MEN AND MEASURES 
 OF HALF A CENTURY 
 
 HUGH McCuiLocH 
 
LIBRARY 
 
 OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA. 
 
 Accession Class 
 
MEN AND MEASURES OP 
 HALF A CENTURY 
 
MEN AND MEASURES OF 
 HALF A CENTURY 
 
 SKETCHES AND COMMENTS 
 
 BY 
 
 HUGH McCULLOCH 
 
 SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY IN THE ADMINISTRATIONS OF 
 PRESIDENTS LINCOLN, JOHNSON, AND ARTHUR 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 CHARLES SCRIBXER S SONS 
 
 1888 
 

 
 C OPYRIGHT, 1888. BY 
 
 CHAKLKS SCIUBNEirS SONS. 
 
 
 Press of J. J. Little & Ca 
 Astor Place, New York. 
 
TO MY WIFE 
 
 WHO FOR NEARLY FIFTY YEARS, HAS BEEN TO ME 
 
 IN THE FULLEST SENSE OF THE WORD, A HELP-MATE, 
 
 I DEDICATE THIS BOOK 
 
 99498 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 IN the following pages, which, when I began to write, 
 were intended only for my family and personal 
 friends, I have spoken of men and things as they came 
 to mind, without regard to order or consecutiveness. 
 Many of the men were known only in limited circles, 
 but they were well known there, and the impressions 
 which they made upon me have not been effaced nor 
 weakened by intervening years. Of some prominent 
 persons I have spoken with great freedom, but neither 
 as eulogist nor critic. Their historic deeds form impor 
 tant chapters in the national history, and what I have 
 said about them, if it is not now, will, I think, ere long, 
 be in accord with the sentiment of a large majority of 
 their countrymen. 
 
 Our civil war was the result of the differences 
 between the free and the slave-holding States in their 
 social and civil institutions. Loner before the war it had 
 
 O 
 
 become apparent to thoughtful men in all parts of the 
 country that these differences were irreconcilable ; that 
 the national unity could not be preserved unless slavery 
 were nationalized or uprooted. That it could not be 
 nationalized was certain; that it could not be uprooted 
 by any constitutional exercise of Federal power was 
 
Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 also certain. At the same time there was a radical 
 difference of opinion between the citizens of the free and 
 the citizens of the slave-holding States in regard to the 
 character of the Government. In the free States the 
 prevailing opinion was that the Government was formed 
 " by the people, and for the people ; " that by the Con 
 stitution the States were bound together in a union 
 that could not be severed except by a revolution, or by 
 a change in this organic law in accordance with its pro 
 visions. In the slave-holding States the prevailing 
 opinion was, that the Government was a league between 
 sovereign States, which had united for certain govern 
 mental purposes, and that their sovereignty, which had 
 been conditionally relinquished, might be resumed by 
 them, or by any of them, whenever, in their judgment, 
 their interests required it. I have not, therefore, spoken 
 of the civil war on the part of the Southern States as 
 treasonable, nor of those who were on that side engaged 
 in it, as having been traitors. Open rebellion is 
 attempted revolution not treason. Successful rebellion 
 against real, or even supposed, oppression is always and 
 everywhere honored ; it does not become treason by 
 unsuccess. If the colonies had not achieved their inde 
 pendence (and they would not when they did, even with 
 France as an ally, if the mother country had not had 
 plenty of work nearer home), they would not have been 
 guilty of treason. Treason is committed by individuals, 
 not by uprising communities. 
 
 Whatever one may think of the folly or the wicked- 
 
PREFACE. IX 
 
 * 
 
 ness of those who precipitated the war, one cannot help 
 feeling that it was, after all that may be said about it, a 
 necessity ; nor can one help admiring the spirit and con 
 stancy which were displayed by the Southern people in 
 prosecuting it. By no people under the sun were they 
 excelled in bravery, and in devotion to what they con 
 sidered their rights ; by none were they ever equalled 
 in the steadfast cheerfulness with which they endured 
 protracted hardships and deprivations. I may go 
 further : No people defeated in a cause which they had 
 at heart ever behaved better than they did when the 
 war was over. One hardly knows which most to admire, 
 the good temper with which the most of them accepted 
 their situation, humiliating as it was, or the magnanim 
 ity of the Government in the exercise of its authority. 
 Costly as the war was, the country, and the whole coun 
 try, was immensely the gainer by it. It put an end t< 
 slavery the apple of discord between the sections. It 
 cemented the Union with the blood of its enemies as 
 well as with that of its friends. It ended in the mut 
 ual respect of those who were actively engaged in it. 
 There was no exultation on the part of the victors, no 
 feeling of degradation on the part of the vanquished. 
 The bad spirit afterwards engendered was the work of 
 those whose faces had not been seen upon the battle 
 field. Of the prominent and meritorious Union soldiers, 
 I call to mind but one who seemed desirous of keeping 
 alive the animosities of the war. 
 
 I have said something about the tariff, because it is 
 
X PREFACE. 
 
 a subject that has always been interesting to me, and 
 because it involves questions of the highest importance 
 to the country. The United States is far in the lead of 
 all nations in the enterprises, the industry, and versatile 
 intelligence of the major part of its population ; with 
 coal and iron in close proximity, and in inexhaustible 
 supply ; with the finest and most extensive cotton-fields 
 in the world ; with fertile lands enough for the homes 
 of hundreds of millions of people ; with manufactories 
 of almost all descriptions well established and skilfully 
 managed ; with unequalled commercial facilities, and 
 with abundant capital and cheap money. Tlyit such a 
 country should need protection in its home markets 
 against the competition of nations thousands of miles 
 distant to a greater extent than would be afforded by a 
 revenue tariff, is a conclusion that I have been unable to 
 reach, strong as has been, and is, my attachment to 
 the party of whose economical perhaps I ought to say 
 political policy, protection is the corner stone. On 
 the contrary, my conclusion has been, that what was 
 needed by our manufacturers (to say nothing about our 
 farmers, whose wants are becoming painfully pressing), 
 and will become more and more needed as their produc 
 tive power increases was, wider markets for their 
 manufactured goods ; the very markets of which they 
 have, to a large extent, been deprived by the measures 
 that have been thought necessary to secure for them 
 the control of the markets at home. Inactive as most 
 of our mills are (very few are being worked up to their 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 full capacity), there is still overproduction, and manu 
 facturers are combining to limit supplies and maintain 
 high prices at the cost of consumers. Combinations for 
 these purposes are the necessary outgrowth of our pro 
 tective tariff, and they will exist until import duties 
 are levied for revenue only, and as largely as may be 
 practicable upon luxuries. In our zeal to sustain home 
 industry we have overlooked the importance of foreign 
 markets, which cannot be open to us as long as we sub 
 ject their productions to very high duties. Of the 
 immense South American trade, which we ought to 
 control, and should now control if wisdom had prevailed 
 in our national councils, very little is left to us except 
 that with Brazil, and that would be carried on witli 
 much difficulty if the European demand for our 
 cereals and cotton should be seriously reduced. We 
 buy of Brazil chiefly coffee, to the amount in round 
 numbers of fifty millions of dollars, and sell to her 
 chiefly lumber and flour to the amount of ten millions. 
 The resulting balance we pay by what we send to 
 Europe, the larger part of which goes to England, 
 against which country our protective tariff is mainly 
 aimed. Our trade with China and Japan is^ of the same 
 one-sided character, and we continue the trade with 
 these nations, one-sided as it is, because tea and coffee 
 are articles which we must have and cannot produce. 
 It is to England, which takes our wheat and flour and 
 cotton and other articles free from duties, that we are 
 very largely indebted for the means to pay the balances 
 
Xll PREFACE. 
 
 due to the countries I have named, and to other coun 
 tries in our unequal trade with them. England buys our 
 breadstuff s because she cannot produce what she needs, 
 and she will continue to buy as long as she can buy of 
 us cheaper than she can buy of Russia, and no longer. 
 As long as we maintain a tariff to protect our own 
 manufacturers, we can have no reliable interest in inter 
 national trade. Those who expect that our lost South 
 American trade can be recovered, or that profitable 
 trade with other nations can be established, as long as 
 we maintain a tariff which is, against many important 
 articles, substantially prohibitory, are expecting what 
 will never be realized. The British manufacturers 
 would be glad if they could have free trade with the 
 United States, not because they can make goods at less 
 cost than they can be made by United States manufac 
 turers, but because they are willing to work at less 
 profit. . This free trade they know they cannot have, 
 because they know that the United States Government 
 is to be mainly supported, as it always has been, by 
 import duties. They would be quite content if they 
 were sure that our protective laws would be continued, 
 so that they would never have to meet the competition 
 of United States manufacturers in the markets which 
 they now substantially control. 
 
 That the reduction of duties to the revenue standard 
 would affect injuriously mechanical and manufacturing 
 labor in the United States, is not believed by many 
 who have carefully and disinterestedly considered the 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 subject. High duties are prejudicial to tlie laboring 
 classes, by increasing the cost of goods with which they 
 must be supplied. Wages are now higher in the 
 United States than in other countries, but so is the 
 expense of living. Steady employment is becoming as 
 uncertain in the United States as in Europe, and strikes 
 are more frequent and persistent here than in any other 
 country. There has never been so much discontent 
 among manufacturing laborers in the United States as 
 there is now, when Protection, in the opinion of its 
 friends, is doing its perfect work ; when the duties on 
 many articles are equal to the cost of the labor in 
 producing similar articles by our own manufacturers. 
 Wages depend upon demand and supply, and they will 
 steadily decline in the United States in consequence 
 of the foreign immigration. Humane considerations 
 are not apt to influence the action of business men. 
 There is free trade in labor, and our manufacturers will 
 employ, if they do not import, cheap laborers from the 
 other side of the Atlantic, until wages approach pretty 
 near to the European standard. The outlook for labor 
 ers in the manufacturing districts of the United States, 
 if no check is put upon immigration, and no new 
 markets are opened for our manufactured goods, is the 
 reverse of encouraging. With due respect for the 
 opinions of protectionists, I cannot see how the country 
 can continue to be highly prosperous, and peace and 
 order can be maintained in the manufacturing districts, 
 without the admission, free from duty, of the raw 
 
XIV PREFACE. 
 
 materials which are needed by our manufacturers, nor 
 without a reduction of duties upon many articles which 
 are in general use. The real danger which threatens the 
 country, and especially the manufacturing interests, is, 
 not a reduction of duties to the revenue standard, but the 
 necessity which may exist for so high duties for revenue 
 purposes as will prevent free international exchanges. 
 
 The suffrage question to which I have referred, 
 engages little public attention, and yet it is a question of 
 supreme importance, upon the disposition of which the 
 permanency of our republican institutions may depend. 
 " How is this," asked an intelligent foreign looker on, 
 just before our last presidential election " how is this, 
 that I see frequent reference in the newspapers to the 
 Irish vote, and the German vote, and sometimes to the 
 foreign vote ? Do foreigners vote in your presidential 
 elections ? " " Yes, they do," I replied ; " but not until 
 they have been naturalized." My regret was that I 
 could not say that naturalization laws would doubt 
 less be at least so changed that none but native-born 
 citizens would be voters. What I have said in the fol 
 lowing pages upon suffrage expresses but faintly the 
 dangers to be apprehended if immigration continues, 
 and no check is put upon the exercise of the highest of 
 all privileges by those who have no stake in the national 
 welfare, and especially by those whose mission it seems 
 to be to wage war upon all governments, the freest as 
 well as the most despotic. H. McC. 
 
 NOVEMBER, 1887. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 Growth of England and the United States Bill for Railroad from Bos 
 ton to Salem Jeremiah Mason Ichabod Bartlett Stage-coaching 
 Boston in 1883 Its Commercial Character Massachusetts Her 
 High Character Change in Character of New England Population 
 Boston Southern Prejudices against New England Bishop 
 Spaulding s Anecdote 1 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 Changes in New England Theology The Westminster Catechism Dr. 
 Channing s Sermon at the Ordination of Mr. Sparks Division of the 
 Churches The Unitarians The Calvinists Dr. Beecher tried for 
 Heresy Thomas Fessenden His Question to a Dying Christian 
 Plenary Inspiration 10 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 Boston Its Lawyers Daniel Webster His Varied Talents His Debate 
 with Hayne Mr. Calhoun Sectional Feeling Race between a 
 Northern and Southern Horse Mr. Webster before a Jury Frank 
 lin Dexter Benjamin Curtis W. M. Evarts William Groesbeck 
 Rufus Ghoate Richard Fletcher Mr. Choate and Mr. Clay Mr. 
 Burlingame and Mr. Brooks Theodore Lyman Harrison Gray Otis 
 Josiah Quincy Edward Everett Caleb Gushing Henry W. 
 Longfellow Oliver W. Holmes Interesting Incident 10 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Boston Clergy : Channing, Gannett, Parker, Lowell, Ware, Pierpont, 
 Palfrey, Blagden, Edward Beecher, Frothingham, Emerson, Ripley, 
 Walker Outside of Boston : Upham, Whitman and Nichols, Father 
 Taylor, the Sailor Preacher- James Freeman Clarke Edward Ever 
 ett Hale M. J. Savage Decline of Unitarianism The Catholic 
 ( hurch Progress of Liberal Thought Position of the Churches in 
 Regard to Slavery The Slave Question 
 
XVI CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 Departure from New England William Emerson New York Phila 
 delphia Baltimore Wheeling The Ohio River Thomas F. Mar 
 shall Emancipation -Feeling in Favor of it checked by the Profits 
 of Slavery John Bright and the Opium Trade Mr. Adams Mr. 
 Adams s Speech upon the Right of Petition Mr. Marshall in Chicago 
 Cincinnati in 1833 Importance of Railroads to the West Alex 
 ander Ewing Cincinnati as a Manufacturing City Distribution of 
 her Manufactures Her High Character 3S 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Madison, Indiana Jeremiah Sullivan Algernon S. Sullivan License to 
 practise Law Charles Dewey Isaac Houck Isaac Blackford Black- 
 ford s Reports Prominent Young Men in Indiana in 1836 Joseph 
 G. Marshall Caleb B. Smith Richard W. Thompson Henry S. 
 Lane Edward A. Hannegan Samuel Parker Horace P. Biddle 
 George G. Dunn William McKee Dunn Lucy Stone Samuel Judah 
 District-Attorney Howard George H. Promt John B. Howe 
 John B. Niles The Harrison Campaign Condition of the Country 
 Low Prices, and the Causes Removal of the Government Deposits 
 by General Jackson President Van Buren Creation of State Banks 
 Sneers at General Harrison Log Cabin anil Hard Cider Campaign 
 Singing effective in Politics and Religion Scenes at a Church in 
 Cincinnati Failure of Harrison s Election to bring Relief to the 
 Country Usual Causes of Financial Troubles in the United States 
 The Pennsylvania Bank of the United States The Specie Circular 
 Disastrous Effects of the Failure of the Pennsylvania United States 
 Bank The Pet Banks The Banks of Michigan Depression in Prices 
 of Leading Articles 4(5 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Thomas Corwin His Popular Oratory Reply to General Crary of Michi 
 gan Speech on the Mexican War Robert C. Schenck First Laurels 
 Won in Debate with John Brough Appointed Minister to Brazil 
 Resumes the Practice of the Law At the Outbreak of the Civil War 
 gives up a Lucrative Practice and becomes a Soldier Elected to 
 Congress while in the Field Chairman of the Committee of Ways and 
 Means Appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain Per 
 forms his Duties with Great Ability His Connection with a Mining 
 Company Complies with the Request of a Distinguished Lady to 
 Describe a Game of Cards Unjustly Treated by the Press and by the 
 Government. . 62 
 
CONTENTS. xvii 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Ride to Indianapolis The City as it Then Was Its First Settlers Nicho 
 las McCarty, James Blake, Samuel Merrill, Harvey Bates, Calvin 
 Fletcher, James M. Ray, John Coburn, Dr. Coe Some of the promi 
 nent Men of the State Oliver P. Morton Thomas A. Hendricks 
 Daniel W. Voorhees The Methodists Armstrong, Bascom, Durbin, 
 Simpson 70 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 By the Advice of General Howard, I go Northward Eagle Village First 
 Night in a Cabin Its Occupants Ten-Mile Ride to Breakfast The 
 Village of Frankfort Military Company in Training Delphi The 
 Wabash Adventure with a Rattlesnake Logansport Lewis Cass 
 John Tipton South Bend Charles Crocker Samuel C. Sample 
 Rolling Prairie Laporte First Sitting there of the Circuit Court 
 The Court-room Resolve to go to Fort Wayne Goshen J. L. Jer- 
 negan Fort Wayne, its Situation and Appearance Rapid Growth 
 of the Country 78 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 Situation of Foil Wayne French Catholic Priests Anthony Wayne 
 Little Turtle First Temperance Society in the United States The 
 Indians Indian Agents Passing Away of the Tribes Samuel Hanna 
 Allan Hamilton William G. and George W. Ewing Charles W. 
 Ewing Samuel Lewis Lewis G. Thompson Jesse L. Williams- 
 Robert Breckenridge Marshal S. Wines John Spencer Francis 
 Comparet John B. Bourie John B. Richardville 98 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 My First Illness Cheered by a Catholic Priest The State Bank of Indiana 
 Appointed Cashier and Manager of the Fort Wayne Branch Excel 
 lent and Liberal Charter of the Bank General Management Bene 
 fits to the State Capital Paid up in Spanish and Mexican Dollars 
 Its Managers Samuel Merrill, President, and James M. Ray, 
 Cashier, and Prominent Directors J. F. D. Lanier Ill 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Demand for more Banking Capital Free Hanking Authorized Manner 
 in which it was Conducted Its Failure Bill Chartering the Bank 
 of the State of Indiana Passed over the Governor s Veto Manner in 
 which its Stock was Subscribed for The Control Passes into Hands 
 
XV111 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 of Managers of the Old Bank I Become its President Commence 
 ment of Business, January, 1857 Failure of the Ohio Life and Trust 
 Company of Cincinnati General Suspension of the Banks The Bank 
 of the State of Indiana Maintains its Integrity and Saves its Charter 
 Authorized by Opinion of the Supreme Court to Redeem its Notes 
 in Legal Tenders Good Behavior of the Banks of New Orleans. . . . 124 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher He becomes the Pastor of a New-School Presbyte 
 rian Church at Indianapolis The Character of his Sermons Manner 
 of Preparing them Touching Address at Fort Wayne His Power as 
 a Speaker His Speeches at Liverpool and London At the Height of 
 his Career in 1863 His Influence as a Preacher, and his Personal 
 Character His Encounter with a Constable at Indianapolis His 
 Employment Outside of the Pulpit Not a Partisan Dr. Lyman 
 Beecher His Ride to Fort Wayne His Pleasant Manners 140 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln s Election a Pretext for Secession South Carolina and 
 Nullification Mr. Buchanan s Conservatism Slavery Northern and 
 Southern Views of the Constitution Expectation of Secessionists in 
 Regard to Action of Border States Opposition to Coercion in Some 
 of the Free States Dark Days between November, 1860, and April, 
 1861 Slavery the Question which Statesmen were Unable to Handle 
 Defeat at Bull Run Unexpected Demoralization at Washington 
 after the Battle Subsequent Defeats Created no Dismay Platform 
 upon which McClellan was Nominated for the Presidency Mr. Lin 
 coln s Remarks Upon it 151 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 My opposition to the National Banking System in 1863 Justin S. Morrill 
 Visit to the Eastern States Am requested by Secretary Chase to 
 become Comptroller of the Currency My Connection with the Bank 
 of the State of Indiana Dissolved George W. Rathbone my Successor 
 Samuel T. Howard, Deputy Comptroller Rules in Regard to 
 Appointments John Burroughs Organization of the National Banks 
 Unwillingness of the State Banks to become National Banks, and 
 the Reason therefor Especial Objection to their being Known by 
 Numerals My Successors as Comptroller of the Currency Mr. Chase s 
 Opinion of the Legal Tender Acts First Case in regard to their Con 
 stitutionality Appointments of Justices Strong and Bradley Ex 
 tracts from Judge Strong s Opinion in the Second Legal Tender Case 
 Decision in the First Legal Tender Case Overruled by the Second 
 The Third Legal Tender Case Free Comments 103 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Salmon P. Chase Entitled to the Gratitude of his Countrymen for Ser 
 vices as Secretary of the Treasury Condition of the Treasury when 
 he Entered It His Two Mistakes His Ambition to be Chief Justice 
 Not Satisfied after his Ambition had been Gratified Abraham Lin 
 coln His Educational Advantages His Knowledge of Men and his 
 Far-seeing Wisdom William P. Fessenden His Administration of 
 the Treasury His Statesmanship Am Appointed Secretary of the 
 Treasury Thurlow Weed s Agency in the Appointment Extracts 
 From my Advice to National Banks When Comptroller of the Cur 
 rency Extracts from my Speech at Fort Wayne in October, 1865 
 My Opinions of the National Debt 181 
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The House on the 18th of December, 1865, by Vote of 144 to 6, Approved 
 my Recommendation for the Withdrawal of the Legal-tender Note 
 In April following an Act was Passed Authorizing the Withdrawal 
 and Cancellation of Ten Millions of Legal Tenders in Six Months, and 
 Four Millions per Month Thereafter Under this Act Forty-eight Mill 
 ions of Legal-tender Notes Cancelled Market not Affected by the 
 Reduction Increase of Issue in Panic of 1873 Francis E. Spinner, 
 Treasurer His Character Panics and their Cause Speculation in 
 the Timbered Lands of Maine Financial Crisis of 1857 Charles 
 Francis Adams s Letter to Sidney Brooks in Regard to President 
 Johnson s Message and the Secretary of the Treasury s Report Mr. 
 Gladstone s Remarks President Johnson s First Message 210 
 
 CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Assassination of Mr. Lincoln Mr. Lincoln on the Morning of the Assas 
 sination Attemped Assassination of Mr. Seward Execution of some 
 of the Assassins and of Mrs. Surratt Indications of a Panic in Wall 
 Street The Iron-clad Oath President s Message transmitting Letter 
 of Secretary of Treasury, asking Modification thereof Senators Sher 
 man and Summer s Remarks thereon Sumner s Character and Appear- / 
 ance Captured and Abandoned Property Difficulty in ^Executing V 
 the Law Wm. E. Chandler Assistant Secretary His valuable Ser 
 vices John Hartley Revenue Commissioners David A. Wells, 
 Stephen Colwell, S. S. Hayes Mr. Wells Sole Commissioner 232 
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Condition of the Treasury in April, 1865 Detailed Statement thereof 
 Absolute Needs of the Government Offering of the Seven and Three- 
 tenths Notes Action of the Press I^arge Subscriptions by some of 
 
XX CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 the Banks Apprehended Danger therefrom Thorough Examination 
 of the Loan Books Result of that Examination Officers and Clerks 
 
 The Currency Question Review of the General Policy of the Treas 
 ury Department for Four Years ................................. 243 
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The Scientific Club Dr. P. A. P. Barnard University of Mississippi 
 Prosperous until Outbreak of War Dr. Barnard Leaves Mississippi 
 and Comes to Washington Professor Henry His High Character 
 and Large Acquirements His Unselfishness Professor Bache. great- 
 grandson of Benjamin Franklin Dr. Peter Parker His Eminence as 
 a Surgeon His Diplomatic Relations to the United States Simon 
 Newcomb High Reputation as an Astronomer Also as a Writer on 
 Political Economy J. E. Hilgard His Varied Services George C. 
 Schaeffer A. A. Humphreys, Distinguished as a General and Engi 
 neer Jonathan H. Lane His Hobby William B. Taylor His valu 
 able Work in the Smithsonian Titian H. Peale Benjamin N. Craig 
 
 J. M. Gillis J. N. McComb 0. M. Poe M. C. Meigs His Great 
 Services as Quartermaster-General General George H. Thomas, the 
 " Rock of Chickamauga " General John A. Logan General P. H. 
 Sheridan General William T. Sherman Brief Sketch of his Cam 
 paigns ............................. ........................... 258 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 General W. S. Hancock His Modesty and High Sense of Honor His 
 Nomination for the Presidency What he Said about the Tariff 
 Habits Formed by a Soldier Unfitted for the Presidency General 
 George B. McClellan His Appointment to the Command of the 
 Army of the Potomac How it was Received in Indiana and through 
 out the Country Condition of the Army when he Took the Command 
 Its Re-creation His Scheme for the Prosecution of the War His 
 Inaction and its Effect upon his Reputation Appointment by Con 
 gress of a Joint Committee to Inquire into the Conduct of the War 
 Peninsular Campaign Commenced under Unfavorable Circumstances 
 Its Failure, although Great Skill was Manifested in its Conduct 
 General McClellan not Properly Sustained in Washington The Com 
 mand of the Army Transferred to General Pope The Second Battle 
 of Bull Run McClellan Takes Again, at the Request of the Presi 
 dent, the Command of the Army Its Discipline rapidly Restored 
 Battles of South Mountain and Antietam General McClellan 
 Relieved of his Command and Ordered to Trenton The Hold he Had 
 upon his Army His Private Character ............................ 298 
 
CONTENTS. XXI 
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 General Grant in the Spring of 1861 War not Expected until the Attack 
 upon Sumter Grant Appointed Colonel a Brigadier by Brevet 
 Battle of Belmont Appointed to the Command of the District of 
 Cairo Capture of Forts Henry and Donelson Appointed Major- 
 General of Volunteers General C. F. Smith Battle of Shiloh 
 Union Army Saved by Arrival of General Buell with Reinforcements 
 Capture of Vicksburg It places General Grant at the Head of the 
 Union Generals The Man of Destiny Battle of Chickamauga Gen 
 eral William S. Rosecrans His Merits as a Soldier Battles of Look 
 out Mountain and Missionary Ridge General Grant made Lieu 
 tenant-General Condition of the Union Army in 1864 Battles of the 
 Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna, and Cold Harbor Heavy 
 Losses Sustained by the Union Army Difference in the Condition of 
 the Union and Confederate States The Siege and Capture of Rich 
 mond General Grant s Character and Capabilities as a Soldier 31d 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Condition of the two great Parties in 1868 Horatio Seymour Nominated 
 for the Presidency, and General Frank P. Blair for the Vice-Presi 
 dency, by the Democrats General Grant and Schuyler C olfax Nom 
 inated by the Republicans, and Elected General Grant Nominated 
 on account of his Military Reputation His Nominations for the 
 Heads of Departments Elihu B. Washburne George S. Boutwell 
 Jacob D. Cox John A. J. Creswell E. Rockwood Hoar Alexander 
 T. Stewart Adolpli E. Borie Hamilton Fish George M. Kobeson 
 William W. Belknap Morrison R.. Waite Negotiation for the 
 Annexation of St. Domingo Mr. Sumner s Opposition to it Mr. 
 Motley Recalled from the Court of St. James Change in the Office 
 of Attorney General General Grant as a Civilian Manner in which 
 he Used his Authority Appointment of his Son to be a Lieutenant. 
 Colonel, and a Distinguished Clergyman to be Examiner of Consular 
 Offices His Retirement from the Presidency Desire of a Nomina 
 tion for a Third Term He Visits Europe Is everywhere Received 
 with Great Respect Efforts to Nominate him for a Third Term on 
 his Return from Europe His Unfortunate Connection with a Bank 
 ing Firm His Fatal Illness and Death -344 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 The Navy The Blockade the Severest Blow given to the South Gal 
 lantry on Both Sides Services of the Navy not Confined to the Block 
 adeBattle between the "Monitor" and the "Virginia" the most 
 Important Single Event of the War Passage of the Union Ships 
 
XX11 CONTENTS. 
 
 by Forts Jackson and St. Philip Capture of New Orleans Battle in 
 Mobile Bay Gallantry of Farragut Letter of Captain Theodorus Bai 
 ley The Effect of the War upon our Merchant Marine 362 
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Johnson His Devotion to the Union His Early History His 
 Limited Advantages His Self-Reliance and Energy The Position 
 which he Took at the Close of Mr. Buchanan s Administration 
 While Military Governor of Tennessee, he Visits Ohio and Indiana 
 His Unfortunate Appearance when he took the Oath as Vice-Presi- 
 dent Mr. Lincoln s Remarks About it He Takes the Oath of Office 
 as President He Desires the Members of Mr. Lincoln s Cabinet to 
 Retain their Positions His Reconstruction Policy His View of the 
 Suffrage Question His Veto of the Civil Rights Bill Extracts from 
 his First Message to Congress Views Expressed by Mr. Lincoln 
 His First Message Approved by all the Members of the Cabinet 
 Management of the Different Departments Left to their respective 
 Heads Our Relations with Mexico under French Domination Refer 
 ence to them in the President s Message Action of Mr. Seward, Sec 
 retary of State His Wisdom 369 
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Harmony between the President and his Cabinet until the Spring of 1866 
 Differences between them after Veto of the Civil Rights Bill Mr. 
 Dennison, Mr. Harlan and Mr. Speed Resign Mr. Stanton Holds on 
 to his Place against the Wishes of the President The President Fails 
 to Remove him before the Passage of the Act, and then Suspends 
 him The President s indefensible Extempore Speeches Impeach 
 ment of the President First Instance in the History of Nations of 
 such a Trial Manner in which it was Conducted The Prosecutors 
 The President s Counsel The Trial a Political One Course Pur 
 sued by General Grant Speech of Mr. Fessenden The President 
 Acquitted How the Vote Stood Mr. Stanton Resigns Disadvan 
 tages under which the President Labored His Messages and his 
 Vetoes Henry Stanbery William M. Evarts Injustice to President 
 Johnson Continued after his Death Jefferson Davis I Visit him at 
 Fortress Monroe The Manner in which he was Treated His Appear 
 ance Never Brought to Trial Mr. Johnson Elected United States 
 Senator in 1875 His Death after Serving a Single Term 390 
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Presidential Election of 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes and William A. 
 Wheeler Nominated by the Republicans Samuel J. Tilden and 
 
CONTENTS. Xxiii 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Thomas A. Rend ricks by the Democrats Brief Sketch of the Nomi 
 nees The Canvass a Vigorous One First Reports favorable to the 
 Democrats -The Result Uncertain Great Anxiety and Apprehension 
 throughout the Country The Commission Appointed to Determine 
 the Result Hayes and Wheeler Declared to be Elected Remarks 
 of the President of the Union Telegraph Company My Own Opinion 
 of the Election Hayes s Administration a creditable one 413 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 First Impressions of England The "Scotia" Captain Judkins The 
 Cunard Steamship Company The White Star Steamers Opinions 
 in regard to their Model Steamships and Sailing Vessels Changes 
 in Commerce by Steamships The " Britannia " The " Enterprise " 
 The " Sirius " Barges and Flatboats Superseded by Steamboats 
 on Western Rivers Iron Supersedes Wood in the Construction of 
 Ships The Battle between the " Monitor and the " Virginia " ren 
 ders Valueless the Navies of the World Liverpool and her Docks- 
 All Nations there Represented except the United States Ride from 
 Liverpool to London Appearance of the Country English Farming 
 Climate Favorable to Agriculture 423 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 English Society Introductions Exchange of Cards Primogeniture 
 Unfavorable to Chivalry Difference in the Manners of Society 
 Grades Aristocratic Exclusiveness The Landed Gentry Effect of 
 Leaseholds upon Building London a Well-Governed City Observ 
 ance of Sunday Paupers Exchange Condition of Workingmen 
 Conversation with a Policeman Economy of the English Station 
 more Honored than Wealth House of Lords Esteem in which Noble 
 men are Held The Throne Queen Victoria Her Family The 
 Prince of Wales The Empress of Germany 433 
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Difference between the Government of the United States and that of 
 Great Britain Powers and Duties of the Crown Appointing Power 
 House of Commons Parliament more Democratic than Congress 
 Elections in Great Britain The British Constitution Speakers of 
 the House of Commons and the House of Representatives Henry 
 Clay Robert C. Win throp James G. Elaine John G. Carlisle 
 N. P. Banks James L. Orr Schuyler Colfax Samuel J. Randall 
 England as a Maritime Power Ireland and the Irish Character and 
 Habits of the Upper Classes The Scotch A Protracted Dinner- 
 Taxes not Burdensome 
 
XXIV CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 The English People and the People of the United States Mutual Learn 
 ers Tariffs of the United States General Jackson s Proclamation 
 What a Federalist Thought of it Need of a Commission like the 
 Royal Commission to Investigate the Subject of Taxation Liquor 
 Drinking in England English Deficient in Invention Defective 
 Patent Laws Excellent Effect of United States Patent Laws Local 
 Government Needed in Great Britain The British Debt Mr. Glad 
 stone and Mr. Bright 464 
 
 CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 Second Appointment as Secretary of the Treasury Treasury Officers and 
 Clerks President Arthur more Fortunate than any of his Prede 
 cessors who Succeeded to the Presidency Mr. Tyler Mr. Fillmore 
 Mr. Johnson Mr. Arthur s Successful Administration His 
 Ability and Tact His Cabinet William E. Chandler Robert Lin 
 coln President Cleveland Manner in which he has Filled a Very 
 Difficult Position His Ability and Independence 481 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 The Changes of a Half Century Effect of Machinery upon Labor Con 
 tests between Capital and Labor Demoralization Produced by War 
 Increase of Violence Decline in the Standard of Honor News 
 papers in the United States a Half Century Ago The " Galaxy " 
 of Boston The "Evening Post" and "Courier and Enquirer" of 
 New York The "Intelligencer" of Washington The " Gazette " of 
 Cincinnati The "Journal" of Louisville The "Herald" and 
 "Tribune" of New York J. T. Buckingham William C. Bryant 
 James Watson Webb Joseph Gales Charles Hammond George D. 
 Prentice James G. Bennett Horace Greeley Personality and 
 Impersonality in Journalism Increase of Federal, and Decrease of 
 State Authority Daniel Webster s Opinion upon the Legal-Tender 
 Question Decision of the Supreme Court Henry Clay and the 
 Tariff 488 
 
 CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 Public Questions still Pending The Decline of Shipping and its Causes 
 The Tariff Needed to Protect Infant Manufactures Its Increase 
 for War Purposes Its Effect upon American Shipping The Negro 
 Question Relations of the Two Races to Each Other The Elective 
 Franchise Hostility Between the Poor and Rich Danger of our 
 Large Cities Conversation Between a Citizen of New York and a 
 
CONTENTS. XXV 
 
 PAQK 
 
 Citizen of Georgia Ownership of Land Made Valuable by Labor 
 Hardships of Early Settlers in Western Timbered Lands Few Farms 
 Worth more than the Cost of Cultivation Taxes on Lands Should 
 be Reduced Acquisition and Ownership of all Property to be Pro 
 tected by the Government Wonderful Growth of the Country Immi 
 gration Its Value and Possible Offsets Differences in the Character 
 of the Immigrants Naturalization Laws Dangerously Liberal 
 Necessity of Restrictions of Voting in City Elections Monopolies 
 The Outlook. . . 501 
 
MEN AND MEASURES 
 
 HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 CHAPTER 1. 
 
 Growth of England and the United States Bill for Railroad from Boston to 
 Salem Jeremiah Mason Ichabod Bartlett Stage-coaching Boston in 
 1833 Its Commercial Character Massachusetts Her High Character 
 Change in Character of New England Population Boston Southern 
 Prejudices against New England Bishop Spaulding s Anecdote. 
 
 LORD DERBY, in a speech delivered at Liverpool in 1872, 
 made the striking remark that the increase of wealth in 
 Great Britain within the present century far exceeded the 
 increase in the preceding 1800 years. This wealth had been 
 chiefly created by her extensive commerce and her manufac 
 tures, in which for many years she excelled all other nations 
 perhaps all other nations combined. The gain in the United 
 States has been the result of agricultural and manufacturing 
 industry, and of the increased value of land ; and this increase 
 in the value of land is in a very great degree attributable to 
 canals and railroads, chiefly the latter, without which the most 
 of the great West would have remained a wilderness, and our 
 large cities would have been unimportant towns. It is hardly 
 too much to say, that the United States are twenty times richer 
 than they were a half century ago. The whole world has, 
 indeed, felt the influences that have been at work within this 
 
2 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 brief period of its history in pushing onward modern civiliza 
 tion. A large part of it has, in fact, been rejuvenated within 
 a half century. Nearly all of the mechanical inventions, now 
 so indispensable, such as railroads, iron ships, telegraphs, agri 
 cultural implements, labor-saving machinery of all kinds, have 
 come into use within less than two generations, but in no part 
 of the world have such changes taken place as in the United 
 States. 
 
 In April, 1833, I left my New England home to make my 
 start in life in the West. Fifty-four years are a long time to 
 look forward to, but a short time to look back upon. Crowded 
 as these years have been, in the United States, with events of 
 surpassing interest and importance, they seem too wonderful to 
 have been real. What advances have they recorded in the 
 extent of our cultivated lands, in manufactures, in mining, in 
 facilities of social and commercial intercourse ! What changes 
 have they witnessed in our domestic institutions, in the char 
 acter and in the political and religious sentiment of the people ! 
 
 A reference to events that have left a lasting impression 
 upon my mind, and to a few of the persons whom I have 
 known in the course of a long life, and to others whom I did 
 not know personally, but who were conspicuous in my early 
 days, with free comment? on the changed and changing con 
 dition of the country, and with equally free expression of my 
 opinions upon various subjects, may be interesting to my fam 
 ily and friends, if not to others. Within the period named 
 the population of the United States has been more than twice 
 doubled. Sixteen States have been added to the Union, and 
 what was then the far distant West has become the centre of 
 population and political power; but in no section have the 
 changes referred to been more varied and interesting than in 
 New England, and especially in Boston ; although the New 
 England States are among the oldest of the States, and Boston 
 is one of the oldest of our cities. 
 
 In 1833 there was, if I rightly recollect, but one railroad 
 
FIRST RAILROADS IN NEW ENGLAND. 3 
 
 in all the New England States the road between Boston and 
 Providence. In 1832 I listened to an argument made before a 
 House Committee of the Legislature of Massachusetts by Jere 
 miah Mason in favor of a bill for the incorporation of a com 
 pany to construct a railroad from Boston to Salem. The bill 
 was violently opposed by a turnpike company on the ground 
 that its passage would be an infringement of the chartered right 
 of the company to control the traffic between the two cities. 
 The charter of this company was one of the old colonial char 
 ters, which conferred exclusive and perpetual privileges. It 
 created a monopoly of the strictest character, to which the pas 
 sage of this bill would be a death-blow. The opponents of the 
 bill were not only those who were interested as stockholders in 
 the turnpike company, but such conservatives as dreaded any 
 thing; which looked like an invasion of vested rights, no matter 
 
 O O 
 
 what the character of those rights might be. Its advocates 
 were men who thought that no monopoly should be permitted 
 to stand in the way of progress ; that private interests should 
 be subordinated to the public welfare. The bill presented a 
 question of far-reaching importance, not only to the people of 
 Massachusetts, but to the people of all the States in which 
 chartered monopolies existed. Mr. Mason, then in the merid 
 ian of life, and without a peer in his profession, was employed 
 to appear before the committee to which the bill had been 
 referred and advocate a favorable report. I went to hear him, 
 the great New England lawyer, from curiosity only. The sub 
 ject was a dry one, and I did not expect to be interested in his 
 argument, but he had not spoken five minutes before my atten 
 tion was absorbed, and although he spoke for nearly two hours 
 I was sorry when he closed. His argument was conclusive. 
 The impression which it made upon my mind has never been 
 lost. It was the first time that I had heard a purely logical 
 speech. It was not eloquence, but concise, clear, cogent argu 
 ment. It was profound, yet so clear that anybody could follow 
 and understand it. The committee reported favorably upon 
 
4 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 the bill, and it was soon after passed by both branches of the 
 Legislature. I never saw Mr. Mason after that time, but I 
 never shall forget how he looked and spoke. He was full six 
 feet and a half in height, and upwards of three hundred pounds 
 in weight. His head, which, while he was speaking, was 
 always slightly inclined towards his right shoulder, was well 
 formed, and although very large, it seemed to be small in com 
 parison with his tall and massive body. His dress was care 
 less, if not slovenly, and there was a wide show of linen be 
 tween bis trousers and his waistcoat. He spoke deliberately. 
 His enunciation and his command of language were perfect. 
 He was not an orator, and was doubtless inferior to many of 
 the lawyers of the day as an advocate before a jury ; but in 
 legal knowledge, and in clear and cogent logic he had no equal, 
 not even in Mr. Webster. 
 
 Ichabod Bartlett, a contemporary of Mr. Mason, was one 
 of the leading lawyers of New Hampshire. Inferior to Mr. 
 Mason in legal knowledge, he was more than Mason s match 
 in jury trials. In the trial of a case of some importance, in 
 which, as usual, they were on opposite sides, Mr. Bartlett, who 
 was a very small man, in his address to the jury made some 
 remarks which irritated Mr. Mason, who, rising to his full 
 height, said, " May it please the Court, Brother Bartlett is trav 
 elling out of the record, and if your Honor does not restrain 
 him, I shall have to pick him up and put him in my pocket." 
 " And if he does," replied Bartlett, " he will have more law in 
 his pocket than he ever had in his head." The laugh was at 
 the expense of Mr. Mason. 
 
 I have said that in 1833 there was but one railroad in New 
 England. A daily mail and an accommodation coach were suf 
 ficient for the travel between Portland and Boston, the great 
 New England thoroughfare. The trip was made by the mail- 
 coach in one day, by the accommodation in two, and it was 
 seldom that either coach was filled. The mail-coach was occu 
 pied only by the very few, with whom time was more impor- 
 
STAGE-COACHING. 5 
 
 tant than money, and bad as the roads were in certain seasons 
 of the year, it was generally on time. It seemed to be under 
 stood that, in the transportation of the mails, everybody was 
 interested, and that the services of all could be called upon to 
 clear the way. My home was in Kennebunk. and I recollect 
 how men and boys, with ox-teams and shovels, were called 
 upon frequently every winter after heavy snow-storms to 
 break the roads for the mail-stage. Now, there is not a count\ r 
 in New England that is not penetrated, scarcely a village that 
 cannot be reached, by railroads. The change in other respects 
 is not less striking. Fifty-four years ago, capitalists were just 
 beginning to make investments in manufactures, in which 
 Dover, New Hampshire, was in the lead. Then the seaboard 
 towns were the seats of commerce and trade ; while the people 
 of the interior found their chief employment in farming. 
 There were then more men employed in ship-building and mari 
 time enterprises than in all other kinds of work, except agricul 
 ture. Now, New England is alive with manufacturing industry, 
 and is swarming with people who are engaged in mechanical 
 pursuits. Boston was then a commercial and maritime city, in 
 which respect it was second only to New York. Since then, 
 its enormous increase in wealth has been the result of invest 
 ments in manufactures and railroads. It is no longer the city 
 I knew so well in my early life. There is nothing to remind 
 me of Boston as it then w T as, except the State House, Faneuil 
 Hall, Beacon Hill, and Court and State streets. All else has 
 greatly changed. The Common and the Mall, which I thought 
 the most extensive and beautiful public grounds in the world, 
 still remain ; but the addition of the large garden to the Common 
 has so altered its appearance that I fail to recognize it. Ann 
 Street, where stood the Eastern Stage House then the best 
 kept, and, until the Tremont House was built in 1831, the most 
 popular hotel in the city ; and Milk Street then the least 
 attractive of its streets, are now bordered by blocks of granite 
 and brick. Scores of acres of what were then known as the 
 
6 MEX AXD MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 " Flats," covered with water at high tide, have been filled up, 
 and are now the fashionable part of the city. In one part 
 onlv the wharves has the change in its appearance been for 
 the worse. It was then, as I have said, a commercial city. Its 
 great merchants were engaged in foreign -trade, from which its 
 wealth was chiefly derived. Long Wharf, Central Wharf, and 
 India Wharf, with their (as it seemed to me) interminable 
 lengths, were lined with warehouses, and their slips so filled 
 that small vessels frequently lay side by side, two or three 
 together. Now they are quite deserted. What was then the 
 glory of Boston has disappeared. It is no longer a great mari 
 time and commercial city. It has increased enormously in 
 population and wealth ; but instead of the ships which carried 
 the American flag over the seas into every port where trade 
 could be carried on, one sees at its docks only a few small 
 vessels, engaged in the coastwise trade, in which by our navi 
 gation laws foreign ships are prevented from sharing. 
 
 But the change for the worse is not witnessed alone in 
 the decline of New England shipping and commerce, but in 
 the character of its population. This change is noticeable in 
 all the New England States except Vermont, but it is most 
 conspicuous in Massachusetts, especially in Boston. Half a 
 century ago the men who owned the city governed it the 
 men who collected and disbursed its revenues represented its 
 property. Now the control is rapidly passing into the hands 
 of those who have little or no stake in its welfare. There was 
 then it must be admitted too much of the aristocracy of 
 wealth in the ascendency ; too much of family and social pride 
 in the governing classes ; but the city was wisely and honestly 
 governed. Those by whose taxes the city government was 
 supported controlled the disbursements. Now, if those who 
 pay no taxes but the poll tax were united, their power would 
 be very formidable, if not irresistible. 
 
 The population of Boston in 1830 was 61,392. In 1880, it 
 was 362,839 ; but unfortunately this increase has been very 
 
DECREASE OF NATIVE-BORN POPULATION. 7 
 
 largely in foreigners and their descendants. There has been 
 for many years comparatively little increase there is now 
 scarcely any increase in her native-born American population. 
 There are very few large families among the well-to-do people 
 of Boston. The same is becoming true throughout the East 
 ern States. New England mothers are no longer prolific. 
 The family jewels are not sons and daughters, but stocks and 
 bonds, and luxurious homes. Large families are not the fashion. 
 The births in wealthy families do not much exceed the deaths. 
 To be the mother of man} 7 children is not a crown of honor. 
 The command to increase and multiply is disobeyed by those 
 who are the most competent to maintain and educate their off 
 spring. In the mean time, emigrants from Europe and Canada 
 have been coming in to be laborers in the city, household serv 
 ants, and operatives in manufactories, while the native-born 
 and enterprising young men have been finding employment 
 and making their homes in the cities and inviting fields of 
 other States. This change in the character of the population 
 of New England is going steadily on, and the indications are 
 decided that the control of the cities and towns of at least 
 three of the New England States will soon be in the hands of 
 men who have not a drop of original New England blood 
 in their veins. They will be Yankee States in name only. 
 Fortunately what is their loss is gain to other States. The 
 emigrants from New England have been and are among the 
 leaders in all great enterprises throughout the Union. New 
 England influence has, in a large measure, moulded the sen 
 timent of the country, to which influence Massachusetts has 
 been the largest contributor. A\ r hatever may be the result of 
 the changes in the character of her people, the past of the Old 
 Bay State is at least secure. No State has done so much in 
 aid of all the great material advances of the day, none has 
 done so much to sustain public credit, as Massachusetts. It is 
 to her honor that, large as her debt was, she continued to pay 
 the interest in coin, while all of her sister States, except Cali- 
 
8 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 fornia (which never had departed from the coin standard), 
 paid in depreciated legal-tender notes. The temptation to do 
 what was done by other States was great. Her debt was 
 heavy, and in some years its annual burden was doubled by 
 the high premium which gold commanded over what was 
 called lawful money. But she faltered not in her high integ 
 rity. Upon her financial banner there were no such discredit 
 able words as " pay according to law," but the honest words, 
 " pay according to the spirit of the contract, no matter what 
 may be the cost." Her course was wise. The reputation 
 which she thus acquired more than compensated her for the 
 cost of the coin in which the interest on her debt was paid, 
 and confirmed the truth of the adage that honesty is the best 
 policy. She made her credit capital, and placed it upon a 
 foundation as solid as the hills. 
 
 For her wise policy in the treatment of her debt, and her 
 liberal legislation upon all important questions upon which she 
 has been called to. act, she has been greatly indebted to the 
 influence of Boston. I knew that Boston was a delightful 
 city to live in, but on my journey westward I discovered that 
 its good name was of value, even to those who left it. On my 
 way down the Ohio River, I became acquainted with a very 
 interesting Kentuckian who was carrying on an extensive mer 
 cantile business in Louisville. As I had thought it was possi 
 ble that I might make my home in Kentucky, I asked him 
 how I would be received there. " Where do you hail from ? " 
 he inquired. " From Boston," I replied. " All right," said 
 he ; " if you hail from Boston you will be kindly received in 
 Kentucky, and everywhere in the South. There is," continued 
 he, " a good deal of prejudice against the Yankees in all the 
 Southern States, but not against Bostonians. They are not 
 considered Yankees. We have a good many of them in Louis 
 ville, and there are no more popular men among us." I am 
 here reminded of a story which was told at my expense, in 
 1850, by a Roman Catholic Bishop, Mr. Spaulding, of Ken- 
 
BISHOP SPAULDING S ANECDOTE. 9 
 
 tucky, with whom I was on intimate terms, which illustrated 
 the estimation in which New England people were held in 
 some parts of the slaveholding States. " I was," said he, 
 "some years ago, travelling in the interior of Missouri, where 
 the settlements were sparse, and in which, there being no 
 taverns, I was compelled to stop wherever I could find shelter 
 and food. One day I stopped for dinner at a double log cabin 
 of more than usual inviting appearance. A good-looking- 
 white woman welcomed me at the door, and upon entering, 
 I perceived that everything about the cabin was as nice as a 
 new pin. I had not long to wait for dinner, and had scarcely 
 been seated, when a negro came in and took a chair at the 
 table, and before the meal was over I discovered that he was 
 this white woman s husband. After he went out I could not 
 help expressing my astonishment that she should be the wife 
 of a negro. She listened quietly to what I said, and then 
 remarked that for her part she couldn t see anything bad 
 about that. " Why, sir," said she, " I did e-enough sight better 
 n my sister. She married a Yankee." The Bishop laughed 
 heartily as he told the story, and I joined him and the rest of 
 the company in the laugh. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 Changes in New England Theology The Westminster Catechism Dr. Chan- 
 ning s Sermon at the Ordination of Mr. Sparks Division of the Churches 
 The Unitarians The Calvinists Dr. Beecher tried for Heresy Thomas 
 Fessenden His Question to a Dying Christian Plenary Inspiration. 
 
 AMONG the changes that have taken place in New Eng 
 land in the last half a century, few have been more inter 
 esting than the changes in its theology. Fifty years ago there 
 were a few Catholics in Boston, and the Methodists and Bap 
 tists were just beginning to make headway, but the great 
 body of the people were Congregationalists, who were sup 
 posed to hold substantially the same doctrines. The West 
 minster Catechism was the standard of religious faith. It 
 was taught not only in the Sunday-schools, but in the common 
 schools and in the academies. It was regarded by many with 
 as much reverence as the Bible. I recollect to have heard Mr. 
 Pratt, a teacher for many years in the academy at Saco, where 
 the Monday morning lesson was from the Catechism, say that 
 he numbered the books in his library according to their value. 
 " To which do you give Number One ? " I asked. " To the 
 Westminster Catechism." " What ! do you place that above 
 the Bible ? " " Yes," said he, " I do, because it contains, in 
 small compass, all that is valuable in the Scriptures." As it 
 appeared afterwards, there was among the Congregationalists 
 much diversity of opinion, but all nominally held to the doc 
 trines of the Puritan fathers. The Dissenters from Calvinism 
 and the doctrine of the Trinity kept their opinions to them 
 selves, or gave no such expression of them as would have led 
 to discipline, or produced a rupture in the churches. It was 
 not until Dr. Channin delivered his celebrated sermon at the 
 
CHANNIXG AND THE UNITARIANS. 11 
 
 ordination of Mr. Sparks in Baltimore, in 1S10, in which he 
 attacked with great cogency and eloquence what had been 
 regarded as the cardinal doctrines of the Christian churches 
 
 O 
 
 the Trinity and Calvinism that the diversity in religious sen 
 timent became manifest. A reckoning was then commenced, 
 and divisions speedily followed, and to such an extent that 
 there were very few of the New England churches which were 
 not split in twain. In Boston and the large towns those who 
 agreed with Dr. Channing were a majority. In the country 
 and the villages the unity of the GODHEAD found fewer advo 
 cates. The followers of Channing were known as Unitarians. 
 The adherents to the old doctrine claimed to be " orthodox, 
 and clung to that designation. The dividing line ran not only 
 through the churches, but through society and even families. 
 For years the controversy was warm, and in many instances 
 bitter. Theological discussion became the order of the dav. 
 
 O . 
 
 Old and young, women as well as men, took part in the con 
 troversy, with a spirit ill becoming those who claimed to be 
 the followers of the Prince of Peace. The Scriptures were 
 examined as they never had been, not so much in search of 
 truth, as for texts to support opinions already formed. The 
 best talent in New England was brought into lively exercise. 
 Dr. Channing on the one side, and Dr. Stewart, of Andover, 
 on the other, were the most conspicuous ; but other divines, 
 second only to these acknowledged leaders, were earnest com 
 batants. As the Trinity and Calvinism were attacked, the 
 churches in which these doctrines were adhered to became 
 stricter than ever before in their requirements for church mem 
 bership. Xone could be admitted whose faith did not come 
 up to the highest Calvinistic standard. The departure from it 
 in any particular, so small as even to require the keenest and 
 most subtle intellect to define it, was heterodoxy. Dr. Lyman 
 Beecher, the robust teacher of Xew England orthodoxy, who 
 resigned his charge in Boston to take the Presidency of Lane 
 Seminary, near Cincinnati, and to supply a Presbyterian 
 
12 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 church in that city, was arraigned before a synod on a charge 
 of heresy, preferred by Dr. Wilson, the pastor of one of the 
 old-school churches. They were both very able men, skilful 
 in polemics and ready in debate. The trial was a very inter 
 esting one, not only to the members of the orthodox churches 
 in Cincinnati, but to theologians throughout the country. 
 Xor was the interest in the debate lessened by the fact that 
 very few could exactly understand the points at issue. Dr. 
 Beecher was acquitted, but Dr. Wilson never recognized him as 
 a teacher of truth. If a Calvinist of the present day should 
 examine the records of that trial, he would be surprised to see 
 how little of intelligible difference there was between these 
 two distinguished combatants. Both were Calvinists, both 
 were disciples of Jonathan Edwards, both thought that no 
 one who did not embrace Calvinism, as Edwards had defined 
 it, should be tolerated in an orthodox church ; and yet the 
 controversy between them was bitter in the extreme. 
 
 The church with which my father and mother were con 
 nected sided with the Unitarians, but a small part of the con 
 gregation seceded and formed another church, in which pure 
 Calvinism was taught. It so happened that a majority of the 
 members of the Congregational Church in Kennebunk was 
 Unitarian, while the majority in the church of the adjoin 
 ing town, Kennebunk Port, was overwhelmingly Calvinistic. 
 The pastor of the orthodox church at the Port at that time 
 was Thomas Fessenden, uncle of William Pitt Fessenden, 
 who for many years represented the State of Maine in the 
 United States Senate with distinguished ability, of whom I 
 shall speak hereafter. The uncle, unlike his nephew, was a 
 Calvinist of the strictest school. With him the fall of man by 
 the sin of Adam, total depravity, unconditional election, the 
 perseverance of the saints, were cardinal doctrines, the belief 
 in which was essential to salvation. He believed and taught, 
 as did Dr. Griffin, of Boston, that one of the highest enjoy 
 ments of the saved would be derived from witnessing, as they 
 
THOMAS FESSEKDEN. 13 
 
 looked down from Heaven, the justice of the Almighty in the 
 indescribable sufferings of the lost. The test of faith, accord 
 ing to his standard, was willingness to be damned for theglorv 
 of God. I recollect perfectly well how excited my father was 
 when he described a scene which he had witnessed a few hours 
 before. He had called to see a favorite niece of my mother 
 one of the most beautiful, as she was one of the most virtuous, 
 of women who was dying of consumption. While he was 
 sitting by her bedside, Mr. Fessenden came in. Yielding his 
 seat to the pastor, my father took one a short distance from 
 the bed, and listened to the conversation between the dying 
 woman and her Christian teacher. His inquiries were in 
 regard to her spiritual, not her physical condition. After ask 
 ing her many questions which were answered satisfactorily, 
 he said to her : " Sister, as this may be the last time we shall 
 meet in this world, I must put to you one more question a 
 crucial question Do you feel that you are willing to be 
 damned for the glory of God . " She had heard from the 
 pulpit his descriptions of hell, and the unending torments of 
 the lost, and she hesitated to reply. After waiting a few 
 seconds, he put the question again in a tone of much severity, 
 to which she faintly responded, " Yes, I think I am." Not for 
 her own sins, but for the sin of Adam, she was forced to say 
 that she was willing to be doomed to unending and indescrib 
 able torment. Could there have been anything more horrible 
 than such a question, by a minister of the glad tidings of the 
 Gospel, to a dying Christian woman ? I never went to hear 
 Mr. Fessenden preach after that, nor did I hear anything more 
 about him until, some forty years after, I asked his nephew, 
 the Senator, what became of his uncle. " Oh," he replied, 
 he went to Europe about the time you left New England, 
 and was there converted from Calvinism ; at all events he 
 never preached it after his return." 
 
 I once asked a Calvinistic clergyman, who I understood 
 was a believer in the plenary inspiration of the Bible, if he 
 
14 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 really believed that the Mosaic account of Creation was liter 
 ally true. " Certainly I do, was the reply. " I believe that 
 the Scriptures are the infallible word of God, and that every 
 thing therein contained was written under the direction of the 
 
 O 
 
 Holy Spirit." " You believe, then," I said, " that this world 
 and everything therein, and the sun and the moon and the 
 stars were made by God in six days that having completed 
 the work he rested on the seventli day, and that this was the 
 origin of the Christian Sabbath ? " " Most assuredly, sir, to 
 doubt it would be to doubt the stability of the foundation 
 upon which all true churches rest." Surprised at this answer 
 from a very able and learned man, I questioned him still 
 further : " You believe, then, that God made the first man 
 Adam, of the dust of the ground, and the first woman Eve, of 
 one of Adam s ribs, and having thus created them and know 
 ing what would be the result, He placed them in a garden, in 
 which the woman yielding to the temptation of the serpent, 
 and the man to the influence of the woman, were guilty of 
 disobedience, and thereby incurred His displeasure, in conse 
 quence of which their descendants throughout all ages became 
 the objects of Divine wrath ; but in order that all might not 
 perish, He did, in the exercise of His own good pleasure- 
 without reference to any merits on their part, elect a mere 
 fraction of the race to be the recipients of His favor, leaving 
 the rest to suffer, not for their own sins, but for the trans 
 gression of their progenitors, and notwithstanding the mission 
 of Christ, unending punishment. How can you," I went 
 on to say, " reconcile such belief as this with the I will not 
 say the mercy, but the justice which you attribute to the Al 
 mighty ? " "I undertake," was the reply, " I undertake to 
 reconcile nothing. I believe the Bible, and although I am not 
 able to comprehend it, I believe that God s justice and mercy 
 in the world to come will be as manifest in the punishment of 
 the many as in the salvation of the few." Such was Calvin 
 ism as then taught in orthodox churches. To me, nothing 
 
CHANGES IN RELIGIOUS SENTIMENT. 15 
 
 could be more strange than belief in such a Deity, except that 
 He should be the object of adoration. 
 
 Calvinism, although it may be nominally believed, is no\v 
 rarely taught in American pulpits. Outside of the Andover 
 School, it would, I think, be difficult to find an intelligent 
 man who really believes what were considered the saving doc 
 trines of the orthodox churches fifty years ago. ]S"or have 
 the changes in religious sentiment been confined to those who 
 were known as orthodox. Unitarianism has changed also. 
 There has been a wide departure by Unitarians from the 
 Unitarianism of Dr. Channing, and of his colleague, Dr. Gan 
 nett. Theodore Parker, with whom Unitarians could not 
 fellowship thirty years ago, has been outstripped in liberality 
 by men of a later day. There are now, I think, very few 
 Unitarians who believe in the inspiration of the Bible, or that 
 Christ was Divine in any other sense than as a moral teacher 
 of the highest character, the founder of a religion nobler in its 
 aim and purer in its precepts than any other that has ever 
 existed. There has been evolution in religion, and there will 
 continue to be as long as mankind advance in culture and 
 humanity. The idea of the character of the Deity will not 
 hereafter be formed by that ascribed to him in the Old Testa 
 ment, but by higher conceptions of what is truly excellent and 
 pure. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 Boston Its Lawyers Daniel Webster His varied Talents His Debate with 
 Hayne Mr. Calhoun Sectional Feeling Race between a Northern and 
 Southern Horse Mr. Webster before a Jury Franklin Dexter Benja 
 min Curtis W. M. Evarts William Groesbeck Rufus Choate Richard 
 Fletcher Mr. Choate and Mr. Clay Mr. Burlingame and Mr. Brooks 
 Theodore Lyman Harrison Gray Otis Josiah Quincy Edward Ever 
 ettCaleb Cushing Henry W. Longfellow Oliver W. Holmes Interest 
 ing Incident. 
 
 IN 1831 and 1833 Boston was more famous than now for its 
 lawyers. At the head of his profession then stood Mr. 
 Webster, one of the few men who have obtained great dis 
 tinction as lawyers and advocates, orators and debaters. 
 He excelled in all these qualities, and in this respect he 
 was without an equal in this country or in others. I call to 
 mind none who, having attained great eminence in the legal 
 profession, fully sustained their reputation in the British Par 
 liament, or in the Congress of the United States. No man 
 can read Mr. Webster s argument in the Dartmouth Col 
 lege case and doubt his extraordinary legal ability ; or his 
 speeches in the Knapp trials without being impressed with the 
 power which he brought to bear upon a jury ; or his grand 
 orations at the anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims at 
 Plymouth, and at the laying of the corner-stone of Bunker 
 Hill Monument, without acknowledging him to have been an 
 orator of the very highest grade ; or his reply to Mr. Hayne 
 in the United States Senate, in the great debate on the Foote 
 Resolutions, without admitting that as a debater he Avas with 
 out an equal. 
 
 When this great debate took place I was a student in tlie^ 
 office of Joseph Dane, nephew of Nathan Dane, whom Mr. 
 
WEBSTER S DEBATE WITH HAYNE. 17 
 
 "Webster, in a previous speech, had eulogized as the author of 
 the ordinance which excluded slavery from the northwestern 
 territory. I recollect that the Whigs who gathered together 
 in Mr. Dane s office after they had read Mr. Hayne s speech, 
 looked and talked like men who had met with a great misfort 
 une. The only one among them who was not depressed was 
 Mr. .Dane. He knew Mr. Webster personally, and regarded 
 him as the superior of any man living as an orator and 
 debater. "Don t be discouraged, gentlemen," said he. "Wait 
 until you hear from Mr. Webster." They had not long to 
 wait. Two days after Mr. Webster s reply was received. 
 The atmosphere at once cleared up. A weight was removed 
 from all New England and the North generally, from Demo 
 crats as well as Whigs. Mr. Webster s speech was not merely 
 the great speech of the day it was a speech that had never 
 been equalled before. It has never been equalled since, in this 
 country or in any other. It was replete with eloquence and 
 power, clear in statement, grand in language, irresistible in 
 argument. Its exordium was only excelled by its peroration, 
 a master-piece of patriotic sentiment and rhetorical beauty. 
 The debate was continued for some days, but the interest in it 
 ceased with Mr. Webster s speech. Mr. Ilayne, the champion 
 of the States Rights doctrine, having been discomfited, there 
 was no one of his party who was disposed to enter the lists 
 against the champion. At the next session, however, Mr. 
 Calhoun, who had been elected Senator in place of Mr. 
 Hayne, and who it was supposed was not quite satisfied with 
 the manner in which the nullification doctrine of which he 
 was the exponent had been handled, re-opened the debate. 
 He was a more cogent logician than Mr. Hayne, but he was 
 not the equal of Mr. Webster, and while he sustained his high 
 and deserved reputation, the general sentiment of the country 
 was that he shared the fate of his predecessor. 
 
 While this great debate was really a contest between 
 Whigs and Democrats, it excited much sectional feeling, so 
 
18 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 that the sympathy of Southern Whigs was with Mr. Hayne 
 and Mr. Calhoun, the sympathy of Northern Democrats with 
 Mr. "Webster. There had always been sectional feeling be 
 tween the Northern and the Southern States, and this feeling- 
 was sometimes exhibited on occasions of trivial importance. 
 Some years before it appeared in a horse-race between Bos 
 ton, a Southern, and Eclipse, a Northern horse, and there was 
 as much interest manifested in it as if the destiny of the 
 nation depended upon the result. It was witnessed by hun 
 dreds of the most prominent men of the Southern States, and 
 a very large number of Northern men, many of whom had 
 never witnessed a race of this kind, and would not have been 
 present but for the sectional feeling that was aroused. The 
 horses were the finest specimens of racers, and the race was 
 a very close one. It was won by Eclipse, and the result was 
 hailed as a victory for the North. I recollect how deeply 
 the Northern boys were interested in it, how they shouted and 
 threw up their hats in the air when the result was announced. 
 Sectional feeling existed in colonial times. It was intensified 
 by anti-slavery associations in the Free States, and by the 
 denunciations of slavery by Northern speakers and writers. 
 The abolition of slavery has not put it to rest. It will never 
 entirely cease until the negro vote is divided in the South, as 
 will be the case when there is no outside interference and its 
 unity is not encouraged for other purposes than the general 
 welfare. 
 
 I have said that Mr. "Webster was the only man I ever 
 knew or heard of who united in himself the highest qualities 
 of an advocate, orator and debater. He has never been 
 excelled, if equalled, in making difficult and intricate questions 
 intelligible to jurors. Seeing clearly the real points at issue, 
 and using language that anybody could understand, his state 
 ments of the points at issue were arguments. He never 
 permitted the minds of jurors to be diverted from the real 
 question upon which a case turned. Brushing aside every- 
 
MR. WEBSTER BEFORE A JURY. 19 
 
 thing that was not essential, the strong points only were pre 
 sented by him, and those with exceeding clearness. I was 
 struck with this the first time I heard him before a jury. He 
 was defending a man who bad been indicted for forgery. To 
 obtain a verdict, it was necessary that the State should not 
 only prove that the forgery had been committed, but that the 
 forged instrument had been uttered in Suffolk County, where 
 the case was being tried. To my surprise, at the very com 
 mencement of the trial, before a witness had been called, Mr. 
 Webster rose to his feet and said in a quiet manner, " May it 
 please the Court, we admit the forgery, so that evidence on 
 this point will be unnecessary. We deny that the note was 
 uttered in this county." I was amazed at this admission. To 
 me it seemed to be giving away the case. But the wisdom 
 of it soon became apparent. Mr. Webster was quite sure that 
 the forgery could be proved, but he doubted that the State 
 would be able to prove that the paper had been issued in Suf 
 folk County. His doubts were confirmed. The defendant 
 was acquitted for want of proof on this point. If both the 
 question of forgery and of the issue of the paper in the county 
 had been presented, the jury might have regarded the forgery 
 as the real question, and the defendant might not have escaped 
 the punishment which he merited. 
 
 Mr. Webster s eyes, although deep-set, were so penetrating 
 that few guilty men could endure their piercing gaze. One of 
 his clients in a case of considerable importance informed him 
 that he thought a witness on the other side intended to com 
 mit perjury. " Point him out when he comes into the court 
 room," said Mr. Webster. The witness soon after appeared 
 and took a seat in a swaggering manner, when, looking 
 towards the bar, his eyes met those of Mr. Webster fixed 
 steadily upon him. He immediately looked in another direc 
 tion, but, as if fascinated, he soon turned his face again towards 
 Mr. Webster, to meet those deep penetrating eyes, which 
 doubtless seemed to him to read his very soul. He moved 
 
20 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 nervously in his seat for a few moments, then rose and left the 
 court-house, to which he could not be induced to return. I 
 have heard the opinion expressed that in legal knowledge 
 that is to say, knowledge of the law as contained in the books 
 Mr. "Webster was surpassed by such men as Jeremiah Mason 
 and Samuel Parker and Chief- Justice Shaw. This is undoubt 
 edly true. To be a great lawyer in that sense a man must make 
 the law a constant study, and not aim to be distinguished in any 
 other direction. No man of his years ever excelled Mr. Web 
 ster as a lawyer until he entered into public life. After that his 
 attention was turned to constitutional and economic questions, 
 and strictly legal studies had to be neglected. In the argu 
 ment of legal questions before the courts his briefs were prepared 
 by his assistants, and no man knew better how to use them. 
 
 The Boston bar at that time included many eminent men. 
 Franklin Dexter was, I think, the son of Samuel Dexter, and 
 was scarcely inferior to his illustrious father. Benjamin II. 
 Curtis, then quite a young man, must have given evidence 
 of what was in him, for soon after he obtained the very 
 highest rank at the Boston bar. After the death of Mr. 
 Story, he was appointed one of the Justices of the Supreme 
 Court, but he did not long hold the place. The cause of 
 his resignation I have never heard, but I know that it was 
 deeply regretted by the members of the bar. I heard Mr. 
 Curtis for the first and last time in the impeachment trial 
 of President Johnson. Being a member of Mr. Johnson s 
 Cabinet, I felt no little interest in the trial, and it is possible 
 that my judgment might have been influenced by that fact ; 
 but a recent reading of his opening argument satisfies me 
 that it was what I then regarded it, an argument of mar 
 vellous clearness and force. In this trial, Mr. Evarts had an 
 opportunity for the display of his extensive learning, his wit, 
 and his extraordinary command of language, and they were 
 displayed in a manner that charmed all who heard him except 
 the prosecuting lawyers and the Senators whose prejudice 
 
BEXJ. R. CL T RTIS, MR. EVARTS AND WM. GROESBECK. 21 
 
 against Mr. Johnson extended to his counsel ; but in clearness 
 of statement and concentrated logic, it was inferior to that 
 of Mr. Curtis. The two speeches, however, ought not to be 
 compared. They were different, and they differed as the 
 men differed, in their intellectual composition, but that both 
 speeches were of consummate ability is undeniable. This trial 
 resembled that of Warren Hastings in many respects, but in 
 none more than in the high qualities of the leading lawyers 
 who were employed in the defence. Burke and Sheridan in 
 the trial of Hastings ; Curtis and Evarts in that of Johnson. 
 In this trial a gentleman was associated with Mr. Curtis and 
 Mr. Evarts who was then little known as a lawyer, outside of 
 Cincinnati Mr. William Groesbeck. He was then in feeble 
 health, and his physical strength gave way once or twice in the 
 course of his argument ; but his speech was so remarkably 
 vigorous and able that I repeatedly heard the expression, that 
 it was unfortunate for the country that a man of such high 
 culture and legal ability should have been the son of one rich 
 man and the son-in-law of another still richer, and that his 
 chief employment was necessarily found in the management 
 of his large estates. 
 
 But to return to the Boston lawyers : Rufus Choate, then 
 a young man, was beginning to take high rank in his profes 
 sion. Richard Fletcher had recently come from Xew Hamp 
 shire or Vermont with a distinguished reputation for his legal 
 acquirements and acumen. Both he and Mr. Choate were 
 afterwards members of Congress, the former in the House, the 
 latter in the Senate, and both failed to meet the expectations 
 of their friends. Mr. Fletcher had asserted that a bill under dis 
 cussion had been prepared word for word in the White House, 
 and not by the committee which reported it. This was denied 
 by some of the members of the committee, in language stronger 
 and more personal than was parliamentary. Called upon for 
 proof, Mr. Fletcher was unable to make good his assertion, 
 and, in the estimation of the House, was convicted of making a 
 
22 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 statement for which he had no warrant. Mr. Choate failed, 
 not for want of abilit} 7 but for want of nerve. In an alterca 
 tion with Mr. Clay, he quailed before the threatening manner 
 of the great Kentuckian, and was consequently supposed to be 
 deficient in pluck, which defect was in those days, and is still, 
 fatal to a man in public life. A person who witnessed the 
 altercation, said to me : " Choate was one of the ablest men in 
 the Senate. If he had knocked Mr. Clay down instead of 
 quailing before him, he would have been a Webster." Pluck is 
 needed in all the walks of life, but in no place more than in Con 
 gress. The sentiment of New England was strongly hostile to 
 duelling? but Mr. Anson Burlingame did not suffer by his accept 
 ance of the challenge of Mr. Preston S. Brooks. On the con 
 trary, he was the gainer by it throughout the country as well 
 as in Massachusetts. There were many other lawyers at the 
 Suffolk bar, hardly less distinguished than those I have named, 
 but all have disappeared except Sidney Bartlett, who, during 
 a long life he must now be nearly ninety has maintained 
 the very highest reputation as citizen and lawyer. 
 
 Nor was Boston less distinguished by its sons who were 
 not connected with the legal profession. Theodore Lyman, 
 father of the gentleman of the same name who deservedly 
 stood high in the Forty-eighth Congress, was a gentleman of 
 the highest culture and of commanding influence. Harrison 
 Gray Otis, who conferred honor upon the distinguished name 
 he bore, stood at the head of the social and intellectual society 
 of Boston. He was a man of whom any city or State might 
 justly have been proud. Simple in manners, pure in character, 
 highly cultured, he was a gentleman of the best type of what 
 is called the old school. He was one of the most graceful and 
 captivating of speakers, and as an elocutionist second only to 
 Dr. Channing. The first time I heard him was when he was 
 chairman of a large meeting in Faneuil Hall. He made, of 
 course, the opening speech, and as I listened, I thought it the 
 perfection of eloquence. The next morning it was published 
 
HARRISOX GRAY OTIS. 23 
 
 in the newspapers, and although correctly reported, it did not 
 read like the speech that had excited m} r admiration. The 
 speech was a good one, but it was the charming voice, the 
 graceful delivery, the perfect elocution, that made it seem to 
 be a speech of extraordinary eloquence. The only time I ever 
 heard Mr. Webster in Faneuil Hall was at a meeting of which 
 Mr. Otis was chairman, soon after the veto by President Jack 
 son of the bill making appropriations for the extension of the 
 national road to the Mississippi. In speaking of the nation 
 ality of the enterprise, of the necessity of it as a means of 
 communication between the Eastern and Western States, Mr. 
 Webster said: "There is no road leading everywhere; no road 
 over which everybody or even a majority of the people travel, 
 except, except," and here he seemed to be at a loss for a 
 word " except the road to ruin," interjected Mr. Otis, in his 
 clear and penetrating voice : " Except the road to ruin," 
 shouted Mr. Webster, " and that s an Administration road ! " 
 when down came a thousand feet upon the floor of the grand 
 old hall with an emphasis that made its thick walls tremble as 
 if struck by a thunderbolt. 
 
 Hardly less eminent than Mr. Otis, by birth and social posi 
 tion, and superior to him in scholarship, was Josiah Quincy, 
 then President of Harvard University. Both were Federalists 
 (there were then very few high-toned men in Massachusetts who 
 were not) ; both lived to be old men Mr. Otis to be eighty- 
 three, Mr. Quincy to be ninety-two. Alike in most respects, 
 they differed radically upon the slavery question. Mr. Quincy 
 was an abolitionist, in open sympathy with Garrison ; Mr. Otis, 
 if not pro-slavery in sentiment, was hostile to the anti-slavery 
 movement, which he regarded as being fanatical and dangerous 
 to the Union. It seems strange that these two men, after they 
 had retired from active political life, both able to look upon 
 the subject from the same standpoint, both clear-headed, pa 
 triotic and disinterested, should have held opposite opinions 
 upon the most vital question of the day. 
 
24 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Edward Everett was then second only to Mr. Webster as an 
 orator. In scholarship and manner of speaking, he was Mr. 
 Webster s superior. He was perhaps the finest classical scholar 
 of the day, the greatest linguist that ever went to Congress, 
 except Caleb Gushing. It was said of Mr. Gushing that he 
 could translate all the European languages ; that while in 
 Congress there came to the State Department a document 
 that no one in that Department could interpret. Upon the 
 suggestion of some one who had heard of Mr. Cushing s repu 
 tation as a linguist, it was sent to him, and he translated it 
 without difficulty. Mr. Gushing was a ready and effective 
 speaker, and a very able and learned lawyer. He was one of 
 the few men whose voice could be heard in the chamber of 
 the old House of Representatives, and who never spoke with 
 out commanding the attention of the members. lie lacked 
 only one thing, the possession of which would have made him 
 one of the most distinguished men of his time convictions. 
 Mr. Everett did not maintain his high reputation in Congress. 
 He was an orator, not a debater, and he was too refined in 
 character, too much of a gentleman to be perfectly at home 
 in the low r er House of Congress. 
 
 Mr. Longfellow was then, if I recollect rightly, living in 
 Maine, and had given but slight indications of the genius 
 which subsequently manifested itself in the poetry which has 
 made his name immortal. Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes was a 
 few years younger than Mr. Longfellow. I never heard of 
 him till some years after, and then by his " Table-Talk" which 
 arrested public attention, and which will never fail not only to 
 amuse but to instruct. Since then, his name has become, like 
 Mr. Longfellow s, a household word. In varied accomplish 
 ments Dr. Holmes has but few equals. An admirable talker, 
 a fascinating lecturer, an excellent prose writer, and a poet 
 hardly inferior to Mr. Longfellow or Mr. Whittier, he unites 
 in himself more high, and I may say more lovable qualities 
 than any man of whom I have any knowledge. It may be 
 
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES. 25 
 
 truly said that few men have done more to make the world 
 happier and better than Dr. Holmes. 
 
 I had been a great admirer of Dr. Holmes before I met 
 him, for the first time, in 1878, when I went to Cambridge to 
 deliver a course of lectures at the University on the invitation 
 of President Eliot (who, by the way, is the only man that I 
 have known in whom with ripe scholarship and extensive 
 learning are united administrative, executive and business 
 capacity of a very high order). An incident occurred there 
 which seemed almost to create a relationship between us. My 
 brother Thomas, the best man and the best scholar of his 
 Harvard College class, died at the commencement of his senior 
 year in 1817, and was buried in the churchyard near the col 
 lege. Over his grave his classmates (one of whom was John 
 Everett, brother of Edward) placed a very handsome marble 
 slab with an inscription, prepared by the professor of lan 
 guages in the college, which is said by scholars to be one of 
 the most beautiful pieces of Latin composition that was ever 
 written. On the day before I delivered my first lecture, Dr. 
 Holmes and President Eliot were comparing notes as to what 
 each knew about interesting things in Cambridge. Dr. Holmes 
 claimed that, although he was a citizen of Boston, his knowledge 
 of what had happened in Cambridge Avas better than Eliot s, 
 although he was President of the University. "You don t 
 know, for instance," he said, " where the students were buried 
 before we had Mount Auburn. He then repeated the inscrip 
 tion referred to. " What do you think of that ? " " It is very 
 beautiful, indeed," said Mr. Eliot, "and perhaps you don t 
 know that Mr. McCulloch, who is to speak to us upon finance, 
 is a brother of him whose epitaph you have repeated." " Xo, 
 indeed," said Dr. Holmes. " I shall be right glad to meet him." 
 He called upon me the next day, and informed me how he 
 happened to know anything about my brother. " My father," 
 he said, " was a clergyman in Cambridge when your brother 
 was at the college. He visited him every day, and sometimes 
 
26 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 oftener, during his illness, and manifested so deep an interest 
 in his sad case, that although I was but eight years old I 
 became greatly interested in it also. I went to your brother s 
 funeral, and there have been very few years since in which 
 I have not visited his grave. The circumstances of your 
 brother s sickness and death are fresh to me now." Since that 
 interview with Dr. Holmes, I have felt something more than 
 admiration of him. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Boston Clergy: Channing, Gannett, Parker, Lowell, Ware, Pierpont, Pal 
 frey, Blagden, Edward Beecher, Frothingham, Emerson, Ripley, Walker 
 Outside of Boston: Upham, Whitman and Nichols, Father Taylor, the 
 Sailor Preacher James Freeman Clarke Edward Everett Hale M. J. 
 Savage Decline of Unitarianism The Catholic Church Progress of 
 Liberal Thought Position of the Churches in regard to Slavery The 
 Slave Question. 
 
 DISTINGUISHED as Boston was in 1832 by its lawyers 
 and literary men, it was still more distinguished by its 
 clergy. There were Channing and Gannett, his colleague, 
 Parker, Lowell and Ware, Pierpont, Walker, Frothingham, 
 and Palfrey, among the leading Unitarians; and Blagden, 
 Edward Beecher, and many others whose names I have forgot 
 ten, among the orthodox. It cannot be said that this was a 
 period of religious revival, but it was a time when theology 
 engrossed the public attention in an unprecedented degree, 
 and when the keenest intellects were engaged in theological 
 study and discussion. There was an array of talent in the 
 Boston pulpit that has never been equalled since. At the head 
 was Dr. Channing, than whom there never lived a purer man 
 or more consistent Christian, or one who to a greater degree 
 exemplified in his character the doctrines which he taught ; 
 whose elocution was so perfect and sympathetic ; whose 
 thoughts were so elevated, that without a gesture and without 
 raising liis eyes from his manuscript, he used to bring tears 
 into the eyes of the most critical men in Boston. Xever physi 
 cally strong, he became so feeble towards the latter period of 
 his life that he had to rest entirely during the week days in 
 order that he might be at his desk on Sunday mornings, when 
 
28 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 he spoke with his old-time vigor. His brilliant intellect shone 
 out to the last, and his voice, that no one could listen to with 
 out delight, never lost its sweetness. The little book which 
 
 o 
 
 he wrote upon slavery presented, in language at which slave 
 holders themselves could not take offence, arguments against 
 the peculiar institution of unequalled force. His essays upon 
 Milton and Napoleon were not surpassed by the best of Alli 
 son s or Macaulay s. His sermons were models of pulpit 
 oratory, breathing the very spirit of Him whom he considered 
 the inspired teacher. It is not strange that his name to this 
 day is reverenced on both sides of the Atlantic. 
 
 It is enough to say of Dr. Gannett, that he was fit to be 
 the colleague of one so illustrious, and yet they resembled each 
 other very little except in their earnestness and faith. Dr. 
 Channing abounded in emotion, but was without passion, and 
 except in his sermon at the ordination of Mr. Sparks, was never 
 aggressive. Gannett was not wanting in Christian charity, 
 but so full of zeal was he that his controversial armor was 
 always on, and so enthusiastic that he seemed out of place in a 
 Unitarian pulpit. 
 
 If I could do so without dwelling too long upon the Bos 
 ton clergy, I should be glad to speak of other distinguished 
 preachers whom I frequently heard : of Pierpont, who always 
 attracted large audiences ; of Lowell, the distinguished father 
 of the more distinguished son ; of Henry Ware, who greatly 
 resembled Dr. Channing in mind and character; of Palfrey, 
 who in general learning was surpassed by no man in his day ; 
 of Putnam, of Koxbury, who read the Scriptures with so much 
 expression that they seemed like a ne\v r revelation ; of Froth- 
 ingham, the classic scholar and beautiful writer ; of Walker, 
 distinguished for his scholarship and power as a speaker ; of 
 Ripley and Emerson, both young men then of great promise, 
 but who, unable to keep within the boundaries of the Unita 
 rian faith, abandoned their pulpits, the former to become a 
 literary critic of the highest distinction, the latter to be a 
 
THE BOSTON CLERGY. 29 
 
 leader in Transcendentalism, and a philosopher and thinker of 
 world-wide reputation. Outside of Boston and its vicinitv 
 there were Nichols and Whitman of Portland, and Upham of 
 Portsmouth, New Hampshire, who were men of extraordinary 
 ability, whom I frequently heard in Kennebunk. Upham was 
 one of the most diffident and bashful of men outside the pulpit, 
 but in the pulpit he was perfectly at home, and very few men 
 commanded to a greater degree the attention of his audiences. 
 Whitman was troubled with asthma, but he was a brilliant 
 writer and an energetic speaker. Dr. Nichols was remarkable 
 for the sententious compactness of his sermons and his scholar 
 ship. One of his sermons, upon the value of Sunday as a day of 
 rest, I recollect with perfect distinctness, although it was deliv 
 ered nearly sixty years ago. After speaking of the Sabbath as 
 being of Divine ordination, and evidence of Divine wisdom, 
 he combated the argument of those who were opposed to its 
 observance on the ground that laboring men could not afford 
 to lose a seventh part of their time, when the whole was needed 
 to provide for the wants of their families, by contending that 
 there was so much work to be done in the world, and that the 
 laboring men received as much for six days work as they 
 would for seven ; and he concluded the discussion in his usual 
 emphatic manner by saying : " To sum up this whole question, 
 the poor men have a day of rest, and the rich men have to pay 
 for it." 
 
 But among all the clergymen of Boston, there was no man 
 more respected, no one who did more good in the pulpit and out 
 of it, than Father Taylor, the sailor preacher. Himself a sailor 
 in early life, he understood the sailors wants, and the tempta 
 tions as well as dangers to which they were exposed, and he 
 labored to improve their habits and condition with an unfalter 
 ing earnestness, which showed that his whole soul was in his 
 work. He did much to improve the character of the sailor 
 boarding-houses, which were then among the pests of the city, 
 and to promote temperance among the sailors. On almost any 
 
30 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 day one might have seen him in the streets near the wharves, 
 with a knot of seamen about him, listening to his counsels like 
 children to a father. His chapel was a. plain but good-sized 
 building, upon which, a half-hour before services were com 
 menced, the United States flag was hoisted as being a more 
 suitable invitation to sailors than the ringing of a bell. It was 
 seldom indeed that the chapel was not well filled. As vessels 
 were constantly coming and going, his hearers (they could 
 hardly be called a congregation) were as constantly changing, 
 and during the long time that he preached in Boston, there 
 were few sailors who came to the city who did not ffo to hear 
 
 */ O 
 
 him, and more attentive and interested hearers would not be 
 found in any of the city churches. 
 
 Father Taylor was a natural, and in his way a gifted 
 orator, and never failed to command the attention of the com 
 monest sailors. He knew just what to say, and how to say it. 
 I was very much struck with this faculty when, one Sunday, 
 as he was entering the chapel, a note was handed him contain 
 ing a verse from the Bible, from which he was desired to 
 preach. He read the note, which was signed " An Aged Sea 
 man," but instead of preaching from the verse, he made the 
 signature his text. An aged seaman," he repeated in a tone 
 of impressive sadness " an aged seaman ! and why are there 
 so few aged seamen 2 Why is it, among the hundreds that are 
 before me, that there is not a single old man, scarcely one who 
 is past middle age \ " He then went on to give the reasons in 
 language that thrilled his hearers like a trumpet. He spoke 
 of intemperance and other vices for which they were them 
 selves responsible, in words of severity and warning. Much 
 they had not received, and much would not be required of 
 them, but for what they had received they would be account 
 able on that great day when the sea and the land should give 
 up their dead. Then, in a different strain, he spoke of the 
 dangers to which they were exposed, and which had shortened 
 the lives of so many fearless men ; of the hurricanes which 
 
FATHER TAYLOR. 31 
 
 nothing could withstand ; of the lee shore, with its ragged 
 reefs upon which so man} 7 gallant ships were hurled by the 
 pitiless winds and waves; of the seamen struggling, struggling 
 in vain in the surging billows, in tones that brought tears to 
 faces which had been hardened by vice and exposure, and 
 when he closed with the words, " God save the mariners when 
 no human hand can save, in the raging of the great deep ; 
 God be merciful to those who are sunk in vices deeper and 
 more dreadful than the sea ! " and dropped upon his knees to 
 pray, every one of that large assembly knelt also. It was 
 altogether a most impressive scene those hardy men for 
 whom the world cared so little, listening to their beloved 
 preacher, tears streaming down their faces, showing how deep 
 was their interest in his words, and bending their knees and 
 heads with him in prayer a scene never to be forgotten. 
 
 Father Taylor was beloved by all who knew him. He 
 could hardly read when he commenced preaching, but by 
 giving to study every hour which was not employed in his 
 regular work, he became a man of considerable education. 
 His entire deficiency in this respect in his early life, and his 
 hard work to overcome that deficiency, made him careful in 
 regard to the education of his children. One of his daughters, 
 Mrs. Bradford, wife of General Bradford, Paymaster of the 
 United States lSTavy Department, was one of the best educated 
 women and best talkers that I ever met. Father Taylor was 
 made comfortable in pecuniary matters long before he died, 
 and he left behind him as many sincere mourners as any man 
 of his time. He never permitted himself to be troubled about 
 the dogmas of religion, and he was honored and beloved by 
 the clergy of different denominations who witnessed his good 
 work. The only bad treatment he ever received was from Dr. 
 Breckenridge of Kentucky, who had a decided and uncontrol 
 lable antipathy against all preachers who did not stand square 
 upon the old Presbyterian platform. 
 
 The period to which I have referred was the palmy clay 
 
32 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 of Unitarianism, which, if not declining, is making small 
 progress in comparison with that made by other denomina 
 tions. It still numbers in its clergy James Freeman Clarke, 
 Edward Everett Hale, M. J. Savage, and other men of merited 
 distinction, but besides these it can no longer point to, as its 
 champions, such men as Channing, Dewey, Ware, Lowell, 
 Gannett, Whitman, TJpham, Nichols and Walker. The causes 
 of this decline are obvious. Unitarianism is an intellectual 
 faith ; it fails to meet the natural craving for a religion that 
 appeals to feeling and enlists the sensibilities. It neither 
 claims Divine origin, nor to be the only door through which 
 entrance is to be obtained to the divine life. As the belief in 
 the supernatural dies out, the religious sentiment weakens. 
 There never has been, and probably there never will be, a 
 deep, settled, wide spread religious faith that is not based upon 
 its claims to supernatural ordination. This is not claimed for 
 their faith by Unitarians. There are very few of this denomi 
 nation who believe in the plenar} 7 inspiration of the Scriptures, 
 or who regard the Bible as anything more than a national 
 and literary history of the Jewish nation, covering a long 
 period, and largely made up of Jewish traditions of the 
 Creation, and Jewish notions of the character of the Deity : 
 the most wonderful of books, but not the product of Divine 
 inspiration. Then too, the form of worship in Unitarian 
 churches is severely simple. There is nothing in it to please 
 the eye or to excite the fancy. It lacks the ceremony and pomp 
 which render worship in Catholic churches to ordinary men 
 so interesting. Unitarians are of course tolerant, and tolerance 
 in theology is an evidence of the absence of strong conviction. 
 Much as toleration is commended, no church that favors it can 
 ever be numerically strong. The church whose claims are the 
 highest will always have the largest following. Charity may 
 cover a multitude of sins, but the church that throws the broad 
 mantle of charity over churches of a different faith, will not be 
 permanently strong in its membership. The growth and per- 
 
TOLERANCE IN RELIGION. 33 
 
 manency of the Catholic Church are largely the .result of its 
 
 claims to infallibility. Admirable as it is in its organization 
 
 the most perfect that has ever existed it would lose its hold 
 upon its people if this claim to infallibility were relinquished, 
 and it should become so liberal towards other denominations 
 as to admit that there could be safety for those around whom 
 it had not thrown its protecting arms. 
 
 In contemplating the changes which have taken place in 
 the theology of the United States during the last fifty years, 
 one cannot fail to observe that liberal thought has made the 
 greatest progress where there was formerly the least of it. 
 For two hundred years Puritanism held the New England 
 churches in its iron grasp. When the grasp was loosened, 
 a reaction took place, and liberal thought asserted itself with 
 a power which seemed to have been invigorated by its long 
 suppression ; and yet, strange as it now seems, it was a long 
 time before the people of New England became so tolerant 
 as to sanction a free expression of anti-slavery sentiments. 
 It was long after this emancipation of thought, that such 
 men as Garrison and Phillips were mobbed in Boston, and 
 that Miss Martineau, who had been received with open arms 
 by the cultured society of that city, was socially ostracized 
 by the same society, as soon as she was known to be in pro 
 nounced sympathy with the anti-slavery leaders. It is still 
 more strange that the strongest supporters of the peculiar in 
 stitution were found in the churches. To their honor it must 
 be said, that the Unitarian churches, under the lead of Dr. 
 Channing, were the first to break ground against slavery. It 
 was noticeable that the position of the churches in regard to 
 this great question was, in most cases, defined by their creeds. 
 The churches whose corner-stone was the plenary inspiration 
 of the Scriptures, which sanctioned slavery, could not regard 
 it in the United States as being sinful, or inconsistent with 
 Divine justice. The really earnest anti-slavery men and women 
 were either those who had no fellowship with the churches, 
 3 
 
34 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 and did not hesitate to denounce them as supporters of slavery, 
 or the members of churches who, while clinging to the Bible, 
 did not believe that all its teachings were divine and fitted 
 for the civil and moral government of nations in a progress 
 ive civilization. 
 
 It must, however, be admitted that, although the leading 
 thought of the North was greatly agitated on this question, 
 the mass of the people would have cared little about slavery 
 at the South if it had not been necessarily aggressive, and they 
 would never have struck a blow, or permitted a blow to be 
 struck, for its abolition on moral grounds only. It was not 
 shaken by outside pressure. Its death-knell was sounded by 
 the first gun that was fired upon Fort Sumter. It was to 
 have been the corner-stone of the Southern Confederacy, but 
 .fortunately that stone was never laid. It was destroyed at 
 enormous cost of treasure and blood ; by no other means could 
 it have been destroyed. 
 
 It is lamentable that the only door of escape from a great 
 and aggressive evil should have been a civil war, but this 
 fact, lamentable as it is, only proves what the history of the 
 world has so frequently exhibited, that no great and beneficial 
 change for the benefit of the race is often effected except by 
 the instrumentality of the sword. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 Departure from New England William Emerson New York Philadelphia 
 Baltimore Wheeling The Ohio River Thomas P. Marshall Eman 
 cipation Feeling in Favor of it checked by the Profits of Slavery John 
 Bright and the Opium Trade Mr. Adams Mr. Adams s Speech upon 
 the Right of Petition Mr. Marshall in Chicago Cincinnati in 1833 
 Importance of Railroads to the West Alexander Ewing Cincinnati as 
 a Manufacturing City Distribution of her Manufactures Her High 
 Character. 
 
 IX April, 1833, I started for the great and (compared \vith 
 what it is now) unsettled West, by railroad from Boston to 
 Providence, thence by steamboat to New York, where I 
 remained a couple of days to see something of what was 
 rapidly becoming the great commercial city of the Union. 
 Here I renewed my acquaintance with William Emerson, 
 (brother of Ealph Waldo), who, some years before, had been 
 my teacher in Kennebunk. With him I went to the Battery, 
 then in its old-time beauty, in the neighborhood of which were 
 the fine residences of the aristocracy of the city ; to the City 
 Hall, which still remains unchanged, and in architectural 
 design has not been surpassed by any public building in the 
 country ; to St. Paul s, which had been built in the style of 
 the Wren churches of England, and was regarded by many as 
 being not inferior to the finest of them in symmetry and grace. 
 The long row of dwelling-houses in what was then upper New 
 York, Lafayette Place, had just been completed. They were 
 the show houses of the city ; I was taken to them that I might 
 see what elegant, commodious and expensive houses the New 
 Yorkers were building. My visit to New York was very 
 agreeable made so chiefly by the kindness of Mr. Emerson, 
 who, less distinguished than his brother Ralph Waldo, possessed 
 
36 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 man} 7 of his admirable qualities, with simple manners and ripe 
 scholarship. From New York I went by steamboat to Amboy, 
 by railroad to Bordentown, and from Bordentown to Phila 
 delphia, by steamboat. The only thing in this part of my 
 journey that I especially recollect was the beauty of the Del 
 aware. The journey from Philadelphia to Baltimore was 
 made by railroad and steamboat. I spent but a single day in 
 either city, but long enough to see the charming parks in the 
 former, and the monuments the finest I had ever seen in the 
 latter. From Baltimore I went by rail to Frederick in Mary 
 land, and thence by stage-coach, two days and one night, over 
 the Cumberland (National) Road to Wheeling. 
 
 The Ohio was in good boating condition, and the journey 
 down the river was charming. It then deserved the reputation 
 it had, of being one of the most beautiful rivers in the world. 
 There was nothing but a few straggling villages to mar its 
 original beauty. The magnificent forest through which it 
 flowed had been quite untouched by the great destroyer, the 
 woodman s axe. Its banks had not been stripped of their 
 beaut}*, as they have been since by the destruction of the mag 
 nificent trees that covered them, and disfigured by the inroads 
 which, in consequence thereof, the waters have made upon 
 them. For miles upon miles nothing could be seen but the sky 
 and the river and the grand old forest through which it ran. 
 Occasionally we overtook flat-boats loaded with coal or lumber, 
 or met a high-pressure stern-wheel steamboat, making slow 
 progress against the stream. There was little else than these 
 and the puffing of our own steamer to break the pervading 
 solitude. 
 
 On my way down the river I read with great interest a 
 number of letters, just published in pamphlet form, by Thomas 
 F. Marshall, in advocacy of the gradual abolition of slavery in 
 Kentucky. In these letters the slave question was very ably 
 discussed. The injurious effects of slavery upon the industrial 
 condition of the State were illustrated by comparison of the 
 
GRADUAL EMANCIPATION. 37 
 
 rapid growth of Ohio on the one side of the river, with the 
 slow growth of Kentucky on the other, and its injustice to the 
 slave, and its depressing influence upon enterprise, were pre 
 sented with great independence and force. Many other Ken- 
 tuckians, like Mr. Marshall, were then the advocates of gradual 
 emancipation, and it seemed for a time that the sentiment in 
 this direction in that State would sweep everything before it. 
 For a short time only, however, did this sentiment prevail. It 
 disappeared in Kentucky, and took no deep hold in the other 
 border States, as the demand for slave labor increased in the 
 cotton, sugar and rice-producing States, and the raising of 
 slaves became more profitable. If the cotton-gin, one of the 
 most valuable of labor-saving machines, had not been invented, 
 and the cultivation of rice and sugar had not yielded large 
 returns, slavery might years ago have disappeared in the 
 South, as it had in the North. 
 
 The extent to which the moral sentiment of nations is sub 
 jected to pecuniary interest the heart to the purse is a sad 
 evidence of human perversity. The control which money 
 exercises over principle has been witnessed in other nationg 
 as well as in our own. I will name but a single instance. 
 Great Britain is the most civilized of nations. Nowhere else is 
 the moral standard so high ; in no other country are hospitals 
 and asylums so well sustained by voluntary contributions, or 
 life and property so thoroughly protected by the administration 
 of just and equal laws, and yet Great Britain is guilty of the 
 unparalleled and atrocious crime of forcing upon China the 
 trade and use of opium, merely because the sale of it to the 
 Chinese yields large revenues to India. The eloquent denun 
 ciation of this great crime against humanity, by such men as 
 John Bright, whose opinions and feelings are not governed by 
 lust for gain, are unheeded by the Throne and Parliament. 
 The iniquitous trade is going on, and will go on as long as 
 revenue can be derived from it, and there is force to perpetu 
 ate it. 
 
38 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 But to return to Mr. Marshall : I saw him twice once when 
 he was in the meridian of his intellectual strength, the accom 
 plished and magnetic orator ; and again when he had fallen 
 from his high estate to be the slave of intemperance an 
 object of painful commiseration. A few days after the unsuc 
 cessful effort was made in Congress in 1842 to pass a resolution 
 of censure against John Quincy Adams, for presenting a peti 
 tion from citizens of Massachusetts for the dissolution of the 
 Union, in which effort Mr. Marshall took a leading part, I hap 
 pened to be seated with some Southern members of Congress 
 at the dinner table of one of the Washington hotels, when Mr. 
 Marshall.came in. It seemed that Mr. Adams had said or done 
 something that day which had irritated these gentlemen, and 
 as Mr. Marshall was taking his seat at the table, one of them 
 exclaimed, " Well, Marshall, the old devil has been at work 
 again ; you must take him in hand." " Not I," replied Mr. 
 Marshall, with a decisive shake of his head ; " I have been 
 
 gored once by the d d old bull, and have had enough of 
 
 him. If there is to be any more of this kind of work, it must 
 be undertaken by somebody else. The old devil, as you call 
 him, is a match for a score of such fellows as you and I. 
 
 Mr. Adams s speech upon the right of petition in 1837 was 
 one of the most effective and triumphant speeches ever made 
 in Congress. The great speech of Mr. Webster, in reply to 
 Hayne, was not listened to with more interest. Mr. Adams 
 was one of the most remarkable men that this country has pro 
 duced, and in no respect was he more remarkable than in the 
 fact that he became a great offhand speaker after he had left 
 the Presidency, and had reached the period in life after which 
 there is usually a decline instead of improvement in intellectual 
 vigor. He had, some time before, represented his State in the 
 Senate of the United States, and his district in the House ; in 
 neither of which was he a very prominent member. Soon 
 after the expiration of his term as President, he was nomi 
 nated for Congress by the Anti-Masons, whose cause he had 
 
JOHX QUIXCY ADAMS. 39 
 
 ardently espoused, and was elected. As it is very difficult for 
 one who has held a high position, and filled it with ability, to 
 sustain his reputation in a lower one, and as he had given no 
 evidence of possessing the gift of oratory, or readiness in 
 debate, his friends were apprehensive that his career in Con 
 gress would be anything but brilliant. Their apprehensions 
 were very soon dissipated. He proved himself to be a vigor 
 ous and ready speaker, perfectly at home amid the rough-and- 
 tumble conflicts of the House. He was re-elected eight times, 
 and during his seventeen years of continuous service, he was, 
 what no other member has ever been, perfectly independent. 
 His sympathies, as far as he indicated any, were on the side of 
 the Democrats ; but he incurred the bitter hostility of those 
 from the South by his advocacy of the right of all men, slaves 
 as well as free, to petition Congress for the redress of griev 
 ances. He was a free lance, and hard hitter. With his armor 
 always on, he was never unprepared for a tilt with any one 
 who was bold enough to enter the lists. His great learning 
 and command of language made him a most formidable and 
 dangerous antagonist. Pugnacious by temperament, he loved 
 a fight better than he loved his friends, of whom there were 
 few, and with none was he ever long in perfect accord. Before 
 he commenced his Congressional career, he had alienated 
 from himself his old Federal allies, and he entered into no 
 alliances afterwards. He was hated as few public men have 
 been, but his great ability, perfect independence, and thorough 
 uprightness, commanded the respect even of those who hated 
 him. In the great speech to which I have referred, he achieved 
 the very highest reputation as a debater and orator. It was a 
 speech in which learning and argument and the bitterest satire 
 were so combined as to overwhelm his opponents, and secure 
 for himself the name of the " Old Man Eloquent," which he 
 afterwards retained. He died with his harness on in the cham 
 ber in which he had been, for so many years, the commanding 
 fiure. 
 
40 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Many years after I saw Mr. Marshall in Washington, he 
 was pointed out to me in the Lake House, in Chicago, sitting 
 upon a bench, with the messenger boys, and talking to them 
 incoherently a mental and physical wreck. He had joined 
 temperance societies, and made temperance speeches equal to 
 the best of Gough s, for, like Gough, he spoke from his own 
 experience. His description of the terrible next morning fol 
 lowing the night s debauch, was as truthful and touching as it 
 was graphic. For months together, he seemed to have con 
 quered his enemy a thirst for intoxicating drink but its hold 
 had become too strong to be overcome. He resolved, and 
 re-resolved, and died the victim of alcohol. I have known 
 many victims of intemperance, but none who have fallen from 
 so distinguished a position, whose ruin was so lamentable and 
 complete. 
 
 In 1833, Cincinnati was the great city of the West the 
 Queen City it was not inaptly called, although its population 
 did not exceed thirty-five thousand. It lay between the river 
 and the hills, which were covered with noble trees and 
 carpeted with a sod of as deep a green as the finest of the old 
 lawns of England. In 1880, it had a population of 255,139. 
 It has extended its borders up and down the river and over the 
 hills, but it is less beautiful now than it was fifty years ago. 
 
 I had letters of introduction from Rev. John Pierpont to 
 William Starr, and William Green, two of the foremost men 
 of the city, which gave to me access to the best of its society. 
 This society was largely composed of New England people, 
 and the New England influence prevailed to such an extent, 
 that Cincinnati seemed like a second edition of Boston. It 
 was not then what it has since become, a manufacturing city. 
 There were in its population very few foreigners, and if there 
 were any Catholics, who have since become so numerous, they 
 were so obscure as to be quite unknown to the citizens gener 
 ally. It was a commercial city, situated in the very heart of 
 a very fertile country, with a commanding position upon the 
 
 * 
 
OUTLET FOR PRODUCTS. 41 
 
 Ohio. It was, even then, the centre of a large and rapidly 
 increasing trade. 
 
 The great market for the surplus productions of the Missis 
 sippi Valley was New Orleans, and it was only by the rivers 
 that this market could be reached. All of these surplus pro 
 ductions were taken to it by flat-boats or barges and steam 
 boats, chiefly the former, and thence shipped by sailing 
 vessels to the Eastern States or to European ports. New 
 Orleans was then so unhealthy that very fe\v persons who 
 had not been acclimated ventured to remain there from July 
 to November, and it had no conveniences for handling goods ; 
 but notwithstanding these serious drawbacks, in very few cities 
 of the world was so large a trade carried on, and none sur 
 passed it in prosperity, until railroads became active and suc 
 cessful competitors with rivers. 
 
 Nothing shows more clearlv the changes that have taken 
 
 O / 
 
 place in what was then the West, than the fact that for many 
 years after I went to Indiana, the sole dependence of the 
 farmers of nearly all of the West for sending their agricultural 
 products to market, and obtaining supplies of goods in return, 
 was upon streams which, with the exception of the Mississippi, 
 the Missouri and the Ohio, were navigable, even in favorable 
 seasons, only for the smallest craft, during one or two months 
 in a year. In those days settlements were mainly confined 
 to the borders of the rivers, and it sometimes happened that 
 the small ones were so low the year round, that even flat- 
 boats could not be floated upon them. The June freshet was, 
 however, confidently expected ; and this expectation was usu 
 ally realized. In anticipation of it, the flat-boats at the ship 
 ping points were loaded in advance and made ready for it 
 when it came. I recollect that in 1835 the rise of the upper 
 Wabash was so much later than usual that some of the owners 
 of the flat-boats became discouraged, and sold the corn with 
 which they were laden at six cents a bushel. But the river 
 did not fail. The rain fell, the waters rose, and in a few days 
 
42 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 the purchasers of the corn were richly compensated for what 
 they called their " trust in Providence." 
 
 It is to railroads, which now penetrate all sections of the 
 "Western States, that the enormous growth of these States in 
 population and wealth is mainly attributable. Without them 
 they would have remained pretty much what they were (except 
 in the vicinity of rivers and the lakes) half a century ago a 
 magnificent wilderness. The construction of the Illinois Cen 
 tral Railroad first opened for settlement the fertile prairie sec 
 tion of Illinois. I recollect the time when no one thought of 
 living on the grand prairie, away from the timber land which 
 frino-ed it : when one who had crossed on horseback this tree- 
 
 O 
 
 less and trackless region was regarded as having made a diffi 
 cult and venturesome journey. 
 
 A country, no matter how fertile, must be of little value 
 without markets for its productions ; and but for railroads, 
 there would have been no accessible markets for a region large 
 enough and rapidly becoming populous enough to cast into 
 the shade any of the European States, except Russia. Chicago, 
 the central citv, which excites the admiration of all visitors, 
 and whose praises are constantly in the mouths of its enter 
 prising citizens, would have been to this day an insignificant 
 town if its avenues of trade had been confined to the lakes 
 and to the Erie Canal. Railroads have not only opened vast 
 regions for settlement, but they have been the great distrib 
 uters of wealth. They have made lands hundreds of miles 
 away from water courses as valuable as those in their neigh 
 borhood. They have stripped some cities and towns of their 
 commercial importance, but they have opened the way for 
 millions of industrious people into regions which, without 
 them, the axe and plough would not have touched. 
 
 I have spoken of Cincinnati as having been a commercial 
 city. It is still such, but not exclusively or mainly. I had 
 been for many years a visitor to the city on business before I 
 understood that its rapid growth had not been owing alone to 
 
CINCINNATI AS A MANUFACTURING CITY. 43 
 
 its agricultural and commerical advantages. Some forty years 
 ago, however, I happened while there to meet Mr. Alex 
 ander Evving, one of the prominent citizens, and the conver 
 sation between us turned to the subject of the rapid growth 
 of the city. In the course of the conversation I remarked that 
 one ought not to be surprised at its growth, when one con 
 sidered the advantages it enjoyed in having so fertile a country 
 around it, and the markets which were opened to its trade by 
 the river. " It is true," he replied, " that Cincinnati is fortu 
 nate in this respect, but it is not these advantages, but its manu 
 factures, which are sending it ahead so rapidly." " Manufac 
 tures ? " said I. " Do you mean to say that Cincinnati is a 
 manufacturing city ? " " Yes, I do mean just that," he replied. 
 "Manufacturing is doing more to build up Cincinnati than 
 everything else. Get into my carriage with me, and I will 
 satisfy you that what I say is true." To me a city without 
 water-power and large factories, and yet a manufacturing city, 
 was an anomaly. 
 
 We spent some hours in driving about the city, and in 
 every part, except where were the residences of the wealthy 
 people, we found hives of manufacturing industry. Here were 
 shops where iron-workers were employed. Further on were 
 the shops of wagon and carriage makers ; beyond or alongside 
 of them, extensive furniture factories. In fact the whole lower 
 part of the city seemed to be filled with buildings of plain 
 exterior, which, upon entering, we found to be alive with 
 runn : ng wheels and active and skilful hands, turning out all 
 kinds of articles, for which there was a constantly increasing 
 demand in the new country. " In these shops," said Mr. 
 Ewing, " small and insignificant as they seem to be, goods 
 which are worth millions upon millions of dollars are annually 
 manufactured. There is scarcely anything that farmers need 
 for their farms or their homes which is not made in this city, 
 which you have supposed to be commercial only. Not only is 
 Cincinnati doing much to supply what we call the home 
 
44 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 demand, but large quantities of her manufactures are being 
 sent by the way of New Orleans to foreign countries. Trade 
 and commerce pay well ; farming pays, and you know, he 
 said significantly, " that banking pays, but nothing gives so 
 larire returns as the conversion of raw materials into finished 
 
 o 
 
 goods. Now," said he, " let us go to the levee and see where 
 the goods that these workshops produce are going." 
 
 This was in May, and the river was full, but not overflow 
 ing-. The levee was lined with barges, from which coal from 
 
 O o * 
 
 Pittsburgh was being unloaded, and with steamboats, some of 
 which had just come up from New Orleans deeply laden with 
 sugar, molasses and coffee ; while others, and the larger part, 
 were taking on board Cincinnati manufactures of all descrip 
 tions. Some were bound for New Orleans and St. Louis ; 
 some for the towns upon the upper Mississippi and Missouri ; 
 some for points on the various tributaries of these great rivers. 
 " Now," said Mr. Ewing, " let us go back to the hotel, and see 
 where the places are to which these steamers are bound, what 
 markets we have for our manufactures, what a nice little 
 country we have out here west of the Alleghanies." So with 
 the map before us we traced the rivers which these steam 
 boats were to travel, the Mississippi from the Gulf up to Fort 
 Snelling, the Missouri I cannot tell how far, the Ohio up to 
 Pittsburgh and down to the " Father of Waters," the "Wabash 
 to Lafayette, Indiana, the Kentucky and Tennessee as far as 
 they were navigable, etc., etc. What an extent of country 
 was drained by these streams ! Since then what an empire it 
 has become! What is to be its future, with its swarming 
 millions of people of nationalities so diverse, who is bold 
 enough to predict ? 
 
 Of the superior commercial advantages that Cincinnati 
 possessed for many years, railroads have in a large degree 
 deprived her ; but she is still a great, thriving and prosperous 
 city, of such solid wealth, that she feels the effect of financial 
 trouble as little as any other city of the Union. She was for- 
 
CHARACTER OF CINCINNATI TO-DAY. 45 
 
 Innate in the character of her early inhabitants. They were 
 not only men of enterprise, but men of rare intelligence, liber 
 ality and taste. The impress they made upon her remains to 
 this day. She has been largely outstripped by Chicago, and 
 to some extent by St. Louis, in business and population, but 
 she surpasses both and is equalled only by one of the Eastern 
 cities, in the munificence of her wealthy citizens, and the prog 
 ress she has made in the cultivation of art. Cincinnati is 
 still a great manufacturing city. Before the Western States 
 were penetrated by railroads, her interior position, and the 
 cost of transportation from the seaboard, were a sufficient 
 protection to her manufactures. Since then, and especially 
 since 1862, her manufactures have been stimulated in common 
 with those of other cities, by our protective tariffs. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 Madison, Indiana Jeremiah Sullivan Algernon S. Sullivan License to 
 practise Law Charles Dewey Isaac Houck Isaac Blackford Black- 
 ford s Reports Prominent Young Men in Indiana in 18D6 Joseph Or. 
 Marshall Caleb B. Smith Richard W. Thompson Henry S. Lane 
 Edward A. Hannegan Samuel Parker Horace P. Biddle George G. 
 Dunn William McKee Dunn Lucy Stone Samuel Judali District- 
 Attorney Howard George H. Proffit John B. Howe John B. Niles 
 The Harrison Campaign Condition of the Country Low Prices, and the 
 Causes Removal of the Government Deposits by General Jackson Presi 
 dent Van Buren Creation of State Banks Sneers at General Harrison 
 Log Cabin and Hard Cider Campaign Singing effective in Politics 
 and Religion Scene at a Church in Cincinnati Failure of Harrison s 
 Election to bring Relief to the Country Usual Causes of Financial 
 Troubles in the United States The Pennsylvania Bank of the United 
 States The Specie Circular Disastrous Effects of the Failure of the 
 Pennsylvania United States Bank The Pet Banks The Bank of Michi 
 gan Depression in Prices of Leading Articles. 
 
 WHEN I left New England, I had no definite notion as to 
 which of the Western States I should go, but as I had 
 a cousin, the only person I knew west of the mountains, living 
 in Alton, Illinois, I should probably have gone there if I had 
 not met at Cincinnati Mr. E. M. Huntington (some years after 
 a United States circuit judge), who thought so highly of the 
 prospects of Indiana, of which State he had recently become a 
 citizen, and advised so strongly that I should see something of 
 it before I went further, that I concluded to stop for awhile, 
 at least, in Madison, one of the largest and most thriving of 
 the Indiana towns. I had a favorable letter of recommenda 
 tion from Mr. Webster, which I exhibited to Jeremiah Sulli 
 van, one of the leading lawyers of the State, with the request 
 that I might be permitted to spend some time in his office, to 
 become acquainted with the laws of the State and learn some- 
 
MADISON, INDIANA. 47 
 
 thing of Western practice. My request was readily granted, 
 and I spent four or five weeks very pleasantly in Madison, 
 devoting six hours to study, and spending the rest of the day 
 in roaming over the picturesque hills which surround the city, 
 and about the adjoining country, which was then being rapidly 
 settled, chiefly by farmers from Kentucky. 
 
 Mr. Sullivan was a high-toned, talented Virginian, who 
 placed me under great obligations by his kindness and advice. 
 He was afterwards one of the judges of the Supreme Court, 
 and he filled that high position with eminent uprightness and 
 ability. A year before I met him, he had, as one of the Fund 
 Commissioners of the State, visited Boston on official business. 
 He said to me one day that he had gone there with Virginia 
 prejudices against the New England people, but that this 
 prejudice speedily gave way in the social atmosphere of Bos 
 ton. He expected to meet people exclusive and repellent, 
 devoted to making money and wanting in hospitality. On the 
 contrary, he found them warm-hearted, cordial, and, while 
 wide awake to their own interests, genial and hospitable. It 
 so happened that he was in Boston on the Fourth of July, and 
 witnessed an old-fashioned Boston celebration of that day. 
 He saw the usual procession, and listened to a patriotic address 
 in the cradle of liberty, Faneuil Hall. " Never," said he, " had 
 I beheld such a hearty demonstration of patriotic sentiment. 
 I am," he continued, "a Virginian, root and branch, but I 
 could not help feeling that if the liberties of the country were 
 ever lost, their last resting place would be in New England." 1 
 One of Mr. Sullivan s sons, Algernon S., a lawyer in New 
 York, recently deceased, resembled his father strikingly in 
 appearance and held a high rank in his profession. 
 
 I had not been admitted to the bar when I left New Eng 
 land, and in order to practice law in the Circuit Courts of 
 Indiana (for I had not been long in Madison before I had 
 determined not to go any further west), it was necessary 
 that I should pass an examination by two circuit judges and 
 
48 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 receive from them a license. I was examined by Judge 
 Eggleston in Madison, and then went to Salem, some thirty 
 miles distant, where the judge of another circuit was holding 
 court. There my license was perfected, and there I became 
 acquainted with Charles Dewey and Isaac Houck, who, with 
 Mr. Sullivan, were the famous legal trio of Southern Indiana. 
 Dewey and Ilouck were Kew England men. Houck died before 
 his ability had been fully developed (I attended his funeral a 
 few weeks after in Indianapolis), but young although he was, 
 he exhibited legal talents which only required a longer life 
 and a wider field for their display to have secured for him 
 high rank in his profession. 
 
 Dewey was subsequently one of the judges of the Supreme 
 Court, and an associate of Mr. Sullivan s. The head of that 
 court for many years was Isaac Blackford. I am quite sure 
 that three abler judges than Blackford, Dewey, and Sullivan 
 could not have been found in any court in the United States. 
 Biackford s reports are acknowledged authority in all courts of 
 the Union. They receive by all judges the most respectful 
 consideration to this day. Dewey would have been an orna 
 ment to the Supreme Court of the United States when Mar 
 shall was its chief justice. Although his mind was eminently 
 judicial, he was reputed to be a captivating speaker. He rarely 
 spoke at political meetings, however, and I never heard him 
 except at the funeral of his friend Ilouck. His remarks on this 
 painful occasion exhibited a command of choice language which 
 few men possess. In personal appearance he was like Mr. 
 Webster. He had the same swarthy complexion, broad fore 
 head, deep-set eyes and brawny figure. Mentally and phy 
 sically he resembled Mr. Webster more than any one I ever 
 met. 
 
 A few years after, there came to the front in Indiana a 
 number of young men whose equals as speakers and in intellect 
 are rarely found anywhere. Conspicuous among them were 
 Joseph G. Marshall, Caleb B. Smith, Richard W. Thomp- 
 
JOSEPH G. MARSHALL AND OTHERS. 49 
 
 son, Henry S. Lane, Edward A. Hannegan, Samuel Par 
 ker, Horace P. Biddle, and, a little later, George G. and 
 William McKee Dunn. 
 
 Marshall was in public life only as a member of the Indiana 
 Legislature, in which he had no equal as a clear, concise and 
 forcible speaker. His arguments in the Supreme Court of the 
 State were listened to by the judges with the utmost respect. 
 Before a jury in important cases he was singularly effective. 
 I became acquainted witli him a few days after I reached 
 Madison, and my admiration of his ability increased with my 
 acquaintance. He was the strongest man of his years that I 
 had known. He died young, at the commencement of what 
 promised to be a brilliant career. Smith was one of the best 
 off-hand speakers of the State. He had a wonderful com 
 mand of language and a clear, ringing voice which was none 
 the less pleasant by reason of a lisp, which he did not care 
 to overcome. An earnest, enthusiastic Whig, he was always 
 ready, although apparently unprepared, to advocate and defend 
 the principles of his party. He was appointed Secretary of 
 the Interior by Mr. Lincoln, but he lacked industry and execu 
 tive ability, and in that position he failed to meet the expec 
 tations of his friends. Thompson was a model of graceful 
 oratory. His voice was sonorous, his periods rounded and 
 perfect. He lacked conciseness, but his hearers were never 
 wearied by his speeches, long as they usually were. He 
 represented his district in Congress for a number of years, 
 and won there an enviable reputation. He was appointed 
 Secretary of the Navy under Mr. Hayes, which office, after 
 holding it for a couple of years, he resigned to become presi 
 dent of the Panama Railroad Company. 
 
 Lane did not take high rank as a lawyer, but as a popular 
 and effective stump speaker he was not equalled by any man in 
 the State. The meetings at which he spoke were always 
 lively. His speeches would not have "borne reporting" like 
 those of Thompson, but in passing by a building in which 
 4 
 
50 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 he was speaking one could always tell who was the orator by 
 the almost continuous shouts which he never failed to call 
 forth. In the United States Senate, of which he was a mem 
 ber for one term, he did not take high rank. He always 
 spoke well, but his style was better fitted for popular assem 
 blies than the Senate. ~No purer or more honorable man ever 
 lived, Hannegan was also a United States Senator for six 
 years. He had previously represented his district in the 
 House. He was a natural orator, who could speak better than 
 he could write. The seats in the Senate were never empty, 
 and the galleries were always full when he was the speaker. 
 Had he been temperate and industrious, he would have been 
 one of the most prominent and useful men of his day. Parker 
 was not an orator, but he was a keen and ready debater. 
 To come off unscathed in a discussion with Parker, an oppo 
 nent had to be thoroughly armed and equipped. If there was 
 a weak place in his armor, Parker was sure to hit it. Biddle 
 was a better scholar than any of his compeers, and an admira 
 ble story-teller, an excellent mimic and a wit. I have laughed 
 more in listening to Biddle s political speeches than at those 
 of any one I ever heard. He was withal a good lawyer. As 
 one of the Judges of the Indiana Supreme Court he deservedly 
 stood high. 
 
 George G. Dunn, like Mr. Marshall, died young. He was 
 an able lawyer, fluent in speech, skilful in debate. Of invective 
 he was a master. His command of vituperative language was 
 extraordinary, but there was nothing low or coarse in his 
 
 / / o 
 
 vituperation. He served two terms in Congress, and, young 
 although he was, he won before the end of the first session of 
 the first term a reputation that the oldest and ablest members 
 might have been proud of. One of the Representatives from 
 Maryland, himself a man of mark, said to an Indiana friend of 
 mine : " Your Mr. Dunn is one of the ablest men, if not the 
 ablest man, in Congress." "William McKee Dunn made him 
 self known in the convention by \vhich the Constitution of the 
 
WILLIAM MCKEE DUNN AND LUCY STONE. 51 
 
 State was amended. In this convention, although one of the 
 youngest of the members, he was distinguished by his legal 
 knowledge, sound judgment and readiness in debate. The 
 reputation which he had acquired in this convention he main 
 tained, and more than maintained, as a member of the Thirty- 
 sixth and Thirty-seventh Congress. In 1864 he was appointed 
 Assistant Judge Advocate in the War Department, which 
 office he held until he succeeded Judge Holt as Judge Advo 
 cate General, filling this position with marked abilitv until 
 January, 1881, when, to the great prejudice of the service, he 
 was retired by President Hayes, to make place for Major D. 
 G. Swaim. Mr. Dunn was an ardent Whig, and an earnest, 
 uncompromising Republican. His recent death was deeplv 
 lamented by all who knew him. 
 
 And here I cannot forbear to say a few words about Lucv 
 Stone, the only woman that 1 heard speak upon a platform in 
 the West, after hearing whom I was in accord with Wen 
 dell Phillips in the opinion he expressed, that not only should 
 women be allowed to speak in public, but if there were many 
 like her, they should be the only speakers. She delivered two 
 lectures in a good-sized hall in Fort Wayne in advocacy of the 
 rights of women. My seat at the first lecture was near the 
 platform, to which fact I attributed my ability to hear her 
 distinctly, for she spoke in what seemed to be a low, conversa 
 tional tone. At the next lecture I sat on the bench that was 
 farthest from the platform, and although she spoke in the 
 same low tone, I heard every word as distinctly as I did on 
 the previous evening when I was not more than six feet from 
 her. I had heard many men with lusty lungs and clear voices 
 speak in the same hall, and I knew how much effort was 
 required by them to make themselves heard. And yet here 
 was a small young woman whose sweet, silvery tones reached 
 every ear in a crowded hall as if they had been trumpet- 
 tongued. She spoke without notes and with great earnest 
 ness and feeling, but there was no straining for effect, nothing 
 
52 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 like mere declamation, in her manner of speaking. Her aim 
 was to show in what respects women had been unfairly dealt 
 with, and to define the natural rights of which they had 
 been deprived or prevented from enjoying by law or public 
 opinion. And this she accomplished with so much clearness 
 and force that there were few in the large audiences who were 
 not in sympathy with her. The only time she became excited 
 was in her second lecture, when she repelled the assaults that 
 had been made upon herself and others for what they were 
 publicly doing in behalf of their sex. 
 
 There was need at that time of just such hearty and effec 
 tive workers as Lucy Stone and her co-laborers in the cause of 
 woman, and their labors were not in vain. They gave to the 
 public sentiment a direction which resulted in very important 
 changes in the laws of most, if not of all the States, such 
 changes, for instance, as those which secured to women rights 
 to property. In Indiana and in many other States before 
 this movement was commenced, the dower of widows whose 
 husbands had died without providing for them by will was 
 one-third part of the rents and profits for life of the lands of 
 which their husbands were the owners, and these lands in a 
 new country were often unimproved. I knew many instances 
 in which the widows of men who were extensive land-owners 
 were left without any means of support. These and other 
 unjust laws have been radically changed, and women in In 
 diana now have equal rights with men in regard to property, 
 and in many other respects are made their equals. These 
 important and rightful changes in the legal rights of women 
 were largely owing to the labors of Lucy Stone and others of 
 her class. 
 
 If I had not given so much space to the gentlemen I have 
 named whom I knew personally and well, I would speak of 
 Samuel Judah, the best-read man in the State, and one of her 
 ablest lawyers ; District- Attorney Howard, an able lawyer and 
 a man of the purest character ; George II. Promt, who ranked 
 
SAMUEL JUDAH AND OTHERS. 53 
 
 among the most distinguished stump speakers; Andrew Ken 
 nedy, who was then just beginning to exhibit talents which 
 would have made him a leader of the Indiana .Democracy, had 
 not his career been cut short by untimely death; John B. 
 Howe and John B. Niles, who were not active in politics, but 
 who stood high in the legal profession. Niles having become 
 disgusted with Calvinism, became a Swedenborgian. In his 
 estimation Emmanuel Swedenborg wa"s the wisest man that 
 ever lived : a prophet, and more than a prophet. 
 
 In the Indiana Harrison campaign of 1840, Thompson, 
 Smith and Lane were the most prominent speakers on the 
 AVhig side ; Hannegan and Kennedy on the Democratic. In 
 that campaign public feeling was altogether with the Whigs. 
 The financial crisis of 1837 was followed by a long period of 
 severe depression, during which business of all kinds was pretty 
 nearly dried up. In the flush times of 1835 and 1830 almost 
 everybody in all the States had run heedlessly into debt, and 
 in most States when the crisis came relief was sought in stay 
 and appraisement laws which completed in those States the 
 general stagnation. There were more unemployed people in 
 the United States than ever before, and, as is generally the 
 case in times of financial trouble, the masses were disposed to 
 attribute their misfortunes to other causes than the true ones. 
 The true causes were, inflation of the currency, injudicious 
 extension of credit, and widespread speculation. In the esti 
 mation of the masses, however, the main cause was bad admin 
 istration of the Federal Government. There was really noth 
 ing especially objectionable in the administration of Mr. Van 
 Buren. The financial crisis came when he was President, but 
 he was not responsible for it. Mr. Van Buren was far above 
 the average of our Presidents as a statesman, with a character 
 above reproach. He was unfortunate in being President in a 
 time of great disaster. Had prosperity prevailed, his admin 
 istration would have been endorsed by his reelection. His 
 defeat was not a triumph of Whig over Democratic principles 
 
54 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 (there was no principle involved in the canvass) ; it was the 
 result of hard times. 
 
