"t c «: :c c «: f ( Ct ^< ^C ^ ( ^T" «rtc (T ( (Ccc C ■■ «i ' cc co< «: «:■' ". c ^ ; c 41 ' »^ Ccccc' c c ^.. c LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. PRESENTED BY : ^ CCCC CLcO «ccc<:i ci .< • «:cc<: c fC <-cCt ^cc. coKc: <«-9 : ^^^^ ^^ ^ (CCCd CC cccc <«: c c > re cc << '-. 'C< tCCC (C <- , << «LC CL, ^ , cC t C C t. * ^/■T : Ci(. € ■ ^ C .CLc <«•''■ "CC :■ -c'lC ^CC ^"-~c :;--CCC'' V.C 'C<" C i_ «rG< <(:c«' ■CC«C CccC c-> c c C c < c c c ■ < c c c r <:c c« cc CTccco -^ ' c c "Co c cc c c ct^c C^ < Cl CO c C'- ^ c; 1 CO c; c c c <;cc«; ' ci^C C< cCT C?rc: CxC CfC Ci^C. O-C Cue c c cc <: cc <: cc d cc ^cc^ cc c: cc C^cc c-^ ^ec5 ,oc ^cc< cc .. ccc -C" c c :.cc c cc . C*5 C cc _ ?c §:a I- C CC CL ccc c cxc c CCC c ccc C C! c C c>c C C C C c c c cc C cc c c C c — ■ - ' ' ccc-«_ c c C<.-C< r'cc -«: CcC^-^r, I CCC ««/« C ' s ■iCI'Cc NEW YORK: D. APPLETON & COMPANY, 90, 92 & 94 GRAND STREET. 1870. JI3 THE BIOGIJAPIIICAL ADDRESS CHIEF- JUSTICE DALY To Ml'. Verplaiick must he accorded tlie metropoli- tau honor of having been the most distingaiished de- scendant of the men who nearly two centuries and a half ago founded the city of New York. It may be doubted if there be any family now extant in the city, with the single exception of the Browers, who can trace their connection with its early history as far back as the one of which he, by direct chain of lin- eal descent, was at the time of his death the gifted head. They were, as their name denotes, of that old Batavian stock, half Flemish and half Dutch, of Brabant and Zealand — a race to which he was not merely allied l)y blood, but of which he was a reprc- sentatlve type, for lie I'esembled them in his persoual appearance, and he had their characteristic abilities and virtues; their probity, frugality, and firmness; their independence of mind, their tolerant spirit, their ca- pacity for public affairs, and their love of letters. A book published in Amsterdam, in 1651 ('■^ Be- scliryvlnglLe Van Virginia,^'' etc.), contains the eai'liest pictorial representation of the little dorp or village which has since become the commercial metropolis of America. This print represents a fort at the southern extremity of the island of New York, close to the water's edge, with a few houses sparsely scattered to the east and west of it, the roofs of some of which, from the inequality of the ground, are alone visible, and tow- ering above all, that indispensable and uniformly prom- inent object in a Dutch village, a windmill. Before the drawing for this print was made, or, to express it more definitely, in 1630, four years after the purchase of the island from the Indians, when the efltire popula- tion, men, women, and children, did not exceed three hundred souls, Abraham Isaacson Ver Planck, or, as he was sometimes called, Planck, was married to Maria, daughter ot Jan Vigne, one of the proprietors of the land surrounding " The Collect," or Great Fresh-water Pond, Avhich existed up to the early part of the present century, on the space now bounded by Bi-oadway, Grand, Cliatliam, and Reade Streets, As lie was tlie first immigrant and common ancestor, it may not be inappropriate upon an occasion like this to put together from our early Dutch records Avhat has beeu preserved respecting him. In the year of his marriage, a director of the Amsterdam Company, named PauA\', obtained a patent for a large tract of laud, opposite the little set- tlement, upon the western bank of the Hudson, which included what is now Jersey City and Hoboken. This tract, to which he gave the Latin name of Pavonia, Avas granted to him as a Patroon under the imposing title of the Lord of Achtienhoven, that he might found there a feudal estate or manor of the kind Avhich Van Rensselaer about the same period established in the land about Albany. Having vainly endeavored for several years to accomplish this object, he gave up the grant, and Abraham Verplanck was the first to avail himself of the opportunity thus oftered to obtaiu, by purchase, a considerable portion of this fertile tract at or in the vicinity of Jersey City, where he soon estab- lished a flourishing farm, and, by selling ofl^ other por- tions of it unconditionally to actual settlers for farms and tobacco-plantations, he managed to bring aboiit what the would-be feudal proj^rietor could not, an active and thriving agricultural settlement. In 1641 he was selected by the inhabitants as one of the coun- 6 cil of "Twelve Men," tLe first attempt at any thing like representative government in tlie colony, which had its origin in the following circumstance : In 1G26 a peaceable Indian from Westchester, ac- companied by his sou, a young boy, started for the Dutch, fort to barter some beaver-skins, and was met upon his way, in the vicinity of " the Collect," ■ by three of the inhabitants, who robbed him of bis peltries, and, to conceal what they had done, murdered him. The boy, however, escaped, to remember the deed and to avens;e it in the manner of his race. When he had arrived at the age of manhood, fifteen years afterward, he went to New Amstei'dam, and, entering the house of an humble mechanic, struck him dead with the blow of an axe. This oj^en and daring act, per- petrated under the very walls of the fort, filled tlie whole settlement with consternation and alarm. The governor demanded the murderer, but his tribe, approv- ing of what he had done, refused to give him up, upon wdiich the heads of families in Manhattan and its vicinity were summoned to the fort, and, upon the gov- ernor apprising them of his design to make a general war upon the Indians, they selected twelve of their number as a representative body to confer with him. The " Twelve Men " decided against the war, evasively ad- vising the governor to Avait for a fitting opportunity ; and, laaviiia' iu tliis wav beeu called into existence as representatives, tliey proceeded to recommend a re- modelling of tlae government, so as to secure to the in- habitants the rights and privileges they had enjoyed iu Holland, which resulted in an ordinance of Gov- ernor Kief dissolving that body and forbidding any future assemblage of the people, as " dangerous and tending to the great injury of tlie country and of his authority." Very soon afterward Abraham Verplanck was arrested " for slandering the authorities and ma- liciously tearing down an ordinance posted on the gate of the fort," possibly the one dissolving the pop- ular body, for which he Avas fined three hundred guil- ders. The imposition of this fine,' a very heavy one at the tune, appears to have wrought a thorough change in his sentiments; for in the following year, with two others who had served with him in the Council of the Twelve Men, he went to Kief, and, falsely professing to represent the wishes of the in- habitants, proposed that an attack shoiild be made upon the unsuspecting savages, he and his two as- sociates offering to guide the soldiers and to assist them in making it. The jjroposition was eagerly ac- cepted, and led to the perpetration of the dai'kest deed that stains the annals of New Netherland. One hun- dred and tAventy Indians at Pavouia and Corlear's 8 Hook were massacred iu cold blood iu their Avifjwams at midnight. Forty were murdered in tlieir beds. In- fants, torn from tlieir mothers' breasts, were chopped into pieces with axes, and the ft-agments thrown into the fire. Neither age nor sex was spared ; and the cries of the unhapjiy wretches, borne across the waters of the Hudson, Avere heard on the ramparts of the fort at New Amsterdam, hj the navigator De Vries, who has recorded the incident. That Abraham Verplanck was not merely one of the instigators, but one of the chief actors in the execution of this bloody deed, may be inferred fi'om the fact that, when the matter came before the States-General for in- vestigation, the committee to whom it was referred recommended that two persons should be brought to Holland for examination, and Abraham Verplanck was one of them. It may very well have been, in view of this circumstance, that Mr. Verjilanck never felt any desire to write the history of New Netherland, but left the task to be discharged long after he had become prominent as a literary man, by Dr. O. Callagham and Mr. Brodhead. Indeed, with the exception of a slight allusion in an oration delivered half a century ago, I am not aware that he ever wrote any thing about the people of New Netherland or their history. The investigation in Holland seems to have been 9 abandoued, or at least was productive of no injurious consequences to Abraliaui Verplanck, for lie gi-ew in favor under the subsequent government of Stuyve- sant. In 1649 he was the owner of a plot of ground adjoining the fort, upon which he had a house and garden, which I suppose to have been the site of the present Bowllng-Green, as it was taken, that year to be used as an open place for the holding of the weekly foirs, or markets, another piece of land being given to him in exchange for it, and because there was only one oj^eu space or public square within the city walls for more than half a century afterward. In 1655 his name appears upon the list of those upon whom a compulsory tax was imposed for the defences of the city, and it may be mentioned as a characteristic, that it does not appear upon the list of those who had pre- viously made voluntary loans for the building of the wall from which Wall Street takes its name. Ten years afterward he appears as a witness to a treaty which Stuyvesant effected with the Indians for the acquisition of lands upon the South Eiver, in Dela- ware, of which he became one of the grantees. He appears by the records to have been no respecter of the ordinances, where the disregard of them was at- tended by any advantage in trading, and to have been very litigious, involved in lawsuits Avith his mother-iu- 10 law aud Lis wife's relations respecting the lands sur- rounding "the Collect," and with others. In 1664 he was one of the sis^ners of the remonstrance urarina: the inexorable Stuyvesant to capitulate to the English ; and Ave can imagine the temper with which the indignant governor read the passage advising him not "to call doAvn the vengeance of Heaven for all the innocent l)lood Avhich may be shed by reason of your honor's obstinacy." Upon the capitulation of the city, Abra- ham Verplanck Avas