MEIsT OF OUR DAY; OR, BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES OF PATRIOTS, ORATORS, STATESMEN, GENERALS, REFORMERS, FINANCIERS AND MERCHANTS, NOW ON THE STAGE OF ACTION: INCLUDINa THOSE WHO IX MILITARY, POLITICAL, BUSINESS AND SOCIAL LIFE, ARE THE PROMINENT LEADERS UF THE TIME IN THIS COUNTRY. BY n. p. BROCKETT, M. D., ADTHOR OF " OUrc GREAT CAPTAINS," "WOMKN's WORK IN THF, CIVIL WAR," "life and times op ABRAHAM LINCOLN." "THE BIOCR APHICAL POR- TIONS OP APPLETON'S annual CVCLOP.KDIA," ETC., ETC. ELEGANTLY ILLUSTRATED WITH FORTY-TWO PORTRAITS FK03I LIFE. PUBLISHED BY ZIEGLER k McCURDY, PHILADELPHIA, PEXN'A.; SPR[NGFIKLI>. MASS.j CINCINNATI, OIIIOj ST. LOUIS, MO. ^ Entered according to Act oi Congress, in the year 1872, by L. P. BROCKET T, In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. 0. ^ H-o ^^ PREFACE. " Nothing," says a recent epigrammatic writer, " suo- ceeds like success." We may add, nothing interests the public like the history of success. Let a man be poor, obscure, and undistinguished by any remarkable or con- spicuous deeds, and though he had the wisdom of Solo- mon, the meekness of Moses, the patience of Job, or the faith of Abraham, yet there would be little or no inter- est felt in his history. An humble and outwardly quiet life may have its record of heart struggles, its days of sunshine and shadow, its nights of wearying anxiety and mental disquiet, whicii are full of interest to beings of higher intelligence than ours, and form to the psycho- logist a curious study; but for the great mass of man- kind they possess no charm. But let this same man achieve, slowly or suddenly, a high position ; let him, by some cunning invention, or by some bold and daring enterprise, attain a princely for- tune ; or, better still, by the bold avowal of some great \\\ IV PREFACE. and righteous principle, and patient adherence to it through years of obloquy and persecution, win from a reluctant world admiration for his fearless persistency ; let him at a fitting moment enunciate some great truth which shall influence a continent, or speak some word which shall loosen a nation's bonds ; let him by calm cool bravery, sound judgment and unflinching resolution, win his way up from a humble position to the command of great armies, and leading them wisely, bring a long and bloody war to a close ; or in the quiet of his study, let him forge those lyrics, whose white heat shall set the world aflame, and there will be enough to interest them- selves in him. His every movement will be chronicled. ; thousands will seek to honor themselves in honoring him ; his words will be carefully noted and treasured ; and even the most trivial incidents of his childhood and youth will be eagerly sought for, and read with the greatest avidity. And there is nothing surjDrising, nothing wrong in this. When a man has achieved greatness, it is natural that we should desire to know the steps by which he has attained to his present position, for there is in every heart, and especially in the hearts of the young, a hope, seldom expressed, oft^n hardly acknowledged to them- selves, that, knowing the way, they, too, may succeed PREFACE. V in ascending to that lofty and distant summit, where "Fame's proud temple shines afar;" and though but few have the patience and the gifts to realize their fond expectation, yet they are often led to greater exertion than they would have made but for the inspiration of such a hope. But while thus inciting the young to emulate the struggles and toils by which others have gained exalted station or distinction, the biographer must be impartial, and record, though in a kindly spirit, the errors and faults, as well as the good qualities of those of whom he writes. If he fails to do this, and indulges in in- discriminate eulogy, the lesson he seeks to impart will be lost ; for there is no perfection in human life, and a just, but not unkind, delineation of the faults and errors of others, may lead the young reader to avoid them in his own life. It is at all times a matter of difficulty, in the case of living men, to award the just measure of either praise or blame in a biographical sketch ; and never more so, than when the subject is one of the candidates for high office, in a heated and violent political campaign ; but the writer has endeavored, without partisan bitterness or prejudice, for or against either of the prominent political leaders, to draw their portraits, leaning in every case to the side of mercy rather than of severity Vl PREFACE. How far he has been successful in this respect his readers must decide. For the rest, his sources of infor- mation have been ample, and as he believes thoroughly authentic, and he has endeavored to use them as wisely as he could. That the volume may aid in making all its readers, and especially the young, wiser, by giving them loftier and more earnest aims, is his sincere hope and desire. L. P. B. Brooklyn, N. Y., July, 1872. ILLUSTRATIONS. U. S. GRANT. W. T. SHERMAN. P. H. SHERIDAN. GEO. Q. MEADE. 0. 0. HOWARD. D. D. PORTER. W. S. HANCOCK. BENJ. F. WADE. R. C. SCHENCK. HENRY WILSON. LYMAN TRUMBULL. 0. P. MORTON. SCHUYLER COLFAX. S. P. CHASE. SIMON CAMERON. CARL SCHURZ. W. D. KELLEY. THOS. A. SCOTT. G. S. BOUTWELL. JOHN SHERMAN. JOHN A. LOGAN. CHAS. SUMNER, EDWIN D. MORGAN. REUBEN E. FENTON. HANNIBAL HAMLIN. W. A. BUCKINGHAM. HAMILTON FISH. ANDREW G. CUBTIN. JAY COOKE. CHAS. FRANCIS ADAMS. WM. H. SEWARD. KEVERDY JOHNSON. GEO. M. ROBESON. CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. J. A. DIX. HORACE GREELEY. ■WENDELL PHILLIPS. B. GRATZ BROWN. CYRUS W. FIELD. GERRIT SMITH. HENRY WARD BEECHER. WM. LLOYD GARRISON. Tii CONTENTS. PA08 PREFACE ~- 3 CONTENTS 9 ULYSSES SIMPSOI^ GRANT. Great leaders spring from the people — Often lead quiet and obscure lives till the emergency arises which calls them out — Are not always or often those who are first thrown upon the top wave — General Grant's ancestry — His boyhood — His fondness for hoi-ses — Anecdotes — His judgment and executive power — Incidents — Fond of mathematics — Don't like tanning — Sent to West Point — Graduates twenty-first in his cliuss — Service at Jefferson Barracks — At Southern posts — In the Mexican war — Distinguishes himself in the battles of the route to Mexico, and is honorably mentioned and brevetted — On garrison duty after the Mexican war — In Oregon and on the frontier — First Lieutenant— Captain — Resigns his commission — Reasons for so doing — Becomes a farmer — 111 success — Tries other vocations — Enters " Grant and Son's " store at Galena — His political views — The outbreak of the war — He resolves to offer his services to the Government — Adjutant-General of Illinois — Appointed Colonel of twenty-first Illinois volunteers — The march to Quincy — Guarding railroads — Acting Briga- dier-General — Commissioned Brigadier-General— Heads off Jeff. Thompson — Mrs. Selvidge's pies — Grant's post at Cairo — He seizes Smithland and Paducah — Another chase of Jeff. Thompson — The battle of Belmont — Fort Henry captured — The siege of Fort Donelson — Overtures for surrender — " I propose to move immediately upon your works " — The surren- der — A-scent of the Tennessee — The camps at Shiloh — Carelessness of the troops — A sur- prise — The battle of Shiloh — The Union troops driven back toward the river, and sadly cut up — Grant's coolness and composure — The second day's fights— The rebels driven back and compelled to retreat — The siege of Corinth — Gi-ant in command of the Army of the Ten- nessee—Battles of luka, Corinth, and the Hatchie — Grant at Memphis — Movement toward Vicksburg — The disaster at Holly Springs, and its consequences — Grant at Young's Point and Milliken's Bend — Attempts to reach Vicksburg by way of the Yazoo — Canal projects — Running the batteries — The overland march — Crossing the River to Bruinsburg — Tlie march northward to Jackson, the Black river, and to the roar of Vicksburg — Assaults, and siege^ Communication opened above the city — Surrender of Vicksburg — Visits home — Accident at New Orleans — Appointed to the command of the Blilitary Division of the Mississippi — At Chattanooga — Battles of Lookout Mountain and Mission Ridge — Driving Longstreet from Knoxville — President Lincoln's Letter — Grant Lieutenant-General — Preparations for the campaign of 18G4 — Consultation with Sherman — The opening battles of the spring of 1864 — Wilderness, Spottsylvania, the North Anna, etc. — " I propose to fight it out on this line, if it takes all summer " — Battles of Tolopotomy and Cold Harbor — Crossing the James — Peters- burg — The mine — Hatcher's Run — The operations in the Shenandoah Valley — Terrible pounding — The enemy at last worn out — Cutting their communications — Five Forks — Evacuation of Richmond and Petersburg — Lee's surrender — The President's assassination — Grant at Raleigh — The nation's gratitude to Lieutenant-General Grant — His Southern tour — He accompanies Mr. Johnson to the West — Created General, July, 1866 — Secretary of War ad interim, August, 1867 — Resto^^8 the office to Secretary Stanton, Januarj', 1868 — Rage of the President — His nomination for the Presidency in May, 1868 — Note: The Republican platform and General Grant's acceptance — The Presidential campaign — The election — The ix X CONTENTS. Republican majority — He resigns bis commission as General — His inauguration and his new Cabinet — The troubles which followed his selection — Changes In the Cabinet — His reasons for not selecting prominL-nt political leaders as his Cabinet advisers — His course possibly inju- dicious — A review of his administration, and the charges made against it — Some errors com- mitted, but wisdom gained from experience — The complaints of nepotism, favoritism, and intriguing for power greatly exaggerated, and while having some slight basis of fact, were yet untrue in tlie inferences of corrupt motive deduced from them — The successes of his administration— Reduction of national debt — Treaty of Wiishington — Peace with the Indian tribes — A beginning of civil reform — Financial prosperity — President Grant's pei-sonal appearance — His physical and intellectual characteristics — His renomination for the Presi- dency at Philadelphia, June 5th and 6th, 1872— The Platform of the National Republican Convention, Judge Settle's letter to President Grant, and the President's acceptance of tlie nomination 17-68 WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAI^. His birth— Adopted into the family of Hon. Thomas Ewing— Enters West Point^His high rank as a cadet — Services in Florida — At Fort Moultrie — Transferred to California — Promoted to a captaincy — Marries — Resigns — Is a banker — President of Louisiana State Military Academy — His letter of resignation — Intense loyalty — Visits Washington— Incredulity of the Govern- ment — Colonel of l.'ith Infantry — In battle of Bull Run — Desperate ligliting — Brigadier- General — In command of Department of the Ohio — Excludes the reporters from his head- quarters — Indignation of the " gad-flies " of the press — " Two hundred thousand men wanted " — Ad interim Thomas pronojinccs him crazy — Sherman asks to be relieved — Is shelved at Jefferson Barracks — Halleck assigns liini to a division — The hero of tlie buttle of Shiloh — The attiick on Chickasaw Bluff — Superseded by BIcClemand — Restored to command by Grant — The Sunflower river expedition — Demonstration on Haines' Bluff — The rapid marches and hard figliting in approaching Vicksburg from below — His capture of Walnut Hills, and assaults on Vicksburg — Pursuit of Johnston — In» command of the army of the Tcnnessp". and en mute to Chattanooga — The demonstration on Fort Buckner — Pursuit of Longstrcet and rsisinjg the siege of Knoxville — The Meridian expedition— What it accom- plished — Commander of the Grand Military Division of the Mississippi — Number of his troops — His communications— The movement toward Atlanta, Dalton, Rcsaca, Kingston, Allatoona Pass, Dallas, Kenesaw Mountain — Crossing the Chattahoochie — Rousseau's raid— The battle before Atlanta — Death of McPherson — Siege of the city — Its capture by strata- gem — Thomas sent northward — Sherman marches to the sea — Capture of Fort McAllister and Savannah — "A Christmas gift" — Sherman's march through the Carolinas — Columbia and Charleston captured — Entrance into North Carolina — Results thus far— Battles of Averysboro and Bentonville — Goldsboro occupied — Rest — Sherman goes to City Point — For- ward again — Rvleigh — Overtures for surrender by Johnston — Sherman's propositions — Their rejection by the Cabinet — Grant sent to Raleigh — Surrender of Johnston — In command of the Military Division of the Mississippi — Lieutenant-General, U. S. A., and LL.D. — Suc- ceeds General Grant, as General of the U. S. A. in March 18G9, and makes his head- quartere at Washington, occasionally visiting the various divisions and departments — His visit to Europe, 1871-72 — His personal appearance, manners, and habits — Analysis of his character as a military commander — His possible deficiency as a civil commander — His dili- gence as a military student — Attachment of his soldiere to him 69-9T 'admiral dayid d. porter. His father a naval hero — Sketch of Commodore David Porter — Birth of the future Vice-Admiral— He accompanies his father in chase of the pirates when a child — Enters the navy in 1829 — Midshipman — In coast survey — Slow promotion — In Mexican war — On the Crescent City — " He would go in" — Promoted to be commander— In blockading squadron— In charge of mortar fleet — On the James river — In charge of the Mississippi squadron as Acting Rear- Admiral — Captures Fort Henderson — The Yazoo and Sunflower expeditions — Running the batteries — Fight at Grand Gulf — Shelling Vicksburg — The Red river expedition — Gathering cotton— Jumping the rapids — Colonel Bailey's wing dams— Sharp fighting— Recalled to the CONTENTS. XI Atlantic Coast — Tlie two attacks on Fort Fisher — Its capture — Capture of Wilmington — Cor- respondence with General Butler — Superintendent of the Naval Academy — Relonus — Con- tinues in the Superintendency of the Naval Acadomy until the beginning of Grant's admin- istration, when he resigned, and for about three months was Secretiiry of the Navy, de J'acln — He continues at Washington as Acting Admiral during Admiral Farragut's European tour, and after Admiral Farragut's death was temporarily appointed Admiral by the Presi- dent — The letter to Secretary Welles, and its treacherous publication — Admiral Porter's unwise management in regard to it — His nomination to the Senate as Admiral — He is confirmed — His personal appearance — His fine intellectual culture — His extraordinary physical cour- age 98-112 lieutenant-ge:^eiial philip h. sheridan. His birth and birth-place — His adventures with the Irish schoolmaster McNanly — His ajipoint- nient to West Point — Gets sent down one class for thrashing a fellow cadet — His gradua- tion — Ser\-es on the Texas frontier — In California and Oregon — Keeps the Indians in order — His readiness for the war — Audits claims— Quartermaster for General Curtis — Sent to buy horses — On Halleck's staff — Colonel of cavalry — Commands a cavalry brigade — Made Briga- dier-General — Commands the third division in the Army of the Ohio — Fortifies Louisville — C#mmands his division at Perryville, and saves the day — His gallant conduct at Stone Kiver — He turns the tide of battle — Made Major-General — Sheridan at Cliickamauga — Cut off by the enemy, but find? his way back — Sheridan in the ascent of Mission liidge — His gal- lant leadership — " How are you ? " — He mounts a captured gun — Transferred by General Grant's request to the charge of the cavalry corps in the Army of the Potomac — He reor- ganizes it — Fights seventy-six battles in less than a year — Ills report — His raid toward lUchmond — Appointed commander of the Dei)artment of the Shenandoah — The battle of Opequon creek — Early " sent whirling " — Made Brigadier-General in regular army — The battle of Middletown plains — A defeat and a victory — " We are going to get a twist on them!" — The reinforcement of the Union army, "one man, Shebipan !" — "The ablest of generals " — The great raid to the upper waters of the James — Marching past Richmond — Dinwiddle Court-House — Five Forks — Removal of General Warren — Following up the enemy — Ordered to Texas — Commander of the Fifth District — Troubles — The riot and mas- sacre — Border difficulties — Sheridan's decisive action — President Johnson removes him — His visit North, and the ovations he received — His management of Indian affairs — Promoted to be Lieutenaxt-Gexeral U. S. A, March 5th, 1869. Assigned to the command of the Military Division of the Missouri — Spends several months in Europe during the Franco-Ger- man war — His return, and his invaluable service at Chicago after the great fire — Acting General-in-chief of the U. S. A. during General Sherman's absence in Europe — His personal appearance and personal magnetism 113-142 MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE GORDON MEADE. Born in Spain — His family— His education at West Point — His engineering services — In the Mexican war— Survey of the northern lakes— In command of one brigade of the Pennsyl- vania Resers-e Corps — Army promotions — Battle of Mechanicsville— Wounded in the Seven Days— Division commander— Commands a corps at Antietam — At Fredericksburg— Succeeds to command of fifth army coqis- Major-General of volunteers — Battle of Chancellorsville — The march into Pennsylvania— General Meade succeeds General Hooker— His general order on assuming command— Battle of Gettysburg — The pursuit of Lee — Lee's attempt to Bevcr his communications— General Sleade's action of Mine Run — He commands the Army of the Potomac through the campaign of 1804-5— Made Brigadier and Major-General in regular army— In command of Military Division of the Atlantic— Suppression of Fenian invasion of Canada — Transferred to the Military Division of the South — His services there — Transferred in March, 18Cn, to the command of the Military Division of the Atlantic, which was subse- quently enlarged — General Meade's personal, intellectual and military characteristics — His modesty— An English writer's description of him 143-151 MAJOR-GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK. Bom in Pennsylvania— His family— His early education— A cadet at West Point— His rank on graduation— Commissioned in the infantry— On the frontier— In the Mexican war— His gal- sli contents. lAntrj- — Is l>n'vottetJ and mentioutHl in the official reports — His sorvioes acknowledged by the rennsyh-auia Lvsislatun' — 8tatiout^l at l*rairie Ju Chien, ami at St. Li.>uis — Marrietl iu l^^O to a laily of St. Louis — Attains start' rank of aiptaiu in IsTio^lu ISoO, at St. Augustiuo, luid eubsequfutly in Vtah and California, whoro Uo ser\evl till the couiiuducfuionl of the war — Visits Wsiihiugton — .\pi»,>inttHl Brigiadior-ileuonU on General Mci'lellan's n>1 — His i>art iu the siege of \"orktown — The l>attle of Williiunsburg — His Iwyonet charge — His Jesiwrate fighting at Gaines Mills, and during the St'ven Paj-s — Coiumissioned Major-GenenU of volunteers, luid June 27th, hrvvetted Colonel U. S. A. — Conimamls a Divi- sion at .Kutietaiu — In the kittle of yredericksburg — Conspicuous for his hravery — Ilis gal- lant cvniduct and svn-vess at Chancellorsville — Assigueii to the cv>mutand of the Stxvnd Army Corjw — His admirable c\.>mluct at Gettysburg — Severely wounded — His gradu;U revvvery — Honors liestoweil on hiin at Xomstown, West Pvdut, New Tiu-k. and St. Louis — Or\lort>d to Washington, Pecemlfr. ISiB — Ktiises ,V\000 men for his army cv^r^s — His g-.Ul.iut fighting and magnilicent charge iu the Wilderness, and at Sivttsylvania — Made Brigaiiier-General ia V. S. A., August lith, 1^04. Further honors — Pisubleti by the luvakiug out afresh of his wound — .\iilsiu organiiing the veteran cv>riis — Commamis in West Virginia, the Army of the Shenaiidi\di, etc., till July ISth, ISiJo— Transferred to Detwrtment of the Missouri, lS«ks and commands an exi>eilition agaiust the Indians in IS^T — Brevetled Major-<5eneral V. S. A., March, l!?ivj«, and commissioneti Major-General, July itvth, 1S6«>— Transferrwl by Pn?sident Johnson to o-numsuid of Fifth Military District ^Louisiana and Texas^ in August, IStTT — Revokes Genenil Sheridan's v>rderss and issues a sixx-ial or\ler — .VW : Qut>stionablene«s of Gi>nei-al llaucvvk's action at that time — GenersU tirant revokes his orxlers — He asks to l»e r«>- lieved — Is wade cv>mmatHler of the new dei>artment of Washington — Assigneil in March, IStS), to cvnumand of Milit.iry Peixirtment of Pakota — l"uv>leasant state of feeling between him and President Grant— General Hancock's personal ai^peaiauce — His personal mag- netism - - _ _- 152-lfii MAJOK-GEXERAL JOHN McALLISTER SCHOFIELD. His bitth and v»arentage — Removed to Illinois— .\ cadet at West Pinut— Gradviati^s iu ISvV? seventh in his class — Enters the ,-u-tiUery — Two years at Southern torts — Five years at West IViut as instnictor in Xatural PhiU^si'phy — rrv>fe«sor in Washington Vniversity, St. Uniis, Mo„ in ISeiv—Afler c\>u»mencx>uient of the war. Msyor First Mita^nm iufantrj- — .\ssistaui Ailjutant- Geneial to General Lyon — Brigadier-General of volunteers, Nov. 21st, 1S61 — Cv'mmands Mis- souri militia, and in June, ISfcJ, the >Ulitary District of Missiniri— Deft>ats the rel>els at Fea Ridge — In Nov., lSt!2, arjx>int«M by President Uncoln, Miyor-General of wdunteors, and not l>eing ivnfimusl, was n-«n>ivinteil in .\pril, 1S63 — .\ller a mouth's service in the Army of the l^imberland ap{x>intepailmeut and .\rmy of the Ohio iXwenty-thinl .\rmy Cori^V— Fought tlin.>ngh the Atlanta i-aniivtigu— *ent l«ck to Nashville in Nov., IStH, with General Thomas, to Kvk after HixkI— amtiuued skirmishing fh'n> Not. 14th to Not. S»Hh— Action at Ptilaski ; battle at tVdumbia : severt> and harvl fought Ivittle at Franklin, Tennwse : Si-hofield in command in all — Siege and l>attle of Nashville — SchotieUrs gallant cv>ndnct— Pursuit i>f H>.kh1— is.hofield and his ivrps tran-iferre^l to N^rth 0»rvdina — aipt\ir»> of Wilmington, etc. — Command of DeiiHrtment of North Cs«roHiu-i — Brigadierth. IStvi — t\imn>i^oned M.\jor-General in lpe, ft\>m June ISftS, to .\ngust. IStk^— Ok.>inmander Pejiartment of the Potomac. lS«>t">-t!7. and of >^i-st Military District fn^m March, IS«?T. ^^ .\pril. ISt>S— ^?e^-r>^ tary of Wt«r April £V1, ISti*. to Mareh llth.lStSsi — Commander of Military Det^artment iif the Missonri, 186;»-T0, and on the iltNtth of General Thom,'»s, transferred to the cvmimand of the BliUtary Division of the Pacific ~ -...I^-ICT BRIGADTEE-GEXERAL OLIVER OTIS HOTTARD. His birth and olucation — .V gradu.ite of Bv^wxloin c\dleg\' — Fnters West Point — Graduates fourth in his class — His service N>fore the war — .Assistant prv^fessa'r at Wk>st Point— -«.\doneI of Tvdunteers from Maine — Leads a brigade at Bull Kun— Brigadier-General of Tulunteew. Sep- CONTENTS. XIU tcintH-r, IStU — LiKisos his arm at Fiiir thiks — At soconil Kittle of Cull Run — At Anfiotani and Fivilorii'k>l>urg — M«jor-liiMii>ral of voluutoors, and Ciunmanilcr of the I'lowiith oori>s — Tlio Uittlo of I'hanoelloi'svillo — Panic in oU-vonth corns — Uottysburg — Gallant behavior of Genenil Howarxl — Uowiuil at rhattaniHtgsi — The ossnnlt on Fort IJuckner — The niart-h to Athuita — Succeeds to the command of the Army of the Tennessee — Ili.s bravery — Leads tho right wing of SheniKin's army in the march to the sea, and thnmgh the Oarolinas — Anec- dote of Shernuin and Howard, wle — Slade Brig-adior and brevet Majiu-General in the n>gul;vr Army — Ainxniited Oouiniissioner of the Froednuin's Buivau — Pix^sident .Iolin>oirs opixisition to this bureau — Ho desires to remove General Howarvl fivm the commissionoi-shii), but is lireventeii by the Tenure of Ollice law — The difficulties in the administnitiou of the affaii-s of the bnrv-au caused by the Tresident's opposition — His management of the Freedman's Bureau — F.uinds the lL>w:u\i l"iiivei-sity — Is apiK>inted to the [Vicification of the predatory tribes of the Svuahwest — Literary honoi-s coufcrrini on Geuerai Howard 168-178 SALMOX PORTLAND CHASE. Birth and ancestry — His father's cliaracter and career — >Ir. Chase's early education — Bishop Chase's invitation — His stay at Cleveland — Tho ferry Uiy — His life at Worthing— Keraovea with his uncle to Cincinnati — The bishop goes to England, and his nephew returns to Now Hamiishire — Tenches, and enters Partmouth college — His standing there — The revocation of the fiiculty's sentence on his fellow student — .\t Washington — Teaching — Studies law under Williiuu Wirt — Commences practice in Cincinnati — Partnership — Defends J. G. Birney — Other anti-slavery cases — " \ promising young man who has just ruined himself" — Defends Biniey agjiin, and Van Zandt — " Once free, always free " — Aids ii»organizing a Liberty jKirty — The tliirxl clause of the Constitution of the I'nited States— No mental reservations — Address to Daniel O'Connell — The S. and W. Liberty Convention— The Van Zandt and Dieskell vs. r;iri,rs — The skill and success of his financial measures — His early lo.-uis — The tive-twenties — The National kinking Act — The seven-thirties and ten- forties — Brief expi.>sition of his jv>licy — His resignation — His apix>iiitment as Chief Justice — Tour at the South — Characteristii-s of Chief Justice Cliase's mind — He presides over the im- IHMchment trial — His persiinal appearance — A {Hissible candidate for the Presidency in lSf>S auJ iu ISTi — His letter on the subject — His character as a statesman 179-200 WILLIAM HEXRY SEWARD. Birth and education — Sttidios law with John Anthon and others— Kemoves to Anbum— Mar- riage — Partnership — Presides over Adams' Young Men's Convention — An anti-mason — Elected to the State Senate — His career then- — Goes to F.un>|H> — Elected and re-elected Governor — Measures of his administration — Controversy with Cmveniors of Georgia and Vir- ginia — Resumes the practice of law — The Freeman case — The Van Zandt case — The Michi- gan Conspiracy cases— Politii-al and literary addresses— Electeil U. S. Senator — " The higher law "—He is abused by pr^>-slavery mi-n — The subjects he discussed — His literary lal>ors — Argument in the McCormick Reajier case — Re-election to the Senate — His great lalnirs in the Senate — " The Irrepressible Conflict" — The Presidential nomination in isr.0 — Mr. Seward a csindidate — He Oinvasses for ^Ir. Lincoln — Entertains the Prince of Wales — Is ap|Hnnted Secn'tary of St,ite — The imivirtant questions he ha — Mason and SlidiU — Some dissatisfaction felt with some of his measures — Tenders his resignation to Mr. Lincoln — It is not accepted — "Sixty or ninety days" — The accident to Mr. Seward — .\ttempt to assassinate him — his rean-ery — Regrets — Mr. SewanVs recent cciurse — His pnirhaSes of territory — His liws of reputation by his support of Mr. Johnson's schemes — rndertaki-s a jouniey niund the world — Lessons from his public life — His personal appearance 201-216 SCHUYLER COLFAX. His hirth and early lif.-" — Removal to the West — Clerk in a country store — Depnty county audi- tor — Studies law — The debating society and mock legislature — Owns and edits the St. Xiv CONTENTS. Joseph Valley Register — Not a printer by trade — Ability with which the paper was con- ducted — Mr. Wllkeson's account of Mr. Colfax at this time — Mr. Colfa.x's remarks — A dele- gate to, and secretary of the Whig National Convention in 1S48 — Member of the Indiana Constitutional Convention — Opposes the Black laws — A candidate for Congress in 1851, but defeated — Delegate and Secretary of the National Whig Convention in 185'2 — Elected to Con- gress in 1854 — His maiden speech — Half a million copies circulated — Canvasses for Colonel Fremont as President — Successive re-elections to Congress — Speaker of the House for three successive sessions — His remarkable ability as a presiding officer — His interest in the Pacific railroad — Overland journey to California — " Across the continent " — His canvass for Mr. Lincoln — Cordial and intimate relations with him — Personal Appearance — Manner as a speaker — P;issage from one of his speeches — Religious character — Elected Vice-President in 18G8— His ability as President of the Senate 217-229 HANNIBAL HAMLIN. " We raise men " — Mr. Hamlin's family — His birth and ediic;ition — An editor — Studies law — Ad- mitted to the bar — Removes to Hampden, Maine — In the Legislature — In Congress — His defence of New England — Re-election— His laboi-s— Elected to the Senate — His opposition to slavery — Loaves the Democratic party and becomes a Republican — Elected Governor by an immense majority — Re-elected to tlie Senate — Replies to Senator Hammond's " Mudsill" speech — Nominated and elected Vice-President — The confidence he inspired — His judicious course — The folly which prevented his re-nomination — Appointed Collector of Boston — His resignation and its cause — His letter to Mr. Johnson — Subsequent career — Elected for the fourth time to the United States Senate — Personal appearance — Character 230-239 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WADE. Birth and early life — Goes to Ohio on foot — Cutting wood — School teaching — Driving cattle — Work on the Erie canal — Teaching again — Studios law — His first case — His unremitting study — His success — Prosecuting attorney for Aslit;ibula — Elected to the State Senate — His work there — His anti-slavery views give offence — Returns to the practice of his profession — Canvasses Oliio for General Harrison — His marriage — Again elected to the State Senate — Procures the incori)oi-ation of Oberlin College — Makes an able report against the refusal of the right of petition by Congress — Defends J. Q. Adams — Declines renomination to the Senate — Resumes practice — Elected in 1847 President Judge of third Judicial District of Ohio — His ability as a judge — Chosen U. S. Senator in 1851 — Takes the Stump for General Scott — Aliandoiis the Whig party in 1854, and avows himself a " Black Republican " — His speech — Incidents of the Kansas-Nebraska debate — The Southern fire-eater — "A foul- mouthed old blackguard " — "Gag" Atherton and Mr. Wade — Some men bom slaves—" The dwai-fish medium " — " Selling his old mammy " — Senator Douglas's " Code of Morals " — Lane of Kansas — " Well, what are yon going to do about it?" — Wade not to bo crushed — "Good- by. Senator " — " The Liberator, one of our best family papers "^Toombs's tribute to Senator Wade's honesty and integrity — His avowal of his radicalism — The assault on Senator Sumner — Senator Wade's fearlessness— His action duinng the war — Re-elected to the Senate — President of the Senate, and Vice-President of the United States— Appointed chair- man of a commission to visit Santo Domingo — His personal appearance — His keen eye — An excellent presiding officer — The measures he has initiated and advocated — His only disagree- ment with President Lincoln 240-2G2 HAMILTON FISH. Birth and education — Embraces the profession of the law — Success as a lawyer — Early interest in politics — Becomes a member of the State Assembly of New York — Fills various public offices — Elected Governor of the State — Conduct as Governor — Becomes a niember of the United States Senate — Travels in Europe — Appointed on a commission to relieve the Union prisoners in the Southern prisons — Revisits Europe — Nominated Secrefciry of State by Presi- dent Grant — His administration of the duties belonging to this office — His conduct regarding the Alabama Claims, and especially indirect damages — Character aa a diplomatist and states- man 263-268 CONTENTS. XV GEORGE S. BOUTWELL. Birth, lineage, and education— In a country store— The old library— Self-culture— His earnestness as a student— He studies law— A public lecturer— A political speaker— A member of the Massachusetts Legislature for seven years out of nine — Other offices held by Mr. Boutwell— A candidate for Congress— Nominated for Governor, and elected in 1851 and 1852- In the Constitutional Convention of 185a— For ten years a member of the board of education, and for five years its secretary— Literary and scientific honors — His anti-slavery views — A con- sistent advocate of the rights of man — Organizes the new Department of Internal Revenue, and acts as commissioner in 18G1-62— Member of Thirty-eighth, Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congresses — A manager in the impeachment— Nominated by President Grant as Secretary of the Treasury in 1869 — His financial management- His habits of mind — Effectiveness as a speaker 2G9-275 GEORGE MAXWELL ROBESON. Birth and education— Early eminence as a lawyer — Appointed Prosecutor of the Pleas of Cam- den county, in 1855 — Becomes Attorney-General of New Jersey — Member of the Sanitary Com- mission — Appointed Brigadier-General of volunteers — Nominated as Secretary of the Navy in 1869 — His administration of the department — Temper and disposition 276-278 GEORGE H. WILLIAMS. Birth and education — Admitted to the bar in 1844 — Moves to the " Great West," and settles in Iowa — Elected Judge of the First Judicial District of that State — Appointed bj- President Pierce, in 1853, Chief Justice of the Territory of Oregon — Member of the United States Senate in 1865— Serves on many important committees in Congress — His great legal attain- ments—Appointed Attorney-General of the United States in 1872 — Qualifications for the office 279-280 JACOB DOLSON COX. General character of Mr. Cox — His birth, descent and education — Becomes a lawyer — Attain- ments in literature, history, philosophy and military and political science — .Appointed Briga- dier-General of volunteers in ISGl — His campaign in Western Virginia under McClellan and Eosecrans — Commands tlie District of Ohio under General Burnside — The Atlanta campaign — In the battles of Franklin and Nashville — .Appointed Major-Genenil in 1804 — His exploits on the .\tlantie coa-st — Elected Governor of Ohio, and resigns his milifciry oflice — Returns to his practice of the law— Nominated by President Grant as Secretory of the Interior — Resigns his office in 1870 — A member of the Liberal Republican Convention at Cincinnati in 1872 281-286 SIMON CAMERON. Birth and early life — Becomes editor of the remisylrania Iiildlipenrrrfd Doylestown, Pa. — Presi- dent of the Midilletown Bank — Elected United States Senator for Pennsylvania — His political career — Nominated Uy President Linculn in 1861 as Secretary of War — Difficulties connected with the office — Resigns from ill-health in 1S62 — In 1871 appointed chairman of the Com- mitt«e on Foreign Affairs — His great experience and influence in political matters — Business successes 287-290 CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. His lineage — Birth — Early residence abroad — Fights the English boys for the honor of America — Enters Harvard College — Graduates with high honors -Studies law with Daniel Webster — His marriage — Literary labors — In the Stxte Senate — Contributes to the reviews, etc. — Opposes the admission of Texas as a slave State — Edits the Bn^tim Wln'g — Nominatnd by the Free- Soilers for Vice-Presidency — His " Life and Works of .Tohn Adams" — Elected to Oongrfss in 1858, 1800, and 1861 — His course there — Appointed Jlinister to England by Mr. Lincoln — His XVl CONTENTS. extraordinary ability as a diplonialist — Complicated state of affairs in England — His great eenicos to his cxiuntrj- — Keturus to America, and retires into private life — Appiniited in ISTl the American Commissioner to Geneva, in connection with the Treaty of Washington — Two Letters by Mr. Adauis on political subjects — Personal appearance _ .....291-301 REVERDY JOHNSOX. Birth and lineage — He studies law — Keports the decisions of the Court of Appeals — Appointed Deputy Attomey-Oener.U of MaryUind — Removes to Baltimore — Civil app^lintments — Elected State Senator — Serves for four years — Resigns to devote himself to hi< extensive practice — Senator in Congress lS4o— la — A,ttomey4ieneral United States. lS4J>-50 — Retires from office — His reputation as a jurist — Delegate to Peace Conferi>nce, 1S61 — C S. Senatt>r, 1S63-69 — His course during the rebellion — His devotion to the Constitution — On the committee on recon- struction — His anniments in the Senate — Ap}K>inted by President Johnson, in ISGS, minister to tlie Court of St. James — Negotiates a treaty with the British Government regarding the Alabama Claims, etc., which was afterwarvls rejectetl by the Senate — Returns to the United States in 18C9, and devotes himself to his profession — His continued vigor of mind and body - 302-304 CALEB CUSIIIXG. Birth, parentage, and education — Admitted to the bar in 1S25 — Elected a Representative to the State Legislature of JIassachusetts — His literary productions — Makes a tour in Europe — Pub- lic addresses — Elected to Congress as Representative of his State — His literary essa>-s and ora- tions — Ability as a public orator — Parli;unent.iry accomplishments — Appointed United States Commissioner to Cliina — Negotiates a tre:ity there — Returns home, and in 1S46 is ag;un chosen to represent Xewbur>TXirt in the State Legislature — Colonel of the JLissachusetts regiment — BrigatUer-General of volunteers in 1S4T — flavor of Newburyport — His great interest in lite- rary and educational matters — Literary honors — N'ominated by President Pierce, United States Attorney-GenenU — Confidential agent of the E.xocutive at the Siitbreak of the late Mar — In 1SG6, app«.unted one of the jurists to codify the laws of the United States — One of the counsel l>efore the Commissioners at Geneva — His general character 305-311 JOnX ADAMS DIX. Birth and lineage — Early edui-ation — Enters St. Mary's College, Baltimore — His proficiency in classics and matliematics — Offered and accepts an Ensign's n\nk in the army — His promo- tions — His father's death — Captain in the Third. Artillery — Visits CuUi — His marriage — Ad- mission to the kir — In politiciU life — Adjutant-General of Xew York — S<>cretarj- of State — In the Legislature — Tour of Euroi>e — U. S. Senator — Xominoe of Free-S<>ilers for Governor — Assistant U. S. Tre.isurcrat Xew York — Postmaster of Xew York City, ISoO to ISCl — Secre- tary of the Treiisurj-, January to March, ISOl — " If any man attempts to haul down the Ameriam flag, sln;>ot him on the six>t ! " — Presides over Union me<.>ting in Union P;irk — .Ap- pointed M;y".'r-General in regular army, June 16th. ISCl — In command of District of Marj-- land — Transferred to Eastern Virginia — Commands Department of the E.ist — Trial and exe- cution of Be;Ul and Kenninly — Presides at the Philadelphia Convention — Xominateil by President Johnson, Naval Officer of the Port of New Y'ork, and the ssime day U. S. Minister to France — Chooses the latter — Is confirmed, and enters upon his duties in J.uiuarv-, 1S67 — Returns home in 1S69, and retires into pri^"ate life — His published works — His personal appearance..... „.312-31S JOIIX LOTIIROP MOTLEY. Designation of an author, sbitesman, or diplomatist to his life work sometimes most unac- countably delayed — Mr. Motley's birth and parentage — Education — Visits Europe — Re- turns to .Vmerica, and studies law — Writes a novel — Sent to Russia in lS4tl as Secretary of Legation — .\fler his rettim writes several rt>view articles — In ISol gix-s to Eurojv, and sjx'nds five years in diligent study in Berlin, Dresden and the Hague— Learus the Dutch languagv' — CONTENTS. XVU His " Rise of the Piitoh Ri-public " — Greut success of tliis work — Returns to tU? rnitod States in 1S5S — " History of tlie United N'etlierliuuis " — Literary honors — " Causes of the American Ci>il War" — Apiniinted by President Joimson, in lb06, Jlinister Pleniiiotentiary to Austria — Recalled in ISO" — In IS09 nominated by President Gnint, Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James — His diplomatic ability — Recalled in 1870, and remains in Europe pui-su- iug his historical studies — Character as a historian 319-323 GEORGE BANCROFT. Ncft necessary that a gimd historian should devote himself to his work alone — Many instances to the contrary — Mr. B;mcn.>ft's birth and parent;ige — E;irly education — Entei's Harvaril Col- lege in lSi;i — Goes to Germany, and spends two years in cU>se study at Gottingen — Makes a tour of Europe in ISJl, and returns to America in 1S22 — Greek tutor in Harvard College — Vith Dr. Cogswell establishes the Round Hill School at Northampton — His great work, '' The History of the United States " — Av>i)ointed, in 1S3S, Collector of the Port of Boston, which situ- ation he resigned in 1S41 — Appointed by President Polk, Secretary of the Jsavy — In 1S4G, sent as Minister Plenivxitentiary to Great Britain — His diplon\atic abilities — Returns to the United States in 1S49, and in l!>o2 publishes the fourth and fifth volumes of his history — Other Tolumes issued in lSo4, '58, '63, and '66 — His jwlitical views — Minister to Prussia in 1S67 — Negotiates a treaty with the North German Confederation — Literary honois — Varied character of luslife 3-2-1-330 ELiiiu BEXJA:^^IX 'washburne. x Birth and early apprenticeship — Studies law at llar\ard University — Elected to Congress in 1S53, and to succeeding Congresses till 1871 — " Father of the House " — Chairman of Committee ou Commerce, and of various other im)xirtant committees — Grant and Washburne's first inti- macy, and his suliseijuent vindication of General Grant — .\bility as a speaker — In 18G9 ap- pointed by President Grant, Secretary of State, which he shortly resigned, and accepted tho position of Minister to France — Remains in Paris during the siege of 1S70-1 — His judicious and able management of aflaii-s on the occasion — Great diplomatic ability 331-334 ROBERT CUMMIXG SCHEXCK. Diplomacy, what is it, and who qualified for the work? — United States views on the subject — Her representatives equal to those of any other State or Court — Qualifications of Mr. Schenck as U. S. Representative at the Court of St. James — His birth and ancestry — Educ;>tion — Ad- mitted to the bar in 1828 — Representative in the State Legislature of Ohio, for Dayton, in 1841 — Electeil to Congress in 184;i, and re-electi^d in 184o, '47, and '49 — Api>ointed by Presi- dent Fillmore, Minister to Brazil, in 1S.)1 — His great abilities as Member of Congress, and as Foreign Minister — Ketunis to Ohio in 18.V1, and practises his profession — Suppi>rts Mr. Lin- coln in 1860, :is a csindidate for the Presidency — Appointed Brigadier-General of volunteers — His conduct at Bull Run — Sul>sequent career — Joins the army of Virginia — Severely ■wounded— Commands the Middle Military Dep;\rtment— The " woman difficulty "in Balti- more, and how overcome — Resigns his omimission in 186:5, and takes his seat in Congress — Made House Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs— ReM?lected to the Thirty -eighth, Thirty-ninth, Fortieth and Forty-first Congresses, and liecime leader of the House — His general character— .\pixiintcil by President Grant, .\mKissador to Great Britain in 1871 — His diplomatic ability there, esi>ecially regjirding the Alal«nia Claims — Literary accomplish- ments—Personal appearance, and intensify of his feelings 335-341 ANDREW GREGG CURTIX. Birth and edacation — Ancestry — Studies law — Admitted to the bar — Takes an interest in poli- tics — Canvasses for General Harristm, for Henry Clay, for Genpral Taylor, and General Scvtt — On the electoral ticket in l!*4S and ls.''2 — Peclint-s nomination for Governor — State SecretHry — Lal>ors :n behalf of education — Devotes himself to the practice of law — .K le.iding railroad man — Nominated and elected Governor in isr.0 — His incessant laUirs in raising troops, organizing a reser^-e corj^, and prot.>cting Penn«yl\-ania during the war — Invj\sions of Pennsylvania — Re-elected in 1863 — Actively engaged in business since hLs retirement from XVni CONTENTS. office— His iwlitical serrices— Pressed by Iiis friends for Vice-Presidency, but withdraws his name— In ISO'J, appointed United StiUes Minister to the Kussian Court— Tlie C'atacazy ditti- culty amicably settled by the able management of Mr. Curtin ^42-343 DAVID DAVIS. Insight of President Lincoln in selecting men for high official jiositions — Ability of the members of tlie Supreme Court of the United States — Birth and lineage of Mr. Davis — Education Admitted to the bar in 1835 — Early intimacy between Davis and Lincoln — Davis is appointed Judge of the Eighth Judicial Circuit, in Illinois, in 1S48 — Appointed by President Lincoln as member of the Supreme Court of the United States — His ability on the bench His opin- ion regarding martial law — Garland vs. Cuniming!: — Bretman vs. lilioda — The Vezif Bank case — Appointed administrator of the estate of President Lincoln — His shrewd foresight re- garding the purchiUie of land in and around Chicago 346-351 CHARLES SUMNER. Birth — Ancestry — Education — Eminence as a scholar — Studies law — His great attainments in the literature of the law — Edits the "American Jurist " — Reporter to the Circuit Court — Sumner's Reports — Lecturer in the law school, and editor of law treatises — Visits Europe — His cordial reception there — Incidents — Return to America — Devotes himself to law studies, and to lecturing on law^Oration on " The Tnie Grandeur of Nations " — Offered a place as Judge Storj's successor in the Law School — Determines to enter political life as an Aboli- tionist — His public addresses on slavery — Associates himself with the Free-Soil party — Elected United States Senator in 1851 — His avowed position — His great speeches on slavery — The Kansas-Nebraska bill — " The worst and best bill at the same time " — Anti-slaverj' speeches out of Congress — His eloquence — His speech on " The crime against Kansas " — The murder- ous assault of Brooks and his a-ssociates upon Mr. Sumner — The effect upon the nation — The distressing result of the injuries inflicted upon Mr. Sumner — His recovery, and return to his pbice in the Senate — His oration on " The Barbarism of Slavery" — His opposition to all compromise — In 18G1 made Chairnutn of the Committee on Foreign Relations — In 1871 removed from this to be Chairman on Privileges and Elections — Reviews President Grant's Administration — Mr. Sumner's general character — Personal appearance, culture, and com- prehensiveness of his views as a statesman 352-366 HENRY WILSON. Birth — Early struggles with poverty — His thirst for know ledge — His reply to Senator Ham- mond — He enters a shoe shop to learn the ti-ade — Attempts to obtain a collegiate education — He is foiled by fraud — In the academy — Visit to Washington — Discussion — Returns to Natick and shoemaking — Entere political life— Elected to the Legislature — State Senator — Petitions against admission of Texas as a slave State — Speech in opposition to farther extension and longer existence of slavery in America — Becomes a Free-Soiler in 1848— Edits the Bnston Ki'pubU-an — Again in the Legislature — State Senator — Originates the coalition — Candidate for Congress, and for Governor— Elected United States Senator in 1855, as successor to Edward Everett— Horror of the old line AVhigs— Mr. Wilson's qualifications for the position— He is twice re-elected— His hostility to slavery— His defiance of the Southern leaders— The attack on Mr. Sumner "brutal, murderous, and cowardly "—Brooks's challenge— Wilson's reply- Brooks silenced— Wilson's courage— Chairman of Military Affairs— His incessant labors in that committee and in the Senate— Incidents of the early days of the war— General Scott's appreciation of his services— His military service— Raises two regiments— Volunteer aid on General MrClellan's staff— The General's regret at his resignation— :Military measures origi- nated by him— Mr. Cameron's opinion— His intercourse with Secretary Stanton— Mr. Wil- son's constant exertions in behalf of the armv— Other measures advocated by him— Anti- slavery legislation— The Freedmen's Bureau Bill— His zeal for the oppressed— His character —A candidate for the Vice-Presidency in ISfiS— Again elected to the Senate in 1871— Nomi- nated to the Vien.Prosidency at the National Republican Convention held at Philadelphia, June 5th and Gth, 1872 307-386 CONTENTS. XIX LYMAN TRUMBULL. Birth and parentage — His education — Removal to Georgia — Admission to the bar — Removal to Illinois and settlement in Chicago — Election to the State Legislature — Becomes Secretary of St;ite^Justice of the Supreme Court of Illinois — Representative in Congress — Election to the U. S. Senate — Twice re-elected — His opposition to secession — Advocacy of conciliation — Chairman of the Judiciary Committee — He moves an amendment to the Confiscation Bill — Advocates and defends the Emancipation Proclamation — Sustains the act susjjending the habeas corpus — Defends the first Frcedman's Bureau Bill, attaching an amendment provid- ing for permanent confiscation of rebel property — Aided in drawing up the second and third Freedmen's Bureau Bills — Presented the Civil Bights Bill — His course in regard to the im- peachment of President Johnson — Supports General Grant's election in 1868 — Character and judicial attainments 387-391 JOHN SHEEMAN. His ancestry — The family large — John sent to Mount Vernon, Ohio, to school — At fourteen be- gins to earn his own way — Studies civil engineering with Colonel Curtis — Curtis removed from office, and Sherman discharged — Wants to go to college, but cannot accomplish it — Studies law and literature, and works as a law clerk, all at the same time — Admitted to the bar — In partnership with his brother Charles — In political life — Delegate to national con- ventions — Presidential elector — Elected to Congress — His services there — Re-elected three times — Chosen United States Senator, in Mr. Chase's place, in 18G1, and re-elected in 1807^ His labore on the Finance Committee — His bill to fund the public indebtedness — His support of home industry — Action on reconstruction — His new funding bill in the Fortieth Congress — Its provisions — His defence of it — Subsequent modification of his views — His material assis- tance in funding at lower rates of interest the five-twenty bonds — Personal appearance — Eflectiveness as a speaker 392-102 CARL SCHURZ. Bom in Germany — Student of the University of Bonn — Through political complications escapes to the Palatinate — Assists in the defence of Radstadt — Goes to Switzerland in 1849 — In 1850 returns to Germany and releases his friend Kinkel from prison — Escape of the fugitives to Leith — Paris correspondent 6f some German newspapers — Arrives in London in 1851, mar- ries there, and goes to America — Devotes his attention for three years in Philadelphia to political, historical and legal studies — Practises the law at Madison, Wisconsin — His first speech in English — Great abilities as a politician and an orator — Lectures and speeches — In 18U0 delegate to the Republican National Convention — Great services to the Republican cause — Appointed Minister to Spain by President Lincoln — Resigns the situation at the out- break of the civil war, to take part in the military service of his adopted country — Appuiated Brigadier-General of volunteera in 1862 — Major-General in 1803 — Distinguishes himself at the second Bull Run battle — His conduct at Chancellorsville, Gettysburg, and Cliattanooga — Resigns, and returns to Detroit, Michigan — Appointed by President Johnson commissioner to report on the Freedmen's Bureau — In 1865-66 corresjioadeat of tire iVew i'/rk Tribune — In 1866 establishes the Detroit Post, and afterwards at St. Louis the Westliche I'nsI — Delegate to the Republican Convention of May, 1868, at Cliicago — United States Senator in 1869 — Powerful in debate — Instigates the investigation respecting tlie sale of arms to France — Con- tinued interest in Fatherland — Personal appearance. 403-408 Jy MORTON. ^6/ OLIVER PERCY MORTON. Birth and early life — Enters Miami University — Studies law — Marries — Acquires distinction in the legal profession — Nominated for Governor in 1856, but defeated — His energy and tact in the thorough organization of the Republican party — Elected Lieutenant-Governor in 1860, for Indiana — Becomes Governor — Condition of affairs in Indiana at this time — Corrup- tion and fraud — Secessionism — He commits the State to loyalty — His e.xertions to send troops into the field — Sends State agents to care for Indiana soldiers — The condition of Kentucky — Ascertains the plans of the rebels there— 8i»nds aid to the Union men at Louisville and else- wh''re — The Kentucky Unionists adopt him as their Governor — Governor Morton's fidelity to the absent troops — Malicious charges of his enemies — He is triumphantly vindicated — In- XX CONTENTS. flupncc with the Govomment — The "Order of American Knights" — Their hatred of Gover- nor Morton— The "butternut ticket" — The copperheud Legislature— Tlieir insults to the Governor — They refuse to pixss the appropriation bills — Their intention to embiirrass Gover- nor Jtorton— His course— The bureau of finance— Re-nonunated for Govornor— His over- whelming labore at this time — Re-election by a sweeping raajority-^Complete overthrow of the " Sons of Liberty " organization — Zeal for the soldiers — Welcomes them home — Physical exhaustion— Paralysis— He sails for Kurope— His health still feeble — Is elected to the Senate Services there — Speech on reconstruction — Earnest friend and zealous defender of Presi- dent Grant^Lofty patriotism and great integrity of character 409-422 REUBEN E. FENTON. Birth and lineage — Early education— He reads law— Engages in mercantile business, and after a time in the lumber trade — Is successful — Chosen supervisor — Elected Representative in Congress in lS."i2, and again in '50, "58, '00, and '02— Labors in Congress — Opposition to slavery —An active supjiorter of the Government during the war — Elected Governor of New York in 1S04 — Able administration — His opposition to coiTuption — Sympathy with the Boliliers — His vetoes — Address to President Johnson, 1S66 — The political situation in the autumn of 186G — Governor Fenton re-nominated and re-elected by a larger mnjority than at first — Continuation of his policy — The rebel dead at Antietani — The Governor's message of 1868— His fidelity to the people— Elected U. S. Senator iu 18G9 — Politiail views 423-134 WILLIAM ALFRED BUCKIXGHAM. His lineage — His birth and early training — His education — Clerk in New York city, and after- warti in Norwich— In business for himself— Treasurer of Hayward Rubber Company— One of the foundei-s of the Norwich Free Academy — JIayor of Norwich— His benevolence-^ Elected Governor of Connecticut, and seven times re-elected — His prompt and noble action at the commencement of the war — Equips the troops on his own responsibility — Sends his Adjutant-General to W;ishington to cheer the President — Official letters to the President — Congratulation to the President on the issue of the Emancipation Proclamation— The majori- ties by which he was re-elected — Close of his gubernatorial career— In ISCO returns to Nor- wich, and engages in mercantile affairs — Elected United States Senator in 18(59— His con- duct as a Senator 435-441 WILLIAM GANNAWAY BROWNLOW. His birth and ancestry— Early struggles — Learns a trade — Goes to school— Enters the Blethodist ministry — Political experiences in South Carolina — Controversy on slavery — His prediction — His account of his political creed — Establishes the Knoxi-ille Wing in 1837 — Its character — ■ " The Fighting Pai'son " — Discussion with Kev. J. R. Graves — Debate with Rev. Abram Payne — Brownlow for the Union unconditiomiUy — He is persecuted by the secessionists — His paper stopped — His imprisonment for four months — Sent into the Union lines — Makes a tour of the Northern States — "Brownlow's Book " — Residence in Ohio — Returns to Nashville and Knoxville— He re-establishes his paper under the title of The Knnxvilk Wliiij and BeM Ventilator — Elected Governor of Tennessee in 1865, and re-elected in 1867— Elected U. S. Senator for six years, from March, 1869— His account of himself— Intensity of expi-ession, and force of will 442-449 JAMES HARLAN. Birth and early educational advantages— Educated at Ashbury University — Professor of lan- guages in Iowa City College — State Superintendent of Public Instruction— Studies- law and practises it for five yeara — President of Wesleyan University, Mt. Pleasant, Iowa— Elected U. S. Senator — Resigns the presidency of the university, but accepts the professorship of political economy, etc. — His course in the Sei\ate — His severe rebuke of the Democracy — Vote to unseat him on account of irreguladty in his election — Heturns to Iowa, and is imme- diately re-elected, and returns to his seat — Jlember of the Peace Congress of 1801 — An inti- mate friend and adviser of President Lincoln — Review of his Senatorial action— Extract from one of his speeches — Member of Union Congressional Committee in 1864 — .\ppointed Secre- tary of the Interior by President Lincoln — Cannot sympathize with " BIy Policy " — Ke- gigng_Is returned to the Senate in 1SC7— Acts on various important committees there 450-460 CONTENTS. XXI HON. KOSCOE CONKLING. Circumstances of Mr. Ck>nkling's first election to Congress — His birth and lineage — His educa- tion — He studies law — Appointed District Attorney for Oneida county — Mayor of Utica — Klectod to Congress— Thrice re-elected — He detects and convicts some parties of frauds against the Government — The " ring " determine to crusli him — The exciting Congressional canvass of 18C6 — Mr. Conkling elected to the U. S. Senate in January, 18G7 — His intense radicalism — The case of Judge Patterson of Tennessee — Mr. Conkling's speech — His personal appearance and character 461^65 MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN. Birth, and early advantages of educiition — Enlists in the Mexican war — Returns home and studies law — Elected county clerk — Admitted to the bar — Elected Prosecuting Attorney of third judicial district — Sent to the Legislature — Married — Elected to Congress in 1858 and in 1860 — Joins the army as a private at the battle of Bull Run — Colonel Slst Illinois volunteers — In battle of Belmont — At Fort McHenry — Wounded at Fort Donelson — Brigadier-General at Shiloh— In command at Jackson, Tennessee — Major-General of volunteei-s, November 29th, 18t')2 — Takes part in the siege of Vicksburg — Saves the day at Raymond, Mississippi, May 12th, 1853 — Makes the assault, June 25th, on Vicksburg — His column the first to enter the city of Vicksburg after its surrender — He is made its military governor — On furlougli at tlie North in the autumn of 18G3 — Commands the fifteenth army corps from November, 18G3 — Takes part in tlie march to Atlanta and its terrible fighting — "McPhei-son and revenge" — In the Presidential cani|)aign of 186-1 — .loins his corps at S;ivannah, and marches through the Caro- linas — Commander of tlie Army of the Tennessee — Appointed Minister to Slexico, but de- clined — Elected to the Fortieth Congress from the State at large — One of the impeachment managers — Re-elected to the Forty-fii'St and Forty-second Congresses — In 1871 elected a U. S. Senator — Becomes President Grant's eulogist and defender in 1872 406-471 HON. JAMES F. "WILSON. His eminence as a lawyer — Birth and education — Removes to Fairfield, Iowa — A member of the Iowa constitutional convention — Civil appointments — Chosen State Senator — Be-elected^and made President of tlie Senate — Manifests remarkable ability — Elected to Congress, and tlirice re-elected— Appointed Chairman of the Judiciary Committee on the part of the House — Acquits himself with great ability — His speech on granting impartial suffrage in the District of Columbia — One of the impeachment managei-s — Repeatedly offered Cabinet positions and missions in Europe — In 1872 elected to the United States Senate 472-47o BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER. Moral and physical qualities often inherited — General Butler's ancestry — His birth — Enters Waterville college, Maine — Gi-aduates — Studies law — Voyage to Labrador — His indomitable energy, and fondness for work — His interest in politics — A democrat — Delegate to national conventions — A member of the Legislature, and of the constitutional convention — Opposes the Know-Nothing party vehemently — Is elected Brigadier-General by the militia officers, and receives his commission from Governor Gardner — A n)eniber of the State Senate — The measures advocated — A delegate to the Charleston Democratic Convention in 1800 — His con- duct there — Nominates Breckinridge — Unpopular at home — Visits Washington — He returns home, and urges Governor Andrew to prepare for war — Starts for Washington with three regiments, April H)th, 1801 — Landing at Annapolis — The march from Annapiilis to Washing- ton — Laying track all the way — In command of the department of Annapolis — Baltimore in rebel hands — Takes possession (if the city — At Fortress Monroe — Big Bethel — Slaves "con- traband of war" — Expedition to Fort Ilatteras — The New Orleans expedition — Butler com- mands the land forces — Ship Island— Takes possession of New Orleans — His occupation and government of the city — What he accomplished — He is relieved of his command — His ser- vices elsewhere in 1803— The New York riots — In command of the army of the James — The attack on Petersburg — The Dutch Gap Ciinal — Subsequent movements — Expedition against Fort Fisher — General Butler elected to the Fortieth Congress — One of the managers of the impeachment trial — His ability as a lawyor — Satirical jwwer — He squelches Fernando Wood — Supports President Grant's administration — Unpleasantness with some of the leading Re- publicans and Democrats— Runs for Governor of Massachusetts jn 1871, but is defeated — His character 476-194 Xxil CONTENTS. HON. WILLIAM D. KELLEY. Early struggles — Removal to Boston — Contributes to the newspapers of the day — Bemores to Philadelphia — Studies law, and is admitted to the bar — Appiunted Attorney-General of the State — Judge of the Court of Common Pleas — Extracts from an address before the Linnsean Society of Pennsylvania College — Elected to Congress, and three times returned — Counsel fi>r the Govemment in the privateer " Jeff. Davis " case — Speech on impartial suffrage — Other important speeches in Congress and abroad — Visit to the Southern States — Opposition to Mr. Johnson's policy — High character — One instance of his moral courage 495-603 HEXRY LAUREXS DAWES. Born in " The Switzerland of America " — Education — Studies law and edits the Greenfield Gazette — Character— In 1848. '49, and '52 elected to the State Legislature — In ISoO State Senator — Dis- trict Attorney in lSo3 — Member of Congress — Chairman of various impv>rtant committees there 504-506 BEXJAMIN GRATZ BROWX. Birth, ancestry and education — In 1852 a member of the State Legislature — Edits the Missouri Democrai — Advocates the Free Soil pi-inciples — His conduct during the war — In 1863 elected V . S. Senator for Missotiri — Serves on many imjwrtant committees — Governor of Missouri — His able administra.tion — Nominated Vice-President of the United States at the Convention at Cincinnati, in 1872 — His letter on the subject — Personal appearance, and character 507-514 JOHN McAULEY PALMER. Successively cooper, peddler, teacher, and lawyer — Various legal and jiolitical appointments — Colonel of the 14th Illinois volunteers — His gallant exploits during the civil war — Major- Oeneral of volunteers — Joins, in 1865, the Feileral forces in Kentucky — In 1868 and 1870 elected Governor of Illinois — Able administration — Character 515-523 JOHN THOMAS HOFFMAN. studies law — Political career — Practises his profession — In 1S60 elected Recorder of the city of New York — Re-elected in 1863 — Mayor of New York in 1866 — Chairman in 1867 of the Democratic State Convention — Re-elected Mayor— Chosen Governor of the State in 1S68- Able and judicious administration — In 1870 re-elected Governor — Personal appearance, and character 524-533 EDWIN D. MORGAN. Birth of Mr. Morgan — Becomes a partner — Removes to New York — Alderman.— Commissioner of Emigration — Governor in 1858 — Re-elected in 1860 — Great labors during the firet two years of the war — Major-General of volunteers — United States Senator — His course in the Senate — • ffered the position of Secretary of the Treasury, but declines it — Engages in commercial and financial enterprises 534-,^37 JOSEPH RUSSELL HAWLEY. Journalist, soldier, and politician — Studies law — Edits the Hartford Ex^ming Press — His career during the late war — Ability as a soldier — Governor of Connecticut in 1866 — Cliaracter 5oS-542 HORACE GREELEY. Birth— Family history— Hardships in early life — Early choice of a vocation— Boy life in Ver- mont — Teetotalism — Learns the printer's trade — The printing-office at East Poultney, Ver- mont — His extraordinary memory — Works at Sodus, New York, and at Erie, Pennsylvania — Resolves to try his fortunes in New York city — His description of liis entrj- into the metropo- lis—The pocket Testament— Other work— Partnership with 3Ir. Winchester— The j\eio y'jrktr prosperity — Marriage — The crisis of 1837 — Living through it— Mr. Greeley edits also the Jeffersoniau in 1S38, and the Log Cabin in 1840— Starting the Tribim't — His success — Fourierism — The monthly American Laborer — Book publishing — The Evening and jS-mi- Weekly Tribune — Burning of the Tribune office — Mr. Greeley in Congress — Great success of the Tribune — Mr. Greeley's " Hints towards Reform " — Visits England — His services to popu- lar literature there — His course during the war — Mobbing of the office — His "History of the CONTENTS. XXIU American Conflict," and other literary productions — " Wliat I Know About Farming " — His great influence — Gradually withdraws from the Administration — Nominated for the Presi- dency at the Liberal Republican Convention in Cincinnati, May, 1872 — The Democracy generally sanction the nomination — The address and platform of the Cincinnati Convention sent him — Mr. Greeley's reply — Withdraws from the editorship of the Tribune. — Charac- ter 543-574 WILLIAM S. GROESBECK. Studies law in Albany, and practises his profession in Cincinnati — In 1856 Representative in Con- giess — Member of Committee on Foreign Affairs — In 18G8 counsel for President Johnson on his trial — Devotes his time latterly to his profession 575-576 THOMAS A. HENDRICKS. Admitted to the bar in 1843 — Practises his profession in Indianapolis — ^Political career — In 1862 elected U. S. Senator — Great influence in Indiana 577-578 WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. Apprenticeship — Indentured to a printer — Starts two or three papers — His decided anti-slavery views — His articles excite hostility — Lectures on slavery — Issues the first number of the LH'crator in January, 1831 — Organizes the New England Anti-Slavery Society — Visits Eng- land in 1S33 — His cordial reception there — American Anti-Slavery Society formed — .Mr. Gar- rison mobbed — The peace question — World's Anti-Slavery Convention — Mr. Garrison again in Europe in 1840 — His action during the war — Efforts for emancipation — Fort Sumter — At the close of the war withdraws from the American Anti-slavery Society — Visits England in 1867 — A banquet given him by John Bright and others — Other honors — American testimonial of S33,000— His letter to a friend 579-592 WENDELL PHILLIPS. Bemarka'ole scholarship — Avows himself a co-worker with Garrison — The thirty years' contest — His gifts as a public lecturer — His reply to tli^ Attorney-General at Faneuil Hall — Mr. Pliillips at the anniversiries of the American Anti Slavery Society — His power over his audiences — Mr. Delane of the London Times — Reforms advocated by Mr. Phillips — His versatility — In private life „ 593-601 GERRIT SMITH. Studies law — His eloquence — anti-slavery views — Temperance — Hostility to tobacco— Prison re- form — Land reform — Gives away two hundred thous;ind acres of land, mostly in small farms and money with each^Troubles with his colonists — John Brown — Elected to Congress — Re- signs — Temporary insanity— Sustiuns the Government during tlie war — Helps to bail Jeffer- son Davis — Ilis religious views — His published works — In 1872 favors President Grant's re- election _ 602-606 REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER. Popularity — Reasons for it — Versatility of talent — Remarkable industrj' — Cultivated taste — The Beecher family — Birth of Henry Waixl — His youthful training — Desire to go to sea — General Culture — Theological course — Professional career — Publishes lectures to young men — Edits an agricultural paper — Called to Plymouth church, Brooklyn — Peculiarity of his preaching — Growth of his church — Increase of his salary — Outside work — Care of his body and brain — His immense labors — Goes to Europe — Speaks there in behalf of his country — Labors for the soldiers — Edits the Christian Union — In 1872 supfwrts President Grant — His leaning to exces- sive mercy to the South — His earnest patriotism G07-619 MATTHEW SIMPSON D.D., LL.D. Classical and philosophical studies — Graduates M.D. in 1833 — Devotes himself to the ministry — Elected bishop in 18.52 — A hard worker — Intimate friend of President Lincoln — Great eff'orts for his country's welfare 620-623 JAY COOKE. Education — Early employments — Accepts a situation with E. W. Clark A Co. — Becomes a partner at twenty-one — Leading partner in the firm — Retires from the firm in 1858 — Forms a partner- XXIV OOSTBXTS. s^ V "■:>. >r* VT-tV^fr-'T-.-Viw ir, 1>>?1, -r 'or :>.:■ r.— T^? -.vj-u-JC- ;av:'. .: ~;'o ;■.;■-> -.a Ijifi — J(*y C\v>^« J( Ox] V :-:.:-•. .: •.. ■ .4:v,v,-: I*X-':-.— -V»r.--t t" r u.: ior hiUMl«d MUaHa «f Aki-CwiMMIM— Tk* n>i i ■ >,>.>■.■.<, c.-.-or ,.: ::-.: f.-..;f— Ai-.-i — Hk (OLweaiv* WhH»— TW ghMOiqr w M tiafc m trs;— r. . :^ x; ^-..i: <■...-,-.•>« — T>.f -\::.ci: b4H^«^ ^ J fc f I te MiUji^ ti Bt. «« fa* ItWl fayrvi-,'.', ,v.>. -■.:-.•,;.■.: :,r r. •..■■:: fT — tnM «(iU Rsn$— «|i*w» » Mr, vVvx. : :^.. :>..' ■...» ^ vir.^^.ir:.:^*— T%»? **«ts |wt fc«tik— iSsKv-«s>— B»4 of tlM w >* > Ko*— vV^n>t».>et$ <,'4~ a«:i i\vi» Jt CVv stec* di# wr— bi ISn W wMi A i w « hruKk ktoUi i» liMKk* — It$ $TviM j«.-\>i p«T i-««t— ¥%«.-»l a«^^•t of dw Xv«th«ni FtKiSc K»a«MJ Ifr Kkxnlit;'— TV* i«a fcr ku>>-«\' S*w Y^-st.— A t«K-i«^Ki;t5 w bostaiss— Usf Fnacjftee i» k«suM»— &««• fiM>!is^t — iiiv«t wea&.-fT— No s^yv-ubtxk^a— >\«t.ia«» &« v-testcal litaranu* •»< ftr IW •»« ««—<>■»- ABIEL ABBOT LOW. Suir fii^— ]:<«wkMK» i» C^sjk— K«!« v>f A. A. Tj^ k Bl*- — Ht» ba$«~)t«».k>i at*«a-;y — Pr«ai*a; cf N>* T«»»k Owttwr «f CV>«k»««v* — Biis Otcvoi^ eOKSEUUS YAS'PEBBILT. «Kt— !<«■$«$ 1^ >M« Y^rtL «mI J>ltc*k« WMl HitmiiktM l i yyi oW * * »>w Hit . wtMnfc- Tfc» 3 au »w if t tCNKil— Six. VMNkrtttt^ <»<»jj a»4 canwytfat "3h>k«s tlt« hmt if Emivy* *» kfe •«» miiiw» fciy ¥litiWiiiifi' «• i afef w i Atait £»# «if fits* scmmmns t» H»ti« — CM<» T<««»»*«i — Tkuitzs l>T CV>ai^T«ss> — Ovaufc-vi.-** — ^X#xiff Skviws « i i> WT vessel «r ou^.^ — lM*n — A»*v>ik>«i»— tVrsoa*! i^-tvArasvi? iai ciue»--*«- ^iS$-<71 TUOMAS ALEXANDER SCOTT. «€ tk« ""l^MWfc^rtBMM* ONBkpta^ "—K^rsi>i«»— S» falMciMk — ^S:i-- O w« oa < » CVAis* —TV' Ar^-«!nunl te»i ^mt— Hfe p»»w> Ik* mMc »k« WafSfc.-5:^-a*— Jf>M»»*I *p{-««»r»2>.-* _ ___„ 6!l$-6jngu invasion, the ooeasion has always developed ^ some gre^t leader to command its armies, or restore peace between its embittered factions. In tracing the lives of the men thus called to leadership, three tacts constantly attract our notice. They are almost, without exception, of and from the people; rarely or never from the aristocratic class. Though intelligent and thoughtful men, they have usually led quiet and ot\en obscure lives till called to their great duties, and not unseldom, neither they nor their friends were aware of the power which was held in reserve in them. And. dually, they have not been the men first selected by popular acclaim, for the work which they accomplish. President Grant has been no exception to these general laws. He is a raan of the people : though educated for the army and serving in it for some ye^irs in a sul>irdinate capacity, his life had been quiet and obscure, and neither he nor his friends were conscious of his possession of these rare faculties which he sub- sequently displayed. Moreover, in those days, when General McClellan was reganled as the " coming man," there seemed as little probability that this plain taciturn brigadier at the West, 18 MEN OF OUR DAY. would become the general-in-chief of all our armies, and later, the President of the United States, as that the diminutive sub- lieutenant of the French army would become Emperor of France, and arbiter of the destinies of Europe. President Grant is descended from Matthew Grant, a native of Plymouth, England, or its vicinity, who emigrated to Dorches- ter. Massachusetts, in 1630, and to Windsor, Connecticut, in 1636. His son and grandson, both named Samuel, settled in the adjacent town of Tolland. Noah, a son of the second Samuel, removed to Coventry, Connecticut, and two of his sens, tsToah and Solomon, were officers (captain and lieutenant) in the Provincial army, in the old French war, and both were slain at Crown Point, or its vicinity, in 1756. Captain Noah Grant left a fiimily in Coventry, and his eldest son, also Noah, entered! the Continental army at the beginning of the Revolutionary war, as lieutenant of militia, and remained in it till its close, and, though in many battles, was never wounded. After the Avar he settled in Westmoreland county, Pennsylvania, where his son, Jesse Root Grant, one of a numerous family, was born, in January, 1794. The father removed in 1799 to what is now Columbiana county, and in 1805 to Portage county, Ohio. At the age of sixteen, Jesse was apprenticed to his half- brother, then living at Maysville, Kentucky, to learn the tan- ning business, and after serving his time, he set up for himself at Ravenna, Portage county, Ohio. Here several years of toil were followed by a severe and protracted illness from inter- mittent feve-r. In 1820 he removed to Point Pleasant, Ohio, twenty-live miles above Cincinnati, and the same year married Miss Hannah Simpson, of Clermont county, Ohio. Their eldest ahild, Ulysses Simpson Grant, or as he was christened, Iliram Ulysses Grant, was born at Point Pleasant, April 27, 1822. His father, who is yet living, and then an enterprising ana ULYSSES SIMPSON" GRANT. 19 self-reliant business man, was ready to enter upon any lionest undertaking whiuh gave a promise of success. He continued iais business as a tanner, but did not confine himself exclusively to that, and whatever he undertook prospered. The mother of the President is also still living, a woman of sound judgment, marked and superior moral and mental traits and endowments, a sincere and consistent Christian, whose steadiness, firmness, and strength of character have impressed themselves indelibly upon her children. The young Ulysses is said to have developed, almost from infauc}', a remarkable passion for horses. From the age of five years, his father states, he would ride the horses to water, stand- ing up on their bare backs, and at eight or nine would stand up on one foot and drive them at full speed. At seven and a half years he harnessed and drove a horse alone all day, climbing into the manger to put the bridle and collar on. At eight and a half, he would drive a team day after day hauling wood, and at ten would manage a pair of spirited horses on a long journey, with ])^Ject skill and safety. So complete was his mastery of horses that he broke them with great facility, and no horse could throw him. From the various incidents which his father, with a pardonable pride, relates of him. we find evidence of his possessing, even in childhood, the qualities of sj'stem, method, calculation, self-possession, and that cot)l imperturbable courage and persistency which have since marked his churacter. "His judgment was beyond his years. Few boys in their tw«^fth year could have been trusted to go to a large city two hundred miles distant, and take a deposition to be used elsewhere in a lawsuit; and fewer still, at the same age, would have had th) judgment and mechanical tact to lo;id upon a wagon a number of pieces of heavy timber a ff)ot sc^uare, and fo'irtoen feet long with no aid except that of a horse. 20 MEN OF OUK ©AY. His solf-pobsession and imperturbability ^vere fairly illus- trated in an incident which his lather relates of him as occurrin2 when he was about twelve years old. "He drove a pair of horses to Augusta, Kentucky, twelve miles from Georgetown, and was persuaded to remain over night, in order to bring back two young ladies, who would not be ready to leave until the next morning. The route lay across White Oak Creek. The Ohio river had been rising in the night, and the back water in the creek was so high, when they came to cross it in returning, that tlie tirst thing they knew the horses were swimming, and tlie- water was up to their own waists. The ladies were terribly frightened, and began to scream. In the midst of the excitement, Ulysses, who was on a forward seat, looked back to the ladies, and with an air perfectly undis- turbed, merely said : '■Dont speak — / icn'll take you throvgh sate.'' " He was popular with his schoolfellows and the boys of his age, and though not a talker or boaster, not tyrannical or ir^- perious, not quarrelsome or violent, he fell naturally into his place as a leader among the boys. He was not remarkable as a scholar, though fond of matliematics and maintaining a creditable position in his studies generally. For the rest, he was a manly, active, industrious boy, with a clear head, a kind heart, a well balanced judgment, fond of all outdoor sports and labors, and with a well knit frame and a constitution of great vitality and endurance. Tiliough always ready to work, he had a special dislike for the tanning business, and whenever called upon to do any work in connection with the tannery, he would tind something else to do, and liire a boy to work there in his place. When In- was a little more than sixteen years of aue, his father called upon him one day to work w ith him in the beam-room of the tannery He obeyed, but expressed to his father the strong ULYSSES SIMPSON' GRANT, 21 dislike he felt for the business, £nd his determination not to follow it after he came of age. His father replied that he did not wish him to work at it unless he was disposed to follow it in after life, and inquired what business he Avould like to enter upon. He answered that he would like either to be a farmer, a down-the-river trader, or to get an education. The first two avocations his father thought out of the question, as he was then situated, but inquired how he would like to go to the Military Academy at West Point. This suited the boy exactly, and the father hearing that there was a vacancy in his own Congressional District, then represented by the Hon. (afterward General) Thomas S. Hamer, made application, and Ulysses was appointed immediately, and in the summer of 1839, was admit- ted as a cadet in the Military Academy. The standard of admission at West Point was then very low, and he was below most of his eighty-seven classmates in scholarship. Several of them had graduated from college before entering the Academy, and all had enjoyed much better advantages than he, yet at the end of the four years' course, only thirty-nine graduated, and among these [Jlysses S. Grant stood twenty-first — midway of the class. He ranked high in mathematics and in all cavalry exercises, and had made good progress in engineering and fortification studies. His demerits were almost wholly of a trivial character, violations of some of the minor regulations of etiquette, in the buttoning of his coat, the tying of his cravat or shoes, or matters of that sort. Dr. Coppde, now President of Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, who was at West Point with Grant, says of him : " I rojnember him as a plain, common sense, straight-forward youth quiet, rather of the old head on the young shoulders order, shunning notoriety ; quite contented while others were grum^^ling; taking to his military duties in a very business-like 22 MEN OF OUK DAY. manner , not a prominent man in the corps, but respected by all and ver}^ popular with his friends. The soubriquet of " Uncla Sam"' was given him there, when every good fellow has a nick- name, from these very qualities ; indeed he was a very uncle- like sort of youth. He was then and always an excellent horseman, and his picture rises before me as I write, in the old torn-coat, obsolescent leather gig-top, loose riding pantaloons with spurs buckled over them, going with his clanging saber to the drill-hall. He exhibited but little enthusiasm in any thing; his best standing was in the mathematical branches and their application to tactics and military engineering." On his grad nation in 1843, cadet (irant was assigned a posi- tion as brevet second lieutenant of the fourth regiment, United States Infantry, and joined his regiment in the autumn of that year, at Jefferson Ban'acks, near St. Louis, Missouri. He had a classmate, Frederick T, Dent, who was from St. Louis, and who had been assigned like himself to the fourth intantrv. The two were warm friends, and Lieutenant Dent (now Brigadier- General Dent, on Gen. Sherman's staff) took his classmate to his own home, whenever they could obtain leave. Here lie formed the acquaintance of the estimable huly, then Miss Maria Dent, whom five years subsequently he married. His stay at Jeffer- son Barracks was not long. Li less than a year he was ordered to Camp Salubrity, Natchitoches, Louisiana, and a year later to the Mexican frontier, under the order for military occupation of Texas. There, on the 30th of September, 1845. he attained his commission as second lieutenant, and by special favor, was allowed to remain in ilie fourth infantry, though his appoint- ment was originally made out to the seventh. When th^war with Mexico at last commenced, the fourth infantry formed a part of General Zachary Taylor's army of occupation, and Lieutenant Grint took as active a part as his rank and positiou ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 23 permitted, in the battles of Palo Alto, May 8, 1846, — Eesaca de la Palina, May 9, — Monterey, September 21-23, where bis gallant conduct received honorable mention I'rom his comman- der, and in the siege of Vera Cruz, March 9-29, 1817. On the 1st of April, he was appointed quartermaster of the fourth infantry, preparatory to the long and difficult march upon the city of Mexico, and he held this position from that time, to July 23, 1848, after the close of the ^[exican war. But though his early experiences qualified him to fill this position with great ability, he did not, as by the army regulations he might, consider himself excused from service in the field. He was in nearly every battle of the campaign ; at Cerro Gordo, April 17- 18, 1847, at San Antonio, August 20, at Churubusco, the same day, at Molino del Key, September 8, where his gallant and meritorious conduct procured him a brevet of first lieutenant, and the praise of his commander, at the storming of Chapultepec, September 13, where he won a brevet of captain and the encomiums of that stern old soldier General Worth, and at the assault and capture of the city of Mexico, September 13-18, 1847, where he obtained the more substantial honor of a promotion, two days later, to the first lieut 'nancy in his regi- ment. After the war, he was assigned to garrison duty at Sackett's Harbor, New York, for a year, then again made quartermaster of his regiment, which position he held for four years, to September 30, 1853. He had married in 1848, soon after his return from Mexico, and the next four years were passed in quiet garrison duty, at Sackett's Harbor, Detroit, Michigan, again at Sackett's Harbor, and at Fort Columbus, New York. But in 1852, he was assigned to duty at Benicia, California, and subsequently at Columbia Barracks, and at Fort Vancouver, Oregon, and Fort Humboldt, California. In August, 1853, he attained to a captaincy, and after another year's service 24 MEN OF OUR PAY. on the Pacific slope, lie resigned liis commission, July 31. 1854 He was prompted to this step bv several considerations. It was a time of peace, and the prospect of rapid promotion was slight, especially to a man who had not thus far developed those brilliant qualities, which sometimes enable a man to mount rapidly, even in pence, the ladder of promotion ; the pay of a captain in the regular army, especially with the great cost of every thing on the Pacific coast at that time, was not sufficient to furnish more than a bare support to a man with a family ; he wj« liable to be assigned almost constantly, as he had been for two years already, to duty on frontier posts, where he could not take his ftimily, And where the associations were unpleasant. He was now thirty-two years old, and if he was to be any thing more than a poor, army captain, it was time that he should make a beginning. Such are the reasons assigned by his family for this step, which seemed for a time to be an unfortunate one. Shall we add another, which there is everv reason for believinsc to be true, and which, rightly considered, does him honor ? In the monotony and tedium of barrack and garrison life, and surrounded by rough associates, he had formed the habit, it is said, of drinking freely, and that habit was becoming so marked, that the War Department had thought it necessary to reprove him for it. By abandoning his associates and the associations in which he had been thrown on the Pacific coast, there was an opp-ortunity for him to enter npon a new life, and to abstain thenceforward from this ruinous indulgence. He returned to the east, and having rejoined his family, who had remained at his fathers, duriug his absence on the Pacific, he remove^l to the vicinity of St. Louis, where his father-in-law had given his wife a small farm, and his lather had stockevi it. Captain Grant put in practice his resolution to abandon all intoxicating drinks, and labored zciilouslv on his farm for four vears. President ULYSSES SIMPSON' GRANT. 2o C!opp(5e speaks of having met liira at St. Louis in his farmer's rig, whip in hand, and having enjoyed a very pleasant inter- view with bim, at which Joseph J. Eejnolds, Don Carlos Buell, and Major Chapman of the cavalry were also present. He adds, "If Grant had over used spirits, as is not unlikely, I distinctly remember that, upon the proposal being made to drink. Grant said, ' I will go in and look at you, for I never drink any thing ;' and the other officers who saw him frequently, afterward told me that he drank nothing but water." But he was not destined to succeed as a former. He was industrious, steady, and economical, but it was all in vain. In 1858, he relinquished the larm and moved into St. Louis, and at first undertook the real-est^^te business with a man named Boggs, but after a few months' trial, finding that the business was not sufficient to support both families, he relinquished it to his pai'tner and sought for something else. He next obtained a position in the custom house, but the death of the collector who appointed him, caused him to lose that in a few months. He had endeavored while on his farm to eke out his scanty income by occasionally acting as collector, as auctioneer, etc., but with- out any considerable success. Meanwhile, his fother had been prospering, and had, in con- nection with two of his younger sons, established a leather and harness store at Galena, Illinois. He now ofiered Ulysses a posi- tion and interest in this store, which was gladly and thankfully accepted. For two years he continued in this business, which seemed better suited to his tastes than the farm. It is s;\id, that up to this time he had been a Democrat in bis political views. With his father's strong Whig and Eepublican sentiments, this hardly seems probable. It is more credible that, as he himseF is reported to have said, he had not voted for years, and had taten very little interest in national aftaira 26 MEN OF OUR DAY. The education and general tone of feeling among the oflBcera of the army, had made them, to a great extent, sympathizers with the South, pro-slavery in their views, and opposed to the Eepublicans, whom they regarded as, in some sort, the Abolitionists under a new name. IIow far Captain Gniut shared tho^ feelings, is uncertiiin. One thing we know, he possessed that fine soldierly instinct of honor and loyalty, which was wanting in so many of his for- mer comrades. When the Southern troops tired on the nation- al flag at Sumter, he only knew that it was his country which was assiuled, and thenceforward there was no question of poli- ticks, '• On that morning of April 15, 1S61." s^us a lady friend, who was in his taniily, " he laid down the paper containing the account of the bombaniment^ walked round the counter, and drew on his coat, saying : ' I am for the war to put down this wicked rebellion. The Government educated me for the army, and though 1 served faithfully through one war. I feel still a little in debt for my education, and am ready to discharge the obligation.' " He went out into the streets of Galena, aided in organizing and drilling a company of volunteers, with whom he marched to Spriugdekl, the capital of the State. He had no ambition to serve as commander of this company, and hence declined their nomination of him for captain. Hon. E. B. "VTashburne, then member of Congress from the Galena District, and liis firm friend, then and since, accompanied him to Spring- iicld, and introduced him to Governor Yates, who at ouce of- fered him the position of adjutant-general, which he accepted, and filled very successfully. When the first quotas from Illinois hat.1 been organized, and mostly mustered into service, Adjutant- General Grant made a flying visit to his father at Covington, Kentucky^, and while there. Governor Yates, finding that the colonel of the 21st Illinois volunteer regiment was eutirelj? ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 27 unfit for Lis position, removed Iiin*i, and telegrapbed Grant that he had appointed him to the vacancy. He was on his way to Springfield at that time, and immediately assumed com- mand. In a short time they were under most admirable di'^ci- pline, and an alarm occurring in regard to a Rebel attack upon Quincy, Illinois, he marched them thither on foot, a distance of one hundred and twenty miles, a feat at that time considered most extraordinary. The tirst service to which the 21st Illinois was assigned, was to guard the Hannibal and St. Joseph railroad. Several regi- ments having been oixlered to this service, it was necessary that one of the regimental commanders should become acting brig- adier-general, and control the whole, as no brigadier-general had been assigned to the command. For this office Grant, who, though the youngest colonel on the ground, was the only gra- duate of West Point, was selected, and took command at Mexico, Missouri, July 31, ISOl. On the 9th of August, Colonel Grant was commissioned brigadier-general (his commission dating from the 17th of May), and sent with an adequate force to southern Missouri, where the rebel General Jeff. Thompson was threatening an advance. He visited Ironton, superintended the erection of fortifications there and at Marble creek, and, leaving a garrison in each place to defend it, hastened to JeSersou City, which was afso threatened, and protected it from rebel attacks for ten days, when Thompson, having abandoned his purpose, General Grant left the Missouri capital to enter upon the com- mand of the important district of Cairo. It was while he was in southern Missouri, his biographers Bay, that he issued his famous special order concerning Mrs. Selvidge's pie. The incident, which illustrates somewhat forci- bly the quiet humor which is a marked charactei istic of the presi lent, was something lik ,• this 28 MEN OF OUR DAY. In the rapid marches of- his force in Southern Missouri their rations were often scanty, and not very palatable, but the regioD was poor and sparsely settled, and, for the most part, there waa no chance of procuring food from the inhabitants of the country through which they were passing. At length, ho .vever, they emerged into a better and more cultivated section, md Lieute- nant Wickham, of an Indiana cavalry regiment, who was in command of the advanced guard of eighty men, halted at a farm-house of somewhat more comfortable appearance than any which they had passed, and entered the building with two second lieutenants. Pretending to be Brigadier-General Grant, he demanded food for himself and his staff. The family, whose loyalty was somewhat doubtful, alarmed at the idea of the Union general being on their premises, hastily brought forward the best their house afforded, at the same time loudly protesting their attachment to the Union cause. The lieutenants ate their fill, and, offering to compensate their hosts, were told that there was nothing to pay ; whereupon they went on their way, chuck- ling at their adroitness in getting so good a dinner for nothing. Soon after. General Grant, who had halted his army for a short rest a few miles further back, came up, and being rather favor- ably impressed with the appearance of the farm-house, rode up to the door and asked them if they would cook him a meal. The woman, who grudged the food already furnished to the self-styled general and his staff, replied gruffly, " No ! General Grant and his staff have just been here, and eaten every thing in the house, except one pumpkin-pie." "Ah !" said Grant ; " v/hat is your name ?" " Selvidge," answered the woman. Tossing her a half-dollar, the general asked, " Will you keep that pie until I send an officer for it ?" " I will," said the woman. ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 20 The general and staff rode on, and soon a camping ground was selected, and the regiments were notified that there would be a grand parade at half-past six for orders. This was unusual, and neither officers nor men could imagine what was coming. The parade w^as formed, however, ten columns deep, and a quar- ter of a mile in length. After the usual review, the assistant adjutant-general read the following: "Headquarters, Army in the Field. *' Special Order, No. . "Lieutenant Wickham, of the Indiana Cavalry, having on this day eaten every thing in Mrs. Selvidge's house, at the cross- ing of the Ironton and Pocahontas and Black river and Cape Girardeau roads, except one pumpkin pie. Lieutenant Wickham is hereby ordered to return with an escort of one hundred cavalry, and eat that pie also. "U. S. GRANT, " Brigadiei'-general commanding." The attempt to evade this order was useless, and at seven o'clock the lieutenant filed out of camp with his hundred men, amid the cheers of the whole army. The escort witnessed the eating of the pie, the whole of which the lieutenant succeeded in devouring, and returned to camp. The post of Cairo, the headquarters of the district tu the command of which General Grant was now ordered, was one, from its position, of great importance to the Union cause. It commanded both the Ohio and the Upper Mississippi, and was the depot of supplies for an extensive region above, and subse- quently below. Grant's command extended along the shores of the Mississippi as far as Cape Girardeau, and on the Ohio to the mouth of Green river, and included western Kentucky. That State, at this time, was trying to maintain a neutral posi- tion, favoring neither the Union nor the rebels, a position which was as absurd as it was soon found to be impossible.. 30 MEN OF OUR PAT. The rebeU were the first to cross the lines, and take possession of the uuportaut towns of Columbus and Hickman, on the Mi.-^ist day of May, 18ti8, 7nake the following Declaration of Principles. I. We conirratuliite tlie counlry on the assured success of the Recon- struction policy of (!ong:ress, as evinced by the adoption, in the inuj(,rily of the States lately in rebellion, of Constitutions securing Equal Civil and 6C MEN OF OUR DAY. The Presidential campaign was less exciting than usual, and it was a foregone conclusion, long before the day of election, that Grant and Colfax would be elected. The elections took place November 3d, 1868, and the Republican candidates re- ceived 214 electoral votes, against 80 given to Messrs. Seymour and Blair, thus having a clear majority of IS-i electoral votes. On the popular vote General Grant's majorit}^ though compara- tively less, was still very decided. The whole number of votes Political Rights to all, and it is the duty of tlie Government to sustain those institutions and to prevent the people of such States from being remitted to a state of anarchy. II. 'I'he guaranty by Congress of Equal Suffrage to all loyal men at the Soi;th was demanded by every consideration of public safety, of gratitude, and of justice, and must be maintained ; while tlie question of Suffrage in all the loyal States properly belongs to the people of tliose States. III. We denounce all forms of Repudiation as a national crime; and the national lionor requires the payment of the public indebtedness in the uttermost good faith to all creditors at home and abroad, not only according to the letter but the spirit of the laws under wliich it was contracted. IV. It is due to the Labor of the Nation that taxation should be equal- ized, and reduced as rapidly as the national faith will permit. V. 'Die National Debt, contracted, as it has been, for the preservation of the Union for all time to come, should be extended over a fair period for redemption ; and it is the duty of Congress to reduce the rate of interest thereon, whenever it can be honestly done. VI. That the best policy to diminish our burden of debt is to so im- prove our credit that capitalists will seek to loan us )noney at lower rates of interest than we now pay, and must continue to pay so long as repudia- tion, partial or total, open or covert, is threatened or suspected. VII. The Government of the United States should be administered with the strictest economy ; and the corruptions which have been so sliamefully nursed and fostered by Andrew Johnson call loudly for radical reform. VIH. We profoundly deplore the untimely and tragic death of Abra- ham Lincoln, and regret the accession to the Presidency of Andrew John- son, who has acted treacherously to the people who elected him and the cause he was pledged to support ; who lias usurped Ingh legislative and judicial functions ; who has refused to execute tlie laws ; who has used his high office to induce other officers to ignore and violate the laws ; who has employed his executive powers to render insecure the property, the peace, liberty and life of the citizen; who has abused the pardoning power; who ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 57 polled was 5,716,788, of which General Grant received 3,013,188, a clear majority of 309,588, or 5'-12 per cent. He was inaugu- rated March 4:th, 1869. The new President having previously resigned his commission as General of the United States Army, Lieutenant-General William T. Sherman was on his nomina- tion promoted to be General ; and Major-General Philip H. Sheridan promoted to the vacant Lieutenant-Generalship. Presi- dent Grant sent the names of his new cabinet to the Senate on has denounced the National Legislature as unconstitutional ; who has per- sistently and corruptly resisted, by every means in his power, every pro- per attempt at the reconstruction of the States lately in rebellion : who has perverted the public patronag-e into an engine of wholesale corruption ; and who has been justly impeached for high crimes and misdemeanors, and pro- perly pronounced guilty thereof by the vote of thirty-five Senators. IX. The doctrine of Great Britain and other European powers that, because a man is once a subject he is always so, must be resisted at every hazard by the United States, as a relic of feudal times, not authorized by the laws of nations, and at war with our national honor and independence. Naturalized citizens are entitled to protection in all tlieir rights of citizen- ship, as though they were native-born ; and no citizen of the United States, native or naturalized, must be liable to arrest and imprisonment by any foreign power for acts done or words spoken in this country ; and if so arrested and imprisoned, it is the duty of the Government to interfere in his behalf. X. Of all who were faithful in the trials of the late war, there were none entitled to more especial honor than the brave soldiers and seamen who endured the hardships of campaign and cruise, and imperiled their lives in the service of the country ; the bounties and pensions provided by the laws for these brave defenders of the nation, are obligations never to be forgotten ; the widows and orphans of the gallant dead are the wards of the people — a sacred legacy bequeathed to the nation's protecting care. XI. Foreign immigration, which in the past has added so much to the wealth, development and resources and increase of power to this republic, the asylum of the oppressed of all nations, should be fostered and encour- aged by a liberal and just policy. XII. This Convention declares itself in sympathy with all oppressed peoples struggling for their rights. Unanimously added, on motion of Gen. Schurz : Resolned. That we highly commend the spirit of magnanimity and for- bearance with which men who have served in the rebellion, but who now 58 MEN OF OUR DAY. the 5th of March. They were as follows : Secretary of State, E. B. Washburue of Illinois ; Secretary of the Treasury, A. T. Stewart of New York ; Secretary of War, John M. Schofield of New York; Secretary of the Navy, Adolphe E. Borie of Penn- sylvania ; Secretary of the Interior, Jacob D. Cox of Ohio ; Postmaster-General, John A.J. Creswell of Maryland ; Attorney- General, E. Rockwood Hoar of Massachusetts, frankly and honestly co-operate with us in restoring the peace of the coun- try and reconstructing the Southern State governments upon tlie basis of Impartial Justice and Kqual Rights, are received back into the communion of the loyal people; and we favor the removal of the disqualifications and restrictions imposed upon the late Rebels in the same measure as their spirit of loyalty will direct, and as may be consistent with the safety of the loyal people. Resolved, That we recognize the great principles laid down in the im- mortal Declaration of Independence, as the true foundation of democratic government ; and we hail with gladness every effort toward making these principles a living reality on every inch of American soil. In accepting the nomination. General Grant wrote the following letter: To General Joseph R. Hawley, President National Union Republican Con- vention : In formally accepting the nomination of the National Union Republican Convention of the 21st of May, inst., it seems proper that some statement of views beyond the mere acceptance of the nomination should be expres- sed. The proceedings of the Convention were marked with wisdom, mode- ration and patriotism, and I believe express the feelings of the great mass of those who sustained the country through its recent trials. I indorse the resolutions. If elected to the office of President of the United States, it will be my endeavor to administer all the laws in good faith, with econo- my, and with the view of giving peace, quiet and protection everywhere. In times like the present it is impossible, or at least eminently improper, to lay down a policy to be adhered to, right or wrong, through an admin- istration of four years. New political issues, not foreseen, are constantly arising ; the views of the public on old ones are constantly changing, and a purely administrative officer should always be left free to execute the will of the people. I always have respected that will, and alwaj's shall. Peace and universal prosperity — its sequence — with economy of administration, will lighten the burden of taxation, while it constantly reduces the National debt. Let us have peace. With great respect, your obedient servant, Washinqton, D. C, Mai/ 29, 1868. U. S. Grant. ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 59 Here began President Grant's administration, which was not without its troubles. Mr. Stewart, being an importer, was found to be constitutionally ineligible to the office of Secretary of the Treasury. The law which made him ineligible was one enacted many years since, and a strong effort was made to have it repealed. But this proved ineffectual, and on the llth of March the name of George S. Boutwell of Massachusetts was substituted for that of Mr. Stewart. Mr. Washburne's appointment was purely honorary, and de- signed to be temporary, so that an early successor was expected. Mr. Washburne's declining health precipitated a change, and the name of Hamilton Fish was sent in as his successor. On the same date the name of John A. Eawlins, late Grant's chief of staflt; was submitted as Secretary of War. Three months later Mr. Borie, who found the duties of the Navy Department uncongenial, sent in his resignation, and on June 25th George M. Eobeson of New Jersey was nominated as his successor. These changes did not place the Administration in good working order. Others took place during tlie year. Secretary Eawlins died on September 6th, and after an ad interim administration of his office by General Sherman, Gene- ral Wm. W. Belknap of Iowa was appointed, November 1st, 1869. It was not until the succeeding year that the maciiinery of the Administration was fully adjusted and a definite policy began to be developed. Several of the political leaders of the Eepublican party felt aggrieved that the President should have failed to recognize their claims to places in his Cabinet, and a marked ci)ulne.ss en- sued. That he should have distrusted such men as advisers was quite natural. He had not been trained in their school. That he should have a strong preference for those who had grown up about him both in the army and private life, was quite as natural. 60 MEN OF OUR DAY. Of the former, he knew not whom to trust ; of the latter, he knew precisely who were in accord with him. He deemed confidence an essential to constitutional advisement, just as it was a primary consideration in the army. That he was inju- dicious in some of these appointments, is possible ; and he him- self was subsequently satisfied that it would have been better to have selected those more familiar with their duties. The charges of nepotism and favoritism which sprung from these two causes, the President's preference for those whom he knew best, and his neglect of the politicians, were greatly exag- gerated and reiterated with undeserved bitterness by those who " had nursed their wrath to keep it warm." That he had erred in a few of these appointments even he himself now admits, but he has done, and is doing what he can to obviate these blunders of his inexperience. That he was not induced by his regard for friends or relatives to put as many bad men in ofl&ce as any of his predecessors, is, we believe, susceptible of proof; and when he ascertained that he had been deceived, he took measures for the removal of the offender, however warm may have been his friendship for him. His experience and observation have taught him wisdom. He understands the prominent leaders of political affairs much better than he did in 1868-9, and he has also learned that a man may be proof against temptation in a humble position, who will fall before it in a higher one. The wisdom thus acquired is one of his best claims to future confi- dence. We have never yet seen a charge made against the President that was coupled with a doubt of his personal integrity, or that discounted his patriotism. Nor have his administrative acts often betrayed a forgetfulness of that announcement in his inau- gural address, so welcome to all who heard it: -'I shall have no policy contrary to the wishes of the American people." ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT 61 Considering the military cast of his mind, it was scarcely ex- pected that he could, without considerable administrative school- ing, grasp and successfully handle all the great measures of State. But his instincts were known to be right. The country needed a guarantee of safety and rest, rather than brilliancy and unrest. We were to garner fruits, and not break up ground for new crops. After the excitement of war a breathing time was required. The nation felt that confidence could be reposed in Grant, and it has not been disappointed. Like other Presidents he has not been free from faults, but these he has quickly corrected. Probably the most noticeable of these was the policy of acquiring a foothold for our com- merce in the Caribbean Sea, a policy as old as the country itself. The people forbade, and he hearkened promptly, and gracefully abandoned the scheme. It has been a continual desire on his part to give to his administration the honor of a settlement of that vexatious case known popularly as the " Alabama Claims." At the outset he was surrounded by many difficulties, not the least of which was the personal enmity, amounting to estrangement, which existed between Mr. Sumner, then Chairman of the Committee of For- eign Affairs, and Secretary Fish. Without harmony between these two officials no definite results could be reached. One or the other must be disposed of. Which ? became a momentous question. The Senate came to the President's relief, and Mr. Cameron was cho.sen Mr. Sumner's successor at the head of that important committee. Many deemed this action unwise. Mr. Sumner's personal qualifications for the position were, probably, superior to those of any (>ther Senator, but the necessity for harmony between the Committee and the Secretary must override all other considerations. This treaty, if carried out in good faith, will be of great importance, not only for the benefits which will 62 MEN OF OUR DAY. accrue to the nations concerned in it, but also for the influence it will exert upon all nations, as substituting the theory of amica- ble settlement of national differences for the arbitrament of arms and brute force. Another success of the administration has been the constant and rapid reduction of the national debt. The people have been released from more than $330,000,000 of this burden since March 4th, 1869, and a consequent annual saving of interest for the future to the extent of more than $20,000,000. The work of reconstruction has been well nigh completed. Every Congres- sional district in the United States is now represented at Wash- ington. Severe laws have been administered cautiously, yet with a firmness which has secured harmony in sections where discord once prevailed. The taxes have been greatly reduced, the Congress just adjourned having eft'ected a reduction amount- ing to over $51,000,000 annually. Economy has been enforced in every department of revenue, and defaulters have been fer- reted out and brought to justice. The army and navy estab- lishments have been reduced to a peace footing. A new and humane policy of dealing with the Indian tribes has been at- tempted, which secures the sanction of all philanthropists, and of the respective religious denominations, and bids fair to be far more successful than the old and corrupt method of force and chicanery. But little has been accomplished in the way of civil service reform, for the reason that Congressmen are disinclined to give up their customary patronage ; but the President has often ex- pressed himself in favor of some method of appointment to office on the basis of such reform, and his advice has been so far regarded in many of the departments as to admit of competitive examinations and selection of the most worthy. His efforts in this direction are creditable to him, and we may well hope that ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 63 they will be continued with renewed zeal in the future, and that he may succeed in triumphing over the selfish opposition which the measure has heretofore encountered. The amnesty bill, and also the civil rights bill, failed against his wishes, though these measures, we have every reason to believe, are only postponed. Altogether his administration has been fairly successful, and except with those whose anticipations were too exalted, such as was expected. The farmers, the mechanics, the manu- facturers, the capitalists, all who are interested in the stability of public and industrial affairs, in the maintenance of our institu- tions, have had no occasion to repent of their choice. The country has prospered. Our financial condition at home and abroad was never better. The Treasurer has been able to negotiate our bonds abroad without discount, and at five per cent, interest. We have had peace. In view of all this posi- tive good, of President Grant's honesty, and sympathy with the masses, we may overlook the charges of favoritism, his dis- trust of politicians, who naturally hate where they cannot rule, and hisalleo^ed shortcominsrs. The charge most desperately pressed against him, though with but slight attempt at proof, is that he has made vigorous efforts for his own reelection. It is perhaps desirable that there should be some change in the national constitution, which, while ex- tending the Presidential term to six or possibly eight years, should prohibit a re-election at least till one term had intervened. This is as desirable for the incumbent of the Presidential office as for the people ; for it would at once obviate the charge often unjustly made that the President was intriguing for his own re- election. As the constitution now stands it is too much to ask from human nature, that a President who is conscious of having served his country faithfully, and with fair success, should not desire a re-election ; nor is this desire in itself reprehensible, un- 64 me:n of our day. less accompanied, as it too often has the reputation of being, by intrigue for the accomplishment of its object. That President Grant desired a re-election was but natural ; but that he has shaped his policy and distribution of offices to effect it, or at- tempted to do so by any corrupt means, is too foreign to his nature to be believed for a moment. That a great part of the Republican part}"- desire his re-election is undoubtedly true, for though conventions may be packed, and their unanimity may be effected by the skilful management of political leaders, there is abundance of other evidence of that desire, wholly irrespec- tive of these, a desire based upon a conviction that the pros- perity of the country depends upon his re-election. This desire, too, is wholly irrespective of any effort on his part, or any alleged manipulations of his for the purpose of procuring it. If he is re-elected, it will be as truly as in the case of Lincoln in 186-i, because the people have willed it, and not because he has set any machinery to work to accomplish that purpose. In person President Grant is somewhat below the average height, with a tendency to corpulency ; of great powers of endu- rance, and of uniformly good health. He is temperate, quiet, likes simple ways and simple food ; abhors ostentation, can con- verse clearly, though not fluently, is no speech maker, preferring rather to listen. He is a great smoker, enjoys a game of bil- liards, and is fond of choice horses. As a friend he is firm, as an enemy he is not vindictive. Few men manifest less envy or jealousy. He bears complaint and even censure with resig- nation, and regards the promotion and advancement of those whom he deems worthy as paramount to all personal considera- tions. No man is quicker to correct abuses when he sees th&m, and though slow to believe an accusation against one whom he has trusted, he acts decidedly when convinced. In the ordi- nary acceptation of that term, he is not a man of genius. Blun- ders he has made, but he rarely repeats them. In one word, he ULYSSES SIMPSON GBANT. 