 To a calm observer, if there could have been one in the 
 United States at the time, the Harrison campaign would have 
 been extremely amusing. When General Harrison, who was 
 styled the hero of Tippecanoe by having distinguished himself 
 on that battle-field, was nominated, a foolish article appeared 
 in some Eastern newspaper, in which he was spoken of con 
 temptuously as a man who should go back to his log-cabin and 
 be content with his usual beverage, hard cider. This was 
 regarded as a proclamation by the aristocratic classes, that no 
 man who did not live in a fine house and could not afford to 
 drink wine was to be elected President ; and by general con 
 sent the Log Cabin and Hard Cider became emblems of the 
 Whig party. There was great demand for cider, and cabins 
 made of rough poles were the most prominent objects in Whig 
 processions. In addition to speech-making and log-cabin pro 
 cessions, singing came into requisition. The most popular of 
 the songs was one which referred to Mr. Yan Buren as being 
 a used-up man, and which could with a few changes be 
 extended indefinitely. I recollect but a single verse of the 
 song, which was always sung with great enthusiasm. The 
 triumphant victory of the Whigs in the State election in 
 Maine was the first in the contest : 
 
 "Oh, have you heard the news from Maine, 
 
 Maine, Maine, all honest and true ? 
 Seventeen thousand is the tune 
 
 For Tippecuuoe and Tyler too, 
 
 For Tippecanoe and Tyler too, 
 And with them we ll beat little Van, 
 Van, Van is a used-up man, 
 And with them we ll beat little Van." 
 
 Nothing could be more absurd than such songs, but almost 
 every Whig joined in singing them, and, though absurd, they 
 served to enliven and give spirit to the campaign. They did 
 
HARRISON CAMPAIGN SONGS. 55 
 
 as much as speaking or the processions for the election of 
 Harrison. 
 
 Singing has played an important part in creating religious 
 as well as political feeling. In the early days of Methodism 
 in the United States singing constituted a large and effective 
 part of its exercises. To sing well was an indispensable quali 
 fication for the ministry. It made up for deficiencies in other 
 respects. When I was a boy there was a Methodist circuit 
 rider in the circuit in which I lived, who excelled, as Sankey 
 does, in singing, and the boys, of whom I was one, always 
 hailed his coming to Kennebunk with the greatest delight. 
 One of his hymns which he sung with great spirit, and which 
 was a favorite with all of us, although the subject was far 
 from being a pleasant one, was descriptive of the last judg 
 ment. One of the stanzas ran thus : 
 
 "The chariot, the chariot! its wheels roll on fire, 
 As the Lord cometh down in the pomp of His ire. 
 Lo! self-moving it drives on its pathway of cloud, 
 And the heavens with the glory of Godhead are bowed." 
 
 It so happened that I was in Cincinnati when there was a 
 great revival in one of the Methodist churches. Upon going 
 out of the hotel one evening I perceived that a crowd was 
 flowing towards this church, and I followed it. When I .entered 
 the church every seat seemed to be taken, but the presiding 
 elder, who occupied the desk, noticed me, and beckoned to me 
 to come forward, which I did, and took the only vacant place 
 on what was called the anxious seat a bench in front of the 
 pulpit that was reserved for those who were termed " seekers." 
 I was not one of the seekers, but I was not unwilling to be 
 seated among those that were. 
 
 The sermon was a good one, plain and practical, but it 
 lacked enthusiasm. It produced no excitement, and there 
 were no responses except an occasional " Amen ; " but when 
 it closed a woman began to sing one of their revival hymns, 
 
56 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 other voices joined, and in a moment it seemed to me that 
 everybody in the church, except myself, was either singing 
 or shouting ; and so magnetic was the excitement that it was 
 with great difficulty that I kept down the disposition to shout 
 with them. There was, of course, no more of real reliinon in 
 
 O 
 
 this excitement than there was of real patriotism in the excite 
 ment of the Harrison campaign. There is this much to be said, 
 however, in favor of such revivals : they brought into the 
 Christian fold, where they were instructed as to the true 
 nature of vital piety, thousands of people who might not have 
 been otherwise reclaimed. 
 
 General Harrison was elected by an overwhelming majority. 
 The campaign was an exciting one, but one-sided. The en 
 thusiasm was all on the side of the "Whigs. The country, as I 
 have said, was then in great financial difficulties. The ma 
 jority of the people were heavily in debt, with no means to 
 pay. The only general currency in use was the notes of 
 suspended banks, and these were steadily being called in. 
 Gold and silver had disappeared from circulation. There was 
 not enough of the latter even for change, and what were 
 called " shinplasters " (fractional currency issued by States, 
 companies or corporations, uncurrent, of course, except in the 
 neighborhood of their issue, and in many cases worthless) 
 became the necessary substitute for it. Credit was known 
 only in name. The whole country seemed to be upon the 
 verge of absolute bankruptcy. 
 
 While this was the unhappy condition of the people, the 
 President was represented by stump orators as living in 
 luxury, giving sumptuous dinners to his friends, with a ser 
 vice of silver plate and gold spoons. Relief was needed, 
 and this relief was hoped for in a change of administration. 
 This change was easily effected, but the depression contin 
 ued and did not reach its lowest point until 1842. The elec 
 tion of General Harrison was barren of the hoped-for results. 
 The ascendency of the Whig party was short-lived. Har- 
 
FINANCIAL DIFFICULTIES. 57 
 
 rison died a few months after he became President. Tyler 
 vetoed Mr. Clay s bank bill, and became alienated from his 
 party, and at the next election, the Democratic partv, which 
 had been apparently buried so deep that its resurrection was 
 impossible, again had the control of the Executive bv the 
 election of Mr. Polk, a comparatively undistinguished and 
 unknown man, over Mr. Clay, who had been for years the 
 leader of his party and the most personally popular man of 
 his time. 
 
 The depression which prevailed from 1837 to 1843 can 
 not be understood by any who did not witness it. It was 
 widespread and all-pervading. It affected all classes, but the 
 greatest sufferers, next to the day laborers, were the farmers. 
 Everything which the farmer had to sell had to be disposed of 
 in barter or for currency at ruinous prices. I witnessed in 
 1841 a sale to a hotel -keeper in Indianapolis of oats at six cents 
 a bushel, chickens at half a dollar a dozen, and eggs at three 
 cents a dozen. Other farm products were proportionately 
 low ; two cents and a half a pound net for fat cattle and hogs 
 was the ruling price at Cincinnati at that time the great mart 
 for beef and pork. These prices, so ruinous to farmers, would 
 have been of advantage to consumers had they been merely 
 the result of over-production, but this was not the case. 
 Money was as scarce as prices were low. The dollar had 
 great purchasing power, but the dollar was difficult to get. 
 Capitalists (they were not very numerous in those days) felt 
 the effect of it less than others, but even they were far from 
 being happy, as they could find no safe and profitable use for 
 their money. Day laborers were the severest sufferers, for 
 wages declined more than the prices of the articles which they 
 needed for their own support and the support of their families. 
 Many were out of employment, and those that were employed 
 were able only by the closest economy to keep the wolf from 
 the door. 
 
 It is not difficult to discover the causes of the great finan- 
 
58 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 cial troubles which have occurred in the United States. Those 
 which commenced in 1837, and continued with steadily in 
 creasing severity until 1842, and from which there was no 
 decided relief until 1844, were largely the result of the hostility 
 of President Jackson to the Bank of the United States. In 1832 
 he vetoed the bill for its re-charter ; in 1833, by his order, it 
 ceased to be the fiscal agent of the Government. In anticipa 
 tion of the winding up of this Bank, which had branches 
 in most of the large cities, a great number of banks were 
 organized in 1834 and 1835, under State la\vs, and some of 
 them, which were known as pet banks," whose notes were 
 made receivable for customs and lands, the only sources of 
 public revenue, were selected to be the depositaries of public 
 moneys. 
 
 In the same year many of the States engaged in what 
 were called works of internal improvement, for the construc 
 tion of which bonds were issued from time to time and sold 
 chiefly in Europe. In February, 1836, a bank under the name 
 of the Pennsylvania Bank of the United States was chartered 
 by the Legislature of Pennsylvania, to be the successor of the 
 United States Bank and with the same capital. The result of 
 these financial enterprises was a very large increase in the circu 
 lating medium and an expansion of credits, which led to invest 
 ment in all kinds of property and to wild speculation. Within a 
 period of one or two years cotton advanced from seven or eight 
 cents a pound to fifteen and sixteen ; wheat from a dollar a 
 bushel to two dollars, and almost all other agricultural produc 
 tions in the same ratio. The advance in the prices of cotton 
 and wheat lands was still greater, and millions of acres of 
 Government wild lands were bought for purely speculative 
 purposes. Unfortunately, however, as is frequently the case 
 in times of seeming prosperity, industry, and consequently pro 
 duction, declined, and in 1836 many articles of prime impor 
 tance commanded exorbitant prices by reason of their actual 
 scarcity. In July of that year the Government divorced 
 
WILD SPECULATIONS. 59 
 
 itself from the banks and issued what was called tiie Specie 
 Circular, prohibiting the receipt of anything but gold or silver 
 for public dues. This checked to some extent the rise of the 
 tide of speculation, but it continued with diminished force 
 until the spring of 1837 when, the current of exchange having 
 turned against the United States, the banks in the sea-board 
 cities were heavily drawn upon for coin, and on the 10th of 
 May, 1837, the banks in Xew York were compelled to suspend 
 specie payments. Those in the other cities and throughout 
 the country suspended also as soon as the intelligence of the 
 New York suspension reached them, and thus was commenced 
 that protracted period of terrible depression to which I have 
 referred, during which the accumulations of years were swept 
 away and many States and most of the enterprising citizens 
 of the country were forced into bankruptcy. The stay and 
 appraisement laws which were enacted by State legislatures, 
 instead of giving relief, aggravated the evils by the destruction 
 of credit. No one who was not an observer of the troubles 
 which then overwhelmed the country can have any concep 
 tion of their extent and severity. Of all the cities, that 
 great conservative city Philadelphia which up to that time 
 had been, by reason of its being the home of the United 
 States Bank, the money centre of the Union was the severest 
 sufferer. 
 
 The second bill for the re-charter of that bank having been 
 vetoed by the President, the Pennsylvania Bank of the United 
 States, as I have said, was chartered by the Legislature of 
 Pennsylvania. It went immediately into operation, as the suc 
 cessor in credit and business of that great institution which 
 had done so much to benefit the country, and whose long and 
 successful career was drawing to a close. Unfortunately its 
 means were larger than could be used in legitimate banking, 
 and its manager, the President, with a recklessness which 
 seemed like infatuation, undertook to check the downward 
 tendency of prices, chiefly of cotton, by enormous purchases. 
 
60 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Instead of accomplishing this object he ruined the bank. Its 
 failure was most disastrous ; its entire capital was sunk, and its 
 many thousands of depositors, although ultimately paid, were 
 for a time greatly distressed. 
 
 There was another bank which came to grief by having too 
 much money. The Bank of Michigan, at Detroit, had for 
 years been managed with great prudence, meriting the confi 
 dence which it enjoyed. It was one of the " pet banks," and a 
 favorite. In January, 1830, I had some business to transact 
 with it, and I called upon the president, Mr. Hastings, just 
 after the adjournment of the board of directors. He was not 
 in his usual good humor, and he explained the cause. " I 
 have," he said, " been overruled by my directors. We owe the 
 Government a million of dollars, and we have more than that 
 in ISTew York. I wanted to square the account and dissolve 
 our connection with the Government. The directors did not 
 agree with me. The idea of giving up the use of a million of 
 dollars for which we were paying no interest seemed to them 
 absurd. They instructed me to use the money in current busi 
 ness, and I must be governed by their instructions." The 
 money was loaned when the speculative tide was at its height, 
 and the bank went down in the general crush, hopelessly 
 insolvent. 
 
 The veto of the bank bill by President Jackson was strongly 
 disapproved by many of the wisest men of his party, but he 
 was the idol of the Democratic masses, and resistance to his 
 iron and misdirected will, even by those who claimed to be 
 their leaders, was impotent. This veto was unquestionably 
 the prime cause of the unparalleled financial troubles, the 
 political effect of which was visited upon the unoffending head 
 of his successor, Mr. Van Buren. That the United States 
 Bank, managed, as it was during it sentire career, as a strictly 
 business institution, was of immense utility to the country, is 
 apparent to all who have made its history a careful study. It 
 was useful in a very high degree, not only in what it did, but 
 
PRESIDENT JACKSON S VETO OF THE BANK BILL. 61 
 
 in what it prevented. It furnished a bank-note currency of 
 uniform value and perfect solvency; it fostered well-directed 
 industry; it regulated exchanges; it created a high standard 
 of mercantile and commercial credit. On the other hand, it 
 stood in the way of the creation of State banks, with unreal 
 capital, and held in check the disposition of its customers to 
 engage in speculative enterprise. 
 
 What the United States needs to-day, and will need still 
 more when the National Banking System shall cease to exist, 
 is a national bank with capital enough to enable it to act as 
 a regulator of the rates of interest, and consequently to a large 
 extent of business. Such a bank is the Bank of England, 
 which has been of incalculable benefit to Great Britain a 
 bank which, in its management, is outside of politics, and over 
 which there are never any partisan squabbles ; which is inde 
 pendent of the Crown, and practically of Parliament ; which 
 keeps its fingers on the business pulse of the country, and by 
 its wise and prompt action contributes immensely to the sta 
 bility and healthiness of trade. 
 
CHAPTER VII. 
 
 Thomas Corwin His Popular Oratory Reply to General Crary of Michigan 
 Speech on the Mexican War Robert C. Schenck First Laurels won in 
 Debate with John Brough Appointed Minister to Brazil Resumes the 
 Practice of the Law At the Outbreak of the Civil War gives up a Lucra 
 tive Practice and becomes a Soldier Elected to Congress while in the 
 Field Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means Appointed Min 
 ister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain Performs his Duties with Great 
 Ability His Connection with a Mining Company Complies with the 
 Request of a Distinguished Lady to describe a Game of Cards Unjustly 
 treated by the Press and by the Government. 
 
 SOON after I reached Indiana I heard a good deal about 
 two men, with both of whom I became well acquainted 
 in after years, of whom I cannot forbear to say a few words, 
 Thomas Corwin and Robert C. Schenck, the former then a 
 prominent member of Congress, the latter a rising young law 
 yer ; both ardent Whigs and citizens of Ohio. Of Mr. Corwin 
 it is not too much to say that in wit, in humor, in general 
 knowledge, in a ready command of language, in voice, in mo 
 bility and expressiveness of features, in all the requisites for 
 fascinating and effective stump oratory, he was without an 
 equal. 
 
 Men would travel twenty or thirty miles to listen to the 
 matchless orator, and even his political opponents could not 
 help joining in the applause which his speeches never failed to 
 call forth. His memory was not only a perfect storehouse of 
 historical facts, but also of anecdotes and stories. It was worth 
 a " Sabbath day s journey " to hear " Tom " Corwin (as he was 
 familiarly called) tell a story. ]S"o matter how frequently 
 heard, it was always made fresh and racy by his variable and 
 inimitable manner of telling it. While to his extraordinary 
 control of the muscles of his face, which were alwavs in accord 
 
THOMAS comvix. 63 
 
 with the sentiments he was expressing and the anecdotes he 
 was relating, and to his charming voice the attractiveness of 
 his speeches was in no small degree attributable, they were 
 never lacking in eloquence or force. He had always some 
 thing good to say, and he never failed to be instructive as well 
 as fascinating. His power over popular and promiscuous 
 assemblies was immense. Plain farmers would not only travel 
 long distances to hear him, but they would stand for hours 
 under a burning sun or in a pelting rain, seemingly oblivious 
 of everything but the speeches by which their attention was 
 absorbed. 
 
 Nor was his fame as an orator confined to Ohio. By 
 his speeches in Congress he acquired a national reputation. 
 Made upon subjects which have long ceased to be interesting, 
 no one can read them now without feeling that they place him 
 in the front rank of American orators. Two of them espe 
 cially illustrated his peculiar powers one delivered in the 
 House in 1S40, in reply to General Crary ; the other in the 
 Senate in 1847, upon the Mexican War ; the former a master 
 piece of wit and humor, the latter all aglow from the begin 
 ning to the end with patriotic eloquence. 
 
 General Crary, of Michigan, a gentleman of considerable 
 ability, in a bitter partisan speech had criticised the military 
 character of General Harrison, the Whig candidate for the 
 Presidency, especially his generalship in the battle of Tippe- 
 canoe. In his off-hand reply to this speech Mr. Convin gave 
 free rein to the style in which he surpassed all men of his day. 
 While he did not fail to vindicate Harrison s military capacity, 
 as displayed in that battle, by apt references to the action of 
 soldiers of acknowledged merit in somewhat similar circum 
 stances, he overwhelmed his assailant with ridicule by show 
 ing what his opportunities had been for learning how battles 
 should be fought. General Crary was a military general on a 
 peace establishment. Taking advantage of this fact, Mr. Cor- 
 win described in his inimitable manner a Michigan militia 
 
64 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 parade with General Crary as the commanding figure ; the 
 troops in motion with hoes, axe-handles and other deadly im 
 plements of war overshadowing the field ; the general, with his 
 gaudy epaulets gleaming in the sun, mounted upon a crop eared, 
 bushy-tailed mare, fourteen hands high, riding gallantly in 
 front, displaying the beauty of his steed and his superior horse 
 manship ; and when the parade was over satisfying the thirst 
 which his glorious labor had created with watermelons which 
 he slashed with his mighty sword and shared with his heroic 
 men. I recollect no speech so provocative of hearty laughter 
 as this speech of Mr. Corwin. His exaggerated but somewhat 
 truthful description of a militia parade (general training, it was 
 called) in the early days of the West, in the conduct of which 
 General Crary was supposed to have acquired the knowledge 
 that fitted him to criticise General Harrison s military charac 
 ter, was so absolutely funny that the House was convulsed 
 with merriment, and Democrats as w r ell as Whigs shouted as 
 he went on until they were hoarse. To such a speech there 
 could be no answer. General Crary subsided. He was never 
 heard again in the House or in public in Michigan. " Slain 
 by Corwin," was the return of the inquest over his political 
 remains. 
 
 Mr. Corwin s speech upon the Mexican War was of an en 
 tirely different character. There was in it some of his usual 
 humor, which he could never entirely restrain, no matter what 
 subject he might be discussing, but it was especially remarkable 
 for its very able exposition of the unjustifiableness of the war. 
 It is a speech that excites the same emotion now which I felt 
 when I read it nearly forty years ago; a speech full of eloquent 
 appeal to the honor of the Senate, and of scathing denunciation 
 of the action of the Executive in commencing an aggressive 
 
 o 00 
 
 war, without the authority of Congress, upon a friendly but 
 feeble nation for no other purpose than to obtain by force an 
 extension of territory. 
 
 Mr. Corwin s reputation for patriotism can safely rest upon 
 
COUWIN S SPEECH ON THE MEXICAN WAR. 65 
 
 that speech. It commanded the attention of the Senate as 
 few speeches have ever done. It was heartily responded to 
 by the Senators who were in sympathy with the orator, and 
 was listened to attentively by those who were already com 
 mitted to the war. It was extensively published, and read 
 with delight by the many thousands to whom the national 
 honor was dearer than military renown, but nevertheless it 
 was a most unfortunate speech for Mr. Corwin in respect 
 to his political career. It was made when the nation was 
 engaged in war; when the people were exulting over the 
 success of the national arms at Palo Alto and Monterey, under 
 General Taylor, and just before General Scott commenced his 
 triumphant march from the Gulf to the Mexican capital ; when 
 thousands of young men were offering their services as volun 
 teers; when the war spirit of the multitude was thoroughly 
 aroused. For a Senator under such circumstances to oppose 
 the war and advise the withdrawal of troops from Mexican 
 territory, and for him to say, as Mr. Corwin did, that if he 
 were a Mexican, "he would welcome the invaders with bloody 
 hands to hospitable graves," was equivalent to signing with his 
 own hands his political death-warrant. The unpopularity of 
 this speech was deepened by the result of the war, which was 
 soon after terminated by the capture of the City of Mexico. 
 
 It Avas a very gainful war to the United States. California 
 and Xew Mexico became ours virtually by conquest, although 
 these vast territories were not ceded by Mexico until the fol 
 lowing year, when, by the treaty of Guadaloupe, she released 
 all claim upon them on the agreement of the United States to 
 pay for them fifteen millions of dollars a hundred times less 
 than they were really worth. It is a hazardous thing for a 
 man who is in public life, or who expects to enter into it, to 
 oppose a war, no matter how unjust he may consider it, in 
 which his country is already engaged. Very few have done so 
 in any country without being driven politically to the wall. 
 Men are by nature fond of war, and this natural fondness is 
 5 
 
66 ME1ST AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUEY. 
 
 vastly strengthened by the glory which always waits upon 
 successful warriors. It is not the civilian, no matter how im 
 portant may have been his discoveries, or valuable his services 
 to his country and the world, but the war-chief, however des 
 picable his character, who receives the adulation of the multi 
 tude and occupies a distinguished place in history. No one 
 understood this better than did Mr. Corwin when he made his 
 celebrated anti-war speech : but he was one of the very few 
 men who openly avow their sentiments without counting the 
 cost to their own popularity. All honor to those who, few in 
 numbers but grand in character, cling to their convictions of 
 honor and duty, however strong may be the popular tide which 
 they encounter ! 
 
 Mr. Schenck was in many respects very different from Mr. 
 Corwin superior in some, inferior in others. He had more of 
 what might be called intellectual grip ; a stronger hold upon 
 the subject he was discussing ; more consecutiveness in argu 
 ment, and more terseness in expression than Mr. Corwin ; but 
 he lacked the wit and humor which made Mr. Corwin s 
 speeches so fascinating, the fervid eloquence which rendered 
 them so overpowering. He won his first laurels in an en 
 counter with John Brough, the Boanerges of the Democratic 
 party, the champion advocate of its principles in Ohio. Mr. 
 Brough was then in the meridian of life. In mental vigor, 
 in acuteness and skill in debate arid in strength of voice, he 
 greatly resembled Mr. Douglas. So formidable was he in 
 debate, and so high was his reputation as a speaker, that very 
 few Whigs were bold enough to meet him upon the stump. It 
 was with him that Mr. Schenck, then but a boy in appearance, 
 and not much beyond boyhood in years, had his first political 
 encounter. That so young a man, so inexperienced in debate, 
 should willingly meet the victor upon scores of intellectual 
 battle-field, seemed to savor rather of recklessness than of 
 courage; but so skilfully did he use his weapons, so fearless 
 did he prove himself to be in attack, and so prompt and ready 
 
ROBERT C. SCIIENCK. 67 
 
 in defence, that if he was not the acknowledged victor, he 
 forced his opponent to admit that he had met a foeman worthy 
 of his steel. From that time Mr. Schenck was one of the 
 most prominent Whigs of Ohio. He was elected to Congress 
 in 1842, and he represented his district with acknowledged 
 ability for eight years, when he was appointed Minister to 
 Brazil. 
 
 On his return to Ohio he resumed the practice of law 
 which, had he been governed by his pecuniary interests, he 
 would never have abandoned. At the outbreak of the civil 
 war he manifested his patriotism by giving up a lucrative prac 
 tice and entering the field as a soldier. He was wounded 
 in the second Bull Run battle, but he did not resign his com 
 mand. Yielding, however, to the pressure of those who knew 
 how much he was needed in Congress, he suffered his name 
 to be used for a seat in the House, and so high was his 
 reputation that while still in the field he was triumphantly 
 elected in a strong Democratic district. As Chairman of the 
 Committee of Ways and Means, in which position he succeeded 
 Thaddeus Stevens, he exhibited rare ability in preparing and 
 carrying through Congress various financial and economical 
 bills upon which the safety of the Government and the main 
 tenance of its credit depended. It is generally admitted that 
 no man has ever discharged the duties of that difficult position 
 with more tact and ability. 
 
 In 1871 General Schenck was appointed Minister Pleni 
 potentiary to Great Britain, for which place he was eminently 
 fitted except in a single respect. He had given many of the 
 best years of his life to his country s service and been impover 
 ished by it. The Government of the United States, to its 
 shame be it said, is the only government that sends men to 
 represent it at expensive courts without supplying them with 
 the means to live handsomely. JSTo man who has not a 
 private fortune to draw upon should be appointed minister to 
 any of the leading courts of Europe. Foreign missions should 
 
68 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 either be discontinued, or adequate provision should be made 
 for their honorable support. The appointment of Mr. Schenck 
 was heartily approved by all who knew him. Xo one ever 
 sent on that important mission was ever more warmly endorsed 
 by the press than he was. 
 
 There were very difficult questions then pending between 
 the United States and Great Britain, upon the proper solution 
 of which amicable relations between the two countries de 
 pended. It was, therefore, of the last importance that our 
 representative should be thoroughly equipped for the dis 
 charge of his duties, in order that peace might be pre 
 served while the honor of his country should be in no wise 
 impaired. To properly represent his country under such cir 
 cumstances General Schenck was eminently fitted ; nor did 
 he fail in any respect to justify his appointment. Less courtly 
 than Mr. Motley, less eloquent than Mr. Lowell, and less schol 
 arly than either, he was their superior in aptitude for busi 
 ness, their equal in diplomatic skill. That he performed the 
 very important duties which were devolved upon him with 
 marked ability is undeniable. 
 
 I was living in London during the entire period of his mis 
 sion, and I speak advisedly when I say that he commanded 
 in a high degree the respect of the British Government. 
 Notwithstanding all this he returned to the United States 
 with a cloud upon his reputation. At the solicitation of a 
 friend he permitted his name to be used in the prospectus 
 of a mining company, and became one of its directors. This 
 was unquestionably an error on his part, but it was not a 
 serious one, nor did the Executive of the United States so 
 regard it. He had good reason to suppose that the mine was 
 a valuable one. If there was fraud in the representation of 
 it in the prospectus, he was not a party to it or cognizant of 
 it. But this was not all. He was frequently the guest of a 
 lady so distinguished that it was an honor to any one to be 
 invited to her house. On one occasion the merits of the differ- 
 
GENERAL SCHENCK S DIPLOMATIC CAREER. G9 
 
 ent games in which cards were used was a subject of conversa 
 tion, in the course of which General Schenck mentioned poker, 
 a game then quite unknown in London. His hostess became 
 interested in his description of it, and requested him to write 
 it out for her. He could not decline to comply with her 
 request, and she had his description of the game printed for 
 her own use and the use of her friends only. Hence the name 
 of the United States Minister became connected with the game 
 of poker. The story soon took wings that he was a poker 
 player, and was instructing the card players of London in the 
 mysteries of the game. This story w r as at once seized upon by 
 the journals that had already opened their batteries upon him 
 for his connection with a mining company, and made the text 
 of unparalleled abuse. 
 
 I know nothing about the game, but its name is not a 
 pleasant one. It carries with it obloquy which attaches to 
 no other game, and the association of the name of the United 
 States Minister with it was regarded as casting dishonor upon 
 the Government which he represented. Never was a public 
 man so violently denounced as he was for what, after all, was 
 a mere act of courtesy to a distinguished lady. The varied 
 and valuable services which he had rendered such services as 
 in other countries are recognized by liberal and substantial 
 rewards went for naught. The very journals that had in the 
 strongest terms endorsed his appointment became his vindic 
 tive assailants. Very few of our public men have served their 
 country so honorably and unselfishly as General Schenck; 
 none has been so unfairly treated. 
 
CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Ride to Indianapolis The City as it then was Its First Settlers Nicholas 
 McCarty, James Blake, Samuel Merrill, Harvey Bates, Calvin Fletcher, 
 James M Ray, John Coburn, Dr. Coe Some of the Prominent Men of the 
 State Oliver P. Morton Thomas A. Hendricks Daniel W. Voorhees 
 The Methodists Armstrong, Bascom, Durbin, Simpson. 
 
 IE" the latter part of May, in the company of Mr. Sullivan 
 and two or three other lawyers, I went to Indianapolis, 
 the capital of the State. The journey was made in a strong 
 spring wagon, called a stage-coach, and such was the condition 
 of the road that it required two full days to complete it. 
 Upon our arrival at the only tavern in the place, we received 
 the sad intelligence that Mr. Houck was dying from a violent 
 attack of bilious colic, caused by his having eaten heartily of 
 cherries not fully ripened. He died a few hours after. His 
 death was a severe shock to the judges of the Supreme Court, 
 which was then in session, and to the members of the bar, of 
 which he was one of the chief ornaments. I have already 
 referred to the touching and eloquent eulogy pronounced over 
 his remains by his friend Mr. Dewey. 
 
 The day following his funeral I was examined by the judges 
 of the Supreme Court, and licensed to practice law in all the 
 courts of the State. The question then to be decided was 
 whether I should settle in Indianapolis or seek a home some 
 where else. Indianapolis had been made the seat of the State 
 Government in 1821, but was not occupied as such until 
 1825. It had been selected for the capital, not because there 
 was anything attractive in the situation, but because it was 
 near the geographical centre of the State. Its site was upon 
 the eastern bank of White River, in the heart of a magnificent 
 
INDIANAPOLIS. 71 
 
 forest, but on what seemed to be a perfectly level plain. It 
 had been laid off by the surveyors on a magnificent scale, with 
 rectangular streets ninety feet, and avenues radiating from the 
 centre one hundred and twenty feet in width. Ample pro 
 vision had been made for parks to enclose the public buildings, 
 and the plan of the city upon paper was attractive and artistic, 
 but upon paper only. Little resemblance, indeed, did the place 
 itself bear to the plat. The parks, in which were the State 
 House, just then completed, and the court-house, had been 
 enclosed with post and rail fences, but nothing had been done 
 to the streets except to remove the stumps from two or three 
 of those most used. All of the noble old trees walnuts, oaks, 
 poplars, the like of which will never be seen again had been 
 cut down, and around the parks young locust and other inferior 
 but rapidly growing trees had been set out. There were no 
 sidewalks, and the streets most in use, after every rain, and for 
 a good part of the year, were knee-deep witlj mud. 
 
 As a director of the State Bank, I was under the necessity 
 for many years of making quarterly trips on horseback from 
 Fort Wayne to Indianapolis through a country almost impass 
 able by carriages of any kind, and yet I never encountered 
 mud deeper or more tenacious than in the streets of the capital 
 of the State. I have seen many of the incipient towns of the 
 West, but none so utterly forlorn as Indianapolis appeared to 
 me in the spring of 1833. It had no local advantages except 
 the fact that it was surrounded by a very fertile country ; 
 nothing to recommend it but its being the metropolis of the 
 State. There were then only two bridges in Indiana, and 
 these had been built by the United States in anticipation of 
 the extension from Richmond to Terre Haute of the national 
 road, which extension was prevented by the veto of Presi 
 dent Jackson, which I referred to in what I said about one of 
 Mr. Webster s speeches in Faneuil Hall. Upon none of the 
 roads were wagons in use, even for carrying the mails, ex 
 cept those from Madison and Terre Haute to the capital. 
 
72 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 From all other points it could only be reached by those 
 who travelled on foot or on horseback. No one who saw 
 Indianapolis when I saw it for the first time could have 
 anticipated its rapid growth and present condition. Xo one 
 could have dreamed that in half a century this almost inac 
 cessible village would become a great railroad centre, with 
 large and varied manufactures, a population of a hundred 
 thousand souls, one of the best built and most populous cities 
 in the Union not situated upon navigable waters. The 
 engineers who surveyed it and platted it were wiser than their 
 critics. The plat which then seemed so preposterous in the 
 extent of ground which it covered, has been again and again 
 extended by additions to meet the wants of its constantly 
 increasing population. Instead of being inaccessible, there are 
 now few counties in the State which are not connected with it 
 by railroads, and hundreds of trains are daily arriving at it or 
 passing through it. Then, three or four days of hard horse 
 back riding were required for the inhabitants of the remote 
 counties to reach the capital ; now they reach it by railroads in 
 as many hours. 
 
 Indianapolis was fortunate in the character of its early set 
 tlers. Such men as Nicholas McCarty, James Blake, Samuel 
 Merrill, Harvey Bates, Calvin Fletcher, James M Kay, John 
 Coburn and Dr. Ooe are rarely found in any place. Their su 
 periors in intelligence, in enterprise and moral worth can be 
 found nowhere. What was true in regard to the early set 
 tlers of Indianapolis was also true of those in many other Indi 
 ana towns. Nor have their successors been degenerate. No 
 State has been more prolific of superior men than Indiana ; 
 few have been as well represented in Congress. Of two or 
 three of them whom I knew well, who came to the front 
 after I became a resident of the State, I cannot forbear to 
 speak. 
 
 Few of our public men have won a higher or wider reputa 
 tion than Oliver P. Morton. As Governor of a State during 
 
OLIVER P. MORTON. 73 
 
 the civil war, in untiring industry, in energy and in devotion 
 to the Government he found a rival only in Governor Andrew 
 of Massachusetts. By his efficiency in forming and preparing 
 for the field the numerous regiments which Indiana contrib 
 uted for the preservation of the Union, he was known as the 
 War Governor, the great War Governor of the West. As a 
 United States Senator (my impression is that he wa^ never a 
 member of any other legislative assembly) he stood in the 
 front ranks. Clear, logical, incisive, he soon added to the rep 
 utation he had acquired as an executive officer the reputation 
 of a ready and vigorous speaker. Disabled for a long time by 
 physical infirmity from standing upon his feet, his mental 
 vigor was unabated, and the speeches which he read while 
 sitting in his chair always commanded the attention as they 
 did the respect of the Senate. 
 
 Thomas A. Hendricks served four years in the United 
 States House of Representatives, and although one of the 
 youngest members (he had just completed his thirtieth year 
 when he was first elected) he soon became a prominent member. 
 As a United States Senator from 1803 to 1869 he more than 
 maintained the high reputation which he had secured in the 
 House. Pure in character, faithful to duty, courteous in man 
 ners, he was highly respected even by the Senators from 
 whom in politics he radically differed. Upon the stump he 
 did not excite the enthusiasm of the crowd, nor did he attempt 
 it. His aim was to convince and to win. Intelligible, earnest, 
 sincere, he rarely failed to impress his own convictions on 
 those who listened to him. Without being an orator, he was 
 one of the most effective speakers of the day. As a lawyer 
 he stood high, both as counsellor and advocate. His two nom 
 inations for Yice-President were evidences of the hold which 
 he had upon the confidence and respect of his party. For 
 tunate was it for the Democracy that his name was upon the 
 ticket with President Cleveland, as it was his great popularity 
 that insured its success in Indiana and strengthened it in 
 
74 MEX AXD MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 other States. His death was a severe loss, not only to his 
 political friends, but to the whole country. 
 
 Daniel TV. Voorhees is a born orator. He could speak elo 
 quently before he could speak correctly. In the Senate he does 
 not speak often, but always to the point, and rarely to seats 
 which are not filled. Upon the stump he has few equals and 
 no supe^jors. Of a commanding figure, copious in language 
 without being verbose, with a clear ringing voice that can be 
 heard distinctly by the largest assembly, even in the open air, 
 and a perfectly natural and easy delivery, he is a popular ora 
 tor of the highest grade. As a lawyer he may not be ranked 
 among the highest, but as an advocate, especially in impor 
 tant criminal cases, where his sympathy has full play and suc 
 cessful defence depends more upon skilful management and 
 the humane feelings of the jurors than upon the weight 
 of evidence, it would be difficult to find his peer. He is one 
 of Indiana s favorite and most highly and justly honored 
 sons. 
 
 Nor, in these reminiscences of the early days of the "West, 
 can I refrain from speaking briefly of the impression which 
 was made upon me by the Methodists of this pioneer period. 
 A Methodist Conference is one of the most despotic assemblies 
 in the world. It is the Conference that decides where a 
 preacher shall go and how long he shall stay at the place to 
 which he has been appointed, without regard to his pleasure 
 or the wishes of the churches. From this decision there is no 
 appeal, and against it no complaint is ever uttered. In this 
 respect its discipline is as perfect as that of Rome. If promo 
 tion is not always the reward of merit, it is the result of the 
 best judgment of the Conference, and this judgment is rarely 
 at fault and never revoked. It is the most powerful ecclesias 
 tical organization in the United States except the Catholic, 
 and its strength and cohesion are very largely attributable to 
 the centralized authority in the Conference. By the general 
 spread of free thought and the increase of education among its 
 
THE METHODIST CONFERENCE. 75 
 
 clergy and laity, it has, like the Catholic Church, lost some of 
 its spiritual power and sectarianism, but it still holds fast to 
 the theology which was taught by its founders. Upon the 
 great popular questions of the day the Methodists are more 
 united than any other Protestant denomination. While out 
 side of theological doctrines freedom of opinion nominally 
 prevails, there is not often much diversity of opinion among 
 them on political questions, except so far as diversity is caused 
 by sectional feeling. Until the question of slavery became a 
 political question a large majority of the Methodists were 
 Democrats, and such they continued to be until the church 
 was rent in twain by the slavery question. Then the Metho 
 dists of the South continued to be Democrats, while those of 
 the North naturally affiliated with the anti-slavery men of 
 their own section. During the civil war the Methodists of 
 the North stood manfully by the Government, and after the 
 war they became Republicans. The Southern Methodists sus 
 tained the Confederacy, and on many battle-fields Northern 
 and Southern Methodists met each other in deadly strife. Re 
 ligious sentiment, strong as it may be, cannot stand against 
 national or patriotic feeling when thoroughly aroused. We 
 had an illustration of this in the late Franco-German war, 
 in which the Catholics of Bavaria were united with the 
 Protestants of Prussia against Catholic France. Germany, 
 divided as it was into different kingdoms and of a different 
 religious faith, was still the fatherland of the Germans, and in 
 their devotion to it the antagonisms of faith were for the time 
 buried. In saying that the Northern Methodists before the 
 war were Democrats and that they are now Republicans, I do 
 not mean that there were and are no exceptions. What I do 
 mean is, that as a body they were and are politically united, 
 as was and is the case with no other Christian denomination 
 except the Catholic. 
 
 Among the Methodist clergy in the early days of the West 
 there were a few very eminent men, of whom the most promi- 
 
76 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 nent were Armstrong, whose field of labor covered a region 
 which is now the home of millions of people, and who would 
 have been distinguished for his ability and acquirements in the 
 most highly cultivated community ; Bascom, whom Henry 
 Clay described as being the most eloquent man he had ever 
 heard in the pulpit or elsew T here ; Durbin, a man of not only 
 large literary but scientific attainments. I was much impressed 
 by one of Mr. Durbin s published sermons from the text, " We 
 are fearfully and wonderfully made, in which he presented, in 
 a manner which would have done honor to one who had made 
 the human form a life-long study, an argument in favor of 
 Divine creative power, as illustrated in man s ph} r sical mechan 
 ism One who listened to that sermon said to me that as Mr. 
 Durbin, with the finger of his right hand upon his left wrist, 
 described the regular but intermittent flow of the blood through 
 the system by the action of the heart, he could feel the beating 
 of his own heart as though he had within him a steam engine. 
 Mr. Simpson, afterwards Bishop Simpson, was then just begin 
 ning to exhibit his wonderful power as a pulpit orator. lie 
 has recently gone to his reward, but he has left behind him 
 undying fame as a preacher, and a reputation for unsullied 
 virtue, to be treasured up as a precious legacy by the great 
 church of which he was a brilliant ornament. 
 
 While the Church could point to such men as its members 
 (they were few in numbers and seem not to be increasing), the 
 circuit riders were, as a class, uneducated men who made up in 
 industry and zeal what they lacked in culture. There was no 
 settlement in the broad West, however isolated and remote, 
 where they were not found. Ever in the van, pioneers in fact 
 of the onward wave of civilization, regardless of their personal 
 comfort, perfectly at home in the cabins of the first settlers or 
 the wigwams of the Indians, they exemplified in their lives 
 the self-denial and self-sacrifice which were enjoined upon 
 His followers by their Divine Master. Ignorant of books, 
 they were adepts in the study of human nature. By constant 
 
THE CIRCUIT RIDERS. 77 
 
 practice they became fluent speakers ; some of them ora 
 tors. Dauntless, zealous, well nigh homeless, with no expecta 
 tion or hope of reward in this life, they combined, as did the 
 early Jesuits, the heroism of crusaders with the fortitude of 
 martyrs. 
 
CHAPTER IX. 
 
 By the Advice of General Howard, I go Northward Eagle Village First 
 Night in a Cabin Its Occupants Ten-mile Ride to Breakfast The 
 Village of Frankfort Military Company in Training Delphi The Wa- 
 bash Adventure with a Rattlesnake Logan sport Lewis Cass John 
 Tipton South Bend Charles Crocker -Samuel C. Sample Rolling 
 Prairie Laporte First Sitting there of the Circuit Court The Court 
 room Resolve to go to Fort Wayne Goshen J. L. Jernegan Fort 
 Wayne, its Situation and Appearance Rapid Growth of the Country. 
 
 HAD I not (fortunately, as it turned out,) met General 
 Howard, the United States District Attorne}^ for the 
 State, I should have made my home in one of the southern 
 counties of Indiana. I had been advised to do so by Mr. 
 De\vey, and had concluded to follow his advice, when, accident 
 ally meeting General Howard, I was asked by him whether I 
 intended to remain in Indianapolis or to drive my stakes in 
 some other part of the State. I told him what advice I had 
 received, and that I had about made up my mind to follow it. 
 " Don t do it," said he. " There are some nice fellows in the 
 southern counties, but the people generally have come from 
 Kentucky, Tennessee, or the Carolinas ; they are good enough 
 people in their way, but having been raised in the States in 
 which slavery exists, they are not enterprising ; their ways are 
 not your wa} r s : you would not like them. Go north." " But," 
 replied I, " northern Indiana is mostly a wilderness ; what in the 
 world could a young lawyer find to do there ? " " No matter 
 if it is a wilderness," said he ; " it will not long be a wilderness. 
 It is," he continued, " the most inviting country I have ever 
 seen, and it will soon be filled by people from New York and 
 New England the right kind of people to develop it. There 
 is Lake Michigan on its northern boundary, and a canal is being 
 built which will unite the "Wabash with Lake Erie. I charge 
 
A RIDE THROUGH THE FOREST. 79 
 
 nothing for it, but my advice to you is, look at least at the north 
 ern part of the State before settling clown anywhere else." I 
 thought the matter over, and concluded that I would, at all 
 events, see the country that General Howard thought so highly 
 of before taking a step that was likely to be so important to me. 
 The next morning, therefore, I bought a horse, saddle and 
 bridle, exchanged my trunk for a pair of saddle-bags, and after 
 dinner I was on my way to the north. As I was quite un 
 accustomed to the saddle, I thought I would make my first 
 day s ride an easy one, and spend the< night at a place called 
 Eagle Village, which was said to be about eighteen miles from 
 Indianapolis. Fresh from New England, I supposed that 
 nothing would be called a village that did not contain at 
 least a church, a schoolrhouse, a tavern, and a few dwelling- 
 houses. In this I was soon to be disappointed, and 1 had 
 not been long in the West before I discovered that there 
 could be cities in which there were no people, which only 
 existed upon paper and in the lands selected for their sites. 
 Some of them have become cities in fact ; others exist only 
 in their recorded plats, the land upon which they were laid 
 off having been converted into farms. The Michigan road, 
 through which in after years I had many a hard ride with 
 the mud so deep that fifteen or twenty miles were a good 
 day s journey, was made from Indianapolis to Lake Michigan 
 by the proceeds of the sales of lands granted to the State by 
 the Miami tribe of Indians, who were in possession of a con 
 siderable part of the territory through which it ran. Upon 
 entering upon it that afternoon, I perceived that nothing had 
 been done to make it a road except to open a way through the 
 forest. It was perfectly straight, and the noble trees, nearly a 
 hundred feet in height, stood on either side of it like a protecting 
 wall. The birds were singing blithely, and although my horse 
 was my only companion, the wildness and novelty of the scene 
 acted upon me like a tonic. Long, long years have inter 
 vened ; a long and busy life is nearly ended, and yet the exhil- 
 
80 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 aration which I experienced as I rode through that magnificent 
 forest comes back to me as freshly as if it were but yesterday. 
 
 The sun was just going down when I met a man on foot of 
 whom I inquired how far it was to Eagle Village. " Why 
 stranger," he replied, " I reckon you are in it now." On the 
 left-hand side of the road in a clearing of some fifteen or twenty 
 acres, there was a single cabin built of logs and chinked with 
 clay, and near it what was intended for a stable, built likewise 
 of logs, but of smaller ones laid one upon another without chink 
 ing, so that it afforded but little shelter from the weather. 
 " Do you call this a \ 7 illage ? " "I don t call it anything, but 
 that s what they call it here," was the reply. This, then, was 
 Eagle Tillage, and the cabin, the tavern in which I was to 
 spend the night. u How far to the next house? " was my next 
 question. Taking off his hat and scratching his head, the 
 traveller hesitated for some time, as if he were calculating the 
 distance he had walked, and then replied, " About ten miles, 
 as near as I can jedge." Ten miles was too far for me to ride 
 at night, so I thanked the traveller for his kindness and rode 
 up to the door of the cabin, where I was met by a well-grown 
 girl whose reddish jeans gown covered her from her neck to a 
 little below her knees, when the following dialogue took place: 
 
 u Can I stay here for the night, my girl?" 
 
 " I ain t your girl that I knows of, but we sometimes keeps 
 strangers, and I reckon you can stay here if you like." 
 
 " Is there anybody to take care of my horse ? " 
 
 " Xo, sir ; the rest of the folks are out in the clearing." 
 
 " Have you any corn or oats ? " 
 
 " No, sir ; we don t keep any of them things yet. We are 
 new-comers here, but you will find some fodder in the loft," 
 pointing to the stable. So to the stable I went, took the sad 
 dle from my horse, freed his mouth from the bit, tied him as 
 best I could with the rein, and climbed up to the loft by the 
 open logs, where I found the fodder cornstalks blackened and 
 mouldy by exposure to the weather. It was poor fare for my 
 
A PIONEER INN. 81 
 
 horse, but his exercise had given to him, as it had to his mas 
 ter, a good appetite, and he took hold of the fodder with a 
 relish that surprised me. As there was no curr} T comb, nor 
 even straw to rub him down with, I used some of the fodder 
 instead. His grooming that evening was decidedly imperfect. 
 Having thus taken care of my horse, I entered the cabin. It 
 consisted of a single but good-sized room, with a large tire- 
 place, the chimney for which was on the outside. The walls 
 had been whitewashed, and were adorned with female wear 
 ing apparel instead of pictures. Two large beds at the sides of 
 the room and a small cot in a corner, a half-dozen splint-bot 
 tomed chairs, a bureau with a ten-by-twelve family looking- 
 glass hanging over it, constituted the furniture of the room. 
 Outside of the cabin there was a small shed in which was a 
 cooking-stove. It did not take me long to make a survey of the 
 premises, and I had not long to wait before the " rest of the 
 folks " began to make their appearance. First came the father, 
 a tall raw-boned man with a face bronzed by exposure, but 
 expressive of self-satisfaction and good humor, who shook my 
 hand warmly and bade me welcome. Xext sauntered in a 
 couple of lusty little boys ; then three girls, the youngest 
 about sixteen and the oldest twenty-one, all dressed like 
 their sister, but with skirts a little longer. They were sun 
 burnt, but not bad looking. Last came the mother, prema 
 turely old, with that woebegone expression which I noticed 
 upon the faces of most of the wives and mothers whom I met 
 in my subsequent travels through the West. It is they who 
 feel most severely the labors and privations of frontier life. 
 Their work is never intermittent. With no help until their 
 children are old enough to help them, without proper medical 
 attendance when ill, with a great deal to annoy and very little 
 to encourage them, they are old before they have reached 
 middle age. Fortunate was it for Ohio and Indiana that their 
 forest lands were opened, and to a considerable extent culti 
 vated, before much was known about the prairies further west. 
 
82 ME^ AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTUEY. 
 
 There is, it is true, very little enticing about the prairies; 
 beautiful in the spring, in the later summer months and in 
 autumn they are scorched by the sun ; in winter cold, bleak, 
 cheerless. Still, as only the plough and harrow are needed to 
 bring the prairie lands under cultivation, and their soil is as 
 rich as that of the timber lands, although perhaps less durable 
 and less fitted for a variety of crops, they afford great advan 
 tages to the first settlers. If they had been known a little 
 earlier, a great many of what are now the best farms in the 
 States I have named might not have existed. 
 
 My first meal in a cabin was not attractive. It consisted of 
 corn dodgers, fried pork, and something they called tea, which I 
 should never have supposed to be tea by its taste ; but I was 
 full of health and hungry, and rather enjoyed the fare, coarse 
 as it was. After supper I had a talk with the head of the 
 household on a bench outside the cabin, in the course of which, 
 among other things, I learned that he was a native of North 
 Carolina, and that after marrying he had started w r ith his wife 
 for Western Pennsylvania. He was not inclined to stop in 
 Virginia. He had had, he said, enough of a slave State, w r here 
 a poor white man was not considered as good as a black one. 
 He remained in Pennsylvania five or six years, until the people 
 became too thick for game, when he moved to Ohio, spent 
 some years in the eastern part of the State, as many more in the 
 Avestern, and thence he had come to Indiana. " I have been," 
 said he, " a kinder rolling stone, but I am a good deal better 
 off than I was when I started. I own eighty acres of good 
 land, twenty acres cleared ; a yoke of oxen, a mule, a cart and 
 some farming tools, and besides as good a rifle as you ever laid 
 eyes on. And then," continued he, " we have all the time 
 been peopling the earth, as the Bible says we ought to. We 
 have eight children ; two of the boys have gone to work in 
 the city, and I reckon that the old woman is good for two or 
 three more. It has been pretty hard for her, but I," said he, 
 straightening himself up, " am as hearty as a buck. I sha n t 
 
PRIMITIVE PROMISCUITY. 83 
 
 stay here long if I find anybody to buy me out. You see, 
 stranger, I am what they call a pierneer, and pierneers oughtn t 
 to stay long in the same place." Here our talk was interrupted 
 by an announcement from one of the girls that it was bed 
 time. Upon going in I perceived that trundle-beds had been 
 rolled out from under the large beds, and that the floor was 
 pretty well covered by the sleeping arrangements. Pointing 
 to the small cot in the corner, my host merely said, " Stranger, 
 that s yourn," and blew out the candle so that I could not see, 
 if I had been inquisitive, how the women disposed of them 
 selves. I recollect only that in an incredibly short time the 
 room was as still as if nobody was in it. My bed was a hard 
 one (I could not see whether it was clean or dirty), but novel 
 as the circumstances w r ere, I slept soundly. In the morning, 
 just as the light began to stream through the windows, I was 
 awakened by the moving back of the trundle-beds, and I was 
 soon left to dress by myself. Upon the bench on which I sat 
 in the evening there was a tin basin, by it a bucket of pure 
 spring water (a true pioneer never drives his stakes where 
 there is not a spring), and hanging upon a nail in one of the 
 logs a coarse but clean towel. Having washed, paid my bill 
 (fifty cents), shaken hands with my host, who wished me well, 
 I mounted my horse, which had been brought to the door, and 
 made my best bow to the girls, who came to the door to see me 
 off. Such was my first experience in a log cabin. I relate it 
 because it was a type of subsequent ones. 
 
 The rays of the risen sun were just touching the tops of 
 the tallest trees as I started. The air w r as cool and invigorat 
 ing, and my ten-mile ride to breakfast, enlivened as it was by 
 the singing of the birds, with which the trees seemed to be 
 alive, was an exceedingly pleasant one. There is nothing 
 which gives one a keener appetite than a ten-mile ride to 
 breakfast. The house at which I stopped was quite preten 
 tious, two stories high and of hewn logs, with a sign over the 
 door, " Entertainment for Man and Beast." My breakfast was 
 
84 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 a good one : ham and eggs, cakes with maple molasses, and 
 excellent coffee. My horse fared equally well, for here he had 
 hay and corn instead of fodder. My bill was thirty-seven 
 cents. Cheap travelling, thought I, as I rode on again along 
 the wide opening through the forest. For dinner, I stopped 
 at Kirk s, a tavern well known for many years after for its 
 good fare. This proved to be the end of the cut-out Michigan 
 road ; so, after receiving directions from Mr. Kirk, I turned 
 to the left, and early in the afternoon I reached Frankfort, 
 one of the towns which were just coming into existence in 
 that part of Indiana. Before I came in sight of the town, I 
 heard the inspiring sound of a fife and drum, and as I rode in 
 I perceived that a company of thirty or forty backwoodsmen 
 were going through a military drill. Hardy looking men thev 
 were ; many of them doubtless proved good fighters in the 
 Mexican \var, but the oddity of their appearance who could 
 describe ? I was reminded of this training when I read Mr. 
 Corwin s speech describing the regiment in Michigan, to which 
 I have already referred. A few of the men had rifles, but the 
 most of them carried sticks instead of guns. The captain . 
 wore a uniform which had seen better days and had evidently 
 been made for a smaller man. His trousers did not come to 
 his shoes by three or four inches, and the cuffs of his coat did 
 not reach his hands by about the same distance. He had 
 epaulettes upon his shoulders and a glistening blade in his 
 hand, which he waved in the air as he gave the word of com 
 mand, and the scabbard of which dangled between his legs as 
 he strode before his company. Of the rank and file, not one 
 was in uniform, and no two of them were dressed alike. 
 
 As soon as I was observed " Look there, boss ! " called out 
 one of the men to the captain ; " there comes a stranger ; let s 
 have a drink." The captain was not averse to the proposition. 
 The company was dismissed. Whiskey was cheap, and I stood 
 the treat. " He looks kinder stuck up," said one in an under 
 tone, " but he is a d d good fellow, anyhow." The whiskey 
 
FIRST VIEW OF THE WABASH. 85 
 
 produced good feeling in the motley crowd, and I was for 
 once the hero of the hour. So much for whiskey. The next 
 morning bright and early I was on my way to Delphi which 
 was to be my next stopping place over the country road that 
 had been used by wagons, but how wagons could be hauled 
 over it in rainy seasons I could not imagine. It ran through 
 sloughs which must have been at times bottomless, and over 
 brooks (creeks they are always called in the West), too deep to 
 be forded after heavy rains, but it was a good road for a horse 
 man, and I reached Delphi early in the afternoon. Delphi has 
 since become a town of considerable importance, but then it 
 was about as ugly and unpromising as a town could be. The 
 next day s ride took me to Logansport ; a rather long ride it 
 was, but a charming one. Avoiding the wagon road. I fol 
 lowed an Indian trail that led along the banks of the Wa- 
 bash, which had not then been deprived of any of their natu 
 ral beauty by either freshets or the axe of the settler. The 
 river was bank-full. Its water was clear, and as it sparkled 
 in the sunlight or reflected the branches of the trees which 
 hung over it, I thought it was more beautiful than even the 
 Ohio. It was flowing on just as it had been for ages, undis 
 turbed by anything but the canoe of the Indian. In imagina 
 tion it is before me now, not picturesque, but charming in its 
 quiet beauty. 
 
 I saw neither man nor beast in my long day s ride, and 
 met with no adventure, unless the killing of a rattlesnake might 
 be called one. Riding briskly along in the afternoon, I heard 
 something which sounded like the chirping of a locust, and 
 looking ahead I saw, at a short distance before me, a large 
 snake leisurely moving across the path. As I approached him 
 he coiled himself up, and with his eyes flashing and his rattles 
 sounding, he seemed to be daring me to come on. As the 
 path was not wide enough to allow my horse to pass without 
 danger of being struck by the venomous reptile, I was com 
 pelled either to turn back or to contend for the right of way. 
 
86 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 I was in a dilemma : I could not go back, I dared not go on ; 
 but, as my good luck would have it, upon looking around I saw 
 supported by a tree a pole resembling a fishing-rod about an 
 inch in thickness and ten or eleven feet in length, which I 
 seized and advanced to the encounter. The reptile, probably 
 not understanding the advantage I had gained, held his 
 "round, and with his head and tail slightlv raised seemed to 
 
 O o / 
 
 be waiting for me to come within his striking distance. I 
 
 O O 
 
 urged my horse forward by the free use of the spur (he did 
 not like the appearance of the enemy any better than I did), 
 until I was near enough to strike. One blow from my pole 
 untwined his coils, and that followed by another and another 
 made me master of the field. The snake was some four or 
 five feet in length, with a brown back and yellow belly, the 
 largest I have ever seen, and the only one which I have known 
 to invite an attack. Game was he, and fatal would have been 
 his bite if he could have struck me or my horse. It was not a 
 brave feat that I had performed, for I have to confess that I 
 was afraid to dismount and meet my enemy on equal ground, 
 but it seemed to me to be something of an exploit to kill a 
 rattlesnake. 
 
 Logansport is situated in the triangle formed by the junc 
 tion of Little River with the Wabash. Hon. John Tipton, 
 one of the early United States Senators from Indiana, was its 
 proprietor. He had been for many years an Indian agent. 
 Perhaps he held the same office when I first met him. It w r as 
 charged, unjustly perhaps, that he secured his seat in the Sen 
 ate by the skilful use of the patronage of his agency with some 
 of the leading members of the State Legislature. Even in 
 those days the power of official patronage was well understood, 
 and there were no public offices in the West in which so much 
 power was lodged as in Indian agencies. As it would have 
 been difficult to find an honest Indian trader, so also there 
 were very few officials who did not make their offices subservi 
 ent to their personal interests. There was, however, one con- 
 
LEWIS CASS. 87 
 
 spicuous exception. Lewis Cass held the office of General 
 Superintendent of Indian Affairs in Michigan for many years. 
 During that period he negotiated a score of treaties with Indian 
 tribes by which he might have enriched himself and his friends, 
 but so uprightly did he administer his trust that no stain ever 
 rested upon his reputation. I did not have the honor of an inti 
 mate acquaintance with him, but I knew him well enough to 
 entertain for him the highest respect. Of the distinguished 
 men of his day I can think of few, if any, more deserving of 
 high honor than General Cass. As a soldier, Secretary of Wai 1 , 
 Minister to France, Senator, Secretary of State, lie exhibited 
 qualities of a very high character learning, executive ability, 
 diplomatic skill, graceful oratory, statesmanship. He failed in 
 his highest ambition, as did his compeers, Clay and Webster, 
 but his failure neither soured his temper nor weakened his zeal 
 in his country s service. Disgusted by the cowardice or treach 
 ery of Hull, under whom he served in the war of 1812 with 
 Great Britain, he broke his sword rather than surrender it. 
 Nearly fifty years after he resigned the office of Secretary of 
 State, to avoid being in any way responsible for the hesitating 
 policy of his chief, Mr. Buchanan, which he was unable to 
 direct. Fortunately for himself and his family, he had bought 
 in 1815 a large farm near the village of Detroit. The village 
 soon became a town and city, of which this farm became an 
 important part. Detroit is now one of the most beautiful and 
 prosperous cities in the Union. Thus, by the investment of a 
 few thousand dollars, General Cass became a millionaire. I 
 have thus briefly referred to him because he was one of my 
 early acquaintances in the West, and because during his long 
 life of almost continuous public service there is nothing in his 
 record that will not stand the test of the severest scrutiny. 
 
 But to return to Logansport. It was selected by General 
 Tipton for a town site on account of its water power, the 
 improvement of which has contributed largely to its growth. 
 It has become one of the flourishing towns of the State, the 
 
88 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 centre of a large and rapidly increasing business. When I saw 
 it in 1833 its population would have been numbered by scores 
 instead of hundreds, Canadian French seemingly predominat 
 ing. I remained here one day, spending an hour with General 
 Tipton, who had recently removed from Fort AVayne, to whom 
 I had a letter of introduction, and whom I found to be a man 
 of intelligence and full of energy one of those far-seeing, 
 hardv men who led the van in the settlement of the West. In 
 the course of my conversation I ventured to ask him if he 
 would advise me in regard to a location. On this subject he 
 was non-committal. " There are," said he, " two subjects upon 
 which I never advise : matrimony, and the place to be selected 
 for a home. These are so much matters of taste, that in regard 
 to them every man must decide for himself. Keep your eyes 
 open," said he, "and don t be in a hurry in deciding." From 
 Logansport I went directly north to South Bend. North of 
 the Wabash, the face of the country was quite different from 
 that over which I had been travelling. Instead of the dense 
 and almost impenetrable forest, the land was covered by large 
 spreading trees, free from underbrush, so that a horseman 
 could ride under their lofty branches as upon the open plain. 
 These timber lands were called " oak openings." In the course 
 of my ride, however, I passed over a wide belt in which walnut 
 trees predominated over the oaks. This walnut belt extended 
 east and west through the State. Walnut lumber was not 
 then much used, and if it had been there were no facilities for 
 taking it to market from the wilds of Indiana. Nearly all of 
 these fine old trees, oaks as well as walnuts, have disappeared, 
 the larger part having been used for fencing rails or burnt 
 upon the ground. There are splendid farms where they stood, 
 but to make them many thousands of walnut trees were 
 destroyed, a single one of which, had it been left standing, 
 would now be worth more than an acre of the cultivated land. 
 This destruction of the forests is still going on in other parts 
 of the United States, and unless means are used to prevent it 
 
EARLY DAYS OF CHARLES CROCKER. 89 
 
 it will be continued, until within another generation the United 
 States will be as destitute of forests as is France or Germany. 
 Between Logansport and South Bend there were but two 
 cabins one (the best I had seen) upon the Tippecanoe, the 
 other about twenty miles further north, where I spent the 
 night. At South Bend a court-house had been built, and near 
 it there were a few log houses and a tavern. It has become a 
 town of considerable importance. It can boast of having in it, 
 or near it, the most extensive " wagon shops" in the world. 
 Studabaker s wagons are well known throughout the "West. 
 So well established is their reputation that they command a 
 higher price than equally good ones from any other factor} . 
 In speaking of South Bend, I am reminded that Charles 
 Crocker, one of the millionaires of San Francisco, whose 
 daughter s recent wedding was one of the most brilliant that 
 has ever been witnessed in the United States, went from that 
 town to California in 1849, reaching Sacramento in August, 
 1850. I did not know Mr. Crocker when he lived in Indiana, 
 but I had the pleasure of meeting him in San Francisco in 
 1876, and hearing from his own lips a brief but interesting 
 account of his journey over the plains with his family, in a 
 covered wagon, drawn by two horses, of which he was the 
 driver. His entire fortune then consisted of his horses and 
 wagon, a couple of beds, some cooking utensils, and a few 
 dollars in money. Samuel C. Sample, a Circuit judge, was 
 then living in South Bend. His salary was but a thousand 
 dollars a year, but he was economical, industrious and tasteful, 
 and had been able to build a pretty little cottage and to beau 
 tify its surroundings with shrubs and rapidly growing trees. 
 Mr. Crocker was a friend of Judge Sample, with whom, as he 
 informed me, he spent an hour of the evening before he com 
 menced his long and wearisome journey. " As I left the 
 cottage," he said, "I could not help feeling envious of my 
 friend, and I said to him, that if I were as well fixed as he 
 was I should be content. On my way over the plains," he 
 
90 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 continued, " I never stopped at night, dust-covered and weary, 
 after a hard day s travel, without having the vision of that 
 beautiful little cottage before me, and comparing my doleful 
 condition with that of my friend Sample." It must indeed 
 have been a trying journey, such as only a man of nerve 
 would have undertaken, and a man of vigorous health could 
 have endured. Mr. Crocker was not only brave and hardy, 
 he was enterprising and far-seeing, sound in judgment and 
 able in execution. He made money rapidly from the start in 
 well-managed enterprises, and with Leland Stanford, C. P. 
 Iluntington and Mark Hopkins, he constructed the Central 
 Pacific Eailroad, the greatest enterprise of the time, by which 
 he and his associates were made rich. In less than twenty 
 years from the time he left South Bend Mr. Crocker had 
 become prominent by his ability and enterprise, and able from 
 his income alone to buy every year hundreds of such places as 
 had excited Ifis envy. Rarely indeed has there been such a 
 contrast in any man s life as in that of Charles Crocker work 
 ing his weary way over the plains, with all his possessions in 
 his wagon, and Charles Crocker the great railroad builder, and 
 twenty times over millionaire, of California. 
 
 The -Circuit Court had just completed its session when I 
 reached South Bend, and had adjourned to meet the day fol 
 lowing at Laporte, the adjoining county on the west. So the 
 next morning I turned my face westward, and soon came in 
 sight of the first prairie I had seen. To my disgust it was low 
 and swampy, looking more like one of the salt marshes of 
 Maine than a prairie as described by travellers. It had been 
 properly named the " wet prairie," but long since it has 
 been drained and has proved to be more fertile than its 
 higher arid much more beautiful neighbor. Passing by this 
 prairie and through a strip of woodland, my eyes were de 
 lighted by a picture so charming that the recollection of it 
 remains indelibly stamped upon my memory. One who -sees 
 rolling prairie now can have no conception of its appearance 
 
THE PRAIRIE AND LAPORTE. 91 
 
 before it had been touched by the plough. It was about two 
 miles in breadth, and ten or twelve in length. Its surface was 
 undulating like the waves of the sea after a storm, and cov 
 ered with luxuriant grass interspersed with wild flowers of 
 every hue. Around and completely inclosing and seemingly 
 protecting it stood the forest. I have seen since then many 
 parks of great natural and artistic beauty, but none so charm 
 ing as was the rolling prairie on that bright morning in 
 June. A short distance beyond it, but separated by an arm of 
 the forest, was Laporte prairie, larger but inferior in beauty, 
 which received its name from the fact that on its western 
 border there was an opening like a door in the forest which 
 everywhere else inclosed it. ISTear the centre of the prairie, 
 upon a charming little lake, was the county seat, Laporte. So 
 new and so evidently temporary were its few buildings, that 
 they seemed to have been " gotten up " for the accommodation 
 of the court, which was to sit there for the first time. The 
 court-house so-called was a long story-and-a-half structure, 
 with a battened roof arid sides of slabs, showing that there was 
 a saw-mill in the vicinity. In one end was the court-room, 
 in the other a tavern, and between them a grocery, dignified 
 with the name of saloon, and over all were the sleeping-rooms. 
 The court-room was simple and unique. The bench, elevated 
 three or four feet, with a floor of unplaned boards, was sup 
 ported by trestles, and upon it was a long table, behind which 
 sat the judges. Below the bench was the bar ; on one side 
 seats for the jurors, and on the other for criminals. The halt 
 score of dwelling-houses near the court-house were of the same 
 material and knocked together in the same manner. I had, it 
 seemed, reached the point in Northern Indiana where boards 
 were cheaper than logs. The county had been organized the 
 winter before, and as court was sitting in it for the first time 
 the docket was a light one three or four civil suits and an 
 indictment for assault and battery, all of which were speedily 
 disposed of. 
 
92 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 In those days the Indiana circuit courts were held by three 
 judges one the circuit or presiding judge appointed by the 
 Governor with the consent of the Senate, who was supposed to 
 be learned in the law ; and two elected by the voters of the 
 respective counties composing the judicial district, who were 
 not lawyers, and whose function it was to bring common sense 
 to bear upon legal questions. The circuit judge bore the name 
 of Evarts (if a relative of the distinguished William M., he 
 must have been a very distant one), who was more apt at story 
 telling than in deciding legal questions. The prosecuting attor 
 ney was quite famous for his fluent display of bad English, 
 the worst I think that ever fell from mortal lips. lie must 
 have had, however, a good deal of push and endurance in his 
 composition, for in 184-8 he walked all the way to California, and 
 reached Sacramento shoeless and hatless. There were two or 
 three lawyers present who followed the court through the whole 
 circuit and who would have stood high in any court. There 
 were then in the Western States lawyers of established repu 
 tation who, as the saying was, " rode the circuit," and who were 
 employed in important cases, and in many cases which were 
 not important, by reason of the intricacies of the legal practice. 
 Special pleading was then in full vogue. A lawyer who had 
 not made " Chitty on Pleading " a careful study, was fre 
 quently bewildered by the pleas he had to meet in the simplest 
 cases. The first suit which I commenced after I hung out my 
 shingle at Fort Wayne was on a plain note of hand against 
 which there was no real defence ; but the maker of the note 
 Avanted more time than the holder was disposed to give him, 
 so he employed a young attorney to stave off the payment, and 
 the young attorney called to his assistance one of these circuit- 
 riding lawyers. I recollect perfectly well how embarrassed I was 
 Avhen I found that I had to answer more than a dozen special 
 pleas, and how mortified I was in being compelled to avail my 
 self of the skill in special pleading of another of these travelling 
 lawyers, in order to obtain a judgment on a promissory note. 
 
93 
 
 This practice of circuit-riding by prominent lawyers then 
 prevailed, and for some years after, throughout Indiana and 
 Illinois, and to some extent in Ohio. Each judicial district 
 embraced a large number of counties, and there were very few 
 in which there was not enough business to justify the attend 
 ance of abler or more experienced lawyers than were usually 
 found there. Some lawyers like Charles Dewey, Samuel C. 
 Sample, John S. Newman of Indiana, and Abraham Lincoln 
 and Stephen A. Douglas of Illinois, frequently travelled on 
 horseback hundreds of miles to be leading counsel in impor 
 tant suits. In these long journeys through sections but sparsely 
 settled these circuit-riding lawyers were frequently under the 
 necessity of stopping for the night at cabins lighted only by 
 candles or by blazing wood in the ample fire-places, and, to 
 while away the time, story-telling was resorted to, in which 
 not only memory but imagination was brought into lively exer 
 cise. To be a good story-teller under such circumstances was 
 a necessary qualification for agreeable companionship. To this 
 practice is the country indebted for many of Mr. Lincoln s apt 
 and original stories. 
 
 Laporte was a beautiful county, but the population was 
 scanty, and I thought that if I remained there it would be a 
 very long time before I could reasonably expect to have busi 
 ness enough to support me ; so the next day after the adjourn 
 ment of the court I concluded to accept a kind invitation 
 which I had received from Dr. Lewis G. Thompson (whom I 
 had met at South Bend), to visit Fort "Wayne, of the outcome 
 of which he had great expectations. Leaving Laporte, I rode 
 eastward^ over a rich but unsettled country to Goshen, the 
 county seat of Elkhart County, and thence, turning southward, 
 I reached Fort Wayne three days after I left Laporte, having 
 spent a part of one day in defending a man who was on trial 
 for an alleged malicious trespass. An hour or two after I had 
 registered my name in the tavern at Goshen, and told one of 
 the inquisitive bystanders that I was a lawyer and on my way 
 
94 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 to Fort Wayne, I received a note signed J. L. Jernigan, request 
 ing me to call at the house of the writer some time during the 
 evening. The house at which I called was made of logs with 
 a single room, the furniture of which consisted of a bed, a table, 
 three or four chairs and a cooking-stove. Mr. Jernigan was 
 evidently quite ill. His only attendant was a good-looking 
 and neatly dressed young woman, whom he introduced to me 
 as Lis wife. After apologizing for asking me to come to his 
 house, he informed me that a case in which he was attorney 
 for the defendant, and which was a very important one for his 
 client, was to be tried the next day ; that he w T as likely to be 
 too ill to leave his house, and that having just learned that I 
 was in town and a lawyer, he had taken the liberty of sending 
 for me to see if he could not induce me to take charge of the 
 defence. He explained to me its nature, and seemed to be 
 greatly relieved when I said to him that I would comply with 
 his request and do the best I could for his client. This point 
 having been settled, we talked about personal matters, and I 
 learned that he and his wife were natives of Martha s Vineyard. 
 u We are," said he, " starting in an humble way, but I guess 
 we shall come out right ; " and they did, as far as success in 
 his profession was regarded. He was a ripe scholar and hard 
 worker, and it was not long before he acquired high reputation 
 as a lawyer in Indiana, which he sustained when, many years 
 afterwards, he became a member of the New York Bar ; but 
 to the surprise of his friends, at the very summit of his pro 
 fessional career, he went to Europe, and when I last saw him 
 he was living in Florence, manifesting no interest whatever in 
 the affairs of his country or the welfare of his family. The 
 case in which I appeared for the defence in the place of Mr. 
 Jernigan was tried the next day. It was to me a novel pro 
 ceeding a jury trial before a justice of the peace. The evi 
 dence was decidedly against the defendant, but the sympathies 
 of the jurors were in his favor, and to my great satisfaction 
 their verdict was "Not guilty." My fee was small (ten 
 
A MAGNIFICENT WILDERNESS. 95 
 
 dollars), but it was very acceptable in the low state of my 
 finances. 
 
 Fort Wayne was about as uninviting in every respect 
 except its site as any of the towns through which I had passed, 
 but it proved to be the end of my journey, which had been 
 long and solitary, but by no means lonesome or tedious. The 
 country over which I had travelled was not picturesque ; no 
 hills to relieve its flatness, few streams to diversify the scenery. 
 It was simply a magnificent wilderness, mostly covered with 
 lofty trees of almost countless varieties. Nevertheless there 
 was something in my long and solitary ride that prevented 
 wearinesfc and produced an exhilaration of spirits which I had 
 never before experienced. There is society where none in 
 trudes," and there is more music in the singing of birds than 
 in the roar of the sea. It was a country peculiarly adapted to 
 the wants and habits of Indians. Its climate was mild, and it 
 abounded with all kinds of game. It is not strange that in 
 many cases force was required to remove from it these natives 
 of the country, and that to them the prairie country (now 
 Kansas and Nebraska) to which they and other tribes were 
 removed seemed to be a desert. Little did I think as I rode 
 mile after mile without seeing even a dot of civilization, and 
 pondered the question, Where are the people to possess and 
 cultivate this extensive wilderness to come from? little did I 
 think that before I had reached middle age, it would become 
 the home of hundreds of thousands of enterprising and thrifty 
 men ; that wave after wave of immigration would sweep over 
 it, to take possession of vast regions beyond, then unknown 
 except by the name of the North western Territory ; that 
 before I had become old the invading flood would move on 
 over the great desert, over the Rocky Mountains and Sierras, 
 and create upon the Pacific Ocean States rivalling in wealth 
 and population many of their Atlantic sisters ; that the Pa 
 cific Ocean would be the western boundary, as the Atlantic 
 was the eastern boundary of the great republic ; and what is 
 
96 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 stranger still, that these oceans would be brought into proxim 
 ity by lines of railway. 
 
 In recalling the geographical, commercial, and agricultural 
 condition of the country west of the Alleghanies in 1833, and 
 comparing that condition with what it now is, the changes that 
 have taken place seem too strange to be real. Then Indiana 
 was a frontier State ; Michigan a territory embracing with 
 imperfectly defined boundaries the extensive region which in 
 cludes Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota and Southern Dakota. Then 
 Kansas and Nebraska were only known as a country to which 
 the Indian tribes east of the Mississippi could be removed in 
 order that they might live without being molested by intru 
 sive white men. Then Galena was the chief town in Illinois, 
 Chicago little more than a hamlet. Then San Francisco was 
 only visited by whale ships ; the Columbia, a river whose deep 
 waters had very rarely been disturbed by vessels of any kind 
 from the time of its exploration by Lewis and Clark. Then 
 scarcely a bushel of wheat or a barrel of flour from what is 
 now the great grain-producing country of the world was sent 
 to the Atlantic States or to Europe, which did not go by New 
 Orleans. Then west of Pennsylvania railroads had not been 
 contemplated. Then the labor-saving farming implements now 
 in use, and without the aid of which millions of acres now 
 under cultivation would have remained a wilderness, had not 
 been invented. Then there were no mowers, no reapers, no 
 threshers, all of which are now indispensable to profitable 
 husbandry. East of the Alleghanies the geographical changes 
 were unimportant, but the new life with which the world 
 seemed to be infused with the incoming of the nineteenth cen 
 tury was showing itself there with equal vigor. Nearly all 
 the great enterprises of every kind which have contributed so 
 much to the comfort of the people, and added so enormously to 
 the national wealth, have been undertaken since I left New 
 England. Besides the great undertakings such as water-works, 
 steamships, rolling-mills, tramways, telegraphs, telephones, etc., 
 
INVENTIONS OF THE PAST FIFTY YEARS. 97 
 
 etc., what an immense variety of articles for family use have 
 been devised ! It is within this period that such indispensable 
 articles as cooking ranges, furnaces, and even lucifer matches, 
 have come into use. Indeed I can hardly think of anything 
 now regarded as essential to national progress or domestic 
 convenience and comfort which has not been the product of 
 the last half century. 
 7 
 
CHAPTER X. 
 
 Situation of Fort Wayne French Catholic Priests Anthony Wayne Little 
 Turtle First Temperance Society in the United States The Indians 
 Indian Agents Passing Away of the Tribes Samuel Hanna Allan 
 Hamilton William G. and George W. Ewing Charles W. Ewing 
 Samuel Lewis Lewis G. Thompson Jesse L. Williams Robert Brecken- 
 ridge Marshal S. Wines John Spencer Francis Comparet John B. 
 Bourie John B. Richardville. 
 
 IN" 1833 Fort Wayne, as I have said, had little to recommend 
 it but its site which, being an elevated plateau at the junc 
 tion of the St. Joseph s and St. Mary s Rivers, which formed 
 the Maumee, was commanding and picturesque. It was near 
 the line which divides the waters which flow northeasterly to 
 Lake Erie from those which flow southwesterly to the Gulf of 
 Mexico, a few miles, called " the portage," separating the 
 Maumee from the Wabash. The explorers of this section were 
 French Catholic priests, who crossed the St. Clair Straits near 
 Detroit, passed over the western end of Lake Erie, ascended 
 the Maumee to its head, and having had their canoes carried 
 by friendly Indians over the portage, descended the Wabash 
 to the Ohio, and thence by the Ohio and Mississippi to the 
 Gulf. Catholic priests are invariably sagacious, far-seeing 
 men, and these explorers predicted that their route from Lake 
 Erie westward would become a great thoroughfare ; which 
 prediction was fulfilled, first by the Wabash and Erie Canal, 
 and afterwards by the Wabash Railroad. 
 
 Upon taking command of the United States forces after the 
 defeat of General Ilarmer on the St. Joseph s in 1790, and the 
 practical annihilation of the army under General St. Clair, near 
 the head-waters of the Wabash in the following year (the report 
 of which terrible disaster so overwhelmed President Washing 
 
ORIGIN OF FORT WAYNE. 99 
 
 ton with grief and rage that he gave expression to his feelings 
 in a vehemence of language surprising even those who knew 
 that beneath his usually placid and cold exterior there existed 
 a fiery sensibility which, when suddenly excited, he was unable 
 to control), General Anthony Wayne perceived the necessity 
 of a fortification which would command the portage and pre 
 vent free communication between the Eastern and Western 
 Indian tribes. The fort, to which his name was given, was 
 therefore built under his direction, and it became a nucleus of 
 what is now one of the most populous and enterprising cities 
 of Indiana. In 1833 the stockade, enclosing two or three 
 acres and a number of hewn \og houses, was still stand ins;. 
 
 o O 
 
 At the head of the allied tribes by which Hariner and St. 
 Glair had been defeated was Little Turtle, Chief of the Mi- 
 amis, one of the bravest and most sagacious Indians of whom 
 there is any record. It has been stated by some writers that 
 a Mohawk half-breed, called by the English Joseph Brandt, 
 was in command of the Indians in these (to the United States 
 forces) disastrous battles. This, I think, is a mistake. Brandt 
 was raised among the Onondagas, in New York. Having an 
 aptitude for learning, he became a favorite of the English 
 Indian Superintendent and his secretary. When the Revolu 
 tionary War broke out, he naturally sided with those in whose 
 service he had been employed, and his name became a name of 
 terror to many settlements in New York and Pennsylvania ; 
 but there is no evidence that he took part in either of the bat 
 tles referred to. Richardville, who succeeded Little Turtle as 
 Chief of the Miamis, informed me that it w r as Little Turtle 
 Avho led the Indians, and to whose valor and skill they were 
 indebted for their victories. 
 
 Little Turtle had heard of Wayne, and when he learned 
 that this great warrior was to take command of the United 
 States forces, he called the chiefs of the allied tribes together 
 in council, and advised that peace should be proposed to the 
 white men, from whom, he thought, honorable terms could be 
 
100 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 obtained. " Our wigwams," said he, " are lined with the 
 scalps of white warriors and filled with plunder ; let us make 
 peace and return to our hunting grounds. "We may not always 
 be victors. Our enemy is still strong ; the new chief, the 
 friend of the great Washington, is a chief who never sleeps." 
 This advice was disregarded. A large majority of the council 
 was in favor of their continuing upon the war-path. " Have 
 we not," said one of the young chiefs, " beaten the white men 
 in two great battles ? Is not the land ours ? Shall we talk 
 about peace when by a few more blows we may destroy the 
 invaders and enjoy our hunting grounds forever ? " Mourn 
 fully and with sad forebodings Little Turtle yielded to the 
 demand of those whose thirst for blood had been increased 
 by. what they had tasted. The war was continued, and in 
 1794, the allied tribes were so overwhelmingly defeated near 
 the Maumee Rapids, eighty miles below Fort Wayne, by the 
 forces under Wayne, that they never appeared upon the war 
 path again. Gathering together the remnants of his tribe 
 after this terrible defeat Little Turtle returned with them to 
 their own country, on the upper Wabash, where he spent the 
 rest of his life in efforts, not to civilize his people, but to save 
 them from being contaminated by intercourse with the whites. 
 To him is due the honor of forming one of the first temperance 
 societies in America. He called together the men of his tribe, 
 and, after portraying the evil of whiskey (fire-water, as it was 
 properly called), he proposed that they should all pledge them 
 selves to each other to drink no more of it. His proposal was 
 agreed to. The pledge was given, and during the life of this 
 great chief it was, with few exceptions, faithfully adhered to. 
 
 Little Turtle differed from most Indians in being inquisi 
 tive in the desire to know how other people were living, and 
 what they were doing. He had great respect for General 
 Cass, whom he visited at Detroit, and to whom, as the General 
 informed me, he was in the habit of putting questions which 
 exhibited great natural intelligence and a good deal of interest 
 
CHARACTER OF THE INDIANS. 101 
 
 in the affairs of nations which he had heard about. lie could 
 not speak English well, but he understood everything that was 
 said to him in this language. In one of these interviews Gen 
 eral Cass told him about Poland ; how it had been crushed by 
 the strong nations around it, and was being divided between 
 them. " I never had," said the General, " a more attentive 
 listener. He sat motionless, with his keen eye upon me, until 
 I had finished the mournful story, when he sprang to his feet, 
 and with his hands upon his tomahawk, paced the room with 
 an expression upon his face which indicated that his war spirit 
 was aroused, and that he would be glad to strike a blow for 
 the unfortunate Poles." 
 
 I saw a good deal of the Indians in my early life in the 
 West. I was present at many of the annuity payments to the 
 Miamis, and at one of the great councils at which treaties 
 were made. Many of them I knew personally, and I must say 
 of them that, when sober, they were perfectly inoffensive and 
 trustworthy. In riding through their country, in meeting 
 them on the way or at their wigwams, I never had the slight 
 est fear of them nor any cause for distrusting them. It was 
 only when they were intoxicated by the vile whiskey which 
 was sold to them by the traders and this was not frequently 
 the case that they were dangerous. From what I know of 
 Indians generally, my conclusion is, that if the treaties with 
 them had been fairly made and faithfully observed, if upright 
 and competent agents had been sent to them and they had 
 been protected against the impositions of villanous traders, 
 Indian wars would have been of rare occurrence. It must be 
 admitted that in numerous instances treaties were made with 
 chiefs who were under the influence of dishonest white men, 
 or by chiefs who did not represent the wishes and sentiments 
 of the tribes, and even such treaties were not faithfully exe 
 cuted by the Government. By neglect of the Indian Bureau 
 at Washington, or the incompetence of Government employees, 
 supplies, in many instances, failed to reach the Indians in sea- 
 
102 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 son. In other instances, the articles delivered were of such 
 inferior quality as to justify the suspicion of the existence of 
 something worse than neglect or incompetence on the part of 
 those who acted for the Government. It cannot, perhaps, be 
 truthfully said that Indian agents, as a class, have been dis 
 honest or incompetent ; but it can be said, without doing them 
 injustice, that they have not been the kind of men that private 
 individuals would have selected to perform important duties. 
 As for the licensed traders, it can be safely said that the^y have 
 been the reverse of what they ought to have been. Nor has 
 dishonesty in trade with the Indians been confined to the 
 licensed traders. 
 
 There has been a good deal of Indian trade outside of the 
 agencies in which the Indians have been cheated. Nothing 
 surprised me more, as I became acquainted with the manner 
 in which this trade was carried on, than the fact that men 
 who had the reputation of dealing fairly \vith white men did 
 not hesitate to practise the most shameful impositions in their 
 dealings with Indians. I have known many men who were 
 engaged in the Indian trade, but I cannot remember more than 
 two or three who dealt with them with perfect fairness. Long 
 ago I formed the opinion that the tribes that occupied the 
 northern part of the United States were incapable of being 
 civilized, by which I mean, incapable of living by manual labor 
 upon land or in shops. Differing widely in disposition and 
 character from the tribes in the Southern States, and altogether 
 differing from the aborigines of Central and South America, 
 naturally disinclined to industrial pursuits, they have been 
 doomed to pass away with the game upon which they mainly 
 subsisted. Land is needed for grazing and cultivation. Every 
 acre is, or will be, required for the subsistence of the human 
 family. Territory sufficient to support a thousand Indians by 
 hunting and fishing, would furnish homes for hundreds of 
 thousands of industrious white men. A few families of the 
 various tribes will for a while linger about the industrial civ- 
 
PIONEERS OF EMINEXCE. 103 
 
 ilization in which they can never fully participate; but as a 
 race they will soon disappear, leaving no record of their origin 
 and no reliable record even of their own existence. While 
 this is to be their fate, there is cause for national humiliation 
 in the fact that their disappearance has been hastened by the 
 vices, the cupidity, the injustice, the inhumanity of a people 
 claiming to be Christians. 
 
 Uninviting as Fort Wayne was in many respects, it was 
 fortunate in the character of its settlers intelligent, far-seeing, 
 wide-awake men, among the most prominent of whom was 
 Samuel Hanna, one of that class to which the West has been 
 indebted for its public improvements. Commencing business 
 in a small way with his brother-in-law, James Barnet, he 
 became the leader in all enterprises which were undertaken for 
 the benefit of Fort Wayne and the country around it ; the 
 most important of which were the Ohio and Indiana, and the 
 Fort Wayne and Chicago railroads, the former extending 
 from Crestline in Ohio to Fort Wayne, the latter from Fort 
 Wayne to Chicago. The construction of these roads was 
 uphill work from the start. Again and again were the com 
 panies upon the verge of bankruptcy, and nothing saved them 
 but the faith, energy, and unyielding tenacity of Mr. Hanna. 
 He lived to see both roads completed and consolidated with the 
 Pennsylvania and Ohio, forming the Pittsburgh, Fort Wayne 
 and Chicago, one of the great trunk lines of the country. 
 
 Allen Hamilton was a Protestant Irishman of a respectable 
 but impoverished family. Having obtained, by the help of 
 some of his relatives, a fair clerical education, and formed the 
 resolution to strike out for himself, as he expressed it, he 
 joined a small company of his countrymen who were about to 
 emigrate to Canada. In due time he reached Montreal, and, 
 after spending a few days in that city in fruitless efforts to 
 find employment, he proceeded on foot to New York, and 
 being equally unsuccessful there, he pushed on in the same way 
 to Philadelphia. Here he was compelled to make a stand. 
 
104 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 He was down to his last dollar, and he must either find some 
 thing to do or starve. Having secured a cheap lodging, and 
 been refreshed by a good night s sleep and a plain but sub 
 stantial breakfast, he started out hoping to find some one who 
 would take him upon trust and put him to work, no matter 
 what might be the nature of the service. All the long, weary 
 day he spent in going from street to street and shop to shop. 
 Nobody w r anted a clerk, and to those who might have given 
 him employment as a laborer, he seemed too delicate to be 
 serviceable. Just as the sun was going down and he was 
 about to return to his lodgings, hungry and despairing, he 
 saw through the window of a plain-looking office a gentleman 
 of venerable appearance sitting at his desk. " This is my last 
 chance," said he to himself ; " I will try it." So, mustering 
 what courage he had, he knocked hesitatingly at the door and 
 was bidden to come in. There was something in the tone in 
 which the words " Come in " were uttered that was encour 
 aging. " And what can I do for you ? " said the old gentleman. 
 " Something to do by which I can earn an honest living," was 
 the earnest reply. " You look weary and troubled ; how hap 
 pens it, if you are willing to work, that you are in need of 
 employment ? " Briefly the young man related his pitiful 
 story. The old gentleman listened to it patiently, and when 
 it was finished he said : " You bear, young man, an honest 
 face. I believe you have told me the truth. You shall have 
 a trial. Come to me in the morning ; I will put you at work." 
 These were the first words of encouragement which Hamil 
 ton had heard since his arrival at Montreal. His heart, as he 
 said to me years after, went to his mouth. He could hardly 
 speak, and when he did he could only say, " I thank you, sir." 
 The next morning at the appointed hour he was at the office. 
 By his aptness and industry he grew rapidly in the favor of 
 his employer, and was so well paid for his services that in less 
 than a year he had money enough to cover his expenses to 
 Aurora in Indiana, where a distant relative was living. Here 
 
THE BROTHERS EWING. 105 
 
 he obtained employment in the office of the County Clerk, 
 and, being a young gentleman of good habits and address, he 
 soon became a visitor at the house of Judge Ilolman, United 
 States District Judge, whose daughter, a very accomplished 
 girl, the sister of William S. Hoi man, the distinguished mem 
 ber of Congress from Indiana, he had the good fortune to 
 marry. From Aurora he went to Fort Wayne, and had been 
 living there two or three years when I met him in 1833, 
 unconsciously laying the foundation for a large fortune by 
 investing everv dollar he could raise in Government lands. 
 I say unconsciously, because no one then dreamed of the 
 rapidity with which AYestern lands were to rise in value. In 
 a conversation with him in the spring of 1834, 1 said that a 
 friend of mine, a ship-master, tired of the sea, was coming to 
 Fort Wayne with $15,000 in cash. " That is a large sum," 
 said he ; " if I had that amount of clear cash I should con 
 sider myself rich." He died about twenty -five years from that 
 time, leaving an estate worth a million or more. The turning- 
 point in Mr. Hamilton s life was his kind reception by the old 
 Quaker in Philadelphia. From that day his career was one 
 of uninterrupted success. Nor was his good fortune confined 
 to the acquisition of wealth. He was equally fortunate in his 
 family relations. Especially fortunate was he in having sons 
 who (unlike the sons of most rich men in the United States) 
 are addino- to the estate which their father left them, and at 
 
 O 
 
 the same time maintaining his good reputation. 
 
 William G. Ewing and his brother, George W., formed the 
 firm of " W. G. & G. W. Ewing." They had come from 
 Ohio, and with Mr. Hanna, Mr. Hamilton, and others whom 
 I shall mention, were among the first settlers of Northern 
 Indiana. As there were at that time no surplus agricultural 
 productions in that section, the only business opening for them 
 was trade with the Indians and white hunters and trappers in 
 furs and skins. Commencing in a small way at Fort Wayne, 
 they rapidly extended their field of operations, and in a few 
 
106 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 years from the time at which they bought the first coonskin, 
 the firm of " W. G. & G. W. Ewing " became one of the 
 most widely known and successful trading-firms of the North 
 west. For a considerable period their bills drawn upon their 
 consignee in New York against shipments of furs and skins 
 furnished the larger part of the Xew York exchange of the 
 branch bank, of which I was manager. But large and profit 
 able as was their trade, the bulk of their large fortune was the 
 result of investments in real estate, the most fortunate of which 
 were in Chicago and St. Louis. Enterprising, laborious, adven 
 turous men they were, but so devoted to business, so persistent 
 in the pursuit of gain, that they had no time to enjoy the 
 fruits of their labors. I have rarely met their equals in busi 
 ness capacity or general intelligence ; very few have I known 
 who had less real enjoyment of life. Charles W. Ewing, their 
 brother, was a lawyer, and one of the most graceful and fasci 
 nating speakers, one of the most accomplished and agreeable 
 men socially, that I ever became acquainted with. He had a 
 splendid physique and a classic face. He was an excellent 
 singer and story-teller. He had made a study of Shakespeare, 
 and could quote the finest passages from the works of the great 
 master in a manner that could hardly be surpassed by dis 
 tinguished actors. In addition to these accomplishments and 
 advantages, he was a good lawyer and skilful advocate. So 
 thoroughly equipped was he for success in the higher walks 
 of life that the most distinguished positions would have been 
 within his reach, if his convivial habits had not led him into 
 dissipation which terminated prematurely a career the opening 
 of which was full of promise. 
 
 Samuel Lewis, who had charge of the Wabash and Erie 
 Canal land office, was a man of the purest character and of 
 superior business capacity. His wife, a lady of rare intelli 
 gence, was the aunt of General Lew Wallace, who is adding to 
 his high reputation as a soldier enviable distinction as a writer. 
 The house in which Mr. Lewis lived was a double log- cabin, 
 
DR. THOMPSON AND ENGINEER WILLIAMS. 107 
 
 the latchstring of which was always out, a cabin which was 
 rendered charming in summer by the beauty and odors of 
 the honeysuckles and climbing roses which covered its walls, 
 and in winter by the cheerful blaze in its ample lire-places, 
 and which was always made doubly charming by the open- 
 handed hospitality of its host. Lewis G. Thompson was for 
 many years the leading physician of Fort Wayne. He had 
 that instinctive knowledge of diseases which distinguishes the 
 born physician, and without which medical knowledge derived 
 from books is a snare. Belonging to the old allopathic school, 
 he believed in medicine, and gave evidence of his faith by 
 prescriptions which were the reverse of homoeopathic, but so 
 accurate was his intuition in locating diseases, that he was 
 rarely at fault in treating them. I admired Dr. Thompson for 
 his medical skill and for his many noble and manly qualities, 
 but more than all for the conscientiousness and humanity 
 which compelled him to treat with equal caref ulness x and atten 
 tion those who were able to pay for his services and those 
 who were not. Jesse L. Williams, the chief engineer of the 
 Wabash and Erie Canal, was living at Fort Wayne in 1833. 
 When the State engaged in an extensive system of public 
 works, he was appointed chief engineer of the State, and 
 went to Indianapolis, where he remained until the entire sys 
 tem collapsed in the general financial crash of 1837, and all 
 hopes of its revival had been abandoned, when he returned to 
 Fort Wayne, where he recently died, the last survivor of those 
 whom I first met there. Few of our civil engineers have sur 
 passed Mr. Williams in engineering skill, and I have never 
 known his equal in industry and endurance. His labors as 
 chief engineer of the Wabash and Erie Canal, and other 
 public \vorks in Indiana, were prodigious, but he never failed 
 to be equal to them. Week after week and month after 
 month, every day except Sunday, on which he always rested, 
 he could be found upon the line of the public works, usually in 
 the saddle, and in the evening, and until midnight, at his desk. 
 
108 MEN ATs T D MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 The only position which he has held outside of Indiana was 
 that of Government director of the Union Pacific road, which 
 he held for only a short period. He found soon after his 
 appointment that there was a secret as well as open connec 
 tion between the railroad company and the Credit Mobilier, 
 the nature of which he was not to be made acquainted with ; 
 a wheel-within-a-wheel management, which he suspected was 
 not favorable to the interests which he was appointed to look 
 after and protect, and he therefore resigned his directorship. 
 Mr. Williams acquired a large property, and he was very for 
 tunate in his family connections. His wife (a daughter of 
 Judge Creighton of Chillicothe, Ohio), who is still living, is a 
 lady of superior culture, who has always been distinguished 
 alike for her social qualities and active beneficence. His sons, 
 while they do not come up to their father s standard in energy, 
 will not discredit the name which they bear. 
 
 The men whom I have thus mentioned, with Robert Breck- 
 enridge, Register of the Land Office, a man who possessed the 
 best qualities of the distinguished Breckenridge family of Ken 
 tucky, of which he was a distant connection ; Marshall S. Wines, 
 a man of extraordinary enterprise and force ; John Spencer, 
 Receiver of the Land Office ; Francis Comparet, and John B. 
 Bourie, Canadian Frenchmen, who were just commencing what 
 soon became a large trade in furs with the Indians, made up, 
 with their families and a few stragglers, the population of Fort 
 Wayne in the early summer of 1833. Since then I have seen 
 a good deal of the world. I have been thrown among people 
 of all grades ; I have been brought into social and business 
 relations with men standing high in public esteem ; but the 
 men of whom I have spoken, after the lapse of more than half 
 a century, stand out before me in bold relief as remarkably 
 intelligent, enterprising, far-seeing, and withal kind-hearted, 
 generous men. Nor do I forget the roving, daring men who 
 opened the way for settlers, but never lingered when people 
 became numerous and game became scarce the leather-stock- 
 
CHARACTER OF FRONTIERSMEN. 109 
 
 ing frontiersmen of the West. Rough in manners, uncouth, if 
 not repulsive, in appearance, as some of them were, they 
 seemed to be the very men whom it would not be safe to meet 
 in out-of-the-way places. But such they were not. Thieves, 
 robbers, murderers are not bred in the forests where nature 
 exists in its freshness and beauty ; they are the product of 
 gregarious civilization. Many a time have I met frontiersmen 
 in places where resistance would have been in vain, without 
 receiving from them any but the kindest treatment. Beneath 
 a rough exterior there was a mine of noble qualities, which 
 slumbered only when there was nothing to bring them into 
 exercise. Scratch a Russian, and you will find a Tartar," 
 said Napoleon. " Scratch a Christian, and you will find a 
 pagan," says Ileber Newton. Reversing the scale, I could say 
 as the result of my observation, that if one of these frontiers 
 men had been scratched, there would have been revealed a 
 gentleman. 
 
 Nor ought I to conclude what I have thought it proper for 
 me to say about my early acquaintances in the West without 
 saying a few more words about a prominent and remarkable 
 man, John B. Richardville, who succeeded Little Turtle as 
 chief of the Miamis. His father was a Frenchman, his mother 
 a squaw. By what rule of succession or selection he became 
 chief I was not informed, but he proved to be the right man 
 for the place. He was no war chief, like Little Turtle. He 
 had not a drop of fighting blood in his veins, but he was a man 
 of great natural shrewdness and sagacity, of whom no one 
 ever got the better in a trade. Nor did he find an equal in 
 diplomatic skill among the Government commissioners when 
 treaties were to be made with his nation. " He is," said Sen 
 ator Tipton, who met him frequently in council, " the ablest 
 diplomat of whom I have any knowledge. If he had been 
 born and educated in France, he would have been the equal of 
 Talleyrand." Although he dressed like a white man, and lived 
 in a brick house, he had a commanding influence over the 
 
110 MEN AND MEASURES OE HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 tribe. He was watchful of the interests of his people, but by 
 no means unmindful of his own. In all treaties, large reserva 
 tions of the choicest lands were secured to him, and not a few 
 boxes of silver were set aside for his special use. The great 
 mistake of his life w r as made, he said, when he yielded his own 
 judgment to that of a Catholic priest, who was one of his sec 
 ular as well as spiritual advisers, and sent his two boys away 
 from home to be educated one in Louisville, the other in 
 Montreal. Apt to learn, and patient under discipline, they 
 took high rank in their respective schools, and when they 
 returned to their home, near Fort Wayne, they were as bright 
 and interesting young fellows as could be found anywhere. 
 Such they did not long contkme. They had lost their taste 
 for Indian life, and the}" had no disposition to engage in the 
 pursuits of white men. They soon passed from listlessness to 
 dissipation, and became the most degraded of the young men 
 of the tribe. " Education," said their disappointed father, 
 " very good for white boys ; bad, very bad, for Indians." 
 
 With the exception of a few of their chiefs, Avho were land 
 owners, the Miamis were removed to what is now^ Kansas, in 
 1846, and I recollect the doleful descriptions which came from 
 them of that country. To them it was a desert over which 
 the fierce winds were constantly sweeping, without trees, and 
 without game. The change from a country like Northern 
 Indiana, its lakes and rivers abounding with fish, and its splen 
 did forests alive with game of nearly all descriptions, to a 
 nearly treeless plain, w r as indeed disheartening. Said one of 
 the traders who went with them to me on his return : " I am, 
 as you know, unused to the melting mood ; but when the young 
 braves at my parting with them burst into tears and begged 
 like children to be taken back to their old home, I could not 
 help crying also." 
 
CHAPTER XI. 
 
 My First Illness Cheered by a Catholic Priest The State Bank of Indiana 
 Appointed Cashier and Manager of the Fort Wayne Branch Excellent 
 and Liberal Charter of the Bank General Management Benefits to the 
 State Capital Paid up in Spanish and Mexican Dollars Its Managers 
 Samuel Merrill, President, and James M. Ray, Cashier, and Prominent 
 Directors J. F. D. Lanier. 
 
 I BEACHED Fort Wayne on the 26th of June, and on the 
 4th of July, while I was delivering an oration, I had a 
 chill, which was followed by what was called an acclimating 
 bilious fever, from which I did not fully recover until October. 
 For some days my recovery was considered doubtful, even by 
 my physician, Dr. Thompson, and so prostrated was I after 
 the fever left me that for weeks I was as helpless as a child. 
 During my illness I received from my physician all the atten 
 tion which he Avas able to give me, but it was a sickly season, 
 and he had so many other patients to attend to that I seldom 
 saw him except in the morning and evening. His wife and 
 her sister, Mrs. Forsyth, were not lacking in kindness, but my 
 room was separated from their house, and with their own fami 
 lies to look after, they had little time to give to a stranger. 
 My room, the furniture of which was a bed, two splint-bot 
 tomed chairs and a dry-goods box, which answered the pur 
 pose of a table, was about as cheerless as could be imagined. 
 The only one to wait upon me was a lad twelve or thirteen 
 years old, and my almost only visitor was a French Catholic 
 priest, who called two or three times a week, not to adminis 
 ter spiritual consolation, but to cheer me by his pleasant and 
 encouraging talk. He had been educated in Paris, and was 
 old enough at the time of the Revolution to observe and to be 
 impressed by what he witnessed during the Reign of Terror. 
 
1J2 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 He spoke the English language fluently, and I recollect vividly 
 how charmed I was by the tones of his voice, and how he 
 seemed to strengthen me in my contest for life by his descrip 
 tion of the fortitude he had witnessed of those of his own order 
 under the cruelties to which they had been subjected. It has 
 always seemed strange to me that I should not, at any time 
 during my protracted and dangerous illness, deprived as I was 
 of all the care and comforts to which I had been accustomed 
 in my Xew England home, have been depressed in spirits. I 
 knew, of course, that I was desperately ill, and although my 
 physician always spoke encouragingly, I knew by his treat 
 ment that he regarded my case as critical, but I was never 
 despondent. If my courage had given way, I should have 
 died. It was pluck that saved me. 
 
 During my illness the population of Fort Wayne had been 
 considerably increased by new-comers, as had also its business 
 by active work upon the Wabash and Erie Canal, which was 
 then being rapidly constructed. This alone would probably 
 have induced me to remain there, but the question whether I 
 should do that or go further was no longer an open one. It 
 had been decided by the emptiness of my purse. As soon, 
 therefore, as I was able to be upon my feet, although but little 
 better than a skeleton, I took possession of a ten-by-twelve 
 office which Dr. Thompson had built for me, and hung out my 
 shingle as an attorney-at-law. I had not long to wait for clients. 
 The oration which I delivered on the 4th of July had made 
 a favorable impression upon those who heard it (I believe 
 that everybody in town or the neighborhood was present), and 
 I soon had business enough to keep me pretty well employed. 
 On the first day I was called upon to draw a contract of con 
 siderable importance ; the next day, a will ; a day or two 
 after, to defend a man charged with a breach of the peace. So 
 the business went on steadily increasing with my improvement 
 in health, and at the end of the year I had made more than 
 enough to cover expenses, with fair prospects of satisfactory 
 
THE STATE BANK OF INDIANA. 113 
 
 success in my profession. Fate had decreed, however, that I 
 was not to earn my bread by the practice of the law. 
 
 The State Bank of Indiana was chartered in the winter of 
 1833 and 1834. Ten of the branches were organized and put 
 into operation in the following November. The next year 
 the eleventh branch was established at Fort Wayne, and sub 
 sequently two more were established one at South Bend, the 
 other at Michigan City. In October, 1835, I was appointed 
 cashier and manager of the Fort Wayne branch. I had no 
 practical knowledge whatever of banking, and I said so to the 
 directors ; but they supposed that I was better fitted for the 
 place than anybody else whose services they could obtain, and 
 I did not feel at liberty to decline the appointment. I did not, 
 however, intend to abandon my profession, and I accepted the 
 appointment with the understanding that I should be at lib 
 erty to resign at any time after the organization had been per 
 fected and business had been fairly commenced. I did not 
 resign. I liked the business of banking, and had no disposition 
 to resume the practice of the law. In 1836 I was appointed, 
 by the directors of the branch, a director of the State Bank, 
 and I held the office of cashier of the branch and direc 
 tor of the bank until the expiration of the charter in 1857. j 
 During this period I had the entire management of the busi 
 ness of the branch. Mr. Hamilton, the president, received 
 only a nominal salary, and gave the bank very little personal 
 attention. The directors met every week, rather to sanction 
 the doings of the cashier than to decide upon discounts, and 
 there being practically but one head, there was never any 
 diversity of opinion as to what had been, or ought to be, done. 
 The charter required a quarterly examination of the condition 
 of the branches by committees of their directors. This exam- 
 ination was rather formal than actual, in most if not all of the 
 branches. It was, I know, only formal at Fort Wayne. Kot 
 so, however, was it with the examinations always semi-annual 
 
114 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 and sometimes more frequent which were made by the presi 
 dent of the bank. As no notice was ever given of the time when 
 these examinations were to be looked for, no especial prepara 
 tion could be made for them by the officers of the branches, and 
 they were always of the most searching and thorough charac 
 ter. So searching and thorough were they, that fraud or mis 
 management could hardly have escaped detection. I can bear 
 testimony to the intelligence, the industry and honesty which 
 were displa} T ed in the examinations by Samuel Merrill, the 
 first president, and his successor, James Morrison. The thor 
 oughness of these examinations did much, I am sure, to keep 
 the business of the branches in a safe and healthy condition. 
 
 In nothing was the wisdom, the practical good sense, of 
 the representatives of the people of Indiana in the legislative 
 assembly more strikingly exhibited than in the charter of this 
 bank. In some respects it resembled the charter of the United 
 States Bank ; but it contained grants and obligations, privileges 
 and restrictions quite unlike those which were to be found in 
 any other bank charter, and which were admirably adapted to 
 the condition of the State and the circumstances of the people. 
 The number of branches was limited to thirteen, the capital of 
 each of which was to be one hundred and sixty thousand dol 
 lars, one-half of which was to be furnished by the State. 
 During the existence of the charter no other bank or corpo 
 rate banking institution was to be authorized or permitted in 
 the State. As there were no capitalists and few men of more 
 than very moderate means in Indiana, the charter provided 
 that to every stockholder who should pay eighteen dollars and 
 seventy-five cents on each fifty-dollar share by him subscribed 
 for, the State should at his request advance as a loan thirty- 
 one dollars and twenty-five cents, so that the stock might be 
 fully paid up. The loan was to be secured by bond and mort 
 gage on real estate at one-half its appraised value. The stock 
 holder was to be charged six per cent, on the loan, and credited 
 with whatever dividends might be declared on that part of the 
 
THE FORT WAYNE BRANCH. 115 
 
 stock which was thus to be paid for by the State. As an 
 illustration, a stockholder who should subscribe for one hun 
 dred shares of stock ($5,000) would pay eighteen hundred and 
 seventy -five, and the State, at his option, would pay for him 
 thirty-one hundred and twenty-five dollars. The dividends on 
 the latter were to be received by the State and credited upon 
 his loan. Many stockholders availed themselves of this option, 
 and as in most of the branches the dividends largely exceeded 
 six per cent., they found themselves before the expiration of 
 the charter to be the owners of the stock subscribed for, free 
 from the lien of the State. In the best-managed branches, the 
 lien of the State was discharged some years before the charter 
 expired. The branch at Fort Wayne was not the best, but it 
 was one of the best-managed branches. The profits of this 
 branch so much exceeded six per cent., that the loan was paid, 
 if I recollect rightly, seven years before the expiration of the 
 charter (during which period the largest profits were made), 
 and the borrowing stockholder received for that period the 
 dividends on the full amount of his shares. Nor was this all. 
 At the winding up of the business of the branch, he received 
 not only the par value of his stock, but an equal amount from 
 the accumulated surplus 
 
 To pay for its stock and the advances to stockholders, the 
 State issued and sold in London its coupon bonds, bearing 
 five per cent, interest, to run for a period slightly exceed 
 ing the time for which the bank had been chartered. These 
 bonds were known as bank bonds, the interest and principal 
 of which were equitably secured by the stock of the State in 
 the branches, and its lien upon individual stock for advances. 
 Long before their maturity the State was in a condition to 
 retire them ; but although her general credit had been broken 
 down in the crisis of 1837, and her other bonds were for a 
 number of years regarded as being well nigh valueless, these 
 bank bonds could not be reached, although a handsome pre 
 mium was offered for them. The stock of the State in the 
 
116 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 branches, and the individual stock on which the State had 
 made advances, was under the care of a board known as 
 " commissioners of the sinking fund," composed of the pres- v 
 ident and five directors of the bank, on the part of the State, 
 and a secretary who was cashier of the bank. It was the 
 duty of this board to receive the dividends on the stock of 
 which it had the care, and after paying the interest on the 
 bank bonds, to lend the overplus to citizens of the State on 
 bonds and mortgages. 
 
 To lend the money judiciously and safely on the security 
 of real estate, which, although generally advancing in value, 
 was as generally over-rated, especially in speculative times, 
 there were required on the part of the commissioners practical 
 knowledge and sound judgment as well as integrity. That 
 they were not lacking in these good qualities was proven by 
 the fact that on these loans, running up as they did into the 
 millions, not a dollar was lost. The result of the connection 
 of the State with the bank was a net profit of nearly three 
 millions of dollars, which became the basis of her large and 
 well-managed school fund. Nor was the pecuniary gain the 
 only benefit which the State derived from the bank. At the 
 commencement of its business, when the agricultural produc 
 tions of the State did not much exceed the demand for home 
 consumption, a large part of the loans were necessarily to men 
 who were buying or improving lands. No considerable losses 
 were sustained on these loans, but they were sluggish and un 
 reliable, and if in excess of the capital of the branches, might 
 become dangerous. The managers of the branches were not 
 slow in discovering this fact, and the lesson which it taught 
 was so sharply impressed upon them by the financial crisis of 
 183T and the terrible depression which followed, that from 
 the time when business began to revive the loans which they 
 made were mainly confined to bills of exchange, based upon 
 produce shipped or to be shipped to Eastern or Southern mar 
 kets. Such loans were the only loans which could be made 
 
BENEFIT OF THE BANK TO THE STATE. 117 
 
 with advantage to the State or, except to a very limited extent, 
 with safety to the branches. What the State needed was 
 the means for sending its agricultural productions to market. 
 What the bank needed, in order to be able at all times to meet 
 its liabilities, was what was called prompt paper. Both of 
 these requirements were met by the policy which the bank 
 adopted in 1843, and steadily pursued. Not only did the 
 bank furnish the needful means for sending the surplus pro 
 ductions of the State to market, but by its judicious loans to 
 farmers, to enable them to increase their stock of cattle and 
 hogs to consume their surplus of corn, which loans were taken 
 up by bills of exchange drawn against shipments, it greatly 
 stimulated and increased production. I do not exaggerate 
 when I say that the profits of the State upon her bank stock, 
 large as they were, were small in comparison with the increase 
 of her wealth by the manner in which the business of the 
 bank was conducted. Its capital was a little more than two 
 millions of dollars, but its discount line was so active that it 
 was able to do a business quite disproportioned to its capital, 
 the aggregate of its loans sometimes amounting in a single 
 year to ten or fifteen millions. I have said that its charter 
 was in many respects peculiar. It was not, like the Bank of 
 the United States, a bank with branches, but rather a bank of 
 branches. It was a bank in this respect only : it had a presi 
 dent, a cashier, and a board of directors, but as a bank it trans 
 acted no banking business. The president, who was ex-ojficio 
 a member of the board, was elected by the legislature, as 
 were also five directors, on the part of the State ; the other 
 directors were elected by the branches, one by each. It was 
 a board of control, and its authority over the branches was 
 arbitrary, almost unlimited. It could suspend a branch for 
 mismanagement, or close it up if the mismanagement was 
 likely to imperil the other branches, or to affect injuriously 
 their credit. The power to put a branch in liquidation was, 
 however, never exercised, and only in one instance was the 
 
118 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 business of a branch suspended, and that suspension was only 
 temporary. 
 
 The stockholders of each branch were liable for the debts 
 of the branch to an amount equal to the par value of their 
 shares, and each branch, although independent in respect to 
 its profits, was liable for the debts of every other branch. 
 This responsibility of the branches for the debts of the re 
 spective branches created a general vigilance which was pro 
 ductive of excellent results. No branch could make a wide 
 departure from the line of prudent banking (the other branches 
 being responsible for its debts) without being subjected to a 
 rigid overhauling and incurring the risk of being closed. The 
 circulating notes of the branches were obtained from the V 
 officers of the bank, and there could be no over-issue except 
 by collusion between them and the officers of the branches, 
 which was rendered quite impossible by checks that could not 
 be circumvented. Dividends of the profits of the branches 
 were declared by the directors of the bank. None were 
 declared which had not been earned, and a part of the profits 
 were always reserved for the purpose of creating a surplus 
 fund. The amount of the surplus at the expiration of the 
 charter I have already spoken of. Such were the restrictions 
 and conservative features of the charter. On the other hand, 
 its privileges were of the most liberal character. The branches 
 could issue circulating notes to twice the amount of their 
 capitals, and while they could not extend their regular discount 
 lines beyond twice their capitals, they could use their surplus^ 
 funds in dealings in foreign and domestic exchange. 
 
 Privileges like these, notwithstanding the checks and 
 restrictions which were imposed upon them, might have been 
 abused, and the State Bank of Indiana might have shared the 
 fate of the State Bank of Illinois, which, chartered in the 
 same year, disastrously failed in 1837, had it not been for the 
 conservative and high moral character of the men who con 
 trolled it. None of the directors or officers of the bank or of 
 
A SILVER CIRCULATION. 119 
 
 its branches had made banking a study, or had any practical 
 knowledge of the business, and yet no serious mistakes were / 
 made by them. Cautious, prudent, upright, they obtained, 
 step by step, the practical knowledge which enabled them to 
 bring the transactions of the branches into close accord with 
 the public interests, and to secure for the bank a credit co 
 extensive with the country west of the Alleghanies, and which 
 was never shaken. Its notes were current and of the best 
 repute throughout the Mississippi Valley, from the lakes to 
 the Gulf. It suspended specie payments in 1837, as did all 
 other banking institutions of the country except the Chemi 
 cal Bank of New York, but it always furnished New York 
 exchange to its customers, at one per cent, premium, for its own 
 notes or other bankable funds. Xor was its suspension abso 
 lute, as there never was a time that it failed to supply the 
 home demand for coin, which at that time was silver, and 
 practically silver only. Although the double standard existed 
 in the United States, the metallic currency of the country 
 chiefly, and throughout the West exclusively, from the time 
 the bank was organized in 183-i to the discovery of gold in 
 California in 1848, was silver. The capital of the bank was 
 paid up in Spanish and Mexican dollars, and its reserve con 
 tinued to be in this coin until it was sold for gold at a premium 
 of about three per cent, on Mexican dollars and six per cent, 
 on Spanish. I had been a banker for fourteen years before 
 I handled or saw a dollar in gold except the ten-thaler pieces 
 which were brought into this country by German immigrants. 
 If Professor Sumner had been a banker at any time prior to 
 1848, he would not have gone so wide of the mark as he did 
 in saying, in the 1885 June number of the North American 
 Review, " We do not want or need silver as a circulating 
 medium, and shall not abandon it, because we never had it." 
 We did have it, and sooner or later we shall have it again, and 
 without its being degraded. We are not prepared the world 
 is not prepared for the demonetization of either gold or 
 
120 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 silver, nor can this preparation be brought about without the 
 wiping out of a very large part of public and private debts. 
 Debts contracted when both metals are used as money would 
 be a burden too heavy to be borne when measured by a single 
 standard. 
 
 As has been seen, the profits of the bank were large, but 
 the} 7 " were legitimate. The borrowers paid only six per cent, 
 on the money which they borrowed, and the bills which they 
 drew were on such time as was needed for the transportation 
 and sale of the productions against which they were drawn. 
 The profits in addition to the six per cent, discount were 
 derived from the sale of exchange which these productions 
 created at the seaboard cities. Borrowers obtained money 
 when they wanted to use it, and the loans were paid where the 
 productions were disposed of without prejudice to the borroxv- 
 ers. There was never a more wholesome banking business 
 
 C 
 
 done between banks and their customers than was done by the 
 State Bank of Indiana and its customers through a large part 
 of its career. It is proper for me to remark that while the 
 ruling rate of discount on ail home paper and on bills payable 
 at the seaboard cities was six per cent., the Southern branches 
 did charge a small commission in addition to interest on bills 
 payable in New Orleans, where New York exchange was 
 sometimes at a discount, sometimes at a premium. 
 
 The charter of the bank for active business expired on the 
 first day of January, 1857, but its legal existence for the wind 
 ing up of its affairs continued until 1859, before which time it 
 became certain that a considerable amount of its circulating 
 notes, widely circulated as they had been, would be outstanding 
 after its existence had ceased. In order, therefore, to prevent 
 loss to note holders, and to maintain the honor of the bank 
 after its dissolution, contracts were made by the bank with 
 responsible parties for the redemption of all notes not pre 
 sented in its lifetime. 
 
 If the history of this bank should be written it would be 
 
THE BANK S EXCELLENT KECOKD. 121 
 
 both interesting and instructive. It would be the history of a 
 bank which, although established in a new State and commit 
 ted to the charge of inexperienced men, through periods of 
 speculation and depression, prosperous and unprosperous years, 
 was so managed as largely to increase the wealth of the State, 
 
 o o f 
 
 and secure for itself a reputation for honorable dealings and 
 fidelity to its engagements which placed it in the front rank of 
 wisely and honorably conducted banking institutions. Of its 
 managers, my associates some of them for nearly a quarter 
 of a century my recollections are of the pleasantest nature. 
 More upright, trustworthy men could not be found any 
 where. There may have been, there may be now, better 
 bankers ; but, wide as my acquaintance and observation have 
 been, it has not been my good fortune to meet them. Merrill 
 and Ray, the president and cashier of the bank ; Lanier, 
 Fletcher Blanchard, Dunning, Fitch, Ball, Rathbone, Ross, 
 Burkham, Orr, Rector, Chapin and others, directors of the 
 bank and managers of the branches, were all of them men of 
 sterling qualities and great aptitude for business. In this bank 
 there was no betrayal of trust, and only one single instance 
 was there of official dishonesty. At the quarterly meetings of 
 the directors of the bank at Indianapolis, at which all the 
 branches were represented, the balances between the branches 
 were adjusted. Very frequently considerable amounts passed 
 from hand to hand in these adjustments, and such was the con 
 fidence which the directors had in each other that no receipts 
 were ever given. Each entered upon his memorandum book 
 his payments and receipts, and in no case was this confidence 
 found to have been misplaced. 
 
 I may mention here a fact which shows that the changes 
 which have taken place in what were then new States have 
 not been altogether in the right direction. There were, in the 
 times of this bank, no express companies in the West. Money 
 was carried from place to place by its owners or private mes 
 sengers. I have said that at the quarterly meetings of the bank 
 
122 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 directors the accounts between the branches were adjusted. 
 It was at these meetings also that the branches usually 
 obtained their circulating notes. Every director, therefore, in 
 going to or returning from these meetings, was under the neces 
 sity of taking with him considerable amounts of money, and 
 although the most of the directors travelled on horseback, and 
 were sometimes two or three days on their way, there was no 
 instance of robbery. Fort Wayne was three good days ride 
 from Indianapolis, mostly through the woods. For fifteen 
 years I made this journey on horseback and alone, with thou 
 sands of dollars in my saddle-bags, without the slightest fear 
 of being robbed. I was well known upon the road, and it was 
 well known that I had money with me, and a good deal of it, 
 and yet I rode unarmed through the woods, and stopped for 
 the night at the taverns or cabins on the way, in perfect safety. 
 In what part of the United States would a man dare to travel 
 in this way now ? 
 
 I am here reminded of the reduction which has been made 
 in the rates of postage. For eleven years of the existence of 
 the charter of the State Bank, postage on a single letter for 
 thirty miles was six and a quarter cents; over thirty and 
 under eighty, ten cents ; over eighty and under one hundred 
 and fifty, twelve and a half cents ; over one hundred and fifty 
 and under four hundred, eighteen and three quarter cents ; 
 and over four hundred, twenty-five cents ; and the same rates 
 for every inclosure no matter how small, and four times these 
 rates if the letter weighed over one ounce. The post-office 
 clerks seemed to have great skill in ascertaining how many 
 pieces a letter contained. Rarely indeed did the Government 
 fail to get all that it was entitled to. On a very large propor 
 tion of the letters received from the seaboard States at the 
 Fort Wayne branch prior to 1845, the postage was a dollar 
 and upwards. In 1845 the rates were reduced more than 
 fifty per cent., a reduction which, according to the predictions 
 of the opponents of the measure, would bankrupt the Post- 
 
THE POSTAGE REDUCTION. 123 
 
 Office Department, if it did not the Treasury. Little did those 
 who advocated the reduction think that in less than forty 
 years two cents would carry a letter weighing an ounce across 
 the continent. Nothing shows better the growth of the coun 
 try than a comparison of our present postal system with that 
 which existed half a century ago, nor more clearly how cheap 
 ness increases use. 
 
 I have dwelt at some length upon the State Bank of Indi 
 ana, because it was one of the best-managed banking institu 
 tions of its day, and because there is scarcely any part of a 
 long and busy life which I look back upon with more real 
 satisfaction than that which was spent in its service. Of those 
 who were prominent in connection with the bank, the only 
 one who left it and the State to enter into business elsewhere 
 was Mr. J. F. D. Lanier, who resigned the presidency of the 
 branch at Madison and his directorship of the bank, to estab 
 lish with Mr. Winslow, a gentleman of high financial standing, 
 the banking house of Winslow, Lanier & Co. In this new 
 field Mr. Lanier displayed the knowledge of men and of busi 
 ness which he had acquired in Indiana, and the quickness of 
 apprehension and decision for which he had been there distin 
 guished qualities essential to success in a city celebrated not 
 only for the magnitude but the celerity of its transactions; 
 and it was not long before the house of Winslow, Lanier & 
 Co. stood in the front rank among the great banking houses 
 of New York. Mr. Lanier was not only a man of great finan 
 cial ability, but one whose open manners, social disposition, 
 and excellent character commanded the esteem of those who 
 became his intimates in private life. 
 
CHAPTER XII. 
 
 Demand for more Banking Capital Free Banking Authorized Manner in 
 which it was Conducted Its Failure Bill Chartering the Bank of the 
 State of Indiana Passed over the Governor s Veto Manner in which its 
 Stock was Subscribed for The Control Passes into Hands of Managers of 
 the Old Bank I Become its President Commencement of Business, 
 January, 1857 Failure of the Ohio Life and Trust Company of Cincinnati 
 General Suspension of the Banks The Bank of the State of Indiana 
 Maintains its Integrity and Saves its Charter Authorized by Opinion of 
 the Supreme Court to Redeem its Notes in Legal Tenders Good Behavior 
 of the Banks of New Orleans. 
 
 r I ^HE State Bank of Indiana was a monopoly. During its 
 1 existence no other bank could be chartered, no other 
 banking system could be authorized. In the mean time 
 the business and population of the State had very largely 
 increased, and railroads had begun to make important changes 
 in the commercial advantages of the towns. Some towns 
 in which branches of the bank were established were being 
 outstripped by towns that were hardly known when the bank 
 was chartered. As a consequence a popular sentiment, seem 
 ingly irresistible, had been created before the expiration of 
 the charter of the bank, that there ought to be what was 
 called " a new shuffle and deal " in the banking business of the 
 State. The convention for the revision of the constitution had 
 refused to authorize an extension of the charter of the bank, 
 and the directors were satisfied that a charter of another bank 
 with liberal privileges could not be obtained without influences 
 which they would be unable or unwilling to bring to bear upon 
 the legislature. They therefore, without a dissenting opinion, 
 resolved to retire gracefully from the field which they had 
 occupied and monopolized for nearly a quarter of a century, 
 and leave it open to free banking, which had been authorized 
 
FREE BANKING. 125 
 
 by the new constitution, and for which there seemed to be a 
 growing popular demand throughout the West. An act was 
 passed by the legislature authorizing the organization of free 
 banks, but so near was the expiration of the charter of the 
 State Bank, that it was not thought advisable by the directors 
 to test the validity of the act by any legal proceedings. By 
 this Free Bank act it was made the duty of the State Treasurer 
 to receive from banks organized in conformity with its pro 
 vision bonds of the State and other States, and to issue there 
 for notes prepared at the expense of the banks to the full 
 amount of the bonds. As the times were flush, and credit 
 easily obtained, anybody who could command two or three 
 thousand dollars of money could buy on a margin the bonds 
 necessary to establish a bank, to be paid for in its notes after 
 its organization had been completed. Many of these free 
 banks came into existence with no more actual cash capital 
 than was required to cover the engravers bills, and to pay for 
 the scanty furniture of rented banking rooms. After they 
 were thus started, the way was clear for rapidly increasing if 
 not for unlimited issues. 
 
 A single case illustrates the operation of free banking 
 in Indiana under the first Free Bank act. An enterprising 
 gentleman, whose cash capital did not exceed ten thousand 
 dollars, in connection with two others who were utterly impe 
 cunious, bought, mostly on credit, fifty thousand dollars of the 
 bonds of one of the Southern States. These bonds he deposited 
 with the treasurer, and as soon as they could be engraved he 
 received an equal amount of notes, with which he paid for the 
 bonds. This transaction having been completed, more bonds 
 were bought and paid for in the same manner ; and the opera 
 tion was continued until the financial crisis of 1857 occurred; 
 at which time this bank, which had been started with a capital 
 of ten thousand dollars, had a circulation of six hundred thou 
 sand dollars, secured by State bonds, on which the bank had 
 for two or three years been receiving the interest. After the 
 
126 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 country had recovered from the general depression which fol 
 lowed the collapse in 1837, which recovery was not fully 
 reached until 1844, there was a period of great prosperity in 
 all branches of productive industry, which stimulated enter 
 prise and created unusual demands for currency. At the same 
 time there was little demand for coin for exportation, and con 
 sequently bank notes were rarely presented for redemption. 
 Hence it was that these free banks, organized as most of them 
 were as banks of circulation only, had nothing to do but to put 
 out their notes and draw interest on their bonds. Their life 
 was pleasant but short; their demise ruinous and shameful. 
 As soon as their notes began to be presented for payment they 
 died without a struggle. When the crash came, State bonds 
 declined rapidly in market value, and the bank notes nominally 
 secured by them declined still more rapidly, and the unfortu 
 nate holders became the victims of money dealers who, being 
 advised on what bonds the notes had been issued, could form a 
 correct opinion of their value, and who never failed to use this 
 knowledge for their own advantage and with severe loss to the 
 holders of the notes. 
 
