, Governor, mention of, 462, 492, 509 528, 696 Glentworth, James B., mention of. .504, 509 523, 543, 570 826 IIS DEX. Gould, James 505 Gould, John Stanton 737 Graham, David, Jr., mention of, 237, 247, 632 Granger, Francis, mention of, 70, 71, 77, 96 99, 156, 171, 211, 240, 299, 323, 336, 343 349, 362, 364, 366, 372, 379, 408, 516, 519 521, 545, 562, 565, 570, 671, 744 Granger, Amos P., mention of, 569, 665, 668 Gray, Henry Peters 653 Grant, U. S 671 Greeley, Horace, mention of ...368, 381, 395 412, 496, 509, 534, 553, 607, 609, 626, 656 665, 667, 674, 676, 689, 700, 712, 721, 730 740, 754, 769, 770 Green, Archibald 72, 73 Greig, John ..369, 614 Gridley, Abraham 467 Gridley, Judge 567 Griffin, John 152 Griffin, George 96 Grinnell, Moses H., mention of, 364, 379, 504 509, 533, 543, 653 H. Haarlem, the great organ at 118 Harpers Ferry, visit to 267 Helderberg war 451 Holland Land Company 301 Haight, Jacob 521 Hale, John P 759 Hall, J ames 397 Hall, Nathan K 469 Hall, Taylor, mention of 670, 733, 769 Hall, Willis, mention of. ..237, 243, 247, 393 523, 567, 622, 626, 632, 643, 696 Hamilton, Alexander, mention of, 68, 97, 98 409, 636 Hamilton, Mrs. Alexander, mention of. . 198 781, 784 Hamilton, Henry 474 Hamilton, James A 724 Hamilton, John C , 569 Hammond, Jabez D., mention of, 86, 145, 488 530 Hard, Gideon, mention of . .569, 577, 579, 584 Hardenbergh, J. H 218 Harding, Chester, mention of.. 609, 649, 653 655, 659, 664, 673, 677 Harper Brothers 442 Harper, James. . , 698 Harper s School Library 522 Harrison, William Henry, mention of . . 297 299, 318, 409, 470, 498, 501, 509, 513, 515 524, 531, 693 Harrison nominated for President 448 Harrison, General, election of 506 Harrison, General, inauguration 526 Harrison, General, death of 531 Harvey, Jacob 543 Hasbrouck, William C 501 Hathaway, Charles , 469 Hawks, Francis L., D. D., mention of. . . 247 371, 609 Hawley, Gideon 609 Hawley, Seth C., mention of. . ..388, 508, 560 566, 664, 676, 678, 725, 747, 757, 799 Henshaw, Secretary 668 Henshaw, Caroline M., mention of.. 631, 633 634 Hermance, Levi, Dr 816 PACK. Hickok, L. P., Rev 427 Higher Law, speech on 472 Hinman, Lyman 193 Hoffman and Seward 51 Hoffman, Charles Fenno, mention of ... 4t>7 520, 609 Hoffman, Michael, mention of, 540, 569, 579 593, 611, 617, 654. 808 Hoffman, Ogden, mention of... 48, 240, 338 379, 498. 640 Holley, John M 676 Holley, Myron, mention of 79, 509 Holley, Orville L 521, 609 Hone, Philip 364 Hooker, James 586 Hopkins, James G 412, 445 Hopkins, John R 816 Hopkins, Samuel Miles, mention of.. 92, 164 Hornblower, Joseph C 1 22 Horner, James,mention of, 244, 501, 645, 762 7S Hosack, Dr 635 Howe, Thomas Y 222 Hubbell, General 520 Hubbell, Levi 569 Hudson, David 474 Hughes, Bishop, mention of ...502, 586, 598 662 Hulburd, Calvin T 569, 578 Hulbert, Colonel 64 Humphrey, Charles 611 Humphrey, Friend .445,465, 645 Humphreys, George 322 Hun, Dr 609, 816 Hunt, Alvah 372, 466 Hunt, Washington, mention of, 626, 770, 773 775, 780, 782 Hunter, R. M. T 449 Hunter, Robert 505, 645 Huntington, Daniel 653 Huson, Calvin 704 I. Imprisonment for debt 191 