65 possesses a clear, well-balanced mind, every faculty of which is thoroughly practical, and such a combination is worth much more than genius. At the National Eepublican Convention, held at Philadelphia, June 5th and 6th, 1872, President Grant was renominated for the Presidency, receiving the unanimous votes of all the State delegations present. At the same convention, Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, was nominated for the Vice-Presidency, re- ceiving on the first ballot 384:J votes to 314| for Mr. Colfax. The following platform was unanimously adopted : THE PLATFORM. The Republican party of the United States, assembled in National Conven- tion in the City of Philadelphia, on the ^Uh and 6th days of June, 1872, again declares its faith, appeals to its history, and announces its position upon the questions before the country : I. During eleven years of supremacy it has accepted with grand courage the solemn duties of the time. It suppressed a gigantic rebellion, emanci- pated four millions of slaves, decreed the equal citizenship of all, and. established universal suffrage. Exhibiting unparalleled magnanimity, it criminally punished no man for political offences, and warmly welcomed all who proved their loyalty by obeying the laws and dealing justly with their neighbors. It has steadily decreased, with a firm hand, the resultant dis- orders of a great war, and initiated a wise policy toward the Indians. 'J'ho Pacific Railroad and similar vast enterprises have been generally aided and successfully conducted ; the public lands freely given to actual settlers; immigration protected and encouraged, and a full acknowledgment of the naturalized citizens' rights secured from Eiiropean powers. A uniform national currency has been provided; repudiation frowned down; the national credit sustained under most extraordinary burdens, and new bond* negotiated at lower rates ; the revenues have been carefully collected and honestly applied. Despite the annual large reductions of rates of taxation, the public debt has been reduced during General Grant's presidency at the rate of $100,000,000 a year. A great financial crisis has been avoided, and peace and plenty prevail throughout the land. Menacing foreign difficul- ties have been peacefully and honorably compromised, and the honor and the power of the nation kept in high respect throughout the world. This glorious record of the past is the party's best pledge for the future. We believe the people will not intrust the Government to any party or combi- nation of men composed chiefly of those who have resisted every step of this beneficial lorogress. 5 6Q MEN OF OUR DAY. II. Complete liberty and exact equality in tVie enjoyment of all civil, political and public rights should be established and effectually maintained throughout the Union, by efficient and appropriate State and Federal legis- lation. Neither the law nor its administration should admit of any dis- crimination in respect of citizens by reason of race, creed, color, or previ- ous condition of servitude. III. 'i"he recent amendments to the National Constitution should be cor- dially sustained, because they are right, not merely tolerated because they are law. and should be carried out according to their spirit by appropriate legislation, the enforcement of which can be safely trusted only to the party that secured those amendments. IV. The National Government should seek to maintain an honorable peace with all nations, protecting its citizens everywhere, and sympathiz- ing with all peoples who strive for greater liberty. V. Any system of the Civil Service under which the subordinate posi- tions of the Government are considered rewards for mere party zeal, is fatally demoralizing ; and we, therefore, favor a reform of the system by laws which shall abolish the evils of patronage, and make honesty, effi- ciency and fidelity the essential qualifications for public position, without practically creating a life-tenure of office. VI. We are opposed to further grants of the public lands to corpora- tions and monnpolies, and demand that the national domain be set apart for free homes for the people. VII. The annual revenues, after paying the current debts, should furnish a moderate balance for the reduction of the principal, and the revenue, except so much as may be derived from a tax on tobacco and liquors, be raised by duties upon importations, the duties of which should be so ad- justed as to aid in securing remunerative wages to labor, and promote the industries, growth, and prosperity of the whole coimtry. VIII. We hold in undying honor the soldiers and sailors whose valor saved the Union ; their pensions are a sacred debt of the nation, and the widows and orphans of those who died for their country are entitled to the care of a generous and grateful people. We favor such additional legisla- tion as will extend the bounty of the Government to all our soldiers and sailors who were honorably discharged, and who in the line of duty became disabled, without regard to the length of service or the cause of such dis- charge. IX. The doctrine of Great Britain and other European powers concern- ing allegiance — " Once a subject always a subject " — having at last through the effort of the Republican party, been abandoned, and the American idea of the individual's right to transfer his allegiance having been accepted by European nations, it is the duty of our Government to guard with jealous care the rights of adopted citizens against the assumptions of unauthorized claims by their former Governments ; and we urge the continual and care- ful encouragement and protection of voluntary immigration. ULYSSES SIMPSON GRANT. 67 X. The Franking Privilege ouglit to be abolished, and the way prepared for a speedy reduction in the rate of postage. XI. Among the questions which press for attention is that which concerns the relations of capital and labor, and the Republican party recognize the duty of so shaping legislation as to secure full protection, and the amplest field for capital, and for labor the creator of capital, the largest opportunities and a just share of the mutual profitsof these two great servants of civilization. XII. We hold that Congress and the President have only fulfilled an imperative duty in their measures for the suppression of violent and trea- sonable organizations in certain lately rebellious regions, and for the pro- tection of the ballot-box, and therefore they are entitled to the thanks of the nation. XIII. We denounce repudiation of the public debt in any form or dis- guise as a national crime. We witness with pride the reduction of the principal of the debt and of the rates of interest upon the balance, and confidently expect that our excellent national currency will be perfected by a speedy resumption of specie payments. XIV. 'I'he Republican party is mindful of its obligations to the loyal women of America for their noble devotion to the cause of freedom. Their admission to wider fields of usefulness is received with satisfaction, and the honest demands of any class of citizens for additional rights should be treated with respectful consideration. XV. We heartily approve the action of Congress in extending amnesty to those lately in rebellion, and rejoice in the growth of peace and frater- nal feeling throughout the land. XVI. The Republican party propose to respect the rights reserved by the people to themselves as carefully as the powers delegated by them to the State and to the Federal Government. It disapproves of the resort to unconstitutional laws for the purpose of removing evils by interference with rights not surrendered by the people to either the State or National (jrovernment. XVII. It is the duty of the General Government to adopt such mea- sures as will tend to encourage American commerce and ship-building. XVIII. We believe that the modest patriotism, the earnest purpose, the sound judgment, the practical wisdom, the incorruptible integrity, and the illustrious services of Ulysses S. Grant have commended him to the heart of the American people, and with him at our head we start to-day upon a new march to victory. The President of the Convention, Judge' Settle, of North Carolina, addressed to President Grant a letter apprising him of his nomination, in the following terms: Washington, June 10th, 1872. To the President. — Sir: In pursuance of our instructions, we, the un- dersigned. President and Vice-Presidents of the National Republican Con- 68 MEN^ OF OUR DAY. vention, held in Philadelpliia on tlie 5th and 6th instant, have the honor to inform you of your nomination for re-election to the office of President of the United States. As it is impossible to give an adequate idea of the enthusiasm which prevailed, or the unanimity which hailed you as the choice of the people, we can only add that you received the entire vote of every State and Territory. Regarding your re-election as necessary to the peace and continued prosperity of the coiuitry, we ask your acceptance of the nomination. Signed by Thomas Sktti.k, President of the National Republican Con vention, and the Vice-Presidents. President Grant replied as follows, the same evening : ExKOUTivE Mansion, ) Washington, D. C. June 10th, 1872. j The Hon. Thomas Settle, President National Republican Convention^ Paul Strabach, Elisha Baxter, C. A. Sarg^;ant, and others, Vice- Presidents. Gkntlemkn : Your letter of this date, advising me of the action of the Convention held in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on the 5th and 6th of this month, and of my unanimous nomination for the Presidency by it, has been received. I accept the nomination, and through you return my heartfelt thanks to your constituents for this mark of their Confidence and support. If elected in November, and protected by a kind Providence in health and strength to perform the duties of the high trust conferred, I promise tlie same zeal and devotion to the good of the whole people for the future of my official life as shown in the past. Past experience may guide me in avoiding mis- takes inevitable with novices in all professions and in all occupations. When relieved from the responsibilities of my present trust, by the elec- tion of a successor, whether it be at the end of this term or next, I hope to leave to him, as Executive, a country- at peace within its own borders, at peace with outside nations, with a credit at home and abroad, and with- out embarrassing questions to threaten its future prosperity. With the expression of a desire to see a speedy healing of all bitterness of feeling between sections, parties, or races of citizens, and the time when the title of citizen carries with it all the protection and privileges to the humblest that it does to the most exalted, I subscribe myself. Very respectfully, your obedient servant, U. S. GRANT. WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN. GENERAL OF THE ARMY OF THE U. S. lILLIAM TECUMSEH SHEEMAN, son of Oon. Charles R. Sherman, for some years a judge of tlje Supreme Court of Ohio, and a brother of Hon, John Sherman, the well known United States Sena tor from that State, was born in Lancaster, Ohio, on the 8th of February, 1820. His early education was obtained in the schools of his native town, but after his father's death, which occurred when he was nine years of age, he became a member of the family of Hon. Thomas Ewing, where heenjoyed much wider advantages; and, at the age of sixteen, entered the United States Military Academy at West Point, Graduating from that institution, June oOth, 1840, with the sixth rank of his class, he was immediately appointed to a second lieutenancy in the Third Artillery, and served through the next year in Florida, achieving some distinction by the masterly manner in which he foiled certain maneuvers of the wily Indian chief " Billy Bow- legs." In November, 1841, Sherman was made a first lieuten- ant, and, sh'jrtly after, was ordered to Fort Moultrie, Charleston harbor, where he remained several years, forming intimaciea with eminent citizens of South Carolina, which it required all his jSrmness and patriotism in after years to abandon. In 18-iH he was transferred to California and made assistant adjutant general, performing his duties with such marked ability, thai 09 70 MEX OF OUR DAT. Congress, in 1851, made him captain, by hrevet^ dating from May oOtli, 1848, "for meritorious services in California, during the war with Mexico." In September, 1850, he was appointed Commissary of Subsistence, with rank of captain, and assigned to the staff of the commander of the Department of the West, with headquarters at St. Louis. During the same year he mar- ried the daughter of iiis old friend, Hon. Thomas Ewing, and was soon after stationed at New Orleans, where he became well acquainted with the leading men of Louisiana. In September, 1853, he resigned his commission in the army, and was, for four years ensuing, the manager of the banking house of Lucas, Turner & Co., of San Francisco, California. In 1857, his ser- vices were solicited and secured, by some of his old Louisiana friends, as the President and Superintendent of a State Military Academy, which they were then establishing, and he assumed his position early in 1858. The objects and inducements alleged for the creation of such an institution were, of them- selves, reasonable and plausible ; and it was not until after the commencement of the Presidential campaign of 1860, that he became aware of the disloyal sentiments existing among the majority of the leading men of the State, or of the real and treasonable purposes which had influenced them in founding the academy over which he presided. Simultaneously with the unavoidable unmasking of their plans, these men now strove, by every persuasive art, to induce him to join with them in their revolutionary projects. But the solicitations of friendship, the proffer of gold, and the tender of high of&cial position, failed to shake, even for a moment, the sterling loyalty of the soldier. Amazed at the revelation, and convinced that civil war waa inevitable, he promptly sent to the Governor of the State the following letter of resignation : — WTLLTAM TECUMREH SHERMAN". 71 JAN0ART 18, 1861. Gov. Thomas 0. Moore, Baton Rouge, La. Sir: — As I occupy a (/was /'-military position ander this State, I deem it proper to acquaint you that I accepted such position when Louisiana was a Suite in the Union, and when the motto of the seminary was ins ;ried in marble over the main door, ^^ By tlie ilbt'raliLij of the (rewral Government of the Uiv'IcjI SUitea. The Union^ Esio Per/irt?(a."' Kecent events foreshadow a great change, and it becomes all men to choose. If Louisiana with- draws from the Federal Union, / prefer to maintain my alle- giance to the Old Constitution as long as a fragment uf it sur- vives, and my longer stay here would be wrong in every sense of the word. Li that event, I beg you will send or appoint some authorized agent to take charge of the arms and munitions of war hero belonging to the State, or direct me what dispusiiion should be made of them. And I'urthermore, as President of the Board of Supervisors, I beg you to take immediate steps to relieve me as Supei'intendent, the moment the State determines to secede-; for, on no earthly account will I do any act or think any thought, hostile to, or in defiance of, the old Government of the United States. With great respect, &;c., (Signed) W. T. Sherman-. His resignation was accepted with regret, by those whc knew his worth as a man and his value as a soldier, and an in- structor of soldiers; and, in February, he removed with his family to St. Louis. Shortly bef )re the attack on Fort Sumter be visited Washington, and, conversant as he was with the intentions and plans of the Southern leaders — he was am.i^^ed at the apathy and incredulity of the Government, who, as he Biiid, "were sleeping on a volcano, which would surely burst upon them unprepared." Urging U})on government ofru-iala the imminenry of the impending danger and the fearful lack of prepan^tion to meet it, he also proffered his services as a sol- dier who had been educated at the country's expense and 72 MEN OF OUB DAY. who owed every thing to her care and institutions. But the threatened storm was generally regarded, by those in authority, as a mutter which would " blow over" in sixty, or, at the most in ninety days, and he could find no one to comprehend or indorse his views in regard to the necessity of immediately call- ing out an immense army /or the war. Ijj^n the organization, however, of the new regiments of the regular army, in June, 1861, he was made colonel of the new 13th infantry, his com mission dating from May 14th, 1861. His first actual service in the war was at the battle of Bull Eun, or Manassas, where he commanded the Third Brigade in the First (Tyler's) Division. The spirited manner in which he handled his men was in strong contrast to the many disgraceful scenes which have made that day one of ignoble memories. The vigor and desperate valor, indeed, with which Sherman fought his brigade on that occasion, is evidenced by the fact that its losses were far heavier than any other brigade in the Union army ; his total of killed, wounded and missing, being six hundred and nine, while that of the whole division was but eight hundred and fifty-nine, and of the entire army, aside from prisoners and stragglers, but fif- teen hundred and ninety. His valor and good conduct were promptly rewarded by his appointment as a brigadier general of volunteers, his commission dating from May 17th, 1861 ; and, early in August, he was made second in command of the Department of the Ohio, under General Anderson. On the 8th of October he was appointed to the chief command, in place of that general, who had been obliged to resign on account of ill health. The Department of the Ohio, which, at tliis time, com- prised all east of the Mississippi, and west of the Alleghanies, was in a deplorable condition ; paucity of troops ; insufficiency of supplies and munitions of war; a surrounding country, luke- warm, if not openly inimical to the Union cause, and the clofie WILLIAM TKCUMSEH SHERMAN". 73 proximity of large, well equipped and well officered forces of the enemy (who, if they had known his' real condition, could have driven him " out of his boots" in ten days) rendered Sher- man's situation a most unenviable one. In addition to the pressure of these unfavorable circumstances, he now found him- self annoyed and seriously endangered by the presence in his camp of numbers of those "gad-flies" of the press — newspaper letter writers and reporters — whose indiscreetness threatened to reveal to the enemy, the very facts which most needed con- cealment. He soon put an end to this risk by a stringent general-order, which excluded the whole busy crew from his lines, and, of course, brought down upon his own head an ava- lanche of indignation from a hitherto '* untrammeled press." Sherman's greatest difficulty, however, was the impossibility of making the Government comprehend the magnitude of the con- test which it was waging, and the necessity of placing a large and well appointed army in the field, which should make short work with rebellion by the crushing weight of numbers. When, in October 1861, he explained to the Secretary of War the critical position of his own department, and, in reply to a question of the number of troops needed for an immediate for- ward and decisive movement, replied " two hundred thousand men" — his words were considered visionary — and he was incon- tinently pronounced "crazy," by government officials as well as by the newspaper press, who had not forgiven him ft)r his for- mer severity. Chagrined at the distrust of his military judg- ment til us evinced by his superiors, Sherman, in November 1861, asked to be relieved from his position, and was succeeded by General Buell, who, being immediately reinforced witli the troops so often requested by and so persistently denied to his predecessor, was enabled to hold the department in a defensive attitude, until the opening of the spring campaign. 74 MEN OF OUR DAY. Sherman, meanwhile, was left to rust in commanJ of Benton barracks, near St. Louis, until General Halleck, who succeeded Fremont in command of the Western Department, and who well knew the abilities of the man, detailed him for service in General Grant's army ; and, after the capture of Fort Donelson, he was placed in command of that general's fifth division, com- posed mostly of raw troops, whom he began immediately to drill and perfect. Soon the storm of battle again burst upon him, at Shiloh, April 6th, 1862, where he had taken position three miles out from Pittsburgh Landing, on the Corinth road. Sustaining, against great odds, the repeated and furious onsets of the enemy on the 6th, he assumed the offensive on the 7th, and pushed them back with heavy lo.-^s ; and, on the morning of the 8th, pushing still forward, met and routed their cavalry, and captured many prisoners and large quantities of arms and ammunition. During the advance upon Corinth, which followed this battle of Shiloh, his division was constantly in the lead and carried, occupied, and reintrenched seven distinct camps of tho enemy; and when, on the 3 'th of May, Beauregard retreated from the city, it was Sherman's gallant division which took possession of it. Occupying with these raw recruits, at the opening battle of Shiloh, " the key point of the landing," says General Grant, in his official report, " it is no disparagement lo any other officer to say, that I do not believe there was another division commander on the field who had the skill aud expe- rience to have done it. To his individual efforts I am indebted for the success of that battled General Halleek also records it as the "unanimous opinion, that General Sherman saved the for- tunes of the day ; he was in the thickest of the fight, had three horses killed under him, and was twice wounded"' — and in this eulogium of his services, every general officer, as well as others, heai'tily concurred. At the earnest request of Generals Grant WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN". 75 wid Ilalleck, Sherman was made a major- ;eneral of volunteers, dating from May 1st, 18o2. Appointed by General Grant, in the spring of 1862, to the command of the district of Memphis, Tennessee, he thoroughly suppressed, within the course of six months, the guerrilla warfare and contraband trade which had rendered it, in the opinion of rebel officers, a more valuable position to them in the possession of the Federal government, then it ever had been while in their own. When, in December, 1862, General Grant began his operations against Vicksburg, he first placed Sherman in command of the lift-^oi^th army corps, and after the latter had made some important recounoissances, he took him into his confidence regarding his plan for tl '^. capture of that city. According to this plan, Sherman, with four picked divisions, sailed from Memphis in December, to make a direct attack upon Chickasaw Blufis, a part of the del jnces of Vicksburg on the river side, while Grant himself, proceeding down the Missis- sippi Central railroad, to Jackson, Mississippi, vas to move to the rear of the city. Grant's movement, however was prevented by the unexpected surrender of Holly Springs, (u the Mississippi Central railroad, which was to be his base of supplies, and he was also unable to communicate the fact to Sherman. Unconscious of this, therefore, the latter pressed on, disembarked on the 26th and 27th of December, and after three days' desperate fighting, ■which failed to make any impression upon the fortifications of the city, had the mortification to be superseded in command by General McClernand, a volunteer officer, to whom he transferred the command with a soldierly loyalty and manliness, which few men, in his circumstances, would have been able to exhibit towards a civilian general, and a rival. The repulse of the Chickasaw Blufl's, however, was subsequently fully compensated for by the hearty praise and candid criticism of General Grant and other eminent military critics, who saw, in the natural topo- 76 MEN OF OUR DAY. graphy of the ground, the insuperable obstacles against which he had so bravely contended. Sherman's next most brilliant exploit was his rapid and successful movement for the relief of Admiral Porter's fleet of gunboats, on the Sunflower river, which were in danger of being hemmed in by the enemy, while attempting to reach Haines' Bluff, above Vicksburg, with a view to an attack on the city. In Grant's subsequent attempt on the city from below, the role assigned to Sherman was one involving considerable danger, and requiring a high degree of military tact — being a feigned attack, or rather a demonstration, in conjunction with the gunboats, on Haines' Bluff. This attack, which continued with great fury for two days, enabled Grant to land his troops without opposition at a point seventy miles below, — then, by a forced six days' march over terrible roads. General Sherman joined his force to that of Grant at Grand Gulf, and the whole army moved forward. We next find Sherman operating with McPherson in a series of brilliant movements, resulting in the rout of the enemy and the capture of Jackson, Mississippi, and the destruction of numerous rail- road bridges, machine shops, and arsenals at that point; then, by a succession of rapid marches, which General Grant charac- terized as " almost unequalled," he wrested the possession of Walnut Hills from the enemy, cutting their force in two, and compelling the evacuation of Haines', Snyder's, Walnut, and Chickasaw Bluffs, together with all their strong works; and enabling General Grant at once to open communication with the fleet and his new base on the Yazoo and Mississippi, above Yicksburg. To General Sherman it was perhaps an additional source of pleasure that the position which he had thus gained by a rear attack, was the very one against which, less than five months before, he had hurled his troops in vain. In the first assault on the enemy's lines, May 19th, Sherman's corps, alone WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN". 77 of the tbree engaged, succeeded in making any material advance, The surrender of the city of Vicksburg, on the 4th of July brought rest and comfort to all of the brave " Army of the Tennessee, except to Sherman's corps, who were immediately started in pursuit of Johnston, then hovering in the rear of the Union army. Johnston marched at once to Jackson, which he attempted to defend, but finally, on the night of the 16th, evacuated hastily, abandoning every thing to Sherman, of whom General Grant said, in reference to this last success, " It entitles General Sherman to more credit than usually falls to the lot of one man to earn." A well earned rest of two months was terminated, September 23d, by orders from Grant to reinforce Rosecrans, who had just fought the battle of Chickamauga. Promptness, celerity of movement, and a force of will which overcame every obstacle which enemy or accident placed in his way, characterized his execution of this order. Arriving at Memphis, he pushed on to open communication between that city and Chattanooga; and, while so engaged, was appointed commander of the Army of the Tennessee, at the request of General Grant, who had been advanced to the command of the Grand Military Division of the Mississippi, comprising the Armies of the Cumberland, the Ohio, and the Tennessee. On the loth of November, under imperative orders from Grant, and by a forced march, he joined that general at Chattanooga, and exhausted as his men were, by the arduous march from Memphis, he at once received, and promptly obeyed, orders to cross the Tennessee, make a lodgment on the terminus of Missionary Ridge and demonstrate against Bragg's flank. The roads were in a horrible condition, but by herculean exer- tions, three divisions were put across the river and concealed, during the night of November 28d, behind some hills, and by one o'clock, the following morning, his whole force had crossed 78 MEN OF OUR DAY. both tlie Tennessee and the Chickamauga, and under cover of a rain and dense fog, the cavalry dashed forward to cut the Chattanooga and Knoxville, and the Cleveland and Dalton rail- roads, while the infantry, by half past three, p. m., surprised and captured the fortifications on the terminus of Missionary Eidge ; and the Union guns being dragged up the steep ascent, quickly silenced the fire which was opened upon them from the batteries of the discomforted and enraged enemy. The night was spent in rest and preparation for the struggle which the morrow would inevitably bring for the possession of Fort Buck- ner, the formidable fortification which crowned the next or superior ridge of the hill. To General Sherman, on account of his known abilities and, more especially, his unquestioning obedience to military necessities, was assigned a task requiring firmness and self-sacrifice, unattended with any immediate hope of reputation and fame, but which he accepted with that prompt- ness which always characterizes him. It was, to make a per- sistent demonstration against Fort Buckner, in order to draw the enemy's force from Forts Bragg and Breckinridge, which being weakened, would fall an easier conquest to G rant's storm ing column. Splendidly did this masterly soldier and his brave men carry out their part in the programme of the battle of the 25th. From sunrise, until three o'clock, they surged forward in desperate charges upon the fortifications of the crested heights above them — again and again were repulsed — slill gained a little and steadily held what they gained — until the enemy had massed nearly his whole force against the struggling column ; when, suddenly. Hooker swooped down upon Fort Bragg, and at twenty minutes to four P. M., Thomas's Fourth army corps, charging in solid column up the ridge, carried Fort Breckinridge by assault — and the battles of Chattanooga were won. The glorious success of that day was due quite as much WILLIAM TECUMSEH SnERMAN. 79 to the persistency and stubbornness with which General Sherman held the crest of Tunnel ITill, as to the gallant daring of the other divisions ; and, without the former, the latter could never, by any possibility, have succeeded. Victory, however, brought no respite to Sherman and his tired veterans. The flying foe was to be pursued and railroad connections severed ; and, while so engaged, they were ordered to the relief of Knoxville, where twelve thousand men under 'General Burnside were closely besieged by Longstreet. Eighty- four miles of terrible roads, and two rivers, lay between them and Knoxville, which must be reached in three days. Seven days before they had left their camp beyond the Tennessee, with only two days' rations, and but a single coat or blanket per man, officers as well as privates, and with no other provisions but such as they could gather by the road. In that time, also, they had borne a conspicuous part in a terrible battle, and well might they have been excused if they had grumbled at this fresh imposition of extra duty. But with them "to hear was to obey." The railroad bridge across the Hiawassee was repaired and planked ; they then pushed forward to the Tennessee, and found the bridge there destroyed by the enemy, who retreated. Despatching Colonel Long with the cavalry brigade, with orders to ford the Little Tennessee, and communicate tidings of the approaching relief to General Burnside within twenty-four hours, Sherman turned aside to Morgantown, where he extem- porized a bridge, which he crossed on the night of December 4th; and the next morning received information from Bum- side of Colonel Long's safe arrival, and that all was well. Moving still rapidly forward, he was met at Marysville, on the evening of the 5th, by the welcome news of the abandonment of the siege by General Longstreet, on the previous evening. Halting at Marysville, he sent forward two divisions, uudez 80 MEN OF OUR DAT. General Granger, to Knoxville, and every thing there being found safe, returned leisurely with the rest of his army to Chattanooga The three months' campaign thus closed, had been one of extreme fatigue and brilliant success. Leaving Vicksburg, they had marched four hundred miles, without sleep for three successive nights, fought at Chattanooga^ chased the enemy out of Tennessee, and turning more than a hundred miles north- ward, had compelled the raising of the siege of Knoxville. All this had been done, much of the time, in the depth of winter, over a mountainous region, sometimes barefoot, without regular rations or supplies of any kind, and yet without a murmur. " Forty rounds of ammunition in our cartridge-boxes, sixty rounds in our pockets; a march from Memphis to Chattanooga; a battle and pursuit ; another march to Knoxville ; and viciory everywhere," was the proud answer of one of these fifteenth corps soldiers, in reply to the sentinel who asked him where his badge was. And the cartridge-box with forty rounds, thence- forth, became the emblem of the fifteenth corps. Early in 1863, Gen. Sherman planned an expedition into Central Mississippi, which was sanctioned by Gen. Grant and which was immediately carried into effect. His idea was to march a movable column of 22,000 men, cut loose from any base, for one hundred and twenty miles through the enemy's country, which should sweep Mississippi and Alabama out of the grasp of the rebels. As a military conception it was un- surpassed in modern times, except by Sherman himself in his later movements; and that it failed of its intended results — and became merely a gigantic raid, which, however, carried terror and destruction into the very heart of the Confederacy — was owing only to the lack of proper energy in the co-operating cavalry force. This force, 8000 strong, leaving Memphis on the Ist of February, was to move down the Mobile and Ohio rail- WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN. 81 road from Corinth to Meridian, destroying the road as they went. At Meridian they were expected to meet Sherman, who, with 20,000 cavalry, 1200 infantry, and twenty days' rations, left Vicksburg on the 3d. The cavalry force, however, were so badly behind time at starting, that when they did move they met with much opposition from the enemy, who had massed at different points on the route ; and they finally turned back. Sherman's share of the expedition was promptly carried out, railroad communications were cut, stores destroyed, negroes brought away, and an immense amount of irreparable damage done. Finding that the co-operating cavalry force was not " on time " at the appointed rendezvous, he turned his face westward from Meridian, followed at a very respectful distance by the enemy, from whom, however, he received no serious opposition. The failure, however, deranged and postponed, for a time, the contemplated attack on Mobile by Farragut. On the 12th of March, JSGl, Sherman succeeded to the com- mand of the grand military division of the Mississippi, recently vacated by Gen. Grant, who had been elevated to the command i of the armies of the United States. This division comprised i the departments of the Ohio, the Cumberland, the Tennessee, and, for the time, Arkansas ; and the forces under his command — soon to be increased — numbered, at that time, over 150,000 men, under such leaders as Thomas, McPherson, Schofield, Hooker, Howard, Stoneman, Kilpatrick, Eousseau, and others- of equal ability and fame. At a conference with Grant, soon, after this event, plans for the coming campaign had been fully discussed and agreed upon. It was decided that a simultaneous forward movement of the eastern and western armies should take place in May, one aiming for Eichraond, Virginia, and the other for Atlanta, Georgia. In less than fifty days, Sherman had concentrated the different army corps at Chattanooga, as 6 82 MEN OF OUR DAY. well as immense stores of arms, ammunition and cannon ; had re-organized and drilled his men, remounted and increased his cavalry, and made all the arrangements, even to the minutest detail, for the expected campaign. On the seventh of May, his army of 98,797 effective men (of which 6149 were cavalry and 4460 artillery) and 254 guns, moved forward to its gigantic work — the capture of Atlanta, 130 miles distant. The region of Northern Georgia through which they were to pass, abounds in rugged hills, narrow and steep defiles and valleys, with rapid and deep streams; and is, in all respects, a difficult country for military movements. In addition to its natural topographical advantages, the Chattanooga and Atlanta railroad threaded many of these mountain passes, and these points, therefore, had received the special attention and scientific skill of Gen. John- ston, the rebel commander, who had added immensely to their strength by almost impregnable fortifications. Opposed to the Union troops, also, were about 45,000 well trained soldiers, re- inforced during the subsequent campaign by nearly 21,000, and commanded by Johnston, Hardee, Hood, and other picked gen- erals of the Confederacy. Again, while the rebel army, if com- pelled to retreat, would be only falling back upon its base of supplies, Sherman's army, already 350 miles from the primary base at Louisville, and 175 from its secondary base at Xashville, was increasing that distance by every step of its advance ; and was under the necessity of guarding its long and constantly in.- creasinof line of communications (one, and for a part of the dis- tance, two lines of railroad, and in certain conditions of naviga- tion, the Tennessee river) from being cut by the rebel cavalry, as well as from the attacks of guerrillas. Yet Sherman, during the succeeding five months' campaign, retained this line of nearly 500 miles, wholly within his control, turning to the sig- nal discomfiture of the enemy every attempt which they made WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN. bo to destroy it. Dalton, a position of great strength, and which could only be reached by the Buzzard Roost's Gap, a narrow and lofty defile in the groat rock-faced ridge of the Chattoo- gata mountains, was the first point of attack. Protected by a formidable abatis, and artificially flooded from a neighboring creek, and commanded by heavy batteries, this defile, through which the railroad passed, and which oft'ered the only route to Dalton, was impregnable by a front attack. Leaving Thomas and Howard to demonstrate vigorously against it, therefore, Sherman, with the rest of his army, flanked it by a movement through Snake Creek Gap, towards Resaca, on the railroad, eighteen miles below Dalton. Johnston, however, fell back on Resaca before the Union army had reached it, while Howard passed through Dalton close in Johnston's rear. Once in Re- saca, Johnston showed fight, and Sherman having pontooned the Oostanaula, south of the town, and sent a division to threaten Calhoun, the next place on the railroad, and a cavalry division to cut up the railroad between Calhoun and Kingston, gave bat- tle at Resaca, which place, after two days' heavy fighting, the rebel commander abandoned in the night of the 15th, burning the bridge behind him, with a loss of some 3500, of whom 1000 were prisoners, eight guns and a large amount of stores, etc. Pressing fiercely on his flying footsteps, Sherman sent the 14th corps to Rome, which was captured and garrisoned, and after a severe skirmish at Adairsville,he reached Kingston on the 18th, captured it, and gave his troops a few days' rest, while he re- opened communications with Chattanooga, and brought forward supplies for his army. On the 23d, with twenty days' rations, he moved forward again, flanking the dangerous defile of Allatoona Pass, by a rapid march on the town of Dallas. Johnston, fearing for the safety of his railroad communications, felt compelled to leave his fortified position and give battle. In rapid successioD 84 MEN OF OUR DAY. followed the severe engagements at Burnt Hickory on the 2ith, at Pumpkinvine creek and at New Hope church, on the 25th, and Johnston's grand attack on General McPherson at Dallas, on the 28th, where the former was repulsed with a loss of over three thousand. While this had been going on, Sherman had extended his left, so as to envelope the rebel right, and to occupy all the roads leading eastward towards Allatoona and Ackworth, and finally occupied Allatoona Pass with his cavalry, with a feint of moving further south. Suddenly, however, he reached Ackworth, and Johnston was obliged to fall back, on the 4th of June, to Kenesaw mountain. Sherman now fortified and garrisoned Allatoona Pass as a secondary base, repaired his communica- tions, and on the 9th of June received full supplies and rein- forcements by railroad from Chattanooga. Moving forward again, he proceeded to press Johnston, who held a finely fortified position in a triangle, formed by the north- ern slopes of Pine, Kenesaw, and Lost mountains. After several days' artillery practice, General Johnston was found, on the morning of the 15th, to have abandoned the first named moun- tain, and to be occupying a well intrenched line between the two latter. Sherman still pressed him until he evacuated Lost mountain, and, finally, was obliged to make another change — • with Kenesaw as his salient, covering Marieica with his right wing, and with his left on Norse's creek, by which means he hoped to gain security for his railroad line. A sally by Hood's corps upon the Union lines, on the 22d, was repulsed with a heavy loss to the assailants; and, on the 27th, Sherman made an assault upon Johnston's position, which was unsuccessful. Despite the heavy loss which they sustained, the Union troops were not dispirited, and a skilful manoeuvre by Sherman, com- pelled the evacuation of Marietta, on the 2d of July. General Johnston remained well intrenched on the west bq,nk of the WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN. 85 Cbattahoochie, until the 5th, when a flank movement of Sher- man compelled him to cross, which he did in good order. But, on the 7th and 8th of July, Sherman secured three good pointa for crossing the river, and the Confederates were obliged to fall back to Atlanta, leaving their antagonist in full possession of the river. While giving his men the brief rest, which they so much needed, before his next move on Atlanta, eight miles dis- tant, Sherman on the 9th, telegraphed orders to a force of two thousand cavalry (which he had already collected at Decatur, over two hundred miles in Johnston's rear) to push south and break up the railroad connections around Opelika, by which the rebel army got its supplies from central and southern Alabama, Georgia, and Mississippi, and then join him at Marietta. The cavalry, under General »Kousseau, set out promptly, and, within twelve days, destroyed thirty miles of railroad, defeated the rebel General Clanton, and I'eached Mari- etta on the 22d, with a loss of only thirty men. Meanwhile, the main army had been enjoying a rest, supplies had been brought forward, railroad guards and garrisons strengthened, roads and bridges improved and the attention of the rebels well diverted by cavalry expeditions which were sent down the river. On the ITth, then, a general advance was made, and the same evening the Union army formed its line along the old Peach Tree road. The next day McPherson and Schofield, swinging around upon the Augusta railroad, east of Decatur, broke it up most eft'ectually, and, on the 19th, Thomas crossed Peach Tree creek on numerous bridges thrown across in face of the enemy's lines. All this was accomplished with heavy skirmishing, and on the 20th, Hood (who, three days })revious, had succeeded General Johnston in the supreme command of the Confederate army), taking advantage of a gap between two corps of the Union army, hurled his whole force upon its left 86 MEN OF OUR DAY. wing, with the hope of cutting oiYand routing it. llis skilfully conceived stratagem, however, was foiled by the unexpected steadiness of the Union soldiers, and after a terrible battle the enemy was driven back to his intrenchments, with a loss of over five thousand men. Retreating to his interior lines along the creek, forming the outer lines of the defences proper of Atlanta, Hood now massed nearly his whole force, and, upon the 22d, fell upon Sherman's left with great fury. Six times during tbe day his columns desperately charged upon the Union lines, but at night he was compelled to withdraw with a loss of fully 12,000 men, of whom over 8000 were killed, 5000 stand of arms and eighteen flags. The Union loss was but 1,720, but among the slain was the able and beloved Major- Gen eral James B. McPherson, commander of the army of the Tennessee, whose death was not only a serious blow to General Sherman, but was generally regarded as a national misfortune. The day following this severely contested battle. General Gar- rard's cavalry force, which had been sent to Covington, Georgia, to break the railroad and bridges near that place, returned to headquarters, having fully executed his mission with great damage to the rebel cotton and stores, and a considerable num- ber of prisoners. An expedition, however, planned by General Sherman fur the destruction of the Atlanta and Macon, and ihe West Point railroads, with the view of severing Atlanta from all its communications and compelling its surrender, was not so successful. A portion of it, under General McCook, performed its share speedily and well, but the co-operating force under General Stoneman unfortunately failed — the general and a large number of his men being captured — while McCook was obliged to fight his way out; the whole entailing a heavy loss of cavalry to the Union army. On the 28th of July, Hood in full force again assaulted the WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN". 87 Union army on the Bell's Ferry road — expecting to catch its right flank " in air." He founrl, however, that Sherman was perfectly prepared for him — and, after six desperate assaults, gave it up as a bad job, having lost fully 5000 men, which, with his losses in the previous battles of the 20th and 23d, placed nearly one half of his force hors du combat. Hoping, by threatening his communications, to draw Hood out from hi? fortifications, Sherman now extended his line southwesterly towards East Point. The ruse failed, however, and the only alternative remaining to compass the capture of Atlanta, in- volved the necessity of another flank movement of the whole army, a difl&cult and unwelcome matter both as regarded the further removal of the army from its base of supplies and the apparent raising of the siege. But there seemed to be no other way, and accordingly, on the nights of the 25th and 26th, a por- tion of his army was withdrawn to the Chattahoochie, and Hood congratulated himself that a cavalry expedition which he had sent northward to break the Union connections between Allatoon? and Chattanooga, had alarmed Sherman for the safety of his communications, and compelled him to raise the siege. The joy of the rebels, however, was of short duration ; on the 29th of August, they learned that Sherman's army was sweeping their own railroad communications at West Point with a "besom of destruction" — and on the 31st, two rebel corps, which had been hastily pushed forward to Jonesboro, were heavily repulsed by the advancing Union armies. Find- ing his communications now irretrievably lost, by this flank movement of his antagonist. Hood retreated, on the niglit of September 1st. to Lovejoy's Station. Atlanta was occupied, the next day, by the victorious Union troops, and the city was immediutely converted into a strictly military post. The loss jf Atlanta was a severe blow to the rebels; and, under orders 88 MEN OF OUR DAY. from President Davis, on the 24:th of September, Hood ini- tiated a series of movements by which he hoped to recover not only it, but northern Georgia and east and middle Ten- nessee, Sherman, however, kept a watchful eye upon him and pursued him closely to Gaylesville, where he could watch him intrenched at Will's Gap, in Lookout mountain. Divin- ing, further, that Hood meditated a union with General Dick Taylor at Tuscumbia, Alabama, and a joint attempt by them, for the recovery of middle and east Tennessee, he divided his army, giving a share to his trusted friend General George H. Thomas, Avith orders to hold Ttanessee against the rebels. Then, announcing to his army that he should follow Hood northward no longer, but "if he would go to the river, he would give him his rations," he moved back to Atlanta, by the 1st of November, and sent the railroad track, property of value, etc., at that city and along the line, to Chattanooga, which thenceforward became the outpost of the Union army in that direction. Leaving Tennessee safe in Thomas's charge, and Schofield to keep the rebels out of Chattanooga and Nashville, Sherman now prepared for a campaign which he had already projected through Georgia and North Carolina "to the sea." "They are at my mercy," he telegraphed to Washington, "and I shall strike. ' Do not be anxious about me. I am all right." With the army under his command, consisting of nearly 60,000 infantry, and 10,000 cavalry, he proposed to cut loose from all bases, and, with thirty or forty days' rations and a train of the smallest possible dimensions, to move southeastward through the very heart of the Confederacy, upon Savannah ; thence, if favored by circumstances, to turn northward through North and South Carolinas, thus compelling the surrender or evacuation of Richmond. With General Sherman, action follows close on thought. Destroying all the public buildings of Atlanta, he WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN. 89 moved. forward in two columns, the right commanded by Gen- eral Howard and the left by General Slocum, while a cloud of cavalry floating around the main body, shrouded the real inten- tions of the march with a degree of mystery impenetrable to the enemy. General Howard's column, accompanied by Gen- eral Sherman, passed through East Point, Rough and Ready, Griffin, Jonesboro, McDonough, Forsythe, Hillsboro, and Monti- cello, reaching Milledgeville, the capital of Georgia, on the 20th of November ; thence via Saundersville and Griswold to Louis- ville. The left wing, meanwhile, under Slocum, had marched through Decatur, Covington, Social Circle, Madison ; threatened Macon with attack, then through Buckhead and Queensboro, and divided, one part moving towards Augusta, the other to Eatonton and Sparta. Here, uniting, they entered Warren and finally joined the right wing at Louisville. The whole force now moved down the left bank of the Ogeechee to Millen and thence to the Savannah canal, where their scouts, on the 9th of December, communicated with General Poster and Admiral Dahlgren, who where there waiting for their arrival. During this magnificent march of three hundred miles, they had met with no very serious opposition, and the few troopa which the rebel generals could muster, were skilfully thrown •out of his way by Sherman's feints on Macon and Augusta — by which they were garrisoned for the defence of those cities. So completely, indeed, was General Bragg fooled by his wily antagonist, that when Savannah was actually attacked, he was unable to come to its relief. Fort McAllister was carried by storm, by the Union troops, on the 13th of December, and on the 16th, the city, which, by some strange oversight, had only a garrison of one hundred and fifty men, was summoned to surrender. General Hardee, who commanded these, refused, whereupon Sherman commanded to invest the city, with the 90 MEN OF OUR DAY. design of bombarding it. But, on the night of the 20th, under cover of a heavy fire from the rebel gunboats and batteries, Hardee abandoned the city, which was entered the next day by , the Union army. Into the hands of the victors fell 150 guns, 13 locomotives, 190 cars, large stores of ammunition and sup- plies, 3 steamers, and 33,000 bales of cotton in warehouses. The expedition, the entire loss of which was less than 400 men, gave freedom to over 20,000 slaves who accompanied it to Savannah; and its course was marked by over 200 miles of destroyed railroad, which effectually broke the enemy's con- nection with Hood's and Beauregard's armies. Simultaneously, also, with their victorious entry into Savannah, Sherman and his brave veterans received the welcome news, that the Union army in Tennessee, decoying Hood to Nashville, liad there turned upon him, and utterly routed him even beyond the borders of Alabama. From every quarter, indeed, of Sherman's military jurisdiction, came the good news, that in each place his subordinates had proved themselves worthy of the trusts com- mitted to their charge. Hopefully then, the great leader turned to the completion of his self-imposed and herculean task. South Carolina — Columbia, its capital, and Charleston, " the nest of the rebellion," were yet to be humbled beneath the mailed foot of loyalty. Eefreshod, recruited and strengthened at every point, the army commenced its march to the northward, on the 14:th of January, 1865. Two corps (loth and 17th) were sent by transports to Beaufort, South Carolina, where they were joined by Foster's command, and the whole force moved on the Savann^^h and Charleston railroad. A few days later, the two remaixiing corps (l-lth and 20th) crossed the Savannah river, and despite the overflowed and terrible condition of the roads, struck the railroad between Branchville and ('harleston, early in February ; compelled the enemy to evacuate the former WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN. 91 place on the lith, and breaking up the road so as to efFejitUrtUy prevent reinforcement from the west, entering Orangeburg on the 16th, and Columbia on the 18th, close on the heels of Beauregard's retreating force. This movement flanked Charles- ton, and Hardee, finding it untenable, retreated in the light of a conflagration, which laid two thirds of the business portion of that beautiful city in ashes. On the morning of February 18th, the Union troops from Morris island, entered the city, and the " old flag" once more floated over Fort Sumter. Moving in two columns, the 17th and 20th corps marched from Columbia to Winnsboro, thirty miles north, on the Charlotte and Columbia railroad, which was thoroughly destroyed. Sending Kilpatriek towards Chesterville, in order to delude Beauregard into the be- lief that he was moving on that point, Sherman turned e;ist, liis left wing directed towards Cheraw, and his right threatening Florence. On the 3d of March occurred the short and not very severe battle oC Cheraw, a success for the Union arms, and on tlie next day, March 4th, President Lincoln's second in ;uguration was celebrated by a salute from the rebel guns which tliev had captured. On the afternoon and night of the 6th, the Union army crossed the Great Pedee river, and in four columns, with outlying cavalry, swept through a belt of country forty miles wide, entering Laurel Hill, North Carolina, on the 8th, and reaching Fayetteville on the 11th. Thus far, the results of the campaign had been, 14 captured cities, hundreds of miles of railroads, and thousands of bales of cotton destroyed, 85 cannon, 4000 prisoners, 25,000 horses, mules, etc., and 15,000 refugees, black and white, set at liberty. After a rest of two days, Sher- man moved moderately forward, meeting, fighting, and defeating the enemy under Johnston, at Averysboro, on the 16th, and again, on the 19th, at Bentonville ; finally, pressing them back BO swiftly on Smithfield, on the 20th and 21st, that they lost 92 MEN" OF OUE DAY. seven guns and over 2000 prisoners, while deserters ponred in b}'^ hundreds. On the same day Schofield occupied Goldsboro, General Terry secured Cox's bridge, and successfully pon- tooned the Neuse river, and General Sherman issued a congratu- latory Older to his troops, in which he says : " After a march of the most extraordinary character, nearly five hundred miles, over swamps and rivers, deemed impassable to others, at tKe most inclement season of the year, and drawing our chief sup- plies from a poor and wasted country, we reach our destination in good health and condition — you shall now have rest, and all the supplies that can be brought from the rich granaries and storehouses of our magnificent country, before again embarking on new and untried dangers." The entire Union losses in killed, wound.'cl, and prisoners, on this sixt}^ days' march from Savan- nah to Goldsboro, had been less than 2500 men. Leaving his men to recruit their energies, Sherman went to City Point, where, on tlie 27th of March, he had an interview with General Grant and the President, returning to his camp the next day. His army was now only separated from Grant's by a distance Cff 150 miles, traversed by a railroad which could easily be put in ord r lor immediate use ; and, between the two, as between the upper and the nether millstone, the enemy were to be crushed by a blow, whieh, ns yet, neither army hastened to give. On th.' 10th of April, Sherman's army, thoroughly rested and fully equipped, mowd on Smithfield, which they entered on the following morning, Johnston, who commanded a large body of troops, retired across the Neuse, burning the bridge behind, and retreating by railroad. Sherman's men, struggling through roads so muddy tliat they were obliged to corduroy every foot of them, were cheered by the news of Lee's surrender, which met them eii route, and leaving their trains, they pushed ahead with redoubled energy, to Raleigh, which they entered in the WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHETiMAN. 93 earlj morning of the 15th. Sherman now took measures to cut off Johnston's retreat, when the latter (knowing, what Sherman did not, that Salisbury had been captured by the Union General Stoneman on the 12th. thereby closing his own avenue of escape to the southward) made overtures for surrender. Interviews between the two generals, on the 17th and 18th, (at the latter of which General J. C. Breckinridge, then acting Secretary of War of the Confederacy, was present) resulted in the drawing up of a joint memorandum, to be submitted to the Presidents of the United States and of the Confederate Government, and if approved by them to be acted upon. The points of this memo- randum were briefly as follows : (1) the contending armies to remain in statu quo^ hostilities not to be resumed until within forty -eight hours after due notice from either side; (2) the Confederate armies then in the field to disband, march to their respective State capitals, there to deposit their arms and public property, and each man to execute an agreement to cease from acts of war. The number of arms, etc., to be reported to the chief of ordnance at Washington, subject to the future ac- tion of the United States Congress, and, meanwhile, to be used only to maintain peace and order within the borders of the several States; (3) the recognition, by the Executive of the United States, of the several State governments, on their oflicera and legislatures taking the oath prescribed by the Constitution of the United States ; and the legitimacy of any conflicting State governments to which the war may have given rise, to be submitted to the Supreme Court of the United States ; (4) the re-establishment of all Federal courts in the several States, with powers as defined by the Constitution and laws of Congress; (5) the guarantee, by the Executive, to the people of all the States, of their political rights and franchises, as well as personal and property rights, according to the Constitutions of the United 94< MEN OF OUR DAY. States and tlie several States; (6) the people not to be dis- turbed by the United States Government, on account of the late war, so long as they lived in peace, obeyed their local laws, and abstained from acts of armed hostility ; (7) on the above condi- tions, a general amnesty. This agreement, which was evidently entered into by Sherman under the full conviction that slavery was dead and the rebellion totally crushed, was received at Washington, by the Cabinet, just at the moment that their hearts and the public mind were intensely agitated and confused by the recent atrocious assassination of President Lincoln, the attempt on Secretary Seward's life, and the other startling events of the day. To men in such a frame of mind, and when read by the light of surrounding circumstances, its terms seemed unpardonably liberal. Forgetting that his action coin- cided exactly with the published policy of the late President (in his permission [April 7th] to the Virginia legislature to meet and adopt such measures as should withdraw the State troops from the Confederate force) ; and forgetting, also, that Sherman, in his recent great march, had been completely isola- ted from the outside world, and was ignorant of any change of policy on the part of the new Presideni — the Cabinet set the seal of its disapproval upon the course which the gallant chief- tain had submitted to their consideration. Yet, it is worthy of note, that, as events have since turned, the relations of these States to the Union have been based upon the identical policy which Sherman's course then indicated. General Grant went, therefore, immediately to Ealeigh, where he arrived on the 24th, and Sherman promptly notified the enemy of the termination of the armistice at the end of forty-eight hours. Johnston im- mediately signified to Sherman his desire for a conference, which resulted, on the 2()th, in the surrender of the Confederate army to General Sherman, on the terms awarded to General Lee WILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN. 95' 30,000 soldiers, 15,000 muskets, 108 pieces of artillery were surrendered, and the war of the rebellion was virtually ended. On the -ith of May, the greater part of his army moved northward to Richmond and Washington, where they were reviewed, May 24th, 1865, and about two-thirds of them disbanded, the war having so nearly closed, as to render their further presence in the field unnecessary. From June 27th, 1865, to Augpt 11th, 1866, General Sherman held the command of the Military Division of the Mississippi (including Ohio, Missouri, and Arkansas), with headquarters at St. Louis; and, from the latter date, of the Military Division of Missouri, which command he retained till March 5, 1869. He was also appointed a member of the Board to make recommen- dations for brevets to general officers, March 14th to 24:th, 1866 ; and was sent on a special mission to Mexico, in November and December, 1866. On the 25th of July, 1866, by vote of Congress, he was created Lieutenant-General of the United States Army, a deserved acknowledgment of his valor, skill, and patriotism. On the 19th of the same month, he received from Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws. On the 5th of March, 1869 he was nominated by President Grant, and the same day confirmed by the Senate, as General of the United States Army, succeeding in this, as in his previous promotion, the President, who had on assuming the Presidential office resigned his commission of General. Gen- eral Sherman was himself succeeded in the Lieutenant-General- ship by Major-General Sheridan. The duties of this high office being, in time of peace, mostly of a routine character, General Sherman took up his residence in Washington, and gave his atten- tion to them, visiting, however, from time to time the various divi- sions and departments. In November, 1871, he sailed for Europe acconroanied by Lieutenant Fred. D. Grant, the eldest son of the 96 MEN OF OUR DAY. President, who had a few months previous graduated from West Point. At the time of our writing (June, 1872) he is on the European Continent, having visited Egypt, Turkey and the Kingdom of Italy. General Sherman is tall and slender, but possesses great elas- ticity and power of endurance. His temperament is nervous and wiry, with a dash of the sanguineous, indicated by his auburn hair and beard. His manners ^re slightly brusque and austere, and he has a quick, jerky way of speaking. He is a great smoker, but chews and bites his cigar somewhat viciously, especially when, as is often the case, he is in one of his abstracted moods, and thinking closely. He requires but little sleep. As a writer he expresses himself with great terseness and force, sometimes condensing a whole volume of military law into a single sentence. He is imperious, positive, and dogmatical, but he has usually thought out his opinions carefully before committing them to writing. His mind acts with great rapidity, and though some- times eccentric and crotchety, he generally reasons accurately and well. With all his iniperiousness and dogmatism, he always recognises the great military law, that " unhesitating obedience is the first duty of a soldier." General Sherman -is a man of higher genius, as well as of broader culture, than General Grant, yet we doubt if he would be quite as safe a man, as the commander-in-chief of our armies in a great war. He is, indeed, well versed in both the theory and practice of logistics ; and in handling an army of a hundred thou- sand nu n or more with masterly skill, he has not a dozen equals, and perhaps hardly a superior in the world. His deficiency, if he has one, would be manifested in his unwillingness, in the midst of a great contest, to subordinate the military to the civil power, liowever necessary it might be to do so. General Sher- man's ambition lies wholly in the military direction, and although WIILLIAM TECUMSEH SHERMAN. 97 he has attained to the highest command possible in this country, he does not relax his military studies. He took great delight in following out the admirable strategical plans of General Moltke, in the recent Franco-German-war. As a commander he has always had the regard of his soldiers, not from personal magnetism, like Sheridan or McPherson, but from the conviction ^hat their grim chieftain would share their toils and privations uncomplain- ingly, and that he took a special interest in seeing their wants supplied and their comfort secured. 1 •ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER. '^"^'^^ courage and splendid fighting qualities are inherited, '^ll Admiral Porter should be, as he is, one of the best tight- gI?^ ing men in the navy, for he is the youngest son of that 'S' old Viking, Commodore David Porter, who, in the war of 1812, was the terror of the British marine, and who, while, unlike Semmes of the Alabama, he never let slip an ojiportunity of engaging a war vessel of the enemy, even if she carried twice his armament, made worse havoc with their mercantile marine, than Semmes did with ours. The career of the frigate Essex, and her untoward fate, made the old commodore a hero for the rest of his life. After the close of the war he served as a mem- ber of the board of Navy Commissioners from 1815 to 1823, but the longing for the sea was too strong for him to overcome, and an opportunity occurring for a cruise to destroy the pirates who were infesting the West Indies, he gladly took command, and served two years, when, having punished with some severity an insult offered by the authorities of one of the islands, he was c:illed home, and a naval court martial having decided that he bad transcended his authority, he was suspended from command for six months. He resigned soon after, and for the next four years was commander-in-chief of the naval forces 'of Mexico. Keturning to the United States in 1829 he was appointed consul general to the Barbary powers, and thence transferred first as 98 ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER. 99 cliarg(3 and afterward as minister, to Constantinople, wliere he remained till his death in 1843. Ilis youngest son, David D. Porter, was born in Philadelphia in June, 1813, and, while still a child, aucornpanied his father in his cruise after the pirates in 1823-25. We believe he was also with him in Mexico. On the 2d of February, 1829, he received his warrant as mid- shipman, being appointed from Pennsylvania. He was ordered to the frigate Constellation, thirty-six guns, stationed in the Mediterranean, under Commodore Biddle and Captain Wads- worth. In 1831, the Constellation was ordered home, and laid up in ordinary at Norfolk, and Porter was granted leave of absence, after which, in 1832, he was ordered back to the Mediterranean on the new flag-ship United States, a forty-four gun frigate, under Captain Nicholson, Commodore Patterson having charge of the squadron. On the 3d of July, 1835, he passed his ex- amination, and was recommended for early promotion. During the years 1836 to 1841, he was appointed on the Coast Survey and exploring expeditions, and stood on the list of passed mid- shipmen at the following numbers: — January 1, 1838, No. Ill; Janaary 1, 1839, No. 84; January 1, 1840, No. 61, and January 1, 1841, at No. 48. On the 27th of February, 1841, he was commissioned a lieutenant, and ordered to the frigate Congress, a forty-four gun vessel-of-war. He then rejoined the Mediterranean squad- ron, and after a short time this vessel was ordered on the Brazilian station. lie still retained his position on the same frigate, and was on her more than four years ; for his name is re- oorded as one of her lieutenants on the rolls of the Navy Depart- ment for the years commencing January 1, 1842, 1843, 1844, and 1845. He had not risen much during these years; for on the 100 MEN OF OUR DAY. llrst mentioued date his name stood at Is , 267 on the list cf lieutenants ; on the second at No. 258 ; on the third at No. 245, and on the last at No. 232. At the latter end of 1845 he was attached to the Observatory at Washington on special duty, which position he still held at the commencement and during a part of the year 1846. He then stood No. 228 on the list. On January 1, 1847, after having performed some brilliant exploits in the Gulf of Mexico during the Mexican war, he is entered as being in charge of the rendezvous at New Orleans, from which he was detached to again join the Coast Survey, on which service his name is recorded on January 1, 1848. Dur- ing this year he was appointed to the command of the schooner Petrel, engaged on the survey. In February, 1849, he left New York as the commander of the steamship Panama, the third of the vessels constituting the line of American mail steamers first established for service on the Pacific. The pioneer passage of the Panama was attended with incidents which displayed on the part of the commander courage, caution, patience, and thoroughly competent qualifica- tions for the post to which he had been assigned. After taking the vessel safely to Panama Bay, he was ordered to New York to the command of the mail steamer Georgia, which command he held during the latter part of 1850, the years 1851 and 1852, and a great portion of 1853. Amongst the many gallant exploits of Admiral Porter was that of running the steamer Crescent City (appropriately named) into the harbor of Havana, during the excitement between the two countries relative to the ship Black "Warrior. The Spanish government had refused to permit any United States vessel to enter that port. Eunning under the shotted guns of Moro Cas- tle, he was ordered to halt. He promptly replied that he cap- ried the United States flag and the United States mails, and, by ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER. 101 ihe Eternal, tie would go in ; and he did, the Habaneros fearin,<:; to fire upon him. He said afterwards that he intended firing his six-pounder at them once in defiance, after which he would haul down hi- flag. During the Mexican war, Admiral Porter, tlien a lieutenant, took a very active part in the naval portion of that conflict. He was the executive officer and first lieutenant und^r the famous Commodore Tatnall, who had charge of the mosquito fleet in the waters of the Gulf, Their adventures before Vera Cruz are not likely soon to be forgotten. On the 1st of January, 1854, he is recorded absent again on leave, and at the beginning of the next year awaiting orders. His name now stood at No. 138. During 1855 he was ordered to the command of the storeship Supply, and held this com- mand during the next year, until February, 1857. He was then, ordered on shore duty, and on the 1st of January, 1860, was at the Navy Yard at Portsmouth as third in command. At the beginning of the year 1861, he was under orders to join the Coast Survey on the Pacific, but, fortunately, had not left when the rebellion broke out. His name at this time stood number six on the list of lieutenants. The resignation of several naval traitors left room for his advancement, and the "Naval Register" for August 31, 1861, places him number seventy-seven on the list of commanders, with twenty others between him and the next grade of rank below. He was then placed in command of the steam sloop-of-war Powhatan, a vessel of about twenty-five hundred tons, and armed with eleven guns. In her he to Dk part in one section of the blockading squadron, and left that ship to take the special charge of the mortar expe- dition. The active part he took in the reduction of the forts below New Orleans will make his name ever memorable in connection with the mortar fleet, or "bummers," as the sailors terra them. After the capture of New Orleans he. with his 102 A. EN OF OUR DAY. fleet, went up the MississipjM river, and was engaged in several affairs on that river, including that of Vioksburg. Fnnn that place ho was ordered to the James river, and returned in the Octorara. When oflt" Charleston, on his way to Fortress Monroe, he lell in with and eupturc-d the Anglo-rebel steamer Tubal Cain, It was at lirst supposed that he would have been placed in command of the James river flotilla; but fi-oni some cause this plan was changed. lie was allowed leave of absence to recruit his health, while his mortar fleet was engaged on the Chesapeake and in front of .lialtinK)re. In October, 1862, he was a})pointed to the command of the Mississi[)pi gunboat flotilla, as successor to Commodore Davis, with the rank of acting rear-admiral, and was required to co-operate with General Grant in the assault and siege of Vicka- burg. His services in that siege form a record of which any man might be proud. His squadron was a large one, composed of vessels of all sizes, many of them constructed under his own su})ervisi m, and a considerable number were armed steamers, plated with from three to four and a half inches of iron and capable of resisting the shot of any but the heaviest batteries. His previous very thorough knowledge of the Mississippi river was of great advantage tt) him in this service, as well as iu his operations previously and subsequently in the lower Mississippi. In General Grant he evidently found a co-worker after his own heart, for imperious and exacting as the admiral's temper is, they h;ld no dillieulties, and he entered most heartily into all the general's elVorts io find a suitable point for assailing successfully the Gibraltar of the rebellion. Previous to the coming of General Grant's army to Young's Point, Admiral Porter had chaired the lower Yazoo of torpedoes, losing one gunboat (the Cairo) in the attempt; had assisted Gereral Slier man to the utmost of his ability in his attack upon Chickasaw ADMIRAL DAVID I). PORTER. 103 Bluffs; and accompanying General McClernand in Lis expedi- tion to the post of Arkansas and the White river, had born barded the fort (Fort Ilindman) till it surrendered, and broken up the other small forts and driven out the rebel steamers on the White river. He also succeeded in blockading eleven rebel steamers in tbe Yazoo, Ilis activity during the next six months w^as incessant; now sending gunboats and rams down the river past the batteries of Vicksburg to destroy the rebel rams and steamers and capture the supplies intended for Vicka- burg and Port Hudson ; then firing at the upper or lower batteries of Vicksburg, cutting the levee at Yazoo pass and en deavoring to force a passage through the Yallobusha and Tallahatchee into the Yazoo; and failing in this, cutting his way through the labyrinth of bayous and creeks to attain the aame end. These exercises were varied by sending occasional- ly a coal barge fitted up as a monitor, past the batteries, greatly to the fright of the rebels, who, after concentrating the fires of their batteries on the contrivance without effect, were so badly scared as to destroy the best gunboat (the Indianola taken from Lieutenant Commander Brown) they had on the river, from fear of its capture by this formidable monitor. Then came the hazardous experiment of running gunboats past the batteries, twice repeated, to aid General Grant in hi.H movement to approach Vicksburg from below and from the rear. The success of these enterprises, only two transports out of sixteen or eighteen, and none ot the gunboats, being destroyed, was remarkable, and of itself evinced great skill and caution on the part of the admiral. The fight at Grand Gulf was a severe one, and not successful, but the night following the batteries were run, and the troops ferried over to Bruinsburg, from whence they marched to Jackson and to the rear of Vicksburg. Meanwhile a part of the spuadron had been engaged in aidiufjj 104 MEN OF OUR DAT. Sherman in making a demonstration on Haines' Bluff to draw off the attention of the rebels from Grant's approach hj the south. When, on the 19th of May, Grant's army made their first; assault on the rear of Vicksburg, and on the 22d of May, when the second assault was made, Admiral Porter maintained a heavy fire in front, to distract the attention of the rebels ; and during the whole siege, whenever a ball or shell could be thrown from his squadron either above or below the city with good effect, it was promptly and accurately hurled. The sur- render of Vicksburg, on the 4th of Jul}'-, and of Port Hudson on the 9th, opened the Mississippi to our fleet and to merchant steamers, and thenceforth the fleet on the Mississippi acted only as an armed river patrol. The duties of the squadron in these respects were, however, somewhat arduous for a time. The Tennessee and Cumberland rivers, and the Ohio, were in- cluded Avithin its cruising ground ; and the pursuit of Morgan's expedition to Bufiington island, and the repressing of occasional rebel raids, kept them almost constantly on the alert. Early in March, 186-i, Admiral Porter ascended the Red river to co-operate with General Banks in his expedition to break up the rebel posts on that river, and penetrate by that route into Texas, The expedition was at first successful, and captured the forts of the enemy, and their principal towns, in a series of brief engagements. But, as they ascended the river, the greed of gain seemed to take possession of the squadron, and large quantities of cotton were gathered up from both shores of the river and brought on board the gunboats ; and they were forced so far up the falling stream, that they were in great danger of being unable to return, and so of becoming a prey to the rebels. The army, too, had been seriously repulsed, and had made a somewhat hasty retreat as far as Grand Ecore, I ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER. 105 From this point downward the squadron was in constant trouble — the larger vessels getting aground, hard and fast, several times a day, and being compelled to tie up at night ; harassed almost every hour by small bodies of rebel troops, whom they could only keep off by a free use of canister and grape shot ; not making more than thirty miles a day, and the river constantly falling. At length, thirty miles below Grand Ecore, the Eastport, the largest vessel of the squadron, stuck fast and hard upon the rocks in the channel, and could not be moved ; and the admiral was compelled to give orders for her destruction. The attempt made by the rebels to board the Cricket, another of his gunboats, at this juncture, was so se- verely punished, that they disappeared, and were not seen again until the mouth of Cane river, twenty miles below, was reached. Here was a rebel battery of eighteen guns, and a severe fight ensued. The Cricket, which was but lightly armed (being, as the men were in the habit of saying, only " tin clad"), was very badly cut up, almost every shot going through her, two of her guns being disabled, and half her crew, and her pilot, and chief engineer, being either killed or badly wounded. Here the splendid personal bravery of Admiral Porter proved their sal- vation. He improvised gunners from the negroes on board, put an assistant in the place of the chief engineer, took the helm himself, and ran past the battery under a terrific fire, which he returned steadily with such of his guns as were still serviceable. The other gunboats, though sadly injured, at length got by — the Champion, only, being so much disabled as to be unable to go on, and being destroyed by order of Admiral Porter. On reaching Alexandria, matters were still worse. In the low stage of water, the rapids were impassable by the gur- boats, and at first their destruction seemed inevitable. But the engineer of the Nineteenth army corps, Lieutenant-Colonel 106 MEN OF OUR DAY. Joseph Bailey (afterward promoted to the rank of brigadier- general for this great service), devised a way of floating them over the rapids, by the construction of a series of wing-daraa partly across the river at several points. The task was hercu- lean, but it was skilfully and speedily accomplished, and by the 13th of May all the gunboats had passed the barrier and were on their way to the Mississippi river, still one hundred and fifty miles distant. Before this time, however, two small gunboats and two transports, laden with troops, were attacked by the rebels, and both the transports and one gunboat captured, and the other burned. Admiral Porter returned to his patrol of the Mississippi, from whence, soon after, he was transferred to the command of the North Atlantic squadron. Here he was busy, for a time, with the removal of torpedoes in the naviga- ble waters of Virginia and North Carolina ; in capturing block- ade runners ; and cruising after the pirates who seized our merchant steamers. But his restless activity and energy could not be satisfied without striking a blow at the chief port of entry for which the blockade runners aimed, and into which at least seven out of every ten succeeded in entering. AVilming- tdn. North Carolina, had, during the whole war, been one of the chief seats of the contraband trade of the rebels, and the blockade runners had been more successful in okuling the vigi- lance, or escaping from the pursuit of the blockading squadron there, than either at Charleston or Mobile. This was due in part to its position, and the defences of the harbor. Five forta protected the entrance to the estuary of Cape Fear river; and while they were sufficient to prevent any access to the river by the blockading squadron, they effectually shielded the block- ade runners, who succeeded in effecting an entrance, by either inlet, to the estuary. Of these works, Fort Fisher, one of the most formidable earthworks on the coast, was the chief; and it ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER. lOT was to the reduction of this, that the attention of Rear- Admiral Porter* was directed. The Navy Department, which liad been instrumental in his transfer to the North Atlantic squadron, heartily seconded his efforts ; and an arrangement leaving been made with General Grant for the necessaiy land forces to co« operate with the squadron, a fleet of naval vessels^ surpassing in numbers and equipments any that had been assembled during ths war, was collected with dispatch in Hampton Roads. Vari- ous circumstances delayed the attack until the 2'ith of Decem- ber, 1864. What followed, is best related in the report of the Secretary of the Navy. " On that day (December 24), Rear-Admiral Porter, with a bom- barding force of thirty-seven vessels, five of which were iron- clad, and a reserve force of nineteen vessels, attacked the forts at the mouth of Cape Fear river, and silenced them in one hour and a quarter ; but there being no troops to make an assault or attempt to possess them, nothing beyond the injury inflicted on the works and the garrison was accomplished by the bombard- ment. A renewed attack was made the succeeding day, but with scarcely better results. The fleet shelled the forts during the day and silenced them, but no assault was made, or attempt- ed, by the troops which had been disembarked for that purpose. Major-General Butler, who commanded the co-operating force, after a reconnoissance, came to the conclusion that the place could not be carried by an assault. He therefore ordered a re- embarkation, and informing Rear- Admiral Porter of his intention, returned with his command to Hampton Roads, Immediate information of the failure of the expedition was forwarded to the department by Rear- Admiral Porter, who remained in the * He was made full rear-udiniral for liis gallant services io the siege of Vicksburg, his commission dating from July 4th, 1863. 108 MEN OF OUR DAY. vicinity with his entire fleet, awaiting the needful military aid. Aware of the necessity of reducing these works, and of the great importance which the Department attatched to closing the port of Wilinington,.and confident that with adequate military co-operation the fort could be carried, he asked for such co- operation, and earnestly requested that the enterprise should not be abandoned. In this the department and the President fully concurred. On the suggestion of the President, Lieutenant- General Grant was advised of the confidence felt by Rear- Admi- ral Porter that he could obtain complete success, provided he should be sufficiently sustained. Such military aid was there- fore invited as would insure the fall of Fort Fisher. A second military force was promptly detailed, composed of about 8,500 men, under the command of Major-General A. H. Terry, and sent forward. This of&cer arrived off' Fort Fisher, on the 13th of January. Offensive operations were at once resumed by the naval force, and the troops were landed and intrenched themselves, while a portion of the fleet bombarded the works. These operations were continued throughout the 14th with an increased number of vessels. The 15th was the day decided upon for an assault. During the forenoon of that day, forty-four vessels poured an incessant fire into the rebel forts. There was, besides, a force of fourteen vessels in reserve. At 3 P. M., the signal for the assault was made. Desperate fight- ing ensued, traverse after traverse was taken, and by 10 P. M. the works were all carried, and the flag of the Union floated over them. Fourteen hundred sailors and marines were landed, and participated in the direct assault. Seventy-five guns, many of them superb rifle pieces, and 1,900 prisoners, were the immediate fruits and trophies of the victory ; but the chief value and ultimate benefit of this grand achievement, consisted in closing the main gate through which ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER. 109 the insurgents hud received supplies from abroad, and sent their own products to foreign markets in exchange. Light-draught steamers were immediately pushed over the bar, and into the river, the channel of which was speedily buoyed, and the removal of torpedoes forthwith commenced. The rebels witnessing the fall of Fort Fisher, at once evacuated and blew up Fort Caswell, destroyed Bald Head Fort and Fort Shaw, and abandoned Fort Campbell. Within twenty-four hours after the fall of Fort Fisher, the main defence of Cape Fear river, the entire chain of formidable works in the vicinity shared its fate, placing in our possession one hundred and sixty- eight guns of heavy calibre. The heavier naval vessels, being no longer needed in that quarter, were dispatched in different directions — some to James river and northern ports, others to the Gulf or the South Atlan- tic squadron. An ample force was retained, however, to sup- port the small but brave army which had carried the traverses of Fort Fisher, and enable it, when reinforcements should arrive, to continue the movement on Wilmington. Great caution was necessary in removing the torpedoes, always formidable in harbors and internal waters, and which have been more destructive to our naval vessels than all other means combined. About the middle of February, offensive operations were resumed in the direction of Wilmington, the vessels and the troops moving up the river in concert. Fort Anderson, an important work, was evacuated during the night of the 18th of February, General Schofield advancing upon this fort with 8,000 men, while the gunboats attacked it by water. On the 21st, the rebels were driven from Fort Strong, which left the way to Wilmington unobstructed, and on the 22d of February, that city was evacuated. Two hundred and twelve liO MEN OF OUR DAT. guns were taken in the works from the entrance to Old river, including those nea-. the city, and thus this great and brilliant achievement was completed." The failure of General Butler to make the attack when ex- pected, though it would seem to have been justified by the dictates of prudence, and to have been in no respect due to any want of personal courage or daring on the part of the general, was very annoying to Rear- Admiral Porter, and led to an acri- monious correspondence between the two parties, neither of whom were at all chary in their abuse of each other. The termination of the war soon after the capture of "Wil- mington, left little more active service for the North Atlantic squadron, and its reduction and consolidation with the South Atlantic squadron followed in June, 1865. Before this, how- ever, on the 28th of April, Rear- Admiral Porter had been re- lieved, at his own request, of the command of the squadron, and Acting Rear- Admiral Radford succeeded him. In the few months' leave of absence granted him, he visited Europe. In September, 1865, when the Naval Academy was brought back to Annapolis, and partially re-organized, Rear- Admiral Porter was appointed its superintendent, and has remained in that position since that time. He has infused new energy and character into the instruction there, and the Academy is now a worthy counterpart of the Military Academy at West Point. On the 25th of July, 1866, Vice- Admiral Farragut being pro- moted to the new rank of Admiral, Rear- Admiral Porter was advanced to the Vice-admiralty. Viue-A*liiiii';il Pt)nei- i-ciiuiiiiLHl in cliarge of the Naval Academy, though devoting a coiisiilcrable pt)rtion of his time to the details of the Navy Department management, till the commencement of President Grant's administration, when he resigned the superin- tendency of the Academy, and was for some months, wliile the ADMIRAL DAVID D. PORTER. Ill department was in charge of Mr. Borie, the Secretary of the Navy de facto, though not de jure. When, soon after, Admiral Farragut set out upon his European tour, Vice- Admiral Porter's presence at Washington was, in some sort, a necessity, as many of the questions which come up for decision in the Navy Depart- ment require for their proper solution the judgment and knowledge of naval affairs of a high officer of the Navy. Admi- ral Farragut died August 14, 1870, and as the rank of Admiral in the Navy had been created expressly to honor him, and it had been the intention to abolish it after his death, there seemed to be a probability that he would have no successor. This proba- bility was very galling to Vice- Admiral Porter. His ambition could be satisfied with nothing short of the highest position, and he immediately initiated measures to ensure his appointment. He had received from President Grant, on the 20th of September, 1870, the temporary promotion, until the next session of Con- gress, when it was expected that his name would be sent to the Senate for confirmation as Admiral in place of Farragut deceased. He was on terms of friendship and intimacy with the President; and though there might be some objection on the part of the Senate, he considered his confirmation a certainty. At this juncture a letter written by Admiral Porter, January 21, 1865, and addressed to Hon. Gideon Welles, then Secretary of the Navy, was published by Mr. Welles. In that letter Porter, whose temper is none of the sweetest, had made very severe strictures on General Grant, who had, as he supposed,, under-rated the part taken by the Navy in the capture of Fort Fisher. The letter was unjust, and written evidently under the impulse of wounded pride and sensitiveness; but while it bore very hardly and unwar- rantably on the motives and conduct of the general, it was easy to see that jealousy for the honor of the Navy had led him to write it. . The true course for the admiral to have pursued 112 MEN OF OUR DAY. would have been to have explained in a note to the President, that the letter, evidently a confidential one, was written under a misapprehension of the real circumstances of the case, and was a natural ebullition of wounded pride and vexation at what, he afterward learned, was a misstatement of the general's real course, that he had subsequently done him justice, and that the bringing forward of this letter now was simply a })i^^'* of petty malice. Instead of this. Admiral Porter went to the President, and after expressing his regrets, denied all recollection of the matter, and sought to mollify the President's displeasure by such disavowal. We think that the President must have laughed in his sleeve at the trepidation and humiliation of the gallant admiral ; but he passed over the offence, nominated the vice- admiral to the Senate for the rank of Admiral, and he was con- firmed a few days later. But though the President would not deprive the admiral of what he believed to be a promotion to which he was justly entitled, their intimacy was not subsequently renewed. Admiral Porter is a man of commanding personal appearance, of medium height, good features, a spare but muscular figure, of great physical power and capacity for endurance. He is an accomplished linguist, speaking fluently most of the European languages, and is a skilful performer on several musical instru- ments. Though of imperious and exacting temper, and intolerant of the slightest disobedience to his orders, he has always been able to rouse the highest enthusiasm in the men under his command. The secret of this is probably his extraordinary physical cour- age. He never asked any man in his squadron to incur any risk which he was not himself willing to face, and ulten in times of the greatest peril, he would be found in the must exposed position. This perfect fearlessness is the one trait in which he most nearly resembles the noblest of our Naval heroes — Farkagut. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. c) yp INCE General Sheridan became famous, the honor of being his birth-place has been claimed by almost as (^^ many places as contended for the same honor in the ^io) case of Homer. Enthusiastic Irishmen have insisted that he first saw the light in county Cavan, Ireland ; the army regis- ter for years credited Massachusetts with being the State in which he was born ; the newspaper correspondents, knowing men that they are, have traced him to Albany, New York, where, they say, he was born while his parents were en route for Ohio; while the general himself, wlio being a party to the' transaction should know something about it, and what is still more to the purpose, his parents, testify that he was born in Somerset, Perry county, Ohio, on the 6th of March, 1831. His parents were then recent emigrants from county Cavan, Ireland, but were not of the Scotch Irish stock so largely predominant in that county, but belonged to one of the original Celtic and Roman Catholic families of the county. Vain has been the attempt to find any of those inciden-ts which foreshadow greatness, in the boyhood of the futui-e' cavalry general. He was a wild, roguish, fun-loving Irish boy, probably fond of horses, though the Eev. P. C. Headley's story about his riding a half broken vicious horse when only five years old is pronounced by the general himself an entire fabrication. lie b 113 11^ MfilN OF OUR DAY. went to school to an Irish schoolmaster for a time, Avlien about ten or twelve years old, one of Goldsmith's sort : — " A man severe lie was, and stern to view ; I knew him well, and every truant knew ; Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace The day's disasters in hia morning face." This pedagogue gave the mischievous uiohin his full share of the birch, incited thereto, as one of Sheridan's schoolmates affirms, by the recollection of an occurrence in which Phil got the better of him. The story is substantially this : when Sheri- dan was about eleven or twelve years old, on a cold winter's morning, two of his schoolmates came early to the schoolhouse, and finding the teacher, McNanly, not yet arrived, prepared a somewhat unpleasant surprise for him, in the shape of a pailful of icy water suspended over the schoolhouse door, in such a way that its contents would descend upon i,he head of the one who should first open the door. This arranged they v^^ithdrew to a neighboring haymow, and waited to see the fun. McNanly soon came, unlocked the door and received the ducking, which naturally aroused his not very placable temper. He sat down to watch, resolved to give the first boy who should come, a terri- ble thrashing. A little fellow who happened to be first was caught by the neck and shaken fiercely, but being convinced that he knew nothing of it, the teacher dropped him and waited for another. Each boy in turn was throttled and shaken, the two real offenders among the rest, but as all denied it, McNanly still waited for his victims. At length Phil. Sheridan came, somewhat late, as usual, and convinced that he had now the real culprit, McNanly made a dive for him ; the boy dodged and ran, and the teacher after him, bare headed and brandishing his stick. Phil did his best, but his legs were short, and when he reached his father's yard McNanly was almost upon him, -iud LIEUTENAXT-GEXERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 115 he bolted tlirougL the gate, the teacher following at full speed, when a new ally suddenly came to Phil's relief. This was no other than a large Newfoundland dog, the boy's playmate and pet, who seeing his young master in trouble, sprang upon tho teacher, who, frightened sadly, climbed the nearest tree with great agility. " Take away your divilish dog," he cried, " or I'll bate the life out of ye." " Like to see you," said the boy, as he very coolly brought a bit of old carpet, threw it under the tree and ordered Kover to " watch him." The dog obeyed and Phil mounted the fence and looked, somewhat impudently, we fear, at his teacher, the whole school meantime being gathered close by to see the end. McNanly's clothing was none of the warmest, and his cold bath and violent exercise had thrown him into a violent perspiration, and he was now shivering with the cold. " What d'ye want to lick me for ?" queried Phil. " What did ye throw the wather on me for ?" asked the teacher ; " I didn't throw any wather on you," said the boy. " What did ye run so for, thin ?" " Cause I saw ye was going to lick me," said Phil. " Well, call off the dog." " Not till ye promise ye won't lick me. Watch him, Eover." This last order was given as the teacher was trying to get down, and the dog in response seized him by the leg. Mr. Sheridan now came out, and McNanly appealed to him, declaring that he must lick Phil, for the sake of the discipline of the school, for the boys were all laughing at him now. Mr. Sheridan called to the dog, but he would not move, and doubting perhaps whether Phil deserved a thrashing, he returned into the house. "You'd better prom- ise," said Phil, " for the dog won't mind anybody but me, and I can stay here all day." At length, nearly perished with the oold, McNanly promised that he wouldn't lick him that time^ and the boy, calling to Rover, allowed the master to descend. The 116 MEN OF OUR DAY. subsequent whippings, Phil used to say, had interest added to them, orf account of this. Sheridan was fond of mathematics, and managed to pick up a fair knowledge of figures in school. At the age of about fifteen he was taken as a clerk by Mr. Talbot, a hardware dealer of the village^ who, finding him active, intelligent, and faithful, gave him further instruction in mathematics and guided him in his reading. After a time, as a better position ofiered, he helped him to get it, and he became a clerk for Mr. Henry Detton. Not long after, General Thomas Eitchey was the Congressman from the district, and had in his gift an appointment to a vacancy at West Point. For this place there was a strong competition. Sons of wealthy parents came, or sent to him their applications with a long list of influential names. At length one letter came without recommendations or references. It merely asked that the place might be given to the writer and was signed, " Phil Sheridan." General Eitchey, who had known the boy for a long time and had marked his faithfulness and love of study, gave him the appointment at once. Sheridan was at this time (1848), seventeen years old. Among his classmates were James B. McPherson, Schofleld, Sill, Tyler^j and the rebel General Hood. His scholarship at West Point was above mediocrity, but his animal spirits were so constantly running over, and his pugnacity was so much in the ascendancy, that he was always receiving demerit marks in the conduct column. One of the cadets insulted him, and he proceeded to redress his own grievances, by giving the offender a severe thrashing. This conduct, some of the officers of the academy believed justifiable, but it was unrailitary, and, as a result, Sheridan was suspended and thrown iftto the class below, so that he did not graduate till 1853, when he stood thirty-fourth in a class of fifty-two. He was ordered to duty as brevet second LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 117 lieuteaaat of infantry, but at first without being assigned to any particular regiment, and after serving in garrison at.Newport barracks, Kentucky, for a few months, was sent in the begin- hing of 1854, to the Texas frontier, where for nearly two years, he served at Fort Duncan, La Pena, and Turkey creek, Texas. He received his commission as full second lieutenant, while in Texas, November 22d, 1854. Returning east, after a short period of garrison duty at Fort Columbus, New York, he was ordered to escort duty from Sacramento, California, to Colum- bia river, Oregon, and then on a series of expeditions among the Indians, for a year. He was next assigned to the military posts at Forts Ilaskius and Yamhill, where he endeavored to make peace with the Indians, learned their dialects, and won their regard to such an extent that he could acoomplish wliat he pleased with them. On the 1st of March, 1861, he was pro- moted to a first lieutenancy in the fourth infantry, and ten weeks later, May 14th, a commission was sent him as captain in the thirteenth infantry, and with it, news of the impending war. He was ready for it, and wrote to a friend in the East: " If they will fight us, let them know we accept the challenge. Vf ho knows? Perhaps I may have a chance to raise a majcjr'a commission." A modest ambition, certainly for the man who vrithin four years was to demonstiate his title to be regarded as the ablest living cavalrj^ general. He was ordered to report at Jefferson barracks, Missouri. He arrived in the midst of the confusion that followed the removal of Fremont from command. Nothing could be a more droll illustration of the frequent governmental faculty for getting the wrong men in the right places than the assignment that awaited the j^oung Indian fighter. He was made president of a board to audit claims under the Fremont administration. He did the work satisfac- torily, however ; and presently the Govenxmeut, fully satisfied 118 MEN OF OUR DAY. now, that here was a good man for routine and clerical duties, made him quartermaster and commissary for Curtis, at the outset of the Pea Ridge campaign. All this seemed rapid promotion to Captain Sheridan, and he went to work heartily and earnestly to make a quartermas- ter of" himself. He was sixty-fourth captain on the list — so onu of the staff officers tells of his reasoning in those days — and with the chances of war in his favor, it needn't be a very great while before he might hope to be a major ! With such modest aspirations he worked away at the wagon-trains ; cut down regimental transportation, gave fewer wagons for camp furni- ture and more for hard bread and fixed ammunition, established secondary depots for supplies, and wiih all his labor found that he had not fully estimated the wants of the army. Some orders from General Curtis about this time seemed to him inconsistent with the West Point system of managing quarter- masters' matters, and he said so, officially, with considerable freedom of utterance. The matter was passed over for a few days, but as soon as Pea Ridge was fought. General Curtis found time to attend to smaller affairs. The first was to dispense with the further services of his quartermaster, and send hira back to St. Louis in arrest. But, just then, educated officers were too rare in Missouri to be kept long out of service on punctilios. Presently the affair with Curtis was adjusted, and then the Government had some fresh work for this young man of routine and business. It sent him over into Wisconsin to buy horses! The weeping philosopher himself might have been embarrassed to refrain from laughter! McClellan was at the head of the army; Halleck had chief command in the west ; men like McClernand and Banks, Crittenden and McCook, were commanding divisions or corps ; and for Cavalry Sheridan the best work the Govern- LTEUTENANT-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAlsr. 119 ment could find was — buying horses in Wisconsin! Then came Pittsburg Landing, and Halleck's hurried departure for the field. Wishing a body of instructed regular officers about him, he thought, among others, of Curtis's old quarter- master, and ordered him up to the army before Corinth, Then followed a little staff service, and at last, in May, 1862, the future head of the cavalry got started on his proper career. Watching wagon-trains, disputing with the lawyers about doubt- ful contractor's claims, or with the jockeys about the worth of horses — all this seems now very unworthy of Sheridan, but it was a part of his education for the place he was to fill; and we shall see that the familiarity thus acquired with the details of . supplying an army were to prove of service to one whose business was to be to command armies, and to tax the energies of those who supplied them to the utmost,' There was need of a good cavalry force, and chiefly of good cavalry officers, men who understood their duties and could train a cavalry force to act with precision as well as dash, and not to fire once and run away. Our young Indian fighter was thought of; he had done good service in Oregon, and indeed everywhere else, and it was possible that he might know how to handle cavalry. So, at a venture, on the 27th, of May, he was commissioned colonel of the second regiment of Michigan volunteer cavalry, and sent immediately on the expedition to cut the railroad south of Corinth, This accomplished, on his return he was immediately sent in pursuit of the rebels, who were retreating from Corinth, and captured and brought off the guns of Powell's rebel battery. On the 6th of June, leading a cavalry reconnoissance below Boonesville, he met and signally defeated a body of rebel cavalry commanded by General For- rest; and on the 8th, started in pursuit of the enemy, drove them through Baldwin and to Guntown, where, though tbeir 120 MEN OF OUR DAY. force was much larger than his own, he defeated them, but under orders from headquarters fell back to Boonesville and thence to Corinth. On the 11th of June he was put in command of a cavalry brigade, and on the 26th, ordered to take his position at Boone- ville, twenty miles in advance of the main army, whose front he was to cover while at the same time he watched the operations of the rebels, llis brigade numbered less than two thousand men. On the 1st of July 1862, he was attacked at Booneville by a rebel force of nine regiments (about six thousand men), under command of General Chalmers, Sheridan slowly retreated toward his camp, which was situated on the edge of a swamp, in an advantageous position, where he could not be flanked, and here he kept up the unequal fight, but finding that Chalmers, with his greatly superior numbers, would in the end surround and overpower him, he had recourse to strategy. Selecting ninety of his best men, armed with revolving carbines and sabres, he sent them around to the rear of the enemy by a detour of about four miles, with orders to attack promptly and vigorously at a certain time, while he would make a simultane- ous charge in front. The plan proved a complete success. The ninety men appeared suddenly in the enemy's rear, not having been seen till they were near enough to fire their carbines, and, having emptied these, they rushed with drawn sabres upon the enemy, who, supposing them to be the advance guard of a large force, were thrown into disorder ; and, before they had time to recover, Sheridan charged them in front with such fury that they fled from the field in complete disorder, utterly routed. Sheridan pursued, and they continued their flight, utterly panic- stricken, to Knight's mills, twenty miles south from Boone- LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 121 ville, throwing away their arms, knapsacks, coats, and every thing which could impede their flight. General Grant reported this brilliant affair to the War De- partment, with a recommendation that Colonel Sheridan should be promoted. This recommendation was granted, and his com- mission of brigadier-general bore date July 1, 1862. At this time, the rebels in his front had but one stream (Twenty Mile creek) from which to water their live-stock, and from his post at Boone ville, General Sheridan frequently made sudden dashes in that direction, and captured large quantities of their stock, often two or three hundred at a time. In August, 1862, he was attacked by a rebel cavalry force, under Colonel Faulkner, near Eienzi, Mississippi, but after a sharp engage- ment the rebels were defeated, and retreated in haste, Sheridan pursuing them to near Ripley, and, charging upon them before they could reach their main column, dispersed the whole force, and captured a large number of prisoners. Early in Septem- ber, 1862, General Grant having ascertained that the rebel Gen- eral Bragg was moving towards Kentucky, detached a portion of his own forces to reinforce the Army of the Ohio, then under command of General Buell. Among these were General Sheri- dan, and his old command, the second Michigan cavalry. As General Grant expected. General Buell gave Sheridan a larger command, assigning him to the charge of the third division of the Army of the Ohio. He assumed command of this division on the 2<)th of September, 1862. At this time. General Bragg was approaching Louisville, which was not in a good condition for defence, and General Sheridan was charged with the duty of defending it. In a single night, with the division under his command, he constructed a strong line of rifle-pits from the rail- road depot to the vicinity of Portland, and thus secured the city against the danger of surprise. On the 25th of September, 122 MEN OF OUR DAY. General Buell arrived at Louisville, and soon commenced a re- organization of the Army of the Ohio, now largely reinforced. In this re-organization, General Sheridan was placed in command of the eleventh division, and entered upon his duties on the 1st of October. Buell soon took the offensive again, and began pushing the re- bels, who had already commenced a retreat, but were embarrassed by the amount of plunder they had collected. On the 8th of Octo- ber, the rebels made a stand near Perryville, Kentucky, for the double purpose of checking the pursuit, and allowing their trains to move forward out of harm's way. The battle which followed, though a severe one, was not decisive, owing to some defects in the handling of the forces, and Bragg was allowed to make good his retreat with most of his plunder, and with but moderate loss : but in it, Sheridan played a distinguished part, holding the key of the Union position, and resisting the onsets of the enemy, again and again, with great bravery and skill, driving them at last from the open ground in front, by a bayonet charge. This accomplished, he saw that they were gaining advaniage on the left of the Union line, and moving forward his artillery, directed so terrible a fire upon the rebel advance, that he drove them from the open ground on which they had taken position. Enraged at being thus foiled, they charged with great fury upon his lines, determined to carry the point at ail hazards ; but, with the utmost coolness, ho opened upon them at short range, with such a murderous fire of grape and canister, that the}- fell back in great disorder, leaving their dead and wounded in winrows in front of the batteries. The loss in Sheridan's division in killed and wounded, was over four hundred, but his generalship had saved the Union army from defeat. On the 30th of (.)cta. ber, General Eosecrans succeeded General Buell as commander of the Army of the Ohio, which, with enlarged territory, was LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 123 thenceforward to be known as the Army of the Ouiiibcrhind, and in the re-organization, General Sheridan was assigned to the command of one of the divisions of McCook's corps, which constituted the right wing of that army. He remained for the next seven or eight weeks in the vicinity of Nashville, and then moved with his corps, on the 26th of December, 1862, toward Murfreesboro. During the 26th, his division met the enemy on the Nolensville road, and skirmished with them to Nolensville and Knob gap, occupying at night the latter import- ant position. The next morning a dense fog obscured the hori- zon; but as soon as it lifted, Sheridan pressed forward, and drove the enemy from the village of Triune, which he occupied. The next three days were spent in skirmishing, and in gra- dually drawing nearer, over the almost impassable roads, to Murfreesboro, the goal of their hopes. At length, on the night of the 30th of December, the army was drawn up in battle array, on the banks of Stone river. " The men bivouacked in line of battle. They were to wake to great calamity and great glory in the morning. "In the general plan of the battle of Stone river, the part assigned to the right wing, was to hold the enemy, while the rest of the army swung through Murfreesboro, upon his rear. In this right wing Sheridan held the left. Elsewhere along that ill-formed line were batteries, to which the horses had not been harnessed when the fateful attack burst through the gray dawn upon them. But there was one division commander who, with or without orders thereto, might be trusted for ample vigilance in the face of an enemy. At two in the morning, he was moving some of his regiments to strengthen a portion of his line, on which he thought the enemy was massing. At four he mustered his division under arms, and had every cannoneer at his post. For over two hours they waited. When the onset 121 MEN OF OUR DAY. came, tlie ready batteries opened at once. The rebels contiuuod to sweep up. At fifty yards' distance the volleys of Sheridan's musketry became too murderous. The enemy, in massed regi- ments, hesitated, wavered, and finally broke. Sheridan instantly sent Sill's brigade to charge upon the retreating column. The movement was brilliantly executed, but the life of the gallant brigade commander went out in the charge. " Presently the enemy rallied and returned. Already the rest of the wing had been hurled back in confusion ; the weight of the victorious foe bore down upon Sheridan's exposed flank and broke it. There was now come upon Sheridan, that same stress of battle under which his companion division commanders had been crushed. But hastily drawing back the broken flank, he changed the front of his line to meet the new danger, and ordered a brigade to charge ; while under cover of this daring onset, the new line was made compact. Here Sheridan felt abundantly able to hold his ground. " But his flank ? The routed divisions, which should have formed upon it, were still in hasty retreat. He dashed among them — threatened, begged, swore. All was in vain; they would not re-form. Sheridan was isolated, and his right once more turned. Moving then by the left, he rapidly ad- vanced, driving the enemy from his front, and maintaining his line unbroken till he secured a connection on the left with Negley. Here he was instantly and tremendously assailed. The attack was repulsed. Again Cheatham's rebel division at- tacked, and again it was driven back. Once again the baffled enemy swept up to the onset, till his batteries were planted within two hundred yards of Sheridan's lines. The men stood firm. Another of the brigade commanders fell • but the enemy was once more driven. Thus heroically did Sheridan strive to beat back the swift disaster that had befallen the risht. LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 125 "But now came tlie crowning misfortune. When the rest of McCook's wing had been swept out of the contest, the ammuni- tion train had fallen into the hands of the enemy. With the overwhelming force on his front, with the batteries playing at short range, with the third rebel onslaught just repulsed, and the men momentarily growing more confident of themselves and of their fiery commander, there suddenly came the startling cry that the ammunition was exhausted I ' Fix bayonets, then !' was the ringing command. Under cover of the bristling linea of steel on the front, the brigades were rapidly withdrawn. Presently a couple of regiments fell upon an abandoned ammu- nition wagon. For a moment they swarmed around it — then back on the double quick to the front, to aid in the retreat of the artillery. One battery was lost, the rest, with only a miss- ing piece or two, were brought off. Thus riddled and depleted, with fifteen hundred from the little division left dead or wound- ed in the dark cedars, but with compact ranks and a steady front, the heroic column came out on the Murfreesboro turn- pike, ' Here is all that is left of us,* said Sheridan, riding up to Eosecrans to report, ' Our cartridge-boxes are empty, and 80 are our muskets !' " Thus the right, on which the battle was to have hinged, had disappeared from the struggle. Already the enemy, press- ing his advantage to the utmost, seemed about to break through the centre ; and Sheridan, supplied with ammunition, was or- dered in to its relief. He checked the rebel advance, charged at one point, and captured guns and prisoners, held his line steady throughout, and bivouacked upon it at nightfall. This final struggle cost him his last brigade commander !"