one of the tAvo hundred and sev- enty-two Avho SAVore allegiance to the English, and Avith that act his name disappears from our records. His son, the first Guliau, Avas the founder of the subsequent wealth and prosperity of the family. He became a merchant, having his store upon Pearl Street, Avhich then faced the water, betAveen Broad and Whitehall Streets. He was a sharp-sighted man of business, attentive to his own interest, but regarded as Avoi"thy of so much trust aud confidence, that he Avas one of tlie three persons charged Avith the care and settlement of Governor Lovelace's estate. When the Dutch repossessed themselves of the city in 1673, he Avas one of five selected by the gOA-ernment, out of fifteen recommended by a A^ote of the inhabitants, for the ofiice of schepen, a position ranking next to that of burgomaster; but, Avhile filling the position, he 11 was tried for liokling intercourse with the Englisli, a grave offence on the part of a magistrate in the eyes of liis associates ; wliicli lie defended upon the ground that he did so to secure his estate in New Eng- land ; which not l:ieing considered satisfactory, a heavy fine was imposed upon him of five hundred beaver- skins. Upon the restoration of the city to the Eng- lish in 1674, an enumeration was made of two himdred and seven of the most wealthy of the inhabitants, in which his personal estate is put down at five thousand florins, being the twenty-eighth in order on the list. A few years afterward he united with others in a purchase from the Indians of a large tract of land upon the Hud- son, which was followed shortly thereafter by the loca- tion of Fishkill, of which he was one of the founders — the first settlement made in Dutchess County. It was by this act chiefly that he laid the foundation of the fu- tiire wealth and social influence of the family ; his de- scendants having managed, amid the mutations, revolu- tions, and changes, that have occurred in our history, to retain, to a very great extent, what he had the fore- thought to acquii'e. A family homestead, built about the commencement of the last century, was Mr. Ver- planck's country residence, which, together Avith the lands around it, has passed, by his death, to his only surviving son, "William S. Verplanck, Esq., the father of a numerous family. 12 During tlie colonial period, the Veri^lancks, by in- termarriage witli the leading English and Dutch fam- ilies, the Bayards and the Ludlows, the Van Cortlands and the Beekmans, increased in wealth and social im- portance. By their marriage with the Van Cortlands they acquired the large tract of land jutting out into Hudson River which is known as Verplanck's Point. In 1730 they intermarried Avith the Crommelins, an influential Dutch family, long afterward, and tiutil a few years ago, represented in Amsterdam by the wealthy banking-house of that name. This family con- nection was further cemented by the marriage of Mr. Vei'planck's grandfather with an heiress of one of principal members of this house, a few years before the breaking out of the American Eevolution, and this family association with Holland was preserved in the middle name of Crommelin, borne alike by Mr. Verplanck and by his father. Throughout the whole of the colonial period, the family were, to employ a term that was then in use, "people of figure;" the most distinguished member during that period be- ing Philip Verplanck, who, in 1734 and 1768, repre- sented the Manor of Cortland in the Colonial Assembly, and who, in 1746, was one of the commissioners to con- fer with the other colonies iipon the French and Indian War. When the difficulty occurred with Great Brit- 13 ain, like many of the Dutcli families, their sympathies were with the colonists. Samuel Verplanck, Mr. Ver- planck's grandfather, was a member of the general com- mittee of one hundred, organized in the city of New York in 1775, and, as a delegate of the Provisional Congress of the colony, he signed the celebrated Dec- laration of Association and Union against the jireten- sions of Great Britain, one of the prej^aratory steps to the Declaration of Independence in the following 3'ear. But with that his active sympathies ceased, and he foiled to fulfil the bold resolution to which he had bound himself by his signature, to " carry into execution whatever the Continental Congress should recommend." No doubt the possibility of the loss, in the event of failure, of his landed estate in Dutchess, and his possessions iu the city of New York, Avas too great a risk for a member of a family that had been ever mindful of the preservation of their property. He had not the Celtic quality of blood which led Charles Carroll, in affixing his name to thj Declaration of Independence, to imperil a vast estate ui^on the issue, and, that there might be no mistake,**to add to his signature, " of Carrollton." In December of 1776, Thomas Paine uttered the memoi'able words, " These are the times that try men's souls. The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot 14 will, iu this crisis, shrink from the sacred cause of his country ; " and Samuel Verplanck Avas one of the men to whom these words applied. He was not willing to risk family distinction or property upon the issue of a cause, though he believed it to be right, and although he had declared, under his own signature, that the salva- tion of the rights and liberties of America " depended upon a firm union of its inhabitants, in the vigorous prosecution of the measures necessary to oppose the ai'bitraiy and oppressive acts of Great Britain." He took no further part iu aid of the colonists, but carefully avoided doing any thing to incur their ill-will. His mansion and grounds at Fishkill be- came the headquarters of Baron Steuben during the period that the American Army were encamped in the vicinity, and iu a large room in this mansion the meet- ing was held at which the Society of the Cincinnati was formed. Its owner appears to have acted with so much discretion, and to have given so little offence, that he escaped from being named in the act of for- feiture of 1779, and when the war closed he quietly repossessed himself of his property. As he was a rich man, and his Dutch wife was a ^vomanrof great intelligence and cultivation, he became one of the social magnates of the city of New York ; occupying a large double mansion iu Wall Street, upon the site 15 of wliat was afterward the United States Assaj' build- ing, where, and upon his patrimonial estate at Fishkill, he kept up the old Dutch hospitality. He died at the homestead at Fishkill, in 1819, at the age of ninety-one. Having said thus much respecting the fiimily, I cannot pass, at least without a brief notice, Gulian Verplanck, Mr. Verplanck's graud-uncle, after whom he was named, and who was in his time a very prominent man. He was for many years one of the leading mer- chants of the city, carrying on aii extensive trade with Holland, where he had been sent in early life for his education. Like his grand-nephew, he was a man of literary tastes. Mr. Kelby, of the Historical Society, called my attention to a paragraph in the Columbian of February 23, 1817, which I will read, as the verses are quite respectable, containing Avhat the writer felt to be a political prophecy. " The following lines were transcribed from a pane of glass at an inn, in England : " Hail, happy Britain, Freedom's blest retreat, Great is tliy power ; thy wealth, thy glory, great : But wealth and power have no immortal day, For all things only ripen to decay ; And when that time arrives, the lot of all, When Britain's glory, wealth, and power, must fall, 16 Then shall thy sons, fcjr such is Iloavevi's decree, In other worlds, another Britain see — And what thou art, America shall be. " (Signed) GuLiAN Verplanck. His anticipations of the future glory of America, however, liad little effect upon his loyalty when the struggle with the mother countiy arose, and he remained in New York during the long period of tlie British occupation, a steadfast adherent to the crown. When the Duke of Clarence, then a young midshipman, afterward William IV., was in New York, Gulian Verplanck was his associate, skated with him upon the Collect, and rescued him from drowning M'hen he fell through a hole in the ice. He was, how- ever, a man of so much character and capacity, that his Tory antecedents in no way operated to his pi'ejudice, for he was more influential and prominent after the Revolution than before. He represented the city of New York in the House of Assembly in 1788-89, and again in 1796-97, and upon both occasions was elected Speakei", a position at that time of great dignity and influence. In 1790 he be- came the President of the Bank of New York, then the only bank in the city, and continued to be its President until his death in 1799. He was the father 17 of Jolinsou Yerplanclc, for many years a proiiuiient editor iu New York, au active Federal politician, aud a literary man. Daniel C. Verplanck, Mr. Verplanck's fatliei-, mar- ried in early life Elizabetli Johnson, tke daughter of the third and the grand-daughter of the fii'st President of Columhia College, of which union Mr. Verplanck was the only child. His father afterward married Ann Wal- ton, the daughter of William Walton, the proprietor, during the Revolution, of the old mansion, still stand- ing in Pearl Street, known as the Walton House ; by Avhich marrlasre he had two daughters and three sons.' After his second marriage he lived exclusively in Dutch- ess County, which he represented for six years in Con- gress, from 1803 to 1809, and later iu life he was one of the County Judges. He died In Fishklll, iu 1846, at the age of eighty-eight. Mr. Verplanck was born at his grandfather's house, iu Wall Street, in 1786. He lost his mother at a very early age, and after his father's second marriage he was brought up exclusively by his grandmother, and passed most of his childhood in the house in which he was born and that of his grand-uncle Gulian, who lived a few doors below it, iu Wall Street ; or In occasional visits ' Mary Ann Verplanck, Samuel Verplanck, Elizabetli Verplanck, Wil- liam Walton Verplanck, and James Delaiicey Verplanck. 