Incendiary publications 291 Indian chief s address 390 Inventors and inventions 443 Ingalls, Ruf us 671 Inman, Henry, mention of, 649, 653, 673, 675 677 Irving, Washington 371 466 J. Jefferson s statue, General Jackson criti cises 278 Jackson, Andrew, mention of, 60, 62, 63, 67 70, 73, 74, 75, 86, 87, 95, 100, 103, 144, 232 245, 252, 292, 318, 327, 328, 329, 746 Jacobs, A. P 560 Jay, William 609, 60 Jefferson, Thomas, mention of.. 98, 518, 627 Jennings, Isaac 19 Jennings, Mary 20 Johnson, A. B 609 Johnson, A. P 501 Johnson, Colonel 699 Johnson, Reverdy 773, 774 Johnson, Thomas A 626 INDEX. 827 PAGE. Jones, Adjutant-General 441 Jones, Commodore 640 Jones, David R. Floyd 569 Jones, Major-General 441 Jones, Nathaniel 586 Jordan, Ambrose L 721, 808 Joy, Alderman 681 K. Knights of Golden Circle 148 Know-Nothing party 148 Knower, Benjamin 234 Knowles, James Sheridan 243 Kane, James 469 Kellogg, Charles 73 Kellogg, Day Otis 372, 535 Kellogg, Palmer V 368 Kemble, Gouverneur 379, 808 Kempshall, Thomas 379 Kennedy, John A 808 Kennedy, John P 409, 564 Kent, James, Chancellor, mention of, 29, 99 143, 247, 332, 360, 441, 609, 678 Kent, William, Judge, mention of.. 198, 219 238, 246, 427, 520, 536, 555, 628, 634 Ketchum, Hiram, mention of. ..536, 549, 502 Keyes, E. V 589 King, Charles, mention of 246,249, 363 King, John A., mention of, 211, 371, 465, 554 599, 681, 720 King, James G., mention of. ...240, 246, 248 416 King, Preston 240, 776 Kins, Rufus, General, mention of.. 246, 3b4 401, 432, 487, 516, 532, 551, 641, 645, 649 681, 722 King, Thomas Butler 775, 783 Kirkland, Charles S 808 Kirk, Rev. Edward N 188 Law reform 467 Law, the Electoral 61 Law, the Small Bill 299 Legislative sessions 94 Loco-Foco, origin of 299 Long Branch, life at 287 Lafayette, General 155 Lafayette, General, reception of 64 Lafayette s welcome to Seward 134, 140 Lafayette, George Washington 139 Lake, Jarvis N 868 Lansing, Gerrit Y 196, 240 Lansing, Jacob 505 Lansing, Rev. D. C 64 Latch-string pulled in 565 Lawrence, Abbott 241, 744 Leavenworth, E. W 501, 689 Lee, Gideon, mention of 514, 520, 577 Lee, John 731, 733 Legare, Hugh S., mention of.. 498, 502, 562 666 Leigh, Benjamin Watkins 777 Leitch, George F 662 Leland, General 581 Levy, Jefferson M 274 Lewis, Morgan 637 Lewis, Samuel 742 Lewis, Tayler 427 Lincoln, Governor. ... 548 Lincoln, Levi 241 Linn, Archibald L ...427, 469 Little, George W 586 Livingston, JSdward 145 Livingston, Edward P 78, 211 Livingston, Peter R 500 Lloyd, Major-General 441 Locke, John A 569 Loomis, Arphaxad 569, 579 Lord, Daniel 416, 569 Lott, John A 578 Love, Harlow C 560 Love, Thomas C 469 Loveridge, Cicero 514 Luckey, Rev. Dr 460, 502 Lyell, Charles 555, 557 Lyons, James 778 M. Magnetism, animal Mass meetings, women at Mexican war Militia reviews Mohicans, Last of " Mont Blanc Moon hoax, the Mac Kenzie, Alexander S 640, Macomb, Major-General Madison, Mrs. James, mention of.. 770, Mahan, Professor Mangurn, Willie P., mention of, 319, Mann, Abiiah, Jr Marcy, William L., mention of.. 59 170, 240, 241, 249, 299, 365, 381, 450, 494, 583, 638, 639, 660, 679, Marshall, Chief Justice Marshall s Life of Washington Martin, Enos T. Throop, mention of, 609, 580, 775, , 84, 415, 763, 774, .90. 