 Upon the failure of a bank the treasurer offered to surren 
 der the bonds, dollar for dollar, for the notes which they were 
 pledged to secure. The money dealers were prompt in avail 
 ing themselves of this offer. Never was so active and profit 
 able a business done by the brokers of Cincinnati, Indianapolis, 
 and other cities as was done by them in buying, assorting and 
 exchanging with each other the notes of the suspended banks, 
 and in receiving for them the bonds which were held by the 
 treasurer. The brokers were enriched by the operation ; the 
 losers were the note holders, and these, as is usually the case 
 in bank failures, were mostly of that class which is the least 
 able to bear losses. The experience of Illinois in the working 
 of free banking was similar to that of Indiana. The acts of 
 both States which authorized it lacked all the conservative 
 provisions which have made the national banking system sue- 
 
BANK OF THE STATE OF INDIANA. 127 
 
 cessful, and the result was what might have been anticipated. 
 The losses of these States by the experiment amounted to mil 
 lions of dollars, and yet the growth of the States was not 
 greatly retarded by them. Toothing could better illustrate 
 their resources and the energy of their people. 
 
 But while the directors of the State Bank had determined 
 to retire from the field, a number of active and influential 
 politicians of both parties formed what would now be called a 
 " syndicate " to obtain a charter for another bank, to take the 
 place of the State Bank, and similar to it in its most important 
 features. To accomplish their object, they used the personal 
 and political influence which they possessed to secure the elec 
 tion to the legislature of 1854 and 1855 of men who were, or 
 might be induced to be, friendly to their object. There was 
 no important political election then pending, and the work was 
 done so quietly that a majority favorable to the measure was 
 obtained in both branches of the legislature without any agi 
 tation of the question in the canvass. Early in the session a 
 carefully prepared bill to establish " The Bank of the State of 
 Indiana " was introduced in the Senate, and passed without 
 serious opposition. In the House strong objections were raised 
 to it by some influential members, and for some days its fate 
 seemed to outsiders to be doubtful ; but its friends were stronger 
 than its opponents, and it passed the House as it had passed the 
 Senate, by a decided majority. It was- known that the Gov 
 ernor was hostile to the bill, and personally hostile to some of 
 its promoters. It was returned to the Senate with a spirited 
 veto message, which might have defeated it, if its promoters 
 had not taken into consideration the opposition of the Governor 
 in estimating and securing the number of votes that would be 
 needed to render his objections of no avail. It passed both 
 houses, and became a law on the 3d of March, 1855, the Gov 
 ernor s objection to the contrary, notwithstanding. 
 
 The bill, as I have said, was carefully drawn, and in many 
 important respects it was a counterpart of the charter of the 
 
128 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 State Bank. The difference in the two charters was mainly in 
 the facts that the State was not to be stockholder in the new 
 bank ; that the number of the branches was to be twenty, 
 instead of thirteen, its authorized capital six millions of dol 
 lars, instead of two millions, and that the president was to be 
 elected by the directors. It was a very valuable charter, and the 
 promoters of the bill immediately took the necessary steps to 
 secure for themselves the result of their exertions and expendi 
 tures. A majority of the promoters did not intend to become 
 bankers. Their object was to sell the franchise after having 
 secured the control of the stock. To obtain this control they 
 were prepared. The incorporators (commissioners, as they 
 were called) were their personal friends ; some of them were 
 interested in the enterprise. It was their duty to divide the 
 State into districts, to locate a branch in each district and, 
 other things being equal, in the same county in which there 
 was a branch of the State Bank, and to appoint sub-commis 
 sioners to open books for subscriptions to the stock. The capi 
 tal stock of the bank was to be divided into shares of $50 each, 
 and no branch was to be organized until stock to the amount 
 of $100,000 had been subscribed, to be paid for in instalments, 
 the first instalment to be two dollars, which was to be paid to 
 the sub-commissioners when the subscription was made. Ample 
 notice was to be given of the time and place at which the sub 
 scription books were to be opened, which were to be kept open 
 for thirty days, if the requisite amount of stock should not 
 sooner be subscribed. 
 
 All of these requirements of the charter were complied 
 with. The sub-commissioners were appointed, the proper 
 notices were given, and the books were opened, but they were 
 kept open only long enough to enable one or two representa 
 tives of the promoters to subscribe for the full amount of the 
 authorized capital. This having been done, the books were 
 closed ; the first instalment (two dollars per share) was paid to 
 the sub-commissioners, and the promoters became the owners 
 
ORGANIZATION OF THE BANK. 129 
 
 of one of the best bank charters that had ever been granted in 
 the United States. All this was accomplished in the summer 
 of 1855, and as business was not to be commenced until the 
 first of January, 1857, the promoters, now the stockholders, 
 had ample time to dispose of the stock or to make the neces 
 sary preparations for putting the branches into active opera 
 tion. Xothing was done in either direction until the follow 
 ing spring. In the mean time, however, the stock of the 
 branches had been divided among those who had been instru 
 mental in obtaining the charter and in completing the organ 
 ization of the bank. The charter required that the residue of 
 the stock should be paid in such instalments as the branch 
 directors might call for, but that not less than $100,000 should 
 be required to be paid into each branch before the first of 
 January, 1857. As has been stated, the promoters were not 
 bankers. Few of them had money to invest in banking, and 
 it soon appeared that all but three of the branches were owned 
 by men who would not be prepared to meet the $48 per share 
 as it might be called for, and that seventeen of the branches 
 were for sale. Their owners, although not capitalists, were 
 men of good standing. Some of them were prominent poli 
 ticians, who expected to be still more prominent ; all were 
 respectable citizens of the State, and consequently they were 
 not disposed to sell to non-residents, nor to any persons who 
 would not be. able to make the Bank of the State a worthy 
 successor of the State Bank. 
 
 Under these circumstances they concluded that the only 
 creditable and safe course for them to pursue was to open nego 
 tiations with some of the prominent directors of the old bank. 
 A conference was held, in accordance with this conclusion, 
 between three or four men on each side, the result of which 
 was a proposition for the sale of seventeen of the branches, 
 and a couple of weeks were given for its consideration. Within 
 that time the proposition was accepted, but with the condi 
 tion that the directors of the bank should, at the approaching 
 
130 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 May session, make me its president. This was done, and with 
 all possible speed the transfers of stock were effected, and the 
 new bank passed under the control of the men who had con 
 trolled the old one, and of other well-known citizens of Indiana. 
 It is not necessary for me to say what premium was paid for 
 the stock, except that it varied according to the location of the 
 branches, and that the bargain was entirely satisfactory both 
 to sellers and buyers. The honor of being president of the new 
 bank was enhanced by the fact that the purchase of its stock 
 by men with whom I had been associated for more than twenty 
 years was upon the condition that I should be elected to that 
 important office. 
 
 I had been tolerably hard worked before, but the real hard 
 work of my life commenced with my election to the presidency 
 of the Bank of the State of Indiana. Within a period of seven 
 months twenty branches, seven of them in new hands, each 
 with a capital of not less than $100,000, were to be ready for 
 business. Books were to be obtained and properly opened. 
 Bank notes were to be engraved and signed by me in readiness 
 for delivery to the branches, before or soon after the first of 
 January following. In addition to my various duties as presi 
 dent of the bank, my attention was required in the organ 
 ization of the new branch at Fort Wayne, and in the winding 
 up of the old one ; so that at a time when rest would have 
 been agreeable, I was overwhelmed with work which only 
 habits of industry and vigorous health enabled me to perform. 
 The charter required, as did the charter of the State Bank, 
 that all the circulating notes supplied to the branches should 
 be signed by the president. No one w T ho has not had a trial 
 of it can have any conception of the unmitigated wearisome- 
 ness of signing one s name day after day and week after week. 
 My self-imposed limit was a thousand sheets (four thousand 
 signatures) a day. For a single day, even with a name as dif 
 ficult to write rapidly as mine, this would not be a hard task ; 
 but to follow it for weeks and months, as I did in the autumn 
 
CAUSES OF BANK FAILURES. 131 
 
 of 1856, would, if it were a punishment, be too inhuman to be 
 inflicted upon the most guilty of criminals. The work, how 
 ever, irksome as it was, was performed. Four millions of dol 
 lars in circulating notes, a considerable part of which were in 
 ones and twos, were signed and delivered to the branches before 
 the first of January, 1857, or soon after. This uncomfortable 
 work did not end with furnishing the branches with the notes 
 to which they were entitled at the start. The increase of 
 capital and the necessity of issuing clean notes in exchange 
 for those which became defaced, compelled me to give a good 
 deal of time to signing notes as long as I w r as connected with 
 the bank, and it tried my patience almost beyond endurance. 
 
 On the first day of January, 1857, the Bank of the State 
 of Indiana, with a capital of two millions of dollars, soon to be 
 increased to three millions, commenced its short but honorable 
 career. In the negotiations between the buyers and sellers, 
 three of the branches were not included in the sale, and these 
 remained in the hands of the original owners. Respectable 
 and intelligent men they were, but I soon discovered that 
 their notions of banking were widely different from mine. To 
 them a bank was an institution, the officers and directors of 
 which were to be privileged borrowers. Time and discipline, 
 and, in one instance, the exercise of the plenary power of the 
 Board of Control (the directors of the bank) were required 
 to make such men comprehend the simple but all-important 
 principle that lenders and borrowers could not safely be the 
 same persons, and that in this bank men whose necessities 
 or business required that they should be borrowers from the 
 branches ought not to be, and would not be permitted to be, 
 their managers. Bank failures are invariably the result of 
 a disregard of this rule. No bank in the United States, the 
 capital of which was a cash reality, and whose managers were 
 not thieves or the borrowers of its money, has ever failed. 
 All bank failures are fraudulent, either by mismanagement or 
 deception in regard to capital, and all who are responsible for 
 
132 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 such failures are betrayers of trusts, and should be punished as 
 criminals. 
 
 The year in which the Bank of the State commenced busi 
 ness opened for it auspiciously. Known to be under the con 
 trol of the same men who had so successfully managed the affairs 
 of its predecessor, its credit was high from the start. Busi 
 ness was active, and the circulation and discount lines of the 
 branches rapidly expanded under a healthy demand for money. 
 At the meeting of the Board of Control in Indianapolis on the 
 second Monday of August, the reports of the examiners of the 
 branches were carefully scrutinized, and the general condition 
 of the bank was as carefully considered. All but three of the 
 branches were under excellent management, with ample means 
 for a liberal increase of their discounts to meet the usual 
 autumnal demand for money. An abundant wheat crop had 
 been harvested, and the later crops were unusually promising. 
 The commercial outlook was assuring ; there was not a cloud 
 in sight to indicate a financial storm, and the board adjourned 
 with the understanding between the directors that all legiti 
 mate demands for money should be met, as far as might be 
 practicable. Scarcely, how r ever, had the board adjourned and 
 the directors left the city, when I received a telegram from 
 Winslow, Lanier & Co., which announced the suspension of 
 the Ohio Life and Trust Company of Cincinnati, one of the 
 largest financial institutions of the West, with an agency in 
 New York. A few minutes after I received another telegram, 
 advising me that the suspension would be only temporary. 
 This was soon followed by another, in these words : " Suspen 
 sion a failure, and a bad one." The intelligence was astound 
 ing. It was a bolt from a cloudless sky. The Ohio Life and 
 Trust Company had enjoyed the highest credit. Its home 
 business had been managed in the most careful manner. It 
 had been distinguished for its conservatism. Its directors, who 
 were among its largest stockholders, met every day to pass 
 upon the offering for discount. Not a bill or note, no matter 
 
FAILUEE OF THE BANK. 133 
 
 how small, was discounted without their approval. It had 
 thus acquired a high reputation, and secured large deposits. 
 But while its business was being thus carefully and judiciously 
 conducted at home, its agent in New York, who, strangely 
 enough, had been clothed with unlimited powers, was engaged 
 in speculative operations on a gigantic scale, by which the 
 entire capital and surplus of the bank, and a large part of the 
 money of its depositors, were hopelessly lost. 
 
 The bank was ruined by its New York agent, while its 
 directors supposed it to be perfectly sound and eminently pros 
 perous. The failure of this bank created a panic, the sharpest 
 and most widespread that had ever been known. It came 
 without premonition ; it was a financial sirocco which at once 
 dried up the springs of confidence and faith. Those who had 
 money held it with the grip of misers. Trust ceased ; confi 
 dence between men, confidence in everything but money, and 
 hard money at that, disappeared. Men who were worth mil 
 lions could not raise the few thousands that were needed to 
 save them from discredit. Distrust, as general as it was cause 
 less, pervaded the country. All of the Eastern banks except 
 the Chemical Bank of New York, which w r eathered the storm 
 twenty years before, and all of the Western banks except the 
 Kentucky banks and the Bank of the State of Indiana, sus 
 pended specie payments. All of the private banking houses of 
 which I had any knowledge except that of Allen Hamilton & 
 Co., at Fort Wayne, in which I )vas a partner, and one or two 
 in Indianapolis, were compelled to close their doors. It is true 
 that the State Bank of Ohio continued nominally to redeem its 
 notes, but only nominally. Its capital was locked up in the 
 Ohio Life and Trust Company, and it was so crippled by the 
 failure of that bank that even the brokers forbore to return its 
 notes. The Kentucky banks did not suspend, but nearly all 
 of their notes were issued by branches situated at places so 
 remote from the principal thoroughfares that they were not 
 often visited by brokers or their runners. To the branches of 
 
134 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 the Bank of the State of Indiana there was no such protection. 
 All of its branches were accessible by rail, and in two or three 
 days after the failure of the Life and Trust Company, their 
 notes commanded a premium over the notes of all other 
 Western banks. In a couple of weeks the premium reached 
 three per cent, over the notes of the Kentucky banks, and 
 five per cent, over the notes of the State Bank of Ohio, in Cin 
 cinnati, which was then the financial centre of the West. As 
 a consequence the notes of the Bank of the State flowed 
 rapidly thither, and were as rapidly sent home for coin. 
 
 My position was a trying one. The charter Avas very valu 
 able, and it became subject to forfeiture upon the failure of the 
 bank to meet its obligations in coin. The manner in which it 
 had been obtained precluded any well-grounded hope that a 
 suspension of specie payments would be sanctioned by the 
 legislature. There was really no alternative. Specie pay 
 ments must be maintained, or the charter would be forfeited. 
 There was no danger of large calls for coin from depositors. 
 Many of them were borrowers, and there was a tacit under 
 standing between the branches and their customers that 
 deposits of bank notes were payable in bank notes. There 
 was, however, apparently great danger that some of the 
 branches might be unable, without assistance from other 
 branches, to redeem their notes in coin. I received each day 
 at my office at Indianapolis, by telegraph or messenger from 
 each branch, a statement of its redemption and of its coin and 
 other cash means. For three or four weeks the calls upon the 
 branches were so continuous and heavy that it seemed prob 
 able that their entire circulation would be sent home ; but this 
 extremity was not reached. In the fifth week of the panic 
 there was an improvement in the financial outlook. Gold 
 failed to command such a premium in New York as to make 
 it profitable for the brokers of Cincinnati to assort and return 
 the notes of the most remote branches. Calls upon the neigh 
 boring branches continued for a week or two longer, and then 
 
THE SUSPENSION OF SPECIE PAYMENTS. 135 
 
 ceased altogether. The crisis had been passed the charter 
 was safe. In two months from the commencement of the 
 panic some of the strongest of the branches resumed their 
 usual business. In three months all were under full headway, 
 and with credit strengthened and improved by the manner in 
 which they had met their obligations. From that time to the 
 commencement of the civil war the business of the bank was 
 healthy and prosperous. 
 
 South Carolina led the way in the attempted secession of 
 the Southern States. Her example was soon followed by other 
 States, but there was no financial disturbance, until it became 
 apparent that the nation was to be involved in a civil war, the 
 extent and duration of which could not be foreseen. For a 
 considerable time, even after the war had begun, the specie 
 standard was maintained, and hopes were indulged that the 
 war might be prosecuted on a specie basis. These hopes were 
 dissipated by the action of Secretary Chase in his dealings w r ith 
 the New York, Philadelphia and Boston banks, which had 
 agreed to advance to the Government on its seven and three- 
 tenth notes $150,000,000 ($50,000,000 in August, $50,000,000 
 in October, and $50,000,000 in November, 1861), under the ex 
 pectation that the Treasury drafts for the money would be pre 
 sented through the clearing-houses, and be paid without large 
 reductions of their coin. The Secretary did not, however, feel 
 at liberty to meet their expectations, and the drain upon their 
 coin reserve soon became so heavy that they were forced to sus 
 pend specie payments. Their suspension was soon followed by 
 the suspension of nearly all the banks in the country. As a con 
 sequence, specie commanded a premium, and the directors of 
 the Bank of the State of Indiana were not slow in coming to 
 the conclusion that the circulation of the bank must be retired. 
 The premium which specie commanded at Cincinnati was 
 small, but it was large enough to induce the brokers of that 
 citv to assort and send home the notes of the branches for 
 
136 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 gold, which was then the only legal tender in circulation. 
 There was no panic, but property of nearly all descriptions 
 began to be depressed in market value, and a feeling of dis 
 trust pervaded the country. The managers of the branches 
 were therefore instructed to redeem promptly in coin all notes 
 that might be presented ; to anticipate and prevent their 
 return, as far as might be practicable, by taking them up at 
 commercial points with other cash means; to make arrange 
 ments with depositors by which deposits of gold should be 
 paid in gold, deposits of bank notes should be paid in bank 
 notes, and to be thus prepared for any crisis that might occur. 
 These instructions were promptly obeyed. In a few weeks 
 the larger part of the circulating notes of the branches were 
 at rest in their vaults, and the business of the branches was 
 reduced to what could be safely done upon their capitals and 
 deposits. It was, of course, impossible that this should have 
 been effected without inconvenience to borrowers and inter 
 ruption to trade ; but the action of the bank directors was judi 
 cious, and it commanded the approbation of even those who 
 were incommoded by it. The business of the bank was thus 
 conducted until some time after the passage of the legal-ten 
 der acts of 1862, and the legal-tender notes had become a sub 
 stitute for coin. The question, Can these notes be lawfully 
 used by the branches of the Bank of the State in the redemp 
 tion of their circulating notes? then became a question of great 
 interest, not only to the bank, but to the State. By the char 
 ter, the obligations of the bank could be discharged only by 
 coin. The legal-tender notes had been declared by Congress 
 to be lawful money in all payments, except at the custom 
 houses. Could they be regarded as lawful money in the dis 
 charge of the coin obligations of the bank ? This question 
 could only be decided by the Supreme Court of the State, and 
 it was quite important that a decision should be made before 
 any risk had been incurred. I therefore waited upon Judge 
 Perkins, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, who was 
 
LEGAL TENDER IN INDIANA. 137 
 
 not only eminent as a judge, but a Democrat of the strictest 
 order, explained to him the condition of the bank, and that its 
 inability to maintain circulation upon a gold basis (gold then 
 being at a premium over legal-tender notes) was preventing it 
 from doing what it was important it should do in aid of the 
 business of the State. I informed him that all the other banks 
 of the country were treating the legal-tender notes (green 
 backs, as they were called,) as lawful money, and using them 
 in the discharge of their coin obligations, and that the Bank of 
 the State was desirous of doing the same, if it would not be in 
 violation of the requirements of its charter ; and I then asked 
 him whether the Supreme Court, if the question should be 
 presented in a case involving it, would order the case to be 
 advanced upon the docket, in order that a decision might be 
 expected at an early day. Without a moment s hesitation, he 
 replied that he could not answer for his associates, but that he 
 thought the question a very important one, and that he had 
 very little doubt that such an order would be made. The next 
 day a fifty-dollar note, issued by the branch at Indianapolis, was 
 presented for payment in coin. Instead of coin, legal-tender 
 notes were offered in payment, which were refused. A suit 
 was immediately commenced against the bank in the Circuit 
 Court, and as the question involved w r as regarded by the judge 
 as one of great public interest, the case took precedence of all 
 others. As the facts were agreed upon by the counsel on 
 both sides, the trial was a short one. I do not now recollect 
 how the case was decided by the Circuit judge, but an appeal 
 was taken to the Supreme Court, and the case was, on motion 
 of Mr. Joseph McDonald, counsel for the bank, advanced upon 
 the docket and immediately taken up. Arguments on both 
 sides were listened to with great interest (the argument of 
 Mr. McDonald was a very ingenious and able one), and in the 
 course of a week or two the court decided (there was no dis 
 senting opinion) that the legal-tender acts were constitutional ; 
 that the United States notes were lawful money, and could be 
 
138 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 used by the bank in the payment of its notes without a viola 
 tion of its charter. It is my impression that this decision was 
 the first decision by a court of high standing in favor of the 
 power of Congress to make anything but gold and silver law 
 ful money. This decision was a very advantageous one to the 
 bank, as it enabled it not only to extend its business, but to 
 strengthen its position. At the next meeting of the board of 
 directors, I advised that the notes which had been so lono- 
 
 o 
 
 resting in the vaults of the branches should be put into active 
 use. As, however, I feared that the war in which the country 
 was engaged would be protracted, and might cause a large 
 appreciation of gold or depreciation of the legal-tender notes, 
 if not great financial disturbance, I also advised that every 
 dollar of the means of the branches not absolutely needed in 
 their regular business should be used in the purchase of gold. 
 This advice was followed. The premium on gold was then 
 only about one and a half per cent., so that no great expense 
 was incurred by the branches in raising their gold reserve 
 to a very high point. When I resigned the presidency of the 
 bank in April, 1S63, it held $3,300,000 in gold on a capital 
 of $3,000,000. As the premium on gold soon after rapidly 
 advanced it is not necessary for me to say that the profits of 
 the branches from this source were quite satisfactory to their 
 stockholders. 
 
 Upon the passage of the act of Congress by which notes 
 of all banks except those of the national banks were subjected 
 to a ten per cent, tax, the Bank of the State went into liqui 
 dation. Its career was short, but fortunate. It fully main 
 tained the credit of its predecessor. If it was conceived in sin, 
 as was charged by Governor Wright, who vetoed the bill creat 
 ing it, it brought forth in a large measure the fruits of a well- 
 conducted business. 
 
 In closing what I have to say about banking in Indiana, 
 I cannot forbear to refer to the action of the New Orleans 
 banks towards their Northern correspondents at the outbreak 
 
LOUISIANA CREDIT. 139 
 
 of the civil war. The Southern branches had large dealings 
 with men who were engaged in the Southern (Mississippi) trade, 
 and when measures were being instituted for the secession of 
 Louisiana from the Union, and, indeed, after the ordinance 
 of secession had been adopted, these branches had large cash 
 balances and large amounts of commercial paper in the New 
 Orleans banks. Against the remonstrances of the secession 
 leaders, and in disregard of threatened violence, these cash bal 
 ances and the proceeds of the commercial paper as it matured 
 were remitted for according to directions not a dollar was 
 withheld. No more able and honorably conducted banks 
 existed in the Union than were those in New Orleans before 
 the war, nor was mercantile honor anywhere of a higher tone 
 than in that city. There was a good deal of demoralization 
 during the war, and much more for eight or ten years after 
 the war terminated, but the good seed that had been sown 
 there during the period of her great prosperity and commer 
 cial supremacy in the West had taken too deep root to be 
 lost. Few advocates of repudiation have been found among 
 her bankers and merchants and large tax-payers. If they 
 could have controlled the legislation of the State, her honor 
 would not have been impaired. Railroads have deprived New 
 Orleans of the monopoly of AVestern traffic, and she has been 
 outstripped in population and business by Cincinnati, St. Louis 
 and Chicago, but she is rapidly regaining her credit, and as 
 long as the Mississippi bears upon its waters a considerable 
 part of the productions of the immense region which it drains, 
 she will be a great and prosperous city. Not only was the 
 spirit of her citizens displayed in her recent exposition, but the 
 productive power of the country which is naturally tributary 
 to her was there so exhibited as to establish confidence in her 
 future and continued growth. No Western man who knew 
 New Orleans when she was the great city of the West, the 
 only accessible market for the productions of an immense 
 region, can fail to be interested in her welfare. 
 
CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 Henry Ward Beecher He becomes the Pastor of a New-School Presbyterian 
 Church at Indianapolis The Character of his Sermons Manner of Pre 
 paring Them Touching Address at Fort Wayne His Power as a Speaker 
 His Speeches at Liverpool and London At the Height of his Career 
 in 1863 His Influence as a Preacher, and his Personal Character His 
 Encounter with a Constable at Indianapolis His Employment Outside 
 of the Pulpit Not a Partisan Dr. Lyman Beecher His Ride to Fort 
 Wayne His Pleasant Manners. 
 
 ONE of the earliest, and in many respects the pleasantest, of 
 the acquaintances which I formed in Indiana, was that 
 of Henry "Ward Beecher, who in 1839, on the invitation of 
 Samuel Merrill, president of the State Bank, and a few other 
 prominent citizens of Indianapolis, left Lawrenceburg, where 
 he had been preaching for two or three years, to become the 
 first pastor of a New-School Presbyterian Church at the capital 
 of the State. There was not more than a dozen members 
 when he took charge of it, but it grew rapidly in membership 
 until 1847, when he accepted a call to Brooklyn. It had then 
 become numerically one of the largest in the city, but its increase 
 was not to any considerable extent at the expense of the other 
 churches. The congregation was largely made up of men and 
 women who were not and had not been members of any 
 church, who were attracted by the novelty and earnestness of 
 Mr. Beecher s preaching. His sermons, both in style and topics, 
 were quite different from those which had been heard from 
 Presbyterian pulpits. They were in some respects like those 
 of the presiding elders of the Methodist Church, but broader, 
 less doctrinal, and much more varied in subjects. It was 
 religion, not theology, that was preached by Mr. Beecher. 
 Christianity was, in his estimation, the moral purifier of the 
 
HENRY WARD BEECIIER. 141 
 
 world. Adapted to all conditions of mankind, it was the 
 only foundation upon which social order and free Government 
 could safely rest. The religion of which he was the advocate 
 was not a system of doctrines, belief in which was necessary 
 for either present or future happiness ; but a system of which 
 love was the corner-stone, and active benevolence, unselfish 
 efforts for the well-being of others, and personal purity were 
 the legitimate results. In copiousness of language and faculty 
 of illustration he excelled all men whom I have heard. He 
 was one of the very few preachers who could be followed 
 and understood by everybody. He was never above the level 
 of ordinary comprehension, and he rarely offended the most 
 highly cultivated taste by language of a low order. 
 
 Except for extraordinary occasions Mr. Beecher s sermons 
 were not elaborately prepared. They were rather the outcome 
 of observation in his walks and in his intercourse with the peo 
 ple than of his study of books. They were premeditated, but 
 his notes were not written until within a few hours before the 
 sermons were delivered. These notes consisted of as many sen 
 tences as there were subjects to be dealt with ; a single sentence 
 on each subject. They were thus prepared, he said, in order 
 that he " might be fairly started, kept on the right track, and 
 not be led off on a false scent." His sermons, I have said, 
 were premeditated ; but for some of them, and for some of his 
 addresses, there was little or no opportunity for premeditation. 
 These were, however, among the most effective that he deliv 
 ered. I recollect one especially. He had come from Indianap 
 olis to Fort Wayne, where I was living, to assist his father (who 
 had come from Cincinnati) in the organization of a church of 
 which his brother Charles was to be the pastor. He reached 
 Fort Wayne late in the afternoon after a hard day s ride on 
 horseback, and immediately after his arrival he was hurried off 
 to meet some ten or fifteen men and women who were to become 
 members of the new church, and a number of citizens besides, 
 who felt an interest in this religious enterprise. The meeting 
 
142 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 was in a private house, and the room was well filled, as it was 
 expected that Mr. Beecher would be present, and if present, that 
 he would speak. He did not disappoint them. After some busi 
 ness connected with the organization services had been trans 
 acted, Mr. Beecher arose, read a few passages from the Xew 
 Testament, and made an address in language so beautiful and 
 appropriate, in a voice so tender and affectionate, that all pres 
 ent were spellbound, and when he closed there was not a dry 
 eye except his own in the room. 
 
 One day Mr. Beecher was called upon unexpectedly to 
 attend, at the wretched place where he died, the funeral of a 
 man who had long been a drunkard. The deceased had no 
 family, but he had a large number of friends, who had assem 
 bled to show their regard for him. Blear-eyed, hard-faced 
 men were nearly all of them, such men as Mr. Beecher had 
 never seen together ; such as only a man like Mr. Beecher 
 could reach ; but wretched and degraded as they had become, 
 there was something of their better nature still left, and this 
 was open to the warnings and the appeals of the speaker. 
 They had never been spoken to as he spoke to them ; not as 
 outcasts, but as men. They felt the justice of his rebukes, 
 their hearts responded to his affectionate entreaties. All 
 wept like children ; two became temperate men. " I never 
 felt," said Mr. Beecher, some time after, " I never felt God s 
 helping hand as I did when I addressed a score of drunkards 
 at a drunkard s funeral." 
 
 Mr. Beecher was one of the rare speakers who carry their 
 audiences along with them irresistibly. Such was his ardor, 
 his earnestness, his unquestionable sincerity, his copiousness of 
 language, his personal magnetism, that his listeners were too 
 much under his control to be critical. He loved his pulpit, 
 and was always at home there ; but he seemed to be equally 
 at home upon the platform, where some of his most powerful 
 addresses were delivered. As a platform orator he had no 
 equal except Wendell Phillips. His language was less classic 
 
HIS INFLUENCE FOR LIBERALISM. 143 
 
 than that of Phillips, and his style was less perfect, but he had 
 more endurance and vitality, and his devotion to the cause 
 which he advocated never made him unjust to those from whom 
 he differed. His grandest addresses were delivered during the 
 civil war, when his intellectual and physical powers were at 
 their highest level. In those which he delivered in Liverpool 
 and London in 1863, he had opportunities for the display to 
 the fullest extent of his wit, his aptness in repartee, his tact, 
 his perfect self-control, his physical endurance, and his over 
 mastering power as a speaker ; and these opportunities were 
 so improved by him as to check the current of English sympa 
 thy which had been flowing towards those who were in arms 
 against their government, and to make him an idol to his loyal 
 countrymen. "When he returned to the tTnited States in the 
 autumn of 1863, he Avas at the height of his career. He was 
 then more loved and honored than any man of his day. His 
 sky was then cloudless. It did not continue so, but those who 
 knew him best never lost faith in him, or doubted the purity 
 of his character. The manner in which the report of his death 
 was received throughout the country showed how strong was 
 his hold upon the hearts of his countrymen. Mr. Beecher was 
 not only the most popular, but the most influential preacher 
 that this country has produced. He did more than any other 
 man to liberalize religious sentiment, to lift orthodox theology 
 out of the ruts in which it had been running from the days of 
 the Puritans. His sermons were very rareh r doctrinal. He 
 was in no respect a theologian. He cared little for creeds. 
 P>elief with him was a matter of secondary importance ; con 
 duct was everything. He had a decided taste for horticulture, 
 and one of his most intimate acquaintances was a man (Aldrich, 
 I think his name was,) who had a fine nursery and garden near 
 Indianapolis. " I like him," said Mr. Beecher to me one day, 
 " I like him because he loves flowers as I do, and I have a great 
 admiration of him because he is one of the honestest men that 
 I have ever met. I have made him a study. He is always 
 
144 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 what he appears to be a perfectly upright man. Nothing 
 would induce him to swerve from the truth, and yet he is an 
 infidel, a disbeliever in the Bible and a future life. I wish that 
 I and my church members were more like him." 
 
 I was very intimate with Mr. Beecher as long as he lived 
 in Indianapolis. His brother Charles was the pastor of the 
 New-School church at Fort Wayne, of which my wife was a 
 member. He was frequently at my house. I once travelled 
 with him on horseback from Fort "Wayne to Indianapolis, when 
 it took full three days to make the trip ; stopped w T ith him at 
 the same taverns, and slept in the same rooms with him. To 
 me he was an open book. If there had been anything wrong 
 about him, I should have discovered it. He was incapable of 
 disguise, and I never heard a sentiment from him that the 
 strictest moralist could object to. His vitality was immense, 
 his jollity at times irrepressible. He was physically very 
 strong. His health was perfect, his buoyancy of spirits unflag 
 ging. I recollect how he sang and shouted as we rode through 
 the w r oods together, how admirably he mimicked preachers 
 who seemed to think that sanctimonious countenances and 
 whining tones were the indications of zealous faith. To Mr. 
 Beecher, religion was joyousness, Christianity the agency by 
 which men were to be made not only better but happier. 
 " Some people," said he, " think that I am not solemn enough 
 in the pulpit, nor staid or reverent enough out of it. I won 
 der what they would think if I should act just as I feel." 
 
 Mr. Beecher gave proof of his pluck in his encounters with 
 secessionists and sympathizers with the South in Liverpool and 
 London. It was sometimes tested in a different way. The 
 people of Indiana before the war, if not pro-slaver} r in senti 
 ment, were, with few exceptions, opposed to all anti-slavery 
 movements, and the negroes who came to the State were fre 
 quently the subjects of barbarous treatment. One day there 
 was what was called a negro riot in Indianapolis, in which 
 some inoffensive colored people were driven from their homes 
 
BEECHER S PLUCK. 145 
 
 and treated with savage inhumanity. A leader of the rioters, 
 whose behavior towards these people was especially infamous, 
 was a constable. Mr. Beecher, upon being informed of his 
 conduct, denounced it in his usual emphatic manner. This 
 came to the ears of the constable, who expressed his determi 
 nation to hold Mr. Beecher responsible. " Beecher must take 
 back what he has said about me, or I ll lick him within an 
 inch of his life." The next day as Mr. Beecher was walking 
 leisurely by the constable s office, the constable opened the 
 door and asked Mr. Beecher to step in. The office was near 
 the principal hotel of the city, and some young men who had 
 heard of the constable s threats, and happened to be standing 
 upon the sidewalk, gathered around the door to see, as they 
 said, the fun. The constable was a big, brawny fellow, and as 
 Mr. Beecher entered he advanced to meet him, and said in a 
 rough voice, " I understand, Mr. Beecher, that you have said 
 so and so about me," repeating the offensive language. " Did 
 you say that, sir? " " I don t think I said exactly that, but it 
 was about what I meant to say," replied Mr. Beecher, as he 
 
 looked the constable steadily in the face. " You re a d d 
 
 liar, sir, and if you were not a preacher I would lick you like 
 a dog," said the constable. " Dismiss all considerations of 
 that kind ; I ask no favor on that score," responded Mr. 
 Beecher. The constable looked at the stoutly-built, sturdy 
 man who stood before him without flinching, and concluded 
 that it was safer to threaten than to strike. Mr. Beecher lis 
 tened for a moment to the constable s oaths, then left the 
 office, saying as he went out, " Good-bye, Mr. Constable, you 
 will feel better when you cool off." The bystanders clapped 
 their hands as Mr. Beecher stepped upon the sidewalk, and it 
 was a long time before the constable heard the last of his 
 interview with Mr. Beecher. ; What would you have done," 
 I asked Mr. Beecher, " if the constable had attempted to make 
 good his threats ? " "I should have warded off his blows and 
 laid him upon his back in no time. I knew if I was not 
 10 
 
146 ME1ST AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 stronger that I was quicker and a better wrestler than he was, 
 and I was sure that he could not have stood before me for an 
 instant. I should have been sorry to have had a contest with 
 such a fellow, but I could not stand and be whipped," was Mr. 
 Beecher s reply. 
 
 Few of Mr. Beecher s hearers could understand how he 
 acquired knowledge without study. It was understood that 
 he had not been a hard student at Amherst College, nor at the 
 Theological Seminary at Cincinnati. In Indianapolis he had 
 nothing that could be called a library. He seemed to care 
 very little for books, and he had no time to give to them. He 
 sawed his wood, milked and took care of his cow, groomed 
 and fed his horse, and with his o\vn hands made the best and 
 largest garden in the city. At the same time he prepared and 
 delivered a course of lectures to young men, and made many 
 addresses at various places. He was the sole editor of a hor 
 ticultural weekly paper, and was always ready to lend a help 
 ing hand to his neighbors in the improvement of their yards 
 and lawns. The taste for landscape gardening, for which the 
 householders of Indianapolis were afterwards distinguished, 
 was the outcome of Mr. Beecher s work and teaching. Not 
 withstanding all this, he rarely failed to preach three sermons 
 a week, which were not only beautiful in language and strik 
 ing in thought, but apparentl\ r the result of careful study ; and 
 so they were not of books, but of men and things and of his 
 extraordinary power of observation. If a stranger had noticed 
 him upon the streets or in the country, he would have thought 
 from his impassive face that he was woolgathering, while he 
 was noticing everything about him, learning as he went. If 
 he spent a day or two in a town which he had never before 
 visited, he would know more about it, its people and its busi 
 ness, than those who had been there for years. His mind was 
 constantly at work, and its grasp was quick and clear. He 
 read newspapers to know what was going on, but he did not 
 give much time to them. Men, their characters and their 
 
HIS INDEPENDENCE. 147 
 
 occupations, were his study. His thoughts and observations 
 included everything in which his people were or ought to be 
 interested, and consequently his sermons embraced a great 
 variety of subjects. Nothing which affected their welfare 
 socially or politically was, in his judgment, out of place in ser 
 mons. Worldly topics, which most clergymen considered 
 improper to be discussed in the pulpit, were just those which 
 Mr. Beecher loved to discuss, and in discussing them he gave 
 full play to his humor and wit, which were only less effective 
 than his pathos. 
 
 Mr. Beecher was an independent thinker, and although he 
 never doubted the correctness of his own conclusions, he was 
 free from uncharitableness and intolerance. While he was at 
 Indianapolis the theological war between the Old and New 
 School churches was carried on with great acrimony. In the 
 opinion of the Old School people, the believers in the New 
 School doctrines were heretics, and Mr. Beecher, as one of the 
 most prominent of the New School leaders, was the subject of 
 unparalleled abuse ; but he never indulged in retaliation. I 
 never heard from him a word that savored of unkind ness 
 towards those whom he knew to be his assailants. He was also 
 free from egotism. He must have been conscious of his great 
 powers. He was building up a church with great rapidity ; he 
 perceived that he was listened to with attention by some of 
 the most intellectual men in the State ; he had good reason to 
 believe that his sermons were making deep impressions upon 
 minds that had never before been interested in religious sub 
 jects ; he knew that he w T as regarded, young as he was, as 
 being one of the most effective preachers in the West ; but he 
 never seemed to be elated. I heard him speak but twice of 
 himself as a speaker ; once when he referred to the effect of 
 his remarks at the drunkard s funeral, and once when he spoke 
 of the first sermon that he preached in his father s presence. 
 " I was," he said, referring to this sermon, " embarrassed at 
 the start, but I soon got over that, and perceiving that I was 
 
148 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 commanding the attention of the audience, I warmed up with 
 my subject, and you can judge how happy I was when, looking 
 around, I saw that my father, who sat behind me, was in tears. 
 It was one of my first sermons, and 1 had made my father 
 cry." 
 
 Mr. Beecher wrote a great deal, and usually with great 
 ability ; but it is upon his talents and accomplishments as a 
 preacher that his fame will most securely rest. Few of his 
 sermons were what might be called finished productions, but 
 they abounded in eloquent passages, in striking illustrations, in 
 original ideas. They were instructive as well as captivating. 
 No man has ever been heard by so many people, no man of 
 the present century has expressed so many loving thoughts, or 
 touched so many hearts, or influenced so many lives, or done so 
 much to soften theological austerities, and liberalize religious 
 sentiment, as Henry Ward Beecher. 
 
 When I went to the West in 1833, I had, besides those I 
 have named, letters of introduction to Dr. Lyman Beecher, 
 Henry AVard s father. He was then engaged in ministerial 
 work as the pastor of a New School church in Cincinnati, and 
 in the establishment of a theological school (Lane Seminary) 
 in that vicinity. My interview with him was short, and I did 
 not meet him again until he went to Fort Wayne, in 1844, to 
 assist in the ordination of his son Charles. He left Cincinnati 
 Thursday in a canal boat, expecting to reach Fort Wayne on 
 the following Saturday, but he made slower progress than he 
 had anticipated, and before half his journey had been com 
 pleted he discovered that by the canal he could not reach Fort 
 Wayne in season to be present at his son s ordination. He 
 therefore determined to leave the canal boat at St. Mary s and 
 complete his journey (a distance of sixty miles) on horseback, 
 which he did. He left St. Mary s Friday evening just as the 
 sun was going down ; rode all night, and reached my house, 
 at Fort Wayne, the next afternoon. He was covered from 
 foot to head with mud, but was far from being exhausted by 
 
LYMAN BEECHER. 149 
 
 his long and tiresome ride. Immediately after his arrival he 
 asked if he could have some whiskey to " rub himself down 
 with," as he said. The whiskey was sent to his room, and 
 soon after he joined the family, apparently as fresh as if he had 
 been resting for hours. Dr. Beecher was then about seventy 
 years old, and was quite unaccustomed to the saddle, and yet 
 so strong and hardy was he that he rode all night and a good 
 part of the next day over one of the worst roads in the 
 West without exhibiting weariness. To my inquiry how he 
 got on during the night he replied : " Comfortably enough, 
 but I should not if my horse had not known more about 
 roads than I did. I clung to the saddle, gave him the rein, 
 and he brought me through all right." 
 
 I had known Dr. Beecher before I left New England as one 
 of the vigorous assailants of Unitarianism, and I had expected 
 to find him uncongenial if not austere ; but he proved to be 
 one of the most social and agreeable of men. He spent a num 
 ber of days at my house, and I became strongly attached to 
 him. I had known him in the pulpit as an earnest, intolerant, 
 and always logical preacher. It did not take me long to 
 discover that out of it he abounded in sympathy, in genial 
 ity, in good-will for everybody. He seemed to be happy 
 in throwing off restraint and indulging his natural taste. 
 Fort Wayne was then a small town, and on the opposite side 
 of the river, but near my house, was the forest, the sight of 
 which revived the habit which had been formed in his early 
 life. u I must have a run through the woods," he said to me 
 one morning, " and if there is any game there, and you will let 
 me have a gun and plenty of powder and shot, I will see what 
 I can do as a sportsman." The gun and ammunition were 
 ready. He started for the woods by himself, and before noon 
 he returned with a rabbit and a pigeon, as much delighted with 
 his achievement as a boy usually with his first success in hunt 
 ing. The rabbit was cooked according to his directions, and 
 he seemed overjoyed by his contribution to the family dinner. 
 
ME1ST AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Dr. Beecher had the reputation of being the father of more 
 brains than any other man in the country. As far as I know 
 he merited the reputation. His six sons and four daughters 
 were very unlike in talents and in their leading characteristics ; 
 but there was not an ordinary one among them. 
 
CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln s Election a Pretext for Secession South Carolina and Nullifica 
 tion Mr. Buchanan s Conservatism Slavery Northern and Southern 
 Views of the Constitution Expectation of Secessionists in Regard to 
 Action of Border States Opposition to Coercion in Some of the Free 
 States Dark Days between November, 1860, and April, 1861 Slavery the 
 Question which Statesmen were Unable to Handle Defeat at Bull Run 
 Unexpected Demoralization at Washington after the Battle Subse 
 quent Defeats Created no Dismay Platform upon which McClellan was 
 Nominated for the Presidency Mr. Lincoln s Remarks Upon It. 
 
 THE election of Mr. Lincoln was only the proximate cause 
 of the attempted secession of the Southern States from 
 the Union. If Mr. Douglas or Mr. Breckenridge had been 
 elected, the decision of the question of the right of a State to 
 withdraw its allegiance from the Federal Government would 
 have been merely postponed. There had been, from, the adop 
 tion of the Constitution, a difference of opinion between the 
 leading men of the Northern and those of the Southern States 
 
 O 
 
 upon this important and fundamental question. It was one 
 that could be settled neither by Congress nor the Supreme 
 Court. It was practically an open question, and the leading 
 statesmen of the South were quite willing that it should remain 
 so until a certain crisis should arise which would consolidate 
 the Southern States, and justify the exercise of their sover 
 eignty in withdrawing from the Union and establishing an 
 independent Government. South Carolina had placed her 
 sovereignty in opposition to the authority of the Federal Gov 
 ernment by attempting to nullify an act of Congress creating 
 higher tariff than was needed for revenue. The tariff question, 
 however, was a question upon which there was a lack of una 
 nimity among the Southern people, and the other Southern 
 
152 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 States did not sympathize with South Carolina in the stand 
 which she took. Nullification was stamped out by President 
 Jackson s celebrated proclamation, and his well-known deter 
 mination to execute the law, no matter how strong the opposi 
 tion might be to it. Whether the secession movement would 
 have been crushed before it had made such headway if Gen 
 eral Jackson, or a man of equally fiery temperament and un 
 conquerable will, had been President, is at least questionable. 
 General Jackson, although the idol of the Democratic Party, 
 and for many years its leader, was not, upon the question of 
 State rights, a Democrat. The proclamation to which I have 
 referred was a clear and vigorous presentation of old-time 
 Federalism. Mr. Buchanan, who commenced his public life as 
 a Federalist, and who said in one of his early speeches that if 
 there were a drop of Democratic blood in his veins he would 
 let it out, became in his mature years a Democrat of the deep 
 est dye a strict constructionist of the Constitution a sturdy 
 advocate of the doctrine that all powers not absolutely granted 
 to Congress were reserved by the States. The characters of 
 the two men were as different as were their opinions in regard 
 to the authority of the Government and the rights of the 
 States. Jackson was quick in deciding and prompt in action, 
 more apt to exceed his authority than to fall short of its exer 
 cise. He never shrank from the performance of what he con 
 sidered his duty to the people, even if the legality of his actions 
 might be questionable. He was brave, patriotic and honest, 
 but arbitrary and aggressive. Mr. Buchanan was equally 
 honest and patriotic, but he gave to the Constitution very 
 strict construction, and he seemed to be more careful to avoid 
 infringement of the rights of the States than to maintain the 
 rightful authority of the Government. He was better fitted 
 for the Senate than the Presidency better fitted to make laws 
 than to execute them. Nevertheless he would have made a 
 good President in ordinary times. He was learned, courteous, 
 of spotless integrity, and in all respects a gentleman. Indeed, 
 
BUCHANAN AND SECESSION. 153 
 
 until near its close, his administration was creditable to himself 
 and satisfactory to the country ; but he lacked the nerve, the 
 decision, the self-reliance, which were needed when he was 
 called upon to meet so portentous a matter as the threatened 
 disruption of the Union. He hesitated to act, when hesitation 
 was perilous to the peace of the country. He discussed with 
 his cabinet every member of which, except General Cass. was 
 in sympathy with the South, if not with the secessionists the 
 questions of State rights and of the authority of the Govern 
 ment to enforce its laws by military power, while South Caro 
 lina was instituting measures to withdraw from the Union, and 
 taking possession of all the property of the United States which 
 was within her reach. Still, as I have said, it is by no means 
 certain that secession would have been crushed in its incipient 
 stages if a more resolute man than Mr. Buchanan had been in 
 his place. The slavery question was a far different question 
 from that of a tariff. It was one on which there was very 
 little difference of opinion among the leading men of the South. 
 There were, it is true, a few Southern men who were opposed 
 to slavery, but they generally kept their opinions to themselves. 
 Indeed, for some years before the war no one could safely utter 
 anti-slavery sentiments in the Southern States : to be suspected 
 of entertaining them was sufficient to consign a man to social 
 ostracism, if it did not expose him to personal violence. It 
 was the one subject upon which there could be no discussion 
 in the slave States. It was the apprehension of slave-owners 
 that their property might not be sufficiently protected under 
 the Constitution, that made them converts to and advocates of 
 the doctrine that the Union was a federal Union, or compact 
 of States, from which any State might peaceably withdraw- 
 that the allegiance of a citizen of a State was primarily due to 
 the State, not to the United States ; a doctrine which had been 
 taught in Southern schools and colleges, and even churches, 
 until the entire South had been so permeated by it that upon 
 this point the Southern States w r ere substantially a unit. 
 
154 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 On the other hand, the almost universal sentiment of the 
 North, was, that the United States was a nation ; that the 
 Constitution had been adopted for the very purpose of creating 
 a nationality which should be independent of the States in its 
 action, and absolute in its rightful authority ; that all acts of 
 Congress were to be obeyed until they had been declared to be 
 unconstitutional by the Supreme Court ; that the Union could 
 only be dismembered by a successful revolution. Such was 
 the conflict of opinion between the sections, a conflict which 
 was terminated and could only be terminated by the sword. 
 That the leaders in secession had contemplated war as a possi 
 ble if not probable result of their attempt to divide the Union, 
 there is no reason to doubt. They did not, however, anticipate 
 a general uprising of the people of the Middle and Western 
 States in defence of the Union. They confidently expected 
 that Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland would unite with the 
 other States in which slavery existed, and that Illinois, Indiana 
 and Ohio would give reluctant and but partial aid to the Fed 
 eral Government if coercive measures should be resorted to for 
 its support. For these expectations there were apparently 
 good reasons. The most prominent men in Missouri, Kentucky 
 and Maryland, if not disunionists, were more attached to 
 slavery than to the Union, while their people generally were 
 bound to the people of the Southern States by family or com 
 mercial ties. What might be called the civilization of these 
 central States was widely different from that of the Northern 
 States, and they would undoubtedly have joined the South if 
 they had not been prevented by the prompt and energetic 
 measures of the Government. The disposition of the people of 
 Maryland was indicated by the treatment which a Massachu 
 setts regiment received as it passed through Baltimore, and the 
 war was nearly ended before the presence of Union troops was 
 regarded with as much favor in Maryland as was the presence of 
 the Confederates. At the commencement of the war, Missouri 
 was in open revolt, and desperate battles were fought upon her 
 
THE DOUBTFUL BOEDER STATES. 155 
 
 soil before she could be prevented from casting- her lot with the 
 South. The same influences which were at work in Missouri 
 and Maryland were potent also in Kentucky. I happened to 
 be in Louisville, which in early days was called the Yankee 
 city of the West, from the number of New England men who 
 were in business there, when South Carolina adopted the ordi 
 nance of secession, and my conclusion was that the action of 
 Kentucky in this regard would depend upon that of the other 
 slave-holding States. I had conversations with many Louisville 
 merchants and bankers, who were much troubled by the pro 
 ceedings of South Carolina. They expressed deep regret at 
 what they called her rashness and folly, and they evidently 
 contemplated the future with anxious forebodings ; but to my 
 question, " On which side will Kentucky stand in case other 
 Southern States shall follow the example of South Carolina and 
 war shall be the consequence ?" "Kentucky will stand with 
 them," was the reply. " Her interests and sympathies are in 
 that direction, and when they go she will go also." The seces 
 sion leaders, who were well informed in regard to the sentiment 
 of the dominant party in each of these States, had therefore 
 good reason to expect that if the Government should undertake 
 to save the Union by force, all of the slave-holding States would 
 stand together. It is true that in both Missouri and Kentucky 
 a strong Union sentiment was developed soon after hostilities 
 had been commenced, and both furnished regiments which 
 were greatly distinguished for their gallantry ; but when the 
 storm-clouds were merely gathering, and before a bolt had 
 been discharged, the prevailing sentiment in both States was 
 in the direction I have named, and both would have united 
 with the South if they could have had their own way. Nor 
 was the expectation unreasonable that the Western free States 
 which bordered upon the Ohio and Mississippi rivers would 
 yield but reluctant aid to the Government if it should resort 
 to arms to enforce obedience to its authority. My duties as 
 president of the Bank of the State required my presence at 
 
156 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Indianapolis when the Legislature of 1860-61 was in session, 
 and I was astounded by the speeches of some of its most prom 
 inent members against what the} 7 called coercion the coercion 
 of sovereign States. In their opinion the Union was not worth 
 preserving if it could only be preserved by force. Indiana, 
 they asserted, would furnish no soldiers, nor would she permit 
 soldiers from other States to pass through her territory for the 
 subjugation of the South. One enthusiastic speaker to whom 
 I listened, and who did good service to the Government as a 
 colonel of an Indiana regiment, declared that armed coercion- 
 ists would have to pass over his dead body before they crossed 
 the Ohio River. This was very absurd, but it was listened to 
 with favor, and it voiced the prevailing feeling of a strong 
 minority, if not a majority, of the House. The sentiment of 
 the people of southern Illinois was in sympathy with that of 
 the people of southern Indiana. In fact, the leaders of the 
 Democratic party in both States and some of the leading 
 Republicans also were opposed to coercion. All this was well 
 known throughout the South, and although it is now certain 
 that the conflict could not have been long deferred, there can 
 be no doubt that the Southern States were encouraged in their 
 attempted secession by the expectation that the North would 
 be so divided that the Government would be unable to prevent 
 its dismemberment. 
 
 The darkest days for the Republic were between the elec 
 tion of Mr. Lincoln, in November, I860, and the 13th of 
 April, 1861. The hostility to slavery in the Northern States 
 had been steadily increasing from the date of the repeal 
 of the Missouri Compromise. The number of those who 
 were disposed to disturb slaver} 7 " in the States where it 
 existed was small, but the number opposed to its extension 
 was, throughout the free States, overwhelming. On the other 
 hand, the South demanded that the Territories should be open 
 to it without regard to the will of their inhabitants. The 
 Southern members of Congress who voted for the repeal of 
 
SOUTHEKN SENTIMENT. 157 
 
 the compromise under which Missouri was admitted into the 
 Union with slavery, did not so vote because they favored 
 popular sovereignty, but to free the South from an odious 
 restriction for which there was, in their opinion, no warrant in 
 the Constitution. To them popular sovereignty was only 
 another name for squatter sovereignty, which they held in 
 contempt. That they should not be permitted to take their 
 property into a Territory and retain it there after the Terri 
 tory had become a State, merely because there happened to be 
 a majority of the settlers who, having little or nothing to 
 take with them, could move more readily than slave-owners 
 opposed to slavery, seemed to them to be the height of injus 
 tice and absurdity. Kansas became a State in which slavery 
 was prohibited after a struggle which created intense feeling 
 in all parts of the country. It was in that State that the first 
 blood was shed in what was really a contest between the sec 
 tions. It was the result of this contest that convinced the 
 South that slavery henceforth was to be confined to its exist 
 ing boundaries, and that so strengthened the disunion senti 
 ment that little provocation was needed to cause an open 
 rupture. This provocation was found in the election of Mr. 
 Lincoln. The political leaders in the Southern States had for 
 many years regarded a division of the Union, on the line which 
 separated the slave-holding States from the free, as something 
 more than a contingency. They had, through emissaries who 
 had visited Europe for the purpose of sounding the feelings and 
 opinions of European statesmen, ascertained that the dismem 
 berment of the Republic would be regarded with favor on that 
 side of the Atlantic ; and they thought that they were war 
 ranted in the expectation that if the Southern States should as 
 a body undertake to resume the rights which they had surren 
 dered in becoming States, and to form an independent gov 
 ernment, recognition by at least France and England would 
 speedily follow. They hoped that secession would be accom 
 plished without war, but they intended that the South should 
 
158 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 be prepared for war, if Avar should become inevitable, in which 
 the*y were confident of success, a solid South being arrayed 
 against a divided North. 
 
 "While such was the condition of things in the South, the 
 people of the Northern and Western States pursued their 
 usual avocations quite unconscious of impending danger. The 
 threats of secession by those who claimed to be the exponents 
 of Southern sentiment were considered merely an offset to the 
 denunciations of slaverv, and of the Constitution which recoo 1 - 
 
 J O 
 
 nized it, by abolitionists. Most men in the North who had given 
 the subject consideration were convinced that, in the language 
 of Mr. Lincoln, the country could not permanently remain part 
 slave and part free ; and that slavery, inconsistent as it was with 
 the principles upon which the Government was founded, must 
 sooner or later give way to freedom, but how this was to be 
 accomplished none could say. Slavery was the one great ques 
 tion which the boldest and ablest of Northern statesmen con 
 fessed themselves unable to deal with. Few, if any, however, 
 regarded war as the means by which it was to be uprooted and 
 the Union preserved. And so State after State followed the 
 example of South Carolina, adopted ordinances of secession, 
 took possession of all the property of the United States within 
 their reach, and set the authority of the Federal Government 
 at defiance. Indeed it seemed for a time that the Union was 
 to perish without a blow being struck in its defence. In trav 
 elling through southern Indiana in the autumn of 1860 and 
 the following winter, after South Carolina had passed the or 
 dinance of secession, I was amazed and disheartened by the 
 general prevalence of the non-coercive sentiment, the seeming 
 indifference of the people to the danger to which the Govern 
 ment was exposed. As far as I could learn, the same opposi 
 tion to coercion prevailed to a considerable extent in the other 
 free States bordering upon the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, and 
 I could not help feeling that the Union, which I had regarded 
 as being indissoluble, was without real strength or cohesiveness 
 
HEKOISM OF THE SOUTH. 159 
 
 that it was destitute of self-sustaining power that it had no 
 deep hold upon the affections of the people. This feeling was 
 of short duration. The report of the attack upon Fort Sum- 
 ter was like an electric shock to a body seemingly dead, but 
 full of vitality. In a day the current of sentiment throughout 
 all of the non-slaveholding States was changed. Party lines 
 were swept away party divisions ceased. Men who had 
 denounced coercion at once became its advocates ; those who 
 had spoken of the Union which could only be maintained by 
 force as not being worth preserving, were now its champions 
 and foremost in demanding its preservation, no matter what 
 might be the cost. 
 
 I was not among those who supposed that the war would 
 be a short one. I knew that the South was better prepared 
 for war than the North, that there were no braver men in the 
 world than in the Southern States, and that if they should be 
 thoroughly united, time and superior numbers of equally gal 
 lant men would be required to conquer them. I expected 
 that the struggle would be severe and expensive, but I had no 
 expectation that it would be protracted as it was. I under 
 rated the persistency of the Southern people. I did not sup 
 pose it to be possible that the war would continue for four 
 long years, and until the resources of the South had become 
 exhausted. The devotion of the people of the South to what 
 they now acknowledge to have been a bad cause, and the 
 sacrifices they made to sustain it, are without a parallel in 
 history. Their persistent heroism commanded the world s 
 respect, although displayed in efforts to destroy a government 
 under which they had greatly prospered, and to establish one 
 of their own of which slavery was to be the corner-stone. 
 Fortunately for themselves and for the cause of liberty every 
 where, their efforts were not crowned with success. 
 
 Although I had not looked for decided Union victories in 
 the early stages of the war, I was quite unprepared for the 
 defeat of the Union forces in the first battle, at Bull Kun. At 
 
160 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 one o clock of the day on which that battle was fought, as 
 I went from my office in Indianapolis to the Bates House 
 for dinner, the boys were crying in the street, " Great battle 
 at Bull Run Rebels defeated." A glance at one of the slips 
 which had been printed at the office of the Indianapolis 
 Journal confirmed the cry of the venders. I did not shout as 
 the boys did, although I felt like it, but I was overjoyed, as 
 were the other guests, Democrats as well as Republicans. We 
 drank to the health of each other, and especially to the health 
 of the boys in blue. Jubilant were we all, and jubilant were 
 the people in the streets. The joy was of short duration. In 
 two or three hours after I had returned to my office I heard 
 the boys crying again, as it seemed to me in a different tone. 
 Opening my window, so that I might hear distinctly, my 
 heart almost stopped beating as I heard the words, "Rebels 
 reenforced Union army badly beaten Union soldiers flee 
 ing for their lives thousands cut down in their flight by the 
 Black Horse Cavalry." From the " Mount of Delight " I was 
 at once pretty near to the " Slough of Despond." There was 
 no more shouting that day in the streets of Indianapolis, nor 
 was there any over substantial Union victories for long, long, 
 weary months. 
 
 Eight or ten days after this first Bull Run battle I visited 
 Washington. My feelings when I left home were not buoyant ; 
 they were not improved by my visit. Washington seemed to 
 me to be utterly demoralized. I did not see one really cheer 
 ful face, nor did I hear one encouraging word. The President 
 was criticised ; the manner in which the battle was fought 
 was criticised ; criticism was the order of the day. The 
 gloom which this defeat of the Union army had cast over 
 the North was concentrated in Washington. The battle had 
 ended in a panic the city was in a panic. Members of Con 
 gress and other civilians who had gone out to witness a 
 Union victory had returned stricken with terror. If the 
 Confederates had known the real condition of Washington, 
 
EFFECT OF THE BATTLE OF BULL RUN. 361 
 
 and the character of its defences, they might have captured 
 the city and placed their banners upon its public buildings. 
 In the evening of the day on which I reached the city Mr. 
 Lincoln held his last reception for the season. It was one of 
 the hot days of Washington. The Executive Mansion was 
 crowded. Large numbers of the officers of the army in full 
 uniform were present. The President looked jaded and care 
 worn. Everybody seemed to be trying to be cheerful, but 
 none were, except perhaps a few whose sympathies were with 
 the South. The next morning I called with a few friends 
 upon the President. He received us kindly, and tried to 
 amuse us with anecdotes. I did not at that time know him 
 well, and I was surprised that he should relate anecdotes when 
 the Government of which he was the head seemed to be in 
 imminent peril. I have to confess that I left Washington in a 
 very despondent mood. 
 
 The reaction from the despondency into which the North 
 was plunged by the result of the first battle of the war 
 was slow, but it was sure and permanent. The defeat of the 
 Union Army, disastrous as it was, was not without com 
 pensation. It opened to some extent the eyes of the people 
 of the North to the greatness of the conflict in which the 
 nation was engaged to the necessity of united efforts for 
 the preservation of the Government ; it hushed party strife ; 
 it cemented the Union sentiment throughout the country. 
 Thereafter there was no more despondency in the North. 
 Many misfortunes followed, but devotion to the Union, and 
 the determination to preserve it, were strengthened rather 
 than weakened by them. The disaster at Ball s Bluff, where 
 Senator Baker, distinguished alike for his eloquence and 
 bravery, was slain the reverses of the Army of the Poto 
 mac under General McClellan the crushing blow which it re 
 ceived at Fredericksburg under General Burnside its defeat 
 in the second battle of Bull Kun sent bitter grief into thou 
 sands of households and cast gloom over the North ; but 
 11 
 
162 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 they caused neither dismay nor despondency. The determina 
 tion of a vast majority of the people of all the free States to 
 preserve the Government and the Union, no matter what 
 might be the cost in treasure and blood, was never stronger 
 than it was when the Democratic Convention at Chicago, in 
 August, 1864, declared that the war had failed to accomplish 
 the object for which it had been waged, and that hostilities 
 should be discontinued, and nominated General McClellan for 
 the Presidency upon a peace platform. 
 
 " I am here," said Mr. Lincoln, in one of the last conver 
 sations I had with him, " by the blunders of the Democrats-. 
 If, instead of resolving that the war was a failure, they had 
 resolved that I was a failure and denounced me for not more 
 vigorously prosecuting it, I should not have been reelected, 
 and I reckon that you would not have been Secretary of the 
 Treasury." 
 
CHAPTER XV. 
 
 My opposition to the National Banking System in 1862 Justin S. Morrill 
 Visit to the Eastern States Am requested by Secretary Chase to become 
 Comptroller of the Currency My Connection with the Bank of the State 
 of Indiana Dissolved George W. Rathbone my Successor Samuel T. 
 Howard, Deputy Comptroller Rules in Regard to Appointments John 
 BuiToughs Organization of the National Banks Unwillingness of the 
 State Banks to become National Banks, and the Reason therefor Especial 
 Objection to their being Known by Numerals My successors as Comp 
 troller of the Currency Mr. Chase s Opinion of the Legal Tender Acts 
 First Case in regard to their Constitutionality Appointments of Justices 
 Strong and Bradley Extracts from Judge Strong s Opinion in the Second 
 Legal Tender Case Decision in the First Legal Tender Case Overruled 
 by the Second The Third Legal Tender Case Free Comments. 
 
 IN" 1862 I went to Washington to oppose the passage of 
 the bill to establish a national banking system, which, if it 
 passed, might be greatly prejudicial to the State banks, of 
 one of the largest of which I was president. One of the 
 members of Congress with whom I had interviews was Justin 
 S. Morrill, who was as much opposed to the bill as I was. 
 My acquaintance with Mr. Morrill, thus commenced, proved 
 to be not only pleasant but valuable. By the support which 
 he gave to me during my administration of the Treasury 
 Department, he placed me under obligations that I can never 
 forget. No man is more worthy of the honors which have 
 been conferred upon him no man better merits the high repu 
 tation for uprightness and intelligence which he enjoys in the 
 Senate and throughout the country, than Mr. Morrill. 
 
 In March, 1863, I was again in Washington. I had left 
 home with my wife to be absent for a couple of weeks on a 
 pleasure trip. I had been a hard worker without intermis 
 sion for a quarter of a century, and so we decided that we 
 
164 XEN AXD MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 would make a flying visit to the Eastern cities, letting no one 
 at home know where letters would reach us, in order that we 
 might enjoy a few genuine holidays. In the afternoon of 
 the day before we left Washington, we went through the 
 Treasury Department. As I had no business to transact, and 
 was not acquainted with Secretary Chase, I did not feel at 
 liberty to call upon him, but as we passed by the door of his 
 room, I handed my card to his messenger. The next morning 
 we were on our way to Baltimore, where we spent a day very 
 pleasantly. Thence we went to Philadelphia, New York and 
 Plattsburg, where we had been married twenty-five years before, 
 and were at home again within the time fixed for our return. 
 Here, to my surprise, I found a number of telegrams, some of 
 which had followed me from place to place, requesting me to 
 return to Washington, and a letter from Mr. Chase, offering 
 to me the position of Comptroller of the Currency, and express 
 ing an earnest wish that I should accept it. My opinion in 
 regard to the establishment of a national banking sj stem 
 underwent a change after the bill which I had opposed had 
 been amended and become a law. It had become quite certain 
 that the war was not to be brought to an early close, and that 
 the expense of prosecuting it, already largely exceeding its 
 anticipated cost when hostilities were commenced, must be 
 enormously increased before it was ended. It was also equally 
 certain that the notes of the State banks, imperfectly secured 
 as most of them were, could not be safely received in the 
 collection of the public revenues. I had therefore been forced 
 to the conclusion that banks with a perfectly secured circula 
 tion, which would be current throughout the Union, were an 
 absolute necessity, and a careful examination of the Bank Act 
 had satisfied me that this necessity had been met by it. But 
 I was president of a bank which I knew was sound to the 
 core, and in whose welfare I was deeply interested. The offer 
 of Mr. Chase, was therefore, not only unexpected, but embar 
 rassing. I was wedded to the bank which I had worked hard 
 
COMPTROLLER OF THE CURRENCY. 165 
 
 to place in a perfectly solvent condition. I could not resign 
 the presidency of it without severing very agreeable official 
 relations, nor without considerable pecuniary loss, and I had 
 no desire to go to Washington. On the other hand, I had 
 been forced to admit that there was a necessity for a national 
 banking system, and I felt that the Government had a right 
 to any services that I might be able to render in the 
 tremendous struggle in which it was engaged. Being thus in 
 
 oo o o o 
 
 a strait, I did what all men who have sensible wives ought to 
 do, when important questions are to be considered and acted 
 upon I consulted my wife. The conclusion was that I should 
 resign the presidency of the bank, and go to Washington to 
 organize the National Currency Bureau, with the understand 
 ing, however, that I should remain in Washington no longer 
 than might be necessary to give the new banking system a 
 successful start. As soon as this conclusion was reached, I 
 informed Mr. Chase that I would accept the office which he 
 had so kindly tendered to me. This done, I called a special 
 meeting of the board of directors of the Bank of the State, 
 according to the requirements of its by-laws, at which, not 
 without feelings of deep regret on my part, and, as I had good 
 reason to think, on the part of the directors also, I resigned 
 the presidency, and in a few days I was in Washington. My 
 successor as president of the Bank of the State was George 
 W. Rathbone, a gentleman of sound judgment and great 
 aptitude for business, who held the office until the bank went 
 into liquidation, and the branches were reorganized under the 
 national banking system. 
 
 My interview with Mr. Chase, on my arrival at Washing 
 ton, was very pleasant. I was most favorably impressed by 
 his appearance, and by the clearness and directness with 
 which he expressed his views upon the financial condition 
 of the country, and the necessity of a paper currency, other 
 than the United States notes, of undoubted solvency. He 
 spoke of the national banking system as a measure of his 
 
166 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 own, in the success of which he felt a very deep interest. As 
 the interview was about to close, I said to him that I had but 
 one request to make, which was, that as I was to be responsible 
 for the proper organization and management of the bureau, 
 which might become a very important one, I should have the 
 selection of my clerks. To this he readily assented. " Man 
 age," said he, " the bureau in your own way ; when you need 
 clerks, and as you need them, send their names to me and 
 they will be appointed." This understanding was fully carried 
 out. In no instance while I was Comptroller, was an appoint 
 ment made for the bureau which was not at my request. 
 
 The organization of the bureau was undertaken with 
 Samuel T. Howard, Deputy Comptroller, who proved to be 
 by his executive abilities, intelligence and industry admirably 
 fitted for the place ; and two young ladies, Miss John, who 
 died early, and Miss Wilson, now Mrs. McCormick, who, with 
 the exception of a couple of years of married life, has ever 
 since been employed in the bureau, and is one of the most 
 meritorious of its numerous clerks. In the selection of clerks, 
 my habit was to be governed by the appearance and manners 
 of applicants rather than by the recommendations which they 
 presented. One day a young man called at my office and said 
 to me that he understood that the force of the bureau was to 
 be increased, and that he should be glad to be employed. I 
 asked him if he had any recommendations. " I have not," he 
 replied ; " I must be my own." I looked at his sturdy form 
 and intelligent face, which impressed me so favorably that I 
 sent his name to the Secretary, and the next day he was at 
 work as a twelve hundred dollar clerk. I was not mistaken. 
 He was an excellent clerk, competent, faithful, willing. Since 
 then he has been a worker in a different field, and become a 
 most captivating and instructive writer. I never see an 
 article from the pen of John Burroughs, which I do not read 
 with pleasure, and without calling to mind his appearance 
 when he said to me, " I must be my ow r n recommendation." 
 
ORGAXIZIXG THE SYSTEM. 167 
 
 This was only one of many somewhat similar cases. I do not 
 recollect an instance of appointments thus made that did not 
 prove to have been judicious. The privilege which was 
 granted to me as Comptroller was granted by me to the 
 heads of bureaus while I was Secretary. It is one that ought 
 not to be denied to those who are responsible for the manner 
 in which important duties are to be performed. Especially 
 should it not be denied to officers like the Treasurer and 
 Assistant Treasurers of the United States, who are custodians 
 of public moneys who give bonds for the faithful discharge 
 of their duties, and who are legally liable for losses that may 
 happen through the mistake or dishonesty of their subordi 
 nates. 
 
 Considerable time was required after. my appointment for 
 the preparation of circulating notes and of forms to be used 
 in the organization of banks, and for the consideration 
 of the numerous details in the bureau, in order that the 
 machinery might be in good running order when active busi 
 ness was commenced. Summer had come before the First 
 National Bank was authorized to commence business. The 
 First National of Philadelphia, took the lead, with a capital of 
 $150,000. Its organization certificate was issued on the 20th 
 of June. On the same day certificates were issued to the First 
 National of New Haven, with a capital of $300,000 ; to the 
 First National, of Youngstown, Ohio, with a capital of $150,- 
 000 ; to the First National of Stamford, Connecticut, with a 
 capital of $300,000. On the 22d, a certificate was issued to 
 the First National of Chicago (whose present business is larger 
 than that of any other bank in the country), with a capital 
 of $100,000 only ; on the 13th of July, to the First National 
 of Cincinnati, with a capital of $1,000,000. The organizations 
 then increased rapidly, but mainly in the Middle and Western 
 States. Most of the bankers in the large commercial cities of 
 the East regarded the system with distrust. It did not " take" 
 at the start, either in Boston, Philadelphia, or New York. 
 
168 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 The First National Bank of New York, the richest bank 
 ing mine ever opened in that city, was chartered on the 21st of 
 July, with a capital of $200,000 ; the Second, on the 13th of 
 August, with a capital of $300,000 ; the Third, on the 21st of 
 September, with a capital of $500,000. No more were organ 
 ized in New York until February 27, 1864, when the Fourth 
 National was organized with a capital of $5,000,000. It is 
 proper for me to remark that the banks which were organized 
 with small capitals reserved the right to increase them, and in 
 most cases they were from time to time largely increased. 
 None of the large State banks were converted into national 
 banks until nearly seven hundred new banks had been organ 
 ized. There were four causes for the unwillingness of the State 
 banks to become national banks. 
 
 First : The apprehension that the national system might 
 prove to be a repetition of the free-bank system of the AYest, 
 which had been a disreputable failure. 
 
 Second : The opinion that in becoming national banks, and 
 issuing notes secured by Government bonds, their interests 
 would be so identified with the interests of the Government, 
 their credit so dependent upon, so interwoven with, the public 
 credit, that they would be ruined if the integrity of the Union 
 should not be preserved. 
 
 Third : The danger of hostile legislation by Congress, or 
 the annoyances to which they might be exposed by Congres 
 sional interference with their business for partisan purposes. 
 
 Fourth : The requirement, that in order to become national 
 banks, they must relinquish the names to which they had 
 become attached, and be known by numerals. 
 
 I had no great difficulty in satisfying the bankers with 
 whom I had personal interviews or correspondence that three 
 of these objections were unsubstantial. In answer to the first, 
 I pointed out the important particulars in which the national 
 system differed from the free-bank system of the West, in the 
 requirement that the capitals of the national banks should 
 
OVERCOMING OPPOSITION. 169 
 
 be real, and fully paid up ; that their circulation was to be 
 secured by United States bonds, with ten per cent, margin ; 
 that in case of the failure of a bank, its notes would be at once 
 redeemable at the United States Treasury ; that all the banks 
 would be subjected to frequent examinations by men appointed 
 by the Treasury Department. In answer to the second, I took 
 the ground that the interests of the State banks were already 
 so involved with those of the Government, that the fate of the 
 latter would be the fate of the former also ; that whether they 
 remained State banks or became national, they would stand or 
 fall with the Government. In answer to the third, I expressed 
 the opinion that there was as little to fear from Congressional 
 as from State legislation ; that if there was trouble to be appre 
 hended in either direction, it would be in the control which the 
 banks might have over Congress, rather than in annoying inter 
 ference by Congress with their legitimate business. To the 
 fourth I could make no reply. It seemed to me to be unrea 
 sonable that the State banks should be required, in order to be 
 converted into national banks, to surrender the names that had 
 been made honorable by the manner in which their business 
 had been conducted, and accept for a name, a number. This 
 was the only point on which I differed from Mr. Chase in the 
 management of the bureau. He had, before I met him, formed 
 the opinion that the banks should be named the First, Second, 
 Third, and so on, of the town or city in which they were estab 
 lished. This he considered necessary to give the system a 
 national character. Few men were more tenacious of their 
 opinions than Mr. Chase, and he did not yield in this instance 
 until he found that adherence to his ruling stood directly in 
 the way of the perfect success of the system, which he believed 
 to be essential to the national welfare. 
 
 " Do you expect that the Bank of Commerce," said its 
 president to me, " will relinquish its honored name and be 
 known as the Tenth or the Twentieth National Bank of New 
 York? If you do you will find yourself mistaken. On this 
 
170 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 point the leading State banks were a unit. When it was 
 yielded by the Secretary, and they were permitted to retain 
 their old names, with the word national prefixed or affixed, 
 they came into the national system with a rush Boston, as is 
 her wont in all public enterprises, taking the lead. Within 
 less than two years the State banks were superseded by the 
 national, and their notes, the most of which had at best, 
 merely a local and uncertain credit, were withdrawn from cir 
 culation, and their place was filled b}^ notes of perfect solvency, 
 and current through the Union. All this was accomplished 
 without a ripple of disturbance to the current business of the 
 country. The bureau was a bus} T one, and although the clerical 
 force was rapidly increased by raw recruits, the work was so 
 systematized, the machinery kept in such good condition, that 
 there was no confusion and no accumulation of unfinished 
 business. My labors were severe and incessant, but I look 
 back with satisfaction upon the two years which were spent in 
 the organization of the National Currency Bureau on a basis 
 which should only need extension for its increasing business, 
 and in putting into operation a banking system admirably 
 adapted to our republican institutions, and which, by the se 
 curity which it gives to bank-note circulation, is the best that 
 has ever been devised. The office of Comptroller has been ably 
 filled, since I resigned it, by Mr. John J. Tvnox, who held it for 
 many years, and whose reports are sound in doctrine, lucid, 
 and instructive, and by his worthy successor, Mr. Henry W. 
 Cannon, and by his accomplished successor, Mr. W. L. Tren- 
 holm. 
 
 Mr. Chase has been known as the father of the greenbacks. 
 It was by his advice that they were issued, but it was not by 
 his advice that they were made a legal tender. He thought 
 that a large issue of United States notes was absolutely neces 
 sary for the purpose of furnishing the country with currency, 
 and for aiding the sale of bonds which were to be the main 
 reliance of the Government for the means for prosecuting the 
 
CHASE S VIEW OF THE GREENBACKS. 171 
 
 war. lie was opposed to the clause that made the notes a 
 legal tender, and his opposition to it was only overcome by the 
 apprehension of his friends, and perhaps his own, that unless 
 this character were given to them they might not be current, 
 lie never expressed the opinion that the Legal Tender Acts were 
 constitutional, nor did he expect that the notes of which they 
 authorized the issue would become a permanent circulation. 
 This is evident from the fact that they were made convertible 
 into the first issue (five hundred millions) of the six per cent, 
 five-twenty bonds. It was Mr. Chase s expectation that the 
 notes would greatly aid the negotiation of the loan, and that 
 they would be absorbed by the bonds as soon as the market 
 price of bonds was above par. The notes did facilitate the 
 negotiation of the bonds, and they would have disappeared 
 from circulation if the provision of the act which made them 
 convertible into bonds had not been repealed. This provision 
 was repealed at the instance of Mr. Chase, because he thought 
 it stood in the way of successful negotiation of further neces 
 sary loans. 
 
 When the war was over and the army had been disbanded, 
 and all demands upon the treasury had been provided for, 
 some months after I was appointed Secretary, the great work 
 of converting before they matured the compound interest 
 bearing notes, the seven and three-tenth notes, etc., etc., into 
 bonds, was to be undertaken. While this work was going on, 
 it was of the utmost importance that there should be no dis 
 turbance in the financial condition of the country, and I was 
 in constant fear that a case then pending before the Supreme 
 Court, involving the constitutionality of the Legal Tender Acts, 
 might be taken up and decided adversely before this work had 
 been completed. I had no reason to doubt as to what the 
 opinion of Mr. Chase, the Chief Justice, would be when he was 
 called upon to face the question judicially ; and I thought if 
 he, who was in a measure responsible for the acts, considered 
 them unconstitutional, that his associates would be quite sure 
 
172 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUEY. 
 
 to agree with him. I was greatly relieved when all the tem 
 porary obligations of the Government had been converted into 
 bonds, and the Treasury Department was prepared for the 
 expected decision, that the Legal Tender Acts w^ere not war 
 ranted by the Constitution. The case referred to was dis 
 missed on what grounds I do not recollect and there was no 
 decision by the Supreme Court upon this most important ques 
 tion until after I had ceased to be Secretary of the Treasury. 
 
 The first case involving the constitutionality of the Legal 
 Tender Acts, decided by the Supreme Court, was in December, 
 1869 (Hepburn v. Griswold). The question in this case was, 
 whether the holder of a note executed before the passage of the 
 first Legal Tender Act (the Act of February 25, 1862) when coin 
 was the only standard of value, should be compelled to receive 
 in payment thereof legal tender notes, which then, measured by 
 coin, were at a heavy discount in other words, whether Con 
 gress had the constitutional authority to make anything but 
 gold and silver lawful money in satisfaction of contracts 
 entered into before the Act w r as passed. The question, Can 
 Congress make such notes a legal tender for contracts made 
 after the passage of the Act ? was not involved in the case, but 
 it was very clear from the opinion of the Court, delivered by 
 the Chief Justice, that a majority of the justices regarded the 
 Act as being unconstitutional in its application to contracts 
 made after as well as to those made before the Act was passed. 
 Upon the question before the Court, the justices were divided 
 in opinion, five, including the Chief Justice, agreeing that the 
 Act was invalid to the extent that it made the notes a legal 
 tender on contracts executed prior to its enactment, three 
 being of the opinion that it was valid. Against the constitu 
 tionality of the Act, in its application to the case under consid 
 eration, were the Chief Justice and Justices Nelson, Grier, 
 Clifford and Field ; in favor of its constitutionality were Jus 
 tices Miller, Swayne and Davis. The opinion of the dissent- 
 
THE LEGAL TENDER ACTS. 173 
 
 ing justices was delivered by Justice Miller. This decision 
 Avas unfavorably received by the Administration, and it was 
 especially offensive to the great railroad companies whose bonds 
 were executed prior to February 25, 1862, inasmuch as it 
 made the interest and principal of their bonds payable in coin. 
 The second Legal Tender case (Knox v. Lee, and Parker v. 
 Davis), was decided in December, 1STO, the Court then con 
 sisting of nine judges ; the place of Judge Grier, who had 
 resigned, having been filled by the appointment of Judge 
 Strong, and Judge Bradley having been appointed under 
 an act which took effect in December, 1869, increasing 
 the number of justices to nine. It was no secret, indeed 
 it was a matter of public notoriety, that these justices 
 were appointed in order that the decision of 1869 might 
 be reversed. No one who knew them doubted their integ 
 rity or ability their perfect fitness for the places they 
 were called to fill ; but their opinions in regard to the 
 constitutionality of the Legal Tender Acts, had been clearly 
 and publicly expressed, and to this fact their appointment was 
 attributed. It was therefore pretty well known what the 
 decision would be when the question was again presented. It 
 was understood that no change had taken place in the opinions 
 of the justices who were upon the bench when the first Legal 
 Tender case was decided, and still remained upon it ; that 
 Messrs. Swayne, Davis and Miller, would adhere to the opinion 
 expressed in that case, and that with Justices Strong and 
 Bradley, the Court would stand five in support of the Act and 
 four against it. By a majority of the Court, five to four, the 
 judgment rendered a year before was reversed, and an Act of 
 Congress, making the depreciated notes a legal tender in pay 
 ment of pre-existing contracts was declared to be constitu 
 tional ; that creditors were bound to receive on contracts call 
 ing for dollars, the notes of the Government promising to pay 
 dollars, but on which dollars could not be obtained. This 
 judgment of the court established the validity of the Legal 
 
174 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Tender Acts, on the ground chiefly that Congress regarded 
 them as a necessary means of preserving the Government in a 
 period of extraordinary emergency. It did not settle the 
 question as to the authority of Congress to make Government 
 notes lawful money, when no emergency existed, in a time of 
 peace and general prosperity. The argument of Justice Strong, 
 in expressing the opinion of the Court in the second Legal Ten 
 der case, was based upon what was considered a fact, that the 
 acts were necessary so save the country from ruin. His lan 
 guage on this point was this : 
 
 " "We do not propose to dilate at length upon the circum 
 stances in which the country was placed when Congress 
 attempted to make treasury notes a legal tender. They are 
 of too recent occurrence to justify enlarged description. 
 Suffice it to say that a civil w r ar was then raging, which 
 seriously threatened the overthrow of the Government, and 
 even the Constitution itself. It demanded the equipment and 
 support of large armies and navies, and the employment of 
 money to an extent beyond the capacity of all ordinary 
 sources of supply. Meanwhile the public treasury was nearly 
 empty, and the credit of the Government, if not stretched to 
 its utmost tension, had become nearly exhausted. Moneyed 
 institutions had advanced largely of their means, and more 
 could not be expected of them. They had been compelled to 
 suspend specie payments. Taxation was inadequate to pay 
 even the interest on the debt already incurred, and it was 
 impossible to await the income of additional taxes. The 
 necessity was immediate and pressing. The army was unpaid. 
 There was then due to the soldiers in the field nearly a score 
 of millions of dollars. The requisitions from the War and 
 Navy departments for supplies exceeded fifty millions, and 
 the current expenditure was over one million per day. The 
 entire amount of coin in the country, including that in private 
 hands as well as that in banking institutions, was insufficient 
 to supply the need of the Government three months, had it 
 all been poured into the Treasury. Foreign credit we had 
 none. We say nothing of the overhanging paralysis of trade, 
 and of business generally, which threatened loss of confidence 
 in the ability of the Government to maintain its continued 
 existence, and therefore the complete destruction of all remain 
 ing national credit. 
 
JUSTICE STRONG S ERROR. 175 
 
 It was at such a time and in such circumstances that Con 
 gress was called upon to device means for maintaining the 
 army and navy, for securing the large supplies of money 
 needed for the preservation of the Government created by 
 the Constitution. It was at such a time and in such an emer 
 gency that the Legal Tender Acts were passed. Xow. if it 
 were" certain that nothing else would have supplied the abso 
 lute necessities of the Treasury, that nothing else would have 
 enabled the Government to maintain its armies and navy, that 
 nothing else would have saved the Government and the Con 
 stitution from destruction, while the Legal Tender Acts would, 
 could any one be bold enough to assert that Congress trans 
 gressed its powers ? Or, if these enactments did not work 
 these results, can it be maintained now that they were not for 
 a legitimate end, or appropriate and adapted to that end in 
 the language of Chief Justice Marshall ? That they did work 
 such results is not to be doubted. Something revived the 
 drooping faith of the people ; something brought immediately 
 to the Government s aid the resources of the nation, and 
 something enabled the successful prosecution of the war. and 
 the preservation of the national life. What was it, if not the 
 Legal Tender enactments ? " 
 
 In all this, Justice Strong was undoubtedly wrong. The 
 quality of legal tender which was given to the notes was not 
 necessary to make them current. It added nothing to their 
 real value. They would have circulated just as freely and 
 performed all the service for which they were issued as well 
 without the legal tender quality as with it. The confidence of 
 the people in these notes depended not upon their being 
 declared to be lawful money, but upon the ability of the 
 Government to redeem them. Their market value rose and 
 fell with the successes or reverses of the Federal armies. As 
 the amount of issue was limited, and as the notes were receiv 
 able for Government loans and in payment of all Government 
 dues except import duties, it was a matter of surprise that 
 they went as low as they did. In making them a legal 
 tender, Congress followed bad examples. It was just as 
 powerless to make them the equivalent of real money by 
 declaring them to be a legal tender, as was the Continental 
 
176 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Congress to give to the Continental notes, and the French 
 Government to give to assignats, intrinsic and reliable value. 
 The lowest point to which the Legal Tender notes fell, was 
 when Congress, in order to appreciate them, attempted to pre 
 vent dealings in gold in the public exchanges, by the passage 
 of the gold bill (July, 1864). It was then, if I rightly recol 
 lect, that one hundred dollars in gold was equal in the New 
 York Stock and Gold exchanges, to two hundred and eighty- 
 five dollars of Legal Tender notes. Nothing ought to have 
 been clearer from the result of similar experiments than that 
 governments are absolutely impotent to give anything more 
 than a limited and artificial value to notes that are not con 
 vertible into coin. According to the opinion of the Court, as 
 expressed by Justice Strong : " It is hardly correct to speak 
 of a standard of value when that value is an ideal thing." If 
 this is true, then nations have been in error from the very com 
 mencement of commerce and trade. From the earliest period 
 of which there is any record, gold and silver have been used as 
 a measure of value, and a measure of value is necessarily a 
 standard. These metals were selected because they were the 
 only metals fitted for current use as money. They are, in 
 fact, the only metals which suffer but very little from 
 abrasion, which can be changed from bullion to coin, and from 
 coin to bullion again, without perceptible loss. Besides, the 
 supply always has been and is quite sure of continuing to be 
 limited, and the cost of obtaining them equal to, if not greater 
 than, the value fixed upon them when coined. It is true that 
 neither gold nor silver was coined until a comparatively recent 
 period, but they had been used as a measure of value centuries 
 before, and this is an evidence of their intrinsic value. In all 
 but the simplest trade, carried on by an exchange of one 
 article of use for another, a standard of value was needed. 
 This standard was found in the precious metals gold and 
 silver, and they will continue to be the standard until some 
 thing is discovered better fitted in all respects for the uses to 
 
THE FAR-REACHING THIRD DECISION. 177 
 
 which they have been applied. The United States notes were 
 needed at the time they were issued. The mistake was in 
 clothing them with the attributes of real money. By their 
 being made a legal tender, they enabled, most unjustly, debt 
 ors to use them in discharge of obligations executed when 
 coin was the only standard, but their value was not enhanced 
 by it. Their real value depended, not upon their being de 
 clared to be lawful money, but, as I have said, upon their being 
 receivable for Government loans and public dues, and the abil 
 ity and disposition of the Government to redeem them in coin. 
 By the decision in the second Legal Tender case, the decis 
 ion of the Court in the first case \vas reversed, and the doc 
 trine established that at a time of great emergency, when the 
 Government was engaged in a gigantic war for the mainte 
 nance of its authority, and was in imminent danger of being over 
 thrown, it was proper for Congress to do whatever was deemed 
 to be necessary and not absolutely prohibited by the Consti 
 tution, for its preservation, and that, as the Legal Tender acts 
 were passed at such a period and for such a purpose, they were 
 not unconstitutional. The question, therefore, of the author 
 ity of Congress to make Government notes, issued or reissued 
 in a time of peace, and when the national authority was estab 
 lished throughout the country, a legal tender, was regarded as 
 being an open one. In the third Legal Tender case, that ques 
 tion, the most important in its far-reaching character and its 
 bearings upon the nature of the Federal Government that had 
 ever been presented to the Court, was definitely decided. Mi 1 . 
 Justice Gray, in delivering the opinion of the Court, said : " The 
 simple question to be considered is, whether United States 
 notes, issued in a time of war, under acts of Congress declar 
 ing them to be a legal tender in payment of private debts, and 
 afterwards in a time of peace re-issued, can, under the Consti 
 tution, be a legal tender in payment of such debts." This 
 question, Justice Field alone dissenting, was decided in the 
 affirmative, and this decision covered the whole ground of 
 12 
 
178 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 controversy between those who were of the opinion that Con 
 gress possessed no power not expressly granted by the Consti 
 tution, or necessary to render effective the power that was 
 thus granted, and those who were of the opinion that all 
 power not absolutely prohibited, belonged to Congress, to be 
 exercised whenever a majority of both branches and the Presi 
 dent should consider the exercise of it necessary or expedient : 
 between those who thought that Congress possessed no power 
 not expressly granted, and those who thought that Congress 
 possessed all power not expressly prohibited by the Consti 
 tution. 
 
 One of the most singular things in the trial of these Legal 
 Tender cases was the fact that the attorneys in their argu 
 ments, and the judges in their opinions, referred to the decis 
 ion pronounced by Chief Justice Marshall, in the celebrated 
 case of McCulloch v. The State of Maryland a decision not 
 more remarkable for the ability which it displayed, than for 
 the clearness and precision of its language for the support of 
 antagonistic and irreconcilable doctrines. The decision of the 
 Court in this last case was a surprise to the country. It estab 
 lished the authority of Congress, in times of peace as well as in 
 times of war whether the treasury is full or empty to make 
 United States notes a legal tender for the payment of private 
 debts, no matter how large the issue or how small their 
 value when measured by coin. It was admitted that no such 
 power was distinctly conferred by the Constitution, and it was 
 not contended that this power was necessary for the exe 
 cution of what was expressly given. The power expressly 
 granted to Congress was to coin money, and regulate the value 
 thereof, and of foreign coins. The power to make Government 
 notes a legal tender was certainly not inferable from the 
 power to coin money, and hence the Court, in deciding that 
 the Legal Tender Acts were not unconstitutional, was com 
 pelled to take the ground that the United States was a nation 
 with powers limited only by the language of the Constitution ; 
 
WHAT GIVES PAPER MONEY VALUE. 179 
 
 that what the Constitution did not absolutely forbid, Congress 
 might lawfully do ; that the power to make United States 
 notes a legal tender grew out of the national sovereignty insti 
 tuted by the Constitution. It is not for me to criticise the 
 judgment of the justices of the Supreme Court, for whose 
 learning, wisdom and uprightness I have profound respect. 
 This much it is proper, however, for me to say, as it is obvious 
 to everybody, that this decision relieves Congress from what 
 have heretofore been considered well defined restrictions, and 
 clothes a republican government with imperial power. 
 
 There is, however, a higher power than imperial po\ver 
 which controls the value of paper money. It may be made a 
 legal tender, and the people may be compelled to use it as 
 money, but its real value depends upon the relation which it 
 bears to coin. Unless convertible, depreciation cannot be pre 
 vented by acts of Congress, and the extent of its depreciation 
 will depend upon the amount in circulation, and the financial 
 condition of the country. There is no real money but gold 
 and silver. It is unfortunate that this fact was not appre 
 ciated when the Legal Tender Acts were passed. By the Con 
 stitution, u the powers not delegated to the United States, 
 nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States 
 respectively, or to the people." This clear and unmistakable 
 restriction of the powers of Congress would not have been dis 
 regarded had not the Government been engaged in a terrih c 
 struggle for its existence. No prominent man when they were 
 passed thought that the Legal Tender Acts were constitu 
 tional. The simple fact that the authority of Congress to 
 provide for the punishment of counterfeiting was limited to 
 " the counterfeiting of the securities and current coin of the 
 United States," makes it clear to ordinary comprehensions 
 that the framers of the Constitution did not contemplate the 
 issue of notes as money. 
 
 I have said that Mr. Chase has been known as the father 
 of the greenbacks (the United States legal tender notes). It is 
 
180 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 true that when these notes became a very popular currency, 
 and he was aspiring to the Presidency, he was quite willing to 
 acknowledge his paternity ; but the great scheme upon which 
 he desired that his financial reputation should rest was the 
 national banking system. That this system has been of ines 
 timable benefit to the country, all who have knowledge of the 
 systems which it superseded unhesitatingly admit. It is a sys 
 tem that ought to be perpetuated, although its perpetuation 
 will require the continued existence of a part of our national 
 debt. With the opinions which I entertain in regard to this 
 debt, I can say nothing stronger in its behalf. 
 
CHAPTER XVI. 
 
 Salmon P. Chase Entitled to the Gratitude of his Countrymen for Services 
 as Secretary of the Treasury Condition of the Treasury when he 
 Entered It His Two Mistakes His Ambition to be Chief Justice Not 
 Satisfied after his Ambition had been Gratified Abraham Lincoln His 
 Educational Advantages His Knowledge of Men and his Far-seeing 
 Wisdom William P. Fessenden His Administration of the Treasury 
 His Statesmanship Am Appointed Secretary of the Treasury Thurlow 
 Weed s Agency in the Appointment Extracts from my Advice to 
 National Banks when Comptroller of the Currency Extracts from my 
 Speech at Fort Wayne in October, 1865 My Opinions of the National 
 Debt. 
 
 M 
 
 R. CHASE was one of the most extraordinary men that 
 our country has produced. In 1837 he was pointed out 
 to me in the Cincinnati court-house as the rising young 
 member of the bar, which was even then distinguished by 
 the high character of its lawyers. Had he continued in the 
 practice, he would have been the peer of Henry Stansbury in 
 legal accomplishments, and have come up to the standard of 
 Thomas Ewing, the ablest lawyer who has appeared west of 
 the Alleghanies. His mind was clear and logical, comprehen 
 sive in its grasp, and certain in its conclusions. lie was a fine 
 scholar, a master of the English tongue. He spoke with ease 
 and distinctness. He was not what might be called a fluent, 
 nor, according to the American idea (which is rapidly chang 
 ing) an eloquent speaker ; but he had few equals in analyzing 
 difficult questions and making abstruse subjects intelligible. 
 Inclined to be dogmatic, he was nevertheless genial in social 
 intercourse, and at times fascinating. In manners he was 
 courtly without assumption ; in opinion, tenacious without 
 intolerance. He was strong in his convictions, and steadfast 
 in his principles. Hostile to slavery, and a strict construe- 
 
182 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 tionist, lie was willing to yield to the slave power just what 
 was granted by the Constitution, not an iota more. In 
 his opinion, slavery was a local institution, of which the 
 States in which it existed had exclusive control, and which 
 Congress had .no authority to extend or even to sanction. 
 He was, therefore, heartily opposed to its extension into the 
 territories, and to its existence in any part of the public 
 domain ; but he was at the same time opposed to any outside 
 interference with it in the slave-holding States. In a word, 
 his hatred of slavery was subordinated to his reverence for the 
 Constitution. 
 
 The movements of the armies, the great battles that were 
 fought with varying success on both sides, so absorbed the 
 public attention that comparatively little interest was felt in 
 the measures that were adopted to provide the means to meet 
 the enormous and daily increasing demands upon the treas 
 ury. It was the successful general who was the recipient 
 of public honors, not the man by whose agency the sinews 
 of war were supplied ; and yet but for the successful 
 administration of the Treasury Department during the war, 
 the Union would have been riven asunder. If I were 
 asked to designate the man whose services, next to Mr. Lin 
 coln s, were of the greatest value to the country, from 
 March, 1861, to July, 1864-, I should unhesitatingly name 
 Salmon P. Chase. When Mr. Chase was appointed Secretary, 
 the public credit was lower than that of any other great 
 nation. The treasury was empty. The annual expenditures 
 had for some years exceeded the revenues. To meet the 
 deficiencies, shifts were resorted to which, while they gave 
 present relief to the treasury, increased its embarrassment. 
 To show how low the public credit was at the close of Mr. 
 Buchanan s administration, it is only necessary to state that 
 u in December, 1860, when the national debt was less than 
 $65,000,000, proposals were invited by the Secretary of the 
 Treasury for $5,000,000 of treasury notes (the amount re- 
 
THE FINANCIAL OUTLOOK IX 1861. 183 
 
 quired to meet debts falling due and payable on the 1st of 
 January following), to bear such rates of interest as might be 
 proposed by bidders and agreed to by the Secretary. For 
 these notes, bids to the amount of $1,831,000, at twelve per 
 cent, interest were accepted, and bids for $-4:05,000, at from 
 fifteen to thirty -six per cent, interest, were rejected. Soon 
 after the balance of this loan ($3,169,000) was taken by the 
 Bank of Commerce, Xew York, and its associates, at twelve 
 per cent, interest. Such was the credit of the Government 
 when the country, although disturbed by the threatened seces 
 sion of some of the Southern States, was in an unusually pros 
 perous condition. 
 
 In February, 1861, proposals were invited for twenty -year 
 six per cent, bonds. Offers for these to the amount of 
 $8,006,000, at ninety per cent, were accepted, and offers 
 for $6,454,250, at a lower rate than ninety, were rejected. 
 In March following, proposals were invited for more of 
 the same kind of bonds, for which offers to the amount of 
 $3,099,000, at ninety-four per cent., and upwards were accepted, 
 (there were but three bids, amounting to $21,000, above ninety- 
 four), and offers for $23,983,000. at less than ninety-four were 
 rejected. Such was the condition of the treasury when Mr. 
 Chase entered upon the discharge of his duties. A more dis 
 couraging financial outlook can hardly be imagined. The 
 Government was without credit the treasury without money. 
 Eight States had adopted ordinances to dissolve their connec 
 tion with the Union ; three others were quite sure to follow 
 their example the loyalty of Maryland, Missouri and Ken 
 tucky was questionable and war clouds were gathering all 
 along the southern horizon. It was obvious, if war should 
 occur, that no money could be borrowed on the other side of 
 the Atlantic. The tone of the European, and especially the 
 English press, which with a single exception was in sympathy 
 with the South, left no room for doubt on this point. It was 
 openly hostile to the North, and this hostility never ceased 
 
184 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 until the war was ended. When the United States notes, 
 with which the six per cent, bonds could be obtained at 
 par, were greatly depreciated, German capitalists purchased 
 freely, and thereby relieved to some extent, the home market, 
 but not a bond could be sold in either the English or French 
 markets. Mr. Chase perceived, upon entering upon the dis 
 charge of his duties, that the home market was the only one 
 in which the United States securities could be disposed of 
 that to the people of the loyal States he must look for the sup 
 port of the treasury. 
 
 It is not necessary for me to speak of the various loans that 
 were negotiated, and the taxes that were imposed to raise the 
 immense sums that were needed in the prosecution of the most 
 expensive war that the world has ever known. It is enough 
 for me merely to refer to the extraordinary fact that the 
 people were patient under very burdensome taxes, taxes to 
 which they were entirely unaccustomed, taxes direct and 
 indirect, taxes upon almost everything that they consumed, 
 taxes which before the war it would have been considered 
 impossible to collect; and to the still more extraordinary 
 fact that the public credit steadily improved, notwithstand 
 ing the rapid increase of the public debt, and was higher when 
 it reached the enormous sum of $2,757,803,686, as it did in 
 August, 1865, than it was when the Government did not owe 
 a dollar. Not alone to Mr. Chase is the honor due for the 
 financial success of the Government in its desperate struggle 
 for the maintenance of its integrity, but a very large share of 
 it certainly belongs to him. It was by his advice that taxes 
 were imposed and loans were authorized. It was by him that 
 the most important negotiations were accomplished, and it 
 was in accordance with his general financial policy that the 
 Department Avas administered after his resignation. He was 
 the manager of the finances from March, 1861, to July, 186-i, 
 and by their successful management during that gloomy and 
 momentous period, he established a lasting claim upon the 
 
MR. CHASE S GREAT SERVICES. 185 
 
 respect and gratitude of his countrymen. To him, more than 
 to any other single man, always excepting Abraham Lincoln, 
 are they indebted for the preservation of the national unity. 
 To the worshippers of our great military captains, this may 
 seem absurd, but not to those who comprehend the difficulties 
 which Mr. Chase encountered in building up the national 
 credit, which had been broken down by the bad management 
 of the Secretary of the Treasury of the next preceding admin 
 istration, and in improving it when the national unity was in 
 peril. Prior to becoming Secretary of the Treasury, Mr. 
 Chase had had no financial experience. lie was not a financier, 
 but he had the qualities that were needed in the head of the 
 Treasury Department at that particular time. He was clear 
 headed, self-possessed, self-confident, patriotic, hopeful, bold, 
 and he succeeded when trained financiers, Avho are usually con 
 servative and cautious, would have failed. Nor was he lack 
 ing in executive ability. The Treasury Department in 1861 
 was not larger in working force than one of its present 
 bureaus. It became in less than four years the largest finan 
 cial department in the world. Its clerical force during that 
 period was increased ten-fold, and consequently a large part of 
 its important work was performed by inexperienced hands, 
 and vet there was no confusion, and no irregularities that were 
 
 / O 
 
 not speedily corrected. I do not exaggerate when I say that 
 there was really more hard and difficult work done in a single 
 year in a single bureau the Bureau of Internal Revenue (for 
 the admirable organization of which the country is indebted 
 to George S. Boutwell) than was done in the whole Depart 
 ment from the establishment of the Government up to 1861. 
 
 That Mr. Chase made some mistakes, is admitted by his 
 warmest friends if he had not, he would have been more 
 than mortal. lie was called upon to perform duties of the 
 highest importance to his country duties to which he was 
 entirely unaccustomed, and for the performance of which he 
 had no opportunity for preparation. His work was gigantic, 
 
186 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 and even the most critical were compelled to acknowledge 
 that on the Avhole it was done well. Two mistakes he admit 
 ted one, in consenting that the United States notes should 
 be made a legal tender ; the other, in advising the repeal of the 
 clause in the first Legal Tender act, which made the notes 
 convertible into bonds. His friends were forced to admit that 
 he made two mistakes of a different character one in permit 
 ting his name to be used as a candidate for the Presidency 
 while he was a member of Mr. Lincoln s Cabinet; the other, in 
 resigning when his services as Secretary of the Treasurv were 
 
 O O *, / 
 
 greatly needed. The acknowledged cause of his resignation 
 was a disagreement between the President and himself in 
 regard to the appointment of a successor to Mr. Cisco in the 
 office of Assistant Treasurer at New York. The real cause 
 was the interruption of their pleasant relations by political 
 rivalry. Mr. Chase s resignation was promptly accepted I 
 think to his surprise, I am sure to his lasting regret. His 
 place in public estimation would have been higher, and he 
 would have been a much happier man, if, instead of desiring to 
 be President, and permitting his name to be used in opposition 
 to that of his chief, he had been content to remain at the 
 head of the Treasury Department until the work which he had 
 undertaken amid great discouragements, and had prosecuted 
 with so much vigor and boldness, had been completed. 
 
 Nothing is so captivating and yet so dangerous, to our pub 
 lic men, as the whisperings of the siren, exciting aspirations 
 for the Presidency which are never realized and which never 
 die. In a conversation which I had with Mr. Chase, in 1863, 
 he remarked that there was only one office which he had 
 heartily desired the office of Chief Justice of the Supreme 
 Court. I dined with him a couple of weeks after the coveted 
 honor had been conferred upon him, and I was pained by dis 
 covering that he was far from being satisfied. As a justice of 
 the Supreme Court, he had no favors to grant, no patronage 
 to wield. High as the position was, it was not the one to 
 
MR. CHASE AS CHIEF JUSTICE. 187 
 
 which he had really aspired. To him it seemed like retirement 
 from public life. There was another thing that was undoubt 
 edly weighing upon him, although he did not suggest it. lie 
 had not been in the active practice of the law for twenty 
 years, nor had he been able during that period to devote any 
 time to legal studies. As an active politician, the leader of the 
 Anti-Slavery party in Ohio, as Governor, United States Sen 
 ator, and Secretary of the Treasury, he had been otherwise 
 fully employed ; so that when he went upon the bench he 
 was unfamiliar with the work which he was called upon to 
 perform. He perceived, therefore, that unless he shrank from 
 his proper share of the duties of the Court (and that he was 
 not disposed to do), he would for a time labor under great dis 
 advantages. He did have to work much harder in the inves 
 tigation of legal questions, and in the preparation of opinions, 
 than any of his associates. It was undoubtedly this hard 
 work and the disappointment of his political ambition that 
 shortened his life. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln s high appreciation of Mr. Chase s ability and 
 character was exhibited by his appointing him to be Chief 
 Justice. He hesitated for some days, while the matter was 
 under consideration, to send his name to the Senate, under the 
 apprehension that he might be somewhat rigorous in his judg 
 ment of some of the executive acts, and especially those of the 
 Secretary of War, if suit should be brought involving questions 
 that could only be settled by the Supreme Court. Knowing 
 that my relations with Mr. Chase were intimate, he sent for 
 me one day, and after explaining the nature of his fears, asked 
 me what I thought about them. "Why, Mr. President," I 
 replied, " you have no reason for fears on that score. Mr. 
 Chase is in the same box with yourself and Mr. Stanton. He 
 favored and advised, as he has himself informed me, the dis 
 persion by force of the Maryland Legislature, and if anything 
 more illegal than that would have been has been done, I have 
 not heard of it." The President did not say that that 
 
188 MEX AXD MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 reminded him of a story, but he laughed heartily and the 
 interview was ended. It may be proper for me to remark 
 here, that the personal relations between Mr. Lincoln and Mr. 
 Chase Avere never cordial. They were about as unlike in 
 appearance, in education, in manners, in taste, and in temper 
 ament, as two eminent men could be. Mr. Chase had received 
 a classical education, and until he entered the political field 
 and became the leader of the Anti-Slavery party of Ohio, he 
 had been a student of general literature ; in appearance he was 
 impressive, in manner stately, in taste refined, in tempera 
 ment cold. Although the larger part of his early life was 
 passed in the West, he was not " Westernized." He cracked 
 no jokes, and he had no aptitude for story-telling. He did 
 not and could not appreciate those qualities which brought 
 Mr. Lincoln so close to the hearts of the people. Self-reliant, 
 rapid in conclusions, and prompt in action, he would not, had 
 he been President in the spring of 1861, have waited for 
 South Carolina to strike the first blow ; it was therefore for 
 tunate that he was not in Mr. Lincoln s place. 
 
 Mr. Lincoln had no educational advantages in his early 
 life. In appearance he was unprepossessing, in manners 
 ungraceful, in taste unrefined, or at least peculiar, but he was 
 warm-hearted and genial. In knowledge of men, in strong 
 common sense, in sound judgment, in sagacity, Mr. Lincoln 
 had no superior. He was unassuming, patient, hopeful, far-see 
 ing. He was also one of the bravest of men. In saying this 
 I do not refer to personal courage, in which he was by no 
 means deficient ; but to bravery of a higher and rarer kind- 
 bravery which was steadfast under the criticism of his friends 
 and the assaults of his enemies. His inaction for some weeks 
 after his inauguration greatly disappointed many of his most 
 devoted political adherents, who became fearful that it indi 
 cated indecision ; and the feeling became widespread that he 
 lacked nerve one of the most essential qualities in a states 
 man who is called upon to act when danger is imminent and 
 
LINCOLN S WISE PATIENCE. 189 
 
 great interests are at stake. In this he was misjudged. He 
 was anxious to prevent a decided rupture of the relations of 
 the Government with the Southern States, and lie was deter 
 mined if a rupture should occur that the Administration should 
 not be responsible for it. It was his duty to enforce obedience 
 to the federal authority throughout the Union, but he hoped 
 that this might be accomplished in the Southern States with 
 out a resort to arms, lie knew how strong the opposition 
 was in the West to what was called coercion the coercion of 
 sovereign States, and he foresaw that if a conflict should occur, 
 and the Government should be regarded as the aggressor, it 
 would fail to command hearty support in that section, and 
 how important it therefore was, if war was to be the result of 
 attempts to execute the law, that the first blow should not be 
 struck by the Government. His wisdom was vindicated by 
 the manner in which the report of the cannonade upon Fort 
 Surater was received throughout the loyal States. It was, as 
 I have remarked, like an electric shock to a body seemingly 
 inanimate, but which was full of life. It vitalized the dormant 
 patriotism of the people, it hushed party strife, it united Repub 
 licans and Democrats in a common cause the defence of the 
 Union. Thenceforward, many who had been the opponents of 
 coercion were its strongest advocates. Some of them attained 
 high distinction in the field. 
 
 Throughout his administration Mr. Lincoln was wiser than 
 his assailants, wiser than his friends. Beside the attacks of his 
 political enemies, to which he was indifferent, he was con 
 stantly charged, by those who claimed to be friendly, with 
 hesitation, when hesitation was dangerous. They were, for 
 instance, impatient at his tardiness in using his war power to 
 free the slaves, and they censured him without stint. He was 
 troubled by this censure, but his purposes were not shaken 
 bv it. Although one of the mildest of men, he was 
 unviekling to efforts which were made to force him to acts 
 
 . O 
 
 which he considered erroneous in themselves, or erroneous be- 
 
190 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 cause untimely. His aim was to keep abreast with the public 
 sentiment, with which no man was better acquainted, and not 
 to go too fast to avoid the charge of going too slow. He 
 issued his celebrated Emancipation Proclamation when he 
 thought the people were prepared for it, and when the mili 
 tary condition of the country seemed to justify it. It came at 
 the right time ; it breathed the right spirit, and it was hailed 
 with almost universal satisfaction in all the loyal States. I 
 never think of the manner in which Mr. Lincoln performed 
 the most difficult and responsible duties which ever devolved 
 upon mortal man ; of the enormous labors which he per 
 formed ; of his faith in the right, his constancy, his hopeful 
 ness, his sagacity, and his patience under unmerited and 
 bitter criticism, without feelings of admiration akin to rev 
 erence. 
 
 When Mr. Chase resigned, the eyes of the people turned to 
 Mr. Fessenden as the right man to be his successor. Mr. Fes- 
 senden s acknowledged ability and high character, and the 
 financial knowledge which he had displayed as Chairman of 
 the Finance Committee of the Senate, were a sufficient guar 
 anty that under his direction the business of the Treasury 
 Department would be uprightly and ably conducted. He 
 accepted the office with extreme reluctance. His business had 
 been to assist in making laws, not in executing them. He was 
 distrustful of his executive ability. The duties which he was 
 required to perform were distasteful to him from the start, 
 and the longer he remained in office the more distasteful they 
 became to him. Besides, he was not physically strong. He 
 was disinclined, therefore, to daily, incessant labor, especially 
 to what seemed to him to be mere drudgery. Then, too, his 
 desire was to return to the Senate, and he was afraid that in 
 important transactions he might subject himself to criticism 
 which would prejudice his election. He knew, for instance, 
 that Mr. Chase had been sharply criticised for employing an 
 agent in the negotiation of loans, and so instead of following 
 
WILLIAM P. FESSENDEN. 191 
 
 Mr. Chase s example, he attempted to supply the treasury with 
 money through the instrumentality of the national banks. 
 He addressed a circular letter, appealing strongly to them to 
 subscribe directly and liberally for the seven-and-three-tenth 
 notes, and to use their best efforts to dispose of them to their 
 customers. The appeal was not responded to as he hoped and 
 anticipated that it would be, and he was compelled, after 
 some delay, to avail himself of the services of the same agent, 
 Mr. Jay Cooke, whom Mr. Chase had successfully employed 
 in his most important negotiations. In the mean time the 
 treasury became considerably embarrassed and the Govern 
 ment credit impaired. If Mr. Fessenden had been strong in 
 health, if his duties had been congenial, and he had been con 
 tent to remain at the head of the great department, he would 
 have been equal to his duties, however difficult and onerous 
 they might have been. But his health was not good, and his 
 heart was not in executive, but in legislative work. It was 
 as a Senator that he had achieved renown. It was in the Sen 
 ate chamber that he was at home. There, in extent of 
 knowledge, in command of language, in readiness and force in 
 debate, he had no equal. Mr. Douglas was frequently com 
 pared with him, but he was more learned than Mr. Douglas, 
 closer in reasoning, more easily followed, more accurate in 
 statements, and altogether safer as a leader. 
 
 Mr. Fessenden was one of the very few men of his day 
 that merited the name of statesman. He must have been a 
 hard student in early life (he was not subsequently), or great 
 as was his aptitude for learning, he would not have possessed 
 that wealth of knowledge which he frequently displayed in 
 the Senate Chamber. He was not an orator, but a debater of 
 the highest order, lucid, cogent, incisive. He did not regard 
 the halls of Congress as fit places for oratorical display, for 
 the delivery of orations, and he listened impatiently, when he 
 listened at all, to Mr. Sumner s which had been prepared with 
 care and committed to memory. He was disposed to under- 
 
192 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 rate abilities which differed from his own, and he therefore 
 underrated those of Mr. Sumner. In devotion to what he 
 considered right, he was as inflexible as steel. This trait of 
 character was exhibited in the impeachment trial of President 
 Johnson. While this celebrated trial was going on, he received 
 scores of letters threatening him with personal violence some 
 of them with death, if he voted for acquittal, but they did not 
 disturb him in the least. Xo one knew how he would vote 
 he did not know himself until the testimony and the arguments 
 on both sides had been heard but it was well known that he 
 had no sympathy with those who had determined how thev 
 would vote before the trial was commenced ; who did not 
 hesitate to pronounce the President guilty without waiting for 
 the evidence. Hence it was feared that his vote might not be 
 unfavorable to the President, and hence the threats. Mr. Fes- 
 senden said to me as much, I am sure, as he said to any one, 
 which was simply this : That he should listen attentively to the 
 testimony and to the arguments of counsel, and then, and not 
 until then, make up his mind as to what his oath and his duty 
 required of him. His vote and the votes of six others, from 
 the Republican side of the Senate, with the Democratic 
 votes, saved the President from being adjudged a criminal, and 
 the Republican party from disruption. I shall say something- 
 more about this trial when I come to speak of Mr. Johnson 
 and his administration. 
 
 For some years before his death, ill health prevented Mr. 
 Fessenden from participating in Washington festivities, and 
 on this account he was regarded by many as being of an 
 unsocial disposition. In this he was misjudged. Before his 
 health became impaired, he was eminently social ; to those 
 who were intimate with him, he was always one of the 
 most affable and agreeable of men. In appearance he was 
 attractive ; his face was handsome and strikingly intellectual ; 
 in deportment he was natural, in character upright, in all 
 business transactions honorable. He was true to his princi- 
 
SECRETARY OF THE TREASURY. 198 
 
 pies and to his friends, never unfaithful to the former, or for 
 getful of the latter. 
 
 A day or two after his second inauguration, Mr. Lincoln 
 requested me, by one of his messengers, to call upon him at the 
 White House at some time during the day, which I did in the 
 afternoon. He was alone, and as he took my hand, he said : 
 I have sent for you, Mr. McCulloch, to let you know that I 
 want you to be Secretary of the Treasury, and if you do not 
 object to it, I shall send your name to the Senate. 1 I was 
 taken all aback by this sudden and unexpected announcement. 
 It was an office that I had not aspired to, and did not desire. 
 I knew how arduous and difficult the duties of the head of that 
 department were, and a place had been offered to me in New 
 York which it would be greatly for my interest to accept. I 
 hesitated for a moment, and then replied : " I thank you, Mr. 
 President, heartily for this mark of your confidence, and I 
 should be glad to comply with your wishes if I did not distrust 
 my ability to do what will be required of the Secretary of the 
 Treasury in the existing financial condition of the Govern 
 ment." " I will be responsible for that," said the President. 
 " I will be responsible for that, and so I reckon we will con 
 sider the matter settled." The President seemed to be greatly 
 careworn, but he was cheerful, and after a brief talk with him 
 I returned to my office and said nothing to any one about the 
 interview. I was, I confess, gratified by being asked to take 
 the most important place in the Government, but I was 
 troubled as I thought of its duties and responsibilities. I could 
 not say which feeling predominated gratification or dread. 
 The next day my nomination was sent to the Senate, and was, 
 as I understood, unanimously confirmed. 
 
 I may say here that I found the office a very laborious 
 
 and thankless one. I gave my entire time to its duties, I 
 
 was not away from it more than twenty days during the 
 
 whole term (four years) which I held it, frequently working 
 
 13 
 
194 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 by night as well as by day. I was subject to the most 
 liberal abuse in the Senate and the House, and to some extent 
 by the press ; and yet I was never sorry that I accepted the 
 post. Responsibility I did not shrink from hard work agreed 
 with me and the causeless abuse even of Senators did not 
 disturb me. In looking back after so many years upon my 
 administration of the Treasury, I can think of no recommen 
 dation which I made to Congress that did not merit favorable 
 consideration ; of no official act which I would recall. The 
 only thing that annoyed rne, and that not very much, was the 
 course of some of my Republican friends in the Senate and 
 House, who, when a rupture of my official relations with Presi 
 dent Johnson was feared, would come to the Treasury Depart 
 ment and entreat me to " hold on " (as one of them said, " for 
 God s sake, hold on ! "), and then go back to the Capitol and 
 hear me abused without uttering a word in my behalf. 
 
 My appointment, as I heard after it was made, was 
 strongly recommended by Mr. Chase and Mr. Fessenden. 
 This was gratifying to me, because they knew me personally 
 and officially. Mr. Thurlow Weed claimed that I was 
 indebted to him for my appointment. In his autobiography 
 he savs that Mr. Lincoln invited him to Washington for a con- 
 
 / O 
 
 sultation about the person who should be selected to be Mr. 
 Fessenden s successor, and that after discussing the qualifica 
 tions of a number of men (my name being one of them), it 
 was agreed that he (Mr. Weed) should confer freely with me 
 and report his conclusions. The following is Mr. Weed s 
 account of the interview with me, and of the result : 
 
 " I found myself not a little embarrassed on my way, one 
 Sunday morning, to the residence of Mr. McCulloch. The 
 idea of establishing relations with that gentlemen on compul 
 sion seemed like seeking knowledge under difficulties. These 
 difficulties, however, disappeared by degrees as our conversa 
 tion proceeded. There were two elements in the character of 
 Mr. McCulloch, on which, per se, I was disposed to rely. 
 
LETTER TO THE NATIONAL BANKS. 195 
 
 He had Scotch blood in his veins, and had been in politics a 
 AYhig. My interviews with that gentleman, if protracted, 
 were made so by his intelligent, right-minded, and straight 
 forward expression of views and opinions. If, in going to Mr. 
 McCulloch, I had something the feeling of Toots in calling 
 on Captain Cuttle for the favor of his friendship, I left 
 him with a strong feeling of regard and confidence, and so 
 reported to Mr. Lincoln, who immediately sent his name to 
 the Senate a step which neither Mr. Lincoln nor the people 
 have had occasion to regret. On the contray, Mr. McCulloch 
 proved himself an enlightened, independent, and upright 
 Secretary of the Treasury. To the friends whom I represented, 
 he was just and faithful. To myself, who was frequently 
 compelled to occupy his time and attention, he was uniformly 
 courteous and patient, always granting what was proper and 
 in his power to grant, and never refusing without a good 
 reason, and in friendly spirit. All my recollections of Mr. 
 McCulloch in his department the only place I am sorry to 
 say that I ever met himare pleasant ones." 
 
 I recollect that Mr. "Weed did call upon me one Sunday 
 morning, and that I had a pleasant chat with him upon 
 various subjects, but I never heard that he had anything to do 
 with my appointment until I read his autobiography. While 
 it is undoubtedly true that efforts were made on my behalf by 
 the gentlemen I have named, and perhaps by others, I have 
 reason to believe that Mr. Lincoln s mind was turned towards 
 me by the impression which was made upon him by a letter 
 which I addressed, as Comptroller of the Currency, to the 
 national banks, in December, 1863, which he read at the time 
 and was pleased with. A few extracts from this letter may 
 not, therefore, be out of place. After some suggestions in 
 regard to the records of bookkeeping, organizations, etc., etc., 
 I remarked : 
 
 "Bear constantly in mind, although the loyal States 
 appear superficially to be in a prosperous condition, that 
 
196 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 such is not the fact ; that while the Government is engaged 
 in the suppression of a rebellion of unexampled fierceness 
 and magnitude, and is constantly draining the country of 
 its laboring and producing population, and diverting its 
 mechanical industry from works of permanent value to 
 the construction of implements of warfare ; while cities are 
 crowded, and the country is to the same extent depleted, and 
 waste and extravagance prevail as they never before prevailed 
 in the United States, the nation, whatever may be the 
 external indications, is not prospering. The war in which we 
 are involved is a stern necessity, and must be prosecuted for 
 the preservation of the Government, no matter what may be 
 its cost ; but the country will unquestionably be the poorer 
 every day it is continued. The seeming prosperity of the 
 loyal States is owing mainly to the large expenditures of the 
 Government and the redundant currency which these expendi 
 tures seem to render necessary. 
 
 " Keep these facts constantly in mind, and manage the 
 affairs of your respective banks with a perfect consciousness 
 that the apparent prosperity of the country will be proved to 
 be unreal when the Avar is closed, if not before ; and be pre 
 pared by careful management of the trust committed to you, 
 to help to save the nation from a financial collapse, instead of 
 lending your influence to make it more certain and more 
 severe. 
 
 u Let no loans be made that are not secured beyond a 
 reasonable contingency. Do nothing to foster and encourage 
 speculation. Give facilities only to legitimate and prudent 
 transactions. Make your discounts on as short time as the 
 business of your customers will permit, and insist upon the 
 payment of all paper at maturity, no matter whether you 
 need the money or not. Never renew a note or bill merely 
 because you may not know where to place the money with 
 equal advantage if the paper is paid. In no other way can 
 you properly control your discount line, or make it at all 
 times reliable. 
 
 " Distribute your loans rather than concentrate them in a 
 few T hands. Large loans to a single individual or firm, 
 although sometimes proper and necessary, are generally inju 
 dicious, and frequently unsafe. Large borrowers are apt to 
 control the bank ; and when this is the relation between a 
 bank and its customers, it is not difficult to decide which in 
 the end will suffer. Every dollar that a bank loans above its 
 capital and surplus it owes for, and its managers are therefore 
 under the strongest obligations to its creditors, as well as to 
 
PROTECTION OF A SURPLUS. 197 
 
 its stockholders, to keep its discounts constantly under its con 
 trol. 
 
 " Treat your customers liberally, bearing in mind the fact 
 that a bank prospers as its customers prosper, but never per 
 mit them to dictate your policy. 
 
 " If you doubt the propriety of discounting an offering, 
 give the bank the benefit of the doubt and decline it ; never 
 make a discount if you doubt the propriety of doing it. If 
 you have reason to distrust the integrity of a customer, close 
 his account. oSTever deal with a rascal under the impression 
 that you can prevent him from cheating you. The risk in 
 such cases is greater than the profits. 
 
 " In business, know no man s politics. Manage your bank 
 as a business institution, and let no political partiality or pre 
 judice influence your judgment or action in the conduct of its 
 affairs. The national currency system is intended for a 
 nation, not for a party ; as far as in you lies, keep it aloof 
 from all partisan influences." 
 
 "Pay your officers such salaries as will enable them to 
 live comfortably and respectably without stealing ; and require 
 of them their entire services. If an officer lives beyond his 
 income, dismiss him ; even if his excess of expenditures can be 
 explained consistently with his integrity, still dismiss him. 
 Extravagance, if not a crime, very naturally leads to crime. 
 A man cannot be a safe officer of a bank who spends more 
 than he earns. 
 
 The capital of a bank should be a reality, not a fiction ; 
 and it should be owned by those who have money to lend, 
 and not by borrowers. The Comptroller will endeavor to pre 
 vent, by all means within his control, the creation of a nomi 
 nal capital by national banks, by the use of their circulation, or 
 any other artificial means ; and in his efforts to do this, he con 
 fidently expects the co-operation of all the well-managed banks. 
 
 " Every banker under the national system should feel that 
 the reputation of the system in a measure depends upon the 
 manner in which his particular institution is conducted, and 
 that, as far as his influence and management extend, he is 
 responsible for its success ; that he is engaged in an experi 
 ment which, if successful, will reflect the highest honor upon 
 all who are connected with it, and be of incalculable benefit 
 to the country ; but which, if unsuccessful, will be a reproach 
 to its advocates and a calamity to the people. It should be a 
 chief aim, therefore, of the managers of the banks, to make 
 their respective institutions strong ; not only to keep their 
 capital from being impaired, but gradually to create a surplus 
 
198 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 that will be a protection to their capital and to their creditors 
 in the trying times that sooner or later happen to all banking 
 institutions. There are few items that have a better look 
 upon the balance-sheet, and none that is better calculated to 
 give aid and comfort to the managers of a bank, and to 
 secure for it the confidence of the people, than a large surplus 
 fund. Create, then, a good surplus, even if you have for a 
 time to keep your stockholders on short commons in the mat 
 ter of dividends, to do it. 
 
 u Pursue a straightforward, upright, legitimate banking 
 business. Never be tempted by the prospect of large returns 
 to do anything but what may be properly done under the 
 National Currency Act. Splendid financiering is not legiti 
 mate banking, and splendid financiers, in banking, are gener 
 ally either humbugs or rascals. 
 
 " Recollect, especially at the present time, that it should 
 be the object of all honorable bankers to expedite as far as 
 practicable, rather than to postpone, a return to specie pay 
 ments. While the exigencies of the nation have required that 
 the issues of the Government should be a legal tender, it must 
 never be forgotten that the business of the country rests upon 
 an unsound basis, or, rather, is without a proper basis, as long 
 as the Government and the banks are not meeting their obli 
 gations in coin. 
 
 " The eyes of the people are turned to the national banks. 
 The indications are strong that if they are well managed they 
 will furnish the country with its bank-note circulation. It is 
 of the last importance, then, that they should be so managed. 
 