* General Eosecrans, in his report of this battle, pays the fol- lowing high compliment to Sheridan's generalship : " Sheridan, • Mr. Whitelaw Reid's sketch of Sheridan in his " Ohio in the War." 126 ii-Rs OF OUR PAY. after sustaining /ij/r successive attacks, gradually swung liia right round southeasterly to a northwestern direction, re.p%ilsing the enemy fonr times, losing the gallant General Sill of his right, and Colonel lioborts of his left brigade; when, having ex hausted his aninmnition, Negley's division being in the same predicament, and hoavil}'' pressed, after desperate fighting they fell back from the position held at the commencement, through the cedar woods, in which Rousseau's division, with a portion of Negley's and Sheridan's, met the advancing enemy and checked his movements." For liis gallantry in this battle, General Rosecrans suggested, and the President recommended, Sheridan's promotion to the rank of major-general of volunteers, his commission to date from December 31st, 1862. He was at once confirmed by the Senate. In the months that followed the battle of Stone river, months of watching and waiting, Sheridan kept himself busy, and en- joying the confidence of the commanding general, who did not, however, fully appreciate his talents, he and his division found constant employment. The country about Murfreesboro was thoroughly seoured, and all its strategic points caiofully mapped in the mind of the cavalry general. On the od of march, he flung himself and his division upon the rebel General Van Dorn, who had penetrated as far as Shelbyville, Tennessee, m an ad- vance upon the Union lines, hurled him back, pursued him to Columbia and Franklin, and near Eagleville, Tennessee, cap- tured his train and a large number of prisoners. In the ad- vance on Tullahoma, June 24 to July 4, 1863, he drove the rebels out of Liberty Gap, a strong mountain pass, which was one of the keys of their position, occupied Shelbyville, pushed forward to, and took possession of Winchester, Tennessee, which by a flank, movement, he had compelled the enemy to LIEUTEN^VXT-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 127 abandon, and saved the great bridge over the Tennessee at iiridgeport, his infantry outstripping Stanley's cavalry, which they were ordered to support. The Tennessee crossed, Chattanooga flanked by Rosecrans, and evacuated by Bragg, General Sheridan was sent to reconnoitre the enemy's force and position, and found him largely reinforced and determined to push Rosecrans to the wall and recover Chattanooga. Then came Chickamauga, the severe bat wholly indecisive battle of the first day, in which, however, Sheridan, by his promptness and activity, did good service, and the disas- trous fight of the second day, which yet, thanks to General Thomas's firmness and superb generalship, was not wholly a defeat. In- this severe action, McCook's and Crittenden's corps and the general commanding the army were, by the fatal mis- understanding of an order, cut off from the remainder of the army, and compelled to fall back upon Rossville, and Chatta- nooga. Sheridan, whose division was still a part of McCook's coips, though involved in this disaster, succeeded, by the utmost effort, in rallying the greater part of his command and bringing it through by-roads from Rossville to join General Thomas, who had fought and repulsed the enemy. .He was not in season, much to his mortification, to participate in the closing hours of the fight, but he nevertheless strengthened materially the handa of the general. The corps of McCook and Crittenden were now consolidated into one (the fourth) corps, and the command of it given to Gordon Granger, an officer only less incompetent than those whom he succeeded. Then came a change of commanders to the Army of the Cumberland ; General G. H. Thomas succeeded General Rosecrans, and the army of the Tennessee, and two corps from the Army of the Potomac, being added to the force, General Grant took charge of the whole. The battles of the 128 MEN OF OUR DAT. WauhatcTiie, Lookout Mountain, and Mission Eidge, and the expulsion of the rebels from the vallej'-s of Chattanooga and Chickamauga followed. In the capture of Orchard Knob, and in that most brilliant episode of the war, the ascent of Mission Eidge, Sheridan bore a conspicuous part. The fourth corps (Granger's) were the charging column, and stung by the recollection of that sad day at Chickamauga, as the six guns gave the signal for advance, Sheridan rode along his column, and called in thunder tones to his division, " Show the fourt'i corps that the men of the old twentieth are still alive, and can fight. Eemember Chickamauga !" Before Sheridan and the companion divisions stretched an open space of a mile and an eighth to the enemy's first line of rifle-pits. Above this frowned a steep ascent of five hundred yards, up which it scai'cely seemed possible that unresisted troops could clamber. At the summit were fresh rifle-pits. As Sheridan rode along his front and reconnoitered the rebel pits at the base of the ridge, it seemed to him that, even if captured, they could scarcely be tenable under the plunging fire that might then be directed from the summit. He accordingly sent back a staff-officer to inquire if the order was to take the rifle- pits or to take the ridge. But before there was time for an answer, the six guns thundered out their stormy signal, and the whole line rose up and leaped forward. The plain was swept by a tornado of shot and shell, but the men rushed on at the double-quick, swarmed over the rifle-pits, and flung themselves down on the face of tlie mountain. Just then the answer to Sheridan's message came. It was only this first line of rifle- pits that was to be carried. Some of the men were accordingly retired to it by their brigade commander, under the heavy fire of grape, canister, and musketry. "But," said Sheridan, ** believing that the attack had assumed a new phase, and that I LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN". 129 could carry the ridge, I could not order those ofTicers aid men who wore so gallantly ascending the hill, step by step, to return.* As the twelve regimental colors slowly went up, one advancing a little, the rest pushing forward, emulous to be even with it, till all were planted midway up the ascent on a partial line of rifle-pits that nearly covered Sheridan's front, an order cam© from Granger: "If in your judgment the ridge can be taken, do so." An ej^e-witness shall tell us how he received it.* "An aid rides up with the order; 'Avery, that flask,' .-aid the general. Quietl}'" filling the pewter cup, Sheridan looks up at the battery that frowned above him, by Bragg's headquarters, shakes his cap amid that storm of every thing that kills, where you could hardly hold your hand without catching a bullet in it, and, with a 'How are you?' tosses off" the cup. The blue battle-flag of the rebels fluttered a response to the cool salute, and the next instant the battery let fly its six guns, showering Sheridan with earth. The general said in his quiet way, ' I thought it d d ungenerous !' The recording angel will drop a tear upon tlie word for the part he played that day. Wheeling toward the men he cheered them to the charge, and made at the hill like a bold-riding hunter. They were out of the rifle-pits and into the tempest, and struggling up the steep before you could get breath to tell it." Then came what the same writer has called the torrid zone of the battle. Rocks were rolled down from aVjove on the advancing line ; shells with lighted fuses were rolled down ; guns were loaded with handfuls of cartridges and fired down, but the line struggled on: still fluttered the twelve regimental flags in the advance. At last, with a leap and a rush, over they went — all twelve fluttered on the crest — the rebels were * B. F. Taylor, of the Chicago Journal. 130 MEN OF OUR DAY. bayoneted out of tlieir rifle-pits — the guns were turned — the ridge was won. In this last spasm of the struggle Sheridan s horse was shot under him. He sprang upon a captured gun, to raise his short person high enough to be visible in the half- ci'azy throng, and ordered a pursuit I It harassed the enemy for some miles, and brought back eleven guns as proofs of its vigor. Signal as had been Sheridan's previous services, he had never before been so brilliantly conspicuous. In other battles he had approved himself a good officer in the eyes of his superi- ors ; on the deathly front of Mission Ridge he flamed out the incarnation of soldierly valor and vigor in the eyes of the whole American people. Ilis entire losses were thirteen hundred and four, and he took seventeen hundred and sixty-two prisoners. But these figures give no adequate idea of the conflict. It may be better understood from the simple statement that in that brief contest, in a part of a winter afternoon, he lost one hun dred and twenty-three of&cers from that single division — a num- ber greater than the whole French army lost at Soli'crino 1 Through his own clothes five miuie balls had passed ; his horse had been shot under him ; and yet he had come out without a scratch. For a short time longer he was employed in East Tennessee in driving out the rebels who still found a lodgment there, but when General Grant was advanced to the lieutenant general- ship, one of his first acts was to apply to the War Department for tnc transfer of General Philip H. Sheridan to the eastern army, and when he was arrived, to make him the commander of the cavalry corps of the Army of the Potomac. Ilere he was in the sphere for which he had longed, and for which he was undoubtedly best fitted. But the cavalry of the Army of the Potomac was far from being in a model condition. The LIEUTEN'ANT-GEN'ERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 131 days of the old service of cavalry, the heavy and light horse, the grand cavalry charges, and the chivalry of mounted troops under perfect drill were gone ; rninie muskets and rifled cannon had changed all that. But with this there had gone also in great measure the esprit du corps of the service. The squadrons were detailed for picket service, for guarding trains, for duties which could better be performed by infantry, and when they fought, they charged upon infantry, and were shy of any attack upon the enemy's cavalry. Against all this Sheridan protested, and with good effect. lie procured their release from picket and train duty, he trained his men to care tenderly for their horses, which up to this time had been broken down with frightful rapidity, in consequence of the ignorance, heedlessness and indifference of their riders ; he drilled them in all the ser- vice of cavalry and infused into them a portion of his own fiery spirit, and that joy in the fight, which marks the true cavalry soldier. From the 5th of May, 1864, to the 9th of April, 1865, Sheri- dan's command were engaged in seventy-six distinct battles, all but thirteen of them under his own eye and order. At the close of the campaign he could say, with a commendable pride in the achievements of his men, though always modest in regard to his own deeds, " "We sent to the War Department (between the dates above specified) two hundred and five battle flags, captured in open field fighting — nearly as many as all the armies of the United States combined sent there during the rebellion. The number of field pieces captured in the same period was between one hundred and sixty and one hundred and seventy, all in open field fighting.* * *We led the advance of the army to the "Wilderness; on the Richmond raid we marked out its line of march to the North Anna, where we found it on our return ; we again led its advance to Hanover- 132 MEN OF OUR DAY. town, and tlien to Gold Harbor; we removed the enemy's cavalry from the south side of the Chickahominy by the Tre- villian raid, and thereby materially assisted the army in ita Buccessfal march to the James river and Petersburg, where it remained until we made the campaign in the valley ; w© marched back to Petersburg, again took the advance and led the army to victory. In all these operations, the percentage of cavalry casualties was as great as that of the infantry, and the question which had existed — ' who ever saw a dead cavalry- man ?' was set at rest." Of the many remarkable actions hinted at in these pregnant sentences, we have space only to allude to two or three. His first raid toward Richmond was one of the most daring and successful of the war. He penetrated the outer line of defences of that city ; bewildered and confounded the rebels by his au- dacity, fought two battles to extricate himself from his apparent- ly critical position, in one of which General J. E. B. Stuart, the ablest cavalry officer of the rebels, was slain ; defeated the enemy in both battles, built a bridge across the Chickahominy under fire, and finally returned to the Army of the Potomac after sixteen days with but slight loss, after inflicting serious and permanent inj ury upon the enemy. His second raid, under- taken to co-operate with Hunter in the valley of Virginia was less successful, owing to the utter failure of that officer's plans, but it kept the rebel cavalry out of the way of the Union army in crossing the James. On his return, he guarded the vast train of the Army of the Potomac (an irksome task to him), to and across the James, not without some sharp battles; made some raids south of the James, and took an active part in the feint at the north side of the James, in the last days of July. Appoint- ed to the command of the Army of the Shenandoah, in August, he exhibited such ability in handling his troops, such alternate LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 1^3 caution and daring in liis manoeuvring witli Early, that tha confidence of the nation was soon reposed in him. That that confidence was not misplaced, he speedily gave decisive evidence. On the 19th of September, after a fierce and stubborn fight at Opequan creek, he had defeated and routed Early, and as ha expressed it, " sent him whirling through Winchester," follow- ing him relentlessly to his defences at Fisher's Hill, thirty milea below, killing in the battle and retreat, three, and wounding severely four more of his ablest generals, among the latter Fitzhugh Lee, the commander of the rebel cavalry of the army of Virginia. With his usual celerity, and a strategic skill of which, hitherto, he had not displayed the possession, he proceed- ed to attack Early's stronghold, Fisher's Hill, which that general had believed perfectly impregnable, and, on the 22d, carried it by storm, attacking in front, in rear, and on the flank ; drove the rebels out and chased them without mercy till the 25th, driving them below Port Republic, at the extreme head of the valley. For this splendid series of victories, he was made a brigadier- g3neral in the regular army in place of the lamented McPher- s)n. Twice more beibre the 13th of October he had driven back Early or his lieutenants, who, loth to give up the valley of the Shenandoah, the garden of Virginia, had obtained rein- forcements and again essayed encounters with this western rough rider. At length, believing Early sufficiently^ punished to remain in obscurity for a time, Sheridan made a Hying visit to Washington, on matters connected with his department. Early was quickly apprised of his departure, and resolved to profit by it. Collecting further reinforcements, and creeping Btealthily up to the camp of the Union army at Cedar creek, eighteen or twenty miles below Winchester, the rebel soldiers being required to lay aside their canteens, lest the click of their 134 MEN OF OUR DAY. bayonets against them should apprize the Union troops of their approach, they reached and flanked Crooks' corps, which was in advance, at about day dawn. The Union troops were unpardonably careless, having no suspicion that the rebels were within twenty miles of them. They were consequently taken at unawares, and many of them bayonetted before they were fairly awake ; in a very few minutes they were forced back, disorganized, upon the nineteenth corps, who were en echelon beyond them ; they at first made a stand, but in a short time were forced back, though not completely disorganized ; and the sixth corps in turn were compelled to stand against heavy odds. In the end all were driven back three or four miles, to the Middletown plains, and the fugitives were carrying the news of a total defeat and rout at full speed toward Winchester. But deliverance was nearer than they thought. They had lost twenty-four guns and twelve hundred prisoners, but thty were beginning to recover from their fright, and were re-organizing, while the rebels, hungry and thirsty, wayworn and in rags, were s-topping to plunder the camp. Still they would hardly have regained any portion of their lost territory and might have fallen back to Winchester, had not Sheridan, just at this juncture, appeared riding at full speed among them. He had heard the firing at Winchester, where he arrived late the night before, and at first was not alarmed by it, but, coming out of Winches- ter, he was met by some of the foremost of the fugitives, a mile from the town. " He instantly gave orders to park the retreating trains on either side of the road, directed the greater part of his escort to follow as best they could ; then, with only twenty cavalrymen accompanying him, he struck out in a swinging g.'illop for the scene of danger. As he dashed up the pike, the crowds of stragglers grew thicker. He reproached none; only, swinging LIEUTENANT-GEXERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 135 his cap, with a cheery smile for all, he shouted : ' Face the other way, boys, face the other way. We are going back to our camps. We are going to lick them out of their boots.' Less classic, doubtless, than Napoleon's ' My children, we will camp on the battle-field, as usual ;' but the wounded raised their hoarse voices to cheer as he passed, and the masses of fugitives turned and followed him to the front. As he rode into the forming lines, the men quickened their pace back to the ranks, and everj'^where glad cheers went up. ' Boys, this never should have happened if I had been here,' he exclaimed to one and another regiment. ' I tell you it never should have happened. And now we are going back to our camps. We are going to get a twist on them ; we'll get the tightest twist on them yet that ever you saw. We'll have all those camps and cannon back again !' Thus he rode along the lines, rectified the forma- tion, cheered and animated the soldiers. Presently there grew up across that pike as compact a body of infantry and cavalry as that which, a month before, had sent the enemy ' whirling through Winchester.' His men had full faith in 'the twist' he was ' going to get' on the victorious foe ; his presence was inspi- ration, his commands were victory. " While the line was thus re-established, he was in momentary expectation of attack. Wright's sixth corps was some distance in the rear. One staff officer after another was sent after it. Finally, Sheridan himself dashed down to hurry it up : then back to watch it going into position. As he thus stood, looking off from the left, he saw the enemy's columns once more moving up. Hurried warning was sent to the nineteenth corps, on which it was evident the attack would fall. By this time it was after three o'clock. > " The nineteenth corps, no longer taken by surprise, repulsed the enemy's onset. ' Thank God for that,' said Sheridan, gaily. 136 ' MEN OF OUR DAY. ' Now tell General Emory, if they attack him again, to go after them, and to follow them up. We'll get the tightest twist on them pretty soon they ever saw.' The men heard and believed him ; the demoralization of the defeat was gone. But he still waited. Word had been sent in from the cavalry, of danger from a heavy body moving on his flank. He doubted it, and at last determined to run the risk. At four o'clock the orders went out : ' The whole line will advance. The nineteenth corps will move in connection with the sixth. The right of the nine- teenth will swing toward the left.' "The enemy lay behind stone fences, and where these failed, breastworks of rails eked out his line. For a little, he held his position firmly. His left overlapped Sheridan's right, and see- ing this advantage, he bent it down to renew the attack in flank. At this critical moment, Sheridan ordered a charge of General Mc Williams' brigade against the angle thus caused in the rebel line. It forced its way through, and the rebel flank- ing party was cut off. Custer's cavalry was sent swooping down upon it — it broke, and fled, or surrendered, according to the agility of the individuals. Simultaneously the whole line charged along the front ; the rebel line was crowded back to the creek ; the difficulties of the crossing embarrassed it, and as the victorious ranks swept up, it broke in utter confusion, " Custer charged down in the fast gathering darkness, to the west of the pike ; Devin to the east of it ; and on either flank of the fleeing rout they flung themselves. Nearly all the rebel transportation was captured, the camps and artillery were re- gained ; up to Fisher's Hill the road was jammed with artillery, caissons, and ambulances; prisoners came streaming back faster than the provost marshal could provide for them. It was the end of Early's army ; the end of campaigning in the beautiful valley of the Shenandoah." LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 137 The twenty-four cannon lost in the morning were retaken, and besides them, twenty-eight more of Early's. Beside these, there were fifty wagons, sixty-five ambulances, sixteen hundred small arms, several battle flags, fifteen hundred prisoners, and two thousand killed and wounded left on the field. The Union losses were about thirty-eight hundred, of whom eight hundred were prisoners. In all the records of modern history, there are but three ex- amples of such a battle, lost and won on the same field, and in the same conflict — Marengo, Shiloh, and Stone River; and in the two former the retrieval was due mainly to reinforcements brought up at the critical time, while the third was not ao immediately decisive ; but here, the only reinforcement which the army of the Shenandoah received or needed to recover its lost field of battle, camps, intrenchments, and cannon, was one man — Sheridan. General Grant, on the receipt of the news of the battle, tele- graphed to Secretary Stanton : " I had a salute of one hundred guns fired from each of the armies here, in honor of Sheridan's last victory. Turning what bid fair to be a disaster into a glori- ous victory, stamps Shtridan, what I have always thought him, one of the ablest of generals.''^ General Sheridan also received an autograph letter of thanks from the President, and on the 14th of November, he was promoted to the major- generalship in thfl regular army, vacated by General McClellan's resignation. For six weeks following, there were occasional skirmishes with small bands of regular cavalry, the dehj-is of Early's army, but this was all. In December, the sixth army corps returned to the Army of the Potomac, and Sheridan, for two months, recruited and rested his cavalry, using it only as an army of observation. About the first of March, with a force of about 9,000 men, well mounted and disciplined, he m .ved forward 138 MEN OF OUR DAY. andcr instructions from General Grant, to destroy the Virginia Central railroad, and the James River canal, the two arteries of supply for the rebels at Richmond and Petersburg, and then strike at, anil if possible, capture Lynchburg, and either join Sherman at Goldsboro, or returning to Winchester, descend thence to City Point. The destruction of the railroad and canal were thoroughly performed, but, delayed by heavy rains, he found that Lynchburg was probably too strong to be attacked, and as every route of communication between that city and Richmond was broken, its garrison could not render any assist- ance either to Lee or Johnston. He had captured Early's remaining force of 1,600 men at Waynesboro; and now, instead of returning to Winchester, or going on to join Sherman, he resolved to march past Richmond, to join the Army of the Poto- mac. The resolve was a bold one, for he knew Longstreet was on the watch for him, and would show him no mercy, if ho could have a fair opportunity of attacking him. Nevertheless, lie made the march, fooled Longstreet, and arrived safely at City Point, having completely desolated the country through which ho }Kissed, and destroyed property, estimated by the rebels themselves, at over $50,000,000. And now came the end of the war, and in its closing scenes, so far as the rebel army of Northern Virginia was concerned, Sheridan had the most conspicuous part. Arriving at City Point on tlie 2,"')th of ^[arch, 1865, he was directed by General Grant to niDve, on the 2yth, southwestward by way of Reams' station to Dinwiddle Court-house, and from thence either strike the Southside railroad at Burkesville station, some forty milea distant ; or, if it should seem best, support the infmtry, one or two corps of which should, in that case, be put under his com- mand, in an attempt, by way of Halifixx road, to cross Hatcher's run at the point which had been held since February. Ue LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 139 chose, after reconnoissance, the latter plan, and pushed on towaru Dinwiddle, and connected with the left of the fifth corps, on the Boydton road. The enemy were found strongly intrenched at Five Forks, about six miles west of the Boydton plank-road, and also held in some force the White Oak road, by which the Five Forks were approached from the east. On the 31st of March there was heavy fighting all along the line. The fifth corps, or rather two divisions of it, were driven back in some disorder on the White Oak road, and a part of Sheridan's cav- alry were separated from the main body, and his whole force imperilled. By dismounting his cavalry in front of Dinwiddle Court-house, and fighting desperately till late at night, he suc- ceeded in holding his position, and the two contending forces lay on their arms through the night. The next morning, April 1st, the fifth corps, now under his command, did not advance as he expected, and his enemy of the night before having retreated to Five Forks, he followed, and finding the fifth corps, directed them to assault when he gave the order, and completed his arrangements for carrying Five Forks by a simultaneous assault in front and on both flanks. In this assault the fifth corps par- ticipated. It was successful, after some hard fighting, and the rebel troops who were not either slain, wounded or prisoners, were driven off westward so far as to be unable to return to aid in the defence of Petersburg. Being dissatisfied, perhaps with- out quite sufficient cause, with the management of General G. K. Warren, the commander of the fifth corps, during the day, General Sheridan relieved him of his command, and ordered General Griffin to take his place. The two men were so unlike in their temperament and modes of thought, though both brave and patriotic officers, that they could hardly have been expected to work well together. 140 MEN OF OUR DAY. Sheridan followed up his successes the following day, by ham- mering the enemy's line along the Southside railroad, and an assault being made at the same time on the defences of Peters- burg, that city and Richmond were evacuated, and the rebel army fled along the route of the Southside railroad and the Appomattox river toward Appomattox Court-house, pursued relentlessly by Sheridan, who acted on the Donnybrook Fair principle, and whenever he saw a rebel head, hit it. There were some sharp actions, for the rebels were fighting in sheer despair ; but finding their trains captured and them.selves brought to bay, without hope, at Appomattox Court-house, they surrendered, and the war in Virginia was over. But not yet was our cavalry general to find rest. He was ordered at once to Texas, with a large force, to bring the rebels there, who still held out, to terms. E. Kirby Smith, the rebel commander of the Trans- Mississippi Department, surrendered about the time of his arrival, and, with his surrender, the war closed. On the 27th of June, 1865, General Sheridan was ap- pointed commander of the military Division of the Gulf, era- bracing the departments of Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas. To preserve order in this division, so recently in rebellion, was a difficult task, the more difiicult because the acting President was not true to his pledges, but encouraged the rebels, who at first were disposed to yield, to raise their heads again in defiance. But General Sheridan proved himself the man for the occasion. lie was unfortunately absent in Texas when the riot and mas- sacre occurred in New Orleans, but his prompt and decided action in regard to it, his denunciation of the course of the mayor and police, even when he knew that they were in favor with the President, his removal of them from office, and with them of others who obstructed reconstruction, and the thorough LIEUTENANT-GENERAL PHILIP H. SHERIDAN. 141 loyalty be manifested all the way through, endeared hini greatly to the nation. In Texas, too, he had his troubles: a disloyal governor was placed in power by the abortive reconstruction plan of Mr. Johnson, and when Congress armed Sheridan with the needed power, he removed him as promptly as he had dune the rebel mayor and treacherous governor of Louisiana. There were border difficulties to encounter, also ; many of the rebel officers had escaped to Mexico, and most of them were in Maximilian's service. Like his chief — General Grant — General Sheridan's sympathies were wholly with the Juarez or Kepuli- lican party in Mexico ; but our relations with France were sue b that Ave could only give them our moral, not our military, suji- port. Demagogues of both the Republican and Imperial par- ties did their best to involve us in the imhroglio in some way, and one of Sheridan's subordinate commanders was so unwise as to cross the Rio Grande, at Matamoras, on the invitation of one of the guerrilla chiefs, and mingle in the fray. For this he was promptly removed from command, and General Sheridan exhibited so much prudence and discretion in the whole affair as to receive the approval of all parties. That Andrew Johnson should not be pleased with so straight- forward and loyal a commander was to be expected ; and not withstanding the earnest protest of General Grant, he removed him in August, 1867, from the command of the Fifth District, and ordered him to command on the plains, where he would have only Indians to contend with. Before proceeding to his new command, however, Major-General Sheridan, by permission of General Grant, visitt^d the East, and was everywhere received with ovations and honor by the people, who were duly mindful of his great services in war and peace. Returning in the summer of 1868 to his new command, one for which, from his thorough knowledge of the Indian ways and Indian languages, he was well adapted^ General Sheridan 142 MEN OF OUR DAY. was successfal in averting a threatened Indian war, and in paci- fying the wily Sioux chiefs. Soon after the inauguration of President Grant, he was promoted to the Lieutenant-Generalship, at the same time that General Sherman succeeded to the Gene- ralship, lie was assigned to the command of the Military Division of the Missouri, embracing the Military Departments of Dakota, the Missouri, the Platte, and Texas, and having its headquarters first at St. Louis, and afterward at Chicago. Soon after the commencement of the Franco-German War, Lieutenant- General Sheridan visited Europe, and was an interested specta- tor of several of the great battles of that war. On his return he resumed his command of the Military Division of the Missouri, and at the great fire in Chicago, October 7th and 8th, and subse- quently, he rendered invaluable service in subduing the progress of the destruction, in aiding, protecting and sheltering the tens of thousands of sufferers from the great conflagration. Since General Sherman's absence in Europe, General Sheridan has been acting General-in-Chief of the United States Army, a most decided advance to have been made in ten years, from a lieutenant of a company to the highest military command in the nation. In person Lieutenant-General Sheridan is small, being barely five feet six inches in height. His body is stout, his limbs rather MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE G. MEADE. O acliieve success where all before him had failed, to retain command where, from unreadiness, incapacity, or lack of skill and foresight, all his predecessors had been compelled to relinquish it, and without extraordinary brilliancy or genius, still, by his soldier-like bearing and his manly and irreproachable conduct, to win the esteem and respect of all who were under his command, such are the claims which the last commander of the army of the Potomac presents to our regard. George Gordon Meade was born in 1815, during the temporary residence of his parents at Cadiz, in Spain. His father, Eichard W. Meade, was a citizen of Philadelphia, and, while engaged in mercantile puiiuits in Spain, was intrusted by the United States Government with the adjustment of certain claims against that country. He filled the offices of Consul and Navy Agent of the United States most creditably, and the cession of Florida — to prevent whose secession the son subse- quently contributed so much — was the result mainly of hia efforts. Shortly after his birth, the parents of young Meade returned to Philadelphia, where his youthful days were spent. "When a boy, he attended the school at Georgetown, taught by the present Chief Justice Chase. The parents, having two sons, Eichard W. and the subject of this sketch, determined to devote tliem to the service of their country. The elder was, therefore, 143 144 MEN OF OUR DAY. educated for the Navy, wliicli be entered in 1826, while George was destined for the Army, and accordingly entered the Military Academy, near Philadelphia, and, in 1831, the Academy at West Point, whence he graduated with honor in 1835. The same year we find him a second lieutenant in the third artillery, in Florida, in the Seminole war. The state of his health induced him to resign his commission in 1836, and he became engaged in civil engineering ; but, in 1842, he again entered the service as second lieutenant in the corps of Topographical Engineers, and in that capacity served in the Mexican war. During this campaign he served on the staff of General Taylor, and after- ward on tfhat of General Scott, distinguishing himself at Palo Alto and Monterey, and receiving, as an acknowledgment of his gallantry, a brevet of first lieutenant, dating from Septembe.r 23, 1846 ; and also, upon his return to Philadelphia, a splendid Bword from his townsmen. During the interval between the Mexican war and the rebellion, having been promoted to a full first lieutenancy in August, 1851, and to a captaincy of engi- neers in May, 1856, he was engaged with the particular duties of his department, more especially in the survey of the northern lakes ; but upon the call to arms in 1861, he was ordered east, and upon the organization of the Pennsylvania Reserve Corps, under the three years' call. Captain Meade was made a brigadier- general of volunteers, and placed in command of the second brigade, with General McCall as division-general, lii-^ commis- sion dating August 31, 18(31. After wintering witli ilie division at Tenallytown, and helping to erect JFort Pennsylvania, they crossed the Potomac into Virginia during the early part of 1862, and became a portion of the Army of the Potomac. AVhen this army began to move upon Manassas, during March of that year, General Meade's brigade formed a portion of the second division of McDowell's first army corps, and with this corps he remained MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE GORDON MEAIE. 145 after that general was made commander of the Department of the Shenandoah. On the 18th of June, 1862, General Meade's^ rank in the regular army was advanced to that of major of topographical engineers, and subsequently he was confirmed with the same rank in the newly organized engineer corps of the United States army. About this time the division of Penn- sylvania Eeserves was added to the Army of the Potomac, on the Peninsula, General Meade took part in the battle of Me- chanicsville, June 26, 1862, and in the battle of Gaines' Mills, June 27, he fought so bravely as to be nominated for a brevet of lieutenant-colonel of the regular army for his distinguished services. After the capture of Generals McCall and Reynolds, he took charge of the division. In the battle of New Market Cross Roads, June 30, General Meade was struck by a ball m his side, inflicting a painful wound ; but quickly rose from hia bed of suffering, and was again at the head of his division. During the Maryland campaign he also distinguished himself at the head of the Pennsylvania Reserves. At Antietam, when General Hooker was wounded. General Meade took charge of a corps, and fought bravely the remainder of the day, receiving a slight wound and having two horses killed under him. During the fearful battle of Fredericksburg, he held charge of the second division of the first army corps, and fought in Franklin's left wing. He led his men boldly up to the rebel works, nnd doubtless would have captured them had he been properly sup- ported; but after losing his brigade commanders, several of his field and line officers, and fifteen hundred men, he, with the rest of the army, was obliged to retire to the other side of the river. Two days after this eventful battle, General Meade superseded General Butterfield in the command of the fifth army corps. To enable him to hold this, he was promoted to be a major- general of volunteers, with rank and commission from Nov. 29, 10 l-iQ MEN OF OUR DAY. 1862. Tn the second day of the action at Chancellorsville, the corps of Meade and Reynolds were held in reserve by General Tlooker, and on them he relied for covering the crossing of the Rapidan, when it was finally decided to withdraw to the north bank. They performed their part admirably and with but little loss. Lee's army, now re-inforced and flushed with recent vic- tories easily achieved, took the offensive once more, and speed- ily made its way into Maryland and Pennsylvania, followed by Hooker. On the 28th of June, 1863, the Army of the Potomac was in the vicinity of Frederick, in Maryland, when a messenger arrived from Washington, relieving General Hooker, and invest- ing General Meade with the command of the army. Selected thus suddenly, without solicitation on his own part, and by the unanimous desire of the other corps commanders, he assumed command with a deep sense of the responsibilities thrust upon him, and made the best disposition of his troops in his power for the speedily impending battle. The following is a copy of his general order issued upon this occasion : " Headquarteks of the Army of the Potomac, "June 28, 1863. " General Order, iVo. 66. " By direction of the President of the United States, I hereby assume the command of the Army of the Potomac. As a sol- dier, in obeying this order, an order totally unexpected and unsolicited, I have no promises or pledges to make. The coun- try looks to this army to relieve it from the devastation and disgrace of a hostile invasion. "Whatever fotigues and sacrifices we may be called upon to undergo, let us have in view constantly the magnitude of the interests involved, and let each man deter- mine to do his duty, leaving to an all-controlling Providence the decision of the contest. It is with just diffidence that I re- lieve, in the command of this army, an eminent and accom- plished soldier, wlnse name must ever appear conspicuous in the history of its achievements ; but I rely upon the MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE GORDON MEADE. 14T hearty support of my companions in arms to assist me in the discharge of the duties of the important trust which has been confided to me. "GEORGE G. MEADE, "Major-geueral Commanding. ••S. F. BARSTOW Assistant Adjutant-general." General Meade at once put his columns in motion, and in three days his advance and that of the enemy met at Gettys- burg, and commenced the conflict. The meeting at that place was by accident, but the advantages of the position were such, that instead of withdrawing his advance, upon meeting the enemy, he ordered his whole army up to their support. Three days of terrible warfare, and great loss of life upon both sides, resulted in the defeat of the enemy, and the abandonment of the northern invasion. It was the first substantial victory gained by the Army of the Potomac, and though the editors of the northern papers, and some of the impatient members of the Government, were inclined to blame General Meade for not making more ardent pursuit, and falling upon the foe, who was represented, as usual, as thoroughly demoralized, subsequent events have shown that, in this case, " discretion was the better part of valor." Pursuit, vigorous and effective pursuit, was made, and a considerable portion of the enemy's train was cap- tured, but his retreat had been at the same time swift and orderly, and so thoroughly disciplined were the rebel troops, that an attack upon them by any pursuing force which could be brought up promptly, must inevitably have resulted in a disas- trous repulse. The problem whether the attack should have ])een made, however, is one of a tactical nature, requiring for its solution special and professional knowledge. It is, therefore, one of those questions regarding which public opinion is neces- sarily worthless. One 'hing is certain, the emphasis with which 148 MEN OF OUR DAY, the corps commanders pronounced against tlie assault, should carry witli it great weight, understanding, as they did, the rela- tive situations of the opposing forces. After Lee had crossed the Potomac, General Meade hoped to bring him to battle before he should pass the mountains, but at Manassas gap, where an excellent opportunity occurred, hia plans were frustrated by the dilatory movements of a corpa commander, who had the advance. For some time after this, the opposing armies lay in a state of inactivity, near the Eapi- dan, from the necessity of heavy detachments being drawn oS" to other points. In October, Lee attempted, by a flank move- ment, to sever Meade's communications ; but the latter was too quick for him. Making a retrograde movement as far as Centreville, to meet this effort, he followed Lee in return, and thus the two armies resumed nearly the same position as before the movement commenced. In the fighting accompanying these operations, the Union army had the advantage, and at Bristow station, the rear-guard, under Warren, by a rapid movement won the field, and defeated the enemy. Late in November, Meade undertook the boldest move that the Army of the Poto- mac had ever yet made. Leaving his base, with ten days' rations, he crossed the river, hoping to interpose between the wings of Lee's army, noAV in winter quarters, and stretched over a wide extent of country. The enemy, however, was found to present so formidable a fi'ont at Mine Run, behind intrench- ments, that it was thought best to forego the contemplated at- tack, and our forces were again withdrawn to the north bank, and went into cantonments for the season. When General Grant, as lieutenant-general, assumed the direction of all the forces, his headquarters were with the Army of the Potomac. General Meade retained the immediate command of that army, and during the severe campaigns of 1864-5, led it on the bloody MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE GORDON MEADE. 149 fields 01 the Wilderness, Spottsylvania, Cold Harbor, and the region round about Petersburg and Richmond, winning the approval of Lieuten;int-General Grant, who in recommending his confirmation as a major-general in the regular army, spoke of him in these emphatic words: *' General Meade is one of our truest men, and ablest officers. He has been constantly with the Army of the Potora;ic, confront- ing the strongest, best appointed, and most confident army of the south. He, therefore, has not had the same opportunity of winning laurels so distinctly marked, as have fallen to the lot of other generals. But I defy any man to name a commander who would do more than Meade has done, with the same chances. General Meade was apj^ointed at my solicitation, after a cam- paign the most protracted, and covering more severely contested battles than any of which we have any account in history. I have been with General Meade through the whole campaign; and I not only made the recommendation upon a conviction that this r cognition of his services was fully won, but that he was eminently qualified for the command such rank would en- title him to." Congress confirmed the appointment, dating his commission from August 18tb, 186-1. At the close of the war General Meade returned for a brief season to his home in Philadelphia, where he was received with the highest honors. He was soon nfter appointed to the command of the military division of the Atlantic, in which were included all the States on the Atlantic coast, and which was perhaps the most important of the military departments. His management of this department was able and judicious, but without many events of note. He acted prompt- ly and wisely, under the direction of the Lieutenant general, in suppressing the Fenian movement for the invasion of Canada. AViif'n, in the autumn of 1867, President Johnson 150 MEN OF OUR DAY. . having become dissatisfied with General Pope's administration in Georgia, Alabama and Florida, in consequence of that general's furthering rather than hindering tr.e enforcement of the congressional plan of reconstruction, he removed him and transferred General Meade to the command of that military district, he mistook as he had so often done before, his man. General Meade is thoroughly loyal, and obedient to the laws, and finding that the congressional plan was the law of the land, he obeyed it as strictly, and promptly, as his predecessor had done ; even taking measures, such as the removal of the State provisional officers of Georgia for contumacy and insubordina- tion, at which General Pope had hesitated. He has maintained a dignified and honorable course in regard to the Constitutional Conventions of the States of his district, and whatever may be his own political views, he has sought only to administer the laws faithfully, without fear or favor. The Constitutional Con- vention of Florida, which at one time was on the point of breaking into two impotent factions, was, by his counsels and efforts, harmonized, and the successful future of the re-organized State assured. In July, 1868, the "Department of the South" was recon- structed, and General Meade placed in command of it. lie re- tained this position until March, 1869, when President Grant made a new and better distribution of the army commands, and assigned General Meade to the command of the Military Divi- sion of the Atlantic, embracing the Department of the East, and that of the Lakes; his headquarters were to be at Philadel- phia. This command the general still retains, though from the subsequent discontinuance of the Division of the South and its consolidation with the other divisions, the territory under hia charge has been considerably increased. General Meade is a scholarly and accomplished officer, some- MAJOR-GENERAL GEORGE GORDON MEADE. 151 what cold and quiet ia his manner, usually cautious and slow in his movements, never assuming or boastful ; sometimes inclined to severity, and not very tolerant of commanding officers who were not educated at West Point; but a just and fair man, and one governed by principle. He is not a general who would rouse his troops to the highest enthusiasm by his personal mag- netism, but one who would win their high respect and esteem. One of the best descriptions of his personal appearance we have seen is that given by an English writer, who was introduced to him soon after the battle of Gettysburg. " He is a very remarka- ble-looking man — tall, spare, of a commanding figure and presence ; his manners easy and pleasant, but having much dig- nity. His head is partially bald, and is small and compact ; but the forehead is high. He has the late Duke of Wellington class of nose ; and his eyes, which have a serious, and almost sad ex- pression, are rather sunken, or appear so, from the prominence of the curved nasal development. He has a decidedly patri- cian and distinguished appearance. I had some conversation with him, and of his recent achievements he spoke in a modest and natural way. He said that he had been very ' fortunate ; ' but was most especially anxious not to arrogate to himself any credit which he did not deserve. He said that the triumph of the Federal arms was due to the splendid courage of the Union troops, and also to the bad strategy, and rash and mad attacks made by the enemy. He said that his health was re- markably good and that he could bear almost any amount of physical fatigue. What he complained of was the intense mental anxiety occasioned by the great responsibility of his position." General Meade, in 1840, married a daughter of Hon, John Sergeant, of Philadelphia, and has a large family. MAJOR-GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK. INFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK, one of tbe most brilliant generals of the recent war, is the son of Benjamin Franklin Hancock and Elizabeth his wife, both natives of Montgomery county, Pennsylvania. In a retired part of this county, near Montgomery Square, he was born February 14th, 1824; when about four years old, his parents removed to Norristown, the county town, where his father took the charge of a school — although then preparing himself for the legal profession,which he afterwards practised with success. Amid the pleasant scenes and associations of this thriving town, with parents possessing more than average education, intelligence and patriotism, he and his twin brother Hilary B., (now a lawyer in Minnesota) and a younger brother, John (after- ward a Major in the Army of the Potomac), grew up surrounded by the best of social and religious influences. Among his play- fellows he was naturally a leader, popular in juvenile musical matters, affectionate and social. At the village academy he was esteemed as truthful, obedient and courageous. With his elders lie was an acceptable companion, on account of his modest and •unassuming interest in matters and subjects usually uninteresting to boys of his age — and he seems to have developed, even at that early day, that aptitude for military pursuits and those scientific tastes and acquirements which may be considered as indicative of the probable course of his after life. Like many 152 MAJOR-GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK. 153 another American boy, his first public appearance was as the reader of the Declaration of Independence, on a 4:th of July celebration at Norristown, when he was but fifteen years old. Nearly a year later he was unexpectedly nominated by Joseph Fornance, M. C, for a cadetship in the United States Military Academy at West Point, which he entered July 1st, 1840, meet- ing there with many young men (mostly his seniors) who have since distinguished themselves on American battle-fields. He graduated from West Point, June 30th, 1844, ranking No. 18 in his class; he was brevetted July 1st, as second lieutenant in the 6th United States Eegiment of Infantry; and June 18th, 1846, received his commission of full second lieutenancy in the same regiment, stationed at Fort Lawson, on the Red River of the South. Here and at Fort Washita (an extreme Western post) he continued until, on the outbreak of the Mexican War, in the spring of 1847, his regiment went into actual service. lie was at Churubusco, August 20th, 1847, under General Scott; there, at the head of his platoon, he took a part in the desperately contested hand-to-hand fight of Molino del Key, September 8th, 1847 ; as, also, in the attack, on the 13th, upon the castle of Chapultepec, and the three days' fighting which resulted in a glorious victory to the American arms. He was at that time regimental adjutant, was repeatedly mentioned in the official reports of the day; and, in August, 1848, was brevetted first lieutenant for gallantry in these actions, dating from 20th August, 1847. He was also present when the Mexican commissioners entered the American camp, with proposals of peace — which were rejected by General Scott — and he shared the proud triumph of the 14th September, 1847, when that general, at the head of 6000 war-worn veterans, entered the City of Mexico, as its cap- tors. The war closed soon after, and Hancock — serving for a time with General Cadwallader, at Toluca, asd having been 154 MEN OF OUR DAY. advanced to the position of regimental quartermaster, was one of the last Americans who left the soil of Mexico. His services, too-ether with those of other Pennsylvania soldiers, were appro- priately acknowledged by the Pennsylvania legislature, in a series of resolutions, of which a copy was presented to him. He was next stationed at Fort Crawford, Prairie du Chien, Wis., until the summer of 1849 ; then, until the autumn of 1855, he served as regimental adjutant, on the staff of his old Mexican war colonel, Brigadier-General J. S. Clarke, at Jefferson Barracks and St. Louis, Mo. On the 2-ith of January, 1850, he married Almira, the daugh- ter of Mr. Samuel Hussell, a wealthy and highly esteemed mer chant of that city ; and, in November 1855, was made assistant quartermaster, with rank of captain. During 1856, he was stationed as quartermaster at Fort Myers, near St. Augustine, Florida ; and, in November of the same year, was assigned to duty in the United States quartermaster general's department, for the Western district, in Utah Territory, and accompanied General Harney on his expedition to Kansas, and the regions beyond. From Utah, he was transferred, still in the department, to Benicia, California, where he was brought into intimate social and official relations with that sterling soldier. General Silas Casey ; thence, to the old Spanish town of Los Ano-elos, Lower California. Here he remained two years, attain- ino- a great degree of personal influence in that region, so that, when, in 1861, the civil rebellion broke out, and certain restless spirits tried to turn the Golden State into the secession stream, his voice and example, as well as his cool, calm courage and caution, contributed most powerfully to stem the tide of rebellion, and to hold that grand young commonwealth firmly to its loyalty to the Union. But he burned for a more active part in the defence of that MAJOR-GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK. 155 Union, and, at his own request, was transferred to the East. Reaching New York citj in September, 1861, he stopped not even to greet his parents, but hastened directly to Washington, full of the one idea so clearly expressed in the following extract from a letter written to a friend at the time. " My politics are of a practical kind. The integrity of the Country. The Supre- macy of the Federal Government. An honorable peace, or none at all." He was immediately assigned to duty as chief quarter- master, on the staff of General Robert Anderson, then in Ken- tucky ; and, while making his preparations to go, was, most un- expectedly to himself, nominated by General McClellan, as n, brigadier- general. The appointment was made, entirely on itfi merits, by President Lincoln, 23d September, 1861, and he wa.'i given the command of a brigade in General W. F. Smith's Divi sion, holding an advanced position on the Potomac, and did good service in foraging, reconnoitring, etc., in the face of the enemy, and in a country overrun by rebel emissaries and spies. In the advance of April, 1862, towards Yorktown, Hancock's brigade took an active and foremost part, his artillery experience coming into good play. Several times he led his brigade in person, in the open field; and, at the battle of Williamsburg, just at the set of sun, and during a pouring rain, with the enemy massed in his front, and with recent and yawning chasms amid the ranks of his own men, he rode to the centre of his lines, and quickly passing the words "fix bayonets," paused a moment, then, wav- ing his hat, uttered the order to his officers, "Gentlemen, charge." Following their brave leader who was riding straight upon the enemy at the top of his speed, the bayonet charge of that little band was the decisive stroke of that day's battle. The enemy were whirled helplessly before it, the day was suddenly crowned with victory, and Hancock's character for " dash," was established from that moment. For this and other services, he was bre- 156 MEN OF OUR DAY. vetted Major in the United States Army, dating from May 4th, 1862. In the progress of the Union army up the Peninsula, his brigade was constantly in the advance — his duties being particu- larly arduous in the pestilential swamps of the Chickahominy, where he shared in all the dangers and fatigues of the principal attacks, and rendered important aid by his regular army expe- rience in conducting the safe withdrawal of the men under his command. At Gaines' Mill, while in the extreme advance, he met and overcame the terrific fire of five massed rebel regiments, defeating their purpose. At the brief, but sanguinary fight of Garnett's Hill, he met and repulsed a savage onslaught made by Toombs and the Georgia troops, and held -this position until near the close of the day (June 28th), when he rejoined Smith's com- mand and took part in the obstinately contested battle of Savage's Station (29th), and that of White Oak Swamp on the 30th. For his services at Garnett's Hill he was recommended for appoint- ment as Major-General of Volunteers ; and subsequently for three brevets in the (regular) United States Army, for meritori- ous conduct during the Peninsula campaign. June 27th, 1862 he was brevetted Colonel in United States Army. On the 17th September, General Hancock commanded a division on the field of Antietam, Md, When the Army of the Potomac, in October and November 1862, marched to Falmouth, Va., Hancock's column was on the extreme right, and in perfect order, and at the battle of Frede- ricksburg, December 13th, his men crossed the river in open boats, under fire, scaled tlie banks, drove off the enemy, and formed the pontoon bridge, taking, also, conspicuous part in the subsequent heavy fighting of that disastrous day. On the 29th of November, on the nomination of General Burnside, he was appointed Major-General of Volunteers. In the battle of Chan- MAJOR-GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK. 157 cellorsville, May 2d — 4th 1863, Hancock's skill turned the for- tunes of the day; and he was soon after appointed by President Lincoln to the command of the Second Army Corps. When the rebel advance into Pennsylvania was so suddenly checked at Gettysburg, July 1st — 3d, 1863, Hancock was present with this gallant corps, near the centre of the Union lines; and, he was, at first, in command of the field. His dispositions and plans, made during the critical interval which elapsed before the arrival of Meade, were so admirable, that that gallant genera?, on his arrival, saw no reason to change them. On the third da/ of that great battle, Hancock was wounded severely, but would not be taken to the rear. He was obliged to go home t) recover from his wound ; was received at Norristown by his fel- low-citizens, and borne to his home on a stretcher, on the shoulders of soldiers of the Invalid Corps. His recovery was gradual but sure — and the admiration felt for his patriotic ser- vices were manifested by numerous presentations, receptions, eU\ His Norristown fi'iends gave him a service of nine pieces of gold and silver plate ornamented with the trefoil badge of the Second Corps, and valued at $1600. When he had so far recovered as to be able to travel to West Point, he was honored with pub- lic receptions in his native county, at New York, West Point, and at St.. Louis, where he went to see his family, and where, also, he received from the Western Sanitary Fair a superb sword. Ordered to Washington, December loth, 1863, he promptly obeyed, although his wound was not yet healed, and was detailed to the important duty of increasing the ranks of the army by his personal presence and exertions. He undertook the raising of 50.000 men for his corps (headquarters at Harrisburg, Penn- sylvania) with good success — the great cities of New York, Albany, and Boston, offering him every public and private 16» MEN OF OUR DAY. facility. At Philadelphia, a public reception was given him ; resolutions were offered by the city government, and the rare honor was his of having Independence Hall thrown open to his use ; on the 22d of February he reviewed the volunteer troops of the city ; in New York City, the Governor's Room in the City Hall was placed at his disposal ; at Albany, the Legisla- ture tendered an official testimonial of respect, as, also, did the Legislature of Massachusetts and the merchants of Boston. In March, 1864, he was again ordered to the front, and led his old corps, the second, again in the advance, under Grant, upon Cul- peper Court House, Virginia, participating in the battles of the Wilderness. At Spottsylvania, he made a magnificent charge at the head of his whole corps, and proved himself the man of the day, which he closed with the following brief despatch to General Grant. " General, I have captured from thirty to forty guns. I have finished up Johnson, and am now going into Early." At Petersburg, Virginia, he personally rallied the Second Corps, and his force was always well in hand ; no matter how much extended his lines were, they always responded promptly a ad perfectl}'- to his orders, and he handled them with the pre- cision, force and ease with which a single regiment is usually manoeuvred. For gallant conduct in the AVilderness, at Spott- sylvania, Cold Harbor, and in all the operations of tlie army under Grant, President Lincoln made him Brigadier-General of the United States Army, commission dated 12th August, 186-1. From the Mississippi Valley Sanitary Fair he received a splen- did sword ; from the Great Central Sanitary Fair, at Philadel- phia, a full set of horse equipments, value $500 ; a residence in Philadelphia, from some citizens; and $15,000 placed at his dis- posal by the Coal Exchange of the same city for the purpose of recruiting his corps, while St. Louis gave him an elegant sword. MAJOR-GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK. 159 He remained in command of the Second Army Corps, though partially disabled by the repeated breaking out afresh of his old wound received at the battle of Gettysburg, until November 25tb, 1864, when he was compelled to ask to be relieved, and for the next three months was at Washington organizing, as far as his infirm health would permit, the army corps of veterans. He was then put in command of the Department of West Virginia, and temporarily of the Middle Military Division, and of the Army of the Shenandoah, in which he continued till July 18th, 1865, when he was transferred to the Middle Department, and in August 1866, to the Department of the Missouri ; in March, 1867, he took command of an expedition against the Indians of the plains. Meantime other promotions had come to General Hancock ; on the 13th of March, 1865, he had been brevetted Major-General in the United States Army for gallant and meritorious conduct a* the battle of Spottsylvania ; and on the 26th of July, 1866, had been commissioned Major-General in the army. While in command of the Department of the Missouri, his intercourse with both the President and General Grant had been very cordial ; but in August, 1867, President Johnson determined to remove General Sheridan from the command of the Fifth Military District, which comprised Louisiana and Texas, and appointed General Hancock his successor. The latter could not immediately enter on his duties; but in November, 1867, he went to New Orleans and took command, revoking immediately several of General Sheridan's orders, and issued a special order, of which the second item (which we give below) was the most important portion.* * " Second. The General commanding is gratified to learn that peace and quiet reign in this department. It will be his purpose to preserve this con- dition of things. As a means to this great end, he regards the maintenance 160 MEN OF OUR DAY. Of the abstract truth and justice of the opinions here laid down, there can be no doubt. But as to their practical opera- tion in this case there were two important questions, viz. : whether the people of Louisiana and Texas were at this time so far reduced to a peaceful condition that they might safely be left to the control of the civil authority alone, while the two conflict- ing elements of society were yet in open hostility to each other, and whether General Hancock, an entire stranger, was compe- tent, at the very day of his coming among them, to decide a ques- tion of such importance. On these two questions there was a conflict of opinion be- tween General Hancock and his superior officer, General Grant. President Johnson sanctioned General Hancock's course; but General Grant revoked his special orders, for carrying out of the civil authorities in the faithful execution of the laws, as the most efficient under existing circumstances. In war it is indispensable to repel force by force, and overthrow and destroy opposition to authority ; but when insurrectionary force has been overthrown and peace established, and the civil authorities are ready and willing to perform their duties, the mili- tary power should cease to lead, and the civil administration resume its natural and rightful dominion. Solemnly impressed with these views, the General announces that the great principles of American liberty still are the lawful inheritance of this people, and ever should be. The rioht of trial by jury, the habeas corpus, the liberty of the press, the freedom of speecli, and the natural rights of persons and the rights of property must be preserved. Free institutions, while they are essential to the pros- perity and happiness of the people, always furnish the strongest induce- ments to peace and order. Crimes and offences committed in the district must be referred to the consideration and judgment of the regular civil authorities, and these tribunals will be supported in their lawful jurisdic- tion. Should there be violations of existing laws, which are not inquired into by the civil magistrates, or should failures in the administration of justice by the courts be complained of, the cases will be reported to these headquarters, when such orders will be made as may be deemed necessary. While the General thus indicates his purpose to respect the liberties of the people, he wishes all to imderstand that armed insurrections and forcible resistance to laws will be instantly suppressed by arms." MAJOR-GENERAL WINFIELD SCOTT HANCOCK. 161 the measures indicated above, and annulling the previous orders of General Sheridan and his own subordinate, General Mower. The controversy between General Hancock and General Grant continued for about two months; but finally terminated in General Hancock's asking to be relieved from his command in January, 1868. He was made commander of the new military department of Washington, including Maryland, Virginia, Penn- sylvania, and the District of Columbia, by President Johnson It is worthy of notice that early in the ensuing summer tht States of Louisiana and Texas, as well as several other of tlui Southern States, were readmitted to the Union by Act of Con gress, and placed under a strictly civil administration, as Genera/ Hancock had insisted should be done. General Hancock retained his new command until the inau- guration of President Grant, when, by the new arrangement oi' military commands, he was assigned to the Military Department of Dakota, embracing that Territory and part of Montana,. There was an unpleasant state of feeling between him and Presi- dent Grant, growing out of the Louisiana troubles, and he regarded this assignment of command, as he well might, as a virtual banishment. Subsequent correspondence has made the matter no better. General Hancock is still commander of the Department of Dakota, and though senior Major-General in his Military Division, he was, during the late absence for nearly a year of Lieutenant-General Sheridan, put under the command of one of his own juniors. In personal appearance, General Hancock is decidedly one of the most dignified and imposing of our military officers of high rank. Of fine stature, and an intellectual, thoughtful face, a man evidently born to command, courteous, and gentlemanly in his manners, he possesses in a large degree that personal ma«^ 11 162 MEN OF OUR DAY. netism wliicli enables liim to exert a powerful influence over the men he leads. He is destined yet to exert a powerful influence in our national affairs. Bj the death of Generals Thomas and Halleck he stands next to the highest rank as a Major-General in the army of the United States. MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN McALLISTER SCHO- FIELD. (^jSJ^OHN McAllister SCHOFIELD, the son of Rev. '^^)'| James Schofield, was born September 29th, 1831, in Chau- ^(^ tauqua county, N. Y., and in 1843, when twelve yearg ^ old, removed with his father's family to Illinois. From this State he was nominated and entered as a cadet in the United States Military Academy at West Point, graduating from that institution in 1853 with the rank of seventh, in the same class as Sheridan and J. B. McPherson, with a brevet second lieutenancy in the Second Artillery, in which he passed two years, partly at Fort Moultrie, S. C, and partly at Fort Cass, Fla. He was then ordered to the "West Point Academy as Instructor in Natural Philosophy, a position which occupied his time for the next five years. In 1860, he obtained leave to occupy the chair of Natural Philosophy in Washington University, St. Louis, Mo. Soon the War of the Civil Rebellion opened, and the young professor was detailed by the War Department to muster the Missouri troops into the LTnited States service, being at the same time appointed Major of the 1st Missouri Infantry, his regular army rank being then that of captain, to which he passed by regular steps since his brevet of second lieutenant with which he had left West Point. After the battle of Booneville he was made Assis- tant Adjutant-General to General Lyon, shared in that chief- tain's success at White Creek, and was by his side, when ho 163 164 MEN OF OUR DAY. fell — at the moment of victory. " Wherever the battle most fiercely raged," wrote Major Strong, in his official report, "there was General Lyon ; and there, too, was Major Schofield, his principal staff-officer. The coolness and equanimity with which he moved from point to point carrying orders, was the theme of universal conversation. I cannot speak too highly of the invaluable service Major Schofield rendered by the confidence his conduct inspired." His gallantry had its reward in his appointment, November 21st, 1861, as Brigadier-General of Volunteers, and his assign- ment to duty in command of the Missouri Militia, authorized by the War Department to be raised for service during the war. When General Halleck went to Pittsburg Landing, about four- fifths of that great State was placed under Schofield. In June, 1862, the whole State was set apart as the Military Dis- trict of Missouri, under his charge, and shortly after, the army of the frontier, operating in Missouri and Kansas, was committed to him, and he struck out boldly against all the organized rebel forces in that section, whipping them soundly in a severe engagement at Maysville, near Pea Ridge (October 22d), and driving them, a routed rabble, beyond the Boston Mountains and back into the valley of the Arkansas River. He had rapidly developed the salient points of a good soldier, and promotion followed close upon his footsteps. In November, 1862, he was appointed by the President a Major-General of Volunteers, and continued in command of the "Army of the Frontier" in Southwestern Missouri till April, 1863, The politicians of Missouri, dissatisfied with his just and straightforward administration of affairs, interfered at Washing- ton, and prevented his confirmation ; but President Lincoln reappointed him in April, 1863. He was assigned to the com- mand of the thir'' division of the Fourteenth Army Corps, Army MAJOR-GENERAL J®HN m'ALLISTER SCHOFIELD, 1G5 of the Camberland, April 20th, 1863, but transferred on the 13th of May following to the command of the Department of the Missouri, which involved the command of the Missouri State Militia, and captured Fort Smith and Little Rock, in Arkansas. He rendered material assistance to General Grant in the siege of Yicksburg. This command he held until January, 186-i, when he was relieved of his command in Missouri, and on the 9th of February following made commander of the Depart- ment and Army of the Ohio, known at that time as the Twenty-third Army Corps, This corps, on the sixth of May following (the day when Sherman commenced his Atlanta cam- paign), numbered 13,559 effective troops, but was subsequently reenforced. In all the battles in the Atlanta campaign, and they were many, and some of them very severe. General Schofield took an active and honorable part. His command, though only one-ninth of the entire force, was never found wanting whenever any brave or daring enterprise was to be undertaken ; and it would be hard to say which of Sherman's army commanders, Thomas, McPherson, or Schofield, best deserved the high encomiums which their grim but just chief bestowed equally on all. Atlanta won and dismantled, and some apprehensions being entertained from Hood's raid into Tennessee, General Sherman despatched General Thomas, with General Schofield as second in command, to look after the Rebel General. Schofield repaired at once to Nashville, and learning that Hood was crossing the Tennessee at Florence, set out to meet him and obstruct and delay his progress until General Thomas could collect a more adequate force, and especially a larger cavalry force, for the defence of Nashville and Tennessee. Skirmishing with Hood continually, from the 14th to the 80th of November, General Schofield had a sharp action at Pulaski, another at Columbia, and 166 MEN OF OUR DAY. on the 30th of November fought the battle of Franklin, Tennes- see, one of the severest in the AVestern campaigns. His own force was greatly outnumbered by that of the enemj^, and the result, amid terrible slaughter, was a drawn battle. But Scho- lield had gained his point ; he had so thoroughly delayed and crip- pled Hood's army that General Thomas had been able to concen- trate his troops at Nashville, and Tennessee was safe. Falling back upon Nashville by rapid marches, he succeeded in joining General Thomas with his command before Hood could overtake him. On the 15th and 16th of December, the battle of Nashville took place, and General Schofield, conspicuous as ever for his daring, had a full share in Hood's discomfiture, and pursued him relentlessly, till his troops, a disorganized and almost wholly disarmed mob, singly and by scores found their way across the Tennessee. Spending no time in rest, General Schofield and his command were next ordered, wa Cincinnati and Washington, to the mouth of Cape Fear River, N. C, arriving January 15, 1865. Here he took part in the capture of Fort Anderson and Wihnington, in the battle and occupation of Kinston, and on the 22d of March joined General Sherman at Goldsboro, He was detailed to execute the military convention of capitu- lation of General J. E. Johnston's Rebel army, April 26, 1865, and was in command of the Department of North Carolina till June 21, 1865. He had been made a brigadier-general in the regular army, his commission dating from November 30, 1864, the day of the battle of Franklin. On the 13th of March, 1865, he Avas brevetted major-general in the regular army, and in 1867 was commissioned major-general in that army. From June 22, 1865, to August 16, 1866, he was on special duty in Europe. On his return he was put in command of the Depart- ment of the Potomac, and on the reorganization of the military MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN MCALLISTER SCHOFIELD. 167 commands, March 13, 1867, was made commander of the First Military District (Virginia). On the 23d of April, 1868, on the final resignation of Secre- tary Stanton, he was appointed Secretary of War, and held that position till March 11, 1869, performing its duties with eminent ability. Resigning this office, he was made commander of the Military Department of the Missouri, and on the death of General Thomas, transferred to the command of the Military Division of the Pacific, with headquarters at San Francisco. lie still retains this command. In all the positions, military and civil, which General Schofield has been called to occupy, he has ac- quitted himself with the hisfhest credit, makina; no failures and no blunders. BRIGADIER-GENERAL OLIVER OTIS HOWARD. •^fCiliRIGAriER-GENERAL OLIVER OTIS HOWARD. ^lll ' ^^^ Havelock of the Americiin Union Army," was born mT!^ at Leeds. Kennebec county. Maine, on the Sth of Novem- c^ ber, ISoO, the eldest of three children of parents in moder- ate, but independent, circumstances. Working upon the tarm until his tenth year, he was then, by his father's death, left in the care of an uncle, Hon. John Otis, of Hallowell, Maine, Having attained a good common-school education, he, in IS-iO, matriculated at Bowdoin College, from which he graduated at the head of his class in 1S50. Entering immediately the United States Military Academy at Wos: Poiur, he graduated from that institution in June^ 1854:, with the fourth rank in his class. He w:\s assigned to the Ordnance Department, with brevet rank of second lieuten- ant, served in Texas and Florida, and was subsequently trans- ferred to the United States arsenal at Augusta, Georgia ; and from thence to the arsenal at Watervliet^ Maine. On the 1st of July, 1S55, he was made a second lieutenant by promotion ; and on the 1st of July, 1857, promoted to be first lieutenant, and appointed Acting Assistant Professor of Mathematics at West Point, which position he held at the commencement of the rebellion. On the 2 Sth of May, 1861, he resigned his professorship and accepted a commission as colonel of the third Maine volunteers, the first three years regiment that left that State; and, as senior colonel, led a bri- i(>6 BRTGADIKR-GEXERAL OLIVER OTIS IIOWAKD. 1G9 gaile at the battle of Bull Run, July 21, 1861. The gallantry and ability manifested on that occasion secured for him (September 3d) the rank of brigadier-general, and ho was placed in com* mand of a brigade in General Casey's provisional division, to which was then intrusted the charge of the national capital. In the following December, he was assigned to General Sumner's command, the first brigade of the first division of the second army corps, in McClellan's Peninsula campaign. At Fair Oaks, June 1, 1862, while gallantly leading a decisive charge, he was struck in the right arm by two bullets, one near the wrist and the other at the elbow; he did not leave the field, however, nntil wounded a second time, when he was obliged to go to the rear and submit to an amputation of the limb. In the words of a friend, " Weak and fainting from hemorrhage and the severe shock which his system had sustained, the next day he started for his home in Maine. lie remained there only about two months, during which time he was not idle. Visiting various localities in his native State, he made patriotic appeals to the people to come forward and sustain the Government. Pale, emaciated, and with one sleeve tenantless, he stood up before them, the embodi- ment of all that is good and true and noble in manhood. lie talked to them as only one truly loyal can talk — as one largely endowed with that patriotism which is u heritage of New Eng- land blood. Modesty, sincerity and earnestness characterized his addresses, and his fervent appeals drew hundreds around the national standard." Before he had recovered from his wound, and against the advice of his surgeon, he hastened to the front, and at the head of a brigade of the second (French's) division, (his own being temporarily commanded by General Caldwell,) he took part in the second battle of Bull Kun; and in the re- treat from Centreville he commanded the rear-guard. At Antie- tam he succeeded General Sedgwick, who was woundeil, in com- 170 MEN OF OUR DAY. mand of Lis division. On the 13th of December, at the battle of Fredericksburg, he led his division, in support of General French's, in the heroic charge made upon the rebel position in the rear of that city. In this attempt — in which the Union troops, in the words of their commander, " did all that men could do — Howard's brigade alone lost nearly a thousand men." During the succeeding winter he held the command of the Becond division of the second corps ; and, in April, 1863, was confirmed as major-general of volunteers (his commission dating from the 29th of the preceding November), and was transferred to the command of the eleventh corps, thereby re- lieving General Sigel. His new command was composed of German troops, many of whom could not even speak tho English language, and all enthusiastically devoted to their former commander, who, for some inscrutable governmental reason, had so suddenly been taken away from them. With these men, good and true soldiers, yet demoralized to a certain degree by the change of command, and before time had been afforded to him for re-organizing them or becoming better known to them. General Howard was fated to meet the first onset of the rebel attack at Chancellorsville. Under the unexpected and crushing blow, and despite the heroic endeavors of Howard himself, they broke and ran, causing a panic which had well nigh proved the irretrievable ruin of the whole Union army. The eleventh and its commander keenly felt the dishonor of this day — but the noble-hearted and patient Lincoln's confi. dence in the subject of our sketch was unshaken, and when a change of commanders was urged, he simply replied, " Howard will bring it up to the work, only give him time." And splendidly did Howard and his men redeem their credit upon the battle field of Gettysburg, on the first, second, and third of July, 1863. It was to his happy forethought, on the first day BRIGADIER-GENERAL OLIVER OTIS HOWARD. 171 of that battle, ia seizing Cemetery Hill, that we may in a great measure, attribute the favorable results of the fighting on the two succeeding days. It "was one of those divine inspirations on which destinies turn," giving him a stronghold of defence and shelter, when, as he must have foreseen, and as happened three hours later, he was obliged to retire in the face of an enemy more than double his own number. And, on this hill, the natural centre of the Union lines, the eleventh corps, burn- ing to wipe out the memory of Chancellorsville, met and terri- bly repulsed the brunt of the attack by the rebel General Ewell's division, at sunset of the second day. On the third day of this terrible fight, Howard's corps still held the samo position, grimly watching the sublime panorama of battle which unrolled before them. " I have seen many men in action," wrote an eye-witness, "but never one so imperturba- bly cool as this general of the eleventh corps. I watched him closely as a minie whizzed overhead. I dodged, of course. I never expect to get over that habit. But I am confident that he did not move a muscle by the fraction of a hair's breadth." At last, however, came the furious final charge of tlie desper- ate veterans of Lee's array, recklessly bent on obtaining posses- sion of Cemetery Hill. Two hundred and fifty cannon cc»ncen- trated their unintermitted and terrific fire upon the Union centre (Howard's position) and the left — but Howard simply ordered one after another of his guns to be quiet, as if silenced by the enemy's fire, and his gunners flung themselves flat upon the ground. Suddenly, as the rebel line, in huge semicircular sweep, reached the Emmetsburg road, the Germans of the eleventh corps sprang to their guns, and along the whole front of the Union centre and left, more than four miles long — there rained such a storm of fiery, pitiless hail of death-bolts upon the advancing foe, as swept away not only the last hope of 172 MEN OF OUR DAY. the Confederate chieftain, but, almost literally, his best army, Gettysburg was won, and the North was saved. President Lincoln sent to Howard an autograph letter of thanks for his inestimable services, and Congress passed a vote of similar import. General Hancock having been severely wounded in this battle, the command of his corps (the second) was given to Howard. In the fall of 1863, after the battle of Chiokamauga, Generals Howard and Hooker, with their corps, were sent to reinforce Kosecrans, in Tennessee, and at Chattanooga came under the command of General Grant, who had then recently assumed the leadership of the Military Division of the Mississippi. Here it was, also, that Howard became acquainted with General She^-man, and laid the foundation of an intimacy which increased un-il the close of the war. Together they led their respective corps in the assault upon Fort Buckner, on the second day of the battle for the possession of Mission Eidge (November 25, 1863), and it was Howard's cavalry which contributed largely to the more complete discomfiture of the routed rebels, by the destruction of the Dalton and Cleveland railroad. In the long and severe march of Sherman, to the relief of General Burnside, at Knox- ville, in December, 1863, General Howard bore a conspicuous part, winning the highest commendation for fidelity and intelli- gence from Sherman, who says, in his official report : " In Gen- eral Howard throughout, I found a polished and Christian gentleman, exhibiting the highest and most chivalrous traits of the soldier." During the whole of General Sherman's march to Atlanta (May to August, 186-1), General Howard and his men did splendid service. During the siege of that place, the brave and beloved General McPherson was killed on the 21st of July, and his command, that of the Army of the Tennessee, was given, by the President, at General Sherman's request, to BRIGADIER-GENERAL OLIVER OTIS HOWARD. 173 Major-Gencral Howard. In the opening movement (on the 29th of August) of General Sherman's feint towards raising the siege of Athinta, General Howard's column was fiercely attacked by S. D. Lee and Hardee's rebel corps, but repulsed them with terrible slaughter; and again, at Jonesboro, on the 31st of August, he dealt to Hood's army the last crushing blow, which drove him routed from Atlanta, thenceforth open to the Union troops. In Sherman's " March to the Sea," from Atlanta to Savannah^ Major-General Howard led the right wing, marching down the Macou road, destroying the railroad, and scattering the rebel cavalry — and passing through Jackson, Monticello, and Hilla- boro, to Milledgeville, the capital of the State, where he was' joined by the left wing of the army, under General Slocum. From Millen, the united army moved down on either bank of the Ogeechee river, and Howard's column, by the 8th of Decem- ber, had reached and seized the Gulf railroad, within twenty miles of Savannah. On the night of the 9th, Howard commu- nicated, by scouts, with a Union gunboat lying two miles below Fort McAllister — which shortly after fell into the hands of the- Union troops — and Generals Sherman and Howard wxnt down to the fleet in a small boat, where they met Admiral Dahlgren. Their great work was done, and Savannah was a splendid Christ- mas gift to the President, and to the nation.* Early in February * A story is told of this boat voyage, which illustrates, to some extent, the characters of both General Sherman and General Howard. On finding. the fort carried, and his army again in communication with the Unioa army and navy, General Sherman was much elated and jubilant, and soon after they eml)arked, he said : " I feel good ; I want to sing or shout, but my musical education was neglected. Boys" (to the staff officers in tlie boat), "can't you sing something?" The "boys" seemed at a loss. " Howard," said the general, " I know you can sing, for I have heard you." "But, general," replied Howard, "1 can't sing anything but hymn 174 MEN OF OUR DAY. commcnned the marcli througli the Carolinas, in which Howard again led the right wing, moving towards Beaufort, and menac- ing Charleston — and finally entering Columbia, the capital of the Palmetto State. Then pressing into North Carolina, they met and whipped Johnston's rebel army at Averysboro, on the 20th of March, 1865 ; and while on the march for Raleigh, on the 12th of April, were delighted by the glad news of Lee's surrender. Congress, at the close of the march of Sherman's army to the sea, in December 186-1, promoted General Howard to the rank of brigadier- general in the regular army, his commission dating from the 21st of December, 1861, and the Thirty-ninth Con- gress, at their first session, conferred on him the brevet rank of major-general in the regular army, dating from March 13, 1865. When the Thirty-eighth Congress, at the suggestion of the lamented Lincoln, determined upon the organikiation of a " Bureau of Freedmen, Refugees, and Abandoned Lands," it wa3 felt almost instinctively that General Howard was the man to be at the head of it, and no nomination made by the Secretary of War was more heartily approved than that by which he was named commissioner. Owing to the necessary duties connected with the closing up of his command of the right wing of General Sherman's army, General Howard was unable to take charge of his Bureau until May 12th, 1865. In its organization there were manifold difficulties to be overcome. The act was loosely drawn ; many matters were left discretionary with the commis- sioner and his assistants, in which their duties should have been tunes. 1 don't know any thing else." " Those will be just as good as any thing else," said the commanding general ; " sing them." And so, as they rar. down to the squadron, Howard made the air vocal with " Shining Shore," "Homeward Bound," and "Rock of Ages ;" the staff officers joining in, and Sherman occasior.ally trying a stave or two — though it was evident, at, he said, that his musical education had been neglected. BRIGADIER-GENERAL OLIVER OTIS HOWARD. 175 defined ; and their authority was often insufficient to enforce mea- sures which were necessary ; still, during the first two or three years, the affairs of the Bureau were managed with a discretion, an integrity and a conscientious regard for the right in the con- flicting interests of the freedman and his former master, which won for the commissioner and his subordinates the esteem and respect of the intelligent and loyal of all classes. When President Johnson began to drift back to his old affinities with the rebels, and to sympathize with those whom he had at first so loudly proclaimed must be severely punished, the Freed- men's Bureau, and its patriotic and loyal commissioner, became objects of his utter aversion. He recommended that the Bureau should not be suffered to exist beyond the time specified in the first organic act, viz., two years; and when a new Freedmen's Bureau bill passed both houses of Congress, he vetoed it, attempting in a long argument to show the needlessness of any such Bureau of the Government. The bill was not passed over his veto, but later in the session a better bill, re-organizing it in some particulars, but retaining its substantial features and con- templating the retention of General Howard as commissioner, was passed by a strong vote, and when Mr. Johnson vetoed it, was passed again by the constitutional majority of two-thirds. Mr. Johnson then gave out that he had determined upon the removal of General Howard from the commissionership, but as the Tenure of Office act clearly prohibited this, he was compelled to allow him to remain, but did all that he could to hinder him from accomplishing what he desired. He pardoned in every case in which application was made, and sometimes even without application, the most violent rebels, especially if their lands had been confiscated and were inuring to the bene- fit of the Freedmen's Bureau, and he invariably ruled that bis pardon entitled them to the restoration of all their lands unless 176 MEN OF OUR DAY. these bad been sold for the non-payment of the direct revenue tax. This action of the Pi'esident in many instances seri- ously crippled the usefulness of the Freedmen's Bureau, taking from it a source of legitimate revenue, and often requiring the relinquishment of lands occupied by colonies of freedmen, or for schools or churches for their intellectual or religious in- struction ; but, during this period of trial. General Howard maintained a discreet and dignified course. There is no reason to believe that he was actuated at any time by any other motive than a desire to do what he believed to be right and just to both parties with whom he had to deal — the Freedmen and the original owners of the lands and houses, who had legally forfeited them by their participation in the Eebellion. But the condition of affairs was complicated in several ways. The various missionary and benevolent organizations (nearly or quiL3 half a score of them) had their schools and in some cases their churches among the freedmen, and they were all anxious to secure what they deemed their fair proportion of these aban- doned lands and buildings for their purposes; and within reasonable limits it was right and proper that they should be thus aided, since the grants would not go to the personal emolu- ment of the officers of the societies, but to the support of the Freedmen's schools and worship. General Howard, with undoubted good intentions, was too easily influenced, and did not administer the trust with perfect fairness, and as a result, one society, with which he was religiously affiliated, now holds these abandoned lands and buildings by gift from him as commissioner, to the value of between two and three million dollars (some state the amount even higher), while other societies equally deserving had but a mere trifle granted them. As was to be expected from a military officer of high rank, General Howard selected his assistant commissioners from his BRIGADIER-GENERAL OLIVER OTIS HOWARD. 177 3omrades in the army, and undoubtedly endeavored to make a judicious selection of these for the work, but in too many instances, they proved cruel oppressors of the Freedmen, and took advantage of their position to enrich themselves at the expense of those whom they were sent to protect. There were, doubtless, very many who administered their difficult task with perfect honesty and justice, but the number who did not, was so large that the title of Assistant Commissioner of the Freedmen's Bureau became almost a term of reproach. General Howard from an esprit du corps, which was in one view creditable to him, was very unwilling to believe any evil report concerning his old comrades, and sometimes kept them in place when he should have removed and punished them. In 1869 and 1870, the Bureau had from these causes fallen into such a condition that it was felt that its longer existence would be undesirable, and an investigation into its affiiirs was ordered, which resulted in the exoneration of the commissioner from serious blame, though this result came about rather from the partial and imperfect character of the investiojation, than from his entire innocence of all wrong'. Among other good measures inaugurated by him during his administration of the Freedmen's Bureau, was the founding of Howard University, an institution for the higher education of men of color, of which he is the nominal president. He has been accused of transcending his powers in what he has done for this institution, but the charge has probably no sufficient foun- dation. The Bureau of Freedmen and Abandoned Lands is now virtually abolished, and General Howard has within a few months past been assigned to a new class of duties, the pacijScation of the wild and predatory tribes of the Southwest. In this work he will very probably prove more skilful than in the manage- ment of the Freedmen's Bureau, and win to himself deserved honor. The instances in our own, or in English history, where 12 1T8 MEN OF OUR DAT. men of strictly military education who liave risen to high com mand in the army, have proved good civil administrators, have been so few that it is greatly to be desired for their own sakes, as well as as for the nation's sake, that the experiment may never again be tried. General Howard in the army was one of our ablest officers, a Chevalier Bayard, sa7is jjeur et sans re2^roche; as an administra- tive officer, he has, to say the least, won no laurels. In 1865, Colby University (Waterville, Maine) and Shurtleff College, Alton, Illinois, conferred upon him the degree of LL.D.; and Pennsyl- vania College, Gettysburg, Pa., did the same in 1866. SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. HIS distinguished statesman, jurist and financier — whoso somewhat peculiar baptismal names were conferred upon him in memory of a deceased uncle Salmon, a resident of the town of Portland, Maine — was born at Cornish, New Hampshire, on the 13th of January, 1808, He traces his descent from Aquila Chase, a native of Cornwall, England, who was born in 1618, and, while quite young, came to America and settled at Newburyport, Massachusetts. Dudley Chase, the grandfather of Secretary Chase, and fourth in descent from Aquila, procured a grant of land on the Connecticut river, north of Charleston, (or, as it was then called, Fort No. 4,) upon which he settled, naming the township Cornish, in honor of the original home of his English ancestry. His children became notable persons in that region ; one of them, Philander, being the Epis- copal Bishop of Ohio, and the founder of Kenyon College ; and another, D. P. Chase, became Chief Justice of Vermont. Another brother, Ithamar Chase, the father of the subject of this sketch, was a fine specimen of the old-fashioned New Englander, of im- posing stature, great natural dignity, and an affability of manner which rendered him, in the best sense of the word, a gentleman Sagacious, honest, energetic, and — Yankee-like — turning hia hand to whatever business chance offered, he succeeded, as Carraer, merchant, surveyor and manufacturer, in accumulating 179 180 MEN OF OUR DAY. a handsome property. He secured, also, the confidence : nd good-will of his fellow-citizens, whom he long served in the capacity of a justice of the peace, and whom, for many years, he acceptably represented in the Executive Council of New Hampshire. The close of the " war of 1812 " brought disaster tc his fortunes, and necessitated, in 1815, his removal to Keene, New Hampshire, w^here, two years later, he suddenly died, leav- ing his family with little else than the heritage of an honorable name and a well-spent life. His wife, however, who was of Scotch descent, and possessed much of the energy and thrift characteristic of that race, had inherited from her parents a little property, which still remained intact after the wreck of her husband's fortunes. By a careful husbanding of her resources, therefore, she was enabled to keep her children in comparative comfort, and to give a mother's tender thought and direction to their earlier studies. Young Chase, at the schools of Keene, and afterwards at a boarding school, kept by one of his father's old friends, at Windsor, Vermont, had mastered the elementary parts of knowledge, had got through the Latin Grammar, read a little in Virgil's Bucolics, and had commenced Greek and Euclid, when, in the spring of 1820, his mother received from her brother-in-law, the Bishop of Ohio, an offer to take charge of and educate the lad. The proposition was joyfully accepted, and, before long, Salmon started on his long journey westward, in company with his elder brother Alexander, who had just graduated from college, and was going (in company with Henry R. Schoolcraft, since distinguished as a traveller, ethnologist and writer) to join General Cass's expedition to the Upper Mis- sissippi. At Cleveland the young traveller parted from his brother and friend, and spent nearly a month with a friend of his uncle, while waiting for an opportunity to reach that relative, who SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 181 resided at Worthington, in the interior of the State. While thus delayed, the boy was by no means idle, but employed him- self much of the time in ferrying travellers across the Cuyahoga, upon the eastern bank of which stream the town stood, thereby adding somewhat to his slender funds, and gaining a lesson of industrious self-reliance which was of much use to him in the future. At length, however, an opportunity ofi'ered for Salmon's proposed journey. He was placed in charge of two theological students, en route for Worthington, on horseback, and with them — travelling " ride and tie," as was frequently done in the time of the early settlement of the West — he made the long trip through the woods, fording streams, and meeting with many adventures which were full of interest and novelty. Arriving at Worthington, he was received into the family of his uncle, the bishop, a most excellent man, but a rigid disciplinarian, where he fulfilled the menial office of "chore boy" during the intervals of study. In mathematics and the languages he made excellent progress, despite the disadvantages under which he labored, of being so much and arduously occupied with farm duties. In composition he was proficient, and in Greek he so far excelled as to be the Greek orator of the bishop's school at its annual exhibition in the summer of 1821. One of his inti- mate schoolmates says : " Never have I known a purer or more virtuous-minded lad than he was. He had an extreme aversion to any thing dishonorable or vicious. He was industrious and attentive to business. Laboring on the farm of his uncle, he missed many recitations, and had but limited chances for study, yet, having a natural fondness for books, he was surpassed by 710 one of his age in the school. He had little regard for hia personal appearance, or, indeed, for any thing external. His mind appeared to be directed to what was rujJit^ regardless of the opinions of others." In the fall of 1822, Bishop Chase removed 182 MEN OF OUR DAY. to Cincinnati, having accepted the presidency of the college there ; and here a somewhat easier life, in many respects, fell to Salmon's lot. He entered the freshman class of the college, and studying hard, attained the rank of sophomore, when his studies were interrupted by the removal, in August, 1823, of the bishop, who resigned the presidency, in order to visit England, with the purpose of obtaining the necessary funds for a Pro- testant Episcopal Seminary in the West, an effort which finally resulted in the establishment of Kenyon College. Salmon returned to his home in New Uampshire, travelling a large por- tion of the way on foot ; and, after a short period of school- teaching, and a few months of close and rapid preparation at the academy in Royalton, Vermont, entered the junior class of Dartmouth College. During his collegiate course, an incident occurred strongly indicative of that innate love of right which has ever been so marked a feature of Mr. Chase's character. An intimate friend and classmate having been arbitrarily accused, and, despite his asseverations of his innocence, condemned to rustication, by the faculiy, for a trivial offence committed by other parties, Salmon waited upon the president, protested against the decision of the faculty as unjust, and finding it irre- vocable, declared his intention to leave the colle2"e with hia friend — and did leave. The faculty sent a messenger after them, who overtook them on the road, with a revocation of their sen- tence ; but the inexorable young men did not return until they had spent a pleasant week of visiting among their friends and relatives ; and their re-entry into Hanover was a triumph. As one of the foremost third of the senior class, young Chase was admitted into the Phi Beta Kappa Society, and at his gradua- tion, in 1826, he ranked eighth, delivering an oration on "Lit- erary Curiosity. Going directly to Washington, D, C, he an- nouuced, in the columns of the " National Intelligencer," of SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 183 December 23d, 1826, his intention to open a select classical school in that city on the first Monday of the ensuing year ; but for a time fortune seemed to look most discouragingly upoQ him. Patience and courage, however, had their perfect work; and, finally, he most unexpectedly received the offer of the male department of a well-established classical school, the proprietors of which had determined to give their whole time and attention to the female department. In this school (in a little, one-story frame building on G street,) he commenced teaching, receiving the patronage of many eminent men, among whom were Henry Clay, William Wirt, and Samuel L. Southard, who entrusted their sons to his care. While thus arduously engaged, he occu- pied all his leisure time in studying law under William Wirt, then Attorney-General of the United States ; and upon attaining his majority, in 1829, closed his school, and was admitted to the bar of the District of Columbia in February, 1830. On the 4th, of March, 1830, he set out for Cincinnati, where he commenced the practice of his profession, with an energy and perseverance which could not fail to secure iiltimate success. He formed a partnership with Edward King, Esq., son of the celebrated Rufus King, which,however,was of short duration; and in 1833, he formed another connection with Mr. Caswell, a lawyer of established reputation, and, while striving to obtain cases, he diligently busied himself with the compilation of the statutes of Ohio, accompanied with copious annotations and prefaced with a historical sketch of the State, the whole forming three large octavo volumes. This valuable compendium — the fruit of a careful use of time which young professional men too often fail to improve — soon superseded all other editions of the statutes, and is now the accepted authority in the courts. While the reading and investigations necessary to the compilation of this work, added largely to his stores of legal knowledge, the admi- 184 MEN OF OUR DAT. rable manner in wliich it was prepared, gave its young autlior an immediate reputation among the profession, and secured him the notice and respect of the active business community by which he was surrounded. It was the stepping-stone to hia fortune. Early in 1834, he was made the solicitor of the United States bank, in Cincinnati, to which was soon added a similar position connected with another of the city banks, and he was soon engaged in the full tide of a large and lucrative commer- cial practice. In 1837 the partnership ol Caswell and Chase was dissolved, and shortly after the latter formed a connection with Mr, Ellis. Mr. Chase now first came distinctly and prominently before the public, in connection with those higher interests with which his name is now so widely associated. In July, 183G, when the office of the " Philanthropist" news- paper, published by James G. Birney, was attacked and de- spoiled by an anti-slavery mob, Birney's life \ras saved by the courage of Salmon P, Chase, who, from that time, was- foremost among those who breasted the tide of pro-slavery aggressions. In 1837, as the counsel of a colored fugitive slave woman, claimed under the law of 1793, he made an elaborate argument denying the right of Congress to delegate to State magistrates, powers in such fugitive slave cases — a position since sustained by the Supreme Court of the United States,and maintained that the law of 1793 was void, because unwarranted by the Consti- tution. In passing from the court room after making this brave, but ineffectual defence in this case, he overheard the remark of a prudent citizen, '' There is a promising young man who has just ruined himself.