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NOTICE OF JEREMIAH MORROW AND
SAMUEL F. VINTON, OF OHIO,
WITH A CORRECTION OF SOME ERRORS.
At a meeting of the Massachusetts Historical
Society, held 9 October, 1890, after other business,
Hon. Robert C. Wintiirop made the following
remarks : —
I present to our Library this afternoon a volume recently
published in Cincinnati, entitled " Life and Times of Ephraim
Cutler, prepared from his Journals and Correspondence by his
daughter, Julia Perkins Cutler, with Biographical Sketches of
Jervis Cutler and William Parker Cutler."
Ephraim Cutler, the principal subject of the volume, was a
son of M axasseh Cutler, whose career and character have
been recently portrayed in two most interesting and valuable
volumes which are in our library, and with which we all are,
or ought to be, familiar. The present volume can hardly be
named in comparison with those ; but it contains much supple-
mentary information, both about the family of which Manasseh
was the head, and about the State of Ohio, which he was so
instrumental in founding.
Iii tinning over the pages of this aew volume cursorily, —
for I <lu not pretend to have read it carefully, — I have been
attracted bv its references to two men. long since dead, with
whom I was intimately associated in Congress, and for whom
I formed a high regard and respect.
< hie of them was Jeremiah Mobeow, who represented the
" Highland, Clinton, and Warren" Congressional District of
Ohio in 1841. He was bom at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, —
then a little village, more recently a celebrated l>aUle-field, —
in 1771. and was, of course, nearly forty years older than
myself. He had been a member of the Northwestern Terri-
torial Legislature in 1801, and of the Ohio Constitutional
Convention in 1802. He was the first member of Congress
from Ohio, and continued a member from 1sU-'j to 1*1:]. He
was a Senator of the United States from Ohio from 1813 to
1819, and Governor of Ohio from 1822 to 1826. lie had now.
at seventy years of age, consented to be returned as a Rep-
resentative in the twenty-seventh Congress, — the Congress
which was called together for a special session by his friend.
President William Henry Harrison, but which, alas! his friend
William Henry Harrison did not live to see assembled. It
was a midsummer session, beginning in the last week of May.
and not ending, if I rightly remember, until about the 13th of
September. There was intense heat : hut that was the least of
our troubles. It was th< --ion of hank acts, ami bankrupt
acts, ami hills for the distribution of the proceeds of the
public lands, when Congress was almost daily brought into
controversy and collision with President Tyler, when veto fol-
lowed veto in quick succession, and when cabinets ami even
parties were broken up.
In those days members of Congress had no salaries. — a
pitiful /" /• diem of eight dollars during the continuance of the
session was their allowance : ami of course they could not af-
ford to build or hire line houses to dwell in. They lived in
wdiat were called "messes,' small parties clubbing together
in boarding-houses. It was in such a mess that I formed the
acquaintance and friendship of Jeremiah Morrow. We were
seven: two Senators, -- John Leeds Kerr, of Maryland, and
Oliver H. Smith, of Indiana, — and five Representatives, -Da-
vid Wallace, of Indiana ; Isaac I). Jones, of Maryland ; Jeremiah
Morrow, of Ohio ; Leverett Saltonstall, of Massachusetts; anil
myself. I recall them all with warm regard : Oliver II. Smith
with something higher than regard; Leverett Saltonstall with
respect and affection ; Jeremiah Morrow almost with venera-
tion. He was older even than his years ; hut he bore the bur-
den and heat of that trying session with more patience than
any of us. He was an example to us all, and had wisdom and
experience enough in public affairs to instruct a whole Con-
gress. Amid all the excitements and provocations of that
memorable session he remained calm and collected, discharging
his duties as Chairman of the Committee on Public Lands
with untiring diligence, while in the private associations of
our little mess he was a genial and most instructive compan-
ion. I was most glad to be reminded, in some of the pages of
this Cutler volume, of kind old Jeremiah Morrow, whom 1
never saw again after the twenty-seventh Congress ended, and
who died early in 1852.
The other old associate in Congress to whom I have found
repeated references in this new Cutler volume, is one whom I
knew much longer and more intimately. He was a native of
Massachusetts, and I am glad of an opportunity to speak of
him to a Massachusetts Historical Society. I refer to Samuel
Finley \ r iXTON T , who was so distinguished a member of Con-
gress for a great many years from the Slate of Ohio. He was
born in South Iladley, in our old county of Hampshire, on the
25th of September, IT'.'l', and was graduated at Williams Col-
lege in 1814. Having pursued the study of law, he was ad-
mitted to the bar in 1816, and soon afterwards removed to
Gallipolis in Ohio, where he practised his profession with greal
success and distinction.