 " The sincere efforts of the Comptroller will not be want 
 ing to make the system a benefit to the country. May he not 
 expect that these efforts on his part will be sustained by the 
 efforts of the managers of the banks that have been or may be 
 organizing: under it? " 
 
 1 & 
 
 -These suggestions I thought were timely as well as sound, 
 and they were so considered by the banks ; but one of the 
 Pittsburgh journals, referring to what I said about the condi 
 tion of the country, denounced me as a copperhead. That an 
 officer of the Government should intimate that the country 
 was not prospering while engaged in a civil war of enormous 
 magnitude, was, in the estimation of the editor of a paper of 
 large circulation, an evidence of disloyalty, for which he 
 should be dismissed. 
 
CONSULTATION WITH BANKERS. 199 
 
 In the administration of the department, my action was 
 precisely what it would have been had I been managing my 
 own personal affairs. I did what I thought ought to be done, 
 under the authority with which I was clothed, without being 
 influenced by others. Financial matters had not been dis 
 cussed at the Cabinet meetings before I became Secretary, 
 and they were not as long as I continued in office. Each 
 member had as much as he could do in the management of 
 his own department, and it seemed to be generally understood 
 that each should act independently in the work that was 
 devolved upon him by his position. My policy, therefore, like 
 that of my immediate predecessors, was neither directed nor 
 influenced by my associates in the Cabinet, nor did I think it 
 advisable to go elsewhere for advice. Soon after Mr. Fessen- 
 den was appointed Secretary, he thought he should see his 
 way more clearly if he knew what the prominent bankers and 
 merchants of New York would advise in regard to his policy. 
 At his request, therefore, I went to New York, and had a free 
 talk with a number of such men as I knew to be intelligent, 
 and who I thought would give me disinterested opinions. I 
 did not ask them to meet together, but in private interviews I 
 endeavored to obtain from each as much light as he could 
 shed upon the points which were presented to him. I did not 
 expect to gain much by these interviews, but I confess I was 
 disappointed at the want of accord in the opinions that were 
 expressed. They were all high-toned and able men, but I 
 could not avoid the conclusion that all viewed the questions 
 in which Mr. Fessenden was so deeply interested in the light 
 of their own personal interests. This was natural, for no 
 honorable business man ever supposes that his own interests 
 can be antagonistic to those of his Government. There was 
 no accord even among the bankers in regard to what should 
 be the policy of the Secretary. I ought not to have been sur 
 prised at this, for I knew that the bankers of New York had 
 always been in the habit of deciding and acting each for him- 
 
200 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 self in cases of emergency, without reference to the opinions 
 and action of others that there was not then and never had 
 been in that city, in times of financial trouble, a banker of 
 such acknowledged superiority that the other bankers would 
 look to him for guidance. In the financial crisis of 1857, I 
 Avent to Xew York to look after the interests of the Bank of 
 the State of Indiana, which had large deposits in the banks of 
 that city. Soon after my arrival, I met Thomas Tileston, 
 president of the Phoenix Bank, a banker and merchant of 
 great ability whom I had known for many years. " Well, 
 Mr. McCulloch," said he, " you see how we are here all pull 
 ing and hauling in different directions. What shah 1 we do ? " 
 " Call a meeting of the presidents of all the banks," I replied, 
 " and elect a king with full power to compel unity of action, 
 and all will go right. " All but the Chemical Bank had sus 
 pended specie payments, and in this action only Avere they in 
 full accord. 
 
 On my return to Washington, I gave to Mr. Fessenden 
 an account of my fruitless mission, and said to him : " There 
 is but one thing for you to do, which is, to administer the 
 department in your own way, letting consequences take care 
 of themselves ; outside advice will embarrass instead of helping 
 you." When I succeeded Mr. Fessenden, I did what I advised 
 him to do. For any mistakes that were made during my 
 management of the Treasury Department (there were, perhaps, 
 many that I have failed to discern,) I was alone responsible. 
 I have no disposition to refer to the particular measures which 
 were adopted to raise the money which was needed, in addi 
 tion to the revenues, to relieve the Treasury from embarrass 
 ments ; to meet the heavy requisitions of the War and Navy 
 departments for the payment of the soldiers and sailors after 
 the war was ended and to fund temporary loans and early- 
 maturing obligations; but it is proper for me to say something 
 about the general policy that was pursued to bring about these 
 results. This I shall do when I conclude what I have to say 
 
SPEECH AT FOKT WAYNE. 201 
 
 about ray administration of the department, by copying a few 
 pages from my last report of December 1, 1868. In October, 
 1865, seven months after I was appointed Secretary, I went to 
 Fort Wayne to look after some personal matters. While 
 there, I delivered an address at a dinner given in my honor. 
 Upon the currency and the financial outlook, I spoke as 
 follows : 
 
 " I am not one of those who seem disposed to repudiate 
 coin as a measure of value, and to make a secured paper cur 
 rency the standard. On the contrary, I belong to that class 
 of persons who, regarding an exclusive metallic currency as an 
 impracticable thing among an enterprising and commercial 
 people, nevertheless look upon an irredeemable currency as an 
 evil which circumstances may for a time render a necessity, 
 but which is never to be sustained as a policy. By common 
 consent of the nations, gold and silver are the only true meas 
 ure of value. They are the necessary regulators of trade. I 
 have myself no more doubt that these metals were prepared 
 by the Almighty for this very purpose, than I have that iron 
 and coal were prepared for the purposes for which they are 
 being used. I favor a well-secured convertible paper currency 
 no other can to any extent be a proper substitute for coin. 
 Of course it is not expected that there shall be a dollar in coin 
 in reserve for every dollar of paper in circulation. This is not 
 necessary. For all ordinary home transactions, a paper cur 
 rency is sufficient ; but there are constantly occurring periods 
 when balances between countries and in the United States 
 between its different sections must be settled by coin. These 
 balances are insignificant in amount, in comparison with the 
 transactions out of which they arise, and when a vicious sys 
 tem of credits does not too long postpone settlements, they 
 are arranged without disturbing movements of coin. When 
 ever specie is needed for such a purpose, or for any other pur 
 pose, the paper currency of the country should be convertible 
 into it, and a circulation which is not so convertible will not 
 be, and ought not to be, long tolerated by the people. The 
 present inconvertible currency of the United States was a 
 necessity of the war ; but now that the war has ceased, and the 
 Government ought not to be longer a borrower, this currency 
 should be brought up to the specie standard, and I see no way 
 of doing this but by withdrawing a portion of it from circula 
 tion. 
 
202 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 " I have no faith, sir, in a prosperity which is the effect of 
 a depreciated currency, nor can I see any safe path for us to 
 tread but that which "leads to specie payment. The extreme 
 high prices which now prevail in the United States are an 
 unerring indication that the business of the country is in an 
 unhealthy condition. We are measuring values by a false 
 standard! We have a circulating medium altogether larger 
 than is needed for legitimate business ; the excess is used in 
 speculations. The United States is to-day the best market 
 in the world for foreigners to sell in, and among the worst to 
 buy in. The consequence is that Europe is selling us more 
 than she buys of us (including our securities, which ought not 
 to go abroad), and there is a debt rolling up against us that 
 must be settled, in part, at least, with coin. The longer the 
 inflation continues, the more difficult will it be for us to get 
 back to the solid ground of specie payments, to which we must 
 return sooner or later. If Congress shall, early in the ap 
 proaching session, authorize the funding of the legal tenders, and 
 the work of reduction is commenced and carried on resolutely, 
 but carefully, and prudently, we shall reach it probably with 
 out serious embarrassment to legitimate business ; if not, we 
 shall have a brief period of hollow and seductive prosperity, 
 resulting in wide-spread bankruptcy and disaster. 
 
 " There are other objections to the present inflation. It is, 
 I fear, corrupting the public morals. It is converting the busi 
 ness of the country into gambling, and seriously diminishing 
 the labor of the country. This is always the effect of exces 
 sive circulation. The kind of gambling which it produces is 
 not confined to the stock and produce boards, where the very 
 terms which are used by the operators indicate the nature of 
 the transactions, but it is spreading through our towns and 
 into the rural districts. Men are apparently getting rich, 
 while morality languishes and the productive industry of the 
 country is being diminished. Good morals in business, and 
 sober, persevering industry, if not at a discount, are consid 
 ered too old-fogyish for the present times. 
 
 " But while I feel anxious about the present inflation, and 
 its effect upon the business and morals of the country, I am 
 hopeful that by wise legislation we shall escape a financial col 
 lapse, and I am confident that a grand future is before the 
 United States. I am hopeful that the currency may be 
 brought up to the specie standard without those financial 
 troubles which in all countries have followed protracted and 
 expensive wars. By the experiences of the past four years we 
 are led to the conclusion that our people have a latent power 
 

 DESTINY OF THE NATION. 203 
 
 that will manifest itself when required, and which is equal to 
 any emergency. I have faith, sir, that as we have, to the 
 astonishment of the world, raised immense armies larger, I 
 apprehend, than any single nation ever brought into the field 
 and met the enormous expenses of the war without borrowing 
 from other nations, we shall also be able, without a financial 
 crisis, to fund our surplus currency and interest-bearing notes, 
 bring back the business to a specie standard, and place the 
 credit of the country on the most stable and satisfactory basis. 
 If we do this, we shall accomplish what the soundest thinkers 
 in Europe have considered an impossibility, and what no other 
 people but the free and enterprising people of the United 
 States, occupying the grandest country in the world, could 
 accomplish. 
 
 " But should we be disappointed in these hopeful expecta 
 tions ; should no early check be put upon the issues of paper 
 money ; should prices still further advance and speculation be 
 still further stimulated, and the result thereof be extensive 
 bankruptcy, depression, and hard times, the grand destiny of 
 this country and this government will not be affected. 
 
 " The United States occupies the best portion of the tempe 
 rate zone of a continent stretching out its arms to Europe on 
 the one side and Asia on the other, and producing all articles 
 necessary for the subsistence and comfort of the race. If cot 
 ton be king, he is, thank God, enthroned again in the United 
 States ; if bread be king, where should his capital be but in 
 this great valley of the Mississippi? This nation has within 
 itself everything that is needed to make it the greatest among 
 the family of nations. Coal and iron in juxtaposition and 
 inexhaustible supply; mountains and valleys rich enough in 
 gold and silver to furnish the world, for all time, with what 
 may be needed for circulation and other uses; copper, and 
 lead, and other minerals in no less abundance ; a soil of 
 wonderful fertility, a climate salubrious and diversified, and, 
 above all, republican institutions and an energetic and again 
 united people. 
 
 " A\ e have, it is true, sir, difficult questions growing out of 
 the war, yet to be settled ; but I have an abiding confidence 
 that they will be settled, as they come up for settlement, in 
 such manner as will strengthen the Union and add to our 
 national renown. The labor question at the South is one of 
 those questions, but if there be no outside interference, it will 
 not, I apprehend, be a very difficult one; on the contrary, it 
 is quite likely to be a self-adjusting one. The planter wants 
 the labor of his former slaves, and the high price which 
 
204 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Southern products will command for years to come \vill enable 
 him to pay liberally for it. The colored people will soon 
 learn that freedom from slavery does not mean freedom from 
 work. The interests of the two races will not long be antago 
 nistic. The whites will need the labor of the blacks, and the 
 blacks will need employment. There is as much danger to be 
 apprehended from the unwillingness of the latter to labor for 
 a support, as from an indisposition on the part of the former 
 to pay fair wages. Like all other economical questions, it will 
 be settled by the necessities and interests of the parties. 
 
 " Fortunately for the solution of this question, and the well- 
 being of laboring men generally, capital is not supreme in the 
 United States. It does not, as in most other countries, hold 
 labor under its control, and dole out to it only such remunera 
 tion as will make it most productive. Labor is a power in this 
 free country, with its cheap lands which are within the reach 
 of all industrious men, and dictates terms to capital. There is 
 no part of the world where labor is more needed than in the 
 Southern States, nor where it will soon command better prices. 
 This labor question at the South will, I doubt not, be satisfac 
 torily arranged in due time for the best interest of all con 
 cerned." 
 
 These remarks were favorably commented upon bv the 
 leading journals throughout the country, and so great was the 
 demand for the address, in which the political as well as the 
 financial policy of the administration was presented with con 
 siderable fulness that a second edition of it was soon 
 exhausted. In the address I did not refer to the national 
 debt. My views in regard to the debt, and the manner in 
 which it should be treated, were presented in my reports to 
 Congress, a few extracts from which may be of interest even 
 at this late day. The folloAving are from my first report : 
 
 " At the close of a great Avar, which has been waged on 
 both sides with a vigor and energy, and with an expenditure 
 of money, without a precedent in history, the people of the 
 United States are incumbered with a debt which requires the 
 immediate and careful consideration of their representatives. 
 Since the commencement of the special session of 1861, the 
 most important subject which has demanded and received the 
 attention of Congress has been that of providing the means to 
 
FIRST REPORT AS SECRETARY. 205 
 
 prosecute the war ; and the success of the Government in rais 
 ing money is evidence of the wisdom of the measures devised 
 for this purpose, as well as of the loyalty of the people and the 
 resources of the country. No nation, within the same period, 
 ever borrowed so largely, or with so much facility. It is now 
 to be demonstrated that a republican government can not 
 only carry on a war on a most gigantic scale, and create a 
 debt of immense magnitude, but can place this debt on a satis 
 factory basis, and meet every engagement with fidelity. The 
 same wisdom which has been exhibited by the national coun 
 cils in providing the means for preserving the national unity, 
 will not be wanting in devising measures for establishing the 
 national credit. 
 
 " The maintenance of public faith is a national necessity. 
 Nations do not and cannot safely accumulate moneys to be 
 used at a future day, and exigencies are constantly occurring 
 in which the richest and most powerful are under the neces 
 sity of borrowing. The millennial days when nations shall 
 beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into prun 
 ing hooks, and learn war no more, are yet, according to all 
 existing indications, far in the future. Weak and defaulting 
 nations may maintain a nominally independent existence, but 
 it will be by reason of the jealousies rather than the forbear 
 ance of stronger powers. No nation is absolutely safe which 
 is not in a condition to defend itself; nor can it be in this con 
 dition, no matter how strong in other respects, without a well- 
 established financial credit. Nations cannot, therefore, afford 
 to be unfaithful to their pecuniary obligations. Credit to 
 them, as to individuals, is money ; and money is the war-power 
 of the age. But for the unfaltering confidence of the people 
 of the loyal States in the good faith of the Government, the 
 late rebellion would have been a success, and this great nation, 
 so rapidly becoming again united and harmonious, would have 
 been broken into weak and belligerent fragments. 
 
 " But the public faith of the United States has higher con 
 siderations than these for its support. It rests not only upon 
 the interests of the people, but upon their integrity and virtue. 
 The debt of the United States has been created by the people 
 in their successful struggle for undivided and indivisible nation 
 ality. It is not a debt imposed upon unwilling subjects by 
 despotic authority, but one incurred by the people themselves 
 for the preservation of their Government ; by the preservation 
 of which those who have been leagued together for its over 
 throw are to be as really benefited as those who have been bat 
 tling for its maintenance. As it is a debt voluntarily incurred 
 
206 MEX AND MEASURES OF HALF A CE1STTUKY. 
 
 for the common good, its burdens will be cheerfully borne by 
 the people, who will not permit them to be permanent. The 
 debt is large, but if kept at home, as it is desirable it should 
 be, with a judicious system of taxation, it need not be oppres 
 sive. It is, however, a debt. While it is capital to the hold 
 ers of securities, it is still a national debt, and an incumbrance 
 upon the national estate. Neither its advantages nor its bur 
 dens, are, or can be, shared or borne equally by the people. 
 Its influence is anti-republican. It adds to the power of the 
 executive by increasing federal patronage. It must be distaste 
 ful to the people because it fills the country with informers 
 and tax-gatherers. It is dangerous to the public virtue because 
 it involves the collection and disbursement of vast sums of 
 money, and renders rigid national economy almost impractica 
 ble. It is, in a word, a national burden, and the work of 
 removing it, no matter how desirable it may be for individual 
 investment, should not be long postponed. 
 
 " As all true men desire to leave to their heirs unincum- 
 bered estates, so should it be the ambition of the people of the 
 United States to relieve their descendants of this national 
 mortgage. We need not be anxious that future generations 
 shall share the burden with us. Wars are not at an end, and 
 posterity will have enough to do to take care of the debts of 
 their own creation. 
 
 " Various plans have been suggested for the payment of 
 the debt, but the Secretary sees no way of accomplishing it 
 but by an increase of the national income beyond the national 
 expenditures. In a matter of so great importance as this, 
 experiments are out of place. The plain, beaten path of experi 
 ence is the only safe one to tread. The first step to be taken 
 is to institute measures for funding the obligations that are 
 soon to mature. The next is to provide for raising, in a man 
 ner the least odious and oppressive to tax-payers, the revenue 
 necessary to pay the interest on the debt, and a certain definite 
 amount annually for the reduction of the principal. The 
 Secretary respectfully suggests that on this subject the ex 
 pression of Congress should be decided and emphatic. It is 
 of the greatest importance, in the management of a matter 
 of so surpassing interest, that the right start should be made. 
 Nothing but revenue will sustain the national credit, and 
 nothing less than a fixed policy for the reduction of the public 
 debt will be likely to prevent its increase." 
 
 In my second report, I referred to it in the following lan 
 guage : 
 
IMPORTANCE OF DEBT-REDUCTION. 207 
 
 " The idea that a national debt can be anything less than a 
 burden in which there are some compensations, but still a bur 
 den a mortgage upon the property and industry of the people 
 is, fortunately, not an American idea. In countries in which 
 the public expenditures are so heavy, or the resources are 
 so small, that no reduction of their debts is practicable, and 
 where national securities become monopolized capital in the 
 hands of moneyed aristocracies, who not only absorb the 
 means, but give direction to the sentiments of the people, 
 public debts may be regarded as public blessings ; but no such 
 fallacy will ever be countenanced by the free and intelligent 
 people of the United States. 
 
 Nothing in our history has created so much surprise, 
 both at home and abroad, as the reduction of our national 
 debt. The Avonder excited by the rapidity with which it was 
 created, is greatly exceeded by admiration of the resolution 
 of the tax-payers themselves that it shall be speedily extin 
 guished. The conviction is becoming fastened upon the popular 
 mind that it is important for economy in the national expenses, 
 for the maintenance of a true democracy in the administration 
 of the Government, for the cause of good morals and public 
 virtue, that the policy for a steady annual reduction of the 
 debt should be definitely and inexorably established. Nothing 
 short of this, and that economy in the national expenditures 
 which will render it practicable, will reconcile the people to 
 the burdens of taxation. A national debt must be a severe 
 strain upon republican institutions, and ours should not be sub 
 ject to it one day longer than is necessary." 
 
 In my third I referred to it as follows : 
 
 " The right start in the direction suggested has been made. 
 Since the first day of September, 1865, the debt has been 
 reduced $266,185,121.43. JS T ow if such a reduction could be 
 made while the industry of one-third part of the country, by 
 reason of the war and the unsettled state of its political affairs, 
 has been exceedingly depressed, and the other two-thirds have 
 by no means exerted their full productive power ; if such a 
 reduction could be made, notwithstanding the liberal miscella 
 neous appropriations by Congress, the payment of bounties, 
 and the great expense of maintaining large military forces 
 upon the frontier and in the Southern States, can there be any 
 good reason why the reduction, so successfully commenced 
 under the most inauspicious circumstances, should not be con 
 tinued steadily and without interruption until every dollar of 
 
208 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 it is extinguished. The Secretary indulges the hope that the 
 policy which has been inaugurated, and which, in his judg 
 ment, is so essential to the national credit, if not to the preser 
 vation, of republican institutions, will not be abandoned. Old 
 debts are hard debts to pay. The longer they are continued, 
 the more odious do they "become. If the present generation 
 should throw the burden" of this debt upon the next, it will be 
 quite likely to be handed down from one generation to another, 
 a perpetual, if not a constantly-increasing burden upon the 
 people. Our country is full of enterprise and resources. The 
 debt will be lightened every year with great rapidity by the 
 increase of wealth and population. With a proper reduction 
 in the expenses of the Government, and with a revenue system 
 adapted to the industry of the country, and not oppressing it, 
 the debt may be paid before the expiration of the present cen 
 tury. The wisdom of a policy which shall bring about such a 
 result, is vindicated in advance by the history of nations Avhose 
 people are burdened with inherited debts, and with no prospect 
 of relief for themselves or their posterity." 
 
 And in my fourth and last report, I remarked : 
 
 " The Secretary has noticed, with deep regret, indications of 
 a growing sentiment in Congress notwithstanding the favora 
 ble exhibits which have been from time to time made of the 
 debt-paying power of the country in favor of a postpone 
 ment of the payment of the principal of the debt until the 
 national resources shall be so increased as to make the pay 
 ment of it more easy. If this sentiment shall so prevail as 
 to give direction to the action of the Government, he would 
 feel that a very great error had been committed, which could 
 hardly fail to be a serious misfortune to the country. The 
 people of the United States will never be so willing to be taxed 
 for the purpose of reducing the debt as at the present time. 
 Now, the necessity for its creation is better understood and 
 appreciated than it can be at a future day. Now, it is regarded 
 by a large majority of tax-payers as a part of the great price 
 paid for the maintenance of the Government, and therefore a 
 sacred debt. The longer the reduction of it is postponed, the 
 greater will be the difficulties in the way of accomplishing it, 
 and the more intolerable will seem, to be the burden of taxa 
 tion." 
 
 From these extracts it will be noticed that in all my reports 
 I spoke of the debt as one that ought not to be perpetuated. 
 
SURPRISING DECREASE OF THE DEBT. 209 
 
 In fact the discussion of the debt and the currency question 
 constituted a large part of my annual reports to Congress. 
 The views which I presented in regard to the national debt 
 were received with favor, and the policy of steadily redeeming 
 it has been adhered to, until this great national debt, which 
 twenty years ago was by many regarded with gloomy fore 
 bodings as to its burdens and its effects upon our republican 
 institutions, has been so reduced in amount, and in the rate of 
 interest which it bears, that it has ceased to be burdensome. 
 
 Many things have occurred in the United States within the 
 last quarter of a century to excite surprise on the other side of 
 the Atlantic, but nothing has been so surprising as the rapid 
 progress that has been made in the payment of our public debt. 
 That the reduction should have been commenced within seven 
 months from the close of a war of unequalled cost, and con 
 tinued through years of great financial depression, is about the 
 last thing that the advocates or supporters of monarchy 
 expected from a republican government. 
 14 
 
CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The House on the 18th of December, 1863, by Vote of 144 to 6, Approved my 
 Recommendation for the Withdrawal of the Legal-tender Note In April 
 Following an Act was Passed Authorizing the Withdrawal and Cancella 
 tion of Ten Millions of Legal Tenders in Six Months, and Four Millions 
 per Month Thereafter Under this Act Forty-eight Millions of Legal- 
 tender Notes Cancelled Market not Affected by the Reduction Increase 
 of Issue, in Panic of 1873 Francis E. Spinner, Treasurer His Character 
 Panics and their Cause Speculation in the Timbered Lands of Maine 
 Financial Crisis of 1857 Charles Francis Adams s Letter to Sydney 
 Brooks in Regard to President Johnson s Message, and the Secretary of the 
 Treasury s Report Mr. Gladstone s Remarks President Johnson s First 
 Message. 
 
 THE views which I presented in my Fort Wayne address, 
 and at length in my annual reports upon the currency, 
 were also favorably regarded when first presented. In my 
 first report I expressed the opinion that the legal-tender notes 
 were issued as a war measure, and as a war measure only ; 
 that the Government of the United States was one of limited 
 and defined powers ; that the authority to issue notes as money 
 was neither expressly given to Congress, nor fairly inferable 
 from the powers actually granted ; that the authority of Con 
 gress to issue obligations for a circulating medium as money 
 could only be found in an unwritten law, which sanctions 
 whatever may be done by the national legislature for the pres 
 ervation of the national life ; that a permanent government 
 circulation would be in the way of public economy, and would 
 give to the party in power the means of perpetuating its con 
 trol of the Government ; that what the country needed for a 
 paper circulating medium was not United States notes, the 
 amount of which might depend upon the temporary necessities 
 of the treasury, or party interests but a currency that might 
 be expanded or diminished according to the demands of trade, 
 and which could and would be supplied by the national banks. 
 
CONTRACTION OF THE CURRENCY. 211 
 
 After exhausting all the arguments I could command against 
 the continued issue of legal-tender notes, I recommended that 
 the Secretary of the Treasury be authorized to sell United 
 States bonds, and with the proceeds of sales gradually to retire 
 the legal-tender notes from circulation. So favorably was the 
 recommendation received that, on the 18th of December, the 
 following resolution was adopted in the House, by the decisive 
 vote of 1-M to 6, to wit : " Resolved, That this House cor 
 dially concurs in the view of the Secretary of the Treasury in 
 relation to the necessity of a contraction of the currency, with 
 a view to as early a resumption of specie payments as the busi 
 ness interests of the country will permit ; and we hereby 
 pledge co-operative action to this end as speedily as practica 
 ble." Nothing, however, in this direction was done until 
 April, 1866, when an act was passed that ten millions of dol 
 lars of the United States notes should be cancelled within six 
 months from the passage of the act, and not more thereafter 
 than four millions of dollars in any one month. 
 
 This was not what I wanted, for I knew there would be 
 months in which much more than four millions could be with 
 drawn without affecting the market ; and other months when 
 the withdrawal of a much smaller amount would cause con 
 siderable stringency. What I did want was authority to retire 
 the legal-tender notes as rapidly as it could be be done, with 
 out affecting injuriously industry and trade. I did, however, 
 the best I could under the act to bring about what I thought 
 the best interests of the country required. While in no month 
 were more than four millions of dollars withdrawn and can 
 celled, there were some months in which a less amount, or none, 
 was withdrawn. The whole amount of United States notes 
 retired and cancelled before, in obedience to what seemed to 
 be the public sentiment, further reduction was prohibited by 
 Congress, was, if I lightly recollect, forty-eight millions of 
 dollars, and so little did this reduction of the amount in cir 
 culation affect the markets, that no one outside of the depart- 
 
212 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 ment \vould have known that what was called contraction 
 was going on but for the monthly published statements of the 
 condition of the treasury. It was an unreasonable apprehen 
 sion of what might be the effect of this contraction, rather 
 than what it was, that raised the outcry against it. 
 
 This fact was illustrated by an incident which caused some 
 merriment in the treasurer s office. Every day (except Sun 
 days) for nearly four years I wrote to Mr. Vandyck, the 
 Assistant Treasurer at New York (an admirable officer he was), 
 and he wrote to me, so that I was kept constantly advised of 
 the condition and feeling of Wall Street, the grand centre of 
 financial influence. One day I received a letter from him 
 informing me that the market was becoming tight, and that he 
 feared there would be a panic if the monthly report, which was 
 to be prepared and published the next day, exhibited the usual 
 monthly reduction of the volume of United States notes. 
 Early the next morning I received a telegram to the same 
 effect. We were just then in the midst of the work of fund 
 ing the seven-and -three-tenths notes, which would be seriously 
 interrupted by a Wall Street panic ; so I sent for the Treas 
 urer, General Spinner, and showed to him the letter and tele 
 gram. "Have you," I asked, "the $4,000,000 of United 
 States notes which were to be retired and cancelled this 
 month?" "I have," he replied. "Has the account with the 
 United States notes been credited with the amount ? " " It 
 has not." " Keep them," I said, " in the treasury, with the 
 other currency on hand, so that the report will not show any 
 reduction for the month." This was done, and when the regu 
 lar monthly report, which was published the next day, showed 
 no reduction of the volume of these notes, although the four 
 millions were in the treasury vaults, Wall Street was relieved, 
 and all indications of a stringent money market disappeared. 
 I have no doubt that all of the United States notes might 
 have been gradually withdrawn from circulation without 
 prejudice to legitimate business. For more than fifty years I 
 
CRISES AND THE CIRCULATION. 213 
 
 have been a careful observer of the course of trade and the 
 general range of prices in the United States, and of the causes 
 which have affected the market value of our agricultural and 
 manufacturing productions. I have known prices to be 
 advanced by foreign demand, or by temporary deficiency of 
 supply, but more frequently by speculation, induced and fos 
 tered by redundant currency. I have known prices to decline 
 bv the reaction of speculation, and by diminutions of the 
 home or foreign demands, but I have never known our farm 
 products or manufactured goods to fail to bring what they 
 were worth, at home or abroad, by reason of insufficient sup 
 ply of money or of its representatives. Nevertheless, there is 
 scarcely anything that the people more desire than an abun 
 dant circulating medium, no matter what may be its intrinsic 
 value, if it answer the purpose of money ; or more dread than 
 a contraction of the supply. The policy of retiring the United 
 States notes, even when they were at a heavy discount, was 
 never popular with the masses, and the opposition to it 
 became so strong that it was discontinued when the reduction 
 reached the amount I have named. 
 
 These notes are now, nominally at least, redeemable in 
 gold ; they have been declared by the Supreme Court to be 
 lawful money ; they are the most popular currency which has 
 been known, and consequently the amount now in circulation 
 will never be reduced ; on the contrary, there will be an 
 increase whenever the people demand it. The amount was 
 increased some eighteen or twenty millions in 1873, by what 
 was called a re-issue of notes which had been redeemed and 
 cancelled by the authority of Congress many years before. 
 This so-called re-issue, which was, in fact, an over-issue, was 
 expected to check the financial crisis, which, commencing in 
 New York on what was called Black Friday, was spread ing- 
 over the country ; but it was powerless even to abate the vio 
 lence of the storm which had been long gathering below the 
 financial horizon. 
 
214 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 As I have mentioned the name of General Spinner, I must 
 say something more about him. lie was appointed United 
 States Treasurer in 1861, when the treasury was in the condi 
 tion I have described ; when the business of the office could 
 have been properly performed by a dozen competent clerks. 
 It grew to its present magnificent proportions while he was 
 Treasurer. A more trustworthy, conscientious, upright man, 
 than Francis E. Spinner never held an office under this 
 Government, or any other. Until I knew him, I had not met 
 a man with more disposition or capacity for hard work than 
 myself. In General Spinner, I found in this respect, as well 
 as in many others, my superior. He worked constantly from 
 nine to ten hours a day, and when business was unusually 
 pressing, his working hours were extended to from twelve to 
 fifteen. He liked the place, was familiar with its business to 
 the minutest detail, and he ought to have remained in it until 
 lie was no longer able to perform its duties. His name should 
 .be inscribed high in the roll of honor for meritorious services 
 at a time when the Government was greatly in need of such 
 services as he was able to render, and heartily rendered. His 
 resignation w r as caused by a disagreement between himself 
 and the Secretary about appointments to his bureau. As he 
 was a bonded officer, he thought, and correctly, that he should 
 control the appointment of clerks for whose acts he was 
 responsible. He did control them when I was Secretary, as 
 he did under Mr. Fessenden and Mr. Chase. 
 
 It must not be understood from anything I have said that 
 I have not observed financial troubles that were not caused by 
 excessive issue of paper currency. They have sometimes been 
 caused by an improper use of individual credit, but they have 
 invariably followed imprudent speculation, superinduced by 
 the one or the other. The first mania for speculation of 
 which I have any knowledge occurred some fifty-five years 
 ago, in Maine, when there was no expansion of the currency. 
 Speculation in Maine ! think of it, ye dwellers in the sunny 
 
SPECULATION IN MAINE. 215 
 
 South, who look upon Maine as a hyperborean region, where in 
 winter there is no day in summer no night ! It was even so. 
 The wildest speculation that has ever prevailed in any part of 
 the United States, was in the timber lands of Maine. In 1832, 
 or about that time (I am not precise as to dates when precis 
 ion in this respect is of no importance), it became known to 
 people in Massachusetts, that a good deal of money was being 
 made by a few investors in the Maine timber lands. A large 
 part of Maine was then covered by a magnificent forest chiefly 
 of pine trees, and the lands upon which they stood were 
 rapidly becoming valuable ; their value, however, being 
 mainly dependent upon their contiguity to streams that were 
 large enough to float logs to the mills, which were near navi 
 gable waters. These lands were offered for sale by the State 
 
 O v 
 
 at very low prices, and those who bought early and judiciously 
 did make what were then considered large fortunes by their 
 investments. It was not long before reports of their gains 
 went out from the neighborhood to which they had been con 
 fined, and, as is usual with such reports, they were magnified 
 as they were repeated, until almost everybody in New 
 England who heard them was seized with a desire to specu 
 late in Maine lands. 
 
 The desire soon became so strong, and the excitement so 
 great, that a courier line was established between Boston and 
 Bangor, by which orders first to buy, and subsequently to sell, 
 were rapidly transmitted, and for months little was talked 
 about but Maine lands. Brokers offices were opened in 
 Bangor, which were crowded from morning till night, and fre 
 quently far into the night, by buyers and sellers. All were 
 jubilant, because all, whether buyers or sellers, were getting 
 rich. Not one in fifty knew anything about the lands he was 
 buying, nor did he care to know as long as he could sell at 
 a profit. Lands bought one day were sold the next day at a 
 large advance. Buyers in the morning were sellers in the 
 afternoon. The same lands were bought and sold over and 
 
216 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 over again, until lands which had been bought originally for 
 a few cents per acre, were sold for half as many dollars. As 
 is always the case when speculation is rampant, and inexperi 
 enced men (lambs they are called in Wall Street) become 
 speculators, dishonesty was in the ascendant. In the interest 
 of large holders, maps were prepared, on which lands were 
 represented as lying upon water courses which were scores of 
 miles away from them. The speculative fever centred in 
 Bangor, but ran high in Boston and the neighboring towns. 
 On a small scale the mania resembled that which convulsed 
 England near the end of the last century, when the worthless 
 one-pound shares of "John Law s Company of the Indies" 
 (the South Sea Bubble it was called after it collapsed) went 
 up day by day until they were sold at forty. 
 
 It happened strangely enough that the largest losers in 
 this Maine land speculation were prudent men who kept 
 aloof from it until it had reached the highest point, and the 
 tide was ready to turn. They listened contemptuously to the 
 early reports which were in circulation of the wealth which 
 some of their neighbors had suddenly acquired ; but as report 
 confirmed report, their prudence gave way, and they deter 
 mined to make up by large purchases what they had lost by 
 delay. I heard of the following occurrence which I will 
 relate, as it shows how the game was sometimes played. A 
 company of men in Worcester, Massachusetts, who were sup 
 posed to have made a good deal of money by operations in 
 these lands, offered to some of their neighbors a large tract, at 
 what they said was a low price. These neighbors were pru 
 dent men, who although inclined to take a hand in what was 
 going on, were not disposed to buy, as the boys swapped 
 knives, " sight unseen." So they employed an agent to 
 examine the land before accepting the offer. The day after 
 the agent reached Bangor, a man of agreeable address was 
 introduced to him as a large operator in lands, with whom he 
 had a free and pleasant conversation, in the course of which 
 
BASIS OF THE GAMBLING FABKIC. 217 
 
 the stranger inquired if he knew the owners of a tract of land 
 (the very tract that the agent had come to examine) which lie 
 was anxious to get hold of, and for which, if it could be 
 obtained within a couple of weeks, he would pay a certain 
 price per acre, naming a much larger price than it had been 
 offered at to his employers. The agent did not give the 
 stranger the desired information, but he thought that as delay 
 might be dangerous, he ought to spend no time in examining 
 the land, and the next day he was on his way back to Worces 
 ter, lie reported to his employers immediately upon his 
 arrival, and advised them to buy. II is advice was followed. 
 The land was purchased, and in a few days the agent was in 
 Bangor again with authority to sell. To his dismay the 
 stranger had disappeared, and his whereabouts were unknown 
 to the proprietor of the hotel, and to everybody else of whom 
 inquiry was made. It was a well-concocted swindle. The 
 land was found to be well timbered, but it was far distant 
 from any stream large enough to float logs, and it coultl not 
 be sold for a quarter of the price that had been paid for it. 
 
 I have referred to this speculation in the timbered lands of 
 Maine the wildest and most disastrous to most of those who 
 were engaged in it, that had ever been witnessed in the United 
 States because I was greatly interested in it while it was in 
 progress, and because it shows that there may be speculation 
 which is neither caused nor fostered by excessive currency. 
 At that time the circulating medium was specie and bank 
 notes, the supply of which was very limited. Personal obli 
 gations became, therefore, the medium of exchange, and were 
 freely given, and as freely taken. Purchases and sales were 
 made chiefly upon credit. Very little money was handled in 
 the transactions, whether large or small. It was upon promis 
 sory notes that the gambling fabric rested, and when the 
 explosion took place, it was these promissory notes, for which 
 nothing available for their payment had been received, that 
 brought ruin to many hundreds of households. Of the two 
 
218 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 evils excessive circulation of paper money, and excessive use 
 of personal credit the former is the lesser, but both lead in 
 the same direction to dangerous enterprises ; to efforts to 
 make money rapidly, and not by persistent industry ; to specu 
 lation ; to panics. In all the great and wide-spread financial 
 troubles that have come upon the country, the two have been 
 united. Those of 1873 I have already spoken of. The follow 
 ing is a part of what I said of that of 1837 and 1857 in my 
 first report : 
 
 "The great expansion of 1835 and 1836, ending with the 
 terrible financial collapse of 1837, from the effects of which the 
 country did not rally for years, was the consequence of exces 
 sive bank circulation and discounts, and an abuse of the credit 
 system, stimulated in the first place by Government deposits 
 with the State banks, and swelled by currency and credits 
 until, under the wild spirit of speculation which invaded the 
 country, labor and production decreased to such an extent 
 that the country, which should have been the great food-pro 
 ducing country of the world, became an importer of bread- 
 stuffs. 
 
 ; The balance of trade had been for a long time favorable 
 to Europe and against the United States, and also in favor of 
 the commercial cities along the sea-board and against the 
 interior, but a vicious system of credits prevented the prompt 
 settlement of balances. The importers established large credits 
 abroad, by means of which they were enabled to give favor 
 able terms to jobbers. The jobbers in turn were thus, and by 
 liberal accommodations from the banks, able to give their own 
 time to country merchants, who, in turn, sold to their custom 
 ers on indefinite credit. It seemed to be more reputable to 
 borrow money than to earn it, and pleasanter, and apparently 
 more profitable to speculate than to work ; and so people ran 
 headlong into debt, labor decreased, production fell off, and 
 ruin followed. 
 
 " The financial crisis of 1857 was the result of a similar 
 cause, namely, the unhealthy extension of the various forms 
 of credit. But, as in this case the evil had not been long at 
 work, and productive industry had not been seriously dimin 
 ished, the reaction, though sharp and destructive, was not 
 general, nor were the embarrassments resulting from it pro 
 tracted." 
 
RECEPTION OF FIRST REPORT. 219 
 
 Credits on the one hand, debts on the other and it is their 
 undue extension, no matter whether it be by the Government, 
 or corporations, or individuals, that produce financial troubles, 
 the severity of which can be measured by the extent of the 
 cause. These troubles will come upon all free and enterpris 
 ing nations. They have been and they will continue to be 
 most frequent in this country, because there are more freedom 
 and enterprise here than in any other nation. All that can be 
 required of the Government is that it should do nothing to 
 bring them about by the issue of its own notes, or by lowering 
 the standard of value. 
 
 No head of one of our great departments ever prepared 
 his first repoi-t to Congress without being anxious about the 
 manner in which it might be received. I recollect how Mr. 
 Fessenden, one of the ablest and most facile writers of the day, 
 was troubled about his. In my case, there was cause for spe 
 cial anxiety. I was not, like Mr. Fessenden, a practised writer, 
 and as the war had been ended, it was my duty (as I thought) 
 to present my views in regard to what should be the action of 
 Congress upon the important questions currency and debt 
 which demanded prompt and careful consideration. The 
 report was written in my house at night after hard days work 
 in the department. I lacked time to condense it, and I was 
 disgusted with it when it was finished and sent to the printers. 
 I was therefore surprised and gratified by the general favor 
 with which it was received. Scores of letters, from strangers 
 
 o 
 
 as well as friends, came to me daily for weeks, strongly com 
 mending it. It was very favorably noticed and commented on 
 by the leading journals in the United States, and also by the 
 English. The London Times reviewed it at length, and pro 
 nounced it very able. 
 
 But none of the compliments which I received pleased me 
 so much as the following extract of a letter under date of 
 May 4, 1866, from our Minister to England, Charles Francis 
 Adams, to his brother-in-law, Sidney Brooks. I copy it be- 
 
220 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 cause it is complimentary to Mr. Johnson, who was rarely 
 complimented after he became President. 
 
 " The annual message, and the report of the Secretary of 
 the Treasury, raised the character of the nation immensely in 
 Europe ; I know of nothing better in the annals e\ 7 en when 
 Washington was chief and Hamilton his financier." 
 
 All of my reports were well received, but the only one that 
 I was satisfied with was that of 1867. It certainly did not 
 merit the praise which it received, but upon reading it care 
 fully, twenty years after it was written, I do not see anything 
 that I Avoukl expunge. 
 
 In speaking in the House of Commons of my report of 
 1866, and of my administration of the treasury, Mr. Gladstone 
 used the following language: Let us not be ashamed to fol 
 low a good example whenever we may find it, or to render a 
 just tribute of admiration to the courage and forethought of 
 the American people, who are at this moment braving a large 
 burden of taxation, both in its amount and kind, which makes 
 their conduct a marvel because they believe that the true 
 secret of their future power lies in the steady and rapid reduc 
 tion of their debt. I am sure the prevailing sentiment of 
 the House will be to convey to the American people, to the 
 authorities there, and to the able and enlightened Minister of 
 Finance (Mr. McCulloch) our hearty congratulations and our 
 best wishes that he may long continue to apply the same 
 vigorous and prudent hand in thus wisely administering the 
 resources of his country." 
 
 President Johnson s first message, to which Mr. Adams 
 referred in his letter to Mr. Brooks, was an admirable paper. 
 It was written before the President had wandered so far from 
 right thought as to express the opinion, as he afterwards did, 
 that the holders of the United States bonds ought not to 
 receive in payment thereof any more than the Government 
 received for them in real money ; that inasmuch as the bonds 
 had been paid for in notes, which, measured by gold, were not 
 
JOHNSON S FINANCIAL EKKOK. 221 
 
 worth more than fifty per cent, of their face value, the pay 
 ment of the interest for sixteen years ought to extinguish the 
 principal. In expressing this opinion the President not only 
 indicated disregard of the obligations of contracts, but he 
 overlooked the fact that when these bonds were subscribed 
 and paid for, the Government was engaged in a civil war the 
 result of which was by no means certain, and that investments 
 in them were regarded rather as an evidence of loyalty than 
 of business sagacity. 
 
CHAPTER XVIII. 
 
 Assassination of Mr. Lincoln Mr. Lincoln on the Morning of the Assassina 
 tion Attempted Assassination of Mr. Seward Execution of some of the 
 Assassins and of Mrs. Surratt Indications of a Panic in Wall Street The 
 Iron-clad Oath President s Message transmitting Letter of Secretary of 
 Treasury, asking Modification thereof Senators Sherman and Sumner s 
 Remarks thereon Sumner s Character and Appearance Captured and 
 Abandoned Property Difficulty in Executing the Law Wm. E. Chand 
 ler Assistant Secretary His valuable Services John Hartley Revenue 
 Commissioners David A. Wells, Stephen Colwell, S. S. Hayes Mr. Wells 
 Sole Commissioner. 
 
 THE rejoicings of the people of the loyal States over the end 
 of the war and the preservation of the Union were sud 
 denly changed into the deepest sorrow by the assassination of 
 Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 I never saw Mr. Lincoln so cheerful and happy as he was 
 on the day of his death. The burden which had been weighing 
 upon him for four long years, and which lie had borne with 
 heroic fortitude, had been lifted ; the war had been practically 
 ended ; the Union was safe. The weary look which his face 
 had so long worn, and which could be observed by those who 
 knew him well, even when he was telling humorous stories, 
 had disappeared. It was bright and cheerful. As he took me by 
 the hand when I was about to leave the AVhite House, he said : 
 We must look to you, Mr. Secretary, for the money to pay 
 off the soldiers." " I shall look to the people," I replied ; 
 " they have not failed us thus far, and I don t think they will 
 now." A few hours after I saw him unconscious and dying. 
 
 In the evening of the 13th of April, 1865, 1 had just gone to 
 ray sleeping-room when I was startled by a knocking at the 
 door, and the cry, " Mr. Seward has been murdered ! " Almost 
 at the same instant there was a more violent knocking, and as 
 
LINCOLN S ASSASSINATION. 223 
 
 I opened the door, I met Mr. Walker, the photographer of 
 the Treasury Department, so breathless from running that he 
 could hardly utter the \vords : " The President has been shot 
 at the theatre." My lodgings were in one of the Cass 
 houses, no\v a part of the Arlington Hotel, not more than a 
 stone s throw from the house occupied by Mr. Seward, to 
 which I immediately ran. The outside door was open, and I 
 saw no one as I went up the stairs and through the hall to Mr. 
 Seward s sleeping-room, except Mrs. Frederick Seward, who 
 was just entering another room, to attend as I heard after 
 wards, upon her husband, whose skull had been fractured by a 
 blow from her father-in-law s assailant, whom he had met at 
 the head of the stairs and tried to arrest. As I entered Mr. 
 Seward s room, Miss Seward left it, and I was for a minute or 
 two alone with her father. He had been raised from the floor, 
 upon which he had thrown himself in his efforts to escape the 
 murderous blows that had been aimed at him, and he lay on 
 his blood-stained bed, with his wounds still bleeding. As I 
 took his hand he opened his eyes, and seemed to recognize me, 
 but he immediately closed them again, and became apparently 
 unconscious. His wounds were ghastly, but they did not seem 
 to be fatal. His breathing was regular, and his pulse was full 
 and strong. Some days before he had been thrown from his 
 carriage and his jaw had been fractured. To keep the bones 
 in place, an elastic wire bandage had been placed upon one 
 side of his face, extending down to the throat. This bandage 
 prevented at least one of the blows of his powerful assailant 
 from being a death blow. It was aimed at the throat, but the 
 bowie knife, although wielded by a strong hand, was diverted 
 when it struck the bandage, and failed to inflict a deadly 
 wound. The life of Mr. Seward was, however, saved by his 
 army nurse, George F. Robinson, who was in attendance upon 
 him. As the assassin entered the* room, and, knife in hand, 
 was rushing to the bed upon which his intended victim was 
 lying, the servant, although greatly inferior in strength, seized 
 
224 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 hold of his left arm, and prevented him from using his right 
 arm with its full force. As soon as Mr. Seward had thrown 
 himself from the bed to the floor, the assassin turned upon 
 Robinson, gave him a staggering blow, dashed through the 
 hall and down the stairs, and in a moment he was on the 
 horse which he had left standing by the sidewalk, and was 
 away. Some days after, he was arrested in the house 
 of Mrs. Surratt, which he had entered disguised as a 
 laborer. 
 
 As soon as a surgeon and one or two friends of Mr. 
 Seward entered the room, I left it to learn the fate of Mr. 
 Lincoln. I had not gone far towards the White House before 
 I met a number of men who told me that he was not there. 
 I then ran down the Avenue to F Street, down F to Tenth 
 Street, and thence to the theatre, around which a large crowd 
 had gathered, through which I pushed my way to a house 
 opposite the theatre, into which I heard that he had been car 
 ried, and presently I was at the bedside of the dying Presi 
 dent. Mr. Stanton, Mr. Wells, Mr. Dennison, and Mr. Speed, 
 members of the Cabinet, were already there. Surgeon-Gene 
 ral Barnes, General Meigs, Mr. Sumner, and a number of other 
 friends of the President, were also present. The death-like 
 paleness of Mr. Lincoln s upturned face, his stertorous breath 
 ing, and the grief -stricken countenances of the men around 
 him, indicated too clearly as I entered the room that his case 
 was hopeless. All night we stood or sat silent by his bed 
 side. Not a word was spoken except by Mr. Stanton, who 
 in undertones gave directions through messengers to army 
 officers to guard the exits from the city, to prevent, if it might 
 be possible, the escape of the assassins. Once only was the 
 impressive silence broken, when Mrs. Lincoln came in, and, 
 kneeling by the bed, and clasping a hand of her unconscious 
 husband, gave vent to her irrepressible grief in tones that 
 pierced every heart, and brought tears to every eye. When 
 she was led away, silence again prevailed, and it continued 
 
THE CASE OF MRS. SURRATT. 225 
 
 unbroken until seven o clock in the morning, when the death 
 shade came over his face, and Mr. Lincoln was at rest. 
 
 It had been a sleepless night in Washington. The theatre 
 in which Mr. Lincoln was shot was well filled, and conse 
 quently there were hundreds to spread the shocking tidings 
 throughout the city. Houses were deserted ; women as well 
 as men flocked to the streets, but there was little heard except 
 the tramp of feet in the crowded thoroughfares. The feeling 
 was too deep for noisy expression. But I need not dwell upon 
 a scene which has been frequently described by other pens. 
 John Wilkes Booth, the assassin of Mr. Lincoln, the small bone 
 of one of his legs having been broken as he leaped from the box 
 occupied by Mr. Lincoln to the stage, and who must have suf 
 fered almost unbearable agony in his efforts to escape, was 
 shot by one of his pursuers. Lewis Paine, the assailant of 
 Mr. Seward, David E. Harrold, George A. Adzerodt, Mary E. 
 Surratt, Samuel A. Mudd, Michael O Laughlin, Edward Span 
 gle, and Samuel II. Arnold were tried by a military commis 
 sion for conspiracy and murder. Paine, Harrold, Adzerodt, 
 and Mrs. Surratt were found guilty of murder and condemned 
 to die. Mudd, Arnold and O Laughlin were found guilty of 
 conspiracy, and were sentenced to imprisonment for life ; Span- 
 gler to imprisonment for six years. The finding of the court 
 was approved by the President, on the sixth of July, and those 
 who were condemned to die were executed the very next day, 
 Mrs. Surratt having pleaded in vain fcr a respite of a fe\v days. 
 After her execution, there was a general feeling of regret that 
 her punishment had not been commuted from death to impris 
 onment. The evidence on which she was convicted would not 
 have satisfied an impartial jury. Her complicity in the assas 
 sination was not clearly proven, and the sternest justice in her 
 case would have been satisfied with a lesser punishment. The 
 most pitiful object that I ever beheld was the prostrate form 
 of Miss Surratt (who was said to be an amiable and accom 
 plished young lady), upon the main staircase of the Executive 
 
 15 
 
MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Mansion, in the morning of the day of her mother s execution. 
 She had come to plead for her mother s life, and having 
 failed to obtain admission to the President, she had fainted 
 in descending the stairs. There was, I am sure, no founda 
 tion for the report, which many believed, that Mr. Stanton s 
 life was shortened by remorse for his agency in the prosecu 
 tion and execution of Mrs. Surratt ; but I know that President 
 Johnson deeply regretted that he did not favorably consider 
 the petitions that were made for a commutation of her pun 
 ishment, and that he especially regretted that he ordered the 
 Avrit of habeas corpus, issued by Judge Wiley, on the morning 
 of her execution, to be disregarded. The facts that the trial 
 was before a military commission, months after the war was 
 ended; that the male criminals were manacled during the 
 trial ; that from those (with the exception of Mrs. Surratt) 
 upon whom sentence of death was pronounced the shackles 
 were not removed when they were executed, indicated how 
 justice could be strained and humanity deadened when public 
 vengeance was thoroughly aroused. 
 
 There were real indications of a panic in "Wall Street the 
 next morning after Mr. Lincoln s death, and fears were 
 expressed that there might be a real panic, which, in the con 
 dition of the Treasury, would be a very serious matter. A few 
 bonds were offered at some points below the market rates of 
 the day before. Through a trusted agent, they were pur 
 chased by Mr. John A. Stewart, the Assistant Treasurer, under 
 instructions which I had given him, and the market at once 
 resumed a healthy tone. A few days after, the bonds were 
 disposed of with a profit to the Treasury. This was an occa 
 sion when it would not have been safe to leave the interests of 
 the Government to take care of themselves or to be controlled 
 by Wall Street. To meet the pressing demands upon the 
 Treasury, a large amount of securities were soon to be sold. 
 A panic, therefore, was to be prevented before it had obtained 
 headway, and it was prevented by the prompt and prudent 
 
THE IROX-CLAD OATH. 227 
 
 action of Mr. Stewart. In one or two other cases the market 
 was steadied in the same way. 
 
 When the war ended, and it became necessary to enforce 
 the revenue laws in the Southern States, an important ques 
 tion came up for decision. The law required that all civil 
 officers should take what was called the Iron-clad Oath an 
 oath that they had not in any way or manner aided the rebell 
 ion an oath that very few Southern men could take. The 
 question then to be met was, Shall this oath be required as an 
 indispensable qualification for appointees to Southern revenue 
 offices ? The same question arose in regard to appointments 
 in the postal service. It was carefully considered at a Cabinet 
 meeting, and the conclusion was that men might be appointed 
 who could not take the oath if such appointments should be 
 necessary in order to establish the revenue and postal ser 
 vice in the Southern States. On this point the Cabinet was a 
 unit. I recollect perfectly that Mr. Stanton expressed his opin 
 ion with his usual directness. The Act, he said, was passed 
 under circumstances very different from those now existing, 
 and ought to be disregarded when it stood in the way of 
 the enforcement of the revenue laws, or even the restoration 
 of the postal service. According to this conclusion, a number 
 of men were appointed revenue officers and postmasters in the 
 Southern States who could only take an oath for the faithful 
 performance of their duties and obedience to the Constitution 
 of the United States. I was careful, as was the Postmaster- 
 General, Mr. Dennison, that no one should be appointed who 
 could be justly charged with having instigated the rebellion. 
 Upon the meeting of Congress, an appropriation was asked to 
 pay the appointees for the services they had rendered. Objec 
 tions were made to such an appropriation, on .the ground that 
 the appointments had been in violation of law, and a resolution 
 was adopted by the House calling upon the President for the 
 names of those who had been appointed without taking the 
 required oath, and for the reasons of their appointment. The 
 
228 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 resolution was referred by the President to me and to the 
 Postmaster-General. Our replies were addressed to the Presi 
 dent, and by him were sent to Congress with his approval. I 
 copy my reply, because I think, now, as I thought then, that it 
 stated the case fairly, and because it expressed what I thought 
 ought to be the policy of the Government towards the Southern 
 States : 
 
 " The following message from the President of the United 
 States, transmitting communications from the Secretary of the 
 Treasury and Postmaster-General, suggesting a modification 
 of the oath of office prescribed by Congress, approved July 2, 
 1862, was laid before the House, April 6, 1866 : 
 
 "To THE SENATE AND HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES: 
 
 " I herewith transmit communications from the Secretary 
 of the Treasury and the Postmaster-General, suggesting a 
 modification of the oath of office prescribed by Congress, 
 approved July 2, 1862. I fully concur in their recommenda 
 tion, and, as the subject pertains to the efficient administration 
 of the revenue and postal laws in the Southern States, I ear 
 nestly commend it to the early consideration of Congress. 
 
 ANDREW JOHNSON. 
 WASHINGTON, D. C., April 5, 1866. 
 
 " TREASURY DEPARTMENT, March 19, 1866. 
 
 " SIR : Herewith I hand you the names of collectors of 
 internal revenue, assessors, assistant assessors, collectors and 
 surveyors of customs, etc., etc., appointed since the overthrow 
 of the rebellion in the Southern States, who have not been 
 able to take, literally, the oath of office prescribed by the Act 
 approved July 2, 1862. Besides these officers, a considerable 
 number, perhaps the larger proportion of those holding sub 
 ordinate positions in the revenue departments, have been also 
 unable to comply with the requirements of the statute. As a 
 consequence, they have served without compensation, as their 
 accounts could not be audited by the accounting officers of the 
 Government. Many of these officers have performed very 
 important duties with fidelity, and not a few must be in great 
 distress by reason of their inability to draw their salaries and 
 commissions. 
 
 " When these appointments were made, it was feared that 
 it would be difficult to find competent officers in many of the 
 
CONDITION OF THE SOUTH. 229 
 
 Southern revenue districts who could take the oath referred to, 
 but so important did it seem to you and to your Cabinet, for 
 the purpose of equalizing the public burdens, that the revenue 
 svstem should be established throughout the recently rebel 
 lious States with as little delay as practicable, and that the 
 unpleasant duty of collecting taxes from an exhausted and 
 recently rebellious people should be performed by their own 
 citizens, that I did not hesitate to recommend for appointment, 
 and you did not hesitate to appoint, men of whose present 
 loyalty there was no question, but who might have been, either 
 willingly or unwillingly, during the progress of the rebellion, 
 so connected with the insurgent State and Confederate govern 
 ments as to be unable to take the oath of office. This was not 
 done from any disposition to disregard the law, but with an 
 honest and sincere purpose of collecting the revenue with as 
 little odium to the tax-payers as possible. 
 
 " The country was in a peculiar condition. The rebellion 
 had come to a "sudden close. All resistance to the authority 
 of the United States had ceased, and some seven millions of 
 people, in a state of utter disorganization, were left without 
 any civil government whatever, and without even an adequate 
 military protection against anarchy and violence. Under 
 these circumstances, as it seemed to be clearly the duty of the 
 Executive to proceed at once to establish the Federal authority 
 and civil government in these States, so it seemed to be neces 
 sary to carry into effect the revenue laws of the general 
 Government. As the country was passing from a state of 
 war to a state of peace, and the emergency seemed to be too 
 pressing to admit of delay until the meeting of Congress, it 
 was thought that the Test Oath might, in view of the great 
 objects to be attained, in some cases be dispensed with ; or 
 rather, that persons might be permitted to hold revenue offices 
 who could take it only in a qualified form. No one could 
 have regretted more than yourself, and the members of your 
 Cabinet, the necessity which existed for this course ; but there 
 seemed to be no alternative, and it was confidently hoped 
 that under the circumstances of the case it would be approved 
 by Congress. 
 
 " Among those whose names are presented to you, I have 
 no reason to suppose that there is one who can be justly 
 charged with being instrumental in instigating the rebellion, 
 although a few may have contributed to its support and con 
 tinuance. Some, with strong attachment for the Union, had 
 followed the States in. which they lived into the war against 
 the United States under the baleful influence of the doctrine of 
 
230 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 State Soveregnty. Some had held office under the insurgent 
 authorities as the only means of supporting their families ; 
 others, to escape conscription, or to be in a better condition to 
 resist, at the proper time, Confederate rule. Not one is known 
 to have been a disunionist, or unfriendly to the Government 
 at the commencement of the war. A very slight change in 
 the oath a change that would not cover a particle of present 
 disloyalty would enable the most of them to hold the offices 
 they are now so acceptably filling. Great loss to the Govern 
 ment and great inconvenience to this department must result 
 from the discontinuance of their services ; but it is due to 
 them, unless relief should be given to them at an early day, 
 that they should be notified of the fact that, as their services 
 cannot be legally paid for, they will be no longer required. 
 At the same time I would respectfully suggest, if it should be 
 necessary to give them this notice, that Congress be asked 
 that authority be granted for the payment of the salaries and 
 commissions to which they would be entitled had they taken 
 the oath. It is true, they were advised that their accounts 
 could not be audited until Congress had modified the oath ; 
 but as they expected, as did yourself and your Cabinet, a 
 modification of it early in the session, and as they have been 
 living and working in this hope, it would seem to be unjust as 
 well as unwise, for the Government to decline paying them 
 for the valuable services which they have rendered. 
 
 In regard to future appointments, I have to say that I 
 am w r ell satisfied that it will be difficult, if not impossible, to 
 find competent men at the South to fill the revenue offices 
 who can qualify under the statute. Especially will this be so 
 in regard to the subordinate positions. In the progress of the 
 rebellion, very few persons of character and intelligence in 
 most of these States failed in some way or other to participate 
 in the hostilities, or to connect themselves with the insurgent 
 government. This is almost universally true of the young 
 men who are expected to fill clerkships and other inferior 
 places in the revenue service. Men of the necessary qualifica 
 tions who were able to take the oath, and were inclined to 
 accept appointments, have, as far as they could be found, 
 already been employed by the Government. For those offices 
 that must soon become vacant, if Congress should not deem it 
 safe or proper to modify the oath, I am at a loss to know 
 where the right men are to be obtained, or how the revenues 
 in many of the Southern districts are to be collected. 
 
 " It is urged, I know, that there are plenty of men at the 
 South who can comply with the statute, and, that if this 
 
UNWISDOM OF SECTIONALISM. 231 
 
 should not prove to be the fact, men at the North can be 
 found who will accept prominent offices at the present salaries, 
 and also the subordinate positions, if the proper inducements 
 in the way of increased salaries are held out to them. 
 
 " It is^true that there are still some applicants for office in 
 Southern States who present what they call a clean record 
 for loyalty, but, with rare exceptions, they are persons who 
 would have been able to present an equally fair record for 
 place under the Confederate Government if the rebellion had 
 been a success, or persons lacking the qualifications which are 
 needed in revenue positions. 
 
 " In regard to the matter of compensation, I have only to 
 remark that the law fixes definitely the salaries and commis 
 sions of most officers, and that the pay of subordinate officers 
 is altogether inadequate to tempt Northern men to assume the 
 risk and incur the odium of collecting taxes in the Southern 
 States, except, perhaps, in the commercial cities on the sea 
 board. 
 
 " I deem it my duty, further, to remark that I do not con 
 sider it advisable for the Government to attempt to collect 
 taxes in the Southern States by the hands of strangers. After 
 having given the subject careful consideration, anxious as I 
 am to increase the revenue and to lighten by distributing and 
 equalizing the burdens of the people, with no party interest to 
 promote, and with nothing but the good of the Government at 
 heart, I have come to the deliberate conclusion that it would 
 be better for the country, politically and financially, to sus 
 pend the collection of internal revenue taxes in the Southern 
 States (except in commercial cities) for months, if not for years 
 to come, rather than to undertake to collect them by men 
 not identified with the tax-payers in sympathy or interest. 
 
 " The rebellion grew out of an antagonism of opinion 
 between the people of the free and slave States, the legitimate 
 result of a difference of institutions. With the abolition of 
 slavery, all real differences of opinion, and all serious causes of 
 estrangement, ought rapidly to disappear. It will be a calam 
 ity, the extent of which cannot now be estimated, both to 
 this nation and to the cause of civil liberty everywhere, if, 
 instead of looking toward reconciliation and harmony, the 
 action of the Government shall tend to harden and intensify 
 sectionalism between the Northern and the Southern States. 
 It is difficult to conceive of a more unfortunate course for the 
 Government of the United States to pursue than to make tax- 
 gatherers at the South of men who are strangers to the people. 
 It needs no reference to history (although it is full of lessons 
 
232 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 upon this subject) to illustrate the fatal consequences of such a 
 policy. 
 
 " The importance of this subject must be my apology for 
 thus calling your attention to it. I am greatly embarrassed, 
 on the one hand, by the consideration that by sanctioning the 
 longer continuance in office of persons who have not taken the 
 oath I am not acting with entire fairness to them, and am 
 subjected to the charge of disregarding the law; and on the 
 other hand by the consideration that if they should be dis 
 missed or requested to resign, the public revenues would be 
 very considerably diminished, and reconciliation and harmony 
 between the Government and a large portion of its citizens 
 greatly retarded. I would therefore respectfully suggest that 
 the whole matter be referred to Congress for such action as, 
 in their judgment, the interest of the service and the interest 
 of the Union may seem to require. 
 
 "THE PRESIDENT." 
 
 "When the appropriation bill which covered the amount 
 required to pay these officers for the services they had ren 
 dered came up for consideration in the Senate, Mr. Sherman, 
 the Chairman of the Finance Committee, explained the case in 
 the following language : " The circumstances which induced 
 the committee to report favorably were very simple. The 
 Secretary found it impossible to find men in some of the coun 
 ties of the rebel States to discharge the duties of assistant 
 assessors who could take the oath. According to law, they 
 must live in the counties in which they respectively hold office. 
 The Secretary was, therefore, compelled to dispense with a 
 part of the oath in particular cases, and he has now asked to 
 pay these men only up to the first of August." 
 
 To this fair and calm statement of the case Mr. Sumner 
 savagely replied : " The Secretary of the Treasury was guilty 
 of an illegal act nay, more, a crime. He violated the law in 
 appointing men who could not take the oath, and when com 
 plaint was made, he replied, in a notorious falsehood, that there 
 were no Union men in the South who could take the oath. This 
 was nothing less than a notorious untruth. Congress has been 
 too lenient towards the crimes of this officer. I will not vote 
 
CHARLES SUMNEB. 233 
 
 to pay those rebels ; let the Secretary pay them out of his own 
 pocket." Mr. Sumner knew, when he uttered this language, 
 that my action in the appointments referred to was approved 
 by his friend Mr. Stanton, and he kne\v also, or ought to have 
 known, that there was not a statement in my letter to the 
 President which was not absolutely true. Mr. Sumner dis 
 agreed with me upon the suffrage question (there had been 
 some correspondence between us upon this question), and he 
 was angry with me on account of the removal of his brother- 
 in-law from the office of surgeon in the Marine Hospital at 
 San Francisco. The appropriation of money to pay men who 
 had not taken the Test Oath, gave him an opportunity for 
 expressing his bad feeling towards me and the people of the 
 South, which he did in the language I have quoted. There 
 was no personal intercourse between us after that time until 
 we met in London, in 1ST2 or 1ST3, where we agreed that 
 bygones should be forgotten, and pleasant relations were 
 established between us, which continued as long as he lived. 
 
 Time also brought its healing power to bear upon Mr. 
 Sumner s prejudice against the South. He became not only 
 anxious that good feeling should prevail between the sections, 
 but he took the ground that there ought to be no monuments 
 in the North to remind the people of the South of their 
 humiliation, or to indicate that there had been a civil war. 
 Mr. Sumner was interesting by both his merits and his faults. 
 He was a ripe scholar, an elegant and instructive writer. As 
 an orator, he had few if any superiors. His style was ornate, 
 his delivery impressive. His speeches in the Senate were care 
 fully prepared, and were worthy of the close attention which 
 they received from most of the senators, although they were 
 better fitted for the platform than the halls of legislation. His 
 face was handsome and highly intellectual. He was tall, well 
 formed, and of commanding presence, a "man of mark" in 
 the street or in an assembly. He was also a pure man, a man 
 of unsullied and unassailable integrity. All this can be justly 
 
234 ;ME:N T AND MEASURES OF HALF A CEXTURY. 
 
 said of him. On the other hand, his prejudices were hastily 
 formed and violent. His self-esteem was limitless. Impatient 
 of contradiction, his manner to those who differed with him 
 was arrogant and offensive. His ears were ever open to flat 
 tery, of which he was omnivorous. His friendship was con 
 fined to the very few whom he acknowledged to be his equals, 
 or to the many who looked up to him as a superior. His sym 
 pathies were for races too lofty to descend to persons. For 
 the freedom of the slaves he was an earnest worker ; of their 
 claims to all the privileges of freedom, after their emancipa 
 tion, he was an able and eloquent advocate and defender ; but 
 to appeals by needy colored people to his charity, or even his 
 sympathy, he was seemingly indifferent. These constitutional 
 defects in his character did not greatly impair his usefulness, 
 nor lessen the estimation in which he was held by those who 
 knew him well and properly appreciated his excellent qualities 
 and the value of his public services. He was one of the most 
 distinguished of that gallant band whom the slavery question 
 made prominent in the United States, and his name will be at 
 all times and everywhere honored by the lovers of freedom. 
 
 The most troublesome and disagreeable duty which I was 
 called upon to perform was in the execution of the law in 
 reference to the property in the Southern States, which had 
 been captured by the Federal armies, or was owned or con 
 trolled by the Confederate Government, or abandoned by its 
 owners. All such property as was found within the Federal 
 lines, as the war progressed, and in any of the Southern States 
 after the war was ended, became the property of the United 
 States, and it was the duty of the Treasury Department to 
 adopt rules and appoint agents for its collection. Rules had 
 been prepared and agents had been appointed for this purpose 
 during the war by my predecessors, Mr. Chase and Mr. Fessen- 
 den. At the close of the war the field was greatly enlarged, 
 and new rules, and a much larger number of agents were 
 required. The preparation of rules which should strictly define 
 
INVESTIGATING CLAIMS. 235 
 
 the duties of the agents was a difficult matter, but this diffi 
 culty was small in comparison with that which was encoun 
 tered in keeping the agents up to, and yet within, the line of 
 their instructions. As they were to be paid for these services 
 by a commission on the property which they collected and 
 secured, there was a strong temptation for them to take pos 
 session of property which had not been owned or controlled 
 by the Confederate Government ; while on the other hand, the 
 Southern people were still more strongly tempted to claim as 
 their own, or to conceal, property which wcs liable to seizure. 
 Thus while the agents were disposed to regard all property 
 which they could reach (it was chiefly cotton) as belonging to 
 the United States, the people, or most of them, were disposed 
 to claim as their own private property that which had been 
 bought and paid for by the Confederate Government. 
 
 For some time after the war was ended, the Southern 
 States were in a disorganized condition. The Confederate 
 Government having been overthrown, there was no governing 
 power except the Federal military power, and this did not 
 extend much beyond the territory occupied by the Federal 
 troops. Everywhere else there was an absence of recognized 
 authority to which appeal could be made for the protection of 
 private property or for the protection of the Treasury Agents 
 in the performance of their legitimate duties. In these cir 
 cumstances a good deal of Confederate property was undoubt 
 edly " spirited avxiy " (as its disappearance from accessible 
 places Avas called), and not a little was seized by the agents to 
 which the United States had no claim. As it was my duty to 
 execute the law fairly to protect the interests of the Govern 
 ment without doing injustice to claimants I was compelled to 
 give a great deal of time, by night as well as by day, to the 
 investigation and decision of claims upon the Government by 
 real or pretended owners, and that too, when other business of 
 the greatest importance demanded my constant attention. 
 When individual claimants were clearly right, the property 
 
236 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 was surrendered. "When there was a reasonable doubt as to 
 the ownership, it was retained, and the claimants were left to 
 prosecute their claims in the courts. Although Mr. Eames, an 
 eminent and upright lawyer, was employed as special counsel 
 for the Government in cases of peculiar difficulty, I should 
 have been unable to do what seemed to be absolutely required 
 of the head of the Department in the disposition of these cap 
 tured and abandoned property cases, but for the very efficient 
 aid which I received from my Assistant Secretary, William E. 
 Chandler. 
 
 Mr. Chandler was a stranger to me when, at my request, 
 he was appointed Assistant Secretary of the Treasury ; but I 
 knew that, although quite young, he had performed satisfac 
 torily, important duties in the Navy Department, and I was 
 pleased with his appearance. He proved to be just the man I 
 Avanted. He was self-possessed, industrious, intelligent, acute ; 
 faithful to the Government, and true to me. He had my entire 
 confidence in no one could it have been more safely reposed. 
 Since then he has risen to distinction as Secretary of the Navy, 
 and he enters the United States Senate well equipped for the 
 performance of legislative duties. His private life is pure, his 
 integrity unquestionable. In politics he is an efficient and 
 skilful worker, devoted to his party, and an earnest advocate 
 of its principles. To his great credit be it said, he was one 
 of the few radical Republicans who did not permit their party 
 allegiance to blind them to the merits of Andrew Johnson. 
 
 Mr. Chandler was succeeded \)y Edmund Cooper of Ten 
 nessee, a personal friend of President Johnson. I had no 
 acquaintance with him before his appointment, but he proved 
 to be an intelligent, industrious, high-toned gentleman, who 
 soon became familiar with the duties assigned to him, and per 
 formed them to my satisfaction. I have very pleasant recollec 
 tion of Mr. Cooper, personally and officially. John F. Hartley 
 was also one of my assistant secretaries. He w r as a class-mate 
 of mine in the Saco Academy, and at Bowdoin College. After 
 
DAVID A. WELLS. 237 
 
 graduating \vith high honors (he was always at the head of 
 his classes), he studied law, and gave promise of taking a 
 prominent position in his profession. Before getting fairly at 
 work, however, he went to Washington with the intention of 
 spending a few months there, and seeing something of public 
 life, and forming the acquaintance of public men. While 
 there he was so unwise as to accept a clerkship in the Treasury 
 Department, and there I found him when I became Comp 
 troller of the Currency. Like a great many other talented 
 young men who have applied for and obtained clerkships in 
 the Washington departments for temporary employment, and 
 have become so attached to their places, or disqualified for 
 more active life, as to become fixtures, Mr. Hartle} T relin 
 quished the profession in which he might have been distin 
 guished, and buried himself in the Treasury Department. He 
 was advanced by Mr. Chase to the chief clerkship, some thirty 
 years after he entered the department, and one of my first 
 official acts as Secretary was to make him one of my assistants, 
 and a very valuable assistant he proved to be. He had a clear, 
 discriminating intellect, which had been improved by his early 
 legal training and subsequent study, so that he had peculiar 
 aptitude for the investigation of the complicated and difficult 
 questions which were constantly arising under the tariff laws. 
 His duties were chiefly in that line, and they were admirably 
 performed. No one in the Department was so familiar with the 
 customs laws, or so competent to interpret them, as Mr. Hart 
 ley. He held the office of Assistant Secretary during my term, 
 and under Secretaries Boutwell and Richardson. His resi<rna- 
 
 O 
 
 tion was asked for soon after Mr. Bristow became Secretary. 
 
 There are few of my official acts that I look upon with 
 more satisfaction than the appointment of David A. Wells to 
 be a Revenue Commissioner. Prior to the civil war, economic 
 questions excited but little practical interest in the United 
 States. The Government was out of debt, and the current 
 expenses were provided for by the tariff and small receipts 
 
238 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 from the sales of public lands. The tariff, it is true, had been 
 for nearly forty years a fruitful subject of discussion, but it 
 had been discussed as a party and sectional question, and with 
 comparatively little reference to its bearing upon the diversi 
 fied interests of the country. So much of a sectional question 
 at one time was it, that it gave birth to the doctrine of nullifi 
 cation, and but for the energy and decision of the President, 
 General Jackson, and the compromise measures of which 
 Henry Clay was the father, it might have jeopardized the 
 integrity of the nation. Soon after the commencement of 
 the civil war it became obvious that the revenues must be 
 largely and promptly increased to meet extraordinary expenses 
 and strengthen the public credit. To accomplish this great 
 changes were made in the tariff, and a far-reaching system of 
 internal revenue was adopted. The emergency was pressing, 
 and there was no time for an investigation by Congress of 
 the effect which heavy and indiscriminate taxation might have 
 upon productive industry. The object aimed at was immedi 
 ate increase of revenue, and this was most successfully accom 
 plished ; but the burdens to which the tax-payers were sub 
 jected were heavy; a part of the taxes were found to be 
 injudicious, and when the war was concluded and business 
 was returning to its former and regular channels, a thorough 
 investigation of the existing tax laws for the purpose of 
 accommodating them to well-established economic principles 
 and the changed and changing condition of the country was 
 very clearly demanded. To meet this demand, Congress, by 
 the amendatory act of March 3, 1865, authorized the Secre 
 tary of the Treasury to " appoint a Commission, consisting of 
 three persons, to inquire and report at the earliest practicable 
 moment upon the subject of raising by taxation such revenue 
 as may be necessary in order to supply the wants of the Gov 
 ernment, having regard to and including the sources from 
 which such revenue should be drawn, and the best and most 
 efficient mode of raisin^ the same." 
 
THE EEVENUE COMMISSION. 239 
 
 In accordance with this act, David A. "Wells, Stephen Col- 
 well and S. S. Hayes were appointed Commissioners. Mr. 
 Hayes I knew personally. Mr. Colwell was appointed on the 
 recommendation of Pennsylvania Congressmen, and Mr. Wells, 
 from my own knowledge of him, and on the advice of my 
 predecessor, Mr. Fessenden. Mr. Hayes was regarded as repre 
 senting the agricultural interests of the West ; Mr. Colwell, 
 the manufacturing interests of the Eastern States ; and Mr. 
 Wells, commerce in its various branches. The Commission 
 was thus constituted that it might fairly represent different, 
 and to some extent conflicting, interests. It was organized in 
 June, 1865, and continued in existence until July, 1866, dur 
 ing which time it performed very valuable work, and, by the 
 joint and several reports of its members, gave to Congress a 
 great deal of such information as was needed to give right 
 direction to economic legislation. The following paragraphs 
 in regard to the work of the Commission are from my report 
 of 1865 : 
 
 " An investigation of the character of the revenue contem 
 plated by the act authorizing this Commission necessarily 
 involves a careful and comprehensive inquiry into the condi 
 tion of every industry, trade or occupation in the country 
 likely to be affected by the national revenue system, and, in 
 the absence of nearly all previously compared and exact data, 
 must necessarily be protracted ami laborious. 
 
 " The plan pursued by the Commission has been to take up, 
 specifically, these sources of revenue which our own experi 
 ence, and the experience of other countries have indicated as 
 likely to be most productive under taxation, and most capable 
 of sustaining its burdens. In pursuance of this plan, a large 
 number of witnesses have been examined, and much valuable 
 testimony put upon record. 
 
 " As a gratifying feature of their work, the Commission 
 report a most cheerful and prompt co-operation on the part of 
 nearly all the representatives of the industrial interests of the 
 country in the procurement of exact information, and a uni 
 versal expression of ready acquiescence in any demands upon 
 them which the future necessities of the Government may 
 require, united at the same time with a request that the Gov- 
 
240 MEX AXD MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 eminent should, on its part, seek to equalize, so far as prac 
 ticable, and fairly distribute, the apportionment of its require 
 ments." 
 
 The duties of the Commissioners were ably performed, and 
 satisfactorily to Congress and to the Secretary ; but upon 
 the completion of their reports, their further services were dis 
 pensed with, and instead thereof, the Secretary was author 
 ized by An act to reduce internal taxation," etc., etc., to 
 appoint an officer in his department, who should be styled 
 Special Commissioner of the Revenue, whose office should ter 
 minate in four years from the 10th day of June, 1866. In my 
 report of 18C6 I referred to the act, and to the appointment of 
 Mr. Wells as Special Commissioner : 
 
 " It was the duty of the Special Commissioner of the Rev- 
 enue to inquire into all the sources of national revenue, and the 
 best method of collecting the revenue ; the relation of foreign 
 trade to domestic industry ; the mutual adjustment of the sys 
 tems of taxation by customs and excise, with the view of insur 
 ing the requisite revenue with the least disturbance or incon 
 venience to the progress of industry and the development of 
 the resources of the country ; and to inquire from time to 
 time, under the direction of the Secretary of the Treasury, 
 into the manner in which officers charged with the adminis 
 tration and collection of the revenues perform their duties. 
 
 "On the 16th of July last Mr. David A. Wells was 
 appointed Special Commissioner of the Revenue, under the 
 authority above stated, and he was instructed to proceed at 
 once to perform the contemplated work, giving his chief atten 
 tion to the tariff, with the view of ascertaining what modifica 
 tions are required to adjust it to the system of internal taxes, 
 stimulate industry, and make labor more productive. 
 
 " The ability displayed by Mr. Wells in the performance of 
 his duties as one of the Commissioners for the revision of the 
 internal revenue laws, and the heartiness with which he is 
 prosecuting his investigations, give the best assurance that he 
 will perform the work in a manner creditable to himself and 
 satisfactory to Congress and the people." 
 
 My instructions to him were given in a letter, from which 
 the following are extracts : 
 
REVENUE AXD TARIFF REFORM. 241 
 
 In view of the fact that the revision of the tariff is cer 
 tain to engage the attention of Congress at its next session, I 
 consider it especially desirable that the Treasury Department 
 should be prepared to furnish as much information pertinent 
 to the subject as can be obtained and collected within the lim 
 ited time available for the necessary investigations. You are, 
 therefore, hereby requested to give the subject of the revision 
 of the tariff especial attention, and to report a bill which, if 
 approved by Congress, will be a substitute for all acts impos 
 ing customs duties, and which will render the administration 
 of this branch of the revenue system more simple, economical 
 and effective. 
 
 " In the discharge of this duty, you will consider the neces 
 sity of providing for a large, certain, and permanent revenue, 
 recollecting the fact that the existing tariff has proved most 
 effective in this direction. You will, therefore, endeavor first 
 to secure for the Government a revenue commensurate with 
 its necessities ; and, secondly, to propose such modifications of 
 the tariff laws now in force as will better adjust and equalize 
 the duties upon foreign imports with the internal taxes upon 
 home productions. If this last result can be obtained without 
 detriment to the revenue by reducing taxation upon raw mate 
 rials and the machinery of home productions, rather than by 
 increasing the rates upon imports, it would, in my opinion, by 
 decreasing the cost of production and increasing the purchas 
 ing power of wages, greatly promote the interests of the 
 whole country." 
 
 In my report of December, 1867, I referred again to the 
 work of the Commission in the following language : 
 
 " The Special Commissioner of the .Revenue, since the 
 adjournment of the Thirty-ninth Congress, has been actively 
 engaged in the wide range of duties assigned to him by 
 law, and, under the direction of the Secretary, has devoted 
 a portion of his time to a personal study and examination of 
 the revenue systems and industrial condition of Great Britain 
 and the leading countries of Europe. The result of his inves 
 tigations will be transmitted to Congress at an early day. In 
 his report the Commissioner will discuss the subject ^of Govern 
 ment expenditures as bearing upon the question of the abate 
 ment of taxes ; the present industrial condition and recent prog 
 ress of the country, the price of labor and raw materials at 
 home and abroad, the revision of the internal revenue system 
 both as respects administration and specific taxation, and the 
 16 
 
242 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 relations of the present tariff to revenue and domestic indus- 
 try." 
 
 To those who have read his reports, it is not necessary for 
 me to say that these subjects were discussed with great clear 
 ness and vigor. All of the reports which were made by Mr. 
 Wells, as Special Commissioner, exhibited the most careful, 
 painstaking and intelligent investigation. In clearness and 
 accuracy of statement, and in logical force, they have not been 
 surpassed on either side of the Atlantic. Their ability was 
 admitted, even by those who disagreed Avith the writer in his 
 conclusions. To the reputation which Mr. Wells acquired as 
 Special Commissioner of the Revenue he has added very largely 
 by his numerous papers upon economic subjects. It is not too 
 much to say that his rank is among the first of political econo 
 mists of the time, in Europe as well as in the United States. 
 
CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Condition of the Treasury in April, 1865 Detailed Statement thereof Abso 
 lute Needs of the Government Offering of the Seven and Three-tenths 
 Notes Action of the Press Large Subscriptions by some of the Banks 
 Apprehended Danger therefrom Thorough Examination of the Loan 
 Books Result of that Examination Officers and Clerks The Currency 
 Question Review of the General Policy of the Treasury Department for 
 Four Years. 
 
 THE condition of the Treasury in April, 1865, and the sale 
 of the last of the seven and three-tenths notes that were 
 offered to the public, were thus described in my report of 1867 : 
 
 " In order that the action of the Secretary in the financial 
 administration of the Department may be properly understood, 
 a brief reference to the condition of the Treasury at the time 
 the war was drawing to a close, and at some subsequent periods, 
 seems to be necessary. 
 
 " On the 31st day of March, 1865, the total debt of the 
 United States was $2,366,955,077.34, of the following descrip 
 tions, to wit : 
 
 Funded debt $1,100,361,241 80 
 
 Matured debt 349,420 09 
 
 Temporary loan certificates 52,452,328 29 
 
 Certificates of indebtedness 171,790,000 00 
 
 Interest-bearing notes 526,812,800 00 
 
 Suspended or unpaid requisitions 114,256,548 93 
 
 United States notes (legal tenders) 433,160,569 00 
 
 Fractional currency 24,254,094 07 
 
 $2,423,437,002 18 
 Cash in the Treasury 56,481,924 84 
 
 Total $2,366,955,077 34 
 
 " The resources of the Treasury consisted of the money in 
 the public depositories in different parts of the country, amount 
 ing as above stated to $56,481,924.84 ; the revenues from 
 
244 MEX AXD MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 internal taxes and customs duties, and the authority to issue 
 bonds, notes and certificates, under the following acts to the 
 following amounts : 
 
 Act of February 25, 1862, bonds $4,023,600 00 
 
 Act of March 3, 1864, bonds 27,229,900 00 
 
 Act of June 30, 1864, bonds 7-30 or compound- 
 interest notes 79,811,000 00 
 
 Certificates for temporary loans, act June 30, 
 
 1864 ". 97,546,471 71 
 
 U. S. notes for payment of temporary loans, 
 
 act July 11, 1862 ". 16,839,431 00 
 
 Fractional currency, act June 30, 1864 25,745,905 93 
 
 Act of March 3, 1865, bonds or interest-bearing 
 
 notes 533,587,200 00 
 
 Making a total of. . . .8784,783,508 64 
 
 " Certificates of indebtedness, payable one year from date, 
 or earlier at the option of the Government, bearing interest at 
 the rate of six per cent, per annum, might be issued to an indefi 
 nite amount, but only to public creditors desirous of receiving 
 them in satisfaction of audited and settled demands against the 
 United States. 
 
 " Early in April, the fall of Richmond and the surrender of 
 the forces which had so long defended it, rendered it certain 
 that the Avar was soon to be terminated, and that provision 
 must be made for the payment of the army at the earliest 
 practicable moment. 
 
 " The exigency was great, and the prospect of raising the 
 money required to meet the present and prospective demands 
 upon the Treasury, under the laws then existing, was suffi 
 ciently discouraging to create solicitude and anxiety in the 
 mind of a Secretary little experienced in public affairs, upon 
 whom the responsibility of maintaining the credit of the nation 
 had been unexpectedly devolved. There was no time to try 
 experiments or to correct errors, if any had been committed, in 
 the kind of securities which had been put upon the market. 
 Creditors were importunate, the unpaid requisitions on the 
 Department were largely in excess of the cash in the Treasury ; 
 the vouchers issued to contractors for the necessary supplies of 
 the army and navy were being sold at from ten to twenty per 
 cent, discount indicating by their depreciation how uncertain 
 was the prospect of early payment while nearly a million of 
 men were soon to be discharged from service, who could not 
 
SUCCESS OF THE SEVEX-THIRTY LOAX. 245 
 
 be mustered out until the means to pay the large balances due 
 them were provided. There was no alternative but to raise 
 money by popular subscription to Government securities of a 
 character the most acceptable to the people, who had subscribed 
 so liberally to previous loans. 
 
 " As a considerable amount of the seven-thirty notes had 
 recently been disposed of satisfactorily by the Department, 
 and had proved to be the most popular security ever offered 
 to the people, the Secretary determined to rely upon them 
 (although on the part of the Government they were in many 
 respects objectionable), and, in order to insure speedy subscrip 
 tions, to place them within the reach of all who might be 
 willing to invest in them. In every city and town and village 
 of the loyal, and at some points in the disloyal States, subscrip 
 tions were solicited. The press, with its immense power, and 
 without distinction of party, seconded the efforts of the ener 
 getic and skilful agent who had charge of the loan. The 
 national banks gave efficient aid by liberal subscriptions, 
 while thousands of persons in humble life and with limited 
 means hesitated not to commit their substance to the honor and 
 good faith of the Government. Before the end of July the 
 entire loan, exceeding five hundred millions, was subscribed 
 and paid for, and the Secretary was enabled with the proceeds, 
 together with the receipts from customs and internal revenue, 
 and the use to a limited extent of some of the other means at 
 his disposal, to pay every requisition upon the Treasury, and 
 every matured national obligation. As evidence of the neces 
 sity for prompt action in the negotiation of this loan, and the 
 straits to which the Treasury was reduced, it will be remem 
 bered by those who examined carefully the monthly statements 
 of the Department, that although during the month of April 
 upwards of one hundred millions of dollars had been received 
 from the sales of 7-30 notes, the unpaid requisitions, at its close, 
 had increased to $120,470,000, while the cash (coin and cur 
 rency) in all public depositories amounted only to $16,835,800. 
 If few men intrusted with the management of the finances of 
 a great nation Avere ever in a position so embarrassing and try 
 ing, as that of the Secretary of the United States Treasury in 
 the months of April and May, 1865, none, certainly, were ever 
 so happily and promptly relieved. The Secretary refers to 
 this period of his administration of the Department with 
 pleasure, because the success of this loan was to him not only 
 a surprise and relief,. but because it indicated the resources of 
 the country, and gave him the needed courage for the perform 
 ance of the great work that was before him." 
 
246 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 When these seven and three-tenths notes were offered, the 
 market was already amply supplied with Government securi 
 ties, but the machinery for placing them before the public was 
 under the direction of Mr. Jay Cooke, the agent of the Gov 
 ernment in the disposition of many of the previous loans, and 
 the success was such as I have described. It was understood 
 to be the last of a long line of loans necessitated by the civil 
 war, and there was therefore unusual activity among sub 
 scribers. The. last day s subscription exceeded ten millions of 
 dollars. I was, of course, gratified by the result ; but this 
 gratification was immediately followed by anxiety. The 
 national banks were largely instrumental in the sale of these 
 notes, and some of them were liberal subscribers on their own 
 account. The next day after I had been advised that the 
 entire loan had been disposed of, I requested General Spinner, 
 the Treasurer, to bring to me a statement of the bank balances. 
 As I looked over the list, cold sweat started from my fore 
 head. u You are sweating, Mr. Secretary," said the Treasurer. 
 "Yes," I replied, "and this list would make me sweat if the 
 mercury, instead of being in the nineties, were at zero." I 
 perceived that very large balances were due from banks of 
 small capitals. One bank in a Western city, with a capital of 
 two hundred thousand dollars, was indebted to the Govern 
 ment for over two millions. The loan had gone with a rush. 
 I knew that the market had been, at least temporarily, over 
 sold, and I foresaw that until the notes were better distributed, 
 they would fall below par, and might decline to such an extent 
 as to cripple some of the banks that were large holders, unless 
 they sold speedily. I therefore said to the Treasurer : " Draw 
 down the large bank balances as rapidly as you can without 
 causing serious trouble. Send drafts to the Assistant Treasurer 
 [where the bank especially referred to was located] and instruct 
 him to use them discreetly in reducing the amount which it 
 owes to the Government." This was done, and it was done 
 none too early, if not for the protection of the Government, 
 
VERIFYING ACCOUNTS. 247 
 
 at least for the benefit of the bank, which by being heavily 
 drawn upon, was compelled to sell a large part of its holdings 
 before the decline. Within a month the notes were selling at 
 two or three per cent, discount ; but in the mean time the 
 balances in that bank, and in other banks, had been so reduced 
 that I slept soundly again. 
 
 For nearly three years after I became Secretary I had 
 enough to do (besides the routine business of the great Depart 
 ment, to some items of which I have referred) in funding the 
 immense amount of temporary obligations of the Government. 
 As soon as this great, and in some respects difficult, work, was 
 completed, or in a fair way of speedy accomplishment, the 
 question, Has a dollar been received for each dollar of debt 
 that has been created since the commencement of the war ? 
 forced itself upon my attention. I confess that this question 
 troubled me. I had no reason to think that there had been 
 any over-issues, or that the Government had been defrauded 
 in any way. Everything upon the surface appeared to be 
 straight, but a debt of nearly three thousand millions of dol 
 lars had been created in four years. The obligations repre 
 senting this enormous debt had been of various kinds, and in 
 their preparation and issue had passed through many inexperi 
 enced hands. Might not serious mistakes have been made 
 might there not be outstanding obligations that did not appear 
 upon the books ? This question I determined to have settled, 
 if it should be possible, before my term of office expired. I 
 therefore appointed a committee, consisting of some half dozen 
 of the hardest workers and best accountants in the Depart 
 ment, to take up each loan in the order of issue ; to examine 
 carefully the rules under which the obligations had been 
 printed the checks which had been adopted to prevent col 
 lusion among those whose hands they passed in being prepared 
 for use the records of issue and redemption ; in a word, to do 
 everything that could be done to ascertain whether the public 
 statements of the public debt \vere, or were not, correct. 
 
248 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Some months were required for this investigation, which, as 
 far as I could judge, was thorough and complete. I need not 
 say that my mind was relieved when the committee reported 
 to me that no material errors of any kind had been discovered ; 
 that the records of the different loans had been carefully kept, 
 that all the bonds and notes which had been issued appeared 
 to have been paid for that there had been no over-issues, and 
 that the debt in kind and amount, was what it appeared to be 
 on the books and in the monthly statements. That no losses 
 were sustained by the Government through want of care, 
 incompetency, or dishonesty on the part of its employees or 
 agents, considering the amount and variety of its obligations, 
 is a very interesting fact in the history of our civil war. The 
 United States is the only nation that publishes a monthly 
 statement of its debt ; it is among the few that have dealt 
 honestly with their creditors; in the steady reduction of its 
 debt it stands alone. 
 
 I have said more than I intended to say about the 
 Treasury Department, and my connection with it ; but I cannot 
 forbear to testify to the industry, zeal and ability of the heads 
 of the bureaus and the leading clerks. Willing and hard 
 working men were they all true to the Government in the 
 great struggle in which it was engaged, they seemed always 
 to be emulous to display in their respective stations the devo 
 tion to the honor and welfare of the country which was dis 
 played by so many of their countrymen in the field. Many 
 of them were men of great ability ability that might have 
 distinguished them in more conspicuous walks of life. An 
 opinion is prevalent that no high order of capacity is required 
 in what are called the subordinate officers of the executive 
 departments. This opinion is altogether erroneous. The 
 work to be performed in these departments, especially in the 
 Treasury, is of the highest importance to the country, and 
 such as can be well performed only by men of decided ability. 
 For instance, the duties of the comptrollers and auditors of 
 
THE CURRENCY QUESTION. 249 
 
 the Treasury Department, by whom all official accounts are 
 examined and settled, require in their performance legal and 
 business knowledge of a very high order, and integrity that is 
 proof against temptation. I do not exaggerate when I say, that 
 millions of dollars were saved by the Government during the 
 war and immediately after its close, which would have been 
 lost if the auditors and comptrollers had not been able and 
 incorruptible men. It is of supreme importance that the 
 comptrollers, especially, should be men of this character, as it 
 is their duty to revise the work of the auditors, and their 
 decisions can only be overruled by the courts. Such were 
 Mr. R. W. Taylor and Mr. I. M. Brodhead, who held these 
 offices for many years, and Avhose services were of inestimable 
 value to the country. The clerks, also, in their different 
 stations, were faithful and industrious in the performance of 
 their duties. Xo one was appointed or dismissed at my 
 instance on party or personal grounds. It was my aim, as I 
 have said, to administer the department on strictly business 
 principles, and in my efforts in that direction I had the hearty 
 co-operation of my subordinates. I am quite sure that very 
 few private institutions were so faithfully served. 
 
 I have before expressed to some extent my views in regard 
 to the national debt and the currency question. The follow 
 ing extract from my report of 1860 indicates, perhaps, more 
 clearly than anything that I have said, my opinion in regard 
 to an irredeemable, and consequently depreciated, currency : 
 
 "There being but one universally recognized measure of 
 value, and that being a value in itself, costing what it represents 
 in the labor which is required to obtain it, the nation that 
 adopts, either from choice or temporary necessity, an inferior 
 standard, violates the financial law of the world and inevitably 
 suffer from its violation. An irredeemable, and consequently 
 depreciated, currency, drives out of circulation the currency 
 superior to itself ; and if made by law a legal tender, while 
 its real value is not thereby enhanced, it becomes a false and 
 demoralizing standard, under the influences of which prices 
 
250 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 advance in a ratio disproportioned even to its actual deprecia 
 tion. Very different from this is that gradual, healthy, and 
 general advance of prices which is the effect of the increase of 
 the precious metals. The coin which is obtained in the gold and 
 silver producing districts, although it first affects prices within 
 such districts, following the course of trade, and in obedience 
 to its laws, soon finds its way to other countries, and becomes 
 a part of the common stock of the nations, which, increasing 
 in amount by the regular product of the mines, and in activity 
 bv the growing demands of commerce, advances the price 
 of labor and commodities throughout the commercial world. 
 Thus the products of the American, Australian, and Russian 
 mines tend first to advance prices in their respective localities, 
 but the operation of trade soon distributes these products, and 
 enterprise everywhere feels and responds to the increase of 
 the universal measure of value. All this is healthful, because 
 slow, permanent and universal. The coin produced in any 
 country will be retained there no longer than its productions 
 and sales keep the balance of trade in its favor. As soon as it 
 becomes cheaper (if this word can be properly used in regard 
 to the standard of value) in the country in which it is pro 
 duced than in other accessible countries, or rather when it 
 will purchase more in other countries (adding interest, the cost 
 or transportation, duties, and other necessary expenses) than 
 in that in which it is produced, or when it is required to pay 
 balances to other countries, it flows to them by a law as 
 regular and as certain as gravitation. Hence, although the 
 precious metals are produced in considerable quantities in but 
 a few countries, they affect the prices in all. Not so with a 
 paper currency, which is local in its use and in its influence. Its 
 advantages, when convertible, are admitted ; for, if convertible, 
 although it swells the volume of currency, it rather increases 
 enterprise than prices. Its convertibility prevents expansion, 
 while its larger volume gives impetus to trade, and creates 
 greater demand for labor. But when a paper currency is an 
 inconvertible currency, and especially when, being so, it is 
 made by the sovereign power a legal tender, it becomes prolific 
 of mischief. Then specie becomes demonetized, and trade is 
 uncertain in its results, because the basis is fluctuating ; then 
 prices advance as the volume of currency increases, and require 
 as they advance further additions to the circulating medium ; 
 then speculation becomes rife, and the few are enriched at the 
 expense of the many ; then industry declines, and extrava 
 gance is wanton ; then, with a diminution of products, and 
 consequently of exports, there is an increase of imports, and 
 
CRITICISM AND EXPLAXATIION. 251 
 
 higher tariffs are required on account of the general expansion, 
 to which they, in their turn, give new stimulus and support, 
 while the protection intended to be given by them to home 
 industry is in a great measure rendered inoperative by the 
 expansion." 
 
 I was of course abused, as every independent officer of the 
 Government must expect to be. For this I did not care. 
 Personal abuse did not trouble me, but I was sensitive to fair 
 criticism. As the criticism to which I was subjected for what 
 was considered an unnecessary and improper interference, on 
 my part, with the New York market, and to some extent for 
 my general policy in the management of the debt, seemed to 
 me to be, in some instances, the result of misunderstanding, I 
 thought it due to those who had honored me with their confi 
 dence to say in my last report, a few words, not in self-defence, 
 but in explanation, which I did (after describing the condi 
 tion of the Treasury on the 1st of April, 1865), as follows : 
 
 " The fall of Richmond, and the surrender of the Army 
 of Virginia under General Lee (which virtually closed the 
 war), had not the effect of relieving the Treasury. On. 
 the contrary, its embarrassments were increased thereby, 
 inasmuch as it seemed to leave the Government without 
 excuse for not paying its debts, at the same time that 
 popular appeals for subscriptions to the public loans were 
 divested of much of their strength. As long as the Govern 
 ment was in danger by the continuation of hostilities, the 
 patriotism of the people could be successfully appealed to 
 for the purpose of raising money and sustaining the public 
 credit, without which the war could not be vigorously prose 
 cuted. When hostilities ceased, and the safety and unity of 
 the government were assured, self-interest became again the 
 controlling power. It will be remembered that it was then 
 generally supposed that the country was already fully sup 
 plied with securities, and that there was also throughout 
 the Union a prevailing apprehension that financial disaster 
 would speedily follow the termination of the war. The great 
 ness of the emergency gave the Secretary no time to try experi 
 ments for borrowing on a new security of long time and lower 
 interest, and removed from his mind all doubts or hesitation in 
 regard to the course to be pursued. It was estimated that at 
 
252 MEX AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 least $700,000,000 should be raised, in addition to the revenue 
 receipts, for the payment of the requisitions already drawn, 
 and those that must soon follow preparatory to the disband- 
 ment of the great Union army and of other demands upon 
 the Treasury. The anxious inquiries then were, By what means 
 can this large amount of money be raised ? and not. What will 
 be the cost of raising it ? How can the soldiers be paid, and 
 the army be disbanded, so that the extraordinary expenses of 
 the War Department may be stopped ? and not, What rate of 
 interest shall be paid for the money ? These were the inquiries 
 pressed upon the Secretary. lie answered them by calling to 
 his aid the well-tried agent who had been employed by his 
 immediate predecessors, and by offering the seven and three- 
 tenths notes the most popular loan ever offered to the people 
 in every city and village, and by securing the advocacy of 
 the press, throughout the length and breadth of the land/ In 
 less than four months from the time the work of obtaining 
 subscriptions was actively commenced, the Treasury was in a 
 condition to meet every demand upon it. 
 
 " But while the Treasury Avas thus relieved, the character 
 of the debt was by no means satisfactory. On the first day 
 of September it consisted of the following items : 
 
 Funded debt $1,109,568,191 80 
 
 Matured debt 1,503,020 09 
 
 Temporary loan 107,148,713 16 
 
 Certificates of indebtedness 85,093,000 00 
 
 Five per cent, legal-tender notes 33,954,230 00 
 
 Compound-interest legal-tender notes. 217,024,160 00 
 
 Seven-thirty notes 830,000,000 00 
 
 United States notes, legal tenders. . . . 433,160,569 00 
 
 Fractional currency 26,344,742 51 
 
 Suspended requisitions uncalled for. . 2,111,000 00 
 
 Total 2,845,907,626 56 
 
 Deduct cash in treasury 88,218,055 13 
 
 Balance 2,757,689,571 43 
 
 " From this statement it will be perceived that $1,276,834,- 
 123.25 of the public debt consisted of various forms of tempo 
 rary securities and debts due, $433,160,569 of United States 
 notes the excess of which over $400,000,000 having been put 
 into circulation in payment of temporary loans and $26,344,- 
 742 of fractional currency. Portions of this temporary debt 
 
A STRONG- TREASURY XEEDED. 253 
 
 were maturing daily, and all of it, including $18,415,000 of the 
 funded debt, was to be provided for within a period of three 
 years. The seven-thirty notes were by law and the terms of 
 the loan convertible at maturity, at the will of the holder, 
 into five-twenty bonds, or payable like the rest of these tempo 
 rary obligations in lawful money. It was, of course, necessary 
 to make provision for the daily maturing debt, and also for 
 taking up, from time to time, such portions of it as could 
 be advantageously converted into bonds, or paid in currency, 
 before maturity, for the purpose of avoiding the necessity of 
 accumulating large sums of money, and of relieving the Treas 
 ury from the danger it would be exposed to if a very con 
 siderable portion of the debt were permitted to mature, with 
 no other means of paying it than that afforded by sales of 
 bonds in a market too uncertain to be confidently relied upon 
 in an emergency. In addition to the temporary Joan, payment 
 of which could be demanded on so short a notice as to make 
 it virtually a debt payable on demand, the certificates of 
 indebtedness, which were maturing at the rate of from fifteen 
 to twenty millions per month, the five per cent, notes, which 
 matured in January following, and the compound-interest 
 notes, there were $830,000,000 of seven-thirty notes, which 
 would become due as follows, viz. : 
 
 August 15, 1867 $300,000,000 
 
 June 15, 1868 300,000,000 
 
 July 15, 1868 230,000,000 
 
 u As the option of conversion was with the holders of 
 these notes, it depended upon the condition of the market 
 whether they would be presented for payment in lawful 
 money, or be exchanged for bonds. JNTo prudent man, 
 intrusted with the care of the nation s interest and credit, would 
 permit two or three hundred millions of debt to mature with 
 out making provision for its payment ; nor would he, if it could 
 be avoided, accumulate large sums of money in the Treasury 
 which would not be called for, if the price of bonds should be 
 such as to make the conversion of the notes preferable to 
 their payment in lawful money. The policy of the Secretary 
 was, therefore, as he remarked in a former report, determined 
 by the condition of the Treasury and the country, and by the 
 character of the debt. It was simply, first, to put and keep the 
 Treasury in such condition as not only to be prepared to pay 
 all claims upon presentation, but also^to be strong enough to 
 prevent the success of any combinations that might be formed 
 
254 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 to control its management ; and, second, to take up quietly, and 
 in advance of their maturity, by payment or conversion, such 
 portions of the temporary debt as would obviate the necessity 
 of accumulating large currency balances in the Treasury, and at 
 the same time relieve it from the danger of being forced to a 
 further issue of legal-tender notes, or to a sale of bonds at 
 whatever price they might command. In carrying out this 
 policy, it seemed also to be the duty of the Secretary to have 
 due regard to the interests of the people, and to prevent, as 
 far as possible, the work of funding from disturbing legitimate 
 business. As financial trouble has almost invariably followed 
 closely upon the termination of protracted wars, it was gen 
 erally feared, as has been already remarked, that such trouble 
 would be unavoidable at the close of the great and expensive 
 war in which the United States had been for four years 
 engaged. This, of course, it was important to avoid, as its 
 occurrence might not only render funding difficult, but might 
 prostrate those great interests upon which the Government 
 depended for its revenues. It was, and constantly has been, 
 therefore, the aim of the Secretary so to administer the Treas 
 ury, while borrowing money and funding the temporary 
 obligations, as to prevent a commercial crisis, and to keep the 
 business of the country as steady as was possible on the basis 
 of an irredeemable and constantly fluctuating currency. 
 Whether his efforts have contributed to this end or not, he 
 does not undertake to say ; but the fact is unquestioned, that 
 a great war has been closed, large loans have been effected, 
 heavy revenues have been collected, and some thirteen hundred 
 millions of dollars of temporary obligations have been paid 
 or funded, and a great debt brought into manageable shape, 
 not only without a financial crisis, bub without any disturbance 
 to the ordinary business of the country. To accomplish these 
 things successfully, the Secretary deemed it necessary, as has 
 been before stated, that the Treasury should be kept con 
 stantly in a strong condition, with power to prevent the credit 
 of the Government and the great interests of the people from 
 being placed at the mercy of adverse influences. Notwith 
 standing the magnitude and character of the debt, this power 
 the Treasury has, for the last three years, possessed ; and it has 
 been the well-known existence, rather than the exercise of it, 
 which has, in repeated instances, saved the country from panic 
 and disaster. The gold reserve, the maintenance of which has 
 subjected the Secretary to constant and bitter criticism, has 
 given a confidence to the holders of our securities, at home 
 and abroad, by the constant evidence which it exhibited of the 
 
THE TREASURY AND THE MARKET. 255 
 
 ability of the Government, without depending upon purchases 
 in the market to pay the interest upon the public debt, and a 
 steadiness to trade, by preventing violent fluctuations in the 
 convertible value of the currency, which have been a more 
 than ample compensation to the country for any loss of 
 interest that may have been sustained thereby. If the gold 
 in the Treasury had been sold down to what was absolutely 
 needed for payment of the interest on the public debt, not 
 only would the public credit have been endangered, but the 
 currency, and, consequently, the entire business of the country, 
 would have been constantly subject to the dangerous power 
 of speculative combinations. 
 
 -x- * -x- * ::- # * -x- * -x- 
 
 " Complaint has been made that in the administration of 
 the Treasury Department, since the war, there has been too 
 much of interference with the stock and money market. This 
 complaint, when honestly made, has been the result of a want 
 of reflection, or of imperfect knowledge of the financial con 
 dition of the Government. The transactions of the Treasury 
 have, from necessity, been connected with the stock and 
 money market of New York. If the debt after the close of 
 the war had been a funded debt, with nothing to be done in 
 relation to it but to pay the accruing interest, or if business 
 had been conducted on a specie basis, and consequently been 
 free from the constant changes to which it has been and must 
 be subject as long as there is any considerable difference 
 between the legal and commercial standard of value the 
 Treasury could have been managed with entire independence 
 of the stock exchange or the gold-room. Such, however, was 
 not the fact. More than one-half of the national debt, accord 
 ing to foregoing exhibits, consisted of temporary obligations, 
 which were to be paid in lawful money or converted into 
 bonds, and there was in circulation a large amount of irre 
 deemable promises constantly changing in their convertible 
 value. The Secretary, therefore, could not be indifferent to 
 the condition of the market, nor avoid connection with it, 
 for it was, in fact, with the market he had to deal. lie would 
 have been happy had it been otherwise. If bonds had to be 
 sold to provide the means for paying the debts that were pay 
 able in lawful money, it was a matter of great importance to 
 the Treasury that the price of bonds should not be depressed 
 by artificial processes. If the seven-thirty notes were to be 
 converted into five-twenty bonds, it was equally important 
 that they should sustain such relations to each other, in regard 
 to prices, that conversions would be effected. If bonds were 
 
256 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 at a discount, the notes would be presented for payment in 
 legal tenders ; and these could only be obtained by further 
 issues, or the sale of some kind of securities. For three years 
 therefore, the state of the market has been a matter of deep 
 solicitude to the Secretary. If he had been indifferent to it, or 
 failed carefully to study the influences that controlled it, or 
 had hesitated to exercise the power with which Congress had 
 clothed him, for successfully funding the temporary debt by 
 conversions or sales, he would have been false to his trust. 
 The task of converting a thousand millions of temporary obli 
 gations into a funded debt, on a market constantly subject to 
 natural and artificial fluctuations, without depressing the price 
 of bonds, and without disturbing the business of the country, 
 however it may be regarded now, when the work has been 
 accomplished, was, while it was being performed, an exceed 
 ingly delicate one. It is but simple justice to say that its 
 successful accomplishment is, in a great measure, attributable 
 to the judicious action of the Assistant Treasurer in New York, 
 Mr. Van Dyck. 
 
 Similar complaint has also been made of the manner in 
 which gold and bonds have been disposed of, by what has 
 been styled secret sales ; and yet precisely the same course 
 has been pursued in these sales that careful and prudent men 
 pursue on their own account. The sales have been made when 
 currency was needed and prices were satisfactory. It was 
 not considered wise or prudent to advise the dealers precisely 
 when and to what amount sales were to be made (no sane 
 man operating on his own account would have done this), but 
 all sales of gold have been made in the open market, and of 
 bonds by agents or the Assistant Treasurer in New York, in 
 the ordinary way, with a view of obtaining the very best 
 prices, and with the least possible disturbance of business. In 
 the large transactions of the Treasury, agents have been indis 
 pensable, but none have been employed when the work could 
 be done equally well by the officers of the department. 
 Whether done by agents or officers, the Secretary has no 
 reason to suppose that it has not been done skilfully and 
 honestly, as well as economically. 
 
 #***##*# 
 
 " The Secretary has thus referred to a few points in his 
 administration of the Treasury, for the purpose of explaining 
 some things which may have been imperfectly understood, 
 and not for the purpose of defending his own action. Deeply 
 sensible of the responsibilities resting upon him, but neither 
 appalled nor disheartened by them, he has performed the 
 
INDEBTEDNESS TO ASSISTANTS. 257 
 
 duties of his office according to the best of his judgment and 
 the lights that were before him, without deprecating criticism; 
 and plainly and earnestly presented his own views without 
 seeking popular favor. It has been his good fortune to have 
 had for his immediate predecessors two of the ablest men in 
 the country, to whose judicious labors he has been greatly 
 indebted for any success that may have attended his adminis 
 tration of the Treasury. Nor is he under less obligation to 
 his associates, the officers and leading clerks of the depart 
 ment, whose ability and whose devotion to the public service 
 have commanded nis respect and admiration." 
 
 17 
 
CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The Scientific Club Dr. F. A. P. Barnard University of Mississippi Pros 
 perous until Outbreak of War Dr. Barnard Leaves Mississippi and Comes 
 to Washington Professor Henry His High Character and Large Acquire 
 ments His Unselfishness Professor Bache, great-grandson of Benjamin 
 Franklin Dr. Peter Parker His Eminence as a Surgeon His Diplo 
 matic Relations to the United States Simon Neweomb High Reputation 
 as an Astronomer Also as a Writer upon Political Economy J. E. 
 Hilgard His Varied Services George C. Schaeffer A. A. Humphreys, 
 Distinguished as a General and Engineer Jonathan H. Lane His Hobby 
 William B. Taylor His Valuable Work in the Smithsonian Titian 
 H. Peale Benjamin N. Craig J. M. Gillis J. N. McComb 0. M. Poe 
 M. C. Meigs His Great Services as Quartermaster General General 
 George H. Thomas, the "Rock of Chicamauga" General John A. Logan 
 General P. H. Sheridan General William T. Sherman Brief Sketch 
 of his Campaigns. 
 
 SOME of the pleasantest acquaintances which I have formed 
 have been purely accidental. When I went to Washing 
 ton, in 1863, to organize the National Currency Bureau, I 
 obtained board at one of the houses which had been built by 
 General Cass, and which is now a part of the Arlington Hotel, 
 but could not be furnished with a desirable room there. I 
 therefore applied for lodging at a house a short distance from 
 my boarding-house which I understood was occupied by a gen 
 tleman and his wife who might be willing to let one of their 
 rooms. The door was opened by a lady like woman, who, upon 
 being informed of the object of my visit, said that she had a 
 pleasant room which she would be glad to have me take, if it 
 suited me. It was very cheaply and scantily furnished, but as 
 it fronted the south, and was of good size, I was glad to secure 
 it. In the course of our conversation, I learned that she and 
 her husband, Dr. Barnard, with one servant, were the only 
 occupants, and had only recently taken possession of the house. 
 
F. A. P. BARNARD. 2f)9 
 
 Mv impression, therefore, was, that Dr. Barnard was a country 
 doctor who was desirous of providing in part for the payment 
 of the rent of his house by letting one or more of the rooms. 
 A few days after I was thus domiciled, Mrs. Barnard said to 
 me that she would be pleased to introduce me to her husband, 
 and, as I happened to have a leisure half hour, I thanked her 
 for her kindness, and was at once in the presence of Dr. Bar 
 nard, a middle-aged man, of graceful manners, with a handsome 
 and highly intellectual face. It did not take me long to dis 
 cover that instead of being a common country doctor, he was 
 a gentleman of superior culture. Noticing (after we had con 
 versed for some minutes upon ordinary topics) that my eyes 
 w r ere turned towards his table, upon which were some sheets of 
 paper covered with figures, he said that he was engaged when 
 I came in in calculating the explosive poAver of gunpowder. 
 As there was a good deal of powder in use at the time, I ven 
 tured to ask him if he Avas employed in the War or Navy 
 Department. " No," he replied ; " I am a clerk in the Coast 
 Survey." He must have seen that I was surprised at his 
 answer, for he w r ent on to say that if I had a few minutes to 
 spare, he would tell me who he was, and how he happened to 
 be in Washington doing clerical work for the Coast Survey. 
 His story w r as deeply interesting. I wish I could repeat his 
 graphic description of the political and social condition of Mis 
 sissippi before the war, and of the change after hostilities had 
 commenced ; of how opposed the people were to secession when 
 the matter was first talked about ; how the ordinance of seces 
 sion was adopted by the influence and activity of their polit 
 ical leaders, and how united all classes became, after the war 
 had been commenced. As I cannot do this, I will condense 
 his narrative, and give briefly my recollection of it. He was a 
 native of Massachusetts, but was a graduate of Yale College, 
 Connecticut. Having concluded to make the South his home, 
 he accepted the professorship of Mathematics and Natural 
 Philosophy in the University of Alabama, which he held for a 
 
260 MEX AXD MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 number of years, and until 1850, when he was elected presi 
 dent of the University of Mississippi, at Oxford, which he 
 hoped to be instrumental in making the leading literary insti 
 tution of the South, and a rival of older institutions of the 
 Northern States. Everything went on prosperously with him 
 self and the college until South Carolina passed an ordinance 
 of withdrawal from the Union. Then the minds of the stu 
 dents were diverted from books, and turned to politics. When 
 Mississippi adopted a similar ordinance, the political excitement 
 increased, and little was talked about but the dissolution of the 
 Union, and the establishment of a Southern Confederacy, of 
 which Mississippi was to be one of the most important mem 
 bers. War, however, was not contemplated as the result of 
 secession, until Fort Sumter had been captured, and President 
 Lincoln had called for troops to enforce obedience to the laws. 
 Then appeals were made to the State pride and the chivalry 
 of the students, and with so much success that the classes were 
 rapidly depleted, and in the course of a few Aveeks the Univer 
 sity of Mississippi was a university with a president and one 
 or two professors, but without students. But this was not all. 
 President Barnard was a Northern man, known to be strongly 
 attached to the Union, and, of course, strongly opposed to 
 secession. His situation, therefore, was a very unpleasant one. 
 All Union men were regarded with suspicion. In many parts 
 of the South they had been treated with indignity ; in some 
 places, with violence. He noticed that, day by da} 7 , man} 7 who 
 had been his friends were turning their backs upon him, and 
 by none was he openly treated with cordiality. But he was 
 attached to Southern people, and his heart was with the 
 university. What he should do under these circumstances 
 became, therefore, a question for anxious thought. While he 
 was thus troubled by uncertainty in regard to what his action 
 ought to be, he was privately waited upon by some of the 
 leading citizens of the town, and informed that the hostility of 
 the people to Northern men had become so bitter that his 
 
THE SCIENTIFIC CLUB. 
 
 safety, and possibly that of his family, depended upon their 
 leaving Mississippi at once. Had he been alone, he might 
 have been disposed to remain at his post, no matter what might 
 be the consequences to himself ; but the safety of his wife was 
 a matter superior to all other considerations, and the next 
 day he was, with her, on his way to the North. Their journey 
 was not without adventure and peril, but they reached Wash 
 ington in safety, and here he had found temporary employment 
 in the Coast Survey. Some months after I was introduced to 
 him, he was recommended for a professorship in Columbia Col 
 lege, New York. Tie did not obtain the professorship, but not 
 long after he was elected president of the same college, which 
 position he fills with distinguished honor and ability. Justice 
 was more than even-handed in the case of Dr. Barnard. From 
 the presidency of an institution in its infancy, with very 
 limited endowments, and in a sparsely settled State, he was 
 advanced to the presidency of one of the oldest and richest 
 colleges in the country, and at its commercial capital. 
 
 My acquaintance with Dr. Barnard was a great advantage 
 to me. It was pleasant and profitable in itself, and it opened 
 the way for my introduction to men of a different, and in 
 many respects, higher stamp than I had known before. He 
 said to me one Saturday that the Scientific Club would meet 
 in the evening at the house of one of its members, and that he 
 would be glad if I would join him in attending it, which I 
 did. There were present ten or twelve gentlemen, some of 
 whom I knew by reputation, but to all of whom I was person 
 ally a stranger. I was greatly interested by the manner in 
 which the subject under discussion was handled so interested 
 that I accepted a second invitation, and before the next meet 
 ing I received, to my surprise, a note from the secretary 
 informing me that I had been elected a member of the club. 
 I was surprised, because I understood that the membership 
 was confined to persons of scientific attainments. Happen 
 ing, a few days after, to meet Professor Henry, to whom I 
 
262 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUEY. 
 
 had been introduced at the club, I said to him that I had 
 no knowledge of the sciences, and that I feared that I had 
 been elected by mistake. " ]STot so," he replied. " Finance is a 
 subject in which the country is just now deeply interested, and 
 the club wants a member who knows something about it." 
 My admission to this club was of very great service to me, 
 intellectually and socially. The most delightful hours which 
 I spent in Washington were spent at its meetings. It was a 
 club without being a corporation. It had neither a constitu 
 tion nor by-laws, and no officer but a secretary. It met everv 
 Saturday evening (except during the summer) at the house of 
 some one of its members. The subjects discussed were chiefly 
 scientific, and usually such as the public was interested in at 
 the time. The discussions were always able, and when, as was 
 often the case, the views of the members were not in accord, 
 they were warm and keen. Xo one spoke who had not some 
 thing to say, and he fared badly who advanced theories he 
 was unable to maintain. The meetings closed with a supper, 
 the appetites for which had been sharpened by mental exercise. 
 The members at the time were, Joseph Henry, A. D. Bache, 
 Peter Parker, Simon Newcomb, J. E. Ililgard, George C. 
 Schaeffer, A. A. Humphreys, Jonathan II. Lane, William B. 
 Taylor, Titian II. Peale, Benjamin 1ST. Craig, J. M. Gillis, J. 
 K McComb, O. M. Poe, M. C. Meigs, and Dr. F. A. P. Bar 
 nard of whom I have spoken. All of them were interesting 
 men all well known to each other, and some of them to the 
 public by their scientific and literary attainments; there was 
 not one who would not have been distinguished in any literary 
 and scientific club in this country, or in any other ; there was 
 not a money-worshipper or time-server among them all. 
 
 At the head of these men was Joseph Henry, Secretary of 
 the Smithsonian Institute, whose life was largely devoted to 
 carrying out the object of its founder "the increase and 
 diffusion of knowledge among men." The acquaintance which 
 I formed with Professor Henry at the club ripened into friend- 
 
JOSEPH HENRY. 263 
 
 ship, which continued as long as he lived. When I went to 
 London in 1870, he gave to me the kindest and most compli 
 mentary letter that I ever received from any one. During the 
 war, his attention had been turned to financial questions, and 
 it so happened that the opinions which he had formed by 
 thought and study were in harmony with mine the result of 
 observation and experience. This fact increased the intimacy 
 between us. In looking after the pecuniary interests of the 
 Smithsonian, and in attending the meetings of the Light-House 
 Board, of which he was a member, he often came to the Treas 
 ury Department, and while there, he rarely failed to step into 
 my room to bid me good cheer. Of the views w T hich I 
 expressed in my annual reports upon the currency and other 
 questions, he heartily approved. Since my introduction to 
 Professor Henry in 1863, I have met many distinguished men, 
 but none in whom so many grand and admirable qualities were 
 combined. Modest and unassuming, he was a man of varied 
 and extensive learning. Firm in his convictions, he was free 
 from intolerance. While other scientific men became heated 
 in the discussion of opposing theories, he presented his own 
 opinions with a calmness and dignity which commanded 
 respect and disarmed criticism. He was absolutely free from 
 the jealousies which so frequently exist among gifted men. 
 He rejoiced over every contribution to science even?" dis 
 covery which tended to the well-being of man. Religious by 
 tehiperament, and seeing nothing in scientific discoveries 
 inconsistent with revelation, he was a conscientious and 
 prayerful Christian. Charitable beyond his means, and neg 
 lectful of his own pecuniary interests, he was careful and pru 
 dent in the management of the funds of the Smithsonian Insti 
 tute, which he regarded as a precious legacy to be used for 
 no other purpose than that designed by Smithson. It w r as 
 against his judgment that the Smithsonian building was 
 erected, as it involved an expenditure of money which ought 
 to be used for the diffusion of knowledge. The character of 
 
264 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Professor Henry is illustrated by what he said about securing 
 for himself the pecuniary benefits of his discoveries in electro- 
 magnetism, as related by Dr. Dickerson in his address at 
 Princeton on the 10th of June, 1883. " At the time of mak 
 ing my original experiments in electro-magnetism in Albany, I 
 was urged by a friend to take out a patent, both for its appli 
 cation to machinery and to the telegraph, but this I declined 
 to do, on the ground that I did not then consider it compatible 
 w T ith the dignity of science to confine the benefits which might 
 be derived from it to the exclusive use of any individual/ This 
 was carrying self-abnegation to an extreme ; but it exhibited 
 the nobility of the man. His mission was to work for others, 
 not for himself, and to this he was faithful through life. That 
 the telegraph was based mainly upon his successful experi 
 ments in electro-magnetism, is now admitted by those who have 
 carefully studied its history. Wheatston and Cooke, in Eng 
 land, and Steinhiel, in Munich, under whose patents the tele 
 graph was brought into use on the other side of the Atlantic, 
 and Morse, the patentee in the United States, were all indebted 
 to Henry for a large part of what they claimed to be their own 
 discoveries. Had he followed the advice of his friends in 
 Albany, he would have held the key of telegraphy in the 
 United States, and controlled the telegraph long enough to 
 have made himself rich. He never expressed regret that he did 
 not avail himself of the protection of the patent laws ; no one 
 ever heard from him a word of complaint that other men hall 
 reaped, in honor and money, the fruits of his labors, but he 
 would have been more than human if he had not been morti 
 fied by their failure to give to him the credit which was his 
 due. Professor Henry was thoroughly American in his 
 loyalty to the Government, and in his admiration of our 
 republican institutions, but in scientific pursuits he was a citi 
 zen of the Avorld. It was for man that he labored ; and when 
 his last hour was approaching, he only regretted that he had 
 not done more. His name will be honored as long: as eminent 
 
PETER PARKER. 265 
 
 attainments, spotless integrity, lofty and unselfish endeavors, 
 are honored by mankind. 
 
 So firmly attached did I become to the members of this 
 club, and so highly did I honor them, that I cannot forbear to 
 say a few words about each. 
 
 Alexander Dallas Bache was a great-grandson of Benjamin 
 Franklin, a man of immense working power, and of extensive 
 scientific acquirements. He was superior to his great-grand sire 
 in mathematics, and scarcely his inferior in general learning. 
 His name was honored abroad as "well as at home for his valu 
 able contributions to science. He rendered the Government 
 great service in the various positions which he held, especially 
 as Superintendent of the Coast Survey. In practical science 
 he had no superior on either side of the Atlantic. 
 
 Peter Parker was a graduate of Yale College. After 
 studying medicine and theology, he went to China as a medi 
 cal missionary. His success in the treatment of diseases, 
 especially diseases of the eye (which were very common among 
 the Chinese), was so extraordinary that his fame extended 
 throughout the empire. The hospital which he established 
 was thronged every day with applicants for treatment. Dr. 
 Parker was in China when diplomatic relations were opened 
 between that country and the United States, and by his 
 knowledge of the Chinese language, and of the habits of the 
 people, and by his sound judgment, he was able to render 
 efficient aid to Caleb Gushing, the first Commissioner of the 
 United States to China, in the preparation of a treaty between 
 the two countries. To John "W. Davis, who succeeded Mr. 
 Gushing, his services as an interpreter, and his great popularity 
 with the Chinese officials, were also very valuable, and they 
 were handsomely acknowledged. When there was no United 
 States Commissioner, as was often and for considerable periods 
 the case, he acted as charge d affaires. Twice he returned to 
 the United States for the recovery of his health, which had 
 been impaired by the climate, and his manifold and arduous 
 
266 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 labors, and when he went back in 1855, it was as Commissioner, 
 which office he held for t\vo years, during which time he care 
 fully revised the treaty which he had assisted Mr. Gushing to 
 make in 1844. Few men can look back upon a long life with 
 greater satisfaction than can Dr. Parker. No foreigner had 
 better opportunities than he for becoming acquainted with the 
 Chinese, their habits, and the character of their government ; 
 and no one could have used these opportunities to greater 
 advantage, both to China and to the United States. 
 
 No man of his age has a wider reputation as an investi 
 gator in both theoretical and practical astronomy than Simon 
 Newcomb, or better merits the high reputation which he has 
 acquired. His relations with the prominent astronomers and 
 other scientific men of Europe are intimate, and he is held by 
 them in very high regard. He has been, and still is, a good 
 deal interested in the subject of political economy, and he has 
 written upon it with so much ability that his readers might 
 suppose that he had made it a life-long study, and was a pro 
 fessor of that science, instead of being a professor of astron 
 omy. He has also written upon many other subjects of popu 
 lar interest, and has thus made himself liable to the criticism 
 of scattering his fire." A man who, before he was twenty- 
 five years old, prepared and published astronomical works of a 
 very high order, and before he was forty was elected an 
 associate of the Astronomical Society of England, and a cor 
 responding member of the Institute of France, and received 
 a gold medal for his tables of the most distant planets, ought 
 to be satisfied with nothing short of the very highest place 
 among the astronomers of the world. This place he can only 
 secure by devoting himself more exclusively than he has 
 hitherto done to astronomical pursuits. 
 