^'' Time has proved how erroneous this judgment was, yet it was then the popular verdict. During the same year, Mr. Chase defended James G. Birney, who was tried before th? SALMON" PORTLAND CHASE. 185 Supreme Court of Ohio, for harboring a negro slave — forcibly arguing that slavery was a local institution, dependent for its existence upon State legislation ; and that the slave, having been brought into Ohio, by her master, was de facto et de jure^ free. This was followed, in 1838, by a severe review from hia pen, in the newspapers, of a recent report made by the Judiciary committee of the State Senate, in which they had advocated the refusal of trial by jury, to slaves. He also acted as counsel for Mr. Birney, in his trial for haboring the slave Matilda ; and, in 1842, defended one Van Zandt, in the United States Circuit Court, in a similar trial, in which the principle as stated by the opposing counsel, " Once a slave always a slave," was met by Mr. Chase with its nobler antithesis " Once free, ALWAYS FREE ;" and he followed it with a warning and eloquent denunciation of the atrocious claims of slavery. In these cases, Mr. Chase added materially to his previous honorable reputation, and took rank, thenceforward, with the oldest and ablest practitioners of Ohio. Up to this time, he had taken but little part or interest in politics, nor had he settled down into the trammels of any par- ticu'ar party — voting sometimes with the Democrats, but more generally with the Whigs, because the latter seemed most favorable to the anti-slavery doctrines to which he had given his conscientious adherence. He supported Harrison for the Presidency, in 1840; but, becoming convinced from the tone of his inaugural address and the subsequent course of the Tyler administration that the anti-slavery cause had little or nothing to hope for from the Whig party, and that the cause could only attain its legitimate aims, which he considered of para- mount importance, through the instrumentality of a distinct party organizatioa, he united with others, in 1841, in calling a State convention of the opponents of slavery and slavery- extension. Tlie convention met in December, organized " tho 18Q MEN OF OUR DAY. Liberty party" of Ohio, nominated a candidate for governor, and issued an address (from Mr Chase's pen) definhig its principles and purposes, which was one of the earliest exposi- tions of the anti-slavery movement. In the "National Liberty convention," held at Bufialo, New York, in 1843, Mr. Chase was a prominent participant, and as a member of the committee on resolutions, so vigorously opposed a resolution which pro- posed " to regard and treat the third clause of the Constitution, whenever applied to the case of a fugitive slave, as utterly null and void, and consequently as forming no part of the Constitu- tion of the United States, whenever we are called upon or sworn to support it," — that it was not adopted by the committee, although it was afterwards moved and adopted in the conven- tion. Years afterward, when Senator Butler, of South Caro- lina, charged Mr. Chase with having been the author and advocate of this resolution, and severely denounced the doctrine of mental reservation which it impliedly sanctioned, the latter replied, " I never proposed the resolution ; I never would pro- pose a vote for such a resolution. I hold no doctrine of mental reservation; every man, in my judgment, should speak just as he thinks, keeping nothing back, here or elsewhere." During the same year Mr. Chase was selected to prepare an address on behalf of the friends of Liberty, of Ireland and of Repeal, in Cincinnati, in reply to the letter from Daniel O'Connell, in behalf of the Loyal National Repeal Association of Ireland. This address — which reviewed the relations of the Federal Gov- ernment to slavery at the period of its organization, set forth its original anti-slavery policy, and the subsec^uent growth of the political power of slavery, indicated the action of the Liberal party, and repelled the aspersions cast by a Repeal Association in Cincinnati, upon anti-slavery men — -was a document worthy of Mr. Chase's talents. With Mr. Chase, also, originated tho SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 187 Southern and "Western Liberty Convention, lield at Cincinnati, in June, 1845, and designed, in the words of its founder, to embrace " all who, believing that whatever is worth preserving in Republicanism can be maintained only by uncompromising war against the usurpations of the slave power, are therefore, resolved to use all constitutional and honorable means to effect the extinction of slavery in their respective States, and its re- duction to its constitutional limits in the United States." He also drew up the address of the Convention, embracing a his- tory of the Whig and Democratic parties in their relations to ihe slavery question, and urging the political necessity of forming a party pledged to the overthrow of the institution. Mr. Chase, who had now become a widely distinguished champion of anti-slavery, was associated with William H. Seward in the defence of John Van Zandt, who was arraigned before the United States Supreme Court, for aiding in the escape of certain slaves ; and subsequently he was retained for the defence in the case of Dieskell vs. Parish, before the United States Circuit Court, at Columbus, Ohio. In both of these cases he argued, in a most elaborate manner, that, " under the ordinance of 1787, no fugitives from service could be reclaimed from Ohio, unless thert? had been an escape from one of the original States ; that it was the clear understanding of the framers of the Constitution, and of the people who adopted it, that slavery was to be left exclusively to the disposal of the several States, without sanction or support from the National Government; and that the clause of the Constitution relative to persons held to service was one of compact between the States, and conferred no power of legislation on Congress, having been transferred from the ordinance of 1787, in which it conferred no power on the Confederation and was never understood to con- fer any." In 1817, Mr. Chase attended a second "National 188 MEN OF OUR DAY. Liberty Convention ;" where, in the hope that tho agitation of the Wilmot Proviso would result in a more decided movement against slavery, he opposed the making of any national nomina* tions at that time. He anticipated, also, the Whig and Democratic Conventions of 1848, by calling a Free-Territory Convention, which resulted in the Buffalo Convention, in August of that year, and the nomination of Mr. Van Buren for the presidency. On the 22d of February, 1849, Mr. Chase was elected to the United States Senate, by the entire vote of the Democrats, and a large number of the free-soil members of the Ohio Legislature. Supporting the State policy and the nominees of the Democracy of the State, he still declared that he would desert it if it de- serted the anti-slavery position which it then held. On the 26th and 27th of March, 1849, he delivered a cogent, eloquent and timely speech against the compromise resolutions ; following it up during the session, with others on the specialities embraced within these resolution, and moved three amendments — one, against the introduction of slavery, in the Territories to which Mr. Clay's bill applied ; another, to the Fugitive Slave Bill, to secure trial by jury to alleged slaves; and the third, to an amend- ment made by Senator Davis, relative to the reclamation of fugitives escaping from one State into another — all of which, however, were lost. The nomination of Franklin Pierce for the presidency, and the approval of the compromise of 1850, by the Democratic Convention at Baltimore, in 1852, was the signal for Mr. Chase's withdrawal from the Ohio Democracy. He immediately took the initiative in the formation of an Independent Democratic party, which he continued to support, until the Nebraska-Kansas bill began to be agitated. To this bill he was a strenuous and prominent opponent, offering three important amendments, SALMON POHTLAND CHASE. 1^^ which were severally rejected, and closing his opposition by an earnest protest against it on its final passage. During his Sena- torial career, economy in the National Finances ; a Pacific Rail- road by the shortest and best route ; the Homestead Bill ; Cheap Postage, and the provision by the National Treasury for defray- ing the expense of procuring safe navigation of the Lakes as well as the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, all found in Mr. Chase an able and earnest champion. In 1855, he was elected Gover- nor of Ohio, by the opponents of the Pierce administration, and his inaugural address recommended single districts for legisla- tive representation, annual, instead of biennial sessions of the Legislature, and an extended educational system. At the next National Republican Convention, he declined the nomination for the Presidency, which was urged upon him by the delega- tions from his own, as well as other States, In the course of the same year, a deficiency was discovered in the State treasury, only a few days before the semi-annual interest on the State debt became due — but Governor Chase's energetic action com- pelled the resignation of the State Treasurer, who had concealed the deficiency, secured a thorough investigation, and effected such a judicious arrangement as protected the credit of the State, and averted what would otherwise have been a serious' pecuniary loss. At the close of his first gubernatorial term, the Republicans insisted upon his accepting a re-nomination, which was carried by acclamation, and he was re-elected after a spirited canvass. In his annual message for 1858, he made an elaborate exposition of the financial condition of Ohio, recommending, also, semi-annual taxation, a greater stringency in provisions for the security of the State treasury, and proper appropriations for the establish- ment of benevolent institutions, especially for the Reform: School — all of which suggestions met with the approval of the 190 MEN OF OUR DAY. Legislature, and laws were passed in accordance therewith. In tlie beginning of 1860, he was again chosen to the United States Senate, from Ohio, Upon the secession of South Carolina, in Decemher, 1860, Mr. Chase urged upon General Scott, bj letter, the necessity of taking active measures to secure the public property, assuring him that the country would fully endorse such action. But timid counsels prevailed. Again, in February, 1861, Mr. Chase represented Ohio at the Conference of the States, held at "Wash- ington, by invitation of Virginia, and there he stood boldly out as an uncompromising opponent of any purchase of peace by undue concessions to the South. Meanwhile, when threats were made that Mr. Lincoln should never be inaugurated, unless the South received the concessions it demanded from the North, Mr. Chase replied, " Inauguration first, adjustment afterwards," words which, caught up and used as a popular motto, had no small influence. On the 4th of March, 1861, he took a seat in the Senate. Two days afterwards, however, he yielded to a very general and pressing demand, on the part of personal and political friends, (as well as some who, up to that time, had not been considered as either), and resigned his seat in the Senate to accept the Sec- retaryship of the Treasury, which had been tendered him by President Lincoln. Immediately after the organization of the Cabinet, and when the most important topic under discussion was, what should be the policy of the Government towards the seceded States, Mr. Chase's influence was strongly felt in the national councils. When hostilities commenced at Sumter, the Secretary urged upon General Scott the propriety of occupying Manassas, which, had it been done, would have compelled the evacuation of Harper's Ferry and the Shenandoah valley by the rebels, and would have materially altered the character of SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 191 tbe opening campaign of the war. To Mr. Chase's suggestion, also, was due tlie call, promulgated in May, 1861, for 65,000 volunteers, to take the place of the 75,000 first called for ; and to him the President committed, with the consent of the Secretary of War, the preparation of the necessary orders — since known as Nos. 15 and 16 — the one for the enlistment of volunteers and the other for regular regiments. The object which Mr. Chase had in view was the establishment of a regular system — which had not hitherto existed — in conformity with which all new enlistments should be made, and in this important work he was assisted by Colonel Thomas, Major McDowell and Captain Franklin. During the trying period, in the early part of the war, when great efforts were made to precipitate Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee into rebellion, Mr. Lincoln committed to his Secretary of the Treasury the principal charge of what- ever related to the conservation and protection of the interests of the Government in those States. He obtained for Kousseau, of Kentucky, his colonel's commission, and gave him his order for the raising of twenty companies. He also drew most of the orders under which Nelson acted, and furnished him with the means of defraying his expenses for the expedition into the interior of Kentucky, and the establishment of Camp Dick Robinson — movements which saved that State from secession. He was the honored confidant and adviser of General Cameron, while Secretary of War, especially in relation to western border- state matters, slavery, and the employment of colored troops; and it was at his suggestion that General Butler was directed by the Secretary of War to refrain from surrendering alleged fugi- tives from service to alleged masters, and to employ them under such organization and in such occupations as circumstances might suggest or require. It was, however, in the discharge of his legitimate duties, as Secretary of the Treasury, that Mr. irf2 MEN OF OUR DAY. Chase achieved his greatest success. The treasury, at the time when he assumed its charge, was nearly bankrupt. Lie, there- fore, immediately proceeded to negotiate a loan. On the 22d of March, 1861, he issued proposals for his first loan of $8,000,000 on six per cent, bonds, redeemable at the end of twenty years. The bids were opened April 2d, and amounted to $27,182,000, at rates varying from eighty -five for one hun d to par. All bids below ninety-four were promptly rejected by the Secretary, who determined to let the country know at the outset that bonds of the United States were not to be sacrificed in the market, and that the national credit was not so impaired as to be at the mercy of brokers and capitalists. The disappointed bidders winced at this decision, but its effect upon the country at large was certainly healthy. Continuing to effect loans under existing laws, he borrowed, on the 11th of April, $4,901,000, on two years treasury notes, at a small premium ; on 25th of May, $7,310,000, on twenty years bonds, at from eighty-five to ninety-eight, declining all bids below ninety five ; and on two years treasury notes, $1,681,000 at par, all of which loans, considering the situation of the coun- try, were remarkable successes. Congress, on its assembling in July, 1861, authorized a national loan, under which act, and the acts amending it, he took measures to secure the funds needed to carry on the war. The result of a full and frank conference with the representatives of the banks of Boston, Philadelphia and New York, at the latter city, was an agreement, on the part of the banks, to unite as associates in an advance to Government of $50,000,000 ; while he, on his part, agreed to appeal to the people for subscriptions to a national loan, on three years notes, bearing seven-thirty per cent, interest, and convertible into twenty years bonds bearing six per cent., the proceeds of which subscriptions should be paid over to the banks, in satisfaction SALMON" PORTLAND CHASE. 193 of tbeir advances, so far as they would go; the deficiency, if any, to be made good in seven-thirty notes. By this and a sub- sequent loan, made on nearly the same terms, the Government obtained $100,000,000 at a rate of interest only one and three- tenths of one per cent, higher than the ordinary rate of six per cent., and that for three years only. The banks now declining to advance another $50,000,000 for the seven-thirty notes, through the efforts of the Secretary, a seven per cent, loan was negotiated on the 16th of November, but trouble resulted from the oppo- sition of many of the banks to the further issue of United States notes as legal tender, in distinction to their own local issues, and the Secretary now applied the remedy to this state of aiSairs by uniting his whole influence to those who desired the United States notes made a legal tender, and by joining them, decided the success of that measure, which he had previously urged upon Congress. Tt was, however, only by the most indomitable perseverance that he was enabled, after several defeats and long delay, to secure the passage of the National Banking Act, providing for a system of national banks, based upon government securities. This system, which embraces the best features of the New York Free Banking System, together with certain additions protec- tive of the rights both of the bill-holder and depositor, has proved most successful, and, although at first vehemently opposed by some of the State and local banks, has now fairly triumphed over all opposition. In the negotiation of these loans, Mr. Chase secured the services of Mr. Jay Cooke, an emi- nent financier of Philadelphia, as general agent, who by his numerous agencies, and a wholesale and ingenious system of advertising, gave the widest possible publicity to the loan, and secured for it the full favor of the community throughout the United States. By January 1st, 1864, five hundred millions of 13 194 MEN OF OUR DAY. the loan (5-20 bonds) was taken up, and the subscriptions were in excess, by nearly fourteen millions, of the amount authorized. The full measure of the Secretary's comprehensive plans was insured by the enactment, in 1864, of tax laws, in accordance with his repeated suggestions since 1861, by which the revenue to the government was largely increased, and by the aid of which future secretaries of the treasury will be enabled to " weather" any financial pressure. This great work accom- plished, he resigned his secretaryship, June 30, 186-i. The great importance and beneficial results of Mr. Chase's financial measures, adopted as they were in the heat and pres- sure of the most stupendous war of modern times, and initiated with a bankrupt treasury, and notice in advance from the great financial powers of Europe, that we " need not expect any assist- ance from them," render it desirable that they should be somewhat better understood than they have been, and we there- fore gladly avail ourselves of the following explanations of them, recently put forth, it is understood, with his own sanction. The objects which he had in view, were : "I. To establish satisfactory relations between the public credit and the productive industry of the country — in other words, to obtain supplies. The suspension of the banks put an end to the first and most obvious resort, loans of gold, and made new methods indispensable. Then the secretary resorted to legal tender notes, made them a currency, and borrowed them as cash. The patriotism of the people came in aid of the labors of tlie treasury and the legislation of Congress, and the first great object was made secure. " II. To provide against disastrous results on a return of peace. This could only be done by providing a national cur- ^enc3^ There were about 1,500 State banks in existence which wanted to make their own paper the currency ot the country This the secretary resisted, and confined his loans to greenbacks; but he did not drive out their currency, nor indeed did he think SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 195 it exactly honest to so deprive them of it, without giving any equivalent. He preferred to neutralize their opposition to a national currency and make them allies as far as possible, instead of enemies. In his endeavors to secure such results, he proposed the national banking system, and before he left the Department its success was assured. *' The national banks were certain to be useful in many ways, but the secretary's main object was ths establishment of a national currency. This saved us from panic and revulsion at the end of the war, and is of inestimable value to men of labor and men of business — indeed, to every class. " III. The third division of his labor was to provide a fund- ing system. It was unavoidable during the rebellion that every means of credit should be used. He borrowed money every way he could at reasonable rates. The form that suited one lender did not suit another ; and the army and navy needed every dollar that could be raised in any form. Hence tem- porary loans, certificates of deposit, certificates of indebtedness, 7.30 notes, compound interest notes, treasury notes payable after one and two years, etc. "But it was necessary to have funding hans^ into which all these temporary loans could be uUimatel// merged. To this end the secretary established the 5-20 loan and the 10-40 loan. His belief was that after the $514,000,000 of the 5-20 loan had been taken, tlie additional amounts needed could be obtained by the 10-40 loan and the temporary loans ; but the secretary was ready to resort to the 5-20s in case of emergency. He did get $73,000,000 in the 10-40 loan, and his successors got about $120,000,000 more, at par. " It is easy to see how Mr. Chase's funding system worked, by examining the last statement of the public debt. The condi- tion is something like this: $1,200,000,000 5-20s; $200,000,000 10-40s; $200,000,000 81s payable now after fourteen years, which can then easily be put into 10-40s ; other loans (all tem- porary), say $500,000,000, of which three fourths consist of 7.30s, convertible, and certain to be converted into 10-40s; and say $400,000,000 greenbacks, including fractional currency, 106 MEN OF OUR DAT making the debt of $2,500,000,000. So, it may be seen, tbe whole debt except '81s is already funded, or sure to be funded in 5-20 six per cei ts, or 10-40 five per cents." It has been well said of Mr. Chase's conduct in this hazardous and laborious position, that " the nerve he displayed, the breadth of intellect he manifested, the ardor of his patriotism, and the wonders wrought by his financial wisdom and skill throughout the first three years of the rebellion, are so recent and so well remembered, and live so freshly in the hearts of his grateful countrymen, as to render unnecessary any thing more than this simple reference. His enduring fame is built on his measures ; his best eulogy is written in his acts. He vindicated the wisdom of the President's choice; he both justified and rewarded the confidence of the people." It is not strange, therefore, that President Lincoln, with strengthened confidence in Mr. Chase's patriotism, ability, and sound judgment, tendered to him, in 186-4, the highest judicial seat of the nation, which had become vacant by the death of its venerable incumbent, Roger S. Taney. The nomination of Mr. Chase as Chief Justice, by the Execu- tive, on the 6th of December, 1864, was promptly confirmed by the Senate, and on the 13th of the same month he took his seat upon the bench, " having previously," as the records state, ' on the same day taken the oath of allegiance, in the room of the judges, and the oath of office, in open court, at his place upon the bench, in the presence of a large number of ladies and gen- tlemen, who had assembled to witness a ceremony which, in this nation, had taken place but once in sixty-three years preceding.** Shortly after his assumption of the duties of tnis high position, the Chief Justice made an extended tour throughout the recently conquered rebel States — passing down the Atlantic coast and up the Mississippi river — with the purpose of gaining a personal knowledge of the actual condition of the people. During this SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 197 trip, he embraced every opportunity of conversing unreservedly with all, both white and black, who chose to avail themselves of the knowledge of his presence, and the information thus obtained was placed at the public service in his correspondence with the President and others, while his suggestions of measures necessary and expedient to the proper accomplishment of peace and reconstruction, order and justice, were characterized by a comprehensiveness of view and a noble spirit of Christian patriotism eminently creditable to his head and heart. Few public men of his years, in this country, possess minds better stored with varied treasures of knowledge, or bear the evidence of severer mental discipline than Mr. Chase. To an intellect at once comprehensive, discriminating and retentive, he adds the graces of learning and the power of logic ; and whatever subject he treats, is handled with keen insight, breadth of view, thoroughness of reflection, and strength of reasoning. His whole career as a statesman and jurist, and all his public efforts, in popular addresses, newspaper writings, occasional lectures, and contributions to periodical literature, show the same breadth of premise, exactness of statement, logical sequence, completeness of consideration, and power of conclusion, from which we are justified in hoping and expecting much in his present exalted position, where his rulings and decisions have always been characterized by their adherence to the great fundamental principles of equity on which all human law is professedly based. His is no narrow mind to run only in the rut of precedents, and be constantly hampered by the chi- canery of rigid constructionists. He goes naturally to the foun- dation principles, and while he has no superior, either in legal learning and acumen, or in wide and generous culture, upon the bench of the Supreme Court of the United States, he is less 198 MEN OF OUR DAY. likely perhaps than any of them to base an opinion on previous decisions either there or in the English courts. In the trial of Andrew Johnson under the impeachment of the House of Representatives, Chief Justice Chase was, by tho Constitution, the presiding officer of the High Court of Impeach- ment. His course there was marked by dignity and ability. The position was a difficult and trying one, and his powers (it being the first instance of such presidency since tlie adoption of the Constitution) were not clearly defined ; but he acquitted himself admirably in it. In person Mr. Chase presents the most imposing appearaiice of any man in public life in this country. He is over six feet in height, portly and well proportioned, with handsome features, and a grand, massive head. Few men possess so much real dignity and grace of manner. But with it all, he is utterly incapable of the arts of the demagogue, or of any effort to win popularity, by "bending the supple hinges of the knee, that thrift may follow fawning." He entered upon his office of Secretary of the Treasury with a property of about ono hundred thousand dollars ; he left it three years later, after managing the immense finances of the nation in war time, materially poorer than when he assumed office. No man who knew him could doubt, for an instant, his unflinching integrity and honesty. The name of Chief Justice Chase has often been used in con- nection with the Presidency, and while an aspiration for that exalted position is not unworthy of one who could not but be conscious "that he had done the State some service," it would have been more worthy of his great and brilliant past career had he remembered that his present office is one of equal honor and of less severe test of character than the Presidency. We would be glad to present Chief Justice Chase's character SALMON PORTLAND CHASE. 199 to our readers as one without foible or blemish, so highly do we esteem the great work he accomplished for freedom for so many years; but we are afraid that he cannot be acquitted of the charge of coquetting for the Presidency. In 1868, at the Demo- cratic National Convention, he, one of the founders of the Anti- Slavery and of the Republican parties, the firmest and most fearless advocate of the measures which made the Union party triumphant in the civil war, and which had been censured over and over again by the Democratic party as ruinous to the Gov- ernment, was the avowed candidate of a large section of that party for the Presidency, and his daughter, Mrs. Senator Sprague, was through the. whole session canvassing actively for his nomi- nation. Defeated in that convention by Horatio Seymour, who secured the nomination but not an election, it was supposed by his old friends that he had given up all hope of reaching a nomi- nation ; and in the interval of a long illness, which it was feared had impaired seriously his intellectual and physical powers, but from which he happily recovered, other men and other issues had become so prominent that he was not even suggested as a candidate. But the old ambition was not yet dead, and he was so unwise as to write the following letter to a friend to be used at the Cincinnati Liberal Reform Convention in May, 1872. Washington, D. C, April 29, 1872. My Dear Sir : My name, if we may judge from the newspapers, will not be much considered at Cincinnati, and I am quite content and none the less grateful to the friends who think it should be so, as you know I have not sought or desired the nomination. If it were judged the best means of uniting the greatest number of those opposed to the Administration on principle, it would doubtless be my duty to accept it. If any other name be preferred, I shall be entirely satisfied. What is essential with me is that what has been gained — freedom — be secured beyond peradven- 200 MEN OF OUR DAY. ture ; tbat tlie currrency be placed on a sound basis ; tbat a real reform be accomplished in taxation, internal and external, and in perfect reconciliation of sections and citizens. Your Parkers- burg platform, as I remember it, embodies these views substan- tially, and I hope none contrary to it will be adopted. Yours truly, S. P. Chase. It was a painful commentary on this letter that at that con- vention he received on the first ballot two and a half votes, on the second, one, and on the subsequent ballots none. Yet despite this sliirht weakness, Chief Justice Chase is one of our statesmen of whom we have great cause to be proud. His views are broad and profound on all the great questions of statesmanship, and his manliness and strict integrity render him a man to be thoroughly trusted and honored. May he long continue to fill the high office he adorns by his learning and ability. WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. .. ILLIAM HENRY SEWARD, tlie son of Dr. Samuel , iowever. zav^ pLice ia» :iie xZL-abaorbing iiaias R OJL (IL Saiacor Dauslasi S^doraska. rvitl^ "▼nicii. in is neetiLe^ ja s&'T'^ m^ jvIlIl aH tiie pseaaa&sis ^wi •^owgrnil opposriaiL wiiicn. \fr. SfwaixL eauIicL rnnrrg aprrunsc is. The m ea .' ^ are. aoweve^ ▼^*s inaZv gaa rw i. Li ««imt?rm 33 31^ -l^-:<:r:ir± —-rsciijea nuuie an. tais laooic. \fr. Sevard prnmcrmiied :::...:-i- j^^ :Tf»-r -rnTniir:n j dolaaifis lon. EenTT *ZLi J ami L'aniel Wdbser. ami iin-ing: sae- aonmier <-&. lais jgar \Ii'>t; aH-iTV PTTHJ ■ihe annual oracimL b^ns uie josarr siciedes of Tale CoZeae on. ■* Tne FlLTsea^. VtiroT, ani TTTmTpf?t:irnr -ieveiapnifflic 'or aie. ^ Tit^rft^an Feaole ;~^ ami ac lie '^o mmffni^t^mfmi: e^aroiaea^ racavod ZAA ojQmirarx itigree ar Docscr of Laws. La. 'jcsaoer ajILawm'r. ae Tiinie ais iciebiaoBtL ami •siacorace arzTmeu; in. uie Ui- r . :aai:es ^Zireaic Canr:; in. ^ne •* MtiCorniick: Saan^ east.'* ^urniff tie seefloii sesBiSL r OF OUR DAY. pels us to say, that Mr. Seward's course since his recovery from those wounds of tlie assassin, was not wholly worthy of his previ- ous illustrious career. Forgetful, apparently, of his past intense loyalty and devotion to freedom, he sustained Mr. Johnson in every attempted usurpation of power; assumed a super- cilious tone in addressing the people, while yet their servant, was vacillating and self- contradictory in his intercourse with foreign powers, and attempted to distract the attention of Congress from the usurpations and crimes of his chief, by the purchase of extensive territories away from our previous geo- graphical limits, and of which we stood in no need. These pur- chases were made without any consulta'tions with Congress, and solely upon his own judgment ; the prices he offered for them were exorbitant, and they were understood to be but the stepping stones to further and still more extensive negotia- tions. His purchase from Russia of the territory of Alaska, for seven and a half millions of dollars in gold, was regarded by most of our people as unwise, but the negotiations had already proceeded so far, that it was consummated ; but when he pro- ceeded to buy from Denmark, at eight or ten times their value, the islands of St. Thomas and Santa Cruz, the home of earth- quakes and hurricanes; entered upon negotiations w^ith San Domingo for the bay and harbor of Sam an a, and turned longing eyes upon the island of Cuba, all felt that his greed for land was growing too great to be longer tolerated, and his negotiations were brought to an ignoble conclusion. His ulterior object of distracting attention from Mr, Johnson's usurpations failed as signally, and he was involved, even more fully than any of his colleagues, in the disgrace of the President. We are glad to say that with his retirement from the cabinet in March, 1869, his eyes seemed to be opened to his departure from the principles to which his life had been for so many yeara WILLIAM HENRY SEWARD. 215 devoted. With the glamour, which in official position had deceived him, removed from his vision, and the stern realities of a future life in which he must give an account of his steward- ship, confronting him, in feeble health and with a partially para- lysed body, this man prematurely old, from the hot fevers of partisan strife and political action, had leisure to review his career, and to see clearly the errors he had committed. When he had partially recovered from his illness, his active and rest- less spirit, impatient of confinement, led him, feeble as he still was, to undertake a journey round the world. Traversing first our neighbor republic of Mexico, where, notwithstanding his former inclination to recognize Maximilian's Empire, he was received with great cordiality and many honors, he subsequently traversed our Pacific States, and thence by steamer visited Japan, China, India, Palestine and Egypt, and the principal states of Europe. Everywhere he was received with high honor, and his ability and statesmanship fully recognized. In the autumn of 1871, he returned to his luxurious home at Auburn, and has since been engaged in the preparation for speedy publication of a narrative of his journeyings. He will, not in all probability, take any part hereafter in pub- lic or political life, and perhaps has no desire to do so ; but there is a lesson for all statesmen to learn from his career. While engaged in the defence of a great principle, the advocacy of a great right, or the attack on a great wrong, they can afford to sacrifice present popularity for the abiding and deliberate judg- ment of the future ; they can be sure that they will not long remain misunderstood ; but if these same statesmen when known, honored, and loved, depart. from the principles they have so long and fearlessly advocated, if tempted by the glittering gauds of office, fame and political power, they forget to practise those great doctrines which it has been their glory to sustain, no 216 MEN OF OUR DAY. length of public service, no deeds of past patriotism, no lofty aspirations in the past, will save them from that deep and set- tled distrust, on the part of the masses, which will eventually bury them beneath the waters of oblivion. Mr. Seward, though a man of rare gifts and extraordinary talents, is not prepossessing in personal appearance ; small of stature, slender and pale, careless in dress and manner, and with an habitually sad expression of countenance, he wins confidence but slowly ; yet he has the art to attach his friends to him " as with hooks of steel." Let us hope that, when he shall sleep under the clods of the valley, there may be in the hearts of the people a kindly remembrance of his great services to his country during forty years and more of his public career, which shall partially, if it cannot wholly; conceal the errors of his later life. SCHUYLER COLFAX,- VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. ^/| N the life history of this eminent statesman, so widely iM known and so universally beloved, we have another of those instances of which we have had so many in this volume, of a man rising by the power of genius and industry from humble life, and filling exalted stations with a grace, ease, and dignity, which could not be surpassed had he been "to the manor born." Schuyler Colfax comes from some of our best revolution- ary stock. His grandfather, Captain Colfax, was the command- ant of General Washington's body-guard ; his grandmother was a near kinswoman of that noble patriot of the Eevolution., Major-General Philip Schuyler. He was born in New York city, March 23d, 1823, his father having died in early manhood, a short time before his birth. When he was ten years old, his mother married again, becoming the " Mrs. Matthews," whom all recent habitues of Washington have seen presiding at her son's receptions. With this event the boy's school life closed, but the scanty term seems to have been well improved, for one of his early schoolmates tells us " Schuyler always stood at the head of his class." The next three years were spent in his step- father's store. In 1836, his stepfather having decided to emi- 217 218 JAEN OF OUR DAY. grate to the west, Schuyler accompanied his parents to the valley of the St. Joseph river, and they settled in New Carlisle, St. Joseph county, Indiana, The region was then a wilderness, but it is now densely populated, and its thrift, fertility, enterprise and beauty have made it the garden of the State. The five years which followed, were, we believe, spent as clerk in a country store. His disposition to study was inbred, and every leisure moment was improved. A friend and companion of hia boyhood, in New York, now an active business man and philanthropist, tells us that, in those days, he and Schuyler Colfax kept up an active correspondence, and that Schuyler's letters always spoke of the studies he was prosecuting by him- self in the wilderness, and were full of knotty questions, which both tried their best to solve. In 1841, his stepfather, Mr. Matthews, was elected county auditor, and removed to South Bend. Schuyler became his deputy, and made such studious use of his leisure, that when but little more than eighteen, he became undisputed authority on precedents, usage, and State laws afi'ecting the auditor's duties. He was also very busily engaged in the study of law at this time. A debating society, that inevitable necessity of American village life, was organized at South Bend in 1843, and, on some one's suggestion, it was transformed into a moot State Legis- lature, of which Hon. J. D. Defrees, since government printer, was speaker, and young Colfax an active member. The rules of parliamentary debate, and the decisions of points of order, were followed with amusing punctiliousness in this body, and Colfax, who had improved his previous familiarity with these matters, by two years' service as Senate reporter for the State Journal, soon became the acknowledged authority on aH parliamentary questions, and was thus unconsciously qualifying himself for that pust he has since so ably filled. SCHUYLER COLFAX. 219 In 1845, he started a weekly journal at South Bend, the county seat, with the title of the St. Joseph Valley Register^ be- coming its sole proprietor and editor. In this connection it is doubtless proper to correct a mistake into which the public has fallen relative to Mr. Colfax's connection with the printing busi- ness. Mr. Lanman, in his Dictionary of Congress, says: — "He was bred a printer." He never was apprenticed to the printing business, and knew nothing of the practical part of the " art pre- servative of all arts," until after he had commenced the publica- tion of the Register. With his ready tact and quick perception, however, and great anxiety to economise, for his means were yet very limited, he soon mastered the art sufficiently to " help out of the drag ;" but he never attained to any great proficiency in the business ; his editorial labors, the business of the office, and other duties, soon claiming his entire attention. The Register prospered, and soon became a source of profit to its proprietor. It was ably edited, and was a model of courtesy and dignity. Every paragraph, however small, seemed to have passed under the supervision, and to reflect the mind and ele- vated thoughts of its editor. How he toiled at this time, and what was the opinion of the people of South Bend of the young editor, are very pleasantly related by Mr. Samuel Wilkeson, in a speech at a press dinner, in Washington, in 1865, at which Mr. Colfax was an honored guest. "Eighteen years ago, at one o'clock of a winter moon-lighted morning, while the horses of the stage-coach in which I was plowing the thick mud of Indiana, were being changed at the tavern in South Bend, as I walked the footway of the principal street to shake off a great weariness, I saw a light through a window. A sign, ' The Register,^ was legible above it, and I saw through the window a man in his shirt sleeves walking quickly 220 MEN OF OUR DAT. about like one that worked. I paused, and looked, and imagined about the man, and about his work, and about the lateness of the hour to which it was protracted ; and I wondered if he was in debt, and was struggling to get out, and if his wife was expecting him, and had lighted a new candle for his coming, and if he was very tired. A coming step interrupted this idle dreaming. When the walker reached my side, I joined him, and ai we went on I asked him questions, and naturally they were about the workman in the shirt sleeves. ' "What sort of a man is he?' 'He is very good to the poor; he works hard ; "le is sociable with all people ; he pays his debts ; he is a safe adviser; he doesn't drink whisky ; folks depend on him ; all this part of Indiana believes in him.' From that day to this, I have never taken up the South Bend Register without thinking of this eulogy, and envying the man who had justly entitled himself to it in the dawn of his manhood." Mr. Colfax himself, in his reply to this speech, acknowledged that in the early history of the newspaper, which numbered but two hundred and fifty subscribers when he established it, he was often compelled to labor far into the hours of the night. His paper was, from the first. Whig in its politics, and frank nnd outspoken in its expression of opinion on all political questions, but though in a district then strongly Democratic, and sur- rounded by Democratic papers which waged a constant, and often unscrupulous warfare against his paper and his principles, the constant readers of his paper cannot recall a single harsh or intemperate expression in his columns, in reply to the fierce personal attacks made upon him. In the year 18-i8, Mr. Colfax was appointed a delegate from his adopted State to the Whig National Convention, of which he was elected secretary, and although extremely young, he discharged the functions of his office commendably. Tn 1850, SCHUYLER COLFAX. 221 he was elected a member of the Indiana State Convention, hav- ing for its object the preparation of a State Constitution. Here he persistently opposed the nnmanJj clause prohibiting freo colored men from entering the State. This clause, submitted separately to the people, was indorsed by majorities of eight thousand in his district' and ninety thousand in the State, yet, where a mere political trimmer would have waived the personal issue, he, like a man, openly voted with the minority, though he was at the time a candidate for Congress. In 1851, unanimously nominated from the ninth district of Indiana, he made a joint canvass with his opponent. Dr. Fitch, and, solely on account of this vote, was defeated by two hundred and sixteen majority, although the district had been Democratic, by large majorities, for many years. In 1852, he was again sent as a delegate to the Whig National Convention, of which also he was appointed secretary. In 1854, Mr. Colfax was elected to Congress as a Eepublican nominee ; and from that time to the present, he has always occu- pied his seat as a Kepresentative. At the opening of the Thirty-fourth Congress occurred the memorable contest for the speakership, resulting in the election of Mr. Banks to that position. During that session Mr. Colfax took his stand as one of the most promising of our Congres- sional debaters. His speech, upon the then all-absorbing topic of the extension of slavery and the aggressions of the slave power, was a masterly effort, and stamped him at once as a most influ- ential orator. This speech was circulated throughout the coun- try at the time, and was used as a campaign document by tho Fremont party during the canvass of 1856. Five hundred thousand copies of it were issued, a compliment perhaps never before received by any member of Congress. Mr. Colfax labored zealously for John C Fremont, who was 222 MEN OF OUR DAY. his personal friend ; the result of that campaign is well known. In the Thirty-fifth Congress, Mr. Colfax was elected to the im- portant position of Chairman to the Committee on Post-Offices and Post Roads, which place he continued to hold until his elec- tion as Speaker to the Thirty-eighth Congress, on the 7th of December, 1853, to which responsible position he was subse- quently twice re-elected — to the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Con- gresses — honors awarded before only to Henry Clay. As Speaker of the House of Representatives he was ready, seldom hesitating to replace a word, or failing to touch the quick of a question, never employing any words for stage effect; but straightforward, direct, and often exquisitely elegant in image and diction, he was, in the genuine sense, eloquent. His every speech was a success, and though one often wondered how he would extricate himself, in the varied and often untimely calls made upon his treasury, he always closed with added wealth of gratified admirers. If George Canning was once the Cicero of the British Senate, Schuyler Colfax was equally that of the American House. In the chair, lie was suave and forbearing almost to excess, but as impartial as the opposite Congressional clock. Nothing escaped him, nothing nonplussed him. The marvel of his pre- siding watchfulness was equaled alone by the intuitive, rapid solu tion of the knotty point suddenly presented, and having either no precedent, or, at best, but a very distant one. In every quan- dary, the Indiana Legislature,. or the Journal reporter, or the persistent student of Jefferson or Cushing, or all, rally to the rescue of the wondering House and still "smiling chairman. The advocate is never confused with the judge. While presiding, it is as difficult to remember, as when debating to forget, that be is radically a Radical. H(? was one of the first advocates, and is still one of the SCHUYLER COLFAX. 223 warmest friends of the Pacific railroad. Indeed, he takes a warm interest in any movement looking to the development of the boundless resources of the great West. It was, doubtless, the interest he felt in that section of the country, which induced him to take his celebrated journey "Across the Continent." His trip was a perilous one, but his welcome at " the other end of the line" was so spontaneous, truly genuine and heartfelt, that it more than repaid him for all the dangers and hardships he passed through. This tour led him to prepare one of the most entertaining lectures ever delivered in this country. It was lis- tened to with rapt attention by the people of almost every city in the North. Pecuniarily, however, it was of but little profit to him, for with that liberality which has ever been a marked trait in his character, the entire proceeds of a lecture were oftener donated to some charitable purpose than retained for his own emolument. His intimacy and confidential relations with Mr. Lincoln are well known. They labored hand in hand as brothers in the cause of the Union, holding frequent and protracted interviews on all subjects looking to the overthrow of the rebellion, for there were no divisions between the executive and legislative branches of the Government, then, as there have been since. A patriot was at the head of the Government then — a statesman who could give counsel, but often needed it as well. During the darkest hours of that bloody drama which cast so deep a shadow over the hearts and homes of the nation, they were ever cheer- ful and hopeful. Confident in the justness of the war waged for the preservation of the Union, and placing a Christian reliance in that Providence which guides and shapes the destiny of nations, great reverses, which caused others to fear and tremble, at times almost to despair, seemed only to inspire them with 224 MEN OF OUR DAY. greater zeal and a firmer belief in the ultimate triumph of our cause. There has not been a great radical measure before the country, since his advent into Congress, that Mr. Colfax has not sup- ported with all the warmth of his nature. But he is not one who will rush blindly forward into a pitftxll. He would rather make haste slowly, that no backward step may be necessary — he would duly weigh every measure in all its bearings, and from its various standpoints, before committing himself wholly to any particular line of action relative to the subjects under considera- tion. Previous to his reelection as Speaker of the Thirty-ninth Congress, in response to a serenade tendered him, he said : " The danger is in too much precipitation. Let us, rather, make haste slowly, and then we can hope that the foundation of our Government, when thus reconstructed on the basis of indisputa- ble loyalty, will be as eternal as the stars," Had this warning been heeded, much of the legislation of the Thirty-ninth Congress would have needed no revision at the hands of that which has succeeded it. His course, while in the great council of the nation, was one of straightforward, unswerving integrity; and he counted many friends among even his political opponents. He so discharged the important duties of the speakership, that he was considered one of the best presiding oflUcers that has ever been called upan to conduct the proceedings of a great body. Mr. Colfax is only forty-nine years of age. In personal ap- pearance, he is of medium height, solid and compactly built. His hair and whiskers are brown, now a little tinged with gray. His countenance has a pleasing and intellectual expression. His person is graceful, and his manner denotes unusual energy. His eyebrows are light in color, and overshadow eyes which sparkle with intelligence and good-humor. He is strongly affectionate SCHUYLER COLrAX, 225 Had kindly in disposition. Whenever his mother-in-law appeared ia the gallery of the House, Mr. Colfax generally called some member to the chair, and went immediately to her side. Such a trait in his character serves still further to deepen the respect and esteem in which he is held everywhere. As a speaker, Mr. Colfax is earnest, frank, pointed and fluent. His manner is pleasing, and his language is always well-chosen and refined. Urbane in demeanor, and courteous and fair to- ward opponents, he always commanded respect and attention on both sides of the House. He is zealous and fearless in main- taining his principles, though his benevolence and good-humor so temper his speeches that he gains few or no enemies. He ia one of the few whose personal qualities have secured exemption from the bitterness of feeling generally displayed by the friends of pro-slavery aggression toward their opponents. He seldom, indulges in oratorical flourish, but goes straight to his subject, which, with his keenly perceptive intellect, he penetrates to the. bottom ; while his close, logical reasoning presents his aspect of ' a question in its strongest light. On the question, " Shall freedmen be citizens, and be allowedi the right of suffrage?" he took an early opportunity of avowing, his views. At the opening of the second session of the Thirty- ninth Congress, he said : " The Creator is leading us in his own way rather than our own. He has put all men on an equality before Divine law, and demands that we shall put all men upon the same equality before human law." In an address delivered in 1867, before the Union Lcaguo' club of New York, we find these eloquent passages: — " How rapidly and yet how gloriously we are making history ; but posterity will read it on the open pages of our country's an- nals. Sfx years ago — how brief it seems — but a fraction of an individual's life — but a breath in the life of a nation — the banners 15 226 MEN OF OUR DAY of rebellion waved over the hostile armies and stolen forts from the Potomac to the Kio Grande, and the on- looking world predicted the certain downfall of the Republic. Now, thanks to our gallant armies and their gallant commanders— Grant the inflexible — Sherman the conqueror — Sheridan the invincible — - and all their compatriots on sea and shore — but one flag waves over the land — the flag that Washington loved, and that Jack- son, and Scott, and Taylor adorned with their brilliant victories — the flag dearer to us in all its hours of peril than when gilded by the sunshine of prosperity and fanned by the zephyrs of peace, at last triumphant, unquestioned, unassailed. Six years ago, millions of human beings born on American soil, created by the same Divine Father, destined to the same eternal here- after, were subject to sale like the swine of the sty, or the beasts of the field, and our escutcheon was dimmed and dishonored by the stain of American Slavery. To-day^ auction-blocks, and manacles, and whipping-posts are, thank God, things of the past, while the slave himself has become the citizen, with the freedman's weapon of protection — the ballot — in his own right hand. Nor can we forget, while rejoicing over this happy contrast, the human agencies so potential to its accomplishment. First, and conspicuous among the rest, rises before my mind the tall form of a martyred President, whose welcome step no mortal ear shall ever listen to again. Faithful to his oath, faithful to his country, faithful to the brave armies his word called to the field, he never swerved a hair's breadth from his determination to crush this mighty rebellion, and all that gives it aid, and comfort, and support. Unjustly and bitterly de- nounced, by his enemies and yours, as a usurper and despot ; compared to Nero and Caligula, and all other tyrants whose base deeds blacken the pages of history, your noble League stood by him amid this tempest of detraction, cordially and to SCHUYLER COLFAX, 227 che end; and you have now your abundant vindication and reward. Though the torch of slander was lit at every avenue of his public life while he lived, the civilized world would become mourners at his coffin ; and with those libelous tongues hushed, our whole land enshrines his memory to-day with the Father of the Country he saved." "I cannot doubt the future of the great party which has won these triumphs and established these principles. It has been so brilliantly successful, because it recognized liberty and justice' as its cardinal principles ; and because, scorning all prejudices and defying all opprobrium, it allies itself to the cause of the humble and the oppressed. It sought to enfranchise, not to enchain; to elevate, not to tread down; to protect, never to abuse. It cared for the humblest rather than for the mightiest — for the weakest rather than the strongest. It recognized that the glory of states and nations was justice to the poorest and feeblest. And another secret of its wondrous strength was that it fully adopted the striking injunction of our murdered chief: ' With malice toward none, with charity for all, but with firmness for the right, as God gives us to see the right.' Only last month the British Chancellor of the Exchequer, in defend- ing his Keform bill, which holds the word of promise to the ear to break it to the hope, exclaimed : ' This is a nation of classes, and must remain so.' If I may be pardoned for replying, I would say : ' This is a nation o1 freemen^ and it must remain so.' Faithful to the traditions of our fathers in sympathizing with all who long for the maintenance or advancement of liberty in Mexico or England, in Ireland or Crete, and yet carefully avoiding all entangling alliances or violations of the law, with a recognition from ocean to ocean, ISTdrth and South alike, of the right of all citizens bound by the law to share in the choice of 228 MEN OF OUR DAY. the law-maker, and thus to have a voice in the country their heart's blood must defend, our centennial anniversary of the Declaration of Independence will find us as an entire nation, recognizing- the great truths of that immortal Magna Gharta^ enjoying a fame wide as the world and eternal as the stars, with a prosperity that shall eclipse in future all the brightest glories of the past." Religion gained the early adherence of Mr, Colfox, who many years ago began a Christian life, joining the Dutch Eeformed Church, and serving humbly and usefully as a Sunday school teacher for twelve years. The "pious passages" so frequent iu his public speeches are not mere sentiment or oratorical arts, for he loves to talk, in private, of how God rules and how distinctly and how often, in our history, his holy arm has been revealed ; and the ascription of praise comes from a worship- ping heart, reliant on God through Christ. His personal ex- ample at Washington is luminous. When twenty, he made vows of strict, abstinence, which have never been broken. Liquors and wines are never used at his receptions, while Presidential dinners and diplomatic banquets are utterly power- less to abate one jot or tittle of his firmness. Many of our readers well remember his speech at a Congressional temper- ance meeting, and how he banished the sale of liquor from all parts of the Capitol within his jurisdiction. On the 21st of May, 1868, the National Republican Union Convention, in session at Chicago, nominated Mr. Colfax as their candidate for the vice-presidency, on the fifth ballot, his name receiving five hundred and twenty-two votes out of the six hundred and fifty polled. At the Presidential election, November 3d, 1868, General Grant and Mr. Colfax were elected President and Yice-Presi- dent, and on the 4th of March, 1869, Mr. Colfax took his seat as SCHUYLER COLFAX. 229 President of the Senate, and his inaugural oath as Vice-Presi- dent of the United States. The President of the Senate is not like the Speaker of the House, an elected member of the body over which he presides, and hence can take no part in the dis- cussions of that body, nor is he allowed any other than a casting vote. The rules of the Senate are also very different from those of the House, and of late years it has lost its ancient reputation for dignity and decorum, and under the lead of some of its less discreet members, has seemed to be striving to win from the House its old name of reproach, " the National Bear Garden." To preside successfully over such a body is even a more diffi- cult task under the circumstances, than over the more boister- ous, but at the same time more easily controlled. House of Rep- resentatives. Yet in a position which some of the ablest parli- amentarians had found exceedingly difficult, and among men who sometimes regard themselves as entirely above the law, it is much to his credit that Vice-President Colfax has presided with an easy dignity and grace which has been recognized by all classes as wholly without partiality, and has furnished no grounds of complaint. His excessive labors at one time broke down his health, and compelled him to take a long rest ; but. his tem- perate habits, his systematic and methodical ways, and his vigo- rous constitution enabled him to recover his health completely. In 1870, Mr. Colfax wrote to a friend in New York declaring his purpose to withdraw forever from public life at the close of his present term of office. This letter was published and vari- ously commented on by the press. Subsequently the urgency of his friends induced him to reconsider this intention, and suf- fer his name to be brought before the Philadelphia National Republican Convention; but this was done at so late a date that Senator Wilson, who had been a competitor for the nomination in 1868, had a decided advantage, and was nominated by a small majority on the first ballot, at Philadelphia. HANNIBAL HAMLIN. I HAT can you raise here?" iDquired a distinguislietl English asfriculturist, of a friend, a citizen of Maine, as they were traversing the rocky, iron-bound coast, against which the North Atlantic dashes its waves in summer and winter. " Your soil seems so rocky and sterile that no crops will thrive in it. What can you grow ?" " We raise men," was the proud reply. Yes, the sunrise State does raise men^ and one of the best of her products, was the man whose history we propose here to sketch briefly. Hannibal Hamlin was born in Paris, Maine, August 27th, 1809. His ancestors were from Massachusetts, and of Puritan and revolutionary stock. His grandfather, Eleazar Hamlin, commanded a company of minute men in the revolution, and had five sons enrolled under him, some of whom served through the whole war. Cyrus, one of the sons of Eleazar Hamlin, studied medicine, married and settled at Livermore, Oxford county, Maine, where he acquired a very extensive practice, and was also clerk of the courts for Oxford county, for a number of years. Hannibal was the sixth son of Dr. Cyrus Hamlin, and, from his boyhood, was a studious, manly -boy. His brothers have, several of them, attained distinction. His eldest brother, Elijah, has long been one of the most promi- nent men of the State ; Cyrus, another brother, is well known as a missionary of the American Board, at Constantinople, and 230 HANNIBAL HAMLIN. 231 is now at tlie head of the Eobert college there. Few men have been more widely useful. It was the intention of Dr. Hamlin to give Hannibal a collegiate education, and before he was six- teen, he was nearly fitted for college, when the failure of hia brother Cyrus's health led to a change of plans, and he com- menced the study of medicine, while Hannibal remained at home to labor on the farm, employing the winter in surveying a township of forest land on Dead river, which his father and others had purchased. When he was eighteen years of age, hia father directed him to undertake the study of law, with his brother Elijah. He commenced his studies, but at the end of six or eight months, his father died, and he returned home, and labored on the farm, for the next two years. He was next, for about a year, joint proprietor and editor with Horatio King, afterwards assistant postmaster general, of a Democratic news- paper. The Jeffersonian^ published at Paris, the county seat of Oxford county. To this paper he contributed both prose and poetical articles. But his inclination was still to the study of the law, and having sold out his interest in the paper, he entered, with his mother's sanction, the office of Hon. Joseph G. Cole, and, for the next three years, prosecuted his legal studies with him and with the firm of Fessenden, Deblois, and Fessenden, the junior partner being the late Senator from Maine. In January, 1833, he was admitted to the Oxford county bar, and mimediately commenced a successful practice, which continued to increase until 1851, when he relinquished farther practice of his profession. He soon after removed to Hampden, a flourish- ing village six miles below Bangor, on the Penobscot, and married the same year. From 1836 to 1810, he was each year elected to the State Legislature, and in 1837, 1839, and 1810, was speaker of the House, In 1810, he was the Democratic candi- date for Representative in Congress, but was defeated by about 232 MEN OF OUR DAT. two hundred votes. In 1843, he was again a candidaf.e and was elected by about a thousand majority. Though elected as a Democrat, and voting with that party on all other questions, Mr. Hamlin, from the commencement of his Congressional career, uniformly opposed the extension and aggressions of slavery. His first speech in Congrera was in opposition to the twenty-first rule, by which abolition petitions were excluded ; and he ably and strenuously opposed the annexation of Texas, not because he was averse to new acces- sions of territory, but because the bill provided for the exten- sion of slavery there. His speech, in opposition to the annexa- tion on these terms, was one of remarkable eloquence, and its defence of New England against the attacks of southern mem- bers, was one of the finest passages of parliamentary oratory. "I am sure, sir," he said, "that the hardy sons of the ice-bound region of New England, have poured out their blood without stint, to protect the shores of the South, or to avenge her wrongs. Their bones are even now bleaching beneath the sun, on many a southern hill ; and the monuments of their brave devotion may still be traced, wherever their country's flag has floated on the battle field, or the breeze, upon the lakes, the ocean, and the land : — " ' New England's dead ! New England's dead ! On every field they lie, On every field of strife made red, With bloody victory ! Their bones are on our northern hills, And on the sonthern plain; By brook and river, mount and rills, And in the sounding main.' " I glory in New England and New England's institutions. There she stands, with her free schools, and her free labor, her fearless enterprise, her indomitable energy ! With her rocky HANNIBAL HAMLIN". 233 hills, her torrent streams, her green valleys, her heaven pointed spires ; there she stands a moral monument around which the gratitude of her country binds the wreath of fame, while pro- tected freedom shall repose forever at its base." Mr. Hamlin was re-elected to Congress in 1844, and though known mainly as a working, rather than a talking member, (and his reputation was of the highest, as an efl&cieut business man,) he took some part in the debates, handling the most im- portant questions with great ability. Among the topics on which he spoke were the public land question ; on giving notice to the British Government to termiiKite the joint occu- pancy of Oregon ; on the mode of raising troops for the Mexican war; on the mode of increasing the army, and on establishing a territorial government for Oregon. He also offered the Wilmot Proviso as an amendment to the famous " three million bill." On his return home he served for one session in the Maine Legislature, and in May, 1848, was elected to fill the vacancy in the United States Senate, caused by the death of Ex-Gover- nor Fairfield. In July, 1851, he was again chosen Senator, for the full term, by the Democrats and Free Soilers. His decided opposition to slavery had alienated a few of the pro- slavery Democrats in the Legislature, but their place was more than supplied by the Free Soilers, who held the balance of power in the Maine Legislature at this time. In the Senate, Mr. Hamlin almost immediately took a position as one of the ablest members of that body. He was not given to participating in the debates on trivial matters, but on the great questions of the time he usually gave his care- fully considered views, and they commanded the attention and respect of the entire Senate. As a working member, he had no superior; he was chairman of the very important Committee on Commerce, from 1849 till his resignation of that position in 234 MEN OF OUR DAY. 1856, on an occasion to be presently noticed, and drew up and matured many of the bills which have proved so beneficial fco our national commerce. He was also chairman of the Com- mittee on the District of Columbia, and an active member of other important committees. He was outspoken and decided in his efforts for the repression of slavery, and in opposition to its aggressive tendencies, and the purpose of its friends to extend it over all the new territories, from his entrance ir-io the Senate. One of his earliest speeches, in 1848, on the bill providing a territorial government for Oregon, denounced in strong and manly terms this purpose of the pro-slavery men, and in the debates on the admission of California, he was equally explicit and earnest. He advocated in the same session the abolition of the practice of flogging in the navy. On commercial topics, his most important and effective speeches were, on the ocean mail service ; on regulating the liabilities of ship owners ; on providing for the greater security of lives on steamboats ; in defence of the river and harbor bill ; for the codifications of the revenue laws, etc. Up to 1856, Mr. Hamlin had acted with the Democratic party on all questions, except those connected with the extension of slavery, directly or indirectly. He opposed the repeal of the Missouri compromise, the Kansas and Nebraska bill, and the Fugitive Slave act, but in all these, others affiliated with that party had acted with him ; but the time came, at the national Democratic Convention at Cincinnati, in June, 1856, when that party succumbed to the slave power, and delivered themselves over to the rule and dictation of the South ; then Mr. Hamlin felt that he must sever the ties which had hitherto bound him to them. He took the first opportunity of doing this which olfered, rising in his place in the Senate, June 12th, 1856, and resigning his position as chairman of the Committee on Com- HANNIBAL HAMLIN. 235 merce, and assigning as liis reason, that after the platform and resolutions adopted by the convention at Cincinnati, he could no longer maintain political associations with a party which in- sisted on such doctrines. Thenceforward, he became identified with the Republican party. Two or three weeks later he was nominated by the Republicans for Governor of Maine, and made a personal canvass of the State, speaking nearly one hundred times in the different counties. The Democrats had carried the State by a large majority the year before, and were then in power, but Mr. Hamlin was elected in September, 1856, by an absolute majority of eighteen thousand over both the competing candidates, and of twenty-three thousand over his Democratic competitor, more than double the majority ever given to any other candidate in that State. On the 7th of January, 1857, he resigned his seat in the Senate and was the same day inaugurated Governor of Maine. Nine days later, January 16th, 1857, he was a third time elected to the Senate, for the term of six years from March ith, 1857, and on the 20th of February resigned the office of governor, and took his seat again in the Senate, on the 4th of March. During the next four years, he was the active and eloquent defender of Republi- can principles in the United States Senate, discussing the Kansas question with consummate ability, attacking the Le- compton Constitution, replying with great pungency and effect to Senator llammond's " mud-sill" speech, and repealing his assaults upon the free laborers of the North. He also exposed the unfair- ness and gross sectional partiality of the Democratic majority in the Senate, in the formation of the committees, and, in an able speech, defended American rights in regard to the fisheries. On the 18th of May, 1860, at the Republican National Conven- tion at Chicago, Mr. Hamlin was nominated as the candidate of the party for the vice-presidency on the ticket with Abraham Lincoln. 236 MEN OF OUR DAY. The nomination was entirely unexpected by Mr, Hamlin and took him completely by surprise. It was made spontaneously and with great unanimity. The ticket was elected, and on the 4th of March, 1861, in the midst of civil commotion and the loud muttering of the storm which was so soon to burst upon the nation. President and Vice-President were inaugurated. During the four years that followed, Mr, Hamlin was the President's right hand ; calm, patient, clear-headed and far-seeing, he was able to give wise counsel, and enjoyed, throughout his administration, Mr. Lincoln's fullest confidence. It is said that in the history of our country, there has been but one other instance, in which there was full and perfect harmony between the President and Vice-President, and that was in the case of President Jackson and Vice-President Van Buren. As the pre- siding officer of the Senate, he has rarely, if ever, been equalled in the skill with which he conducted its proceedings and the dignity with which he guided its deliberations. So thorough was his knowledge of parliamentary rules and usages, and of the precedents of senatorial action, that not a single ruling of his, during the four years of his presidency over the Senate, was ever over-ruled by that body, and on his taking leave of it all parties united in testifying to his courtesy and impartiality. At the Baltimore National Republican Convention, in 186-i, it was at first proposed to nominate Mr, Hamlin again to the vice- presidency, which he had filled so well; there was nothing to be objected to in his conduct, and very much to praise; but it was represented that the position belonged, by right, to some loyal representative of the border, or seceded States, and this view prevailing, Andrew Johnson was nominated. It has been well said, that "with Hannibal Hamlin in the vice-presidency, either Mr. Lincoln would not have been assassinated, or we should HANNIBAL HAMLIN. 237 have been spared the trouble, discord, and disgrace wliich haa followed." In July, 1865, Mr. Johnson appointed Mr. Hamlin collector of the port of Boston, the most lucrative office in New England. He held the position about thirteen months, when becoming convinced that Mr. Johnson had deserted the party which elected him, and abandoned its principles, he felt that he could not retain the office, without danger of being identified with Mr. Johnson's treachery, and resigned it in the following manly letter. " Custom House, Boston, Collector's Office, Aug. 28, 1866. " To the President : — " One year ago you tendered to me, unsolicited on my part, the position of collector of customs, for the District of BovSton and Charlestown. I entered upon the duties of the office, and have endeavored faithfully to discharge the same, and I trust in a manner satisfactory to the public interested therein, " I do not fail to observe the movements and efforts which have been, and are now being made to organize a party in the country, consisting, almost exclusively, of those actively engaged in the late rebellion, and their allies, who sought by other means to cripple and embarrass the Government. These classes of persons, with a small fraction of others, constitute the organiza- tion. It proposes to defeat and overthrow the Union Republi- can party, and to restore to power, without sufficient guaranties for the future, and protection to men who have been loyal, those who sought to destroy the Government. " I gave all the influence I possessed to create and uphold the Union Republican party during the war, and without the aid of which our Government would have been destroyed, and the rebellion a success. *' With such a party as has been inaugurated, and for such purposes, I have no sympathy, nor can I acquiesce in ita measures by my silence. I therefore tender to you my resig- nation of the office of collector of customs, for the District of 238 MEN OF OUR DAT. Boston and Ch.irlestown, to take effect irom the time when a successor shall be appointed and qualified. *' Eespectfully yours, "H.HAMLIN." After his resignation, Mr. Hamlin engaged in the political canvass in New York, Pennsylvania, and Maine, in the autumn of 1860, and then returned to his home in Bangor, Maine, where he remained, engaged in the management of his estate, taking part, however, in the political campaign in New Hampshire and Connecticut in the spring of 1868. Mr. Hamlin was the first choice of several of the States for the vice-presidency in the National Convention of May, 1868, and it is no discredit to the other eminent and able candidates, to say that no man could have filled the office better than he. In the session of the Maine Legislature, in the winter of 1869, Mr. Hamlin was a fourth time elected United States Senator from that State, which position he still holds. He has been throughout, a decided supporter of President Grant's adminis- tration. Mr. Hamlin is about six feet in height, though apparently less, in consequence of his having a slight stoop. His athletic and robust form gives a just indication of his great physical energy and power of endurance. His complexion is dark, and his eyes are of a piercing blackue^is.* His voice is clear, strong, melodious in its tones, a.nd his delivery rapid, energetic, and highly effective. He speaks without verbal preparation, but without any embarrassment, and with remarkable directness. * The southern pohtical speakers and leaders in the presidential cam- paign of 18G0, circulated the report widely throughout the South, and it was extensively credited tJiere, that Mr. Ilaml-n was a mulatto, and that the Repullicans had nominated him for the pumose of inciting the negroes to rise in rebellion against their masters. Mr. Hamlin's dark complexion was the only thing which gave the slightest phiusibility to this story. HANNIBAL HAMLIN. 239 Always talking to the point, and never for mere effect, lie is invariably listened to with respect and attention. As a popular orator, he has great power and eloquence. His manners, though dignified and decorous, are still remarkable for their republi- can simplicity. At his home on the Penobscot, he cultivates his small farm with his own hands, laboring on it every summer, with all the regularity and vigor of his youthful days. In^his moral character, Mr. Hamlin is wholly without reproach, a man of pure and Christian life, and in his domesiic relations, he is most devoted and affectionate. No man is more thoroughly faithful to his friends than he, and none more highly prizes a true friend. His native State honors him, and with reason, for he is one of her best products, a manly, noble man in all the relations of life. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WADE, LATE VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. I 5"! T would be hard to find a better illustration of the facility with which, under Republican institutions, a man of genius and integrity may rise from obscurity and humble life to the most exalted station, than is afforded in the history of Benjamin F. Wade. He has not, it is true, like his predecessor, " filled every office, from alderman of a small village to President of the United States," but he has risen from an humble though honorable and honest condition, to the highest positions in the g'ft of the people, and through all, has maintained himself with dignity, propriety, and honor, and with a reputation for unflinching adherence to the principles of right, justice, and freedom, which any man might covet. BenjAiMIN Franklust Wade was born in Feeding Hills Parish, West Springfield, Massachusetts, October 27th, 1800. He was the youngest of ten children. His father was a soldier, who fought in every revolutionary battle from Bunker Hill to Yorktown. His mother was the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman, a woman of vigorous intellect and great force of character. She fed and clothed her brood while the father was in the army. The family was one of the poorest in New England. A portion of its scanty property was a library of twelve books. This eventually became Benjamin's possession. He read the volumes through and through, and over and over, 24U Kkobavkd by /\.B Wat.tek Phxi,ad / BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WADE. 24 1< after his mother had led him so far into an education as to teach him to read and write. When Ben was eighteen, he tearfully turned his back on the old plow and the older home- stead ; and, with seven dollars in his pocket and a bundle of cloth- ing on his back, started to walk from Springfield, Massachu- setts, to Illinois, to seek his fortune. He footed it to Ashtabula county, Ohio. There, the snow falling, he determined to wait for spring to finish his journey ; hired himself out to cut wood! in the forest for fifty cents per cord, and snatched hours from sleep at night to read the Bible by the light of the fire on the hearth of the log-cabin. Both the Old and the New Testa- ments are at his tongue's end. Spring came; but the journey to Illinois and fortune was delayed by a summer's work at chopping, logging, and grubbing, followed by a Yankee winter at school-teaching. The journey was suspended by a second year of such work, and was finally lost in an experience of driving a herd of cattle. Wade led the " lead" steer of a drove from Ohio to New York. Six times he made this trip. The last ox he led took him to Albany.* 'Twas winter. Of course, * General Brisbin relates that on one of these occasions Mr. Wade came near losing his life. He was leading a steer as usual in front of the drove, when he came to a long covered bridge. The gate-keeper, according to the rules, would only allow a few of the herd to pass over at a time, lest their weight should injure the bridge. Wade started with the advance guard, but the cattle in the rear becoming frightened, rushed into the bridge and stampe- ded. Young Wade made haste to run, but finding he could not reach the other end before the frantic cattle would be upon him and trample Kim to death, he ran to one of the posts, and springing up, caught' hold of the brace and drew himself up as high as possible. He could barely keep his legs out of the way of the horns of the cattle, but he held on while the bridge swayed to and fro, threatening every moment to break under the great weight that was upon it. At length the last of the frightened animuls i)assed by, and our dangling hero dropped from his perch, to the astonishment of the drover, who thought he had been crushed to death, and was riding through the bridge, expecting every moment to find hia crushed and mangled body." 242 MEN OF OUR DAY. the drover tten expanded into a scliool-teacTier. "When the frost was out of the ground, scholars and teacher went to manual ^abor. The Erie canal got the teacher. During the summer of 1826 Wade shoveled and wheeled ; " The only American I know/' said Governor Seward, in a speech in the Senate, " who worked with a spade and wheelbarrow on that great improvement." An- other winter of school-teaching in Ohio, and the persuasions of Elisha Whittlesey, and the friendly offer of a tavern-keeper who had got to loving Wade, to trust him bed and board without limit, drew Ben, at the age of twenty-six, into a law office, to study for the bar. He was admitted in two years. He waited another year for his first suit. It was but a petty offence with which his first client was charged, but the young lawyer went into his defence with all his might, and secured his acquittal. His zeal and resolution secured him the friendship of the members of the bar, and after the trial was over, the good old presiding judge condescended to privately give him a word of encouragement. Mr. Wade says no one can ever know how much good the kind words of the judge did him, and how they put courage into his heart to fight the future battles of his life. Without the advan- tages of early education, Mr. Wade felt constantly ihe need of close application to his law books, and became a hard student. The lawyers soon began to notice his opinions, and the energy and confidence he threw into a case. He had a wonderful deal of sense, and could analyze a knotty question with surprising ability. Those lawyers who were far his superiors in learning and eloquence could never equal the rough backwoodsman in grasping the points in a case and presenting them to the jury. After six years of unremitting toil, Wade found himself em- ployed in almost every case of importance litigated in tha BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WADE. 248 circuit where he practiced. He was now a man of note; his law business was constantly increasing, and money was coming in to fill his pocket. He felt, as a thousand other men have felt, that the struggle of his life was over ; that it was no longer ■vjith him simply a fight for bread. The world had been met and conquered, and the master began to look about him, and consider other matters than mere questions of food and clothing. Like most men who have taken the rough world by the throat and conquered it, Mr. Wade felt how completely he was self- made, and how little he had to fear from the future. In 1835, he was elected prosecuting attorney for the county of Ashtabula. Ilis talent for special pleading was remarkable, and his indictments are considered models at the present time. In 1837, Mr. Wade was offered the nomination to the State Sjnate from his district, and reluctantly accepted. This, Mr. Wade contends to this day, was the great mistake of his life. Tie has been continually successful in politics, and reached the tecond office in the nation ; but he never fails to warn young men to stick to their professions, and let politics alone. The empty honors of public life, he contends, never repay the poli tician for the toils and troubles that besot him at every step ^ and a quiet home is infinitely to be preferred to the highest political honor. lie was just entering his thirty-eighth year when he too.k hia seat in the State Senate of Ohio, and at once began his political career with the same earnestness that had characterized hia course at the bar. As a new member, he expected no position ; but his fame as a lawyer had preceded him to the capitol, and he was appointed a member of the Judiciary Committee. Mr. Wade finst directed his efforts to the repeal of the laws of Ohio whereby the poor but honest man could be imprisoned for debt by his creditor. He rapidly rose to the leadership of 244 MEX OF OUR DAY. the little squad of "Whigs in the State Senate, and although greatly in the minority, he handled his small force so efiectively as to keep the Democrats always on the defensive. The question of the annexation of Texas coming up, Mr. Wade made haste to take bold grounds against slavery. He said : " This State of Texas coming to the Union, as it must (if at all), with the institution of slavery interwoven with its "social habits, being brought into this Union for the sole object of ex- tending the accursed system of human bondage, it cannot have ray voice or vote ; for, so help me God, I will never assist in adding one rood of slave territory to this country." Soon after his efforts to prevent the extension of slavery, the black people of Ohio began an active movement for relief from the oppressive State laws, and appealed to Mr. Wade to help them. He took their petition and presented it in the Senate, asking that " all laws might be repealed making distinctiona among the people of Ohio on account of color." This raised a storm of indignation, and even some of Mr. Wade's personal and party friends warned him to desist 'n his efforts to place a negro on equal footing with a white man, but Wade sternly re- buked them, and insisted on his petitions being heard. At first the Senate refused to hear what the negroes had to say, but at length received their petition, and at once laid it on the table, Mr. Wade protesting, and saying, with great vehemence and earnestness to the majority : " Remember, gentlemen, you have, by your votes, in this free State of Ohio, so treated a part of her people, these black men and women." At the close of his senatorial term, Mr. Wade found his negro doctrines had made him unpopular with his constituents. When the convention met in his district, he was not only passed over and a new man nominated, but some of the delegates thought it would be a good thing to censure him for his course. Mr, BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WADE. 245 Wade had given great offence by his vehement opposition to State appropriations for internal improvements, and the Com- missioners appointed by the Legislature of Kentucky to visit Ohio and obtain, as Mr, Wade said, ** the passage of a law to degrade the people of Ohio." The bill they sought to have made a law, was one of pains and penalties, intended to repulse from Ohio the unhappy negro, whether bond or free — flying from the cruelty of a mas- ter — or, if manumitted, from the persecution of the superior class of laborers in a slave State, who abhor such rivals. Mr. Wade's noble nature revolted against the tyranny which would not allow human beings a refuge anywhere on a continent from which they had no outlet, and into which they had been dragged against their will ; and he opposed the measure with all his might. Mr. Wade, conscious that he had done right, when his sena- torial term was out, returned to his home and recommenced the practice of law, resolving never again to stand for any political office. In 1840, when General Harrison was nominated for President, Mr. Wade, yielding to the wishes of his friends and the excitement and enthusiasm of the hour, took the stump, and in this campaign, for the first time in his life, became a stump orator. Ills speeches were plain, matter-of-fact talks, which the people thoroughly understood, and he became popu- lar, lie passed over the Reserve, addressing thousands of peo- ple, and laboring day and night for General Harrison's election. As soon as the canvass was over, he returned to his law office, at Jeftl'rson, and began to work up his cases again, regretting that he had not ]>aid more attention to his clients, and less to politics. He had remained single till his forty-first year, but then met with the lady who subsequently became his wife, at the residence of a client. His marriage has been an eminentlj^ 246 MEN OF OUR DAT. happy one, and bis two children, both sons, distinguished them- selves and did honor to the name they bear, during the late war. In 1841, the people of Ohio having come to thoroughly understand and detest the speculations of internal improvements, and the Kentucky black laws, Mr, Wade's views were adopted, and he became popular as a wise legislator. The people of his district tendered him a re-nomination to the State Senate, but he declined. When the convention met, however, he was placed in nomination and triumphantly elected, by a largely increased majority over his former election. No sooner had he taken his seat than he renewed his labors in behalf of equal rights, and the repeal of all laws making dis- tinctions on account of color. He brought forward the petition of George W. Tyler, and fifty-four other persons, praying for the repeal of the fugitive slave law, passed by Ohio, in 1838, to please Kentucky. Wade argued, in an able speech, that negroes were men, as much as white persons, and as such entitled to personal liberty, trial by jury, testimony in the courts, and com- mon school privileges. Kentucky was then opposed to all these things, and used her influence with Ohio, to prevent her from adopting a liberal and just policy toward her black population. That was in 1841, more than a generation ago, and although it cannot be said Kentucky has advanced much in the business of securing her black })eople equal rights, she has done much toward changing their complexion. Herein Ken- tucky and her people differed from Mr. Wade and the people of Ohio ; Kentucky desired to equalize her population by nature, Ohio by law. Of the two processes we think posterity will incline to the belief that the former was the best. In February, 1842, a "bill for the incorporation of Oberlin Collegiate Institute, an institution for the education of persona^ BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WADE. 247 without regard to race or color," came up in the Senate of Ohio, Mr. Wade advocated the bill, but it was voted down. Thia bill afterward passed, and was the foundation of the excellent college at Oberlin, Ohio, an institution that has furnished more> than five liundred anti-slavery missionaries, teachers and preach- ers, and done more than any other college to unmask the de-. formities of the system of human bondage. While he was in the State Senate, the people of Ohio peti tioned their Legislature to protest against the infamous resolu- tion, passed by Congress in 1837, relating to slavery. This resolution was in these words : Resolved^ That all petitions, memorials, and papers touching the abolition of slavery, or buying, selling or transferring of slaves in any State, District or Territory of the United States, be laid on the table without being debated, read or referred^ and that no further action whatever shall be taken thereon. Mr. Wade was appointed a special committee, and the peti- tion of the people of Ohio, and the resolution complained of, referred to him with directions to make a report on them. It is said Wade read and examined, for three weeks, books and au thorities, before he began writing his report ; be that as it may, certain it is, his report was at the time, and is still, regarded as one of the ablest anti-slavery documents ever published in this country. Thirty years have elapsed since then, and yet in all that time few reasons have been advanced against slavery that cannot be found embodied in Mr. Wade's report. At the same session he defended, with great ability and elo- quence, the course of John Quincy Adams in upholding the right of petition in Congress. Mr. Adams bad been censured by the House for presenting the Haverhill resolutioiis, asking for the dissolution of the Union, and the Ohio Legishiture undertook to justify that censure, but Mr. Wade and his anti- 248" MEN OF OCK PAY, slavery friends, resisted the course of tlie Democratic majority with great energy and ability, though not with success. At the close of his second senatorial term, Mr. Wade declined a renomination, and again determined to leave off, forever, political life. From 18-i2 to 18-i7 he held no public office, and devoted himself to the practice of his profession and the care of his family. In February, 1847, Mr. Wade was elected, by the Legislature, president judge of the third judicial district of the State of Ohio, nis popularity at this time was unbounded. It has been the fortune of but few men to enter upon the discharge of judicial duties, having in advance secured to such an extent the unqualified confidence of the bar and people. He entered immediately upon the discharge of his duties. His district em- braced the populous counties of Ashtabula, Trumbull, Maho- ning, Portage, and Summit. The business had accumulated yastly under his predecessor. The same territory has now three resident judges, with but slightly increased business. It is but truth to say, that in no country on earth has the same number of people had the same amount of important and satisfactory justice administered to them in the same length of time, as had the district under the administration of Judge Wade. The younger members of the profession, who were so fortunate as to practice in this circuit during, Judge Wade's term upon the bench, will remember with lasting gratitude his kindness and judicial courtesy. During the time he was upon the bench, Judge Wade in- creased (if possible) in the confidence and admiration of his political friends, and disarmed those who had differed with him, and had felt the withering power of his logic and eloquence on the stump and at the bar. His judicial career was brought to A sudden and unexpected close in March, 1851, while he was BEITJAMIN FRANKLIN WADE. 249 holding a term of court at Akron, Summit county, by his elec- tion by the Legislature, then in session, to the United States Senate. When thi news of his election reached him, Judge Wade was on the bench trying a case. The firing of cannon, and shouting of men. announced that some unusual event had taken place and presently a boy came running into the court with a dispatch informing Mr, Wade he had been elected a United States Senator from Ohio. The intelligence surprised no one so much as the judge, who had no knowledge that his name had been mentioned in con- i^ction with it, and had made no efforts to secure a nomination. The members of the bar in his judicial district were full of regret at his loss to the bench, but were pleased that his talents were at last appreciated. Resolutions of mingled regret and congratulation were passed, almost unanimously, in the various counties comprising his circuit. Mr. Wade was again persuaded to reluctantly give up his law business, and go into politics. He did so, however, with less regret this time than before, because the people of Ohio had come up to his anti-slavery views. He felt that in repre- aenting the majority of the people of his State, he need make no sacrifice of his own opinions, and he was most anxious to attack slavery at the capital, and, if possible, arouse the people of the country to the enormities of the institution, as he had aroused the people of Ohio. After his election to the United States Senate, in 1S51, Mr. Wade resigned his seat on the bench, and retired to his home at Jefferson. In 1852, Mr. Wade advocated the nomination and election of General Scott to the presidency. lie still insisted, and ardently hoped, that the Whig party, with which he had always acted 250 MEN OF OUR DAY. and in wbicli he saw so much to approve and admire, would jei be instrumental in bringing back the Government to the parpose of its founders. Stimulated by this consideration, he again took the stump, in and out of Ohio, and made the hustings ling with the clarion sound of his voice. Wherever he was heard, his reasoning was listened to with the most, profound attention ; and where he failed to convince, he obtained credit for honesty of purpose and powerful effort. Mr. Wade continued to act with the Whig party until 1854, when the proposition to repeal the Missouri Compromise began to agitate Congress. In March, 1854, he made a speech in the Senate, clearly defining his position, and fully demonstrating his determined hostility to a measure which, he predicted, would be fraught with more evil to the country, and danger to its peace, than had ever before disturbed its prosperity. After this speech he contented himself with watching the events which he saw must ultimately end in the consummation of all the evils he had predii^ted. He learned, by discussion of the measure, that it was to be carried by a combination of the southern Whigs, and those who for the occasion assumed the name of "National Democrats." At this union for such a purpose, his heart sickened, and he prepared himself to give utterance to the noble sentiments and awful warnings contained in his speech, delivered on the night of the final passage of that measure in the Senate. "] he Tribune of ihat date appropriately called that speech " the new Declaration of Independence." In this speech Mr. Wade takes a final farewell of his former Whig friends of the South, but not until he had seen solemnized the nuptials between them and the Democratic party. We cannot refrain from giving a few extracts from this speech. He said : — - " Mr. President : I do not intend to debate this subject further. The humiliation of the North is complete and overwhelming. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WADE. 251 No southern enemy of hers can wish her deeper degradation. God knows I feel it keenly enough, and I have no desire to prolong the melancholy spectacle, -s^ * * I have all my life belonged to the great National Whig party, and never yet have I failed, with all the ability I have, to support her regular candidates, come from what portion of the Union they might, and much oftener has it been my lot to battle for a southern than for a northern candidate for the presidency ; and when such candidates were assailed by those who were jealous of slaveholders, and did not like to yield up the Government to such hands, how often have I encountered the violent prejudices of my own section with no little hazard to myself. How tri- umphantly would I appeal on such occasions to southern honor — to the magnanimity of soul which I believed always actuated southern gentlemen. Alas ! alas ! if God will pardon me for what I have done, I will promise to sin no more. * * * We certainly cannot have any further political connection with the Whigs of the South ; they have rendered such connection impossible. An impassable gulf separates us, and must here- after separate us. The southern wing of the old Whig party have joined their fortunes with what is called the National Democracy, and I wish you joy in your new connections. * * * To morrow, I believe, is to be an eclipse of the sun, and I think it perfectly meet and proper that the sun in the heavens, and the glory of the Eepublic should both go into obscurity and darkness together. Let the bill then pass ; it is a proper oc- casion for so dark and damning a deed." No extract can do any thing like justice to the mind that conceived, and the noble manliness that gave this speech utter- ance. From the time Mr. Wade made this speech, he haa known no Whig party, but devoted himself, soul and body, to the advocacy and defence of the measures of the Republican party. In the struggle over the Kansas-Nebraska bill, Mr. Wade came fully before the country as a debater. The southern fire- eaters and northern doughfaces combined to break him djwn. 252 MEN OF OUR DAT. but he hurled them back with surprising ability, and for the first time the southerners learned they had a northern master in the United States Senate, and were overmatched whenever they came in contact with the old Ohio Senator.* The New * It is to tliis portion of Mr. Wade's career that the story so graphically told by General Brisbin belono^s, and it illustrates so well hrs utter fear- lessness that we cannot refrain from quoting it, Soon after taking his seat, he witnessed one of those scenes so common in the Senate in those days. A southern fire-eater made an attack on a northern Senator, and Wade was amazed and disgusted at the cringing, cowardly way in which the northern man bore the taunts and insults of the hot-headed southerner. As no allusion was made to himself or State, Mr. Wade sat still, but when the Senate adjourned, he said openly, if ever a southern Senator made such an attack on him or his State, while he sat on that floor, he would brand him as a liar. This coming to the ears of the southern men, a Senator took occasion to pointedly speak a few days after- wards of Ohio and her people as negro thieves. Insiantly Mr. Wade sprang to his feet and pronounced the Senator a liar. The southern Senators were thunderstruck, and gathered around their champion, while the northern men grouped abott Wade. A feeler was put out from the Bouthern side, looking to retraction, but Mr. Wade retorted in his peculiar style, and demanded an apology for the insult offered himself and the people he represented. The matter thus closed, and a fight was looked upon as certain. The next day a gentleman called on the Sena- tor from Ohio, and asked the usual question touching his acknowledgment of the code. " I am here," he responded. " in a double capacity. I represent the State of Ohio, and I represent Ben. Wade. As a Senator I am opposed to duelling. As Ben. Wade, I recognize the code." '•My friend feels aggrieved," said the gentleman, "at what you said in the Senate yesterday, and will ask for an apology or satisfaction." "I was somewhat embarrassed," continued Senator Wade, "by my posi- tion yesterday, as I have some respect for the Chamber. I now take this opportunity to say what I then thought, and you will, if you please, repeat it. Your friend is a foul-mouthed old blackguard." " Certainly, Senator Wade, you do not wish me to convey such a message as that ?" •'Most undoubtedly I do; and will tell you for your own benefit, this friend of yours will never notice it. I will not be asked for either retrac- lion, explanation, or a fight." Ne.