3 18 to his luotlier's relations, tlie JoLusons, at Stratford, iu Connecticut. Mrs. Henry Pierrepont remembered to Lave been present at a dinner-paity at liis grand- uncle's when young Gulian, then a very small boy, was broiight in and placed upon the table, to repeat, for the entertainment of the company, a sj^eech from one of the dramatists. The taste for the drama, thus early implanted, he retained through lifa The theatre was ahvays one of his greatest enjoyments, and his I'ecoUec- tions of the great actors he had seen in this country and Europe, his vivid remembrance and delicate discrim- ination of their distinctive qualities, and the many in- teresting anecdotes he had to tell respecting them, was one of the charming features iu his table-talk. At his grandmother's house, and more especially at that of his graud-uncle, he had the opportunity of seeing all that was cultivated and refined of the society of New York at that period, and in his old age he fre- quently spoke of the happy hours he had spent in Gulian Verplanck's hospitable mansion, especially dur- ing the jDeriod when he was passing through college, and of the many distinguished persons he had seen there. He graduated at Columbia College in 1801, at the early age of fifteen. Ha^■iug outlived nearly all his contemporaries, I have met with no one who could 10 comuumicate :xiiy particulars of Lis college-life ; but it may be taken for granted tbat lie was an apt student, and diligently earned Lis degree. After leaving col- lege Le studied law in tlie office of tlie celebrated Ed- ward Livingston, and was admitted to tlie bar by CLancellor (tlien CLief- Justice) Kent, in 1807, at tLe age of twenty-one. In tLe following year Le Lad an office as an attor- ney-at-law, at 51 Wall Street, and kept one for some years tliereafter in Pine Street, but I appreliend did no business, as Le was never known to Lave tried or ar- gued a cause in court except a case of Lis own, AvLicL will be Lereafter referred to. In 1809 Le may he said to Lave made Lis entrance into public life by tlie delivery of an oration upon tlie 4tL of July, in tLe old NortL DutcL CLurcli in Wil- liam Street, before tLe Wasliington Benevolent So- ciety. He Avas at tLe time a Federalist, tLe party to wLicli Lis family belonged, and accordingly we find tLe young orator in tLis oration denouncing " tLe bold imposture and many-colored lies by wLicli tLe friends of WasLington were driven from public confidence." He portrayed iu glowing rlietoric tLe disastrous effects of Jefferson's Administration, de- scribed tLe country during tLat period as "sunk iu letLargy ; its people drugged witL flattery ; its navy 20 dismantled ; its commerce a prey to every jietty jiu'ate ; its judiciary trampled under feet, witli corrup- tion sprouting from the head of the Administration and spreading through every department of the state, until the nation was brought to the very verge of ruin." Nor did the newly-elected President, Madison, fare much better. He was referred to as " the supporter of the calumniators of Washington, the patron of the admirers of French licentiousness who was content to submit in silence to the plans of men which had nearly brought the nation to the feet of Napoleon." All this was highly acceptable to the body before whom it was delivered. They printed the address, and with them, and with all Avho entertained the same sen- timents, he acquired considerable reputation, and was marked as a rising man. But lie had been two years a student-at-law in the office of Edward Livingston, the talented leader of the Democratic party, and had the opportunity of learning somethino- of the real views and sentiments of the other side. This association had doubtless opened his eyes to the fact that the general distrust of the people entertained by Hamilton and most of the leading Federalists was not destined to promote the success or secure the permanency of that party ; and he was con- seij^uently carefid to incorporate in his oration the sen- 21 timeut tliat " to the people of this Liinl experience has shown thiit the protection of their rights may be safely confided," indicating that he was then drifting toward the Democratic party, a result which an event that occurred two years afterward materially contrilnited to brins: about. In 1811 one of the 2;raduatin2' class of Columbia College, afterward well known as Dr. J. B. Stevenson, who had been appointed one of the disputants in a political debate which was to take place at the college commencement, submitted, as required, what he was to say, to the inspection of one of the faculty. Dr. Wilson. It contained this passage ; " Representatives ought to act according to the sentiments of their constituents," which Dr. Wilson required him to modify by limiting it to one instance only. The young man remonstrated, but the doctor was inexoral^le, because, as he afterward testified, he considered it expedient that the young man should deliver correct principles, as he was to be the respondent in the debate. The commencement was held in Trinity Church before a crowded audience, and, when Stevenson came to reply, he omitted the qualifi- cation and delivered the passage exactly as he had written it. When his name was called for the de- livery of a diploma, he ascended the stage, and, as the president was in the act of handing him the one 22 prepared for liiiii, one of tlie j)rofessors interposed, and tlie president refused to confer tlie degree. Tlie young man Avithdrew, overwhelmed by this public exposure, but upon returning to the body of the church he Avas surrounded by his fellow-graduates and friends, for he had been an industrious and most exemplary student, and at their instigation here turned to the platform and demanded his diploma. One of the professors, anxious to accommodate matters, said to him, " Probably you forgot," but the young man promptly answered, " I did not, but I would not utter what I did not believe," The diploma was again refused, upon which he had the courage to turn to the audience and say : " I am refused my degree, ladies and gentlemen, not from any literary deficiency, but because I refused to speak the sentiments of others as my own." This at once pro- duced a sensation, upon which Hugh Maxwell, an alumnus of the college and after\vard a distino-uished advocate, went upon the stage and addressed the audience in support of Stevenson, condemning the faculty in what they considered veiy bold and offensive language. At this juncture Mr. Vei"planck also went upon the platform and demanded of Dv. Mason, the provost, who w^as the ruling power in the college, why the de2:ree was not conferred. Dr. Mason informed him, and Verj)lanck answered : " The reason, sir, is not 23 satisfactory; Mr. Maxwell must be sustained." Tlie audience now became greatly excited in favor of Steven- son, and Yerplanck, turning toward tbem, moved a vote of thanks to Mr. Maxwell "for bis zealous and bonoi'able defence of an injured man," a proposition wbicb tbe graduating class received witb tbree cbeers, followed by tbree groans for tbe provost. Yerplanck's manner in tbis scene, as subsequently described by Dr. Mason, " was loud and rude, ■\vitb an au* of consequence and disdain, calculated to aid and increase tbe disturb- ance," and, according to tbe doctor's account, be " ap- jjeared as if erecting bimself into a tribunal to judge above tbe beads of tbe faculty," a statement in wbicb otbers wbo -were present did not concur. Old as well as young men now took as active a part as Veiplanck or Maxwell ; and wben Dr. Mason, in bis official cbaracter as provost, came forward to restore order, be Avas, to employ bis own words wben examined as a witness, received witb a "biss tbat in manner and quality would not disgrace a congregation of snakes upon Snake Hill in New Jersey." He was compelled to re- tire, tbe police were brougbt in, and tbe commence- ment came to an end in confusion and disorder. From tbe college and tbe cbureb tbe affair passed into tbe newspapers. Tbe faculty published in tbe daily journals a lengtby vindication of tbeir course. 24 and were answered Ly a rejoinder from the graduating class, and by reY)lies from others wlio were present. A complaint was made to the grand jury, and seven of tlie principal actors, Stevenson, Verplanck, and Max- well being included, were indicted, and at the August term of the Court of Sessions, or, as it was then pop- ularly called, the Mayor's Court, they wei'e arraigned and put upon their trial for the criminal offence of creating or assisting in a riot. De Witt Clinton, being then mayor of the city, presided ; and from the unusual circumstance of such an occurrence in a church upon such an occasion, and the foct that all who were indicted were members of leading families of the city, the trial excited the deepest interest. Verplanck and Maxwell defended themselves, and three of the most eminent counsel of that day, David B. Ogden, Josiah O. Hoffinan, and Peter A. Ja}^, aj^peared for the other defendants. The principal members of the fac- ulty were examined as witnesses, conspicuous among whom was Dr. Mason, the provost of the college, in the earnestness and zeal which he displayed to secure a conviction. He was at the time the most eloquent preacher in the city, or indeed in the country, and in giving his testimony brought all the weight of his pop- ularity and his intellectual gifts to bear with great effect against the accused. Vei'planck addressed the jury upon liis own liehalf. He declared, wliicli was no doubt the truth, that he was moved to do what he did solely from his sense of the injustice of the college authorities, in publicly re- fusing to confer the degree becaiise the young man would not utter their political sentiments. " There was," he said, "gentlemen of the jury, a lofty spirit of gallantly about the conduct of Mr. MaxAvell ^vith which at the time I could not but sympathize, and which now I cannot but admire. He was bold in the cause of friendship and of character. I approved of his behav- ior, and I am proud that I did so ; " and then gratified his own feelings at least by telling the jury that Dr. Mason was " a man towering in the proud consciousness of intellectual strength, little accustomed to peld, or even to listen to the opinion of others, that he appeared as a witness jiouring forth iij^on him and Maxwell all the bitterness of his rancor and the overboilinc; of his contempt ; throwing ofl:' the priest and the gentleman and