 J. E. Hilgard has spent a good part of his life in the Coast 
 Survey, in which his services were highly appreciated. Dur 
 ing the long illness of Professor Bache, and the frequent 
 absence of his successor, Professor Pierce, Mr. Ililgard had 
 
A. A. HUMPHREYS. 267 
 
 charge of the bureau ; and after the death of Captain Patter 
 son, he was appointed superintendent by President Arthur. 
 Owing to a severe domestic affliction (the death of an only and 
 talented son) and his overwork, the business of the bureau 
 became so deranged as to necessitate his resignation. He 
 lacked the executive ability for which his predecessor, Captain 
 Patterson, was so greatly distinguished, but his uprightness 
 and devotion to his duties were beyond question. In the 
 extent and variety of his acquirements he has few equals. - His 
 reputation on the other side of the Atlantic for scientific 
 acquirements is such as any man might be proud of. 
 
 George C. Schaeffer was an encyclopedia of knowledge. 
 No subject was ever discussed in the club that he did not 
 appear to be master of. He was then, I think, librarian in the 
 Interior Department. He had been one of the examiners in 
 the Patent Office, and had been transferred to the library 
 because (as his friends supposed) he had become obnoxious to 
 some patent lawyers by his superior knowledge and perfect 
 integrity. He was a prodigy of learning. I held him in the 
 highest respect. 
 
 A. A. Humphreys was one of the most distinguished topo 
 graphical engineers of the country. He was a major-general 
 by brevet, and the chief engineer of the army. A brave and 
 skilful soldier, he earned high honor by his conduct as a divi 
 sion commander in the battle at Gettysburg, and in the Vir 
 ginia campaigns of 186-i and 1865. Not only was he a gallant 
 soldier and very able engineer, but he was a vigorous and 
 graceful writer. His reports upon the physics and hydraulics 
 of the Mississippi were regarded at the time as being very able 
 and well written. His history of the last Virginia campaign 
 is one of the most valuable contributions to the history of our 
 great civil war. 
 
 Jonathan II. Lane was in his personal appearance one of 
 the most unattractive persons that I ever met, but he was a 
 man of large scientific acquirements. His hobby was to ere- 
 
268 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 ate by mechanical contrivances or chemical means intense cold 
 cold which should equal in the opposite direction the heat 
 of the sun. To what use the cold was to be applied, he never 
 undertook to explain ; but he worked on with unflagging zeal, 
 trying one invention after another as long as he lived, accom 
 plishing nothing, but never discouraged in his pursuits. 
 
 William B. Taylor held, and still holds, high rank among 
 the scientific men of Washington. He was then an exam 
 iner in the Patent Office, the duties of which he performed 
 with great ability. He is now employed, and is doing good 
 work, in the Smithsonian. Valuable articles from his pen 
 are sometimes seen, but he avoids notoriety, is rarely seen 
 in society, and seems to be perfectly content with such enjoy 
 ments as he finds in doing his duty as the head of one of the 
 divisions in the Smithsonian, and in familiar intercourse with a 
 few personal friends. By those who know him well, he is con 
 sidered the most learned man in Washington. 
 
 Titian II. Peale was a brother of Rembrandt Peale, and 
 was himself an artist of very considerable merit. He was 
 an examiner in the Patent Office. He was a man of varied 
 accomplishments. He had seen a good deal of the world and 
 been a careful observer. He was a good talker and a most 
 agreeable companion. His interest then centred in photogra 
 phy, to the advancement of which he contributed much by his 
 investigations and discoveries. 
 
 Benjamin N. Craig was an odd stick, but he was a hard 
 student, and one of the clearest headed men connected with the 
 club. He was employed in the Medical Museum, where he 
 found work that suited him exactly. He was not a ready 
 speaker, but when he did speak it was with concentration of 
 force that few of his associates could equal, and none could 
 excel. 
 
 J. M. Gillis was a naval officer in charge, if I rightly 
 recollect, of the National Observatory. I did not know 
 him well, but his merit was proved by the fact that Pro- 
 
M. C. MEIGS. 269 
 
 fessor Henry, who knew him thoroughly, held him in very 
 high esteem. % 
 
 J. X. McComb was also a naval officer, of whom I heard 
 expressions of high regard, but whom I had not the pleasure 
 of meeting. 
 
 0. M. Poe, whom I knew very well, was one of the young 
 est members of the club. He was regarded as a young man 
 of great promise, which promise has been fulfilled. He has 
 become, while still in the prime of life, one of the ablest and 
 most distinguished engineers connected with the army. 
 
 M. C. Meigs stands high with those who know him, but his 
 merits have not been, I think, appreciated by the public as 
 they ought to have been. I must therefore speak of his ser 
 vices during the war at considerable length. I had a good 
 deal to do with him while I was Secretary of the Treasury, 
 and he commanded my respect by his ability and his fidelity 
 to the Government. In war, as has been said, it is the soldier 
 upon whom honors are conferred for distinguished services 
 the battle-field that attracts public attention. Little is thought 
 about the services of those by whose agency the organization 
 of armies is maintained ; and yet the success of military move 
 ments on a large scale, in modern times, depends mainly upon 
 the efficiency of what is called, in the United States, the Quar 
 termaster s Department. In ancient times, invading armies 
 subsisted upon the countries which they conquered or through 
 which they marched. Everything that was needed and could 
 be reached was seized by them, and desolation marked their 
 progress. There was no recognition of private property. 
 Everything in the enemy s country was enemy s property 
 and legitimate prey. Wars always are, and always will be, 
 barbarous, but progressive civilization has lessened their bar 
 barism. Armies are no longer dependent upon the countries 
 which they occupy for subsistence. Xations that wage aggres 
 sive wars must make provision for the support of their armies 
 independently of plunder. The instances in modern wars of 
 
MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 the support of armies by levies or violence are exceptional. 
 A\ 7 hile from countries occupied by invading forces, contribu 
 tions may be exacted, and supplies to some extent obtained, 
 their main dependence must be upon their own commissariat. 
 Deficiency in this would imperil the best campaign plans and 
 the most perfect army organization. In the Franco-German 
 war, the French armies, although fighting upon their own soil, 
 labored under great disadvantages by having a commissariat 
 poorly supplied and badly managed ; while the Germans, in a 
 foreign land, were bountifully provided by their own commis 
 sariat with everything needed for their health and comfort. 
 
 The civil war in the United States could not have been 
 prosecuted by the Government with the smallest hope of suc 
 cess, had not the Union armies been properly provided and 
 cared for by the Quartermaster s Department. Fortunately 
 for the country, there was at the head of this department 
 M. C. Meigs, who merits the respect and gratitude of his 
 countrymen by the services which he rendered in a posi 
 tion requiring qualities of a very high order vigilance, 
 industry, and integrity, with the ability to comprehend large 
 transactions, and master the smallest details. All of these 
 qualities General Meigs possessed in an eminent degree, and 
 he had ample opportunities for their exercise in furnish ing- 
 supplies for nearly four years to armies larger in the aggregate 
 than had been employed by any other nation, and scattered 
 over a country of greater extent than had ever been occupied 
 by contending forces. In 1872 I met in London an intelligent 
 and inquisitive American, who had been spending some months 
 in the city for the sole purpose of ascertaining how four mill 
 ions of people, who produced nothing in the food line, could 
 day by day be furnished with the necessary supplies. He had 
 investigated with diligence and skill, and he had prepared 
 tables which exhibited the varieties and quantities of food 
 brought into the city for daily consumption, and statements 
 of the sources from which they w^ere obtained. " Here," said 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF THE COMMISSARIAT. 271 
 
 he to me, " are four millions of people within the boundaries 
 of a single city, whose existence mainly depends upon what is 
 brought to them each day, and very largely from other coun 
 tries, and so closely do demand and supply correspond, that 
 there is no excess and no deficiency/ He thought this very 
 wonderful, and he seemed to be rather disgusted when I said 
 to him that, wonderful as it was, the manner in which the 
 Federal armies in our civil war were provided for, through 
 the agency of the Quartermaster s Department, was still more 
 wonderful. In this statement I was right, and for obvious 
 reasons. The growth of cities being gradual, there are no 
 emergencies to create extraordinary demand for supplies. 
 Step bv step, from villages to towns, and from towns to cities, 
 from small cities to large ones, they have grown ; and cor 
 responding with their growth has been the increase in the 
 sources of supply. London is as readily supplied with what is 
 needful for the subsistence of four millions of people as it was 
 when its proportions did not exceed one hundred thousand ; 
 the means of supply have kept even pace with its growth, and 
 are al \vays equal to the demand. Very different is the case 
 with regard to the supply of armies, and especially of suddenly 
 created armies, engaged in aggressive war, and occupying 
 large extents of country. Xever were such onerous duties 
 performed by a single department, in any country, as were 
 performed by the Quartermaster s Department in our civil 
 war. In the spring of 1861 the regular army of the United 
 States was 12,000 strong, stationed along the frontier to keep 
 peace among the Indians, and protect the settlers in their new 
 homes. They were in a region in which game was plenti 
 ful and all needful supplies, except clothing, were at hand. 
 There was scarcely work enough to be done in the Quarter 
 master s Department to justify its existence. Suddenly, at the 
 call of the President, seventy-five thousand men were mustered 
 into the military service. The firing upon Sumter was the 
 tocsin of the greatest war which the world has ever witnessed. 
 
272 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Scarcely had this call been answered, when other calls rapidly 
 followed, until before the war was ended more than a million of 
 men were employed by the Government, and subsisted through 
 the Quartermaster s Department. 
 
 At the head of this Department, when the war commenced, 
 was General Joseph E. Johnston, who resigned in the spring 
 of 1861 to enter into the Confederate service, and whose 
 example was followed by some of his subordinates. The 
 Department was thus deprived of experienced men, and when 
 General (then Colonel) Meigs was appointed Quartermaster- 
 General, on the 15th of May, 1861, he found merely the 
 skeleton of a bureau, to be reorganized and made equal to the 
 existing and rapidly increasing demands upon it. If the mag 
 nitude and duration of the war could have been foreseen 
 months before its commencement, the organization of a depart 
 ment with force and skill enough to do what was to be required 
 of it would have been a matter of no small difficulty ; its organ 
 ization after the war had been commenced, and while heavy 
 calls were to be answered, was a task that could only have 
 been performed by a man of superior executive ability, assisted 
 by subordinates whose lack of experience was their only defi 
 ciency. Men learn rapidly under the stimulus of patriotism, 
 and the pressure of necessary action ; and this Department, 
 upon the efficiency of which great results depended, was 
 reorganized and enlarged in the midst of the Avar without 
 confusion, and placed upon a basis that rendered it equal to 
 the enormous work it was called upon to perform. It was 
 the duty of this department to purchase all the horses, 
 mules, and oxen needed for the armies, the camp and garri 
 son equipage, the clothing and accoutrements of the soldiers, 
 the timber for barracks and hospitals ; to purchase or rent 
 grounds for camps, to construct or charter steamers and other 
 vessels to be used upon the ocean or rivers ; to build or 
 repair railroads which were needed for the transportation of 
 troops or supplies; to furnish everything that was required 
 
GENERAL MEIGS S ACCOMPLISHMENT. 273 
 
 for the organization of armies and for their support and 
 comfort. 
 
 While it devolved upon the Commissary Department to 
 procure the food for the soldiers, and for the Ordnance 
 Department to manufacture or buy arms, it was the duty of 
 the Quartermaster s Department to transport them, and all 
 war material, to the armies, no matter how far they might be 
 from the points at which they were obtained. Branches of the 
 Quartermaster s Department were with the different armies 
 wherever they might be. They furnished General Grant with 
 supplies in the battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary 
 Ridge. They followed him in the terrific battles of the 
 Wilderness, and were with him at City Point, and at the 
 surrender of General Lee at Appomattox. They were with 
 Rosecrans at Stone River and at Corinth. They were with 
 Sherman as he fought his way through Tennessee to Atlanta. 
 If they did not follow him in his march to the sea, they fur 
 nished him with a liberal outfit at the start, and they met 
 him again at Goldsborough, after the skill and endurance of 
 his army had been proved in the march through the swamps 
 and the morasses of the Carolinas. They were with McClellan 
 in his battles in the Peninsula and at Antietam ; with Meade at 
 Gettysburg, with Sheridan on the Shenandoah, with Thomas 
 in the battle of Nashville. Wherever there were forces to 
 be supplied or transported, there were agents of the Quarter 
 master s Department. In the first year of the war it con 
 structed seven iron-clad gunboats, and nine steam rams, and 
 operated them upon the Mississippi River and its tributaries. 
 After the capture of Forts Henry and Donelson they were 
 turned over to the Navy Department. In the latter part of 
 the war, the transportation fleet of this department consisted 
 of over a thousand vessels of all kinds. Within fifteen months 
 from the commencement of active hostilities, the department 
 purchased and delivered to the army 247,678 horses and 
 mules, and over 22,500 wagons and ambulances ; and as the 
 18 
 
274 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 army was increased in numbers, purchases were correspond 
 ingly increased. The outlays in 1864 were larger than in any 
 previous year. Between the 1st of January, 1864, and the 
 1st of May, 1865, 214,000 horses were purchased, and in seven 
 months 59,000 mules. The forage supplied during the war 
 was : 
 
 22,816,271 bushels of corn, at a cost of $29,879,300 
 
 78,663,799 bushels of oats, at a cost of 76,362,026 
 
 1,518,621 tons of hay, at a cost of 48,595,892 
 
 21,276 tons of straw, at a cost of 425,520 
 
 There was also purchased and delivered : 
 
 551,456 cords of wood, at a cost of $2,756,180 
 
 1,620,910 tons of coal, at a cost of 13,777,735 
 
 When the war was ended, the Department carried to their 
 homes nearly a million of men, and had subject to its dis 
 posal, 104,474 horses and 102,954 mules, and upwards of 
 420,000 tons of military stores, which were judiciously dis 
 posed of. It expended $45,367,000 upon military railways. 
 Its total expenditures were upwards of $1,500,000,000, every 
 dollar of which was faithfully accounted for. I mention these 
 items to show the magnitude of the work performed by the 
 Quartermaster s Department. Its operations are of record, 
 and will be of immense service to the future historian of the 
 great civil war, which was waged with vigor and characterized 
 by bravery and devotion on both sides which have never been 
 equalled. 
 
 It was at the Club that I became acquainted with General 
 George II. Thomas. He was not a member, but he accepted 
 invitations to its meetings, in which he seemed to be much 
 interested. He frequently participated in the discussions, and 
 always spoke with intelligence and to the point. I saw a 
 good deal of him, in the Club and out of it, and the better I 
 knew him, the more highly I esteemed him. My acquaintance 
 with him became close, and he spoke to me, I think, with as 
 much freedom, as he spoke to any one, about his military ser- 
 
GE^EKAL GEORGE H. THOMAS. 275 
 
 vices, and the criticisms to which he was subjected just before 
 the battle of Nashville. In the last conversation I ever had 
 with him, he referred to the annoying telegrams which he 
 received from General JIalleck at Washington, and from 
 General Grant at City Point. " I was on the ground," he said, 
 "and hard at work in getting together and into fighting shape 
 the scattered and undisciplined forces under my command, 
 after General Sherman had commenced his march to the sea, 
 in order that I might strike an effective blow against the 
 superior forces of General Hood. I knew, or thought I knew, 
 when the blow should be struck, and it was struck just as soon 
 as it could be with reasonable prospects of success. Defeat 
 at that time, and at that place, would have been a greater 
 calamity than any which could have befallen the Federal 
 forces. It would have cleared the way for the triumphant 
 march of Hood s army through Kentucky, and a successful 
 invasion of Indiana and Illinois, in which there were no Federal 
 troops. It was, therefore, of the last importance that the 
 battle upon which so much depended should not be fought 
 until I was ready for it. To one of General Grant s dis 
 patches, urging me to fight, I was strongly tempted (grosslv 
 improper as it would have been) to ask why he was not fight 
 ing himself. 
 
 Fortunate was it for the country that General Thomas 
 was not relieved by General Logan, who it was understood, 
 was on his way to take the command, while the great and 
 decisive battle was being fought. General Logan was a brave 
 man, and for his opportunities he was a skilful officer ; but 
 neither he, nor any other general, could have taken Thomas s 
 place without imminent danger to the Union army. No other 
 general, except perhaps McClellan, commanded the confi 
 dence of his soldiers to the same extent as did General Thomas. 
 Had he been deprived of his command at that critical time, so 
 great would have been the disaffection of the troops, that in 
 all probability Hood would have achieved a victory, instead 
 
276 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 of meeting a crushing defeat. The battle of Nashville was 
 one of the most important battles of the war, in itself and in 
 the eifect which it produced in the disloyal as well as the 
 loyal States. It was the only great battle in which the Con 
 federates were thoroughly vanquished. For this signal victor} -, 
 General Thomas was properly honored, but the opinion then 
 prevailed and still prevails, that he was, as General Grant 
 expressed it, the right man to repel, but not to initiate that 
 he was slow. For this opinion there is no other foundation 
 than that he did not give battle to Hood before he did. In 
 his long and honorable military career, there is nothing to 
 show that he was not as prompt in acting as he was sound in 
 judging. In no single instance was he liable to the charge of 
 excessive prudence. His military career began in the war 
 with the Seminole Indians in Florida ; for his services in which, 
 as second lieutenant, he was complimented by his superior 
 officers. For his good conduct at Monterey, in the Mexican 
 war, he was breveted captain ; for his distinguished gallantry 
 at Buena Yista, major. 
 
 General Thomas was a Virginian, and strongly attached 
 to his native State ; but he never faltered in his allegiance 
 to the Government. By his fidelity to the Union, he was 
 estranged from his relatives and Virginia friends, who never 
 forgave him for what they called his treason to his State. 
 Under the first call of President Lincoln for volunteers, upon 
 the bombardment of Fort Sumter, he was assigned to the 
 command of a brigade under General Patterson, and when 
 Patterson was mustered out at the expiration of his ninety 
 days service, he was appointed Brigadier- General of Volun 
 teers, and ordered to Louisville. In the organization of the 
 Army of the Cumberland, under General Buell, he was assigned 
 to the command of the First Division. His duties in this 
 command were laborious and trying, as he had an active 
 enemy to watch, while he was preparing his undisciplined 
 troops for efficient service. On the 18th of January, 1862, he 
 
THE ROCK OF CHICKAMAUGA. 277 
 
 had a sharp engagement at Mill Springs, with the Con 
 federates under General George B. Crittenden and General 
 Zollicoffer, whom he routed with considerable loss to the Con 
 federates in men. and great loss in munitions of all kinds. In 
 this battle General Zollicoffer was killed, and although, in com 
 parison with those which followed, it was a small affair, it 
 was important in raising the spirit of the Federal troops, in 
 giving them confidence in their commander and in themselves, 
 and in encouraging the people of the Xorth. It was a well- 
 contested battle on both sides. It was one of the first battles 
 in the "West the first in which the Union troops won a vic 
 tory. It was also important in the effect it had upon the 
 people of Kentucky. It raised the reputation of the Northern 
 soldiers, and did much to check the progress of secession senti 
 ment in that State. In the West, the effect of this battle was 
 electrical. It was the baptism of fire to a number of Western 
 regiments ; and the report of the victory was received with a 
 delight scarcely equalled by the reports of subsequent victories 
 on a larger scale. 
 
 The bravery and admirable judgment of General Thomas 
 were soon again displayed in the battle of Stone River, under 
 General Rosecrans, one of the hardest-fought and bloodiest 
 of the early battles of the war ; but it was at Chicamauga that 
 he won his greatest popular renown. It was there that his 
 indomitable courage was most effectively displayed. Undis 
 mayed by the reports which reached him of the disasters of 
 the rest of the Union forces, he held his own well in hand, 
 and, gathering them together on Horseshoe Ridge, a position 
 selected by himself, he resisted with twenty-five thousand men 
 the repeated attacks of twice that number of Confederate 
 troops, frequently reinforced, and flushed with their successes 
 in other parts of the field. Never was there a grander display 
 of tenacious heroism than was displayed by General Thomas, 
 when for six hours, delivering harder blows than he received, 
 he held his position against the furious assaults of almost over- 
 
278 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 whelming numbers. It was then that he won the name so 
 expressive of his merit "The Rock of Chickamauga." To 
 him was the country indebted for the salvation of the Army 
 of the Cumberland. 
 
 The gallantry and military capacity of General Thomas 
 were displayed in every one of the many battles in which he 
 was engaged ; and never was he charged w r ith being slow until 
 he hesitated to strike at Hood before he was prepared to make 
 the battle of Nashville one of the most decisive battles of the 
 Avar ; but the complaint came from City Point, and hence the 
 credence of its justice. In the history of the great civil war 
 yet to be written by an impartial pen, no name will be more 
 conspicuous, not for courage only, but for all the qualities 
 required in a great commander, than that of George H. 
 Thomas. Nor was it as a soldier only that he was renowned. 
 He was no less distinguished by his modesty, his unselfishness, 
 and his keen sense of justice. He was never his own trum 
 peter, nor with his approbation was any one the trumpeter of 
 his fame. Newspaper correspondents were never welcome in 
 his camps. His supreme ambition was to do his duty, and 
 he was content that his reputation should rest upon his acts. 
 He declined honors when by accepting them he would have 
 sanctioned injustice to others. The following illustrates his 
 magnanimity in this regard. After the battle of Mill Springs he 
 was assigned to the command of the Army of the Ohio in place 
 of General Buell. He declined the promotion, on the ground 
 that, in his judgment, Buell merited the approbation rather 
 than the censure of the Government. Having heard that his 
 name had been sent to the Senate by President Johnson for a 
 position that w r ould, if the nomination were confirmed by the 
 Senate, make him superior to General Grant, he promptly 
 requested some of his personal friends in the Senate to vote 
 against his confirmation. He had, he said, received all the 
 honor he was justly entitled to. In the same spirit he refused 
 presents such presents as the commander-in-chief w r as in the 
 
GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN. 279 
 
 habit of receiving. Nor did lie complain of the intended injus 
 tice to him just before the battle of Nashville. lie felt, how 
 ever and this feeling he expressed to intimate friends that 
 neither Secretary Stanton nor General Grant was his friend. 
 Many regarded his transfer to the command of the Military 
 Division of the Pacific an indication of unfriendly feeling or 
 jealousy on the part of the President. 
 
 I have said much more than I intended to say about Gen 
 eral Thomas. I should have said less if I had felt that his 
 high character and great success had been fully appreciated. 
 But having said so much about him, I cannot help giving the 
 impressions made upon me by a few of the other distinguished 
 generals and commanders with whom I became personally 
 acquainted during the war, or soon after its close. My 
 acquaintances in this direction were limited. While the war 
 was in progress, and for nearly four years after its termina 
 tion, my time was required to such an extent in the general 
 management of the Bank of the State of Indiana, and in the 
 performance of financial duties in Washington, that I had 
 little opportunity for becoming personally acquainted with 
 many of the men by whose gallantry in the field and on the 
 water the national unity was preserved. 
 
 Although he was a Western man, it was after the war that 
 I met General John A. Logan, the most distinguished of the 
 volunteer generals who added to the prestige fairly acquired in 
 the field, the honor of serving with distinction the great State 
 of Illinois in the United States Senate. Before the war he 
 had obtained considerable celebrity as a young, popular orator. 
 He was a Democrat, and living in southern Illinois, his personal 
 .and political affiliations were largely with Southern men. He 
 was a non-coercionist, but he was nevertheless for the Union, 
 and heartily opposed to all combination, all measures which 
 seemed to him to endanger it. Although he had no sympathy 
 with the anti-slavery men in the free States, he had none with 
 secessionists at the South. When, therefore, the Southern 
 
280 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 States attempted to withdraw from the Union and to establish 
 an independent government by force, he had no doubt as to 
 what duty required of him. lie was for the Union, and his 
 fidelity was not in the slightest measure weakened by the fact 
 that among those who were most active in efforts to destroy it 
 were many to whom he had been strongly attached. So ambi 
 tious was he, and so apt in learning the art of war, that he 
 commanded the respect of the officers of the regular army, and 
 so untiring in his devotion to the Government that he richly mer 
 ited the high distinction which he acquired. General Logan 
 belonged to that class of men whose rise from obscurity to 
 eminence is not only creditable to themselves, but a compliment 
 to our democratic institutions. If after the war he was unable 
 to overcome the feeling engendered by it to be just to those 
 who were forced into the war against the Government by their 
 adherence to the doctrine of State Sovereignty, in which he 
 had himself been a believer ; if he could not help regarding 
 the attempted secession of the Southern States as treasonable, 
 and treasonable only, it was because there are no animosities 
 so lasting and bitter as those which follow ruptured friendship. 
 The advocates of the harshest treatment of the people of the 
 Southern States after the war were those who, like Secretary 
 Stanton, General B. F. Butler, and General Logan, were in the 
 closest sympathy with them before its commencement. Gen 
 eral Logan was among the very few of the distinguished 
 Union soldiers who were, or are, disposed to keep alive sec 
 tional animosity rather than to use their influence to restore 
 amicable relations between the North and South, which but for 
 slavery would never have been interrupted. 
 
 The evening of the day on which reports of General P. IL 
 Sheridan s splendid victory in the Valley of Virginia at Cedar 
 Creek were received in Washington, I spent with the President 
 at the Soldiers Home. It was such a relief to have cheering 
 news from that quarter, that Mr. Lincoln threw off his cares and 
 gave free rein to his humor. lie had not been so happ} 7 , he 
 
GENERAL PHILIP II. SHERIDAN. 281 
 
 said, since the capture of Vicksburg. I certainly never saw 
 him during the war when he was so joyous. My desire to 
 meet Sheridan was not gratified until I met him, some years 
 after, in London, where we spent some pleasant hours together. 
 Since then I have known him quite well, and he has grown 
 steadily in my estimation and respect. To many of his coun 
 trymen, General Sheridan has been known only as one of the 
 bravest of the brave the dashing cavalry commander, whose 
 gallantry had been displayed on many battle-fields, always 
 foremost in the fight and seemingly courting danger for the 
 love of it. Such he had seemed to me until he was assigned 
 to the command of the Army of the Shenandoah, in August, 
 1864. It was there that he found opportunity to display 
 his qualities as a commander. It was the first command 
 of an army that he had been intrusted with, and he had 
 opposed to him one of the most skilful generals of the Con 
 federacy. That the right man had at last been assigned to the 
 command of the Union forces in that fertile valley, from 
 which General Lee was obtaining a large part of his supplies in 
 the defence of Richmond was speedily proven by his great but 
 dearly-bought victory at Opequan Creek. It was the first bat 
 tle in which he had led an army, and in his elation he indited 
 his dispatch, " We have sent the enemy whirling through 
 Winchester. We are after them to-morrow." The battle at 
 Fisher s Hill, which soon followed, in which the Confederate 
 fortifications, well built, and on a commanding position, were 
 skilfully flanked and carried by storm, was scarcely less 
 important than that at Opequan in the effect which it had upon 
 both sections of the country. It was, however, in the battle 
 of Cedar Creek that General Sheridan obtained his greatest 
 renown. In this battle the Confederates commenced the attack, 
 and followed it up with so much vigor that the Union forces 
 were driven from their encampments, and twenty-four of their 
 guns were captured. A great victory seemed to be within the 
 grasp of General Early, up to eleven o clock, when the tide was 
 
 *rv 6 R A rt 
 
 OF TH7. 
 
 lV^r. 
 
282 MEX AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 suddenly turned. General Sheridan was on his return from 
 Washington, and had reached Winchester on the morning of 
 the 10th of October, when an officer reported to him sounds 
 of artillery. This report made so little impression upon him 
 that he did not leave the town for a couple of hours, but he 
 had not proceeded far, before it became evident that a great 
 battle was being fought, and to the disadvantage of his army. 
 As soon as his horse could carry him, he was among his 
 retreating troops. To stop this retreat, to re-form the broken 
 lines, to compel the fugitives to face the enemy and to win a 
 great victory, was possible only to a general of great ability, 
 who could inspire his troops with his own gallant spirit. When 
 Sheridan reached the field, at about eleven o clock, the largest 
 part of the Union Army was in retreat, some of it in utter con 
 fusion. In a few hours the lost ground was recovered, and 
 before night the Confederates, beaten at all points, were flying 
 for their lives. The annals of war reveal nothing grander than 
 the conduct of Sheridan in this, the last great battle in the 
 Shenandoah. Like General Thomas, he was the idol of the 
 men whom he commanded. Since the war he has displayed 
 executive ability and sound judgment in the performance of 
 various important duties, and there are none to deny that he 
 fills with great credit the highest place in the army. 
 
 Xo other general in the army of the civil war is known by 
 as many people as William Tecumseh Sherman, and none has 
 warmer friends. Of great versatility of character, he has 
 been soldier, teacher, banker, and again soldier. He has trav 
 elled much, and been a close and accurate observer. His per 
 ception is rapid, and his comprehension of the topography of 
 a country through which he merely travels is so extraordinary, 
 that he understands its general features better than they are 
 understood by its residents. This faculty gave him great advan 
 tages in his Tennessee and Georgia campaign, and in his 
 march from Savannah to Ealeigh. He had been over a consid 
 erable part of these sections once before, not as a student of its 
 
UNFORESEEN MAGNITUDE OF THE WAR. 283 
 
 topography, but as a young lieutenant in the Seminole war, 
 and yet he knew more about them than the Southern generals 
 seemed to know. Sherman is a man of the world. He has 
 the faculty of adaptation, which makes him everywhere at 
 home upon the frontier, and at the Capital ; among the 
 rudest, and the most polished ; in cabins, where corn dodgers 
 and pork or opossum are the only fare, and in the mansions of 
 the rich, where there is everything to tempt and gratify the 
 appetite ; in high life or lo*w life, he is equally at ease. Grim 
 and stern in his appearance, he is one of the most genial of 
 men. He is a good talker, and especially interesting in con 
 versation, because without being egotistical, he can be led to 
 speak, not about what he has heard or read, but about what 
 he has himself experienced and observed in a varied life. 
 He is also a ready public speaker and facile writer, but he fre 
 quently speaks without preparation, and rarely reviews with 
 care what he writes, so that he sometimes either says what he 
 did not intend to say, or his language is so misconstrued as to 
 expose him to criticism ; but he never makes a speech that 
 does not command attention, or writes an article which is with 
 out value. He was well received in Europe, a good deal of 
 which he saw during his visit in 1871. Especially was he well 
 received in London, where he was regarded as standing at the 
 head of the national generals in the civil war, the progress 
 of which had been watched with the keenest interest by the 
 British people. 
 
 So little comprehension was there throughout the North 
 ern States, in the autumn of 1861, of the magnitude of the 
 struggle in which the Government was engaged for the main 
 tenance of its authority in the South, that Sherman s report 
 that seventy-five thousand men would be required for the 
 prosecution of the war in the Department of the Cumber 
 land, to the command of which he had been appointed, was 
 received with surprise, if not with derision, by the War De 
 partment, and with astonishment everywhere at the North. 
 
284 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Seventy- five thousand men for a single Department ! could 
 anything be more preposterous ! If seventy-five thousand 
 men were needed for a single Department, and that not 
 one of the most important, how many would be required for 
 all the Departments ? And if the men could be found for such 
 armies as would be required, according to Sherman s estimate, 
 how could the money be raised to cover the expense ? Ko 
 sane man could entertain so wild an opinion ! Sherman 
 must be crazy, was the talk in Washington. Sherman is crazy, 
 responded the newspapers ; one of the most enterprising of 
 which made the startling discovery that insanity was hered 
 itary in the Sherman family. Whether the prevalence of this 
 sentiment was the cause of his being relieved of his command, 
 and placed in charge of a camp of instruction, does not appear ; 
 but that it was the fear at the War Office that he was not 
 perfectly sane which kept him in the background for months, 
 is more than probable. Well was it for the country that the 
 magnitude of the war was not foreseen at the beginning. If 
 it had been, the Union might have been severed without a blow 
 being struck for its preservation. A war of four years dura 
 tion, requiring the services of more than a million of men the 
 expenditure of four thousand millions of dollars annual taxes 
 of four hundred millions, and the sacrifice of hundreds of thou 
 sands of precious lives ; who would not have stood aghast at 
 such a picture ? Sherman himself had no forecast of a war of 
 so gigantic proportions. But he had lived at the South ; he 
 understood the character of the people ; he knew that they had 
 not been, as many supposed, enervated by the existence among 
 them of a servile class, upon whom they mainly depended for 
 labor ; he comprehended the topography of the country to be 
 invaded, and the advantages which it possessed in defensive 
 warfare. He Avas consequently quite sure that the conflict 
 would be severe and protracted, and that it might require all 
 the energy and resources at the command of the Government 
 to bring it to a successful termination. 
 
GENERAL AV. T. SHERMAX. 285 
 
 Sherman was the sane man, the insane were his critics ; and 
 this the "War Office and the people were not long in discover 
 ing. A few months after he took charge of the school of 
 instruction, his presence in the army was considered necessary, 
 and he was placed in command of the District of Paducah in 
 Kentucky. From that time to the end of the war he was, next 
 to General Grant, the most conspicuous of the national gen 
 erals ; more constantly employed, and more frequently in battle 
 than any other. Before he was assigned to the command of 
 the Department of the Cumberland, he had been made for his 
 gallantry at the first battle of Bull Eun, a Brigadier-General, 
 and after the battle of Shiloh he was made a Major-General 
 of volunteers. On the 4th of July, 1863, he was promoted to 
 be Brigadier-General, and in August, 1864, Major-General in 
 the regular army. All of these advances in rank, step by step, 
 were recognitions of his merit, and his merit only. In nearly 
 all the great battles in Tennessee and Mississippi he bore an 
 important part, but opportunity for the full exercise of great 
 ability was not afforded until he was placed in full command 
 of the section which included the Departments of the Ohio, 
 the Cumberland, Tennessee and Arkansas. Then at the head 
 of the finest national army that had been under one command 
 in the West, he was confronted at every point by a Confed 
 erate force second only in strength and discipline to the Army 
 of Northern Virginia, and under the command of General 
 Joseph E. Johnston, who, next to Lee, was the ablest of the 
 Confederate Generals. From May to September there was 
 incessant manoeuvring and fighting between the two armies, 
 and great valor and generalship were displayed on both sides. 
 Sherman s aim was to flank Johnston, and avoid direct attack 
 upon his fortifications. Johnston s effort was so to extend 
 and fortify his lines that he could not be flanked nor 
 attacked in front without great risk to the assailants. The 
 local advantages were on the side of Johnston. He was on 
 the defensive, with ample supplies at hand. Sherman was 
 
286 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 encountering almost insuperable difficulties in keeping open his 
 lines of communication through a hostile country to his far- 
 distant base, and yet the Confederates were forced from one 
 position to another, with no small losses of men and munitions. 
 In one instance only were they able to make good their 
 stand. In this instance (the battle of Kenesaw) Sherman 
 changed his tactics. He made a direct attack upon the lines 
 of the enemy, and was repulsed with considerable loss. This 
 repulse, however, did not seriously check his onward move 
 ment. In a few days, by skilful manoeuvres, he forced the 
 enemy to abandon his strong position and to fall back upon 
 another. The battle at Kenesaw was the last of his encounters 
 with Johnston in the West. Before there was any more severe 
 lighting, Johnston was superseded by General Hood. The 
 change was gratifying to Sherman and his well-drilled army. 
 Johnston was brave^ skilful, prudent, wary. If driven from 
 one position, he had another to occupy ; so that he was always 
 confronting Sherman with fortifications too strong to be car 
 ried by assault, and too extended to be flanked without consid 
 erable loss of time, nor without increasing Sherman s difficulties 
 in obtaining supplies. Hood, on the other hand, was aggres 
 sive more disposed to strike than to await an attack. The 
 government at Richmond had become alarmed at the steady 
 progress of Sherman, and dissatisfied with the Fabian policy 
 of Johnston. Hence the change of commanders. That the 
 change was unfortunate for the Confederates, Avas soon appar 
 ent. Hood was a daring soldier, who had obtained renown 
 on many well-contested battle-fields ; but if he had been as 
 wise as he was brave, he would have known that his army was 
 not strong enough for aggressive movements against such an 
 army as Sherman s. In the battles at Atlanta and Gaines- 
 borough, he exhibited skilful generalship, and his usual personal 
 courage, but he was beaten in battle and foiled in his efforts 
 to compel Sherman to abandon Georgia. He could not save 
 Atlanta, but although beaten, he was not vanquished ; and 
 
THE MARCH TO THE SEA. 28? 
 
 when Sherman was on his grand march to the sea, he was 
 making a counter movement with an increased force towards 
 
 O 
 
 the north. His military career was ended by the crushing 
 blow which he received at Nashville. 
 
 The greatest single loss sustained by the Government at 
 the battle of Atlanta was in the death of General McPher- 
 son, a gallant soldier and an accomplished gentleman, to 
 whom, as much as to any one, the country was indebted for 
 the salvation of the national army in the first day s battle at 
 Shiloh. The campaign which Sherman commenced in May, 
 1864, at Dalton, and substantially closed in September, at 
 Atlanta, was one of the most brilliant and successful cam 
 paigns of the war. He was in a country admirably adapted 
 to defensive operations. He had opposed to him an army 
 nearly equal to his own in numerical strength, and fully equal 
 in spirit and endurance, commanded first by Johnston, one 
 of the most skilful, and next by Hood, one of the most daring 
 of the Confederate generals. He was dependent entirely 
 upon his base for supplies, with a long line of communication 
 to be maintained. Every inch of advance had to be fought 
 for, and almost every day was marked by fighting or manoeu 
 vring ; and yet the movement was onward, interrupted only 
 by the repulse at Kenesaw, until the object of the campaign 
 was accomplished in the capture of Atlanta, which, next to 
 Richmond, was the most important position for the Confeder 
 ates to hold. 
 
 In the conduct of this campaign, Sherman exhibited mili 
 tary genius of the highest order, supplemented by courage, 
 hardihood, endurance; but the crowning glory was yet to be 
 attained. He was hundreds of miles away from his base of 
 supply ; and he had an active enemy in his neighborhood, not 
 strong enough to meet him in battle, but sufficiently strong to 
 make his position uncomfortable. What should he do? 
 Should he fortify Atlanta, destroy Hood s army, and hold the 
 country he had conquered ; or should he endeavor to give the 
 
288 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Confederacy a death-blow, by pushing on to the sea captur 
 ing Savannah and Charleston, marching northward and insur 
 ing the fall of Richmond, and the destruction of the Army 
 of Virginia under General Lee ? The world knows what he 
 determined to do, and how thoroughly he did what he under 
 took. His march to the sea was as grand in design as it was 
 splendid in execution. To Sherman alone belongs the honor 
 of the design; to him and to his army, the honor of the achiev- 
 ment. It was, in conception and accomplishment, one of the 
 grandest enterprises of which there is a record. When it was 
 understood in the North that Sherman, with an army of sixty 
 or seventy thousand men, had abandoned his base and com 
 menced a march through a hostile country, upon which he 
 must largely depend for supplies until by capturing cities 
 upon the sea-board he could open communication with the 
 national fleet, the joy over the fall of Atlanta gave way to 
 anxiety, and as days followed days, and weeks followed weeks, 
 without any certain intelligence of his movements, the anxiety 
 became intense. The relief was long in coming, and when it 
 did come, when the report was received that the army was in 
 excellent condition, in the neighborhood of Savannah, there was 
 greater joy and hopefulness throughout the loyal States than had 
 been witnessed since the outbreak of the war. It was an assur 
 ance that the days of the Confederacy were nearly numbered. 
 The march through Georgia proved to be, however, 
 neither difficult nor dangerous. Forage was abundant, and 
 there were no armed forces to be contended with. It was a 
 pleasure trip, in comparison with the hardships that were 
 soon to be encountered. Savannah and Charleston were 
 soon in possession of the national forces, and what and 
 where next, were the questions to be answered by early action. 
 Sherman was decided in his opinion that the march to the 
 sea should be followed by a march to Columbia to Raleigh 
 to Richmond. General Grant at first advised that a strong- 
 intrenched position should be established at a suitable point, 
 
THE GREATEST MODERN MILITARY FEAT. 289 
 
 and that the bulk of the army should be sent by sea to 
 join the Army of the Potomac. This advice, upon reflection, 
 was changed, and Sherman was left to complete the cam 
 paign in his own way. Up to this time, as has been said, 
 no serious difficulties had been met. Now the working power, 
 the endurance, and the courage of the army were to be 
 severely tested. Rivers were to be bridged, swamps were to 
 be waded, roads through forests were to be constructed, with 
 an active enemy hovering about, ready to strike whenever a 
 blow could be effectively given. It was the rainy season, and 
 the rains were unusually heavy. The banks of the rivers were 
 overflowed for miles, and the larger part of the route from 
 Charleston to Columbia was through a country covered with 
 water. Such was its condition that the Confederate generals 
 considered it impassable, and yet this grand army made its 
 way through it, at an average rate of ten miles a day. I 
 thought when I read the accounts of it years ago that Sherman s 
 sixteen days march from Charleston to Columbia was the 
 grandest feat of modern times that the crossing of the Alps 
 by Napoleon was far less difficult. This opinion has been 
 confirmed by what I have heard and read about it since. I 
 have no knowledge of battles, but I do know something of 
 travel over a flat country in rainy seasons. "With a strong 
 horse under me, I have frequently found ten miles a good 
 day s journey, and I can therefore appreciate the enormous 
 work performed by Sherman s army in this part of its cele 
 brated march. I take the liberty of copying the following 
 from General Jacob D. Cox s " March to the Sea " : 
 
 " An itinerary of the march through South Carolina would 
 furnish interesting daily illustrations of the expedients by 
 which an army of expert woodsmen can overcome difficulties 
 in logistics commonly thought insurmountable. In a country 
 where many of the rivers are known by the name of swamps, 
 continuous rains so raised the waters that scarce a stream was 
 passed without deploying the advanced guard through water 
 waist deep, and sometimes it reached even to the armpits, 
 19 
 
290 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 forcing them to carry the cartridge-box at the neck and the 
 musket on the head. The fitness of the name swamp for even 
 the rivers will be felt when it is remembered that at the cross 
 ing of the Salkehatchie, at Beaufort s Bridge, the stream had 
 fifteen separate channels, each of which had to be bridged 
 before Logan s corps could get over. "Whoever will consider 
 the effect of dragging the artillery and hundreds of loaded 
 army wagons over mud roads in such a country, and of the 
 infinite labor required to pave these roads with logs, levelling 
 the surface with smaller poles in the hollows between, adding 
 to the structure as the mass sinks in the ooze, and continuing 
 this till the miles of train have pulled through, will get a con 
 stantly growing idea of the work and a steadily increasing 
 wonder that it was done at all. Certainly he will not wonder 
 that the Confederate generals believed they could count upon 
 Sherman s remaining at his base till the rains ceased and the 
 waters subsided. If the march through Georgia remained pict 
 ured in the soldiers memories as a bright frolicsome raid, that 
 through South Carolina was even more indelibly printed as a 
 stubborn wrestle w r ith the elements, in which the murky and 
 dripping skies were so mingled with the earth and water below 
 as to make the whole a fit type of " chaos come again ; " but 
 where, also, the indomitable will of sixty thousand men, concen 
 trated to do the inflexible purpose of one, bridged this chaos for 
 hundreds of miles, and, out-laboring Hercules, won a physical 
 triumph, that must always remain a marvel. And mile by mile 
 as they advanced the General and his men were equally clear 
 in the conviction he had expressed to Grant before starting, 
 that every step they took was as much a direct attack upon 
 Lee s army as though it were operating within the sound of 
 his artillery. : 
 
 At the time of paroling the Confederate army at Greens 
 boro, Is". C., speaking of this part of Sherman s march and of 
 the combination of physical labor with military hardihood, 
 General Johnston said, in the hearing of General Cox, that 
 there had been no such army since the days of Julius Caesar. 
 He might also have remarked with truthfulness that there 
 have been few such commanders. 
 
 I have said more about Sherman, as I did about Thomas, 
 than I intended to say ; but it is proper that I should refer 
 briefly to the armistice for which he was so severely criticised. 
 General Joseph E. Johnston, who was in command of the Con- 
 
THE CONVENTION WITH JOHNSTON. 291 
 
 federate forces that were endeavoring to check Sherman s 
 march from Columbia towards Richmond, and had been foiled 
 in every effort, notably at Bentonsville, where he made a stand 
 behind fortifications from which he was driven after a severe 
 contest, having been advised of the fall of Richmond and the 
 surrender of Lee and his army, opened a negotiation with 
 Sherman for the surrender of his army on the 13th of April, 
 the day on which Lincoln was assassinated, and in a few days 
 terms were agreed upon between them, subject to confirmation 
 or rejection by the authorities which they undertook to repre 
 sent. Immediately upon being informed by Secretary Stan- 
 ton of the convention, President Johnson called a meeting of 
 his Cabinet at his lodgings (he had not then taken possession 
 of the White House), at which all the members except Mr. 
 Seward were present. The meeting was in the evening, and 
 after the convention had been stated by Mr. Stanton, there 
 was a free interchange of opinions, and the conclusion promptly 
 reached that it should be rejected, the armistice terminated, 
 and no terms but unconditional surrender by Johnston and 
 his army accepted. Mr. Stanton was directed by the President 
 to communicate this decision to General Sherman. In this 
 conclusion the President and his cabinet were a unit. No 
 one, however, attributed to General Sherman any want of 
 fidelity to the Government except Secretary Stanton. To him 
 the terms of surrender seemed such as no truly loyal man could 
 have agreed to, and little short of treason. The rest of the 
 members of the Cabinet were equally strong against the con 
 vention, but they were not disposed to attribute improper 
 motives to the soldier who by four years of excellent service 
 to the Government had given the best proof that could be 
 given of unswerving loyalty. 
 
 It was understood that the action of the Cabinet should 
 not be made public until after it had been communicated to 
 General Sherman, and the armistice had been terminated. It 
 was, however, generally known the next morning, and at the 
 
292 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 instance of Mr. Stanton, General Grant was ordered to 
 Ealeigh to relieve General Sherman from all responsibility, and 
 to take command of the army if he should consider it neces 
 sary. Before Grant s arrival at Raleigh, Sherman had given 
 General Johnston notice that the Government had disap 
 proved of the convention, and that the armistice was to be 
 terminated. This was speedily followed by the unconditional 
 surrender of the Confederate army. 
 
 Ko one, I think, is more willing than General Sherman to 
 admit that the President and his advisers were clearly right 
 in disapproving of the convention. It was ambiguous, to say 
 the least, upon a question of supreme importance slavery. 
 Sherman regarded that question as having been settled by 
 President Lincoln s proclamation, and his understanding was 
 that slaves were not property which was to be secured to the 
 Confederates by the convention. This was Johnston s under 
 standing as well as Sherman s, but it is evident from the 
 recently-published correspondence between the President of 
 the Confederacy and his Cabinet, that this was not the con 
 struction which would have been given to the language of 
 the convention at the South. General Sherman had no reason 
 to complain and never has complained that his action was 
 disapproved of ; but he resented the insinuations, if not direct 
 charge, of the Secretary of "War, that in his dealings with 
 Johnston he had been treacherous to the Government and to 
 freedom. The treatment which he received at the close of 
 this brilliant campaign was mortifying to his honorable pride. 
 He submitted to it like a true soldier, but he did not consider 
 it his duty to bear tamely unjust imputations upon his honor. 
 The cloud that rested upon him was only partial and tempo 
 rary. "When General Grant became President of the United 
 States the highest rank in the army was conferred upon him, 
 and, in the estimate of his countrymen, his name is second to 
 none in the roll of those by whose bravery, devotion, and 
 talents the national integrity was maintained. 
 
CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 General W. S. Hancock His Modesty and High Sense of Honor His Nomina 
 tion for the Presidency What he Said about the Tariff Habits Formed 
 by a Soldier Unfitted for the Presidency General George B. McClellan 
 His Appointment to the Command of the Army of the Potomac How it 
 was Received in Indiana and throughout the Country Condition of the 
 Army when he Took the Command Its Re-Creation His Scheme for the 
 Prosecution of the War His Inaction and its Effect upon his Reputation 
 Appointment by Congress of a Joint Committee to Inquire into the Con 
 duct of the War Peninsular Campaign Commenced under Unfavorable 
 Circumstances Its failure, although Great Skill was Manifested in its 
 Conduct General McClellan not Properly Sustained in Washington The 
 Command of the Army Transferred to General Pope The Second Battle 
 of Bull Run McClellan Takes Again, at the Request of the President, the 
 Command of the Army Its Discipline rapidly Restored Battles of South 
 Mountain and Antietam General McClellan Relieved of his Command 
 and Ordered to Trenton The Hold he Had upon his Army His Private 
 Character. 
 
 I MET General Hancock for the first time a few days after 
 the battle of Gettysburg. I had known something of his 
 early history; that two years after he graduated at West 
 Point he had been brevetted first lieutenant for his bravery in 
 the war with Mexico, and I was quite familiar with his mili 
 tary history from the commencement of the civil war. I knew 
 that he had Avon distinguished honors on the Peninsula, at 
 South Mountain and Antietam, and that his praise was in 
 everybody s mouth for the excellent judgment and gallantry 
 that he had displayed at Gettysburg. I was therefore desirous 
 to know him personally, and I met him with the most favor 
 able impressions of his merit as a soldier. From that time my 
 acquaintance with him was as intimate as the difference in our 
 pursuits and our places of abode would permit ; and the better 
 I knew him, the higher did he rise in my estimation. In 
 
294 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 uprightness, in a keen sense of honor, in kindness of heart, in 
 generosity, in genuine manliness, he had no superior in the 
 army. To jealousy he was a stranger. If he thought, as 
 many of his friends did, that his services were not properly 
 appreciated, he never expressed or indicated it. In the field, in 
 the management of the troops under his command, wherever 
 valor came into full exercise, he was, in the language of one 
 who fought with him and under him, "simply magnificent." 
 Of his qualifications to command an army and conduct a cam 
 paign, there must have been some doubt in the mind of Mr. 
 Lincoln, or he would have been tried in that capacity. It is 
 not unlikely that these doubts were created by Secretary Stan- 
 ton, with whom Hancock was not a favorite. There was 
 apparently no good ground for them. In all the battles in 
 which he was engaged, and which were unfavorable to the 
 Union armies, his position was a subordinate one, and he was 
 in no manner responsible for their results. On the contrary, 
 his conduct in each was such as to justify the opinion that he 
 possessed the qualities for absolute command ; that if he had 
 succeeded McClellan in command, the battle of Fredericks- 
 burg would not have been fought, and no such disasters as 
 those at Chancellorsville and Bull Run would have befallen 
 the grand Army of the Potomac, or of Virginia, as it was 
 for a short time called. Burnside had rendered good service 
 in North Carolina ; Hooker was distinguished for his bravery, 
 and Pope had won a high reputation in the "West; but 
 neither, outside of the War Department, was considered the 
 equal, as a soldier or commander, of Hancock. Their pref 
 erence to him was a surprise to me, as I think it was to 
 others who were acquainted with their respective histories. 
 It was by Hancock s advice that Lee was met at Gettys 
 burg, and although General Meade was in command, to him 
 
 O / O 
 
 more than to any other one man the nation was indebted for 
 the most important victory of the war. For his services at 
 Gettysburg he received the thanks of Congress. Having been 
 
HANCOCK AND THE TAEIFF. 295 
 
 wounded in that battle, and thereby incapacitated for active 
 service until the spring of 1864-, when General Grant had 
 been appointed General of the Army, the only further honor 
 that could be conferred upon him was that of corps com 
 mander. As such he took a prominent part in the battles of 
 the Wilderness, Spotsylvania, North Anna, and Cold Harbor, 
 in all of which he displayed the high qualities that always dis 
 tinguished him upon the battle-field, and which gave to him a 
 name among American generals like that of Ney among the 
 marshals of France. 
 
 Next to being elected President, the worst thing that can 
 happen to a successful military general is to be a candidate 
 for that high office. A stranger to the freedom of the press 
 and the unfairness of politicians, in reading Republican news 
 papers and listening to Eepublican orators, when Hancock 
 was a candidate for the Presidency, would have supposed 
 that he was destitute of both intelligence and patriotism. 
 Nothing could have been wider from the truth. Of his 
 patriotism there could be no question. In general intelligence, 
 he was not inferior to any of the well-educated men of the 
 army, except perhaps McClellan and Sherman and Thomas 
 and Canby. He was a good deal ridiculed for speaking of 
 the tariff as a local question. That the tariff, which had 
 been especially the apple of discord from the foundation of 
 the Government, and which at one time threatened the integ 
 rity of the Union, should be spoken of by a candidate for the 
 Presidency as a local question, did seem to be absurd. But 
 was it ? The tariff was then, as it is now, one of the most 
 interesting questions before the country; but it has always 
 been, to a considerable extent, a sectional, and consequently a 
 local question. It has not been a question upon which the 
 two great parties have been divided. It is true that the 
 Republican party is more strongly committed to the tariff, or 
 rather to its protective features, than the Democratic party, 
 but many of the strongest advocates of a purely revenue tariff 
 
296 MEX AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CEJSTTUKY. 
 
 are Republicans, while among the Democrats there are not a 
 few out and out protectionists. In Congress, the advocates 
 of protection are chiefly from manufacturing districts its 
 opponents from commercial and agricultural. It was not, 
 therefore, so very absurd for General Hancock to speak of it 
 as a local question. 
 
 The tariff certainly has never been fairly presented in the 
 platforms of either party. There has been a good deal of 
 dodging about it on both sides. It has never been discussed 
 throughout the country as a national question, upon the 
 definite settlement of which great national interests are 
 dependent. I trust that the time is not far distant when it 
 will be so presented, discussed and settled. My position 
 upon this question is not uncertain. An original Henry 
 Clay Whig, a believer in what was called the American sys 
 tem, and now and since the party was formed, a Republican, 
 I favor the reduction of the tariff to a revenue standard. A 
 tariff for revenue cannot be so framed as not to give all the 
 protection which is needed to enable our manufacturers, with 
 their superior aptitude in the invention and use of machinery, 
 and with most of the raw materials at hand, to compete suc 
 cessfully in the markets of the world with foreign manu 
 facturers and their cheaper labor. I do not see where relief 
 from over-production in the United States is to come from 
 except in a freer trade with foreign nations. Neither I nor 
 my children will live to see the day, but I am hopeful that it 
 is not very far in the future, that the United States, and the 
 European nations, that are now following our bad example, 
 will let down the bars and remove all restrictions upon 
 international trade. In no other way can brotherhood be 
 established among the nations, the principles of Christianity 
 be vindicated, and the best interests of all be promoted. The 
 country is, however, indebted to the protective tariff for the 
 rapid reduction of the public debt, which is no small compen 
 sation for its burden. 
 
GEOKGE B. McCLELLAN. 297 
 
 General Hancock, had he been elected, would not have 
 been a bad President, but I do not think he would have been 
 a very good one. The education and habits of military men 
 do not fit them for the performance of high civil duties. Our 
 experience with military men in the Presidency has not been 
 fortunate. Jackson could not divest himself of the habits of 
 the soldier. He was self-willed, arbitrary, overbearing the 
 first of the Presidents to give to the administration of the 
 Government a personal character. Neither of our military 
 Presidents, except Washington, was selected because he was 
 supposed to be especially qualified for the place, but because 
 military prestige was a strong element in popular favor. 
 Harrison would not have been thought of for the Presidency 
 if he had not been distinguished in the Indian wars ; nor 
 would Taylor, if he had not been the " Rough and Ready " of 
 the war with Mexico ; nor would Grant, but for his military 
 renown. The most ardent friends of Harrison or Taylor 
 could hardly have expected that their administrations would 
 be such as the country would have been proud of, and Grant 
 would have stood higher in the respect of the best men of the 
 country if he had not been President. Washington was a 
 general, but he was a statesman also, and of the very highest 
 grade, of which he had given ample proof before his election. 
 It was well for Hancock that he was defeated. As President, 
 he might have been a failure. His fame now rests upon his 
 military services, and there it rests securely. His record as a 
 soldier is without a blemish. A gallant soldier was he, with 
 out fear and without reproach. 
 
 The appointment of General George B. McClellan to the 
 command of the Army of the Potomac, on the day after the 
 first battle of Bull Run, was hailed with satisfaction through 
 out the loyal States. He had graduated at West Point with 
 high honor. He had been bre vetted as first lieutenant and 
 captain for his gallantry in the Mexican war. As a member 
 of a military commission, he had visited the Crimea to observe 
 
298 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 the military operations of the combined French and English 
 armies, of which he made a very interesting and instructive 
 report. He had resigned as an army officer in 1857, to become 
 successively chief engineer and vice-president of the Illinois 
 Central, and president of the Ohio and Mississippi railroad 
 companies. He had promptly offered his services to the 
 Government upon the outbreak of the civil war, and had been 
 appointed to the command of the Department of the Ohio. 
 He had been commissioned a major-general in the regular 
 army ; had taken command of the Union forces in West Vir 
 ginia ; had beaten the Confederates, Garnet and Pegram, in 
 two sharp engagements, and forced .General Lee to abandon the 
 State. There was, therefore, good reason for the favor with 
 which his appointment to the command of the Army of the 
 Potomac was so universally received. I was then living in 
 Indiana, and I recollect perfectly how I felt, and all my 
 friends felt, about the appointment. James M. Ray, the 
 cashier of the bank of which I was the president, saw the 
 announcement before I did, and came to me with a face radi 
 ant with joy, exclaiming : " Good news ! good news ! General 
 McClellan has been ordered to Washington to take command 
 of the army. There will be no more Bull Runs." " You think, 
 then," I said, " that General McClellan is going to save the 
 nation ? " " Certainly I do. He is to do for the people of the 
 United States what Moses did for the children of Israel. I 
 have not a particle of doubt that he has been raised up for 
 this very purpose," was the reply. 
 
 Mr. Ray was a zealous Old School Presbyterian, a full 
 believer in the plenary inspiration of the Bible, and in special 
 providence. I did not share his faith, but I was in full sympathy 
 with him in regard to McClellan. One of our Indiana regi 
 ments had been in the West Virginia campaign. Its colonel 
 was one of my personal friends, and the account which he 
 gave to me of the conduct of General McClellan in that, the 
 opening campaign of the war, had raised him very high in 
 
RESULT OF MCCLELLAN S REMOVAL. 299 
 
 my estimation. The great expectations which were excited 
 by his appointment to the command of the Army of the 
 Potomac were not realized. In little more than a year he 
 was relieved of his command, in disrepute with the War De 
 partment, and with almost every bod} 7 except his personal 
 friends, and the officers and soldiers who had served with 
 him and under him, whose love for him personally, and whose 
 confidence in him as a commander, were never shaken. I 
 thought at the time that he merited the displeasure of the 
 Government, and that neither he nor his friends had reason to 
 complain of the manner in which he was treated. After I 
 went to Washington, and had been better informed in regard 
 to the Peninsular campaign, and the battles of South 
 Mountain and Antietam, and of his conduct after these bat 
 tles, my mind underwent a radical change, and I came to the 
 conclusion that instead of being relieved by reason of his 
 unsuccess in the Peninsula, and retired after the battle of 
 Antietam, he should have been honored for his generalship 
 and continued in command. I never think of the second 
 battle of Bull Run, that place of ill omen to the Union army ; 
 the slaughter for it was nothing else at Fredericksburg, 
 and the disaster at Chancellorsville, without feeling that these 
 terrible misfortunes were the consequences of McClellan s retire 
 ment. The Army of the Potomac was his army. He had 
 organized it. He was its beloved chief, and it ought not to 
 have been expected that it would do itself full justice when not 
 under his command. It was said I do not know by what 
 authority that in the second and third days battles at Gettys 
 burg, a part of the Union forces fought under the inspiring 
 report that McClellan had been restored to his command, and 
 was directing the general movements. 
 
 When General McClellan was called to Washington to 
 take command of the army in July, 1861, he found the capital 
 in a state of utter demoralization. A victory had been so con 
 fidently expected, that members of Congress, and other distin- 
 
300 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 guished civilians, had followed the army in its first southward 
 movement to participate in the anticipated triumph. The 
 defeat of the Union forces at Bull Run had been so unlocked 
 for that a feeling of dread approximating a panic prevailed 
 throughout the city. What a few days before was a fine 
 and, according to the notions then existing, a well-disciplined 
 arrnv, had become little better than a disunited, disorganized 
 mob. So general was the demoralization, and so insufficient 
 were the fortifications to protect it, that the capital was seem 
 ingly at the mercy of the enemy. The army was to be re-cre 
 ated ; the despondency which pervaded the city, and which 
 was spreading throughout the country, was to be checked. 
 The emergency was such as to require at Washington for its 
 protection, and to give direction to the movements of the 
 Union troops which were being organized throughout the 
 loyal States, a man who commanded the public confidence 
 and the respect of the army officers. Such a man was then 
 General McClellan, who, without an hour s delay, entered 
 upon the performance of the duties of his command, and with 
 so much vigor were they performed that the gloom produced 
 by the first disaster speedily disappeared, and wonder was 
 expressed that so great depression should have been caused by 
 a single defeat. For three months General McClellan s duties 
 were confined to protecting the city with fortifications, to 
 re-creating and re-organizing the Army of the Potomac ; to 
 making it what it became under his masterly direction the 
 best-disciplined and, when ably led, the most efficient of the 
 Federal armies. The newspapers thought that he was spend 
 ing too much time in getting his forces in readiness for fight 
 ing ; but so strong was his hold upon the public confidence that 
 on the 1st of November, with the full approval of General 
 Scott, with whom he was not on amicable terms, and as stated 
 by Mr. Lincoln in his first annual message to Congress, with 
 the unanimous concurrence of the people, he was appointed 
 commander-in-chief of all the national forces. 
 
WHY THE WAR WAS PROLONGED. 301 
 
 This is what General "Webb said of him on his assuming 
 the command : " The order of General McClellan in assuming 
 the command is noticeable as coming from so young an offi 
 cer. His orders to General Buell, in charge of the Depart 
 ment of the Ohio, and General Ilalleck, in charge of that of 
 Missouri, together with his letters to General Sherman, com 
 manding at Port Koyal, and to General Butler in the South 
 west, show the vigor of thought and the grasp of the man 
 who had been called to the prosecution of the war which 
 extended over half a continent." 
 
 General McClellan s scheme was indeed a magnificent one. 
 It was for active operations all along the lines. Richmond and 
 ISTashville, Savannah and Charleston, were to be captured ; the 
 Mississippi Avas to be opened ; the Confederates were to be 
 pressed at all points as nearly simultaneously as might be pos 
 sible. For the execution of such a scheme much time was 
 required. Before it was put into operation, or could have been 
 under the most efficient organizer, an order was issued without 
 his approval and without his knowledge relieving him from the 
 command of all the armies except the Army of the Potomac ; 
 and for nearly three years, and until General Grant was 
 appointed lieutenant-general, the war was carried on without 
 a controlling military head. The prolongation of the war, 
 and many of the reverses of the Union army, are doubtless 
 attributable to this fact. The Secretary of War, Mr. Stanton, 
 was a very able lawyer, self-reliant and energetic, but violent 
 in his prejudices and without military knowledge. The gen 
 erals in command of the separate armies were, with a few 
 exceptions, men of ability, but there Avere jealousies among 
 them, and there Avas no absolute commander to give unity to 
 their movements. 
 
 When General McClellan issued his first order, as com- 
 mander-in-chief, his star Avas at its zenith. Its decline AA^as 
 rapid. The inaction of the Army of the Potomac in the 
 autumn of 1861 Avas a great disappointment to the people of 
 
302 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 the North. More time was consumed than was supposed to 
 be necessary in fortifying the city and in perfecting the disci 
 pline of the army. Meanwhile the Confederates were active 
 and daring. They blockaded the Potomac, and displayed their 
 flag almost within sight of the capitol. The daily report 
 which went out from Washington, that all was quiet on the 
 Potomac, became a reproach to the Government and to the 
 army. It was understood that there was to be a movement 
 upon Richmond by the Army of the Potomac, but when and 
 by what route seemed to be quite undecided. General Mc- 
 Clellan was the sole keeper of his own counsels. He had no 
 confidential communications with any one, not even with the 
 President. His relations with the Secretary of War were 
 more than unfriendly. To the criticisms of the press he was 
 seemingly indifferent. The only explanation which he made 
 of his inaction was, that time was required to fortify Washing 
 ton in such a manner that no large force would be required 
 for its protection, and to perfect and put into operation his 
 plans for simultaneous action by all the armies, which might 
 be jeopardized by any partial movements. Whether the delay 
 was needful or not, he was undoubtedly the best judge ; but 
 when the winter was passed, and the spring found the 
 grand army still in its tents, the popular dissatisfaction and 
 the dissatisfaction of the Government became too strong to be 
 resisted. The public debt was rapidly increasing; the rela 
 tions between the Government and foreign nations were 
 becoming delicate ; inaction could no longer be tolerated. 
 
 Whether General McClellan was justly or not chargeable 
 with unnecessary delay in the long-expected aggressive move 
 ments by the armies generally, and especially the Army of 
 the Potomac, is a question upon which a difference of opinion 
 existed, and still exists ; but he greatly suffered in consequence 
 of it ; and when he took the field in March, the prestige with 
 which he came to Washington in July was sadly diminished. 
 He was no longer a popular idol. Doubts began to be enter- 
 
DISTRUST OF McCLELLAN. 303 
 
 tained and expressed by men of influence not only of his 
 ability to command a large army, but of his devotion to the 
 cause. His failure to respond to the " On to Richmond ! " cry 
 created the opinion that he lacked what is essential in the 
 character of a commander self-confidence ; his real, or sup 
 posed, want of sympathy with the anti-slavery sentiment of 
 the North produced distrust of his fidelity to the true prin 
 ciples of civil liberty, among that large body of earnest men 
 who clearly saw, what all intelligent men ought to have seen, 
 that the real issue in the struggle in which the Government 
 was engaged was between freedom and slavery ; that the 
 irrepressible conflict had been commenced ; that, as it was 
 quite certain that the Government could not much longer 
 remain part slave and part free, the question whether slavery 
 should be nationalized or uprooted was to be decided in the 
 only way in which it could be decided by arms. Then, too, 
 Congress had appointed a joint committee to inquire into the 
 conduct of the war, by which some of the prominent generals 
 were examined in regard to what had been done, and, in their 
 judgment, what ought to be done, in order to bring about a 
 more vigorous prosecution of the war. The members of the 
 committee were able and ardent men, who reflected the impa 
 tience of a large majority of the people at the inactivity of 
 the armies, and especially of the inactivity of the Army of the 
 Potomac. The proceedings of the committee were under 
 stood to be private, but it was soon publicly known that all 
 of the members were in accord in the opinion that there was 
 great lack of vigor on the part of the commander-in-chief, and 
 that this opinion had been expressed in strong language to the 
 President. 
 
 The committee not only examined army officers in regard 
 to the general conduct of the war, but also in regard to the line 
 of advance upon Richmond. On this point there was a differ 
 ence between the President and General McClellan. The for 
 mer had a decided preference for a direct movement against 
 
304 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Richmond, as the surest to protect Washington and bring about 
 early results. The plan of the latter was to make the attack 
 indirectly, and by the York or James river. The committee 
 agreed with the President ; but as the disagreement between 
 him and McClellan might lead to serious trouble, the question 
 was submitted to a council of twelve division commanders, 
 which, by a vote of eight to four, approved of the route 
 designed by McClellan. The fact that such a committee was 
 appointed showed a lack of confidence on the part of the 
 President and his advisers in the judgment of the general 
 upon whom the responsibility for the results of the campaign 
 was mainly to rest. Nobody knew what the general s plan 
 was until a few days before it was disclosed to the committee. 
 As has been said, he was not in confidential communication 
 with even the President, and many were led to believe that 
 the inaction of the army was attributable to his indecision in 
 regard to the line of march. The alleged, and doubtless the 
 true, reasons for his uncommunicativeness were : first, that the 
 President must of necessity be influenced in his judgment by 
 the Secretary of War, who would not approve any plan of his 
 designing ; and second, that his plan, if disclosed, would be at 
 once known by the enemy. Washington, at that time, was 
 full of spies, who seemed to have no difficulty in ascertaining 
 everything that was done or contemplated by the War 
 Department, and communicating it to Richmond. Not only 
 was a council of generals called upon to determine the 
 route of the army, but before the campaign was commenced, 
 and before the comparative merits of the respective generals 
 could be tested, an order was issued not only in disregard of, 
 but in opposition to, the expressed wishes of McClellan, for the 
 division of the army into four army corps, and for the assign 
 ment of officers to the commands. No intimation was given 
 to McClellan that such an order was contemplated, and the 
 first knowledge he had of it was from the newspapers. 
 
 It is thus seen that the Peninsular campaign was com- 
 
\VIIY THE CAMPAIGN FAILED. 305 
 
 menced under the most unfavorable auspices. The plan of the 
 campaign, although consented to, was not heartily approved 
 by the President. The general who was to conduct it had 
 lost, in a great measure, the public confidence, and he had 
 incurred the ill will of Mr. Stanton, the Secretary of War. 
 How powerful this ill will was, was exhibited during the war 
 in numerous instances besides that of McClellan. That a cam 
 paign commenced under such circumstances would be a fail 
 ure, ought to have been expected. AVas its failure chargeable 
 to McClellan ? I thought it was when the campaign ended, 
 and he was relieved of his command ; but, as I have said, I 
 thought differently when I became acquainted with its history. 
 His plan had been carefully considered and approved by a 
 majority of the division commanders. It embraced the 
 co-operation of the navy, and it required, for complete success, 
 an army of at least 140,000 men. The navy was not able to 
 render to him any effective services, and the available force at 
 his disposal (McDowell s corps having been detached for the 
 protection of Washington) never came up to ninety thousand 
 men. His requirements were well known at the War Depart 
 ment before the campaign was opened. If they were not to 
 be complied with, he should have been so advised. The plan 
 should not have been approved unless the necessary means for 
 its execution were to be supplied. General McClellan should 
 have been superseded, or his demands should not have been 
 ignored. To hold a general responsible for the results of a 
 campaign which he has planned, without furnishing him with 
 what he considers needful for its accomplishment, is rank 
 injustice. Was not this injustice meted out to General 
 McClellan? 
 
 It has not been denied by any competent and impartial 
 soldier that the Union forces were well handled in all the 
 Peninsular battles. The elements were against them. Unusual 
 rains had made the roads nearly impassable. A large extent 
 of land bordering upon the rivers was inundated. To the 
 20 
 
306 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 * 
 
 Union soldiers it seemed like a God-forsaken country ; but 
 they sustained their labors and discomforts with a heroism, 
 and met the enemy, the flower of the Confederate armies, with 
 a bravery, that have never been surpassed. The first battle, 
 the battle at Williamsburg, was fought while McClellan was 
 away. Some misunderstanding between the corps command 
 ers made the victory dearly bought ; but it was a victory. In 
 the battle of Fair Oaks, which was fought a fe\v days after, 
 the Confederates were the assailants, and it was fought on their 
 part with the determination to drive the Federal forces from 
 their position and cut off their line of supplies before they were 
 reinforced by McDowell. The plan was carefully considered, 
 and would have been successful but for the excellent general 
 ship of the Federal officers and the indomitable pluck of the 
 soldiers. The fighting was admirable on both sides, but the 
 result was a severe discomfiture of the Confederates, who dur 
 ing the night retreated to the intrenchments in the immediate 
 neighborhood of Richmond. At the close of this battle, the 
 leading Federal column was within four miles, the entire army 
 Avithin ten miles, of the Confederate capital. General McClel 
 lan reported that his active force did not exceed 80,000 men; 
 that from the best information he could obtain, the Confeder 
 ates, besides being in defensive positions, and with a base of 
 supplies near at hand, greatly outnumbered him. In his appeal 
 to the President, he said : " I ask for all the men that the War 
 Department can send to me. I will fight the enemy, whatever 
 their force may be, with whatever force I have, and I firmly 
 believe we shall beat them ; but our triumph should be decisive 
 and complete. The soldiers of this army love their Govern 
 ment, and will fight for its support. You may rely upon them. 
 They have confidence in me as their general, and in you as 
 their President. Strong reinforcements will at least save the 
 lives of many of them. The greater our force, the more per 
 fect will be our combinations and the less our loss." 
 
 General McDowell, with nothing to do but to protect 
 
MCDOWELL S FATAL RETENTION. 307 
 
 Washington, which was is no real danger, could then have been 
 at once placed at the disposal of McClellan. If he had been, 
 Richmond would probably have fallen and the campaign would 
 have been crowned with success. All of McClellan s movements, 
 after York had been abandoned, had been made in the confi 
 dent expectation that he could rely upon McDowell for rein 
 forcements when reinforcements should be absolutely neces 
 sary. The reply of the President to McClellan s appeal was 
 favorable, and an order was given to McDowell to place himself 
 at McClellan s command ; but before the order could be exe 
 cuted there was a panic in Washington, which was caused by the 
 sudden appearance of Stonewall Jackson upon the Potomac, 
 over which he had driven General Banks from the valley of 
 Virginia. The order to McDowell was therefore revoked, and 
 his forces remained in front of Washington, and for its protec 
 tion, about which great solicitude was felt throughout the 
 country. There is good reason for the opinion which was 
 entertained by McClellan that this raid by Jackson was made, 
 not with a view of an attack upon Washington, but to prevent 
 the reinforcement of the Army of the Potomac. Everything 
 of an important character that was done or contemplated in 
 Washington was speedily known in Richmond. It was there 
 understood that McClellan expected to be reinforced by 
 McDowell. To prevent this reinforcement was a matter of 
 deep concern to the Confederates, and Jackson was ordered to 
 make a show of an attack upon Washington. 
 
 This was done. McDowell did not reinforce McClellan, 
 and in a few days Jackson was in Richmond with the army of 
 Virginia, at the head of which was General Lee, who had been 
 assigned to its command after the battle at Fair Oaks, at 
 which General Johnston had been wounded. It was this rein 
 forcement of General Lee that changed the movements of 
 both armies. McClellan had received some reinforcements, 
 but they were not equal to what General Lee had received in 
 the accession of Jackson to his command. Up to this time the 
 
308 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Union army had been steadily advancing towards Richmond, 
 until it was nearly in sight of the city. Then the advance was 
 checked ; the Confederates became the assailants, and McClel- 
 lan was forced to carry out a design he had formed in case he 
 was not reinforced, and the Confederates proved to be too 
 strong to be overcome, of making the James his base for 
 further operations. In carrying out this design he was 
 -attacked with great vigor, and for seven days there was con 
 tinuous, desperate fighting, in which, however, the Confeder 
 ates were the heaviest sufferers, although the strongest in 
 numbers. The last and most desperate battle was at Malvern 
 Hill, at which the Confederates were repelled at all points ; 
 and on the evening of the day on which it was fought, the 
 Army of the Potomac was upon the banks of the James and 
 under the guns of the Union fleet. Thus ended the first 
 advance upon Richmond. Two years after, the Union army 
 was upon the same river, to which it had been forced from the 
 direct line on which the campaign had been commenced, and 
 it was here that the effective siege of Richmond was com 
 menced by General Grant. General McClellan had always 
 thought that Washington would be best protected by energetic 
 movements against Richmond. The Confederates were almost 
 as sensitive about the safety of Richmond as the officers of 
 the Government and the people of the North were about the 
 safety of Washington. Washington was well fortified, and 
 was never in real danger after the first battle of Bull Run, 
 except when the Union forces had been withdrawn from the 
 neighborhood of Richmond. It required no large army in 
 front for its protection while Richmond was threatened. This 
 was McClellan s opinion, and it was in accord with that which 
 was afterwards entertained by General Grant ; as was also 
 his opinion that the line of attack upon the Confederate 
 capital was by the James. 
 
 The retrograde movement of McClellan towards the James 
 for a new base of supplies, and a movement against Richmond 
 
THE SECOND BULL KUN. 309 
 
 on the south as soon as he was reinforced, was a retreat, 
 but so skilfully was it conducted that his forces were not 
 demoralized by it. Such was the confidence of the soldiers 
 in their commander, that they fought with the same spirit 
 and maintained the same discipline that they would have 
 displayed if they had been the assailants. Outnumbered by 
 the enemy, they preserved their order, and although stead 
 ily retreating, they were never overcome. The manner in 
 which the retreat was conducted commanded the admiration 
 of military men, abroad as well as at home. The spirit of the 
 army when it reached the James was unbroken. Its numbers 
 had been diminished by battles and by sickness, not by deser 
 tions. It was the same highly disciplined, resolute army that 
 it was when it was nearly within sight of Richmond. All it 
 needed was reinforcements to renew the offensive, and from 
 the same position that was occupied by the same army under 
 General Grant two years after. Instead of reinforcements, 
 General McClellan received an order to transfer his army from 
 the James to a point on the Potomac near Washington. 
 Against this order remonstrance was vain, and although he 
 believed it would lead to disaster, he obeyed without hesita 
 tion. Nor did he complain when he saw, to his inexpressible 
 mortification, the Army of the Potomac, under an order from 
 Washington, transferred to the command of General Pope. 
 Deprived of his command, without having been formally 
 superseded, he was denied even the privilege of being present 
 at the pending conflict. To his request that he might go with 
 his staff to the scene of battle the disastrous second battle of 
 Bull Hun to be present with his men, who he " thought would 
 fight none the worse for his being with them " General Ilal- 
 leck replied : " I cannot answer without seeing the President, 
 as General Pope, by his order, is in command of the Depart 
 ment." Could there have been anything more wicked ? Here- 
 was the general by whom the army had been trained to ser 
 vice the army of which he was the idol humbly begging 
 
310 MEIST AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUEY. 
 
 that he might share its fate in a battle of momentous impor 
 tance, and being coolly informed that his request could not be 
 complied with without the authority of the President. Hal- 
 leek must have known that General McClellan s presence on 
 the battle-field would greatly encourage the men that confided 
 in him and loved him. If authority from the President was 
 needed in order that this request might be complied with, why 
 was not the authority obtained ? General McClellan was not 
 superseded, but he was deprived of his command by an order 
 which must have been prepared for the purpose of insulting 
 him. After the entire Army of the Potomac had been com 
 bined with what was then called the Army of Virginia, the 
 following order was issued from the War Department : 
 
 " WAR DEPARTMENT August 30, 1862. 
 
 " The following are the commanders of armies operating in 
 Virginia : 
 
 " General Burnside commands his own corps, except those 
 that have been temporarily detached and assigned to General 
 Pope. 
 
 " General McClellan commands that portion of the Army of 
 the Potomac that has not been sent forward to General Pope s 
 command. 
 
 u General Pope commands the Army of Virginia, and all the 
 forces temporarily attached to it. All the forces are under 
 the command of Major-Gen eral Halleck, General-in-Chief. 
 
 " E. D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant General." 
 
 If McClellan had been of a revengeful disposition, the 
 opportunity of gratifying it was at hand. After a number of 
 hard days fighting, the army under General Pope was defeat 
 ed. When the news of his defeat reached Washington it 
 produced, of course, a panic a panic of the most exciting char 
 acter. The enemy were supposed to be close at hand, and 
 with force enough to capture the city. In this emergency the 
 eyes of the citizens and of the officers of the Government 
 were involuntarily turned to McClellan as the only man who 
 could save it. Not having been permitted to participate in. 
 
McCLELLAN EESTORED. 3.11 
 
 the battles which had resulted so unfortunately to the Union 
 forces, he had joined his family in Washington. Early on the 
 morning of September 2 he was surprised by a call from the 
 President and General Ilalleck, who came to him with the 
 tidings from the front, and to ask that he would again take 
 command of the army. Three days before he had been virtu 
 ally deprived of his command by an order from the War 
 Department. Would he -now take command of the forces 
 demoralized by defeat and frying before the enemy, and save 
 the capital ? This was the most that was then hoped for : 
 Would he take the command, and prevent the Confederates 
 from entering Washington? Without a moment s hesitation, 
 forgetful of the injustice he had suffered, the indignities that 
 had been heaped upon him, he replied that he would accept 
 the command, and stake his life upon the protection of the 
 city. Within an hour he was in the saddle with his staff 
 inspecting the approaches to the city from the south, and 
 making arrangements for the reception of the defeated and 
 and demoralized troops. So great were the fears at the War 
 Department of an immediate attack upon the city, that he was 
 instructed by Halleck not to go to the front, but to give his 
 attention to the defences. In the afternoon, however, he rode 
 out a few miles from the city, and met the foremost brigade of 
 the retreating army, and Generals Pope and McDowell, with a 
 regiment of cavalry. Having informed General Pope that 
 the defence of Washington had been assigned to him, lie rode 
 on a few miles further, and met a large body of troops, by 
 whom he was recognized, and as the report went from com 
 pany to company, and from regiment to regiment, that their 
 beloved general, Little Mac," as he was sometimes familiarly 
 called, was at the head again, there was such shouting as was 
 never before heard from a retreating army. 
 
 Of the merits of a commander, none are so competent to 
 judge as his soldiers. The Army of the Potomac was com 
 posed of men of unusual intelligence. There were hundreds 
 
312 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 in the ranks who were fitted to be captains ; scores who were 
 fitted to be colonels and generals. The manner in which 
 McClellan was received by such men the men whom he had 
 trained, under whom they had fought in the desperate battles 
 of the Peninsula was not only a compliment to him as a man, 
 but a strong testimony to his merit as a commander. I have 
 met with many of these men since the Avar, and from none 
 have I heard a w r ord that was not favorable to McClellan. 
 He had been, unfortunately, a candidate for the Presidency, 
 on a platform that declared the war a failure, and he conse 
 quently suffered politically in the esteem of many of his fellow- 
 soldiers, but their respect for him as a commander, and per 
 sonally, was never lost. No general ever commanded the 
 confidence of his men to a greater degree; none was ever 
 more loved. 
 
 General McClellan took the command of the army at the 
 verbal request of the President, for the defence of the city, 
 which, at that time, was supposed to be in imminent danger, 
 and the only order which was issued with respect to his duty 
 was the following : 
 
 " WAR DEPARTMENT, ADJUTANT GENERAL S OFFICE, ) 
 " WASHINGTON, D. C., Sept. 2, 1862. j 
 
 " Major-General McClellan will have command of the for 
 tifications of Washington, and of the troops for the defence of 
 the Capital. 
 
 " By order of Major-General HALLECK. 
 
 "E. D. TOWNSEND, Assistant Adjutant General. 
 
 Fairly interpreted, this order meant that he should not 
 only take charge of the fortifications, but do whatever he 
 thought necessary for the protection of the city. No one 
 knew better than he the character of the fortifications, for 
 they had been mainly constructed under his general directions, 
 and no one was so well qualified to anticipate and thwart the 
 movements of the enemy. He regarded General Lee as too 
 prudent a soldier to attack the city in front, and he was con 
 fident that if any movement against it were attempted, it 
 
SOUTH MOUNTAIN AND ANTIETAM. 313 
 
 would be by cutting off its communications with the North. 
 To prevent this movement from being successful, if attempted, 
 and to beat the enemy in battle, was the only way in which 
 the city could be protected. His duty was therefore plain, 
 to restore the discipline of the army ; to renew confidence in 
 itself, so that it would be prepared to meet the enemy by 
 which it had been recently beaten. Time was pressing ; the 
 enemy flushed with victory, and inspired by the belief that the 
 Confederate banner would soon wave over the Capitol, was in 
 the neighborhood. This enemy was to be met and driven 
 back towards Richmond by the very troops that had been 
 demoralized by recent disasters. 
 
 In accepting the command at this critical time, General 
 McClellan understood perfectly the tremendous responsibility 
 which it involved. He knew that the safety of the capital, 
 and perhaps the preservation of the Union, depended upon the 
 result of a battle or battles soon to be fought. He knew that 
 the army he should have to meet was the best disciplined and 
 the most high spirited of the Confederate forces, and that they 
 were under the command of the ablest officers in the Confede 
 rate service. He knew, also, that JIalleck, the General-in- 
 Chief, was unfriendly to him ; that Stanton, the Secretary of 
 War, was his enemy ; and that any misfortune that might 
 happen to his command would be attributed, by his superiors 
 in station, to a want of ability or to misconduct on his part. 
 All this he knew, but he did not hesitate to comply with the 
 request of the President. He was true to his convictions of 
 duty. He had confidence in the army, and he had confidence 
 in himself. The simple fact that lie was willing to take the 
 command under circumstances so inauspicious should have dis 
 pelled all doubts in regard to his self-reliance and self-confi 
 dence. The rapidity with which he restored the discipline 
 and revived the spirit of his troops, and the manner in which 
 he handled them in the battles of South Mountain and Antie- 
 tarn, should have banished forever all scepticism in regard to 
 
314 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 his merits as a commander. In t\vo weeks from the time at 
 which he took the command two very severe battles had been 
 fought and the Confederate army driven back over the Poto- 
 
 o / 
 
 mac, which it had so recently crossed in triumph. After bat 
 tles have been fought, it is easy enough for unfriendly critics 
 to discover how this or that movement might have been im 
 proved, how this or that mistake might have been avoided ; but 
 it has never been denied, by fair-minded and competent judges, 
 that, on the whole, the battles of South Mountain and Antie- 
 tarn were skilfully fought by the Union forces ; nor is there 
 room for reasonable doubt that if the Confederates had been 
 the victors, they would have taken possession of the capital. 
 May it not be justly said, therefore, that the nation was at 
 that time saved from so terrible a misfortune by General 
 McClellan? And yet, strange as it now appears, and still 
 more strange as it will appear to the future historian, on the 
 5th of November, within two months from the time the battle 
 of Antietam was fought, the following orders were issued : 
 
 " HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, ) 
 
 " WASHINGTON, D. C., November 5, 1862. f 
 
 " GENERAL : On the receipt of the order of the President 
 sent herewith, you will immediately turn over your command 
 to Major-General Burnside, and repair to Trenton, New Jersey, 
 reporting, on your arrival at that place, for further orders. 
 
 " Very respectfully, 
 
 " Your obedient servant, 
 
 " H. W. H ALLEGE, General-in-Chief. 
 
 " Major-General McClellan." 
 
 " WAR DEPARTMENT, ADJUTANT GENERAL S OFFICE. ) 
 . " WASHINGTON, D. C.. Nov. 5, 1862. <j 
 
 " By direction of the President of the United States, it is 
 ordered that Major-General McClellan be relieved from the 
 command of the Army of the Potomac, and that Major-Gen- 
 eral Burnside take the command of the army. 
 
 " By order of the Secretary of War, 
 
 " E. D. TOWNSEND, Adjutant-General." 
 
 Thus summarily was McClellan dismissed, and thus was 
 
McCLELLAN s HOLD ON THE ARMY. 315 
 
 ended his military career. The alleged reasons for his retire 
 ment were : 
 
 First, that he failed to follow up the victory of Antietam 
 as he ought to have done, and might have done, by pursuing 
 the enemy, and preventing him from crossing the Potomac. 
 To this it was only necessary for him to say that his men 
 were nearly exhausted by marching and fighting, and were in 
 no condition to follow an army, the very flower of the Con 
 federate force, under the command of the ablest Confederate 
 generals, and that his duties had been strictly limited to the 
 defence of the city. 
 
 Second, that after he had crossed the river, he failed to 
 comply with the orders of the President for aggressive move 
 ments against General Lee ; that precious time was wasted in 
 preparations to move. The answer to this allegation was 
 found in the fact, substantiated by conclusive evidence, that 
 his army had not been supplied with what was needed for an 
 aggressive campaign. 
 
 McClellan was retired, and what happened to the Army of 
 the Potomac ? Terrible slaughter under Burnside at Freder- 
 icksburg; crushing defeat at Chancellorsville under Hooker. 
 
 The hold which McClellan had upon his men, their love 
 for him, and the confidence they had in him, were displayed 
 when he took his leave of them and turned over the com 
 mand to Burnside, when it was difficult to say which predom 
 inated, sorrow or indignation ; sorrow^ that they were to be 
 separated from their beloved commander ; indignation at the 
 injustice with which he had been treated. 
 
 The prevalent opinion in regard to McClellan was, that it 
 was his habit to overrate the strength of the enemy and 
 underrate his own ; that he was too much of an engineer, too 
 cautious, too prudent for an efficient commander ; that he was 
 wanting in that self-confident daring which, united with a 
 clear head and military knowledge, has been the characteris 
 tic of successful generals. His position from the time he took 
 
316 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CEISTTUKY. 
 
 command of the Army of the Potomac up to the close of his 
 military career was such as to make him cautious and pru 
 dent, but I have looked in vain in his military history for the 
 evidence of such defects as have been attributed to him. It is 
 certainly not found in his first campaign in West Virginia; 
 not in the Peninsula, where he had everything to contend 
 with which was calculated to discourage him and his army, 
 with no word of cheer from the headquarters in Washington ; 
 not in his willingness to take again the command of the 
 army after it had been shattered and demoralized ; not in 
 the rapidity with which its discipline was restored and its 
 spirit revived, so that it was able to meet and overcome the 
 same foes by which it had been defeated a few days before. 
 The evidence of General McClellan s deficiencies are found, 
 not in a correct history of his military career, but in the press 
 and in the dispatches of the War Department. He was unfor 
 tunate in not comprehending the true cause of the rebellion, 
 and in the view which he entertained upon the question of 
 slavery. He was unfortunate in the use of his name by his 
 political friends, in connection Avith the Presidency while in 
 the field. He was still more unfortunate in permitting his 
 temper to get the better of his judgment, in attributing to the 
 War Department indifference in regard to the result of the 
 Peninsular campaign ; in writing to the President a letter 
 which would have been well enough in a political contest, but 
 which was grossly improper when addressed by a general in 
 the field to his superior. All this and more can be admitted 
 without derogation to his merits as a soldier. He was perma 
 nently retired under a cloud within little more than a month 
 from the time when, with a recently beaten army, he had 
 achieved a very important victory ; retired under circum 
 stances that seemingly justified the opinion that there were 
 influences at work in Washington which demanded his retire 
 ment as a political necessity. To doubt that the cloud that 
 rested upon him when he was ordered to Trenton will be cleared 
 
CONFEDERATE VIEW OF McCLELLAN. 317 
 
 away, that his high military character will be vindicated, would 
 be to doubt the triumph of truth over jealousy and misrepre 
 sentation. A Confederate general who served with distinction 
 in the Army of Virginia under Johnston and Lee, said to me 
 in 1871: " There was no Union general whom we so much 
 dreaded as McClellan. We could always tell when he was in 
 command by the manner in which the Union troops were 
 handled, and the number of our dead and wounded. We 
 received the blows, and we knew who dealt the heaviest ones. 
 We were sorry when we heard that he had been restored to 
 command, after we had defeated Pope, and we were glad 
 when he was retired." " Did you consider him the ablest of 
 the generals of the Army of the Potomac ? " I inquired. 
 " Certainly we did," was they reply ; " he had, as we thought 
 no equal." 
 
 It is enough to say of General McClellan in his private 
 and social life, that he was in the truest sense a Christian 
 gentleman. I had no sympathy with him in politics; I did 
 what I could to prevent his election to the Presidency. What 
 I have said about him has been prompted only by a sense of 
 duty to one who periled his life in his country s service, and 
 who merited lasting honor instead of the ignominy to which 
 he was subjected, and the disrepute which still, to some 
 extent, attaches to his name. 
 
 The foregoing was written before General McClellan s 
 autobiography (which I have not read), was published. I 
 have preferred, in my sketches of prominent men, to present 
 the impressions which have been made upon me by my own 
 observations, and what I considered reliable information, 
 rather than to subject myself to the influence of what may 
 have been said bv themselves or their friends. 
 
CHAPTER XXII. 
 
 General Grant in the Spring of 1861 War not Expected until the Attack upon 
 Suinter Grant Appointed Colonel A Brigadier by Brevet Battle of 
 Belmont Appointed to the Command of the District of Cairo Capture 
 of Forts Henry and Donelson Appointed Major-General of Volunteers 
 General C. F. Smith Battle of Shiloh Union Army Saved by Arrival of 
 General Buell with Reinforcements Capture of Vicksburg It places Gen 
 eral Grant at the Head of the Union Generals -The Man of Destiny 
 Battle of Chickamauga General William S. Rosecrans His Merits as a 
 Soldier Battles of Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge General 
 Grant made Lieutenant- General Condition of the Union Army in 1864 
 Battles of the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, North Anna, and Cold Har 
 bor Heavy Losses Sustained by the Union Army Difference in the Con 
 dition of the Union and Confederate States The Siege and Capture of 
 Richmond General Grant s Character and Capabilities as a Soldier. 
 
 THAT fact is stranger than fiction, is illustrated in the life of 
 General Ulysses S. Grant. Few men were ever subject 
 to so great vicissitudes, none ever rose so rapidly from obscu 
 rity to fame ; from a very low estate to the highest. In the 
 spring of 1861 he was utterly unknown outside of a very 
 limited circle. In 1868 he was elected President of the 
 United States by an overwhelming majority over one of the 
 most distinguished men of the day. 
 
 Educated at West Point, he entered the army a second 
 lieutenant, and for gallantry in the war with Mexico, he 
 was brevetted captain. In 1853 he was promoted to a full 
 captaincy, which he resigned the year following to engage in 
 farming, in which he was unsuccessful. At the outbreak of 
 the civil war he was in the employment of his father, at a 
 tannery in Galena, Illinois. To no graduate of West Point 
 could the outlook for life have been more unpromising than 
 it must have been to Captain Grant in the spring of 1861. 
 He had been, in all branches except mathematics, below medi- 
 
GRANT IN 1861. 319 
 
 ocrity in his class at West Point ; his mind had not been im 
 proved by study after he graduated ; he had no capacity for 
 business; he lacked self-control; he was dependent upon his 
 father for his own support and the support of his family. To 
 him the war was a godsend. It developed qualities which 
 war only could bring out. But for the Avar, he would have 
 lived in poverty, and died in obscurity. Until its actual com 
 mencement, war between the States, war for the maintenance 
 of the Government, had not been anticipated, or even seemed 
 possible to the people of the jSTorthern States. There had 
 been threatenings at the South of a rupture of the Union; 
 some of the States had adopted ordinances of secession ; but 
 until Fort Sumter was fired upon, a resort to arms was foreign 
 to the thought of all loyal citizens. The attack upon Sumter 
 dispelled this illusion, deeply stirred the martial spirit, and 
 called into exercise the patriotism of all to whom the Union 
 was of priceless value. The call of the President for seventy- 
 five thousand volunteers was responded to in a manner that 
 showed how strong the love of the Union among the masses 
 really was. To this call, three times the number required 
 tendered their services. Men were plenty, but there was a 
 lack of competent officers. The militia system had long since 
 been permitted to die out. A small Federal army had been 
 sufficient to protect the frontier against the Indians; there had 
 been no other use for it since the war with Mexico. With 
 the exception of a few militia regiments in the large cities, 
 there were no military organizations in the United States. 
 In the Eastern and Middle States the people were quite unac 
 customed to the use of arms. Most of the settlers in the new 
 States knew how to handle the rifle, but very few had ever 
 seen what was called a " training." Hence men who had 
 received a military education were in great demand ; and Grant, 
 who went to Springfield, Illinois, with a company which had 
 been formed at Galena, and of which he had been chosen 
 captain, was welcomed warmly by the Governor. After aid- 
 
320 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CEJSTTUEY. 
 
 ing the Governor for a few weeks in mustering in the volun- 
 
 o o 
 
 teers, he was appointed colonel of a regiment, and soon after a 
 brigadier-general of volunteers, by brevet. During the autumn 
 he exhibited much activity in checking the advance of the 
 Confederate forces in northern Kentucky, and fought a battle 
 of some importance at Belmont, Missouri. In December he 
 was appointed to the command of the District of Cairo, which 
 embraced that part of Kentucky which lies west of the Cum 
 berland River ; and on the 22d of February, aided by Com 
 modore Foote with his fleet of gunboats, he commenced the 
 aggressive movement which resulted in the capture of Fort 
 
 OO 1 
 
 Henry on the Tennessee, and of Fort Donelson on the Cum 
 berland, which made him famous. The idea of breaking 
 up, by a land and water movement, the lines of the south 
 western Confederate defences was not original with General 
 Grant. It had been suggested by Generals Sherman, Buell, 
 and others ; but to Grant is the honor due of carrying it out. 
 
 Fort Henry lying upon low ground, was easily taken, the 
 work being chiefly done by the gun-boats. Donelson w r as 
 stronglv built upon a bluff a hundred feet above the water, 
 too high to be damaged by the gun-boats, the most of which 
 were speedily disabled by well-directed fire from the fort. 
 While the fleet was engaged in exchanging shots with the 
 fort, the Union land forces were being placed in position, 
 either for siege or an assault, and the day ended without any 
 thing serious being done. The next morning a sortie in force 
 was made by the Confederates, and with so much spirit and 
 persistent hand fighting that the Union forces were driven 
 back from their positions and some of the divisions completely 
 doubled up and routed. General Grant, who had gone to con 
 fer Avith Commodore Foote on his gun-boat, did not reach the 
 lines until about one o clock. He saw at once that his forces, 
 although worsted in the desperate fight which had been going 
 on for hours, were not beaten, and with that self-possession 
 and indomitable will of which he was that day to give the first 
 
THE CAPTURE OF DONELSON. 321 
 
 evidence, he resolved that what had been lost should be recov 
 ered. Ordering General C. F. Smith, whose division was in 
 better order than any other, to take the lead, and the other 
 commanders to rally their broken troops and regain the posi 
 tions from which they had been driven, he succeeded after a 
 hard struggle in driving the Confederates within their lines, 
 and converting apparent defeat into victory. Up to the time 
 that General Grant arrived, the advantages were so decidedly 
 on the side of the Confederates, that a great victory was 
 reported to their Western headquarters. The day closed with 
 despondency on the part of the Confederates, and triumphant 
 feelings on the part of the Union forces, notwithstanding the 
 losses they had sustained. 
 
 In no other instance in his military career were the self- 
 possession and the resolution of General Grant so clearly dis 
 played as in this, the first great battle in the West. Most gen 
 erals would have been content with saving the army, after the 
 severe blows which it had received in the morning, instead of 
 attempting to rally it and lead it to victory. Although the 
 Confederates had captured six pieces of artillery, several 
 thousand small arms, and a large number of prisoners, their 
 generals were so disheartened by their reverses after they had, 
 as they thought, achieved a splendid victory, that early in the 
 night they came to the conclusion that the fort could not be 
 successfully defended, and that it should be surrendered the 
 next day on the best terms that could be obtained. During 
 the night two of the Confederate generals, Floyd and Pillow, 
 with part of their commands, left the fort and succeeded in 
 making their escape by steamboats up the river. The next 
 morning General Buckner, who was left in command of the 
 fort, sent a letter to General Grant containing a proposition 
 for the appointment of a commission to agree upon the terms 
 of capitulation, and for an armistice until noon ; to which 
 Grant replied : " No terms except an unconditional and imme 
 diate surrender can be accepted. I propose to move immecli- 
 
 21 
 
322 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 ately upon your works." This at once settled the question. 
 The fort was surrendered, with its ample stores and munitions, 
 and its garrison of some fifteen thousand able-bodied men, 
 besides the wounded. It was the first decided victory that 
 had crowned the Union arms, and it was hailed with the 
 utmost joy by all the loyal men of the country. Upon the 
 receipt of the news, the President appointed Grant a major- 
 general of volunteers, and the Senate -promptly confirmed the 
 appointment. The same honor was conferred a little later, 
 upon four of the division commanders who had distinguished 
 themselves in the fight. It was thought by General Ilalleck, 
 and many others, that the first honors were due to General C. 
 F. Smith for the manner in which he turned the tide of battle 
 and carried the enemy s outworks. The conduct of General 
 Smith was indeed admirable, but he acted under Grant s com 
 mand, and it was Grant s coolness and pluck that inspired the 
 Union forces w^ith the determination to recover the ground 
 they had lost. All the generals merited the honors that were 
 conferred upon them, but to Grant was the highest honor due. 
 ISTot only did he gain renown by the manner in which the lost 
 battle was won, but by the tone of his letter to General Buck- 
 ner. It was the kind of talk which the loyal people desired 
 to hear. For a long time he was called in the West " Uncon 
 ditional Surrender Grant." 
 
 Some months passed before General Grant added to the 
 reputation he had gained by the capture of Fort Donelson. 
 For a while he seemed to be intoxicated by his success, and in 
 danger of being ruined by a long-existing habit which could 
 not easily be overcome. General Ilalleck, who had been 
 assigned to the command of the Department of the Mississippi, 
 did, perhaps, injustice to him in the following dispatch, which 
 he sent to General McClellan, who was then commander-in- 
 chief of all the Departments : 
 
 "I have had no communication with General Grant for 
 more than a week. He left his command without my author- 
 
SHILOH. 323 
 
 ity, and went to Nashville. His army seems to be as much 
 demoralized by the victory of Fort Donelson as was that of the 
 Potomac by the defeat of Bull Eun. It is hard to censure a 
 successful general immediately after a victory, but I think he 
 
 O *> v 
 
 richly deserves it. I can get no reports, no returns, no infor 
 mation of any kind from him. Satisfied with his victory he 
 sits down and enjoys it without any regard to the future. I 
 am worn out and tired- by this neglect and inefficiency. C. F. 
 Smith is almost the only officer equal to the emergency." 
 There was undoubtedly cause for the apprehension of his 
 friends that Grant s habits might incapacitate him for any 
 important independent command. 
 
 It is enough to say of the next battle in which Grant was 
 engaged the battle of Shiloh, near Pittsburg Landing, at 
 which a strong force of Union troops had been concentrated 
 for a movement upon Corinth that it would have resulted in a 
 most serious disaster but for the opportune arrival of General 
 Piuell with his army, twenty thousand strong, in the night after 
 the first day s battle. Although the army under General Grant 
 had been lying at the Landing for three weeks, the presence 
 of the enemy in force was not even suspected, until at break 
 of day on the 6th of April it was manifested by a spirited 
 attack upon the Union camps. For a movement against Co 
 rinth, ample provision was being made; against an attack by 
 the enemy, none whatever. It has been denied that the Union 
 forces were taken by surprise. If it was not a surprise, it was 
 worse : it was a battle on their part without preparation or 
 plan. The Union forces were driven from their positions, a 
 large number of officers and men were made prisoners and 
 nothing but hard and persistent fighting and darkness saved 
 the entire army from being captured or destroyed in the first 
 day s battle. On that day the contending forces were about 
 equal in numbers. By the arrival of Buell, the Union forces 
 were so strengthened as to be able the next day to assume the 
 offensive and turn the tide. For a while the Confederates 
 
324 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 maintained the ground they had won, but the odds were deci 
 dedly against them, and they were compelled to retreat. To 
 them it was a defeat, for they had failed to accomplish their 
 object the destruction of the Union army ; but there was lit 
 tle exultation on the part of the victors, and there was no pur 
 suit. The killed and wounded in two cla^ys battles were 
 about ten thousand on each side. The Confederates were the 
 gainers in prisoners. 
 
 General Grant gained no credit bv the battles at Shiloh. 
 
 / 
 
 A few days after they were fought, General Halleck arrived 
 at the Landing, assumed the command of the army, and 
 renewed the work of concentrating the Western troops for the 
 long contemplated movement upon Corinth. He soon had 
 under his command a hundred thousand men, the largest force 
 that had been gathered under the Union flag; but the Con 
 federates had been concentrating also, and when the march 
 upon Corinth was commenced, the opposing armies were about 
 of equal strength. In the reorganization of the army by Hal 
 leck, General Grant was appointed second in command, but 
 no active duty was assigned to him ; and up to the time that 
 Corinth was reached, he was merely a looker-on. The expe 
 riences at Shiloh had made the commanders on both sides 
 prudent. This was especially the case with Halleck, who, cau 
 tious to an extreme, was nearly a month in reaching Corinth, 
 and then to find it abandoned. As Corinth was the point 
 against which the expedition had been organized, its posses 
 sion seemed to render the expedition a success ; but it had been 
 very costly, and the advantages which had been gained by it 
 were of little permanent value. General Halleck remained at 
 Corinth for a couple of weeks, and then went to Washington 
 to attend to his new duties as a bureau commander-in-chief, 
 leaving General Grant in command. Before he left, however, 
 he had so divided the army that it was three months before 
 offensive operations were resumed. During the autumn and 
 early part of the winter, there were some engagements in 
 
THE ATTACK ON VICKSBURG. 325 
 
 which the Union troops were the victors, but as an offset to 
 them, the Confederates had strengthened Yicksburg and were 
 in complete control of the Mississippi from that point to the 
 vicinity of New Orleans. On the whole, the year 1862, closed 
 without decided advantages on either side. 
 
 In the latter part of January, 1863, General Grant took 
 the personal command of the troops on the river, to prosecute 
 the attack upon Yicksburg, that stronghold which could only 
 be successfully assailed in the rear. In every other direction 
 it was impregnable, and the rear could not be reached unless 
 the army could be transferred from above the city to below it. 
 The first attempt to get below the fortifications which com 
 manded the river for a long distance, was by a canal to be cut 
 across the peninsula opposite the city. This canal had been 
 commenced before General Grant took the command. It did 
 not meet his approval, but he thought it advisable that the 
 work upon it should be continued. An immense amount of 
 labor was expended upon it, but before it was completed, it 
 came within the range of the enemy s guns, and work upon it 
 was discontinued. In the mean time, and after this attempt 
 had proved to be abortive, other routes were experimented 
 upon, and other ways were devised for transferring the army 
 to the river below the city, without success. Three months of 
 precious time were lost, and very heavy expenses incurred, in 
 these fruitless experiments. The wit of the best engineers had 
 been exhausted, and yet here was the army in its camps, and 
 there, but a few miles below, was the city, confident of the 
 strength of its position, and scornful of the efforts that were 
 made to prepare the way for a successful movement against it. 
 Meanwhile the people of the North were becoming impatient, 
 and the attempts to make a new channel for the river by cut 
 ting canals through swamps densely covered with immense 
 trees, which had to be sawed six feet below the surface, became 
 subjects of ridicule. The experiment was such, said the press, 
 as no sane man would have tried. Grant was sinking the 
 
320 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 honor he had won on the Tennessee and Cumberland in 
 ditches on the Mississippi. 
 
 General Grant s reputation did indeed seem to be trembling 
 in the balance. He had done little to sustain the reputation 
 he had gained at Donelson. To abandon the attempt to take 
 Vicksburg, after such an expenditure of time and money, would 
 be ruinous to himself and perilous to the Union. Anxious and 
 harassed he was, but not despairing or depressed. He had 
 undertaken to capture Vicksburg and he meant to do it or 
 perish in the attempt. There was one way, and but one, by 
 which it could be accomplished the gun-boats must run the 
 gauntlet by passing down the river by night, under the guns 
 of the fortifications, and the army must reach the river some 
 distance below the city, by a long, difficult and dangerous 
 march on the western side of the river. The risk would be 
 great. The army might be destroyed ; the gunboats might be 
 sunk ; but it was a risk that he preferred to incur rather than 
 to acknowledge that the expedition against Vicksburg had 
 disastrously failed. His star, never long obscured after the 
 commencement of the war, was again in the ascendant. The 
 gunboats, with supply boats by their sides, under the direction 
 of Admiral Porter, passed the forts by night with trifling 
 losses. The army reached the river below the city, and was 
 carried safely across it. The Confederates having most 
 unwisely divided their forces, were beaten in several sharp 
 engagements, and the city was invested. The siege was com 
 menced on the 18th of May, and the garrison and city sur 
 rendered on the 4th of July, with 27,000 troops. The expedi 
 tion was managed throughout with great ability. The night 
 before it was determined upon, General Grant asked the 
 opinion of the other generals. They were all opposed to such 
 a movement. The march through a country partially inun 
 dated would be an extremely difficult one, and when accom 
 plished, the army would be removed from its base of supplies, 
 and where defeat would be annihilation. He listened atten- 
 
GRANT AT HIS BEST. 327 
 
 lively to all that was said, and then simply remarked : " I am 
 sorry to differ with you gentlemen upon a matter of so much 
 importance, but my mind is made up. The army will move 
 to-morrow morning." And it did. 
 
 In this expedition Grant was at his best. Sensible of the 
 great responsibility that rested upon him, he tempered his 
 daring with caution. He kept his forces well in hand after he 
 crossed the river, and he outgeneraled his opponents in every 
 attempt they made to prevent his approach to the city. It 
 was the most brilliant achievement of the war. Port Hudson 
 was abandoned soon after the fall of Vicksburg, and the Mis 
 sissippi, undisturbed by enemies of the Union, was again open 
 to trade, from its head to the Gulf. This great river had 
 always been the main outlet for the surplus productions of the 
 immense regions which it drained. For two years it had been 
 closed, to the great prejudice of the pecuniary interests of 
 millions of loyal men. Its opening was a matter of great 
 importance, not only to the people of the West, but to all the 
 loyal States. Besides being a very great gain in respect to 
 commercial operations, it was, by separating Arkansas, Lou 
 isiana and Texas from the other Confederate States, a great 
 gain to the Government in a military point of view. 
 
 The capture of Vicksburg placed Grant at the head of the 
 Union generals. It is true that the success of the campaign 
 in the rear of the city was, in a measure, owing to the dissen 
 sion among the Confederate commanders, but this did not 
 lessen his merit. It was by his persistent energy that what 
 seemed to be almost insuperable difficulties were overcome in 
 gaining for his army a position that rendered the capture of the 
 city possible. It was by his skilful management of his troops, 
 after that position bad been secured, that the grand result 
 was accomplished. For his great services in this expedition, 
 he was made a major-general in the regular army, and fronl 
 this time to the close of the war, his name, next to Lincoln s, 
 was the most conspicuous and the most honored throughout 
 
328 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 the loyal States. His success in this expedition had a decided 
 influence and bearing upon his subsequent career and his self- 
 estimation. From being one of the most obscure of the West 
 Point graduates, he had become the most prominent and dis 
 tinguished, and the change had been so great, that the idea 
 became dominant with him that he was the " man of destiny," 
 that there was no difficulty which he could not surmount, 
 no position in the army or the State that he was not compe 
 tent to fill. Self-confidence (a most excellent quality when 
 not accompanied by self-deception), thenceforward became 
 one of the most marked traits in his character. 
 
 Although a heavy blow was dealt to the Confederates by 
 the capture of Yicksburg, and their loss of the control of the 
 Mississippi, they were not disheartened. On the contrary, 
 their ardor and resolution seemed to be increased and strength 
 ened by these reverses. They had not, in the West, received 
 a really crushing blow, nor did they receive that blow until it 
 was administered by General Thomas at Nashville, in 1864. 
 Their best efforts were put forth, and their best fighting was 
 done, in the latter part of 1803. They achieved a decided vic 
 tory at Chickamauga, and reduced the Union forces to dire 
 distress by shutting them up in Chattanooga. Horses and 
 mules in large numbers were starved to death, and the soldiers 
 were on the verge of sharing the same fate before they were 
 relieved. The battle of Chickamauga was one of the bloodiest 
 and most desperately fought battles of the war. In this battle 
 the Union forces were not greatly outnumbered ; but by the 
 misunderstanding of dispatches of the commander, General 
 Rosecrans, and the failure of some of the officers promptly 
 to obey the orders which they received, there was a lack of 
 concentration which enabled the Confederates to overwhelm 
 and put to rout all of the divisions except that under General 
 Thomas, which repelled the combined attacks that were 
 made upon it and saved the entire army from being 
 utterly routed. Soon after this disaster the Departments of 
 
WILLIAM S. ROSECRANS. 329 
 
 the Ohio, the Cumberland, and the Tennessee were consoli 
 dated into the Military Division of the Mississippi, and placed 
 under the command of General Grant. By the same order 
 that created this division, General William S. Rosecrans was 
 relieved of his command. 
 
 There was much dissatisfaction in the army, and a strong 
 feeling of regret, not to say indignation, throughout the West 
 at the retirement of General Rosecrans. He had never been a 
 favorite of the Secretary of War, and he was greatly dis 
 liked by General Grant. In temperament, in manners, in 
 habits, in the general make-up of their characters, the two 
 generals were totally unlike. The very qualities that made 
 Rosecrans popular with his soldiers, and with the Western 
 people, made him obnoxious to Grant. It was quite impos 
 sible for them, therefore, to work harmonious!} 7 together, and 
 Rosecrans was forced into retirement. As has been said, 
 it provoked a good deal of feeling in the West adverse to 
 the War Department and to General Grant. Rosecrans was 
 a Democrat, the brother of a Catholic bishop, and his entrance 
 into the army at the outbreak of the rebellion, as volunteer 
 aid to General McClellan, was considered a great gain to the 
 Union cause. He was a native of Ohio, a graduate of West 
 Point, and for three years was professor of engineering and 
 natural philosophy in that institution. Pie resigned his com 
 mission in the army in 1854 to become a civil engineer at Cin 
 cinnati, and was engaged in that and other employment in 
 that city until he joined General McClellan in West Virginia. 
 A harder worker or more zealous patriot never fought under 
 the Union flag. His merits were acknowledged by preferment 
 until he was subjected to the superior influence of General 
 Grant. His military ability was proven by the masterly 
 manner in which he conducted the campaigns when he was in 
 command of the Department of the Mississippi and the Cum 
 berland, and especially was it proven in the battles of Stone 
 River and at Corinth. He was beaten at Chickamauga, but 
 
330 MEX AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 there was no mismanagement in that battle on his part. The 
 only mistake which he made was in giving credence to the 
 reports which were brought to him that the whole army was 
 defeated and in full retreat to Chattanooga, while Thomas 
 was holding his position against the tremendous assault to 
 which he was exposed. If, instead of going to Chattanooga 
 to make preparations for the reception of his retreating and 
 exhausted troops, he had gone to the front, it is possible that 
 he might have gathered together the broken forces as Grant 
 did at Donelson, and won a victory instead of suffering a 
 defeat. He deserved a victory, for no man ever worked 
 harder to obtain it. The fates were against him, and the man 
 ner in which they sometimes deal with the fortunes of men is 
 shown in the simple fact that the nomination of this gallant 
 and most accomplished soldier for the humble office of Regis 
 ter of the Treasury in 1S86 hung fire for weeks in the Senate 
 of the United States. 
 
 After the sorely needed supplies had been obtained by the 
 execution of plans that were devised by General Rosecrans, the 
 army, now under General Grant, had the desired opportunity 
 of redeeming the credit which had been somewhat impaired by 
 the disaster at Chickamauga, The battles at Chattanooga, 
 Lookout Mountain, and Missionary Ridge, which soon fol 
 lowed, were in fact one continuous struggle, in which at differ 
 ent points different divisions of the army were engaged, and 
 in which there seemed to be a rivalry, not only between the 
 commanders of the divisions but among the soldiers, for the 
 highest honors. The Confederates, strong in numbers and 
 strongly intrenched on Lookout Mountain and Missionary 
 Ridge, were routed at every point with immense losses in war 
 materials and men. In no other battles was superior bravery 
 displayed or so much independent fighting done by the Union 
 soldiers. The plans of General Grant were frequently changed 
 during the fight, and in some instances they were disregarded 
 both by officers and men. It was in this battle that Hooker 
 
THE BATTLE ABOVE THE CLOUDS. 331 
 
 won renown in his attack upon the enemy in their position 
 above the clouds. It was in this battle that the soldiers under 
 Thomas and Sheridan, without orders, or in disregard of them, 
 exposed to a terrific lire, with shouts for the Union, overcom- 
 inf all obstructions, climbed the mountain sides and drove the 
 
 O 
 
 Confederates from their intrenchments. To General Grant, 
 commander-in-chief, was lasting honor due for the splendid 
 success of the Union army in these sanguinary battles; but no 
 less honor was due to the division and brigade commanders, 
 whose conduct in the attack upon the enemy s strongholds 
 was superb. ISTor were the soldiers less meritorious than their 
 commanders. Never was the spirit and daring of the com 
 mon soldiers so grandly displayed. " By whose orders are 
 those troops going up the hill ? " asked General Grant of Gen 
 eral Thomas. "By their own, I suppose," was the reply. 
 " It s all right, if it turns out right ; but some one will suffer if 
 it don t," was Grant s rejoinder. It did turn out right. These 
 gallant fellows, full of ardor, and brave to a fault, had assumed 
 authority, and were not long in capturing the positions which 
 were only to be threatened. It is hardly necessary to say 
 that their conduct was not investigated, nor were they cen 
 sured for disobedience. 
 
 The year 1863, on the whole, closed favorably to the Gov 
 ernment. There had been some serious backsets in the East, 
 but compensation for these was found in the very important 
 victory at Gettysburg. In the West, Vicksburg had been 
 taken ; the Mississippi had been opened ; the disaster at 
 Chickamauga had been obliterated by the rout of the enemy 
 at Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge. 
 
 In March, 1864, Congress came to the wise conclusion, 
 which ought to have been reached long before, that the war 
 should no longer be carried on by division commanders, 
 under instructions from the War Department, and passed 
 an act reviving the grade of lieutenant-general. For this 
 position, Grant was nominated, and the nomination was 
 
332 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 promptly confirmed. By this act, all the national armies, 
 numbering nearly a million of men, were placed under the 
 direction of a single head. The appointment of General 
 Grant to this high position was approved by the country. 
 At that time he was regarded by the people, as well as by 
 Congress, as being the most efficient and meritorious of the 
 generals. If doubts existed in regard to his generalship, of 
 his fighting qualities there could be no dispute. He had 
 won renown at Donelson and Yicksburg, and had never suf 
 fered a defeat. He was not popular with the army ; he had 
 no hold upon the affections of the soldiers ; but with the 
 people he was a favorite. The high qualities of Sherman and 
 Thomas were not then fully appreciated. Sherman had not 
 captured Atlanta, nor made his march to the sea. Thomas 
 had not crushed the Confederates at Nashville. There was, 
 therefore, no competition with General Grant for the honor 
 which was conferred upon him. 
 
 In the spring of 1864 the Union armies were in their very 
 best condition. The generals in active service were, with very 
 rare exceptions, men of marked ability, whose valor and skill 
 had been tested on the battle-field, and the larger part of the 
 soldiers had become veterans. The Union forces were also 
 better provided for, and were numerically stronger than ever 
 before. The duties of the lieutenant-general, outside of the 
 Army of the Potomac, of which he took personal command, 
 were consequently altogether less trying than they would 
 have been if the appointment had been made when McClellan 
 was relieved of his command as general-in-chief. In fact, 
 after a few general and special orders were given to division 
 commanders, at various points, the lieutenant-general was 
 able to give, and did give, his entire attention to the Army of 
 the Potomac. 
 
 It is not the opinion of men who have made military sci 
 ence a study, nor will it, I think, appear by impartial history, 
 that General Grant added to his military renown by his cam- 
 
THE WILDERNESS CAMPAIGN. 333 
 
 paign against Richmond. With the best disciplined and most 
 thoroughly equipped army that was ever organized in this 
 country, or any other ; with ample reinforcements at his com 
 mand ; supported by the favor and confidence of the Govern 
 ment, he commenced his celebrated march by the direct route 
 to Richmond. His aim was, by celerity of movement, to place 
 his army between that of the Confederates and the Confederate 
 capital. This accomplished, he would have little difficulty in 
 destroying the former and capturing the latter. This aim was 
 thwarted b^y General Lee, the Confederate commander, who 
 met him in front and compelled him to fight at great disad 
 vantage the battles of the Wilderness, in which no generalship 
 could be displayed, and which will long be remembered for the 
 bravery of the troops on both sides, and the losses that were 
 sustained. A United States Senator who visited the Wilder 
 ness at the close of the two days battle, said to me on his 
 return to Washington : If that scene could have been pre 
 sented to me before the war had been commenced, anxious as 
 I was for the preservation of the Union, I should have said, 
 The cost is too great ; erring sisters, go in peace. : Failing in 
 this attempt to intercept the Confederates, General Grant 
 attempted to accomplish his object by a left flank movement 
 to Spottsylvania, but here was Lee again, and behind formi 
 dable intrenchments, from which he was only forced after many 
 days of continuous and what has been described as simply 
 murderous fighting. 
 
 It was after this battle that General Grant sent his cele 
 brated dispatch to Washington, that he intended " to fight it 
 out on that line, if it took all summer." The loyal people, in 
 the pursuit of business or pleasure, were delighted with this 
 dispatch. It reminded them of the reply to Buckner at Fort 
 Donelson. " That s Grant," said one who read it in my hear 
 ing. "That s Grant; that means business." Business it was, 
 but unfortunately it was business (glorious as it seemed to 
 those who read the accounts of it in the newspapers) in which 
 
334 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 the Union forces were the heaviest losers ; business which sent 
 sorrow into many thousands of loyal households, which filled 
 cemeteries with the slain, and hospitals with the wounded. 
 More, and if possible still harder, work "was to be done on that 
 line, but the object of the campaign the capture of Richmond 
 was not thus to be accomplished. Grant was met again at 
 North Anna, and again at Cold Harbor, from which he was 
 repelled with tremendous slaughter. Cold Harbor was a very 
 important point in General Grant s plan of the campaign, but 
 the fortifications having proved impregnable, he did what 
 McClellan had been compelled to do he transferred his army 
 to the James. He did not, however, stop there. Undisturbed 
 by orders from Washington, and with ample resources at his 
 command, he crossed the river and immediately put in opera 
 tion the instructions he had given to General Butler, who was in 
 command of the army upon the James, to capture and hold 
 Petersburg, and then to advance against Richmond. The for 
 tifications around these two cities proved, however, to be too 
 strong to be carried, and a siege was commenced which con 
 tinued for nearly a year, and was terminated by an assault 
 upon the attenuated line of Confederate intrenchments, which 
 was memorable for the courage with which it was made and 
 the resolution with which it was resisted. The line of defence 
 having been broken, Richmond, the long-coveted prize, was 
 abandoned by the Confederate forces, and the Stars and Stripes 
 again floated, as of yore, over the capital. A few days after, 
 the war was practically ended by the surrender of General Lee 
 and the remnant of his army at Appomattox Court House. 
 
 In the battles in the Wilderness, at Spottsylvania, North 
 Anna, and Cold Harbor, and about Richmond and Petersburg, 
 the losses on the Confederate side were heavy ; on the Union 
 side enormous, amounting in killed and wounded to nearly sixty 
 thousand men a larger number than Lee had under his com 
 mand at the opening of the campaign. In these battles General 
 Grant displayed the qualities for which he was distinguished 
 
THE ENOKMOUS UNION LOSSES. 335 
 
 in the West confidence in himself and in his army, indiffer 
 ence to danger, and indifference also to his own losses while 
 he was striking telling blows against the enemy. On the 
 other side, it must be admitted that General Lee proved him 
 self to be a very able and vigilant commander. He antici 
 pated every movement of his opponent, and was prepared to 
 meet him at every point which he intended to occupy on his 
 march, and finally compelled him to leave the direct route and 
 to commence what was practically a new campaign, by the 
 siege of Richmond and Petersburg. In all the battles that 
 were fought from the first day in the Wilderness to the day 
 on which they were shattered in their desperate assaults upon 
 the intrenchments at Cold Harbor, the Union forces outnum 
 bered the Confederates in the ratio of two to one. In the 
 operations on the south of Richmond and about Petersburg, 
 the comparative difference was still greater. But the lack of 
 numbers by the Confederates was made up by their being on 
 the defensive, and in possession of very formidable intrench 
 ments, which could not be successfully attacked except by 
 superior numbers and at a heavy loss by the assailants. The 
 Union soldiers never fought better than they did in the despe 
 rate battles which have been named, and the most of them 
 had proved their valor on many well-contested fields. They 
 fought under the eye of a chief whom they knew only by his 
 fame, but under the eyes, also, of division commanders whom 
 they knew personally and trusted, and whose good opinion they 
 were resolved not to lose. They behaved splendidly through 
 out the campaign. They were patient, obedient, brave. There 
 was no hardship that they did not willingly submit to, no 
 danger that they shrank from. They were the glorious Army 
 of the Potomac, which, although rarely victorious, w r as never 
 excelled in discipline and steadfast valor by any army in the 
 world. 
 
 The adoption of the direct route to Richmond was, to say 
 the least that can be said about it, unfortunate, as the entire 
 
336 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 army could have been transferred from the Potomac to the 
 James, to which it turned after the battle of Cold Harbor, 
 without the loss of a man, and with the saving of millions of 
 dollars to the national treasury. It would not have been 
 adopted but for the prevailing opinion that the safety of 
 Washington depended upon the army being kept between it 
 and Richmond. Some consolation, however, for the national 
 losses was found in the losses of the enemy, which, although 
 they did not probably exceed twenty thousand, told most 
 heavily upon their declining strength. 
 
 Some of General Grant s eulogists have expressed the opin 
 ion that as his mode of conducting the war was to exhaust the 
 resources of the Confederates as rapidly as was possible, without 
 the slightest regard to the losses that he might sustain himself, 
 to attack them at all times, and at all vulnerable points ; that 
 as he could afford to sacrifice two men to their one, and that as 
 constant fighting must, sooner or later, bring the war to a 
 close, he was satisfied with the results of these sanguinary bat 
 tles. That this method of carrying on the war against the Con 
 federacy was approved by General Grant is well known, but 
 that he was satisfied with the result of his direct movement 
 toward Richmond is, I think, questionable. Nevertheless it 
 must be admitted that the Union was not saved by the vic 
 tories of its armies, but by the exhaustion of its enemies. 
 Extensive as was the field of military operations, and costly as 
 these operations were, the loyal States were not apparently 
 weakened by them. The demand which the war created for 
 everything needed for the support of large armies, and the 
 construction of fleets for naval operations upon the coast and 
 rivers, gave great activity to various brandies of mechanical 
 and manufacturing industry. Money, or what practically rep 
 resented it, was abundant. The credit of the Government 
 improved as the war progressed, and was higher in 1864 than it 
 was in 1861. A stranger in travelling through the loyal States 
 in 1864 would have seen little to indicate that they were 
 
EXHAUSTION OF THE CONFEDERACY. 337 
 
 engaged in a civil war of unexampled magnitude. He would 
 have seen men pursuing their usual avocations with ardor ; the 
 farmer and mechanic busily employed ; new factories being 
 built ; the marts crowded with buyers and sellers ; and upon 
 inquiry he would have learned that the foreign and domestic 
 trade, and manufacturing in its various branches, had never 
 been so prosperous, and that labor had never been so well 
 rewarded. In the disloyal States the reverse of all this was 
 exhibited. They had been, from the commencement of the 
 war, substantially shut up from the outside world. The bel 
 ligerent rights which had been accorded to them had not been 
 followed by the expected acknowledgment of independence 
 by Great Britain, or by any other European power, and were 
 therefore of little value to them. Trade with Europe could 
 only be carried on by running the blockade, in which the risk 
 was greater than the profits. Their cotton, in exchange for 
 which they expected to receive all necessary supplies, remained 
 either upon the plantations or was stored in the warehouses 
 of the cities. Manufacturing they had not encouraged before 
 the war, and although their necessities developed skill in 
 this direction that was a surprise even to themselves, they 
 were unable to do more than to supply their armies with 
 munitions and clothing. The credit of the government which 
 they had undertaken to establish was at the lowest ebb, at 
 home as well as abroad. Its bonds, which in 1861 were sold 
 in Great Britain at nearly par, and were then regarded by 
 European capitalists with more favor than the bonds of the 
 United States, were no longer salable at any price. Its 
 notes, which were kept in circulation by being made a legal 
 tender, and the absence of any other circulating medium, had 
 become even in trade well nigh valueless. What little real 
 money there was in the Confederacy was either hidden or in 
 the Confederate treasury. The exhausting process, which 
 commenced soon after the war begun, had gone steadily on 
 until there was little left in the disloyal States except the 
 22 
 
338 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 buildings and the naked lands. Everything had been yielded 
 by the people to the support of their armies, with unexampled 
 self-sacrificing devotion. 
 