\t morning Mr. Wade came into the Senate, and proceeding to his Beat, deliberately drew from under his coat two large pistols, and unlocking BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WADE. 253 York Tribune, speaking of liis first great speech on tke Kansas Nebraska bill says : — " There are many fine orations and good arguments ielivered in the United States Senate from time to time, but not often a reall}'- good speech. In order to have a good speech, there must be a man behind it. Such a speech we have in the powerful effort of Judge Wade, and in this case the speech is but the just measure of the man." Numberless are the incidents told of Mr. Wade's sharp and telling hits made during this protracted and famous debate. We subjoin a few, for most of which we are indebted to General Brisbin. his desk laid them inside. The soutliern men looked on in silence, wliile the northern members enjoyed to the fullest extent the fire-eaters' surprise at the proceedings of the plucky Ohio Senator. No further notice was taken of the affair of the day before. Wade was not challenged, but ever afterwards treated with the utmost politeness and consideration by the Senator who had so insultingly attacked him. But, while Mr. Wade was not to be intimidated by the bullying of southern fire-eaters, no man living surpassed him in his intense contempt for northern doughfaces. Another incident, not narrated by Gen. Brisbin, but which occurred in the session of 1852-3 illustrates this very forcibly. Hon. Charles (t. Atherton of New Hampshire, better known as " Gag Atherton," from his introduction of the resolution to lay all anti-slavery petitions on the table, was emphatically a " Northern man with Southern principles." One day, Mr. Wade, who was personally very popular, even with his political opponents, was conversing with Ex-Governor Morehead of Kentuckj^ who was then visiting Washington, when Atherton came up, and at once began an attack on Mr. Wade, in regard to the Fugitive Slave law. " Why, Mr. Wade," he said, "if a nigger had run away from a good master in Kentucky, and came to your house in Ohio, wouldn't you arrest him, and send him back to his master?" "No! indeed, I wouldn't;" replied Mr. Wade. "Would you, Atherton?" "Certainly, I would," replied Mr. Atherton, "I should deem it my duty, to enforce that as much as any other law." Mr. Wade turned to Morehead; "Well, Governor, what do you say? Would yon arrest a nigger and send him back under such circumstances ?" " No," replied (Governor Morehead, gruffly, " I'd see him d— d first." "Well," said Old Bon, after a moment's pause, " I don't know as I can blame you, seeing you have got such a lliiug as this" (pointing to Atherton) to do it for you." 254 MEN OF OUB DAT. Mr. Pugh, Judge "Wade's colleague in the Senate, was an intense pro-slavery Democrat; he was a man of very fair ability, but nc match in wit or sarcasm for his radical colleague, yet he often sought a collision, and Mr. Wade never hesitated to reply to his challenge. One day, Pugh had put some taunting ques* tiDus to him respecting the common brotherhood of mankini* Wade replied : — " I have always believed, heretofore, in the doctrines of tho Declaration of Independence, that all men are born free and equal ; but of late it appears that some men are born slaves, and I regret that they are not black, so all the world might know tbem." As he said this he pointed to Pugh, and stood looking at him for several moments, with a scowl and expression of countenance that was perfectly ferocious. Mr, Brown, of Mississippi, interrupted him just as he had said, "1 know very well, sir, with what a yell of triumph the passage of this bill will be hailed both in the South and in pandemonium." Mr. Brown. — "Do you know what is going on there?" [Laughter.] Mr. Wade. — " I do not pretend to know precisely what is on foot there; but I think it pretty evident that there is a very free communication between that country and this body, and unless I am greatly mistaken, I see the dwarfish medium by which that communication is kept up." [Great laughter, and a voice on the southern side, " I guess he's got you, Brown."] During the argument on the Nebraska bill, Mr. Badger, theu a Senator from North Carolina, drew a glowing picture of slavery. He had, he said, been nursed by a black woman, and bad grown from childhood to manhood iinder her care He loved his old black mammy ; and now, if he was going to Nebraska, and the opponents of the bill succeeded in prohibit- BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WADE. 255 ing slavery there, he could not take his old mammy -with him Turning to Mr. Wade, he said : — *' Surely you will not prevent me from taking my old mammy with me?" " Certainly not," replied Mr. "Wade ; " but that is not the difficulty in the mind of the Senator. It is because, if we make the territory free, he cannot sell his old mammy when he has got her there." Mr. Wade was arguing to show that slaves were not property in the constitutional meaning of the term. He said : " If a man carries his horse out of a slave State into a free one, he does not lose his property interest in him ; but if he carries his slave into a free State, the law makes him free." Mr. Butler, interrupting him, said : " Yes, but they won't Btay with you ; they love us so well they will run off, and come back, in spite of you and your boasted freedom." Mr. Wade smilingly replied, amid roars of laughter : " Oh, yes. Senator, I know they love you so well, you have to make a Fugitive Slave law to catch them." The southern men, having tried in vain to head off Mr. Wade, appealed to their northern allies to help them. One day Mr. Douglas rose in his seat, and interrupted Mr. Wade, who was speaking. Instantly the chamber became silent as death, and all eyes were turned in the direction of the two standing Senators. Every one expected to see Wade demolished in a moment, by the great Illinois Senator. *' You, sir," said Mr. Douglas, in measured tones, " continually compliment southern men who support this bill (Nebraska), but bitterly denounce northern men who support it. Why ia this ? You say it is a moral wrong ; you say it is a crime. If ihat be so, is it not as much a crime for a southern man to support it, as for a northern man to do so ?" Mr. Wade. — " No, sir, I say not." / 256 MEN OF OUR DAY. Mr. Douglas. — " The Senator says not. Then lie entertains a different code of morals from myself, and — " Mr Wade interrupting Douglas, and pointing to him, with scorn marked on every lineament of his face, ^" Your code of morals I Your morals!! My God, I hope so, sir." The giant was hit in the forehead, and after standing for a moment with his face red as scarlet, dropped silently into hij< seat, while Mr. Wade proceeded with his speech as quietly as though nothing had occurred. Mr. Douglas was angry, however, and closely watched Wade for a chance to pounce upon and scalp him. It soon occurred, and in this way : Mr. Wade had said something complimentary about Colonel Lane, of Kansas, when Mr. Douglas rose and said: " Colonel Lane cannot be believed — he has been guilty of perjury and forgery." Mr. Wade. — " And what proof, sir, have you of these allega- tions ? Your unsupported word is not sufficient," Mr. Douglas. — " I have the afSdavit of Colonel Lane, in which, some time since, he swore one thing, and now states another." Mr. Wade. — " And you, sir, a lawyer, presume to charge this man with being guilty of forgery and perjury, and then offer him as a witness to prove your own word." Douglas saw in a moment he was hopelessly caught, and attempted to retreat, but Wade pounced upon him and gave him a withering rebuke, while the chamber shook Avith roars of laughter. Such scenes have to be witnessed to fully understand them, as there is as much in the exhibition as in the words. Mr. Douglas continued to badger Wade, sometimes getting the better of him, but often getting roughly handled, until Wade, worn out with defending himself, determined to become the attacking party. Soon afterward, the " Little Giant " was BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WADE. 257 bewailing tlie fate of the nation, and picturing the sad condition it would be in if the Free Soilers succeeded. Having worked himself up into a passion, Avhen he was at the highest pitch, Mr. Wade rose in his seat and said, with indescribable coolness, "Well, what are you going to do about it?" Douglas, for a moment, was surprised and dumbfounded, and then attempted to proceed ; but the pith was knocked out of his argument, and the Senators only smiled at his earnestness, and he, at last, sat down in disgust. Mr. Douglas afterward said, '' That interrogatory of AVade's was the most effective speech I ever heard in the Senate. Con- found the man ; it was so ridiculous, and put so comically, I knew not what answer to make him, and became ridiculous myself in not being able to tell ' what I was going to do about it.' " While the Lecompton bill was under discussion, Mr. Toombs, of Georgia, referring to the minority, of which Mr. Wade was one, said: "The majority have rights and duties, and I trust, there is fidelity enough to themselves and their principles, and to their country, in the majority, to stand together at all haz- ards, and crush this factious minority." Instantly, Mr. Wade sprang to his feet, and shaking his fist at Toombs, roared out : " Have a care, sir ; have a care. You can't crush me nor my people. You can never conquer us , we will die first. I may fall here in the Senate chamber, but I will never make any compromise with any such men. You may bring a majority and out-vote me, but, so help me God, I will neither compromise or be crushed. That's what I have to say to your threat." A southern Senator one day said, roughly, to Wade, " If you don't stop your abolition doctrines, we will break up the Union. We will secede, sir 1" Wade held out his hand, and said, com- 17 / 258 MEN OF OUR DAY. ically, " Good-by, Senator, if you are going now ; T pray yoa don't delay a moment on my account." Senator Evans, of South Carolina, a very grave and good old man, one day was exhibiting in the Senate chamber and speak- ing of a copy of Garrison's Liberator, with its horrible pictures of slavery. Turning to Mr. Wade, who sat near him, he said : " Is it not too bad that such a paper should be allowed to exist ? Why will not the authorities of the United States suppress such a slanderous sheet ? Can it be possible that any patriotic citizen of the North will tolerate such an abomination?" Senator Wade put on his spectacles, and looking at the title of the paper, exclaimed in surprise, " Why, Senator Evans, in Ohio, we con- sider this one of our best family papers !" The Senators roared ; but Mr. Evans, who had a great respect for Mr. Wade, turned sadly away, saying, "I am sorry to hear you say so, Mr. Wade; it shows whither we are drifting." Notwithstanding Mr. Wade's bitter opposition to the slave power, the southern men always respected and liked him. Mr. Toombs, the Georgia fire-eater, said of him, in the Senate : " My friend from Ohio puts the matter squarely. He is always honest, outspoken and straightforward, and I wish to God the rest of you would imitate him. He speaks out like a man. He says what is the difference, and it is. He means what he says ; you don't always. He and I can agree about every thing on earth except our sable population." There was not a northern demasfOf^ue in Congress who would not have given gladly all his ill-gotten reputation to have had such a compliment paid him by a southern Senator as was paid by Mr. Toombs to Senator Wade. In the debates on the organization of Kansas as a State, Mr. Wade avowed himself a Eepublican — a Black Republican, if they chose to call him so — and as determined in his opposition BE>rjAMIN FRANKLIN WADE. 259 to slavery extension, under all circumstances and at all times. In the course of one of the speeches he made on that question, he made use of the following language : " Sir, I am no sycophant or worshipper of power anywhere. 1 know how easy it is for some minds to glide along with the cur- rent of popular opinion, where influence, respectability, and all those motives which tend to seduce the human heart are brought to bear. I am not unconscious of the persuasive power exerted by these considerations to drag men along in the current ; but I am not at liberty to travel that road. I am not unaware how unpopular on this floor are the sentiments I am about to advo- cate. I well understand the epithets to which they subject their supporters. Every man who has been in this hall for one hour knows the difference between him who comes here as the de- fender and supporter of the rights of human nature, and him who comes as the vile sycophant and flatterer of those in power, y I know that the one road is easy to travel ; the other is hard, i and at this time perilous. But, sir, I shall take the path of duty 1 and shall not swerve from it. "I am amazed at the facility with which some men follow in the wake of slavery. Sometimes it leads me even to hesitate whether I am strictly correct in my idea that all men are born to equal rights, for their conduct seems to me to contravene the doctrine. I see in some men an abjectness, a want of that manly independence which enables a man to rely on himself and face the world on his own principles, that I don't know but that I am wrong in advocating universal liberty. I wish to heaven all such were of the African race." The brutal and cowardly attack on Hon. Charles Sumner by Preston S. Brooks, in May, 1856, called out all the grand and heroic elements of Mr. Wade's nature. Others might htsitate and fear to enter upon the discussion of the question of slavery, when its advocates resorted to the bludgeon and pistol as their reply to the arguments of the anti-slavery men ; but it was not m Ben "Wade to falter. On the next day after the outrage he MEN" OF OUR DAY. rose and commenced bis speech in denunciation of the atrocious deed, with these memorable words : " Mr. President, if the hour has arrived in the history of this Republic when its Senators are to be sacrificed and pay the for- feit of their lives for opinions' sake, I know of no fitter place to die than in this chamber, with our Senate robes around us ; and here, if necessary, I shall die at my post, and in my place, for the liberty of debate and free discussion." The southern men writhed, as if in pain, as his scathing words fell hot and heavy upon them, portraying the cowardice, the meanness, the infamy of the deed, and it required a brow of brass to stand up in defence of it, after this severe yet dignified denunciation of the assault. During the war, Senator Wade was one of the ablest and most untiring members of the Senate. He was chairman of the Committee on Territories, and also of the special Committee on the Conduct of the War, a committee whose services were of the greatest value to the national cause. Ohio wisely kept him in the Senate for three successive terms, the last of which ended March 4th, 1869. In the begin- ning of March, 1867, the term of office of Hon. Lafayette S. Foster, President pro tern, of the Senate, and acting Yice-Presi- dent of the United States, having expired, Mr. Wade was elected by the Senate as their presiding officer, a position for which his large experience, thorough political and parliamentary know- ledge, and fearless independence, eminently fitted him. During the impeachment trial, he, according to the Constitution, resigned the cl^air to the Chief Justice of the United States, whose duty it was to preside in such a trial, and it was the understanding that in case of the President's conviction, Mr. Wade would suc- ceed to the presidential chair. On the 4th of March, 1869, Mr. Wade surrendered his place BENJAMIN FRANKLIN WADE. 261 as President of the Senate to his successor, Hon, Schuyler Col- fax, his kinsman by marriage, and retired with satisfaction to his home in northern Ohio. From that peaceful and quiet home he was called in January, 1871, to be the chairman of a Commis- sion to visit Santo Domingo and ascertain the desires of the people in regard to annexation to the United States, and the advan- tages and disadvantages of such annexation. The Commission examined the island, very thoroughly, and repoi'ted in favor of annexation, but the feeling against it in Congress was so strong that it was given up. Since his return fi-om Santo Domingo Mr. Wade has not taken any part in public affairs. In person, Mr. Wade is about five feet eight inches in height. Rtout, and of dark but clear complexion. His eyes are sraall^ jet black and deeply cut, and when roused, they shine like coals of fire. He is slightly stooped, but walks without a cane, and is sprightly and active. His jaws are firm and large, the under one being very strong and compact. The lips are full and round, the upper one doubling, at the corners of his mouth, over the lower one, which gives the Senator a ferocious and savage sort of look ; and this it is that causes so many persons to misunder- stand the true character of the man, and mistake him for a fierce, hard, cold man, when he is, in reality, one of the w^armest, kindest-hearted men in the world. His face is not a handsome one, and if you examine it in detail, you will sa}'' he is an ugly man ; and yet there is in that face a sort of rough harmony, an honest, bluff, heartiness that makes you like it. There is nothing weak, bad, or treacherous-looking about it ; and when he speaks the features light up, and the mobilized countenance gives to the straightforward words such an interest that you no longer remember his homeliness at all. When sitting silent or listen- ing, he has a way of looking at one with his piercing black eyes that at once disconcerts a rascal or dishonest man, and is often 262 MEN OF OUR DAY. most annoying to the innocent and honest. You feel he is read- ing you and weighing closely your motives for what you are saying. There is no use in trying to deceive or lie to old Ben. Wade ; if he don't find you out and hint at your motives before you leave, rest assured he understands you, and only keeps his belief to himself, because he does not desire to wound your feelings. We do not think Mr. Wade ever owned such a thing as a finger-ring or breast-pin. He dresses in plain black, and wears a standing- collar of the old style, and is always scrupulously clean. Always talkative and lively when out of his seat, he is silent, grave and thoughtful when in the Senate chamber. Any one who looked at him from the galleries, as he sat daily in the Yice-President's chair, presiding over the deliberations of the highest tribunal in the land, could see in his quiet repose a pic- ture of real strength and dignity such as should characterize the American Senator. As chairman of the Committee on Territories, he reported the first provision prohibiting slavery in all the territory of the United States to be subsequently acquired ; the bill for negro sufii'age in the District of Columbia; carried the homestead bill through the Senate ; led the Senate in the division of Virginia and the formation of the new State of West Virginia ; and secured the admission of Nevada and Colorado into the Union. On one point only did he differ from Mr. Lincoln, viz. : his proposed reconstructiou policy ; and the difference was for a time strong and decided; but, in the end. Mi. Lincoln acknow- ledged that that was the great error of his life, and receded from the measures he had proposed. HAMILTON FISH SECRETARY OF STATE. ^jrt AMILTON FISH, the present Secretary of State, is a ^- j I sou of Colonel Nicholas Fish, and a native of the city ^^^ of New York, where he was born in 1809. He is e) descended from one of what are called " the old families " of that city, not less on account of their lineage, than from their standing, wealth, and respectability. He was educated at Col- umbia College, from which he graduated in 1827, with an ex- cellent reputation for ability and attainments. He embraced the profession of law ; was admitted an attorney in the Superior Court in 1830, and, three years later was regularly enrolled among the counsellors of that court. As a lawyer, his business was large, and always attended to with a promptness, ability and diligence which would naturaljy have insured its increase^ had not the management of his large estate occupied more of his time than was consistent with the attainment of the highest honors or the lucrative emoluments of the profession. Early in life he manifested a deep interest in politics, and it could scarcely have been otherwise with a young man of his social positioq and intelligence, when we consider the period of remarkable political activity in which he grew up to man's estate. Although then as now, rather conservative, he was generally associated with those of advanced opinions. In 1831: he was an unsucr 263 264 MEN OF OUR DAY. cessful candidate for the State Assembly ; but, was more suc- cessful in 1837, and his course in that body afforded entire satis- faction to his party friends ; for, while not particularly distin- guished in debate, his consistency as a politician, business tact, and ability, gained him a prominent place on the Whig side of the House, and the favorable regard of those with whom he was particularly affiliated. In 1842 he was elected to represent the Sixth Congressional District (embracing the six upper wards, except the 13th and 14th) over John McKeon (Democrat), by a small majority ; whicn, however, was considered a great triumph, inasmuch as Governor Bouck's (Democrat) majority over Seward (Whig) was about 1200 in the same district. Mr. Fish's success, however, was owing not so much to his personal popularity, as to his well-known approval of the principles and objects of the Native American party, who threw their influence in his favor. He served but one term, was Chairman of the Military Committee, and attained a creditable standing among the prominent Whigs of that day, which paved the way for future political prefer- ment ; so that, when he retired again to private life, his friends were unwilling to surrender their claims upon him, and he was nominated as the Whig candidate for Lieutenant-Governor of the State, at the State Convention of 1846, on the same ticket with John Young, which, however, was defeated by the " anti- renters " adoption of the Democratic candidate. The next year, 1847, he was elected Lieutenant-Governor in the place of Mr. Gardiner, who resigned (the opposition failing in consequence of division in the Democratic ranks), and presided over the deliberations of the Senate with dignity and acceptability. In 1848, Governor Young declined renomination, and Mr. Fish, ' as Lieutenant Governor, naturally attracted the attention of his party to himself. In spite of the then existing division of the HAMILTON FISH. 265 Whig party into "Conservatives" (afterwards National Whigs), with whom Mr. Fish sympathized, and "Eadicals" (or Seward Whigs), he received the nomination for Governor, at the State Convention, on September 14th, with Geo. W. Patterson as Lieutenant-Governor. The Whigs, owing to divisions in the Democratic camp, succeeded, by a plurality vote, and Mr. Fish took the oath of office January 1st, 1849. The position being pretty well stripped of patronage by the Constitution of 1846, the new Governor found no difficulty in preserving that mode- rate, neutral course of conduct, which became the position, and which was so acceptable to his own tastes, and his administra- tion passed harmoniously, although slavery was bitterly agitat- ing the councils of the State, as well as of the nation. Mr. Fish was early committed to the Wilmot proviso, and in his annual message, took strong grounds against the extension of slave ter- ritory. His messages, like all public papers from his hand, are conspicuous for their style and the modesty with which his opinions are stated. Among his recommendations were the institution of a State Agricultural School ; of a School for In- struction in the Mechanical Arts; the restoration of the office of County Superintendent of Schools; the revision and alteration of the laws authorizing taxes and assessments for local improve- ments ; a more general and equable tax on personal property ; the establishment of tribunals of conciliation, in accordance with provisions of the Constitution of 1846; and a modification of the criminal code. After his retirement from the gubernatorial chair, he was sent to the United States Senate (in place of Daniel S. Dickinson), where he served from 1852 to 1857. During this time, includ- ing as it did the epoch of the Repeal of the Missouri Compro- mise, he became identified with the present Republican party. After leaving Congress, he spent several years in the enjoyment 2G6 MEN OF OUR DAY. of travel in Europe. At the outbreak of the War of Secession lie was boldly outspoken for the Union, and participated in the overwhelming demonstration at Union Square, New York, May 20tli, 1861, where he made a short but stirring appeal lu January 1862, he was appointed, together with Bishop Ames of the Methodist Episcopal Church, upon a Commission to relieve the Union prisoners in the Southern prisons, and although they were denied admission to the territory held by Southern arms, they nevertheless succeeded in negotiating a general exchange of prisoners of war. Later in the same year Mr. Fish wrote a letter, in which he said : " We must conquer peace ; we cannot buy it, and if we could, it would be valueless, as it would be disgraceful." At the close of the war Mr. Fish again went to Europe, but soon after his return was nominated Secretary of State by Presi- dent Grant, March 1st, 1869, in place of E. B. Washburne, resigned. In the administration of the duties devolving upon this office, which has come to be considered of laie years the Premiership of the Cabinet, Mr. Fish's course has not always met the public approval. Like most men of reticent and con- servative temper, he possesses a very strong will, and some notions which make him a difficult man to deal with. In his relations with our ministers to foreign courts, and the ministers of other powers to the United States, he has either been unfortu- nate or perverse. Mr. Motley, a gentleman and scholar of as high social position as Mr. Fish, a historian of whom the nation had a right to be proud, and a diplomatist of very considerable experience, was appointed Minister to the Court of St. James at the commencement of President Grant's administration; but within a year fell under Secretary Fish's displeasure, and after a correspondence, which was not specially creditable to either party, was dismissed. The unseemly quarrel with Mr. Catacazy, the Russian Minister, was not probably Mr. Fish's fault, for the HAMILTON FISH. 267 Bussian was not lit for his place ; but the disgraceful wrangling over it, and the discourtesy to the son of the European monarch most friendly to us, was not an edifying spectacle. In his diplomatic intercourse with other powers, notably with Spain, Denmark, and France, Mr. Fish has at times been rash and fretful. While not lacking the ability to handle a constitu- tional law point as adroitly as any of his predecessors, he has fallen below the generality of them in courteous style of state- ment. Yankee brusqueness may accord perfectly with oui home dispositions,' and may even be excused in private character abroad, but diplomatists have grown so used to suave methods of speech that a departure for any reason is well nigh inex- cusable. Secretary Fish has come in for a large share of censure in his method of conducting the Alabama claims controversy. But as most of that censure was predicated on the supposed entire failure of the treaty, it has been in a great measure withdrawn since the prospect of the treaty's ratification, in a modified form, has brightened. We shall not discuss the preliminaries of the treaty, but sim- ply state that the nation expected much from it, not only as a comipensation for actual losses, and as a sedative to that rancor- ous feeling which was distracting two nearly allied countries, but as a harbinger of the era of amicable arbitration wherever national differences existed. In order to reach the desired end both nations had to concede something. Mr. Fish's position was strongly taken. It accorded with the views of our greatest diplomatists, not even excepting those of his bitterest personal enemy, Mr. Sumner. When Eng- land recoiled from it, and took the position that she could not honorably admit our claim for indefinite consequential damages, perhups Mr. Fish continued to be a little too stiff" and exacting. At any rate it was not until a powerful sentiment grew up in 268 MEN OF OUR DAY. the country against the advisability of adhering to such conse- quential claims that he showed signs of yielding. When he did yield it was evidently against his better judgment, and with a reluctance that proved a strong attachment to his original position. His conduct thus far only shows that native convic- tion was with difficulty overborne by considerations of policy, , or that concessory spirit which so largely enters into successful diplomacy. His enemies were, however, not slow to seize this opportu- nity for first driving home upon him the charge of obstinacy, and afterwards when he yielded, the charge of cowardice, which charge, on the other side of the water, took the shape of disin- genuousness and trickery ; for though he pressed at first the claims for indirect damages with all his ardor, he privately de- clared that it was not done with the expectation of recovering upon thein. The fact is, he simply took a lawyer-like view of them, and regarded their presentation as necessary to show that some modification of the laws regulating the conduct of neutrals was needed. We cannot think that either cowardice or a desire to act unfairly is an ingredient of Mr. Fish's nature. We must credit him with a strong will and great professional pride, amount- ing at times, perhaps, to forgetfulness of those little refinements which unavoidably attach themselves to diplomacy, and to abhorrence of those compromises which in every day life are oftener evidences of weakness than strength. Instinctively he is a safe and true counsellor. His slowness may give rise to the impression that he is timid, but surely this is rebutted by that firmness, when his mind is once made up, which has so often thrown him open to the charge of wilfulness and stubbornness. The/oj-^e of the diplomatist is tact. That he lacks the shrewd- ness and smoothness of diction, which have immortalized shal- lower men, must not go to discredit the integrity of his character the depth of his learning, or the soundness of his judgments. GEORGE S. BOUTWELL. ,03 bEORGE S. BOUTWELL was born in Brookline. Massachusetts, January 28tli, 1818. In April, 1820, •^V£ bis parents removed to Lunenburg, where they lived to on a farm until 1863, when both died, his mother in March, and his father in July. His mother was of the Marshall family. Mr. Boutwell's father was a man of good abilities, and was twice a member of the Massachusetts House of Repre- sentatives, and a member of the Constitutional Convention of 1853. Mr. Boutwell learned to read at a very early age, stand- ing at his mother's knee, while she read the large family Bible. The result was that he learned to read as the type setters read, " by the word method." As he grew up he could not remember the time when he could not read. He went to the public school six or seven very brief summer terms, and to perhaps as many private schools, of a few weeks each, and usually kept by the same teacher. He attended winter schools until, and including, his sixteenth birth- day. The next winter he taught a school in Shirley, Massa- chusetts. At that time he had thoroughly mastered Arithmetic, and learned something of Latin, Algebra, Geometry, Astronomy, Natural Philosophy and History. He studied these branches, in scbool and out, under most unfavorable circumstances. 270 MEN OF OUR DAY. When nearly tliirteen years old he went into a country store at Lunenburg and remained there four years. In March, 1835, he went to Groton, entering upon the mercantile business and continuing there as clerk or partner for several years. The early facility in reading, gained at his mother's knee, created a taste for study, and an insatiable thirst for knowledge. In the second story of the store where he served as clerk, there was kept an old, but choice and well selected library. This was a mine of wealth to young Boutwell. In the absence of customers, and so far as fidelity to his employer permitted, he read during the day. But at nine o'clock, when the store closed, he repaired promptly to the library and there read till overcome by drowsiness, when he roused himself by some physical exercise, and continued his reading. When sleep again asserted its claims, he plunged his head in a pail of water, at hand for that purpose, and under that renewed stimulus read on till an unduly late hour of the night. The fact that at this early age, with such meagre school advantages, and while so closely occupied with farm work and clerk service, he had made so large attainments in the studies named, and that he was able to teach school at sixteen, shows his enthu- siasm in the work of self-culture, his unusual quickness in learning, and invincible energy in pursuing his studies, in the face of manifold difB.culties. When only eighteen years of age he commenced, systematical- ly, the study of law, and entered his name in an attorney's office, studying at odd times, chiefly nights. At the same time he renewed the study of Latin, under Dr. A. B. Bancroft, and read Yirgil, and other Latin authors. While an active member of the Legislature, in the winter of 18i2-43, he resumed the study of French under Count Laporte, which he had previously pursued without a teacher, devoting for several months one GEORGE S. BOUTWELL. 271 half hour a day to this study. For six years his thirst for knowledge almost consumed him. He devoted every moment he could command to study, working till midnight, and often till one, two, or even three o'clock in the morning. This zeal was self-prompted, and without the stimulus of a teacher or any rival companions. This excessive labor injured his health, and in 1841-42, he was obliged to diminish his hours of study. At nineteen he delivered his first public lecture before the Groton Lyceum. In 1840, he entered the political contest in favor of Mr. Van Buren. At the age of twenty-one, he was elected a member of the school committee in Groton, a large town of more than usual wealth and culture. The esteem in which he was held by his fellow-townsmen is also shown by the fact that in the same year he was the candidate of the Democratic party for the Legislature and though defeated the first two years, continued to be their candidate for ten years. He was a member of the legislature in 1842, '43, '44, '47, '48, '49, and '50. He soon became a prominent and influential member, and surpassed all by his thorough mastery of the subjects which he discuss,ed and by his readiness and ability in debate. He successfully advocated the questions of retrenchment of expenses, enlargement of the school fund, and Harvard college reform. The legislation on these subjects, and especially in reference to Harvard college, was mainly due to his efforts. Between 1842 and 1850, he was Railway Commissioner, Bank Commis- sioner, Commissioner on Boston Harbor, and a member of special State Committees upon the subject of Insanity, and upon the Public Lands in Maine. In all those years he gave numer- ous Lyceum lectures, and political addresses. In 1844, '46, and '48, he was the candidate of the Democratic party for Congress. He was nominated for the ofi&ce of governor, in 1849-50, and 272 MEN OF OUR DAY. was elected to that office in 1851, and 1852. In the State Leoislature and Constitutional Convention of 1853, he was early recognized as a leader. He was familiar with parliamen- tary rules, was always in order, never prolix, speaking merely to be heard or without something to say, but always aimed directly at the point, and of course at all times had the ear of the Convention. He united firmness with conciliation and exhibited fairness, tolerance, and courtesy to opponents. In the Constitutional Convention, Rufus Choate was his lead- ing opponent. Early in the session, Mr. Choate, by a most elo- quent speech, had won the admiration of the Convention. The subject was " Town Representation." Mr. Boutvvell rose to reply. His apparent temerity in meeting the most brilliant member on the Whig side, quite surprised those who did not know him. But the apprehension of a damaging comparison, or a failure, at once passed away. He enchained the attention of the Convention, and maintained his cause with signal ability. He prepared and reported the Constitution which was submitted to the people and adopted. The same year he became a member of the " State Board of Education." It was a deserved tribute to his clear judgment and substantial educa- tion, that Massachusetts, ever proud of her public schools, should call one without collegiate culture to succeed the classi- cal Barnas Sears, and the eloquent and enthusiastic Horace Mann. He was connected with this board ten years, and, as its secretary for five years, acquitted himself with marked ability. His five annual reports, his commentary on the school laws of Massachusetts, and his volume on " Educational Topics and Institutions,'' rank high in the educational literature of the country. From 1851 to 1860, he was a member of the Board of Overseers of Harvard college. In 1856, he was elected a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; in 1801, a member of the Phi Beta Kappa of Cambrid>;e, and de- GEORGE S. BOUTWELL. 273 livered tbe commencement oration. Political subjects, according to usage and obvious propriety, are avoided on sucb occasions, but in this crisis of the nation, officers of college and of the society called upon the ex-governor to discuss freely the state of the country. His oration, after showing that slavery was the cause of the war, demonstrated the justice and necessity of emancipation. It was in advance of the times, and was severely censured, not only by Democrats but by many Republican leaders and papers. It was published entire in various jour- nals, and circulated widely through the country, and hastened the great revolution of public sentiment on this subject more than any address by any American statesman during the first year of the war. Immersed in public affairs since his majority, no other man of his age in Massachusetts has been so long and constantly in the public service. No other man living, in that State, has held so many, varied and responsible offices, in each of which his course has been marked by integrity, fidelity, and ability. To the young his life is a fit example of the cardinal virtues of industry, uprightness, and frugality, of strict temperance, and unwearied perseverance. Mr. Boutwell is not a politician, but a statesman. In all his history, his faith has been in truth, in right, in justice and principle, and not in art and scheming, in management and chicanery. Fidelity to principle has marked his whole career. He has ever been an earnest and consistent advocate of the rights of man. He left the Democratic party upon the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854, his last vote with that party being in 1853. He was a leader in the organization of the Republican party in Massachusetts, and was a delegate to the Baltimore Convention, in 1864 ; was a member of the Peace Congress in 1861 ; organized the new Department of Internal lb 274 MEN OF OUR DAT. Revenue, and served as Commissioner until 1862, when he resigned to take his seat in the Thirty-eighth Congress. He served on the Judiciary Committee, in the Thirty-ninth and Fortieth Congress, and was one of the managers in the Impeach- ment case. He was re-elected to the Forty-first Congress, and took his seat at the First Session, commencing March 4th, 1869, but on the 11th of March he was nominated by President Grant for Secre- tary of the Treasury, and has held that important and responsi- ble office till the present time (1872.) In the management of the national finances, he has had many difficulties to contend with, both from the interference of others, and the novelty of his position, many of the emergencies he has been called to meet being entirely without precedent. His nature and habit incline him to, perhaps, an excess of caution ; and the petty details of his early experience in a country store are not, it may be, the best preparation for the comprehensive sweep and the vast movements of a national treasury, which disburses its four or five hundred millions or more annually. Yet his financial man- agement has been, taken as a whole, a success. He has extin- guished three hundred and thirty millions of the public debt; has made a very good beginning in funding the remainder at five per cent, or less; has kept down the price of gold, and when he deemed interference called for, has always interfered for the people and against the speculators. Mr. Boutwell is a man of judicial mind, instinctive sagacity, strong memory, iron will, indomitable perseverance, great power of mental concentration, and entire self-command. His ener- gies never seem to flag. His fine voice, distinct articulation and deliberate but earnest delivery, make him an impressive speaker. His style is clear and vigorous. He is too earnest to deal in^ sallies of wit, the play of imagination, or ornaments of rhetoric,* GEORGE S. BOUTWELL. 275 but be is always sincere and impressive. His mind, wbile full of information, patient in details, and accurate in tbe minutest point, grasps easily great questions, and tends to broad and rapid generalizations. He bas trained bimself to " tbink on bis legs.'i He enjoys debate, excels in forensic contests, and seems always strongest in tbe closest grapple of mental combat. GEORGE MAXWELL ROBESON, SECRETARY OF THE NAVY. faEORGE MAXWELL ROBESON was, until his appoint- ment to the Secretaryship of the Navy, a resident of Cam- den, New Jersey, where as a lawyer, he had attained emi- S nence, both in professional and social life. He is a son of William P. Robeson, a native of Philadelphia, who was an Asso- ciate judge of the Philadelphia county court. He comes from a family that have been long distinguished in both law and politics. His maternal uncle, J. P. Maxwell, and his grandfather, George C. Maxwell, were members of Congress from New Jersey. Mr. Robeson was bora in the town of Belvidere, Warren County, New Jersey, in the year 1829. At an early age he matriculated at Princeton College, and, when under eighteen years of age, graduated with distinguished honors. Subse- quently he began the study of law, at Newark, New Jersey, in the office of Chief Justice Hornblower, and although his learning and abilities fitted him to discharge the duties of his profession before he arrived at a legal age, he was obliged to wait that period under the rules of the court, before being admitted to practice. Commencing his professional duties at Newark, he subse- quently removed to Jersey City, where the larger commercial and manufacturing interests and population afforded a wider field for his abilities. 276 GEORGE MAXWELL ROBESON. 277 In 1855 Governor Newell appointed Mr, Robeson Prosecutor of the Pleas of Camden county, and he became a resident of Cam- den, holding his office of public prosecutor until 1860. Retiring from that office he became a law partner of Alden'C. Scovel, Esq., but in the year 1865, when Mr. Theodore F. Frelinghuysen, then Attorney General of New Jersey, was elected Senator, he recommended Mr. Robeson to the vacant Attorney- Generalship, to which position Governor Ward appointed him. Mr. Robeson has always taken an active part in politics, and was one of the most ardent and able supporters of the war policy of the Government through all our late troubles. He was a member of the Sanitary Commission, and was from the first associated with the Union League of Philadelphia. In 1862 he was appointed by Governor Olden a Brigadier-General, and commanded a camp of volunteers at Woodbury, New Jersey for the organization of troops. Mr. Robeson is in the prime of life, and is universally esteemed for his abilities and his agree- able social character. His nomination as Secretary of the Navy, June 25th, 1869, though somewhat surprising, since he had not been known in political circles outside of his own State, was not, on the whole, injudicious. He had had no special training in naval matters, nor any particular acquaintance with marine affairs, but in these matters he was probably as well informed as many of his prede- cessors, better, perhaps, than some of them ; and having spent most of his life in the vicinity of large seaports, he would natu- rally have been attracted to the interests of both our commercial and national marine. His administration of the Department has been, in general, very creditable to him. Charges were brought against him by a New York editor of corruption, fraud and malfeasance in office; but on a careful and thorough investigation by a committee of the 278 MEN OF OUR DAY. House. of Kepresentatives, they were proved to have been un- founded, and the only instance in which there was ground for any semblance of blame was in his payment of the Secor (Jersey Gity) claim, after it had been once decided adversely by Con- gress and by an official Board of Examination. The claim was not, perhaps, unjust, and it was reasonable that the contractors, if wronged, should have some means of redress ; but it was a some- what dangerous stretch of official authority for the head of a department to order a large payment made to them on his own motion, after it had been adjudicated by the only competent authority that they had been paid in full. It is due to him to say, however, that in this case there was no just imputation in regard to his honesty and integrity, but that his action was only an error of judgment in regard to the scope of his official powers. Mr. Robeson unquestionably possesses a high order of talent, and may be regarded as one of the ablest administrative officers of the Government. His genial temper, graceful address and fascinating manners, render him deservedly popular in private life. GEORGE H. WILLIAMS, ATTORNEY-GENERAL OF THE UNITED STATES. HE present Attorney-General of the United States, George H. Williams, was born in Columbia county, New York, on the 28d day of March, 1823 ; received an academical education at an academy in Onondaga county ; studied law, and was admitted to tlje bar in 1844. He immediately sought a field for the exercise of his talents in the "Great West," and located in tlie young and growing State of Iowa. Ilere he displayed energy, probity, and versatile talents which attracted attention, and resulted, not only in a flattering professional business, but in the honor of being elected, in 1847, Judge of the First Judicial District of that State, a position which he occupied, with credit to himself and to the general satisfaction of the public, until 1852. In that year he was a presidential elector from Iowa, and received, in 1853, from Presi- dent Pierce, the appointment of Chief Justice of the then Terri- tory of Oregon, to which he was again reappointed in 1857, by President Buchanan, but resigned. He was elected a member of the State Constitutional Convention of Oregon in 1858; and in 1865 took his seat in the United States Seriate, as a Union Republican, from that State (succeeding B. F. Harding, Union Republican), his term expiring March 4th, 1871. His course on the bench and as Senator was characterized by Bound judgment, fine legal abilities, and unquestioned honesty 279 280 MEN OP OUR DAY of principle and purpose. In Congress he served on many im- portant committees, such as the Standing Committee on Claims, Private Land Claims, Finance, and the Special Committees on the Rebellious States and Reconstruction, Expenses of Senate, and the National Committee to accompany the remains of the martyred Lincoln from "Washington to his home in Illinois. His remarkable legal attainments, and especially his profound knowledge of constitutional and international law made his name prominent for the position of Attorney -General when Judge Hoar resigned, but the President for some cause selected Judge Akerman of Georgia, who in turn resigned in January, 1872, when Judge Williams was tendered the oflEice and accepted it. The Attornej'' -General's office can boast of many eminent names, men like Reverdy Johnson, Judge Black, William M. Bvarts, and others, who brought to it the lustre of great reputa- tions, but it has been filled by no jurist of higher ability or more spotless reputation than the present incumbent. JACOB DOLSON COX. J\T has always seemed to us that Plutarch was guilty of 1 holding up to undeserved scorn, that Athenian citizen ~ whom he represents as having applied to Aristides to ^3 inscribe on his shell his own name, that he might vote to banish that eminently just magistrate. Plutarch says that the judge asked him if he knew anything against Aristides. " No," he replied ; " but he was tired with hearing everyone call him the Just." The man was not so far out of the way, after all. Aristides was undoubtedly an upright and just ruler, but he lacked sympathy with humanity, and that personal attraction or magnetism which made many worse men more popular and bet- ter loved than he, and the poor fellow who wanted him banished, really revolted not against his being called the "Just," but at his not being also the " merciful" and the sympathizing magis- trate. Something of this same feeling has always prevented General Cox from being a popular idol. He is eminently a correct, just, upright man; he is a fine scholar, accomplished in all directions ; he was a good though not a great soldier, always safe but never daring; he had the respect of his troops, though not their love; he was an able and judicious legislator ; he made a good record as Governor, though he was never popular. Ilis administration of the Department of the Interior was skilful and successful, but he made no friends, and when he withdrew on the alleged ground that he could not be a party to corrupt and fraudulent disposi* 281 28:s MEN OF OUR DAY. tion of the public lands, his protest, though admirably written, was so cold and formal that it carried very little weight with it He was "the just," undoubtedly, but people had become weary of a justice which lacked soul, which had no sympathies with the living, throbbing, and oft-times sinning heart of humanity. The Germans have a legend that the Frost King found one night that a daring traveller had invaded his dominions. Though very angry, he did not, as he might have done, destroy the in- truder ; he only touched his breast with his icy finger, and thenceforward the man wherever he went bore a frozen heart in his bosom. We incline to the belief that this man with the fro- zen heart had a numerous progeny. But to our biographical sketch. Jacob Dolson Cox was born in Montreal, Canada, October 27th, 1828, during the temporary residence of his parents (who were citizens of New York) in that city. His mother was a lineal descendant of Elder William Brewster of the Mayflower. He removed to Ohio in 1846, graduated from Oberlin College in 1851, and commenced the practice of the law at Warren, Ohio, in 1852. Not long after he married a daughter of Eev. Charles G. Finney, D.D., the eloquent and able president of Oberlin College. A man of scholarly habits, Mr. Cox soon distinguished him- self by his attainments in literature, history, philosophy and military and political science. He was withal a well read and very able lawyer, a fine horseman, a good fencer, and for a militia officer, remarkable for his knowledge of the practice as well as the theory of military manoeuvres. He had been com- missioned Brigadier-General in the Ohio militia before he had attained his thirtieth year, and was so able a politician as to be sent to the Ohio Senate from the Trumbull and Mahoning Dis- trict in 1859. Here he and James A. Garfield, one of the lead- JACOB DOLSON COX. 283 ing members of the last three Congresses, and himself subse- quently a general of Volunteers, were reckoned the leaders of the Eadical wing of Ohio Eepublicans. When the President's proclamation of April 15th, 1861, was received. Senator Cox entered with a great deal of spirit into the work of organizing the Ohio contingent, and was at once commissioned, by Governor Dennison, Brigadier-General of Ohio Volunteers, that he might do this work more effectually. He organized and prepared the Ohio troops for the field at Camp Dennison, and reenlisted most of them as three years regiments. About the 1st of July General Cox was commissioned, by President Lincoln, Brigadier-General of Volunteers, ante-dating from May 15th, 1861, and soon after was called into the field. We have not space to go over his war record in any great detail ; but as we follow him through the campaign in Western Virginia under McClellan and Rosecrans, now advancing and accomplishing what he had been directed to do, carefully and well ; now compelled to fall back by the greatly superior force of the enemy ; but always doing so, in good order and without serious loss ; as we review his movements under Fremont's un- fortunate campaign in the Shenandoah, his subsequent connection with the Army of Virginia, just as it was merged in the Army of the Potomac, his bravery and good conduct at South Moun- tain, at Antietam, and subsequently in his old command of West Virginia, we find him always cautious, always discreet and safe, but never bold, daring, or dashing ; always commanding the respect of his men, never winning their admiration by his fear- lessness ; never gaining their warm love by his personal magne- tism. In the spring of 1863, he was ordered back to Ohio, and commanded the District of Ohio under General Burnside. In December he took part in the defence of Knoxville, and in the Atlanta campaign commanded the Third Division of the Twenty- 284 MEN OF OUR DAY. third Corps, or as it was oftenest called "the Army of the Ohio." He had been nominated as Major-General of Volunteers by President Lincoln, in the winter of 1862-3, but dropped before confirmation, through no fault of his own, but because, through a misunderstanding, the President had nominated too many. He went through the Atlanta campaign with great credit, though still only a Brigadier, never originating a measure, but obeying orders silently, firmly and effectively ; had returned to Nashville with Thomas and Schofield in pursuit of Hood, and had a con- spicuous and honorable part in the fierce battle of Franklin; and one as creditable though less bloody in the crowning two days' fight at Nashville, and the subsequent pursuit of Hood. On the strong recommendation of Generals Sherman and Schofield he was commissioned a Major-General, to rank from December 7th, 1864. Transferred with General Schofield to the Atlantic coast, he took an honorable part in the battles about Wilmington and Kinston, North Carolina, and effected a junction with Gen- eral Sherman at Goldsboro. He had charge of the mustering out of the Ohio troops till near the close of the year, when having been elected Governor of Ohio, he resigned his military to accept his civil office. He had the reputation of a prudent, skilful and safe military commander, as well as his literary, professional and scientific attainments to serve as capital for his candidacy for the office of Governor ; but he had well-nigh defeated himself by that cold heart of his. Some of his old Oberlin friends addressed certain inquiries to him relative to the status of the African, and the then vexed question of negro suffrage. He had been reared and educated an Abolitionist, had been trained in an Anti-slavery College, had married the daughter of one of the most fearless anti-slavery men of our time ; he had represented in the Ohio JACOB DOLSON COX. 285 Senate the strongest Anti-slavery district in Ohio, and there had distinguished himself as a Radicalof the Radicals, and in the army had always been sternly just as the defender of the African against hU numerous foes. Yet now, when all Ohio was ablaze with a feeling of sympathy for the down-trodden race, and a desire to lift them up, he coldly expressed in his reply his belief that the nation would not tolerate negro suffrage, and that, probably, the best thing which could be done for the race would be to deport them to Africa or Hayti, and colonize the whole three or four millions. This letter greatly reduced the Republican majority in the State, and caused him to run considerably behind' the rest of the ticket. Soon after his inauguration he did another foolish thing. He espoused the cause of Andrew Johnson, advocated some of his worst acts, and addressed an urgent and well-written letter to the Ohio Senators and Representatives in Congress to bring them over to his views. Mr. Johnson before long went so far that the cau- tious Governor was unwilling to follow; but the whilom radical had become intensely conservative. He declined a renomina- tion, which would have been an inevitable defeat, and returned to the practice of his profession at Cincinnati, where he was soon in the enjoyment of a large and lucrative business. On General Grant's election to the Presidency, he called ex- Governor Cox to the Cabinet as Secretary of the Interior. The appointment was not a bad one, for he was fully competent for its duties, and might have made that department much better in every respect than it ever had been. But his evil genius again prevailed. He was not in sympathy with the other members of the Cabinet, and perhaps not with his chief, and his rulings very soon began to conflict with those of the other secretaries. A Cali- fornia mining claim relating to a great quicksilver deposit had been in litigation before the Government for twelve or fifteen 286 MEN OF OUR DAY. years, and after the most careful examination by the law officer of the Government and the Committee on Claims of Congress, had been decided. To their ruling Secretary Cox took excep- tion, and proposed to reverse it. Finding this impossible, he addressed a caustic letter to the President, denouncing the fraud and corruption which he said was rife in the Government, and resigned his office, November 1, 1870. The occasion for this diatribe was one where he was so evidently in the wrong that his resignation lost much of the force and dignity which might otherwise have pertained to it. He returned to Cincinnati and resumed his practice. At the " Liberal Eepublican " National Convention held at Cincinnati, May 3d and 4th, 1872, ex-Secre tary Cox was a member, and received some votes for the Presi dential nomination. He was very active in his advocacy of the free-trade doctrines, and, we believe, thus far refuses to support the nominees of that convention. SIMON CAMERON. JUl 3,^ IMON CAMERON, born in Lancaster county, Pennsyl- vania, March 8th, 1799, was left an orphan at the age of nine years, and acquired his education by a diligent improvement of all the facilities which he could secure, while an apprentice in a newspaper and printing office. As such he worked at " the case " in Harrisburg, Pa., and at Washington, D. C, finally striking out on his own account as editor of the Pennsylvania Intelligencer^ at Doylestown, Pa. In 1822 he became the publisher and editor of a newspaper at Harrisburg, which strongly advocated the claims of General Jackson for the Presidency. In 1832 he was President of the Middletown Bank, which he had established ; and of two Railroad Companies, as well as holding the responsible position of Adjutant-General of the State. In 1845 he was elected United States Senator from Pennsylvania, and served until 1849 ; and in 1851 was re-elected for the term ending in 1863, voting in that body, amongst other things, for Douglas' proposition to extend the Missouri Compro- mise line to the Pacific. After the repeal of that Compromise, in 1854, and the attempt to force slavery on the people of Kan- sas, he identified himself with the " People's Party " in Pennsyl- vania: in 1856 voted for Fremont for the Presidency; and in the Chicago Convention of 1860, was spoken of as a candidate for the same high office, having the third place on the first ballot after which his name was withdrawn, 287 288 MEN OF OUR DAY. President Lincoln, on his accession to office, March 4th, 1861, nominated Afr. Cameron for Secretary of War, and he resigned his seat in the United States Senate to accept the place in the Cabinet. The condition of the Department of War at the time when he took charge of it, is thus briefly but graphically described by him : "Upon my appointment to the position, I found the department destitute of all means of defence, without guns and with literally no prospect of purchasing the material of war. I found the nation without any army, and there was scarcely a man throughout the whole War Department in whom I could put any trust. The Adjutant-General deserted; the Quartermaster-General ran off; the Commissary-General was on his death-bed ; more than half the clerks were disloyal." This condition of things, in a capital menaced by a well or ganized rebel army without, and by hordes of traitorous officials and spies within, was truly appalling ; but Mr. Cameron possessed nerve and loyalty, and was nobly seconded by the loyalty of the Northern States. All tliat man coi:ld do, he did ; and shared, with his great Chief, the awful burden of anxiety which accom- panied those earlier months of the war for the suppression of the rebellion. He made strenuous efforts to secure the counter- manding of the order for battle, which resulted so disastrously in the failure in the first Bull Run fight, in which he lost a brother, Colonel James Cameron, who was killed while leading a charge of the New York 79th (Highlanders) regiment. In his Annual Report to the President, of the operations of his department, December 1st, 1861, he spoke boldly and at con- siderable length of the policy (to which he had become a eon- vert) of recognizing slavery as the Union's real assailant, and fighting her accordingly. This portion of the Secretary's report was stricken out by President Lincoln (who had not, at that time, reached this point, to which he was afterwards forced by SIMON CAMERON. 289 tlie necessity of events), and a more moderate and briefer allu- sion to the subject was substituted therefor. After ten months of anxious and unfaltering attention to the weighty duties devolved upon him, Mr. Cameron, whose health was seriously impaired, resigned, January 13th, 1862, and was succeeded as Secretary of War by the late Edwin M. Stanton. He was then sent as Minister to St. Petersburgh, but soon returned, arriving in the United States in November, 1862. In 1864, he was a delegate to the Baltimore Convention, as well as to that of the "Loyalists" at Philadelphia in 1866, and in January, 1867, again took his seat in the United States Senate from Pennsylvania, as a Union Eepublican (succeeding Edgar Cowan, Democrat) for the term ending 3d of March, 18.73. In February, 1871, he succeeded Mr. Sumner as Chairman of the Committee on Foreign Affairs; and has served conspicuously on the Committees on Military Affairs, Ordnance, etc. Mr. Cameron has great experience in political affairs, and pos- sesses executive ability of a high order. He has for many years past ruled his party in Pennsylvania, sometimes, as in the late- nomination for Governor, carrying matters with a very high hand, and securing the nomination of men personally distasteful to a considerable portion of the party, but by thorough disci- pline he has usually succeeded in securing their election. Some- times he has carried this imperialism a little too far, and has defeated the objects he desired to acccomplish. An active business life and great skill in financial movements have resulted in accumulating for Mr. Cameron a very large for- tune, and his influential connection with the great railroad and mining corporations has enabled him to exert more political power than he could otherwise have done. For years rumors of his con- tion with jobs and corruption have been rife, and the numerous "jobs" which were perfected during his service in President 19 290 MEN OF OUR DAY. Lincoln's Cabinet were adduced as evidence of the truth of these rumors. In any great national disaster or struggle, the cormo- rants are sure to gather and seize on their prej, and Secretary Cameron's rather loose notions on this subject made him less careful than he should have been, and undoubtedly led in part to his resignation. That he was a partner in or personally cog- nizant of these frauds, is wholly improbable, but he had not that quick eye to detect fraudulent intention in others, nor that stern and inflexible determination to punish it, which was so grand a characteristic of Secretary Stanton. Since the war, whether in public or private life, save for the domineering spirit to which we have alluded, Mr. Cameron's course has been without reproach, and in his position as Chair- man of the Committee on Foreign Affairs, his fine abilities and his large knowledge of our relations to the European Govern- ments, have made him an able successor to Senator Sumner, if the change was needful. We need not say that Senator Came- ron is a staunch supporter of President Grant. CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. (ir'HIS eminent diplomatist comes of an illustrious lineage. The only son of John Quincy Adams, sixth President of the Kepublic, who survived his father, and the grand- son of John Adams, the second President of the United States, he inherits patriotic sentiments, and has done honor, in his public career, to some of the noblest names in our nation's past history. Charles Francis Adams was born in Boston, Massachusetts, August 18, 1807. At the age of two years, he was taken by his father to St. Petersburg, where he remained for the next six years, his father being United States Minister at the Eussian Court. During his residence at the Eussian capital, he learned to speak the Eussian, German and French, as well as the English. In February, 1815, he made the perilous journey from St. Pe- tersburg to Paris, with his mother, in a private carriage, to meet his father. The intrepidity of Mrs. Adams, in undertaking such a journey in midwinter, and when all Europe was in a state of commotion, gave evidence that the courage and daring which her son inherited, were not all due to the father's side. John Quincy Adams was next appointed Minister to England, and during his residence there, he placed Charles at a boarding school, where, in accordance with the brutal practices in vogue in the English schools, he was obliged to fight his English 291 292 MEN OF OUR DAY. schoolfellows in defence of the honor of America. But, young as he was, he was too pluckj to be beaten, and maintained his country's cause with as much valor, though probably with less intelligence, than he has since been called to exercise in its behalf. In 1817, his father was recalled to America, to become Secre- tary of State in President Monroe's administration, and young Adams, on his return, was placed in the Boston Latin school, from whence he entered Harvard College, in 1821, and gradu- ated there with honor in 1825. His father was at this time President, and the son spent the next two years in Washington; but, in 1827, returned to Massachusetts, and commenced the study of the law in the office of Daniel Webster. He was ad- mitted to the bar in 1828, but did not engage actively in practice. In 1829, Mr. Adams married a daughter of Peter C. Brooks, an opulent merchant of Boston, another of whose daughters was the wife of Hon. Edward Everett. The first years of Mr. Adams' manhood were mostly passed with his books, and in literary and scientific pursuits. Though strongly averse to partizan politics and the petty squabbles for office and plunder, which then occupied the minds of the politicians of the day, it was im- possible that, with his birthright and broad culture, he should not devote a considerable part of his studies to political science and statesmanship. He wrote able articles on topics involving a large knowledge of both, in the North American Review, and other periodicals, between 1830 and 18-15. He also edited at this time the letters of Mrs. John Adams, and gathered the docu- ments for the " Life and Works of John Adams, second Presi- dent of the United States." He was nominated, in 1810, as Kepre- sentative-in the Massachusetts Legislature; but he had no poli- tical aspirations, and declined to be a candidate. At his father's CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 293 request, however, he consented to be a candidate the next year, and was elected for three years successively, and was then chosen State Senator for two years. This period (1841-1846) was one of violent struggle, and eventually of disruption between the two wings of the Whig party, the time-serving or " Cotton Whigs," and the '•'Conscience Whigs," who subsequently, with large additions from the Democracy, formed the Kepublican part3^ Of the "Conscience Whigs," Mr, Adams was the ac- knowledged leader. Some of his reports, and his " Review of the Proceedings of the Legislature of 1843," were very remark- able for their breadth of view, their enunciation of great prin- ciples of statesmanship, and their clear and vigorous style. While he was a member of the Senate, the State of Massachusetts sent Judge Hoar to South Carolina, to endeavor, by peaceful measures, to put an end to the imprisonment of colored sailors from Massa- chusetts in South Carolipian jails, whenever they entered any of the ports of that state. Judge Hoar was treated wiih great indignity, and driven from the State by a mob. The Massa- chusetts Legislature hereupon appointed a joint committee, of which Mr. Adams was chairman, to draw up a " Declaration and Protest," to be forwarded to the President and the Gover- nors of the respective States, This paper, prepared by Mr. Adams, is a document wortliy of its occasion and its author, a masterly exposition of the legal and Constitutional aspects of the question, and a model of weighty and impressive eloquence. The opposition in Massachusetts, as well as in other Northern States, to the admission of Texas into the Union as a slave State, found a voice and a leader in Mr. Adams. In the winter of 1846, a committee, of which he was chairman, maintained a campaign paper called Tlie Free SUite Rally ^ and sent on to Washington, from Massachusetts alone, remonstrances with nearly sixty thousand signatures, against the admission of 294 MEN" OF OUR DAY. Texas as a slave State. This act in reality severed tbe connec- tion between Mr, Adams and the Cotton Wbigs, and, late in 1846, he founded and conducted politically for some months, a daily paper called the Boston Whig. The " Conscience Whigs" were bitterly maligned and abused by the pro-slavery men of the party, and the severance of the slight bonds which held the two together was beginning to be felt as a necessity. In the measures which resulted somewhat later, in the formation of the Free Soil Party, the Boston Whig did good service. The State Whig Convention of September, 1847, was the last in which Mr. Adams, Mr. Sumner, Judge Allen and other Con- science Whigs, attempted to take part in any so-called Whig Convention. The Free Soil party was organized in most of the Northern States in the spring of 1848, and in the summer of that year its Convention at Buffalo nominated Martin Yan Buren for President, and Charles Fi-ancis Adams for Vice-Presi- d'ent. The vote for these candidates was a protest, and a vigor- ous one, against Pro-Slavery aggression ; it could be nothing more. In the five or six years which followed, there was a com- plete break-up of the Whig party, and the Free Soil party was in part swallowed up in the temporary but short-lived success of the " American " or " Know-Nothing " organization, but soon emerged in the " Republican party," which took shape and form early in 1855. Durino- the chaotic condition of parties, Mr. Adams had stood aloof from politics, sickened with the corruption of many of the party leaders, yet powerless, for the time, to check it, and it ■was not till the emergence of the new and purer party from the seethino- mass, that he again mingled in political circles. Mean- time, he had devoted himself with great assiduity to the memoir of his grandfather and the careful editing of his works. This valuable contribution to the early history of our country is CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 295 written with that elegant scholarship which marks all Mi. Adams' compositions, and is remarkably impartial in its details of the life of the venerable President. It occupies ten volumes. In the autumn of 1858, Mr. Adams was called from his literary pursuits to represent his district in Congress. His course there, on the eve of the rebellion, was worthy of the great name he bore and of his own previous history. Calm, dignified, yet tenacious in his adherence to the great principles of right, he was such a representative as it became Massachusetts to have at such a time. In the summer and autumn of I860, he took part in the Presidential canvass, supporting Mr. Lincoln in many able speeches, in the Northwestern States. That he supported, both in committee and in his place in the House, the resolutions disavowing, on the part of the free States, any right, under the Constitution, to interfere with Slavery in States where it was already established, or to hinder by law the reclamation of fugi- tiv^es, and the bill for the admission of New Mexico as a State,* leaving its citizens at liberty in respect to a constitutional admis- sion or prohibition of Slavery, is not to be denied. Looking at these questions in the light o^ the present, it seems astonisliing that he could have made even such concessions as these to the Slave power ; but that was the hour of darkness, and many Re- publicans, who afterwards stood up boldly for freedom, went much farther than Mr. Adams in their concessions at this time. Mr. Adams, unlike most of these, made these propositions his ultimatum, declaring war preferable, with all its horrors, to any further attempts at conciliation. Bat the Southern leaders were mad upon their idols; they would hear nothing of compromise, and in heart, if not in word, assented to Jefferson Davis's decla- ration, "That if the North would give him carle hlanche to make such propositions as he would be satisfied with, he would reject the offer." So, happily and well for the North, all these offers 296 MEN OP OUR DAY. of conciliation failed of success, and the war commenced. Mr. Adams was re-elected to the Thirty-seventh Congress; but, in the spring of 1861, Mr. Lincoln nominated him as minister to England, and he was promptly confirmed by the Senate, and in the first week of May he sailed from Boston to enter on his duties. He was now in the sphere for the exercise and mani- festation of his rare qualities. They were illustrated by the great discouragements which he had to encounter. The armed rebellion had broken out. The ministry and the ruling classes ol England were unfriendly. The Tory party could not but wel- com.e the prospect of a downfall of the great republic, whose pros- perity had so potently backed up the argument of English friends to free principles and free institutions. The Whig aristocracy, alarmed by the progressive radicalism of their own allies at home, were not unwilling that it should receive a check from the foilure of the American experiment. Except the great names t)f the Duke of Argyll, Mr. Bright and Mr. Cobden, there were few in the first rank of English statesmen who looked favorably or justly on the rights or the prospects of this country. In the commercial circles in which, sin6e the squirarchy has become more enlightened, the intensest burliness of John Bullism resides, the ruin of the great maritime power across the water was a welcome conclusion. The suffering that would fall on the labor- ing classes in consequence of the stoppage of the supply of cot- ton from America was apparent, and the decision with which, as it proved, they not only refrained from pressing their govern- ment into hostile measures, but pronounced their advocacy of that cause of freedom in America which they instinctively felt to be their own, showed a sense and magnanimity which it would nave seemed visionary to look for. The clergy, from Cornwall Jo the Tweed, rejoiced in the new demonstration that social order was only to be had under the shadow of a church-sustain- CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 297 ing throne. The Carlton Club was elate. The Reform Club was bewildered and double minded. Lord Palmerston, even beyond his wont, was flippant and cheerful. Mr. Adams stepped into the circle collected, prepared, grave, dignified, self-poised, with the port of one who felt that he had great rights to secure, that he knew how to vindicate them, and that he had a stout power behind him for their maintenance. The British ministry — not over-reluctant themselves — were pressed by solicitations from across the Channel, as well as by taunts and importunities at home, to espouse the cause of the insurgent States. Had they done so, it will not do to say that we should have failed to come victorious out of the contest, but without doubt we should have won our victory at immeasurably greater cost. That they were held to a neutrality, however im- perfect, instead of proceeding to an active intervention, was largely due to the admirable temper and ability with which our diplomacy was conducted. A short time sufficed to make it appear that Mr. Adams was not to be bullied, or cajoled, or hoodwinked, or irritated into an invprudence, and every day of his long resi- dence near the British court brought its confirmation to that profitable lesson. Under provocations and assumptions the more offensive for being sheathed in soft diplomatic phrase, not a pet- ulant word was to be had from the American minister, nor a word, on the other hand, indicative of a want of proud confi- dence in the claims and in the future of his country. A timid and yielding temper would have invited encroachments : a testy humor or discourteous address would have been seized upon as excuse for reserve or counter-irritation. Nor by the prepar- ation of study was he less equal to the difficult occasion than by native qualities of mind and character, as was proved more than once when. Lord John having flattered himself that he had dis- covered some chink in our mail in some passage of our treat- 298 MEN OF OUR DAY. ment of Spain and the South American republics, the pert diplomatist had to learn that it would be prudent for him to go into a more careful reading of the records of past American administrations. It is of less consequence to say that Mr. Adams' personal accomplishments, his familiarity with the usages of elegant society, his cultivated taste in art, his profound scholarship, and his acquaintance with the classical historians, orators and poets (a sort of attainment nowhere more considered than in England), added to the estimation which attached to him. Going to that country in circumstances of the extremest per- plexity and trial, he left it, after seven years, the object of uni- versal respect, and of an extent and earnestness of private re- gard seldom accorded, in any circumstances, to the representa- tive of a foreign power. To maintain at once an inflexible and an inoffensive attitude, to assert, without a jot or tittle of abate- ment, a counti-y's unconceded right, yet expose no coign of vantage to the aggressor by a rash advance, to enforce justice and tranquillize passion at the same time, is the consummate achievement, the last crowning grace, of diplomacy. After Mr. Adams was recalled from England at his own re- quest, as in former years, he lived in Boston in the winter, and in the summer months managed his extensive farm at Quincy, eight miles from town, where he occupied the mcient house which John Adams, attached to it by early recollections, pur- chased before his return from Europe in 1788, In a secure building which he lately erected on the estate, Mr. Adams ar- rano-ed the voluminous manuscripts left by his grandfather and his father, and the large library of Mr. John Quincy Adams. It is understood that he has been occupied in preparing for publi- cation, a selection from the writings of his illustrious father. In December, 1870, he came from his retirement to pronounce, before the New York Historical Society, a discourse, which has CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 299 since been published, containing a masterly exposition of the debt of the world to the American government for its persistent maintenance, from first to last, of the doctrine of the right of a nation to preserve its own neutrality ; in other words, the right of a nation to remain in peace when other nations go to war — a doctrine laid down b}' Mr. Wheaton as " incontestable," but which, in fact, was never valid, from the beginning of time till this new people asserted and established it. In the summer of 1871, he was nominated by the President as the American Commissioner in the arbitration provided for by tlie Treaty of Washington, ratified in July, and has twice visited Geneva and Paris on that mission. No appointment could have been so fitting and appropriate. Mr. Adams' name has often been mentioned in connection with the Presidency. We do not believe he desires it, and he is too eminent a statesman and too much of a gentleman and scholar, to be likely to be elected in a republic where mediocrity of talent and ability is preferred to genius, and a certain boorish- ness of manner is a surer passport to high political honors than refinement and culture. He has mingled but little in political matters since his return from England in 186S, but that he has his own decided opinions on the questions of the day, will be evident from the following letters. The first was written in reply to an invitation to visit Pittsburgh, and take part in the commemoration of Andrew Jackson's birthday : " Boston, Jan. 6, 1871. ; '^ Malcolm Hay, Esq., Secretary of the Committee: " Dear Sir : By some accidental dehxy your letter of the 31st ultimo, reached me only this morning. I feel much honored in receiving the invitation to visit you at Pittsburgh. My en- gagements at home, however, prevent me from moving at this time 300 MEN OF OUR DAY. " Neither am I much in the way of expressing sentiments on present political topics. The country has passed through a violent convulsion, and is now slowly, but steadily, recovering itself. The main object should be to restore harmony and in- spire mutual confidence among all the jarring members. Our government draws its life from the ready consent of the governed. " When the distinguished hero, whose name your association bears, uttered those memorable words: 'The Union shall be preserved ! ' he undoubtedly rested his faith upon the sponta- neous co-operation of the great mass of the nation, responding to his call in the regular and legitimate channels prescribed by the organic law. He never contemplated the use of bayonets in controlling the forms of collecting the general suffrage. "Our safety as a nation, lies in going back to the first princi- ples, and forgetting that force has ever been resorted to as a painful necessity to preserve them. What was a bitter medicine should not be turned into daily food. " Very truly yours, "Charles Francis Adams." The second letter was one addressed to Hon. David A. Wells, in reply to a request that he would become a candidate for nomi- nation at the Cincinnati Convention : "Boston, April 18, 1872. " My Dear Mr. Wells : I have received your letter, and will answer it frankly. I do not want the nomination, and could only be induced to consider it by the circumstances under which it might possibly be made. If the call upon me were an une- quivocal one. based upon confidence in my character, earned in public life, and a belief that I would carry out in practice the principles which I professed, then indeed would come a test of my courage in an emergency ; but if I am to be negotiated for, and have assurances given that I am honest, you will be so kind as to draw me out of that crowd. With regard to what I un- derstand to be the declaration of principles, which has been CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS. 301 made, it would seem ridiculous in me to stand haggling over them. With a single exception of ambiguity, I see nothing which any honest Eepublican or Democrat would not accept. Indeed, I should wonder at any one who denied them. The difficulty is not in the professions. It lies everywhere only in the manner in which they are carried into practice. If I have succeeded in making myself understood, you will perceive that I can give no authority to anyone to act or to speak for me in the premises. I never had a moment's belief that, when it came to the point, any one so entirely isolated as I am from all polit'- cal associations of any kind, could be made acceptable as a car • didate for public office; but I am so unlucky as to value that independence more highly than the elevation which is bought by a sacrifice of it. This is not inconsistent with the sense o.' grateful recognition of the many flattering estimates made ol my services in many and high quarters; but I cannot consent t) peddle with them for power. If the good people who meet at Cincinnati really believe that they need such an anomalous being as I am (which I do not), they must express it in a man- ner to convince me of it, or all their labor will be thrown awaj. I am, with great respect, yours, etc., " Charles Francis Adams. "David A. Wells, Esq., Norwich, Conn." At that Convention, held May 2d and 3d, 1872, Mr. Adams received 324 votes out of 715, being within 8 votes, on the original declaration of the sixth ballot, of Mr. Greeley, the suc- cessful candidate. In person, Mr. Adams is rather below than above the middle height. His figure, as he advances in life, tends somewhat to fullness, as did those of his father and grandfather. His head and features, worthily represented in the fine portrait by Hunt^ are strongly marked with the family likeness, and express the vigor, decision and repose of his mind and character. REVERDY JOHNSON. SeVERDY JOHNSON was born in Annapolis, Maryland, V on the 21st of May, 1796. He was the son oi the Hon. %•: John Johnson, who was the chief judge of the first judicial district of Maryland from 1811 until 1821, when he was appointed chancellor of the State of Maryland. Reverdy Johnson studied law with his father, and entered upon practice in Prince George's county, and in the city of An- napolis, in his native State. While pursuing his profession, he was engaged in reporting the decisions of the Court of Appeals of Maryland, having prepared the greater part of the well-known series of seven volumes of Harris and Johnson's Reports, which extended to some time in the year 1826. While pursuing this employment, and engaging in the active practice of his profession, he was appointed a deputy attorney- general of Maryland. In 1817, he removed to the city of Baltimore. In 1820, he was appointed chief commissioner of insolvent debtors. He held this office until 1821, when he was elected to the Senate of Mary- land. In this body he served for two years, and was re-elected, and served nearly two years longer as a State Senator. He then resigned the of&ce, in order to devote himself to a rapidly in- creasing practice, which he pursued until 18'15, with distin- guished ability and success, reaching, by general consent, the leadership of the Maryland bar. 302 REVERDY JOHNSON. 303 In 1845, lie was elected a Senator in Congress. He retained this position until 1849, when he resigned it to accept the office of Attorney-General of the United States, tendered him by President Taylor. Upon the death of that President, he retired from office, and continued to practice in the Supreme Court ol the United States, in which he had established a great and well- deserved reputation as a jurist. He was obhged, by the exi- gency of the times, and by his own disposition to use every effort to restore tranquillity to the country, to re-enter political life in 1861. In that year he was a delegate to the Peace Con- gress. In 1862 he was elected, by the Legislature of Maryland, a Senator in Congress for the term commencing in 1863 and ending March 4th, 1869. His distinguished services in the Senate, during the period of the rebellion, and his masterly and vigorous efforts to maintain the supremacy of the Constitution and the laws during the pro- gress of the rebellion, and after its termination, are well known to the whole country. During the term of President Lincoln, he was sent to New Orleans, for the purpose of adjusting grave questions which had arisen with foreign governments, by reason of the alleged undue exercise of military and civil authority, by the general then commanding in Louisiana. His action in restraining and cor- recting the abuses, which he had been requested to remedy, was fully approved of by the Government at "Washington. Since the close of the rebellion, Mr. Johnson has, with signal ability, manifested his devotion to the Constitution of the United States, He has uniformly insisted that this instrument was as binding upon ourselves as upon those who sought to violate it in 1861. His selection as a member of the joint select com- mittee on reconstruction was most judicious, for no member of 804 MEN OF OUR DAY. the Senate was more tlioroughly informed on the subject, or more impartial. The debates in the Senate bear testimony to the earnest zeal with which he has endeavored to confine all parties and sections of the country within the boundaries of constitutional law. la so doing, he has not ministered to the prejudices or hostilities of any political organization, in order to win popularity or pro- mote his personal ambition. He has steadily disregarded the dictates of popular clamor and popular passion, and has been content to pursue that course which will secure to him the appro- bation of all good men and the applause of posterity. His political action has been so calm and impartial as to oe wholly judicial in character. This quality of mind, singularly dis- played through his senatorial career, was never more distinctly marked than during the trial of the President before the Senate. In May, 1868, President Johnson nominated him for minister to the court of St. James, as successor to Hon. Charles Francis Adams, and he was confirmed by unanimous vote of the Senate, In the ensuing autumn Mr. Johnson negotiated a treaty with the British Government covering the Alabama Claims, the North- western boundary controversy, etc. This treaty was laid be- fore the Senate in February 1869, and after discussion rejected, only one or two votes being recorded in its favor. In April, 1869, Mr. Johnson was recalled, and John Lothrop Motley, the historian, appointed his successor. Since his return to the United States he has devoted himself to his profession, of which he is esteemed one of the ablest members. He was consulted in reference to the Washington Treaty of 1871, and approved of its provisions. Notwithstanding his advanced age, neither mind nor body seems to have lost any portion of its vigor, and so far as we can judge, he may rival the English statesmen and jurists in maintaining his position up to his ninetieth year. CALEB GUSHING. . ^^^^XiEB GUSHING, eminent as an orator, jurist and poli- tician, was born at Salisbury, Mass., January 17th, 1800, being the son of Captain John N. Gushing, an enterprising ship-owner of that town, and descended from an old colo- nial family largely represented in official positions of trust. Fit- ting for college at the public schools of his native town, he grad- uated from Harvard College, in 1817, when he gave the saluta- tory oration ; and was a student of Cambridge law-school in 1818. In 1819, he delivered the annual poem before the Phi Beta Kappa Society ; and, as candidate for the degree of A. M., pro- nounced an oration on the durability of the Federal Union. He was also appointed tutor in mathematics and natural philosophy at Harvard, which position he held until July, 1821, signalizing his resignation with a truly eloquent farewell address, strongly indicative of his own ambitious temperament. The addresses which he delivered before debating clubs, etc., at this time, show him to have been strongly impressed with the political grandeur of the Federal Union, and with intense devotion to its highest aims and welfare. In 1822 he was admitted to the Essex bar, and, in 1825, his political career began by his election as representative to the State Legislature from Newburyport, where he had commenced the practice of his profession. In the next year he was seated in the State Senate; published a " Ilistory 20 305 306 MEN OF OUR DAY. of Newburj'-port," and a " Treatise on the Practical Principles of Political Economy," having previously translated from the French, a work on '•' Maritime Contracts for Letting to Hire." He also pronounced a eulogy on Jefiferson and Adams, in New- buryport, about this time ; took an active part in the politics of the day (as a republican), and carried on a large and successful law practice until 1829. Meanwhile he had been a candidate for Congress, from the Essex district of Massachusetts, but was defeated through the prejudice excited by an unjust charge which was made against him, of recommending himself as a suita- ble incumbent, in the columns of the Boston Patriot. Shortly after this check to his aspirations, he made a European tour, (1829-1832) with his accomplished wife, the daughter of Hon. John Wilde of Boston, whom he had married in 1824, and who was the authoress of two volumes of " Letters Descriptive of Pub- lic Monuments, Scenery and Manners in France and Spain," published in 1832, after their return to America. During the same year, also, Mr. Gushing issued his " Eeminiscences of Spain — the Country, its People, History and Monuments," in two volumes; and with it another work in two volumes entitled "A Keview, Historical and Political, of the late Revolution in France," etc., and, also pronounced an admirable oration at New- buryport. In 1834: he addressed the American Institute of Instruction; delivered a eulogy on Lafayette, at Dover, New Hampshire, and wrote a reply to Cooper the novelist. These evidences of his mental power, together with his high character as a lawyer and a man, fully justified the choice of the good peo- ple of his adopted town, in electing him as their representative, in 1833 and '34, in the State, where he augumented his reputa- tion by his speech (which was afterwards published) on the cur- rency and public deposits. Again, in 1835, he ran for Congress, and was this time successful — retaining his seat by repeated CALEB GUSHING. 307 re-elections until 1843. . While there his literary inclinations were by no means obscured by his interest in national politics, as was evidenced by his frequent contributions to the North Ameri- can Review ; his tasteful articles on the legal and social condition of women ; his review of " Boccaccio ; " essays on Columbus and Americus Vespucci, and an oration before the Literary Societies of Amherst College, August 22, 1836, on " Popular Eloquence, and its Power in our Republic." Another oration, delivered at Springfield, Massachusetts, on the 4th of July, 1839, — shortly after the acquisition of Louisiana in a manner deemed by many to be a flagrant violation of the constitution, — forcibly urged the necessity of repressingan undue national ambition ; while an oration delivered the same year before the Phi Beta Kappa Society, at Cambridge, on the " Errors of Popular Reformers," displayed great ability and ready rhetorical powers. In Congress he was ever alive and alert to the interests of his constituents, and to what he deemed important national measures. His speeches were dignified, vigorous and effective, characterized by purity of style and depth of reflection. On all subjects he could speak sensibly and effectively, in a manner that betrayed diligence of study and preparation. One of his most effective displays of oratory was his answer, in the winter session of 1836, to an out- rageously abusive speech of Ben Hardin, of Kentucky, wherein he alluded to the cod-fishery, wooden-nutmeg and tin peddling of New England, whose people, he said, could see a dollar with the naked eye afar off as through a telescope. The debate gave rise in part to an excellent article in the North American Review, entitled "Misconceptions of the New Eng- land Character," which was ascribed to Mr. Cushing's pen. In the early part of his Congressional career, be was a Whig ; — was in 1840, an earnest advocate for Harrison's election to the Presi- dency, which he materially aided by writing a life of the old hero, which was largely circulated throughout the country. 308 WEN OF OUK DAY. On Harrison's decease, Mr. Gushing, with Wise of Virginia, and others, openly espoused the measures of the Tyler adminis- tration, and he has since been generally identified ^^'th the Democratic party, — his Congressional career being distinguished by unusual application to public business, eloquence, and par- liamentary accomplishments of a high order — making his influence felt not only on the floor, but in the deliberations of com- mittees, caucuses, etc., and he had occasion to make many volumi- nous reports and submit them for legislative action. In 184:3, he was three times nominated by Presitlcut Tyler as Secretary of the Treasury, being each time rejected by the Senate; and, in July, 1843, was appointed United States Commissioner to China ; sailed in the steam-frigate Missouri, which was burned oft' Gib- raltar, in August of that year— but fortunately rescued all his oHicial papers from destruction — and without awaiting any further instrnctions from the Government, proceeded directly to China {via Egypt and India), and within six months had suc- cessfully negotiated a treaty, which was signed at Wanghia, July 8, 1844, and finally ratified between the two great powers, December 31, 1845. Mr. Gushing, having thus enjoyed the honor of being the first foreigner who ever negotiated with "The Son of Heaven," upon equal terms, and having secured for his country an honorable standing in the great Celestial Empire, returned home via Mex- ico, having made almost a complete circuit of the globe, by land and sea, within a belt of forty degrees, in the period of less than one year — during which time, also, he had prepared and for- warded to the National Institute, at Washington, a highly valu- able article on the peculiar geographical and unique physical characteristics of Egypt. In 184G he was chosen to represent Newburyport in the State Legislature. War having been declared against Mexico, Mr. Gushing warmly advocated it in the face of a strong opposition by the CALEB GUSHING. 309 people of the State, and whcu an appropriation of $20,000 for the equipment of volunteers was refused by the Legislature, he advanced the uKjncy himself; was shortly after chosen Colonel of the Massachusetts regiment; a few months later (April, 18-1:7) was appointed a Brigadier-general, and was in command of the Virginia, South Carolina and Mississippi volunteer regiments ia the front of the line at Buena Vista, under General Taylor. lie was afterwards transferred, at his own request, to the army under General Scott, under whom he served until the peace. While in the service, in 1847, he was the Democratic candi- date for the Governorship of Massachusetts, but was defeated, and was also one of three officers appointed as a Court of Inquiry on Generals Scott, Worth and Billow. On returning again to private life, General Gushing was elected (Ibr the sixth time) to the State Legislature, as a representative for Newbury port, and was the life and soul of that body, actively opj)osing the election of Sumner as United States Senator, as well as the coali- tion of the democratic and free-soil i)arties. In 1850 and 1851 he was chosen mayor of the newly incorporated city of New- buryport by an almost unanimous vote, and a feature in the city charter, probably adopted at his suggestion, was, that the mayor should J'cccive no salary. As maycjr he disi)layed the same jealous care for the best interests of the municipality which ha had done for those of the Union, and was exceedingly popular with men of all parties. Ilis interest in literary and educational matters never flagged, and he was a meml)er of the Board of Overseers of Harvard College, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1852 he received the merited compliment of LL.D. from hia Alma Mater, and the same year was appointed an Associate Justice of the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court, and filled the position with his usual marked ability until 1853, when he was nominated by Bresident Biercc as United States Attorney 810 MEN OF OUR DAY. General, from which office he retired in 1857. In this arduous position, notwithstanding the great number and complicated nature of the novel questions (arising, to a large extent, from the expansion of the national domain) submitted for his considera- tion, the duties were never more thoroughly and ably performed than by him. Ilis opinions, as legal adviser to the cabinet, have been published, and though voluminous and covering a far wider range of topics than had fallen to the lot of his predecessors to decide upon, are in no respect surpassed. In 1857, '58 and '59, he again served in the State Legislature. In July, 1860, he was president of the Democratic Convention at Charleston, South Carolina, and in December of the same year, when the occupancy of Fort Sumter by United States troops under Major Kobcrt Anderson had deeply intensified the hos- tility of the South toward the North, Mr. Gushing was dispatched to Charleston by President Buchanan, as a commissioner or con- fidential agent of the Executive. His object, so far as its nature transpired, was a proffer on the part of Mr. Buchanan designed to postpone the inevitable outbreak of hostilities between the Seces- sionists and the Federal Government, until the close of his admin- istration — then but a few weeks distant. General Cushinsc, who, a few months previous, had been in Charleston as a delegute (Anti-Douglas) to and president of the Democratic National Con- vention, found the "cold shoulder" turned to him, and left the city, after a five hours' stay, convinced that the South were dreadfully in earnest, and his report was understood to have been the theme of a stormy and protracted Cabinet meeting. In July, 1866, he was appointed one of three jurists to revise and codify the Laws of the United States, a work on which he has since been engaged, though not to the exclusion of other duties, public and private. His vast legal and general learning, and his independence of party trammels, of late years, have made him a valuable consellor for the Government in all international CALEB CUSHINQ. 311 questions. He had some share in the construction of the rejected Santo Domingo Treaty ; and a large part in the preparation of the protocol of the Treaty of Washington as well as in the sub- sequent statement of our case, while he was also retained as one of the American Counsel before the Commissioners at Geneva. Caleb Gushing has always had the reputation of being too ambitious ; yet his aspirations seem ever, from youth to mature age, to have been inseparably interwoven with his desires for the welfare and glory of his country, and his motives are well expressed by the following remark from one of those defences which have been forced from him, at times, by the shafts of malice: "I am yet to be informed what there is culpa- ble in a pure and single-hearted ambition, with a willingness, when called, to enter the career ot public service,' which the republican institutions of our happy country open to all its citi- zens, to the low alike with the lofty," And a political opponent once said of him, there was " no fear that he would ever use any Other than means worthy of his elevated character to push him- self" to distinction. Apropos of the expression "push" in this connection we may be allowed to quote the good-natured epi- gram on General Gushing, from the pen of the late accomplished Newburyport poetess. Miss Hannah F. Gould : " Jjiiy aside all ye dead, For in the next bed Reposes the body of dishing; IJe has elbowed his way 'I'hroiigh the world, as they say, And, though dead, he still may be pusliing." The General's reply to this was as witty as gallant : " Here lies one whose wit. Without wounding, could hit, And green be the turf that's above her; Having sent every beau To the regions below, She has gone down herself, for a lover." JOHN ADAMS DIX. ^OnN ADAMS DIX was born at Boscawen, New TTamp- )1 sLire, on the 24tli of July, 1798, and is the son of Timo- thy Dix, a lieutenant-colonel of the United States army. Sent first, at an early age, to an academy at Salisbury, lie was thence transferred to a similar institution at Exeter, under the well known Dr. Abbott, where he pursued his studies in the companionship of Jared Sparks, John G. Palfrey, the Buckminsters and Peabodys, who have since become eminent men. In 1811, he was sent to Montreal, in Canada, where he continued his studies under the careful direction of the fathers of the Sulpician order. In July, 1812, however, the opening of hostilities between the United States and Great Britain com- pelled his return to his native country, and in December, follow- ing, he received an appointment as a cadet in the United States army, and was assigned to duty at Baltimore, where his father was then stationed on recruiting service. His duties here being merely those of an assistant clerk to his father, he diligently improved the opportunity which was offered, of continuing his studies at St. Mary's college, in that city. He had already attained high proficiency in the Spanish, Greek, and Latin languages, and in mathematics ; and was esteemed, by those who knew him best, as a most highly cultivated and gentle- manly young man. In March, 1813, while visiting Washington, he was tendered, unsolicited, a choice of a scholarship at West 312 JOHN ADAMS DIX. 313 Point, or an ensign's rank in the army. Selecting tlie latter he was commissioned in his father's regiment, the fourteenth infantry, and immediately joined his company at Sackett'g Harbor, New York, being the youngest officer in the United States army ; and was shortly made a third lieutenant of the twenty-first infantry. A sad loss shortly after befell the young heutenant, in the death of his father, in camp, leaving a widow and eight children, besides the subject of our sketch, upon whom now devolved the responsibility of saving, for his loved ones, something from the estate, which had become seriously embarrassed by the colonel's long absence in the service. In March, 1814, he was promoted to a second lieutenanoy, and in June, 181-4, was transferred to an artillery regiment, commanded by Colonel Walback, to whose staff" he was attached and under whose guidance he passed several years in perfecting his mili- tary education, not forgetting his favorite readings in history and the classics. "While in this position, he was made adjutant of an independent battalion of nine companies, commanded by Major Upham, with which he descended the St. Lawrence, in a perilous expedition, which resulted in more severe hardship than good fortune. In March, 1816, young Dix was appointed first lieutenant ; and, in 1819, entered the military family of General Brown as an aide-decamp, and began to read law during his leisure hours, with a view of leaving the army at an early day. During this period he was, in May, 1821, transferred to the first artillery; and, in August following, to the third artillery, being promoted to a captaincy in the same regiment in 1825. His health having become seriously impaired, he obtained a leave of absence, and visited Cuba, during the winter of 1825 -26, and extended his travels in the following summer to Europe. Marrying in 1826, he retired from the army, and in 814 MEN OF OUR DAY. December, 1828. was admitted to the bar, and established him- self in practice at Cooperstown, New York. Entering warmly, iiho, into politics, he became prominent in the Democratio paity ; and, in 1830, was appointed, by Governor Tliroop, adju- tant-general of the State, in which capacity he rendered effi- cient service to the militia of New York. In 1833, he waa elected Secretary of State for New York, becoming ex-officio a regent of the University, and a member of the board of Public Instruction, the Canal board, and a commissioner of the Canal fund. By his wise foresight and energy, school libraries were introduced into the public and district schools, and the school- laws of the State were codified and systematized. In 1841 and 1842, he represented Albany county in the New York Legislature, taking an active and influential part in the most important measures of that period, such as the liquidation of the State debt by taxation, and the establishment of single Congressional districts. In the fall of 1842, Mr. Dix accom- panied his invalid wife abroad, spending that winter and the following year in the southern climates of Europe. Return- ing to the United States in June, 18-44, he was chosen, in January following, to fill the unexpired term in the United States Senate, of Hon. Silas Wright, who had recently been elected Governor of the State of New York. He took his seat in that body, January 27, 1845, and speedily secured a deservedly high position among his confreres, being energetic and Indus trious to a remarkable degree, and always well prepared for what ever question might arise. As chairman of the Committee on Commerce, and as a member of the Committee on Military AfTairs, he did the country excellent service. He was the author of the warehousing system then adopted by Congress, and gave to the Canadian debenture law, and the bill for reciprocal trade, much of his time and attention. When, during the short sesaion of JOHN ADAMS DIX. ' 815 1845, tlie Santa Fe debenture bill was proposed, he secured an amendment including the Canadas, which, together with the original bill, was largely indebted to his advocacy for its pas- sage. His bill for reciprocal trade with Canada, formed the basis for the subsequent reciprocity treaty. He also took great interest in army affairs, as well as in the annexation of Texas, the war with Mexico, and the Oregon dif&culty ; and firmly main- tained the right of Congress to legislate with regard to slavery in the Territories. Owing to divisions in the Democratic /)arty, he was not re-elected to the Senate ; but ran, unsuccessfully, as the nominee of the " Free Soil" wing of that party, for Governor, in the fall of 1848. He actively sustained the nomination of General Pierce for the presidency, in 1852, and upon that gentle- man's accession to office, was tendered the office of Secretary of State ; which, owing to the opposition made by the Southern Democrats of the Mason and Slidell school, he was induced to decline, as also the appointment of minister to France, which was subsequently offered him. In 1853, he was made Assistant United States Treasurer in New York city ; but, on the appoint- ment of John y. Mason to the French embassy, resigned the position, and withdrew almost wholly from politics, devoting his time, until 1859, to legal practice. At that time, however, he was appointed, by President Buchanan, postmaster of New York city, vice I. V. Fowler, absconded. When, in January, 1861, Messrs. Floyd and Cobb, of the first Buchanan cabinet, resigned their positions and fled from Washington, the financial embarrassments of the Government required the appointment of a Secretary of the Treasury, in whose probity, patriotism, and skill the whole country could confide. General Dix was called to that high office, and entered on its duties, January 15, 1861. The promptness of his measures 316 MEN OF OUR DAT. did as much to reassure the public and save the Government, aa the exertions of any other man in "Washington. On the IStli of January, 1861, three days after he took charge of the Treasury Department, he sent a special agent to New Orleans and Mobile, for the purpose of saving the revenue ves- sels at those ports, from seizure by the rebels. The most valua- ble of these vessels, the Eobert McClelland, was commanded by Captain John G. Breshwood, with S, B, Caldwell as his lieu- tenant. Breshwood refused to obey the orders of General Dix'a agent, Mr. Jones ; and on being informed of this refusal, General Dix telegraphed as follows: — '•'• If any man attempts to haul doivn the American flag^ shoot him on the spotP'' memorable words, which became a watchword throughout the loyal States. While a member of Buchanan's cabinet. Major (late General) Eobert Anderson made his famous strategical movement from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter, which so excited the indignation of the (arch-rebel) Secretary Floyd, that he threatened to resign if Anderson was not ordered back. General Dix, thereupon, promptly notified Mr. Buchanan, that Major Anderson's recall would be the signal for the immediate resignation of himself and the other members of the Cabinet (Messrs. Stanton and Holt), and his firnmess decided the course of the weak-minded execu- tive, and Floyd himself left? — none too soon for his own neck, or the country's good. On the 6th of March, 1861, Mr. Dix retired from the Treasury Department, and returned to his home in New York city, where he presided, on the 20th of April, over an immense meeting of the citizens of the metropolis, convened in Union Square, to take measures for the defence of the Constitution and the laws, so recently and rudely assailed by the rebel attack upon Fort Sum- ter — and he was also chairman of the '" Union Defence Commit- tee," organized at that meeting. On the 6th of May, he was JOHN ADAMS DIX. 317 appointed a major-general of volunteers, from New York ; and, on the 16tli of the followhig June, he was appointed major- general in the regular army, dating from May 16th, 1861, by President Lincoln, and placed in command of the department of Maryland, his headquarters being at Baltimore. The first military movement of the war that was successful, was made tinder his command by General Lockwood. The counties of Accomac and Northampton, in Virginia, known as the Eastern Shore, were occupied by him, the rebels driven out, and the mildness and justness of his government restored them as loyal counties to the Union, while every other part of Virginia was in arms and devastated with war. The command of Maryland at that period required a man of the greatest tact, firmness, and judgment ; for that reason. General Dix was selected by the President. His rule was one of such moderation and justice, that his reputation in Baltimore is honored by his most violent political opponents. In May, 1862, he was transferred to the command of the military department of Eastern Virginia, with headquarters at Fortress Monroe. This department enjoyed the benefit of his services until July, 1863, when he was transferred to the Department of the East, with headquarters at New York city. To his very prompt action for the prevention of any outbreak during the draft of August, 1868, the metropolis was indebted for the peaceful manner in which that draft was finally carried out. nis subsequent assignments to duty were administrative, and attended with no particular incidents of importance, except the trial of John Y. Beall and R. C. Kennedy, as spies and con- spirators, in February and March, 1865, and their execution. At the so-called National Union Convention at Philadelphia, August 1-4, 1866, General Dix was temporary chairman. In the autumn of 1866 he was nominated, by the President, naval 818 MEN OF OUR DAT. officer of the port of New York, and the same day, United States minister to France, in place of Hon. John Bigelow, re- signed. After some hesitation, General Dix made his election to accept tlie post of minister to France, and having been con- firmed by the Senate, arrived in Paris, and was presented to the Emperor in January, 1867. He retained this position till March, 1869, when he resigned and was succeeded by Mr. Washburne. Since his return General Dix has remained in private life, and in IMarch, 1872, became President of the Erie Eailway, into the management of which ho has introduced many needed reforms. In the intervals of a very busy life, General Dix has found some time for authorship, and his writings are marked by an elegant grace and dignity of style, which renders them, when not on technical or professional subjects, attractive and readable. This is- specially true of his "A Winter in Madeira" (New York, 1851), and "A Summer in Spain and Florence " (New York, 1855). Ilis speeches and public addresses were collected in two fine volumes in 1865. He has also published "Resources of the City of New York" (New York, 1827), and " Decisions of the Superintendent of Common Schools of New York," and laws relating to common schools (Albany, 1837). Though now in his seventy -fourth year, General Dix preserves the erect and military bearing of the soldier, and, during the late war, was one of the finest looking officers in the army. He bears a high reputation for thorough honesty and integrity, and his character is irreproachable. If, with increasing years, he has, like his former chief, General Scott, a little vanity, it is a pardonable weakness, a most venial fault, of which his great public services should render us oblivious. JOHN LOTHROP MOTLEY, LATE MINISTER PLENIPOTENTIARY TO ENGLAND. f^yji| HE designation of an author, a statesman, or a diplo- matist to what shall prove his life work, is sometimes SS^^ most unaccountably delayed. He may be indolent or a '^ dilettante, just tasting here and there of literary sweets; he may have no fixed purpose in life, and rambling on in this aimless way may have reached the noonday of manhood with- out finding out what he is fit for, when suddenly there comes an impulse which transforms the man, rouses him to a sense of his powers and his destiny, and changes him from an elegant idler or drone in the busy hive of this work-a-day world, into a diligent, earnest student, one of the busiest working-bees in the community. And this transformation once begun is not usually left unfinished. The later years of the man's life are as bus7 as his earlier ones were listless and idle. We can all recall instances of this sudden and complete transformation ; one of the most striking we have ever known is that of the eloquent historian whose name we have placed at the head of this sketch. Born in Dorchester, Massachusetts, April 15th, 1814, of wealthy and highly cultured parentage, John Lothrop Motley seems to have had no particular inducement to take life other- wise than easily. Trained in the best schools of Boston, and entering Harvard College at the early age of thirteen, he gradu- 319 320 MEN OF OUR DAY. ated in 1831, with a fair standing, visited Europe after his graduation, spent a year at Gottingen, and another at Berlin, but without brilliant results ; travelled in Italy, and in 1834: returned to America and studied law. In 1836, he was admitted to the bar, and opened an office, but sought no business, and business did not come to him. Thus far he had taken life very easily, and he seemed inclined to continue to do so. But as a man of his opportunities and position must seem to do some- thing, he wrote a novel and published it in 1839. Its title was " Morton's Hope ; " the Morton of Merry Mount, who so vexed the souls of the Pilgrims of Plymouth and Boston. The novel had some merit, and showed a leaning toward historical research ; but there was no soul in it, and it died at birth. He was sent to Eussia as Secretary of Legation in 18-40, but stayed only eight months. After his return he wrote, in a leisurely fashion, but with a somewhat stronger indication of the power that lay slumbering within him, several review articles. One of these on " Peter the Great," in the North American Review, and two on Goethe, and De Tocqueville's " Democracy in America," in the New York Review, attracted some attention. In 1849, when thirty-five years of age, he produced another novel on a similar theme with his first, "Merry Mount, a Romance of the Massa- chusetts Colony ; " but, like its predecessor, it attracted little or no attention. He was not to acquire fame as a novelist, evi- dently. About this time, from some cause, his attention was attracted to the history of the Netherlands. He procured some books on the subject of Dutch History, read up, and trusting to that *' fatal facility" which had been one of his earlier gifts, came near ruining one of our best historians. He wrote in a hur- ried slip-shod way two volumes of Netherland history, and JOHN LOTITROP MOTLEY. 