assuming the buffoon ; showering tijion them his delicate irony, his choice simile of the congregation of snakes, and all the other savory flowers of rhetoric, in which he was so fertile, and had poured forth in such abundance," and, appealing to the juiy, asked, "What credit will you give to a witness, inflamed by passion, smarting with wounded pride, and mortified self con- fidence ? " 26 It "was very doubtful wlietlier the offence, -wlncli tlie law denominates a riot, liad been proved, or in fact committed, wlietlier tbere was any tiling more than a strong expression of disapprobation on tlie part cf the audience, an occurrence more or less incident to the nature of jjublic assemblages, which became a scene of disorder from the faculty persisting in refusing to give the young man his diploma. No actual violence on the part of any of tlie defendants was proved, nor was wliat occurred of a nature to ci'eate j^uljlic terror, a necessary ingredient in the crime of riot. There was probably nothing more than a l)reacli of the j^eace. It was pertinently suggested by Mr, Jay that if the college permitted the students to discuss a polit- ical question, as a part of the public exercises at a commencement, they should have been allowed the free exercise of their own views in the discussion of it, and that the supervision of their remarks should have been confined to the correction merely of literary de- fects; that otherwise there Avas no freedom in the debate, but the students were simply mouth-pieces to utter the political views and sentiments of the pro- fessors ; that there was nothing in the statutes of the college wliicli imposed the penalty of a refusal of a degree if a student Avould not incorporate in his speech what a professor directed him to put in ; that a reso- lution had been inserted in the minutes of 1790, sub- jecting the compositions of the students to the inspec- tion of the faculty, and, if any such penalty as the deprivation of a degree "were attached, the students were left in i2;noi'ance of it, as there was nothui2: of the Ivind in the college statutes ; and he argued that it was not the young men upon trial, but the faculty, who Avere responsible for the disturbance ; that they had, perhaps, without sufficient reflection, fallen into an error, which their pride prevented them afterward from admitting. They had committed a palpable act of injustice, and it was theii* unwillingness to recede from it, and their determination to persist in it, that had exasperated the audience. They consequently were the real authors of the I'iot, if there was one, but he insisted, as did the other counsel for the de- fence, that, in the sense of the law, there had been no riot. Clinton, however, had no misgivings in resjject to the law. He charged the jury that the offence had been committed, that all the defendants were guilty of it, and got rid of the definition of a riot by Haw- kins, a learned elementary avithority upon the criminal law, by declaring it to be " undoubtedly bad." He commented upon the conduct of the defendants with 28 great severity, and was .especiallj' severe upon Ver- ])lanck. It Avas difficult, he said, to speak of his con- duct iu terms sufficiently strong ; that he was one of the principal ringleaders " in the scene of disorder and disgrace," and that in his reply to the provost, and in his moving a vote of ttanks to Maxwell, he evinced " a matchless insolence." He told tlie jury that tliey were bound, " Ijy every consideration arising out of \he public peace and the puldic nioi'als, and by their re- gard for an institution venerable for its antiquity, to bring in all the defendants guilty ; " that he had no hesitation in declarina; that the disturbance was "the most disgraceful, the most unprecedented, the most unjustifiable, and the most outrageous, that had ever come to the knowledge of the court." Under this charge the juiy found the defendants guilty. Verplanck and Maxwell were fined two hundred dollars each, which was imposed, says Renwick, Clin- ton's biographer, in an address conveying a severe, mer- ited, and pointed reprimand. They were required, in addition, to procure sureties for their future good be- havior; and the same authority states that Clinton hesitated for some time whether he was not called upon, by a regard for justice, to inflict also the dis- grace of imprisonment. But the result of the prosecution did not produce 29 the effect wliieli its promoters anticipate.!. Public feeling, especially in the Democratic party, was with the defendants, and the course of Clinton, uj^on the trial, greatly augmented the hostility of the Madiso- nian Democrats to him. We were then on the eve of a war with England. The measures of Madison had not been sufficiently enei'getic to satisfy the more ardent of the Democrats; and Clinton, relying upon a diver- sion of the dissatisfied portion of that party in his fa vor, had taken the field as a candidate for the presi- dency against Madison, and at this very time Avas in- triguing to secure the support of the Federalists. By the Democrats his course i;pon the trial was at- tributed to a desire to ino;ratiate himself with the Fed eral pai-ty, and matters subsequently brought to light disclose that this belief was not wholly without foun- dation. Dr. Mason, a Federalist of the straitest sect, either shortly before, or about the time of the trial, had acted as the private friend of Clinton in brino-ins:: about an interview between him and John Jay, Kufus King, and Gouverneur Morris, three of the principal Federal leaders, which failed of its object through John Jay's disgust at hearing Clinton say that he had never sympathized with the Democrats, but had always been in favor of the policy of Washington and Adams's Administration — an extraordinary statement 30 fi'om the man whose denuuciatiou of tlie Federal lead- ers, as " men wLo would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven," had rung through every part of the Union. It was therefore not without some ground that he was exposed to the suspicion of having been actuated upon this trial hj a desire to do something that would gratify the Federalists, and esjiecially his negotiator with them, a man of imperious temper and despotic will, who had set his heart upon the success of this prosecution. Two months after this trial Mr. Verplanck was mar- ried to Miss Eliza Fenno, by whom he had two chil- dren, William L. and Gulian Verplanck, Jr. The lady died in Paris, in 1S17. The younger son, Gulian, in 1845. During this year, 1811, he made his first venture in authorship, in an anonymous pamphlet in the form of a letter, addressed to the learned Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell, purporting to come from Abimelech Goody, ladies' shoemaker, 289 Division Street, beseeching the learned doctor, who was then a United States Senator, to advise him how he should invest ten thousand dol- lars which he had drawn in a lottery, and detailing his ill success in attemjiting to use it in banks, in manu- facturing companies, and in discounting commercial paper. This production was rather playful than witty, but it attracted attention at the time from the nature 31 of tlie subject, aucl because it was a pioneer of a kind of writing in wliicli Artemus ^Yarcl and otlier humor- ists liave been so successful, wliere mucli of tlie effect is produced by the Avay in which the words are spelled and ill the clever imitation of the style of an illiterate person. Having entered the literary arena under the so- briquet of Abimeleeh Coody, he used this nonide plums afterward in pamphlets aud in political ai-ticles iu the newspapers during the years 1814 and 1815. One was a vigorous appeal to the Federalists to come out manfully iu support of the war. In another, "A Fa- ble for Statesmen aud Politicians," the struQ^o-le for the presidency was depicted as a strife among the va- rious animals for supremacy, in which Clinton figures as a " young Irish greyhound of high mettle and ex- travagant pretensions." In 1812 and 1813 Clinton cooperated with the Federalists, first in his effort for the presidency and afterward in an attemj^t to defeat Governor Tompkins; and Verplanck, though an a^'owed Federalist, exerted himself against Clinton, whom he regarded as playing a double part, by secretly acting with the Federalists, who opposed the war, and outwardly with that portion of the Democratic party who regarded ]\Iadison's meas- ures as not sufficiently energetic. 32 In the 8priiig of 1814 he took a more decided course in the formation of a small party of Federalists opposed to Clinton and in favor of the war, who ran a sejiarate ticket for members of Assembly from the city of New York, Mr. Verplanck being one of the nomi- nees. The pretension of this organization to repre- sent the Federalists was unsparingly ridiculed by Cole- man, the editor of tlie livening Post, who l)estowed upon them the sobriquet of "the Coodies," and the ridicule finding support in the very small vote which they polled at the election, the organization was aban- doned. But, though small in numbers, they were for- midable in talent, and kept up the war against Clinton 1)y clever and witty articles in the newspapers, which he appears to have felt much more keenly than the organized efforts of the politicians. In 1815 Clinton was I'emoved from the office of Mayor of New York. He had become alienated from the Democratic party, without acquiring the confidence of the Federalists; and, with his political prospects blasted, he found himself with a large family, deprived of a lucrative office, and heavily in debt. This painful position was augmented by the fact that his life had been passed wholly in politics and that he had never followed any business or jirofession. At this moment, when many would have sunk in despondency, this 33 remarkable man determined to devote liis eneregy to a work witli Avliicli Lis name will be forever associated — the constniction of the Erie Canal; and, anticipating political opposition both to it and to himself, he resolved to attack Avith their own weapons those vrho by their writings had assisted in producing his downfiill. Accordingly, in 1815, a pamphlet appeared entitled " An Account of Abime- lech Coody and other celebrated writers of New York, in a letter from a traveller to his friend in