 In connection with this brief reference to General Grant s 
 campaign against Richmond, is not this question a pertinent and 
 fair one ? If General Grant, with an army of vastly superior 
 strength to that of the enemy, could gain no decided advantages 
 in the bloody battles of the AVilderness, Spottsylvania, North 
 Anna, and Cold Harbor, but on the whole was so worsted by 
 them as to be compelled to transfer his army to the James, and 
 was nevertheless honored, and justly honored, by his country 
 men, ought General McClellan, who met the same enemy when 
 in its greatest vigor and strength, and inflicted upon him severer 
 blows than he received, in as well contested battles as those 
 that have been named, and was compelled by the superior 
 force of the enemy to fall back upon the same river, to have 
 been retired in disgrace ? Was General Grant s generalship 
 so superior to that of General McClellan s ; did he handle his 
 troops with so much greater skill ; was he so much more 
 prompt in action and sound in judgment, as to make it clear 
 that while he received no honor that he had not fairly won, 
 McClellan was treated with no injustice? 
 
 I have said that it was not the opinion of competent judges 
 that General Grant added to his military reputation by his 
 overland campaign against Richmond. Notwithstanding the 
 great superiority of his forces in numbers, he gained no de 
 cided advantages over General Lee. His aim was to intercept 
 and destroy the Confederate army, and then to capture the 
 Confederate capital. He succeeded in neither. That army 
 was not destroyed. On the contrary, it dealt harder blows 
 than it received, and Richmond was only taken after a pro 
 tracted siege. The conduct of General Grant at the surrender 
 of General Lee, and of the remnant of his once formidable 
 army, was that of a true soldier and a gentleman, but there 
 was nothing in what occurred at Appomattox which added to 
 
MILITARY SIDE OF THE WAR. 339 
 
 his renown as a commander. The fall of Richmond, which 
 was hastened by the approach of Sherman from the south, 
 was, from the commencement of the siege of Petersburg, only 
 a question of time, and what was left of the Army of Northern 
 Virginia was doomed as soon as it was forced from the for 
 tifications which it had held with so much courage and 
 tenacity. 
 
 In this great civil war, there was little opportunity for the 
 exhibition of military science as this science is understood in 
 Europe. By some European generals it was spoken of con 
 temptuously as a bushwhacking war, in which fighting qual 
 ities only were displayed, and a great deal of blood was unnec 
 essarily shed. It is true that few of the battles in this war were 
 fought where the talents of a Yon Moltke would have shown to 
 advantage, but there were battles in which very great ability was 
 displayed not in handling large armies upon open plains, but 
 in adapting warfare to the topography and conditions of the 
 countrv. Von Moltke s science might have been at fault in 
 
 / o 
 
 the Peninsula and in the Wilderness. Grant might not have 
 obtained celebrity at Sadowa, or Sedan. But if, as European 
 critics have asserted, there was very little science exhibited in 
 our civil Avar, there never was a war in which the best qualities 
 of soldiers courage, patience, endurance were so conspic 
 uous on both sides. And here it is fitting for me to say, that if 
 General Grant has not received more credit than was his due, 
 other generals have received less than was due to them. A 
 stranger to the history of the war, in reading the newspapers 
 that were published at the time of General Grant s death, 
 and in noticing the respect that is paid to his memory, would 
 think that to him more than to all the other generals was the 
 success of the Union armies to be attributed, and he would be 
 surprised if he were informed, that in the great and most 
 important battles of Antietam, Gettysburg, Atlanta and Xash- 
 ville he had no part ; that his real and lasting honors were 
 won before he was appointed to the chief command and led 
 
340 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 the Army of the Potomac against Richmond ; that besides 
 those whom I especially speak of, there were officers in the 
 Union service who, like A. II. Terry, and Meade, and Scho- 
 field, and Canby, and Howard, and Slocum, were scarcely his 
 inferiors in military capacity. I do not exaggerate when I 
 say that Napoleon, who startled the world by his brilliant 
 achievements, had not under his command, when nearly all 
 Europe was at his feet, lieutenants of higher accomplishments 
 as soldiers than C. F. Smith, and McPherson, and Reynolds, 
 and Sedgwick, and "W. II. Wallace, and Couch, and Curtis, and 
 Custer, and Humphreys, and Gilmore, and Sickles, and Kearny, 
 and Reno, and Ly tie, and Doubleday, and Cox, and Lewis 
 Wallace, and Stoneman, and Hayes, and Gresham, and Rick- 
 etts, and Granger, and Wood, and Palmer, and Steadman, and 
 Geary, and Mitchel, and Wa-ds worth and Sedgwick, and 
 Sumner, and scores of others, of the same stamp, whose 
 names are irnperishably inscribed on the rolls of their country s 
 honor. Many of them sealed with their blood their devotion 
 to the Union. Their names will always be especially dear to 
 their countrymen. Not to Grant alone, but to such as these, 
 and to the hundreds of thousands of men officers and privates, 
 w r ho imperilled their lives in its support is the nation indebted 
 for its integrity. On the other side, also, were men who, in 
 an unholy cause, displayed ability, heroism, devotion, zeal which 
 commanded universal admiration. It was a long, expensive and 
 bloody war, but its compensations have been greater than was 
 its cost. It destroyed slavery and thus uprooted all causes of 
 difference between the sections. It cemented the Union. It 
 made the States "now and forever, one and inseparable." 
 
 It was fortunate for the country, and for his own repu 
 tation, that General Grant was not in command of the Army 
 of the Potomac in 1861. Having no aptitude for the organi 
 zation of troops, he would have spent little time in making it 
 what it became under McClellan, the best disciplined, and for 
 its numbers, the most efficient army of the age. If he had 
 
GKANT AS A GENERAL. 341 
 
 been in McClellan s place in the autumn of 1861, the reports 
 would not have been, as they were for months, that "all 
 was quiet on the Potomac," but probably a report of a much 
 less satisfactory character, that a great battle had been fought 
 and a worse disaster than that of Bull Run had befallen the 
 Union forces. It was also fortunate for the country and 
 General Grant that he did not take the command of that 
 army, highly disciplined as it had become, until he had secured 
 by his services in the West the confidence of all loyal people 
 and of the Government, a confidence so strong as not to be 
 shaken by the unsuccess of his great battles in Virginia and of 
 the assaults upon the fortifications of Petersburg and Rich 
 mond, nor even by the delays of a protracted siege. Fortunate 
 indeed was it for General Grant that he was not then a candi 
 date for the Presidency, and was supposed to have no political 
 aspirations. 
 
 There have been and there will continue to be great differ 
 ences of opinions in regard to General Grant s character and 
 merits as a soldier. While many, and perhaps a majority, 
 regard him as having been a great military genius, whose 
 name will go down in history along with the names of the 
 most renowned soldiers of modern times, others regard him 
 as having been destitute of genius, entitled to no credit except 
 for stubborn courage and unyielding resolution ; as one whose 
 rise was a chapter of accidents and luck. Neither of these 
 opinions is correct. It was not by accident or luck that 
 Donelson was taken; that the Mississippi was opened by the 
 capture of Vicksburg, and that the misfortunes at Chicka- 
 mauga were offset by the achievements at Lookout Mountain 
 and Missionary Ridge. It was not by luck that he rose from 
 the captaincy of a company in 1861 to the command of all 
 the armies of the United States in 186-i. Accidents were in 
 his favor, and lucky he certainly was; but if he had not pos 
 sessed military qualities of a high order, accidents would not 
 have been favorable to him, and good luck would not have 
 
342 MEN AXD MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 been so constantly his attendant. His rise was rapid, and with 
 but a single interruption. For some weeks after the capture of 
 Donelson he seemed to have reached the height of his military 
 career, but after his success at Yicksburg his star was again 
 in the ascendant, and it continued to shine with undiminished 
 if not increasing brightness to the end of the war. 
 
 On the other hand, it must be admitted that he did not 
 accomplish enough, nor give evidence of possessing all the 
 qualities which were necessary to entitle him to a place by 
 the side of the great captains of the world. If he had capac 
 ity for planning campaigns, he lacked the opportunities for 
 exhibiting it. Before the expedition in which Fort Henry and 
 Fort Donelson were captured and the line of Confederate 
 fortifications was broken, was commenced, the importance of 
 such an expedition had been freely discussed. The successful 
 movement against Vicksburg was not undertaken until all 
 other plans for reaching the city had failed. The battles on 
 Lookout Mountain and Missionary Ridge were not fought 
 according to any well-digested plan. 
 
 But while General Grant s abilities were not in the line of 
 organizing troops or planning campaigns, it cannot be denied 
 that in all the battles of which he had the direction, he dis 
 played indomitable resolution, perfect self-possession, dauntless 
 courage. His conduct at Donelson and before Yicksburg, 
 where he obtained his highest renown, was such as to entitle 
 him to very high rank as a soldier ; but in neither of these 
 fields was there, or could there be, a display of such ability as 
 would sustain the claims of his extreme eulogists. His quali 
 ties were such as circumstances required. There was no senti 
 ment in his mode of warfare. He was never seen on the 
 field after a battle had been fought, or in the hospitals, and he 
 never counted the cost of a victory. His business was to fight. 
 To persistently push the enemy at all points, and at all sacri 
 fices, was, in his opinion, the surest as well as speediest way of 
 terminating the war. It was, he thought, his duty to cripple 
 
HOW HISTORY WILL RANK HIM. 343 
 
 him in every possible way. lie was opposed, therefore, for a 
 time, to the exchange of prisoners, knowing as he did, that 
 owing to the difference of treatment in Northern and South 
 ern prisons, he would be receiving men who were not fit for 
 duty in exchange for those that were, and that the Govern 
 ment which he served had far less need of men than its 
 enemies. This was considered by many as inhuman ; but war 
 is a business in which humanity is not often brought into lively 
 exercise. lie understood both the duties and responsibilities 
 of a commander, and while insensible to fear, he never exposed 
 himself unnecessarily to danger. He lacked personal magnet 
 ism. His presence among his troops was never hailed with 
 enthusiastic shouts as was McClellan s. He never breasted the 
 storm of battle, as did Thomas at Chickamauga. He never per 
 sonally rallied fleeing troops, and led them back to victory, as 
 Sheridan did at Cedar Creek. His soldiers were not strongly 
 attached to him, but they had confidence in his generalship, 
 and they admired him for his coolness and courage. As I 
 have said, he did not accomplish enough, nor exhibit all the 
 qualities which were required to entitle him to a place by the 
 side of the great captains of the world. What his rank is to 
 be hereafter, among the distinguished generals of his own 
 country, cannot be safely predicted. It certainly will be 
 among the highest. His name may not be second to any in 
 the long line of American soldiers ; but that it will be regarded 
 by impartial historians as entitled to the pre-eminence that is 
 now so generally accorded to it, is at least doubtful. He 
 gained nothing in reputation after he became lieutenant- 
 general. Sherman expressed the opinion that if General C. 
 F. Smith had lived, Grant might not have been heard of after 
 Donelson. He would not have been wide of the mark if he 
 had said that but for Donelson and Yicksburg, Grant would 
 not have been known in history. But Smith did not live to 
 throw Grant into the background, and Donelson and Vicks- 
 burg are fixed facts in the annals of the war. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 Condition of the two great Parties in 1868 Horatio Seymour Nominated for 
 the Presidency, and General Frank P. Blair for the Vice-Presidency, by 
 the Democrats General Grant and Schuyler Colfax nominated by the 
 Republicans, and Elected General Grant nominated on account of his 
 Military Reputation His Nominations for the Heads of the Departments 
 Elihu B. Washburne George & Boutwcll Jacob D. Cox John A. G. 
 Creswell E. Rockwood Hoar Alexander T. Stewart Adolph E. Borie 
 Hamilton Fish George M. Robeson William W. Belknap Morrison R. 
 Waite Negotiation for the Annexation of St. Domingo Mr. Sumner s 
 Opposition to it Mr. MotleyRecalled from the Court of St. James Change 
 in the Office of Attorney-General General Grant as a Civilian Manner 
 in which he Used his Authority Appointment of his Son to be a Lieu 
 tenant-Colonel ; and a Distinguished Clergyman to be Examiner of Con 
 sular Offices His Retirement from the Presidency Desire of a Nom 
 ination for a Third Term He Visits Europe Is everywhere received 
 with Great Respect Efforts to Nominate him for a Third Term on his 
 Return from Europe His Unfortunate Connection with a Banking 
 Firm His Fatal Illness and Death. 
 
 IN 1868, as the two great political parties were supposed to 
 be of about equal strength, the leading politicians on both 
 sides were on the alert for a candidate who possessed the 
 greatest personal popularity ; availability, rather than qualifi 
 cation or merit, being the question to be considered. John 
 son s administration had been conducted in the interests of 
 neither party. It had for two years been bitterly opposed by 
 the Republican party, although the Cabinet was composed of 
 men who were either Republicans, or Democrats who had not 
 been in sympathy with their party during the war. It had 
 not been cordially supported by the Democrats. Johnson 
 having been elected Vice-President on the Republican ticket 
 with Mr. Lincoln, and an ardent supporter of his administra 
 tion, could not be regarded as a representative of Democratic 
 principles. lie had made few changes in the public offices, 
 
THE CAMPAIGN OF 1868. 345 
 
 and a large majority of the office-holders were earnest and 
 active Republicans. The Democrats had stood by him in his 
 impeachment. They had approved of his Reconstruction 
 policy, but they knew that he had lost by his intemperate 
 harangues the public respect which he commanded when he 
 was elected Yice-President. It was quite certain, long before 
 the convention was held that he would not be their candi 
 date. Singularly enough, the eyes of both parties turned to 
 General Grant as the most available candidate, and the 
 opinion was current in Washington that if he was not nomi 
 nated by the Republicans, he would be by the Democrats. 
 Before the war, General Grant (as was true of most of the 
 West Point graduates who had been appointed under Demo 
 cratic administrations) was a Democrat, and it was known that 
 his relatives and some of his most intimate associates in the 
 army were members of the Democratic party. It was there 
 fore thought that he might be willing to accept a Democratic 
 nomination. This question, however, was not tested. Before 
 he was approached by any of the leading men of that party, 
 it became known that he was in sympathy with the Republi 
 cans, and that he would accept a Republican nomination if it 
 were tendered to him. The Democrats were, therefore, com 
 pelled to select another man for their standard bearer. The 
 choice fell upon Horatio Seymour, one of the ablest and 
 purest of statesmen. General Frank P. Blair was their nominee 
 for Vice-President. The ticket was apparently a strong one. 
 Seymour had been Governor of New York, and although he 
 was full of anxious misgivings during the war, he had not 
 been backward in filling the requisitions which were made 
 upon him for troops. He was sound, according to Democratic 
 standards, upon all economical and financial questions ; a man 
 of varied and extensive knowledge, of an unblemished reputa 
 tion, of great personal popularity, of superior executive abilit}^ 
 Ko man in the country was better equipped for the Presidency 
 than Horatio Seymour. General Blair was a man of vigorous 
 
346 MEX AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 intellect and of great force of character. He had done good 
 service in the war, and although a Democrat of the strictest 
 order, he had been hostile to slavery when the pro-slavery 
 sentiment was strong throughout the Union. The ticket was 
 strong, but it was greatly weakened by the speeches that were 
 made at the convention. General Grant and Schuyler Colfax, 
 who had acquired a high reputation as Speaker of the House, the 
 nominees of the Republican party, were triumphantly elected. 
 It is not claimed by many of his real friends that General 
 Grant sustained, in the Presidency, the reputation that he had 
 won in the field. Before his election he had lacked both the 
 opportunities and the disposition to acquaint himself with the 
 subjects upon which he was called to act in the discharge of 
 his executive duties. He had not only kept himself aloof from 
 politics, but he had paid no attention to the subjects in which 
 the country was especially interested. He had never held a 
 public position in civil life. He was selected by the Republi 
 cans as their candidate, as General Taylor had been by the 
 Whigs, on account of his military reputation ; and yet such 
 was his self-confidence, that he had no more distrust of his 
 ability to perform the duties of the chief magistrate of the 
 nation than of his ability to command a regiment. " Have 
 you read," asked one of the ablest of the Republican Senators 
 the next morning after the inauguration, " have you read 
 General Grant s inaugural?" "I have," I replied. "The 
 responsibilities of the position I feel, but I accept them without 
 fear." The senator repeated this passage from the inaugural 
 slowly, and then said : " You know, McCulloch, that I am not 
 a religious man, but if I had been elected President, I should 
 not have accepted the responsibilities without fear. I should 
 on my knees have asked God to help me." He then, in lan 
 guage which I will not repeat, expressed something more than 
 his regret that one who had no comprehension of the duties 
 he was to perform should accept the responsibilities thereof 
 with such self confidence. 
 
GRAFT S CABINET. 347 
 
 That General Grant was self- deceived in regard to his 
 fitness for the Presidency was soon manifest to others, but 
 there was at no time any indication that he was conscious of it 
 himself. His self-reliance, and his indisposition to take advice 
 or ask for information, were indicated in the selection of his 
 Cabinet. For some days before the inauguration there was a 
 good deal of speculation and talk about the appointments, and 
 no little solicitude was felt by the friends of those whose names 
 had been mentioned in connection with the different depart 
 ments. I must have seen a score of what were called " slates," 
 prepared by as many different persons, who were considered 
 good political guessers, on which were the names of those who 
 were considered most likely to become the advisers of the 
 President, and a good deal of surprise and disappointment was 
 manifested when the names of the appointees were given to 
 the public. For the War Department, no appointment was 
 made. It was therefore expected that General Schofield, who 
 held the place under an appointment of President Johnson, 
 would be retained. To the other six Departments men were 
 appointed not one of whose names was upon any slate ; nor, if 
 I recollect correctly, had the name of either been suggested 
 for a place in the Cabinet by any leading journal. If, in 
 making the selection, the President consulted anybody, the 
 secret was well kept. He could not have consulted any one 
 who was familiar with the act establishing the Treasury 
 Department, or he would not have selected a merchant for its 
 Secretary. To five of the appointments, unexpected as they 
 were, no objection could be made, except upon the ground that 
 they had not been especially active in the canvass preceding 
 the election. 
 
 Elihu B. Washburne, who was nominated for Secretary of 
 State, was well known as an able and industrious man who had 
 faithfully represented the Galena district of Illinois in Con 
 gress for eight consecutive terms, and been re-elected for the 
 ninth. He had the honor of being the discoverer of Grant 
 
348 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 when educated officers were in demand for the army in the 
 spring of 1SP>1. Alexander T. Stewart, the great merchant of 
 New York, a man of extraordinary business capacity, was 
 nominated for Secretary of the Treasury, a position for which 
 he had high personal qualifications, but for which he was 
 disqualified by the act referred to, which provided that no 
 person should be appointed Secretary of the Treasury who was 
 engaged in commercial trade. Mr. Stewart was very desirous 
 of adding to his reputation as a merchant the reputation of a 
 great public financier, which he was confident he might acquire 
 as the head of the Treasury Department ; and he, as well as 
 the President, was greatly disappointed by his legal disqualifi 
 cation, which was not discovered (strange as it seemed), until 
 after his name had been sent to the Senate. So strong was 
 the desire of the President that Mr. Stewart should be his 
 Secretary of the Treasury, that he asked Congress to pass a 
 joint resolution to exempt his appointment from the operation 
 of the act. The request did not meet with a favorable recep 
 tion. Mr. Stewart s name was withdrawn, and George S. 
 
 o 
 
 Boutwell, a lawyer of good standing and an active and skilful 
 politician, was nominated in his stead. 
 
 Mr. Boutwell, on entering upon the discharge of his duties 
 as Secretary of the Treasury, was greatly helped by the 
 knowledge of the business of the Department which he had 
 gained when he was Commissioner of Internal Revenue. His 
 appointment was not favorably regarded by business men, as 
 he was known to be a strong partisan, and was supposed to be 
 narrow in his financial views, and limited in financial knowl 
 edge ; but his administration of the Treasury was conservative 
 and judicious, creditable to himself and to the Administration. 
 Meeting him on the street the day after he entered upon the 
 discharge of his duties, I said to him that he would find the 
 Department in good running order; that all the real hard 
 work necessitated by the war had been completed, and that his 
 duties would be much less trying and laborious than mine had 
 
GRANT S CABINET. 349 
 
 been. Always a partisan, Mr. Boutwell was bitterly hostile to 
 President Johnson. He had been one of the managers in the 
 Impeachment trial, and so strong in his opinion were the 
 evidences of Johnson s utter unworthiness and guilt, that he 
 had little charity for those who did not regard them as he did. 
 To him it seemed hardly possible that the confidential advisers 
 of him whom he had denounced as the great criminal could be 
 absolutely free from taint. He did not, I think, expect to find 
 that the management of the Department had been corrupt, 
 but he did expect to discover irregularities in the manner in 
 which its business had been conducted, and that there had been 
 gross favoritism in appointments. He was, I am sure (being, 
 in spite of his prejudices, a high-toned gentleman), gratified, as 
 he ascertained from day to day that the Department had been 
 honestly administered ; that its business had been conducted, 
 not in the interest of the President or of his friends, but with 
 regard to public interests only. There were, of course, among 
 the clerks some who were known to be the personal and politi 
 cal friends of Mr. Johnson. To them leave of absence was 
 promptly given. It was said that committees were appointed 
 to ascertain the politics of all the employes, and to report for 
 dismissal those who had the smell of Johnson upon their 
 garments. I am sure that no such committees were appointed 
 by Mr. Boutwell. 
 
 Jacob D. Cox, of Ohio, who had served with honor in the 
 army and been Governor of his State, a man of very vigorous 
 intellect and unsullied reputation, was nominated for Secretary 
 of the Interior ; John A. J. Ores well, of Maryland, a stanch 
 unwavering supporter of the Government during the war, and 
 one of the most accomplished men of the day, for Post 
 master General ; E. Rock wood Hoar, a true scion of excellent 
 stock, who had been a Judge of the Supreme Court of Massa 
 chusetts, and who held high rank as a lawyer in a State where 
 high rank at the bar can be obtained only by men of superior 
 abilities, for Attorney General. 
 
350 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 There was a good deal of astonishment at the nomination 
 of Adolph E. Borie to be Secretary of the Navy. When it 
 was understood that his name had been sent to the Senate, the 
 inquiry everywhere was, " AVho is Adolph E. Borie ? " Outside 
 of Philadelphia, where he lived, he was unknosvn, and there he 
 was known only as a citizen of wealth and good social stand- 
 ino 1 . It was reported that onlv one senator had ever heard 
 
 o I 
 
 of him until his name was read by the secretary. To him 
 self his appointment was as great a surprise as it was to the 
 public. The place was undesired by him. He had no aptitude 
 for the business he was called upon to perform, and he was 
 glad to retire from public life after an experience, if such it 
 could be called, of three months. 
 
 There had been some surprise at the appointment of Mr. 
 Washburne as Secretary of State. It was not a position for 
 which he was especially fitted by education or taste, but no 
 one was prepared to hear of his resignation before he had tried 
 it. There was, therefore, much wonder when, within a week 
 after his appointment, he was nominated and confirmed as 
 Minister to France. No explanation was given of this sudden 
 change, but the supposition was that there had been an under 
 standing between him and the President that he should hold 
 the office of Secretary of State until he could find a place that 
 suited him better, and no longer. Whether such was the case 
 or not, the change, resulting as it did in the appointment of 
 Mr. Hamilton Fish to the State Department, was fortunate for 
 the administration and the country. Mr. Washburne, in his 
 mission to France, proved to be the right man in the right 
 place. He performed his regular duties acceptably to his own 
 government, and to the changing governments of France. He 
 remained at his post in Paris during the siege, and so used the 
 authority and influence of his position as to command the 
 respect and good will of both the French and Germans. Nor 
 did he desert his post, as did the representatives of other 
 nations, during the reign of the Commune. His behavior 
 
HAMILTON FISH. 351 
 
 throughout that entire period of suffering and disorder in 
 Paris was such as to secure for him a high reputation for 
 courage and for fidelity to his trust. 
 
 Hamilton Fish, who succeeded Mr. Washburne as Secretary 
 of State, and whose appointment was as little expected as that 
 of any other member of the Cabinet except that of Mr. Borie, 
 had held many important positions. He had been a Repre 
 sentative in Congress, Governor of New York, and United 
 States Senator; but he had retired from public life, a"nd 
 although but sixty years old, was supposed to have lost both 
 the disposition and ability for active public service. The last 
 time that he had manifested any interest in politics was in 
 1860, when he took part in the efforts that were made to 
 secure the nomination of Mr. Seward for the Presidency. He 
 was remembered as having been a warm personal and political 
 friend of Henry Clay, but so long ago that he seemed to 
 belong to a past generation to be politically superannuated. 
 His appointment was therefore a surprise even to his friends. 
 It was, however, one of the best appointments that the Presi 
 dent ever made. During his retirement he had not been idle. 
 He had been both student and observer, and he brought to the 
 discharge of his new and important duties large experience, 
 superior culture, and thorough knowledge of the relations of 
 the United States with foreign nations. Difficult questions 
 were to be discussed and settled with Great Britain, growing 
 out of her unfriendly conduct during the war. These questions 
 were discussed by him with marked ability, and settled in a 
 manner highly satisfactory to the United States. It is not too 
 much to say, that in no period of our history was the business 
 of the State Department conducted with more ability and dis 
 cretion than while Mr. Fish was at its head. His appointment 
 was, in all respects, a fortunate one. His high character for 
 probity and honor was one of the redeeming features of both 
 of General Grant s administrations. His great wealth enabled 
 him to dispense hospitalities with a liberal hand. His unostenta- 
 
352 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A (XENTURY. 
 
 tious but polished manner, and the grace, the intelligence and 
 varied accomplishments of his wife, did much to elevate the 
 tone of Washington society. 
 
 General Schofield s relations with the President were, I 
 believe, friendly, but he had been a member of Johnson s 
 Cabinet, and he was soon retired from the War Department. 
 His successor, General Rawlins, had no especial qualifications 
 for the place, and had done nothing to merit the appointment. 
 He was in bad health when appointed. He died in the follow 
 ing autumn, and was succeeded by General Belknap, who held, 
 when I was Secretary of the Treasury, an office in the internal 
 revenue service, and had the reputation of being an able man 
 and of good business qualifications. Mr. Borie, Secretary of the 
 Navy, was succeeded by George M. Robeson, of New Jersey, 
 a fine speaker and an able lawyer. Mr. Robeson was the best 
 abused member of the Cabinet, but the abuse to which he was 
 subjected neither soured his temper nor injured his digestion. 
 He was a hard worker, without being apt in business. If, 
 instead of being Secretary of the Navy, he had been Attorney 
 General, he would have won an enviable national reputation. 
 Talented, genial, warm-hearted, he was and is a favorite wher 
 ever he is known. 
 
 On the whole the President was fortunate in these appoint 
 ments, and yet among the thoughtful and independent men of 
 his party, there was an impression, not, as was remarked by 
 an unfriendly critic, when his second term was drawing to a 
 close, that " his good appointments had been by accident ; his 
 bad ones by design," but that personal considerations, rather 
 than a regard for the public interest, had to a large extent 
 governed his action. 
 
 Perhaps no appointment made by President Grant seemed 
 to be more unmerited and injudicious than that of Morrison 
 R. Waite, of Toledo, Ohio, to be Chief-Justice of the United 
 States Supreme Court, upon the death of Chief- Justice Chase. 
 I do not hesitate to say that there were scores of lawyers in 
 
THE SANTO DOMINGO SCHEME. 3f)3 
 
 Ohio who would have been regarded by the members of his pro 
 fession as being as well, if not better, qualified for that exalted 
 position as Mr. Waite. He was little known outside of his 
 State. He had not been ranked among the great lawyers of 
 the country. lie had never, I think, appeared before the court 
 over which he was to preside. So little was he knoAvn outside 
 of Ohio, that his appointment to be one of the representa 
 tives of the United States at the Geneva arbitration was not 
 regarded with public favor. I had known Mr. Waite for many 
 years, and had formed a very high opinion of him, as being 
 a man of a high order of talent, and a safe and able counsel 
 lor in his profession ; but I was not prepared to hear of his 
 appointment to a position which had never before been held 
 by one who had not acquired a high national reputation as 
 a lawyer. President Grant was wiser in this instance than 
 lie knew. Possessing a clear, discriminating, well balanced 
 intellect and great working power, with a character for 
 uprightness and independence which commands the highest 
 respect, it is but simple justice to say of Mr. Waite, that he is 
 most honorably filling the chair that has been occupied by 
 such men as Marshall, and Taney, and Chase. No higher com 
 pliment can be paid to him. 
 
 One of President Grant s first and most important acts 
 one that astonished even his most intimate friends was a nego 
 tiation for the annexation of Santo Domingo. The execution by 
 him of a treaty for the acquisition of a foreign country, a part 
 of one of the West India Islands, populated and governed by 
 negroes, and, as it was understood at the time, without the 
 knowledge of the Secretary of State, was one of the strangest, 
 not to sav most astounding things that had ever occurred in the 
 
 * O CD 
 
 history of the country. It illustrated his ideas of the authority 
 of a President, and indicated his ignorance or disregard of the 
 sensitiveness of thoughtful people in regard to the acquisition 
 of foreign territory. The purchase of Louisiana and the 
 annexation of Texas were looked upon with apprehension by 
 23 
 
354 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 men of liberal views, as well as by strict constructionists ; but 
 these were coterminous territories, the possession of which 
 might be considered a geographical necessity, and nothing was 
 done in either case, without free discussion. The same was true 
 in regard to the territorial acquisitions which were the result 
 of the war with Mexico. But here was an island in no way 
 needful to the United States, one-half of which, with a large 
 population of the African race, was to become a part of the 
 public domain with full privileges of citizenship to its inhabit 
 ants, by a treaty which was not negotiated in the usual way 
 by the head of the State Department, but by the President, 
 through the agency of one of his private secretaries. 
 
 Of the impropriety of the proceeding the President seemed 
 to be unconscious. To secure its ratification, he brought to 
 bear upon the Senate all his personal and official influence, 
 but strong as that influence was, it was not strong enough to 
 overcome the repugnance of senators to a treaty highly objec 
 tionable in itself, and equally objectionable by the manner 
 in which it had been negotiated. Charles Sumner was Chair 
 man of the Committee on Foreign Relations, and he presented 
 his views in opposition to the treaty with such caustic 
 severity, that he incurred the lasting hostility of the President, 
 by which not only he but some of his friends were made to 
 suffer. The President was unable to obtain a ratification of so 
 unsavory a treaty, but he had influence enough with senators 
 (to their discredit be it said) to bring about the displacement 
 of Mr. Sumner from the Committee on Foreign Relations, of 
 which he had been for years the honored and efficient head. 
 Mr. Motley, the distinguished historian, was recalled from the 
 Court of St. James, not because he was not honorably and 
 efficiently performing his duties, but because he had been 
 appointed on Mr. Sumner s recommendation, and was known 
 to be his intimate friend. The change in the office of Attor 
 ney-General, by which Mr. Hoar was succeeded by Mr. Aker- 
 man, was attributed to the influence of persons who had favored 
 
SCANDALS OF THE ADMINISTRATION. 355 
 
 the treaty. In opposing the ratification of this treaty, Mr. 
 Sumner, as was his wont, spoke with great plainness. He had, 
 as he thought, good reason for the opinion that in its negotia 
 tion the President was under the influence of a company of 
 speculators, who were to be large gainers by the project. 
 In denouncing the project, he denounced the projectors in 
 language which seemed to reflect upon the President. In this 
 he might have been wrong, but it did not justify the action of 
 the Senate in desposing him from the place which he had so 
 long honored. In the estimation of the masses, the President 
 did not, perhaps, suffer by the negotiation of this treaty and 
 his persistent efforts to secure its ratification, nor by his treat 
 ment of Mr. Sumner and his friends ; these were matters in 
 which the great public felt but little interest ; but he did suffer 
 in the estimation of many of the best men of his party, who 
 from that time regarded him with distrust. 
 
 I have said that General Grant was no student before the 
 war, and that he lacked the time and the disposition to study 
 afterwards ; but he was a close observer, and his natural abili 
 ties were expanded by his intercourse with able men, and in 
 the performance of executive duties. His mind was clear and, 
 when not influenced by his prejudices or controlled by his 
 egotism, well balanced. In approving or disapproving acts 
 of Congress, he was rarely wrong. His messages and other 
 official papers were sensible and to the point, but, as is too 
 frequently the case with men of high position, his acts were 
 less praiseworthy than his words. He was upon paper an 
 earnest advocate of reform in the civil service, but there was 
 no improvement in the service during his administrations. On 
 the contrary, there was a degree of official corruption that had 
 never before been witnessed. Scandals of a disgraceful char 
 acter, which implicated many who had official relations, and 
 some who had close personal relations with himself, were rife. 
 Although a man of great independence of character, there 
 were very few whose ears were more open to flattery. Both 
 
356 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 as general and President he was kind and indulgent to those 
 who looked up to him as a superior ; he was the reverse to 
 those who did not. He did not object to independence in 
 others, if that independence did not conflict with his own ; 
 when it did, there was coldness on his part, if not dislike. 
 His success as a soldier produced an entire change in his char 
 acter. From the time that he resigned his captaincy, in 1854, 
 to his appointment as colonel, in 1861, he was seemingly con 
 tent with his low social position and humble employments. 
 If he had any desire to rise, if ambition had any hold upon 
 him, there was no indication of it. Upon his re-entrance into 
 the army, a new life was opened within as well as before him. 
 While his demeanor was little changed, while he was still 
 unassuming in manners, he became as if by a new birth, self- 
 confident, self-reliant, daring, ambitious, and these qualities 
 became so dominant, that after accepting the highest position 
 in the army as a right, he entered upon the performance of 
 the duties of the highest civil position without fear ; and, in 
 disregard of the example of Washington and his other pre 
 decessors, was more than willing that his name should be 
 used for a third term. He had the disposition, and only 
 needed the opportunity, to become a dictator. 
 
 The old adage that the boy is father of the man, was 
 
 O v 
 
 contradicted in the case of General Grant. Nothing in his 
 character as a boy indicated the inherent power which was 
 developed when he became a military leader, and the chief 
 magistrate of the nation. He had no influence over his class 
 mates at West Point, or over his brother officers in Mexico. 
 After his return from Mexico, he lacked self-control ; and yet 
 at the head of the army, and in the Presidency, he displayed 
 the characteristics of a man born to command. None of his 
 predecessors, not even General Jackson, used the authority of 
 his position so independently none certainly exhibited such 
 indifference to established usages and public opinion, as he did. 
 No other President would have been so wanting in delicacy 
 
ABUSE OF PATRONAGE. 357 
 
 as to appoint his son, who had performed no important duties, 
 to a lieutenant-colonelcy, over the heads of meritorious offi 
 cers ; or so indifferent to public sentiment and the require 
 ments of the service as to send his eulogist, a distinguished 
 clergyman, without business experience, at a salary of five 
 thousand dollars a } r ear and his expenses, to examine consular 
 offices in Europe. In regard to many important appoint 
 ments, he did not consult even his Cabinet. When first 
 elected, he was regarded, not only by his party, but by a large 
 majority of the people who were not partisans, with as much 
 favor as any of his predecessors had been, except Washington. 
 If the Press properly represented the public sentiment, none 
 retired from the Presidency with less of public respect. The 
 reasons were obvious. Until he was elected, he had not been 
 connected with public affairs. He had no knowledge of the 
 questions upon which parties were divided. He was no poli 
 tician. His judgment of character was faulty in the extreme. 
 He was simply a soldier, a man of good common sense and 
 honest intentions, self-reliant, but wanting in sagacity. Open 
 to flattery, and impatient to criticism, he naturally fell under 
 the influence of the most artful and least trustworthy men of 
 his party. His use of the patronage of the Government was 
 such, in some cases, as to create the opinion that public favors 
 were bestowed in consideration of favors which he had person 
 ally received. As he had been raised to the highest position 
 in the country without any training, he seemed to think that 
 no preparatory education was needful for the performance of 
 important and difficult duties. Many of his appointments 
 were severely criticised by a friendly press. Some were so 
 objectionable that the Senate was forced to disapprove of 
 them. The public is slow in giving up a favorite, and it was 
 a long time before the conclusion became widespread that the 
 honored soldier was not a trustworthy President. 
 
 An effort had been made by some of his ardent personal 
 friends, and the recipients of his favors, to obtain for him a 
 
358 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 nomination for a third term, but without success. That he 
 should have favored it, showed very clearly that he was 
 unconscious of the decline of his popularity, although the 
 evidences of it were before him in the losses which his party 
 had sustained in the recent election. He retired from public 
 life under a cloud, but his personal good fortune did not desert 
 him. The hold which his success as a soldier had given him 
 upon the hearts of the people had been shaken by his methods 
 of administering the government ; but it was too strong to be 
 uprooted by his mistakes as a civilian. An opportunity only 
 was wanting to show how strong this hold was, and this was 
 presented when he returned from the Old World loaded with 
 honors. In May, 1877, with the intention of going around the 
 world, he took passage in a Philadelphia steamship for Liver 
 pool. He was assured, in advance, of a friendly reception in 
 England. The troublesome questions which had arisen between 
 the two countries during the war had been amicably settled 
 while he was President, and there Avas a disposition on the 
 part of the English people, to give to one who had held the 
 highest office in the republic, and who had acquired great 
 distinction as a soldier, a hearty welcome, on his own account 
 and as an expression of their respect for the United States, and 
 a return for the kindness with which the Prince of Wales had 
 been treated when he visited this country some years before. 
 Besides, Lucius Fairchild was the United States Consul at 
 Liverpool ; Adam Badeau, Consul General at London ; and 
 Edwards Pierrepont, our representative at the court, all of 
 whom had been appointed by General Grant and were his 
 warm personal friends. All these circumstances combined to 
 make his reception at Liverpool, London, and other places 
 which he visited in Great Britain, gratifying to him and pleas 
 ing to his countrymen at home. 
 
 In order, however, that there might be no uncertainty in 
 regard to his reception, Mr. Pierrepont had, in advance, called 
 the attention of Lord Derby, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, 
 
GRANT S TOUR OF THE WORLD. 359 
 
 to the subject. He knew that the sympathies of the English 
 nobility in our civil war had been with the South, and that by 
 English army officers General Lee had been considered an abler 
 soldier than General Grant, and he feared that without his 
 intervention ex-President Grant might be treated with as little 
 consideration as ex-Presidents Yan Buren and Fillmore had 
 been when they visited England. He had no doubt in regard 
 to the manner in which he woukl be received by the middle 
 classes and common people, whose sympathies had been with 
 the Government in the civil war, but he had doubts as to the 
 nobility. He therefore had a plain talk with Lord Derby, and 
 obtained from him an assurance that, as an ex-President, 
 General Grant should be received by the British Government 
 with the same respect that was usually shown to ex-sovereigns. 
 This assurance was made good. Great Britain is not only one 
 of the most powerful of nations, but she excels all others in 
 her social influence. An indorsement by her Government is a 
 passport to high consideration everywhere, and to no foreigner 
 had this indorsement been more strongly given than it was to 
 General Grant. Thus indorsed, and with this indorsement 
 backed by his military reputation, he was the recipient of such 
 honors as had never before been paid to any one not of royal 
 lineage, in Germany, in Russia, in Sweden, in Spain, in Portu 
 gal. The European nations seemed to vie with each other in 
 honoring an ex-President of the United States who had com 
 manded armies not inferior to the best of their own. Nor did 
 honors cease to be paid to him when he left Europe. In 
 China, Japan, India, and Siam he was treated with the greatest 
 consideration by their highest officials. Equal honors awaited 
 him on his return to the United States. Not to be outdone 
 by foreigners, the principal cities through which he passed 
 from the Pacific to the Atlantic competed with each other in 
 honoring and welcoming home again one who had been so 
 honored abroad. In Philadelphia, where a year before his 
 presence excited no interest, he was received with an enthu- 
 
360 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 siasm never before witnessed in the Quaker City. All business 
 was suspended ; the people were seemingly mad with joy. 
 
 As General Grant had apparently regained his popularity, 
 a strong but unavailing effort was made to secure his nomina 
 tion for the Presidency. It was known that he would not be 
 an unwilling candidate, and it was thought by his friends that 
 the objection which prevailed against a third term would not 
 be in the way, as Mr. Hayes s administration had intervened. 
 He was strongly supported in the convention by some of the 
 ablest men of the party, but the sentiment against a third 
 term, consecutive or not, was strong, and there was nothing 
 in the recollection of his eight years administration to weaken 
 it. His defeat in the convention put an end to his political 
 aspirations. He must now remain in private life. He had 
 been greatly honored by his countrymen. His name was 
 known and respected throughout the world, but he was not 
 content. He had moved among the affluent, and had become 
 so accustomed to a free expenditure of money that nothing 
 except the highest political position seemed to him so desirable 
 as wealth. For rich men he had great respect ; for poor men, 
 no matter how distinguished they might be by intellectual 
 attainments, he had but little regard. He had felt the crush 
 ing influence of poverty for many years, and although his pay 
 as general of the army had been liberal, and before the com 
 mencement of his second presidential term the salary of the 
 President had been raised from $25,000 to $50,000 per year, 
 and he had been the recipient of many valuable presents, he 
 was, in comparison with most of his personal friends, poor. 
 The love of money grew with the free use of it by himself, 
 and by his observation of the influence which it commanded. 
 His ambition now was to be rich, and so strong was it, that 
 he was induced to enter into a business for which he had no 
 fitness, and with a man of no repute. His connection with 
 Ward, and the disgraceful failure of the firm one of the most 
 disgraceful failures that had ever occurred in the United States 
 
THE GKANT AND AVAKlTFAILUKE. 361 
 
 would have irretrievably ruined him in reputation as it did 
 financially, but for the wonderful hold which he had upon the 
 respect of the people for his military service and the current 
 belief in his personal integrity. 
 
 It was well known \vhen he was President that his 
 knowledge of men was very imperfect ; that he had been fre 
 quently imposed upon by those who understood his assailable 
 points ; that he had, to no small extent, been influenced in the 
 use of his patronage by political adventurers ; but that he 
 should have become the full partner of a speculator about 
 whose character he made no careful inquiry, giving to the firm 
 
 the business of which he did not take the trouble to investi 
 gate the credit of his honored name; that he should have 
 supposed that his firm was making money rapidly by govern 
 ment contracts, without reflecting that if the profits were real 
 the Government was being cheated, indicated such a want of 
 prudence, such childlike simplicity, as to amaze even those who 
 best understood his business incapacity, and stagger the faith 
 of those who knew him most intimately. For a time after 
 the failure, although his personal integrity was not generally 
 doubted, great indignation was felt and expressed against him ; 
 but after it became known that he had been hopelessly ruined 
 by the failure, and that one of his sons had been ruined also, 
 and that he had offered not only to surrender his private estate, 
 but even to pledge his medals to the creditors of the firm, indig 
 nation gave way to regret ; and when it was understood that his 
 sorrow and shame over this disreputable failure had aggravated, 
 if it did not produce, a painful and incurable disease of which 
 he was the victim, the deepest sympathy was felt for him, 
 which increased day by day until the end came and the whole 
 nation was in mournin-. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 The Navy The Blockade the Severest Blow given to the South Gallantry 
 on Both Sides Services of the Navy not confined to the Blockade Bat 
 tle between the " Monitor " and the " Virginia" the most Important Single 
 Event of the War Passage of the Union Ships by Forts Jackson and 
 St. Philip Capture of New Orleans Battle in Mobile Bay Gallantry 
 of Farragut Letter of Captain Theodoras Bailey The Effect of the War 
 upon our Merchant Marine. 
 
 THE navy shares with the array the honor of preserving 
 the national integrity. But for the navy, the rebellion 
 would not have been overcome. It was no small matter to 
 blockade the numerous ports of nearly a thousand miles of 
 sea-coast. They were blockaded, and it was the blockade that 
 isolated the Confederate States, and caused their exhaustion. 
 If the markets of Europe had been open to them for the sale 
 of their cotton and tobacco, and the purchase of supplies for 
 their armies, their subjugation would have been impossible. 
 It was not, as has been said, by defeats in the field, that the 
 Confederates were overcome, but by the exhaustion resulting 
 from their being shut up within their own domain, and com 
 pelled to rely upon themselves and their own productions. 
 The best blood of the South nearly all of its young and middle- 
 aged men was in its armies. When the war was over, there 
 were few Southern families from which there were not 
 sons or fathers missing ; and yet such was the devotion of the 
 people to their cause, that the depleted ranks of their armies, 
 would have been filled, and the war, on their part, have been 
 successfully maintained, if the blockade had not cut off all 
 external sources of supply and bankrupted their treasury. No 
 people under the sun ever displayed such self-sacrificing devo 
 tion to the cause for which they fought, as did the people of 
 
EFFECTIVENESS OF THE NAVY. 363 
 
 the South, in this the greatest of all civil wars. While many 
 of the leaders, controlled by ambitious and selfish considera 
 tions, desired the separation of the slave States from the free, 
 because they perceived that Southern influence was compara 
 tively on the wane, and the establishment of an independent 
 government of which they were to be the master spirits, 
 a very large majority of the Southern people believed that 
 State sovereignty, and the rights of property, were not safe 
 under the Government of the United States, and they shed their 
 blood as freely, and submitted to great sacrifices as willingly, 
 in defence of slavery, and what they considered the rights of 
 States, as they would have done if the avowed purpose of the 
 Government at the commencement of the war had been to 
 deprive the South of its constitutional rights and to free the 
 slaves, without compensation to their owners. " As a man 
 thinketh, so he is." The Southern people thought that they 
 were right in their interpretation of the Constitution, that to 
 their States, not to the Federal Government, primary allegi 
 ance was due, and it was for their rights, as they understood 
 them, that they fought to the bitter end. In this they were not 
 singular. Little of the fighting that the world has witnessed 
 has been for really justifiable causes, and yet there have been 
 but few wars, foreign or civil, in which to those engaged, 
 their rights or their honor did not seem to be at stake. All 
 have asked the divine blessing upon their arms, and the invo 
 cation has been as hearty on the one side as on the other on 
 the wrong as on the right. 
 
 It was not, however, by the blockade alone that the navy 
 rendered service to the government. Without the navy, the 
 Northern sea-ports might not have been safe. Without the navy, 
 New Orleans would not have been brought again under the 
 Union flag. Without the gun-boats, Vicksburg would not have 
 been captured ; nor without the gun-boats and the fleet, would 
 the Mississippi have been opened. In this war, with the 
 exception of the contest between the Monitor and the Vir- 
 
364 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 yinia, there was no opportunity for the display of seamanship, 
 and courage in engagements, fleet against fleet, or ship against 
 ship; but by the manner in which the wooden ships and the 
 gun-boats were handled at the various points, especially on the 
 Mississippi, below New Orleans, and at Mobile, ample evidence 
 was afforded that the American captains and seamen were 
 not deficient in the skill and bravery that distinguished their 
 predecessors in the wars between the United States and Eng 
 land. In proof of this it is only necessary to glance at two 
 or three instances in which these qualities were displayed. 
 
 The little United States Monitor, under the command of 
 John Lorimer "Worden, appeared in Hampton Roads just in 
 season to prevent the Confederate iron-clad Virginia from 
 completing the work which she had commenced the day before 
 in the destruction of the frigates Cumberland and Congress. 
 If the Monitor had arrived twelve hours later, or if she had 
 been worsted in the first fight between iron-clads, the other 
 frigates, the St. Louis, the Minnesota and the Roanoke, would 
 have shared the fate of the Cumberland and the Congress. The 
 conversion of the United States frigate Merrimac, which had 
 fallen into their possession when Norfolk was abandoned, into 
 an iron-clad was a feat in design and manufacturing skill which 
 was not expected of the Confederates. But for the opportune 
 arrival of the Monitor on the 9th of March, 1802, she would not 
 only have given the possession of Hampton Roads to the Con 
 federates, but every Northern sea-port might have been at her 
 mercy. The fight between these two iron-clads was of moment 
 ous importance to the United States and the Con federate gov 
 ernments ; but its influence was not confined to them it was 
 felt by every naval power in the world. It made iron and steel 
 substitutes for wood in the construction of ships of war. It 
 rendered valueless fleets upon which countless millions had 
 been expended. It revolutionized naval warfare. In its con 
 sequences, it was the most important of all naval battles. In 
 the management of his little craft in this fiirht with an iron- 
 
FARRAGUT S PASSAGE OF THE FORTS. 365 
 
 clad ship four times as large. Lieutenant (now Admiral) \Vor- 
 den won world-wide renown. The manner in which both of 
 these iron-clads were managed in this, the longest and most 
 interesting of naval duels, commanded the admiration of all 
 naval men. 
 
 I have always thought that this battle between the Monitor 
 and the Virginia was the most important single event of the 
 war. If the Monitor had been destroyed or captured, the 
 Northern sea-ports would have been at the mercy of the 
 Virginia, the blockade would have been raised, the Southern 
 sea-ports would have been opened to the world. All this 
 would have been speedily followed by the recognition of the 
 Confederacy as an independent State by France and England. 
 I never meet Admiral Worden, whom I cannot help admiring 
 for his modesty as well as for his gallantry and intelligence, 
 without feeling that but for him and the little Monitor the 
 national unity might not, and probably would not, have been 
 preserved. 
 
 While this battle between the Monitor and the Virginia 
 was the only naval contest, ship against ship, in the civil war, 
 no achievement of the British navy ever excelled in brilliancy 
 the passage of the wooden ships, on their way to New Orleans, 
 by the forts, Jackson and St. Philip, under such a fire as 
 Farragut said the world had never witnessed. It would have 
 been the grandest naval feat of the war had it not been fol 
 lowed by the battle in Mobile Bay. Nothing ever surpassed 
 the picturesque gallantry displayed by Farragut in this last- 
 named battle when, lashed to the rigging at the masthead 
 of the flag-ship, he directed the movements of his fleet under 
 the guns of two well-constructed and well-armed forts through 
 a channel well supplied with torpedoes, by the explosion of 
 one of which the iron-clad Tecumseh, which led the van, was 
 sunk. When the Tecumsek went down, there was hesitation 
 on the part of the captain of the Brooklyn, the next in line, 
 and there seemed to be confusion among the ships, which 
 
366 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 threatened disaster. " What is the trouble ? " asked Farragut 
 from his lofty perch on the Hartford, which was next to 
 the Brooklyn. " What s the matter there ?" "Torpedoes," 
 was the reply. " Damn the torpedoes ! " shouted Farragut ; 
 " the Hartford will take the lead ! " which she did. Order 
 was at once restored, and a grand victory was won. If there 
 is a record of valor superior to that displayed by Farragut 
 when lashed to the rigging of his ship, a target for the sharp 
 shooters of the forts, giving his orders through a speaking 
 trumpet, and when the leading gunboat had been destroyed 
 by a torpedo, taking her place with his own wooden ship ; 
 if there is a record of valor superior to that, I should not 
 know where to find it. 
 
 One who met Farragut in society, without knowing any 
 thing of his exploits, would not have dreamed that this retiring, 
 modest, simple-minded man, was one of the bravest and most 
 skilful men that ever trod a quarter deck. Blind to all consid 
 erations but his duty to his country, Farragut would have been 
 unconscious of his merits if he had not read the accounts of his 
 achievements, and been honored as he was by his countrymen 
 and the world. A native of Tennessee, he never for a moment 
 thought of following his State when she attempted to secede 
 from the Union. His allegiance to the Government was never 
 shaken. To him there was but one flag to be sustained the 
 stripes and stars, the flag of the Union. The enemies of that 
 flag were his enemies, although some of them were his kindred. 
 
 The spirit of our naval oificers was exhibited in a letter to 
 Farragut from Captain Theodorus Bailey, who took the lead 
 in the passage of the fleet on the Mississippi by the forts : " I 
 agree with you perfectly in ignoring personal interests and 
 private feelings, but going in heart and soul for the good of 
 the service and the perpetuation of the national interests. 
 Nothing will please me better than to hoist once more the 
 square red flag, and lead the van of your squadron into Mobile 
 Bay to the capture of Forts Morgan and Gaines, as well as 
 
OUR MARATIME PROSPECTS. 367 
 
 the city. Put me down for two chances, as the Jackass said 
 to the Monkey, in the Lion s ball." The gallant captain would 
 have been delighted to lead the way to Mobile, as he did to 
 2s"ew Orleans, but he was prevented by an attack of yellow 
 fever. 
 
 The most of the work performed by the navy in the civil 
 war was in co-operation with the land forces, to the move 
 ments of which the public attention was mainly directed ; but 
 its services lost none of their value from not being in the 
 foreground. Arduous and most important duties were faith 
 fully performed by the Union sailors, and whenever there was 
 an opportunity, gallantry of the highest character was dis 
 played by both officers and men. 
 
 There need be no apprehension in regard to our navy when 
 again we have one. With equal ships, we shall have nothing 
 to fear in a war with any other nation. Although with the 
 exception of the war with Mexico, in which war ships were not 
 required, there had been nearly fifty years of peace when the 
 civil war broke out, there had been no falling off in the naval 
 skill or the spirit of American seamen. Honorable as was 
 the record of our naval ships in the last war with England, 
 their record in this war will compare favorably with it. There 
 have been no naval achievements in which superior courage 
 and ability were displayed, than in those on the Mississippi 
 and in Mobile Bay. No nation can boast of naval officers of 
 whom it has had more reason to be proud than David G. Far- 
 ragut, David D. Porter, Theodoras Bailey, Thomas T. Craven 
 (who went down with the Tecumseh}, Charles S. Boggs, Thomas 
 A. Jenkins, and others of the same stamp. 
 
 As the result of our civil war, during which our merchant 
 ships were either destroyed or disposed of, and of the use of 
 iron and steel in ship building, and of penny-wise legislation 
 since the war, the glory of the United States as a maritime 
 and naval power has departed. Our surplus productions are 
 
368 MEX AXD MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 carried to foreign countries by foreign ships, and as we have 
 no merchant marine to be protected, the necessity of ships of 
 Avar for the defence of our sea-port cities has been overlooked. 
 With an overflowing treasury, and sixty millions of people, 
 our sea-coasts on both oceans are unprotected by any reliable 
 fortifications, and we have not a single ship that can be called 
 a first-class ship of war. Public attention is now being turned 
 to the danger to which the country is thus exposed, and the 
 indications are that at no distant day not only will our coast 
 defences be perfected, but that ships will be constructed which 
 Avill be an honor and safeguard to the nation. When this is 
 accomplished, if not before, may we not hope that an enlight 
 ened policy in regard to our foreign commerce and our mer 
 chant marine will prevail, and that Americans in foreign sea 
 ports will be cheered as of yore by the sight of the Stripes 
 and Stars, where they are now looked for in vain. 
 
CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Andrev 7 Johnson His Devotion to the Union His Early History His 
 Limited Advantages His Self-Reliance and Energy The Position 
 which he Took at the close of Mr. Buchanan s Administration While- 
 Military Governorof Tennessee, he visits Ohio and Indiana His Unfortu 
 nate Appearance when he took the Oath as Vice-President Mr. Lincoln s 
 Remarks About it He Takes the Oath of Office as President He Desires 
 the Members of Mr. Lincoln s Cabinet to Retain their Positions His 
 Reconstruction Policy His View of the Suffrage Question His Veto of 
 the Civil Rights Bill Extracts from his First Message to Congress 
 Views Expressed by Mr. Lincoln His First Message Approved by all the 
 Members of the Cabinet Management of the Different Departments 
 Left to their respective Heads Our Relations with Mexico under French 
 Domination Reference to them in the President s Message Action of 
 Mr. Seward, Secretary of State His Wisdom. 
 
 NO public man in the United States has been so imperfectly 
 understood as Andrew Johnson. None has been so diffi 
 cult to understand. He had few personal friends ; in no one 
 did he entirely confide. He had many faults, but he abounded 
 also in admirable qualities. His love of the Union was a 
 passion intensified by the dangers to which it had exposed 
 him, and by his labors in its defence. It was his devotion 
 to the Union which compelled him to oppose the Reconstruc 
 tion acts of Congress, which he thought would greatly retard, if 
 they did not prevent its perfect restoration. I differed from 
 him upon some subjects, but I never had reason to doubt his 
 patriotism, or his personal or official integrity. His history is 
 an interesting one. 
 
 Born in Raleigh, North Carolina, where there were no 
 free schools, he did not know the alphabet when, at the age 
 of ten, he was apprenticed to a tailor. His desire to learn to 
 read was created by hearing a man who used to visit the shop 
 read passages from the speeches of celebrated orators. To 
 24 
 
370 MKX AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 satisfy this desire, he purchased a spelling-book and by hard 
 study when he had time, he was able before the expiration of his 
 apprenticeship to read the speeches which he had listened to with 
 so deep an interest, and which gave birth to his ambition to be 
 an orator himself. Ability to read was the extent of his educa 
 tion, when he removed from Raleigh to Greenville, Tennessee^ 
 with his mother and sister, who were dependent upon him 
 for support ; and this was its extent until after his marriage. 
 His wife, for the time and place, was an accomplished young 
 woman. Under her instructions, he learned to write and 
 cipher. She was a loving teacher, the only teacher he ever 
 had, and he an apt and ambitious scholar. Such were the educa 
 tional advantages of Andrew Johnson. Who that knew him 
 then this poor young man, the pupil of his wife, earning by 
 his shears and his needle a scanty support for himself and his 
 dependents in a slave-holding State, where manual labor was a 
 degradation who that knew this young man in these circum 
 stances, could have anticipated his future career ? In whose 
 life were there ever such wonderful changes changes which 
 so illustrate the character of republican institutions ! Had he 
 been born and reared under a monarchy, he would have been, 
 unless he emigrated, a restless, discontented subject. In a 
 republic where no repressing influences were at work, or none 
 which brains and energy could not overcome, he rose step by 
 step from the very lowest station in life to the highest. He 
 owed nothing to luck. He was his own architect. To noth 
 ing was he indebted for his rise except the strong qualities 
 which he inherited, and an open field for their development 
 and exercise. The usual controlling influences of men in his 
 position were all against bim> when he made Greenville his 
 home, and for some years after. He was a tailor, and depend 
 ent upon his own hands for the maintenance of his family. 
 The power of slavery in degrading free labor was less potent 
 in eastern than in western Tennessee, and in the other slave- 
 holding States ; but it was strong there, and dominant, until 
 
AXDUKW JOIIXSOX. 371 
 
 he successfull} r resisted it. While working at his trade, he 
 was elected Mayor of Greenville; next a member of the State 
 Legislature ; next a member of the State Senate ; and he 
 continued to work at his trade, as far as his public duties would 
 permit, until he was elected a member of Congress in 1843. If 
 I mistake not, he was the first tradesman who was sent to Con 
 gress from a slave State. He continued by successive elections 
 to represent his district in Congress until 1853, when he was 
 elected Governor of Tennessee. In 1857, he took his seat as a 
 United States Senator, to which he had been elected the year 
 before. In 1862 he was appointed by President Lincoln Mili 
 tary Governor of Tennessee, which position he held when he 
 was elected Vice-President. On the 14th of April, 1865, he 
 became President. From 1869 to 1875 he was in private 
 life. In 1875, he was again elected a United States Senator. 
 He died in July, of that year, after having served a single 
 session. Such is an outline of the life of one of the extra 
 ordinary men of his time. Until 1861, he was a Democrat, 
 and a supporter of all the leading measures of the Demo 
 cratic party. In 1860, he favored the nomination of Brecken- 
 ridge and Lane for President and Vice-President, and gave 
 support to that ultra Democratic ticket. In 1861, he severed 
 his connection with that wing of the party, and became a 
 strong opponent of secession and a hearty champion of the 
 Union, the only distinguished politician of the South who never 
 faltered in his adhesion to the Government. Up to the time 
 of his election as Yice-President, everything had gone well 
 with him. By his opposition to secession, he had provoked 
 the bitter hostility of the leading men of the South, but he 
 had won the admiration of all loyal men throughout the 
 country/ The current of popular opinion was turned against 
 him by the rambling and incoherent speech which he made 
 on the 4th of March, 1865, upon taking the Vice-President s 
 chair ; it became irresistible long before the expiration of his 
 term as President. I 
 
372 MEX AXD MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 My attention was first directed to Mr. Johnson by the 
 decided stand which he took in the closing months of Mr. 
 Buchanan s administration against the secession movement. 
 His speeches in the Senate in that trying period in our national 
 history were remarkable for their boldness and force. He was 
 in that body the only outspoken, uncompromising supporter 
 of the Union from the South. Disregarding the threats of 
 personal violence by prominent men in Tennessee, which were 
 significantly referred to in the Senate chamber by some of 
 the advocates of secession from the South, he stood before 
 the country as an earnest defender of the Government as it 
 was, the hearty opponent of all attempts to dismember it. 
 While he was performing his duty as a United States Senator, 
 at the special session in 1861, his family were driven from their 
 home and subjected to persecution and ill treatment, by which 
 the health of his wife was permanently injured. No man was 
 more attached to his family than he was, but he felt that his 
 country had the highest claim upon him, and he remained at 
 his post until the session was closed. His duties as military 
 governor put both his executive ability and his personal 
 courage to the severest tests, but they were performed in a 
 manner which challenged the respect of even his personal and 
 political enemies in Tennessee, and secured approbation in 
 Washington. In March, 1864, although the Confederacy was 
 still strong, and Tennessee was overrun by gangs of Confeder 
 ate marauders, elections were held by his orders for State and 
 county offices, and the machinery for civil government was 
 put in operation. Tennessee was thus saved from the utter 
 disorganization which prevailed in the other Southern States, 
 except Louisiana, upon the collapse of the Confederate Govern 
 ment in the following spring. While he was military governor, 
 Mr. Johnson made brief visits to Ohio and Indiana. Plis 
 speeches in both States were in full accord with the Union 
 sentiment of the loyal people, and were listened to with great 
 favor by the many thousands who flocked to hear him. I was 
 
LINCOLX OX JOIINSOX. 373 
 
 then living in Indiana, and I shared in the enthusiasm which 
 his visits excited. 
 
 I was not present when Mr. Johnson took the oath of Yice- 
 President in the Senate chamber, but the reports of his speech 
 on that occasion amazed me. It was so different from what 
 had been expected of him, so incoherent, so rambling, that 
 those who listened to it thought that he was intoxicated. " It 
 was not," said a senator to me the next morning, " the speech 
 of Andrew Johnson, but the speech of a drunken man ; " and 
 such it undoubtedly was. He had been ill for some days before 
 he left home, and on his way to Washington had taken brandy 
 as an astringent. On the day of his inauguration as Vice- 
 President he was really ill, and was so unwise as to resort to a 
 stimulant before he went to the Senate chamber. His appear 
 ance and speech on that occasion made a most unfavorable 
 impression upon the crowded assembly, and fears were excited 
 that, at the time when wise and sober counsels were especially 
 required, an intemperate man had been elected Vice-President. 
 These fears were groundless, but the report of his appearance 
 and speech made an impression upon minds suspicious of all 
 Southern men that was never entirely removed. I had then 
 no personal acquaintance with him, and I shared in the distrust 
 which generally prevailed. Meeting Mr. Lincoln a day or two 
 after, I said to him that the country, in view of the Vice-Presi 
 dent s appearance on the 4th, had a deeper stake than ever in 
 his life. He hesitated for a moment, and then remarked with 
 unusual seriousness: " I have known Andy Johnson for many 
 years ; he made a bad slip the other day, but you need not be 
 scared ; Andy ain t a drunkard." 
 
 This remark of Mr. Lincoln came home to me when, a few 
 weeks afterwards, I heard Mr. Johnson take the oath as Presi 
 dent. Mr. Lincoln was right. Mr. Johnson was especially 
 intemperate as a speaker when defending his policy and reply 
 ing to the severe criticism to which he was subjected, but not in 
 the use of liquor. I had good opportunities for observing his 
 
374 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 habits, and my fears made me watchful. For six weeks after 
 he became President, he occupied a room adjoining mine, and 
 communicating with it, in the Treasury Department. He was 
 there every morning before nine o clock, and he rarely left 
 before five. There was no liquor in his room. It was open to 
 everybody. His luncheon, when he had one, was, like mine, a 
 cup of tea and a cracker. It was in that room that he received 
 the delegations that waited upon him, and the personal and 
 political friends who called to pay their respects. It was there 
 that he made the speeches which startled the country by the 
 bitterness of their tone their almost savage denunciations 
 of secessionists as traitors who merited the traitors doom. 
 So intemperate were some of these speeches, that I should have 
 attributed them to the use of stimulants if I had not known 
 them to be the speeches of a sober man, who could not over 
 come the habit of denunciatory declamation which he had 
 formed in his bitter contests in Tennessee. They were, like 
 all of his subsequent offhand addresses, quite unsuited to his 
 position as President. If he had been smitten with dumbness 
 when he was elected Vice-President, he would have escaped a 
 world of trouble. From that time onward he never made 
 an offhand public speech by which he did not suffer in public 
 estimation, but none of them could be charged to the account 
 of strong drink. For nearly four years I had daily intercourse 
 with him, frequently at night, and I never saw him .when 
 under the influence of liquor. I have no hesitation in saying 
 that whatever may have been his faults, intemperance was 
 not among them. There was a marked difference between 
 his carefully-prepared papers and his offhand speeches. The 
 former were well written and dignified ; the latter were incon 
 siderate, retaliatory, and in a style which could only be tole 
 rated in the heat of a political campaign hence the opinion 
 that they were made when he was under the influence of liquor. 
 It was at his hotel, on the morning of the 14th of April, 
 that the oath of office as President was administered to Mr. 
 
TAKES THE OATH AS PRESIDENT. 375 
 
 Johnson by Chief-Justice Chase, in the presence of the mem 
 bers of the Lincoln Cabinet (except Mr. Seward) and two or 
 three senators who happened to be in the city. The ceremony 
 was simple, but the circumstances w r ere painful and alarming. 
 Mr. Lincoln s body, from which life had departed but a few 
 hours before, had just been conveyed to the White House, 
 which he had left the evening before in the best of spirits. 
 Mr. Seward was lying upon his bed desperately, if not fatally, 
 wounded. It had been a night of horrors. Mr. Lincoln had 
 been slain in a theatre; Mr. Seward had been assaulted in 
 his bedroom, and reports were current that attempts had 
 been made to assassinate the Vice-President and the Secretary 
 of War. The streets were thronged with deeply excited but 
 undemonstrative people. A feeling of uncertainty and depres 
 sion pervaded the community. The blow which had been 
 struck against the Government through its chief was so unex 
 pected and terrible, that the bravest seemed to be awe-struck 
 and staggered. Vigorous measures had been taken by the 
 Secretary of War to prevent the escape of the assassins, but 
 there were no visible enemies to be struck. Many thought 
 that the Confederates, having been defeated in war, were 
 attempting to break up the Government by assassinating its 
 officials that bloody treason was lurking throughout jthe 
 city. There were doubtless some in Washington who were 
 exultant over what had happened ; soine there were who 
 were suspected of being desperate traitors, if ncrl^participants 
 in the terrible crimes which had been committed, but they 
 were not in the, crowd, nor in the. streets. If they had been, 
 and attention Tiad b"5eh directed to then, their doom would 
 have been speedily sealed. Vengeance was ready to do its 
 work ; objects to wreak its force upon only were wanting. 
 Such were the circumstances under which Mr. Johnson was 
 called upon to undertake the duties of President. There was 
 to be no interregnum. The Government was not to be with 
 out a head for a day, if delay could be avoided. 
 
376 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 The conduct of Mr. Johnson favorably impressed those 
 who were present when the oath was administered to him. 
 He was griefstricken like the rest, and he seemed to be 
 oppressed by the suddenness of the call upon him to become 
 President of the great nation which had been deprived by an 
 assassin of its tried and honored chief ; but he was, neverthe 
 less, calm and self-possessed. He requested the members of 
 the Cabinet to remain with him after the Chief Justice and 
 the other witnesses of the ceremony had retired, and he 
 expressed to each and all of us his desire that we should stand 
 by him in his difficult and responsible position. This desire 
 was expressed in the language of entreaty, and he appeared to 
 be relieved when he was assured that while we felt it to be our 
 duty to him to place our resignations in his hands, he should 
 have the benefit of such services as we could render until he 
 saw fit to dispense with them. Our conference with him was 
 short, but when we left him, the unfavorable impression which 
 had been made upon us by the reports of his unfortunate 
 speech when he took the Yice-President s chair had under 
 gone a considerable change. We all felt as we left him, not 
 entirely relieved of apprehensions, but at least hopeful that he 
 would prove to be a popular and judicious President. The 
 hopes of none of us were fully realized as time went on and 
 controversies arose between him and Congress ; but his first 
 year s administration was cordially supported by every mem 
 ber of his Cabinet. 
 
 Upon leaving the President, each of the members went to 
 his department sad and sorrowful, but still with the feeling 
 that the republic was safe, and that the Government itself had 
 not been even weakened by the great calamity that had befal 
 len it. To the Assistant Treasurer in New York, I sent a 
 message advising him that the Yice-President had taken the 
 oath as President, and that the public business would go on 
 without intermission or disturbance. From the other depart 
 ments encouraging messages were also sent out, and these, 
 
JOHNSOX AND THE CIVIL SERVICE. 377 
 
 together with the reports that no changes in the Cabinet were 
 contemplated, did much to prevent alarm and distrust through 
 out the country. After Mr. Lincoln s remains had been buried 
 at Springfield, and the President had taken possession of the 
 Executive Mansion, the executive business of the Government 
 was taken up where it had been left by Mr. Lincoln. 
 
 It is not my purpose to review Mr. Johnson s administra 
 tion, but there were some things about which he was mis 
 understood or misrepresented, to which I must briefly refer. 
 Mr. Johnson was a man of unblemished personal integrity. 
 He was an honest man, and his administration was an honest 
 and clean administration. In this respect it will bear com 
 parison with any that preceded or has followed it. In 
 appointments, money was not potent. Offices were not mer 
 chandise. The President never permitted himself to be placed 
 under personal obligations to any one. He received no pres 
 ents. The horses and carriage which were sent to him soon 
 after he became President were promptly returned. When 
 he was so unwise as to suppose that there might be a third 
 party, of which he was to be the head, he did, under the 
 advise of injudicious friends, make some official changes to 
 accomplish this object ; but there were fewer changes than are 
 usually made even when an administration follows one of the 
 same partv. There were more offices connected with the 
 Treasury Department than with any other, and it is due to 
 Mr. Johnson that I should say that his desire seemed always 
 to be that it should be fairly and honestly administered, and, 
 except for a very brief period, independently of political con 
 siderations.! In no instance did he interfere with its manage 
 ment. In nis bitter contest with Congress, although most of 
 the employees of the department were politically opposed to 
 him and his Eeconstruction policy, he never even suggested 
 that changes should be made for that reason. \ If he did not 
 declare that public offices were public trusts, his actions proved 
 that he so regarded them. In some matters I doubted the 
 
378 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTITKY. 
 
 correctness of his judgment, but I never doubted his devotion 
 to what he considered his duty to the country, and the whole 
 country. lie was a laborious, painstaking man. For him, 
 fashionable watering-places had no attractions. Neither by 
 him nor by any member of his Cabinet was recuperation 
 sought at the seaside or in the mountains. His administration 
 had little popular and no distinctive party support ; but judged 
 by its merits, as sooner or later it will be, it will cast no dis 
 credit upon the national honor. 
 
 The first great work which demanded the attention of Mr. 
 Johnson and his Cabinet was the restoration of the relations 
 between the Southern States and the Government, which he 
 and the members of his Cabinet regarded as having, been 
 suspended but not destroyed by the war; and this work 
 was taken up just where Mr. Lincoln had left it. The very 
 same instrument for restoring the national authority over 
 North Carolina, and placing her where she stood before her 
 attempted secession, which had been approved by Mr. Lincoln, 
 was by Mr. Stanton presented at the first Cabinet meeting 
 which was held at the Executive Mansion after Mr. Lincoln s 
 death, and having been carefully considered at two or three 
 meetings, was adopted as the Reconstruction policy of the 
 Administration. As the work went on during the summer and 
 autumn, there were complaints, chiefly from men who were 
 opposed to what they called the re-admission to the Union of 
 the Southern States before Congress had authorized it. Their 
 contention was, that manhood suffrage, irrespective of color, 
 should be the corner-stone in the reconstruction of the South 
 ern States, and that they should remain under military control 
 until that question was settled, and until Congress should 
 determine what else should be required in order that they 
 might regain the right which they had forfeited by their 
 rebellion. The President and his Cabinet, on the contrary, 
 thought that the best interests of the whole country demanded 
 that the work of reconstruction should go on as rapidly as wa? 
 
THE RECONSTRUCTION POLICY. 379 
 
 possible, and as it had been commenced. Neither he nor either 
 of his counselors thought it advisable that a special session 
 of Congress should be called, or that reconstruction should be 
 delayed until the regular session. All thought as the Execu 
 tive action was in harmony with the views of Mr. Lincoln, 
 which were well known, before his second election that the 
 true Union sentiment of the country would be satisfied with 
 what was being done, notwithstanding the adverse criticism of 
 some prominent men and a few public journals. In my 
 address at Fort Wayne, I referred to the reconstruction policy 
 of the Administration as follows : 
 
 " Under the President s direction the great work of re-estab 
 lishing civil government at the South under the Federal Con 
 stitution is going rapidly forward too rapidly, it seems, accord 
 ing to the opinion of many at the North whose opinions are 
 entitled to great consideration. I know, sir, that many doubt 
 the wisdom of Mr. Johnson s policy ; that many are of the 
 opinion that by their ordinance of secession the rebellious States 
 had ceased to be States under the Constitution, and that noth 
 ing should be done by the Executive in aid of the restoration of 
 their State governments until Congress had determined on what 
 terms they should be restored to the Union which they had 
 voluntarily abandoned and attempted to destroy ; that as the 
 people of these States had appealed to the sword and been 
 subjugated by the sword, they should be governed by the 
 sword until the law-making power had disposed of the subject 
 of Reconstruction ; that no State that had passed ordinances of 
 secession and united with the so-called Confederate Govern 
 ment should ever be admitted again into the Union unless 
 in its preliminary proceedings all men, irrespective of color, 
 should be permitted to vote, nor without provisions in its 
 Constitution for the absolute enfranchisement of the negro. 
 Some go even farther than this, and demand the confiscation 
 of the property of all rebels and the application of the pro 
 ceeds to the payment of the national debt. 
 
 " These are not, I apprehend, the views of a respectable 
 minority. I know that they are not the views of a majority of 
 the people of the North. The better opinion is, that the States 
 which attempted to secede never ceased to be States in the 
 Union ; that all their acts of secession were of no effect ; that 
 during the progress of the revolt, the exercise of the Federal 
 
380 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 authority was merely suspended, and that there never was a 
 moment when the allegiance of the people of the insurrec 
 tionary States was not due to the Government, and when the 
 Government was not bound to maintain its authority over them 
 and extend protection to those who required it. When the 
 rebellion was overcome, the so-called Confederate Government, 
 and all State Governments which had been formed in opposi 
 tion to the Federal Government, ceased to have even a nominal 
 existence, and the people who had been subject to them were 
 left, for the time being, without any government whatever. 
 The term of office of the Federal officers had expired, or the 
 offices had become vacant by the treason of those who held 
 them. There were no Federal revenue officers, no competent 
 Federal judges, and no organized Federal courts. Nor were the 
 people any better off so far as State authority was regarded. 
 When the Confederacy collapsed, all the rebel State govern 
 ments collapsed with it, so that, with a few exceptions, there 
 were no persons holding civil office at the South by the author 
 ity of any legitimate government. 
 
 " Now, as a government is at all times a necessity among 
 men, and as it was especially so at the South, where violence 
 and lawlessness had full sway, the question to be decided by 
 the President was simply this : Shall the people of the recently 
 rebellious States be held under military rule until Congress 
 shall act upon the question ; or shall immediate measures be 
 taken by the Executive to restore to them civil governments ? 
 After mature consideration, the President concluded it to be 
 his duty to adopt the latter course, and I am satisfied that in 
 doing so he has acted wisely. Military rule will not be 
 endured by "the people of the United States one moment 
 longer than there is absolute necessity for it. Such an army 
 as would have been requisite for the government of the people 
 of the South, as a subjugated people, until Congress might 
 prescribe the terms on which they could be restored to the 
 Union, would have been too severe a strain upon our republi 
 can institutions, and too expensive for the present condition of 
 the Treasury. The President has, therefore, gone to work to 
 restore the Union by the use, from the necessity of the case, 
 of a portion of those who have been recently in arms to 
 overthrow it. The experiment may be regarded as a dan 
 gerous one, but it will be proved, I apprehend, to have been a 
 judicious one. I have met a great man} 7 " of those whom the 
 President is using in his Kestoration policy, and they have 
 impressed me most favorably. I believe them to be honest 
 in taking the amnesty oath, and in their pledges of fidelity to 
 
VETO OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS BILL. 381 
 
 the Constitution and the Union. Slavery has perished this 
 all acknowledge and with it has gone down the doctrine of 
 secession. State sovereignty had been discussed in Congress, 
 before courts, in the public journals, and among the people, 
 and at last when madness ruled the hour, this vexed question 
 was submitted to the final arbitrament of the sword. The 
 question, as all admit, has been fairly and definitely decided, 
 and from this decision of the sword there will be no appeal. 
 It is undoubtedly true that the men of the South feel sore at 
 the result, but they accept the situation, and are preparing for 
 the changes which the war has produced in their domestic 
 institutions with an alacrity and an exhibition of good feeling 
 which has, I confess, surprised as it has gratified me. 
 
 " In the work of restoration the President has aimed to do 
 only that which was necessary to be done, exercising only that 
 power which could be properly exercised under the Constitu 
 tion, which guarantees to every State a republican form of 
 government. Regarding slavery as having perished in the 
 rebellious States, either by the proclamation of his predecessor 
 or by the result of the war ; and determining that no rebel 
 who had not purged himself of his treason should have any 
 part in the restoration of the civil governments which he is 
 aiding to establish, he has not considered it within the scope 
 of his authority to go farther, and enfranchise the negro. For 
 this he is censured by many true men at the Xorth, and a few 
 extreme men at the South, but I have no doubt that he will 
 be sustained by the people, and that the result will vindicate 
 the wisdom of his course." 
 
 My somewhat confident expectations were not realized. 
 The very imprudent speech that was made by the President 
 in February, 1866, and his veto of the Civil Rights bill in the 
 following month, in which, according to a recent decision of 
 the Supreme Court, he was right, turned not only the Republi 
 can party but the general public sentiment of the Northern 
 States against him, and from that time onward there was open 
 hostility between the executive and the legislative branches of 
 the Government. There were some incidental questions of 
 disagreement between them, but the most important one was 
 the suffrage question. Mr. Johnson, although an earnest 
 opponent of secession, was equally opposed to federal centrali- 
 
382 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 zation. He believed, as did Mr. Jefferson, the father of the 
 Democratic party, that all rights which were not clearly con 
 ferred upon the Government by the Constitution, or which 
 were not fairly inferable from those which were expressly 
 granted, were reserved by the States. He believed that in 
 these reserved rights the right of secession was not included, 
 and he believed also that the Government had no authority to 
 declare who should be citizens of the States, or what, within 
 the States, should be the qualification of voters. His views 
 upon this subject were fairly presented in the following 
 passages from his first message, one of the most judicious 
 executive papers which was ever sent to Congress. It is the 
 same that Mr. Adams referred to in his letter to Mr. Brooks : 
 
 The relations of the General Government towards the 
 four millions of inhabitants whom the war has called into 
 freedom, have engaged my most serious consideration. On the 
 propriety of attempting to make the freedmen electors by 
 the proclamation of the Executive, I took for my counsel the 
 Constitution itself, the interpretations of that instrument by its 
 authors and their contemporaries, and recent legislation by 
 Congress. When, at the first movement towards independence, 
 the Congress of the United States instructed the several States 
 to institute governments of their own, they left each State to 
 decide for itself the conditions for the enjoyment of the elective 
 franchise. During the period of the Confederacy, there con 
 tinued to exist a very great diversity in the qualifications of 
 electors in the several States ; and even within a State a dis 
 tinction of qualifications prevailed with regard to the officers 
 who were to be chosen. The Constitution of the United 
 States recognizes these diversities when it enjoins that, in the 
 choice of members of the House of Representatives of the 
 United States, the electors in each State shall have the quali 
 fications requisite for electors of the most numerous branch of 
 the State Legislature. After the formation of the Constitu 
 tion, it remained, as before, the uniform usage for each State 
 to enlarge the body of its electors, according to its own 
 judgment ; and, under this system, one State after another 
 has proceeded to increase the number of its electors, until now 
 universal suffrage, or something very near it. is the general 
 rule. So fixed was this reservation of power in the habits o! 
 
JOHNSON S FIRST MESSAGE. 383 
 
 the people, and so unquestioned has been the interpretation 
 of the Constitution, that during the civil war the late Presi 
 dent never harbored the purpose certainly never avowed the 
 purpose of disregarding it ; and in the acts of Congress, 
 during that period, nothing can be found which, during the 
 continuance of hostilities, much less after their close, would 
 have sanctioned any departure by the Executive from a policy 
 which has so uniformly obtained. Moreover, a concession of 
 the elective franchise to the freedmen, by act of the President 
 of the United States, must have been extended to all colored 
 men, wherever found, and so must have established a change 
 of suffrage in the Northern, Middle and "Western States, not 
 less than in the Southern and Southwestern. Such an act 
 would have created a new class of voters, and would have 
 been an assumption of power by the President which nothing 
 in the Constitution or laws of the United States would have 
 warranted. 
 
 " On the other hand, every danger of conflict is avoided 
 when the settlement of the question is referred to the several 
 States. They can, each for itself, decide on the measure, and 
 whether it is to be adopted at once and absolutely, or intro 
 duced gradually and with conditions. In my judgment, the 
 freedmen, if they show patience and manly virtues, will sooner 
 obtain a participation in the elective franchise through the 
 States than through the General Government, even if it had 
 power to intervene. When the tumult of emotions that have 
 been raised by the suddenness of the social change shall have 
 subsided, it may prove that they will receive the kindliest 
 usage from some of those on whom they have heretofore most 
 closely depended. 
 
 " But while I have no doubt that now, after the close of 
 the war, it is not competent for the General Government to 
 extend the elective franchise in the several States, it is equally 
 clear that good faith requires the security of the freedmen in 
 their liberty and their property, their right to labor, and their 
 right to claim the just return of their labor. I cannot too 
 strongly urge a dispassionate treatment of this subject, which 
 should be carefully kept aloof from all party strife. We must 
 equally avoid hasty assumptions of any natural impossibility 
 for the two races to live side by side in a state of mutual 
 benefit and good will. The experiment involves us in no 
 inconsistency ; Jet us, then, go on and make that experiment in 
 good faith, and not be too easily disheartened. The country 
 is in need of labor, and the freedmen are in need of employ 
 ment, culture and protection. While their right of voluntary 
 
384 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 migration and expatriation is not to be questioned, I would 
 not advise their forced removal and colonization. Let us 
 rather encourage them to honorable and useful industry, where 
 it may be beneficial to themselves and to the country ; and, 
 instead of hasty anticipations of the certainty of failure, let 
 there be nothing wanting to the fair trial of the experiment. 
 The change in their condition is the substitution of labor by 
 contract for the status of slavery. The freedman cannot fairly 
 be accused of unwillingness to work, so long as a doubt 
 remains about his freedom of choice in his pursuits, and the 
 certainty of his recovering his stipulated wages. In this the 
 interests of the employer and the employed coincide. The 
 employer desires in his workmen spirit and alacrity, and these 
 can be permanently secured in no other way. And if the one 
 ought to be able to enforce the contract, so ought the other. 
 The public interest will be best promoted if the several States 
 will provide adequate protection and remedies for the freed- 
 men. Until this is in some way accomplished there is no 
 chance for the advantageous use of their labor ; and the blame 
 of ill success will not rest on them. 
 
 " I know that sincere philanthropy is earnest for the imme 
 diate realization of its remotest aims ; but time is always an 
 element in reform. It is one of the greatest acts on record to 
 have brought four millions of people into freedom. The career 
 of free industry must be fairly opened to them ; and then 
 their future prosperity and condition must, after all, rest 
 mainly on themselves. If they fail, and so perish away, let 
 us be careful that the failure shall not be attributable to any 
 denial of justice. In all that relates to the destiny of the 
 f reedmen we need not be too anxious to read the future ; many 
 incidents which, from a speculative point of view, might raise 
 alarm will quietly settle themselves. 
 
 " Now that slavery is at an end or near its end, the great 
 ness of its evil, in the point of view of public economy, 
 becomes more and more apparent. Slavery was essentially a 
 monopoly of labor, and as such locked the States where it 
 prevailed against the incoming of free industry. Where labor 
 was the property of the capitalist, the white man was excluded 
 from employment, or had but the second best chance of find 
 ing it ; and the foreign emigrant turned away from the region 
 where his condition would be so precarious. With the destruc 
 tion of the monopoly, free labor will hasten from all parts of 
 the civilized world to assist in developing various and immeas 
 urable resources which have hitherto lain dormant. The eight 
 or nine States nearest the Gulf of Mexico have a soil of exu- 
 
NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 385 
 
 berant fertility, a climate friendly to long life, and can sustain 
 a denser population than is found as yet in any part of our 
 country. And the future influx of population to them will be 
 mainly from the North, or from the most cultivated nations in 
 Europe. From the sufferings that have attended them during 
 our late struggle let us look away to the future, which is sure 
 to be laden for them with greater prosperity than has ever 
 before been known. The removal of the monopoly of slave 
 labor is a pledge that those regions will be peopled by a numer 
 ous and enterprising population, which will vie with any in 
 the Union in compactness, inventive genius, wealth, and 
 industry." 
 
 These patriotic and statesmanlike views were supposed to 
 be in harmony with those which had been entertained by Mr. 
 Lincoln. They were approved by all the members of the 
 Cabinet, of which Edwin M. Stanton, James Harlan, James 
 Speed and William Dennison were members ; and as far as 
 could be judged from the general tone of the press by a very 
 large majority of the people irrespective of party. A change 
 took place in the sentiment of Republicans as soon as it was 
 discovered that the President and Congress were not to work 
 together harmoniously, and the opinion became general in the 
 Republican party that without the ballot the recent slaves 
 would be only nominally free ; that by the ballot alone could 
 their emancipation be made certain. Whether the condition 
 of the colored people of the South has been improved by their 
 possession of the elective franchise, bestowed as it was by 
 Congress, is still, I think an open question. Many are of the 
 opinion (and I am one of the number) that it would have been 
 better for them and for the whole country if the suffrage 
 question had been left to the States where it properly 
 belonged that the enfranchisement of people recently in ser 
 vitude, ignorant and degraded as they were, should have been 
 made dependent upon their ability to execute the franchise 
 intelligently. That emigrants from Europe, destitute of the 
 knowledge which ought to be regarded as essential for the 
 proper use of the ballot, have caused a dangerous degradation of 
 25 
 
386 MEX AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 the elective franchise, and that this danger has been increased 
 by the extension of the franchise to the recent slaves, cannot 
 be gainsaid. The experiment of manhood suffrage is one of 
 momentous importance. It certainly is not working well in 
 our large cities. What will be its result when the whole 
 country becomes densely settled, is among the uncertainties of 
 the future which cannot be contemplated without misgivings. 
 In concluding this brief reference to President Johnson s 
 action in regard to the restoration of the seceded States to 
 their places in the Union, it is due to him that I should say 
 that in considering the constitutional questions involved, he 
 was guided by his Attorney-General, Henry Stanbery, one 
 of the most accomplished lawyers of the day, and second to 
 none in sound judgment and in personal integrity and honor./ 
 The management of the affairs of the different depart 
 ments of the Government was left by the President, as it had 
 been by Mr. Lincoln, to their respective heads, and it was not 
 often that any Cabinet member presented at the Cabinet 
 meetings a departmental subject for consideration or advice. 
 The only question upon which I ever asked the opinion of 
 the President and the Cabinet was in regard the appointment 
 to the revenue offices in the Southern States of men who could 
 not take the iron-clad oath to which I have already referred. 
 There were, however, some questions of an important charac 
 ter which were not departmental, and these were considered 
 at Cabinet meetings. One was Reconstruction ; another, and 
 next to Reconstruction one of the most interesting, was our 
 relations with Mexico, then under French domination. The 
 invasion of Mexico by the Emperor of the French, and his 
 attempt to establish an hereditary monarchical government 
 in that country, with the Austrian Archduke Maximilian at 
 its head, in the most critical period of our civil war, created a 
 great deal of feeling throughout the Northern States. It was 
 not only in contravention of the Monroe Doctrine that no 
 monarchical government should be established by foreign 
 
THE MEXICAN DIFFICULTY. 387 
 
 arms on this side of the Atlantic, but it was regarded as an 
 indirect movement in aid of the Confederacy. There had 
 been diplomatic correspondence between this country and 
 France, but nothing was done by the Executive to direct pub 
 lic attention to this important matter until after the close of 
 the rebellion. In his first message, President Johnson referred 
 to it in the following language : " The correspondence between 
 the United States and France in reference to questions which 
 have become subjects of discussion between the two Govern 
 ments, will, at a proper time, be laid before Congress." This 
 was done soon after, and it is enough to say of it, that it 
 exhibited Mr. Seward s \vell-known ability as a writer and as 
 a diplomatist, to the best advantage. 
 
 It was upon the Mexican question that the first difference 
 arose between Mr. Johnson s Administration and the general 
 of the army. No sooner had our civil war been terminated, 
 than General Grant became the advocate of forcible measures 
 for freeing our sister republic from the presence of her ene 
 mies. He expressed to the President and to Mr. Seward the 
 opinion that notice should be given to the French Govern 
 ment that the presence of its army in Mexico could no longer 
 be tolerated by the United States, and that unless it was 
 speedily withdrawn, the United States would be bound, in 
 maintaining their well-known policy, to aid the Mexicans in 
 expelling them. General Grant was not content with the 
 frequent and earnest expression of his opinion in regard to 
 what the action of his Government should be ; he ordered 
 troops to the frontier, not only for readiness to march into 
 Mexico in case war should be declared, but apparently to pro 
 voke hostilities, and thus make war between the two countries 
 unavoidable. Mr. Seward s views, which were in harmony 
 with those of the President and the President s other advisers, 
 were in accord with those of General Grant, that the presence 
 of French troops was not only a continuance of wanton 
 aggression against Mexico, but a defiance of the well-known 
 
388 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 doctrine of the United States that monarchy should not be 
 established by foreign powers on this side of the Atlantic. 
 His views had been forcibly presented to the French Govern 
 ment, and he had reason to suppose that they were receiving- 
 respectful consideration. While endeavoring to effect the 
 withdrawal of the French from Mexico by diplomacy, he 
 thought, of course, that menaces should be avoided, and that 
 force should not be resorted to. The statesman was much 
 wiser than the soldier. Mr. Seward knew that the invasion 
 of Mexico had been in the interests of the Confederate States, 
 the independence of which, and the breaking up of the great 
 republic, had been hopefully, if not confidently expected by 
 France as well as by England, and that the success of the Gov 
 ernment in its war for self-preservation had made it abortive. 
 He knew that the invasion of Mexico had never been popular 
 with the French people, and that, as it was burdensome upon 
 their treasury without reflecting glory upon the French arms, 
 it was becoming odious to them. He knew also that the 
 French people cared nothing for Mexico, but that they did 
 care for the honor of their flag, and that war in which renown 
 might be won was what Napoleon the Emperor needed to 
 repair the blunder he had made in placing, at the expense of 
 France, an Austrian prince upon the throne of Mexico. It 
 was therefore very clear to the mind of Mr. Seward that all 
 that was necessary on the part of the Government to secure 
 the removal of the French was peace and time. 
 
 But this was not all. Mr. Seward perceived, what General 
 Grant lost sight of, that an attempt to expel forcibly the 
 French from Mexico might mea.n, not war between the 
 United, but the disunited States, and one of the most powerful 
 nations of Europe. The Confederates had been beaten, but 
 they had not been restored to their old place in the Union. 
 Time was required for the restoration of good feeling and 
 permanent reconstruction. If war had occurred with France 
 in 1865 or 1866, when General Grant was urging such action 
 
SEWAKD S PRUDENT DIPLOMACY. 389 
 
 on the part of the Government as would certainly have led 
 to it, the Confederate States might have been again in arms, 
 and with such an ally as France, they would have been sure 
 of achieving their independence. The Government had no 
 ships of war which could successfully encounter the ships of 
 France. The Northern sea-ports would have been blockaded, 
 the Southern ports opened to the trade of the world. The 
 Federal armies might not have beaten in the field, but they 
 would not have been long maintained. The loyal States, 
 strong as they were, were not in condition for another sec 
 tional war, with France as ally of their enemy. A peace party 
 would soon have been in the ascendant, and the Union would 
 have been severed, if not broken into fragments. Many 
 thousands of lives would have been sacrificed, and thousands 
 of millions of dollars would have been expended in vain. All 
 this was to be feared. It was feared by Mr. Seward. It was 
 not cowardice, but prudence and intelligent statesmanship, that 
 dictated the policy by adherence to which, the French army 
 was forced out of Mexico, Maximilian left to his fate, and the 
 prestige of Napoleon III. severely damaged. Fortunate was 
 it for the people of the United States, and for the cause of 
 civil liberty throughout the world, that at the close of our 
 great civil war the control of the Government was not in the 
 hands of a self-confident soldier. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI. 
 
 Harmony between the President and his Cabinet until the Spring of 1866 
 Differences between them after Veto of the Civil Rights Bill Mr. Denni- 
 son, Mr. Harlan and Mr. Speed Resign Mr. Stanton Holds on to his Place 
 against the Wishes of the President The President Fails to Remove him 
 before the Passage of the Act, and then Suspends him The President s 
 indefensible Extempore Speeches Impeachment of the President First 
 Instance in the History of Nations of such a Trial Manner in which it 
 was Conducted The Prosecutors The President s Counsel The Trial a 
 Political One Course Pursued by General Grant Speech of Mr. Fessen- 
 den The President Acquitted How the Vote Stood Mr. Stanton 
 Resigns Disadvantages under which the President Labored His Mes 
 sages and his Vetoes Henry Stanbery William M. Evarts Injustice to 
 President Johnson 1 Continued after his Death Jefferson Davis I Visit 
 him at Fortress Monroe The Manner in which he was Treated His 
 Appearance Never Brought to Trial Mr. Johnson Elected United States 
 Senator in 1875 His Death after Serving a Single Term. 
 
 UNTIL the spring of 1860, a year after Mr. Johnson became 
 President, there was entire harmony between him and 
 his Cabinet. In the work of restoring the relations between the 
 Government and the States which had attempted to secede 
 from the Union, which work was taken up where Mr. Lincoln 
 had left it, and which was being prosecuted on the same line, 
 they were a unit. No objection was raised even to that part 
 of the President s first message which treated of the suffrage 
 question by any member of the Cabinet. It was in fact 
 approved by all, and by none more heartily than by Mr. 
 Stanton. A change took place soon after the Civil Rights 
 bill became a law over the President s veto, and bitter con 
 troversy arose between the President and Congress. In this 
 controversy, and at its commencement, Mr. Dennison and 
 Mr. Ilarlan sided with Congress and tendered their resigna 
 tions, which were very reluctantly accepted. They resigned 
 because they could not heartily sustain the President, but 
 
JOHNSON S INDECISION. 391 
 
 there was no breach of the social relations which had existed 
 between them. Mr. Speed soon after followed the example of 
 Dennison and Ilarlan. Mr. Stanton also sided with Congress, 
 but he did not resign. He was advised by prominent political 
 and personal friends to " stick," and he did so, contrary to all 
 precedent and in opposition to the judgment of conservative 
 men of his party. Instead of following the example of his 
 associates, who resigned when they could no longer give to 
 the President a hearty support, he held on to his place. He 
 attended the Cabinet meetings, not as an adviser of the Presi 
 dent, but as an opponent of the policy to which he had himself 
 been committed, and the President lacked the nerve to dismiss 
 him. The failure of the President to exercise his undoubted 
 right to rid himself of a minister who differed with him upon 
 very important questions, who had become personally obnox 
 ious to him, and whom he regarded as an enemy and a spy, 
 was a blunder for which there was no excuse. 
 
 In this crisis of his political life, Mr. Johnson exhibited a 
 want of spirit and decision which astonished those who were 
 familiar with his antecedents. He knew when the Tenure-of- 
 Ottice Bill was before Congress that the object of its leading 
 supporters was to tie his hands, and yet he refrained from 
 using them when they were free. For the first time in his 
 life he manifested indecision and weakness, and when he did 
 act, he acted unwisely. He retained Mr. Stanton in his Cabi 
 net when his right to remove him was unquestionable. He 
 suspended him after the Tenure-of-Office Bill had become a 
 law, and in accordance with its provisions ; and when the Sen 
 ate refused to approve of the suspension, he issued orders for 
 his removal and the appointment of Lorenzo Thomas to be 
 Secretary of War ad interim,. If he had tried to give to his 
 enemies an advantage over him, to furnish them with weaj> 
 
 ons for his own discomfiture, he could not have done it more 
 
 \ 
 
 effectually. In suspending Mr. Stanton, the President did 
 not, however, mean to acknowledge the validity of the Ten- 
 
392 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 ure of-Office Act as applicable to members of his Cabinet. 
 His object was to free himself from a minister whom he could 
 no longer trust as an adviser, and he hoped that the suspen 
 sion would be approved, and that a wider breach between 
 himself and the Senate might thus be avoided. He had, 
 however, resolved that whatever might be the action of the 
 Senate, he would, if he could, prevent Mr. Stanton from con 
 tinuing to be Secretary of the Department of War and one of 
 his constitutional advisers, until his authority to suspend or 
 remove him had been determined by the courts, and he would 
 therefore have acted more wisely if he had removed Mr. Stan- 
 ton in the first place. By suspending him, and issuing an 
 order for his removal after he had failed to accomplish his 
 object by suspending him, he subjected himself to the charge 
 of violating a law the validity of which he had practically 
 recognized. If he had removed Mr. Stanton instead of sus 
 pending him, and justified his action on the ground that his 
 control of the members of his Cabinet was a constitutional 
 right of which he could not be deprived by Congress, he 
 probably would not have been impeached. The gist of the 
 charges against him was that he had violated a law of Con 
 gress in removing Mr. Stanton, or issuing an order for his re 
 moval, after the Senate had refused to sanction his suspension. 
 In the articles of impeachment there were other charges 
 against the President, the most serious of which were that he 
 had delivered intemperate, inflammatory speeches, which were 
 intended to bring into contempt the Congress of the United 
 States and duly enacted laws. The speeches made by the 
 President in Cleveland, St. Louis, and other places in August 
 and September, 1866 in fact, all his public addresses during 
 his contest with Congress were in the worst possible taste, 
 derogatory to himself and to his high position; but they 
 could not be properly regarded as criminal. All that could 
 be said in extenuation of them was that they were extempore, 
 and were delivered after he had been the object of bitter and 
 
HIS INDISCKEET SPEECHES. 393 
 
 unprovoked attack by members of Congress. They were the 
 kind of speeches that he had been in the habit of making in 
 fighting his way up step by step from the tailor s bench to 
 the Senate of the United States ; such as lie could not help 
 making when his war spirit w r as aroused. The first that he 
 made after he became President was in February, 1866. Hav 
 ing seen by the morning papers that he was to be called upon 
 bv citizens of the District and others, who desired to express 
 their confidence in him, and their sympathy with him in his 
 contest with Congress, which was then just commencing, I 
 went to the "White House, and advised him not to make a 
 speech. I feared that if he did he would say things which 
 would widen the party breach, and which he and his friends 
 might have reason to be sorry for. I said this to him plainly. 
 u Don t be troubled, Mr. Secretary," he replied. " I have not 
 thought of making a speech, and I sha n t make one. If my 
 friends come to see me, I shall thank them and that s all." 
 Such, I am sure, was his intention. But the crowd was large 
 and noisy ; they shouted when he made his appearance ; the 
 shouts became louder and more emphatic when he commenced 
 speaking. His wise resolution was forgotten his combative- 
 ness was aroused and he made such a speech as no President 
 could make without suffering in the estimation of thought 
 ful men. It was a type of all his offhand public addresses. 
 They were all bad in substance, bad in language, bad in style ; 
 the very opposite of his messages and other communications 
 to Congress, which are scarcely inferior in any respect to the 
 best that have been issued from the Executive Mansion. For 
 tunate is it for Mr. Johnson that he is hereafter to be judged 
 by his public acts, his carefully prepared speeches in Congress, 
 and his official papers. 
 
 The extempore addresses to which I have referred, 
 although utterly unbecoming a President of the United 
 States, and in all respects bad, did not constitute good ground 
 for his impeachment ; and this was the opinion of the House, 
 
394 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 which in January, 1867, after they were made, refused to 
 impeach him by the decisive vote of 108 to 57. Other causes 
 for his impeachment were subsequently sought for. His bank 
 account was examined. His private conduct in Washington 
 was carefully scrutinized. Men Avere employed to investigate 
 his public and private character in Tennessee, but nothing- 
 was found to his discredit. There were few public men whose 
 characters and conduct would have sustained as severe a 
 scrutiny as Mr. Johnson s were subjected to in 1867. Nothing 
 Avas found to justify his impeachment but the order which he 
 issued for the removal of Mr. Stanton and his appointment of 
 General Thomas to be Secretary of the War Department ad 
 interim after the Senate had refused to sanction Mr. Stanton s 
 suspension. 
 
 There are, I apprehend, very few if any of the Senators 
 now living who, in the spring of 1868, A^oted that the Presi 
 dent, by these acts, was guilty of high crimes and misde 
 meanors, who can now look back upon their votes with satis 
 faction. The President thought that he had the right to 
 remove any member of his Cabinet, and that it was not only 
 his right but his duty to remove one Avho had become obnox 
 ious to him, and with Avhom he could have no consultations. 
 A majority of the members of Congress entertained the opin 
 ion that the President could not remove a member of his Cab 
 inet, no matter how objectionable he might be, without the 
 consent of the Senate. In this conflict of opinion the Presi 
 dent Avas clearly right, and Congress clearly Avrong ; and } r et 
 but for the independence and firmness of seven Republican 
 senators, the President Avould have been found and declared 
 to be guilty, and been dismissed from his high office. Fortu 
 nate Avas it for the national honor that these senators would 
 not permit their fealty to their party to influence their judg 
 ment and control their actions in this interesting trial. 
 
 When the Tenure-of-Office bill Avas under consideration 
 in the Senate, one of the most prominent of the Republican 
 
THE REMOVAL OF STANTON. 395 
 
 senators expressed the opinion that the bill, if it became a 
 law, would not prevent the present President from removing 
 the Secretary of War, the Secretary of the Navy, and the Sec 
 retary of State, and then went on to say : " If I supposed that 
 either of these gentlemen was so wanting in manhood, in 
 honor, as to hold his place after the politest intimation by the 
 President of the United States that his services were no longer 
 needed, I certainly, as a senator, would consent to his removal 
 at any time, and so would we all ; " and yet this senator in 
 a little more than a year after this utterance, voted with a 
 majority of the senators that the President was guilty as 
 charged in the articles of impeachment the only charge 
 worthy of consideration being the removal of Mr. Stanton, 
 who had peremptorily refused to resign, and the appointment 
 of General Thomas to act as Secretary of War ad interim. It 
 is true that the senator, in the opinion which he delivered in 
 explanation of the vote which he was about to give, admitted 
 and proved by an argument of remarkable clearness and force 
 that the President had the constitutional right to remove his 
 Cabinet officers, and asserted that Congress had not under 
 taken to deprive him of that right; but he contended that 
 the law had been violated by the appointment of General 
 Thomas to be Secretary of AVar, and that by this act, the 
 President was guilty of high crimes and misdemeanors. That 
 this position was untenable was clearly shown by Senator 
 Fessenden and other senators. General Thomas was not 
 appointed Secretary ; he was merely authorized to act as 
 such Secretary ad interim. If the President was authorized 
 to remove Mr. Stanton, and if by that removal the office 
 became vacant, it was not only the right but the duty of the 
 President to appoint some one to perform the duties of the 
 office temporarily. In doing it, he did what had been repeat 
 edly done by his predecessors. The heads of the Govern 
 ment departments are the ministers of the President, upon 
 whom he can call for advice and assistance in the discharge of 
 
396 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 his difficult and manifold duties, and for whose acts he is, in 
 the public estimation, responsible. They are a part of the 
 Executive Government, of which he is the head, and conse 
 quently they ought to be under his control. The denial of 
 the right of a President to remove a member whose views 
 upon important questions are not in harmony with his own 
 who may be using the influence of his position to thwart the 
 execution of measures which he, the head of the Government, 
 regards as being important to the public welfare is a denial 
 of the power which is essential to the very existence of an 
 independent and efficient executive. 
 
 It was for this right that Mr. Johnson contended. Mr. 
 Stanton had ceased to be a minister upon whom he could call 
 for advice, or with whom he could hold counsel. He was at 
 the head of one of the great departments, and at the same 
 time was avowedly hostile to the Reconstruction policy of the 
 Executive. It therefore became the duty of the President 
 to do what he could to be rid of him. This he endeavored 
 to do in accordance with the provisions of the Tenure-of-Office 
 Act. Unsuccessful in this, he issued orders for the removal 
 of Mr. Stanton, and the appointment of General Thomas 
 to act as Secretary ad interim. Mr. Stanton refused to sur 
 render his office, and, strangely enough, no way was discovered 
 in these circumstances by which the right of the President to 
 remove him could be presented to the courts. Mr. Stanton 
 continued to hold the office of Secretary, and the President 
 was not only prevented from doing what he thought his duty 
 required of him, but was charged before the Senate with the 
 commission of high crimes and misdemeanors for attempting 
 to do it. The trial was a very interesting one, not only to the 
 people of the United States, but to the people of other coun 
 tries : to the former, because it threatened a change in the 
 administration of the government, and might be followed by 
 important political results ; to the latter because it might test 
 the strength of republican institutions. The fact that it was 
 
THE IMPEACHMENT. 397 
 
 conducted without pomp or display of military poAver did not 
 lessen the interest which was felt in the trial, but rather gave 
 character and dignity to the proceedings. It was an arraign 
 ment of the highest officer in the nation as a criminal before the 
 highest tribunal ; of a man who three years before had been 
 selected by the dominant party for the second office in the 
 government in recognition of the services he had rendered in 
 the preservation of its integrity, his well-tried loyalty, and his 
 ability. It was the first instance in the history of nations of the 
 trial of the head of a government before one of the branches of 
 the law-making power, sitting as a judicial tribunal, on charges 
 presented by another. The presiding officer was the Chief 
 Justice of the Supreme Court the senators of the respective 
 States were the jury the House of Representatives the pros 
 ecutor. The managers to conduct the impeachment for the 
 House were John A. Bingham, George S. Boutwell, James 
 F. Wilson, Benjamin F. Butler, Thomas Williams, Thaddeus 
 Stevens and John A. Logan, all members of the House, all 
 lawyers, and some of them distinguished in the profession. 
 The President entered his appearance by Henry Stanbery, 
 Benjamin K. Curtis, Jeremiah S. Black, William M. Evarts, 
 and Thomas A. K. Nelson. William S. Groesbeck, in the 
 course of the trial, appeared and took part as counsel for the 
 President in place of Mr. Black. The case, as I have said, was 
 an exceedingly interesting and important one and the counsel 
 on both sides were in keeping with the case. There was but 
 one drawback upon the grandeur of the trial, but this was a 
 very serious one it was not an impartial trial. Each sena 
 tor had sworn that in all things appertaining to the trial 
 of Andrew Johnson, President of the United States, he would 
 do impartial justice according to the Constitution and the 
 laws. It is undenirMe that when this oath was taken, a 
 majority of the senators were not prepared to do impartial 
 justice to the accused. According to the records, the Presi 
 dent was tried on the charges contained in the Articles of 
 
398 MEN AXD MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 % 
 
 Impeachment. He was, in fact, tried as a political offender. 
 His offence was, in the language of one of the senators, "that 
 he had abandoned the party which had intrusted him with 
 power." It was well understood before a document had been 
 presented, or a witness had been examined, how most of the 
 senators would vote. The President was impeached for the 
 purpose of bringing about such a change in the -Administra 
 tion as would harmonize the Executive and Legislative 
 branches of the Government. It was, in fact, a trial in which 
 senators were expected to be governed by their party allegi 
 ance rather than their oaths to do impartial justice according 
 to the Constitution and the laws. Long before the trial was 
 terminated, if not before it was commenced, it seemed to be 
 well known that all but seven or eight of the Republican 
 senators had come to the conclusion that the President was 
 guilty, and that they would vote accordingly. 
 
 The senators whose votes were regarded as being doubt 
 ful were Fessenden, Grimes, Frelinghuysen, Trumbull, Van 
 Winkle, Fowler, Henderson, and Jones ; and their votes were 
 so regarded because they had not avowed how they intended 
 to vote. The simple fact that they had expressed no opinion 
 as to the innocence or guilt of the President led to apprehen 
 sion that they might not be satisfied that the charges were 
 sustained by the evidence. The vote of Mr. Frelinghuysen 
 was not, however, long regarded as being doubtful. He was 
 "labored with" by some of his brother senators, and the 
 general of the army, in his zeal for the conviction of the Pres 
 ident, did not hesitate to use his personal and official influence 
 to secure that result. His interviews with the senator were so 
 satisfactory that they relieved him and his friends from the 
 anxiety they had felt in regard to the senator s vote. The 
 general did not call upon either of the other senators whose 
 names have been mentioned. If he had, he might have met 
 with a very different reception from that which he met with 
 when he called upon Mr. Frelinghuysen. The other senators. 
 
FESSENDEX S SPEECH. 399 
 
 were, however, appealed to by their associates to stand by 
 their party in what might be the crisis of its existence. Some 
 of them received letters like those which were received by Mr. 
 Fessenden, but they had taken an oath, as he had, to do justice 
 to the accused, and they were not to be swerved from their 
 duty to him and to themselves by appeals or threats. No one 
 knew how they would vote until they expressed their opinions 
 just before the vote was taken. They voted that the charges 
 against the President were not sustained. By doing so, they 
 not only exhibited their independence and the strength of their 
 convictions, but they saved the national honor from discredit, 
 and, as many thought, their party from disruption. There are 
 now, I think, very few who can read the speech which Mr. 
 Fessenden made in explanation and justification of the vote 
 which he was about to give, without being compelled to admit 
 that there was nothing in the evidence to warrant senators in 
 finding the President guilty as charged. I am sure that no one 
 can read it without being struck with its clearness and force ; 
 nor without feelings of admiration for the senator himself. 
 In concluding his speech, he said : 
 
 " To the suggestion that popular opinion demands the 
 conviction of the President, I reply that he is not now on trial 
 before the people, but before the Senate. The people have 
 not heard the evidence as we have heard it. They have not 
 taken an oath to do impartial justice* according to the Consti 
 tution and the laws. I have taken that oath. I cannot 
 render judgment upon their convictions, nor can they transfer 
 to themselves my punishment if I violate my own. I should 
 consider myself undeserving of the confidence of that just and 
 intelligent people who imposed upon me this great responsi 
 bility, and unworthy a place among honorable men, if for any 
 fears of public reprobation, and for the sake of securing 
 popular favor, I should disregard the convictions of my judg 
 ment and conscience. The consequences that may follow 
 from conviction or acquittal are not for me, with my convic 
 tions, to consider. The future is in the hands of Him who 
 made and governs the universe, and the fear that He will not 
 govern well would not excuse me for a violation of His law." 
 
400 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 The speeches of the other Republican senators who voted 
 with Mr. Fessenden were also pointed and strong admirable 
 for their ability and the independence which they displayed. 
 The speeches of the senators who voted that the President 
 was guilty were also able, but they breathed throughout a 
 partisan spirit. 
 
 The President was not convicted, none of the articles 
 presented against him by the House having been sustained by 
 two-thirds of the senators. The senators who voted " guilty " 
 were Messrs. Anthony, Cameron, Cattell, Chandler, Cole, 
 Conkling, Conness, Corbett, Cragin, Drake, Edmunds, Ferry, 
 Frelinghuysen, Harlan, Howard, Howe, Morgan, Merrill of 
 Maine, Morrill of Vermont, Morton, Nye, Patterson of Kew 
 Hampshire, Porneroy, Ramsey, Sherman, Sprague, Stewart, 
 Sumner, Thayer, Tipton, Wade, Willey, Williams, Wilson and 
 Yates 35. 
 
 The senators who voted u not guilty v were Messrs. Bayard, 
 Buckalew, Davis, Dixon, Doolittle, Fessenden, Fowler, Grimes, 
 Henderson, Hendricks, Johnson, McCreery, Norton, Patterson 
 of Tennessee, Ross, x Saulsbury, Trumbull, Yan Winkle and 
 Yickers 19. 
 
 While a good deal of mortification and chagrin was felt 
 by Republican partisans throughout the country, and especially 
 in Washington, at the acquittal of the President, there weVe 
 not a few who were relieved by it of anxious forebodings which 
 they had been unable to suppress in regard to the effect which 
 his conviction might have upon the next Presidential election. 
 They knew that Benjamin F. Wade, who, as the presiding 
 officer of the Senate, would become President if Mr. Johnson 
 were found guilty, lacked the high qualities which ought to be 
 possessed by the head of the Government, and they feared 
 that in the selection of his Cabinet and in the use of the 
 appointing power generally, he would weaken the party at the 
 time when it ought to be strong. They knew that for every 
 desirable office there would be many disappointed applicants. 
 
STANTON S PEESONAL VIEWS. 401 
 
 who would be indifferent workers in the approaching contest. 
 As the deposition of the President was confidently expected 
 up to the day on which the vote was taken, Washington was 
 full of office-seekers, a large part of whom were not the kind 
 of men to give character as office-holders to an administration 
 which, by not having been created by a popular vote, would be 
 subjected to unusual scrutiny. It was quite clear, therefore, to 
 the minds of such men that nothing would be gained, and 
 great loss might be sustained by the party in power, by a 
 change at that time and such manner in the Executive. They 
 were therefore of the opinion and some of them did not hesi 
 tate to express it that if the Republican party should main 
 tain its ascendency, it would be owing to the votes of the seven 
 Republican senators who, with the main body of Democratic 
 senators, voted that the President was not guilty. 
 
 In this whole matter Mr. Stan ton acted in accordance with 
 the wishes of his party, as expressed by most of its leading 
 members in Congress, and in opposition to his own opinion as 
 a lawyer, in regard to the constitutional authority of the 
 President. lie never thought that Congress could deprive the 
 President of his right to remove civil officers whose services he 
 desired to dispense with. He did not believe in the constitu 
 tionality of the Tenure-of-Office Act. He had denounced it 
 at the time of its passage in the severest language. He felt 
 that he had placed himself in a false position by denying the 
 right of the President to remove him from the office of Secre 
 tary of War in opposition to the opinion which he had given 
 to the President in writing, and after his return to private life 
 he was anxious that on this point he should be set right. In 
 the last conversation which he had with one of his most 
 intimate friends, he said that although he had stood by those 
 who had stood by the Government, Mr. Lincoln and himself 
 during the war, and had remained in the Cabinet in opposi 
 tion to the wishes of his chief, he had never doubted the 
 constitutional right of the President to remove the members 
 26 
 
402 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 of his Cabinet without question from any quarter whatever. 
 The Reconstruction measures which were advocated by Presi 
 dent Johnson were the same that had been favorably con 
 sidered by Mr. Lincoln, and in the same conversation referred 
 to, Mr. Stanton expressed the opinion that " if Mr. Lincoln 
 had lived he would have had a hard time with his party, as 
 he would have been at odds with it on Reconstruction." 
 
 Mr. Stanton was a Democrat, and in full sympathy with 
 the South until the disruption of the Union was undertaken 
 by force. From that time he never faltered in his allegiance 
 to the Government, although at the commencement of the 
 war he doubted its ability to maintain its integrity, because 
 he then thought that the South would be better led and more 
 united than the North ; that the Confederate Government 
 would be subject to less restrictions than the United States 
 Government, and more heartily supported. During the war 
 his complaint was, that the President and himself were 
 unnecessarily hampered. He was a believer in the rights of 
 the States, but he was also a believer in the rights of the 
 Government, and in the independence of the Executive, subject 
 only to the supreme law of the land the Federal Constitu 
 tion. 
 
 Upon the acquittal of the President, Mr. Stanton resigned 
 his office of Secretary of the "War Department. His health 
 had been impaired by his exertions and labors during the war, 
 and he did not find rest in the three years that followed. He 
 died on the 24th of December. 1869, having made for himself 
 a record for energy, promptness of decision, practicable ability 
 and inflexible devotion to the Government, which entitled 
 him to a very high rank among those who are justly honored 
 for their services when the national life was at stake. He 
 was a man of strong prejudices, hastly formed and frequently 
 unjust, but he was never influenced in the exercise of his war 
 powers by selfish considerations. He relinquished a lucrative 
 practice in the legal profession to serve the country when just 
 
JOHNSON AS PRESIDENT. 403 
 
 such services as he was able to render were required, and he 
 did serve it with unfaltering zeal and unremitting industry. 
 Mistakes he made, and wrongs he sometimes committed in his 
 judgment and treatment of army officers ; but it cannot be 
 truly said that his action was ever prompted by unworthy 
 motives. He was a great war minister, and his proper mission 
 ended at the end of the war. Me would have been a happier 
 man been more highly esteemed by his most judicious friends 
 and would probably have lived longer, if he had acted 
 in accordance with his own judgment, and resigned his office 
 when he could no longer stand with the President in his con 
 test with Congress. 
 
 Immediately after the resignation of Mr. Stanton, the 
 President tendered the office of Secretary of War to General 
 Schofield. It was promptly accepted, and from that time to 
 the close of his administration, there was not only harmony in 
 the Cabinet, but there was a cessation of active hostilities 
 between the President and Congress. Good feeling was not 
 restored, but bad feeling was in a large degree repressed. 
 The only prominent man whose bitterness against the Presi 
 dent was increased by the result of the trial was General 
 Grant, who had used his personal and official influence to 
 effect a conviction. To him the acquittal of the President 
 was a severe disappointment; it was more; it was a defeat; 
 and his hatred for the man for whose deposition he had 
 labored, was intensified by it, and yet it is very doubtful 
 that he would have been elected to the high place from which 
 he strove to eject Mr. Johnson if his labors had been suc 
 cessful. 
 
 In his administration of the Government, Mr. Johnson 
 labored under great disadvantages. He had been a Democrat, 
 but his connection with the Democratic party was severed 
 when he became the Republican candidate for the Vice-Presi 
 dency. He was disowned by the Republicans when he antag 
 onized the Reconstruction measures of Congress. For a good 
 
404 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 part of his term he was President without a party. The 
 Democratic Senators in a bod) 7 stood by him in his impeach 
 ment trial ; but they did so, not from personal regard, but 
 because the trial was political, and because they approved of 
 his Reconstruction policy, which was in harmony with the 
 Democratic doctrine in regard to the constitutional rights of 
 the States ; but they never gave to him or to his administration 
 
 */ o 
 
 cordial support. By the Republican press, and by some mem 
 bers of Congress, he was denounced as a traitor, not only to 
 his party, but to the country. His services during the war, in 
 recognition of which he had been nominated for the Vice- 
 Presidency ; the bravery which he had displayed in his contests 
 with the secessionists of Tennessee ; the terrible trials to which 
 his family were subjected by his fidelity to the Union, were all 
 ignored, buried, forgotten. He was accused not only of 
 political offences, but of personal misconduct of which there 
 was not the slightest proof. Unfortunately for himself, such 
 was his temperament that he could not restrain his disposi 
 tion to repel by intemperate speeches the attacks that were 
 made upon him. He seemed to forget what was due to his 
 station- to be unmindful that he had been lifted out of the 
 political arena in which he had been so long a combatant. 
 Silence in his case would have been wisdom ; defence by 
 retaliatory speeches was a blunder. He ought to have felt 
 that his true defence existed in his public career and his 
 official record ; and that sustained by them, the assaults of his 
 enemies would be harmless. He disagreed with Congress (as 
 his predecessor would have done had he lived) in regard to 
 what should be required of the Southern States before they 
 resumed their places in the Union which they had done their 
 best to destroy. It should have been considered an honest 
 difference of opinion on both sides. Congress should have 
 been contented with thwarting his plan of Reconstruction. 
 He should have been content with the exercise of his veto. 
 It was an unseemly a disreputable quarrel, in which both 
 
HIS CHARACTER. 405 
 
 sides were at fault. He was not the aggressor, however, and, 
 although his course was in some respects indefensible, he little 
 merited the obloquy which was heaped upon him at the time, 
 and which still, to some extent, attaches to his name. 
 
 No matter how unpopular or severely criticised a man 
 occupying a high position may have been while in active life, 
 there is usually a disposition, even on the part of those who 
 were the most hostile to him to be generous to his memory. 
 This disposition has not been manifested in ]\Ir. Johnson s 
 case. It is not often that kindly mention is made of him upon 
 the platform or in the press. Among those who have filled 
 high places with ability, or rendered distinguished services to 
 their country, his name is rarely classed ; and yet when the 
 history of the great events with which he was connected has 
 been faithfully written, there will appear few names entitled 
 to greater honor and respect than that of Andrew Johnson. 
 His faults were patent : he was incapable of disguise. He 
 was a combatant by temperament. If he did not court con 
 troversy, he enjoyed it. He rarely tried to accomplish his 
 ends by policy ; when he did, he subjected himself to the 
 charge of demagogy. In tact he was utterly deficient, and 
 he ran against snags which he might easily have avoided. 
 Naturally distrustful, he gave his confidence reluctantly 
 never without reserve ; he had therefore few constant friends. 
 These peculiarities and defects in his character were manifest, 
 and they were severe drawbacks upon his usefulness in public 
 life. On the other hand, he never cherished animosity after a 
 contest was over. He never failed in generosity towards a 
 defeated foe. He was brave, honest, truthful. He never 
 shrank from danger, disregarded an engagement, or was 
 unfaithful to his pledges. His devotion to the Union was a 
 passion. There was no sacrifice that he was not willing to 
 make, no peril that he was not willing to encounter in its 
 defence. It was not mere emotion that prompted the direc 
 tion that the flag of his country the Stripes and Stars should 
 
406 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 be his winding sheet, but the expression of his devotion to the 
 principles which it represented. He was a kind and helpful 
 neighbor, a tender and indulgent father. He was proud of 
 his daughters, and he had reason to be, for they were devoted 
 to him ; and more sensible, unpretending women never occu 
 pied the Executive Mansion. In intellectual force he had few 
 superiors. He had, as has been stated, no educational advan 
 tages, but he made such use of opportunities that he never 
 failed to fill with credit the various places which he held in 
 his way up to the highest position in the Government. The 
 carefully prepared speeches which he made in the House and 
 the Senate chamber in Washington were always to the point. 
 His messages, except his vetoes, written by himself, with no 
 other help than what he received from his private secretary, 
 bear favorable comparison with the messages of those who pre 
 ceded or have followed him. His first veto, that of the Civil 
 Kights bill, was strong in argument and admirable in spirit. 
 Who assisted him in the preparation of it I do not know ; but 
 he must have had assistance, for it exhibited a higher order of 
 legal ability than he possessed. That his reasons for with 
 holding his signature to that bill were well formed, has been 
 proven by the recent decision of the Supreme Court, pronounc 
 ing it unconstitutional. That a similar decision would have 
 been made on the Tenure-of -Office Act, if the question had 
 come before that court, is not now, I think, denied by anybody 
 whose opinion upon a constitutional question is worth any 
 thing. The veto of this bill, strange as it seems in view of 
 his subsequent course, was written by Mr. Stanton. Mr. 
 Johnson s other vetoes were mainly prepared by Attorney- 
 General Henry Stanbery whom Mr. Chase pronounced the 
 most accomplished lawyer of the day, and who, in mental 
 power, was second only to Thomas E\ving, at the Ohio bar 
 but they \vere carefully considered by himself. 
 
 Of Mr. Johnson s patriotism there ought not to have been 
 a question, for he had given the highest evidence of it. He 
 
POPULAR INJUSTICE TO HIS MEMORY. 407 
 
 believed that the Southern States which had attempted to 
 secede were never out of the Union, and that when they had 
 laid down their arms, submitted to the authority of the Gov 
 ernment, and given honest pledges of future loyalty, they 
 should at once have been permitted to resume their places. 
 In this he may have been wrong, but he was backed by what 
 was understood to be Mr. Lincoln s opinion, and by a respect 
 able minority of the people of the North. There was no 
 indication of a want of patriotism in this, nor was there in any 
 of his utterances or acts. No member of his Cabinet ever 
 heard from him an expression which savored of unfaithfulness 
 to the Constitution. Mr. Dennison, Mr. Ilarlan and Mr. 
 Speed resigned their places, not because they distrusted him, 
 but because they could not stand by him in his contest with 
 Congress. Their successors, and the rest of the members, 
 including Mr. Evarts, who had been one of his counsel in the 
 impeachment trial, and who became his Attorney General, 
 never had the slightest reason to doubt his personal or his 
 political integrity, or his unselfish patriotism. All tfhis can be 
 said without exaggeration of Mr. Johnson. No one that 
 knew anything of his history could doubt his ability. No one 
 could truthfully say that he was intemperate ; and yet a 
 Methodist bishop, a few years ago, in a speech which he made 
 at Woodstock, Connecticut, on the Fourth of July, in eulogy 
 of General Grant, referred to his predecessor as having been a 
 " drunken imbecile ;" and this expression, shameful and brutal 
 and false as it was, was listened to by a crowd of highly intel 
 ligent and respectable people, without rebuke, and published 
 in a religious newspaper without comment. A distinguished 
 clergyman, in a historical sermon or address, recenth r 
 delivered in Washington, spoke at length of Tyler, of Fill- 
 more, of Arthur, of all the Yice-Presidents who became 
 Presidents by virtue of their office as Vice-President, except 
 Johnson, whose name was not even mentioned. And yet 
 who can say that he served the country less faithfully than 
 
408 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 they did, or that his life-long services were less valuable than 
 theirs ? 
 
 The question, "What shall be done to the Confederate lead 
 ers ? " was referred to, but not discussed at Mr. Lincoln s last 
 meeting with his Cabinet. Mr. Lincoln merely remarked in 
 his humorous manner, " I am a good deal like the Irishman 
 who had joined a temperance society, but thought that he 
 might take a drink now and then if he drank unbeknown to 
 himself. A good many people think that all the big Confed 
 erates ought to be arrested and tried as traitors. Perhaps 
 they ought to be ; but I should be right glad if they would 
 get out of the country unbeknown to me." This question 
 came up in the case of Jefferson Davis, soon after Mr. Johnson 
 became President. Davis had been captured while attempt 
 ing to escape after the fall of Richmond, and was a prisoner 
 in close confinement in Fortress Monroe. Some action must 
 be taken in his case what should it be ? He had been the 
 President of the Confederacy, and was therefore the most 
 conspicuous of the enemies of the Government. By a large 
 part of the people of the North he was regarded as the arch- 
 traitor upon whose head vengeance should be visited. Should 
 he be liberated in the face of the strong feeling against him, 
 or should he be arraigned for treason, and if arraigned, should 
 he be tried by a military commission or a United States 
 court? These were interesting and important questions, 
 requiring the most careful consideration both in their legal 
 and political bearing. 
 