164, Marvine, E. E Marvin, R. P., mention of, 360, 379, 434, Matsell, Justice Matthew, Father, mention of... 528, 576, Maxcy, Virgil Maxvvell, Hugh 373, Maynard, John, mention of, 466, 477, 564, Maynard, William H., mention of, 77, 83, 99, 165, 166, 182, 188, 209, Mayuard, William H., death of McCall, Dr 813, McCauley, Thomas, D. D McDonough, Commodore McKown, Recorder Mclntyre, Archibald 513, Mclntyre, Donald McLane, Louis McLeod, Alexander, mention of, 519, 522, 534, 538, 540, 551, 568, McLeod, trial of McLean, Captain McLean, Judge John, mention of, 79, 89, 206, 252, 279, 297, 754, 770, 773, 784, 414 729 755 441 198 125 289 5S 441 772 7S1 714 772 783 240 150 433 771 780 91 98 177 758 769 808 504 593 677 696 375 577 682 95 341 2-20 814 30 470 450 645 469 146 526 611 567 625 184 798 828 INDEX. McNab, Allen 567 McNaughton, James 535 Miller, Elijah, Judge, mention of, 52, 62, 75 91. 159, 175, 227, 232, 234, 256, 288, 294 303, 341, 379, 655, 663, 671 Miller, Frances A 55 Miller, Killian 569 Miller, Paulina 290 Miller, Rutger B 358, 653, 740 Minturn, E 501 Monroe, James 379 Monroe, President 50, 85 More, Hannah, life of. . . . 244 Morehead, Senator 773, 806 Morgan, Christopher, mention of... 351, 370 379, 468, 487, 516, 547, 552, 555, 557, 565 611, 626, 648, 659 Morgan, E. B 340 Morgan, William, mention of, 69, 77, 83, 147 Morgan, abduction of 83 Morpeth, Lord 573, 662 Morris, George P 624 Morris, Recorder, mention of.. 523, 534, 598 676, 808 Morris, Thomas 542 Morse, S. F. B 609, 685 Murray, John B 388 Myers, P. Hamilton 468 Mynderse, Colonel Wilhelmus, mention of 55, 231, 261 N. National Anti-Masonic Convention 79 New England, the sons of 247 New York, colonial history of 521 New York, common schools in 535 Nullification movement 211 Nelson, John 668 Nelson, Judge Samuel, mention of.. 179, 415 466, 516, 527, 552, 566, 720 Newton, Isaac 650, 662 Nicholas, Robert C 372, 808 Noah, Mordecai M 502 Northrup, Henry B 501 Nott, Ehphalet, mention of.. 29, 84, 179, 380 382, 414, 420, 427, 460, 488, 502, 593, 605 609, 669, 718, 754 Nott, Joel B 501, 581, 664 Noxon, B. David 689 Noyes, William Curtis 237 o. Old Hunkers. 654 Oregon question, the 793 O Conor, Charles 808 O Connell, Daniel, mention of, 112, 113, 490 576, 659, 661, 668, 686, 697 O Connell and slavery 661 Ogden, David B 96, 496 Sullivan, John L 520, 609 Overbaugh, John L 501 P. Parties, origin of 57 Pittsburg and its manufactories.... 776, 794 Paige, Alonzo C 466 Parker, A. J 343 Parmelee, William 645 PAGE. Parsons, Charles A 704 Patten, Moses 469 Patterson, George W., mention of.. 240, 385 459, 466, 470, 482, 569, 636, 655, 664, 722 808 Patton, John M 529 Payne, George R 505 Payne, John Howard 520 Peacemaker, explosion of 695 Peel, Sir Robert 113 Penrose, Speaker 447 Perry, Commodore O. H 611, 640 Perry, M. C 551 Phelps, Senator 773 Philippe, Louis, Paris under 137 Phillips, Wendell . . 