It was to him that Ohio owed the passage of a law author-
izing and empowering her Legislature to sell the school lands
which had been granted her by Congress in 1803, and which
covered a full thirty-sixth part of her whole territory, and to
invest the proceeds in a permanent fund of which the income
should be forever applied to the support of schools. The
benefits of this law have since been extended to all the new
States. Mr. \ inton is thus most honorably associated with
the fust great measure of thai national aid for education
which has recently been the subject of diseussion in other
relations.
He was a Representative in Congress from 1823 to 1837,
and again from 1843 to 1851, — twenty-two years in all. On
his retirement from Congress, and alter his defeat as a candi-
date for Governor of Ohio, at the same election and under the
same circumstances with a similar defeat here in Massachu-
setts, which I have special reason to remember, he continued
to reside at "Washington in the practice of the law ; and he
died there in .May, 1862, in the seventieth year of his
His last public service of importance was as a member of the
celebrated Peace Convention in 1m">1.
He was a man of eminent ability, of great political experi-
ence and wisdom, and of the highest integrity and personal
excellence, lie might at one time have been Secretary of the
Treasury, had he been willing to accept that office. He might
have been Speaker of the House of Representatives of the
United States in 1847, had he not positively declined the nom-
ination. As Chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means
of the Thirtieth Congress, he rendered distinguished and in-
valuable service. It was my privilege to enjoy his friendship
and confidence during all mv <•■ ;sional career. We were
iii sympathy and accord, as members o( the old Whig party,
during that whole period of eleven or twelve years, without
the slightest disagreement on any important question ^>( pub-
lic interest. Our friendship and confidential correspondence
5
ended only with his death, when I contributed a brief notice
of his character and services to I forget which one of our
Boston newspapers, and of which I have, no copy.
I look back with pleasure and with pride to an intimati
association in Washington with not a few of the most eminent
men of Ohio: with old Jeremiah Morrow, — of whom 1
have already spoken, — the very first Representative from
that now imperial State of the West, afterwards her Gov-
ernor and one of her Senators; with John McLean, so long
an ornament, and more than an ornament, decus et tutamat,
of our Supreme Bench ; with Thomas Ewing, repeatedly one
of her Senators, and successively Secretary of the Treasury
and Secretary of the Interior, one of the most acute lawyers
and ablest financiers of our country ; and with others of hardly
less distinction, dead or living, whom I need not name. But
there are none of them whom I recall with greater respect, or
with a warmer or more affectionate regard, than Samuel
Finley Vinton.
It may be imagined under these circumstances that it was
with something stronger than astonishment that in running
my eye over the pages of the first volume of Mr. Blaine's
" Twenty Years of Congress/' I found myself represented as
having been chosen Speaker " over " Mr. Vinton, though he
was my senior in age and in service, and as having thus occa-
sioned " no little feeling in the West,'' where Mr. Vinton
" was widely known and highly esteemed." And this as " a
reward for my vote for the Wilmot Proviso," — as if Mr. Yin-
ton and I had ever disagreed about that Proviso ! Now, the
truth is. that we never disagreed about anything, and that I
was nominated and elected Speaker after he had declined the
nomination on account of his age and health, and with his
earnest advocacy and support.
I do not refer to this matter with any view to cast reproach
on Mr. Blaine's History. <>n the mistake being brought to his
attention, he took pains to insert a brief correction in the ap-
6
pendix to his second volume, where it will be found at page
67*. The <>nly wonder is that there are not more mistal
to be found in a work so hastily prepared, and covering the
proceedings of Congress during many ye vious to his be-
coming a member. His account of my election as Speaker in
1847, and of mv failure to be re-elected, after sixty-three bal-
lotings, in 1849, are both extremely inaccurate, though I have
not the slightest belief that they were intentionally so. Both
events were long anterior to his own entrance into Congress.
Of course he had no personal knowledge of the facts, and was
obliged to borrow his accounts from newspapers or letter-
writers' reports. His History is an able and interesting one,
and I have no doubt of the general accuracy of the portion of
it in which he describes the doings of Congress after he him-
self became a Representative from Maine, in 1863. I am glad,
however, of an opportunity to place this brief correction
where it will more easily be found than in the small type
of an appendix to a different volume of his History from
that in which the errors occurred.
I may add that a daughter of my friend Mr. Vinton, now
residing at Washington, is the widow of the late Admiral
Dahlgren, whose distinguished services in the War for the
Union are matters of history. I have sometimes hoped that
from her ready and practised pen we might have a more
adequate memoir of her honored lather than is now to be
found.
RB 9.3.
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