South Carolina." Under a show of apparent fairness, it was designed to demolish the political and literary influence " of the Coodies," whom he described as of " a hybrid nature, the combined spawn of Federalism and Jacobin- ism, generated in the venomous passions of disappoint- ment and revenge." Washington Irving, Paulding, and many others, came in for severe castigation, but he especially devoted himself to Verplanck (Abimelech Coody). He reviewed all his literary performances, charged him with avarice, and, what was apparently a high offence in Clinton's eyes, of writing in the magazines for money. He detailed the particulars of Verplanck's trial and conviction as a rioter in Trinity Chiirch, giving extracts from the severest portions of his own charge ; and, after admitting that Verplanck had more knowledge than his brother wits, and was polite in his manner, he 34 proceeded, iu an imag'maiy interview, to give this uot verj^ complimentary account of liis personal appearance • " When I saw Abimelech Coody, he arose from his chair as I was announced and did not approach me in a direct line, but iu a sidelong way, or diagonally, a kind of eclielon movement, reminding one of Lin- ufeus's character of a dog, who, he says, always inclines his tail to the left. This I attributed at first to diiS- dence, but I no sooner had a full view of him, than I instantly sa-w ' the proud patrician sneer, The conscious simper, and tlie jealous leer.' " His person is squat and clumsy, reminding one of Humpty Dumpty on the wall. A nervous tremor is concentrated at the end of each nostril, from his hahit- ual sneering and cai'ping, with a look as wise as that of Solomon, at the dividing of the child, upon an old piece of tapestry." And, after having disposed of Verplanck, he proceeded, under the shelter of an anonymous name, to give the following very flattering account of him- self: "Mr. Clinton, among his other great qualifica- tions, is distinguished for his marked devotion to sci- ence ; few men have read more and few men can claim more varied and extensive knowledge, and the bounties of Nature have been improved by persevering and unre- mitting industry." It would scarcely be credited that a man should Avrite iu this way respecting himself, and the existence of this passage might justify a doubt of his being the author of the pamphlet, were it not that the original manuscript, in his handwriting, which was preserved by the printer, is in existence. It would have been better had he left Abimelech Coody alone; for, though Clinton, as a writer, had a great deal of force, and was something of a master of invective, he had not Verplanck's learning, his critical acuteness, nor his wit — qualities of which the latte.i made ample use when the proper time arrived. It would ajjpear from Clinton's statement that Mi". Verplanck held some military position during the war, for he enumerates, among his other acts, that he settled down into a captain of sea-fencibles for money. He was, however, what Clinton was not, an earnest and oonsistent supporter of the war from the beginning, alienating himself in this respect from his fiimily and from all his previous associations. In 1813 Washington Irvino; undertook the editorial charge of a periodical known as the Analectio Maga- zine, in which he was aided by the contributions of two of his literary friends, Verplauck and Paulding. Mr. Verj^lanck's contributions, which will be found imder the signature of V., consisted chiefly of biograph- ical sketches of such leadinir Americans as Samuel 36 Adams, Fislier Ames, Oliver Ellswortli, ami otliers. These papers, thougli exceedingly well writteu, were, as biographical sketches, wanting in a due apprecia- tion of some of the characters delineated. He did not, for instance, give Samuel Adams the position he de- served as one of the master-spirits of the American Revolution, for the reason, probably, that the facts which show it had not then come to light. At the close of 1816 he went to Europe, and was absent two years. He was joyfully welcomed, upon his arrival in London, by his friend Washington Irving. " The sight of him," writes Irving to Mrs. Hoifman, '' brought a thousand melancholy recollections of past times and scenes ; of friends that are distant, and others that are gone to a better world ; " and the two friends passed much of their time together. While he was in London he was a frequent attendant in the Coui't of King's Bench, then presided over by the celebrated Lord Ellenborouo-h. Of EUenborouajh, and of what occurred in the law coui'ts, he had many pleasant anecdotes. As a ludicrous illustration of the weight which this eminent jurist gave to the want of collegiate educa- tion in a professional man, Mr. Verplauck had this anecdote : that he was present in court in an action brought by a surgeon for the recovery of his bill, which the person who emj^loyed him resisted, as an uureasouable charge. These were not the cU^ys of Sir Astley Cooper, or of Dr. Mott, and Lord. Elleuborough, who probably looked upon the calling of a surgeon as but slightly removed from that of a barber, was de- scribed by Mr. Verplanck as closing his chai'ge to the jurj^, in his deep-toned voice and with all his impres- siveness of manner, in these words : " I submit to j'ou, gentlemen of the jmy, whether this is not an enor- mous charge on the jiart of a man wliose education has been illiljeral, and whose art is mechanical." He was fortunate, in 1816, in seeing Mrs. Siddons iu her two greatest characters. Queen Katherine and Lady Macbeth, upon the only two occasions after her retirement, when she consented to reappear, first for the benefit of her brother, and afterward at the special recpiest of the royal family. He sjioke of her per- formance, upon both occasions, as transcending any thing he had ever witnessed, expressing this opinion after he had seen Rachel and Ristori in their finest personations. He was also present in 1817 when her brother, John P. Kemble, took his farewell of the stage, in the character of Coriolanus. He described Kemble as a careful, studied, and classical actor, who was veiy fine in Roman characters, but not equal to Cooke or to Kean in some of the master-creations of Shakespeare, such as Othello, Lear, Macbeth, Shylock, and Richard 38 tlie Tliiid. He saw Kemble iu Hamlet, whicli was considered the most perfect of liis performances, and paid Mr. Edwin Bootli the compliment of saj-ing that his personation of Hamlet was superior to that of Kemble, Cooke, or Kean. After leaving England he made the usual tour of the Continent, and passed much of his time in Paris, a close observer of the effects produced by the reactionary movement that followed upon the downfall of Napoleon. He especially enjoyed, while in Paris, the acting of Talma, Mdlle. Mars, aud Mdlle. George, for he was an excellent French scholar, and as thoroughly acquainted with the dramatic litera- ture of France as he was with that of England. Upon his return to this city, in 1818, he delivered an anniversary discourse before the New York Historical Society. It is among the most finished of his produc- tions, and greatly augmented his literary reputation. Among other things in this admirable discourse, he suc- cessfully vindicated the benevolent Las Casas from the charge of Robertson, and other historians, of having been the one to suggest the importation of negroes from Africa for slaves, as a means of dispensing with the en- slavement of the Indians, a statement until then univer- sally credited. He reviewed the leading events con- nected with the colonization of New England, the Mid die States, and some of the Southern States, interweav- 39 ing his observations with some finely-sketclied portraits, especially of Oglethorpe and Bisliop Berkeley, calling attention for the first time in tlais countiy to Berkeley's well-known poem, containing tlie prophetic line, "West- ward the course of empire takes its way." In adverting to the founding of this city by the Dutch, he vindi- cated the Hollanders from the aspersions of English writers, and referred to his friend L-ving's " Knicker- bocker," in these words : " It is more in sorrow than in ano;er that I feel mv- self compelled to add to these gross instances of na- tional injustice, a recent work of a writer of our own, Avho is justly considered one of the brightest orna- ments of American literature. I allude to the bur- lesque history of New York, in which it is painful to see a mind as admirable for its exquisite perception of the beautiful, as it is for its quick sense of the ridicu- lous, wasting the riches of its fancy on an ungrateful theme, and its exuberant humor in a coarse caricature." Irving, writing home to his brother, says : " I have seen what Verplanck said of my work. He did me more than justice in what he said of my mental qualifications, and he said nothing of my work that I have not long thought of it myself. He is one of the houestest of men I know of in speaking his opinion His own talents and acqiiirements are too great to suffer him to 40 entertain jealousy ; Init, were I his bitterest enemj', sueli an opinion have I of his integrity of mind, that I would refer any one to him, for an honest account of me, sooner than to any one else." Upon Verplanck's return, Clinton, through his la- bors as one of the commission of inquiry, and his earnest advocacy of the Erie Canal, had been restored to popular favor and was Governor of the State ; but there was still a strong party against him, upon whom Clinton conferred the sobriquet^ by which they were long afterward known, of " The Bucktails," and with that party Mr. Verplanck allied himself. The fruit of this political connection was the ap- pearance in the following year, 1819, of a production which was then extensively read in the city and in the State, upon Avhich the newspapers bestowed the popu- lar name Avhich it afterward bore, of " The Bucktail Bards." It was a poetical satire U2)on Clinton, of great merit not only in the epigrammatic point of the verse, but in the wit and learning displayed in the notes with "which it was profusely garnished. It first appeared in the form of a brief poetical epistle, entitled " Dick Shift," which was after\vard, during the same year, augmented in quantity and published with another poetical effu- sion assuming to come