490 Pickens, F. W 240 Platt, Isaac 5Q1 Polhemus, Henry , 294, 652 Polk, James K., mention of 714, 715, 716 732, 743, 770 Polk and Dallas, election of 731 Pomeroy, Charles W 194 Pomeroy, Theodore M 704 Porter, John, mention of 294, 301 Porter, John K 808 Porter, Peter B., mention of ...368, 414, 500 514, 516, 561 Potter, Alonzo, mention of 217,399, 427 Potter, Horatio, mention of 232, 398, 427 Prindle, P. B 578 Pringle, Benjamin 560 Pruyn, Robert H., mention of.. 368, 381, 535 Pumpelly, H 645 Purcell, Bishop 662 Putnam, Harvey, mention of.. 379, 469, 626 Q. Quincy, Josiah, mention of, 548, 574, 591, 606 K. Railroads . 94 Rebellion in Rhode Island 599 Recollections of Law Student (Cox) 704 Red Jacket 92 Rent, down with 450 Removal of U. S. Bank deposits 149 Rhode Island, rebellion in 599 Randall, Josiah 409, 769 Randall, S. S., mention of 586, 661, 725 Rathbone, Jared L 505 Rathbun, Benjamin 55, 57 Raynor, Kenneth 564 Redfield, Professor 609 Renwick, Professor 443, 609 Rexford, B. F 501 Reynolds, J. J 671 Rhett, R. B 688 Richardson, General 623 Richardson, John L 678 Ritner, Governor 368 Rives, William C 498, 502 Roberts, Marshall 501 Robinson, William 523 Rodgers, Commodore 640 Rodgers, Mary 557, 566 Roe, Captain*. 625, 769 Romeyn, Herman M 514 INDEX. 829 Root, Erastus, mention of.. 86, 211, 348, 445 459, 462, 501, 523, 559, 579, 583, 591, 620 622, 688, 723 Roosevelt, James J 240 Ruger, Senator 656 Ruggles, F. H 368, 501 Ruggles, Samuel B., mention of, 341, 359, 363 374, 380, 394, 439, 560, 609, 624, 653, 791 Rumsey, David 469 Rutnsev, Phineas 501 Rush, Dr 737 Rush, Richard, mention of 145, 206, 230 s. School district libraries 405 School question, the 463 Secession, prediction of 727 Senate, battle with the 583 Senate, first Whig 445 Seward Institute, the S. S 761 Shakers, visit to 183 Shinplasters, origin 332 Slavery, movement against 145 Slavery question 743 South "Carolina nullification 103 Search Law 587 Speculation, the year of 315 State Convention, National Republican. 70 State slave-holding 101 Staten Island, celebration at 417 Swiss mountains 121 Sackett, W. A 378 Sackett, Gary V., mention of.. 520, 550, 646 664 Sanford, General, mention of.. 416, 441, 451 551 Sanford, Mitchell 445, 459 Sargent, John 99, 100 Schoolcraft, John L., mention of. ..501, 645 659, 662, 718 Schoolcraft 751, 753 Schultz, Captain 625 Schuyler, Major 176 Schuyler, Moses 537 Schuyler, Philip 781 Scoles, John B 482 Scott, Wmfield, mention of 360, 447, 527 571, 663, 770, 771, 772, 774, 775 Seaton, W. W 646, 774 Selden, Dudley 628, 632 Sessions, John 704 Sevvard, William Henry Aaron Burr and Seward s children 227 A bloody mystery 787 Address at tlnion College 721 A dislocated shoulder 736 Advice to Thurlow Weed 259 Agricultural address 643 Anti-slavery record 377 A school teacher in Georgia 39 Birth and parentage 19 Birth of his daughter Frances 735 Buying a house 75 Ceases to be Governor 507 Close of legislative life 153 Closing year at college 45 College escapade 36 Croton water celebration 624, 625 Death of his brother Jennings 525 PAGE. Seward, William Henry Death of his mother 735 Death of his only sister 392 Debut at Auburn 52 Defeated for Governor ...159, 241 Delegate to Baltimore Convention. . . . 