 The legal question, Has Mr. Davis been guilty of such 
 acts of treason, that he can be successfully prosecuted ? was 
 submitted to the Attorney General, who, after a thorough 
 examination of it and consultation with some of the ablest 
 lawyers in the country, came to the conclusion that Mr. Davis 
 could not be convicted of treason by any competent and inde 
 pendent tribunal, and that therefore he ought not to be tried. 
 The conclusion was undoubtedly correct. It was a revolution 
 
WHAT TO DO WITH DAVIS. 409 
 
 which had been attempted by the Southern States a general 
 uprising of the people of the South against the Government. 
 It was war in which they had been engaged war of such pro 
 portions that belligerent rights had been accorded to them by 
 foreign nations. The same rights had been acknowledged by 
 the Government in exchanges of prisoners and other acts. 
 They could not, therefore, be charged with treason, nor could 
 one of their number be singled out and legally convicted of 
 the crime. Aside from these considerations, it was clear that 
 whatever treasonable acts Mr. Davis might have been guilty 
 of, were committed in the Southern States, where, under the 
 Constitution, the trial must take place, and where conviction 
 would be impossible. The President was chagrined by the 
 decision, which was forced upon him by the opinions of the 
 Attorney General and other eminent lawyers. It was in 
 direct opposition to his committals in the vindictive speeches 
 which he made at the commencement of his administration ; 
 but he saw the correctness of it, and from that time he pushed 
 his generosity to those whom he had denounced as traitors to 
 an extreme. Mr. Davis was only one of the many thousands 
 who were engaged in war against the Government. His posi 
 tion made him the most conspicuous, but he was no more 
 guilty than many others, against whom no proceedings were 
 contemplated. There was no evidence that he was responsible 
 for the horrors of Andersonville, or the general bad treatment 
 to which Union soldiers were subjected in Southern prisons. 
 He was, however, kept in confinement until the spring of 
 1867, when he was brought before the United States Court at 
 Richmond on the charge of treason, and admitted to bail. 
 He was not tried, although he expressed a desire to be, nor 
 was he among those who asked to be pardoned. 
 
 "While the question was pending, the President sent for me 
 one day, and said that he would like to have me go privately 
 and unofficially to Fortress Monroe and ascertain whether or 
 not the reports that had reached him about the treatment of 
 
410 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Davis were true. " He was," said the President, " the head 
 devil among the traitors, and lie ought to be hung ; but he 
 should have a fair trial, and not be brutally treated while a 
 prisoner/ A few days after the request was made I was able 
 to comply with it. On my arrival at the fortress, Mr. Davis 
 was walking upon the ramparts accompanied by a couple of 
 soldiers. I was glad to notice that his gait was erect, his step 
 elastic, and when he came up to where I was standing, that 
 he had not the appearance of one who was suffering in health 
 by imprisonment. I spent an hour or two with him in con 
 versation. " I was, 1 he said, " in the first two or three 
 months of my imprisonment, treated barbarously, but now I 
 am permitted to have a daily walk, and my present quarters, 
 as you perceive, are such as a prisoner charged with high 
 treason ought not to complain of " a cot, a small pine table, 
 and two cane-bottomed chairs. The cot and chairs were hard, 
 and of the plainest and cheapest kind ; but the room was clean 
 and well lighted. There was not much need of light, for the 
 only book in the room was an old treatise upon military tac 
 tics a subject which was not especially interesting to the pris 
 oner at that time, and in that place. Newspapers were for 
 bidden to him. My interview was very pleasant. There have 
 been few men more gifted than Mr. Davis, and few whose 
 opportunities for intellectual culture have been better improved. 
 I had not known him personally, but I knew what his standing 
 was among the able men of the country, and expected to meet 
 in him an accomplished gentleman. To those who knew him 
 well, it is not necessary for me to say that I was not disap 
 pointed, and that I was most favorably impressed by his man 
 ners and conversation. I was his first visitor, and he seemed 
 to be pleased with my visit, and with the opportunity which it 
 gave to him for a free talk. He was indisposed to say much 
 about himself, and it was only by direct questions that I 
 learned the facts in regard to the barbarous treatment to 
 which he had referred. "I was." he said, "when brought to 
 
HIS PRISON TREATMENT. 411 
 
 the fortress, not only strictly confined in a casemate, which 
 was little better than a dungeon, but I was heavily ironed. 
 As I had been a submissive prisoner, and was in a strong 
 fortress, I thought that chains were unnecessary, and that I 
 ought not to be subjected to them. I resisted being shackled, 
 but resistance was vain. I was thrown violently upon the 
 floor, and heavily fettered. This was not all : the casemate 
 in which I was confined was kept constantly and brilliantly 
 lighted, and I was never relieved of the presence of a couple 
 of soldiers. My eyes were weak and sensitive, I suffered 
 keenly from the light, and you can judge how my sufferings 
 were aggravated by my not being permitted for months to 
 have one moment by myself." I listened silently to this state 
 ment, given substantially in his own language ; but I felt as 
 he did, that he had for a time been barbarously treated. 
 Chains were unnecessary, and the constant presence of the 
 guards in the casemate must have been, to a sensitive man, 
 worse than solitary confinement, which is now regarded as 
 being too inhuman to be inflicted upon the greatest criminals. 
 I happened to know some of his personal friends in the West, 
 and he had a great deal to talk about without saying much 
 about himself. He seemed to be neither depressed in spirits 
 nor soured in temper. He could not help saying something 
 about the war, but he said nothing in the way of justification 
 or defence. He had the bearing of a brave and high-bred 
 gentleman, who, knowing that he would, have been highly 
 honored if the Confederate States had achieved their inde 
 pendence, would not and could not demean himself as a crimi 
 nal because they had not. The only anxiety he expressed 
 was in regard to his trial, not as to the result, but the time. 
 He thought the delay unnecessary and unjust. He was kept 
 in prison for two years before he was arraigned, and released 
 on bail ; and, strangely enough, Horace Greeley and Gerrit 
 Smith, the distinguished abolitionists, were among the signers 
 of his bond. 
 
412 ME1ST AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 On my return to Washington, I made a verbal report to 
 the President of the manner in which Mr. Davis was then 
 being treated. No executive action was considered necessary 
 in his behalf, and nothing was done in his prosecution except 
 what has been mentioned. 
 
 Henry Stanbery resigned the office of Attorney General, 
 at the commencement of the impeachment trial, to become 
 one of the President s counsel. His health, never perfect, had 
 been impaired by his labors and anxieties during the trial, 
 and after the President s acquittal, he felt it to be his duty 
 to decline re-appointment. Mr. William M. Evarts was 
 appointed Attorney General, and the end of Mr. Johnson s 
 administration was peaceful. Strong as was the popular 
 prejudice against him during the most of his presidential 
 career, he never lost the confidence and respect of those who 
 knew him best. His hold upon the hearts of the people 
 of Tennessee was never lost. He was elected United States 
 Senator in 1875, and respectfully and kindly treated by even 
 those senators who a few years before, under political press 
 ure, had denounced him as a criminal. He did not long 
 enjoy his new honor. He died after serving a single session. 
 He was buried in the State which had conferred high honors 
 upon him, and which he had honored in return by his ability 
 and his devotion to what he considered his duty to her and 
 the country. 
 
CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Presidential Election of 1876 Rutherford B. Hayes, and William A. 
 Wheeler nominated by the Republicans Samuel J. Tilden, and Thomas 
 A. Hendricks by the Democrats Brief Sketch of the Nominees The 
 Canvass a vigorous One First Reports favorable to the Democrats 
 The Result uncertain Great Anxiety and Apprehension throughout the 
 Country The Commission Appointed to Determine the Result Hayes 
 and Wheeler Declared to be Elected Remarks of the President of the 
 Union Telegraph Company My Own Opinion of the Election Hayes s 
 Administration a creditable one. 
 
 T 
 
 HE Presidential election of 1876 was contested with great 
 vigor on both sides. Rutherford B. Haves, the nominee 
 
 O v 
 
 of the Republican party for President, had done good service 
 in the array, and as the candidate for Governor of Ohio in 
 1875, had led the party to victory when financial questions 
 were the main subjects for discussion. William A. Wheeler, 
 the nominee for Vice-President, was a man of a high order of 
 ability, who had acquired distinction in Congress. The ticket 
 was a strong and popular one. Mr. Hayes was not the first 
 choice of his party, but it was thoroughly united by his nomi 
 nation. It had, however, been shorn of a good deal of its 
 strength during General Grant s second term. It had lost the 
 control of the House of Representatives, but it held the 
 mastery in the Senate and retained a good deal of the pres 
 tige which it had acquired during the war. It was still confi 
 dent and aggressive. The Democratic party was especially 
 sagacious in the selection of its candidates. Of its nominee 
 for Vice-President, Thomas A. Hendricks. I have alreadv 
 spoken. Samuel J. Tilden, the nominee for President, was a 
 man of distinguished ability in his profession. " He is," said 
 Henry Stanbery to me, in 1864, "the ablest corporation law 
 yer in the United States." The consolidation of the Ohio and 
 
414 MEN AXD MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 Pennsylvania, the Ohio and Indiana, and the Fort Wayne and 
 Chicago railroads into the great trunk line, the Pittsburgh, 
 Fort Wayne and Chicago, was, as far as all legal questions 
 were involved, his work. The three roads were constructed 
 under the laws of four States, Pennsylvania, Indiana, Ohio 
 and Illinois, and in their consolidation many new, complicated 
 and difficult questions were to be grasped and solved. It was 
 the first great work of the kind that had been undertaken in 
 the United States, and the manner in which it was accom 
 plished placed Mr. Tilden as a railroad lawyer at the head of 
 his profession. His distinction was not, however, limited to 
 his superior knowledge of the laws by which corporate bodies 
 were created and governed. His general legal learning was 
 extensive and accurate. He was not an easy and graceful 
 speaker, and he was rarely effective in addressing a jury ; 
 but as a legal counsellor, he had few equals and no superior 
 in New York. He was also a man of large literary acquire 
 ment, a forcible and instructive writer, and when he entered 
 the political arena he was leader and master. To all these 
 qualities he united sagacity and pluck. It was by his skilful 
 and persistent labors that a powerful ring that had for years 
 been governing and robbing the city was exposed and broken 
 up. Then, too, he was a worthy representative of Jeffersonian 
 democracy sound to the core upon all financial and economical 
 questions according to the standards of that school. That he 
 was thoroughly equipped for the Presidency, was not denied 
 by his opponents. The main objections to his nomination 
 were that, although a Union man, he had been more disposed 
 to criticise the actions of the Government than to strengthen 
 it by his hearty support during the war. He was rich, and 
 the most of his large fortune had been acquired in railroad 
 operations, in which he was an adept, and in which a large 
 part of his gains were the losses of other people; but these 
 drawbacks were not considered serious by the party leaders. 
 The tickets on both sides were highly respectable. On the 
 
THE IIAYS-TILDEX CAMPAIGN. 415 
 
 whole it would have been difficult for the managers to have 
 selected men better fitted to bring out the full Republican and 
 Democratic strength. The comparatively few votes which 
 were cast for the Greenback ticket, at the head of which was 
 the venerable and honored name of Peter Cooper, were drawn 
 about equally from the two parties. 
 
 The mention of Mr. Cooper s name reminds me of a con 
 versation which I had with him at the dinner which was given 
 to Bayard Taylor just before the latter s departure to enter 
 upon the discharge of his duties as Minister Plenipotentiary at 
 Berlin. Mr. Cooper s chair was next to mine. I knew, of 
 course, that his opinions in regard to the general currency 
 question were the very opposite of mine, and I desired to 
 avoid all reference to it ; but just before the dinner was over, 
 he made some remark about the money market, which was 
 then stringent, which fact he attributed to the scarcity of 
 money. I therefore could not help asking him if he thought 
 that the best interests of the country would be promoted by a 
 further issue of Government notes. " Undoubtedly I do, sir. 
 What is wanted now to bring back the country to a really 
 prosperous condition is an additional issue of at least two 
 thousand millions of legal-tender notes." Coming as this 
 remark did from a man of excellent business capacity, I was 
 amazed by it. How such an opinion could be entertained by 
 such a man was to me incomprehensible. 
 
 The canvass of 1876 was, as I have said, a vigorous one. 
 Neither money nor effort was wanting on either side. Both 
 sides were confident, but neither was so confident as to neglect 
 the use of all the ways and means which were considered by 
 the keenest politicians essential to success. The result was 
 doubtful up to the day of the election ; it was doubtful after 
 the election was over, and to this day the question, Was Tilden 
 or Hayes duly elected ? is an open one. The first reports 
 received in New York were so decidedly in favor of the 
 Democratic ticket, that the leading Republican journals 
 
416 ME1ST AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 admitted its success. The next day different reports were 
 received, and both sides claimed the victory. In regard to the 
 votes in all the States except South Carolina, Florida, Louisi 
 ana, and Oregon, there was no question. By the first decis 
 ions of the returning boards of these States enough votes were 
 declared to have been given to the Democratic ticket to estab 
 lish its success by a decided majority. These decisions were, 
 however, changed, either as the result of more careful examina 
 tions of the poll-books, or the pressure of the contending par 
 ties upon the State officials, and it was soon well known that 
 two election certificates from each of these States would be pre 
 sented when the count before the two Houses would be made 
 on the second Wednesday of February, and that the question 
 which should be received as being the proper certificate must 
 then, in each case, be decided. The Constitution merely 
 required that the President of the Senate, in the presence of 
 the Senate and House of Representatives, should open all 
 the certificates, and that the votes should be then counted. 
 It was silent in regard to the manner in which the votes 
 should be counted, nor did it direct how questions which 
 might arise in regard to the correctness of the certificates 
 or the eligibility of the electors were to be decided. 
 
 The contents of the certificates from the States referred to 
 were well known ; and it was understood that the Republi 
 can members of Congress favored one set of certificates, the 
 Democratic members another, and that neither would yield. 
 The Republicans controlled the Senate, the Democrats the 
 House, and there was no umpire. If the two Houses should 
 meet when the votes were to be counted, it was quite certain 
 that there would be no accord between them as to the man 
 ner in which the votes should be counted, and the certifi 
 cates which should be received. The condition was critical. 
 Anarchy might follow. There had been great excitement 
 throughout the country from the time the first election 
 returns were received, and this excitement was culminating as 
 
THE ELECTORAL COMMISSION. 417 
 
 the time for counting the votes drew near. Never since the 
 formation of the Government, not even in the darkest days of 
 the civil war, were there such anxious forebodings among 
 thoughtful men as prevailed for some days in January, 1877. 
 Fortunately Congress was equal to the emergency. By a bill 
 which went through the Senate on the 25th of January by 
 the decisive vote of 47 to 17, and through the House the 
 next day by the equally decisive vote of 191 to 86, and which 
 became a law the next day by the approval of the President, 
 a commission was created to which all questions growing out 
 of the election returns were to be referred, and whose decis 
 ions were to be final. Anxious people breathed freely again. 
 A danger, the extent of which could not be foreseen, which 
 threatened the very existence of the Government, was escaped 
 by the creation of this commission. It consisted of five sena 
 tors George F. Edmunds, Oliver P. Morton, Frederick T. 
 Freylinghuysen, Republicans ; and Allen G. Thurman and 
 Thomas F. Bayard, Democrats ; of five members of the 
 House Henry B. Payne, Eppa Hunter, Josiah G. Abbott, 
 Democrats ; James A. Garfield and George F. Hoar, Repub 
 licans ; and of five justices of the Supreme Court, four of 
 whom were designated in the act by the circuits to which they 
 were assigned, to wit : Nathan Clifford and Stephen J. Field, 
 Democrats; William Strong and Samuel F. Miller, Republi 
 cans. By the act, these four justices were to select the fifth 
 justice to make the number fifteen. The Commission thus 
 consisted of five Republican and five Democratic Congress 
 men, and two Republican and two Democratic justices. The 
 interesting question upon which the result might turn was, 
 which of the remaining justices would be selected to make up 
 the complement. When the Electoral Commission Act was 
 passed, the following were the justices of the Supreme Court : 
 Morrison R. Waite, Chief Justice ; Nathan Clifford, Noah H. 
 Swayne, David Davis, Samuel F. Miller, Stephen J. Field, 
 William Strong, Joseph P. Bradley and Ward Hunt. All 
 27 
 
418 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 were Republicans except Clifford and Field, who were Demo 
 crats, and Davis, who before the war was a Democrat, but 
 who had been a warm personal friend of Mr. Lincoln, and an 
 ardent supporter of his administration, but an opponent of 
 General Grant s. He was therefore regarded as being in 
 politics an independent, and it was generally expected that he 
 would be selected to be the fifth member of the Commission. 
 It so happened, however, that after the act had become a law, 
 but before any action was taken under it, he had been elected 
 United States Senator from Illinois, and had resigned his 
 justiceship. Justice Bradley was selected, and the Commis 
 sion stood politically eight Republicans to seven Democrats. 
 The judges of the Supreme Court are out of politics, and 
 are supposed to be absolutely free from political bias and 
 aloof from political influence, and such they undoubtedly are 
 when acting in a judicial capacity ; but the duties which these 
 five justices were called upon to perform as members of this 
 commission were not considered judicial. The questions to 
 be examined and decided were questions for a proper under 
 standing of which superior legal knowledge was not essential. 
 It was a purely political proceeding, and everybodj^ expected 
 that the justices would be subject to the same influences 
 that would be sure to control the action and votes of their 
 associates. So strong was this expectation, that many Demo 
 crats did not hesitate to say, when they heard that Justice 
 Bradley had been made a member of the Commission, that 
 the game was up with their party ; and so it turned out. 
 The members of the Commission had been respectively sworn 
 that they would impartially examine and consider all questions 
 submitted to the Commission, and a true judgment give 
 thereon, according to the Constitution and the laws ; and yet 
 every member of it the justices as well as the Congressmen- 
 acted and voted as political partisans. On every question on 
 which the Commission was divided and it was divided on 
 every material question the vote stood eight to seven. By 
 
HAYES DECLARED ELECTED. 419 
 
 this vote the electoral votes of Florida were counted for 
 Hayes and Wheeler, and so were the votes of South Carolina, 
 Louisiana, and Oregon. With the votes of these States, and 
 the votes which it had received in the other States, in regard 
 to whose returns there had been no disagreement between 
 the two Houses, the Republican ticket was elected by a 
 majority of one. The certificates from all the States had been 
 opened by the President of the Senate, in the presence of 
 both Houses, and only those to the receipt of which objec 
 tions had been raised, were referred to the Commission. On 
 the second day of March, 1877, the counting of the votes 
 having been concluded. Senator William B. Allison, one of 
 the tellers on the part of the Senate, in the presence of both 
 Houses of Congress, announced as the result of the foot 
 ings, that Rutherford B. Hayes had received 185 votes for 
 President, and William A. Wheeler 185 votes for Vice-Presi- 
 dent ; that Samuel J. Tilden had received 184 votes for Presi 
 dent, and Thomas A. Hendricks 184 votes for Vice-President, 
 and thereupon the presiding officer of the Convention of the 
 two Houses declared Rutherford B. Hayes to have been 
 elected President, and William A. Wheeler Yice-President of 
 the United States for four years from the 4th day of March, 
 
 1877. 
 
 This decision was quietly acquiesced in by the Democrats, 
 but not without heartburnings, nor without the feeling, which 
 continues to this day, that they had been cheated out of the 
 Presidency. Whether the result would have been different if 
 Justice Davis, instead of Justice Bradley, had been the fifth 
 justice in the Commission, is a question that must always 
 remain open. By no utterance of Mr. Davis was there ever 
 an indication of what his action would have been, but he had 
 a high opinion of Mr. Tilden, and his political sympathies were 
 known by his intimate friends to have been on the side of the 
 Democrats. Hence the prevailing opinion among the Demo 
 crats has been that if he had not been elected senator, Tilden 
 
420 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 would have been President. The decision of the Commission 
 at an early stage of the proceedings, by a vote of eight to 
 seven, that the Commissioners were not authorized by the 
 Constitution and the Act to go behind the returns that had 
 "been certified to by the returning officers of the State, and 
 that no evidence could be received to impeach their correct 
 ness, indicated very clearty what the result would be; as by 
 the certificates of the returning board from Florida, South 
 Carolina and Louisiana, Republicans had been elected. In 
 the Oregon case, there were two certificates ; but the only 
 question was in regard to the eligibility of one of the Repub 
 lican electors, John "W. Watts, which was by the vote of 
 eight to seven decided in his favor. If the Commission could 
 have gone behind the returns which bore the names of the 
 State officials, they might have discovered that those from 
 Louisiana, South Carolina, and Florida were not true. If 
 they could have gone further and examined into the manner in 
 which the elections in those States had been conducted, they 
 might have ascertained that a great number of Republican 
 negroes had been unlawfully prevented from voting. My 
 own opinion at the time was, and still is, that if the distin 
 guished Northern men who visited those States immediately 
 after the election had stayed at home, and there had been no 
 outside pressure upon the returning boards, their certificates 
 would have been in favor of the Democratic electors. This 
 opinion was confirmed by a remark of the president of the 
 Union Telegraph Company at the annual meeting of the 
 LTnion League Club of New York in 1878. In a conversation 
 which I had with him, I happened to speak of the election of 
 Mr. Hayes ; when he interrupted me by sa} 7 ing : " But he was 
 not elected." " If he was not, the examinations of your office 
 failed to show it," I replied. "Oh, yes," he rejoined, " but that 
 was because the examiners did not know where to look." This 
 was not said to me in confidence. My wife was with me, and 
 he might have been heard by others who were standing near, 
 
HAYES S ADMINISTRATION. 421 
 
 as he spoke in his usual tone. " Mr. Tilden," said a prominent 
 Republican to me, a year or two ago " Mr. Tilden was, I 
 suppose, legally elected, but not fairly ; " and this was doubt 
 less the conclusion of a great many other Republicans. 
 
 But whatever may be thought about his election, it must 
 be admitted that Mr. Hayes proved to be an upright, fair- 
 minded, intelligent and conscientious President. In all 
 respects his administration was an improvement upon the 
 one that preceded it. He made some unwise appointments, 
 of which that of Major D. G. Swaim, to be Judge Advocate 
 General in place of William McKee Dunn, was the most 
 objectionable ; but they were exceptional, and his adminis 
 tration will bear a favorable comparison with those which 
 have been most highly commended by the public. It has not 
 received, even from the Republican press, the credit to which 
 it was justly entitled. During the term of Mr. Hayes all 
 branches of the public service were efficiently administered, 
 and the country was unusually prosperous. By his political 
 enemies, Mr. Hayes has been more violently assailed than any 
 other President except Andrew Johnson ; not, as far as I have 
 observed, because he failed in the proper discharge of his 
 duties as President, but because he accepted the Presidency. 
 He has been stigmatized by leading public journals as " the 
 fraudulent President ; " but there has never been the slightest 
 evidence that he had any agency in the alleged frauds by 
 which his election was secured. It was not by his influence 
 or advice that the Electoral Commission was created. By that 
 Commission, which was created by the intelligent and patriotic 
 action of both parties, he was declared to have been duly 
 elected President, and he was under solemn obligations, not 
 only to his party, but to the people without respect to party, 
 to accept the office. In the then condition of the country, it 
 would have been his duty to accept it even if he had doubted 
 that he was legally elected. 
 
 My acquaintance with Mr. Hayes was limited, but I care- 
 
422 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 fully observed his public career, and discovered much for which 
 he should be commended ; very little for which he should be 
 censured. There is nothing in his record as President of 
 which his friends should be ashamed, or which his countrymen 
 should desire to conceal. His messages were well written ; 
 his public addresses were in good taste ; his personal character 
 was above reproach. The social and moral tone of the White 
 House was never higher than when he was its master and his 
 accomplished wife its mistress. If in the performance of 
 official but social duties their temperance principles were too 
 rigidly adhered to, the mistake was not one that lessened them 
 in public estimation. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII. 
 
 First Impressions of England The "Scotia" Captain Judkins The Cunard 
 Steamship Company The White Star Steamers Opinions in regard to 
 their Model Steamships and Sailing Vessels Changes in Commerce by 
 Steamships The "Britannia" The " Enterprise "The "Sirius" 
 Barges and Flatboats Superseded by Steamboats on Western Rivers 
 Iron Supersedes Wood in the Construction of Ships The Battle between 
 the "Monitor" and the " Virginia" renders Valueless the Navies of the 
 World Liverpool and her Docks All Nations there Represented except 
 the United States Ride from Liverpool to London Appearance of the 
 Country English Farming Climate Favorable to Agriculture. 
 
 THE iirst impressions made upon me in regard to England, 
 which I visited for the first time in November, 1870, 
 were very favorable, and they were not impaired, but rather 
 strengthened, during the five or six years that I lived there. 
 I left New York, with my family, on the Scotia the last, I 
 think, of the English side-wheeled ocean steamers on the 
 9th of November, 1870, and arrived at Liverpool on the 
 19th. Captain Judkins, who commanded the Scotia, was 
 an excellent sailor; one of the surliest old sea-dogs in the 
 service to those who asked questions, but one of the kindest 
 and most communicative to those who did not trouble him, 
 and especially to those who he expected would be liberal con 
 tributors to a benevolent institution in Liverpool in which he 
 was deeply interested. The Cunard steamship line was the 
 pioneer of the steamship lines between Europe and the United 
 States. By the excellence of its ships and the tried seaman 
 ship of the officers (no one was ever intrusted with a com 
 mand whose qualifications as a sailor and navigator had not 
 been thoroughly tested) the Cunard Company obtained the 
 distinction which it has in a large measure retained to the pres 
 ent day. It has not always been as enterprising in the way of 
 
MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 improvements as other lines, and its ships have, until lately, 
 frequently been surpassed in speed, but never in strength, or in 
 careful and skilful management. I have known some people, 
 and heard of many others, who frequently cross the Atlantic, 
 who will go on the ships of no other line. This company had for 
 a time grave doubts as to whether ships of lesser width than the 
 Russia and other ships of their line, would stand such severe 
 storms as are frequently encountered on the Atlantic. These 
 doubts were shared by a great many experienced navigators. 
 I was in London when the first steamer of the White Star line 
 left Liverpool, and I heard at the office of one of the marine 
 insurance companies, the opinion expressed by a number of 
 naval men that she would never reach New York. One man, 
 who I understood had been a sailor, remarked in a loud and 
 authoritative tone, " She is too narrow for her length too nar 
 row, sir, by thirty feet ; no ship of her build can stand rough 
 weather ; she will break in two in the first storm she encoun 
 ters." The fate predicted did not overtake her. She made 
 many trips in all kinds of weather, with perfect safety, and 
 her model was not only adopted for sister ships, but by other 
 lines, including the Cunard. 
 
 In these days, time has become much more important than 
 it was some years ago. Competition has reduced rates of 
 transportation to such an extent that the saving by a steam 
 ship of one or two days expenditure is a matter of considera 
 ble importance to her owners. When I left New England in 
 1833, ocean steamships were things of the future. All the 
 productions of the L T nited States which went abroad, then 
 chiefly cotton and tobacco, were carried by sailing vessels, 
 which were built to carry the bulkiest and heaviest cargoes 
 without regard to speed. Such vessels were forty or fifty 
 days in crossing the Atlantic, but as it frequently happened 
 that as much as a penny a pound was paid on cotton from 
 New Orleans to Liverpool, more money was made in a single 
 trip by one of those vessels than is now made by steamships 
 
CHANGE IN OCEAN STEAMSHIPS. 425 
 
 in three. Vessels that would carry the largest cargoes were 
 therefore in demand ; not those which would make the best 
 time. Baltimore had then the reputation of building the 
 fleetest sailing vessels, and we used to hear a good deal about 
 the Baltimore clippers. For what trade they were used, I do 
 not recollect. Upon the discovery of gold in California, a 
 number of clipper ships were built in New England and New 
 York for speedy voyages to San Francisco. Beautiful ships 
 they were the most perfect specimens of naval architecture. 
 Their day was short, but brilliant. No sailing vessels ever 
 equalled them in speed, and in those lively days time was of 
 importance, and on so long a voyage sailing vessels had great 
 advantage over steamships, on account of the quantity of coal 
 the steamships had to aike with them. These clipper ships 
 were profitable for a couple of seasons only. The construc 
 tion of the Panama Railroad put an end to their utility, and 
 they soon after disappeared from the ocean. 
 
 Of all the changes that have taken place within the last 
 half century, none has been more marked and decided than 
 that in ships. Until the Cunard Company, in 1840, sent their 
 first steamship, the Britannia, of thirteen hundred tons, from 
 Liverpool to Boston, sailing vessels built of wood had the 
 command of the seas. There were, it is true, a few steam 
 ships constructed before that time. In 1819, the Savannah, 
 with sails as well as steam, went from Savannah in Georgia, 
 to St. Petersburg, stopping on her way out at England, and 
 completing her run from St. Petersburg back to Savannah in 
 twenty-six days ; so that the honor of sending the first steam 
 ship across the ocean from the United States belongs to a 
 Southern State. In 1825, the Enterprise, probably so called, 
 went from England to Calcutta, and in 1838 the Sirius, of 
 seven hundred tons, and the Great Western, of thirteen hun 
 dred and forty tons, came to New York from Liverpool. 
 These, however, were experiments. Regular ocean traffic by 
 steamships did not fairly commence until the establishment of 
 
426 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 the Cunard fine in 1840. From that time the construction of 
 steamships went rapidly on, and traffic upon the seas went as 
 rapidly from sailing vessels to steamers. The great motive 
 power of the world, upon water as well as upon land, is steam. 
 Upon the great lakes and upon the ocean its value is appre 
 ciated ; but upon the rivers only can its great advantages be 
 fully understood. Before I went to the West, and for some 
 time after, the business upon the Mississippi and its tributaries 
 was chiefly carried on by flatboats, which were floated down 
 to New Orleans by the current, and broken up and sold for 
 lumber after their cargoes had been disposed of ; or by barges, 
 which, after they had been unloaded at the levee, were towed 
 back to their shipping points by watermen a race that has 
 long since disappeared. A whole season was consumed by 
 these barges in a single trip down and back from the Ohio 
 and upper Mississippi to New Orleans. 
 
 Steamboats, when they came into full play, changed all 
 this, and opened for settlement a country as large as that 
 which lies east of the Alleghanies. The ocean and lake traffic 
 might have been carried on by sailing vessels, but upon no 
 rivers, except the great rivers of South America, could sails be 
 used. In our harbors one now sees a few sailing vessels, and 
 here and there a three-masted schooner, which reminds him of 
 the Baltimore clippers, but these are engaged in a coastwise 
 trade, and are being rapidly superseded by small steamers. 
 In 1876, the last time I was in Liverpool, I saw scarcely a 
 single sailing vessel among the hundreds that filled her docks. 
 The age is utilitarian ; it is the most useful that is sought for, 
 what pays the best is the desideratum. The sailing ship is a 
 thing of beauty. Nothing to me is so beautiful as a full-rigged 
 ship with all sails set, as she moves before the wind ; but she 
 has ceased to pay. A steamship is a thing of power. There 
 is nothing about her which is beautiful, but she is time-saving, 
 and hence her superiority over sailing vessels. Next to steam, 
 iron and steel have been the great factors in the revolution of 
 
FIRST IMPRESSIONS OF ENGLAND. 427 
 
 the last half century in shipbuilding. Fifty years ago, vessels 
 of all descriptions, naval as well as those that were used in 
 trade, were built of wood. Now iron and steel are almost 
 exclusively used. There are a few small sailing vessels being 
 built of wood for home trade, but a wooden ship of war can 
 only be seen among the hulks. The fight in Hampton Koads 
 between the little Monitor and the Virginia sealed the fate of 
 wooden war ships. What a revolution in shipbuilding that 
 first contest between iron-clads produced ! It literally made 
 valueless the navies of the world, upon which countless mill 
 ions had been expended. In itself considered, it was, in com 
 parison with hundreds of other naval battles, an unimportant 
 affair; but as I have said, by enabling the Government to 
 maintain the blockade, it did much for the preservation of 
 the Union, and by showing how powerless wooden ships 
 would be in contests with iron-clads, it created a sys 
 tem of naval architecture in which all the commercial 
 nations are now experimenting. Each is trying to construct 
 ships that will attain the greatest speed, carry the heaviest 
 guns, and resist the heaviest shot. How valuable they will be, 
 will doubtless be proven in the next great European war. 
 
 I have said that the first impression which I received in 
 visiting England was favorable. It could hardly fail to be so, 
 as I landed in Liverpool, one of the most enterprising and 
 interesting of European cities, and the greatest sea-port of the 
 world. The bustle in the streets, and the activity which seemed 
 to prevail throughout the city, reminded me of New York ; but 
 its streets were better paved, and although in actual growth it 
 was not older than New York, its buildings seemed to be 
 ancient and better built. But what impressed me most favor 
 ably was the docks and the shipping. The docks, unequalled 
 in extent and massive strength by any in the world, affording 
 the greatest facilities for handling goods, and protecting the 
 ships that filled them against danger from storms, have been, 
 and continue to be, the admiration of visitors. I saw nothing 
 
428 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 in England that indicated more far-seeing intelligence and 
 wisdom in expenditure, than the Liverpool docks. I was, 
 however, most interested in the shipping in the variety of flags 
 that floated from the masts of the ships with which the docks 
 were filled, without being crowded. It seemed to me that all 
 important nations were there represented except my own. I 
 was not disappointed in this, for I knew, of course, that the 
 United States had ceased to be, what they were many years 
 ago, a great maritime nation ; but I could not suppress feelings 
 of chagrin that in that great congregation of ships the Stripes 
 and Stars were not to be seen. Commercial cities are to me 
 more interesting than any others. There is a fascination in 
 international trade in the intermingling of men from nations 
 remote from each other in the brotherhood which is thus 
 established between different races. There is something enno 
 bling in a seafaring life. Sailors ought to be, and are, a superior 
 class to the laborers in factories and in mines ; and commercial 
 cities, in the intelligence the mental scope of their people 
 are of a higher and more liberal type than manufacturing cities. 
 I was more interested in Liverpool than I should have been, 
 if it had not reminded me of Boston as it was in my boyhood. 
 Much larger it certainly was, but not larger than Boston 
 seemed to me then. I shall not, and my children may not, see 
 the United States a great maritime and commercial nation ; but 
 I shall live and die in the hope that it will become so at no 
 very distant day. Aside from the docks and the shipping, 
 I saw in Liverpool indications of the thrift which is always 
 the result of well-directed enterprise and industry. 
 
 The ride from Liverpool to London was a short one, but 
 long enough to give me a pretty correct idea of the English 
 landscape, which, although there is in it much of sameness, is 
 everywhere and at all times beautiful. It was after the 
 middle of November, but there had been no killing frost. 
 The foliage of the trees was yellow (it never has the brilliancy 
 of color which is peculiar to the trees of the United States in 
 
ENGLISH AGRICULTURE. 429 
 
 autumn), but the grass was as green as it is in spring. There 
 were no visible fences to separate the fields, and no barns. A 
 Pennsylvania farmer, in travelling hastily over England in 
 autumn, would conclude that farming there is conducted on a 
 very small scale, and that the crops are not well cared for. 
 To him the evidence of extensive and productive farming is 
 found in the size of the barns; according to his notions a 
 farm without a large barn is not worth looking at, but if he 
 should spend time enough to see how farming is conducted in 
 England, he would discover that the lands are generally under 
 good tillage, and that there is no neglect of their productions. 
 Instead of barns he would see stacks so carefully and skilfully 
 I might say artistically made that the rain does not pene 
 trate them, in which the hay and unthreshed grain are as well 
 protected as they could be under roofs ; and he would dis 
 cover also that the root crops under mounds in the fields are 
 in as good preservation as they would be in stone-walled 
 cellars. Nowhere except in the best-managed market gardens 
 is the earth made to do its best ; but in no country is there 
 better farming than there is even now in England. I say 
 even now, because there has been in late years some falling off 
 in English farming, it having ceased to be as profitable as it 
 formerly was. 
 
 It was predicted that the repeal of the Corn Laws would 
 affect injuriously the agricultural industry of that country, 
 but the prediction was not verified. The repeal of these laws 
 opened wide the door for foreign importations of grain, but it 
 stimulated the English farmer to greater exertion, and he 
 was more prosperous after he was deprived of the protection 
 which the Corn Laws gave to him than before. It is the 
 immense increase in the production of wheat in California, in 
 the Northern part of the United States, and in Australia, that 
 has made wheat-growing the most important of her crops 
 unprofitable in Great Britain. Wheat cannot be profitably 
 raised by the British farmer, even with the low rates of labor 
 
430 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 and the use of machinery, at the prices which it is now selling 
 in Liverpool. The present low prices which prevail every 
 where cannot, however, be of long continuance. Except 
 where it is raised on a large scale, and chiefly by the use of 
 machinery on fresh lands, wheat costs more than it now sells 
 for. The low prices increase consumption and diminish produc 
 tion. Less and less land will, year by year, be cultivated in 
 wheat, until it can be raised and sold at a profit. Its production 
 has been stimulated by the fact that there is always a cash 
 market for it at some price, which is not the case with other 
 crops, and the soil and climate of the Pacific coast, and of the 
 north-western Territories of the United States which have 
 been recently opened, are especially adapted to its cultivation. 
 These fresh lands rapidly lose their productive power. To be 
 kept up they must be helped by fertilizers, which, situated as 
 they are, will be expensive. Wheat, therefore, cannot long be 
 profitably raised on these lands without an advance in prices. 
 The climate and soil of England are, however, favorable to its 
 production, and so great is the home demand, that if the 
 lands were owned by those who cultivate them, and the taxes 
 upon them were no higher than they are upon lands in the 
 United States, it could, even at the present prices, be profit 
 ably grown, as the average yield per acre in England is 
 nearly three times as large as it is in the United States. 
 
 Fertilizers are, however, expensive, and the land proprie 
 tors are turning their attention more than ever before to stock 
 growing, in which England has always been in the lead. The 
 United States are indebted to her for their fine herds of 
 domestic animals. Our race horses and roadsters, our best 
 milkers and beef cattle and swine, are of English origin. Some 
 of them have not been degenerated by the change of climate, 
 but every year there are fresh importations to prevent retro 
 gression. For all we have in this line, except draft horses 
 from Normandy, and some varieties of sheep from Spain, we 
 are under obligations to the mother country, or to her adjacent 
 
FARMING AND THE CLIMATE. 431 
 
 islands. Some of the European nations are also indebted to 
 her for their stock. There is no healthier country for animals 
 of all kinds than England ; none superior to it for hay and 
 root crops ; none equal to it for grazing except the blue grass 
 regions of Kentucky. The grasses in England seem to be 
 peculiar in the fact that when being cured for hay they are not 
 injured by rain. Good farmers in the United States never 
 permit their hay to be wet, if they can help it. Some of the 
 New England farmers not only try to protect it against rain, 
 but they cover the cocks with tarpaulin to prevent the dew 
 from touching it. But with all the care that can be exercised, 
 the hay crop in the United States is frequently injured and 
 sometimes almost destroyed by showery weather in harvest 
 time. Not so is it in England. I saw in London as clean, 
 bright hay, as free from mould and dust, as I ever saw any 
 where, and yet there was not a ton of it that had not been 
 rained upon when it was being cured. I spent a week with 
 Mr. John "W. Cater, the lessee of a fine crown estate near 
 Barnet, who was not only one of the most intelligent business 
 men of London, but who had a good knowledge of farming 
 also. As I rode up to his house, I perceived a field in which 
 the grass had been cut and was lying in wind-rows. It had 
 rained the day before, and on that day, and on that account 
 it could not be moved ; and there were showers every day 
 during my visit. The grass was in wind-rows when I first 
 saw it on Monday ; it was in wind-rows on Saturday, and I 
 supposed that it was ruined. A week or two after I met Mr. 
 Cater, and asked him how his hay turned out. " Oh, all 
 right," he replied ; " rain does not hurt hay in England." A 
 country, thought I, in which the best grasses grow luxuriantly 
 and are not injured by rain when being cured for hay, must 
 be, for stock growing, one of the best in the world ; and such 
 England is. In this line she is not likely to be outri vailed. 
 The wealth of Great Britain has not, of course, been largely 
 acquired by agriculture. It is her manufactures and her ship- 
 
432 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 ping, the enterprise of her people and the wisdom of her 
 rulers, that have made her the rich and powerful nation that 
 she is; but in considering her present and prospective con 
 dition, the productive power of her land is not to be over 
 looked. I have referred to English farming because I have 
 always been, as Mr. Horace Greeley was, a farmer, a farmer 
 of the same kind, and found use for what little money I had 
 to spare in the cultivation or improvement of land. My 
 expenses in this direction have always exceeded the income, 
 but I have been amply repaid for my outlays, for no part of 
 my varied life has been enjoyed so thoroughly as the small 
 part of it which has been spent on the farm. 
 
CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 English Society Introductions Exchange of Cards Primogeniture Unfa 
 vorable to Chivalry Difference in the Manners of Society Grades Aris 
 tocratic Exclusiveness The Landed Gentry Effect of Leaseholds upon 
 Building London a Well-governed City Observance of Sunday 
 Paupers Exchange Condition of Workingmen Conversation with a 
 Policeman Economy of the English Station more Honored than Wealth 
 House of Lords Esteem in which Noblemen are Held The Throne 
 Queen Victoria Her Family The Prince of Wales The Empress of 
 Germany. 
 
 UPOX English society I have but little to say. Enough has 
 been said upon it by those who have had greater opportu 
 nities for observing it. There is little real difference, it seems to 
 me, between what is called good society in England and good 
 society in the United States. It is at the dinner table that 
 the Englishman throws off his reserve and exhibits his true 
 character ; and I failed to observe anything at the table of the 
 English gentleman, in the manners or style of either the host 
 or the guests, to remind me that I was out of my own country, 
 except that there were no introductions. The increased inter 
 course between the people of the two countries has produced 
 some change in this respect, but I had been more than a year 
 in London before, at a dinner party, I was introduced to any 
 one (stranger although I was), except to the host and the lady 
 whom I took down to the table, and yet some of the pleasant- 
 est acquaintances which I formed in London were at such 
 parties. As I did not like to confine my conversation to the 
 lady I took in, and still less not to be talking to any one, I 
 invariably put my dinner card before my next neighbor, and 
 took his or hers in return, merely remarking that I was an 
 American, and hoped to be pardoned for the libertv I was 
 taking. " I thank you," or " Thanks," was always the return 
 28 
 
434 MEX AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 which I received for mv self-introduction. One evening at 
 
 v O 
 
 the house of a distinguished merchant I happened to sit 
 between two ladies one I had taken down, to the other I had 
 not been introduced. After a pleasant talk with the former, 
 I placed my card before the latter, and took hers. She seemed 
 surprised, but pleased. The ice was broken, and we were at 
 once on pleasant terms. She was a handsome woman and a 
 brilliant talker, and I had more than I could do to keep even 
 with her. As we were about to separate, she said to me in an 
 undertone, " I shall never forget your kindness in relieving me 
 from that horrid man," glancing at the one who was sitting 
 by her side and had taken her to the table. u That horrid 
 man " (now deceased), was one of the most distinguished 
 novelists of the day, whom I had met some years before in 
 Washington, at the house of the British Minister, Sir Fred 
 erick Bruce. Primogeniture the highest place for the eldest 
 son gives precedence to boys over girls, and tends to lessen 
 women in the social scale. The deference which is shown to 
 women by gentlemen in the United States, is not often wit 
 nessed in England. " That horrid man " could have made 
 himself agreeable to the lady by his side if he had been so 
 disposed ; but in his intercourse with women he was thoroughly 
 English, and his manner was displeasing to a highly cultivated 
 lady. English gentlemen are not distinguished for their 
 chivalry in their intercourse with the other sex. 
 
 Introductions are exceptional at receptions and other large 
 assemblies, as well as at dinner parties. London is so large a 
 city that a visitor may go to a score of such gatherings with 
 out meeting any one he has ever met before. I went, by special 
 invitation, to a party given by a member of Parliament, who 
 had been a frequent guest at my house. There was no one 
 whom I could see in the throng that I had ever met before, 
 except the host and hostess, and they did not take the trouble 
 to introduce me to any one. The only exceptions to what 
 seemed to me a want of good manners in this respect were in 
 
TRADESPEOPLE AXD "SOCIETY. " 435 
 
 the houses of the aristocracy. I took my daughter a young 
 girl with me to a party given by a distinguished duke, at his 
 interesting old mansion in Piccadilly. The lady who received 
 with him was, I understood, his daughter-in-law, and three or 
 four times during the evening she left her place at the 
 entrance of the drawing-room to introduce me and my daughter 
 to those whom she thought we would like to know. I noticed 
 wherever I went that there was more ease and freedom less 
 of form and exaction in the noble families (always excepting 
 the royal head) than in those of lower degree. A knight 
 one who has taken the first step on the social ladder is 
 prouder of his rank than one who stands among those who 
 are nearest to the throne. To address a knight without the 
 "Sir" or his wife without the "Lady," would be an offense 
 not readily forgiven. Not so is it with men of high station. 
 " Mr. McCulloch, will you take my wife," said a distinguished 
 earl, at a dinner which was given by him to me soon after I 
 went to London, in recognition of the position I had held in 
 the United States, " Mr. McCulloch, will you take my wife 
 to the table ? " Had he been a knight, he would have said, 
 " Will you take Lady - - ? " The high honors which rest 
 upon dukes, earls and lords, are easily borne : the honor of 
 knighthood seems to be burdensome. 
 
 The English people are spoken of as a nation of shop-keep 
 ers ; but in no country are shop-keepers so rigidly excluded 
 from the society of wholesale merchants, manufacturers, law 
 yers, and other professional men, the landed gentry, etc., etc. 
 There are in London hundreds of men engaged in the retail 
 trade who are not only rich but highly cultured, and would 
 shine in any company, who are never seen as guests in the 
 houses of the classes I have named. If Mr. A. T. Stewart, dis 
 tinguished as he was for intelligence and ability, had lived in 
 London, he would not have been admitted into what is called 
 good society. When the line was drawn, or for what reason, 
 nobody seemed to know. The only explanation which I heard 
 
436 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 was, that if retail merchants were admitted into such society, 
 they might meet delinquent if not dishonest customers, which 
 would not be agreeable to either of them. The aristocracy 
 is a class by itself. Men of high titles meet those of lower 
 station, in politics and for party purposes, on an equality ; and 
 some of them who like good dinners (there are few of them 
 who do not) may be seen at the tables of those who are con 
 sidered socially beneath them, but it is not expected that they 
 will reciprocate. 
 
 To one who goes to England from a country in which no 
 man is honored for his acreage, no matter how extensive it 
 may be, few things seem more strange than the public respect 
 that is paid to the owners or lessees of land. If he takes up a 
 provincial paper, he will see in large type the names of the 
 landed gentry in the neighborhood, and upon inquiry he will 
 find that, with few exceptions, this gentry is made up of men 
 who have no other especial claims to respect than that they 
 are the owners or occupiers of land. The land in Great 
 Britain is owned and controlled by comparatively few of its 
 citizens, and the large estates are entailed. Very little land, 
 therefore, is for sale ; and prices are so high, and conve} r ances 
 so expensive, that it is beyond the reach of men of moderate 
 means, if the proprietors are able and disposed to sell. As an 
 investment, land does not pay. The ordinary farming lands 
 of England, Scotland and Ireland, do not yield two, perhaps 
 not one, per cent, on their estimated value. Many large pro 
 prietors would be land-poor if their holdings were confined to 
 agricultural lands ; but they are the owners also of city and 
 town property, from which their incomes are mainly derived. 
 The incomes from these sources to many proprietors are very 
 large, and are steadily increasing, as the leases made many 
 years since, when ground rents were low, are constantly expir 
 ing, and extensions can only be obtained by lessees at prices 
 which are in accord with present values. Not one landholder 
 in fifty is an owner in fee. I knew but one man in London 
 
LONDON ILL BUILT BUT WELL GOVERNED. 437 
 
 who occupied a house (except the heirs, or original proprie 
 tors), who was not a tenant, and he was a distinguished 
 American banker, who had succeeded after much difficulty 
 in obtaining the fee to the lot upon which he lived. 
 
 This condition of the ownership of the ground would seem 
 to be a draAvback upon the growth of the city, but it is not. 
 Rents are lower in London than in Kew York, and no city in 
 the world, except some of the new cities in the United States, 
 is increasing so rapidly in population and wealth as London. 
 It does, however, prevent the erection of substantial build 
 ings. To one who merely passes along the streets, London 
 seems to be well built ; but this is not the case, and for the 
 simple reason that the buildings have not been erected and are 
 not really owned by the owners of the land on which they 
 stand. They are not as good as they look. The house in 
 which I lived for three years, was the corner house in a row of 
 stately buildings, but so thin Avere the walls above the first 
 story, that the conversation in the drawing-room of the adjoin 
 ing building could be heard distinctly in mine. I looked at 
 some houses that were being built in the neighborhood, and 
 were to be five stories high, and yet the walls above the sec-, 
 ond story were only nine inches thick. "Are not these walls 
 too thin ? " I asked a man who appeared to be superintending 
 the work ; a are not these walls too thin for such high build 
 ings ? " " They are rather thin," he replied ; " but they will 
 last as long as the lease, which runs out in fifty years." Lon 
 don houses are not only poorly built, but they are incon 
 venient. I speak, of course, of those which I saw some years 
 ago. I examined a number on different streets at the West 
 End, and all of them, including the one which I took, seemed 
 to have been built so as to necessitate the employment of the 
 largest number of servants. 
 
 But if London is not well built, it is a well-governed city. 
 In returning from parties at late hours in the night, when my 
 family were not with me, I always walked, and frequently 
 
438 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 through the parks and streets that were only partially lighted, 
 without ever being molested. A gentleman from Brooklyn, 
 ]S r ew York, who was troubled with sleeplessness, said to me 
 that for months he had spent a good part of every night in 
 the London streets, and he never felt that he was less safe 
 there than he would have been in a country village. My 
 conclusion in regard to the government of London was that 
 in the protection which was given to persons and property, 
 in the carefulness with which the immense business in its 
 crowded thoroughfares was conducted, in the vigilance and 
 yet unobtrusiveness of its police, in the management of its 
 public vehicles, that in all these respects it needed little 
 improvement. In the city proper, in which the large and 
 most important business was conducted, the streets were so 
 narrow that wagons in passing had no room to spare, and yet 
 there were no outcries no profane swearing and no confusion. 
 Jams there were, but they could not be avoided, crowded as 
 were the streets from morning to night ; but nevertheless 
 everything seemed to go on in perfect order. The police were 
 always at hand when their presence was needed, and they 
 .never exercised their authority unnecessarily. The cabs and 
 hansoms were under such control, that packages left in them 
 were sure to be recovered. My niece remarked one day as 
 she came into the house, that she had left her umbrella in the 
 cab. " It is lost then," I said. " No," she replied, " I shall 
 find it to-morrow at Scotland Yard," which she did, and 
 she recovered it at the expense of a shilling. A lady dropped 
 her purse containing a considerable amount of money in a 
 hansom, and did not discover her loss until she had entered 
 her own house. It was recovered the next day, with its con 
 tents undisturbed. All such things I noticed, and was most 
 favorably impressed with them. Freedom and order seemed 
 to go hand in hand. Xobody was interfered with who was 
 not in somebody s way. 
 
 London cannot be seen to advantn<re when the streets are 
 
SUNDAY IN THE CITY. 439 
 
 crowded, as most of them are on week days. The only pleas 
 ant drives that I had in the city were on Sunday mornings 
 when the shops were closed, all traffic suspended, and the 
 great city was as noiseless as if it had been deserted. I rode, 
 one Sunday morning three miles without seeing a single per 
 son on the streets except here and there a policeman. Later 
 in the day, if the weather was pleasant, there would be move 
 ments chiefly of the laboring classes towards the parks, 
 which are the great places of popular resort on that day, and 
 which are occupied by as well behaved people, men, women 
 and children, as can be found in the world. AVhat surprised 
 me on such mornings, was the cleanness of the streets, no 
 matter how early I rode through them. Those which were 
 the most crowded on which were the small retail and huck 
 ster shops which were kept open until midnight on Saturdays, 
 and were consequently well littered, were as clean the next 
 morning as if they had not been used the day before. Sunday 
 in London is what it should be everywhere, but what it is not 
 in any European city outside of Great Britain a da) 7 of rest 
 and relaxation. It is not only in the morning, but all day, a 
 wonderfully quiet city. The churches are all open, but there 
 are no loud ringing bells. They are well filled, but chiefly 
 by those who live in their neighborhoods, and who go to them 
 on foot. I ought to limit this statement to those outside of 
 the old city (which constitutes a small part of London), for, 
 with one exception, those in the old city are not well filled. 
 The well-to-do people of London no longer live in that quar 
 ter ; but there are a number of churches there which are kept 
 open, and in which regular services are maintained, as valuable 
 livings which belong to them might be forfeited if they were 
 closed. I looked into one of them which was near the Royal 
 Exchange, one Sunday forenoon, from curiosity. The rector 
 was reading his sermon with considerable earnestness, but 
 unless heads were hidden by the high backs of the slips, there 
 were but six hearers. The exception referred to was the old 
 
440 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 and beautiful church (St. Martin, I think it was called), which 
 is a very rich church, and upon which every year a large 
 amount of money must be expended in decorations according 
 to the terms of the grant made many years before, the income 
 from which could not be devoted to any other purpose. As 
 there has been no improvement since Wren in church archi 
 tecture or church decorations, this church is probably less 
 beautiful than it was a century ago, but its history is interest 
 ing, and such pleasant associations are connected with it, and 
 the rectors are usually so able, that its congregation continues 
 to be large and respectable. 
 
 I have said that all traffic was suspended in London on 
 Sundays. There were, however, two exceptions the rag fair 
 at St. Giles, and what was called the Paupers Exchange, on a 
 cross street between South Kensington and Exeter street, 
 both of which were opened every Sunday forenoon. I never 
 witnessed the former, but I stumbled upon the latter accident 
 ally, and was so much interested in the proceedings that I was 
 an observer of it a number of times. The street was narrow 
 and the buildings with which it w r as lined were of the worst 
 description, and swarming with inhabitants. The exchange 
 was opened at 11 o clock by some signal which the operators 
 seemed to understand, and suddenly a large number of men 
 and women, the majority of them from the lower and subter 
 ranean apartments made their appearance, with their arms 
 full of all sorts of wearing apparel, which had been picked up 
 during the week, and the traffic commenced. Each had some 
 thing to sell or exchange, and sales and exchanges were made 
 with great earnestness ; but there was no noisy excitement, 
 in which respect it greatly differed from the Stock Exchange. 
 The language of the operators was unintelligible to outsiders, 
 but it was well understood by themselves. A more unsightly 
 set of people were never congregated under the sun than those 
 who were thus engaged in a Sunday morning traffic. I asked 
 an old man who was standing on the sidewalk near my car- 
 
A WATCHMAN S STORY. 441 
 
 riage how long this traffic had been carried on at that place. 
 Indeed, sir," he replied, " I cannot tell you. Nobody 
 knows/ It seemed to me very odd that such a scene should 
 be witnessed in the nineteenth century, in the most Sabbath- 
 observing city in the world. 
 
 The workingmen of London are poorly paid in com 
 parison with the workingmen of New York, but as far as I 
 could judge they lived as well, or better. The reason for this 
 seemed to be that rents and everything used and consumed in 
 the families, except meats, were lower in London than in New 
 York, and that the English workingmen were better managers 
 and mo^e economical than the workingmen of the United 
 States. Having understood that the watchmen in London 
 were receiving only a pound a week for their services, I 
 thought that I would like to know how they managed to 
 live on so small pay, so I asked a night watchman on the 
 square where I lived if he had a family. u I have, sir," said 
 he ; " I have a wife and three children." "And can you live 
 comfortably on a pound a week ? " (In United States money, 
 seventy cents a day.) " Yes, sir," he replied ; " we ve managed 
 to get along so far, and as two of my children will soon be able 
 to earn something, I am pretty well satisfied." * "Will you tell 
 me," I asked again, " how you manage to make both ends 
 meet you don t run in debt, I hope ? " " Oh, no, sir, I never 
 runs in debt ; I knows just how much I am to get each week, 
 and as the saying is, I cuts my coat according to the cloth. I 
 cannot tell you exactly how much everything costs, but I can 
 tell you what we do : In the first place we sets aside what 
 we have to pay each month for rent ; and next what Ave have 
 to pay for coal ; we must have a roof over our heads and fire 
 to cook with and keep us warm when the weather is cold ; 
 then a few pennies are laid aside which go to the society, that 
 will give us a decent burial ; then we calculates just how much 
 we can spend a day for food, and have enough left over for 
 clothing, and a little besides. We usually have meat once and 
 
442 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 sometimes twice a week, and always on Sundays, and we have 
 plenty of potatoes and bread. The city furnishes me with 
 two suits of clothes a year, and my wife buys the cloth for the 
 other things I needs, and for her clothes and the children s, and 
 she makes them up. I helps her myself, sometimes, about the 
 housework." " You say," I remarked, " you have a little left 
 over ; what do you do with that ? " " Oh, sir, that is put in 
 the savings bank, so that we may have something to fall back 
 upon if any of us gets sick." "Do you drink any liquor?" 
 " No, sir." " Not even beer ( " " Not often. I likes a glass of 
 beer as well as anybody, but [ might lose my place if I was 
 often seen in beer shops, and I can get along just as well 
 without it ; besides, sir, I could not afford to drink beer if I 
 wanted to." " A good many of your class," I said, " do drink 
 it, and a good deal of it." "That is true, sir; and a good 
 many of them dies in the almshouse." " Do you take nothing 
 in these long, chilly nights ( " " Nothing but tea, sir, which 
 my wife makes for me. I takes a bottle of it in my pocket, and 
 drinks that as I takes my rounds. It is a good deal cheaper, 
 and I am sure it is a good deal better for me than beer." 
 " One question more, and I have done ; how is it about your 
 children ; you don t let them grow up in ignorance, I suppose ? 
 Who teaches them ? " " They goes to the free school, sir ; we 
 have free schools now in London." I was a good deal inter 
 ested in this man s story, which I drew out of him by ques 
 tions. Here was a man supporting himself and his family 
 on seventy cents a day, and yet hale, hearty and contented. 
 Who are more entitled to respect than such men ! 
 
 I have said that the workingmen of England were more 
 economical than the workingmen of the United States, but 
 economy in England is not confined to those who are com 
 pelled to practise it; it is a trait in the English character. 
 There are no more hospitable people in the world than the 
 English ; none that spend their money more liberally in the 
 support of public and private charities ; but they spend noth- 
 
CHEAP PKOVISIONS AND LITTLE WASTE. 443 
 
 ing for show, and for services rendered to them they pay no 
 more than they think the services are worth. Rich English 
 men are frequently seen in second-class coaches on the Con 
 tinent, and they never throw their money away as they think 
 the Americans do upon porters and waiters at station houses. 
 Americans, they say, have made travelling in Europe much 
 more expensive than it used to be, and than it ought to be. 
 One day at the Liverpool station I gave to the porter, for 
 taking my baggage from the cab and placing it upon the train, 
 a two-shilling piece. Just then another porter came along, 
 with two or three large packages belonging to a wealthy 
 young* merchant who stood by me, and received for his ser 
 vices a sixpence, for which this porter bowed as humbly as 
 mine did for four times as much. Everywhere I went I 
 noticed that in all small matters the English were closer in 
 their dealings, and altogether less liberal in their expenditures 
 than Americans. Very little is wasted in England none in 
 France. A French village of three hundred inhabitants would 
 live well on what is wasted in one of the large American 
 hotels. If the food which supplies the people of the United 
 States were properly cooked and none of it wasted, it would 
 well support twice the number of people ; and here I remark 
 that nothing is more needed in the United States, and espe 
 cially in the farming districts of the West, than good cooking. 
 Nothing is more conducive to health and thrift than well- 
 cooked food. Every girl, no matter what may be her station 
 in life, ought to know how to cook. There should be cooking 
 schools in all our towns and villages they would not be out 
 of place if they were in every school district. Happy homes 
 would be more frequent than they now are in the United 
 States if their mistresses knew how to instruct their cooks, 
 although their circumstances might be such as to relieve them 
 from doing it themselves. 
 
 I have said that everything, except meats, was cheaper in 
 England than in the United States. There are no taxes upon 
 
444 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 food and clothing, and sellers are contented with small profits. 
 They do not expect to become suddenly rich ; they are quite 
 content if they are doing what will secure for them a moderate 
 competency in a lifetime. Many Englishmen, by their superior 
 abilities and forecast, have become rich, but none have acquired 
 within the last twenty or thirty years such large fortunes as 
 have been acquired in the United States. Very few have 
 made money rapidly. It is true that the wealth of Great 
 Britain has been enormously increased within the last half 
 century much more rapidly indeed than in any other country 
 except the United States but it has been widely distributed. 
 If there are fewer millionaires in that country, there are 
 comparatively more men with large, or at least satisfactory 
 incomes, than in our own. Wealth is not worshipped in Great 
 Britain, nor does it command respect there, no matter how 
 acquired. No man who had betrayed his trust and compro 
 mised with his successor by the payment of millions of dollars, 
 and made the amount which he still retained the basis of a 
 colossal fortune, could have been admitted into good society 
 in that country, much less could he have become prominent 
 and respected. To rise there in the social scale is considered 
 more worthy of ambition than to become rich. Wealth is a 
 power in all countries, but it is not in England nor in any part 
 of Europe regarded as the main thing to live for, nor is it a 
 passport to a high order of society, as it seems to be in the 
 United States. 
 
 The English people seemed to me to be happier more 
 contented with their situation in life to take life easier, than 
 any I had known. I did not see in their faces that careworn 
 and anxious expression which is so common in the United 
 States. The envied and the enviable people are, of course, 
 the titled and landed aristocracy. There is no country in the 
 world where rank is so highly honored and so justly merits 
 the honor which it commands. It is either an honorable 
 inheritance, or it is conferred by the Crown as a fitting recog- 
 
THE HOUSE OF LORDS. 445 
 
 nition of services in the army, the navy, in diplomacy, in the 
 House of Commons, or for a high order of ability in civil life. 
 In some instances it has been conferred for political purposes, 
 as when private citizens have been made barons, to give the 
 dominant party (which is for the time being the Government) 
 additional strength in the House of Lords ; but this has been 
 exceptional, and when the authority of the Crown to make 
 peers has been thus exercised, that it has never been in dero 
 gation of the high character of that House. Those who are of 
 high rank by inheritance the large landed proprietors are 
 very rarely degenerate. It is the boast of the supporters of 
 the present form of the British Government, that the peers by 
 inheritance, with a long line of distinguished ancestors, are 
 inferior in no respect to those who from time to time are made 
 peers by the Sovereign. Rank in Great Britain is honorable 
 and justly honored. The House of Commons is the popular 
 branch of the Government ; the House of Lords, the aristo 
 cratic. In measures of reform, the Commons are expected to 
 take the lead ; but in the support of measures that affect the 
 honor and welfare of the Empire, it is claimed that the Lords 
 are no less earnest than the Commons ; that in the slow but 
 steady progress that Great Britain has made from the govern 
 ment of the few to the government of the many, in the suc 
 cessful efforts that have been put forth to root out the corrup 
 tions which in the last century existed in all branches of the 
 public service, the Lords have done their full share. It is the 
 conservative branch of the realm, and by the leaders of radi 
 cal movements it has been charged with being in the way of 
 progress, or at least indifferent to the rights of the people. 
 In its defence it is contended that its conservatism has been 
 used, not to prevent progress, but to hinder it from being too 
 rapid to be permanent ; that it has exercised its power so 
 wisely that all steps for the improvement of the condition of 
 the people have been without reaction ; that it has been as 
 much by the agency of the House of Lords as of the Com- 
 
446 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 mons that there is no other country in the world in which 
 life and property are better protected, in which taxes are less 
 burdensome, and larger freedom enjoyed. 
 
 The House of Lords is peculiar in its construction. It is 
 composed of archbishops and bishops, who hold their seats 
 by virtue of their office ; of English peers who hold by inheri 
 tance or by appointment ; of Scotch and Irish peers who hold 
 by election. Of the five classes, besides archbishops and 
 bishops, into which they are divided, the dukes are the high 
 est the barons the lowest ; and between these, socially, there 
 is a very wide, if not insurmountable difference ; and yet when 
 in session they are upon a perfect equality. The standing and 
 influence of members in the House of Lords, as well as in 
 the House of Commons, depend upon their abilities, and 
 not upon their rank. There is a prevailing opinion in the 
 United States that a popular prejudice prevails in England 
 against the House of Lords ; but as far as I could judge, its 
 members stand next to the Queen in the respect and admira 
 tion of the great mass of the English people. The House of 
 Lords will exist as long as the throne exists, and it is not 
 likely to be deprived of any of what are now regarded as its 
 legitimate powers. Great Britain may become a republic, 
 but it will not be until it is proven by the experiment in the 
 United States that the people are not only capable of self- 
 government, but that they are freer and happier under a 
 republic than they can be under a limited and constitutional 
 monarchy. In all the governments of which there is a his 
 tory, republics have been exceptional and brief in their exist 
 ence; the inference from which is, that monarchy in some 
 form or other has been a necessity. If the experiment in the 
 United States (for it cannot be claimed that it is anything 
 more than an experiment a hundred years being quite insuffi 
 cient to test the strength and stability of republican institu 
 tions in a country so vast, so new, and with resources so enor 
 mous, and into which the surplus population of all other 
 
LOYALTY TO THE THKONE. 447 
 
 nations is steadily flowing) ; if the experiment should be a 
 failure in the United States, centuries will doubtless come and 
 go before it is tried again on a large scale. 
 
 The House of Lords commands the admiration of the 
 people because it is composed entirely of titled men, some of 
 whom in rank stand next to the throne. To be appointed a 
 peer is the highest honor that can be conferred upon a subject 
 an honor which is not often conferred except upon those who 
 are justly regarded as being worthy of the distinction. To 
 become a peer is to become ennobled. It is an honor earnestly 
 desired, but never obtained by solicitation. Peers of distin 
 guished ancestry, and their sons, seem to be regarded, not 
 only by the masses, but by men of good social position and of 
 more than ordinary intelligence, as being superior in blood. 
 One day at the house of an eminent merchant, the conversa 
 tion happened to turn upon the peerage. The host was well 
 acquainted with many prominent peers and their sons, and it 
 was soon apparent to me that the respect which he had for 
 them was owing not only to their personal characters, but to 
 their high station, and I ventured to say to him that I sup 
 posed that, like other Englishmen, he regarded them as being 
 of better blood than men of inferior rank. " Yes," said he, 
 " I do. You Americans believe that there is no difference in 
 blood : that as good blood flows in the veins of a laboring man 
 as in the veins of a prince ; we Englishmen do not we believe 
 in blood that the best is in the royal family, the next in the 
 peers and their sons." It is the boast of genuine Englishmen 
 that their great landed aristocracy has not become degenerate ; 
 that some of the purest and best men of the nation are always 
 found in its ranks. 
 
 I have said that the peers, next in rank to the royal family, 
 are next to it in the respect and admiration of the people. 
 Loyalty to the throne is inborn in Englishmen ; it has survived 
 the severest tests. It was severely tried under the Henrys, 
 the Charleses, and the Georges, but it was not uprooted nor 
 
448 MEX AXD MEASUHES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 materially weakened. Loyalty to the throne has been main 
 tained with very slight interruptions, no matter how unworthy 
 or disreputable may have been the occupants. That it would 
 now stand the strain to which it has been subjected in times 
 past is questionable ; but there is no probability that it will 
 be tested again in that way as it has been. One thing may be 
 regarded as certain : that while the form of government is not 
 likely to be changed, no grossly immoral person will ever again 
 long occupy the throne. In tfce present occupant, the British 
 people have been exceedingly fortunate. They have had for 
 fifty years a Queen of the very highest character, upon whose 
 reputation as a woman there never has been a cloud, and who 
 by the manner in which she has performed her official duties, 
 has commanded the respect of every able man with whom she 
 has come in contact. She has done much to improve the 
 moral tone of English society ; much to improve the character 
 of foreign courts. The monarchs of Europe are of a higher 
 type than they have ever been before ; not intellectually, per 
 haps, but in their moral qualities. It would be too much to 
 say that they have looked to her as an example ; but it is 
 undoubtedly true that her influence has been felt by them. 
 Every crowned head in Europe is an admirer of Queen Vic 
 toria, and none can fail to be influenced by the qualities which 
 he admires. Victoria is not only one of the purest of women, 
 but she is one of the most sensible of Queens. An autocrat of 
 autocrats, maintaining with great strictness the forms and cere 
 monies of royalty, she has favored all well-directed movements 
 for the welfare of her people. She has never antagonized 
 popular movements. She has her own opinions in regard to 
 all important measures that are interesting to the public, and 
 she expresses them to those whom she admits to her presence 
 and desires to influence ; but she never interferes with legisla 
 tion, or attempts to bring her influence to bear directly upon 
 Parliament. In sentiment and feeling she is a Tory, but she 
 treats the leading statesmen of both of the great parties with 
 
QUEEN VICTORIA. 449 
 
 equal consideration. Disraeli was nearer to her heart than 
 Gladstone, but the latter never had reason to complain of the 
 manner in which he was received by her. While she does not 
 study the details of all important measures which are before 
 Parliament, there are none which do not receive her attention. 
 She manifests her interest in Parliamentary proceedings by 
 requiring a daily letter from the Prime Minister, and she 
 never gives her approval to a bill without understanding its 
 general scope. Her reign has been characterized by very 
 important reforms in all branches of the service, for which she 
 is entitled to credit ; and while she has done much to relieve 
 her subjects from unnecessary restraint, she has done nothing 
 to lessen the influence or supremacy of the Crown. There is 
 restlessness among her people, as there is among all free 
 people, but the British throne never rested on a firmer basis 
 than at the present time. 
 
 That the Queen, by her high character, her excellent com 
 mon sense, the manner in which she has maintained the 
 dignity of the Crown while sympathizing with all the move 
 ments that have been successfully made, during her long reign, 
 for the improvement of the condition of her people, has done 
 much to secure this result, there can be no question. She has 
 been criticised for the infrequency of her appearance in public, 
 and for the etiquette which she has enforced at Windsor and 
 Osborne ; but she knows, what her critics do not seem to 
 understand, that royalty might lose some of its lustre by 
 frequent exposure, and that etiquette is its necessary adjunct. 
 Although she has kept herself aloof from her people, she has 
 nevertheless popularized monarchy, and strengthened its hold 
 upon the empire. She has been fortunate in her family. The 
 death of her husband was a dreadful blow to her, and for a 
 time it was feared it would seriously impair her usefulness and 
 her health ; but she never failed in the performance of official 
 duties, and at the age of seventy her mental powers are unim 
 paired and she is physically stronger than most women of her 
 29 
 
450 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 age. Few women could endure, as she did, the physical strain 
 to which she was subjected in the recent jubilee. Of her nine 
 children, seven are living ; all are above mediocrity ; some are 
 distinguished by their acquirements and artistic taste. The 
 Prince of Wales is a very clever man. He was profligate in 
 his younger days, and great fears were entertained that he 
 would severely try the loyalty of the people. These fears no 
 longer exist. He is now a social leader. Unostentatious and 
 accessible, he still maintains the dignity of his rank, and there 
 will be no letting down of royalty if he should survive his 
 mother. Her oldest daughter, the Empress of Germany, is 
 the most sagacious and talented of the women of high rank in 
 Europe. 
 
CHAPTER XXX. 
 
 Difference between the Government of the United. States and that of Great 
 Britain Powers and Duties of the Crown Appointing Power House of 
 Commons Parliament more Democratic than Congress Elections in 
 Great Britain The British Constitution Speakers of the House of Com 
 mons and the House of Representatives Henry Clay Robert C. Win- 
 throp James G. Elaine John G. Carlisle N. P. Banks James L. Orr 
 Schuyler Colfax Samuel J. Randall England as a Maritime Power 
 Ireland and the Irish Character and Habits of the Upper Classes The 
 Scotch A Protracted Dinner Taxes not Burdensome. 
 
 THE differences between the governments of Great Britain 
 and the United States, great as man} 7 without examina 
 tion suppose them to be, are more of form than substance. 
 They consist chiefly in the agencies employed. In what is 
 essential to the welfare of the people, the two governments are 
 very much alike. In some respects the British is practically 
 the more democratic. Which is the freer and to be preferred 
 is a question which an American, strongly attached to his own 
 form of government, finds it difficult to answer satisfactorily 
 to himself. In Great Britain there is an hereditary monarch ; 
 in the United States a President elected by the people. The 
 monarch, at the commencement of its session, sends an address 
 (which is understood to be prepared by the Prime Minister) 
 to Parliament, in which the condition of the public service 
 and the relations of the Government with other nations are 
 briefly referred to, and this is about all. The monarch advo 
 cates no measures of public policy, and carefully avoids expres 
 sions that might indicate sympathy with either of the great 
 parties into which the people of Great Britain are usually 
 divided. The President sends a long and elaborate message to 
 Congress, in which he presents, with the utmost freedom, his 
 opinions upon all subjects of public interest, and advises the 
 adoption of such measures as he thinks may promote the pub- 
 
452 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 lie welfare. Elected by a party, and pledged to the support of 
 its principles, it is expected by party leaders that he will admin 
 ister the Government in the spirit of a partisan. The veto 
 power is vested in the Crown, but for years it has never been 
 exercised. This power is freely used by the President, and, 
 although his veto can be overruled by a two-thirds vote of both 
 branches of the legislature, there is scarcely a session of Con 
 gress in which the will of the people, as expressed by the legis 
 lative branches of the Government, is not thwarted by the 
 Executive. In Great Britain the appointing power is in the 
 Crown, but rare, indeed, is it that appointments are made by 
 the sovereign, and no applicant for office would be admitted 
 to the royal presence. In the United States all important 
 offices are filled by the President, and there is scarcely a day 
 in which he is not annoyed by office seekers, and for weeks 
 after a presidential election, and especially when those who 
 have been long the " outs " have become the " ins," the press 
 ure upon him by applicants or their friends is so overwhelm 
 ing that his position is burdensome in the extreme. No one 
 who has not witnessed them can have any proper conception 
 of the trials of temper and of the physical endurance to which 
 a new President is subjected. If pledged to civil service 
 reform by the platform upon which he was elected, the press 
 ure upon him to disregard his pledge is often too strong to be 
 resisted. If he is not so pledged, and is disposed to divide the 
 offices among his supporters, he soon finds that in the distri 
 bution (there being so many more applicants than places), he 
 cannot help making more enemies than friends. It is not 
 strange, therefore, that intelligent Englishmen regard the 
 hereditary monarchy as being preferable in this respect to one 
 in which the chief executive is elected by the people. 
 
 But how is it with the legislative branches of the two 
 countries? In which is there an exhibition of the greatest lib 
 erty ? The House of Lords is an aristocratic body, in the con 
 stitution of which the people have no voice ; the Senate of the 
 
CONGRESS AND PARLIAMENT. 453 
 
 United States is also an aristocratic body, the members of 
 which are elected, not directly by the people, but by the State 
 legislatures ; neither is a direct representative of the people. 
 Men are members of the House of Lords by inheritance, or by 
 royal appointment, in recognition of eminent services or high 
 literary acquirements, and usually without regard to their poli 
 tics. Men are elected to the Senate, not certainly without 
 regard to their abilities, but invariably on party grounds, and 
 not infrequently by the use of influences that would not bear 
 exposure. In the House of Lords, a baron, by his superior 
 ability, may have greater influence than a duke. The little 
 State of Delaware, with a single member in the House, may 
 have, by the superior ability of her senators, greater influence 
 in the Senate than the great State of New York, with thirty- 
 four members. A seat in the House of Lords is the highest 
 honor that can be conferred upon a subject ; a seat in the 
 Senate, is next to the Presidency, the highest political honor 
 that can be attained by a citizen. The House of Lords is the 
 aristocratic and conservative body in Great Britain, and such 
 is the Senate in the United States. It is about as great an 
 honor in the United States to be a senator, as it is in England 
 to be a peer. 
 
 The House of Commons is the direct representative of the 
 British people ; the lower house of Congress is the direct 
 representative of the people of the United States. The mem 
 bers of the House of Commons are elected by the people, and 
 there are restrictions in regard to membership which do not 
 exist in the United States. No collector of taxes, no one 
 holding a contract with the Government, no judge or justice, 
 no clergyman of the English Church, can be elected a mem 
 ber of the House of Commons. No such exclusion from the 
 House of Representatives exists. There are other differences 
 in the legislative branches of the two countries. The mem 
 bers of the British Ministry, who constitute what is called the 
 Government, must be members of the House of Lords or of the 
 
454 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 Commons, and if one is a member of the House of Commons 
 when appointed a minister, he must resign his seat and be 
 indorsed by a new election before he can take the office. The 
 members of the House of Commons are not elected for any 
 definite period. Their tenure of office depends upon the exist 
 ence of what is for the time being the Government, which 
 usually goes out whenever it is beaten upon any very impor 
 tant measure. It is under no legal or constitutional obliga 
 tion to do this, but such is the rule, and it must be obeyed as 
 if it were a law. The actual Government of Great Britain 
 is, in fact, a part of the legislative branch. Members of Con 
 gress are elected for two years, and hold their places for the 
 full term. The members of the Cabinet in the United States 
 are appointed by the President, and they hold their offices 
 subject to his good pleasure. The Tenure-of-Office Act was 
 intended to take from the President the power of their 
 removal without the consent of the Senate, but that Act was 
 undoubtedly in contravention of the constitutional rights of 
 the President, and it has been substantially repealed. The 
 members of the Cabinet, who are at the head of the sex r en 
 executive departments of the Government, are not, and can 
 not be members of Congress, but they make to Congress 
 reports of the condition of their respective departments, with 
 such recommendations as they may deem proper. Members 
 of the British Ministry make no such reports, as they are 
 members of Parliament, and are supposed to be prepared to 
 give all the information that may be required, and they are 
 expected to advocate the measures which are approved by the 
 Prime Minister. All revenue measures in Great Britain must 
 originate in the House of Commons, as they must in the United 
 States in the llouse of Representatives. It will thus be per 
 ceived that the difference between the legislative branches of 
 the two Governments are not practically of much importance, 
 and that, on the whole, Parliament in its membership is more 
 flemocratic than Congress. 
 
MONEY IN ELECTIONS. 455 
 
 As far as I have been able to form an opinion, the elections 
 of members of the House of Commons are as expressive of the 
 popular will as are the elections of Congressmen in the United 
 States. I think, indeed, the true conclusion is, that the English 
 elections are the more fairly and honestly conducted. The 
 vote in Great Britain is by secret ballot. The candidates have 
 active friends at the polls ; there is free discussion, but there 
 is no violence ; at least, there is none until after the polls are 
 closed, when beer and whiskey have been freely imbibed. 
 Bribery is not practised in any manner or form. If it should 
 be shown that a successful member had been guilty of bribery, 
 although a single vote only might have been thus secured, he 
 would lose his seat, no matter how large his majority might 
 have been. Money is, however, spent, and spent freely, by 
 candidates (although members of Parliament receive no sala 
 ries), to cover the necessary expenses of the canvass ; and the 
 rule now is for the successful member to state upon honor the 
 exact amount of his expenditures. In many Congressional 
 districts in the United States none but men of means can 
 afford to be candidates. The election expenses in most of the 
 States have been steadily increasing year by year, and many a 
 candidate spends more in his canvass than a member s salary. 
 It is generally understood that in one or two States a goodly 
 number of voters pay their taxes by their votes. Bribery, 
 however, in the United States in elections, as well as in other 
 matters, is now regarded as a crime, and it is one of the hope 
 ful signs of the times that the public sentiment is in the pro 
 cess of a healthful change, and that bribers of all kinds are to 
 be classed among the worst of criminals. 
 
 One hears a good deal of talk in England about the British 
 Constitution, but if one should inquire for a copy he would be 
 informed that there is no instrument by which the rights of the 
 sovereign, the rights of the people, and the powers of Parlia 
 ment are strictly defined; nothing in form like the Constitu 
 tion of the United States; and yet there is a constitution 
 
456 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTUEY. 
 
 which is strong and binding upon all branches of the Govern 
 ment, and which is free from ambiguity. It has been of very 
 gradual formation from the time of the Magna Charta ; by 
 concessions of the Throne, by acts of Parliament, and decis 
 ions of the courts. Its foundation was laid centuries ago. It 
 has grown step by step, and each step has been marked by 
 the progress of ecclesiastical and civil liberty. The Constitu 
 tion of the United States, considering the circumstances in 
 which it was formed and the purposes which it accomplished, 
 may be regarded as a work of consummate wisdom, approach 
 ing more nearly to divine inspiration than any work of human 
 hands. On some important questions, however, it has been 
 differently interpreted by able and honest men, and amend 
 ments are not easily effected ; while there is enough of elas 
 ticity about the British Constitution to meet the progressive 
 demands of the people without a loss to civil liberty, or the 
 invasion of established rights. 
 
 The Speaker of the House of Commons holds one of the 
 most honorable and desirable places in the British Govern 
 ment. He is elected by the House from its own members, but 
 his election is subject to the approval of the Crown, which, 
 however, is never withheld. Although he is elected by the 
 dominant party, and is in sympathy with it politically, it is 
 expected that he will exercise his power with perfect impar 
 tiality, and that he will not use it to secure or thwart the 
 passage of any bill w T hich is before the House. No Speaker 
 has for many years failed to justify this expectation. Not so 
 is it in the United States. The Speaker of the House of Kep- 
 resentatives not unfrequently uses indeed, he is expected to 
 use the power which he possesses in the service of his party ; 
 and when parties are pretty evenly divided, it is considered a 
 great gain for the majority to have a thorough, not to say, 
 unscrupulous, tactician in the chair. The Speaker of the House 
 in the United States can do much, without an absolute viola 
 tion of the rules, to serve his political friends, to retard or 
 
SPEAKERS OF THE TWO HOUSES. 457 
 
 to advance the passage of bills; and it has been rare that 
 there has been a Speaker whos^ politics have not been fre 
 quently indicated by his rulings. " It is to the great credit of 
 John G. Carlisle, the recent Speaker, that no one could dis 
 cover by the manner in which he performed his duties whether 
 he was a Democrat or a Republican. 
 
 Tne duties of the Speaker of the House of Representatives 
 are much more arduous than are those of the Speaker of the 
 House of Commons. To say nothing of the labor and knowl 
 edge which are required in the appointment of committees, 
 the former has to give direction to much more real business 
 than the latter, and to decide twenty times as many ques 
 tions of all kinds. To preserve order, to prevent confusion, to 
 decide correctly and promptly the numberless questions that 
 are constantly arising, and to expedite business, require in 
 the Speaker of the House of Representatives a ready knowl 
 edge of parliamentary proceedings, perfect self-possession, 
 great facility and clearness of expression, and executive abil 
 ity of the highest order. For ability as presiding officers, no 
 Speaker of the House of Commons ever equalled such Speak 
 ers of the House of Representatives as Henry Clay, Robert C. 
 Winthrop, James G. Elaine and John G. Carlisle: scarcely 
 inferior to whom, within my recollection, were Nathaniel P. 
 Banks, James L. Orr, Schuyler Colfax, and Samuel J. Ran 
 dall. The difference in the compensation of the Speakers of 
 the popular branches of the two countries is most extraordi 
 nary. The Speaker of the House of Representatives receives 
 eight thousand dollars per annum, and a vote of thanks. The 
 Speaker of the House of Commons, six thousand pounds 
 (nearly thirty thousand dollars), and, unless his term is a short 
 one, a peerage and a pension. 
 
 Nothing in English statesmanship has impressed me more 
 favorably than the measures that have been taken to build up 
 and sustain the merchant marine, not only for its direct profits, 
 but as a reliable means of sending British goods into all parts 
 
458 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 of the world. Great as has been the increase of British manu 
 factures within the last thilkv years, the increase in tonnage 
 has been still greater, becaus^lBritish ships have not only been 
 required for British trade, but for the trade of other nations. 
 To stimulate shipbuilding the Government has granted sub 
 sidies to steamships, mainly by very liberal compensation for 
 carrying the mails, by which British steamship lines have 
 been able very largely to monopolize the business of the seas. 
 Within the period named, British shipping has grown from 
 about three hundred thousand tons to more than six millions. 
 Kow, while to increase and sustain the merchant marine has 
 been the policy of the British Government, and is rapidly 
 becoming the policy of other European states, the United 
 States has made no effort to restore the shipbuilding interest, 
 which was destroyed by unwise legislation and the civil war. 
 Members of Congress who support a tariff to protect United 
 States manufactures decline to give such encouragement to 
 shipbuilding as would be the effect of a remission of duties on 
 the foreign articles needed in the construction of ships, and a 
 reasonable compensation for transporting the mails. Votes 
 are what a majority of the members of Congress are looking 
 for, and unfortunately there are few voters among the build 
 ers, the owners, and navigators of ships. Is it unjust to say 
 that politics, not statesmanship, is in the ascendant in the 
 United States at the present time? 
 
 I find it difficult to see in what important matters the 
 rights of the people (with the exception of the Irish) are not as 
 well secured, and the public interest as carefully looked after, 
 in Great Britain as in the United States. The Irish question 
 is so well understood that I have very little to say about it. 
 That the Irish people have not been fairly treated is evident, 
 from the fact that the population of Ireland has for years been 
 steadily decreasing. Its climate is healthful ; its soil is fertile ; 
 it has all natural advantages to make it highly productive; 
 its people have strong local attachments, and yet the exodus 
 
IRISH HOME RULE. 459 
 
 from it is constant, and if not now as large as heretofore, it 
 is because there are fewer left at home. The cause of this 
 ought to be thoroughly understood by the Government and 
 
 O O v v 
 
 removed. The prices of agricultural products are very much 
 lower than they were a few years ago. Rents, therefore, 
 should be correspondingly reduced or paid in kind. The Irish 
 renters should not be at the mercy of the proprietors, the 
 most of whom are non-residents. If Home Rule is not to be 
 granted to the Irish, they should be relieved from the exac 
 tions and oppressions of all kinds that compel them to leave 
 their native land. The English people are not a tender 
 hearted people ; pity for the unfortunate is not a marked trait 
 of their character ; but their sense of justice is keen when it 
 is not blinded by self-interest. That sense of justice is now 
 more awake than it has ever been, and it will not be long 
 before it thoroughly asserts itself in behalf of Ireland. 
 
 There are no men in the world superior in mental and 
 physical power to the upper classes in England. Their edu 
 cational advantages are of the highest order. Oxford and 
 Cambridge stand at the head of literary institutions, and there 
 are many others scarcely inferior to them. There are very 
 few of the sons of parents who can afford the expense who do 
 not receive a classical education, and those who belong to the 
 classes referred to live more in the open air, ride more, hunt 
 more, do more to develop physical strength, than the sons of 
 corresponding classes in the United States. Such is the climate 
 that they can healthfully eat more and drink more than the 
 people of any other country. There has been, however, within 
 the present generation, a great change in their manner of 
 living. French cooking has superseded, in a large degree, the 
 old English cooking. Heavy dinners are not now fashionable, 
 nor is heavy drinking. The judges have passed away who 
 could drink two bottles of port at a protracted dinner and be 
 upon the bench the next morning, u as sober as a judge " ought 
 to be. It is not often that respectable men, as was formerly 
 
460 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 the case, finish their repast upon the floor of the dining-room. 
 The Scotch I am, as a Scotchman by descent, very sorry to 
 say have not improved in this respect as have their southern 
 neighbors. The heaviest eating and drinking, and the most 
 protracted dinners, are still in Scotland. Lord John Lawrence 
 an Irishman, by the way, who distinguished himself at the 
 time of the great Indian mutiny, and was for a number of 
 years Governor General of India, and subsequently a peer 
 used to tell the story of a friend of his, who, when in Scotland, 
 called upon an acquaintance at his house between eleven and 
 twelve o clock in the morning. A servant met him at the door, 
 and, in answer to his inquiries for the proprietor, was informed 
 that he was at his dinner. "At his dinner! You don t mean 
 that he is dining at this hour of the day ? said the inquirer. 
 " Yes, he is, sir," replied the servant, " but it is his yesterday s 
 dinner." 
 
 Although heavy drinking is no longer fashionable in Eng 
 land, there are few Englishmen of means who do not drink 
 wine at dinner. Pure water is scarce in England, and very 
 few drink it. I never saw anybody drink water at a dinner 
 table in London, and at this I did not wonder when I learned 
 from what sources it came. 1 lived at the West End, which 
 was supplied with water from the Thames, whose continuous 
 flow is through cities and towns and highly fertilized land. 
 Such water I could not relish, and before many weeks I drank 
 wine like an Englishman, but not, perhaps, quite so freely. The 
 light French wines have, however, taken the place of port and 
 other heavy wines that were formerly almost exclusively used, 
 and the upper English classes may now be pronounced a tem 
 perate people. I dined sometimes with noblemen, but more 
 frequently with bankers, lawyers, merchants, and literary men, 
 and I never saw at the table, or after dinner, a man who was 
 even excited by drink. The middle classes are also temperate, 
 but not so is it with the laboring classes by which I mean 
 those who live by manual labor, very few of whom are like 
 
TAXES HERE AND IN ENGLAND. 461 
 
 the watchman of whom I have spoken. With rare exceptions, 
 they spend a good part of their earnings at the gin shops, with 
 which all the English cities, and especially London, abound. 
 Mr. William E. Dodge, of New York, was shocked by the 
 number of gin shops which he saw, and the people who fre 
 quented them. He saw, doubtless what I think is never seen, 
 in New York decent looking and decently dressed women 
 standing at the counters drinking rum or beer. In my walk 
 one evening I overtook three or four women, followed by as 
 many young girls, and as I was about passing them, they 
 stepped into one of the gilded gin shops on the street. This 
 surprised me, as they were good-looking persons, and, after 
 walking on for a minute or two, I could not help retracing my 
 steps to see what they were doing. There they were three 
 women drinking I could not tell what, probably beer or whis 
 key at the counter, and the girls looking on ! Gin shops are 
 the curse of London ; the cause of three-quarters of the degra 
 dation, the poverty, the crimes that are so abounding. 
 
 A good deal is said on this side of the Atlantic about the 
 overtaxed the tax-ridden people of Europe ; but there are 
 few countries, if any, in which taxes are higher than in the 
 United States State taxes and national combined. There 
 are fewer still in which such taxes could be borne. In some 
 of the States, the direct taxes paid to collectors upon prop 
 erty, real and personal, amount to nearly two per cent, on 
 what is regarded as a fair valuation. The national taxes are 
 indirect, and, although heavy, they are not complained of, 
 and do not seem to be felt, because they are taxes upon con 
 sumption, and are paid by the consumers in the increased 
 prices of the taxed articles which are consumed. They are, 
 however, none the less real than they would be if they 
 were paid directly to the collectors. Taxes upon imports are 
 easily and cheaply collected, and always have been, and prob 
 ably always will be, the most popular of taxes ; but they are, 
 nevertheless, the most unequal, and consequently the most 
 
462 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 unjust of all, because the very rich people rarely pay more than 
 those in moderate circumstances. Here is a man with an 
 income of hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and another 
 with an income of five thousand, and yet of the goods subject 
 to import duties there may be as large an amount used in the 
 family of one as the other. We know in the United States 
 what the public revenues by import duties amount to ; but how 
 much prices are raised by these duties to what extent the 
 burden upon the people is thus increased, cannot exactly be 
 determined. We do know, however, that import duties are 
 taxes, and that the amount collected at the custom-houses is 
 far less than what is paid by consumers in the increased prices 
 of the articles which are used. As far as I can judge, the 
 taxes to which the masses of Great Britain are subjected are 
 not only lower, but are more wisely placed than in the United 
 States ; lands are heavily taxed, and there are taxes upon wine 
 and liquors, and upon incomes, etc., etc. ; but taxes upon trade, 
 upon commerce, upon manufactures, upon industry and enter 
 prise, are judiciously avoided. I did not look carefully into 
 the sources of the income of the Government, but as far as my 
 observation extended during my residence in London, the taxes 
 were not burdensome. The impression, I know, prevails in the 
 United States that the British people are subject to oppressive 
 and grievous taxation. If this were true, Great Britain would 
 not be the nation she is a nation whose ships are seen upon 
 every sea and navigable stream ; whose manufactured goods 
 are found in every market under the sun. If her people were 
 subject to oppressive taxation, they would not be the leaders 
 in great and successful enterprises ; her colonies would not 
 " encircle the globe ; " she would not be the greatest of naval 
 and maritime powers, nor the richest of nations, with the pos 
 sible exception of the United States. Taxes are needfully high 
 in Great Britain to support the Government, to build and 
 sustain the navy and army, and to pay the interest on her 
 national debt ; but, as I have said, they are so wisely placed as 
 
THE ENGLISH LAND QUESTION. 463 
 
 not to be oppressive ; labor and business do not feel them ; no 
 gainful branch of industry is hurt by them. What the people 
 of Great Britain need more than anything else to become as 
 free as the people can expect to be under an expensive and 
 heavily indebted Government, is what I shall say a few words 
 about farther on free trade in land as well as in commerce. 
 
CHAPTER XXXI. 
 
 The English People and the People of the United States Mutual Learners 
 Tariffs of the United States General Jackson s Proclamation What a 
 Federalist Thought of it Need of a Commission like the Royal Commis 
 sion to Investigate the Subject of Taxation Liquor Drinking in England 
 --English Deficient in Invention Defective Patent Laws Excellent 
 Effect of United States Patent Laws Local Government Needed in Great 
 Britain The British Debt Mr. Gladstone and Mr. Bright. 
 
 THE English people have learned much from the people 
 of the United States ; the people of the United States 
 have learned much from the English. Both nations have 
 been teachers and learners, and there is just now a matter of 
 verv great importance in which the United States should 
 take a lesson from the mother country. No question for 
 the proper comprehension of which much investigation was 
 required has, for many years past, been considered by Parlia 
 ment before it had been submitted for an examination and a 
 report to a royal commission, composed of men of the high 
 est reputation for uprightness and intelligence, who have 
 had no personal interest to promote or to protect aside from 
 the general interests of the nation ; and seldom has it been 
 that the report of such commission has failed to control the 
 action of Parliament. The subject upon which the two great 
 parties in the United States are most evenly divided, and 
 which excites the deepest interest, is the tariff. It is a subject 
 upon which great differences of opinion exist, because it is 
 one in which important interests are involved ; a subject in 
 the discussion of which in times past bad blood and sectional 
 feeling have been excited. It was the tariff question that at 
 one time threatened the integrity of the nation. It had not a 
 little to do in preparing the way for the late civil war. There 
 
THE TARIFF. 465 
 
 might have been severe trouble in 1832, when South Carolina 
 undertook to nullify the Tariff Act, if a man like Mr. Buchanan 
 had been President. It was prevented by General Jackson s 
 proclamation against nullifiers, and the passage by Congress 
 of the Force Bill on his recommendation. That proclamation 
 was one of the most eloquent and powerful papers that has 
 ever been issued from the Executive Mansion. I was at the 
 time a student in Boston, in the office of Augustus Peabody, 
 an old-school Federalist. When Mr. Peabody came into the 
 office on the morning of its publication in Boston, he glanced 
 at the newspaper containing it, and then handed it to me to 
 read the proclamation aloud, which I did, while he, under 
 great excitement, paced the floor. As I w r ent on he could not 
 restrain the expression of his delight, and when I had finished 
 reading, he exclaimed with much feeling: " Mr. McCulloch, I 
 never expected to hear true Federal sentiment from, a Demo 
 cratic President. Democracy will do well enough when 
 everything is quiet, but when the country is in danger, noth 
 ing short of Federalism will save it." This celebrated proc 
 lamation is supposed to have been written by Edward Liv 
 ingston, who was then Secretarv of State, and who was 
 
 O / 
 
 regarded as one of the most eloquent writers and powerful 
 advocates of the time. 
 
 The tariff question is as old as the Government, and yet it 
 has never been for any considerable time satisfactorily settled. 
 It has been always more or less mixed up with politics, and 
 has therefore never been fairly considered by Congress. It is 
 a question which can only be properly treated as a purely 
 economical and revenue question, in the consideration of which 
 the most thorough knowledge of the condition of the various 
 industries of the country is required. A large part of the 
 public revenue must, as has always been the case, be derived 
 from import duties. How to regulate these duties so that 
 they may yield the necessary revenue without depriving exist 
 ing manufactures of incidental protection, and without injus- 
 30 
 
466 MEX A^D MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 tice to consumers and to the great agricultural interest which 
 underlies all other interests, must tax severely the best intel 
 lects of the country. It is a work that can never be properly 
 accomplished by a committee of Congress, because if the 
 time and the intelligence for a proper investigation were not 
 wanting, there would not be in a committee that freedom 
 from party allegiance which is necessary for honest work. 
 It is not too much to say that no Tariff Bill has ever been 
 passed in the United States which was not subject to party 
 influences, except the War Tariff Bill of 1862, and that no Tariff 
 Act has ever been free from ambiguity nor from inconsistency, 
 except, perhaps, that of 184:6, the author of which was Robert 
 J. Walker, Secretary of the Treasury, and which was the 
 only bill which passed through Congress as it was presented, 
 and which therefore escaped the manipulations which have 
 distorted other Tariff Acts, and made them difficult of con 
 struction if not contradictory. That Tariff Act was less pro 
 tective and more in conformity to a revenue standard than 
 the tariff of 1842, and under it the manufacturing industries 
 of the United States steadily increased and prospered. It 
 remained in force until 1857, when the duties on many leading 
 articles were materially reduced without prejudice to home 
 manufactures. Nothing more was done with the tariff until 
 the outbreak of the civil war, when a bill was passed which 
 subjected imports of every description to very high duties. 
 The object of this bill was revenue, which, in the then condi 
 tion of the country, was of vital importance. This object 
 it accomplished. It yielded, notwithstanding its protective 
 character, enormous revenue, and at the same time stimulated 
 manufacturing. It has not been materially changed, notwith 
 standing the changed condition of the industries of the coun 
 try, and it is now injuriously affecting our foreign trade and 
 some branches of domestic industry, and is yielding much 
 more revenue than is required by the Government, large 
 amounts of money being constantly idle in the treasury ; so 
 
THE PRINCIPLE OF PROTECTION. 467 
 
 that the time has come when a thorough revision of it is a 
 political as well as financial necessity. 
 
 It is true that the necessary reduction of the revenue 
 might be accomplished by removing the excise taxes, but no 
 party, no matter how strongly it may favor high import 
 duties for the protection they give to home manufactures, 
 would dare to put upon its political banner free whiskey, 
 while blankets and clothing of all kinds, and scores of other 
 articles of indispensable necessity, are subject to heavy taxa 
 tion. No party would do this, in the present and prospective 
 condition of the treasury and country, and no party will long 
 be able to resist what is becoming a popular demand revis 
 ion of the tariff. Now how shall this revision be effected so 
 that the revenues may be reduced, and the reasonable require 
 ment of the great mass of the people be complied with, 
 which requirement is, not free trade, but a return to the 
 principles upon which the early tariffs were based, duties for 
 revenue, with incidental protection. No one contends that 
 Congress has the constitutional right to levy taxes for the 
 purpose of protecting the manufactures of the United States 
 against foreign competition. All of our tariffs have been 
 nominally made in conformity with the Constitution, which 
 limits the power of Congress to raising by taxes the means 
 required to support the Government, including, of course, the 
 payment of its debts ; but no one doubts that it lies within 
 the discretion of Congress to place higher import duties upon 
 some articles than upon others ; to exercise such a wise dis 
 crimination as will, to a reasonable extent, sustain and benefit 
 home industry. As long as the people are resolved that the 
 Government shall be mainly supported by duties upon imports 
 by indirect, instead of direct taxes there must be a tariff 
 which cannot be otherwise than protective. To prepare a 
 bill which will produce the necessary revenue, and give to 
 manufactures the benefit of a discrimination in their favor not 
 inconsistent with its main object, revenue, will require as I 
 
468 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 have intimated, more time than members of Congress can 
 give to it ; freedom from personal interest and party bias, 
 which cannot be found in that body ; and an exact and com 
 prehensive knowledge of the condition of the various indus 
 tries of the country, which can only be acquired by the most 
 careful and patient investigation. 
 
 A Tariff Bill might be prepared by the Executive, with the 
 assistance of some of the able economists of the day, but no 
 matter how wisely and fairly the work might be done, it 
 would be regarded as a party measure, and condemned in 
 advance by the opponents of the Administration. No party is 
 likely again to have a reliable majority in both branches of 
 Congress, and if it should have, it could not control Congres 
 sional action upon a subject like the tariff. Party ties are 
 not as strong as they formerly were, and there may never be 
 again, as was the case when Mr. Polk was President, a Con 
 gress which will be in harmony with the Executive upon this 
 great economical question. It seems to me, therefore, quite 
 certain, that the tariff will not be properly revised and made 
 what it ought to be a tariff that will yield the necessary 
 revenue without fostering some important interests at the 
 expense of other equally important, if not greater interests 
 that the great subject of taxation, in which Republicans and 
 Democrats are equally interested, not as politicians, but as 
 citizens, will not be taken out of the political arena, and 
 treated as a business matter, without the agency of a com 
 mission, composed of men of acknowledged ability, who have 
 no personal interest to serve no political opinions to sustain 
 and who will bring to the work large experience, accurate 
 observation, industry and zeal, and with all, the determination 
 to serve, not a party nor a section, but the country, and the 
 whole country. Unless the work is done by such a commis 
 sion, there never will be a tariff that will not be the subject 
 of unceasing contention, under which no important interest 
 will be permanently prosperous or secure. "We had, it is true, 
 
THE ENGLISH LIQUOR TRADE. 469 
 
 a few years ago, a commission upon the tariff, which accom 
 plished little, and from which little ought to have been 
 expected, as every member of it had some personal interest to 
 look after and protect. There is plenty of material in the 
 countrv to constitute the right kind of a commission one that 
 
 f O 
 
 shall be equal in every respect to the best which has done 
 valuable work in Great Britain. 
 
 No fair-minded citizen of the United States can be long in 
 England without seeing many things to excite his admiration ; 
 many important things in which she is the leader among the 
 nations, which compel him to feel strong as may be his attach 
 ment to the great Republic proud of the mother country. 
 Tie cannot, however, fail to observe that in some matters she 
 is behind the United States, and that, in some respects, she 
 seems to be so wedded to the past as to be unmindful of what 
 is now required by her people, and of what is needed to place 
 her in accord with the spirit of the age. 
 
 I have said that the upper and middle classes of Great 
 Britain are temperate, and that the lower or laboring classes 
 are the reverse. No improvement in the condition of the lat 
 ter, however, can be expected as long as temperance is not 
 considered by the higher classes to be a virtue and intemper 
 ance a vice, nor as long as the use of malt and other liquors is 
 encouraged, as it seems to be by the Government, for revenue 
 purposes. Whatever may be the condition of her other 
 branches of trade, her liquor trade is always flourishing. No 
 part of the British revenue is more reliable than that which is 
 derived from the various branches of the liquor traffic. The 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer, in making up his annual budget, 
 is always able to estimate, with the utmost precision, the 
 amount of revenue to be derived from this source, and he would 
 hesitate to recommend such high licenses as would shut up a 
 large part of the drinking shops which are the curse of all the 
 large cities, and especially of London, if he thought that the 
 result would be diminution of the revenue. As long as the 
 
470 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 subject is regarded in this light, there will be very little tem 
 perance reform in Great Britain. 
 
 The British people are far behind the people of the United 
 States in invention. It seemed to me, when I was in England, 
 that all the labor-saving machines upon the farms and in the 
 shops were invented in the United States. The inventive 
 faculty was stimulated in the early settlement of the western 
 part of the United States lay the scarcity of hand labor ; but 
 the great stimulus to invention has been the facilities for 
 obtaining patents, and the protection which our patent laws 
 have extended to inventors. I had occasion to look into the 
 patent laws of Great Britain, and my conclusion was that, if 
 they had been framed to prevent rather than to encourage 
 invention, the object could hardly have been better accom 
 plished. There were no thoroughly educated examiners no 
 tribunals competent to decide, and whose duty it was to 
 decide, upon the merits and the novelty of what were 
 claimed to be inventions or discoveries. Patents were issued 
 to all applicants who could pay the high Government charges, 
 although patents might have already been issued for the same 
 invention, or for one in which the same principles were in 
 volved. 
 
 One of the wisest things that was ever done by Congress 
 was the creation, under the direct grant of the Constitution, 
 of a bureau in one of the departments at the Capitol, to be 
 under the charge of a commissioner and examiners of high 
 legal and scientific knowledge, from which patents could be 
 obtained which would secure to the patentees for a certain 
 number of } 7 ears the full benefit of their inventions. By the 
 examiners of this bureau all applications for patents are care 
 fully investigated, and none are granted unless originality of 
 design is clearly established. The questions submitted to the 
 examiners are frequently difficult and complicated, and mis 
 takes may be made by them ; but a patentee has a reasonable 
 assurance that his patent invades no other, and that it covers 
 
LACK OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT. 471 
 
 an invention or discovery the right to the use of which is 
 exclusively his own. 
 
 There are many intelligent men on the other side of the 
 Atlantic who doubt the wisdom of patent laws, but no one 
 has witnessed the operations and the results of the patent 
 laws of the United States without discovering that not only 
 has invention been greatly stimulated and great rewards 
 secured by inventors, but that the whole country and other 
 nations have been benefited thereby. The patent laws of the 
 United States have not only stimulated inventive talent, and 
 been largely instrumental in the advance which the world has 
 made during the present century through the agency of labor- 
 saving machines, but they have been of immense service in 
 international intercourse and scientific investigation. Inventive 
 talent needs something more substantial than honors to bring 
 it into full exercise, and this is found in the profits which are 
 secured to successful inventors by our wise patent laws and 
 their faithful administration. 
 
 In local governments Great Britain is sadly deficient. There 
 may be in the United States too much legislation in Great 
 Britain there is certainly too little. Parliament is the only 
 law-making power, and Parliament has no time to give to the 
 consideration of manv matters which, although local, are of 
 
 \j O 
 
 great interest to the citizens. What is needed in Great Britain 
 is Home Rule, not only in Ireland, but in Scotland, "Wales, 
 and even in England ; by which is meant local governments, 
 with law-making powers, subject to the approval of Parliament, 
 which should have in regard to all local matters such power as 
 is possessed by the States in the American Union. The age 
 is progressive, and Parliament has enough to do to look after 
 great national and international interests. 
 
 What surprised me a good deal while I was living in 
 England, was the complacency with which the enormous debt 
 of Great Britain was regarded by the generality of English 
 men. By some it was not looked upon as being in any 
 
472 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 degree, a public burden. In the estimation of others there 
 were compensations connected with it which more than 
 balanced its burdens. Very few, like Mr. Gladstone, seemed 
 to regard it as an encumbrance upon the property of the 
 nation, from which it ought to be relieved, even at the 
 expense of increased taxation. Those who did not regard it 
 as a burden, gave as a reason for their opinion that the nation 
 during its existence had largely and rapidly increased in popu 
 lation and wealth, and that large as had been the increase of 
 it during the present century, the national income had more 
 than kept pace with it. Such men, it seemed to me, did not 
 trouble themselves to consider that Great Britain might pos 
 sibly have reached the summit of her prosperity and power, 
 that with the United States and -Belgium as great competitors 
 in manufacturing, and with other nations striving to share 
 with her the business of the seas, she might find it difficult to 
 maintain her present position as the leader in commerce and 
 manufactures ; and that she might at. any time be involved 
 in war which would make further loans necessary. There are 
 undoubtedly some compensations in a national debt. Securi 
 ties bearing interest are very desirable for private incomes, 
 and none are regarded with more favor by investors than 
 those of the Government under which they live. Such a 
 debt may even tend to strengthen rather than to weaken a 
 Government, by the manner in which it binds to its support, 
 the holders of its security ; but it ought to be remembered 
 that it is not the business of a Government to supply facilities 
 to investors, and that if it be well administered it will never 
 stand in need of any such preserving influence as may be 
 afforded by a national debt. There can be no reasonable 
 doubt that a national debt is a national burden, for which 
 there can be no substantial counterbalancing compensations. 
 
 During the last thirty years, the most of which have been 
 prosperous years to Great Britain, her national debt has been 
 but slightly reduced. It may now be regarded as a perma- 
 
DIRECT AND INDIRECT TAXES. 473 
 
 merit debt, and more likely to be increased than diminished. 
 Peace between the continental nations may not long be main 
 tained, and in future contests between them, Great Britain 
 may not be able to remain neutral as she did in the recent 
 war between France and Germany. If, however, she should 
 escape all foreign complications, her debt can never be paid 
 or substantially reduced without a radical change in her 
 economical policy. The revenue which she receives on the. 
 few articles which are subject to import duties, is not likely to 
 be increased, and neither Liberals or Conservatives will ever 
 be disposed to increase direct taxes to pay or to lessen the 
 national debt. !No large national debt has ever been practi 
 cally reduced none certainly has ever been paid by direct 
 taxation, and I think it may be said w^ith equal certainty that 
 none will be. This much must be said in praise of the United 
 States Tariff Act of 1862, that by the high duties which it 
 imposed, and the taxes on whiskey and tobacco, etc., etc., 
 more than one-half of the United States debt has been paid, 
 and that the reduction is still rapidly going on. This might 
 also be said, that if no other means than direct taxation had 
 been resorted to, the late civil war would not have been 
 prosecuted by the Government to a successful termination, or 
 that the debt created by it would be a debt like that of Great 
 Britain a debt never to be paid or even lessened. To people 
 who are afraid of direct taxes, indirect taxes seem to have no 
 terrors. In fact those that are paid in the increased cost of 
 what is used are not by many regarded as taxes. A man who 
 pays fifty dollars more for the articles consumed in his familv 
 than he would pay if there were no import duties, may not 
 feel that he is thereby taxed ; but if instead thereof he were 
 compelled to pay half that amount directly to the collector, 
 he would complain of taxation. It is by indirect taxation, 
 chiefly import duties, that the debt of the United States has 
 been paid thus far, and in the opinion of those who believe 
 that import duties are needed for the protection of home 
 
474 MEIST AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 industry, these duties, instead of having been burdensome, 
 have been conducive to the prosperity of the country. Some 
 years ago, a prominent citizen of Philadelphia was ridiculed 
 for expressing the opinion that " a national debt was a national 
 blessing," but in what respect did he differ from those who 
 regard the high duties by which the debt is being extinguished, 
 as being promotive of the best interests of the country. 
 
 I have said that the national debt of Great Britain would 
 not be paid without a radical change in her economical policy. 
 There is no probability that such a change may be brought 
 about. The statesmen of that country do not regard indi 
 rect as being less burdensome than direct taxation, and they 
 believe that import duties, by lessening her exports, would be 
 prejudicial to her home industries, as well as to her foreign 
 commerce. Believing, as I do, that the national debt is the 
 reverse of a national blessing, I have, while that debt was 
 large, and might be dangerous to republicanism, looked with 
 favor upon the tariff of 1862. That tariff, however, has 
 accomplished all that was contemplated by it. It yielded a 
 large revenue when that was absolutely required for the life 
 of the nation ; it has, with the excise taxes, reduced the public 
 debt to such an extent than it can under no circumstances 
 be troublesome; and having served its purpose, it should be 
 reduced substantially to a revenue standard. 
 
 To a citizen of the United States who believes in homes for 
 the many, and free homes at that, with very light taxes on 
 small holdings, nothing in Great Britain seems so needful as a 
 distribution of her landed property such a distribution as has 
 taken place in France. This could in a very large degree be 
 accomplished by cutting off entails, and putting an end to 
 primogeniture. If land were held in Great Britain, as it is in 
 France and the United States, by absolutely free ownership, 
 and when not disposed of by will would descend in equal parts 
 to the children or other heirs, the distribution would, to a con 
 siderable extent, speedily take place. Ownership of land in 
 
BRIGHT AND^GlTIbSTONE. 475 
 
 Great Britain carries with it distinction, because it is so diffi 
 cult to obtain. If the door were once opened to free descent, 
 land would soon be classed with other property, and be valued 
 by what it would produce. Great Britain largely depends 
 for bread and meat upon other nations, and yet there are 
 hundreds of thousands of acres of land in that country of 
 very limited acreage which are used only for deer parks and 
 game preserves, not for profit, but for the pleasure of those 
 who control them, and their guests, and from which every 
 body else is excluded. Large estates and land monopoly are 
 said to be on the increase in Great Britain, and they will con 
 tinue to be until the laws regulating entails and establishing 
 primogeniture are repealed. Both are feudal and unnatural ; 
 both are inconsistent with the progressive sentiment of the 
 age, and with the best interest of the State. The British 
 people move slowly in the way of reforms, but they do move. 
 Entail and primogeniture will, without doubt, at no remote 
 day, be among the things that are past. The succession to 
 the throne could be regulated and secured without primogeni 
 ture, and the existence of the House of Lords need not in any 
 measure be dependent upon it, or upon entail. I heard both 
 spoken of by conservative men as being relics of absolutism, from 
 which the country ought to be and at no remote day would be 
 relieved, strong as the attachment to them then seemed to be. 
 The two Englishmen in whom the people of the United 
 States have been for many years the most deeply interested 
 are William E. Gladstone and John Bright. To the latter 
 the Union people of the North became strongly attached by 
 the kind sentiments which he expressed for the Government 
 during the civil war, so different were they from the expres 
 sions of most prominent Englishmen. To the former the 
 people of the South felt that they were indebted for his 
 sympathy for them in their efforts to establish a Southern 
 Confederacy. The tables are now turned. Mr. Gladstone 
 is a favorite with the North as well as with the South, 
 
476 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 and Mr. Bright lias no hold upon either. There is through 
 out the United States a prevailing opinion that the people 
 of Ireland have not been fairly dealt with, and that their 
 claim for Home Rule is just and reasonable, and ought 
 not to be denied. Mr. Gladstone is their English champion, 
 and b} 7 being so he retains the hold which he had upon the 
 good feeling of the people of the Southern States, and has 
 established himself in the good graces of the Northern. Mr. 
 Bright, on the contrary, has taken a stand against Home Rule 
 for Ireland, and is therefore no longer in sympathy with the 
 people of the Northern States, while his unpopularity with the 
 people of the South remains unabated. Perhaps, however, 
 neither can be charged with inconsistency. Mr. Gladstone is 
 in favor of Home Rule for the Irish because he thinks they 
 have the right to it, and would be benefited thereby. He 
 thought if the people of the Southern States desired to estab 
 lish an independent government, that they had the right to 
 do so, and ought not to be prevented by force. Mr. Bright 
 being a Quaker, was, in principle and by education, a hater of 
 slavery, and he understood better than Mr. Gladstone did, 
 that slavery was at the bottom of the sectional differences in 
 the United States. He was, therefore, opposed to the estab 
 lishment of a government of which slavery was to be the 
 corner-stone, and he thought there was no just right which 
 the Southern States might not secure as well in the Union as 
 out of it. He is opposed to Home Rule for the Irish, not 
 because he does not think that the Irish people have been 
 badly treated, nor because there are no wrongs to be re 
 dressed, but because he thinks they have not shown them 
 selves to be capable of self-government that neither the 
 persons nor property of Protestants would be properly treated 
 if Home Rule should be established, and because he believes 
 that there are no wrongs of which the Irish people can 
 justly complain which would not be redressed by Parliament 
 if they were presented in the right spirit. 
 
THEIR TEMPERAMENTAL DIFFERENCES. 477 
 
 Mr. Bright is a Liberal, and has heretofore been the per 
 sonal and political friend of Mr. Gladstone. lie must, there 
 fore, have passed through a severe ordeal in the separation 
 which has taken place upon a question which seems to involve 
 liberty and right. The two men are, however, naturally dif 
 ferent, and they have been subjected to different influences. 
 Mr. Bright is just and upright from principle, but he is not 
 progressive by temperament, and the influences to which he 
 has been subjected have not tended to change his character in 
 this respect. lie is a Quaker, and Quakers are not apt to be 
 political reformers. lie does not think that even right should 
 be obtained by force, and he has no sympathy with the Irish 
 ardor which leads them into acts of violence. He is thor 
 oughly lo} 7 al to the throne, which, as at present occupied, 
 justifies the loyalty of all Englishmen, but he would not advise 
 forcible resistance to its authority, no matter how oppressively 
 that authority might be exercised. He is, of course, opposed 
 to any forcible resistance to acts of Parliament, unjust 
 although he may regard them. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is progressive by temperament and from 
 principle. He broke away from the conservatism for which 
 he was distinguished in his early career to become a leader of 
 the Liberals, an earnest advocate of all measures which 
 have since been adopted by Parliament for the improvement 
 of the condition of the people. He is an ardent believer in 
 progress, and he is never at rest. No sooner has one advance 
 step been secured than he is ready for another. Finality is 
 not in his creed. If the Irish question should be settled in his 
 day, old as he may be, he will be ready to undertake some 
 other measure which he may think will advance the public 
 welfare. He will not need to buckle on his armor, for he 
 never takes it off. In power or out of it, he is a most ener 
 getic and persistent worker. He is a member of the Estab 
 lished Church, but he is supposed to favor disestablishment. 
 He is known to be tolerant. He believes in free religion. 
 
478 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 and that religious truth stands in no need of Government 
 support. lie believes that the Government should exist for 
 the benefit of the many, and that hereditary rights which are 
 inconsistent with the public welfare should not be considered 
 as being beyond Parliamentary control. He does not think 
 that immense tracts of land should be used for no other pur 
 pose than for game, nor that the larger part of the lands of the 
 kingdom should be held by a few proprietors and cultivated 
 by tenants. He may not live long enough to be instrumental 
 in bringing about changes in Church government or land 
 ownership, but he has put influences in motion that may be 
 retarded, but will not be suppressed, by his death. 
 
 Mr. Bright has acted, throughout his public career, in con 
 formity with his principles as a member of the Society of 
 Friends. He has always been in favor of peace peace at any 
 price. He criticised the Government severely for joining the 
 French in defending Turkey against the armies of Kussia. He 
 opposed the war with China; he has been opposed to all 
 foreign conquests, and he has favored the reduction of the 
 army to a peace establishment. 
 
 Mr. Bright is a man of great intellectual power. He is not 
 a classical scholar, but no man in England has ever spoken the 
 English language with more clearness and force. He is what 
 very few Englishmen of the present day are an eloquent 
 speaker. His speeches at the hustings and in Parliament are 
 among the ablest and most captivating that have ever been 
 made in England. This is somewhat singular, as he was not 
 trained to oratory and has not been engaged in literary pur 
 suits. He has been a manufacturer the head of a large cot 
 ton-spinning firm and would seem to have had limited oppor 
 tunities for study. He has always been an advocate of free 
 trade, and he did as much as any one, except Mr. Cobden, to 
 effect a repeal of the Corn Laws. It was a severe and some 
 what protracted struggle which the opponents of the tax upon 
 breadstuffs had with the landed aristocracy, and their triumph 
 
GLADSTONE S SCHOLARSHIP. 479 
 
 was doubly gratifying by the fact that the result, contrary 
 to the predictions of the Conservatives, was an increase in 
 the value of agricultural lands, and stimulation of trade of all 
 descriptions. 
 
 Mr. Gladstone is in many respects the most remarkable 
 man of the age. His career has been brilliant and command 
 ing from the commencement. His father, a wealthy merchant, 
 gave to him the best of educational advantages, which he 
 improved by winning at Oxford the highest honors. At the 
 age of twenty -three he became a member of Parliament ; at 
 twenty-five he was a Junior Lord of the Treasury ; at thirty- 
 two he was a member of the Privy Council and Master of the 
 Mint. During this period he was not only doing a very large 
 amount of official work, but he was a popular writer upon a 
 great variety of subjects. Up to his fiftieth year he was a 
 Conservative. Since then he has been a leading Liberal. At 
 the age of forty-three he became the Chancellor of the Exche 
 quer, in which office he displayed financial knowledge and 
 ability which placed him at the head of British financiers, 
 where he still stands. In the elucidation of financial ques 
 tions, and in the practical management of financial matters, 
 he has never been surpassed. A good part of Mr. Gladstone s 
 life has been spent in the performance of high official duties, 
 and so pressing must these duties have been, that one can 
 not understand how he could obtain the knowledge he has 
 displayed in the scores of books and pamphlets which he has 
 written upon a greater variety of subjects than have ever 
 engaged the attention of laborious students who have nothing 
 to do but to study and to write. His memory is perfect his 
 working power prodigious. Amid the pressing cares of offi 
 cial life he has even found time to devote to the relations 
 between the State and Church, to careful study of Homer and 
 the Bible, and of other subjects quite different in character 
 from those which have required his attention in the discharge 
 of public duties. Strictly scientific subjects he has avoided, 
 
480 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 and he has not been, perhaps, as deferential as he ought 
 to have been to the scientific men of England. Whether 
 it is for this reason, or because he believes in the Mosaic 
 account of the creation, that he has incurred the ill will of 
 many scientists who have spoken of him in bitter, if not con 
 temptuous terms, is best known to themselves. His reputation 
 as a financier has never been assailed. Of his scholarship he 
 has given ample proof. Many men have studied the English 
 language more thoroughly, but no man has ever equalled him 
 in the facility of using it. Diffuse he sometimes is, but never 
 ambiguous. No man has made more enemies than Mr. Glad 
 stone none is more hated by those whom he opposes but no 
 one has such control of popular opinion. He is the greatest 
 political leader that England has ever produced. He is not 
 personally magnetic ; he has few warm friends ; but no man 
 has ever equalled him in the extent or duration of his influence. 
 For half a century he has been the most prominent and influ 
 ential of English statesmen. His power has never waned ; it 
 is to-day as great as it ever was. 
 
CHAPTER XXXII. 
 
 Second Appointment as Secretary of the Treasury Treasury Officers and 
 Clerks President Arthur more Fortunate than any of his Predecessors 
 who Succeeded to the Presidency Mr. Tyler Mr. Fillmore Mr. John 
 son Mr. Arthur s Successful Administration His Ability and Tact 
 His Cabinet William E. Chandler Robert Lincoln President Cleve 
 land Manner in which he has Filled a Very Difficult Position His 
 Ability and Independence. 
 
 I HAD no desire to enter again into public life, even for a 
 short period, but I was nevertheless gratified when Presi 
 dent Arthur came out to my house in the country, a short 
 distance from Washington, one afternoon in October, 1884, to 
 inform me that Mr. Gresham had resigned the office of Secre 
 tary of the Treasury to become a Circuit Judge of the United 
 States, and to request me to take his place and help him close 
 up" his administration. I was still more gratified by the favor 
 able manner in which my appointment was spoken of by the 
 press, as it seemed like an indorsement of my management of 
 the Treasury from 1865 to 1869. I was glad to see among the 
 faces of the officers and clerks who called at my office on the 
 morning that I entered upon the discharge of my duties as Sec 
 retary, a number of familiar faces, although nearly fifteen years 
 had passed since I had left the Department. I shall always 
 hold in kind and grateful remembrance, the men who served 
 with me while I was Comptroller of the Currency and Secre 
 tary of the Treasury, in a very interesting and trying period of 
 our financial history. An immense amount of work was done 
 in that Department during the civil war and for some years 
 after, and although it was done by men who had to learn as 
 they worked, the record shows that it was fairly well done. 
 31 - 
 
482 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 The same may be said in regard to the other Departments. 
 Faithfully served as the Government was in the field, it was 
 no less faithfully served by the officers and clerks in the public 
 offices in Washington. There were among them men hold 
 ing subordinate positions who were competent to fill the 
 highest; men whose services could not be dispensed with 
 without detriment to the Government ; such men as would in 
 Great Britain be retired with a pension when they were no 
 longer able to perform their necessary work, instead of being 
 turned out, as many have been, to give place to hungry appli 
 cants. 
 
 The highest pleasure that I had during the short period 
 that I held the office of Secretary for the second time was in 
 the intimate acquaintance which I formed with President 
 Arthur. I had known him as Collector of Customs in New 
 York, and as a sagacious politician, but I was not prepared 
 for the ability and tact which he exhibited when he became 
 President of the United States. That high office is a very 
 difficult one to fill by men who have been elected to it ; it is 
 much more difficult for one to fill it who succeeds to it by 
 being Yice-President. Mr. Tyler became President by the 
 death of President Harrison ; Mr. Fillmore by the death of 
 President Taylor; Mr. Johnson by the death of President 
 Lincoln, and Mr. Arthur by the death of President Garfield ; 
 and, singularly enough, the succession in each case commenced 
 soon after the commencement of the Presidential term, so that 
 each of the Yice-Presidents who became President by virtue 
 of his office, was at the head of the Government for nearly 
 four years. All except Johnson were Whigs or Republicans, 
 and each except Johnson was succeeded by a Democrat 
 Tyler by Polk, Fillmore by Pierce, Johnson by Grant, and 
 Arthur by Cleveland. Of Mr. Arthur it can be said, as it 
 cannot be said of either of the others, that he maintained 
 good relations with his party throughout his entire term. 
 Those between President Tyler and the Whig party were 
 
PRESIDENT ARTHUR. 483 
 
 severed before the expiration of the first year of his adminis 
 tration. Throughout the rest of the terra, he was strongly 
 opposed by the party by which he was elected. Mr. Fillmore 
 was true to his party, but his rigid interpretation and execu 
 tion of the Fugitive Slave Law dissatisfied and alienated a 
 good many Republicans, and although he was a very able 
 and upright man, who had done good service to his party and 
 the country in Congress, and excelled as an executive officer, 
 his Administration could hardly be called a successful one. 
 Mr. Johnson, although well known as a Democrat, was highly 
 esteemed by the Republican party when he was nominated for 
 Vice-President, but he and the party were not long in 
 accord. 
 
 Mr. Arthur was little known out of his own State when he 
 was nominated for the Vice-Presidency. The nomination, 
 which was entirely unexpected by the country, was made to 
 palliate the dissatisfaction which had been caused among the 
 Republicans of New York by the nomination of General Gar- 
 field for the Presidency, and there was a good deal of mis 
 giving among the prominent men of the party when he 
 became President. lie had not, however, been long at the 
 head of the Government before he commanded the confidence 
 of his party and the respect of the opposition. His adminis 
 tration w r as distinguished, as few have been, for fairness, eleva 
 tion of tone, and freedom from extreme partisanship. He had 
 held no prominent office but that of collector of customs, 
 which he resigned on account of a disagreement between him 
 self and the President and Secretary of the Treasury upon 
 some question about appointments. He had been educated 
 in the New York school of politics, the cardinal doctrine of 
 which was " to the victors belong the spoils," and he conducted 
 the collector s office on that principle, while its business was 
 performed in a manner satisfactory to the Government and to 
 the merchants. All of his predecessors who succeeded to the 
 Presidency as he did were well known to the country. One 
 
484 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 had been a Governor, and had ranked high as a United States 
 Senator. Another had filled a number of offices with credit, 
 and as a member of Congress had attained great distinction 
 for his industry, his statesmanship, and his unbending integ 
 rity. The last had been for many years a senator, and had 
 distinguished himself, although a Southern man, by his devo 
 tion to the Union. It would have been difficult to find two 
 men (to say nothing of Mr. Johnson, about whose qualifica 
 tions there were differences of opinion) better fitted by cult 
 ure, by experience and knowledge of public men, and of the 
 political and economical condition of the country, than John 
 Tyler and Millard Fillmore, and yet by neither was there as 
 much practical ability or sagacity displayed as by Mr. Arthur, 
 who had none of their advantages ; whose knowledge of the 
 public men of the nation was very limited, and who had never 
 made politics, in the highest sense of the word, a study. It 
 was with great diffidence that he entered upon the discharge 
 of his high duties ; but his self-distrust begot carefulness, and 
 he was content to administer the Government as he found it. 
 Day by day his hold upon his situation became firmer, and in 
 a few weeks he was master of it. His position was a very 
 trying one, not only for the reasons that have been named, 
 but by the fact that he had been a very active politician in 
 New York, and had used men for political purposes who 
 expected to be rewarded for them by the patronage which 
 was at his disposal. The claims of all such men were disre 
 garded. . They became very pressing, as I had good reason for 
 knowing, towards the close of his administration, but Mr. 
 Arthur paid none of his political debts in New York at the 
 expense of the Federal Treasury or to the detriment of the pub 
 lic service. I did not know which most to admire his firm 
 ness in resisting their importunities, or his tact in retaining 
 their good will, notwithstanding his refusal to comply with 
 their urgent requests. 
 