from one Major Pindar Puflf, a friend of Clinton's, and some smaller poems, the whole 41 being embraced uudei- the general title of "The State Triumvirate," to which a ludicrously learned and witty introduction was added, and an increased quantity of notes. My limits will admit only of the observation that the description of the hero, Dick Shift, an un- principled politician and applicant for office ; the por- trait of the learned Dr. Samuel L. Mitchell ; the inter- view with Clinton ; and the meeting of the council, in which Dick's application for office is passed upon, Avill bear comparison with anything in Hudibras or Swift: while the imitation of the Irish orator, Charles Phillips ; the French congratulatory poem; the ludicrous epi- gram disguised in Greek letters, purporting to come from Dr. Parr ; the philological dissertation upon the derivation and meaning of the word Bucktail ; and the learned letter of Dr. Mitchell in the notes, explain- ino- scientifically the kind of vermin that troubled the sapient Mr. Pell, the secretary and political ally of Clinton, are all full of j^oint and humor. The object of this production was to expose the political venality and corruption of many of the lead- ins: nien that surrounded Clinton, as well as to take down the Governor's literary and scientific pretensions, which was done with telling efi^ect both in the poem and in the notes. " The Bucktail Bards " was at the time attributed 42 to Mr. Verplauck, tliougli it has been since supposed to have been the work of several hands, and the names of Judge John Duer, and of Rudolph Bunuer, an active politician and a man of vivacity and -wit, have been named as connected with him in the production of it. He was himself always very reticent upon tlie subject. "VVlien called upon, at the dinner given iu the Century to Fitz-Greene Halleck, to resjaond to a toast compliment- aiy to this satire, he evaded the question of the au- thorship, but upon another occasion impliedly ad- mitted his connection with it, but that was all. He probably felt (for he was not a man to bear animosi- ties) that he had accomplished, by its production at the time, all that he had desired, and was willing to let the controversy end with the causes that had produced it. In this year, 1819, he was elected by the anti-Clin- tonians, or Bucktails, to the Legislature, as a member from the city of New York, and continued to represent it in the Assembly during the years 1820, 1821, 1822, and 1823. He took no prominent part as a speaker or as a debater, nor is his name mentioned in any of the strugsles which led to the overthro\v of the old Coun- cil of Ajipointment, and the adoption of a new Consti- tution in 1821. He was chainnan of the Committee upon Education, and appears to have devoted himself to those quiet legislative labors which produce their 43 effects without attractiusr tie attention wlaicli is o'iven to exciting political discussions in representative bod- ies. In fact, like Clinton himself, he never became a ready public speaker or debate]*. Whatever he did was the result of previous thought and preparation ; and even then, though his matter was excellent, his manner was unimpressive, his voice irnattractive, and his gestures awkward. He was fluent and easy enough with his pen, and, when he had before him a carefully-written address, he could read it before a lit- erary or other public body with considerable effect. In 1821 he was appointed a professor in the Gen- eral Theological Seminary of the Episcopal Church, in the city of New York, and after his retirement from the Legislature, in 1824, he published a volume " On the Natm'e and Uses of the Evidences of Re- vealed Religion," a work of sterling merit. Though the subject was one upon which several able and well- known works had been written, his treatment of it had an especial merit of its OAvn. He did not bring together, like Lardner, the great aiTay of historical proof, nor methodize it, to make the conclusions it warrants more apparent, like Paley ; nor reason from the analogy of Nature, like Butler; but he relied mainly upon the ni- ternal evidence which Christianity itself affords of its divine origin. Toward the close of the essay he u surveyed the leading features of the historical proof, liut the l)ody of the work Avas devoted to show- ing the superiority of Christianity to every otlier form of religious belief, in its adaptation to the wants and hopes of man's nature. It is impossible to read this Vjook without being profoundly impressed by the sin- cerity of the writer's convictions, and it abounds in passages of great force, earnestness, and beauty, of which the following may be cited as a specimen : " Prophecy announces the advent of the religion of Jesus ; history records its j^rogress ; literature and criti- cism combine to attest the muniments of its doctrines ; but its surest witnesses are to be found in man's own breast — in the grandeur of his thoughts — in the low- ness of his desires — in the aspirations which lift him toward the lieavens, in the vices which weigh him to the earth — in his sublime, his inexplicable conceptions of infinity and eternity — in his humiliating experience of folly, misery, and guilt. ... It unfolds to him his own character and situation, his duties and the means of discharsrine them, the moral diseases under which he labors, and the remedies he needs. ... It presents to him a high and beautiful, an unostentatious and pure morality, taught in weighty and impressive aphorisms; in natural and touching similitudes, or in the most engaging forms of action and character. , . . It speaks 45 to liim of the nature and attributes of God, and this not in the Avay of dry and didactic systems, but as those attributes are actually exhibited in the manifes- tations of His power and goodness. While it offers to man's consideration subjects to engage and employ the noblest powers of his reason, it addresses him also as a being largely endowed with sentiments and affec- tions, and it calls upon the warm sensibilities and strong emotions of his breast, moving him in turns by each and every rational motive of interest, duty, and feeling, to remorse, to feai', to repentance, to devotion, and to gratitude." This period of comparative leisure was productive of other fruits. His attention was attracted by the want of commercial morality in that period of Avild speculations and fluctuations in value which preceded the panic of 1825, and the legal rules by which con- tracts for the buying and selling of merchandise are governed, which, as he conceived, were insufficient to secure that integrity in trading Avhich he deemed in- disjiensable to a commercial people. Accordingly, in 1825, he published a volume called an "Essay on the Doctrine of Contracts as affected in Law and Morals by Concealment, Error, or Inadequate Price." Whatever may be the judgment of lawyers upon the modifica- tions he proposed in the rules upon this branch of the 46 commercial law, there can be but one o})inion in re- spect to the legal learning displayed in the work, and upon the ability with which it is written. It would have produced at the time a marked impression, had its author been an eminent lawyer or judge, but, emanating from one unknown in the practice of the law, it appears to have attracted but little attention. It was, moreover, most unjustly assailed by the editor of a law journal then published in the city of New York, who, so far as it related to the law, spoke of it with the utmost contemj)t, and, as an ethical treatise, pronounced it of no value. He recommended those who had not bought it, to leave it untouched upon the bookseller's shelves, and those who had, to let it lie upon their tables Avith its leaves uncut. It may be doubted, from his remarks, if the writer had ever read it, and the whole article bears internal evidence of hav- ing been written by a personal or political enemy. The reviewer was answered by "William Sampson, a lawyer of some literary notoriety at the time, whose praise of the Avork, at least among lawyers, was prob- ably as detrimental as the other Avriter's abuse; for Sampson, in public addresses, in pamphlets, and in newspajier articles, had indulged for years in an indis- criminating denunciation of the whole system of the common law, a course as extreme and as unreasonable as the legal bigotry of those who consider it the per- fection of human reason, and as beyoutl the possibility of improvement. One of the leading objects of this work was to bring about some modification of the rule of caveat emjyfor, by which, in the event of any defect in the ar- ticle sold, the loss is upon the buyer, unless he has bought upon an express warranty, or the seller has been guilty of fraud. He urged with great force the unjust extent to which this rule had been carried, and gave many illustrations of cases in which it would be to the benefit of commerce, entii*ely practicable and certainly just, to impose the loss upon the seller; and, having been engaged for many years in the chief com- mercial city of the Union, in the discharge of duties involving the practical a])plication of this legal rule, I am enabled to say that the law is coming round to the recoguitiijn of some of the very distinctions insisted upon in this derided book ; and I may add, as the result of my experience, that, if a more strict and just rule had been applied, we should, I think, have had a higher standard of morality in buying and selling, without any diminution of our commercial prosperity as a people. During this year, 1824, he delivered a discourse at the annual meeting of the American Academy of the 48 Fine Arts, the superiority of wbicli to a much-lauded address of Clinton's before the same body, eight years previously, is very marked. I know of no production, within the same limits, in which the reasons Avhy a nation should encourage the development of the fine arts are so forcibly stated; that describes so felici- tously the beneficial influence which works of art exer- cise uj)ou individuals, or which points out so clearly the causes of the pleasure which they impart. A consider- able portion of this discourse was devoted to an ex- amination of the state of architecture in this countiy, and suggestions were made for its improvement, many of Avhich are as applicable at the present