206 Delivers an address at six years 21 Discourse on education 337 Elected Brigadier-General 194 Elected Captain of militia. r. 193 Elected Governor 378, 379 Elected to State Senate 80 Experiments in silk manufacture 479 First essay 25 First experience in debate 80 First legislative experience 163 First meets Thurlow Weed 56 First railway ride 195 First steamboat journey 29 First voyage to Europe 104 Fourth of July orations 192 Georgia slave case 547 Given s Hotel 30 Habits in money matters 651 Habits of smoking 481 His infant daughter s death 324 His mother s advice about the Sabbath 658 His mother s illness 229 His views on temperance 577 Introduction to the Geological Survey, 609 J oins debating society 25 Joins Episcopal Church 54 Journey to Albany 1 62 Lafavette s welcome to Seward, men tion of 134, 137, 139, 140 Last month in office 637 Last year in Senate 149 Loses one hundred and fifty dollars. .. 45 Marries Frances A. Miller 62 Militia reforms 82 Nicholas and Harriet Bogart 308 Nominated for Governor 158, 236, 373 Notes on New York 608 Oration at Syracuse 88 Reading novels 181 Received in New York by his mother. 142 Receives John Quincy Adams at Au burn 672 Recommends William H. Harrison for President 252 Refuses Benjamin Rathbun s pardon.. 4*4 Refuses to pardon John C. Colt 630 Removes to Auburn 51 Resumes law and chancery practice. . 249 646 Returns home with his father 141 Returns to Union College 44 School life in Orange county 21 Second inauguration message 516, 517 Seward and the Court of Errors 230 Six months in Georgia 37 Speech on Higher Law 472 Speech on removal of deposits 149 Speech on United States Bank 96, 209 Studying law 47 Talk with the Onondaga Indians 473 " Tell Chapman to crow " 499 The last message 619 The old writing chair 461 The red-headed woodpecker 658 830 INDEX. PAGE. Seward, William Henry Traveling through Holland 117 Trout fishing experience 264 Views of future life 351 Visits Chamber of Deputies. 131 Visits Henry Clay at Ashland 799 Visits Scotland and England 107 Visits the Tuileries 129 Visit to Boston 203 Visit to General Jackson 277 Visit to Harper s Ferry 267 Visit to John Quincy Adams 88, 205 Visit to Mt. Vernon 275 Visit to Park Theatre 37 Visit to the Shakers 183 Year of misfortune 323 Seward, Augustus, mention of, 235, 283, 305 351, 383, 657, 774 Seward, Butler 801, 803 Seward, Colonel John 19, 288 Seward, Clarence A., mention of. ..525, 691 740, 802 Seward, Frances A., mention of, 162, 257, 264 272, 277, 282, 290, 343, 385, 411, 465, 657 663, 675, 703, 720, 722, 735, 744, 767 Seward, Frederick W., mention of.. 80, 161 200, 277, 305, 351, 355, 740, 802 Seward, Israel 801,802 Seward, Jennings, mention of, 328, 336, 492 525 Seward, Samuel S., mention of, 19, 104, 186 335, 343, 657, 663 Seward, Weed and Greeley 760 Seward, William Henry, Jr 44, 802 Seymour, Horatio, mention of.. 358, 569, 578 784 Shaw, Robert G 488 Shepard, William W 704 Sherman, Isaac 518 Sherman, Willett H 535 Sherman, William T 589 Sherwood, John M 294 Sibley, Mark H., mention of. ...240, 335, 338 415, 445, 466, 