321 thought of publishing it; but the conviction began to force itself upon him that the work demanded more thorough and profound investigation, and upon making further inquiry, he found that it would be necessary to go to Holland for the books and manuscripts he needed. We have beard it from good authority, that at this period he was not familiar with the Dutch language, though he was, of course, a proficient in German. In 1851 he embarked for Europe with his family, and the next five years were spent in close and diligent study in Berlin, Dresden and the Hague. He soon be- came dissatisfied with his hastily written volumes, destroyed them, and began anew. He now made himself familiar not only with the Dutch language, but with its great wealth of his- toric literature, and having become thoroughly master of his subject, he published, in 1856, a history of "The Rise of the Dutch Republic," as fascinating as any romance, through which glides, as its hero and statesman, the mystic figure of William the Silent, while the Duke of Alva and Philip II. perform the part of the villains of the play. The success of this work was assured from the day of its publication. It was the very thing the reading world had waited for, and both in England and America it was largelv in demand. It was translated into Dutch by Herr B:ikhuyzen van den Brink, one of the most eminent historical writers of Holland; two translations were published in German, and one of M. Guizot's family translated it into French, Guizot himself writing an introduction. Mr. Motley did not return to the United States until 1858, and then made but a short visit, being deeply engrossed in studies for a further history of the interesting country to which he had devoted himself. In 1861 he published two volumes of his history of the United Netherlands, and seven years later completed two additional volumes. Honors were showered 21 322 ilEN OF OUR DAY. upon him by European universities and learned societies. He was complimented with the degree of D. C. L. hy Oxford Uni- versity in 1860, and the same year received the degree of LL. D. from Harvard. He was made a member of the Institute of France and of most of the societies and orders of merit of Great Britain and the Continent. But amid all these honors he did not forget his duty to, and his patriotic interest in his own country. In 1861, he published in the London Times an elabo- rate and forcible essay on the " Causes of the American Civil War," and by pen and voice aided the American cause, answer- ing the hostile, arousing the indifferent, and doing much to keep Germany and Holland in friendly relations to us. In Novem- ber, 1866, President Jcjhnson nominated him Minister Plenipo- tentiary to Austria. He discharged his duties with ability and fidelity, and was too loyal to suit the mousing spies whom Presi- dent Johnson had set to watch him, and he was recalled in 1867. After a short visit to the United States, he returned again to his historical studies in Europe. In April, 1869, President Grant nominated him Minister Plenipotentiary to the Court of St. James, our highest diplomatic appointment. Here his course seems to have been marked by dignity and abilitj'-, but his nego- tiations in regard to a treaty with England on the Alabama and other questions, as well as some other matters, excited Sec- retary Fish's displeasure, and an acrimonious correspondence ensued, not wholly creditable to either party, but ending in Mr. Motley's recall in November, 1870. Since that time he has been on the Continent engaged in historic studies. "While Mr. Motley is not the equal of Mr. Bancroft as a philo- sophical historian, and does not bring to his work such a wealth of learning, or so rich an experience of all the different phases of national life, his researches have been very great into the JOHN LOTHROP MOTIiEY. 323 history of the Netherlands, and treating of a homogeneous peo- ple, occupying a circumscribed territory, he has had no occa- eion for that world-wide culture which has characterized the historian of our own country. Whatever he has done has been done well, and the best could do no more. GEORGE BANCROFT, UNITED STATES MINISTER TO THE GERMAN EMPIRE. )|l T was long a tradition in literature that historical compo- I sition of a high order was only possible in a nation which had cultivated literature and political science for centuries, and that the historian must devote himself to his work alone, abandoning all other pursuits. Experience has in the present century abundantly demonstrated the folly of this tradition. Among the highest names in English literature are the American historians, Irving, Sparks, Prescott, Bancroft, Hildreth, Palfrey, Motley, and Kirk ; men of elegant and pro- found scholarship it is true, but with the purely American habits and modes of thought, and above all, men of affairs ; who have in many cases pursued their favorite studies, and composed their volumes in the not abundant intervals of engrossing public duties. In this last characteristic they have not been singular, for Gibbon, Macaulay, and Grote were all members of Parlia- ment, and active in other departments of public and private life, while Niebuhr and Bunsen found a diplomatic career no serious hindrance to historical study ; but none of these emi- nent historians of the Old World were so long in public life, or occupied such varied public positions as Mr. Bancroft has done. George Bancroft, Ph. D., LL. D., D. C. L., is the son of the late Rev. Aaron Bancroft, D. D., a learned and accomplished 324 GEORGE BANCKOFT. 325 clergyman and author, of "Worcester, Massachusetts, whose biography of Washington, published in 1807, was translated into most of the languages of Europe, and is still a standard authority in our own country. Mr. Bancroft was born at Worcester, Massachusetts, October 3d, 1800. His early education was acquired under his father's tuition, but his preparatory studies for college were pursued at Phillips' Academy, Exeter, N. H., and he entered Harvard Col- ledge in 1813, before he had completed his thirteenth year. He graduated with the second honors of his class in 1817, and a few months later sailed for Germany to perfect his education. He spent two years at Gottingen, years of close and severe study in German, French and Italian literature, the Oriental languages, the interpretation of the Scriptures, Ecclesiastical and Ancient History, the Antiquities, Literature and Philosophy of Greece and Rome. At that time Gottingen was the most famous universitj^ in Europe for the profound learning of its professors, and their skill in imparting knowledge. In 1820, Mr. Bancroft,, not yet quite twenty years of age, received the degree of Doctor of Philosophy from this old and renowned university, and pro- ceeded to Berlin, where he became a pupil of Wolf, Schleier- macher and Hegel. Here, too, he formed an intimate acquaintance with Wilhelm von Humboldt, Savigny, Lappenberg, Varnha- gen von Ense, and other eminent German scholars. In 1821 he made a tour of Europe, spending some time at Dresden, Jena (where he had already become acquainted with Goethe), Heidel- berg, where he made the acquaintance of Schlosser, Paris, where he became intimate with Oousin, Alexander von Humboldt, and Benjamin Constant ; visited England for a month, and then passed by way of Switzerland to Italy, forming an acquaintance withManzoni, at Milan, and a lifelong intimacy with Bunsenand Niebuhr at Rome. 326 MEN OF OUR DAT. He returned to America ia the autumn of 1822, and was for a year Greek tutor iu Harvard College. Up to this time he had looked forward to the clerical profession, and while tutor preached several sermons. But the claims of a literary life seemed to him so strong, that he abandoned all idea of the ministry. In 1823, he associated himself with Dr. Joseph G. Cogswell, a scholar of rare attainments, and the two established the Eound Hill School, at Northampton, in which some of the most learned young men in Germany were employed as teach- ers. Its standard of instruction was too high for a preparatory school for any college then in existence in the United States, and after several years' trial it was finally given up, not, how- ever, until it had exerted a powerful influence for good in ele- vating the standard of higher instruction throughout the country. Mr. Bancroft was then, as always since, a diligent student, and aside from his duties as a teacher he translated the " Politics of Ancient Greece" of his old preceptor, at Gcittingen, Heeren, and published a volume of poems, whose rare beauty and finish served to show how brilliant a poet was lost to the world in the historian. At this time, too, he commenced collecting the mate- rials for his great work, " The History of the United States," which nearly fifty years of toil still find not quite completed. The first volume of this history appeared in 1834, after ten years of study and research. Meantime he had entered to some extent on political life, making addresses and drawing up politi- cal resolutions and appeals ; but though often tendered office, and once without his knowledge elected to the Massachusetts Legislature, he uniformly refused to accept or occupy any pub- lic position. He was at this time, and for many years after, a Democrat of the Jeflfersonian school, and was very much in earnest in the advocacy of the doctrines of the party. In 1835, he removed to Springfield, Massachusetts, where he completed GEORGE BANCROFT. 327 about 1838, tlie second volume of his history. la 1838, Presi- dent Van Buren appointed him Collector of the Port of Boston, and in this position, at that time one of very considerable diffi- culty, as the customs were paid in bonds, and the country had just passed through the terrible financial panic of 1837, the scholarly recluse manifested such skill, intelligence, and vigor in the administration of his office as to win the applause even of his political opponents. When he entered upon his duties there were many thousands of dollars of unpaid bonds, some of them lying over for years. When he resigned, in 181:1, every bond was paid in full, and his collections amounted to several millions. During this time he found leisure to complete the third volume of his history. In 1844, he was nominated by the Democratic party their candidate for Governor of Massaclmsetts, and though during the entire canvass he was in New York, studying, for twelve hours a day, manuscripts and documents relative to the early history of this country, yet he polled a much larger vote than any can- didate on a purely Democratic ticket had done before, or than any one has since. He was defeated by a very small majority. President Polk immediately after his inauguration nominated Mr. Bancroft as Secretary of the Navy, and during about a year and a half of his service in that office he accomplished a vast amount of good for the navy. He founded the Naval Academy at Annapolis, procured a grant of the military fort and grounds there for its use, arranged its course of instruction, selected its professors and instructors, and ordered every mid- shipman on shore there. Previously the only instruction of naval cadets had been that which they received aboard ship from the chaplain, and it was desultory and very imperfect. There was no opportunity for competition in scholarship, and there was no provision for moral instruction of the young men. 328 MEN OF OUR DAY. He also made great improvements in the Naval Observatory at Washington, and some reforms in the mode of promotion in the navy. He gave the order to take possession of California, and as Acting Secretary of War, directed the occupation of Texas by General Taylor. In 1846, he resigned his seat in the Cabinet, and was appointed Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain. In his three years of diplomatic service he was on the most cor- dial terms with the British Government, and with men of letters there and on the continent, but he never failed to demand and secure for American citizens all the rights and immunities to which the citizens of the most favored power were entitled. One measure which he carried through there, as he has since .„ne in Germany, is worthy of notice. He claimed and secured for naturalized citizens of the United States of foreign, birth, from their native country, the plenary rights of American citi- zens, always and in all places. As it was mainly on this point that war was declared with Great Britain in 1812, the impor- tance of the concession thus gained will be seen at once. But while thus attentive to his diplomatic duties, none of which were ever neglected, he was devoting all his leisure to the col- lection of material for further volumes of his history. The State Paper Office, and all the Kecords of the Treasury, and the early colonial papers, were put at his disposal by the British Ministry, and he was aided in his researches in Paris by such eminent scholars as Guizot, Mignet, Lamartine, and De Tocque- ville. He returned to the United States in 1819, richly laden with historical documents and papers, and taking up his residence in New York city, devoted himself assiduously to the preparation of the fourth and fifth volumes of his history. These were established in 1852. Still continuing his labors (having revised GEORGE BANCROFT, 329 the earlier volumes after his return from England), lie issued the sixth volume in 1854, the seventh in 1858, the eighth in 1863, and the ninth in 1866. Pie is understood to have three more volumes nearly ready, completing the work. He is eminently a philosophical historian, and brings the wealth of his vast and varied learning to bear upon the history of the nation. He has also pub- lished an abridgment of the earlier volumes of his history, and one or two volumes of miscellanies, comprising several of his abler orations and addresses. Mr. Bancroft had been a lifelon^y democrat, differing in this particular from most of the eminent scholars of our country, who were identified with the Whig party while it had an existence, and subsequently drifted very naturally into the Eepublican party. There was, there could be, no question of the intensity and depth of his convictions in regard to the principles of his party. But when the war came, Mr. Bancroft, who was, like many otlier eminent Democrats, more a patriot than a partisan, at once rallied to the support of the Union, gave to it his earnest eftbrts, his eloquence of pen and voice, and his most hearty labors. From that time he has been identified with the Republican party, though he probably recognizes no material change in his views, beyond the subsi- dence of the old issues, and the evolution of new ones to which he applies his early principles. In 1865, he pronounced an eloquent and forcible oration on the death of the martyred Lincoln. He was appointed minister to Prussia in 1867, and negotiated a treaty with the North Ger- man Confederation, and subsequently with the German Empire, to which he is now accredited, by wliich German naturalized citizens of the United States are wholly released from allegi- ance to the government of their native country, and if they re- turn to it for a visit, however protracted, are not liable for mili- tary service, or any of those burdens which have made it peril- 330 MEN OF OUR DAY. ous for tliem to revisit their native land. In Berlin, as every- where else, Mr. Bancroft's great attainments, as well as his courtly and genial manners, have made him very welcome, and no representative of our country who could have been sent thither would have been more highly esteemed. A special entertain- ment was given by the literary men of Berlin in 1870, in honor of the fiftieth anniversary of his receiving the doctorate of philosophy, and titles, orders of merit, etc., were conferred on him in abundance. When he was Minister to the Court of St. James in 1846-9, the University of Oxford, usually chary of its honorary degrees to Americans, made him D. C. L. His alma mater had conferred on him the degree of LL. D. in 1843, and Union College had done so in 18-41. In 1868 the University of Bonn had bestowed upon him the J. U. D. (the German equivalent of LL, D.), and Berlin did the same in 1870. His life has not been without its troubles and anxieties, its strifes born of petty jealousies, its sorrows and its bereavements; but it has been, as a whole, a noble, grand life ; one of patriotic fidelity to his country and her honor, of strong adherence to principle, of manly and generous devotion to the best interests of humanity. ELIHU BENJAMIN WASHBURNE, UNITED STATES MINISTER TO FRANCE. ^IfLlHU BENJAMIN WASHBUENE, United States J^tl^ Minister to France, was born at Livermore, Oxford Q[0^ county (now Androscoggin county), Maine, on the 23d ^^ of September, 1816. Two of his brothers, CadwalLader C, and Israel, Jr., have also sat in Congress, the former from "Wis- consin, the latter from Maine. Elihu served an apprenticeship in the office of the Kennebec Journal ; afterwards studied law at Cambridge Law School (Harvard University), and removed to Galena, Illinois. He was first elected to the Thirty-third Con- gress, from the First Congressional District of Illinois, as a Whig, in 1853 ; and he was re-elected to every succeeding one up to the Forty-first (1869-71), acting with the Kepublican party from its or- ganization, and voting always and persistently on the side of free- dom. In the 38th Congress he became the " Father of the House," by virtue of having served a longer continuous period than any other member. From the Thirty-fifth to the Thirty-ninth Con- gress, he was chairman of the Committee on Commerce, and in the latter session was a member of the Joint Committee on the Library, Chairman of the Special Committee on Immigration, and, at the death of Hon. Thaddeus Stevens, he became Chair- man of the Committee on Appropriations. He was also Chair- man of the Special Committees on the Death of President Lin- 331 332 MEN OF OUR DAT. coin, and the Memphis Eiots; and was on the Committees on Rules ; Reconstruction ; Air Line Railroad to New York, etc. ; always active, attentive, and practical in council and debate. When the war of the rebellion commenced, Mr. Washburne was the leading man of his Congressional District, "carrying it in his breeches pocket," as the saying is; occupying an elegant man- sion, and powerful in political and social influence. At the first war meeting held in Galena, for the mustering of volunteers, he offered a resolution, and, in fact, engineered the meeting. J. A, Rawlins (afterwards Brigadier-General on General Grant's staft' and later Secretary of War), also made a speech. Ex-captain Ulysses S. Grant was present, unnoticed and taking no active part in the proceedings, with evidently no suspicion of the strange fate which was to lift him from the obscurity of his father's leather store to the Presidential chair. At a second meeting, the company was organized and officered, but Grant was not thought of. A few days after, Mr. Collins (Grant's partner, and a Demo- crat) met Mr. Washburne and i-allied him on the selection made for captain of Galena's first volunteer company, " when they could get such a man as Grant." " What is Grant's history ? " was Mr. Washburne's natural inquiry. "Why, he is old man Grant's son, was educated at West Point, served in the army for eleven years, and came out with the very best reputation." So t;he Congressman looked up the quiet leather dealer, Grant, who lived in a modest cottage on the top of a bluff, which he could only reach, whenever he went to dinner, by a staircase some two hundred feet high. The two "struck hands," and Mr. Washburne insisted on Grant's accompanying him to Spi'ing- field, the Capital of the State. Grant had already applied to Ohio, his native State, for a chance to serve, and to the Adjutant-General, at Washington, ELIHU BENJAMIN WASHBUKNE. 333 from whom came no response. So they went to Springfield. Pope was the hero of the hour ; confusion reigned. Grant got employment in Governor Yates' office, and the Governor, after a while, discovered his abilities, and gave him the command of a regiment. For his next promotion, the future President was indebted to the active interest of his friend, Washburne. It so happened that President Lincoln had sent to each of the Illinois Senators and Representatives, a circular, asking them to nominate four Brigadiers. Mr. Washburne pressed Grant's claims, on the ground that his section of the State had raised a very large number of men for the war, and were entitled to such an appointment; his arguments prevailed, and, to his own great surprise. Grant was made a Brigadier-General. In October, 1861, Mr. Washburne saw Grant at Cairo, Illi- nois, and seemed to have become impressed with the idea that Grant was "the coming man" of the war. When General Pope's friends urged that general's claims for a Major-General's stars, Mr. Washburne secured from the President a promise that none of the brigadiers then in commission should be pro- moted until they had distinguished themselves in the field. When Grant's reputation was assailed by reports of intempe- rance, etc., Mr. Washburne took no rest until he had sifted the evidence, and disproved the charge. The battle of Fort Don- elson rendered General Grant, in a large degree, independent of Mr. Washburne's friendly offices; but the intimacy and friendship of the two men were in no wise weakened, and it was Mr. Washburne who had the pleasure of framing the bill by which the rank and title of Lieutenant-General, oidy previously conferred on General Washington, was created and bestowed upon General Grant. In 1864-5, he ran for the United States Senatorship against Governor Yates, and came very near being successful. Mr. 334 MEN" OF OUR DAY. Wasliburne is bluff, hearty, vigorous in manner, yet not dis- courteous. As a speaker he is vehement, brief, plain, practical iu the tone of his remarks, and in his deductions ; his style possessing no flowery adornment, but rather a " sledge hammer" force. He is conspicuous for his persistent opposition to every form of political corruption, fighting against every grant, sub- sidy and private bill, and endeavoring to defeat every attempt at plunder of the public treasury. On the accession of President Grant, he appointed Mr. Wash burne his Secretary of State, in March, 1869, but he resigned about a week later in accordance with a previous arrangement, on the plea of ill-health, and accepted the position of Minister to France. He remained in Paris during the celebrated siege of that city, in 1870-1, renilering much assistance to the American residents, and conducting himself in so humane, hon- orable and judicious a manner during the trying emergencies and complications of that struggle, tliat he reflected honor upon the Republic which he represented, and received not only the most cordial acknowledgments from the llepublic, at whose birth throes he was thus fortuitously pres^ent, but from the Ger- man Government also, many of whose citizens, shut up in the beleaguered city, he had protected from the hostility of the in- furiated National Guard, and as the only representative of a first class neutral power, had been their sole resource. Mr. Washburne has developed in this position a higher order of diplomatic ability than he was generally credited with pos- sessing. His whole course has been eminently judicious, and creditable alike to himself and the Government he represents. The appointment, though made almost entirely on the basis of personal friendship, and in some sense as a requital for benefits conferred, has proved one of the best which President Grant has made ROBERT GUMMING SGHENGK, UNITED STATES MINISTER NEAR THE COURT OF ST. JAMES. \%^7l T lias been for many years the fashion to berate our Gov- o I ernment on its diplomatic appointments. Our leading ii^ reviews and magazines have frequently indulged in ^ language something like this: "A diplomatist is not, like a poet, born, not made ; to the highest success in diplomacy, a life-long training is indispensable. In all the European Courts, the young men of the highest ability, who propose to make diplomacy tlieir life work, begin as attaches to some foreign legation, and proceeding through all the stages of Assis- tant-Secretary, Secretary of Legation, Charge, and Minister Resident, finally arrive at the high dignity of Ambassador Ex- traordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to some court, tho- roughly qualified for their work." " With the United States," they continue, "there is nothing of this sort attempted. Diplo- matic appointments are made without any reference to the qualifications of the appointee. Very seldom has he any knowledge of the language of the country to which he is sent, still less frequently does he know anything of its history, policy or customs ; but he has been efiicient in training in, or drivino- to the polls, a large number of voters for the Administration now in power, and therefore he is to be appointed our represen- tative to some country, where he will be a laughing stock and disgrace to our nation." 335 336 MEN OF OUR DAY. There is jast a spice of truth in this statement, so far as some few of our appointments of Ministers Resident, Consuls, etc., to the minor Powers are concerned. But in the higher appoint- ments, such as those to Great Britain, France, Germany (or, before the late Franco-German war, to Prussia), Austria, etc., whether it was due to our statesmen having a natural talent for diplomacy, or to the skill of the Presidents and their Cabinets, the fact is palpable that we have been represented at these Courts uniformly by men who were the peers of the ablest am- bassadors from other Courts. Such men as Mr. Stevenson, Mr. Everett, Mr. Dallas, Mr. Buchanan, Mr. C. F. Adams, Mr. Motley, or our present representative, General Schenck, at the Court of St. James, were, in no respect, the inferiors of the ablest men England, France or Germany have sent out as their ambassadors. Nor have our Ministers to France or Germany been behind these in ability. Gen. Cass, Mr. Rives, J. Y. Mason, Mr. Dayton, General Dix, Mr. Bigelow, Mr. Washburne, and in Germany, Messrs. J. Q. Adams, Wheatou, Wright, Judd and Bancroft, have all done honor to the nation, and they could not have done better had they been trained all their lives in '•' the art of using language to conceal its true meaning," which was Talleyrand's definition of diplomacy. The statesman who now represents us near the British Court, has the attainments and experience which should qualify him for this important post, but his frank, blunt ways, his utter fear- lessness, and his incapacity for any of the arts of concealment or double-dealing, will introduce a new phase in English diplo- macy, though possibly a successful one for him ; since Bismarck, one of the most adroit of statesmen and diplomatists, has de- clared, "that he had always adopted the plan of telling the exact truth and the whole truth, because it puzzled the diplo- matists so much." ROBERT CUMMINQ SCHENCK. 337 Robert Gumming Schenck was born in Franklin, Warren county, Ohio, October 4, 1809. His ancestry, on his father's side, were of Dutch origin, though his father was, we believe, born in this country. He served in the War of 1812, and rose, like his son, to the rank of General. He died when Robert was but twelve years old, and the boy was put under the guardian- ship of General James Findley. In 1824, he entered Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, a year in advance, and graduated with honor in 1827. He studied law with Tom Corwin, and was ad- mitted to the bar in 1828, though but nineteen years of age. He removed to Dayton, and there, in the next ten years, by diligent study and careful preparation of his cases, rose to a command- ing position in his profession. He first entered upon political life in 1838, by running as a candidate for the State Legislature. In the Presidential campaign of 1840, he acquired the reputa- tion of being one of the ablest speakers on the Whig side, in. the canvass, and, in 1841, was elected a Representative in the State Legislature, from Dayton, and became at once a leader of his party in the House, After another year in the Legislature,. he was elected to Congress from his district in 1843, and re- elected in 1845, 1847 and 1849. He declined a re-election in 1851, and was appointed by President Fillmore, Minister to- Brazil, in March. 1851. In Congress, he was eminently efficient and practical. He displayed rare abilities and a thorough un- derstanding of every subject on which he spoke, and, when oc- casion required, was quick of repartee, pungent and satirical. His nature was one of great intensity, and he always was so- profoundly in earnest in his convictions, that he made warm, friends and bitt ;r enemies. As minister to Brazil, he acquitted himself with high honor, and was directed by the Government to visit Buenos Ayres, Montevideo, and Asuncion, and make treaties with the republics around the La Plata and its affluents. 22 3oi> MEN OF OUR DAY. He obeyed, and negotiated treaties which would have been of great advantage to us, but their ratification was neglected by the Senate. In 1854, Mr. Schenck returned to Ohio, and though sympa- thizing generally in the views of the Eepublican party, his per- sonal antipathy to Colonel Fremont was so strong, that he took no part in the canvass, and, we believe, did not vole. He was building up, at this time, a fine and lucrative business in his profession, and was also connected as President with one or two ]:)rominent railroad companies. In 1859, he came into more active and direct sympathy with the Republican party, and in September of that year, was the first man in the country to suggest Abraham Lincoln to a public meeting as a candidate for the Presidency. He supported Mr. Lincoln with great ardor and warmth at the Chicago Convention, in 1860, and in the subsequent canvass of that year. When the attack was made on Fort Sumter, Mr. Schenck promptly tendered his services to the President, and was com- missioned Brigadier-General of Volunteers. As he had not been known as a military man, though he had, as afterward appeared, been a diligent student of military science, his ene- mies, and they were numerous and bitter, determined at once that the opportunity of being revenged on him, and of ridiculing every movement he might make, was too good to be lost. Many of the West Point graduates, full of their importance, sneered at political generals, and were very glad of the opportunity to sneer at them. In General Schenck's case the opportunity soon came, though not through any fault of his, but rather through the blundering carelessness of a West Pointer. It was what was known for a time, till more important matters drove it out of the public mind, as " the Vienna (Va.) affair." In a recon- noissance by railroad cars, his troops were fired upon and several ROBERT GUMMING SCHENCK. 339 wounded, and as the plucky General disembarked his soldiers and " went for " the enemy, the cowardly engineer ran off with the train, and left his little handful of men at the mercy of four or five times their number. But thanks to his firmness, the enemy believed these troops the advance-guard of a large force, and they ran, instead of capturing the Union troops. This whole affair, which was, in reality, as General Scott reported, highly creditable to General Schenck, except the railroad part, which was not his device, but General Daniel Tyler's (a West Point officer), was, by his enemies, used greatly to his discredit. General Schenck's next appearance was at Bull Run, where he stood his ground, though his subordinates, several of them graduates of West Point, ran, and afterwards got promoted for doing so. He was subsequently in command under Rosecrans, in West Virginia, and under Fremont in the Luray Valley, and after the battle of Cross Keys was, for a time, commander of the First Army Corps, in General Sigel's absence. Ordered to join the Army of Virginia, then under General Pope, fighting at heavy odds against Lee's large army, he joined it just before the second Bull Run battle, and was in the thickest of the fight- ing of the two days that followed, being severely wounded on the second day, and his right arm permanently injured. He was unfit for field duty for six months, but was assigned to the command of the Middle Military Department, embracing the turbulent Rebels of Maryland, over whom Butler and Banks and Dix had held sway. He ruled them with a firm hand, but with perfect and exact justice, repressing all turbulence and acts tending to the manifestation of disloyalty or any complicity with treason. The "woman difficulty," which had troubled Butler in Baltimore, and led to his famous order in New Orleans, was to be met in Baltimore by General Schenck. He settled it effectually and by a very simple but characteristic manoeuvre. 340 MEN OF OUR DAY. The Eebel women of Baltimore were particularly virulent and ingenious in their methods of annoying the Union soldiers and Union citizens. At last they began to wear the Rebel colors, displaying them flauntingly, and taking care to promenade the streets in great numbers, thus nrrayed, whenever this display would particularly annoy the Union troops and their comman- der. General Schenck made no public demonstration, but di- rected that a number of the most noted women of the town should be selected, and brought to his headquarters for instruc- tion. Each was instructed to array herself as elegantly as pos- sible, to wear the Rebel colors conspicuously displayed upon her bosom, and to spend her time in promenading the most fashionable streets of the city. Whenever she met any one of the ladies of Baltimore, wearing the same badges, she was to salute her affec- tionately as a " Sister in the Iloly Cause." For these services she was to be liberally paid. The effect was marvellous. In less than a week, not a respectable woman in Baltimore dared to show herself in public ornamented by any badge of the re- bellion. General Schenck was not popular with the disloyal portion of the inhabitants of Maryland, His own loyalty was too de- cided and earnest to permit him to trifle with them or allow them to trifle with him. In December, 1863, he resigned his commission to take his seat in Congress, to which he had been elected over Mr. Vallandigham, from the Third (Dayton) Conp'ressional District of Ohio. He was at once made House Chairman of the Committee on Military Affairs, at that time, perhaps, the most laborious Committee of Congress, lie was re-elected to the Thirty-Eighth, Thirty-Ninth, Fortieth and Forty-First Congresses, and, from his position, was the leader of the House. In military matters he was laborious and vigi- lant ; the firm friend of the volunteer, as against what he ROBERT CUMAHNG SCHEXCK. 341 thought the encroachments and assumptions of the regulars ; the remorseless enemy of deserters ; a vigorous advocate of the draft, and the author of the disfranchisement of those who ran away from it; the champion of the private soldiers and subordinate officers. He cared little or nothing for per- sonal popularity, and would fight to the death against any- thing which he believed to be wrong, or which covered even the slightest suspicion of fraud. He often opposed the Adminis- tration, but he was so thorougly honest, so fearless in his ad- vocacy of what he believed to be right, and so able in his arguments for it, that he almost always carried his point. He would have been elected Senator, but that the people of Ohio felt that he could not be spared from the House. When Mr. Motley was recalled from the ambassadorship to Great Britain, President Grant offered the place to General Schenck, and, after much hesitation, he accepted it, and sailed for England in July, 1871. He has done honor t» his position, though he has been placed in circumstances ©f great embarrassment and difficulty, in consequence of the hitch in regard to the arbitration of the Alabama Claims. General Schenck is a ripe and accomplished scholar, tho- roughly informed on international and constitutional law, well versed in political history, and familiar with the whole range of modern literature, English, French and Spanish. In person he is about of the middle height, square, compact, broad-chested and rugged-featured. His face indicates his Dutch ancestry, and quite as strongly his vehement passions and his inflexible will. To his enemies he is terrible: the burning, stinging eloquence of his invective comes hissing hot from his lips and scorches whatever it touches. To his friends he ex- hibits an entirely different phase of character, being generous, kindly, and affectionate. He can hardly be called ambitious, but with all bis foibles, is one of our best and soundest statesmen. ANDREW GREGG CURTIN, EX-GOVERNOR OF PENNSYLVANIA. « • » * > I'^MONG the loyal governors of the Northern States du- \s ring the rebellion, none were placed in circumstances ^ '' requiring greater watchfulness, or more prompt and de- cisive action, than the patriotic Governor of Pennsylva- nia, and none fulfilled their high trust with greater fidelity and loyalty. Andrew Gregg Curtin was the son of Rowland Curtin, and was born in Bellefonte, Centre county, Pennsylvania, April 2d, 1817. The inhabitants of his native county were mostly engaged in the manufacture of iron, though agriculture was by no means neglected there. The elder Curtin was a noted iron manufacturer for forty years, in Centre county, where he accu- mulated a large estate, and left his children an ample fortune. The mother of Governor Curtin was a daughter of Andrew Gregg, of British war fame, a Representative in Congress and United States Senate from 1807 to 1813, and one of the sup- porters of Jefferson and Madison. Young Curtin was educated in Milton, Northumberland county, where he was one of the pupils at the academy of the Rev. J. Kirkpatrick. After obtainihg a good rudi mental education he was placed in the law office and law school of Judge Reed, of Carlisle, Pennsylvania. At this time the school 342 ANDREW GREGG CURTm. 843 formed a portion of Dickinson college, and Judge Reed was esteemed the best lawyer in Pennsylvania. During the year 1839, Andrew G. Curtin was admitted to the bar, and began the practice of his profession in Bellefonte. He was very successful, and transacted a large and varied prac- tice in the courts of the neighboring counties. Like most lawyers, he took a great interest in politics, and attached himself to the Whig party of the period. He was actively engaged, during 1840, in promoting the election of General Harrison as Presi- dent of the United States ; and in 1844 stumped the State in support of Henry Clay — being always successful in collecting an audience on the shortest notice. Mr. Curtin was placed on the electoral ticket for 1848, and again travelled through his native State, advocating the election of General Zachary Taylor. In 1852, he supported the nomi- nation of General Scott, was placed on the electoral ticket, and worked arduously in his behalf. Indeed, in all his political ac- tions, he took the side of what were known as the Pennsylva- nia Whigs. During the year 1854, Mr. Curtin was very earnestly re- quested by the voters of the centre of Pennsylvania to accept the nomination for Governor of the State, but refused, receiv- ing instead, the chairmanship of the State Central Committee. He was afterward appointed, by Governor Pollock, State Secre- tary of the Commonwealth. Secretary Curtin devoted a great deal of his attention to common schools, and to the question of public improvements. After his retirement from the State secretaryship, he again de- voted himself to the practice of the law, and was very active in the extension of railroad facilities through the centre of the State. Mr. C irtin accepted the nomination for Governor of tho 844 MEN OF OUR DAY. State of Pennsylvania in 1860 ; was elected in October of that year, and was formally inaugurated January 15th, 1861. The country was then becoming distracted by the first movements of the rebellion, and Governor Curtin soon began to make pre- parations to support the United States Government. On April 9th, he sent a message to the State Legislature, recommending that measures be immediately adopted to remedy the defects in the militia system of the State. The legislative committee re- ported a bill for that purpose, and three days after, it became a law. The excitement attending the fall of Sumter requiring speedy legislative action, the recently adjourned Legislature was again convened, on April 30th, under Governor Curtin's proclamation of April 20th. Volunteers were called for by the United States Government, and through Governor Curtin's energy, the first regiment that entered the national capital, for its defence, was the 25th Pennsylvania volunteers, Colonel Cake. The Legislature provided for the raising of a reserve corps, and when the three years' volunteers were called for, Pennsylvania was ready to send a full division at once into the field. This Pennsylvania Reserve Corps did great honor to the State and extraordinary service to the nation. General Reynolds, who fell on the first day at Gettysburg, was one of its commanders, and Major-General Meade, afterward commander of the Army of the Potomac, another. The territory of Pennsylvania was threatened, and its border invaded, in September, 1862, before the battle of Antietara ; but the movements of the rebels, in June and July, 1863, when sev- eral of its towns were plundered and burned, its capital and it3 chief city threatened, and one of the bloodiest battles of the war fought, for three days, in one of its towns, created great alarm among its inhabitants, and it required all Governor Curtin's ANDREW GREGG CURTIN. 345 self-possession, calmness, and executive ability, to re-assure his people and organize them for resistance to the invaders. His executive powers were again called into exercise in the summer of 1864, when the south-eastern part of the State was invaded again by the rebels, and great destruction of property resulted. Governoi; Curtin was re-elected in 1863, and con- tinued in office till January, 1867. After his retirement, he was actively engaged in business, but during the political campaign of 1867-1868, he did good service for the Republican party as a speaker, in New York, New Hampshire and Connec- ticut. He was strongly pressed as a candidate for the vice-presi- dency at the Chicago Convention, in May, 1868, but the current being evidently in favor of Mr. Colfax, he caused his name to be withdrawn. In 1869, soon after President Grant's inauguration, he was appointed United States Minister to the Russian Court, and has fulfilled the duties of that important mission with great dignity and ixbility. The Catacazy difficulty at one time threatened to mar the harmony which had so long existed between the two nations, but it was fortunately settled most amicably through the admirable management of the American minister. DAVID DAVIS. ASSOCIATE JUSTICE OF THE SUPREME COURT OF THE U. S. (VjS^N nothing did Mr. Lincoln show more clearly his faculty '^q) ill of insight into human character than in his selection of ^(m^ men for high official positions. He was sometimes over- ^ ruled by members of his Cabinet, and men were foisted upon him of whose antecedents he had no knowledge ; and occa- sionally wearied with the constant worry and strife to which he was subjected, he let some men pass, as every President will, who were not qualified for their positions. But of the appoint ments made by liim from his own personal knowledge, and with out extraneous inducncos, it would l)c hard to select one wliich was not admirably appropriate. In this class of appointments made by him entirely on his own volition, one of the best was that of Judge Davis. The Supreme Court of the United States, though often a Court of Appeals, is one less fettered by precedents than almost any other in the world, and its ablest judges have always been, not lawyers of the minutest technical knowledge of precedent and practice in all the inferior Courts of our own or other coun- tries, but men of broad and comprehensive views, well grounded in all the great principles on which State, national and interna- tional law are based ; men with clear notions of equity, and that sound, practical, hard common sense which reaches down at once to the fundamental principle involved in a case, and does not 346 DAVID DAVIS. 347 trouble itself with petty technical details. John Marshall, the ablest Chief Justice of that court in its whole history, could not compare for a moment with any one of a dozen lawyers we might name in New York or Philadelphia, in minute, almost micro- scopic knowledge of the various motions, countcmotions, demurrers, arrests of judgment, and special pleas by which the progress of justice might be delayed ; but he was none the less an able jurist for all that. His knowledge and his clear brain were devoted to the work of expediting justice, not of hindering it. Judge Davis is a man of the John Marshall stamp. David Davis was born in Cecil county, Maryland, March 9th, 1815. His family, which was of Welsh origin, removed during his childhood to Ohio, and he entered very early Kenyon Col- lege, Gambler, Ohio, where he graduated in 1832. Thence he went to the Cambridge Law School, and subsequently to the Yale College Law School at New Haven, and after a very thorough and careful preparation, was admitted to the bar in 1835, when but twenty years of age, and settled in Bloomington, Illinois. Busi- ness did not come rapidly to the young lawyer, but he studied his cases with great care, looking rather to fundamental princi- ples than to petty details and technicalities, and gradually both courts and people began to find that the Bloomington attorney had mastered his cases so thoroughly, that he was sure of defeat- ing lawyers whose reputation was higher than his own. At this time there was practising in the Circuit Courts of central Illinois, a tall, gaunt, but hard-headed lawyer, a half dozen years his senior, between whom and Davis there sprang up a strong friendship and intimacy. Lincoln (for he it was to whom we refer), though powerful before a jury, often deferred to his youni^er friend's thorough knowledge of the great princij)les in- volved, while Davis in his jury cases availed himself as often as he could of his friend's sledge-hammer logic. The two were 3-18 MEN OF OUR DAY. in the State Legislature together, and both, we believe, were members of the State Constitutional Convention of 1847 ; thence for awhile their paths diverged ; Lincoln plunging into the thorny path of politics, and being a member of Congress in 1847-9; Davis adhering to the law, and being chosen in 1848 Judge of the Eighth Judicial Circuit, in Illinois, a position which he held for fourteen years. Occasionally his old friend Lincoln managjed cases in his court, but much of the time he Avas occupied with political matters. These had little interest for the Judge, who wisely devoted himself to his duties as a jurist. Yet he had joined the Republican party in 1856, had watched with eagerness the great struggle in 1858, between Douglas and Lincoln, his sympathies being wholly with his friend. In 1860, he was appointed a delegate to the National Repub- lican Convention at Chicago, and labored zealously and heartily for Lincoln's nomination for the Presidency. In the autumn of ]862, there were several vacancies on the Supreme Court bench to be filled, and for one of them, Lincoln, unsolicited, named hia friend Davis. The appointment was honorable alike to the Presi- dent and the Judge; for while the latter was eminently qualified for the position, the former by the nomination gratified alike the public interests, and his own affectionate disposition. Judge Davis entered upon his duties December 8Lh, 1862. His course on the Supreme Court bench has commanded universal respect. His deci- sions have often been independent, and sometimes diverse from those of a part of his associates ; but the reasons assigned for them were such as commended themselves to every candid mind. Of the reported cases argued during Judge Davis' term (see last volume of BlacJc^s, and the eleven succeeding volumes of Wal- lace), eighty-n'ght of the opinions of the Court have been deliv- ered by him ; while, in nineteen other cases, he has dissented from the majority, whose opinion decided the opinion of the Court. One who has so long held an important judicial posi- DAVID DAVIS. 349 tion as Judge Davis, and has placed upon record so many opin- ions, certainly affords to the public an excellent opportunity of forming a correct estimate of his habits of thoughts, in legal matters, at least. The greater part of the cases brought before the Supreme Court are of such a nature as do not involve con- stitutional questions ; but, in those of that kind which he has had occasion to adjudicate upon, he has left upon record no un- certain indication of his views of the scope of the Federal Con- stitution, and the true relations thereto of the several States ; and especially in all cases touching the life and personal liberty of the citizen. One of the earliest and most important of these cases was that of Milligan, in 1866, who having been arrested, tried, and sentenced to death by a military commission during the recent war, appealed to the Supreme Court, which decided boldly and squarely against the overshadowing of civil tribu- nals by military authority. When Judge Davis came to consider the argument put forth by General Butler, in behalf of the Government, that martial law covered with its broad mantle the proceedings of this military commission, and authorized a military commander to suspend all civil rights, and their remedies, and to subject citizens as well as soldiers, to the rule of his will, he said : "If this position is sound to the extent claimed, then when war exists, foreign or domestic, and the country is subdivided into military departments for mere convenience, the commander of one of them, can, if he chooses, within his limits, on the plea of necessity, with the approval of the Executive, substitute military force for, and to the exclusion of the laws, and punish all persons as he thinks right and proper without fixed or cer tain rules. " The statement of this proposition shows its importance ; for, it true, Republican government is a failure, and there is an end of liberty regulated by law. Martial law established on such a basis destroys every guarantee of the Constitution, and eff'ectu- 350 MEN OF OUR DAY, ally reiulers tlie ' military iudopeiuleut of, and superior to tlie civil pi)\vor,' the attempt to do which by the King of Great Britain was doomed by our fathers such an oftence that they assigned it to the world as one of the causes which impelled them to declare their independence. Civil liberty and this kind of martial law cannot endure together; the antagonism is irrecon- cilable, and in the conflict one or the other must perish. "This nation, as experience has proved, cannot always remain at peace, and has no right to expect that it will always have wise and humane rulers, sincerely attaehed to the principles of the Constitution. Wicked men, amhifion.'^ of power, until hatred of liberty and contempt of law, mat/ Jill the place once occuj)ied hj/ Washington and Lincoln ; arid if this right is conecdod, and the calamities of war again befall us, the dangers to human liberty are frightful to contemplate. If our fathers had failed to pro- vide for just such a contingency, they would have boon false to the trust reposed in them. They knew — the history of the world told them — the nation they were founding, be its existence short or long, would be involved in war ; how often or how long con- tinued, human foresight could not tell, and that unliniitod power, wherever lodged at suoh a time, was especially hazardous to freemen. For this, and other equally weighty reasons, they secured the inheritance they had fought to maintain by incorpo- rating in a written Constitution the safeguards which time had proved were essential to its preservation. Not one of these safeguards can the President, or Congress, or the Judiciary dis- turb, except the one concerning the writ of habeas corpus.^^ The two similar cases of General Garland, a lawyer, and Mr. Cummings, a Roman Catholic priest ; the former debarred from practising, and the latter arrested and fined under the action, in Missouri, of the " iron-clad " or test-oath, adopted in 1865, in- volved the constitutionality of that oath, which was affirmed by the opinion of the Court, a minority (including Judge Davis), dissenting therefrom. In the case of Brennan vs. Ixhodes, 1868, Judge Davis advo- cated the uacoastitutiouality of the legal-tender act ; and, in the DAVID DAVIS. 351 Veazie Bank case, of 1869, concerning the constitutionality of a ten per cent, tax imposed by Congress (July 15th, 1866) on amount of notes issued for circulation by State banks, Judge Davis dissented from the opinion of his colleagues on the ground that the State of Maine had authority to charter the bank and invest it with full banking powers, and that the power of Con grass to tax banks was opposed to the right of the State. Tn his opinion and action upon these and similar cases, Judge Davis has given ample proof of sound judgment, excellent sense, and above all, of clearness of thought. Ilis style of expression is simple and lucid; his opinions never overloaded with a profu- sion of illustrative cases; and his brief, straightforwanl manner of giving reasons for a judgment is well illustrated in the cases of the Bank of RepnMic vs. Millard (Wallace, 10), and Barnard vs. Kello(/g (Wallace, 11), and others. At the time of the assassination of President Lincoln, Judge Davis was one of the committee who accompanied the remains of his lamented friend to their last resting place ; and at the urgent request of the bereaved family, was appointed adminis- trator upon his estate. Of late Judge Davis has become alienated from the President, and has been disposed to take sides with the Revenue Reformers and other classes hostile to President Grant's administration. He was nominated for the Presidency by the National Labor Re- form Convention, at Columbus, Ohio, February 22d, 1872, and would possibly have received the nomination of the Liberal Republicans at Cincinnati, but for the fact that there were two or three candidates from Illinois, and the convention preferred to select from some State which supported but a single candidate. Judge Davis was wise enough to foresee the glowing future of Chicago, and to purchase largely of the land on which the city ia built, and his shrewd foresight has made him a millionaire. CHARLES SUMNER,- UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM MASSACHUSETTS. " '^^HARLES SUMNER was born in Boston, Massacliusetta, on the 6tli of February, 1811. His father, Charles <^^^ Pinckney Sumner, a graduate of Harvard College, a lawyer by profession, and for fourteen years, during the latter part of his life, sheriff of Suffolk county, was a gentle- man of eminent probity, literary taste and ability, of whom it has been said that " the happiness of mankind was his control- ling passion." These graces of disposition, as well as his noble and sympathetic character were inherited by his son ; who, at an early age, developed uncommon powers of intellect and an intense thirst for knowledge. He prepared for college at the Boston Latin school, where he manifested a peculiar fondness for the classics and for the study of history ; winning at the close of his course, the prizes for English composition and Latin poetry, besides the Franklin medal. In 1830, Mr. Sumner graduated from Harvard college, and in the following year entered the law school at Cambridge, where he enjoyed the friendship as well as the teachings of that eminent jurist, Judge "Story ; pursuing his studies with an indomitable energy and assiduity. "He never relied upon text-books," we are told, "but sought original sources, read all authorities and references, and made himself familiar with books of the common law, from the year-books, in uncouth Norman, down to the latest reporta 352 i F.NORAVEO BY A Ij .WalTRKPHU,* V CHARLES SUMNER. 353 It was said that he could go into the law-library, of which he was the librarian, and find, iu the dark, any volume, if in ita proper place." While a student of law, he becanae an esteemed contributor to the " American Jurist," a quarterly journal of extensive celebrity and circulation among the profession, of which he soon assumed the editorial charge. In 1834, he waa admitted to the bar at Worcester, and commenced practice in his native city. Being, soon after, appointed reporter to the Circuit Court, he publif the army, the better to pre- pare the proper legislation to give the highest development and efficiency to the military forces. He served on General McClellan's staff until the 9th of January, 1862, when pressing duties in Congress forced him to tender his resignation. In accepting it, Adjutant- General Williams said : — " The major-general commanding, desires m.e to" acknowledge the receipt of your letter of the 9th instant, in which you tender your resignation of the appointment of aid-de-camp upon his staff. The reasons assigned in your letter are such, that the general is not permitted any other course than that of directing the acceptance of your resignation. He wishes me to add, that it is with regret that he sees the termination of the pleasant official relations which have existed between you and himself; and that he yields with reluctance to the necessity created by the pressure upon you of other and more important public duties." During the second session of the XXXVIlth Congress, Mr. Wilson originated, introduced, and carried through, several measures of vital importance to the army, and the interests of the country. Among these measures, were the bills " relating to courts-martial;" " to provide for allotment certificates;" "for the better organization of the signal department of the army ;" "for the appointment of sutlers in the volunteer service, and 380 MEN OF OUR DAT. defining their duties ;" " authorizing the President to assign the command of troops in the same field or department, to officers of the same grade, without regard to seniority ;" " to increase the efficiency of the medical department of the army ;" " to facilitate the discharge of enlisted men for physical disability;" "to provide additional medical officers of the volunteer ser- vice ;" " to encourage enlistments in the regular army, and volunteer forces;" "for the presentation of medals of honor to enlisted men of the army and volunteer forces, who have dis- tinguished, or who may distinguish themselves in battle during the present rebellion ;" " to define the pay and emoluments of certain officers of the army, and for other purposes," — a bill of twenty-two sections of important provisions; and "to amend the act calling forth the militia to execute the laws, suppress insur- rection, and repel invasion." This last bill authorized for the first time the enrolment in the militia, and the drafting, of negroes; and empowered the President to accept, organize, and arm colored men for military purposes. Military measures introduced by other Senators, or originating in the House, and amendments made to Senate bills in the House, were referred to the Committee on Military Afi'airs, imposing upon Mr. Wilson much care and labor. During the session, Mr. Cameron, the Secretary of War, resigned ; and on leaving the department, he said, in a letter to Senator Wilson : — " No man, in my opinion, in the whole country, has done more to aid the War Department in pre- paring the mighty army now under arms, than yourself; and, before leaving this city, I think it my duty to offer to you my sincere thanks, as its late head. As chairman of the Military Committee of the Senate, your services were invaluable. At the first call for troops, you came here; and up to the meeting of Congress, a period of more than six months, your labors HENRY WILSON. 381 were incessant; sometimes in encouraging the administration by assurance of support from Congress, by encouraging volun- teering in your own State, by raising a regiment yourself, when other men began to fear that compulsory drafts might be neces- sary ; and in the Senate, by preparing the bills, and assisting to get the necessary appropriations for organizing, clothing, arm- ing, and supplying the army, you have been constantly and profitably employed in the great cause of putting down this unnatural rebellion." Mr. Cameron was succeeded by Mr. Stanton, whose rapid intuitions, indomitable energy, and wonderful industry, and exe cutive ability, were made so manifest in the six years which followed, and enabled him to accomplish more than any other man could have done for the prosecution of the war. That Mr, Stanton's manner was brusque and abrupt, is well known, but his relations with Mr. Wilson, which were constant throughout the war, were of the most cordial and friendly character, and the secretary always found in him a prompt and able defender. In tlie last session of the XXXVIIth, and the whole of the XXXVII Ith Congress, Mr Wilson labored with the same vigor and persistency to organize and develop the military resources of the nation, to do justice to the officers, and to care for the soldiers. Aside from the numerous bills which, though originating with him, were offered by others, and the amendments which he suggested to bills originating with other Senators, or with the House of Representatives, the following important measures were introduced and advocated by him, and passed through his efforts: — "An act to facilitate the dis- charge of disabled soldiers, and the inspection of convalescent camps and hospitals;" "to improve the organization of the cavalry forces;" "to authorize an increase in the number of major and brigadier-generals ;" " for enrolling and calling out 382 MEN OF OUR -DAY. the national forces, and for other purposes ;" (this act containecl thirty-eight sections, and was one of the most important passed during the session ;) " to amend an act entitled ' An act for enrolling and calling out the national forces;' " (this bill con- tained the provision that "colored persons should, on being mustered into the service, become free;") "an act to establish a uniform system of ambulances in the armies;" "to increase the pay of soldiers in the United States army, and for other purposes ;" (this increased the pay of a private soldier to sixteen dollars a month ;) " to provide for the examination of certain officers of the army ;" " to provide for the better organization of the Quartermaster's Department ;" " an act in addition to the several acts for enrolling and calling out the national forces ;" " to incorporate a national military and naval asylum for the relief of totally disabled men of the volunteer forces;" "to in- corporate the National Freedmen's Saving Bank ;" '' to incorpo- rate the National Academy of Sciences;" (the humble shoe- maker perfecting and reporting a bill for the organization of an association of the most learned and scientific men of the nation !) " to encourage enlistments, and promote the efficiency of the military and naval forces, to making free the wives and children of colored soldiers ;" and a joint resolution " to en- courage the employment of disabled and discharged soldiers." The important legislation securing to colored soldiers equality of pay from the 1st of January, 186-i, and to officers in the field an increase in the commutation-price of the ration; and three months' extra pay to those who should continue in service to the close of the war, was moved by Mr. "Wilson upon appropri- ation-bills. With the close of the XXXVIIIth Congress, or rather shortly after its adjourn mem, came the conclusion of the war. But the assembling of the XXXIXth Congress, in the follow- HENRY WILSON. 383 ing December, brought no cessation of labor to Mr Wilson, The bill for the continuation of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Civil Eights bill, the Fourteenth Constitutional Amendment, the questions of the basis of representation, negro suffrage, and the Eeconstruction acts of that and the XLth Congress, as well as the matter of impeachment, all demanded his attention. The creation of the rank of general in the army, and admiral in the navy, both originated with his committee, and he had the satisfaction of seeing Lieutenant-General Grant appointed lo the one, and Vice-Admiral Farragut to the other, and the two brave and deserving officers, Major-General Sherman, and Rear- Admiral Porter, advanced to the vacancies thus made. But while laboring, with ever-watchful care, for the interests of the army and the support of the Government in its gigantie efforts to suppress the rebellion, Mr. "Wilson did not lose sight, for a moment, of slavery, to the ultimate extinction of which he had consecrated his life more than a quarter of a century before slavery revolted against the authority of the nation. In that remarkable series of anti-slavery measures which culminated in the anti-slavery amendment of the Constitution, he bore no undistinguished part. He introduced the bill abolishing slavery in the District of Columbia, which became a law on the 16th of April, 1862, and by which more than three thousand slaves were made forever free, and slavery became forever impossi- ble in the nation's capital. He introduced a provision, which became a law on the 21st of May, 1862, providing that persons of color in the District of Columbia should be subject to the same laws to which white persons were subject ; that they should be tried for offences against the laws in the same man- ner as white persons were tried, and, if convicted, be liable to the same penalty, and no other, as would be inflicted upon white persons for the same crime. On the 12th of July, 1862. 384 MEN OF OUR DAY. he introduced from the Military Committee the bill, which became the law on the 17th, to amend the act of 1795, calling for the militia to execute the laws. This bill made negroes a part of the militia, authorized the President to receive, into the military or naval service, persons of African descent, and made free such persons, their mothers, wives, and children, if they owed service to any persons who gave aid to the rebellion. On the 24th of February, 1864, he caused the enrolment act to be so amended as to make colored men, whether free or slave, part of the national forces ; and the masters of slaves were to receive the bounty when they should free their drafted sluves- On the Committee of Conference, Mr. Wilson moved that the slave should be made free, not by the act of their masters, but by the authority of the Government, the moment they entered the service of the United States, and this motion prevailing, the act passed in that form. General Palmer reported that in Kentucky alone, more than twenty thousand slaves were made free by it. He subsequently introduced, and in the face of the most persistent opposition carried through, a joint resolution making the wives and children of all colored soldiers forever free. Six months after the passage of this bill, Major-General Palmer reported that, in Kentucky alone, nearly seventy-five thousand women and children had received their freedom through it. Senator Wilson also moved and carried an amendment to the army appropriation bill of June 15, 1864, providing that all persons of color who had been or who might be mustered into the military service should receive the same uniform, clothing, arms, equipments, camp equipage, rations, medical attendance, and pay, as other soldiers, from the first day of January, 1864. His efforts in behalf of the fifty-fourth and fifty-fifth Massa- chusetts colored regiments are well known, and it was due to HENRY WILSON. 385 his persistency, that they received a part of what was tlieir just due. The Freedmen's Bureau bill was originally reported by him, and in all the subsequent legislation on that subject, lie was active and decided in favor of its organization and maintenance. He defended with great ability and secured the adoption of negro suffrage as a part of the Congressional plan of reconstruction, and in both the XXXIXth and XLth Congresses, he has maintained fully his old reputation as the champion of the oppressed and down trodden. This championship is with him no matter of expediency, i.o political trick to gain a cheap popularity. Born in poverty, nursed in childhood in the lap of penury, and throughout his youth and early manhood accustomed to constant and severe manual labor, he has learned, from the stern experiences of hia own early life, the divine art of sympathy, and has become imbued with the doctrine of human brotherhood and love. A man of the people, sprung from the toiling classes, he has pro- found faith in them, and commands, as few men can, their earn- est and abiding love. From boyhood Mr. Wilson has been strictly temperate and a man of irreproachable moral character; but within the past six or seven years, he has felt the necessity of a more actively reli- gious life, and professing conversion, has united himself with the Congregational church at his home. In this, as in all other public acts of his life, he has given abundant proof of bis earnestness and the purity of his motives. lie was, in 1866, active in organizing a Congressional Temperance society, an association of which there was much need, and has been usinof his great influence to win members of Congress, who had fallen into habits of intoxication, to reformation. He has met with gratifying success in this laudable enterprise. Mr. Wilson was a prominent candidate (rather from the 25 886 MEN OF OUR DAY. urgencv of his friends than from any particular ambition of his own) for the Vice- Presidency, in the political campaign of 1868, and though Mr. Colfax eventually received the nomination, the vote for Mr. Wilson was large, and under other circumstances could not have failed to secure him a place on the ticket. On the election of General Grant to the Presidency he was tendered a position in the Cabinet, but he wisely preferred his place in the Senate to which, in 1871, he was re-elected, as being one of equal dignity and less liability to censure. In the recent discord among the Eepublicans of the Senate, Mr. Wilson has supported President Grant, though temperately and with moder- ation ; but while he differs in his views from his able and distin- guished colleague (Mr. Sumner), their personal relations to each other are, as they always have been, cordial and heartily friendly. At the National Eepublican Convention held at Philadelphia, June 5th and 6th, 1872, Mr. Wilson was nominated for the Yice- Presidency on the first ballot, receiving 384| votes against 314J polled for Mr. Colfax. This result was due to several causes, of which Mr. Wilson's real merit and ability was one ; a declina- ture by Mr. Colfax of a reuomination, early in 1871, which was subsequently reconsidered, and the belief that after the scathing speech of Mr. Sumner, Mr. Wilson's nomination was necessary to secure the New England vote for Mr. Grant, were others. But whatever may have been the causes which led to it, a good and true man has been put in nomination. LYMAN TRUMBULL, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM ILLINOIS. |HILE the Western States, or ratlier those of the Missib- sippi valley, have usually sent men to the Senate who were educated to the legal profession, it has generally been the case that they were those to whom the law had been, for the most part, a stepping-stone to political prefer- ment, rather than men profoundly versed in the higher prin- ciples of law, men of judicial mind, and those who had for years presided with dignity and ability over the highest courts. Illi- nois is one of the few exceptions to this general rule. Judge Trumbull, one of her Senators, had a wide reputation as a jurist for years before he was chosen to a place in the Senate. Lyman Trumbull was born in Colchester, Connecticut, Oc- tober 12, 1813. He is of an excellent lineage, being from one of the collateral branches of a family which has given throe governors to Connecticut, one of them the " Brother Jonathan" of the Eevolution, and has had its full share of eminent men in all departments of public life. Colchester, Mr. Trumbull's birthplace, has been, for three-fourths of a century, famous foi the excellence of its academy, within whose walls hundreds, if not thousands, of distinguished men have received their early education. Here Mr, Trumbull acquired his English and classi- cal training, and about the year 183-4 went to Georgia, and en- gaged in teaching, meanwhile studying law. He was admitted 387 388 MEN OF OUR DAY. to the bar in Georgia, we believe, in 1836, and soon after re- moved to Illinois. A close and eager student of bis profession, be soon began to attract notice, and found himself in possession of a large and growing practice in the young and thiiving city of Chicago. In 1840, he was sent to the State Legislature, and, in 1841 and 1842, was elected Secretary of State. But local politics were not to his taste, and for the six years following he devoted himself with the utmost assiduity to his profession, in which his extensive attainments, and the calm, comprehensive view which he took of his cases, perceiving and meeting before- hand the points which his opponents would make, had given him a high rank. In 1848, he was chosen justice of the Su- preme Court of Illinois, and presided in that court, with extra- ordinary ability, for five years. At the election, in November, 1854, Judge Trumbull was elected a Representative in Congress from the first Congressional district (Cook county) to the XXXIVth Congress. At the assembling of the Legislature in the following January, the Re- publicans, who were in a majority in both branches of the Legislature, were to elect a United States Senator in place of General James Shields, whose term expired on the 4th of March ensuing. Two candidates seemed to have a nearly equal follow- ing, viz. : Abraham Lincoln, of Springfield, and Lyman Trum- bull, of Chicago. The State had been revolutionized and car- ried for the Republican party through Mr. Lincoln's influence ; but preferring the triumph of his principles to a personal vic- tory, he magnanimously withdrew from the canvass, and brought his friends to support Judge Trumbull. The judge took his seat in the Senate in December, 1855, and so fully satisfied were the people with his conduct, that he was re-elected in 1861, and again in 1867. Senator Trumbull is of a somewhat cold temperament, and LYMAN TRUMBULL. 389 thougli from conviction a Eepublican, he was conservative in his tendencies. In the last session of the XXXVIth Congress — December, 1860, to March, 1861 — he opposed secession with decision and firmness, yet advocated conciliation ; and though he did not believe the Constitution needed amending, he was ready to vote for a convention to consider amendments. For- tunately for the cause of freedom, and unquestionably controlled in this by him who causes " the wrath of man to praise him," the southern leaders were not to be coaxed or soothed. They were determined on war, believing that through it they should obtain the complete ascendancy ; and, as one of them said, they would not have staid in the Union if they could have had carte blanche to dictate their own terms. The temporary weakness which had caused the knees of some of the Republicans to smite together, and made them willing to accede to what would have been disgraceful compromises, passed away, and when the shock came, and war was actually begun, they stood shoulder to shoulder, and wondered at their own firmness. Mr. Trumbull had never been particularly timid, but his whole feelings were averse to war, and he had hoped to pre- vent it. Yet when it came, he was firm and true. In the new Senate, he was chairman of the Judiciary Committee, of which he had been, from his entrance into the Senate, a member, and he acted with judgment and promptness in bringing forward such measures as the occasion demanded. On the 24th of July, 1861, Mr. Trumbull moved, as an amendment to the confisca- tion bill, then under consideration, a provision " that whenever any person, claiming to be entitled to the service or labor of any other person, under the laws of any State, shall employ said person in aiding or promoting any insurrection, or in resisting the laws of the United States, or shall permit him to be so em- ployed, he shall forfeit all right to such service or labor, and the ^90 MEX OF OUR DAT. person whose labor or service is thus claimed, shall be theDce* forth discharged therefrom, any law to the contrary notwith- standing." This amendment and the confiscation act passed the Senate, but was opposed in the Ilouse, and after long discussion, a substitute for it, proposed by Mr. Bingham, embodying the same principle, but more definite iu its details, was passed. When this was returned to the Senate, Mr. Trumbull moved a concurrence with the House, and the amended bill was then passed. This was, for the time, a bold move on the part of Mr. Trumbull, though such has been the progress of opinion since that time, that it seems very weak and timid to us. As the war progressed, his faith, like that of most of his party, in the eventful triumph of universal freedom, grew stronger; and, throughout the war, he was found iu the front rank, with Sumner and Wilson and Wade and Harlan, in the development and advocacy of measures looking to the over- throw of slavery, and the protection of the wards of the nation. He advocated and defended the Emancipation Proclamation, sustained the act suspending the habeas corpus, reported the thirteenth amendment to the Constitution in the form in which it finally passed, (abolishing slavery throughout the Union,) defended the first Freedmen's Bureau bill, and attached to it an amendment providing for permanent confiscation of rebel pro- perty; drew up, or materially modified, the second and third Freedmen's Bureau bills, matured and presented the Civil Eights bill, and devoted much labor and time to the perfecting and advocacy of the reconstruction acts. In the trial of President Johnson, on the articles of impeach- ment presented by the House of Representatives, in February, 1868, Senator Trumbull, as one of the Grand Inquest of the nation, before whom the alleged culprit was to be tried, maintained from the first a marked reticence, and though often importuned in regard to his future action gave such vague and mysterious responses that LYMAN TRUMBULL. 391 he was claimed by both sides. That the President had been guilty of a violation of the spirit of the Constitution and laws, very few doubted ; and probably Senator Trumbull was not one of the few who had any doubts on this point. But there was more difficulty in proving him guilty technically of the letter of the law ; and Mr. Trumbull at first, perhaps, undecided on this point, at length voted in the President's favor, greatly to the chagrin of many of his party associates. That he did this simply on legal grounds, and not from any wrong or corrupt motive, was patent to every one who knew his purity of character, and his uniform integrity and high moral principle. Yet it brought down upon him at the time a storm of indignation, which resulted in a partial alienation of feeling for years. Senator Trumbull supported General Grant's election in 1868, but with no great warmth ; and during his administration he has maintained generally an independent position. The removal of Mr. Sumner from the chairmanship of the Committee on Foreign Relations roused his indignation, and since that event he has not often acted with the President's friends. In May, 1872, he signified his approval of the Cincinnati Convention, and was one of the prominent candidates of that convention for the Presi- dency ; but the candidacy of Judge Davis, from the same State, having rendered the success of an Illinois candidate impossible, he gracefully withdrew his name, and has given his support most cordially to Messrs. Greeley and Brown. Senator Trumbull has the reputation of being cold and want- ing in sympathy ; but those who know him best say that under a somewhat impassive and frigid exterior there beats a very warm and loving heart, one of strong sympathies and passsions. He is a man of highly cultivated intellect and a decidedly judicial cast of mind. Ilis dignity of manner and his great attainments as a jurist eminently fit him for a prominent posi- tion in our Jnghest judicial tribunal. JOHN SHERMAN. 'OIIN SHEEMAN, United States Senatoi irom the State of Ohio, comes from the distinguished Connecticut family of Shermans, which was founded by a refugee Koundhead from Essex, England, who brought with him to America, the Puritan politics, courage, and conscience, which sent him into the field as soldier on the popular side in the Civil Wars. The Senator's father, Charles Eobert Sherman, a thoroughly educated lawyer, removed from Connect'icut to Ohio in 1810, and there became famous first as an advocate, and afterwards as a Judge of the Supreme Court. His pro- fessional life and judicial service won the success of eminent reputation and social regard — his generosity and disinterested- ness restricted their profits to the maintenance of his large family. When, in 1829, he was stricken upon the bench with a mortal disease and died, he left a widow and eleven children, the oldest eighteen, the youngest an infant — and he left no estate. The boys became somev/hat scattered. William Tecum- seh, now General Sherman, became by adoption a member of the family of the Hon. Thomas Ewing. John went to Mount Vernon, Ohio, where he was sent to school, and kept steadily and generally under good masters until he was fourteen years old. Then he was sent to the Muskingum Improvement, in part to earn his own support, in part to learn the business of a civil 392 JOHN SHERMAN. 893 engineer, and Avas placed under the care of Colonel Curtis, since General Samuel E. Curtis, the resident engineer of the work The lad's grade in the corps was junior rodman. He was em- ployed two years on this work — the two most valuable years of his education ; for in them he learned the methods and forms of business, acquired a habit of working hard and systematically, and became self-reliant. When he was sixteen years old and innocent of all politics, save a boy's idea that Tom Corwin and Tom Ewing were the greatest men in the world, he became the victim of politics, and lost his employment. The Ohio elec- tion of 1838 brought the Democratic party into power. The pernicious doctrine the leaders of that party had established, that "to the victors belong the spoils," was applied to the Muskingum Improvement. Colonel Curtis was a Whig. He was turned out in the summer of 1839, and most of his boys were turned out with him, to give place to a Democratic engineer, and to Democratic boys, Sherman was among the discharged. He lost little time in weighing the justice which punished him for other people's politics, and not his own, but after his divorce from his engineering apprenticeship, set himself to thinking how he could accomplish the dream and ambition of his young life — a college "education. He went to his brother, Charles T. Sherman, now United States District Judge in Ohio, who was then engaged as a lawyer in Mansfield, Ohio. The collegiate education was discussed in domestic session of the Ways and Means committee, composed of the two brothers, with the family resources all around subject to requisition. It could not be accomplished. John hail to give up the idea of a college course. Furthermore, he had to earn his living. It was finally agreed that the best thing to be done was for John to fit himself to be a lawyer as soon as he could, and while he was reading law with Charles, and working in his 894 MEN OF CUR DAY. office as a clerk, to go to scliool to his brother in some sense, and study mathematics and the Latin classics under his in- struction and direction. The attorney's business of the office of course ran over this, the boy's substitute for a college edu- cation, but amid his drudgery as a clerk, and his reading of elementary books of law, he picked up considerable Latin, and read miscellaneously, but, largely of English authors. Ilis four years' novitiate expired while he was thus liberally educating him.self, and he was graduated out of his college by a license to practice law, which he obtained on examination the day after he was twenty-one years old. He immediately entered into a co-partnership with his older brother, which lasted for eleven years, and which was active and lucrative for those days and the region of Ohio, and in which John earned a solid repu- tation as an able, wise, resolute, laborious, honest, and success- ful lawyer. John rode the circuits ; Charles managed the busi- ness and counselled in the office. Like all western lawyers, John Sherman was a politician. He was an ultra Whig by organization and education, and of course was debarred from office in the Democratic district in which he lived. But his talents and character made him the representative of the young politicians of the minority party in his region, and he had been sent while yet in full practice as a lawyer to the Whig National Conventions of 18-18 and 1852, and in the latter year was chosen a Presidential elector. Up to that time he had never ran for an office, and neither had hoped for or desired one. But when the Nebraska issue arose in 1851, like a true statesman he felt the necessity for combining all the opposition in the country to the further extension of human slavery, and zealously and laboriously worked to organize a new party without a name, whose mission was to be to check the aggrandisement of the slave power, and JOHN SHERMAN. 395 preserve the Eepublican principles and forms of our Govern- ment. He accepted a norainaton to Congress in the Xllltli Ohio district, and greatly to his surprise, in the general political revolution of that year, was elected. The law firm of Charles and John Sherman was now dissolved. Charles drifted into railway enterprises. John was in the current of politics which bore him away forever from his profession. He came into tlie House of Representatives fully equipped for useful public service — a fluent debater, with a large knowledge of affairs, patient of details, laborious in investigation, with habits of hard work, conciliatory in temper, yet persistent in purpose. He brought with him the reputation of being sound in judg- ment, sincere in purpose, and superior to personal consider- ations in the discharge of a public duty. His career was rapidly successful. Its prominent events in the first session of the XXXIVth Congress were his service as one of the Kansas Investigating Committee, and his preparation of the famous Report, which the committee presented to the House of Repre- sentatives and tlie people of the country. He bore a large and influential part in the debates which followed the report. At the close of the session the Republican members of the House, chiefly on the persuasion of Mr. Sherman, adopted the amend- ment to the Army Bill, denying the validity of the slavery- extending laws of Congress. It is almost certain that if the Republican party had stood upon that declaration as a plat- form, they would have carried the presidential election that year. The Republicans in the House agreed to do so, and Sherman wrote an address to the people of the United States, elaborating the principle contained in that declaration, which was signed by all the Republican members, but was not pro- mulgated — for Seward and other Senators, under his example 396 MEN OF OUR BAY. aud dissuasion, " backed down," and the Congress adjourned on a Democratic triumph. The XXXYth Congress was chiefly marked by the long and heated contests, over the Lecompton Constitution, the English Bill, and the defection of Douglas. In these struggles, John Sherman took an active part, and made many and powerful speeches. He was also appointed, and served as chairman of the N.ival Investigating Committee, which made a most damaging exposure of the administrative complicity of Bucha- nan and Toucey, with the crimes and purposes of the slavery propagandists. He made, too, a masterly speech upon the public expenditures, which was widely circulated as a cam- paign document. The XXXVIth Congress opened in the House, with the mem- orable contest for speaker, in which John Sherman was the can- didate of the Republicans. On Mr. Pennington's election, he was made chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, and by virtue of that office, the leader of the House of Representatives. He crowned his great and varied labors on this Committee, by putting through the House the beneficent measure on which, more than on any other, the material prosperity of the coun- try rests — the so-called Morrill Tariff. In his best speech of that Congress, delivered in reply to Pendleton in February 1861, he was prophetic in his appreciation of the influences that divided parties, and the result of the conflict which the South was hastening with such arrogant confidence ; he declared that war was inevitable, that slavery would be destroyed, that the North would triumph. Mr. Sherman was elected to the XXXVIIth Congress as a member of the House, but on the resignation by Mr. Chase of his seat in the United States Senate, was chosen, by the Legislature of Ohio, to represent that State in that body. He was put upon JOHN SHERMAN. 397 the Finance Committee, made by the war the most important in the organization of the Senate. He introduced the National Bank Bill, and had charge of that almost vital measure, as well as of the Legal Tender Acts, on the floor and in the debates. Among his speeches in this Congress, those which commanded general attention, and were of decisive influence, were the one against the continuance of the State banking system, delivered in January 1863, and the one in favor of the national banks soon after. He also spoke powerfully against slavery in the District of Columbia, and took part in every important debate upon subjects growing out of and connected with the war, and always on the right side. But his labors were chiefly confined to finance and taxation — to providing money and maintainin{; credit to carry on the war. In the first session of the XXXIXth Congress Mr. Sherman principally devoted himself to the reduction of the ta^es. He also introduced into the Senate the bill to fund the public indebt- edness, which, if passed as reported, would, as Jay Cooke hag borne witness, have been followed by the beneficial results of the saving of about $20,000,000 of interest per annum, the wider dis- semination of the loan among the masses, and the removal of the debt from its present injurious competition with railroad, mer- cantile, mining, manufacturing, and all the other vital interests of the country. Had the bill been passed as reported, the larger portion of the indebtedness of the United States would now have been funded into a five per cent, loan, and the Treasury and the banks could, in the judgment of the most sagacious financiers in the country, have resumed specie pay- ments by the 1st of July, 1867. Most unfortunately for the public interests, the bill was mutilated in the Senate and defeated in the House. Mr. Sherman, in his funding scheme, and in the speech with which he supported it, completely antici- 398 MEN OF OUR DAY. pated, and would certainly have avoided tlie perils and qnea- tions that now threaten the national credit. In this session he also opposed strenuously the bill to contract the currency, which has since exercised so mischievous an influence upon the business of the country, and the effect of which he clearly foresaw and pointed out, both on the floor of the Senate and in the committee room. Upon these questions, the funding of the public debt, and the contraction of the currency, Mr. Sherman differed so much from Mr. Fessenden, who was chairman of the Committee on Finance, that subsequent co- operation between them became impossible. In the second ses- sion of this Congress, Mr. Sherman spoke and labored in favor of a revised tariff. A patriotic attempt had been made to graduate the duties on foreign goods, so as to equalize tho cost of production here and abroad, reference being had to the difference between wages, cost of living, and interest on money, — a patriotic attempt to secure to American working men and women the possession of the American market. Not only in the XXXIXth Congress, but in all the Consjresses of which he was a member, John Sherman spoke and voted for the industr}^ of his country. The nation is indebted to him, also, for the substitute for the Keconstruction Bill, which he introduced in the second session of the XXXIXth Con- gress, and which finally became a law. The XLth Congress was principally occupied with Eeconstrue- tion and the contest between the legislative and executive branches of the Government, which Andrew Johnson forced and pushed to an issue whose only solution was his impeach- ment and removal from office. Mr. Sherman was chairman of the Senate Finance Committee and, by virtue of the pre-eminent importance of that post, the leader of the Senate. In the second session he reported a new bill for funding the national debt and JOHN SHERMAN. 399 converting the notes of the United States — a measure of the greatest consequence. The bill authorized ; 1. The sale of 10-40 five per cent, bonds to redeem all out- standing debts. 2. It exempted these bonds from State taxation. 3. It provided for the payment of one per cent, annually of the public debt. 4. It offered to the holders of the 5-20s the option to exchange them for 10-40s at par. 5. It authorized the conversion of legal tenders into bonds, and bonds into legal tenders. 6. It authorized contracts payable in gold. The proposed measure was received with favor as being just, wise and necessary, by a large portion of the people. It was attacked as a violation of the pledged faith of the Government, and a step towards repudiation, by a class of capitalists and financiers in some of the large cities. Mr. Sherman, in his mas- terly speech in support of the bill, delivered on the 27th of February 1868, made the following points : By reducing the rate of interest from six to five per cent., without increasing the volume of greenbacks, we can save to the people of the United States seventeen millions of dollars in gold annually, and neither derange the currency, disorder the money market, nor depreciate our credit : — Equity and law will be fully satisfied by the redemption of the 5-20 bonds, in the same kind of money received for them, and of the same intrinsic value it bore, when the bonds were issued : — Every citizen of the United States has conformed his busi- ness to the law which made greenbacks a legal tender. He has collected and paid his debts according to it. And every State in the Union, without exception, has, since the legal tender act 400 MBN OF OUR DAY. wag passed, made its contracts in currency and jxiid tlioni in currency : — The wide discrimination now made between the bondliolder and the notehohlcr, gives rise to popuhir clamor and is the cause of great and just compkiint : — No privilege should be granted to the bondholder that is not granted to the noteholder. Both the bond and the note are public securities, and both equally appeal to the public faith: — No privilege should be given to the bondholder unless it is compensated for by some advantage reserved to the Govern- ment : — The whole public debt should be made to assume such form that it may be a part of tlie circulating capital of the country, bearing as low a rate of interest as is practicable, and having only such exemptions as will maintain it at par with gold :— This funding process will give increased value to the United States notes — under it both notes and bonds will gradually rise, step by step, until they reach the standard of gold — the provision indeed is the most rapid way to specie payment. Mr. Sherman in this speech also drew from British and American history five striking precedents to recommend and sanction the measure he had reported from the Finance Com- mittee. The rate of interest on portions, or the whole of the public debt of England, was reduced by act of Parliament in 1715 from 6 per cent, to 5 per cent. — in 1725 from 5 per cent, to 4 per cent. — in 1749 from 4 per cent, to 3J per cent., and sub- sequently, by the same act, to 3; and in 1822 from 5 per cent, on exchequer navy bills to a 4 per cent, annuity. Alexander Hamilton, the first Secretary of the Treasury of the United States, funded, by authority of Congress, the combined public debt of the nation and the revolutionary war debts of the several Stntes, by offering the fundholders 6 per cent, bonds JOHN SHEPwMAN. 401 for two tliirds of tlieir debt, 3 per cent, bonds for the other third, and by giving public lands for some of it, and annuities for some. The bondholders and government creditors ■who would not accept this offer, got but 4 per cent, interest on the debt they held, 2 per cent, less than they were entitled to under the law creating the debt. The nation at the time sus- tained the arrangement as reasonable, fair, and for the best. Mr. Sherman closed his speech on his Funding Bill with these noteworthy words: " I say the plan now proposed by the Committee on Finance is- in accordance with precedents, holds out no threats, deals witii all alike, holders of five-twenty bonds, greenbacks, and all. It gives them a proposition to fund their debt at their own option by the 1st of November next, or if they will not choose to do it, then, as a matter of course, the question is to be decided at the next session of Congress, what provision ought to be made, whether or not Congress will redeem the five-twenty bonds in the currency in which they were contracted or post- pone its redemption, paying the interest at six per cent, in gold, until we can redeem the principal in gold. "i/" tins offer is rejected, I will not hesitate to vote to redeem maturity bonds in the currency in existence when they were issued and with which they were purchased, carefully com] lying, however with all the provisions of law as to the mode of payment, and as to the amount of currency outstandiny^ With the decline in the value of gold in 1868 and subsequent years, and the sounder views in regard to our obligations to the foreign holders of our national debt which became prevalent after the National Conventions of 1868, these plausible but* falla- cious theories in regard to its payment in greenbacks, which had been a favorite hobby with the Ohio and some other political leaders of both parties, were finally abandoned, and we suppose that Mr. Sherman himself would hardly cafe to recall at the 20 ^ 402 MEN OF OUR DAT. present time the earnestness with which he formerly advocated them. But except this sliglit, and as it turned out inconse- quential, departure from the principles of a high and broad statesmanship, there is nothing in Mr. Sherman's record to be ashamed of. He has, during his last senatorial term, which expires in March, 1873, maintained his old reputation as an effi- cient and faithful worker; has materially aided Secretary Bout- well in forwarding measures for the funding at lower rates of interest the Five-Twenty bonds, and the paying off of the National Debt. Ho has taken no active or prominent part in the violent and unseemly controversies of the last year, but in general supports President Grant. John Sherman is very tall, erect, exceedingly spare, brown- haired, gray-eyed, has a large head, high and square in front, has firm square jaws, a large mouth, with thin lips, expressing in an uncommon degree decision, firmness, and self-control, but betraying his emotional nature, which is tender and sympathetic. He speaks without effort, without hesitation, with great rapidity, wholly free from effort at display, and without a single trick of oratory or any self conscious mannerism. In debate he is greatly animated, and shoots his statements and reasoning straight at his mark. He commands the undi- vided attention of the Senate when he speaks, and his words always carry weight, and generally produce conviction. His life is pure ; his personal and political history are without spot or blemish. CARL SCHURZ, UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM MISSOURI ^ Jf^l'ARL SCnURZ'S life has been one of action, adventure, Vlj ^"^^ romance. Born March 2d, 1829, at Libler, near c /'(^^ the city of Cologne, Germany, he pursued a full course (s* of studies at the gymnasium of that city, and, in 1846, became a student of the great University at Bonn, where he applied himself with fervor to the study of the ancient clas- sics, history, and philosophy. In the political outbreak of 1848, he shared in the prevailing agitation, and having become inti- mate with Gottfried Kinkel, Professor of Rhetoric in the Uni- versity of Bonn, was concerned with him in the publication of a paper of ultra-liberal views, and which, during Kinkel's ab- sence as a member of the Prussian Legislature, was edited wholly by Schurz. In the Spring of 1849, the two friends made ap attempt to originate an insurrection in the town of Bonn, but failed and were obliged to make their escape, seeking refuge in the Palatinate, where a body of the revolutionists had already organized. Schurz entered the military service as adjutant, and shared in the defence of Radstadt. On the conquest of that fortress, he sought safety in flight, and concealing himself for three days and nights without food, finally escaped through a sewer, made his way across the Rhine, and succeeded in reaching Switzerland about the beginning of August, 1849, remaining in seclusion at Zurich 403 404 MEN OF OUR DAY. until the following May. His friend, Kinkel, meanwhile, had been captured, tried, condemned to a twenty years' imprison- ment, and incarcerated in the fortress of Spandau. Schurz con- ceived the bold idea of releasing him from durance vile, and after a long correspondence with Kinkcl's wife, secretly returned to Germany, at great I'isk to liimself, and spent much time at Cologne, and three months at Berlin, engaged in unremitting attempts to establish friendly relations with the guards and others who were brought in contact with the prisoner. The actual attempt at rescue was made November 6th, 1850, when Kinkel's cell was broken open, he was brought out to the roof, and from thence lowered to the ground, and spirited away. The boldness of the scheme was its success; altliough the Government, with little probability, was thought to have winked at it. The fugitives found their way across the frontier to Mecklenburg, thence to Rostock, where, after some time spent in concealment, they took passage on a small schooner, in Decem- ber, to Leith. Schurz then established himself in Paris, finding employment as correspondent of some of the German newspa- pers, until June, 1851, when he removed to London, and pur- sued the vocation of a teacher until July, 1852. In that year, having married, he came to America, remaining for some three years in Philadelphia, during which time he devoted his atten- tion largely to political, historical and legal studies, then, after a short visit to Europe, he settled in the practice of the law at Madison, Wisconsin. As might have been expected, from the natural bias of his mind, and the associations of his earlier years, he found in American politics a congenial field for the exercise of his talents, and in the Presidential canvass of 1856, he became famous in the Western country as an orator among the Ger- mans, wielding among them a very powerful influence, in behalf of Republican principles. In 1857, he was nominated by the CARL SCHUPwZ, 405 State Republican Convention as Lieutenant-Governor of the State, but was defeated at the polls. In 1858, on the occasion of the contest between Douglas and Lincoln, for the United States Senatorship of Illinois, he delivered his first public speech in English, which was widely republished in the newspapers of the land. He developed abilities of a high order, as a politician and orator, and his speech on "Americanism," at Faneuil Hall, as also at the Jefferson celebration at Boston, in the spring of 1859, added largely to liis reputation. Meanwhile, he had taken up his residence at Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and was engaged in legal practice. During the winter of 1859-60, he was in demand as a lyceum lecturer in New England ; and his speech on " Sena- tor Douglas' Ideas and Policy," delivered in Springfield, Massa chusetts, attracted much attention. In 1860, he was a Delegate to the Republican National Convention, in which he swayed great influence, especially in the framing of that portion of the platform which related to citizens of foreign birth. During the Presidential canvass which followed, he led a life of ceaseless activity, haranguing the people in the Northern States, both in the German and English languages; his principal speeches, as rated by their eloquence and popular effect, being that delivered at St. Louis, on "The Irrepressible Confliet," and one entitled '' The Indictment Against Douglas," spoken in New York city. There is no doubt that Mr. Schurz's efforts contributed very largely to the success of the Republican ticket, and his servicea were appropriately acknowledged in his appointment as Minister to Spain, by President Lincoln, shortly after his inauguration. But the outbreak of the war, at this juncture, led him to resign the appointment in order to take a share in the military service of his adopted country. Circumstances, however, seemed to overrule his wishes, and he went to Madrid, where he represented 406 MEN OF OUR DAY. the United States until December, 1861. Immediately upon his return from abroad he threw himself with characteristic energy into the work of aiding the Government; and, among other notable efforts, delivered, at New York, March 6th, 1862, a speech on " The Necessity of Abolishing Slavery, as a Means of Eestoring the National Unity," which struck the key-note of the future action of the Lincoln Administration in its dealings ■with Secession, and has been justly regarded as one of the finest of his oratorical displays. April 15th, 1862, he was appointed a Brigadier-General oi volunteers, and March lith, 1863, was promoted to the Major Generalship. He was assigned to the command of a division under General Sigel, distinguishing himself at the second Bull Eun battle, Auarust, 1862. At Chancellorsville his division oi the eleventh corps was panic stricken by the attack of Stone wall Jackson, and was routed in spite of his attempts to rally it. He succeeded, however, in reforming it, and though in reserve for the next two days, its conduct was creditable. At Gettys- burg, where not only his own division, but the eleventh corp3 was temporarily under his command. General Schurz and his soldiers retrieved fully their former reputation ; no troops in the army behaving with more steadiness and no commander being more conspicuous for bravery. In the early autumn of 1863, General Schurz and his division formed a part of the eleventh corps, which, under the command of General Howard were sent West to reenforce the Army of the Cumberiand. He took part in the battles around Chattanooga, and distinguished himself there as he had done in the East. On the reorganization of the Western Army, under General Sherman, General Schurz re- signed, and returned to Milwaukee, from whence he soon removed to Detroit, Michigan. At the conclusion of the war, General Schurz was appointed CARL SCHURZ, 407 by President Johnson Commissioner to visit the South and ex- amine and report upon the affairs of the Freedmen's Bureau. His report, which was verj full and able, displeased the President exceedingly. During a part of 1865-66, he was the Washington, correspondent of the New York Tribune. In the latter part of 1866, he established the Delroit Post, a very able paper, still in existence ; but subsequently disposed of it, and removing to St. Louis started the WesiUche Post, of which he is still part propri- etor, and to which he contributes frequently. He was a Dele- gate to the Republican Convention of May, 1868, at Chicago, of which he was temporary chairman, and a leading spirit, and in the ensuing winter was elected (as a Republican) to the United States Senate, succeeding John B. Henderson. He took his seat March 4th, 1869, and his term expires March 4th, 1875. He is one of the youngest members of the Senate, in which body he has no superior in direct, pointed attack, skilful and graceful vehe- mence, profound mastery of the great principles of political science, and the wide range of his scholarship. His knowledge of the history of America and Europe is very perfect, and he possesses a wonderful facility in acquiring languages, speaking and writ- ing most of those of Europe, and some of the Oriental tongues. Few dare meet him in debate, for all are aware that he is thoroughly equipped for the conflict, and that the force which he holds in reserve would readily render all their efforts futile. Though quiet, and apparently cold in manner to the superficial observer, there is in him a depth of feeling, an earnestness of patriotism, and a heartiness of friendship which make him a very earnest friend, as he is a stern and unrelenting enemy. At the Chicago Convention of May, 1868, he was very active in promoting General Grant's election ; but he early became dis- satisfied with his course, and became identified with the bolting party in Missouri, in their advocacv of free-trade and a universal 408 MEN OF OUR DAY, amnesty. In the Senate, while ever courteous, he has for some time past been conspicuous for the severity and eloquence of his attacks on the Administration. The sale of arms to France was investigated at his instigation and that of Senator Sumner. By the North German statesmen, Senator Schurz is pleasantly remembered, and his career has been eagerly watched by them. When he ran for the Senate against Henderson and Ben Loan, it is said that old Baron Gerolt, the Prussian Minister at Wash- ington, appeared for the only time in his life in that city, on "Newspaper Row," sanguine to get points in favor of his friend. The Senator is on friendly terms with Prince von Bismarck, and takes a deep interest in all that concerns the Fatherland ; but he is too fully aware of the grand opportunities which our country offers to a man of great gifts and abilities, to desire ever to return to Germany as a residence. "America," he says, with emphasis, " is my country, and here is to be my future." Senator Schurz is now in the prime of manhood, forty-three years of age, tall, slender, but of graceful figure, and broad shoulders. He is very near sighted, wears spectacles constantly, and in his air and bearing combines the soldier and the scholar. Though not rich, he possesses a competence, and has that best of all wealth, an accomplished and excellent wife, to whom he is devotedly attached, and beautiful and intelligent children, who inherit the fondness of both parents for study. A volume of the Senator's orations and addresses was published in 1865. OLIVER PERRY MORTON. I LIVER PERRY MORTON was born in Wayne county, Indiana, on the -ith of August, 1823, and, becoming an orphan while yet very young, was placed under the care of his grandmother and two aunts, living in Hamilton county, Ohio, In early youth he served for awhile with a brother in the hatter's trade, but, in 1839, was placed at school in his native county, under the tuition of Professor S. K. Hos- hour, then principal of the Wayne county seminary, and now a professor in the Northwestern Conference university, at Indi- anapolis. His honored instructor says of him, at this period of his life, "If some knowing genius had then suggested to me that the future governor, par excellence, of Indiana, was then ir. the group around me, I would probably have sought him in a more bustling form, with brighter eyes and a more marked hiiad than Oliver's. But time has shown that in him was the mens sana in corpore sano, which the college, the acquisition of jurisprudence, legal gymnastics at the bar, the political crisis of the past, and the present exigencies of the nation, have fully developed, and now present him the man for the most responsi- ble position in the gift of a free people." After leaving the seminary, young Morton entered Miami university, at Oxford, Ohio, where he appears under a more favorable guise, as the star member of the Beta Theta Pi society, and the best debater in the coUege. Leaving the university without graduating, he 409 410 MEN OF OUR DAY. went to Centreville, Indiana, and began the study of law witli the Hon. John S. Newman, bending all his energies to the tho- rough acquisition of his profession. In 18-i5, he married Miss Lucinda M. Burbank, of Centreville, a lady of rare intelligence and refinement, whose untiring and benevolent efforts, during the recent war of the civil rebellion, for the relief of the Indiana volunteers, have honored both herself and her husband. Admitted to the bar in 1846, Mr. Morton soon took a front rank as a jurist and advocate, commanding, by his natural and acquired abilities, a large and lucrative practice. In the spring of 1852, he was elected circuit judge, acquiring among his fel- low-members of the bar, as well as in the public estimation, a high reputation for thoroughness and fairness. When, in the spring of 1854, the Democratic party, of which he had always been a member, repealed the Missouri compromise and passed the Kansas-Nebraska bill, he promptly seceded from the party, and thenceforth co-operated with the Hepublican party in its efforts to stay the spread of slavery and slave territory. Yet. on the subject of free trade, internal improvements, etc., he re- mained essentially in harmony with this old party, nor did he repudiate these principles in his departure from the Democracy, or in his acceptance of the nomination for the governorship of Indiana, which was tendered to him, in 1856, by acclamation. Having consented to head the Republican State ticket, he accom- panied his Democratic competitor — Ashbel P. Willard — in a vigorous and thorough canvass of the entire State, doing noble work, wherever he went, for the cause of Republicanism. Yet, although he was defeated, the large vote which he received, con- sidering the many difficulties under which he labored, and the youth of his party in the State, was justly to be considered a victory. From this time forward, Morton's character seemed to develop into new strength and harmony, and the superiority of OLIVER PERRY MORTON. 