day as at the time when they wei'e delivered. In 1825 Mr. Verplanck was elected to Congress as a representative from the city of New York, and con- tinued to be a member of the House of Representatives for eight yeare, or until 1833. My limits will not allow me to review in detail his congressional career durincr a period which embraced the whole of John Quincy Adams's Administration and the first four years of Gen eral Jackson's. It was, as will be remembered, one of the most exciting periods in our political history, and in Avhich he was an influential actor. I may refer to the fact that it was through his instrumentality chiefly that the law of copyright was extended from twenty- 49 eight to forty-eiglit years, in recognition of wliicli a public dinner was given to him in this city. He was chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, then the most responsible as well as the most influential po- sition in the House. To this committee was intrusted the delicate subject of the tariff, which at that period agitated the whole country, gave rise to the political doctrine of nullification, and threatened the dismember- ment of the Union. It was a great national crisis, through which the country was carried in safety by the adop- tion of the fjimous Compromise Act of 1833, a master- stroke of policy, which pacified the nation, and satisfied both the North and the South. This compromise Mr. Verplanck was one of the parties in bringing about. As chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, he re- ported a bill for the diminution of duties until they reached the revenue standard. As the passage of this bill in the House was ap2:)rehended by Mr. Clay, the lead- er of the protectionists, action upon it at their request was delayed. Consultation s followed , and a compromise for a gradual diminution of duties over a period of more than tAvo presidential terms was privately agreed upon, a bill was prepared to that effect and introduced in the Senate by Mr. Clay, and discussed. Pending its discus- sion, the bill of the Committee of Ways and Means came up in the House, when the one which had been pri- 7 50 vately agreed ui:>on was offered as a substitute. It was referred to Mr. Verplanck's committee, was reported by Mm the next morning, and passed the House. It was immediately thereafter brought to the Senate, and, hav- ing the united support of Mr. Clay and Mr. Calhoun, was adopted. The chief difference between it and the bill of Mr. Verplanck was, that his bill provided for an immediate reduction in part, and a final reduc- tion to the revenue standard in 1834 ; while the other provided for a gradual diminution to that standard until reached in the year 1842. The whole credit of the measure was, however, accorded to Mr. Clay, and little if any attention given to the fact that it was the bill of Mr. Verplanck, and the fact that he had a majority in the House in favor of it, that brought things to a crisis and to a settlement. He took no pains himself to advise the world of his share iu this important measure. He was throughout life modest iu respect to his own services or acquire- meuts, and appears to have been indifferent to the value of political or literaiy fame. The message of General Jackson, recommending the removal of the deposits from the Bank of the United States, was also referred to this committee. Mr. Ver- planck reported a resolution, declaring as the opinion of the House, that the deposits were safe in the custody 51 of tlie Lank, wliicli was adopted by a large majority. This bronglit liiui into open collision with General Jack- son, and the result was Ms separation, with many others, from the Democratic party, and the formation of the Whig party, of Avhich he Avas one of the founders. In the following year, 1834, he was nominated Ijy the Whigs for the office of Mayor of New York, in opposi- tion to his Democratic colleague in Congi-ess, Cornelius W. LaAvi'ence, which gave rise to one of the most excit- ing municipal contests that has ever occurred in this city, in which his Democratic opponent was elected by the small majority of one hundred and fifty-two. Upon retiring fi-om Congress, he devoted himself more especially to literary pursuits, and contributed ar- ticles to the Mirror, a literary journal then published in New York, among which was a charming memoir of Robert C. Sands, his literary associate, together with Mr. Biyant, in the production about this period of three volumes of a literary annual, Tlie. Talisman, which contains many light articles from his pen. Clinton died in 1828. Ta\'o years afterward, Mr. Verplanck delivered a discourse before the literary societies of Columbia College, and, forgetting what- ever cause he had for complaint at Clinton's conduct upon his trial, and his coarse personality in the sketch of Abimelech Coody, he availed liimself of the occa- 0-2 .sion of this address to offer this uoble tribute to his memory : " I ghadly pay the homage due to his eminent and lasting services, and honor the lofty ambition which taught him to look to great works of jjublic utilit}', and their successful execution, as his arts of gaining or of redeeming the confidence of a generous and pul:)lic-spir- ited people. Whatever of party animosity might have blinded me to his merits, had died away long before his death, and I could noAV utter his honest praises without the imputation of hollow pretence from others, or the mortifying consciousness in my own breast of rendering unwilling and tardy justice to noble designs and great public services." In the same year, 1830, he interested himself in the movement for the erection of a public monument to the great forensic orator and patriot, Thomas Addis Emmet, and waa the author of the lengthy English inscription which records, upon the obelisk in St. Paul's churchyard, the services and merits of this dis- tinguished man. In 1833 Mr. Verplanck published a collection of his own discourses, and for many years thereafter he continued to deliver addresses before lit- erary and other bodies, distinguished for the elegance with which they were written, and the comprehensive- ness and felicity with which he handled various sub- jects Avitliiu the wide rauge of his knowledge. Among them I should not pass without notice his introductory address to a course of scientific lectures before the Mechanics' Institute of the city of New York, in 1833, as exhibiting the facility with which he could impress upon the popular mind the attractiveness and value of scientific studies ; his discourse in the same year be- fore Geneva College, upon "The Right Moral Influ- ence and Use of Liberal Studies," -with its noble open- ing, in Avhich he traced the course of the mathematical and physical sciences from " the time when the Chal- dean shepherd solaced the long hours of his nightly watch by tracing the apparent movements of the heavenly bodies, and the Egyptian priest or magis- trate, compelled, by the yearly overflow of the Nile, to mark out again the places of each proprietor, was led to the discovery of the elementary problems and propositions of geometry;" and the earnestness with which, in this fine address, he sought to impress upon his young hearers the necessity and value of toleration in all matters of opinion, which with him was not sim- ply inculcating a precept, for it was illustrated by the example of his own life ; and his discourse in 1836, before Union Colleo'e, " The Advantages and Dangers of the American Scholar," which may still be read Avith interest and instruction for its admirable com- 54 parison of the advantages and disadvantages wliicli our republican institutions and forms of society ex- ercise upon the vocation of literary men. In 1838 he was elected to the State Senate, in which he served four years. It Avas then a body com- bining legislative and judicial functions, the members of which, in addition to forming a cooperative branch of the Legislature, sat also as a Court of Errors, to review the decisions of the Supreme Coui-t and the Court of Chancery. Of his legislative labors, my limits will allow me only to refer to his masterly speech upon the reform of our judicial system, a speech Avhich gave the death-blow to oiu* Court of Chancery. It exhibits how profoundly he had studied our judi- cial system, and that of England and of other coun- tries ; how fully he imderstood their defects, and how clearly he comprehended the improvements that could be made. It will suffice to say, that some of the most valuable changes adopted by the Constitutional Con- ventions of 1846 and 1868 were suggested in this speech ; and I may add that our system would have been more harmonious and perfect had they folloAved his sagacious advice in some other features. In the Court of Errors he occupied from the be- ginning a commanding position. In the first case that was argued after he became a member of the Court, Saltiis vs. Everett, he delivered the leading opiuion upon a most embarrassiug and difficult question of commercial law, au opiuion frequently cited with ap- probation liy judges, and followed iu other States and in England/ In the one hundred and seven cases de- cided while he was a member of the Court, he wrote opinions in seventy-one, an unusual proportion when the importance and difficulty of the questions are con- sidered that come before a court of last resort. These opinions, which were perspicuously and elegantly writ- ten, were not simply his conclusions, but elaborate judg-ments, founded on the closest investigations of the questions submitted, the most careful and exhaustive examination of authorities, and a practical, comprehen- sive, and familiar acquaintance with legal rules and priuciples, even those of the most technical kind. It was, as it might well be, a matter of astonishment that a man who had never sat before in a court of justice — who never argued or tried a cause for a client in a court in his life — should at once take such a position as this in the highest judicial tiibunal of the State, and hold it during the entire period that he continued to be a member of it. In fact, he was the controlling power, for, whenever the Chancellor differed from him, he invariably carried the Court, and the weight that was attached to his opinions may be inferred from the 5B fact that, during tlie four years tliat lie