577, 666 Sigpurney, Mrs. L. H 181 Silliman, Benjamin D 507 Simmons, George A., mention of. . .501, 569 578, 579, 655, 808 Skinner, George C 218 Slidell, John, mention of 640, 792, 806 Smith, Truman 783 Smith, George W 708 Smith, Gerrit, mention of, 490, 582, 594, 676 733 Smith, Governor 777 Smith, John Cotton 407 Smith, S. McCune 782 Smith, Vivus W 665 South wick, Solomon 71, 73 Spencer, Chief Justice Ambrose, men tion of 48, 49, 51, 184, 617 Spencer, John C., mention of, 77, 89, 90, 96 99, 165, 167, 189, 335, 371, 380, 393, 411 415, 419, 457, 514, 535, 543, 564, 588, 606 613, 626, 646, 654, 676, 689, 721 Spencer, Joshua A 240, 393 Spencer, Midshipman Pkilip 640 Sprague, William B., mention of.. 419, 532 636 Spring, Gardner 416 PAGE. Squire, Benjamin ...................... 716 Stanly, Edward, mention of . . .492, 498, 554 558, 769 Stanley, Lord .......................... 113 Starr, Chandler ................... 373, 467 Stevens, Thaddeus ................. 79, 90 Stevens, John L., mention of . .466, 520, 609 Stevens, Samuel, mention of.. 78, 83, 99, 156 198, 373, 393, 501, 632, 645, 737 Stetson, Lemuel ................... 569, 578 Stewart, Alvin, mention of ____ 509, 582, 732 Stewart, Commodore .................. 640 Stilwell, Silas M., mention of.. 158, 238, 248 St. John, D. B ...... ........ ...... 372 Stockton, Commodore ................. 696 Stone, William L., mention of, 186, 238, 246 358, 520, 535, 609, 624 Storms, George H ..................... 586 Strong, Theron R., mention of, 569, 578, 584 Strong, William K .................... 626 Stryker, Major- General . ............. 441 Swackhamer, Conrad, mention of . .535, 579 617 Swartwout, Samuel .................... 141 T. Truman, Lyman ...................... Tucker, Luther ........................ Turner, William ....................... Tyler grippe, the ..................... Tyler, John, inauguration of ........... Tyler s vetoes ....................... Tyler, John, mention of... 448, 513, 532, 545, 554, 560, 562, 611, 615, 621, 626, 694, Thatcher, George H ................... Thompson, Judge .................... Thompson, Smith .................. 70, Thompson, B. F ...................... Thompson, Robert ..................... Thomas, David S ...... ................ Throop, Enos T., mention of. .71, 75, 78, 164, 177, 223, 296, 494, 660, Thurman, John R ..................... Tilden, Samuel J ...................... Tobey, William N .................... Tompkins, Daniel D., mention of, 35, 36, 66, 238, 382, 400, 420, 583, Tomlinson, Theodore A ............... Torrey, John, mention of ..... 397, 557, Townsend, John F ................... Townsend, General .................... Tracy, Albert H., mention of, 77, 83, 99, 156, 165, 206, 213, Tracy, John... ...... . ................. Temperance reform ................ 589, Tippecanoe and Tyler too .............. Tribune, New York, founding of ........ Tabor, Azor ......... .............. 453, Tallmadge, F. A ................... 466, Tallmadge, James .................. 