411 his mental organization became more generally acknowledged. From the end of this campaign, however, to the commencement of that of 1860, he asked no honors of his party, but was con- tent to labor, energetically and constantly, for the promotion of its success. His sound judgment and eminently practical mind gave him new influence in political councils, where he was acknowledged as the best of engineers and an authority as a framer of policy. The Eepublican party in Indiana, from its inception to 1860, owes its advancement largely to his untiring ze-xl, Avise counsels, and personal influence. When that important campaign opened, Mr. Morton's name again appeared on the Eepublican ticket as nominee for lieu- tenant-governor, "for reasons which were, at that time, supposed to have some weight, but which have since faded so completely that it seems almost incredible that he was ever thought of for so inferior a position." Again he plunged into, the canvass of the State with that vigor of intellect and body which few men possess, in an equal degree, showing a scope of view and a con- cise, but logical, method of statement and argument which rendered him unanswerable by his Democratic opponents, and which entitled him to the front rank of expounders of the Ee- publican doctrines. The Eepublican ticket in Indiana, as in all the Northern States, was successful, and, on the 14th day of Jan- nary, 1861, he was duly qualified as lieutenant-governor, and took his seat as president of the Senate. He occupied this posi- tion but two days, when, in consequence of the election, by the Legislature, of the governor elect — Hon. Henry S. Lane — to the Senate for a six-years' term, he became Governor of Indiana, and took the oath of office. Upon assuming the executive chair, Governor Morton found the public interests in a critical condition. Under previous loose, corrupt administrations, the pablic treasury had been depleted by wanton extravagance and 412 MEX OP OUR DAY. official peculation, tlie sinking fund had been miserably misman aged, and a regular system of frauds had been carried on by State and county officers in the disposition of the swamp lands, until the credit of the State abroad was so much impaired that she had become a borrower to pay her debts, and was, literally, " a by-word among her own citizens." The new governor set himself earnestly to work to bring order out of confusion, to renovate the different departments of government, to replenish a depleted treasury and to redeem the credit of the State. He inaugurated a new era of honesty, economy, and good financial management, which saved the State many millions of dollars, and rescued her name from infamy and distrust. But a new and still more threatening danger was to be averted from his beloved " Hoosier State." The gathering cloud of disunion and civil war hung over the country, and it became evident that Indiana was aflflicted with so large a share of disloyalty, that the advocates of secession even confidently counted upon material aid from her, in the shape of men and arms, in their proposed treasonable designs. Governor Morton was determined, however, that this scarce concealed treason should be nipped "in the bud," and to commit his State fully and unequivocally on the side of freedom and loyalty. Early in the spring of 1861, he visited the President at Washington, and assured him, that if he pursued a vigorous policy, he could pledge him at least six thousand Hoosiers for the defence of the Union. When, at length, in April, the attack upon Sumter had both startled and fired the northern heart, and the Presi- dent issued his call for seventy -five thousand troops — Indiana's quota being fixed at six regiments, of seven hundred and fifty men each — Governor Morton issued a proclamation, which, in eight da7/s, rallied over twelve thousand men to the defence of the national flag. The first six regiments marjhed promptly OLIVER PERRY MORTON. 413 forwara to the iield, attracting at all points general admiration and surprise at the perfection of their equipment; and Governor Morton's efficiency was held up as an incentive for other State executives to follow in nearly all the northwestern States ; and hardly had these first troops reached the field, before the ever- thoughtful governor sent agents to follow their footsteps, at- tend to their wants, and see that all their little needs were supplied while in health, and that they were properly cared for when sick, "With Governor Morton, indeed, may be said to have originated the plan of sending State agents to visit and care for troops in the field ; and, throughout the war, his agents uniformly distanced those of all other States. A few days after, the governor tendered an additional six regiments to the President. His message to the Legislature, which he had called in extra session, was full of determined and lofty patriotism. Laying aside all party prejudices, he required only lovalty and capacity as the necessary qualifications for positions of influ- ence; and so great, indeed, was the liberality shown by him to the Democracy, as to arouse the jealousy of the Republican,;, who criticised his course with much severity during this special session. Meanwhile, the neighboring State of Kentucky was in a very precarious state. Its governor, Magoffin (at heart a seces- sionist), was endeavoring not only to play into the hands of the South by preventing Kentucky from joining the hosts of free- dom, but to draw Indiana, Ohio, and other northern border States also into their power, by inducing them to hold a po- sition of neutrality, and assume the character of sovereign medi- ators between Government and the seceded States. Governor Morton, however, was not deceived by this specious plea of neu- trality. He firmly rejected all propositions to that eft'ect from Governor Magofiin ; and, desirous of keeping Kentucky " in Hi HEX OF OUK DAT. the Union," be dispatched thither numbers of his own secret agents, by whom he was promptly advised of the plans and operations of the secessionists in every part of that State. On the 16th of September, 1861, Governor ^[orton received from one of these agents, information of Zollicofier's advance into Kentucky, to a point some fourteen miles beyond the Tennessee line, and of a corresponding advance by Buckner's rebel force towards Louisville. The governor promptly countermanded an expedition under General Rousseau, which was just starting for St. Louis, and ordered the force to cross the Ohio into Ken- tucky — at the same time hastening every available man in Indiana, to the defence of Louisville, the safety of which was thus assured beyond a doubt. Fully convinced, now, that KentuoKy's neutrality was at an end, and that her soil was actually invaded by the rebels, Gov- ernor Morton withdrew his secret agents, and, appealing to his Hoosiers for help, to redeem the sister State from the enemy, he sent forward regiment after regiment into Kentucky, and before many months had passed, the Federals held Bowling Green, Zollicoffer was killed, his troops defeated at Mill Spring, and the soil of Kentucky cleared of rebels. This generous conduct endeared the governor to the Unionists of Kentucky, who virtually adopted him as their governor. We cite an in- cident in point. " Shortly after Kentucky was cleared of rebel troops, a very wealthy lady of Frankfort, the owner of a large number of slaves, visited some friends in Indianapolis, and on the second day of her visit inquired for Governor Morton Upon ascertaining that he was absent, and would not return for several days, she prolonged her visit somewiiat beyond the time she had intended to remain. The day for the governor's return having arrived, and he not appearing, the lady extended her visit still several days more, saying she would not leave In- OLIVER PERRY MORTON. 415 dianapolis until she had seen him. A friend inquiring of her the reason why she was so anxious to see the Hoosier governor, she replied, " Because he is our governor, as well as yours, and has been ever since the beginning of the rebellion," And we are reminded, also, of the Indiana soldier, who interposed to stop an angry altercation in the streets of Frankfort, Kentucky, as to whether Magoffin (de facto), or Johnson (provisional), was governor of Kentucky, by the remark — " Hold on, gentlemen, you are all mistaken. I will settle this controversy. Neither of 3'-our men is governor of Kentucky, but Governor Morion^ of Indiana, is governor of Kentuchj, as his soldier-boys, with their blue coats and Enfield rifles, will soon show you." Despite the discouraging impressions produced upon the public mind, by the reverses to the national arms in tlie fixll of 1861, twenty volunteer regiments were added to the twenty-four Indiana regiments already in the field by the end of the year, a result of the ever-constant fidelity of Governor Morton in following the absent troops, securing their pay, attending to their personal wants, and providing for their fomilies at home. But the same energy and fraternal care which inspired confidence in the volunteers, also excited envy and detraction at home, among a certain class of ambitious politicians and traitors to the national cause. Charges of mismanagement in State mili- tary matters, of corruption in official appointments and the awarding of contracts, became so frequent that, finally, in December, 1861, a Congressional Committee of Investigation visited Indianapolis, at the urgent and frequently repeated re- quest of the governor, and instituted a rigid examination of the management of the military affairs of the State. Their pub- lished report not only vindicated Governor Morton from all blame, but developed, in the most incontestable manner, his care to prevent fraud, peculation, and waste. It has been well 416 MEN' OF OUR DAT. said of him, at this period, that, "as the war progressed, and the execution of all plans proposed by him resulted success- fully, he rose in the estimation of the President and Cabinet, until it was finally admitted by the knowing ones at Washing- ton, that his influence with the powers at that city was greater than that of any other man, outside of the national executive department, in the country. His thorough knowledge of the people of the northwest, his ready tact in adapting means to ends, his great forecasting and combining powers, and above ail his energy and promptness in the performance of all labor assigned him, secured to him a deference which few men in the nation enjoyed ; and more than once was his presence requested, and his counsel solicited, in matters of the greatest importance to the Government." The depression of the public mind during the winter of 1861-62, seemed only to rouse Governor Morton to still greater resolutions and endeavors ; and by his indefatigable exertion;;, six regiments, by the last of February, 1S62, were added to the number of those already in the service. About the commence- ment of the year, a wide-spread and formidable western con- spiracy, in aid of the Southern Rebellion, was discovered to ex- ist in most of the loyal States, known, in some places, as the " Star in the West," in others, as the " Self Protecting Broth- ers," '' Sons of Liberty," etc., bat most generally, as " The Order of American Knights,'' in affiliation with the southern society of " Knights of the Golden Circle." The order became quite popular in the southern counties of Indiana, and its members were especially virulent in denunciation of the admiuistration, the " abolition war,'' and Governor ^Morton. Against him they especially charged, with a persistence which seemed to be proof against repeated denials, that he was instrumental in pro- curing the imposition, by Congress, of oppressive taxation ; and, OLIVER PERRY MORTON". 417 also, corruption in the appointment of tlie first State quarter- master-general ; notwithstanding, in relation to tlie first charge, that he had b}^ good engineering so managed, that Indiana's share of this taxation had been " offset" by the sum due to the State, by the General Government, for advances made by the former in equipping the Indiana volunteers, etc., and in regard to the quartermaster, ignoring the flxct, that that able officer, as well as many to whom ho had given the best contracts, belonged to the Democratic party. More than this, also, they had the meanness to accuse Governor Morton of appropriating, secretly, to his own use, the county and personal donations made to sol- diers in camp ; although, the governor, as was well known, had borrowed on his own responsibility $600,000, with which he had paid bounties to regiments, which had refused to obey marching orders, unless they received the money. Indiana, indeed, at the commencement of the year 1863, was in a most precarious condition. Secret enemies had succeeded,, by the most unscrupulous means, in securing the election, on. what was familiarly known as the " butternut ticket," of a Le- gislature principally composed of men determinedly ojiposed to the prosecution of the war, and w^ho had deliberately sought seats in that body for the purpose of thwarting all loyal effort, and encouraging the cause of rebellion. Tiiese men, from the first, evincod a fixed determination to insult the executive of the State, deprive him of all power, and seize in their own hands the entire control of every department of the State government. On the second day of the session, the Senate received from the governor the usual biennial message, and ordered it to be printed;, but the House refused to receive it, returned it to the govei-nor, and passed a resolution receiving and adopting the message of the Governor of New York. Beginning its legislative career •rith thi.< deliberate insult to the executive, it continued, during 27 418 MEN OF OUR DAY. its session of fifty-nine days, to pursue its revolutionary policy with increased violence, and an open disregard of constitutional obligations, and even of ordinary decency. Occupying its time chiefly with the introduction of disloyal resolutions and the ut- terance of factious and treasonable sentiments, which were calcu- lated to incite the people to resistance to Government, all the necessary and legitimate subjects of legislation were disregarded or kept back ; and, during the entire session, with a quorum in each House, every appropriation was suppressed until the last day, (when it was known that a quorum could not be had in the House,) except that for their own per diem and mileage, which was passed on the first day of the session. This dastardly conduct, of course, burdened Governor Morton and the loyal ofiicers of the State government with an immense load of responsibility. The benevolent institutions, the State arsenal, the soldiers in the field and hospital, the soldiers' fami- lies at home, the pay due the " Legion " for services at various times in repelling invasion on the border, the corps of special surgeons, military claims, the State debt, and the numerous other important measures and objects requiring prompt and liberal appropriations, were left utterly unattended to — although there was money enough in the treasury — by a set of men who did not forget to draw their own pay and mileage, and appropriate nearly $20,000 to the State printer. But the governor was nothing daunted by this disgraceful and perplexing state of affairs. Believing that to close the asylums would be a shame and a disgrace — a crime against humanity itself — and that to call back the Legislature, after their dastardly conduct of the previous session, would be not only useless out perilous to the peace and the best interests of the State, he established a bureau of finance, and so great a degree of success attended his efforts in obtaining money that he was enabled sue- OLIVER PERRY MORTON". 419 cessfully to carry on all the institutions of the State, and keep the machinery of government in motion, until the next regular meeting of the Legislature. On the 20th of July, 1863, Governor Morton, being in Cin- cinnati, Ohio, received the compliment of a request from the common council of that city, that he would sit for his portrait, to be hung in the City Hall, as a fitting remembrance of the indebtedness felt by the citizens to him for his services during the war. On the 23d of February, 1864, the Union State Con- vention placed bis name at the head of the Union ticket for 1864. It was with the commencement of this campaign " that the great work of Governor Morton's life began ; a work more varied and arduous than, perhaps, was ever undertaken by any other State executive." The " Democratic " Legislature of 1863 had, with the aid of the State officers of that period, surrounded him with such embarrassments that the performance of his civil functions was a most difficult and complicated task. Frequent calls for new levies of troops, the organization of regiments, and their preparation for the field, greatly increased his military labors. The wants of the sick and wounded soldiers at the front were daily multiplying, and thousands of dependent families at home had to be supported. The governor's well-known supe- riority in council, the ability which marked the success which attended his plans and measures, induced frequent demands for his presence at Washington. And yet, not only were these du- ties — civil and military, official and extra-official — not neglected, but they were performed with a readiness, skill and complete- ness which marked Governor Morton as one of the most extra- ordinary men of his times, and covered the name of Indiana with glory. In addition to all this, he gave his own personal attention to the campaign, delivering frequent speeches, which were powerful, and productive of incalculable good. Towards 420 MEN OF OUR DAY. the close, also, of tlie campaign, the atrocious designs of the " Sons of Liberty " seemed about to culminate in open revolt and anarchy. Over eighty thousand members, as was afterwards proved, existed in the State, thoroughly armed, waiting for the signal, to rise at the polls on election day, and Governor Morton'a life was especially marked. But he was prepared for the emer- gency ; his secret detectives were operating in every par^ of the State, and by their dexterity, the executive was constantly and promptly advised of all the schemes and designs of the con- spirators. He' possessed the knowledge of their financial re- sources, their military force and plans, their places of rendez- vous, their purchases of arms, and, through his agents, was " on hand " at every point, to foil every move, break up every plot, and suppress every incipient outbreak of disloyalty. Yet he wisely deferred any open, complete exposure of the " Sons of Liberty " until after the election, when a military court of in- quiry was convened, before which the Indiana ringleaders of treason were tried, convicted and punished. This detective work was the most important of the many signal services ren- dered to the State by Governor Morton ; and not to the State only, but to the Government of the United States itself. The Governor was re-elected by a sweeping majority, and under the new draft, the men of Indiana sprung promptly for- ward to the aid of Government. It was no longer — thanks to Governor Morton's labors for the soldiers — a disgrace to belong to an Indiana regiment, and soldiers of other States were fre- quently heard to say to the " Hoosier boys :" " We wouldn't mind fighting, if we had such a governor as you have." " During the winter of 1865," says a friend of the governor, " he was the most ubiquitous man in the United States. First at Washington, in council with the President ; then at the front, surveying with his own eyes the battle-field ; moving in person OLIVER PERRY MORTON". 421 tbrougli tlie hospitals, ascertaining the wants of the sick and wounded; supervising the operations of his numerous agents; then at home, directing sanitary movements, appointing extra surgeons and sending them to the field, projecting new plans for th'e relief of dependent women and children, attending personally to all the details of the business of his office." And, when the war came to a glorious termination, he was the first to welcome the returning heroes to the State capital, where they were sump- tuously entertained, at the public expense ; promptly furnished with their pay, and sent rejoicing to their homes, with no un- necessary delay — feeling that their governor cared for them, as a father doth for his children. And, then, when the rush of business was over — when, for the first time in five years, he felt in some degree relieved from the immense weight of official responsibility and embarrassment, of gigantic difficulties he had been obliged to combat in placing Indiana in the front rank of loyal States ; of his intense and incessant anxiety for the success of the Union cause — then the high strung frame gave way, and in the summer of 1865, he was attacked with paralysis. Accordingly, by the advice of his physicians, he embarked with his family for Italy, followed by the prayers of thousands of loving hearts in Indiana, and by the respect of the nation. After his return to this country, he was elected to the United States Senate, on the Eepublican ticket, and as the successor of Hon. Henry S. Lane, for the term ending March, 4th, 1873. In the Senate, though embarrassed and restrained from the active labors he so much desires to perform, by the still feeble condition of his health, the result of those years of overwork, he has yet renderod excellent service to the country he so ardently loves. As a member of the important Committees on Foreign Relations, on Military Affairs, and on Agriculture, his counsels have been of great advantage to the Senate. His 422 MEN OF OUR DAY speech on reconstruction, delivered in the winter of 1868, wag the most profoundly logical and able argument on that subject delivered in the Senate, — and even the enemies of reconstruc- tion acknowledged its power. The earnest friend of General Grant, and in the remembrance of his brave and successful leadership of our armies during the war, overlooking his errors of administration. Senator Morton has defended the President and his policy against those who were disposed to criticise it, with a zeal and vigor which recall to those who have long known him, the vehement loyalty of his speeches and labors during the war. But diflfer as we may with the Indiana Senator in regard to personal preferences, no one can fliil to accord to him a lofty patriotism and great purity and integrity of character. REUBEN E. FENTON. . .,^ ENATOR FENTON is one of the few men who, bred (^fll neither to law nor politics, but occupied during early life ^ with mercantile pursuits, have entered later in their career into the political arena, and acquitted themselves so well as to be advanced to, and continued in, high station. Though himself a native of the State of New York, his family, like many others whose record we have given in this volume, are of Connecticut origin. He claims descent from Robert Fen- ton, a man of note among the settlers of the eastern part of Con- necticut, and who was one of the patentees of the town of Mans- field, when that town was set off from Windham, in 1703. During the Revolutionary war, the family was noted for its patriotism, and furnished its full share of soldiers for that great struggle. The grandfather of the Senator, about 1777, removed to New Hampshire, in which State his father was born. In the early part of the present century, Mr. Fenton, then an enterprising young farmer, removed to what is now the town of Carroll, Chautauqua county, New York, then a portion of the Holland land patent, where he purchased a tract of land, and by dint of constant hard work, brought this portion of " the forest primeval" into the condition of a pleasant and profitable farm. Here — July 4, 1819 — his son, Reuben E. Fenton, was born. Young Fenton's early years were spent upon the paternal homestead, and though an amiable, friendly and popular boy 423 424 MEN OF OUR DAY. among his associates, lie seems to have developed no remarkable genius or ability in his boyhood. He was somewhat fond of military studies, and in the boyish trainings was uniformly chosen captain, and it was probably owing to this taste that he was chosen colonel of the 162d regiment, New York State militia, before he was twenty-one years of age. His opportunities for acquiring an education were very lim- ited, but they were well improved. He w^as a good scholar when he was in the common-school, and when, subsequently, he passed a few terms in different academies, he made rapid pro- gress as a student, and won the approbation of his pieceptors for his manly qualities and exemplary deportment. He read law one year, not with the view of going into the profession^ but to make himself familiar with the principles and forms of that science, under the impression that this knowledge would be useful to him in whatever business he might engage. At the age of twenty, he commenced business, with very limited means and under adverse circumstances. But the fact did not discourage him, nor turn him from his purposes. The world was before him, and what others had accomplished, young Fentou resolved should be done by him. He went at his work with all the earnestness and energy of his character, and a few years saw him a successful and prosperous merchant. While in this pursuit, he turned his attention to the lumber trade, as an auxiliary to his mercantile business. He was still a young man when he purchased his first " boards and shingles," and as he floated off upon his fragile raft, valued at less than one thousand dollars, there were not wanting those who wondered at hia temerity, and the failure of his enterprise was confidently pre- dicted. But nothing could dampen his ardor. He tied his little raft safely on the shore of the Ohio, near Cincinnati, went into tho city found a customer, sold his lumber, and returned to hia REUBEN E, FENTON 425 home with a pride and satisfaction never excelled in after years, though he went the round with profits tenfold greater. Lum- bering became in a few years his principal business ; and to such a man, success and competence were but a matter of time. He soon enjoj'ed the reputation of being the most successful lum- berman on the Alleghany and Ohio rivers ; but this came only because he wrought it by untiring perseverance and indefati- gable energy. In 1843, Mr. Fenton was chosen supervisor of his native town, and held the position for eight successive years. Three of these eight he was chairman of the board, though the board was two to one Whig, while he was a well-known Democrat. But he was courteous and aflable, manly and upright, genial and sensible, and his opponents, by common consent, selected him to preside over their deliberations. In 1849, his friends nominated him for the assembly, and he came within twenty-one votes of being elected, though the suc- cessful candidate was one of the oldest and most popular men in the assembly district, which was strongly Whig. In, 1852, he was put in nomination by the Democrats for Congress, and elected by fifty-two majority, though the district, from the manner in which it was accustomed to vote, should have given at least 3,000 majority against him. He took his seat, on the first Monday in December, 1853, in a House which was Democratic by about two to one. Mr. Douglas, chairman of the Senate Committee on Territories, in the course of the session, was beguiled into embodying in a bill which provided for the organization as territories of Kansas and Nebraska, a re- peal of that portion of the Missouri compromise of 1820, which forbade the legalization of slavery in any territory of the United States, lying north of north latitude, thirty-six degrees and thirty minutes. Mr. Fenton. with N. P. Banks, and quite 4:26 MEN OF OUR PAY. a number of the younger Democrats, with Colonel Thomas H. Benton and other seniors, steadfastly opposed this proposition, and opposed the bill because of it. The bill was nevertheless forced through the House by a vote of 113 to 100, and became a law. In the division that thereupon ensued, Mr. Fenton took Republican ground with Preston King, Ward Hunt, George Opdyke, and other conspicuous Democrats, and he has never since been other than a Kepublican. In 1854, the American or Know Nothing party carried his district by a considerable majority (Mr. Fenton consenting to be a candidate on the Saturday previous to election), as they did a good many others in the State ; but, in 1856, he ran on the FiiEMONT ticket, and was elected, and thence re-elecicd by large and generally increasing majoriti^^s down to ISGl, when he withdrew, having been nominated for Governor. He thus served five terms in Congress, each as the representative of the strongly Whig district composed of Chautauqua and Cattarau- gus counties, which contains many able and worthy men who were in full accord with its by-gone politics, and to the almost unanimous acceptance of his constituents. Immediately on entering Congress, Mr. Fenton espoused the cause of the soldiers of 1812, and shortly after introduced a bill providing for the payment of the property accounts between the United States and the State of New York, for military stores furnished in the war of 1812. This measure he con- tinued to urge upon the attention of Congress, and finally, on the 30th May, 1860, had the satisfaction to witness its passage in the House by a vote of 98 to 80. He had a leading place on important committees, and performed the duties appertaining to these positions in a manner satisfactory to all. It is but simple truth to say that he was one of the quietly industrious and faithful members of the House. Nor Vv^as he a silent representa- REUBEN" E. FENTON. 427 tive. lie could talk when there seemed a necessity for speak- ing. During his Congressional career, he delivered able and effective speeches against the repeal of the Missouri Comprom- ise act ; in advocacy of a cheap postal system ; the bill to ex- tend invalid pensions ; for the improvement of rivers and har- bors ; to regulate emigration to this country ; against the policy of the Democratic party with regard to Kansas ; for the final settlement of the claims of the soldiers of the Revolution; in vindication of the principles and policy of the Republieau party ; on the Deficiency bill ; the bill to facilitate the payment of boun- ties ; on the repeal of the Fugitive Slave law ; on providing for payment of losses by the rebellion, etc. Mr. Fenton served in Congress nearly to the end of the war for the Union, of which he was one of the firmest and most efl&cient supporters. Believing the Union to be right and the rebellion wrong throughout, he gave his best energies to the national cause, voting steadily for taxes, loans, levies, drafts, and for the emancipation policy whereby they were rendered effectual. Men of greater pretensions were abundant in Con- gress, but there was none more devoted, or more ready to invoke and to make sacrifices for the triumph of the Union. In the fall of 1862, Mr. Fenton's name was favorably men- tioned in connection with the office of governor, but finding General Wadsworth was to be pressed for a nomination, Mr. Fenton promptly withdrew from the canvass, and yielded to the patriot soldier his warmest support. In 1864, Mr. Fenton was designated as the standard-bearer of the Republican party, and chosen governor by a majority considerably larger than Mr. Lincoln's ; and two years later, he was unanimously re-non..ina- ted, and chosen by an increased majority. The administration of Governor Fenton commenced at the culminating period of thf war, and required the exercise of 428 MEN OF OUR DAI industry, method, decision, and the power ot aiscnmlnating, originating, and executing. He brought to the discharge of his new position all these forces of body and mind, and proved patient amid perplexities, quick in his perceptions, safe in his judgments, mastering toilsome details, and successfully meeting difficult emergencies. His practical training, his wide experi- ence, his luminous intellect and well-disciplined judgment, saved him from the failure that a man of less power might have encountered. His official relations with our soldiers did not weaken tue attachments that had given him the honored title of the " soldier's friend." He was prompt to reward merit, and skilful to harmonize differences that often threatened demoralization and serious injury to many of the military organizations then in the field. Upon the return home of the soldiers, Governor Fenton addressed a letter to the war commit- tees of the various districts in the State, in which he suggested the propriety of a hearty and spontaneous welcome to the heroic defenders of the country, on the part of the people of the State — an ovation to demonstrate the gratitude of those whose battles they had so bravely fought. Governor Fenton's judicious course fully commanded the public confidence and approval, and at the close of the first year of his term, many of the most prominent and influential citizens of New York city addressed him a letter of thanks, promising him their hearty co-operation and support in his efforts to improve the condition and health of the metropolis. A few months later, when he visited New York city, thousands of the best men of New York waited upon him in person, to assure him of their respect and approval of his course. He found it necessary to veto several bills of the first Legisla- ture which sat after his election, in consequence of their de- priving the city of New York of valuable franchises, without REUBEN E. FENTON. 429 conferring compensating advantages. For these acts, he waa 'thanked publicly, by a resolution of the Board of Supervisors of New York county. Governor Fenton's views upon tlie political issues which were involved in Mr. Johnson's attempted "policy" were ably expressed, in a letter addressed to the committee of a meeting held to ratify .the action of the State Union Convention, in October, 186Q, and soon after in a speech delivered at a large political gathering in Jamestown. During the canvass that followed, his opponents were unable to assail any portion of his official record, and his friends proudly pointed to it, as what a patriotic governor's should be. When, in August, 1866, Mr. Johnson, in the course of his political tour, generally known as " swinging round the circle," visited Albany, a proper regard for the high office he held, required that the governor of the State should proffer its hospitalities to him. Governor Fenton did so in the following brief but dignified address : — • " Mk. President : — • " With high consideration for the Chief Magistrate of the Republic, I address you words of welcome in behalf of our citizens and the people of the State whose capital you visit. We extend to you and to your suite, hospitality and greeting, and desire your safe conduct as you go hence to pay honor to the memory of the lamented Douglas, — to the State also distinguished as the home and final resting place of the patriot and martyr, Lincoln. " I have no power to give due expression to the feelings of this assemblage of citizens, nor to express in fitting terms the respect and magnanimity of the whole people upon an occasion so marked as the coming to our capital and to our homes of the President of the United States. In their name I give assurance to your excellency of their fidelity, patriotism and jealous interest in all that relates to the good order, progress, and freedom of all the States, and of their earnest hope that 430 MEN OF OUR DAY. peace will soon open up to the people of the whole land new fields of greater liberty, prosperity and power," The Eepublican party, in 1866, saw the necessity of selecting wise men for its nominees. The more discerning politicians felt that there was reason to fear an unfavorable result of the canvass. Ilerculean efforts were being made to defeat the party at the polls. A division had been created among those who had heretofore professed its principles. A number of influential gentlemen openly repudiated its ideas in regard to reconstruction. The Philadelphia Convention had produced a schism, which it was feared might prove formidable, if not disastrous. Those who were the most pronounced in favor of the policy of President Johnson, were the most earnest in their opposition to Governor Fenton. The question naturally arose whether this marked hostility might not prove fatal to success, by stimulating the Conservatives to greater effort, and enabling them to exert more powerful influence over the moderate and doubtful portion of the party; and whether a man less likely to be thus assailed might not be stronger. On the other hand, there was to be considered the effect which the leading measures of his administration had produced on the popular mind. His national policy had contributed in a marked degree to the success of the war. He had entered upon his term of office as successor to one who disapproved of many of the principal features of the war policy of the Government, and who had been elected because of his decided views in relation thereto. He had stimulated volunteering, and secured for the State a more just recognition of its rights ; had worked clear from the complications in which the public interest had been involved by the blundering and incompetency of the pro- vost marshal general ; and had relieved New York from a large portion of the dreaded burden of the draft. He had done REUBEN E. FEXTON, 431 mucli, with the co-operation of the head of the State fitianca department, to originate a financial system which rendered the credit of the State stable and secure, and furnished the means to supply the demands of war, without being felt as oppressive. By his keen appreciation of the wants of the soldiers, his tender solicitude for their welfare, and his earnest eftbrts in their behalf, he had firmly attached them to himself. In his State policy, he had sought to foster all the material interests of the commonwealth ; and had reluctantly interposed to the defeat of needed enterprises when their aid would render the burden of taxation onerous, and awaited a more favorable opportunity to join in giving them that aid. He was vigilant in his at- tention to the commercial wants of the State, both in the great metropolis and through its extensive lines of transit. This un- wavering devotion to the essential prosperity of the State, elicited confidence and commendation. All the discriminating judgment and forecast of the statesman had been displayed in a marked degree. These views were impressed on the minds of the representative men of his party, and when the Convention assembled, so strongly did they prevail, and so heavily did they outweigh adverse considerations, that no other name was suggested, and he was unanimously nominated by acclamation. The Democrats entered upon the canvass full of hope. Prominent places were given by them, on the State ticket, to Republicans who dissented from the principles enun- ciated by the Republican party, and nominations of a like character were made for many local offices in various portions of the State. The result showed that Governor Fenton's 8tr>».i:gth had not been miscalculated. He was re-elected by a majority five thousand larger than that given him in his first canvass. The year 1867 furnished the occasion for a continuation of a 432 MKX OF OLR DAY. policy which had provovi so aooeptable. aud it is not necessarv that we should dwell upon its features. The absence of all malevolence in the heart of Governor Fen- ton, and the broad charity of his nature, were display evl during that year. The remains of the rebel dead had been left unburied at Autiotam. A letter from Governor Fenton, breath ing the spirit of loyalty and humanity, decided the committee at onoe to au act both Christian and proper, aud in accorvlance with the spirit of the law ot Maryland, which authorized the pur- chase of a cemetery, and created a corporation to carry out the declared object of burying in it^ all who fell on either side during the invasion of Lee at the battle of Antittam. In that letter he took the high ground that it " was a war less of sec- tions than of systems," and that the nation could confer decent burial on the southern dead while condemning and sternly opposing the heresies for which they had siicrificed themselves ; and that attachment to the Union and devotion to the most thorough measures for its preser\-ation and restoration were not inconsistent with the broadest charity, and the observance of sacred oblig-ations to the dead. This letter accomplished the intended purpose ; aud the bones of the rebel soldiers who fell on that memorable field, were interred as befitting not only a legal obligation, but the highest demands of civili;:ation and our common humanity. In his message to the Legislature of lSt>S, Governor Fenton forcibly expressed himself in favor of materially reducing the number of items in the tax lists, and v f a re-adjustment of the assessn^ent laws — now so glaringly unequal — in orxier that every source of wealth might Ivar its just proportion of burtlen. lie also took strong ground in defence of the inviolat<^ maintenance of the national taith. In his usual terse and vigorous style, he wgucd against the legjvlity of the Governments institutevi by REUBEN E. FENTON. 433 riwidont Johnson, after the cessation of active hostilities, and held that the reconstruction acts of Congress were necessary, because the Southern States had rejected, with scorn, the peace- oftering of tlie Constitutional Amoudnicnt. lie eloquently expressed himself in behalf of the rights of the freedman, iu consideration of his manhood and loyalty, to protection through law, and to the elective franchise. Governor Fenton realized that the people of New York had made him their Chief Magistrate, and that thoy looked to him, and to no other person, for the faithful discharge of the duties of the responsible position. He was controlled by no clique — he was the agent of no cabal. Tie patiently listened to all who desired to consult him, and then followed the dictates ofdiis own good judgment. lie had no prejudice so strong, nor patiality so great, as to lead him to do an unjust act. lie was a careful thinker and a hard worker. No man ever labored more hours in the executive chamber than he did. What- ever witrk engaged his attention, he attended to it personally, even to the minutest details. At the State Republican Convention, in September, 1S68, it being understood that Governor Fenton would not consent to be again a candidate, Hon. John A. Griswold was nominated for that office, but the Democrats being successful on the State ticket, lion. John T. llotVinan was elected Governor. The Legislature, in the winter of 1869, elected Reuben E. Fenton United States Senator for six years from March, 1869, and he took his place on the -ith of March following, succeeding •lion. Edwin D. Morgan. In the Senate, Mr. Fenton lias mani- fested similar traits to those which made him so acceptable as a Governor, lie belongs to the liberal wing of the Republican party, favors decentralization in the National Government, uni- versal amnesty, and impartial suflVage, and does not regard 28 43-4 MEN OF OUR DAY. with satisfaction, the corruption which springs from a personal government, or from placing power and influence in the hands of bitter partisans who only desire it for their own private aims and emolument. Unfortunately he and President Grant differ in their views, and he has been in consequence most ruthlessly proscribed and denounced bj the administration papers through- out the years 1871 and 1872. But the Senator is too fair and upright a man to be harmed by this abuse. WILLIAM ALFRED BUCKINGHAM. ^l|lL'LIAM ALFRED BUCKINGHAM is a direct descend- ant, in the sixth generation, from the Rev. Thomas Buckingham and his wife Hester Hosmer, who were of Hartford, Connecticut, in 1666. His father, Captain Buckingham, as he was called, was a farmer, in Lebanon, Con- necticut, a shrewd manager of property, of clear mind and sound judgment, and frequently appealed to as umpire in matters of difference between neighbors. His wife was a remarkable woman, having few equals in all that was good, endowed with strong natural powers both of mind aad body, indomitable perseverance and energy ; with, as one of her neighbors described her, " a great generous heart." The son of these worthy people, who was born at Lebanon, May 24th, 1804, happily partook of the strong points of both his parents. His father being absent from home, on business, during a portion of the year, much of the work and care of the farm necessarily devolved upon him, while yet a mere boy, and he thus early acquired habits of industry and self-reliance. One who knew him well at this period of his life, says, " I don't think any thing left in his care was ever overlooked or neglected." The same friend says, " he was early trained in the school of benevolence. I have often seen him sent off on Saturday afternoons, when the weather was severe, with a wagon load of wood, from his father's well-stored wood-shed, 435 436 MEN OF OUR DAY. and a number of baskets and budgets, destined to clieer some destitute persons in tlie neigliborliood, and make them comfort- able. He received his education at the common school in Lebanon, and passed a term or two at Colchester Academy — evincing a peculiar fondness for the study of mathematics, especially in the higher branches. As he grew up, he developed as a lively, spirited "fast" young man, in the best acceptation of that term — his habits being excellent, and integrity being a marked feature in his character. Indeed, he was regarded as rather a leader among the young people with whom he assc^ ciated. In early manhood, he was a member of a cavalry militia company,, and " trooped" Avith the same energy which has since characterized him in whatever he undertook — excelling in military matters, and becoming a master of the broadsword exercise. Commencing mercantile life as a clerk in the city of New York, at the age of twenty years, he removed to Norwich, Connecticut in 1825, and entered into the employ of Messrs. Hamlin, Buckingham & Giles. A few years later he com- menced business on his own account, and by enterprise, thrift, punctuality, and honorable dealing, became a most successful and widely respected merchant. He has since been extensively engaged in various manufactures; especially in the Hay ward Rubber Company, of which he was treasurer for many years; and the town of Norwich has been largely indebted to his example and influence. He was one of the founders of the Norwich Free Academy, and, in 1849, was elected mayor of the city, which office he filled for two years. His eminently practical mind and great executive ability have contributed largely to the manufacturing and industrial interests of his native State ; and the whole weight WILLIAM ALFRED BUCKINGHAM. 437 of his personal character and sympathies has ever been enlisted in support of religion, temperance, industry, and education. "We have it on excellent authority, that the governor, at the commencement of his business career, made a resolve to set aside one fifth of each year's income to be applied to objects of religious benevolence ; and that his experience was for many years, and perhaps is still, that each year's income was so much in excess of that which preceded it, that at the year's end he always had an additional sum lo distribute to objects of benevolence, to make out the full fifth of his receipts. A striking illustration this, of the declaration of holy writ: " There is that scattereth and yet increaseth." During the eight terms of his gubernatorial career, his entire salary, as governor, was bestowed upon benevolent objects; for the most part, we believe, on Yale college, in which he founded several scholarships, for worthy but indigent students. In- deed, the spirit of benevolence which he inherited from his parents, has ever remained a distinguishing feature of his character. In providing for the wants of the poor and unfor- tunate, and in the unostentatious performance of every good work, Governor Buckingham's life has been a record of un- wearied industry. The qualities which had gained him the respect of his fellow- citizens, as they became more widely known, commended him to the public as a candidate for higher positions of trust and responsibility. In 1858, he was elected Governor of Connecti- cut, and to the same office he was re-elected in 1859, and 1860. Again, on the 1st of April, 1861, he was chosen to the guberna- torial chair, by a majority of two thousand and eighty-six votes, the entire Republican State ticket being elected, at the same time, together with a large Union and Republican majority in both houses of the General Assembly. On the 15th of the samo 438 MEN OF OUR DAY. montli, he received the President's call for seventy-five thousand volunteers. The Legislature was not then in session, but the governor had been among the first to see (in 1860) the rising cloud of " the irrepressible conflict." He had long since aban- doned any hopes of settling the national difficulties by compro- mise ; he had recognized them as questions on -which every citizen must decide squarely, for right or wrong, for freedom or slavery. Therefore his action, when the storm burst, was prompt and decided. He took immediate measures on his own responsibility, to raise and equip the quota of troops required from Connecticut ; his own extensive financial relations enabling him to command the funds needed for the purpose. He threw himself into the work, with all the force of his energetic nature ; and during that week of anxiety, when "Washington was isolated from the north, by the Baltimore rising, his message — that the State of Connecticut was coming "to the rescue," with men and money, was the Jirst intimation received by the President, that help was near at hand. The banks came to his aid, and money and personal assistance were tendered freely by prominent par ties in every section of the State — so that, by the time (May 1st) that the Legislature had assembled in extra session (in response to a call which he had made upon the receipt of Mr. Lincoln's proclamation), he had the pleasure of informing them that forty- one volunteer companies had already been accepted, and that a fifth regiment was ready. Ten days later, the first regiment, " eight hundred and thirty-four strong, under Colonel (afterwards General) A. H. Terry, left the State, equipped with a thorough- ness — as were all the Connecticut troops — which elicited univer- sal admiration from all who beheld them. Soon after he pronounced his conviction, in an official communication to the Washington cabinet, that "this is no ordinary rebellion," that it " should be met and suppressed by a WILLIAM ALFBED BUCKINGHAM. 439 power corresponding with its magnitude," that the President " should ask for authority to organize and arm a force of half a million of men, for the purpose of quelling the rebellion, and for an appropriation from the public treasury sufficient for their support," " that legislation upon every other subject should be regarded as out of time and place, and the one great object of suppressing the rebellion be pursued by the Administration, with vigor and firmness." " To secure such high public inter- ests," said the governor, " the State of Connecticut will bind her destinies more closely to those of the General Government, and in adopting the measures suggested, she will renewedly pledge all her pecuniary and physical resources, and all her moral power," It will be seen, therefore, that Governor Buckingham took an accurate and comprehensive view of the extent, the probable course and the power of the war just inaugurated — and better would it have been for our country, if others of our leading statesmen had manifested, at that critical hour, the same calm, clear insight and broad statesmanship. There was nothing undecided in his thought or action. His suggestions upon every point relative to the prosecution of the war, and the policy of the State, were full of patriotic, far-seeing wisdom. lie was nobly seconded by a loyal Legislature, and though " peace men" tried to intimidate the Unionists, their attempts recoiled upon their own heads. By the 1st of March, 1862, fifteen Connecticut regiments were in the field, and by November following, 28,551 soldiers had been furnished to the defence of the Union, by the little *' Wooden Nutmeg State." In April, 1862, Governor Buckingham was re-elected and hia efforts were as untiring as ever. No amount of disaster in the field, of hesitation in council, or of depression in the public mind, seemed to affect him. lie was always ready to make greater sacrifices ; always full of hope and determination ; and, with the 440 MEN OF OUR DAT. late lamented John A. Andrew, the noble governor of the sister State of Massachusetts, lie was among the earliest to urge the necessity of an Emancipation Proclamation upon President Lin- coln. When that great step had at length been taken, he wrote to the President these cheering and congratulatory words : " Permit me to congratulate you and the country that you have so clearly presented the policy which you will hereafter pursue in suppressing the rebellion, and to assure you it meets my cordial approval, and shall have my unconditional support. The State has already sent into the army, and has now at the rendezvous, more than one half of her able-bodied men between the ages of eighteen and forty-five years, and has more to offer, if wanted, to contend in battle against the enemies of our Government." The spring campaign of 1863 was an exciting one; em- boldened by the ill -success of the national arms, the Democracy rallied around the standard, of " no more war !" while the Ee- publicans, with equal ardor, advocated a more vigorous prose- cution of the war, and were cordially seconded by the Connecti- cut soldiers in the field. Buckingham, however, was re-elected by a majority of 2637, in a total vote of 79,427, in which had been polled 9000 more votes than the year previous, and 2000 more than the aggregate presidential vote of 1860. In April, 1864, Governor B\ickingham was re-nominated by the Republicans, against Origen S. Seymour, Democrat, and was elected by a majority of 5,658, in a total vote of 73,982. Again,' in 1865, he was re-elected governor over the same opponent by a majority of 11,035, in a vote of 73,374. In his annual message he strongly advocated giving soldiers in the field the privilege of the ballot, and national legislation for the abolishment of slavery. With 1865, closed Governor Buckingham's long gubernato- WILLIAM ALFRED BUCKINGHAM. 441 rial career of eight years, of whicli five were " war years, fully tasking his every physical and mental power, and loading him with an incessant burden of responsibility and care. His course, during this arduous term of service, had commanded the uni- versal respect of his fellow-citizens, and the admiration of all loyal hearts throughout the Northern States. Prominent among that noble circle of loyal governors who rallied around the President, in his darkest hours, with brotherly advice and en- couraging words. Governor Buckingham's relations with Mr. Lincoln strongly remind us of those between President Wash- ington and Governor Trumbull, the " Brother Jonathan" of the Revolutionary war. After the close of his last term of service, in April, 1866, he returned to Norwich, where he quietly engaged again in mer- cantile atVuirs. In the National Eepublican Union Convention which met at Chicago in May, 1863, his name was strongly supported, though against his will, for the Vice-Presidency. On the 19th of May, in the same year, he was elected by the Legislature of Connecti- cut United States Senator from that State for six years from March 4th, 1869, succeeding Hon. James Dixon in that office. As a Senator Governor Buckingham has maintained the high and spotless reputation which has so long marked his character. He seldom makes speeches, but is one of the most untiring workers in the Senate ; and even the foul breath of slander has never dared to sully by the slightest whisper, his pure and immaculate fame. WILLIAM GANNAWAY BROWNLOW. c.TpjEV. WILLIAM GANNAWAY BROWNLOW, the patriotic and heroic journalist, Governor, and Senator of Eastern Tennessee, was born in Wythe County, Virginia, on the 29th of August, 1805. lie was the eldest son of Joseph A. Brownlow, a native of Rockbridge Count}'', Virginia, who was characterized by his old associates and friends (among them General Sam. Houston), as possessing good sense, great independence, and sterling integrity. He was also a private in a Tennessee company during the " War of 1812," and two of his brothers were engaged in the battle at fforseshoe, under General Jackson, while two other brothers were officers in the American Navy, and died in the service. Joseph Brownlow died in Sullivan County, East Tennessee, in 1816, leaving his widow, Catharine Gannaway — a Virginian likewise — burdened with the care of five children, three sons and two daughters, all of whom are now dead, except the sub- ject of our sketch. In less than three months from the time of her husband's demise, she also died, and the children were left to the charity of relatives and friends. Young William, now in his eleventh year, was taken by his mother's family, by whom he was brought up to hard labor, until he was eighteen years old, when he removed to Abingdon, Virginia, where he commenced an apprenticeship as a house carpenter. 442 WILLIAM GANNAWAY BROWNLOW. 443 Of course, his education, under the unfavorable circumstances of his earlier years, was imperfect and irregular, " even," as he says, "in those branches taught in the common schools of the country." As soon, therefore, as he had acquired his trade, he diligently set to work to obtain the means whereby to improve his mind, by going to school. Entering the Methodist ministry in 1826, he was for ten years a faithful and hard-worked itine- rant preacher, availing himself, meanwhile, of every opportu- nity of study and improving his defective education, especially in the English branches. In 1832, he was chosen by the Ilolston Annual Conference as a delegate to the General Conference of the Methodist Church held in Philadelphia; and, during the same year, travelled a circuit in South Carolina, having ap- pointments in the districts of Pickens and Anderson, and also in Franklin County, Georgia. Nullification was then raging in South Carolina, and men of all professions took sides, either in favor of the General Government, or of the South Carolina Ordinance of Disunion. Anderson District, which was one of Mr. Brownlow's appointments, was the residence of the arch- nullifier, John C. Calhoun, and the itinerant parson, living in such an atmosphere of excitement, and ever prone to give fear- less expression to his own political convictions, soon found himself drawn conspicuously into the controversy. Ilis stout defence of the Federal Government brought down upon him a storm of opposition so fierce that he felt obliged, in vindication of his position, to publish a pamphlet, in which he fully defined his principles on that particular question. About the same time, also, he became engaged in a contro- versy with a clergyman of another denomination relative to the position of tha Methodists with regard to slavery, and published in a pam})hlet the following prophetic extract, expressing the sentiments he has ever since maintained : — " I have paid some 441 MEN OF OUR DAY. attention to tliis subject (slavery), yoimg as I am, because it is, one day or otliur, to shake this Government to its very founda- tion. 1 expect to live to see that day, and not to be an old man at that. The tariff question now threatens the overthrow of the Government ; but the slavery question is one to be dreaded. "While I shall advocate the owning of 'men, women, and chil- dren/ as you say our ' Discipline' styles slaves, I shall, if I am living when the battle comes, stand by my Government and the Union formed by our fathers, as Mr. Wesley stood by the British Government, of which he was a loyal subject." Nobly has Mr. Brownlow's subsequent career performed this promise of his earlier years ! Mr. Brownlow began bis political career in Tennessee, iu 1828, by espousing, as he says, " the cause of John Qumcy Adams as against Andrew Jackson. The latter I regard as having been a true patriot and a sincere lover of his country. The former I admired because he was a learned statesman, of pure moral and private character, and because I regarded him as a Federalist^ representing my political opinions. I have all m\' life long been a Ftderal Wliig of the Washintjton and Alex- ander JIamiUon school. I am the advocate of a concentrated Federal Government, or of a strong central Government, able to maintain its dignity, to assert its authority, and to crush out any rebellion that may be inaugurated. I have never been a sectional, but at all times a national man, supporting men ibr the presidency and vice-presidency without any regard on which side of Mason and Dixon's Line they were born, or resided at the time of their nomination. In a word, I am, as I have ever been, an ardent Whig, and Clay and Webster have ever been my standards of political orthodoxy. With the breaking up of old parties, I have merged every thing into the great question of the ' Union, the Constitution, and the enforcement 23 WILLIAM GANN^AWAY BROWNLOW. 445 of the l;n\:J.' Hence, I am an unconditional Union man, and advocate the preservation of the Union at tlie expense of all other considerations." About 1837, he became the editor of the "Knoxville (Tenn.) Whi(/" a political newspaper which obtained a larger circula- tion than anj other similar paper in the State, and even larger than all the papers in East Tennessee together. From the vigorous and defiant style of his articles in this sheet, as well as of his public speeches, he obtained a national reputation under the sobnqvei of the " Fighting Parson." He was also actively engaged in all the religious and political controversies of the day, and, amid these varied labors, found time to write several books, the principal of which is entitled '' The Iron Wheel Examined, and the False Spokes Extracted," being a vindication of the Methodist Church against the attacks of Rev. J. R. Graves, of Nashville. It was published by the Southern Methodist Book Concern, at the earnest solicitation of leading members of the denomination, and " is," to use his own words, " a work of great severity, but was written in reply to one of still greater severity." In September, 1858, Parson Brownlow held a public debate at Philadelphia, with Rev. Abram Payne, of New York, in which he defended the institution of Slavery as it existed in the South. This discussion was afterward published in Phila- delphia under the title of " Ought American Slavery to be Perpetuated? " From the beginning of the Secession movement in 1860, Brownlow, as was to be expected from his life-long sentiments, boldly advocated, in his paper, unconditional adherence to the Union, for the reason, among others, that it was the best safe- guard to southern institutions. This course subjected him to much obloquy and persecution after the secession of Tennessee, 446 MEN OF OUR DAY. and on the 24th of October, 1861, he published the last number of the Whig issued under the Slaveocratic Government. In this closing number, he announced his intention not to re-issue his journal until after the State had been cleared of rebels; and he also expressed his expectation of a hurried removal and lengthy imprisonment at their hands. Avowing his determination never to take the oath of allegiance to the Confederacy, he asserted that he would " submit to imprisonment for life, or die at the end of a rope," before he would make any humiliating concession to any power on earth. " I shall go to jail," said he, "as John Eogers went to the stake — for my principles. I shall go, because I have failed to recognize the hand of God in the breaking up of the American Government, and the inauguration of the most wicked, cruel, unnatural, and un- called-for war ever recorded in history. * * I am proud of my position and of my principles, and shall leave them to my children as a legacy far more valuable than a princely fortune, had I the latter to bestow." Remaining, for awhile, unmolested at Knoxville, he was finally taken away by his friends, and remained in concealment for some time in the mountains of Tennessee, until he was in- duced, by the offer of a safe escort out of the State to the North, to appear at the rebel military headquarters ^t Knox- ville. Upon his arrival there, December 6th, 1861, he waa arrested, on a civil process, for treason, and thrown into jail. After a month's confinement, he was released, only to be im- mediately re-arrested by military authority, and was kept under guard in his own house, expecting death, and suffering from severe illness, till March 3d, 1862. He was then sent, under escort, toward the Union lines at Nashville, which he finally entered on the 15th, having been detained ten days by the guerrilla force of Colonel Morgan. Subsequently he made an WILLIAM GANNAWAT BROWNLOW. 447 exteDsive and successful tour of the Northern States, addressing large audiences in all the principal cities, and wrote an auto- biographical work, entitled, " Sketches of the Rise, Progress, and Decline of Secession, with a Narrative of Personal Adven- ture among the Rebels," which was published in Philadelphia. This work, popularly known as " Parson Brownlow's Book," had an extensive sale. During the month of November, 1862, Mr. Brownlow, having been joined by his family, who had also been expelled from Knoxville, took up his residence at Cincin- nati, Ohio, for a time. After the battle of Murfreesboro, he removed, with his family, to Nashville, Tennessee, there to await the earliest opportunity of returning to Knoxville, and re-establishing The Whig^ for which purpose he had received considerable "material aid" during his tour in the Northern States. In September, 1863, the capture of that city afforded him the long-desired chance to return to his old home, and before leaving Nashville, he, on the 7th of September, 1863, issued his prospectus for the Knoxville Whig, under the new and euphonious title of ^^Broionlow^s Knoxville Whig and Rebel Ven- tilator!'^ Its first number was announced to be issued on the anniversary of the day when his " paper was crushed out by the God-forsaken mob at Knoxville, called the Confederate authorities," and his purpose was, as he said, "to commence with the rebellion where the traitors had forced him to leave off." He promised, in the editorial conduct of the paper, to " forget Whigs, Democrats, Know Nothings, and Republicans, and remember only the Government and the preservation of the Federal Union — as richly worth all the sacrifices of blood and treasure their preservation may cost — even to the exter- mination of the present race of men, and the consumption of all the means of the present age." He baa conducted his paper, from that time to the present, 448 MEX OF OUR DAY. with a fearlessness and power of denunciation, which lias made it a terror to the rebels of Tennessee ; and their hatred of him has manifested itself by constant acts of malignity. He has, driven in part by his more fully developed convictions, and in part by the irresistible logic of events, come more and more fully upon the Republican platform, till to-day he is as thorough a Radical as any man in the West. He has advocated both in his paper and in his place in the Senate, every great measure which is regarded as cardinal by the Republican party, and though his health is very feeble, he never abates one jot of the intensity of his invective against the Rebels. In 1865, when Tennessee returned to the Union, Mr. Brown- low was elected, by an overwhelming majority, Governor of the State, and in 1867, re-elected to the same high office. He has brought to his duties his unimpeachable honesty, his fear- less and unflinching integrity, and his remarkable executive ability, and has been one of the best governors the State has ever had. The legislature of 1867 elected him to the United States Senate, for the six years commencing March 4th, 186.^. Of himself, Parson Brownlow says (in 1862) : " I have been a laboring man all my life long, and have acted upon the Scrip- tural maxim of eating my bread in the sweat of my brow. Though a Southern man in feeling and principle, I do not think it degrading to a man to labor, as do most Southern disunionists. "Whether East or West, North or South, I recognize the dignity of labor, and look forward to a day, not very far distant, when educated labor will be the salvation of this vast country I * * * I am known throughout the length and breadth of the land as the 'Fighting Parson,' while I may say, without incurring the charge of egotism, that no man is more peaceable, as my neighbors will testify. Always poor, and always oppressed with security debts, few men in my section and of my limited means have given away more in the course of each year to WILLIAM GANNAWAY BROWNLOW. 449 charitable objects, I have never been arraigned in the ctiurcb for immorality. I never played a card. I never was a pro- fane swearer. I never drank a dram of liquor, until within a few years, when it was taken as a medicine. I never had a cigar or a chew of tobacco in my mouth. I never was in attendance at a theatre. I never attended a horse-race, and never witnessed their running save on the fair grounds of my own county. I never courted but one woman ; and her I married. " I am about six feet high, and have weighed as high as one hundred and seventy-five pounds, — have had as fine a constitu- tion as g,ny man need desire. I have very few grey hairs in my head, and although rather hard-favored than otherwise, I will pass for a man of forty years.* I have had as strong a voice as any man in East Tennessee, where I have resided for the last thirty years, and have a family of seven children." We may add that Mr. Brownlow's earnestness of convictions, and fearlessness in their avowal, is equalled only by the intensi- ty of the language which he employs to express his sentiments. There is nothing " mealy-mouthed" about him — men and things are called by their right names — and words are applied with a " squareness " and force which is peculiarly the " Parson's own," He has seemed, for the last three or four years, to live by sheer force of his imperious will. His enemies, political and other, have often congratulated themselves that he was about to die ; but the old man declares that he "will outlive them, and rejoice that a righteous God has sent them to perdition." *The ten years which have passed since Parson Brownlow wrote this, and his im])aired health, have greatly changed liis appearance. He is no more hard-favored than he was then, but he looks full as old as he is, viz., si.xty-seven. 29 JAMES HARLAN. ;0N. JAMES HAELAN, late Secretary of the Interior, and now United States Senator from Iowa, was born in Clark county, Illinois, August 26tli, 1820. When he was three years of age his parents removed to Indiana, where he was employed during his minority in assisting his father upon the farm. His early advantages of education were small but they were improved to the utmost. In the year 1841, he entered the preparatory department of Asbury University, then under the presidency of the present Bishop Simpson. He graduated from the university with honor, in 18-15, having paid his way by teaching, at intervals, during his college course. In the winter of 1815-6, he was elected professor of lan- guages in Iowa City college, and removed thither. He soon became popular in the city and State, and in 1817 was elected State Superintendent of Public Instruction. His competitor for this office was Hon. Charles Mason, a distingiiished gradu- ate of West Point, who had served as Chief Justice of the Federal court of Iowa Territory during the whole period of its existence, a gentleman of great ability and unblemished reputa- tion, and the nominee of the Democratic party, who had been, and subsequently were, the dominant party in the State. His election over such a competitor was highly creditable to him, especially as he had been a resident of the State but two years, 450 JAMES HARLAN. 451 In 1848, Mr. Harlan was superseded by Thomas H. Benton, Jr., who was reported by the canvassing officers elected by seventeen majority. The count was subsequently conceded to have been fraudulent, though Mr. Benton was not cognizant of the fraud. Mr. Harlan had been for some time engaged in the study of law, in his intervals of leisure, and now applied himself to it more closely, and was admitted to the bar in 1848. He continued the practice of his profession for five years, and was eminently successfal in it. During this period (in 1849) he was nominated by his party for governor, but not being of the constitutional age for that office, he declined the nomination. In 1853, he was elected, by the annual conference of the Methodist Episcopal Church, President of the Mount Pleasant Collegiate Institute, which during the winter following was re-organized under an amended charter as a university, and Mr. Harlan was retained in the presidency. His energy and industry found full scope in this position, and for the next two years the university grew and prospered. On the 6th of January, 1855, without any candidacy, or even knowledge of his nomination, Mr. Harlan was elected by the Legislature, United States Senator from Iowa, for the six years commencing March 4th, 1855. As a pretended informality in this election was made the occasion of his being unseated by the Democratic majority in the United States Senate, two years later, it may be well to give a somewhat more detailed account of this election. In accordance with the custom and the Con- stitution of Iowa, the Senate and House of Eepiesenatives of the Iowa Legislature met, in joint session, soon after the first of January, 1855, to elect a Senator and judges. The two parties were nearly balanced in both houses, and at first there was no ebction ; they adjourned from day to day, when the Democrats found that a majority could be obtained on joint 452 MEN OF OUR DAY. ballot for Mr, Ilarlan as Senator, and to prevent tLis, the Democratic members of the State Senate withdrew, intending thereby to render an election void. But as the Democratic members of the House remained, there was a quorum of the joint session present, and Mr. Ilarlan was elected by a clear majority of both houses. On his election to the Senate, Mr. Harlan resigned the presidency of the university, but accepted the professorship of political economy and international law, to which he was immediately elected, and which he still holds. He took his seat in the United States Senate, December 3d, 1855, and his first formal speech was made on the 27th of March, 1856, on the question of the admission of Kansas. It was pronounced at the time, by both friends and foes, the ablest argument on that side of the question delivered during the pro- tracted debate. Later in the session, on the occasion of his presenting the memorial of James H. Lane, praying the accept- ance of the petition of the members of the Kansas territoria*! Legislature, for the admission of their territory into the Union as a State, he administered a most scathing rebuke to the Democratic majority in the Senate for their tyrannical and oppressive course in regard to Kansas. The Republicans at this time numbered but a baker's dozen in the Senate, and it had been the fashion with the Democratic majority to refuse intercourse, and a place on the committees, to som-e of them on the ground that they were outside of any healthy political organization. They had been disposing, as they hoped, forever, of the Republican leader in the Senate (Mr. Sumner), by the use of the bludgeon, and they were greatly enraged at the castigation which they now received from another member of the little band, and resolved to rid themselves of him also. For this purpose, nursing their wrath to keep it warm, they JAMES HARLATT. 453 called up the action of the Democrats of the Iowa Senate to which we have already alluded, and early in the second session of the Thirty-fourth Congress, introduced a resolution that " James Harlan is not entitled to his seat as a Senator from Iowa." The resolution was fiercely debated, but the majority, confident in their strength, passed it by a full party vote on the 12th of January, 1857. Their triumph was short. Immediately on the passage of the resolution Mr. Harlan left Washington for Iowa City, where the State Legislature, now unmistakably Republican, was in session; he arrived there on Friday evening, January 16th. On the next day, Saturday, he was re-elected by both houses to the Senate, spent a few days at his home in Mount Pleasant, returned to Washington, was re-swoun, and resumed his seat on the 29th of January. The next session of Congress brought valuable additions to the strength of the Republican party in the Senate, but it had no truer member than Mr. Harlan, and his fearlessness, conscientiousness, industry, integrity, and ability as a debater, made him an acknowledged leader in it. In 1861, he was re-elected for the term ending March 4th, 1867, without a'dissenting voice in his party at home. He was a member of the Peace Congress in 1861, but after seeing the niembers sent from the slave States, and witnessing the election of Ex-President John Tyler presiding officer, he predicted that its deliberations would end in a miserablo failure. During the whole course of the war, he was the earnest sup- porter of President Lincoln, whose personal friendship he en- joyed ; and through all the light and gloom of that dark period, his faith in the right never faltered, and his a-^tivity and zeal were not checked by depressing emotions. He and his accom plished and gifted wife were throughout the war among the 454 MEN OF OUR DAY. most active helpers in the work of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions^ ministering in person to the wounded, and aiding, with pen and purse, the efforts for their welfare. As a Senator, as the published debates of Congress show, he argued and elucidated with great clearness and conclusiveness every phase of the question of slavery and emancipation, in all their social, legal and economic ramifications — the exclusion of slavery from the territories — the constitutional means of restriction — climatic influences on the races, white and black — the necessity or propriety of colonization — and the effects of emancipation on the institutions of the country North and South. He was the earnest advocate of the early construction of the Pacific Eailroad — had made himself, by a careful examination, master of the whole subject — was consequently appointed a member of the " Senate Committee on the Pacific Eailroad ;" and when the two bodies differed as to the details of the bill, he was made chairman of the committee of conference of the two houses, and did more than any other living man to reconcile conflicting views on the amended bill which afterwards became the law of the land. As chairman of the Committee on Public Lands, he exerted a controlling influence in shaping the policy of the Government in the disposition of the public domain, so as to aid in the construction of railroads, and the improvement of other avenues of intercourse, as well as to advance the individual interests of the frontier settler, by facilitating his acquisition of a landed estate, and also by securing a permanent fund for the support of common schools for the masses, and other institutions of learning. Under his guidance the laws for the survey, sale, and pre-emption of the public lands were harmonized, and the homestead bil so modified, as to reader it a practical and JAMES HARLAISr. 455 beneficent measure for tlie indigent settler, and at the same time but slightly, if at all, detrimental to the public treasury. And on this as well as that other great national measure, the Pacific Railroad bill, above mentioned, when the two houses disagreed as to details, Mr. Harlan was selected by the Presi- dent of the Senate, to act as chairman of the committee of conference. His thorough acquaintance with the land laws, his clear perception of the principles of justice and equity which should control in their administration, and his unwearied industry and care in the examination of all claims presented to Congress growing out of the disposition of the public lands to private citizens, corporations, or States — caused him to be regarded almost in the light of an oracle, by his compeers in the Senate, whenever any of these claims were pending ; his statements, of fact were never disputed, and his judgment almost always followed. Immediately after he was placed upon the Senate Committee on Indian Affairs, it became manifest that he had made himself master of that whole subject in all of its details. He conse- quently exercised a leading influence on the legislation of Congress affecting our intercourse with these children of the forest; humanity and justice to them, as well as the safety of the frontier settlements from savage warfare, v/ith him were cardi- nal elements, to guide him in shaping the policy of the Govern- ment. The effect of the repeal, over Mr. Harlan's earnest protest, of the beneficent features of the Indian intercourse laws, under the lead of Senator Hunter, which, all admit, laid the foundation for our recent Indian wars, furnishes a marked illustration of the safety of his counsels in these affairs. As a member of the Senate Committee on Agriculture, he waa the earnest advocate of every measure calculated to develop 45G MEN OF OUR DAY. and advance tbat great national interest, and prepared the only report, marked by scientific researcli, made on tbat subject by the Senate Committee during tbe last ten years. He gave bis earnest support to tbe Agricultural College bill, tbougb in con- flict witb bis views of tbe proper policy for tbe disposition of tbe public lands, because be regarded it as tbe only opportu- nity for laying firmly tbe foundation for tbese nurseries of scientifiG agriculture, wbicb must prove of vast consequence for good, to tbe wbole people of tbis continent, and tbe toiling millions of tbe old world. Tbougb never unjust or illiberal toward tbe older and more powerful members of tbe Union, be bas ever been tbe vigilant guardian of tbe peculiar interests of tbe new States, including his own. He bas also been a no less vigilant guardian of the public treasury, tbougb never lending himself to niggardly and parsimonious measures. His inauguration of tbe proposition for tbe construction of a ship canal from tbe northern lakes to tbe waters of the Mississippi (see Congress. Globe, 2d session, 36 Congress, Part I.) ; bis opposition to legislation on tbe Sabbath ; bis introduc- tion of resolutions on fasting and prayer ; his propositions for reform in the chaplain service of tbe army and navy ; in aid of foreign emigration; the reconstruction of the insurrectionary States ; the reclamation of tbe Colorado desert ; the improvement of navigation of lakes and rivers ; the application of meteorolo- gical observations in aid of agriculture to land as well as sea ; for tbe support of scientific explorations and kindred measures ; for reform in criminal justice in the District of Columbia and in the territories ; and bis remarks on such subjects as tbe bank- rupt bill ; tbe Kentucky Volunteers bill; tbe bill to re-organize the Court of Claims ; on the resolution relating to Floyd's accept- ances ; on the bill to indemnify the President ; on tbe couscri > JAMES HARLAN. 457 tion bill ; on the conditions of release of State prisoners ; on the disqualification of color in carrying the mails ; on the organiza- tion of territories; on amendment to the Constitution; on the district registration IdIII ; on bill to establish Freedmen's Bureau; on inter-continental telegraph ; on bill providing bail in certain eases of military arrests ; on the construction of railroads ; on education in the District of Columbia for white and colored children ; on the Income Tax bill ; altogether furnish an indica- tion of the range of his acquirements, the tendency of his thoughts, and the breadth of his views, which cannot otherwise be given in a sketch necessarily so brief as to exclude copious extracts from published debates. Among his numerous eloquent and elaborate speeches in the Senate, we have only room for a brief abstract of one, which must serve as a sample of the whole. It is that delivered in reply to Senator Hunter of Virginia, during the winter of 1860- 61, immediately preceding the first overt acts of the rebellion. This speech was characteristic in clearness, method, directness, force, and conclusiveness, and was regarded, by his associates in the Senate, as the great speech of the session. In the commence- ment, he examined and exposed, in their order, every pretext for secession, and proceeded to charge upon the authors of the then incipient rebellion, with unsurpassed vigor and force, that the loss of political power was their real grievance. lie indi- cated the impossibility of any compromise, on the terms proposed by the southern leaders, without dishonor, and pointed out the means of an adjustment alike honorable to the South and the North, requiring no retraction of principle on the part of any one, by admitting the territories into the Union as States. He warned the South against a resort to an arbitrament of the Bword ; predicted the impossibility of their sec iring a division of the States of the northwest from the Middle and New Eng- 458 MEN OF OUR DAY, land States the certainty and comparative dispatch with which an armed rebellion would be crushed, and concluded with a most powerful appeal to these conspixators not to plunge the country into such a sea of blood. Upon the conclusion of this speech four fifths of the Union Senators crowded around to con- gratulate him, and a state of excitement prevailed on the floor of the Senate for some moments, such as had seldom if ever before been witnessed in that body. He was selected by the Union members of the House and Senate as a member of the Union Congressional committee for the management of the presidential campaign of 186-i. Being the only member of the committee on the part of the Senate who devoted his whole time to this work, he became the active organ of the committee — organized an immense working force, regulated its finances with ability and unimpeachable fidelity, employed a large number of presses in Washington, Balti- more, Philadelphia, and New York, in printing reading matter for the masses, which resulted in the distribution of many mil- lions of documents among the people at home, and in all our great armies. To his labors the country was, doubtless, largely indebted, for the triumphant success of the Union can- didates. With the foregoing record, it is not remarkable that he should have been selected by that illustrious statesman and patriot, Abraham Lincoln, immediately preceding his lamented death, for the distinguished office of Secretary of the Interior. Mr. Harlan's nomination was unanimously confirmed by the body of which he was at the time an honored m.ember, without the usual reference to a committee. But, immediately after the accession of Mr. Johnson to the presidency, with a delicacy and sense of propriety worthy of imitation, he tendered his declination of this high office. This not being accepted, Mr. JAMES HARLAN. 459 Harlan did not deem it proper, in the disturbed condition of public affairs, to make it peremptory, and, in accordance with the President's expressed desire, and the demands of the national welfare, resigned his seat in the Senate, and entered on the dis- charge of the duties of the position, May 15th, 1865. Mr Harlan's great familiarity with the laws pertaining to the de- partment of which he had now become the leading spirit, not only enabled him fully to meet public expectation in the admin- istration of its affairs, but to establish it upon a basis of useful- ness, hitherto unknown in its history. The fact becoming manifest to the people of Iowa, that Mr. Harlan could not long remain as a confidential adviser of Presi- dent Johnson, on account of the early and repeated aberrations of the latter from the cardinal principles of the political party by whom he had been elected to the vice presidency, and not being disposed to dispense with the services of so faithful a public ser- vant, he was re-elected by the Legislature of 1866, to his old seat in the United States Senate. The following August he resigned the office of Secretary of the Interior, and re-entered the Senate Chamber on the 4th of March, 1867, with the full period of six years before him. He was immediately appointed chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, also chairman of the joint committee of the two Houses of Con- gress to audit expenses of executive mansion, and was assigned to membership on the important committees of Foreign Rela- tions, Pacific railroad, and Post Offices, and Post roads, respec- tively. Mr. Harlan is still (1872) a member of the Senate, though his term expires March 3rd, 1873, and lion. James F. Wilson, an able statesman of the same party, lias been elected his successor. Mr. Harlan's early record was so pure and creditable to him, that it is hardly probable that h*e has done anything to mar 460 MEN OF OUR DAY. it ; yet it is very difficult for a Senator or Representative in Con- gress who pushes forward the great land jobbing grants to the Western Railroads to avoid a suspicion of having shared in the profits thus ensured to his clients. Mr. Harlan has been accused, and with great vehemence, of participating in the benefits of those land-grants, but he has defended himself with a good deal of ability, and some asperity, and his innocence is to be pre- eumed. That these charges defeated his re-election is asserted, and is probable, but their truth is not proved thereby. HON. ROSCOE CONKLING. UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM NEW YORK. HEN, some years since, the Representative of the twenty- first Congressional District of New York was declared, by a majority of his peers, to have been guilty of corruption, and to be unworthy of a seat with them, the Republican voters of that district, one of the most intelligent and refined in the state, looked about them for a man of integrity and purity of character who should fully represent their sentiments in the national legislature. Such a man they found speedily ; a young man but little more than thirty years of age, but of highly cultivated intellect, staunch integrity, an eminent advo- cate, and at that time mayor of Utica, the chief city of the district. They elected him ; and, young as he was, he speedily made his mark, in three Congresses of remarkable ability, taking a position with the foremost, in the fervor of his patriot- ism, the clearness of his perceptions, the soundness of his judg- ment, and his eloquence as a debater, and at the close of his six years' service in the House of Representatives, though re-elected from his district, he was transferred by the Legislature of hia native State, to a seat in the United States Senate, previously occupied by one of the most eminent jurists of New York. RoscoE CoNKLiNG (for it is he of whom we speak), was born at Albany, New York, October 30, 1829 ; he was a younger son of Hon. Alfred Conkling, a member of the XVIIth Congress, 461 462 MEN OF OUR DAT. nnd subsequently judge of tlie United States District Court, for the Northern District of New York, for twenty-seven years, and in 1852-5, United States minister to Mexico ; he received a very thorough academic education in the Albany academy, and in 1846, removed to Utica, where he studied and practiced law, and when but twenty-one years of age, was appointed district attorney for Oneida county. In 1858, he was elected mayor of Utica, by a heavy majority. Duimg the autumn of the same year, he was nominated for Congress from the twenty-first district, to succeed 0. B. Matteson. He was carried in by a large majority, and though the youngest member of the House, attained speedily to a very prominent position in that body, as a fearless, eloquent, and accomplished debater. He was re- elected in 1860, and still added to his reputation. He was chairman of the Committee on the District of Columbia, and on a Bankrupt Law. In 1862, New York was so far faithless to her principles as to elect a Democratic Administration, Horatio Seymour, Mr. Conkling's brother-in-law, being chosen governor ; and a professed war Democrat, but real Copperhead, elected to Congress from the twenty-first district to the XXXVIIIth Congress. But the people of that district were dissatisfied, and, in 186-1, they re-elected Mr. Conkling by a heavier majority than ever before. During the two years that he was out of Congress, Mr. Conkling was requested by the attorney-general to aid in the prosecution of some gross frauds which had been committed in that district, in regard to the enlistments ard bounties to soldiers. He entered upon the work with his usual ardor and zeal, and succeeded in unearthing a most astounding system of frauds. By this act, he rendered a great service to the nation, for which he received the thanks of the War Depart- ment, but he had incurred the hostility of the " Ring," which determined thenceforward to crush him. The opportunity did HON. ROSCOE CONKLING. 465 not occur until the summer of 1866, when, as be was nominated again for Congress, a man of large wealth, previously a Republi can, determined to run in opposition to him, and to defeat him, if it could be accomplished by money. Mr. Conkling at once announced his intention to canvass the district in person, and did so, speaking in every village and town of the county, and was reelected by an increased majority. The Republican Legislature which met in January, 1867, elected Mr. Conkling United States Senator for six years, from March 4, 1867, to succeed Hon. Ira Harris. A single passage from one of Mr. Conkling's speeches, will serve to show his earnestness, the intensity of his convictions, and the ability with which he presents them. The occasion was this; Tennessee had been restored to the Union, and her loyal Representatives and one Senator sworn in. The other Senator, Judge Patterson, a son-in-law of President Johnson, was, it was thought, from the fact of his having, though a Union man, held office under the rebel government, unable to take the test oath prescribed for all Senators and Representatives, and the Senate had passed a joint resolution to omit in his case, from the test oath, these words : " That I have neither sought nor accepted, nor attempted to exercise the functions of any office whatever, under any authority, or pretended authority, in hostility to the United States." This resolution was immediately sent to the House of Representatives for their consideration. Messrs. May nard and Taylor of Tennessee advocated it, and Mr. Stokes, also of Tennessee, and Mr. Conkling of New York, opposed it. The closing passage of Mr. Conkling's speech was as follows: " We are asked to drive a plough-share over the very found-'tion of our position ; to break down and destroy the Dulwark by which we may secure the results of a great war and a great history, by which we may preserve from defilement thia 464 MEN OF OUR DAY. place, wTiere alone in our organism the people never lose their supremacy, except by the recreancy of their Kepresentatives; a bulwark without which we may not save our Government from disintegration and disgrace. If we do this act, it will be a precedent which will carry fatality in its train. From Jefferson Davis, to the meanest tool of despotism and treason, every rebel may come here, and we shall have no reason to assign against his admission, except the arbitrary reason of numbers. I move, sir, that the joint resolution be laid on the table." It ivas laid on the table, by a vote of eighty-eight to thirty-one ; and the Bame day, Judge Patterson, having discovered that he could take the test oath, was sworn in by the Vice-President, and the joint resolution laid over forever. Sudden and rapid promotion to the highest places in the peo- ple's gift has before now turned the heads of many otherwise estimable men, and if Mr. Conkling has failed to fulfil in all respects the promise of his earlier years in Congress, as very many of his former friends believe, it is doubtless due in part to his rapid promotion, in part to the grateful but not always healthful influence of the profuse flattery he has received, and to the overweening sense of his own gifts, talents and power, which have been thus bred in him. Mr. Conkling is a man of remarkably fine appearance, and a great favorite of the ladies; he is a man of scholarly tastes and of considerable eloquence; but since he has been in the Senate, he has lost that modesty which so well became him, and by his imperious and dictatorial manner, and his fierce invective against men who, to say the least, were in all respects his peers, he has lost influence in the nation, and has recalled the traditions of the old days when the slave holder's whip cracked ominously in the Senate against all who failed to do its behests. It grieves us to say such things of a man of so much real ability as Mr. Conkling; and we cannot but HON. ROSCOE CONKLING. 465 hope that ia the coming years he may see that the power which is founded on love and respect is infinitely greater than that which is reared on force and brutality, and may be led to unite, as he certainly does not now, the suaviter in modo to the fortiter in re. 30 MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN. fOHN ALEXANDER LOGAN, who has been styled " the Murat of the Union army," was born near the present town of Murphysboro, Jackson county, in Illinois, on the 9th of February, 1826. His father. Dr. John Logan, came from Ireland to Illinois, in 1823 ; his mother, Elizabeth Jenkins, was a Tennessean, and John was the eldest of their family of eleven children. Schools were scarce in Illinois, during hia boyhood, so that he was indebted for most of his early education to his father, or to such itinerant teachers as chanced to visit the new settlement — and it was not until 1840, that he attended an academy, bearing the pretentious title of " Shiloh college." At the commencement of the Mexican war, young Logan, then in his twentieth year, volunteered, and was chosen lieutenant in a company of the first Illinois volunteers ; bearing a conspicuous part in the service of the regiment, of which, for a portion of the time, he was adjutant. Returning home in October, 1848, he commenced the study of law in the office of his uncle, Alexander M. Jenkins, formerly lieutenant-governor of Illinois, and while thus employed, was elected, in November, 1849, clerk of his native county, holding the office until 1850. During that year, he attended a course of law studies at Louisville, receiving his diploma in 1851, and commencing the practice of his pro- fession with his uncle. His practical mind, pleasing address, 466 MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN. 467 and rare abilities as a public speaker, speedily rendered him a general favorite, and, in 1852, he was elected prosecuting attor- ney of the then third judicial district, and established his resi- dence at Benton, Illinois. During the autumn of the same year, he was elected to represent Jackson and Franklin counties, in the State Legislature ; married in 1856 ; was chosen presidential elector for the ninth Congressional district, in May, 1856, and in the following fall was re-elected to the Legislature. In 1858, the Democracy of the ninth Congressional district elected him to Congress by a large majority, and re-elected him, again, in 1860. At the first intimation of coming trouble, he boldly asserted that, although he thought and hoped that Mr. Lincoln would not be elected to the presidency ; yet, if he were, he would " shoulder his musket to have him inaugurated." During the winter of 1860, his county having been thrown out of his old district and added to another, he removed his resi- dence to Marion, Williamson county, in order that he might still be in his district. In July, 1861, during the extra session of Congress, Mr. Logan, fired with the enthusiasm of the hour, left his seat, over- took the troops which were marching out of Washington to meet the enemy, joined himself to Colonel Richardson's regi- ment, secured a musket and a place in the ranks, and, at the disastrous battle of Bull Run, fought with distinguished bravery, and was among the last to leave the field. Returning to his home, at Marion, in the latter part of August, he addressed hia fellow-citizens, on tlic 3d of September, announcing his intention to enter the service of the Government, "as a private, or in any capacity in which he could serve his country best, in defending the old blood-stained flag over every foot of soil in the United States." II is eloquence and high personal reputation rallied Mends and neighbors around him, and, on the 13th of Septem- 4G8 MEN OF OUR DAY. ber, 1861, the thirtj-first Illinois volunteers was organized, and he was chosen colonel. The regiment was attached to General McClernand's brigade ; and, seven weeks later, at Belmont, made its first fight, during which Colonel Logan had a horse shot under him, and his pistol, at his side, shattered by rebel bullets. He led the thirty-first, also, at Fort Henry, and, again, at Fort Donelson, where he received a very severs wound, which, aggravated by exposure, disabled him for some time from active service. Reporting, again, for duty to General Grant, at Pittsburgh Landing, he was shortly after, March 5th, 1862, made brigadier-general of volunteers ; took a distinguished part in the movement against Corinth, in May, and, after the occupation of that place, guarded, with his brigade, the rail- road communications with Jackson, Tennessee, of which place he was subsequently given the command. In the summer of 1862, he was warmly urged by his numer- ous friends and admirers to become a candidate, again, for Congress, but declined in a letter of glowing patriotism, in which he said, — " I have entered the field to die, if need be, for this Government, and never expect to return to peaceful pursuits, until the object of this war of preservation has become a fact established." During Grant's Northern Mississippi cam- paign, 1862 and '63, Logan led his division, exhibiting great skill in the handling of troops, and was honored with a promo- tion as major-general of volunteers, dating from November 29th, 1862. He was afterwards assigned to the command of the third division, seventeenth army corps, under General McPherson, and bore a part in the movement upon Yicksburg ; contributing to the victory at Port Gibson, and saving the day, by hia desperate personal bravery. May 12th, at the battle of Raymond, which General Grant designated as " one of the hardest small battles of the war ;" participated in the defeat and routmg of MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN. 4C3 the rel)e1s at Jackson, May 14th, and in the battle of Cham- pion's Hill, May 16tb. At the siege of Yicksburg, he commanded McPherson'a centre, opposite Fort Hill, the key to the rebel works, and hia men made the assault after the explosion of the mine, June 25th. His column was the first to enter the surrendered city, on the 4th of July, 1863, and he was made its military governor, Hia valor was fitly recognized in the presentation made to him, by the board of honor of the seventeenth army corps, of a gold medal, inscribed with the names of the nine battles m which he had participated. Having thoroughly inaugurated the adminis- tration of affairs at Vicksburg, he spent a part of the summer of 1863 in a visit to the North, frequently addressing large assemblages of his fellow-citizens, in speeches of fiery eloquence, and burning zeal and devotion to the cause of the Union. In November, 1863, he succeeded General Sherman in the com-' mand of the fifteenth army corps, spending the following win! or at Huntsville, Alabama ; joining, in May, 1864, the Grand Military Division of the Mississippi, which, under General Sherman, was preparing for its march into Georgia. He led the advance of the Army of the Tennessee in the movement at Resaca, taking part in the battle which followed, and, still moving on the right, met and repulsed Hardee's veterans at Dallas, on the 23d of May ; drove the enemy from three linea of works, at Kenesaw Mountain, and again, on the 27th of June, made a desperate assault against the impregnable face of Little Kenesaw. On the 22d of July, at the terrible battle of Peach Tree creek, Logan, fighting at one moment on one side of his works, and the next on the other, was informed of the death, in another part of the field, of the beloved General McPherson. Assuming the temporary command, Logan dashed impetuously from one end to the other of his hardly-pressed lines, shouting 470 MEN OF OUR DAY. " McPherson and revenge !" His emotion communicated itself to the troops with the rapidity of electricity, and eight thousand rebel dead left upon the field, at nightfall, bore mute witness to their love for the fallen chief and the bravery of his successor. Conspicuous, again, at the obstinate battle of Ezra Chapel, July 28th, he and his troops co-operated in the remaining bat- tles of the campaign, until the fall of Atlanta, September 2d, when they went into summer- quarters. After a few months spent in stumping the Western States, during the presidential campaign of ISGi, General Logan rejoined his corps, at Savan- nah, Georgia, shared the fatigues and honors of Sherman's march through the Carolinas, and, after Johnston's surrender, marched to Alexandria, and participated with his brave veterans in the great review of the national armies at Washington, May 23d, being advanced, on the same day, to the command of the Army of the Tennessee, upon the appointment of General Howard to other duties. In 1865, General Logan was appointed minister to Mexico, but declined the honor, and was elected to the XLth Congress, from the State at large, as a Republican, receiving two hundred and three thousand and forty-five votes, against one hundred and forty-seven thousand and fifty-eight, given for his Demo- cratic opponent. He took a prominent part, as one of the man- agers on tlie part of the House of Representatives, in the im- peachment trial of President Johnson. General Logan was re-elected as Congressman at large to the XLIst and to the XLIId Congresses, but in the winter of 1871 he was chosen by the Legislature of Illinois to succeed Richard Yates, as United States Senator from that State. The selection was hardly a wise one either for the State or the General him- self. In the house of Representatives, General Logan was per- fectly at home. His capacity for work, his fiery and somewhat MAJOR-GENERAL JOHN A. LOGAN. 