 Mr. Arthur, during his administration, attempted no feats 
 
PRESIDENT CLEVELAND. 485 
 
 of diplomacy. His recommendations to Congress had been 
 carefully considered, and they were- presented in a manner 
 that compelled the respect of Congress, although few of them 
 were favorably acted upon. His administration throughout 
 was characterized by a high order of ability and by devotion 
 to the public welfare. If any one of our Presidents merited a 
 second term, he did. Had he been nominated he would 
 doubtless have been elected, as the opposition to him would 
 have been less savage than it was against Mr. Elaine. He 
 might have lost some votes that were given to Mr. Elaine, but 
 he would have secured a great many that went to Mr. Cleve 
 land. His Cabinet was a respectable one. I had not met any 
 of the members except Mr. Chandler and Mr. Lincoln, before 
 I became an associate, but I formed a good opinion of all of 
 them. Mr. Chandler I have before spoken of. Mr. Lincoln 
 in no wise discredits his parentage, and he will not, if he 
 should be called to the high place which his illustrious father 
 filled with extraordinary wisdom. 
 
 It is only just to say of President Cleveland that in the 
 self-command, the independence, and the executive ability 
 which he has displayed he has exceeded the expectation of 
 his political friends and disappointed his political enemies. 
 Until he was nominated for Governor of New York in 1882, 
 he was little known even to the people of his own State ; out 
 side of it he was scarcely known by anybody. His acquaint 
 ance with public men was more limited than Mr. Arthur s ; 
 his educational advantages were not of a liberal character, 
 and yet it must be admitted by his opponents that he has filled 
 the office with dignity that he has performed his high duties 
 with intelligence, that he has been straightforward in his 
 actions, and that he has not sought popularit} r by swimming 
 with the current. Few men in his position would have 
 vetoed as he did, Pension bills which must have been hastily 
 passed, or passed, for party purposes. He knew that he 
 should make no friends, and would probably make many 
 
486 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 enemies, by his vetoes of many of them, but upon careful 
 examination, he discovered that they were not meritorious, 
 and he therefore withheld from them his signature. He may 
 desire, and doubtless does desire, a re-nomination (Mr. Hayes 
 was the only President who was content with a single term), 
 but I have been unable to see any indication of it in his official 
 acts or unofficial conduct. Whatever else may be said against 
 him, he can never be charged with being a demagogue. 
 By Republicans he is charged with not being governed 
 by the Civil Service Act ; with making removals and appoint 
 ments contrary to its letter and spirit. On the other hand, 
 he is severely criticised by many Democrats for not making 
 a general sweep. He has undoubtedly made mistakes in the 
 exercise of his appointing and removing power, but the won 
 der should be (all things considered) that he has not made 
 more. To disregard entirely the claims of party in the distri 
 bution of patronage, demands an independence of party fealty, 
 and a disregard of party obligations, which no President has 
 ever felt, or ought to feel. How far to go in yielding to the 
 claims of his party, without disregarding the higher claims 
 of the nation, is an exceedingly difficult question for a Presi 
 dent to decide, and if Mr. Cleveland, under the pressure to 
 which he has been subjected, has yielded more to his party 
 than should have been yielded, he ought not to be regarded 
 as being greatly at fault by the advocates of civil service 
 reform. That Democrats, educated in the old school of poli 
 tics, should charge him with lukewarmness to his party because 
 he has not removed more Republican office-holders, is natural ; 
 censure on this ground was rather to be coveted than avoided 
 by him. 
 
 No man should be nominated for the presidency whose 
 qualifications are not unquestionable, nor one who has not 
 rendered important service to the country in civil or military 
 life. It certainly could not be said of Mr. Cleveland, when 
 he was nominated, that his qualifications were beyond ques- 
 
HIS GENERAL SUCCESS. 487 
 
 tion, or that he had rendered very valuable service to his 
 country ; but it cannot be denied that he has discharged his 
 manifold duties with singular independence and marked abil 
 ity. The Republic has received no detriment by the elec 
 tion of Grover Cleveland to the presidency. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIII. 
 
 The Changes of a Half Century Effect of Machinery upon Labor Contests 
 between Capital and Labor Demoralization Produced by War Increase 
 of Violence Decline in the Standard of Honor Newspapers in the 
 United States a Half Century Ago The " Galaxy " of Boston The 
 "Evening Post" and "Courier and Enquirer" of New York The "In 
 telligencer of Washington The " Gazette " of Cincinnati The " Jour 
 nal" of Louisville The "Herald" and "Tribune" of New York J. T. 
 Buckingham William C. Bryant James Watson Webb Joseph Gales 
 Charles Hammond George D. Prentice James G. Bennett Horace 
 Greeley Personality and Impersonality in Journalism Increase of Fed 
 eral, and Decrease of State Authority Daniel Webster s Opinion upon the 
 Legal-Tender Question Decision of the Supreme Court Henry ( lay and 
 the Tariff. 
 
 THE greatest change which has been made in the condition, 
 not only of the United States, but of the world, has been 
 by the invention and use of machinery. Fifty years ago, 
 work of all kinds was done by hand ; now it is chiefly done 
 by machinery. There is scarcely a branch of industry which 
 is not now mainly carried on by it. Labor-saving machines 
 are everywhere in sitting-rooms, in kitchens, in shops, in 
 factories, in ship-yards, in printing offices, and upon farms. 
 The chief employment of hands seems now to be, not in doing 
 work, but in directing machines. The heaviest and coarsest 
 work, as well as the most delicate, is done by this agency ; 
 ships are being built by machinery as well as watches. The 
 result of all this has been rapid increase in individual and 
 national wealth ; in activity and enterprise ; progress in all 
 directions. To all this there is apparently one great offset 
 machines, in diminishing the need of hands, have been prejudi 
 cial to labor. They have cheapened all articles for use or 
 consumption, but they have lessened the present value of men. 
 
THE ECONOMIC REVOLUTION. 489 
 
 Handicraft has been to a large extent destroyed by them ; large 
 capitalists have been enriched, but men of small means have 
 not infrequently been ruined by them. Manufacturers on a 
 small scale cannot compete with those who manufacture on a 
 large one. Even the farmer, whose acreage is not large enough 
 to justify the purchase of machinery for sowing and securing 
 his crops, cannot afford to sell at as low prices as his neighbor 
 who does almost everything by it. The labor of the world is 
 being revolutionized. The whole system of political economy is 
 in derangement. Manufacturers unite to prevent overproduc 
 tion, and keep up the price of manufactured goods by restricting 
 production. Laborers combine to keep up the price of wages. 
 Contests are going on between capital and labor in all coun 
 tries, and they are the most serious where there is the greatest 
 freedom. Hitherto, capitalists have had the best of the con 
 test. Whether this will always be the case is doubtful. 
 Laborers have never been as united as they are now. If all 
 the laboring classes should be harmonized and act together in 
 the United States, they would be able to dictate terms to 
 capitalists, if not to govern the nation. The outlook is not 
 pleasant, but there is no cause for discouragement to those who 
 believe that there is sufficient power in republican institutions 
 for the settlement of all questions, political and economical, 
 without injustice to capitalists on the one hand, or to laborers 
 on the other. The ultimate effect of labor-saving machines 
 must be to place labor on a higher level, but while the process 
 of accommodation is going on, there will be disturbances and 
 contests. The trouble for the time being is serious, but not 
 too serious to be overcome by wise counsels and time. 
 
 Other changes have taken place, and within a recent period. 
 War is always demoralizing. Our late civil war, although its 
 results have been highly beneficial in removing all causes of 
 sectional discordance and establishing the united Government, 
 as it is hoped, for centuries to come, has not been without 
 untoward influences. There is less regard for human life than 
 
490 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTFRY. 
 
 there was thirty years ago more lawlessness and disorder. 
 Acts of violence are more frequent in the United States than in 
 any other country in the world. There are more men who carry 
 deadly weapons more men with pistols in their pockets in 
 the little city of Washington, than in the great city of London. 
 They are not carried for self-defence, and they would not be 
 needed by anybody if canying them was prohibited, as it 
 should be, by law, and the law was efficiently executed. Nor 
 are violations of the law so certainly punished in the United 
 States as in other countries. " Around the gift of freedom " 
 the safeguards of law are not as severely drawn as the welfare 
 of society imperatively demands. The standard of honor in 
 business is not as high as it was in my younger days. Wealth 
 is more honored now than it was then, and the means by which 
 it is acquired is less scrutinized. Men who have been enriched 
 by gambling (speculation it is called) seem to have as high 
 social standing as those who have acquired wealth in branches 
 of productive industry. Official dishonesty dishonesty of all 
 descriptions has more than kept pace with the growth of the 
 country. These evils, however, are not so deeply set as to 
 be beyond correction. They will be corrected before they 
 become too strong to be uprooted, if the Anglo-Saxon spirit 
 continues to be socially and politically in the ascendant. 
 
 Newspapers, in number and contents, have much more than 
 kept pace with the growth of the country in population. It 
 might be safely said that in the last half century the number 
 published in the United States has been increased twenty-fold ; 
 the reading matter forty-fold ; while the cost to their read 
 ers has been very largely reduced. Nothing has been more 
 wonderful (little as we think about it) in this wonderful age, 
 than the change which has been brought about in the record 
 of current events, by steamships and railroads, and especially 
 by the telegraph. For many years after I went to Fort 
 Wayne, in 1833 the news which was there received from the 
 sea-board was from ten to twelve davs old that \vhich came 
 
JOURNALISM FIFTY YEARS AGO. 491 
 
 from the other side of the Atlantic was fifty or sixty. Now 
 the morning papers in all parts of the country record the 
 important events that occurred throughout the world the same 
 day or the day before. Indeed, so much is the telegraph 
 ahead of the earth, in its diurnal revolution, that the events in 
 the Eastern hemisphere are known in the Western, according 
 to Western time, many hours before they occur. To know 
 what important things have happened the day before in all 
 parts of the civilized world, one has only to take up a daily 
 newspaper; and if he wants interesting reading enough to 
 keep him employed a good part of his time, he needs only to 
 subscribe for one of our large dailies. But while all this is 
 true, it cannot be said that there has been improvement in the 
 character of journalism in the United States, by which I mean 
 improvement in the intellectual ability with which the news 
 papers are conducted. The newspapers of all our large cities 
 abound in evidences of enterprise ; they are full of interesting 
 matter ; they have wide-awake and able editors and reporters ; 
 but none can be said to be conducted with superior ability to 
 that which was displayed in the Galaxy of Boston, the Even 
 ing Post and the Courier and Enquirer of New York, the 
 National Intelligencer of Washington, the Gazette of Cincin 
 nati, and the Journal of Louisville, which were the leading 
 newspapers in 1833 ; or in the Herald and Tribune of New 
 York, which appeared a few years later. The newspapers of 
 the day are not more ably conducted, perhaps I ought to say 
 more ably edited, than were those I have named, because 
 abler writers men of more varied intelligence, are not found 
 in any country than were Joseph T. Buckingham, William C. 
 Bryant, James Watson Webb, Joseph Gales, Charles Ham 
 mond, George D. Prentice, James G. Bennett, and Horace 
 Greeley. They have all passed away, but they gave to jour 
 nalism in the United States a character which is not likely to 
 be excelled. All of them were men not only of large acquire 
 ments, but of great mental vigor, and they impressed the jour- 
 
492 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 nals which they conducted with their own personalities. They 
 had in most cases able assistants, but the leading articles in all 
 these journals always bore the distinguishing ear-marks of 
 their distinguished editors. 
 
 Every reader of the Boston Galaxy knew that the keen, 
 the witty, the sarcastic leaders were from the pen of Bucking 
 ham. The perfect English, the elevated tone, the breadth of 
 thought, the extensive knowledge which characterized the 
 columns of the Evening Post, indicated the master-hand of 
 Bryant. The impress of Webb was manifest in the vigor, the 
 independence, the boldness, not to say arrogance, with which 
 the Courier and Enquirer was for a long time conducted. 
 
 Joseph Gales, although his brother-in-law, Seaton, was 
 associated with him, was in fact The National Intelligencer. 
 It had a name to live for a few years after his death, but a 
 name only. Mr. Gales was the best informed man in the 
 political history of the country, and one of the best political 
 writers, of the day. He was an intimate friend of Daniel 
 Webster, who was in the habit of consulting him upon ques 
 tions of great public interest. All such questions were dis 
 cussed in the Intelligencer with as much ability as they were 
 in Congress by its ablest members ; indeed, some of the most 
 noteworthy speeches in both houses were regarded as having 
 been inspired, if not actually prepared, by Mr. Gales. 
 
 I was a good deal surprised to see, soon after I went to 
 Indiana, two papers one published in Cincinnati and the 
 other in Louisville which came fully up to the highest stand 
 ards of those in the Eastern cities. The Cincinnati Gazette, 
 while under the charge of Charles Hammond, was conducted 
 with very great abilit\yand extraordinary fairness. Mr. Ham 
 mond was an ardent and conscientious Whig, but he never 
 descended he was incapable of descending to the low level of 
 a political partisan. The present editors, wise and experienced 
 as they are, would do well to turn for guidance in sharp polit 
 ical contests to the files of the Gazette between 1833 and 1840. 
 
HORACE GREELEY. 493 
 
 George D. Prentice made the Louisville Journal the most 
 
 C3 
 
 captivating newspaper of the times. The selections from his 
 editorials made a volume which contained more original and 
 witty paragraphs than any other book in the English language. 
 Mr. Prentice was more than a wit he was a man of extensive 
 learning, excellent judgment patriotic to the core. Thor 
 oughly imbued with the lofty spirit of Mr. Clay, whose biog 
 rapher he was ; true to the Government, notwithstanding the 
 unfavorable influence to which he was exposed, he exerted 
 potent influence in preventing the secessionists from capturing 
 the State at the outbreak of the rebellion. 
 
 James Gordon Bennett created the New York Herald. It 
 was fashioned and molded by himself ; it breathed his spirit ; 
 it took with the masses because it harmonized with their preju 
 dices. Mr. Bennett never undertook to be a teacher in morals 
 or politics. His aim was to make the Herald a paper which 
 should present to its readers the earliest intelligence of what 
 was going on in all parts of the world, and thus to obtain for 
 it a circulation which would secure the largest amount of 
 advertising. In this he was entirely successful. It has 
 undoubtedly been the most profitable newspaper in the United 
 States. It was not, while its founder was living, nor has it 
 been since his death, a strictly party paper. Never the stead 
 fast supporter of any political organization never the earnest 
 advocate of any political doctrine it has always been ably 
 conducted and full of interesting intelligence. It has been 
 just what its founder intended it should be a great news 
 paper. It is understood that Mr. Bennett, the present pro 
 prietor, who bears his father s name, does not often appear in 
 its columns. 
 
 As the Herald was the creation of James Gordon Bennett, 
 so was the New York Tribune the creation of Horace Greeley. 
 No other editor ever impressed his personality upon a news 
 paper as Mr. Greeley impressed himself upon the Tribune. 
 Mr. Greeley was the Tribune the Tribune was Mr. Greeley. 
 
494 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 There was no impersonality about it as long as he had the 
 control of it. He had able assistants, but the leading articles 
 were mostly from his pen, and when they were not, they were 
 instinct with his spirit. No halting policy, no half-way meas 
 ures, were ever tolerated by Mr. Greeley. In everything he 
 undertook he was earnest, and whatever may have been, in 
 many instances, his lack of wisdom, no one had reason to 
 doubt his sincerity. He was certainly unwise in the opinion 
 which he expressed just before the outbreak of the civil war, 
 that the Government was not worth preserving if it could 
 only be preserved by force. He seemed to fail to perceive 
 that if, as he advised, the " erring sisters " were permitted to 
 " go in peace " slavery, which he abhorred, would not only be 
 perpetuated in the States in which it existed, but would be 
 introduced into Mexico ; that peaceable secession would be 
 followed by wars between the separated States, which would 
 exceed in fierceness those which have so frequently deluged 
 European States with blood. He was unwise, after the war 
 was commenced, in advising the generals in regard to the man 
 ner in which it should be conducted, and in his " On to Rich 
 mond ! " cry. He was unwise in failing to give to the Admin 
 istration cordial support in the most trying period, because, in 
 his opinion, President Lincoln hesitated longer than he should 
 have done to proclaim freedom to the slaves. But his want 
 of wisdom was most signally manifested in accepting a nomi 
 nation for the presidency by Republicans who were dissatis 
 fied with the administration of General Grant, approved and 
 indorsed as that nomination was by a Democratic Convention. 
 All of these mistakes were, however, more than counterbal 
 anced by his wise and excellent course and action in other 
 matters. He was an ardent advocate of temperance and of 
 social reforms ; an unswerving friend of the laboring classes ; 
 an enemy of oppression in whatever form it appeared. Zeal 
 ous in whatever he undertook, truthful and sincere, he made 
 the Tribune a paper of vast and healthy influence. The 
 
PERSONALITY OF THE PRESS. 495 
 
 respect which lie commanded the hold which he had upon 
 the people, high and low were manifested at his funeral, 
 which, by the numbers of real mourners who were present, and 
 their unmistakable sorrow, was the most impressive that had 
 ever been witnessed in New York. 
 
 American journalism has never been of a higher character 
 than when the leading newspapers were under the control of 
 the men I have named. Since then the personality of con 
 ductors of newspapers has to a large extent disappeared, and 
 this has lessened both their attractiveness and their influence. 
 One reads with more pleasure a good article which has been 
 written by one whom he knows personally, or by reputation, 
 than he reads an article equally good from the pen of one of 
 whom he has no knowledge ; and there is an influence in per 
 sonality of a high order which is strong and healthy. The 
 impersonality of the writers gives to newspapers greater 
 liberty than they would have if the writers were known, 
 but it is too frequently the liberty of defamation. It opens 
 wide the door for the indulgence of bitter personalities. If 
 the writers were known, political newspapers would not 
 teem with personal abuse, which discredits them in the esti 
 mation of all fair-minded men. Although the prominent 
 political newspapers of the United States are conducted with 
 great intellectual ability, and as newspapers are of the highest 
 character, they are not, in political contests, as influential as 
 they ought to be, because they misrepresent and frequently 
 grossly misrepresent, the characters of candidates for office. A 
 stranger who should read our political newspapers for some 
 weeks before a Presidential election, would conclude that the 
 candidates on both sides were utterly destitute of the qualities 
 which ought to be required as indispensable for the highest 
 office in the Government men of a very low order of honor 
 and ability. Yery few people read political newspapers for 
 truthful descriptions of candidates for any important offices 
 for which there is sharp competition. All this, I am sure, 
 
496 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 would not be the case but for the impersonality with which 
 these newspapers are conducted. 
 
 Nor is impersonality confined to political newspapers. It 
 is sometimes resorted to by writers for magazines who have 
 malice to gratify without personal responsibility, of which the 
 following is an illustration : Ex-Senator Thurman, of Ohio, one 
 of the ablest and most upright men that this country has pro 
 duced, upon whose reputation for honesty and truthfulness 
 there is not a stain, in a recent speech, thus spoke of the Pres 
 ident : " I have seen a good many Presidents in my long life. 
 I have read the history of the administrations of all, and I 
 have known several of them personally. I have seen and I 
 know, and I think I know him full well, Grover Cleveland, 
 our President of the United States ; and on the honor of a man 
 who is bound to tell you the truth, if ever a man was bound to 
 tell the truth to his fellow men, I don t believe that a more 
 honest, braver, truer man ever filled the presidential chair of 
 the United States. He is more than that ; he is a man of 
 far more ability than people who don t know him may sup 
 pose. He has that supreme faculty, the best of faculties, 
 which we designate by the term good sense. If he is not a 
 level-headed, common-sense, honest man, then I am no judge 
 of men." Mr. Thurman has been a life-long Democrat, and 
 may therefore be supposed to regard with favor the President 
 whose administration he supports ; but there are a great many 
 Republicans who, like myself, have never voted a Democratic 
 ticket, who would not be disposed to qualify very much, if at 
 all, this high indorsement of Mr. Cleveland. And yet, under 
 the assumed name of u Arthur Richmond," in the April, 1887, 
 number of the Nwth American Review, the writer of an 
 article bitterly assailing James Russell Lowell, denounces the 
 President as a man " who had never uttered a word for his 
 country, nor lifted his hand in her defence higher than a 
 hangman s rope a man of brutal manners, of stolid instincts, 
 of vulgar associations, a stranger to polite society, a man who, 
 
THE OLD "NORTH AMERICAN." 497 
 
 in the language of another, is but a wooden image of dull 
 self-sufficiency and cold stolidity; as incapable of receiving 
 impressions as of returning warmth." This is the description, 
 by an anonymous writer, of the man whom Mr. Thurman 
 indorses so highly the man who was elected Governor of 
 the Empire State by an unprecedented majority, and who per 
 formed his duties with so much independence and ability that 
 a great party turned to him as the man who would lead it to 
 victory in the presidential contest. 
 
 Would such an article as that from which these passages 
 have been extracted have appeared in the North American if 
 the editor and proprietor had required the real name of the 
 writer to be attached to it ? I trow not. Most of the writers 
 for that magazine write over their own names. Why was not 
 the true name put to that diatribe against the President, whom 
 a large majority of true Americans hold in high esteem ? Was 
 it not because of its vindictive personality and shameful 
 untruthfulness. 
 
 This reference to the North American leads me to a few 
 words about its early life. If I rightly recollect, it is the only 
 survivor of the United States magazines which existed in my 
 boyhood. When I left New England, in 1833, its editor and 
 proprietor was Alexander II. Everett. For five years before 
 he took charge of it, it had been edited by his younger 
 brother Edward, who was a liberal contributor to it for many 
 years, after. For ten years every number contained one or 
 more articles from one or the other, sometimes from both, of 
 these distinguished men. From this fact, those who did not 
 see the magazine at that time, can judge of its character. 
 Alexander and Edward Everett ! Extraordinary men were 
 they both. Precocious in early life, it may truthfully be said 
 of them that they never ceased to be precocious. Alexander 
 graduated at Harvard College with the highest honors at the 
 age of fourteen ; at seventeen he was attached to the legation 
 to Russia ; before he was thirty he wrote a work of so great 
 32 
 
498 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 value, that it was translated into the German, French, and 
 Spanish languages; and at thirty-three he was Minister to 
 Spain. When, therefore, he took control of the North 
 American, he had established a very high reputation as a 
 scholar and writer. His brother Edward, no less distinguished 
 for his scholarship, was his superior as a speaker. I have 
 heard the opinion expressed by competent judges, that Edward 
 Everett, as an accomplished orator, has never been surpassed. 
 At the age of nineteen he was the pastor of the Brattle Street 
 Church of Boston, which numbered in its congregation many 
 of the most highly cultured men of Boston. His subsequent 
 career was in the highest degree honorable. Under the 
 editorship of the Everetts, the North American obtained 
 great celebrity ; it was known and recognized abroad, as well 
 as at home, as a magazine of the highest character. It is 
 consequently not discreditable to the Review, at the present 
 time, that it does not come up to the high standard to which 
 they raised it more than a half century ago. Its only dis 
 credit is the fact, that it is permitted to be the impersonal 
 vehicle of personal malice or ill will, of vindictive attacks 
 upon such a man as Grover Cleveland, who fills with credit 
 the highest place in the Government, and such a man as 
 James Russell Lowell, who honors his country by his high 
 character and superior scholarship and talents, who stands 
 in the front rank of the honorably distinguished men of 
 the world. 
 
 That the Government of the United States is stronger and 
 more imperial in its character than it was half a centmy ago, 
 is manifest to all who are familiar with its history. Within 
 this period the Federal authority has been greatly augmented, 
 and the authority of the States has been diminished. The 
 States rights doctrines as they were advocated and believed 
 in the slaveholding States, and by many Democrats of the 
 Jeffersonian school in the free States, received a death blow 
 by the civil war and its results ; while by liberal construction 
 
INCREASED FEDERAL AUTHORITY. 499 
 
 of the Constitution by the courts, and the general course of 
 legislation, the tendency towards federal centralization has 
 been increased. I will mention two instances which illlustrate 
 this tendency. 
 
 Daniel Webster, who was styled the " expounder of the 
 Constitution," who was admitted on all hands to be the ablest 
 of constitutional lawyers, uttered the following language in 
 1836: 
 
 " Most unquestionably there is no legal tender in this 
 country, under the authority of this Government or any other, 
 but gold and silver, either the coinage of our own mints or 
 foreign coins, at rates regulated by Congress. This is a con 
 stitutional principle, perfectly plain, and of the highest impor 
 tance. The States are expressly prohibited from making any 
 thing but gold and silver a legal tender in payment of debts, 
 and although no such express prohibition is applied to Con 
 gress, yet, as Congress has no power granted to it in this 
 respect but to coin money and to regulate the value of foreign 
 coins, it clearly has no power to substitute paper or anything 
 else for coin as a tender in payment of debts and in discharge 
 of contracts. Congress has exercised this power fully in both 
 its branches. It has coined money and still coins it ; it has 
 regulated the value of foreign coins, and still regulates their 
 value. The legal tender, therefore, the constitutional standard 
 of value, is established, and cannot be overthrown. To over 
 throw it would shake the whole system." 
 
 This was said in the Senate chamber, in the presence of 
 the most distinguished statesmen of the country, and there 
 was no dissenting voice. There was probably no respectable 
 lawyer in the country who doubted the correctness of Mr. 
 "Webster s opinion ; and yet the Supreme Court has decided 
 that Congress has authority to make the notes of the Govern 
 ment (no matter what their convertible value may be) lawful 
 money and a legal tender. No sovereign in the world ever 
 claimed authority superior to that which Congress possesses, 
 according to this decision. It is a decision which clothes a 
 Government of limited powers with imperialism in a matter of 
 the highest importance to the public welfare. By this decis- 
 
500 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 i 
 
 ion, and the substantially prohibitory tax upon circulating 
 notes other than those issued by the Government and the 
 national banks, the States were deprived of the very impor 
 tant and valuable privilege of creating banks of issue, which 
 from the foundation of the Government they had exercised 
 without question. 
 
 Henry Clay, who was the recognized father of what was 
 called the American System, and whose interpretation of the 
 Constitution was of the most liberal character, never claimed 
 for Congress the authority to extend the manufacturers any 
 thing more than incidental protection under a tariff for rev 
 enue. While revenue should be the object, he thought that 
 Tariff Bills should, and ought to be, so framed that the highest 
 duties would be upon such goods as were manufactured at 
 home, so that our manufactures might be indirectly aided by 
 the Government. There were very few men in his time who 
 contended that Congress could, without disregarding the spirit 
 and the letter of the Constitution, make laws to sustain home 
 manufactures without regard to the question of revenue the 
 object of which laws should be protection, not revenue. 
 
CHAPTER XXXIV. 
 
 Public Questions still Pending The Decline of Shipping and its Causes The 
 Tariff Needed to Protect Infant Manufactures Its Increase for War 
 Purposes Its Effect upon American Shipping The Negro Question 
 Relations of the Two Races to Each Other The Elective Franchise 
 Hostility Between the Poor and Rich Danger of our Large Cities 
 Conversation Between a Citizen of New York and a Citizen of Georgia 
 Ownership of Land Made Valuable by Labor Hardships of Early Set 
 tlers in Western Timbered Lands Few Farms Worth more than the Cost 
 of Cultivation Taxes on Lands Should be Reduced Acquisition and 
 Ownership of all Property to be Protected by the Government Wonder 
 ful Growth of the Country Immigration Its Value and Possible Offsets 
 Differences in the Character of the Immigrants Naturalization Laws 
 Dangerously Liberal Necessity of Restrictions of Voting in City Elec 
 tions Monopolies The Outlook. 
 
 MAJST political and economic questions have been dis 
 cussed and wisely settled in the United States, within 
 the last half century, but there are questions still pending of 
 the greatest importance to the national welfare. The restora 
 tion of our merchant marine, the readjustment of the war 
 tariff on imports, the relations between labor and capital 
 complicated as they are by practical monopolies on one side 
 and theoretic socialism on the other negro suffrage and 
 unrestricted naturalization these are matters of the gravest 
 interest. 
 
 The following sentences are selected from some rather 
 extended remarks, which I made in my report as Secretary of 
 the Treasury to Congress, in 1866, upon the subject of Amer 
 ican shipping. 
 
 " No single interest in the United States, fostered although 
 it may be by legislation, can long prosper at the expense of 
 other great interests, nor can any important interest be crushed 
 
502 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 by unwise or unequal laws without other interests being 
 thereby prejudiced. The people of the United States are natu 
 rally a commercial and maritime people, fond of adventure, bold, 
 enterprising, and persistent. Now the disagreeable fact must 
 be admitted that, with unequal facilities for obtaining the 
 materials, and with acknowledged skill in shipbuilding, with 
 thousands of miles of sea-coast, indented with the finest har 
 bors in the world, with surplus products that require a large 
 and increased tonnage, we can neither profitably build ships, 
 nor successfully compete with English ships in the transporta 
 tion of our own productions. It is a well-established general 
 fact that the people who build ships navigate them, and that a 
 nation which ceases to build ships, ceases of consequence to be 
 a commercial and maritime nation. Unless, therefore, the 
 cause which prevents the building of ships in the United 
 States shall cease, the foreign carrying trade even of our own 
 productions, must be yielded to other nations. To this humil 
 iation and loss, the people of the United States ought not to 
 subjected. If other branches of industry are to prosper ; if 
 agriculture is to be profitable, and manufactures are to be 
 extended ; the commerce of the country must be restored, sus 
 tained and increased. The United States will not be a first- 
 class power among the nations, nor will her other industrial 
 interests continue long to prosper as they ought, if our com 
 merce is permitted to languish/ 
 
 The decline in its shipping is the great humiliation of the 
 United States. Less than half a century ago they were second 
 only to Great Britain, with strong indications that they would 
 soon be her superior as a maritime power. The best ships in 
 the world were then built in the United States, chiefly in New 
 England, and our ship-yards not only supplied the home 
 demand, which was very large, but to a considerable extent 
 the foreign demand also. Now, except for the home trade, 
 the building of ships has substantially ceased. It makes one 
 who saw the ship-yards along the New England coast a half a 
 century ago sad as he sees them now. A few steamships are 
 being built there and in the other Atlantic States for coast 
 wise or West Indian and South American trade, but none for 
 the European. In ship-building and ship-owning, except for 
 domestic trade, the United States are behind nations that, a 
 
THE DECLINE OF AMERICAN SHIPPING. 503 
 
 few years ago, were not known for either. The carrying 
 trade between the Old World and the new is in the hands of 
 Europeans. It is their ships that are crowded with Americans 
 who are constantly visiting the Old World on business or for 
 pleasure ; their ships that bring emigrants to our shores ; their 
 ships that carry our cotton, our wheat, our beef and pork, our 
 tobacco and petroleum and what not to foreign markets. We 
 no longer share in the glory and the gain which attend upon 
 maritime enterprise. The decline of American shipping com 
 menced with the substitution of iron for wooden ships. It 
 was hastened by our refusal to permit our ship-owners to pro 
 tect their ships by a foreign flag during the late war, and the 
 finishing blow was given to it by a tariff, which, by taxing the 
 materials that are used in the construction of ships, made them 
 too costly to invite capital in that direction, and forced it into 
 manufactures. That the United States have been enormously 
 enriched by their manufactures, is undeniable, and it is equally 
 undeniable that their rapid growth in manufacturing indus 
 tries is very largely attributable to high duties upon imports. 
 But why have our tariff laws been so framed as to prejudice 
 and destroy one great interest while fostering others ? Why 
 have our people looked on with indifference, why have our 
 law makers been inert, while our ships have been disappear 
 ing from the ocean ? The answer must be found in the 
 lack of broad and comprehensive statesmanship in Con 
 gress and in the Executive branches of the Government. 
 There are, I am happy to say, indications that the public 
 mind is being awakened to the importance of having some 
 thing done for the restoration of American shipping. Over 
 production in manufactures for the home demand, and the 
 want of foreign markets for the surplus, are awakening 
 public attention in this direction. The party of the future 
 will be that party which, comprehending the interests of 
 the whole country, fosters all alike, or relieves the people 
 altogether from the burdens which a partial policy now 
 
504 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 imposes. If protection is to be the continued policy of the 
 Government, ship-building should be encouraged, and mari 
 time interests protected, as well as manufactures. If all 
 restrictions are to be removed, and taxation for revenue only 
 is to be the policy, the shipping interest, relieved from the 
 burdens now imposed upon it, with fair compensation to 
 steamships for carrying the mails will take care of itself. It 
 will be a proud day for the United States when American 
 ships share with those of other nations in the business of the 
 seas, and the American flag is seen again in ports from which 
 it has been long banished. It is urged, I know, that the build 
 ing of ships could not be a profitable industry in the United 
 States, even if the duty on all articles which are used in their 
 construction and outfit were taken off, by reason of the 
 cheaper labor on the other side of the Atlantic. If this were 
 a fact, which I do not believe, what justification can there be 
 for keeping upon the statute book the law that prohibits citi 
 zens of the United States from buying foreign-built ships and 
 putting them under our own flag ? If we cannot build ships, 
 why should our citizens be prohibited from purchasing them? 
 In no country in the world, except this great, free country of 
 ours, does such a barbarous prohibition exist. If we need 
 ships and cannot build them, why should the right to buy be 
 denied? 
 
 The causes of the decline in ship-building were, higher 
 prices of labor and materials in the United States than in 
 Europe, and the tariff. One of these causes has been much 
 modified. Skilled labor has become abundant in the United 
 States within the last twenty years, and greater progress 
 has been made in labor-saving machinery on this side than 
 on the other side of the Atlantic. If all the materials which 
 are needed in the construction of ships were relieved from 
 import duties, the other cause of the decline of our ship 
 ping would be removed ; but so much ground has been lost 
 by delay, and so strong has become the European monopoly 
 
PROTECTION ONCE NEEDFUL. 505 
 
 of ocean traffic that something more is required to build up 
 ship-building in the United States. Not only should ship 
 building materials be admitted free of duty, but subsidies 
 should be granted to steamships, if not directly, at least 
 in the transportation of the mails. We should, in this 
 respect, do what other nations have done to build up and 
 sustain their maritime interests ; but we must not stop here. 
 All efforts to induce investments of capital in ships will be 
 unavailing unless foreign markets are to be secured for what 
 we have to sell. Trade is essentially barter, and there can 
 be no barter as long as trade is fettered with unequal duties 
 on articles to be exchanged. What is needed, then, in the 
 United States, and needed more than anything else to pro 
 mote general prosperity, is such a modification of our tariff 
 as will facilitate exchanges with other countries. The protec 
 tive policy must be abandoned. A revenue tariff we must 
 have. Absolute free trade will be among the things hoped 
 for, but not to be gained until the people are prepared to sup 
 port the Government by excise duties or by direct taxation, 
 which they probably never will be. 
 
 That, in the infancy of our manufactures, protective laws 
 were needed, and that the country has been in times past 
 greatly benefited by these laws, is admitted by the advocates 
 of tariff reform. Without Government protection against 
 the competition of British manufacturers, capitalists in the 
 United States would not have engaged in manufacturing. 
 Great Britain, early in the present century, became the 
 workshop of the nations. From 1831 to 1870 she controlled 
 the manufacturing of the world. She had more capital 
 than any other nation, and her people were more skilful 
 in the use of machinery than the people of the Continent. 
 She had also what they had not an unlimited supply of coal 
 the great factor in manufacturing ; and if not the inventor 
 of the steam engine, she was the first to utilize it. She was 
 also the leading maritime power of the world, and conse- 
 
506 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 quently possessed the facilities for sending her goods to all 
 ports that were open to her ships. To make the most of these 
 advantages she adopted the principles of free trade. By it the 
 raw materials which she needed were admitted free from tax 
 ation and paid for in the productions of her mills. By this 
 means she had obtained a manufacturing ascendency too for 
 midable to be competed with by capitalists of the United 
 States without government aid. It was to free the United 
 States from dependency upon Great Britain for the goods 
 which were needed, and of which they might be deprived 
 in case of war between the two nations, that our first pro 
 tective laws were enacted. These laws were, for many years, 
 simply re-venue laws with incidental protection. They were 
 afterwards so changed that protection became the object and 
 revenue the incident. " I am in favor ot a judicious tariff," 
 said John Quincy Adams, in a conversation with Henry Clay 
 and others. " I am in favor of a judicious tariff." " And I," 
 said Mr. Clay, " am in favor of a tariff, judicious or not." 
 Congress has of late years been altogether with Mr. Clay, and 
 adhered to protection until it has become burdensome upon 
 the people depriving producers, to a considerable extent, of 
 the benefits of foreign markets for our surplus of agricultural 
 productions, for which, at remunerative prices, there is 
 insufficient foreign demand, and, what is worse than all, our 
 protective tariff has created a demand for laborers, which 
 has brought over immense numbers of foreigners, for whom 
 already there is insufficient employment, and who are con 
 sequently restive and may become dangerous. 
 
 Conceding that protective tariffs were needed to induce 
 investments in home manufactures, and to sustain them when 
 they were too feeble to compete unaided with Great Britain, it 
 is clear to my mind that our tariff laws should have a thorough 
 revision for the purpose of accommodating them to the changed 
 condition of the industrial interests of the country. Pro 
 tection was originally and properly advocated on the ground 
 
THE WAR TARIFF. 507 
 
 that without it manufacturing could make no headway against 
 the crushing power of British capital, and on this ground 
 only. Thirty years ago, few if any of the advocates of pro 
 tection were bold enough to advocate it as a permanent 
 policy. It was to be temporary not perpetual. When the 
 expenses of the civil war began to require immense revenues, 
 the tariff was largely increased, and a patriotic people sub 
 mitted to the additional burden thus laid upon them, because 
 they had resolved that the Government should be sustained. 
 Not only was the tariff increased, but an excise system was 
 adopted under which almost everything that could be reached 
 by the tax collectors was heavily taxed. Nothing more was 
 heard then about protection. Revenue was what was needed, 
 and taxation was chiefl} submitted to, not only for revenue, 
 but to give credit to the immense loans that the Government 
 was obliged to resort to ; and it so happened that these taxes, 
 heavy as they were, and indiscriminately as they were levied, 
 neither diminished production nor checked importation. On 
 the contrary, both were increased. So great was the Govern 
 ment demand for war material and the support of the 
 army and the navy, that existing cotton, woolen and iron 
 mills were worked to their full capacity, and new ones were 
 created and at the same time foreign importations were 
 greatly stimulated. To pay for needful supplies, immense 
 sums of money were required, and this requirement was met 
 by the issue of Government notes, so that in a great and 
 destructive war the greatest and most destructive war that 
 has ever been carried on the loyal States seemed to be highly 
 prosperous, and the burden of taxation was not felt. 
 
 When the war ended, the paper circulation of the country 
 (money, as it is improperly called), instead of being reduced 
 as it should have been, was increased through the agency of 
 the national banks, and artificial prosperity continued until 
 the crisis of 1873 put a temporary end to it. The terrible 
 depression which followed this crisis, was however, of short 
 
508 MEN AND MEASUEES OF HALF A CENTUEY. 
 
 continuance. The spirit of the people was too elastic and 
 buoyant and energetic to be long depressed. Millions of 
 debts were wiped out by the Bankrupt Act. The Govern 
 ment notes were not called in, and bank notes practically irre 
 deemable were abundant for both of which employment 
 must be found ; and this employment was found in the con 
 struction of railroads, many of which were built not for 
 business which required them, but for the business they were 
 expected to create. So capital went into railroads in amounts 
 that would have been ruinous had not short crops in Europe 
 and abundant crops in the United States greatly increased 
 railroad traffic and created balances in our favor which were 
 settled by importations of gold. 
 
 All this is now being changed. Manufacturing of all kinds 
 has been overdone. Mills have been built where they can 
 never be profitable, no matter what government protection 
 may be given to them. Our agricultural productions are 
 declining in value. The tariff is gradually shutting up foreign 
 markets against our manufactured goods, and favorable crops 
 in Europe are diminishing the demand for our breadstufTs. 
 Foreign nations, upon whose productions heavy duties are 
 imposed, buy of us only what they greatly need and cannot 
 dispense with the use of, and these articles are chiefly limited 
 to cotton, wheat, corn, tobacco, petroleum, beef and pork, and 
 our markets for some of these articles are in danger. India 
 is becoming a formidable competitor in the great wheat mar 
 ket of Great Britain, and petroleum from Russia is competing 
 with the petroleum from the United States in the markets of 
 which in this article we have had for years the absolute con 
 trol. But this is not all. The European nations, except Great 
 Britain, are following our example, and, in self-defence, are 
 adopting a protective policy. They are steadily increasing 
 their import duties upon articles which they can produce 
 themselves, and are endeavoring to be as independent of us as 
 we may be of them. To understand how damaging their 
 
NOT DUTIES BUT MARKETS NOW NEEDED. 509 
 
 action is likely to be to the farmers and manufacturers of the 
 United States, it is only necessary to call to mind the facts 
 that our farm products are selling for scarcely enough to cover 
 the cost of production, although not a quarter of our agri 
 cultural lands are under cultivation ; and that our iron and 
 steel, our cotton and woolen factories, if working on only half 
 time, could supply, and more than supply, the home demand. 
 What the great productive interests of the United States now 
 need is, not protective duties, but MARKETS. To remedy the 
 evils which are now to be faced, wise counsels are needed in 
 Congress. The attention of our law-makers must be diverted 
 from the making of Presidents and the distribution of pat 
 ronage to the economic questions upon the proper solution 
 of which the permanent well-being of the people most 
 depends. These questions are the currency, shipping, and the 
 tariff. The currency question must soon come to the front as 
 a vital question. My views upon this question have been fre 
 quently, officially and unofficially, expressed. About our tariff 
 and shipping I must say a few words more. 
 
 The Government is mainly to be supported, as it was 
 before the late civil war, by a tax upon imports, which, 
 although the most insidious, and in some respects the most 
 unequal of all taxes, is, as it has always been, the most popu 
 lar, by reason of its being felt only indirectly by consumers. 
 Against such duties there never will be serious complaint, and 
 when judiciously imposed, separated as the United States are 
 from European nations by the broad Atlantic (neither Canada 
 nor Mexico, nor the South American States can be formidable 
 competitors), they will afford all the protection that our 
 manufacturers really need or can fairly claim. In asking 
 more than this, they are asking that the whole people shall 
 continue to be taxed for the benefit of a few. Much the 
 larger part of the revenue required for the support of this 
 Government and the payment of the national debt must be 
 derived from duties upon imports; and it will therefore be 
 
510 ME^T AXD MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 impossible so to reduce them that they will not be protective. 
 A tariff for revenue only is what is now required to open foreign 
 markets to our various manufactured goods and our agricultural 
 productions. Without these markets our great industrial inter 
 ests can never be permanently prosperous. Time will be 
 required to overcome what has already been lost, but it will be 
 recovered, and more than recovered, if wisdom prevails in our 
 national councils. The opinion which I formed when I was 
 Secretary of the Treasury from 1865 to 1869 that the well- 
 established factories in the United States no longer needed 
 protection, was confirmed by my observations while I resided 
 in England. Wages are lower in Great Britain than in the 
 United States, but labor is less effective. Men move quicker 
 and do more per day in the latter country than in the former. 
 A dollar will command as much service in manufacturing in 
 the United States as in Great Britain. Besides, manufactur 
 ing is no longer the work of hands chiefly, but of machinery, 
 in the invention and use of which Americans excel all other 
 peoples. I speak advisedly, when I say that the far-seeing 
 British manufacturers look forward with dread to the time, 
 which is sure to come about, when, by an abandonment of its 
 protective policy, the United States will become the great 
 competitor of Great Britain in the markets which she now 
 substantially controls. That a country with sixty millions 
 of people, rapidly increasing in population, washed by the 
 Atlantic and Pacific oceans, with thousands of miles indented 
 with the finest of harbors ; with unequalled facilities for ship 
 building; with a soil better fitted to produce cotton, tobacco, 
 maize, cattle and hogs, than is possessed by any other country, 
 and with equal capabilities for the production of wheat ; that 
 such a country should be without ships to transport its surplus 
 to foreign ports, is an anomaly in the history of nations; 
 that in such a country, with manufactories of all descrip 
 tions well established and skilfully managed, with plenty of 
 capital and cheap money, manufacturers, who have become 
 
THE TARIFF AND COMMERCE. 511 
 
 enriched by our protective tariff, should claim more protec 
 tion than a tariff for revenue will afford, is unreasonable and 
 unjust. 
 
 The Tariff ought to be carefully considered not only with 
 regard to its burdens upon consumers, but in its bearing upon 
 commerce and navigation. The leading nations of the world 
 have been commercial, and ship-building and ship-owning 
 nations. Such they were in medieval ages, and such they 
 will always be. It was by such nations that trade was 
 extended and civilization was carried into countries that had 
 been degraded by their isolation. By such nations, in search 
 of markets for their productions, the American continent was 
 discovered, and all great land discoveries made. What has 
 made Great Britain the nation she is the nation upon 
 whose domain the sun never sets? Not her manufactories 
 alone extensive, varied and profitable as they have been 
 but her manufactures, her commerce, and her shipping com 
 bined. Why have her merchants been able to take raw 
 materials from all other nations in exchange for their manu 
 factured goods ? Is it not because she has exempted those raw 
 materials from import duties ? Why is her flag seen upon 
 every sea ? By what means has her supremacy as a commer 
 cial and maritime power been secured and maintained ? Is it 
 not mainly because her statesmen have understood the simple 
 fact that trade is barter, and have freed it from all restrictions. 
 In all natural advantages, the United States are greatly supe 
 rior to Great Britain. While, including her colonies, her 
 domain is more extensive, the territory over which she has 
 absolute control is insignificant in comparison, and so doubtful 
 is her hold upon her colonial possessions, that some of her 
 wisest statesmen have thought that she would be stronger 
 
 o 
 
 without them. In what respect is she superior to the United 
 States ? Not certainly in productions of prime necessity, not 
 in cotton or wool, not in cattle nor swine, or grain of all kinds, 
 not even in what may be called luxuries, such as fruits of all 
 
512 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 descriptions not in precious metals, nor even in iron, lead or 
 copper, which are more valuable than the precious metals ; nor 
 in the inventive power and manufacturing skill of her people. 
 In everything necessary for national growth, everything need 
 ful for the comfort and happiness of the people, the United 
 States are vastly superior to Great Britain. In two things 
 only are they inferior ; in commerce, by which is meant free 
 exchanges of natural and artificial productions, and in shipping, 
 without which in combination they cannot take precedence of 
 Great Britain, and become what they ought to be, and what, 
 with wise legislation, they would soon become, the leading 
 nation of the world, to which all other nations would be tribu 
 tary. Without freer exchanges and a revival of their shipping 
 interests, the United States, no matter how rich and populous 
 they may become, will never be a great nation in all that is 
 needful for national greatness. No nation can be truly great 
 that depends upon other nations for the means of transport 
 ing its productions to foreign markets, or lessens the demand 
 for them by restrictions upon trade. A half century ago the 
 United States were almost supreme upon the ocean. Now 
 they have no rank as a maritime power. 
 
 Among my acquaintances in Boston was Mr. Paul Peter 
 Francis Degrand, who may be recollected by some of the old 
 citizens of that city. Mr. Degrand was a Frenchman of exten 
 sive business knowledge, who was greatly interested in the 
 growth of the United States as a maritime and commercial 
 nation. He was no friend of the English, and he looked hope 
 fully to the time when the United States and not Britannia 
 should rule the waves. In the last conversation which I had 
 with him, before leaving for the West, he said : " My young 
 friend, you are going to the new country, where you will have 
 plenty of other things to think about than the business of the 
 seas ; but if you will come back to Boston ten or fifteen years 
 hence, I will have the pleasure of congratulating you upon the 
 fact that the sceptre has been wrested from England by what 
 
NEGRO SUFFRAGE. 513 
 
 a few years ago was one of her colonies that her ocean 
 supremacy has been lost forever." He did not, I believe, live 
 long enough to see how baseless were his hopes. 
 
 I am proud of my country, of her growth, her greatness, 
 and especially of her free institutions ; but I cannot help being 
 humiliated by the consideration that our merchants must 
 establish credits in London, in order to pay for their purchases 
 abroad ; and that our Government is compelled to maintain an 
 agency in that city for the payment of its representatives in for 
 eign lands, and the expenses of its ships of war in foreign ports. 
 
 While the abolition of slavery has put an end to the 
 original cause of sectional antipathy, it would be fortunate for 
 the country if questions of a very serious character had not 
 arisen in consequence of it. With the boon of freedom came 
 the elective franchise. By amendments of the Constitution, in 
 the passage of which the Southern States had no voice, the 
 colored people of the South, from a condition of servitude, 
 were made the political equals of their former owners. The 
 highest of all privileges was conferred upon men who had 
 never known freedom, and were destitute of qualifications for 
 an intelligent use of the ballot. The enfranchisement .of the 
 recent slaves was regarded by both branches of Congress, as 
 an indispensable adjunct of freedom, without which slavery 
 would not be absolutely uprooted. I thought this policy of 
 immediate enfranchisement unwise and dangerous at the time, 
 and the results have not been such as to change my opinion. 
 It has added largely to the political power of the South with 
 out increasing, to any considerable extent, the number of 
 independent voters. By the abolition of slavery, and the 
 enfranchisement of the recent slaves, the dividing line between 
 the two races, instead of being obliterated, has been more 
 strictly defined. As it had become apparent before the war 
 that the country could not permanently remain part slave and 
 part free that sooner or later either freedom or slavery must 
 33 
 
514 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 become dominant so now it is apparent, that in the States in 
 which slavery recently existed, one race or the other must 
 exercise political control. That the true interests of both 
 races require that this control should be in the hands of the 
 white, there can, I think, be no doubt. To doubt it would be 
 a tacit admission, not only that the African race is intellect 
 ually equal to the Caucasian, but that the severe and continued 
 discipline to which the latter has been subjected in its long 
 struggle for higher and higher civilization has given it no 
 superiority over the former, degraded and enslaved as it has 
 been for countless ages. 
 
 A hater of slavery as I have always been, with no preju 
 dice against colored men, but on the contrary entertaining for 
 them the kindest feeling, and anxious as any man can be for 
 their elevation and welfare, it is very evident to me that at 
 the time of their emancipation and enfranchisement they were 
 not, are not yet, and probably never will be, qualified to prop 
 erly control the government of any of the States of the Union. 
 Hitherto they have been in many instances, most unfortu 
 nately, the tools of designing white men, who have used them 
 for other purposes than their own advantage, or the public 
 good. This was witnessed in the history of South Carolina, 
 when by the exercise of the Federal power, they had the control 
 of that State. That they have been used in other States for 
 pernicious purposes, cannot be honestly denied. It was their 
 votes that placed in power the men who loaded States with 
 enormous debts ; their votes which afterwards gave the control 
 to men by whom these debts were repudiated. Had it not 
 been for the colored votes, the ante-war debt of Virginia 
 would long since have been settled in a manner satisfactory 
 both to the tax-payers and holders of her bonds, and the 
 credit of the State freed from the stain of repudiation, which 
 now rests upon it. Politics force even fair-minded men into 
 strange inconsistencies. The same men who. in our large 
 cities, regard with apprehension the increasing power which is 
 
MLS RULE IX THE SOUTH. 515 
 
 wielded in municipal elections by those who have no property 
 to be protected or taxed, manifest little sympathy for the 
 white people of the South in their efforts to prevent the polit 
 ical control, not only of their cities, but of their States, from 
 passing into the hands of those who have little or no property, 
 and are quite unfit for the exercise of sovereign authority. 
 If New York, Boston, Cincinnati, St. Louis and Chicago were 
 independent cities, with no laws in force except those which 
 were enacted by their aldermen, how long would the property 
 in these cities retain its present value ? How long would the 
 earnings of honest industry be protected ? If the political con 
 trol of such States as South Carolina and Mississippi the latter 
 with a population of 4Y9,371 whites, and 652,221 colored ; the 
 former with a population of 391,244 whites, and 604,398 col 
 ored, were in the hands of the majority, how long would these 
 States be desirable or even safe States for white men to live in * 
 Cities are protected by State laws and State authority. States 
 have no outside protection against a majority misrule. The 
 colored people are already not only a majority in some of the 
 States, but according to the recent returns are increasing much 
 more rapidly than the whites. What, then, is there to prevent 
 them from taking the sovereignty of these States absolutely 
 into their own hands ? It is the general, but to a large degree 
 unexpressed, sentiment of the thoughtful people of the United 
 States that our naturalization laws are injudicious and dan 
 gerous that the franchise should have been conferred upon 
 native-born citizens only. With what favor, then, can the Recon 
 struction Act, which gave the ballot to nearly a million of men 
 who had been recently relieved from slavery be regarded \ 
 The foreigners who come. to our shores to become citizens, 
 undesirable as many of them may be, belong to the great Cau 
 casian family, by which the country was first settled. The 
 colored people are an alien race, a distinct people, and can never 
 be assimilated to the white race. When liberty to the slave 
 was proclaimed by Mr. Lincoln, and confirmed by amendment 
 
516 MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 of the Constitution, the prevailing opinion of Northern men 
 was, that the colored people would rapidly decline in num 
 bers, and pass away, as has been the case with the Indians ; 
 or be scattered over the county where laborers were scarce. 
 Such has not been the case. Instead of diminishing in num 
 bers, they have been rapidly increasing. Instead of availing 
 themselves of their freedom, by leaving their old homes, 
 they have, with rare exceptions, remained there. Their local 
 attachments are strong, and the climate of the South is not 
 only the climate to which they have been accustomed, but the 
 climate to which they are by nature adapted. They are 
 more needed there, and are better off than they would be in 
 any of the Northern or Western States. They will remain 
 and rapidly increase where they are, and there must the 
 serious questions growing out of their emancipation be met 
 and solved. What the solution will be, no one can foresee 
 with certainty. I hazard the opinion, however, that none of 
 the Southern States will ever be permanently subject to the 
 domination of the colored people. If, by their superior num 
 bers, they should obtain political control, their exercise of it 
 would be similar to that which was witnessed in South Caro 
 lina, soon after the close of the war, against which the indig 
 nation of the whole country was aroused. How, then, can this 
 domination be prevented ? First the General Government 
 should abstain as it has done for some years from all inter 
 ference with local affairs. Second, in filling the Federal 
 offices in the Southern States, men of the highest reputation 
 for intelligence and integrity should be selected. Immense 
 injury was done in 1869 and 1870 to the Southern States, and 
 consequently to the whole country, by the appointment of 
 men who were notoriously unfit for the positions to which 
 they were appointed ; men who used their offices to advance, 
 not the public interests, but their own. It was impossible 
 but that the white people of these States should have felt 
 unkindly toward the Government, by the power of which 
 
THE CARPET-BAG REGIME. 517 
 
 they bad been crushed upon the battle-field, and deprived of 
 what had been property under an institution whose roots 
 were entwined with their economical and social systems. But 
 this feeling w r ould soon have passed away, if carpet-baggers 
 which in most cases was only a name for plunderers, had not 
 been appointed to Federal offices in the Southern States. In 
 the position which I held at the time, I had favorable opportu 
 nities for knowing what the feelings of the leading men of the 
 South were at the close of the war. I did not expect that 
 men who had been conquered and stripped of everything but 
 their land, and in some cases even of that; who in four years 
 had been reduced from most prosperous circumstances to a 
 state of absolute destitution, would be grateful to the Govern 
 ment by which albeit by their own fault these evils had 
 come upon them ; but I was most favorably impressed with 
 the disposition which they manifested to accommodate them 
 selves to their changed condition, unpleasant as it was, and 
 to become again law-abiding citizens of the Republic. If the 
 advice of the lamented Andrew, Governor of Massachusetts, 
 had been followed ; if the proffered hand of friendship and 
 conciliation had not been rejected, and the Southern people 
 had not been prevented, in their own but strictly legal way, 
 from restoring their waste places, and building up their ruined 
 fortunes, the South would not have been politically solid. It 
 was the action of the Government after the war was ended 
 and submission had been yielded to the Federal authority, and 
 the unwise administration of Federal patronage, which pro 
 duced this political solidity. It is the outside pressure the 
 efforts of politicians to retain or acquire power that are keep 
 ing sectional feeling alive. By the honors conferred upon 
 Confederate generals by the respect which was shown by 
 Congress to the Vice-President of the Confederacy, the Gov 
 ernment has been precluded from regarding the war as trea 
 sonable (for treason is always and everywhere an unpardon 
 able crime); neither in the opinion of the people of the South 
 
518 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 was it even a rebellion against a recognized and superior gov 
 ernment. It was an attempted assertion by violence of a 
 right for which many of the leading men of the South had 
 always contended the right of States to secede from the 
 Union in the exercise of their State sovereignty. It was, in 
 fact, a resort to arms for a settlement of a question that could 
 not be settled in any other way. Fortunately for the people 
 of the whole country, it was settled rightly and definitely and 
 forever. Enormous as was the cost of the settlement in 
 money and in blood, it is small in comparison with what the 
 country and the whole country would have suffered if the 
 right of secession had been established, and the Union (the 
 maintenance of which is not only essential to all who live 
 under it, but to the cause of liberty throughout the world), 
 had been rent asunder with never-ending strife between the 
 separated States. But nothing is to be gained by the consid 
 eration of what might have been under a different and wiser 
 system of government policy. The error has been committed ; 
 what is now to be done is to modify and overcome as far 
 as practicable its effects, and after outside interference has 
 been discontinued, and the colored people understand that the 
 Government, by their emancipation, has done for them all it 
 can do, and that hereafter their welfare and elevation must 
 depend upon their own efforts the great problem of what is to 
 be the political future of these States must be worked out by 
 the joint action of the two races. 
 
 The whites being the superior race in intelligence and energy, 
 and the chief landholders, must be the dominant race, but 
 this domination must be maintained without violence, and 
 without disregard of the rights of the colored race. The fran 
 chise having been granted, there must be a free ballot, and 
 this, in my judgment, will very soon bring about a division of 
 the colored vote. Nothing will be more sure, after outside 
 interference has ceased, to make this vote solid, than preven 
 tion of a free exercise of opinion at the polls. Let the colored 
 
DIVISION OF THE COLORED VOTE. 519 
 
 people understand that they can vote as they please, and the 
 solidity of their vote will disappear. When divided, it may 
 be for a time under the influence of demagogues, but their 
 influence will be short-lived. Demagogues always fail to make 
 good their promises and live up to their professions, and this 
 the colored people will readily find out. The best interests of 
 the two races are the same. They cannot be permanently dis 
 united. There is no antagonism on the part of the colored 
 people toward the white, except that which has been created 
 by partisans for party purposes, or by demagogues for their 
 own base ends. There cannot be antagonism on the part of the 
 white people toward the colored, on whom they must mainly 
 depend for the cultivation of their fields, and to whom all 
 gratitude is due for their admirable behavior in the late civil 
 war. That, during a war which called into the Confederate 
 service not only all the able-bodied white men of the South, 
 but all who could render it service of any kind, and left thou 
 sands of families under the protection of slaves, there should 
 not have been a single instance of violence, and scarcely one of 
 unfaithfulness, is one of the marvels in the history of the civil 
 war. As long as the memory of the conduct of the slaves in 
 this momentous struggle is cherished, antagonism between 
 the races would be as unnatural as it would be prejudicial to 
 their mutual interests. 
 
 I have said more than I intended to say upon the effect of 
 the bestowment of the franchise upon the recent slave, but I 
 cannot forbear to say a few words upon the greater problem 
 of what is to be the effect of unrestricted manhood suffrage, 
 which exists in all the States except Rhode Island. I say 
 unrestricted, because in most of the States the payment of a 
 poll tax is the only qualification, and the payment of this 
 tax by candidates for office is too frequently the price paid 
 for votes. The suffrage question presents problems as diffi 
 cult of solution in the North as in the South. There is more 
 
520 MEX AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CEJSTTUEY. 
 
 liostility between the poor and the rich between the employ 
 ers and the employed -in the Northern and Western States 
 than there is, or ever can be, between the white and colored 
 people of the South. The enormous increase of the wealth in 
 these States has not been widely distributed. It has been 
 largely confined to a comparative few, whose gains have not 
 been generally the result of legitimate business, but of monop 
 olies of various kinds, and the profits of enterprises in which 
 the many have had no share. There are no legalized monop 
 olies in the United States, and yet there is no other country 
 in the world in which monopolies exist to a greater degree. 
 Where else is the trade of large cities and small so steadily 
 finding its way into few hands where is concentrated capital 
 so omnipotent as in the United States? Money is becoming 
 steadily the controlling power in this free land of ours. In its 
 acquisition, the end seems to justify the means. With the 
 accumulation of wealth by a comparative few, there has been 
 a growing antagonism on the part of manual laborers, and 
 also on the part of those who have been only partially suc 
 cessful in business enterprises, not only against those who have 
 become suddenly rich, but against all rich people. This antag 
 onism is exhibited in our large cities, and it will become 
 intensified as inequalities increase. To such a degree does this 
 antagonism already exist, that if the cities which I have 
 named were freed from the protecting laws of the States to 
 Avhich they belong, they would hardly be, as has been said, 
 safe cities for rich men to live in. What is to be the fate of 
 these cities when the States become densely inhabited ? is cer 
 tainly a question of as much interest to the people of the 
 Northern States as is the question, How can the colored vote 
 be properly controlled ? to the people of the South. The 
 problem of manhood suffrage is as likely to be of as difficult 
 solution, consistently with the proper protection of persons 
 and property in the Northern States as in the Southern. The 
 people of the North will have enough to do at home for self- 
 
POLITICAL FREEDOM AT THE SOUTH. 521 
 
 preservation, without troubling themselves as to what may be 
 happening in the South. 
 
 " Should I be well received in Georgia, 1 said a citizen of 
 New York to a Georgian ; " should I be well received in 
 Georgia if I should go there to become a citizen of the 
 State ? " " Certainly you would," was the reply. " Should I 
 feel myself at liberty to avow myself a Republican, and vote 
 the Republican ticket as I do in New York ? " " Unques 
 tionably, sir." " But if I should go to your country, and 
 attempt to build up a Republican party there, to be chiefly 
 composed of the blacks, how then ? " " You certainly would 
 not do that," was the answer. The New Yorker thought this 
 answer sufficient to justify the opinion that there was no 
 political freedom in Georgia. Now suppose the Georgian had 
 become the questioner. " If I, a Georgia Democrat and 
 recent slave-holder, should go to New York to live, should I 
 be as well received by Republicans as if I were one of their 
 own party ? " " Undoubtedly," would have been the reply ; 
 "your right to be a Democrat and vote the Democratic 
 ticket, would never be questioned." " But if I should under 
 take to strengthen the Democratic party by working with 
 foreigners and socialists, and urging them to unite in active 
 aggression upon the capitalists of the State ; or if I should go 
 into the manufacturing districts, and should advise the work 
 men to combine for the protection of their rights, and build 
 up a working-man s party, what then ? " " You certainly 
 would not do that," would have been the proper reply. We 
 see no harm in a united colored vote at the South, but we are 
 wide awake to the danger of a united vote of foreigners and 
 
 o 
 
 socialists, and laboring men generally in our Northern cities. 
 The danger which threatens our large cities and manufactur 
 ing districts owes its existence to the fact that the political 
 control of such cities and districts is passing into the hands of 
 men who have nothing at stake. It is not especially capital 
 that is thus endangered. Capitalists know how to take care 
 
522 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 of themselves. They are not the chief sufferers by bad laws 
 and the bad administration of them, but the hard-working, 
 economical classes, who, by industry and thrift, are endeavor 
 ing to make an honest living. The safety of every industrious 
 tax-payer in the Northern cities and manufacturing districts 
 would be imperilled by the domination of those who contribute 
 little or nothing to the public revenues. 
 
 I said in the first chapter, that the gains of wealth in the 
 United States were mainly the result of agricultural and 
 manufacturing industry, and of the increase in the value of 
 land ; and that this increase in the value of land was in a very 
 great degree attributable to canals and railroads, chiefly the 
 latter, without which the most of the country would have 
 remained a wilderness, etc. There is, in these times, much 
 discussion in regard to landed property, and it is claimed b}^ 
 even fair-minded, intelligent men, that land is the gift of God, 
 to which none should have the right of exclusive ownership ; 
 that the manner in which it is held in all civilized countries 
 is a wrong to the public, and the main cause of the poverty 
 which is so generally prevalent. That in some countries land 
 is held in too large quantities by comparatively few people, 
 whose ownership is perpetuated by legislation or sovereign 
 power, is undoubtedly true. In such countries there is little 
 free trade in land, and the ownership of a home, no matter 
 how humble, is beyond the reach of the great mass of the 
 people. The effect of this has been the creation of a landed 
 aristocracy, to the power of which labor has been subjected. 
 Nothing of this kind, exists in the United States. Here not 
 only is there free trade in land, but the Government has been 
 for years, by homestead laws and the low prices at which its 
 immense territories of fertile lands have been subject to entry, 
 holding out the strongest possible inducements to industrious 
 people to secure for themselves homes. Strangely enough, 
 however, some of the most earnest opponents of the exclusive 
 ownership of land are in the United States. In their opinion, 
 
THE DISCUSSION ABOUT LAND. 523 
 
 as land was not created by man, no man should be the abso 
 lute owner of any portion of it ; that it should be held by the 
 State for the benefit of all. To correct the wrong which land- 
 ownership is inflicting upon the public, these advocates of 
 equal rights contend that land should be so taxed that the 
 owner would be willing to surrender his right to it. 
 
 Land, it is true, is the gift of God, but it is by man s 
 labor that it has been made valuable. It is admitted by the 
 land reformer, that the improvements, being of man s crea 
 tion, should not be taxed ; but it is the improvements that 
 have given value to the land, and it would be practically 
 impossible to tax the latter without taxing the former. Nearly 
 all the land in the United States east of the Wabash and 
 Mississippi rivers was covered with dense forests, and every 
 acre of it which has been cultivated has cost more in labor 
 and other needful expenditures than it would sell for. I 
 speak, of course, of lands which have not been made valuable 
 by their minerals, or by being the sites of cities or towns, 
 or their proximity to them. I question very much that there 
 are any farms outside of the prairies, and away from large 
 towns, which, if they were charged with the labor bestowed 
 upon them, at the rate of one dollar a day for men, and fifty 
 cents a day for women, and with other necessary outlays 
 (their original cost not included) and credited with the mar 
 ket value of their productions, and their estimated present 
 value, would exhibit a balance on the right side of the 
 account. 
 
 No one who has known anything about the hardships 
 which were endured by the first settlers in the timbered lands 
 of the United States, their unceasing toil, their actual want, 
 not of the comforts, but of the necessaries of life when in 
 health, to say nothing of what they needed and could 
 not be supplied with in sickness, during the long and 
 wearisome years which came and went before they had 
 cleared enough of their lands to enable them to begin to enjoy 
 
524 31 EX AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 the fruits of their sacrifices and labors ; no one who has 
 known anything about all this will be found among those 
 who speak of land as being God s gift, and therefore property 
 of which there should not be absolute ownership. In travel 
 ling from Fort Wayne to Indianapolis, in the early days of the 
 West, over, or rather through, roads that for a good part of 
 the year could only be travelled by men on foot or well- 
 mounted horsemen, and in noticing the slow progress which 
 was being made in the opening up of the country, the question 
 naturally presented itself, Would men who could support 
 themselves in any other way, or in any other place, make their 
 homes in this wilderness, and undergo the deprivations they 
 are to be subject to, and labor as they must for a good part of 
 their lives before they can make a comfortable living ? These 
 settlers were invariably poor men ; three or four hundred 
 dollars would cover the entire outfit of a majority of them 
 their lands, their teams, their cows, their farming implements, 
 their axes and rifles. It was chiefly by such men that the 
 timbered lands of Ohio and Indiana were settled. I have 
 seen hundreds of such beginnings, and have admired the 
 endurance, the patience, the persevering industry by which 
 forest lands have been converted into productive farms ; I do 
 not say profitable farms, because few farms are profitable. 
 Men who, like the late Dr. Gwinn, of California, have bought 
 at low prices extensive tracts of land which were ready for 
 the plough, and which for a time needed no fertilization, and 
 cultivated them by machinery for wheat, have undoubtedly 
 made money out of them ; but as the wheat-producing quali 
 ties of the soil become exhausted, and restoratives become 
 necessary, profits will decline, and may soon disappear alto 
 gether. Lands naturally adapted to grazing may yield indefi 
 nitely good returns, because they do not become exhausted by 
 being grazed; but they are exceptional. The alluvial lands on 
 the lower Mississippi, and on some of its tributaries, might also 
 be excepted, for so deep is the soil, that they may be regarded 
 
FARMING AS A BUSINESS. 52i> 
 
 as being practically inexhaustible ; but they are subject to 
 overflow and droughts, and good crops on even these lands 
 are by no means certain. 
 
 On the whole, farming is not a profitable business in the 
 United States. It is a healthful employment, productive of 
 strong and vigorous men ; but it is not attractive, and it is not 
 
 O O 
 
 attractive because it is not profitable. Seldom do the sons of 
 well-to-do farmers become farmers. As soon as they are old 
 enough to strike out for themselves, they will be found in the 
 towns, not upon the farms. Nor are lands in the old States 
 which are not near enough to populous cities to be profitably 
 used for market gardens increasing in value. So far is this 
 from being the case that very few farms in those States could 
 be sold to-day for prices which they readily commanded twenty 
 years ago. Investments in lands which are valuable for agri 
 culture only, are not regarded with favor by capitalists. Better 
 use for their money is found elsewhere. If thanks are due to 
 God for the land, greater thanks are due to Him for the muscle 
 and the patient industry by which it has been brought under 
 cultivation, and by which its producing properties are pre 
 served ; and yet these cultivators of the soil are among those 
 whose property should be confiscated, because they did not 
 create what they have made valuable. Land is less able to 
 bear heavy taxes than almost any other kind of property. The 
 taxes to which cultivated land is now subjected in most of the 
 States, instead of being advanced should be reduced, for the 
 purposes of increasing the number of farmers. In most of 
 the European States, especially in Great Britian, lands are 
 heavily taxed so heavily, that they can be held only by the 
 rich. In that country the landholders are monopolists, and 
 they will continue to be so until free trade in land is estab 
 lished, and the taxes upon it are so reduced that men of mod 
 erate means can afford to be the owners. 
 
 No greater mistake was ever made by intelligent men 
 than is made by those who suppose that monopolies can be 
 
526 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 broken up or weakened, and property can be more evenly dis 
 tributed in the United States by increase of taxes upon land, 
 which is the cheapest thing upon the market. It is true that 
 in cities, lots to be built upon for homes are beyond the reach 
 of all except those whose incomes are considerably greater 
 than their outlays ; but this is unavoidable. Cities are limited 
 in extent, and the value of lots depends upon the demand for 
 them for building purposes. In a few cities, especially in 
 Philadelphia, some who belong to what are called the labor 
 ing classes are the owners of their homes, but this is not 
 often the case. With comparatively few exceptions, those 
 whose living depends upon their manual labor are renters or 
 boarders. There is, however, compensation for these depri 
 vations. Wages are higher in the city than in the country, 
 and greater inducements to save as well as to spend are found 
 there than exist elsewhere. Men are naturally gregarious, 
 and when thrown together, they have enjoyments of life, 
 although subject to great discomforts. In cities, however, 
 as well as in the country, it is labor and the fruits of labor 
 that have made the ground valuable, and it is difficult to 
 see how the public would be benefited if city lots were to 
 be confiscated, subject to the outlay that has been made 
 upon them. None but anarchists have gone so far as to 
 contend that the property of man s creation should be sub 
 ject to division among the people, or become the property of 
 the State. But in this free land of ours, for whose benefit 
 should property of any kind be confiscated? Not for the 
 benefit of those who are able and willing to work ; for 
 them there is rarely lack of employment at remunerative 
 wages, and the way to rise in the world is open before them. 
 Not for the benefit of those who are disabled their wants, 
 when made known, are relieved by private or public charities. 
 Nine-tenths of the rich and prominent people of the United 
 States have made their upward way in the world without 
 help from others. Of the wealthy men, or the men of large 
 
NATURAL INEQUALITY. 527 
 
 social or political influence whom I have known personally, or 
 with whose history I am familiar, I call to mind very few 
 who have not made themselves what they are by their own 
 exertions. With rare exceptions, they are the offspring of 
 poor men, or of men of very limited means. The opportuni 
 ties for those who are self-dependent to make headway in 
 life are not now, it is admitted, as great in the United States 
 as they were some years ago ; but one has only to look about 
 him to see large numbers of such people rising above the level 
 from which they started, soon to be conspicuous in business, 
 in society, in politics. Poverty always has prevailed and 
 always will prevail to a greater or less degree in all countries 
 in the freest as well as the most despotic until, under some 
 new dispensation, mankind become equal in natural gifts, in 
 capacity and disposition to acquire and retain, in mental and 
 physical power. Until then the industrious and the indolent, 
 the thrifty and the unthrifty, the strong and the weak, the 
 rich and the poor, will be found in all communities. If all 
 the property in the world should be equally divided, in a few 
 brief years inequalities like those which are now complained 
 of would prevail. The differences in the circumstances of the 
 race are to some extent produced by unequal and unjust gov 
 ernment and laws, but they are largely in most countries, and 
 altogether in the United States, the result of constitutional 
 dissimilarities, which always have and always will exist. 
 There can be no equalizing power short of Divine Power, and 
 that power will, as heretofore, continue to be manifested 
 through unchanging law. 
 
 Of all governments which have existed in civilized nations, 
 none has been so bad as a paternal government would be. 
 The permanency of our free institutions depends more than 
 anything else upon our homes our independent homes. Of 
 all property, the homestead should be subject to the lightest 
 taxation. In some States humble homes are protected against 
 the claims of creditors ; they ought everywhere to be protected 
 
MEN AND MEASUKES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 against the tax collector. Great differences in the condition 
 of men have existed and will exist under all forms of govern 
 ment, and these differences will be most marked under the 
 freest, where natural gifts have full play. All that can be 
 done by the best government is to provide for the protection 
 of life and property, the enforcement of just and equal laws ; 
 anything more than this would be tyranny. Without perfect 
 liberty to acquire, and without protection to whatever may 
 be lawfully acquired, no matter what might be the character of 
 the property, enterprise would cease, and government would 
 be a mockery. 
 
 In looking back upon a long life, nothing of course seems 
 so wonderful to me as the growth of the country in the 
 physical elements of national greatness territory, population 
 wealth. This growth, so unprecedented in the world s his 
 tory, has been effected without any change in the character 
 of the Government ; without any departure from the princi 
 ples upon which it was established or material change of the 
 Constitution which was adopted for its preservation. Never 
 theless changes have taken place, the effect of which upon 
 our republican institutions cannot be contemplated without 
 apprehension. 
 
 Immigration, considered merely with regard to its pecuni 
 ary and economical results, has been of immense gain to the 
 United States. It is estimated that since the formation of the 
 Government more than thirteen millions of immigrants have 
 come to the United States, and that if each brought with him 
 sixty dollars in money, the pecuniary gain has been about 
 eight hundred millions ; but the gain in this respect has been 
 small in comparison with what the immigrants were worth as 
 laborers in the varied branches of industry. Estimating them 
 to have been equal in value to the slaves in the Southern 
 States, they have added to the national wealth three times as 
 much as our national debt amounted to at the close of the 
 
DANGERS OF IMMIGRATION. 529 
 
 civil war. What the offsets may be to this enormous gain 
 are yet to be determined. The true wealth of a country is not 
 to be measured by acreage or money, but by the quality of its 
 people. If the effect of the foreign immigration should prove 
 to be deleterious to the character of the population, the gain 
 referred to would have been dearly acquired. 
 
 That the worst and most dangerous part of the population 
 of the United States are foreigners, is proven by the criminal 
 records, and by the utterances of socialists. Not only 
 have the industrious and honest been invited to come to our 
 country to secure homes for themselves, but the door has been 
 thrown wide open to the lazy and the disreputable the very 
 classes that foreign governments have been glad to be rid of. 
 Nor is this all. Money has been furnished to enable foreigners 
 to come and be workmen in our factories and shops because 
 they would work cheaper than native-born citizens. A very 
 large part, if not a majority, of the population in some of our 
 great manufacturing towns are foreigners, many of whom 
 have soon learned enough of American freedom to be dis 
 orderly and dangerous. 
 
 The greatest mistake which has been made by the Govern 
 ment of the United States has been in conferring upon for 
 eigners the elective franchise. So short is the period required 
 for their naturalization, that hundreds of thousands have 
 become voters before they knew anything about the nature of 
 republican institutions before even they could speak the 
 language of the country. The majority of them are doubtless 
 well-meaning people, but they naturally fall under the influence 
 of those who are not. With the workingmen, have come 
 men, who are revolutionists by nature, or who have been made 
 such by real or fancied injustice in their native lands. To 
 denounce the Government, and to make their followers believe 
 that all governments are tyrannical, and ought to be over 
 thrown, seems to be considered by these men their especial 
 
 duty. Others do not go quite so far as this they are more 
 34 
 
530 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTURY. 
 
 moderate in their demands; they contend that property 
 should be held and owned in common ; that exclusive owner 
 ship by the few is oppression to the many ; that the laws 
 have been made by the rich and for their benefit, to the great 
 injustice of the poor ; and that they should be so changed 
 that all would fare alike. If these men, with their blind and 
 ignorant followers, were not voters, they would be compara 
 tively harmless ; but they are not only voters, but some of 
 them active politicians, and when the two great parties are 
 nearly evenly divided, their votes are courted by both. They 
 are already a dangerous class, and are likely to become more 
 dangerous, as they are rapidly increasing in numbers, and are 
 becoming cohesive by organization. It is very clear to my 
 mind that none but native-born citizens ought to have been 
 permitted to be voters ; that immense risk has been incurred 
 not by making the United States an asylum for the 
 oppressed not in opening the door for foreigners to become 
 inhabitants under the protection of just and equal laws, but 
 by inviting them to come and participate in the law-making 
 and governing power. The elective franchise, which ought to 
 have been considered the most precious of all rights, has been 
 freely bestowed upon those who have no knowledge of its 
 value, and upon those who use it for other than patriotic 
 purposes. 
 
 It may now be too late, in the present condition of political 
 parties, to change effectively our naturalization laws, but there 
 might be a limitation upon the franchise in municipal elec 
 tions, and it is very certain that this must be done if our large 
 cities are to be properly governed, and sufficient safeguards 
 are to be thrown around persons and property. Municipal 
 governments should be created and conducted on business 
 principles. No one should be a voter who is not the owner 
 of property. The amount required need not be large, but it 
 should be large enough to indicate that the voter has some 
 thing at stake. Manhood suffrage in municipal elections is, 
 
FOREIGNERS AND THE FRANCHISE. 531 
 
 to say the least, a dangerous experiment ; a law that places 
 upon an equality in voting the lazy vagabond and the enter 
 prising wealth-producing citizen, is certainly neither just nor 
 reasonable. 
 
 The Government is as I have said, stronger than it was a 
 half century ago, but has not this increase of strength been at 
 the expense of republicanism ? We claim that the United 
 States is the freest country in the world the only country, 
 except Switzerland, in which the people have equal rights. 
 Equal rights before the law are indeed possessed by everybody 
 here ; but are there not combinations of interests which prevent 
 the full play of natural rights which hold in check if they 
 do not destroy individual enterprise? In what other country 
 can be found such companies as have been organized in the 
 United States for the purpose of controlling the manufacture, 
 the transportation, and the price of goods ? Where can be 
 found an organization like the Standard Oil Company, which 
 absolutely controls the market of an article for which there is 
 an immense and constant demand, and stamps out competition; 
 or even such companies as have been formed to regulate the 
 production of iron and steel and coal ? In what other countrv 
 do manufacturers who are protected by tariffs against foreign 
 competition combine by trusts and other agencies to prevent 
 domestic competition ? There is no country of which I have 
 any knowledge in which business of all descriptions is so 
 steadily falling into fewer and fewer hands, in which combi 
 nations are so powerful, and individuals so powerless, as the 
 United States no country in which the solution of the labor 
 question may be more difficult. We have yet to learn that 
 there may be as little personal freedom under republican 
 institutions as under monarchies, and that the best efforts of 
 all good citizens should be to prevent the great republic from 
 being a free country in name only. 
 
 That these efforts will not be wanting I have an abiding 
 faith. Congress has the power, by opening the way for freer 
 
532 MEN AND MEASURES OF HALF A CENTUKY. 
 
 trade with other nations, to destroy most of the existing 
 monopolies, and this power will ere long be exerted. There is, 
 however, as has been said, one danger ahead which cannot be 
 easily surmounted. By our naturalization laws by extending 
 the highest privilege to men utterly destitute of proper quali 
 fications for its exercise by inviting to our shores to assist 
 in administering the State and National governments men 
 who consider it their duty to fight all governments, we have 
 done much to make our grand experiment a failure. It is 
 now impossible to undo what was unwisely done to deprive 
 those to whom it has been granted of the franchise, but not 
 too late to prevent an increase of the threatening danger. 
 If our naturalization laws, National and State, should be so 
 changed that none should vote in any elections but those who, 
 when the change is made, have the right to vote, and that 
 thereafter none but the native-born should be voters, the dan 
 ger would not be entirely removed, but it would greatly 
 lessened. If this should not be done if revolutionists, who 
 are rapidly increasing in numbers in Europe, should continue 
 to be invited to come and participate in the government of 
 the Republic how long will, not capitalists only, but indus 
 trious, frugal, liberty-loving men be able to contemplate the 
 future without misgivings? If the Republic is to be short 
 lived like those which have heretofore existed, unrestricted 
 manhood suffrage will be the cause. It is the only really grave 
 danger that threatens the life of the Republic. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 Abbott, Josiah G., 417. 
 
 Adams, Charles F., on Mr. McC ul- 
 loch s first report to Congress, 219. 
 
 Adams, John Quincy, 38, et seq. ; his 
 speech on the right of petition, 38 ; 
 in favor of a judicious tariff, 506. 
 
 Agricultural products, decrease in 
 value of, 509. 
 
 Akerman, Mr., 354. 
 
 Allison, Senator William B., 419. 
 
 Andrew, John A., Governor of Massa 
 chusetts, 518. 
 
 Appointments under Secretary Mc- 
 C ulloch, 166. 
 
 Arlington Hotel, 256. 
 
 Arthur, President, 480, et seq. : his 
 administration, 482 ; his ability, 
 483 ; as Vice- President, 481. 
 
 Bache, A. D., 262, 265. 
 
 Badeau, Adam, 358. 
 
 Bailey, Captain Theodoras, 366, 367. 
 
 Baltimore clippers, 425. 
 
 Bank balances due the Government, 
 246. 
 
 Bank of England, value of, 61. 
 
 Bank of Michigan, failure of, 60. 
 
 Bank of the State of Indiana, 127, et 
 seq. 
 
 Bank of the United States, 58. 
 
 Bank, United States,need of to-day, 61. 
 
 Bankrupt Act, 508. 
 
 Banks, Nathaniel P., 457. 
 
 Banks, National, see National Banks. 
 
 Barnard, Dr. F. A. P., 258, et seq. 
 
 Barnet, James, 103. 
 
 Bartlett, Sidney, 22. 
 
 Bascom, Rev. Mr., 76. 
 
 Bates Harvey, 72. 
 
 Bayard, Senator Thomas F., 417. 
 
 Beecher, Charles, 144, 148. 
 
 Beecher, Henry Ward, settles at In 
 dianapolis, 140 ; character of his 
 sermons, 141, et seq.; his taste for 
 horticulture, 143 ; his vitality and 
 pluck, 144 : anecdote of Mr. Beecher 
 and the constable, 145 ; his habits 
 of study, 146 ; an independent 
 thinker, 147 ; his freedom from 
 egotism, 147. 
 
 i Beecher, Dr. Lyman, 11, 148, et seq. 
 \ Bclknap, General, Secretary of War, 
 
 352. 
 
 i Bennett, James G., 491, 49:5. 
 i Bennett, James G., Jr., 493. 
 ! Biddle, Horace P., 50. 
 i Black Friday, 213. 
 | Blackford, Isaac, 48. 
 Blainc, James G., 457. 
 Blair, Gen. F. P., 345. 
 Blake. James, 72. 
 Blockade, the, 362. 
 Blood, English respect for, 447. 
 Boggs, Charles S., 367. - 
 Bonds, U. S., first proposals for, 183; 
 
 purchased by German capitalists, 
 
 184. 
 
 Booth, John Wilkes, 225. 
 Border States, at the outbreak of the 
 
 Rebellion, 134, et seq. 
 Borie, Adolph E., 350. 
 Boston, growth of, 5 ; foreign trade 
 
 of in 1831 , (i ; change in population 
 
 of, 6 ; good name of, 8; famous for 
 
 its lawyers fifty years ago, 16 ; clergy 
 
 of fifty years. ago, 27. 
 Boutwell, Geo. S. , organizer of the 
 
 Bureau of Internal Revenue, 185, 
 
 348. 
 
 Bowie, John B., 108. 
 Buchanan, President, at first a Fed 
 eralist, 152 ; his character, 152 ; his 
 
 administration, 153. 
 Buckingham, Joseph T., 491, 492. 
 Bull Run, first battle of, 160. 
 Burlingame, Anson, 22. 
 Burroughs, John, 166. 
 Butler, Gen. B. P., 380. 
 Bradford, Mrs., daughter of Father 
 
 Taylor, 31. 
 Bradley and Strong, Justices, reason 
 
 for their appointment, 173. 
 Bradley, Justice Joseph P., 417, 418. 
 Brandt, Joseph, 99. 
 Breckenridge. Dr., of Ky. , 31. 
 Breckenridge, Robert, 108. 
 Bribery in elections, 455. 
 Bright John, 474, et seq. 
 British ministry, 454. 
 
534 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Brodhead, I. M., 249. 
 
 Brooks, Preston S.,22. 
 
 Bryant, Wm. C., 491, 492. 
 
 Cabinet, the, 454. 
 
 Calhoun, Mr., 17. 
 
 Calvinists and Unitarians, 12. 
 
 Calvinism, orthodox, fifty years ago, 
 14 ; decline of, 15. 
 
 Canby, Gen., 340. 
 
 Capital and labor, contests between, 
 489. 
 
 Carlisle, John G., 457. 
 
 Carpet-baggers, 517. 
 
 Cass, Gen. Lewis, 87, 100, et seq. 
 
 Catechism, Westminster, estimate of 
 in N. E. fifty years ago, 10. 
 
 Cater, John W., 431. 
 
 Catholic Church, her claims to infalli 
 bility an element of strength, 33. 
 
 Cedar Creek, battle of, 281. 
 
 Chandler, William E., appointed As 
 sistant Sec. of Treas., 236 ; Sec 
 retary of the Navy, 484. 
 
 Channing, Dr., 10, 11 ; character and 
 ability of, 27, et scq. 
 
 Chase, Secretary, makes Mr. McCul- 
 loch Comptroller of the Currency, 
 164, et seq.; his accomplishments, 
 181, et seq.; financial ability of, 185; 
 his mistakes, 186; ambition of, 186; 
 as Chief Justice, 187 ; relations 
 with Mr. Lincoln, 188. 
 
 Chemical Bank of X. Y., 119, 133. 
 
 Chicago, 42. 
 
 Chickamauga, battle of, 328. 
 
 "Chitty on Pleading, "*92. 
 
 Choate, Unfits, 21, 23. 
 
 Churches of the North, their early atti 
 tude to Slavery, 33. 
 
 Cincinnati in 1833, 40 ; a commercial 
 city at first, 42; now mainly manu 
 facturing, 43, tt seq. ; wealth and 
 character of, 44, 45. 
 
 Circuit riding, 93. 
 
 Cities, life in the, 526. 
 
 Civil service reform, 452. 
 
 Centralization, Federal, increasing ten 
 dency towards, 499, et aeq. 
 
 Claims^ Southern, on the Government 
 for confiscated property, 235, et seq. 
 
 Clarke, James Freeman, 32. 
 
 Clay, Henry, 22, 457 ; on the tariff, 
 500. 
 
 Clergy of Boston fifty years ago, 27. 
 
 Cleveland, President, characterization 
 of, 485, et seq.; Senator Thurman s 
 opinion of, 496 ; attack on, by 
 North American Review, 496. 
 Clifford, Nathan, 417. 
 
 Coburn, John, 72. 
 
 Coe, Dr., of Indianapolis, 72. 
 
 Coercion of the seceding States op 
 posed at first in Ind. and 111., 156, 
 158. 
 
 Col fax. Schuyler, 346, 457. 
 
 Colored people increasing in the South, 
 516. 
 
 Colored voters, 514. 
 
 Colwell, Stephen, 239. 
 
 Commerce and shipping essential to a 
 great State, 512. 
 
 Commerce of Great Britain, 511 
 
 Commissioners of internal revenue, 
 238, et seq. 
 
 Commons, British House of, 453. 
 
 Comparet, Francis, Id8. 
 
 Conduct of the War, committee on 
 the, 303. 
 
 Confederate Government, property of 
 confiscated, 234. 
 
 Congregationalists in N. E. fifty years 
 ago, 10. 
 
 Congress, powers of, 178. 
 
 Constitution, the, Northern views of, 
 154; of the U. S., 456; the British, 
 456. 
 
 Contraction of the currency, 211, et 
 seq. 
 
 Cooke, Jay, 191, 246. 
 
 Cooking, good, importance of, 443. 
 
 Cooper, Edmund, of Tenn., 236. 
 
 Cooper, Peter, 415. 
 
 Corn Laws, 429. 
 
 Corwin, Thomas, 62, his eloquence, 63, 
 et seq. ; his patriotism, 65. 
 
 Couch, Gen., 340. 
 
 Courier and Enquirer, the, of N. Y. 
 491, 492. 
 
 Courts, circuit, in Indiana, 92. 
 
 Cox, Gen. J. D., quotation from his 
 "March to the Sea," 289, et seq.; 
 340, 349. 
 
 Craig, Benjamin N., 262, 268 
 
 Crary, Gen., of Michigan, 63. 
 
 Craven, Thomas T.,367. 
 
 Credit Mobilier, 108. 
 
 Credit, national, in 1860, 183 ; improve 
 ment of, 184. 
 
 Credit system, abuse of, 218. 
 
 Creighton, Judge, 108. 
 
 Creswell, John A. G., 349. 
 
 Criminal classes in U. S., mostly for 
 eigners, 529. 
 
 Crises, not caused by insufficient cur 
 rency, 213 ; causes of the great 
 financial, of 1837 and 1857, 218. 
 
 Crisis, financial, of 1857, 134 ; of 1873, 
 507. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 535 
 
 Crocker, Charles, 89, et seq. 
 
 Cunard Steamship Co., 423. 
 
 Currency, Mr. McCulloch s views on 
 the, 249. 
 
 Curtis, Gen., 340. 
 
 Curtis, Samuel R., 20. 
 
 Cushing, Caleb, 24. 
 
 Custer, Gen.. 340. 
 
 Dane, Joseph, 16. 
 
 Davis, David, 417, 419. 
 
 Davis. Jefferson, question of his trial, 
 408, et seq.; Mr. McCulloch s visit 
 to at Portress Monroe, 409, et seq. 
 
 Davis, John W., 265. 
 
 Debt of Great Britain, 470, et seq. 
 
 Debt, National ; see National Debt. 
 
 Degrand, Mr. Paul Peter Francis, 512. 
 
 Delphi, Indiana, 85. 
 
 Dennison, Mr., Postmaster General, 
 227, 385, 390. 
 
 Derby, Lord, on the increase of wealth 
 in Great Britain, 1. 
 
 Dewey, Charles, 4S, 78. 
 
 Dexter, Franklin, 20. 
 
 Dexter, Samuel, 20. 
 
 Disraeli, 449. 
 
 Dodge, William E., 460. 
 
 Doubleday, General, 340. 
 
 Dover, N. H., 5. 
 
 Drinking habits in England, 460. 
 
 Dunn, George G., 50. 
 
 Dunn. William McKee, 50, 421. 
 
 Durbin. Rev. Mr., 76. 
 
 Eagle Village, 79. 
 
 Eames, Mr., of Treasury Department, 
 236. 
 
 Economy in England, 442, et seq. 
 
 Edmunds, Senator George F., 417. 
 
 Elections. English, 454. 
 
 Elective Franchise, the, 385, 513, et 
 seq.; should not be conferred upon 
 foreigners, 529 ; should be lim 
 ited, 530. 
 
 Electoral Commission, partisan char 
 acter of, 418 ; result of their exam 
 ination, 419. 
 
 Electoral Commission Act, 417. 
 
 Eliot, Pres. of Harvard, 25. 
 
 Emancipation, gradual, 37 ; further 
 result of, 516. 
 
 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 28. 
 
 Emerson, William, 35. 
 
 Enfranchisement of the slaves, 513. 
 
 England, agriculture of, 43, et seq.; 
 compared with United States, 469. 
 
 English Government the, contrasted 
 with that of the United States, 451, 
 
 English society, 433, et seq. 
 
 Englishmen, their lack of courtesy to 
 
 women, 434 ; mental and physical 
 
 superiority of, 459. 
 Evarts. Judge, of Indiana, 92. 
 Evarts, William M., 20; as Attorney- 
 General, 407, 412. 
 Evening Post, the, of New York, 491, 
 
 492. 
 
 Everett, Alexander H., 497. 
 Everett, Edward, 24, 497. 
 Ewing, Alexander, of Cincinnati, 43. 
 Ewing, Charles W., 106. 
 Ewing, George W. , 105. et seq. 
 Ewing, Win. G-, 105. 
 Executive branch of the Government, 
 
 451, et seq. 
 
 Fairchild, Lucius, 358. 
 Farragut Admiral, 365, 367. 
 Farming rarely profitable, 525. 
 Farming lands, decrease in the value 
 
 of, 525. 
 Fessenden, Rev. Thos. of Kennebunk- 
 
 port, 12 ; anecdote of, 13. 
 Fessenden, William P., 12 ; appointed 
 
 Secretary of the Treasury, 190, et 
 
 seq ; his action in the impeachment 
 
 trial, 192, 395, 398, 399. 
 Field, Justice Stephen J., 417. 
 Fill more, Vice-President, 481. 
 Financial difficulties of the country In 
 
 184", 56 ; depression of 1837 1843, 
 
 57 ; prices during, 57 ; causes of, 
 
 58. 
 
 Fish. Hamilton, 350. 
 Fletcher, Calvin, 72. 
 Fletcher, Richard, 21. 
 Forests, early destruction of, 88. 
 Forsyth, Mrs , 111. 
 Fort Wayne, 93, 95, 98, et seq. ; 103. 
 Fowler, Senator, 398. 
 Franchise, see Elective franchise. 
 Frankfort, Ind., 84. 
 Free ballot in the South, 519. 
 Free Bank Act in Indiana, 125 ; 
 
 methods under, 125, et seq. 
 Freedmen, the, their possession of the 
 
 elective franchise, 385 ; unfit for 
 
 the franchise, 515. 
 Free trade, 505. 
 
 Frelinghuysen, Senator F. T., 398,417. 
 Frontiersmen of the West, 109. 
 Frothingham. Rev. Mr., 28. 
 Galaxy, the, of Boston, 491, 492. 
 Galena, 111.. 96. 
 Gales, Joseph. 491, 492. 
 Gannett, Dr., 28. 
 Garfield, James A., 417. 
 Gazette, the, of Cincinnati, 491, 492. 
 Geary, General, 340. 
 
536 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Germany, Empress of, 450. 
 
 Gillis, J" M.. 262; 268. 
 
 Gil man, General, 340. 
 
 Gin shops in London, 461. 
 
 Gladstone, Mr., on Mr. McCulloch s 
 first report to Congress, 220, 449 ; 
 his character and position, 474, et 
 seq. 
 
 Gold Bill, July, 1864, effect of, 176. 
 
 Gold premium on, 138 ; a standard 
 of value, 201. 
 
 Goshen, Ind. , 9 . 
 
 Government, paternal, 527. 
 
 Granger, Gen.. 340. 
 
 Grant, Gen. U. S., 818, et seq.; the 
 war, his good fortune, 319 ; his first 
 military achievements, 320, et seq. ; 
 after Donelson, 822; at the battle of 
 Shiloh, 323 ; at Vicksburg, 325, et 
 seq.; at Chattanooga, 330; made lieu 
 tenant-general, 331 ; his campaign 
 against Richmond, 333, 338, et seq. ; 
 his method of carrying on war, 336 ; 
 his military science, 339; different 
 estimates of his merits, 341 ; his nomi 
 nation for the Presidency. 345 ; his 
 inaugural, 346 ; his choice of a cab 
 inet, 347, et seq. ; his plan for the 
 annexation of Santo Domingo, 353 ; 
 hostility to Mr. Sumner, 85 (: as a 
 civil service reformer, 855 ; his de 
 fects, 357 ; his travels abroad, 358, et 
 seq. ; the third term movement, 360; 
 his business failure, 860 ; views on 
 the Mexican question, 387 ; his hos 
 tility to Pres. Johnson, 403. 
 
 Gray. "Mr. Justice, 177. 
 
 Great Britain, increase of wealth in, 
 during the present century, 1 ; her 
 iniquitous opium trade, 37; the 
 work-shop of nations, 505. 
 
 Greeley, Horace, 411. 432, 491, 492. 
 
 Greenbacks, Mr. Chase their father, 
 170; made legal tender, 171 ; Mr. 
 McCulloch s opinion of their value, 
 180 ; popularity of, 213. 
 
 Gresham, Gen.. 340. 
 
 Griffin, Dr., of Boston, 12. 
 
 Grimes, Senator, 398. 
 
 Groesbeck, Wm., 21. 
 
 Growth of our country, 528. 
 
 Gwinn, Dr., of Cal.,524. 
 
 Hale, E. E , 32. 
 
 Halleck, Gen., 275. 322, 324. 
 
 Hamilton, Allen, 103. 113, et seq., 133. 
 
 Hammond, Charles, 491, 492. 
 
 Hancock, Gen. W. S , 293, et seq. 
 
 Hanna, Samuel, 103, 105. 
 
 Hannegan, Edward A., 50, 53. 
 
 Harlan, James, Sec. of Interior, 385, 
 
 390. 
 Harrison, President, campaign, 54 : 
 
 Election of, 56. 
 Hartley, John F., 236. 
 Hay in England not injured by the 
 
 rain, 431. 
 Hayes, President, 340, 413 ; declared 
 
 President, 419 ; his merits, 421, 
 
 485. 
 
 Hayes, S. S., 239. 
 Hayne, Mr., his debate with Webster, 
 
 17. 
 
 Henderson, Senator, 398. 
 Hendricks, Thos. A., 73, 413. 
 Henry. Prof. Joseph, 261, et seq. 
 Herald, the, of N. Y., 491, 492. 
 Hilgard, J. E., 262, 266. 
 Hoar, E. Rockwood, 349. 
 Hoar George F., 417. 
 Holman, Hon. Wm. S., 105. 
 Ilolman, Judge, 105. 
 Holmes, Dr. O. W., 24, et seq. 
 Home rule, 459. 
 Homestead law s, 522. 
 Hood, Gen., 286. 
 Hooker, Gen., 331. 
 Houck, Isaac, 48; his death, 70. 
 House of Lords, English, 446, 
 Howard, Gen., 78, 340. 
 Howard, Mr., of Ind., 52. 
 Howard, Sam. T., 166. 
 Howe, John B., 53. 
 Humphreys, Gen. A. A., 262, 267, 
 
 3^0. 
 
 Hunt, Ward, 417. 
 Hunter, Eppa, 417. 
 Huntington, E. M., 46. 
 Immigration, 528. 
 Impeachment of Pres. Johnson, 892, 
 
 et seq. 
 Impersonality of the journalism of 
 
 to-day, 495. 
 
 India as a wheat producer, 508. 
 Indian agents, 86, et seq. 
 Indian traders, 102. 
 Indiana, Northern, fifty years ago, 79. 
 Indianapolis in 1833, 70, et seq. 
 Indians, 101, et seq. ; treatment by the 
 
 Government, 101 ; by traders, 102. 
 Intemperance in England, 468. 
 Internal Revenue System, 238. 
 Inventiveness of Americans, 469. 
 Irish question. 458, 475. 
 Iron clad oath, 227. 
 Jackson, President, his veto of the 
 
 bank bill, 60 ; and States Rights, 
 
 152 ; as President, 297 ; and Nulli 
 fication. 404. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 537 
 
 Jenkins, Thomas A., 367. 
 
 Jernigan, J. L . , 94. 
 
 John, Miss, 166. 
 
 Johnson, President, his first message, 
 220; and Mrs. Surratt, 226; elected 
 Vice-President, 344, 369, et seq. ; 
 his career 369, et seq.; his speeches 
 in the Senate, 372 ; his inaugural 
 speech, 372; his speeches while 
 President, 374 ; his conduct after the 
 assassination of Lincoln, 375, et seq.; 
 his integrity, 377 ; reconstruction 
 policy, 378 ; hostility of Congress to, 
 381 ; extract from his first message, 
 382 ; weakness and blunders of, 391; 
 suspends Secretary Stanton, 391, et 
 seq.; his impeachment, 392, ct seq.; 
 characterization of, 403, et seq.; ex 
 aggeration of his faults, 407 ; his 
 patriotism, 406, et seq.; sends Mr. 
 McCulloch to visit Jefferson Davis 
 at Fortress Monroe, 409, et seq.; his 
 death, 412 ; as Vice-President, 481. 
 
 Johnston, General Joseph E., 272, 
 285 ; his opinion of Sherman s 
 march through the Carolines, 290, 
 291, et seq.; convention of, with Gen 
 eral Sherman for the surrender of 
 the Confederate army, 291. 
 
 Journal, the, of Louisville, 491, 492. 
 
 Journalism, its present status, 490 ; 
 former character of, 495. 
 
 Judah, Samuel, 52. 
 
 Judkins, Captain, 423. 
 
 Kansas anti-slavery struggle, 157. 
 
 Kearney, Gen. , 340. 
 
 Kennebunk, 5, 12. 
 
 Kennebunkport, 12. 
 
 Kennedv, Andrew, 53. 
 
 Kirk, MV., 84. 
 
 Knox, John Jay, 170. 
 
 Labor and capital, 489. 
 
 Labor, foreign, demand for, created by 
 protective tariff, 506. 
 
 Labor, diminishing value of, 488 ; con 
 tests with capital, 489. 
 
 Laboring classes, antagonism of, to 
 the rich, 521 
 
 Land, free ownership of, 473 ; owner 
 ship of, in Great Britain. 436, 474 ; 
 value of, depends on labor, 523, et 
 seq. ; value of, in cities, 526. 
 
 Landed aristocracy, 522. 
 
 Landed property, discussions concern 
 ing. 522. 
 
 Lane, Henry S., 49, 53. 
 
 Lane, Jonathan H.. 262, 267. et seq. 
 
 Lanier, J. F. D., 123. 
 
 Laporte, Ind., 91. 
 
 Lawrence, Lord John, 460. 
 
 Legal tender, Daniel Webster, on 499 ; 
 decision of Supreme Court concern 
 ing, 499. 
 
 Legal Tender Acts, 171, et seq. ; their 
 constitutionality, 172, et seq. 
 
 Legal tender notes, 136, et seq. ; de 
 cision of Supreme Court on, 137. 
 
 Legislative branch of our government, 
 452. 
 
 Lewis, Samuel, 106. * 
 
 Liberal thought, progress of, in N. E., 
 33. 
 
 Lincoln, President, 93 ; election of, 
 151 ; after Bull Run, 161 ; his com 
 ment on the blunders of the Demo 
 crats, 162 ; his high opinion of Sec 
 retary Chase, 187 ; characteristics 
 of, 188, et seq. ; makes Mr. McCul 
 loch Sec. of the Treasury, 193 ; his 
 assassination, 222, et seq. ; 402, 408. 
 
 Lincoln, Robert T., Sec. of War, 485. 
 
 Little Turtle, Chief of the Miamis, 99, 
 etseq., 109. 
 
 Liverpool, 427. 
 
 Livingston, Edward, 464. 
 
 Loans, Government, the seven and 
 three-tenths, 252, 245 ; verifying ac 
 counts of, 247. 
 
 Local Government, Great Britain de 
 ficient in, 470. 
 
 Logan, Gen., 275, 279, etseq. 
 
 Logansport, 85, et seq. 
 
 London, a well governed city, 437. 
 
 Longfellow, Henry W., 24. 
 
 Lowell, Jas. Russell, 496, 498. 
 
 Lowell, Rev. Mr., 28. 
 
 Lyman, Theodore, 22. 
 
 Lytle, Gen.. 340. 
 
 McCarty, Nicholas, 72. 
 
 McClellan, Gen. Geo. B., 297. et seq.; 
 his appointment to the command of 
 the Army of the Potomac, 297 : his 
 previous career, 298 ; his scheme 
 of operations, 301; decline of his 
 popularity, 302 ; the President s lack 
 of confidence in him, 304 ; difficul 
 ties in his way, 305; failure to re 
 inforce him after Fair Oaks, 307; 
 his first advance on Richmond. 308; 
 his retreat on the James, 309 ; de 
 prived of his command, 310 ; ap 
 pointed to command the defence of 
 Washington, 311 ; dismissal, 314 ; 
 alleged reasons for his retirement, 
 315 ; Mr. McCulloch s opinion con 
 cerning him, 315, etseq.; compared 
 with General Grant, 338. 
 
 McComb, J. N., 262, 269. 
 
538 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 McCulloch, Hugh, leaves New Eng 
 land for the West, 2, 35 ; lec 
 ture at Harvard University, 25 ; 
 with William Emerson in N. Y., 35; 
 journey to Cincinnati, 36 ; at Madi 
 son, Ind., 46 ; examined for admis 
 sion to the bar, 48 ; in a Methodist 
 revival at Cincinnati, 55; goes to 
 Indianapolis, 70 ; licensed to prac 
 tise law in Indiana, 70 ; travels in 
 Indiana. 71, et seq.; General How 
 ard advises him to settle in North 
 ern Indiana, 78, et seq.; settles at 
 Fort Wayne, 95 ; taken ill, 111 ; 
 embarks in the practice of law, 112; 
 appointed manager of State Bank 
 of Indiana, 113 ; made president of 
 Bank of the State of Indiana, 130 ; 
 opinion of, on the duration of the 
 war, 159 ; visits Washington after 
 Bull Run, 160 ; conversation with 
 Mr. Lincoln, 162 ; opposes national 
 banking system, 163 ; visits the 
 East, 164 ; is offered comptroller- 
 ship of the currency by Secretary 
 Chase, 164, et seq.; his opinion on 
 the Legal Tender Acts, 172, et seq.; 
 appointed Secretary of the Treas 
 ury, 193 ; Thurlow Weed s interview 
 with, 194 ; his letter to the National 
 Banks, December, 1863, 195, et seq.; 
 pursues an independent policy as 
 Secretary of Treasury, 199 ; visits 
 New York for consultation with 
 prominent bankers, 199 ; speech of, 
 at Fort Wayne, December. 1865, 
 201, et seq.; extracts from his reports 
 to Congress, 204, et seq.; views in 
 regard to the national debt, 204, et 
 seq.; opinion concerning legal ten 
 der notes, 210 ; recommendation to 
 Congress relative to resumption of 
 specie payments, 211 ; correspond 
 ence with the Assistant Treasurer, 
 Mr. Vandyck, 212; gives reasons for 
 great financial crises, 218 ; first re 
 port to Congress, 219 ; last words 
 with President Lincoln, 222 ; with 
 Secretary Seward after his at 
 tempted assassination, 222 ; inci 
 dents of President Lincoln s assas 
 sination, 222, et seq.; communi 
 cation to President Johnson con 
 cerning the appointment of revenue 
 officers in Southern States, 228 ; 
 attacked by Senator Sumner, 232 ; 
 labors in investigating Southern 
 claims against the Government, 
 235 ; his assistants, 236, et seq.; 
 
 extracts from report to Congress, 
 1865, 239 ; instructions to David 
 A. Wells, 241 ; report of 1867, 241, 
 et seq.; associates of in Treasury 
 Department, 248 ; views on the 
 national debt and currency ques 
 tion, 249, et seq.; last report, 251 ; 
 pleasant acquaintances in Wash 
 ington, 258, et seq.; the Scientific 
 Club and its members, 261 ; esti 
 mates of several military com 
 manders, 277, et seq.; position on 
 the tariff question, 296 ; address 
 of, at Fort Wayne, 379; opinion 
 on the elective franchise, 385 ; con 
 sults the President respecting the 
 appointment of revenue officers, 386; 
 visits Jefferson Davis at Fortress 
 Monroe. 409, et seq.; second appoint 
 ment as Secretary of the Treasury, 
 480 ; intercourse with President Ar 
 thur, 481 ; opinion of President 
 Hayes, 422 ; first impressions of 
 England, 423 ; conversation with 
 a London watchman, 441. 
 
 McCulloch, Thomas, Latin inscription 
 over his grave, 25. 
 
 McDonald, Joseph, 137. 
 
 McDowell, Gen., 306. et seq. 
 
 McPherson, Gen., 287, 340. 
 
 McRay, James, 72. 
 
 Machinery, changes wrought by, 488 ; 
 effect of, on labor, 489. 
 
 Maine, lumber speculation in, 215, 
 et seq. 
 
 Manhood suffrage, 530 ; unrestricted, 
 the peril of the Republic, 53 2. 
 
 Manufactures, beginning of, 5 ; pro 
 moted by the tariff, 503. 
 
 March to the Sea, the, 288. 
 
 Markets, the great need of productive 
 interests, 509. 
 
 Marshall, Chief Justice, his decision 
 on the power of Congress to create 
 a legal tender, 178. 
 
 Marshall, Joseph G., 48. 
 
 Marshall, Thomas F., letters on grad 
 ual emancipation, 36 ; anecdote of, 
 38, 40. 
 
 Martineau, Miss, 33. 
 
 Mason, Jeremiah, argument of, in favor 
 of railroad from Boston to Salem, 3 ; 
 his logical power, 3; his appear 
 ance, 4, 20. 
 
 Massachusetts, high financial honor 
 of, 8. 
 
 Meade, General, 340. 
 
 Meigs. M. C., 262, 268, et seq. 
 
 Merrill, Samuel, 72, 114, 140. 
 
INDEX. 
 
 539 
 
 Methodism, early days of, 55 ; revival 
 at Cincinnati, 55. 
 
 Methodist conference, character of, 
 75. 
 
 Methodist ministers in the West fifty j 
 years ago, 76. 
 
 Methodists and the Government, 75. 
 
 Mexican question discussed in John 
 son s Cabinet, 386. 
 
 Mexican war, 64, et seq. 
 
 Miami Indians, 110. 
 
 Michigan road, the, from Indianapo 
 lis to Lake Michigan, 79. 
 
 Military Presidents, 297. 
 
 Miller, "Samuel F., 417. 
 
 Mississippi, University of, 260. 
 
 Mitchell, General, 340. 
 
 Monitor and Virginia, 427, 364, et 
 seq. 
 
 Monopolies in the United States, 531. 
 
 Morrill, Justin S.. 163. 
 
 Morrison, James, 114. 
 
 Morton, Oliver P., 72, et seq., 417. 
 
 Motley, Mr., 354. 
 
 Nashville, battle of, 276. 
 
 National Banks, organization of, 167 ; 
 objections to them, 168. 
 
 National debt in 1860, 182 ; total in 
 1865, 243 ; Mr. McCulloch s views 
 on, 248 ; items of, in 1865, 252 ; its 
 compensations, 472 ; will not be re 
 duced by direct taxation, 472; a bur 
 den, 473. 
 
 National Intelligencer, the, of Wash 
 ington, 490, 492. 
 
 Naturalization laws, 515, 532. 
 
 Navy, the, in the war, 362, et seq. 
 
 Newcome, Simon, 262. 266. 
 
 New England, change in population 
 of, 7 ; changes in theology, 10. 
 
 New Orleans banks, commercial honor 
 of, at the outbreak of the Rebell 
 ion, 139. 
 
 New Orleans, 41. 
 
 New York, in 1833, 35. 
 
 Newspapers, increase of, 480, et seq. 
 
 Newton, Heber, quoted, 109. 
 
 Nichols, Rev. Mr., of Portland, 29. 
 
 Niles, John B., 53. 
 
 North American Review, 495, et seq. 
 
 Nullification in South Carolina, 152, 
 464. 
 
 Office, appointments to, 452. 
 
 Office-seekers, 452. 
 
 Ohio Life and Trust Co., 132. 
 
 Ohio river, boating on, in 1833, 36 ; 
 commerce of, 41, 44. 
 
 Orr, James L., 457. 
 
 "Orthodox " and Unitarians, 11. 
 
 Otis, Harrison Gray, 22, et seq. 
 
 Palfrey, Hev. Mr., "28. 
 
 Palmer, Gen., 340. 
 
 Parker, Peter, 262, 265. 
 
 Parker, Samuel, 20, 50. 
 
 Parker, Theodore, 15. 
 
 Party ties, 467 ; the claims of, on a 
 President, 486. 
 
 Patent Bureau, 469. 
 
 Patent Laws in U. S. and Great Brit 
 ain, 470. 
 
 Pauper s Exchange, 440. 
 
 Payne, Henry B., 417, 
 
 Peabody, Augustus, 463. 
 
 Peale, Titian H., 2<i2, 268. 
 
 Pennsylvania Bank of the CJ. S., 58, 
 59 ; failure of, 60. 
 
 Personalities, journalistic, 494. 
 
 Petroleum, Russian, 508. 
 
 Pierpont, Rev. Mr., 28. 
 
 Pierrepont, Edwards, 358. 
 
 Pioneering in Indiana, 80, 83. 
 
 Pleading, special, 92. 
 
 Poe. 0. M., 262, 269. 
 
 Porter, Admiral David D., 367. 
 
 Postage, rates of, fifty years ago, 122. 
 
 Potomac, Army of, 301, et seq. 
 
 Pratt, Mr., of Saco, 10. 
 
 Prentice, George D., 491, 493. 
 
 President of U. S. compared with 
 British Prime Minister, 451 ; his 
 appointing power, 452 ; office of, 
 difficult to fill, 481. 
 
 Prince of Wales, 450. 
 
 Proffit, Geo. H., 52. 
 
 Protection. 504, et seq,; was to be 
 temporary, 507 ; no longer needed 
 for our manufacturers, 510 ; un 
 reasonable, 511. 
 
 Puritanism in N. E., 33. 
 
 Putnam, Rev. Mr., of Roxbury, 28. 
 
 Quartermaster s Department, 269, et 
 seq.; statistics of, 274. 
 
 Queen of England, the, 448, et seq. 
 
 Quincy, Josiah, 23. 
 
 Railroad from Boston to Salem, 3. 
 
 Railroads, their influence on national 
 wealth, 42 ; stimulated by redun 
 dant currency. 508. 
 
 Randall, Samuel, 457. 
 
 Rank in England, 444, et seq. 
 
 Rathbone, Geo. W., 165. 
 
 Rattlesnake, adventure with, 85. 
 
 Rawlins, General, 352. 
 
 Ray, James M., 298. 
 
 Reconstruction Act, 515. 
 
 Reconstruction, errors of, 518. 
 
 Reconstruction Policy the, of Presi 
 dent Johnson, 378, at seq. 
 
540 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Religious sentiment weaker than na- j 
 tional feeling, 75. 
 
 Reno, General, 340. 
 
 Rents in London, 437. 
 
 Republicanism less strong now than 
 formerly in U. S., 531. 
 
 Resumption of specie payments, first 
 Act of Congress concerning, 211. 
 
 Revenue Agents, Southern, appoint 
 ment of, 227. 
 
 Revenue Commission, 238, et seq. 
 
 Reynolds, General, 340. 
 
 Richardville, John B., Chief of the 
 Miamis, 99, 109. 
 
 Ricketts, General, 340. 
 
 " Richmond, Arthur," 496. 
 
 Ripley, George, 28. 
 
 River traffic fifty years ago, 41, 44. 
 
 Robeson, Geo. M., 352. 
 
 Robinson, George F., 223. 
 
 Rosecrans, Gen. W. S., 328, et seq. 
 
 " Russia," steamship, 424. 
 
 St. Giles, rag fair at, 440. 
 
 Sample, Samuel C., 89. 
 
 Santo Domingo, the annexation of, 
 353. 
 
 Savage, M. J., 32. 
 
 Schaeffer, George C., 262, 267. 
 
 Schenck, Robert C., 62, 36; elected 
 to Congress, 67 ; appointed Minister 
 to England, 67 ; his career there, 68, 
 et seq. 
 
 Schofield, General, 340, 347, 352 ; ap 
 pointed Secretary of War, 403. 
 
 Scientific Club at Washington, 261. 
 
 Scotch, the habits of, 459. 
 
 "Scotia," steamer, 423. 
 
 Secession accomplished, 158 ; election 
 of Mr. Lincoln a pretext for, only, 
 151 ; financial disturbance conse 
 quent upon, 135 ; preparations for, 
 157. 
 
 Sectional feeling between North and 
 South excited by Ilayne debate, 18; 
 exhibited on the occasion of a horse 
 race, 18. 
 
 Sedgwick, Gen., 340. 
 
 Senate and the British House of Lords, 
 452, 
 
 Seward, Sec., murder of, 222, et seq.; 
 and the invasion of Mexico, 388, et 
 seq. 
 
 Seymour, Horatio, 345. 
 
 Shaw, Chief Justice, 20. 
 
 Sheridan, Gen. P. H., 280, et seq. 
 
 Sherman, Gen. W. T., 282. et seq.; his 
 terms for the surrender of Johnston s 
 army, 290, et. seq.; disapproved by 
 the Cabinet, 291. 
 
 Sherman. Senator, his explanation of 
 the appointment of Southern reve 
 nue agents, 232. 
 
 Shipping, American, decline of, 457, 
 et seq.; Mr. McCulloch s report to 
 Congress on. 501 ; how restored. 
 505. 
 
 Shipping, British, 457. 
 
 Shopkeepers, the English regard for. 
 socially, 435. 
 
 Sickles, Gen., 340. 
 
 Simpson, Bishop, 76. 
 
 Singing in the Harrison campaign, 54. 
 
 Slavery, first ecclesiastical opposition 
 to, 33; aggressive character of, 
 fatal to it, 34 ; question of, in the 
 South, 153 ; hostility to, in Northern 
 States, 156 ; extension of, opposed, 
 157. 
 
 Slocum, Gen., 340. 
 
 Smith, Gen. C. P., 323, 340, 343. 
 
 Smith, Gerrit, 411. 
 
 Social distinctions in England, 435. 
 
 South Bend, Indiana, 88. 
 
 South Carolina and Secession, 151. 
 
 Sparks, Mr., ordination of, in Balti 
 more, 1819, 11, 28. 
 
 Spaulding (It. C.) Bishop, anecdote 
 of, 9. 
 
 Speaker of the House of Commons, 456. 
 
 Speaker of the House of Representa 
 tives, 456, 457. 
 
 Specie payments suspended, 119, 133, 
 135. 
 
 Speculation in Maine. 215, et seq. 
 
 Speed, James, 385, 391. 
 
 Spencer, John, 108. 
 
 Spinner, Gen., U. S. Treasurer, 214, 
 246. 
 
 Stage coach between Boston and Port 
 land, 4. 
 
 Stanbery, Henry, Attorney-General, 
 386. 400. 412, 413. 
 
 Standard Oil Co., 531. 
 
 Stanton, Edwin M., Sec. of War, and 
 Mrs. Surratt, 226 ; 280, 301, 385 ; 
 resigns. 40^, 406. 
 
 State Bank of Indiana, organization 
 of, 113 ; its management, 114 ; 
 profits, 115, et seq. ; character of its 
 loans, 116, 117; stockholders of , 118; 
 notes, 119; expiration of charter, 
 120 ; its history, 121 : its managers, 
 121 ; a monopoly, 124. 
 
 State s rights doctrine, 498. 
 
 Steadman, Gen., 340. 
 
 Steamships, ocean, fifty years ago, 424 ; 
 changes in, 425. 
 
 Stewart. Alex. B., 348. 
 
541 
 
 Stewart, Dr., of Andover, 11. 
 
 Stewart, John A., 226. 
 
 Stone, Lucy, 51. 
 
 Strong and Bradley, Justices, reason for 
 their appointment, 173. 
 
 Strong, Justice, argument of, in Sec 
 ond Legal Tender Case, 174 ; its 
 error, 11 }. 
 
 Strong, William, 417. 
 
 Subsidies to steamships, 505. 
 
 Suffrage, unrestricted manhood, 529, 
 et seq. ; danger in, 521. 
 
 Sullivan, Algernon S., 47. 
 
 Sullivan, Jeremiah. 46, et seq. 
 
 Sumner, Gen. , 340. 
 
 Sumner, Prof . , on the silver question, 
 119. 
 
 Sumner, Senator, his attack on Sec. 
 McC ulloch, 232 ; his prejudice 
 against the South, 233 ; character 
 istics of, 233, et seq. ; his opposition 
 to the annexation of Santo Domingo, 
 354, et seq. 
 
 Sumter, Fort, attack on, 159. 
 
 Sunday in London, 439. 
 
 Supreme Court, decision of, on Legal 
 Tender Acts, 172, et seq. 
 
 Surratt, Miss, 225. 
 
 Surratt, Mrs., 225. 
 
 Swain, Major D. G., 421. 
 
 Swayne, Noah H., 417. 
 
 Tariff question, the, 295 ; Mr. Mc- 
 Culloch s position upon, 296, 462, 
 et seq. ; an economic question, 464 ; 
 the war tariff bill of 1862, 465 ; the 
 Walker tariff bill of 1846, 465 ; 
 revision of, 466 ; tariff commission, 
 the need of a, 467 ; should be re 
 duced to a revenue standard, 473 ; 
 a modification of, needed, 505, 507; 
 its bearing on commerce, 511. 
 
 Tax on imports a necessity, 509. 
 
 Taxes in the United States, 461 ; indi 
 rect, 461 ; in Great Britain, lower 
 and more equitable than in the 
 United States, 462 ; direct and in 
 direct, 472. 
 
 Taylor, Father, the sailor preacher, 
 29, et seq.; eloquence of, 31. 
 
 Taylor, R. W., 249. 
 
 Taylor, Win. B., 262, 268. 
 
 Temperance reform in Great Britain, 
 
 468. 
 
 Temperance society, an early, 100. 
 Tenure of office bill, 391, 394. 453. 
 Terry. General. A. H., 340. 
 Thomas, General George H. , 274, et 
 
 seq. 
 Thomas, General Lorenzo, 391,395. 
 
 Thompson, Dr. Lewis G., 93. Ill, 107. 
 Thurman, Senator Allen G., 417, 496. 
 Tilden. Samuel J., 413, et seq., 421. 
 Tileston, Thomas. 200. 
 Tipton, Senator John, 86, et seq., 
 
 109. 
 Tolerance in theology fatal to growth, 
 
 32. 
 
 Training, a military, fifty years ago, 84. 
 Treasury Department, alleged inter 
 ference of, in the stock and money 
 
 markets, 255 ; officials of, 248, et seq. 
 Tribune, the, of New York, 491, 493. 
 Trinity, the doctrine of, in New Eng 
 land fifty years ago, 10. 
 Trumbull, Senator, 398. 
 Trusts, 531. 
 
 Tyler, Vice-President, 481. 
 Union sentiment in Indiana, before 
 
 Sumter, 156. 
 Union Telegraph Co., remark of the 
 
 President of, 420. 
 Unitarian Churches, the first to oppose 
 
 slavery, 33. 
 Unitarianism, change in, 15 ; palmy 
 
 days of, 32 ; causes of its decline, 32. 
 Unitarians, the followers of Dr. 
 
 Channing, 11. 
 United States, gain in wealth through 
 
 canals and railroads, 1 ; increase in 
 
 population, 2. 
 United States Government compared 
 
 with that of Great Britain, 451. 
 Upham, Rev. Mr., of Portsmouth, 29. 
 Van Burcn, President, administration 
 
 of, 53. 
 
 Van Winkle, Senator, 398. 
 Vandyck, Mr., Assistant Treasurer, 
 
 212, 256. 
 
 Vice-Presidents, the, 481. 
 Virginia, her debt, 514. 
 Voorhees, Daniel W., 74. 
 Wabash & Erie Canal & Railroad, 98. 
 Wade, Benjamin F. , Senator, 400. 
 | Wadsworth, Gen., 340. 
 Wages in America and Great Britain, 
 
 510. 
 
 Waite, Morrison R., 352, 417. 
 Walker, Mr., of Treasury Department, 
 
 223. 
 
 Walker, Rev. Mr. ,28. 
 Walker, Robert J., 465. 
 Wallace. General, Lew, 106, 340. 
 Wallace, General, W. W., 340. 
 Ware, Rev. Henry, 28. 
 Washburne, Elihu, B., 347. 
 Washington, General, 98. 
 Watts, John W. , 420. 
 Wayne, General Anthony, 98, et seq. 
 
542 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Webb, General, 301. 
 
 Webb, James Watson, 490, 491. 
 
 Webster, Daniel, 16 ; his debate with 
 Hayne, 17 ; his high qualifications, 
 18, et seq. ; anecdotes of, 19 ; in 
 Faneuil Hall, 23 ; speech in Faneuil 
 Hall, 71 ; on the power of the Gov 
 ernment to create a legal tender, 
 499. 
 
 Weed, Thuriow, interview of, with Mr. 
 McCulloch, 194. 
 
 Wells, David A., 237, 239, et seq. ; 
 Mr. McCuIloch s instructions to,241. 
 
 West, growth of the, 96. 
 
 Wheat, low price of, 430. 
 Wheeler, Wm. H., 413. 
 Whitman, Rev. Mr., of Portland, 29. 
 Williams, Jesse L., 107. 
 Wilson, Dr., of Cincinnati, 12. 
 Wilson, Miss, 166. 
 Wines, Marshal S. , 108. 
 Winthrop Robert C., 457. 
 Women, their legal rights in Indi 
 ana, 52. 
 
 Wood, Gen., 340. 
 Worden, Admiral, 365. 
 Workingmen of London, 441. 
 Wright, Governor, of Indiana, 127,138. 
 
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