62, Tallmadge, Nathaniel P., mention of, 84, 361, 394, 462, 498, 558, 564, 580. Taney, Roger B., mention of... 147, 298, Tappan, Arthur ...................... Tappan, Lewis, mention of, 146, 572, 595, Taylor, John ..................... 505, Taylor, Henry W., mention of, 359, 392, Taylor, John P ....................... . 560 609 39 659 533 561 539 665 711 535 51 73 442 501 612 80- 758 501 308 501 50 660 379 609 384 623 151 676 808 590 497 534 569 523 182 227 669 327 146 636 645 465 588 INDEX. 831 Taylor, General Zachary 792, 807 Taylor, Colonel Joseph 755 Ten Eyck, General 623 Ten Eyck, Visscher 645 u. United States Bank, speech on 96 Underwood, Amos 294 Underwood, George 704 Underwood, Henry, mention of, 551, 563, 578 691 Upshur, A. P mention of 562, 668, 696 V. Van Dieman s Land prisoners 621 Van Nest tragedy 786, 787 Virginia, a warning from 93 Virginia controversy 437 Virginia Non-intercourse Law 529 Virginia Requisition 429 Virginia Search Law 600 Virginia, slave life in 271 Virginia, Valley of 268 Vail, Captain 625 Van Buren, Martin, mention of.. 36, 60, 61 67, 71, 73, 74, 75, 84, 85, 86, 100, 189, 221 22*, 232, 238, 252, 296, 317, 327, 338, 340 352, 401, 416, 445, 494, 499, 501, 515, 524 525, 554, 562, 572, 611, 647, 654, 656, 659 668, 670, 677, 681, 682, 683, 691, 714, 722 739, 763 Van Buren, Smith T 435 Van Buren, John, mention of, 343, 450, 456 482, 759, 812, 813, 817, 820, 821 Van Bergen , Judge 576 Van Cortlandt, Pierre 513 Vanderpoel, Aaron 585 Van Rensselaer, Solomon 50, 526 Van Rensselaer, Stephen, mention of.. 211 392, 394 Van Reusselaer, Patroon 449 Van Vechten, Mayor 576, 645 Varian, Isaac L 577 Van Zandt, Rev. Washington 675 Vassar, Matthew 368 Verplanck, Gulian C., mention of.. 154, 157 240, 246, 364, 442, 466, 492, 514, 537, 553 569, 577, 655 Viele, Egbert L 623 Vinton, Francis 608 w. Whig discord 757 Whig party, origin of 154, 237 Whig victories 343 Whigs and the foreign vote 507 Whigs, defeat of 241, 571 Whigs, triumph of 343 Wyatt murder case, the 785 Wadsworth, James 230 Walworth, Chancellor, mention of, 384, 516 593 Wai worth, Lyman J 490 Warren, George B 689 Ward, Henry Dana 77 Washington" George 98 Watson, Elkanah 432 Wavland, Francis 29, 427 PAOE. Wayne, James M 240 Weed, Thurlow Advises Seward to write out his re marks 191 Advises the Governor 380 Albany Evening Journal established. . 77 Anti-Masonic party 90 Anti-rent troubles 756 Clamor against Abolitionists 293 Clever caricature of Weed 433 Contemplates leaving the Journal. ... 719 Declines Clerkship with the Assembly 349 Defeat of Henry Clay 732, 735 Describes Maynard s death 220 Elected State* Printer 462 Embarked on a sea of difficulties 374 Establishes Jeffersonian newspaper.. 354 Evening Journal as an advertising me dium 641 First meeting with Seward 56 God be thanked, we are victorious 87& His daughter s recovery 738 His departure for Europe 662 His generous and faithful friendship.. 639 His letters to the Evening Journal 609 His painful accident 196 His political responsibilities 348 In a very critical situation 224 Introduces Horace Greeley 395 Interesting letters from Europe . .680, 688 J. Fenimore Cooper commences his libel suit 582 Late printer and late dictator . . 