served, it is only in three instances that Ms vote is found recorded with the judges who voted in the minority.' Throuo-hout his life he had been a dilio-ent student "of Shakespeare, and upon his quitting the Senate he ' The opinions be delivered will be found from vols. xx. to xxvi. of "Wendell's Eeports ; and, that some estimate may be formed of their extent and value, I will briefly enumerate some of the most important, viz. : His learned opinion in Thompson vs. The People, upon tlie true nature of franchises in this country, the right to construct bridges over navigable streams, and the limits of the writ of quo warranto. His exhaustive examination of the whole structure of our State and Federal Govemment, in Delafield vs. The State of Indiana, upon the question whether a citizen of this State could inaintaifi an action against one of the States of the Union. His admirable exposition of the reasons upon which the doctrine of prescription, or rights established by custom and long usage, is founded, in Post vs. Pearsall. On the interpretation of technical legal terras, in Lovett vs. Pell. His admirable survey of the whole law of marine insurance, and of the principles upon which it rests, in the American Insurance Company vs. Bryan. The right which the owners of the adjoining soil have in the beds of rivers, involving a lengthy examination of the law of navigable rivers and fresh-water streams, in HemjishaWs case ; a most masterly opinion, in which the whole Court concurred. His opinion in Smith vs. Acker, in which he carried the Court against the Chancellor, and overturned all the pre- vious decisions of the Supreme Court, on the right of a jury, upon an uncontradicted state of facts, to decide whether there was or not a fraudulent intent in a mortgage of personal property, the Supreme Court having uniformly held that the question of fraudulent intent, 57 undertook, at tlie request of tlie Messrs. Harper, to edit a new edition of the poet's works. To this task he applied himself with great assiduity and devoted to it three years. It was completed in 1847, in. three upon an undisputed state of facts, was a question of law for the judge and not for tlie jury. His controUiug opinion in the great case of Alice Lispenard, upon the amount of mental capacity necessary to make a will, affecting an immense amount of property in the cit}^ of New York. Upon the law of personal trusts, in Darling vs. Rogers. Of joint banking corporations, in Warner vs. Beers; of partnership, in Vernon vs. The Manhattan Company. On the right of a^ advocate to maintain an action for his fees, in Stephens vs. Adams. Upon the law of the delegation of trusts, in Lyon vs. Jerome. Upon the fraudulent hypothecation of vessels and the obligation of bottomry bonds, in Cole \%.White, an opinion of great leng"th and of great ability. His opinion maintaining the power of the Chancellor to compel the payment of taxes where there is no adequate remedy at law, in Burant vs. The Supervisors of Albany. Upon the law of fire insurance, in The Mayor of New York vs. Pentz. The law of libel, in Ryckman vs. Delavan. Upon erasures in deeds and instruments under seal, in Broivn vs. Kim- hal. His exposition of the whole law of lien, in Faile vs. White, and his opinion upon the liability of a city to pay for a building which was blown up by order of the authorities to stop a conflagration, in Stone vs. The Mayor of New York. In Hoe vs. Acker, the Court of Errors afterward qualified their previous decision ; and, in the great case of Alice Lispenard, the correctness of Mr. Verplanck's conclusion has been doubted. With these two exceptions, however, so far as I know, the soundness of his numerous opinions has never been ques- tioned. 38 large volumes, and ^vas from its literary merit, its pic- torial emtellisliments, and the perfection of its typo- grapliical execution, tlie best edition of Shakespeare that had appeared in this country. Its chief value as an edition lies in the care Mr. Verplanck bestowed upon the text ; in the light thrown by his notes upon many obscure passages, which he Avas enabled to do from his extensive readino; and his thorough knowl- edge of the political and legal history of England, and in a judicious selection, fi'om the whole range of Shakespearian literature, of such critical observa- tion as would lead to a better understanding of the plays, a clearer conception of the characters, and a fuller ap2")reciation of the poet's genius. No one, un- less he is very familiar with the subject, would get from the work itself a knowledge of the precise ex- tent or value of Mr. Verplanck's labors, for his own observations, he says, are sometimes incorporated with the remarks of others, and sometimes given in separate notes ; modestly observing that he had not felt enough of the pride of authorship to designate any thing of his own by his name or any peculiar maik. He did little in the way of conjectural emendation. If, he says, in one of his notes, the safe rule of endeavor- ing to understand the original text, instead of guess- ing what the author ought to have written, had been 59 adopted, we should have been saved volumes of com- mentary, and it is his judicious adherence to this rule that renders the edition, in my judgment, so valu- able. He remodelled Collier's life of the poet, and wrote an introduction to each play, in which, in addi- tion to many admirable observations upon the separate plays, he bestowed much study and thought to detei-- mine the time or periods in which they were suc- cessively produced, his object being to trace the prog- ress of Shakespeare's taste and experience ; or, to use his own language, " to follow out, through each suc- cessive change, the luxuriant growth of his poetic faculty and comic power, and the still nobler expan- sion of the moral wisdom, the majestic contemplation, the terrible energ}^, the matchless fusion of the impas- sioned with the philosophical, that distingaiished the matured mind of the author of Hamlet, Lear, and Mac- beth." It is much to be regretted that the plates of this excellent edition were shortly afterward destroyed by fire. Being a very costly work, it was not repro- duced, and it consequently never became as exten- sively known as it deserved to be. It now remains but to enumei'ate what he did, in his capacity as a private citizen, for public objects. He was for more than fifty years a trustee of the Society Li- brary ; for foi-ty-foui' years a regent of the University of 60 tlie State of New York, requiring liis personal attend- ance twice a year at its sessions in Albany ; for twenty- six years lie was a member of the vestry of Trinity Chnrcli, and was at his death one of the two church-Mar- dens, a position involving the care and management of the enormous property of that great religious corpora- tion; for twenty-four years he was president of the Board of Emigration, a public trust of the most im- portant and onerous character, to which he attended Avith the most scrupulous fidelity up to last week of his life ; for many years he was a governor of the New York Hospital, and a director of the New York Life Insurance Company ; and was one of the managers of the Manhattan Club, and the first vice-president of the New York Historical Society. All of these positions he held at the time of his death ; to which it must be added that he had been for many years a trustee of the Public School Society, an institution no longer in existence ; a trustee for several years of Columbia College, and had lieen vice-president of the American Academy of Fine Arts, the institution which preceded and gave rise to the preseiit National Academy of Desian. He was at first the usual chairman, and after its charter the president, of the Century Club for seventeen years. His connection with these institu- tions was not like that of many who merely give the 61 countenance of their names, but he attended to their affairs with the exactness, punctuality, and method ot a mei'chant. He did little, if any thing, during his long life, to aid jniblic objects by pecuniary assistance. I have never seen or heai'd of his name attached to a volun- tary subscription for such a purpose. It -was a great defect in a man so accomplished and otherwise so pub- lic-sjjirited, and was the more marked in a city where pecuniary liberality, for public objects, is a distinguish- ing characteristic of its citizens. Clinton charged him with avarice. This was scarcely just, for he was not a man who had made the accumulation of money or property a leading object of life. He was con- tent with the fortune he had inherited, which was sup- posed, during his life, to be large, but which after his death appears to have been much exaggerated. He may have been ])arsimonious ; but he was not avaricious, nor in any way mercenarj^, for he gave his time and his intellect for years, as has been shown, to public institutions, and public labors, frequently of an exact- insr nature, where he nefther received nor sought for compensation. Finally, when it is considered that he was for years an efficient manager of institutions, eleemosynary, finan- cial, educational, municipal, and religious ; that he had 6-2 been an active politician, a legislator, and a statesman ; that he was an eminent jurist, an able theologian, an acute literary critic, a satirical poet, an exquisite prose Avriter, and a scholar of vast and varied attainments, it -will be felt that I have not overestimated in saying that he Avas the most distimruished of the descendants of the founders of New York. The appreciation of his talents and services, the consciousness that a great citizen had departed, were shown in the character of the men who filled Trinity Church upon the day of his funeral, and this voluntary tribute of resj)ect, at the busy hour of noon, in this busy metro jjolis, was a demonstrative and public proof of the estimate formed in his native city of his life and character. • fifC- V cccC ^%i. <1C c<^ CCCC7 CCCC cc Cd ■■'<^^- - tc <3 <: < & c V -- <1 CAS (Core • *<^ S^ .. CSC- C-^ ciX. C C- CCC C C ■ ccc cc < csr cc ' csk: oc C(C _ ^^C €j C <9CL 'i t- C C V^^uSI- <: c CC i. G .ic CC, ;.<-c cc ^^ ■' cc f# ^.^^ : ct J cc cc c c cc CCC r cuc . ^r ^:? ;: Ccct :, ^CC. ■ ddi ■ ccc, CCCC ^Ccftt ■ . Ci-CC ' CcC CccvC<:. 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