648 Meeting at the Eagle Tavern 184 Murder of William Morgan 83 National Anti-Masonic Convention... 79 Never forgets his friends 172 New York and Erie railroad convention 341 One of the great politicians of the age, 179 Political advice to Seward 353 Presaging disasters to the Whig party 560 Recommended for Governor 693 Returns from Santa Cruz 740 Sails with his daughter Harriet to Santa Cruz 738 Saves the State several thousand dol lars 534 Seward s friendship for 166 Seward and the Constitutional Con vention 790 Seward s father confessor 194 Searching for a candidate 156, 158 Sustains defeat with firmness and spirit 218 Sympathy with Seward s affliction... 325 The Albany Lobby 213 The Whigs defeated 241 The year of financial collapse 323 Trial of the negro Freeman 810, 812 Urges right of suffrage to colored peo ple 465 Visit to Daniel O Connell 674 Webb, Henry L 645 Webb, James Watson, mention of.. 248, 358 636, 656, 676, 683, 769 Webster, Daniel, mention of, 96, 150, 228, 237 252, 299, 318, 338. 447, 493, 498. 515, 521 526. 527, 551, 553, 555, 563, 565, 603, 615 622, 623, 625, 658, 661, 664, 681, 692, 765 772, 774, 776, 782, 783, 793, 80S 832 INDEX. PAGE. Webster, Horace B 609 Weed, Harriet A., mention of.. 248, 251, 256 364, 663, 665 Weir, Professor 609, 649 Welch, Rev. Dr 165 Wells, Alexander H 492 Wells, Henry 678 Wetmore, Prosper M 240 Wetmore, R. C., mention of 412, 504 Wheaton, Henry G., mention of, 453, 645, 766 White, Drs. W. & G. H 737 White, John 505, 545 Whitehouse, Bishop 677 Whiting, Bowen , . .709, 809 Whiting, John 501 Whitney, Asa 474 Whittlesey, Elisha 526 Whittlesey, Frederick, mention of.. 77, 157 182, 244, 369, 434, 723, 730, 757 Wickliffe, Postmaster-General 606 Wilder, MyronO 704 Wilkes, Commodore 609 Wilkeson, Judge 56 Wilkin, S. J 722, 725 Willard s, Mrs., Seminary 55 Williams, Dr 660 Williams, Elisha 96 Wilson, James G., mention of, 670, 762, 798 Wilson, John Q 575 Winthrop, R. 772, 774 1 / PAGE. 1/WiTt, William, mention of... 90, 99, 100, 156 208 Wise, Henry A 559 1 Witherell, Colonel H. G , . 77 Wood, Bradford R 766 Wood, George H 294, 469 Wood, George 96 Wool, General John E 601 Wood, Jethro, mention of 761, 768, 772 Wood, Seneca .... M Wood, William 737 Worden, Alvah, mention of.. 501, 528, 534 790, 808 Worden, Mrs. Alvah, mention of.. .290, 335 722, 813 Warden, Ethan A 816, 820 Worden, Warren T 816, 820 Wright, David 813, 816 Wright, Silas ....226, 655, 715, 722, 725, 759 763, 789 Wright, William B 469, 808 Y. Young Men s State Convention 68, 230 Yates, Joseph C 61, 494 Young, John 560 Young, Samuel, mention of, 61, 403, 474, 501 586, 611, 639, 654, 676, 679 RETURN CIRCULATION DEPARTMENT TO ^ 202 Main Library LOAN PERIOD 1 HOME USE 2 3 4 5 6 ALL BOOKS MAY BE RECALLED AFTER 7 DAYS 1 -month loans may be renewed by calling 642-3405 6-month loans may be recharged by bringing books to Circulation Desk Renewals and recharges may be made 4 days prior to due date DUE AS STAMPED BELOW JAhl 1 8 1982 SEP 12 :: UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, BE? FORM NO. DD6, 60m, 3/80 BERKELEY, CA947~_ BERKELEY