471 stilted eloquence, and his power to influence the sympathies and emotions of his hearers, were thoroughly in place ; but in the Senate he was strangely out of his element by the side of his dignified and scholarly colleague, and though disposed to be active and laborious, he ran the risk of sinking to the position of one of the buffoons of the Senate, a fate which he certainly did not deserve. He lacked that wide range of scholarship and knowledge of state-craft, which was so necessary in a Senator from the great State which he represented, and in consequence did not do himself justice. He was during his first year in the Senate very caustic and severe in his denunciation of President Grant, sajdng many and bitter things against him, and when, in May, 1872, he suddenly became his ardent defender and eulogist, too many, who did not understand his impetuous and impulsive nature, attributed the change to base and unworthy motives. HON. JAMES F. WILSON, REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM IOWA. N able, clear-headed lawyer, of cool, calm, judicial mind and sterling patriotism, is the late Eepresentative from Qs^ the first Congressional district of Iowa, The West has sent very few Representatives of higher talent, or greater ability and disposition for usefulness, to Congress within the last twenty years. Although a comparatively young man, (he has not yet seen his forty-fourth birthday,) the House leaned upon him, confided in him, and placed him in its positions of great responsibility, and it never found itself disappointed. James F. Wilson was born at Newark, Ohio, October 19, 1828 ; received in that city, which, for years, has been famous for its good schools, a very thorough academic education, and then commenced the study of the law, and was admitted to the Licking county bar, about 1849 ; in 1853, he removed to Fair- field, Iowa, where he speedily took a high rank in his profes- sion. In 1856, though but twenty-eight years old, he was chosen a member of the convention to revise the State Consti- tution, and acquitted himself with honor there. In 1857, he was appointed, by the governor of the State, Assistant Com- missioner of the Des Moines River Improvement. The same year he was elected to the Legislature, and became at once a leader in the House. In 1859, he was chosen State Senator, and re-elected in 1861, when he was made President of tne Senate. 472 HON". JAMES F. WILSON. 473 In this position, at tlie outbreak of the war, he manifested so much patriotism, and so clear a comprehension of what was the duty of Iowa in aiding in the suppression of the rebellion, as to attract the attention of the people of that eminently loyal State, and rendered great service to the cause. When General Samuel R. Curtis, the Representative of the first district in Con- gress, resigned his seat, to take command of Iowa troops for the war, Mr. Wilson was promptly chosen to serve out the remainder of his term, and has since been re-elected to the XXXVIIIth, XXXIXth and XLth Congresses, and would have been continued there had he not positively declined a re- election in 1868. Though one of the youngest members of the House, the lead- ing men in it were not slow in discovering his superior abilities, and, at the beginning of the XXXVIIIth Congress, he was made Chairman of the Judiciary Committee, in many respects the most important committee of the House, though such men as George S. Boutwell, of Massachusetts, and Thomas Williams, of Pennsylvania, were members of the committee. The event justified Speaker Colfax's selection. Mr. Wilson manifested rare ability in this position, and rarely reported a bill which did not pass the House. In his political views, he was radical, yet cautious, but stern and uncom- promising in regard to matters which he believed to be right. He had a rare faculty of seizing on the strong points of a case, and presenting them with such clearness and force as to insure conviction. He usually did this in all the great measures he brought forward from his committee in the House. In his argument for granting impartial suffrage in the District of Columbia, he urged the early practice of the colonies, and most of the original States, in permitting colored suffrage, the causes which led to their apostasy from this; the low grade of 47-i MEN OF OUR DAY. Union feeling among the white inhabitants and voters of the District, and the true principle of legislation on suffrage, and closed with the following appeal to the Ilouse : "And now, Mr. Speaker, who are the persons upon whom this bill will operate if we shall place it upon the statute-book of the nation ? They are citizens of the United States and resi- dents of the District of Columbia. It is true that many of them have black faces ; but that is God's work, and he is wiser than we. Some of them have faces marked by colors uncertain; that is not God's fault. Those who hate black men most in- tensely can tell more than all others about this mixture of colors. But, mixed or black, they are citizens of this republic, and they have been, and are to-day, true and loyal to their Govern- ment, and this is vastly more than many of their contemners can claim for themselves. " In this district a white skin was not the badge of loyalty, while a black skin was. No traitor breathed the air of this capital wearing a black skin. Through all the gradations of traitors, from Wirz to Jeff. Davis, criminal eyes beamed from white faces. Through all phases of treason, from the bold stroke of Lee upon the battle-field to the unnatural sympathy of those who lived within this district, but hated the sight of their country's flag, runs the blood which courses only under a white surface. "While white men were fleeing from this city to join their fortunes with the rebel cause, the returning wave brought black faces in their stead. White enemies went out, black friends came in. As true as truth itself were these poor men to the cause of this imperilled nation. Wherever we have trusted them they have been true. Why will we not deal justly by them ? Why shall we not, in this district, where the first effective legislative blow fell upon slavery, declare that these suffering, patient, devoted friends of the republic, shall have HON. JAMES F. WILSON. 475 the power to protect their own rights by their own ballots ? Is it because thej are ignorant ? Sir, we are estopped from that plea. It comes too late. "We did not make this inquiry in regard to the white voter. It is only when we see a man t»ith a dark skin that we think of ignorance. Let us not stand on this view in relation to this district. The fact itself is rapidly passing away, for there is no other part of the popula- tion of the district so diligent in the acquisition of knowledge as the colored portion. In spite of the difficulties placed in their pathway to knowledge by the white residents, the colored people, adults and children, are steadily pressing on." He finished by urging the passage of the bill, which he secured a few days later by a vote of more than two thirds. On the trial of Andrew Johnson upon the articles of im- peachment preferred against him by the House of Representa- tives, Mr. Wilson was chosen one of the managers of the trial, and in a closing argument of great force and pertinence, sought to demostrate the guilt of the President. Mr. Wilson has been repeatedly offered Cabinet positions, and two or three of the foreign missions in Europe were tendered him, but he has declined them all. In the winter of 1872 he was elected to the United States Senate, to succeed Hon. James Harlan. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER. JHE courage, pugnacity, fertility of genius, and patriotism, which enter so largely into the composition of Benjamin Franklin Butler, are his by inheritance. His grand- father. Captain Zephaniah Butler, of Woodbury, Con- necticut, fought under General Wolfe at Quebec, and served in the Continental army, during the entire war of the Revolution ; while the general's father, John Butler, of Deerfield, New Hampshire, was a captain of dragoons in the war of 1812, and served for a while under General Jackson at New Orleans. And our hero's mother was of that doughty race of Scotch- Irish origin, to which belonged Colonel Cilley (also an ancestor of General Butler) " who, at the battle of Bennington, commanded a company that had never seen a cannon, and who, to quiet their apprehensions, sat astride of one while it was discharged." John Butler, the ex-captain of dragoons, after the war, fol- lowed the sea — in the various capacities of supercargo, merchant or captain in the West India trade. In politics he was a full blooded Jeffersonian Democrat — one of eight representatives, only, of that party, in the town of Deerfield, whose Democracy isolated them, socially as well as politically, to a degree which is inconceivable to us of the present day, who knew New Hampshire a few years ago as the Democratic stronghold of New Englaml. So that his son, Benjamin Franklin Butler, 476 BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER. 477 born at Deerfield, on tlie Sth of November, 1818, was also " born," as has been happily said, " into the ranks of an ab- horred but positive and pugnacious minority — a little Spartan band, always battling, never subdued, never victorious." Five months after his birth, the boy lost his father, who died in March, 1819, of the yellow fever, while his vessel was lying at one of the West India Islands. His widow, a woman of true New England energy, supported her two boys by her individual exertions ; and, in 1828, removed to Lowell, then a young but thriving town of two thousand inhabitants ; where, by taking boarders, she was enabled to give Benjamin better educational advantages than he had before enjoyed. From the common school he passed to the High School and from thence to the Exeter Academy, where he pre- pared for college. If his own predilections had been consulted, he would have gone to West Point — but his mother, who, like all New England mothers, desired to see her boy in the ministry, consulted with her pastor, and by his advice Benjamin was seni to Waterville College, in Maine, an institution recently founded by the Baptist denomination. So, with the little occasional help received from a kind New Hampshire uncle, and the scanty earnings which he was able to secure from three hours' work per day, at chair-making, in the manual labor department of the college, he gained the ambition of his young manhood — an education, and left the college halls fully determined to be a lawyer. Just then there came to him a special Providence — one which •we might wish would come, in like circumstances, to every youth as he leaves his Alma Mater. A good-hearted uncle, "skipper" of a fishing smack, urged him to accompany him on a trip to the coast of Labrador, saying to him, "I'll give you a bunk in the cabin, but you must do your duty before the mast, 29 478 MEN OF OUR DAY. watcli and watch, like a man. I'll warrant you'll come back sound enough in the fall." So the pale-faced student accepted the kindly offer and returned from a four months' voyage with a fund of perfect health, which has lasted him ever since. With rencv/ed vigor the youth of twenty commenced the study of law, iu the office of William Smith, Esq., of Lowell ; and, being admitted to the bar in 1840, entered heart and soul into the practice of his chosen profession. He eked out his slender in- come by school teaching; he labored indefatigably eighteen hours out of the twenty-four; he joined the City Guard, a com- pany of the since f\imous Sixth Regiment of Massachusetts, and perseveringly worked his way through every regular gradation up to the rank of colonel. Work he craved — work he would have — and work he succeeded in getting. " All was fish that camo to his n -t." "His speeches," says a personal friend, " were smart, impudent, reckless, slap-dash affairs, showing the same general traits which have characterized him as a lawyer and politician ever since he began his career. He very soon became a decided character in Lowell and Middlesex county. He made politics and law play into each other's hands; and while he denounced the agents and overseers of the mills as tyrants and oppressors, his office was open for the establishment of all sorts of lawsuits on behalf of the male and female operatives." From his twentieth year he was an eager, busy politician, whom every election-time found diligently "stumping" the neigh- boring towns; and (after 1844) regularly attending the National Democratic Conventions. His history is closely identified with that of the Democratic party in Massachusetts during twenty years, 1840-60. A "Coalitionist" in 1852, he united with the Free-soilers to crush out the old Whig party. In 1853 he was elected on the Coalition ticket, to the Legislature — and was the acknowledged leader of that party in the House, his wordy BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER. 479 battles with Otis P. Lord, the Whig leader, being memorable in the history of legislative strife and debate in that State. In the election of delegates to the Constitutional Convention, which shortly followed, the Coalitionists of Lowell were ably represented by Butler, who exhibited a marked degree of ability, and of intimate acquaintance with the principles under discussion. And, though the Constitution was rejected, and Coalition died out, yet he was always loyal to his old allies, the Free-Soilers, and when in 1855, the " Know-Nothing" or- ganization came suddenly into existence, he battled against it with all the tremendous energy of which he was capable. When the new Know Nothing governor, Gardner, recommend- ed in his annual message tho exclusion of all persons of foreign birth from the state militia ; and ordered the disband- ment of certain companies wholly or largely composed of such — some of which companies belonged to Colonel Butler's regiment, he refused to transmit the order and was sum- marily deprived of his command by the governor. He then turned around and prosecuted the adjutant-general for remov- ing the arms from the armory — but without satisfactory result. In 1857, however, he was chosen brigadier-general by the officers of the brigade to which his regiment belonged, and received his commission from the hands of the same governor who had broken him of his colonelcy. During the following year he exhibited his usual vigor and fearlessness as counsel in the celebrated Burnham contempt case. In 1858, as the can- didate of the "Liberals," Butler ran for governor but was de- feated by the " Hunker" candidate. In the fall of the same year, however, the Conservatives elected him to the State Senate ; and, in 1859, he was nominated, still on the Liberal ticket, for the governorship, but, although receiving the full vote of his party, was defeated by Nathaniel P. Banks. As a 4S0 MEN OF OUR DAY. legislator lie opposed the old banking system and advocated what is known as the New York system ; and he battled persist- ently and successfully for the " ten hour" bill, which gave the working men two additional hours out of the twenty-four for rest and self-improvement. In April, 1860, General Butler was a delegate to the Demo- cratic Convention, held at Charleston, S. C, and as a member of the committee appointed to prepare a " platform" for that party, in the coming Presidential campaign, he took a very prominent part; strongly and tenaciously insisting upon an adherence to the principles of the platform adopted at the Democratic Presidential Convention of 1856, held at Cincinnati. Both at Charleston and at Baltimore, at which city the Conven- tion met, by adjournment, June 18th, he refused his support to any measures which looked to any further concessions to the South, on the part of the Democracy of the North. When the Convention divided, he, with other delegates who were firmly opposed to Douglas's nomination, withdrew from the meeting and nominated the " Breckinridge and Lane" ticket, and the campaign commenced. It cannot be doubted that in espousing thus Breckinridge's interest, he was misled by representations made to him by the southern leaders ; for it soon became evident that the Breckinridge men at the South, and in Con- gress, contemplated treason. On his return to Massachusetts, he found himself the most unpopular man in the State — hooted at in the streets of Lowell, and a meeting at which he was to speak, broken up by a mob. lie "had his say out," how- ever, at another meeting, and vindicated himself — as events, and his own course have since done — from any complicity with treason. In the fall of the same year, he became the Breckin- ridge candidate for governor, but was defeated, receiving only SIX thousand voteb'. BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER. 4S1 Tn December, 1860, Mr. Lincoln having been elected, Butler visited Washington on party business, and there became aware of the full meaning and extent of the southern movement. Seccssmi he found to be considered, by its leaders, as an accom- plished fact. He reasoned earnestly but fruitlessly with them — he was offered, in return, a share in their treasonable enterprise. Spurning the offer, he waited upon the Government with advice which, as a leader of the party in power, he was entitled to give; and which, had it been accepted and acted upon, might have changed the whole aspect of subsequent events. But Mr. Buchanan was timorous and embarrassed. Then the gen- eral united with his old friend (and political opponent) in urging the Governor of Massachusetts to prepare the militia of the State for the coming struggle. Governor Andrew followed their suggestions — ^and what of preparation was accomplished was effected not a moment too soon. Sumter fell beneath the blows of armed treason. A call came to Boston for two full regiments. General Butler, arguing a case in the court-room,. at 5 p. M., endorsed the order which called the glorious Sixth of his brigade to arms, at eleven o'clock of the next day, on Boston Common. Then he effected a loan of $50,000 from one of the Boston banks, to help off the troops ; and within twent}' - four hours thereafter came an order from Washington for a fall brigade, and he was appointed to the command. On the 17th started the Sixth, on the 18th two regiments by steamer and the Eighth by rail, accompanied by General Batler in person. Arrived at Philadelphia on the 19th, they heard of the attack of the mob upon the Sixth, at Baltimore. Yet, amid the many conflicting rumors, and the dread uncertainty which hung over their path, the general determined to follow out his orders and nviroh his regiment to Washington via Baltimore. Leaving behind them the New York Seventh, who declined to 3i 482 MEN OF OUR DAT. share the risk of that route, the Eighth, on the 20th of April, took cars to Havre-de-Grace, and thence bj a ferry-boat — im- pressed into the service — reached Annapolis, Maryland. Arriv- ing at that place they found the town in momentary expectation of attack, and the school ship, the old " Constitution," belonging to the United States Naval Academy, fast aground and weakly manned, and at the mercy of the Secessionists, So Butler put his little ferry-boat alongside, put on board a guard and a strong crew of Marblehead sailors ; and finally, with incredible exer- tions, the " Constitution" was towed out to a place of safety. Another morning brought a steamer bearing the New York Seventh, and ere long, despite the repeated protestations of the civic authorities and the Governor of Maryland, both regi- ments were landed on the grounds of the Naval Academy. Butler now needed the railroad to "Washington ; but the depot was locked, and the track torn up. Seizing, by force, a small and purposely damaged engine from the depot, a private soldier was soon found who could put it in order — it was speedily in running trim, and track-laying commenced. The history of the three days' march which followed, laying track as they went all the way, forms a wonderful and romantic episode in the histor}'- of the war; but on the 25th the New York Seventh saluted the President at the White House, and Washington, as well as the whole North, breathed for the first time in many days a long sigh of relief Butler remained at Annapolis, where his active nature found full employment in providing for, and forwarding the troops, which now began to pour into the city by thousands. Before the week ended the ''Department of Annapolis," embracing the country within twenty miles of the railroad on each side, was created, and the command given to General Butler. Meanwhile Baltimore was in the hands of the sympathizers BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER. 483 with treason ; and as Baltimore went, so went the State. This then was the next great object of solicitude on the part of the Government. General Scott proposed to seize it by a stra- tegic movement of four columns of three thousand men each. General Butler, who had, on the 4th of May, seized the Eelaj House, nine miles from Baltimore, set forth in the night of the 13th of May with nine hundred men and some artillery, and using a simple stratagem to blind the Baltimoreans to his real design, conveyed his force by rail into the city, occupied Fed- eral Hill in the midst of a tremendous thunder-storm, planted his guards and cannon so as to command the city, and issued a "proclamation," which was to the astonished citizens the first intimation which they had, on the following morning, of the pre- sence of Union troops in their midst. For this he was censured by Lieutenant-General Scuct, but was immediately commissioned a major-general, May 16th, 1861, by President Lincoln, and assigned to the command of the new "Department of Virginia," (embracing South-eastern Virginia, North and South Carolina) with headquarters at Fortress Monroe. He found much to be done, the fort to be improved, the department to be studied and regulated, the troops to be drilled, and sundry expeditions and reconnoissances to be made in the vicinity. He prepared, also, an army for an attack upon Richmond, but it was crippled by a sudden call of most of his troops to the defence of Washing- ton. On the 9th and 10th of June, occurred the night expedi- tion which resulted in the affair at Big Bethel, the first reverso which the Union arms had as yet sustained, and which, although in the light of subsequent experience, only a skirmish, was a heavy blow to the popular expectation in the loyal States. Its ill-success, however, was due rather to an unfortunate mis- manag9:nent in the several commands detailed for the service, 434 MEN OF OUR DAT. and in tlic experience of the brigadier commanding the expedi- tion, than to General Butler. It was during the Fortress Monroe period, also, that General Butler's acute intellect solved the difficulty, which had puzzled all of our politicians and military men, as to the stahis of the slaves of masters in rebellion against the Federal government, bv pronouncing them " contraband of war,^^ a decision the whimsicality of which is infinitely heightened by the basis of truth upon which it is predicated. From General Butler also came (in the form of a communication to the Government, August 30th, 1861) the first distinct avowal of the right and the duty of the Federal Government to emancipate every slave within the Union lines. This opinion, urged as a military neces- sity, and fortified by unanswerable arguments, was not, how- ever, adopted by the Administration for more than a year after. On the 19th of August, 1861, he was relieved from the com- mand at Fortress Monroe, and on August 26th, sailed in com- mand of the military part of an expedition, in conjunction with Commodore Stringham, against the forts at Hatteras Inlet. They were captured August 29th (together with a large number of arms, cannon, and prisoners), and at Butler's suggestion, the forts were retained ; serving subsequently as the basis of Burn- side's splendid operations on the North Carolina coast. The Government now entertained the project of a combined land and water attack on New Orleans, and the winter of 1861-62 was busily spent in preparation for the enterprise, the difficulties of which were felt to be as great as its advantages to the Union cause would be glorious. A fleet of frigates and gunboats was fitted out by Commodore Farragut ; a formidable mortar fleet was got ready by Commander D. D. Porter, and the command of the co-operating land force was given to General Butler. The general was assigned to the newly BEN^JAMIN FEANKLIISr BUTLER. 485 created " Department of New England," in order to recruit men for the service, and his first transports sailed from Portland, Maine, in November, but the public was not informed as to the actual point of operations until the following spring. The advance of the expedition, which was commanded by General Phelps, whose aid Butler had especially desired, reached ita destination, Ship Island (sixty-five miles from New Orleans, and fifty from Mobile Bay, both of which places it thus men- aced), earl};- in March, and was followed by the bomb flotilla, and transports with a formidable armament of mortars and heavy guns. The forts, navy-yard, dry dock, storehouses, barracks, and marine hospital at Pensacola, upon which the rebels had bestowed great labor and expense, were speedily abandoned and burned by them ; and about the middle ox April, the fleet and flotilla gathered together in the Mississippi river, ten miles below Forts Jackson and St. Philip. Six days' unsuccessful bombardment of these forts (18th to 23d) decided Admiral Farragut to run past them, which he successfully accomplished on the 24th, and anchored before the city of New Orleans on the 25th. The forts, however, held out until the prompt and unexpected landing of Batler's army in the rear of Fort St. Philip, and its complete investment on every side, obliged their capitulation to the Federal authority. Having thus opened the Mississippi in the rear of Farragut's victorious fleet. General Butler's army came up the river and on the 1st of May, 1862, landed and took possession of New Orleans. The his- tory of the occupation of that intensely rebel and defiant city forms perhaps the most satisfectory chapter in the history of the war of the rebellion.* " The iron heel of military law was placed * We acknowkid'^e with pleasure our indebtedness to Mr. Parton's Life of General Butler, for this vivid picture of his career at New Orleans. Mr. Parton's book stands without a rival in its graphic portraiture of Its subject. 486 MEN OF OUR DAT. witli relentless severity upon the stiff necks of a people wlioso whole social system bad long been a terror to themselves and a disgrace to American civilization ; and whose violent passions seemed uncontrollable even by the menace of the armed hand. But each day that passed, now gave evidence that these wretched people had found a master whose will of iron and nerves of steel were fully equal to the task, which their con- tumacy imposed upon him. Full of sagacity and force, he quickly evolved order from chaos, lie found the poor of New Orleans starving in the midst of plenty ; he regulated trade so that they were fed, and the price of food was cheapened. The business of the city was dead, and he endeavored to revive it. The currency was deranged and he improved it. The yellow fever was at hand, and the city reeked with filth ; he adminis- tered sanitary science with such effect that hut one case occurred during a season which generally desolated the city, in which, also, there were now 20,000 unacclimated northern troops. The city government was hostile and obstructive ; he " straightened them out." The foreign consulates were depots of concealment for rebel treasure, and centres of foreign and rebel machinations against the United States; he quickly possessed himself of the money, for the use of the Government, and gave them to under- stand that foreign flags could not be allowed to cover domestic treason. He administered the police duty of New Orleans, in a manner hitherto unknown to "the oldest inhabitants" — he shamed into external decency, at least, the rebel women, whose hostility to the Yankee invader had overmastered the modesty of demeanor which belonged to their sex — he hung Mumford, wiiO had pulled down the American flag from the Custom House upon the first arrival of the fleet — he assessed the prominent and wealthy rebels for the benefit of the poor, and for the ex- penses of his sanitary and other improvements, basing the BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER. 487 assessment upon their respective contributions to the rebel defence of New Orleans — he placed the railroads in running order again, he improved the levees — he took the banks " in hand" with a vigor that was revivifying and wholesome — he suppressed rampant newspapers until they learned that " liberty of the pen" did not necessarily mean license — he disarmed New Orleans, and so thoroughly sifted the whole population, that he knew the particular shade and complexion of each man's poli- tics — he permitted registered enemies of the United States to seek more congenial homes elsewhere — he relentlessly confisca- ted the estates of contumacious rebels; in short, he suppressed the rampant minority which had carried the State out of the Union, and fostered the self-respect, protected the interests, maintained the rights, and elevated the scale of civilization among the people of Louisiana, both white and black, bond and free." He was not allowed, however, to carry out the splendid work of regeneration which he had commenced. Intriguing diploma- tists and enemies whose interests had been affected by his management in New Orleans, succeeded in procuring his recall; and on the IGtli of November, 1862, he was relieved of his command by General Banks. The policy of conciliation, to which his successor gave a fair trial, proved itself an im- mediate, complete, and undeniable failure. General Butler's return home was a series of honorable welcomes from the cities and communities of the loyal States through which he passed, and he was presented, by Congress, with one of the captured swords of the rebel General Twiggs. During the year 1863, General Butler, being without a command, rendered good service to the Government by his public speeches in various places ; and in July and November of that year was, for a short time, invested with the chief mill- 488 MEN OF O^U DAY. tary command of New York city, whicli had recently been the scene of the terrible " draft riots." When Lieutenant-General Grant, in the spring of 1864, inaugurated his great and final campaign, he assigned to General Butler the command of the Army of the James, which was composed of the corps formerly known as the Army of Eastern Virginia and North Carolina, the 18th corps from Louisiana, and the 10th corps, partly of colored troops, from (General Gillmore's) the Department of the South. To his division of the Grand Army was assigned the duty of seizing, by an adroit manoeuvre, the position of Bermuda Hundred, on the south bank of the James, midway between Eichmond and Petersburg ; and the interposing of such a force between those two cities, as should isolate them from each other and result in the capture of the latter. This part of the programme was skilfully carried out by General Butler; Bermuda Hun- dred (on the 4th of May, 1864) was occupied and fortified ; on the 7th, the railroad was cut below Petersburg. A strong but unavailing attack was made upon Fort Darling on May 13th ; and the repeated attempts of the enemy (21st and 24th), to drive him from his own position, were each handsomely re- pulsed. On the 10th, an attempt was made to capture Peters- burg; General Gillmore, with about three thousand five hun- dred troops attacking it on the north, General Kautz's cavalry force on the south, and General Butler, with the gunboats as- saulting from the north and east. The plan was partially and handsomely carried out by Butler and Kautz, the latter of whom entered the city and maintained a hand-to-hand fight for sometime ; but the enterprise was finally rendered abortive by General Gillmore's declining, with the force at his command, to attack the rebel works. Duiing the summer General Butler's forces had been cutting BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER. 489 a ca. lal across tlie neck of a peninsula, called Farrar's Island, formed by a six-mile bend in the Eiver James. This neck of land was only half a mile across, so that the canal, it was expected, would greatly shorten and facilitate the passage of gunboats on the river. As it, also, somewhat imperilled Fort Darling and flanked the rebel position at Howlett's, it would oblige them to erect new and more extended lines of defence ; and the Confederates made a desperate attempt, on the 12th of August, to shell out the negroes who were at work on the canal, or " Dutch Gap," as it was called. In order to relieve the ditchers from the annoyance to which they were subjected by the heavy fire from rebel rams and batteries, an attack was made upon the Confederate position at Strawberry Plains, on the 1-ith, which resulted in a Union victory, and was followed by another success at Deep Bottom, on the 16th. Eebel pris- oners were also set at work in the "Gap." While these move- ments were in progress. Grant seized the opportune moment to attempt to gain possession of the Weldon Railroad ; which was, after repeated and deperate fighting, secured and torn up for a considerable distance, on the 21st. In all the subsequent movements of the Union forces before Richmond and Peters- burg, the Army of the James, under General Butler, contributed their full share of heroic fighting, patient waiting, and hard work. Early in the month of December, an expedition was planned by General Grant against Wilmington, North Carolina, which had long been one of the principal channels by which foreign supplies of arms, ammunition, clothing, etc., had reached the Confederacy. Its formidable defences, and the peculiar nature of its coast, rendered its successful closure against blockade- runners almost impossible; a fact at which both the Govern- ment and the officers of the blockading squadron felt deeply chagrined. The naval portion of the expedition, which set 490 MEN OF OUR DAY. sail on the 9tli, was commanded by Admiral Porter, and tlie land forces, which sailed on the 12th, had been drawn from the Army of the James, and were commanded by General Butler iu person. Arriving off New Inlet on the 24th, the squadron opened a fire upon Fort Fisher, which, for rapidity, intensity and weight of metal, was hitherto unexampled in the history of warfare. On the 25th, the land forces were disembarked; a joint assault was ordered at evening, the troops attacking the land face of the fort, while the fleet was to bombard its sea front. Upon moving forward to the attack, however, General Weitzel, who accompanied the column, came to the conclusion, from a careful reconnoissance of the fort, that " it would be butchery to order an assault ;" and General Butler, having formed the same opin- ion from other information, re-embarked his troops, and sailed for Hampton Roads. The opinion of General Weitzel, an ex- perienced engineer officer, to the effect that the fort had been " substantially unimpaired" by the terrific naval fire to which it had been for several days subjected, did not satisfy Admiral Porter, whose report to the Naval Department reflected severely upon General Butler's course; and upon that general's return to the James river, he was relieved from the command of the Army of the James, and ordered to report at Lowell, Massachusetts, his residence. The successful capture of Fort Fisher and Wilmington, two weeks later, by Admiral Porter and General Terry, greatly in- creased the popular dissatisfaction with General Butler — but his course seems to have been fully justified by unimpeachable evidence which was subsequently adduced. It was, however the last active military service performed by General Butler. In November 1866, he was elected on the Eepublican ticket. Representative in the XLth Congress for the fifth district of BENJAMIN FRANKLIN BUTLER. 491 Massachusetts, receiving 9,021 votes against 2,838 votes for Northend, Democrat. During the session of 1867-8 he took a conspicuous part as one of the Managers of the impeachment and trial of President Johnson. His speech at the opening of the impeachment trial was pronounced, even by his opponents, the ablest of its kind on record. Of General Butler, as a lawyer, it has' been well said by one who knew him intimately, that " At the criminal terms of the Middlesex Court, he has done a greater amount of business than anybody else, and his reputation at present is that of the most successful criminal lawyer- of the State, His devices and shifts to obtain an acquittal and release are absolutely endless and in- numerable. He is never daunted or baffled until the sentence ia passed and put in execution, and the reprieve, pardon, or com- mutation is refused. An indictment must be drawn with the greatest nicety, or it will not stand his criticism. A verdict of "guilty" is nothing to him — it is only the beginning of the case; he has fifty exceptions, a hundred motions in arrest of judg- ment ; and after that, the habeas corpus and personal replevin. The opposing counsel never begins to feel safe until the evidence is all in, for he knows not what new dodges Butler may spring upon him. He is more fertile in expedients than any man who practices law .among us." And this same fertility of resource did the country rare good service during the late war of the rebellion. Yet he is not logical — his statements and arguments, when closely analyzed, are frequently mere sophistical decep- tions, so ingeniously constructed, however, that he often believes them liimself. But they are always ingenious, bewildering, set with homely illustrations, full of insinuations, and put wi*th such vehemence and in such plain Anglo-Saxon, z^ often to totally overwhelm his adversary. Anecdotes innumerable are told of his audacity, and quickness 402 MEN OF OUR DAY. of retort. Upon one of his first cases being called into court Tie said, in the usual way, " Let notice be given !" " In what paper ?" asked the aged clerk of the court, a strenuous Whig. "In the Lowell Advertiser^'' was the reply; the Advertiser being a Jackson paper, never mentioned in a Lowell court; of whose mere existence, few there present would confess a knowledge. "The Lowell Advertisers^ said the clerk with disdainful non- chalance, "I don't know such a paper," " Pray, Mr. Clerk," said young Butler, "do not interrupt the proceedings of the Court; for if you begin to tell us what you douH know, there will be no time for any thing else," So, at a later date, and not long after the execution of Professor Webster, of Harvard College, for the murder of Dr. Parkman, when he was examining a professor of that college as a witness, and was "badgering" him in his usual not very respectful manner, the opposing counsel appealed to the court, reminding them that the witness was an educated gentleman "and a Harvard professor." Butler contemptuously replied "I am aware of it, your Honor; we hung one of them the other day," In the impeachment trial, in 1868, the Hon. Fernando Wood, of New York, received one of those scathing replies which Butler can strike out instantaneously at "a white heat." Mr. Wood undertook to protest to the "replication" entered before the Court of Impeachment, on the ground that he, as one of "the people of the United States" in whose name it was made, objected to it. General Butler immediately turned upon him with — " The representatives of the people usually represent them, but the gentleman (Mr. Wood) has not even the merit of origin- ality in his objection. The form is one that has been used 500 years, lacking eight. The objection was made to it once before, and only once, when the people of England, smarting under the usurpatio'i and tyranny of Charles L, not having any provision BENJAMIN FEANKLIN BUTLER. 493 in tlieir Constitution as we have, by which that tyrant could be brought to justice outside of their Constitution, and in a per- fectly legal manner, as I understand and believe, brought Charles to justice. When proclamation was made that they were pro- ceeding in the name of all the people of England, one of the ad- herents rose and said, ' No, all the people do not consent to it,' so that the gentleman has at least a precedent for what he has done ; and I wish we could follow out the precedent in this House, because the Court inquired who made that objection, and tried to find the offender for the purpose of punishing him [laugh- ter] ; but as he concealed himself he could not be found, and he afterward turned out to he a woman [laughter], the wife of General Fairfax, who ratted on that occasion from the rest of the Com- mons." And, then, in reply to some strictures in which Wood had indulged concerning an implied lack of courtesy on the part of the House Managers — he quietly remarked that he " hoped the House would not receive any lectures or suggestions upon propriety of language, or propriety of conduct, from the gentleman who stands as yet under its censure for a violation of all parliament- ■ ary rules f an allusion to an event of only a few weeks previous occurrence, which effectually " squelched " the leader of the " Mozart Democracy." Since the election of General Grant to the Presidency, General Butler has contrived to occupy a prominent position before the public most of the time. He had become reconciled to President Grant before his election (they had previously been on very bad termsin consequence of the Fort Fisher affair), and he has ranged himself among the leading supporters of the administration. His relations with other members of the Kepublican party and the Democrats in Congress have been at times very bitter and un- pleasant. He quarrelled with Speaker Blaine, with most of the Massachusetts members of Congress, with both the Massachusetts Senators, with Governor Hawley of Connecticut, and with promi- 494 MEX OF OUR DAT. nent Republicans of New York, Ohio, and Illinois. In 1S71. ha announced his purpose of running for Governor of Massachusetts and took the stump in his own behalf before the nominating con- vention. He canvassed' steadily and vigorously, and at the meet- ing of the convention was very sanguine of a nomination, but the union of the friends of the other candidates on Mr. "Washburn caused his defeat, and though evidently vexed and chagrined, he took his disappointment very calmly, and did what he could to help the election of the successful candidate. Of late he has sought to be the leader of the Republican party in the House, but finds too many bolters from his rather imperious rule. He is a warm defendant of President Grant and of all his measures, but is supposed not to be very well pleased with Senator Wilson's nomination, as he was dissatisfied with him for not favoring his nomination for Governor. General Butler is in fact a singular compound. He has many good traits : we believe he means to be patriotic, and sincerely thinks that the measures he urges are for the good of the country. He is unscrupulous, eager for power, and ready to adopt almost any means to obtain it : but though he has been often charged with venality and corruption, and a fiworite taunt of his adversaries has been " the spoons," referring to his rigid measures of confiscation in New Orleans, and the supposed wealth he obtained by plunder there, we are satisfied that he is not guilty of taking bribes or of any frauds in his civil administration during the war, or his congressional career since. Had he been thus corrupt, there were abundant opportunities to have proved it conclusively ; but every suit where it has been attempted to prove anything of the sort has utterly broken down, not from his skill in managing it, but from absolute lack of proof. The general is so erratic, and so careless of the means by which he accomplishes his purposes, that he will always have enemies, in the party with which he acts, and in that which he opposes. He is, in fact, an Ishmaelite, and about as dangerous to his friends as to his foe. HON. WILLIAM D. KELLEY. HE Republican party is the legitimate heir of the old Federal and Whig parties — the parties of \Yashington i^\ and "Webster — which, in the ancient and mediasval pe- riods of the Republic, as they may be termed, illustrated the sentiment and the idea of nationality as opposed to the heresy of State sovereignty. There is, nevertheless, flowing in the veins of this great Re- publican organization much of the best blood of the old Demo- cratic party. The men who adopted the political teachings of Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, and the inspirer of the ordinance of 1789, who heartily believed the great American doctrines of the freedom and equality of all men, and the power and duty of the nation to protect the na- tional domain from the pollution of human slavery, passed, by a natural transition, into the Republican ranks when the Demo- cratic party abandoned the faith of its fathers, and became the embodiment of a " creed outworn." Among the men of the Democratic party who earliest sepa- rated from " its decaying forms," and contributed to organize a new party, in the light of truth and reason, on the basis of inherent, inalienable right, was the subject of this sketch — William Darrah Kelley. He was born in the Northern Liberties of Philadelphia, on the 12th of Ap^il, 1814. His grandfather, Major John Kelley 495 496 MEN" OF OUR DAY. was a native of Salem county, New Jersey, and served through- out the Eevolution as an officer of the Continental line. The son of this Eevolutionary officer, and the father of the subject of this meraoir^ — -David Kelley — removed from New Jersey to Philadelphia, where he married a lady of Bucks county, Penn- Bylvania — Miss Hannah Darrah. The cloud of financial em- barrassment, which, at the close of the war of 1812, darkened the horizon, cast its deep shadow over the fortunes of Mr. Kel- ley ; and by his death, in 1816, his widow was left, without an estate, to support and educate a dependent family of four chil- dren, the youngest of whom — William — was but two years of age. Mrs. Kelley struggled nobly and well to fulfil this great trust, and lived to witness the consummation of her most ambi- tious hopes in the prosperity and advancement of her distin- guished son. At eleven years of age, it became necessary that William should earn his own living. He accordingly left school, and became an errand boy in a book store, then a copy-reader m the office of the " Philadelphia Inquirer'^ newspaper, and finally an apprentice to Messrs. Eickards & Dubosq, manufacturing jewel- lers, of Philadelphia. He attained his freedom in the spring of 1834. This was the era of the removal of the deposits from the United States Bank; and Mr. Kelley 's first experience in political leadership was gained in encouraging and organizing the resistance of the Democratic workingmen to the tyrannous demands of the Whig capitalists of Philadelphia. The stand he took on this question rendered it difficult for him to obtain employment in his native city. He accordingly removed to Boston, and at once secured a situation in the establishment of Messrs. Clark and Curry. In Boston, the spirit of New England culture took deep hold upon his nature. While laboring with characteristic industry in the most difficult branch of his trade — HON. WILLIAM D. KELLEY. 497 the art of enamelling— and achieving a high reputation as a skilful aud tasteful workman, he improved his scholarship by solitary study ; and his contributions to the newspapers of the day, and written and extemporaneous lectures and addresses before public audiences, established his reputation as a writer and speaker of ability and power, in association even with such men as Bancroft, Brownson, Alexander H. Everett, Channing and Emerson. In 1839, he returned to Philadelphia, and entered, as a stu- dent of law, the ofl&ce of (^olonel James Page, a local leader of the Democratic party, and the postmaster of Philadelphia. On April 17, 1841, he was admitted to the bar of the several courts of his native city. His advancement in the profession was im- mediate and rapid ; while, in every political canvass, local and national, his stirring addresses attracted large audiences, and rendered him one of the most conspicuous figures in the Demo- cratic party. In January, 1845, he was appointed by the attor- ney-general of the State — Hon. John K. Kane — to conduct, in connection with Francis Wharton, Esq., who has since become' celebrated as a writer on criminal law, the pleas of the Com raonwealth in the courts of Philadelphia. In March, 1846,, Governor Shunk appointed Mr. Kelley a judge of the Court of Common Pleas, a tribunal whose jurisdiction was co-extensive with the common law, chancery and ecclesiastical courts of England. In 1851, he was elected to the same bench, under the new Constitution of the State, upon an independent ticket, in defiance of the attempted proscription of the Democratic party organization, which was embittered against him for his course in the contested election case of Reed and Kneass. This was a triumphant vindication by the people of the justice and integ- rity of his action in that cause. But Judge Kelley did not confine himself to the topics of hia 32 498 MEN OF OUR DAY. professf.on or to the discussion of political questions. The pro- tection of the weak and down -trodden, the reformation of the ignorant and vicious, and the promotion of education, have ever found in him an eloquent and powerful advocate. His re- markable powers of oratory, give additional effect to his chaste and polished style, and few public speakers have proved so effective. We offer the following passages from an address of his before the Linnsean society of Pennsylvania college, Gettys- burg, on the " Characteristics of the Age," delivered over twenty years ago, as giving an idea of the» felicity and beauty of his style, as a writer. The earnestness and the clear ringing tone.s of the orator are wanting to give it full effect. " I would not disparage the value of the * little learning' which enables a man to read and write his mother tongue with facility. "When ' commerce is king,' the ability to do this is little less than essential to the physical well-being of the citizen. Under such government the receipt-book peaceably enough performs a large share of the functions of the embattled wall and armed retainers of the days when force was law. But to rise above the commercial value of these slender attainments, he who can read the language of Shakspeare and Milton, John- son and Addison, Shelley and Wordsworth, has the key to the collected wisdom of his race. The farms around his workshop, the property of others, present to his view a landscape which is his, and to him belongs every airy nothing to which poet ever gave habitation or name. The sages of the most remote past obey his call as counsellors and friends ; and in the company of prophet and apostle he may approach the presence of the Most High. The value of such a gift is inestimable. Wisdom and justice would make it the certain heritage of every child born in the commonwealth. * * * * " The spirit of commerce is essentially selfish. Yoyages are projected f3r profit. The merchant, whose liberal gifts surprise the world, chaffers in his bargains. Not for man is a family HON, WILLIAM D. KELLET. 499 ot* br thren, therefore, are the blessing of this age. They are the gifts of a common Father, but thej come not, like light and dew, insensibly to all. They mark the achievements of our race, and manifest the master-spirit of the age, but hitherto they have been felt but slightly by the masses of mankind. Wealth increases ; but its aggregation into few hands takes place with ever-growing rapidity. The comforts of life abound ; but when the markets of the world are glutted, hunger is in the home of the artisan. Over-production causes the legitimate effects of famine. The ingenuity of political economists is vainly taxed for tlie means of preventing the accumulation of surplus mate- rial and fabrics. And while warehouse and granary groan with repletion, heartless theory points to the laboring popula- tion reduced to want and pauperism, and with dogmatic empha- sis, inquires if the increase of population cannot be legally restrained ? The state of the market shows that there are more men than commerce requires, and a just system of economy would adapt the supply to the demand ! * * •» * "Ancient philosophy did not recognize utility as an aim. It contemned, as mechanical and degrading, the discovery or in- vention that improved man's physical condition. Socrates invented no steam-engine or spinning-jenny. The soul was his constant study. Eegardless of his own estate, he cared not for the material comfort of others. Indifferent to the world him- self, he sought to raise his disciples above it. A disputatious idler and a scoffer at utility, he fashioned Plato and swayed the world for centuries. Our philosophy comes from Bacon. It only deals with the wants of man and uses of nature. The body is the object of its solicitude. Earth is the field of its hopes. Time bounds its horizon. Fruit, material fruit — the multiplication of the means of temporal enjoyment — was the end Lord Bacon had in view, when, denouncing the schools, he gave his theories to the world. Time and experience havo vindicated his methods. But have they not also shown, that a system which offers no sanction to virtue and no restraints to vice, whose only instruments are the senses, and whose only 500 MEN OF OUR DAY. subject is material law, may impart to a world the vices which made the wisest also the meanest of mankind." In August, 1856, Judge Kellej was nominated, while absent from home, as the Republican candidate for Congress from the fourth Congressional district of Pennsylvania. He was not elected ; for the Republican idea had made at that day but feeble impression in Philadelphia, and the party was without means or organization. During that canvass he made his first great Republican address on Slavery in the Territories^ in Spring Garden Hall, Philadelphia. Motives of delicacy prompted him to resign his judicial office immediately after the election, and lie returned, after a term of nine years aad nine months on the bench, to the private practice of his profession. In October 1860 he was elected on the Repablican ticket to the seat in Congress to which he has been 9Ay . times since returned by his constituents. On his return from the special session of Congress which convened on July -ith 1861, he participated as counsel for the Government, in the prosecution of the pirates of the rebel privateer, " Jeff Davis," and made a brilliant closing argument in that great State trial. In Congress he has spoken at length upon every national topic ; and, in most instances, he has borne the standard of his party, and planted it far in advance, holding it with firm and steady hand, until his friends occupied the position. As early as January 7th, 1862, he detected the fatal errors of the military policy of McClellan, and warned the country of the incompetency of that ofiicer, m an impromptu reply to the speech of Vallandigham, on the Trent case. On the 16th of January, 1865, he vindicated, in an elaborate speech, the justice and necessity of impartial suffrage as a fundamental condition of the restoration of Republican Governments in the rebel States. On the 22d of June, 1865, in an address on " the Safe- HOlf. WILLIAM D. KELLEY. 501 guards of Personal Liberty," at Concert Hall, Philadelphia, he criticised the policy of reconstruction foreshadowed by Presi dent Johnson in his North Carolina proclamation, and indicated a plan of action, in respect to the rebel States, which has been Bince substantially embodied in the reconstruction acts of Congress. In his speech on " Protection to American Labor," delivered in the House of Eepresentatives, on the 31st of January, 1866, he indicated a financial policy, in reference to the payment of the public debt, which Congress has fully adopted in the repeal of the cotton tax, and the modification of the duties on manufactured products. In connection with these remarkable speeches, may be mentioned his speech of the 27th of February, 1866, on "the Constitutional Regulation of Suf- frage." Two of Judge Kelley's speeches in Congress — that of January 16th, 1865, on Suffrage, and that of January 31st, 1866, on Labor — have had more extensive circulation than the speeches of any other American statesman. More than half a million copies of each have been printed and distributed. At the first session of the XXXIXth Congress, Judge Kelley introduced the bill, which was afterwards passed with certain modifications, to secure the right of suffrage to the colored population of the District of Columbia. On the evening of the 22d of February, 1868, he spoke in favor of the impeachment of tlie President, and more recently participated in the debate in the House of Representatives on the resolution of Mr. Broomall, of Pennsylvania, to prohibit hereditary exclusion from the right of suffrage, and defended the position taken by him in his more extended speech, two years before, cm the Constitutional Regulation of Suffrage. We have not space even to mention the numerous speeches and addresses of Judge Kelley iu and out of Congress. He has addressed his fellow citizens from the lakes to the gulf. 602 MEN OF OUR DAY. In the spring of 1867, be visited the Soatbern States, and in a series of addresses at New Orleans, Montgomery, and otber cities, spoke earnest and eloquent words of bope and encourage- ment to the people of the South. The noble wisdom and tender humanity which pervade these speeches, stamp them as ihe production of a statesman and philanthropist. They were words of friendly counsel, which the people of the South would do well to heed. A comprehensive, national character, and a generous, in- tense, all-embracing humanity, have always characterized Judge Kelley's political opinions. He saw, in the repeal of the Missouri Compromise, conclusive evidence that the Democratic party bad become sectional,- and be left it. He found that Democracy, which once bad meant civil and religious liberty, equality, justice, advancement, the greatest good of the greatest number, had come to mean proscription of opinion, aristocracy, tyranny, disorder, slavery ; and he abandoned it. lie is therefore one of the fathers of the National Eepublican party. The sincerity and earnestness of bis convictions would always gain for him the attention of the House of Repre- sentatives, if it were not commanded by the striking and en- gaging peculiarities of bis eloquence. He appears with equal advantage in impromptu reply, and in elaborately prepared address. His vehement declamation, delivered in tones of voice marvellously rich and powerful, thrills, on occasions, the members upon the floor, and the listeners in the galleries ; as when, on the memorable night of the 22d of February, he exclaimed: — " Sir, the bloody and untilled fields of the ten unreconstructed States, the unsheeted ghosts of the two thousand murdered negroes in Texas, cry, if the dead ever invoke vengeance, for the punishment of Andrew Johnson." HON. WILLIAM D. KELLEY. 503 Judge Kelley is certainly one of the ablest of the public men whom Philadelphia has sent to the national councils. She has too few of such men — men of progressive ideas, commanding talents, and national fame: and when one has served her, as Judge Kelley has, through twelve years of eventful history, it becomes her duty, as a just community, to cherish and honor him. There are men who though generally just and fair in their intercourse with their fellows, yet under the pressure of partisan dictation, or to gain some paltry end, will be guilty of participa- tion in acts of the grossest injustice, defending themselves by the Jesuit maxim: " The end justifies the means." With this class William D. Kelley has no affinities. In political action, as everywhere else, he is the soul of honor, and he would scorn to do an act of injustice to a political opponent as much as to his dearest personal friend. An instance of this occurred just before the close of the session of Congress in June, 1872. The leaders of Judge Kelley's own party were endeavoring to put through a bill received from the Senate, which was intensely offensive to the opposition, by the party whip and spur, and were even ready to risk the calling of an extra session of Congress in order to accomplish it. The opposition were resisting by every con- stitutional means, in the hope of obtaining a modification from a Committee of Conference which should render it less objection- able. Judge Kelley, seeing the unfairness of the course pursued by the party leaders, boldly threw himself into the breach, de- manded and obtained an extension of time and a new reference, which led to the desired modification of the bill. Few men have the moral courage to do such a thing in defiance of party rule. Only a strong man could have done it successfully ; but we be- lieve there was no man of either party in the House of Repre- sentatives who did not in his heart of hearts honor Judge Kelley for his daring and manliness, while very few would have the moral courage to follow his example in such an emergency. HENRY LAURENS DAWES, LL. D., REPRESENTATIVE IN CONGRESS FROM MASSACHUSETTS. D|| N Western Massacliusetts, "the Switzerland of America," )1I there is a small town perched upon the summit and ^ slopes of some of the higher hills which constitute the outlying spurs of the Green Mountain range. It is called Cummington, a bleak, barren region, where the deep snows settle in the later autumn, and last till May, so deep, that some years ago, the member of the State Legislature from that town could only reach Boston by travelling forty miles on snow-shoes, and drawing his trunk on a hand-sled. It is pleas- ant after its fashion in the summer time, but the summer is short, and altogether it is one of those towns from which the stranger would expect very little. Yet this little mountain town has raised much more than an average crop of men. Some of the most illustrious names in our history and literature were born there : clergymen, poets, philosophers and statesmen, all acknowledge this mountain hamlet as their birth-place. In one of its farm-houses, Henry Laurens Dawes was born, October 30th, 1816, and on its sterile and ungenerous soil the labor of his boyhood and early youth was bestowed. But the boy had his ambition. He desired above all things to obtain an education, and though like most farmer boys he had a hard struggle to attain it, yet he accomplished his purpose, acquiring sufficient preparatory training to enable him to enter Yale Col- 504 HENRY LAURENS DAWES, LL.D. 505 lege in 1885, whence he graduated with a creditable standing in 1839. After his graduation, he went to Greenfield, Massachu- setts, where he commenced the study of the law, editing at the same time the Greenfield Gazette. In 1842, he was admitted to the bar, and removed to North Adams, Massachusetts, where he settled in the practice of his profession, but while seeking busi- ness busied himself with the editorship of the North Adams Transcript. Mr. Dawes makes no pretension to genius, he is not a man who divines all knowledge by intuitions, without study or research ; but he is an industrious, painstaking worker, of sound, clear mind, a good deal of tact, and a faculty of insight into apparently intricate matters, which is worth much more than genius. These traits of character were ere long perceived by the enterprising, intelligent people of North Adams, and the young lawyer was after awhile compelled to relinquish the Transcript into other hands by the pressure of his legal business. In 1848, and again in 18-19 and 1852, he was elected to the State Legislature; in 1850 he was a State Senator; in 1853 he was a member of the State Constitutional Convention. In all these positions he was so able, clear-headed and industrious, that his constituents were fully satisfied with him, and would have been glad to have retained him longer in the legislature. But in 1853 he was appointed District Attorney for the Western Dis- trict of the State, and removed to Pittsfield, the county seat. Here he soon had a circle of warm friends, and continued to be fully occupied .with his professional duties till 1857, when hav- ing been elected the previous autumn to Congress from the tenth or western district of Massachusetts, he took his seat in that body. lie has been continued in that place of honor by his constituents to the present time, a period of sixteen years. In congress he has proved one of the most useful membei*^ of that body; never domineering, never neglectful of his duties, 506 MEN OF OUR DAY. but alwcays punctual, prompt and painstaking , whatever work is assigned to him will be always well done. He was for several terms chairman of the important Committee on Elections, and in the XLIId Congress was made chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, which gives him the virtual leadership of the House. He was a delegate to the Philadelphia "Loyalists" Convention of 1866. Mr. Dawes is thoroughly committed to the Eepublican party and its measures, but he is not a bitter partisan, and retains the respect and esteem of all parties in the House. At home, he has the reputation of being an estimable citizen in all the rela- tions of life, and is greatly honored by the very intelligent con- Etituency he has served so long. BENJAMIN GRATZ BROWN, GOVERNOR OF MISSOURI. ) ifl one of the western States, certainly no western or south- western slave State, has reared so many men of eminent ability in our national affairs as Kentucky, Whether this pre-eminence is clue to her genial climate, her fertile soil, her bold and beautiful scenery, or to the stock from which her sons have come, is a legitimate subject of inquiry ; but the fact remains that among her people, even those without much edu- cation, there is an intelligence and thoughtfulness in regard to public affairs which is not found to anything like the same ex- tent in other States. They may be in error, a majority of them were grievously so during the late war, but you will hardly find a Kentuckian so ignorant or stupid that he has not made out, to his own satisfaction at least, the reasons which justify his political action. The educated class in the State, whatever tlieir political views, are among the best specimens of the thoroughbred gentle- man in our country. Highly intelligent, and holding clear and decided views on all State and national questions, they are frank, courteous, and manly, somewhat impetuous, as is natural from their Virginian ancestry and their early training ; but they are men to be loved and trusted. It is from one of the best families of Kentucky that the sub- ject of our sketch is sprung. The lion. John Brown, his grand- father, was born in Rockbridge, Va., in 1757; was chosen a Eepresentative in Congress from a western district of Virginia, 507 508 MEN OF OUR DAT. and remained in that capacity from 1789 to 1793, being tbe co- temporary and esteemed friend of the founders of the Republic. He subsequently removed to Kentucky, and settled at Frankfort. Here his abilities and honesty were soon appreciated, and when Kentucky was admitted into the Union he was one of her first senators, and during the first session of the Ylllth Congress was President p9-o tern, of the Senate. He was a warm supporter and life-long personal friend of President Jefferson, lie died at Frankfort, Kentucky, in 1837, at the venerable age of 80 years. His son, Judge Mason Brown (father of Governor Brown), was eminent as a jurist, and an upright, enlightened magistrate. He was for some 3'ears one of the judges of the Court of Appeals of Kentucky. Governor Brown's ancestry on the maternal side was no less distinguisljed. His mother's father, the Hon. Jesse Bledsoe, was a distinguished advocate and jurist of Kentucky, and represented that State in the Senate of the United States. He was a Professor of Law in the University of Transylvania, and Chief- Justice of the Supreme Court of Kentucky. Benjamin Gratz Brown was born in Lexington, Ky., May 28, 1826. From early childhood he was a fearless, manly boy, not simply physically brave — that were but an ordinary merit in his native State — but possessing that higher moral courage which made him ready to take the unpopular side, if he believed it to be right. He was carefully and very thoroughly educated under his father's eye, taking the full course of the Transylvania University at Lexington, and then entering Yule College as a junior, from whence he graduated with high honors in 1847. He had already developed an antagonism to slavery at the time of his graduation, and though he pursued his legal studies in his father's office, and was very thoroughly qualified to enter the profession in Kentucky, he preferred to fight his way to reputation as a reformer in a wider field. He removed to St, BENJAMIN GRATZ BROWN. 509 Louis in 1849, and there commenced the practice of his profes- sion. His extensive legal attainments, the carefulness with which he prepared his cases, and his eloquence as a pleader, remarka- ble even in that city of orators, soon won him business and fame. In 1852, before he had completed his twenty-sixth year, he was elected a member of the State Legislature, and being repeatedly re-elected, served for six years in that body. But he was eager to enter more fully upon the work to which he felt that he was called, and in 185-1, having assisted in founding the Missouri Democrat (which lias been for the past fifteen or sixteen years the leading political paper of St. Louis on the side of Keform and Progress), he became its editor-in-chief the same year, and continued in that position until 1859. From its start it advo- cated the Free Soil doctrines, and attacked slavery with an ear- nestness and vehemence which insured opposition. When the Republican party was organized, Mr. Brown and his journal ral- lied under its flag. He labored zealously for Frdmont in the campaign of 1856, and in 1857 delivered a speech in the legisla- ture, which, by its logical power, its caustic denunciation, and its vehement eloquence, roused tlie people against the aggres- sions of the slave power, and led the way to the fiercest political contests. The moral courage and daring which had been so conspicuous a trait in his boy-life came into fuller and grander play as he and his Free Soil associates preached the gospel of freedom throughout Missouri, in the legislature, in the Missoiiri Democrat, in public assemblies, and everywhere, with the earnestness and eloquence which resulted from thorough conviction of the truth of what they were urging. They were for years in the minority, out they were undismayed. Failing to subdue the fearless jour- nalist by political proscription, he was often menaced with per- sonal V'olence. On one occasion he received a shot throuijh 510 MEN OF OUR DAY. the knee, and was so severely injured that he still suffers from the effects of the wound. The zeal, energy, and sagacity of the emancipationists triumphed ; and in 1857 the Free Soil candi- date for governor came within less than 500 votes of being elected. But this partial defeat was compensated by the strong Union sentiment which was engrafted in the community, and which rendered Missouri proof against the blandishments of secession. Thenceforward, for four years, the side of freedom gained strength daily; and men, who had at first scouted the idea of Missouri being a free State, came cautiously to look with more favor on it, and by tens and twenties joined the ranks of the Free Soilers. And this result was owing more largely to the incessant and patriotic labors of B. Gratz Brown than to those of any other man, or, indeed, of all the rest put together. Then came the war. St. Louis was at first like a house divi- ded against itself The secession element was strong and bold, and there was for a time great danger of the city's falling into the hands of the rebels, who held control at first of the State o-overnment. But the coura2"e of the little band of heroes never faltered. As wise in counsel as he was patriotic in sentiment and daring in action, Mr. Brown, in consultation with the gallant Lyon, advised the attack and capture of Camp Jackson, near St, Louis, in May, 1861, and that measure, successfully carried out, relieved St. Louis from its danger, and secured the State to the Union. On that occasion Mr. Brown commanded a regiment of militia, and aided materially in accomplishing the desired result. Soon after he raised a regiment of volunteers, and in the field, as elsewhere, gave evidence of soldierly ability, and of his earnest devotion to the national cause. He was commissioned brigadier- general, and was foremost in organizing those movements which resulted in the ordinance of freedom in 1861. In 1863 he waa BENJAMIN GRATZ BROWN. 511 elected United States Senator from Missouri to fill out an unex- pired term of four years, and taking his seat in tbe Senate, although one of its youngest members, he soon won the reputa- tion of being an able legislator and statesman. He was placed on the Committees on Military Affairs, Pacific Eailroad, Indian Affairs, Public Buildings and Grounds, and Printing, and was chairman of the Committee on Contingent Expenses of the Senate, and for a part of his term of the Committee on Public Buildings and Grounds. It is very seldom the case that a young senator on first entering the Senate is placed on so many and so important committees. Retiring from the Senate, Governor Brown engaged in private and professional pursuits, currying into daily life the love of har- mony, tolerance, and equal rights he had so long advocated in public. He was not, however, allowed to remain in retirement. Obeying the call of thousands of his fellow-citizens, he accepted the nomination for Governor of Missouri, and sustained by coa- lition of the Republicans and Democrats, he was triumphantly elected. The vote was as follows: For Brown, 10-1,286; for McClurg, 62,369; majority, 41,917. The great issue in this campaign was the removal of the prescriptive measures which the angry passions incident to the war had placed in force. The events of Governor Brown's administration are too recent to need recapitulation. His powerful influence has been exerted in repairing the social disturbances as well as the material rava- ges of the war; in resisting every tendency toward repudiation, however plausible may be the pretext, and in securing the just rights of all citizens. Under his wise management of her public affairs, Missouri is rapidly developing her immense resources, and bids fair to rival Pennsylvania as the great iron-producing region of the Union. Governor Brown has been among the number of those who, 512 MEN OF OUR DAY. thougli identified with the Eepublican party by long years of active and earnest labor in its service in the days when it cost to be a Eepublican, have yet felt dissatisfied with the present administration and its management. So pronounced was this dissatisfaction in Missouri that the leading men of what was known as the bolting party (that which elected him as governor), with Governor Brown at their head, called a convention at Cin- cinnati on the 3d, 4:th, and 5th of May, 1872, to - consider the situation, and perhaps propose candidates for the Presidency. Governor Brown is undoubtedly ambitious, but we think none of those who know him would accuse him of having been prompted by a spirit of self-seeking in this movement. Whether the views they entertained were correct or not, they were un- questionably patriotic and in earnest in putting them before the people. The result of that convention was one unquestionably unexpected by Governor Brown, though so far as the Vice-Presi- dency is concerned, it is doubtful if a more judicious selection could have been made. His letter of acceptance of the nomina- tion, addressed to the committee who had notified him of the action of the convention, is manly, honorable, and straight-for- ward ; and its manly and generous tone must meet the approval of many who are not disposed to sustain the ticket. It is as follows : Executive Office, Jefferson City. May 31, 1872. Gentlemen : Your letter advising me of the action of the Liberal Repub- lican Convention at Cincinnati has been received, airtd I return througVi you my acknowledgment of the honor which has been conferred upon me. I accept the nomination as a candidate for Vice-President, and indorse most cordially the resolutions setting forth the principles on which the appeal is made to the whole people of the United States. A century is closing upon our experience of republican government, and while that lapse of time has witnessed a great expansion of our free insti- tutions, yet it has not been without illustration also of grave dangers to the stability of such a system. Of those successfully encountered it is needless to speak ; of those which remain to menace us the most threatening are provided against, as I firmly believe, in the wise and pacific measures pro- posed by your platform. It has come to be the practice of those elevated BENJAMIN GRATZ BROWN. 513 to positions of national authority to regard public service biat as a means to retain power. This results in substituting a mere party organization for the Government itself, which constitutes a control amenable to no lawg or moralities, impairs all independent thought, enables a few to rule the many, and makes personal allegiance the road to favor. It requires little forecast to perceive that this will wreck all liberties unless there be inter- posed a timely. reform of the administration from its highest to its lowest station, whicli shall not only prevent abuses, but likewise take away the incentive to their practice. Wearied with the contentions that are carried on in avarice of spoils, the country demands repose, and resents the efforts of officials to dragoon it again into partisan hostilities. And I will zeal- ously sustain any movement promising a sure deliverance from the perils which have been connected with the war. li is safe to say that only those are now to be feared which come of an abuse of victory into permanent estrangement. The Union is fortified by more power than ever before, and it remains as an imperative duty to cement our nationality by a perfect reconciliation at the North. A wide-spread sympathy is aroused in belialf of those States of the South wliich, long after the termination of resistance to the rightful Federal authority, are still plundered under the guise of loy. alty and tyrannized over in the name of freedom. Along with this feeling is present, too, the recognition that in complete amnesty alone can be found hope of any return to constitutional government as of old, or any development of a more enduring unity and broader national life in the fu- ture. Amnesty, however, to be efficacious must be real, not nominal;, genuine, not evasive. It must carry along witii it equal rights as well as equal protection to all ; for the removal of disabilities as to some, with en- forcement as to others, leaves room for suspicion that pardon is measured by poliiical gain. Especially will such professed clemency be futile in the' presence of the renewed attempt at prolonging a svispension of the habeas corpus and the persistent result to martial rather than civil law in uphold- ing those agencies used to alienate the races wliose concord is most essen- tial, and in preparing another elaborate campaign on a basis of dead issues and arbitrary intervention. All will rightly credit such conduct as but a mockery of amnesty, and demand an administration wliich can give a better warrant of honesty in the great work of reconstruction and reform. In the array of sectional interests a Republic so widespread as ours is never en- tirely safe from serious conflicts. These become still more dangerous when complicated with questions of taxation, where unequal burdens are believed to be imposed on one part at the expense of another part. It was a bold as well as admirable policy in the interest of present as well as future tran- quillity to withdraw the decision of industrial and revenue matters from the virtual arbitration of an electoral college, chosen with the single animating purpose of party ascendancy, and refer tliem for a more direct popular ex- pression to each Congress district, instead of being muzzled by some eva- sive declaration. 'J'he country is thereby invited to its frankest utter- 33 514 MEN OF OUR DAY. ance, and sections which would revolt at being denied a voice ont of deference to other sections would be content to acquiesce in a general judgment "honestly elicited." If local government be, as it undoubtedly is, the most vital principle of our institutions, much advance will be made toward establishing it by enabling the people to pass upon questions so nearly affecting their well-being dispassionately through their local repre- sentation. The precipitance which would force a controlling declaration on tax or tariff through a presidential candidacy is only a disguised form of centralization, invoking hazardous reaches of Executive influence. A conclusion will be much more impartially determined, and with less dis- turbance to trade and finance, by appealing to the most truthful and diver- sified local expression. Industrial issues can be thus likewise emancipated from the power of great monopolies, and each representative held to fidelity toward his immediate constituents. These are the most prominent fea- tures of that general concert of action which proposes to replace the present administration by one more in sympathy with the aspirations of the masses of our countrymen. Of course such concert cannot be obtained by thrust- ing every minor or past difference into the foreground, and it will be for the people therefore to determine whether these objects are of such mag- nitude in the present urgency as to justify them in deferring their adjust- ments until the country shall be first restored to a free suffrage, uninflu- enced by ofiicial dictation ; and ours becomes, in fact, a free Republic, released from apprehensions of a central domination. Without referring in detail to the various other propositions embraced in the resolutions of the Convention, but seeing how they all contem- plate a restoration of power to the people, peace to the nation, purity to the Government, that they condemn the attempt to establish an ascen- dancy of military over civil rule, and affirm with explicitness the mainte- nance of equal freedom to all citizens, irrespective of race, previous condi- tion, or pending disabilities, I have only to pledge again my sincere co-operation. I have the honor to remain, very respectfully, yours, B. Gratz Browx. Ill person Governor Brown is of rather less than middle height, slightly built, and of nervous organization. His most noticeable characteristics, next to vigor and directness of thought, are boldness and decision in action, an iron will, indomitable perseverance and courage, and great capacity for long, continued labor. His speeches and public papers evince scholarship, and are always pointed and forcible. His manner in debate is very impressive and attractive, and he ranks among the foremost of western orators. JOHN McAULEY PALMER. ^e;! OHN McAULEY PALMER was born on Eagle Creek, Scott county, Kentucky, September 13th, 1817. His ancestors were of English origin, and among the early settlers of Virginia ; his father, Louis D. Palmer, having emigrated from Northumberland county in that State to Ken- tucky, in 1793, where he met and married Ann Tutt, also a native of the "Old Dominion," in 1813. A soldier in the war of 1812, and naturally fond of adventure, he removed soon after the birth of the subject of this sketch, to Christian county, in that part of Kentucky then known as the Green River country, and purchasing a considerable quantity of the new and cheap lands of that section, commenced a pioneer farmer's life. The son's educational advantages under these circumstances were but meagre, and such as are common to pioneer settlements ; yet, such as they were, they were eagerly improved. The father also being an ardent Jackson-man, and himself unusually fond of reading, managed to secure all the books, newspapers, and political documents of the day which he could get hold of, especially those of his own party, and these, we may well be- lieve, were eagerly read and re-read by his children. He was also, even at that early day, an earnest opponent of human slavery, and both he and his family were recognized among their neighbors as "Anti-slavery Democrats." It was, indeed, the uncontrollable promptings of his convictions upon the subject 515 516 MEN OF OUR DAT. of slavery that determined him in 1831, to seek; q home for liis young family in the free States, which he did by settling near Alton, in Madison county, Illinois. The death of his wife, in 1833, virtually broke up the family, and in the spring of 1834, John Palmer and his brother Elihu (since a noted minister) en- tered " Alton College," so called, an institution which had then recently been opened on the " manual labor system," by the friends of education in Central Illinois. The boys had more energy than means, and in the fall of 1835, John graduated for want of money for the further prosecution of his studies. Then he went to work for a cooper; next he tried his hand at ped- dling; and in the fall of 1838, he taught two quarters in a dis- trict school, acceptably to his patrons, but all the time cram- ming himself with all the miscellaneous information he could glean from novels, history, poetry, sermons, and newspapers. In the summer of that year, he first met with the late Senator Douglas, then just entering upon his brilliant political career; admired him, voted for him, and from him, perhaps, imbibed his first political aspirations. The next winter he secured a copy of " Blackstone's Commentaries," and after some desultory law reading, he entered in the spring of 1839 the office of John L. Greathouse, an eminent lawyer at Carlinville, Illinois, whither he walked from St. Louis, his entire capital on arriving there being fourteen dollars in cash, a well-worn suit of clothes, and an extra shirt. His brother, who was now married and settled there, offered him a home under his own roof, and he com- menced his regular law studies. Less than two months after, at the request of the leading Democratic county politicians, he be- came a candidate for the office of county clerk, but was defeated. In December, 1839, having managed to buy cloth enough for a suit of clothes, and finding a tailor who had faith enough in him, to make them up on credit, he borrowed five dollars from JOHN m'auley palmer. 517 his preceptor, and set out for Springfield and obtained from the Supreme Court a license to practise as attorney and counsellor- at-law, in which matter he was much indebted to the kindly interest of Mr. Douglas, as was ever remembered with gratitude during the long and bitter contests of later years. With his license, and a meagre stock of law books, given him by an elder and more fortunate professional brother, he commenced practice, with such poor results, however, at first, that he was only re- strained from seeking a new home by the want of sufficient money with which to pay his debts. He participated actively as a Democrat in the Presidential canvass of 1840; in 1841, his profession yielded him a support ; in 1842, he was married ; in 1843, he was elected County Probate Judge; and during the years 1844, '45 and '46, his practice became quite extensive. In 1847, he was chosen to the State Constitutional Convention, and in 1848, was re-elected to the office of Probate Judge, from which he had been ousted at the election of the previous year by a political combination. In 1849, he was elected County Judge, which office he held until his election, in 1851, to the State Senate, of which he was member during the sessions of 1852, '53 and '54. In this latter year he opposed the Nebraska bill, and being re-elected to the Senate for 1855, warmly supported the free-school system, the Homestead Law, and many other important measures. In 1856, he was President of the Illinois Republi- can State Convention, at Bloomington ; and was also a delegate to the National Republican Convention at Philadelphia, where he advocated Judge McLean's nomination, although personally favoring Fremont, whom he actively supported in the ensuing canvass ; first, however, resigning his seat in the State Senate, on the ground that the change in his political connections since his election to that body, rendered such a course necessary both as a matter of self-respect, and of proper regard for the true 518 MEN OF OUR DAT. principles of a representative government. In 1857 and '58, State politics occupied his attention, and in '59 he v/as de- feated in an election for Congress. In I860; he was elector at large on the Republican ticket, and cast his vote for Lincoln ; and in February, 1861, was a delegate to the Peace Congress at Washington, where he advocated the call of a national conven- tion for the settlement of the impending difficulties, and when that proposition failed, he favored the means of compromise finally recommended bj that conference. But when the war-cloud finally burst, the martial spirit in- herited from his father, the old soldier of 1812, united with his own inherent convictions on the great questions at issue, irre- pressibly urged him to action. On the second call for troops, in 1861, he came forward as a common citizen and soldier; but his fellow-citizens knew bis worth, and he was unanimously chosen Colonel of the 14th Illinois volunteers, first seeing active service under his old friend. Gen. Fremont, in the expe- dition to Springfield, Missouri, in which State he served during the remainder of the year, a portion of the time in command of a brigade under Gens. Hunter and Pope. On the 20th of December he was commissioned brigadier-general, and during February and March, 1862, was with Pope in the expedition against New Madrid and Island No. 10, on the Mississippi ; at the former place, in command of a division, with which he firmly held Riddle's Point against a strong rebel force, who constantly strove, both by land and water, to force their way to Tipton- ville, which was the only approach to Island No. 10. After the capture of Island No. 10, Pope's army proceeded down the river to Fort Pillow, which it commenced to bombard, but were soon ordered to join Gen. Ilalleck, then before Corinth. En route to that place, at Hamburgh, on the Tennessee, Pope reorganized his force, and Gen. Palmer was placed in command of the JOHN m'auley palmer. 519 first brigade, first division of the Army of the Mississippi, com- posed of four Illinois regiments and a battery, which he han- dled with admirable coolness and skill at the battle of Farming- ton, May 8th, in which, under extremely critical circumstances, he engaged and finally, after a closely-contested fight of several hours' duration, escaped from three rebel divisions. On the 20th of the same month, he was suddenly taken ill from expo- sure, and was ordered home by Gen. Pope, remaining on the sick list until about August 1st, when he engaged in the efforts then making to raise troops, and by authority of the Governor organized the 122d Illinois regiment at Carlinville. On the 1st September, he again took the field at Tuscumbia, Alabama, where he was assigned by Gen. Eosecrans to the command of the first division of the Army of the Mississippi, and ordered to join Gen. Buell. This he accomplished by a forced march made in good order, though sorely harassed at every step by rebels, and surrounded by a malignant and treacherous popu- lace, and reached Buell at Nashville in safety. During the sub- sequent so-called blockade of Nashville by the rebel forces, Gen. Palmer's and Negley's forces were the occupants and de- fenders of that city, the key-point of middle Tennessee, and right loyally they held it too. At the fierce fight of Stone's river. Gen. Palmer held a conspicuous part, his division occupy- ing important and perilous positions, and it was in distinct recognition of his gallantry and skill on this occasion that the general was nominated and confirmed, November 29th, 1862, as Major-General of Volunteers. He was at Chickamauga, in 1863, and in Sherman's Atlantic campaign, he commanded the fourteenth corps, and he fought with distinction at Kenesaw, and Peach Tree Creek. He also took part in the "march to the sea." Early in the year 1865, he was, at his own request, relieved from the command of his corps, and assigned to that of the 620 MEN OF OUR DAT. Federal forces in Kentucky, which State was in a restless and critical condition ; some 20,000 Kentuckians being then in the rebel army; a large proportion of the remaining population sym- pathizing openly with the Confederate cause; the Unionists chafing under the loss of their slaves, and the slaves them- selves, neither free nor enslaved, being as disturbed as the whites. Palmer was eminently the man for the occasion. Brave, col- lected, shrewd and prompt; deliberate in judgment, but strong in action ; affable and patient with all, but never influenced by designing men ; he possessed also statesmanlike qualities of a high order, well adapted to grapple with and settle the various important questions which were constantly arising in this new ■field — questions, indeed, which eventually tended to the shaping of the national policy. His first and celebrated military order of April 29th, 1865, struck the key-note of loyal administration by its sharp enunciation of the fact, that the people of that de- partment were to be protected "without regard to color or birth- place," and " whether free or not," from cruelty and oppression "in all cases ;" that, when the state of the country and the organi- zation and rules of the civil courts should permit them to en- force justice, offenders against the local laws would be handed over to them for trial ; but that, at the same time, no person or court would be allowed to deprive of liberty, or harass or perse- cute any one who had taken the amnesty oath, who had deserted the rebel cause, or was engaged in serving, aiding or abetting the United States Government. This raised a tremendous howl of malignancy against what was termed " military coercion of the courts; " but it was followed. May 10th, by another order assert- ino- the freedom of the wives and children of all colored men enlisted in the Federal army, and loyal Kentuckians were en- couraged to help enlistments. Slavery was melting visibly away ; the State Legislature refused to approve the Constitu- JOHN m'auley palmer. 621 tional Amendment abolishing it, and so the contest went on. At a Union Convention held in Frankfort, the general delivered an address pledging the whole power of Government for the pro- tection of Union men and free speech, yet boldly claiming that " the time has passed in this country, when free speech is to be un- derstood as the liberty of mouthing treason." The military super- vision which he instituted of the annual election evoked numer- ous complaints of military interference with the rights of fran- chise, and indictments of army officers were common. Gen. Palmer, however, held his ground unflinchingly, and when the colored people sought employment jn other parts of Kentucky or neighboring States, he assisted them by setting aside, by a military order, the statutes forbidding their transportation on lines of transit, and suspended the execution of other barbarous statutes, informing the municipal authorities that they neither could nor should molest persons made free by authority of the Federal Government. The President was entreated to remove him from command of the district, but declined; then, a suit was commenced against him in the name of the State, for aiding slaves to escape, but was dismissed by Judge Johnston, on the ground that the requisite number of States had adopted the Constitutional Amendment before the date of the indictment, and that, therefore, all criminal and penal acts of the legislature of Kentucky were of no avail. Thus, a Kentucky court gave the first practical judicial recognition of the Fourteenth Consti- tutional Amendment. A general order followed, proclaiming the abolition of slavery, and advising colored people to claim their rights on public routes of travel, by legal means. On the 12th October martial law in Kentucky was abrogated by Presi- dent Johnson's proclamation, and on the fifteenth, Gen. Palmer telegraphed to the War Department that " department passes " were dishonored at the ferries on the Ohio, colored people being 522 MEN OF OUR DAY. refused passage across, saying that he" had ordered the Post Commandant at Louisville, to compel the honoring of said passes, a step rendered necessary by " the alarm amongst the negroes upon the report of the withdrawal of martial law." The Secretary of War, however, took the view that, under the cir- cumstances, the Government could not properly interfere. Re- newed efforts for his removal, instigated by treasonable influences, were strongly pressed, but due examination of the application and circumstances attending, convinced the administration that there was no cause for removal, and again treason and half con- firmed loyalty was baffled in its revenge. When at last even Kentucky disloyalists had come to the conclusion that the power of the United States Government, and the sentiment of the whole nation were too strong for them, and yielded, though still with a bad grace, to the legislation based on the fourt(?enth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution, Gen. Palmer re- signed his commission and returned to Illinois. He was active in the Presidential canvass of 1868, and did much to aid in car- rying the State for the Republican ticket. In the autumn of 1868, he was elected as Governor Oglesby's successor as Gover- nor of Illinois, and in the autumn of 1870 was re-elected, his second term of service closing January, 1873. His administra- tion has been characterized by great ability, and what, perhaps, was hardly to be expected from one who had been so long a national soldier, a careful and almost jealous guardianship of Stale rights. After the great fire in Chicago, October 8th, 1871, there was some conflict of authority unintentional, doubtless, on the part of Lieut.-Gen. Sheridan, yet involving some important questions of State and national jurisdiction, and resulting in the death of a prominent citizen of Chicago, at the hands of one of the volunteer sentinels commissioned by the lieut.-general, after the State authorities had taken command of the city. Gen. Palmer ' JOHN m'auley palmer. 523 protested with great spirit against this invasion of the rights ol the State, and though at first the sympathies of Chicago were with Gen. Sheridan, and Governor Palmer's course was denounced, it was not long before the people generally saw that he was right. Governor Palmer has recently declined a renomination, and taking strong ground in favor of the Cincinnati nomina- tions, is engaged in canvassing the State for them, and for the election of the Liberal Republican and Democratic candidate for governor, Mr. Koerner. A straightforward, honest, earnest man, a gallant soldier, an excellent administrative officer, and of such unflinching in- tegrity, that it would be easier to turn the sun from his course, than him from what he believed to be right, Governor Palmer deserves well of his countrymen. JOHN THOMPSON HOFFMAN, GOVERNOR OF NEW YORK. !lGrH social position, and the influence of a line of ances- try who have for generations been of repute in the State, are no hindrance to a young man in attaining e) place and power, if they are not used offensively ; but in our really democratic government and national life, they weigh very little unless there is combined with them sterling ability and merit. Indeed, as between two boys of very nearly equal talent and intellectual power, but one of old and honored famil}', and the other a son of the soil, whose early surroundings were of the humblest and poorest, the poor boy would have, on the whole, a slight advantage in the political prizes of the State and nation. It is not then because Governor Hoffman can claim in his ancestry the honored names of Livingston, Kissam, Thompson, and IloflVnan, that he has attained his conspicuous position, but because there was in him that real capacity for the public ser- vice without which his ancestry would have been of no avail. John Thompson Hoffman was born in the village of Sing Sing, New York, January 10th, 1828. As we have said, he comes of a good stock. His father, an eminent physician, was descended from the Livingstons, the Kissams, and the Hofifmans of our earlier history. The son, after early training under Rev. Dr. Prime, a well known scholar and journalist, entered the 524 JOHN THOMPSON HOFFMAN. 525 junior class of Union College in 1843, at the age of fifteen, and though compelled bj impaired health to suspend his studies for a year, graduated with high honors in 1846. He had already a good reputation as a public speaker, and his graduating oration on "Sectional Prejudices," both in its matter and delivery was so exceptionally excellent as to attract attention. After leaving college he commenced the study of law in the office of General Aaron Ward and Judge Albert Lock wood at Sins: Sins:. Mr. Hojffman's political career began before he had attained his majority. In the year 1848, at the age of twenty, he was made a member of the State Central Committee bv the Conven- tion of Hunker or Hard Shell Democracy. That year will lono- be remembered in the political history of the State, Martin Van Buren's candidacy for the office of President divided the Democracy of New York, causing strong and bitter feelincr be- tween his supporters and those of the regular nominee, Lewis Cass, and resulting in the overwhelming triumph of the Whio- party, Taylor carried the State by a plurality of about 100,000, and Hamilton Fish was elected Governor. This, in face of the fact. that the aggregate Democratic vote exceeded that of the Whigs, Pending the canvass, the State Committee, of which Mr, Hoffman was a member, put forth " An Address to the Peo- ple," in which the claims of their principles and of their candi- dates were advocated with marked ability. Although not then a voter, Mr. Ploflfman took the stump for Cass and did effijctive service as a speaker. On the 10th of January, 1849 — his twenty-first birthday — Mr. Hoffman was admitted to the bar. In October of that year he removed to New York, where, soon after, he formed a law partnership with the late Samuel M. Woodruff and Judge William H. Leonard, the firm name being Woodruff, Leonard & Hoffman. 526 MEN OF OUR DAT. For ten years Mr. Hofifman devoted himself to the practice of his profession, and so marked was his success, that in 1859 he was urged by some of the most prominent citizens of New York for the position of United States District Attorney. But Presi- dent Buchanan objected to him on account of his youth, and Judge Roosevelt was appointed to the place. In the year 1860, Mr. Hoffman was nominated for Recorder of the city of New York, and after a spirited canvass was elected to that position. In this instance the office sought the man, Mr. Hoffman had declined to have his name presented as a candi- date, but he was, nevertheless, nominated by the Tammany Con- vention, on the second formal ballot. At the election which fol- lowed he was the only candidate on the Tammany ticket who, without the support of other organizations, was chosen by the people. He entered upon his duties as Recorder on the 1st of January, 1861. None so young as he had ever before filled the place, but none made a deeper and more favorable impression on the public mind. His strict ideas of justice,, tempered by the influence of a merciful heart; his ample legal acquirements, laid on the foun- dation of rare good sense ; his unhalting firmness in the dis- charge of duty, and his unquestioned integrity, combined to render him a good and upright judge. So firm a hold did he gain on the popular heart during his first term as Recorder, in the course of which he tried and sentenced many of those en- gaged in the famous riots of July, 1863, that the Republican Judiciary Convention named him, on the 12th of October, 1863, for reelection. Tammany and Mozart also united on him ; the newspaper press, regardless of party affiliations, indorsed him, and the people rallied enthusiastically to his support and forgot party prejudice in their admiration for an honest man. Under such flattering circumstances he was again chosen Recorder by an almost unanimous vote of the electors. JOHN THOMPSON HOFFMAN. 527 On the 21st of November, 1865, John T. Hoflfman was nomi- nated for the office of Major of the city of New York by the Tammany Hall Democratic Convention, An effort to unite the then hostile factions of Tammany and Mozart had proved un- successful. Fernando Wood was nominated by the last named organization, but declined in favor of John Hecker, the candi- date of the Citizens Association, who was warmly advocated by the New York Tribune, C. Godfrey Gunther, the then incum- bent, had previously announced himself as a candidate for re- election, and his claims were indorsed by what was known as the McKeon Democracy. The Eepublicans saw in the division of the Democratic vote a chance for their own success. They nominated Marshall O. Koberts,. and under his leadership they inaugurated a most vigorous campaign. At the election which followed 81,702 votes were cast, of which Judge Hoffman re- ceived 32,820; Mr, Roberts, 31,657; Mr, Hecker, 10,390, and Mayor Gunther, 6,758. On the 1st of January, 1866, Mr. Hoffman entered upon his duties as Mayor. His administration of this office, joined with his previous reputation as Recorder, rendered his name familiar throughout the State, and during the summer he was fre- quently mentioned as the probable candidate of the Democracy for Governor. Tlie Convention which assembled at Albany on the 11th of September was found to be composed of elements which had never before mingled in State politics. Old line Democrats joined hands with Conservative republicans in an effort to unite all the varied forces which opposed the Radical course of Con- gress. One-third of the delegates had acted up to that time with the Republican party. These were they who favored Andrew Johnson's policy and indorsed the Philadelphia Convention. They scarcely had faith, however, in the President's ability to 528 MEN OF OUR DAY. carry his ideas to a scccessful issue. Thej were inclined to sing with Tennyson — " 'Tis true we have a faithful ally, But only the Devil knows what he means." The Democrats had just lost their great organizing leader, Dean Kichmond, and these accessions to their ranks, at such a juncture, did not promise to promote harmony. But the Con- vention at Albany was a very large one, and it soon became ap- parent that if a proper nomination were made for Governor, a vigorous campaign could be prosecuted with a reasonable hope of success. Under these circumstances an unusual number of distinguished names were canvassed by the delegates. Sanford E. Church, Henry C. Murphy, William F. Allen, John T. Hoff- man, Henry W. Slocuni, John A. Dix, William Kelly, and others were mentioned as available candidates. After a fair interchange of opinion it was found that a majority of the Con- vention favored the choice of Mayor Hoffman, and on the second day he was nominated by acclamation, amidst the wildest enthu- siasm. The Convention then adjourned until afternoon, and on reassembling it was addressed by the candidate himself, who had been telegraphed for. His manly speech on that occasion made a lasting impression on the minds of the delegates, many of whom saw him then for the first time. After his nomination. Mayor Hoffman canvassed the State, speaking at Elmira, Syracuse, Eochester, Buffalo, Binghamton, Brooklyn, New York and other places. His earnest and con- vincing arguments were well received by the masses of the peo- ple everywhere. But frequent defeat had engendered amongst the Democrats a want of confidence in their ability to succeed, and the ill-timed tour of Johnson and Grant united the columns of the opposition, while it injured rather than benefited the party whose interests the President sought to subserve. But, JOHN THOMPSON HOFFMAN. 529 notwithstanding these disheartening circumstances, the election returns showed a decided gain in the Democratic vote over the preceding year. After the election the Democrats awoke to the knowledge of the fact that, had they made more effort, they might have overcome the small majority by which Governor .Fenton was reelected. The lesson came late, but it was not altogether lost, as the next year's contest showed. In the fall of 1867 Mayor Hoffman was chosen temporary chairman of the Democratic State Convention, and delivered a speech on that occasion in which he enumerated with admirable succinctness the governing principles of the party, and defined its attitude in relation to current questions with remarkable clearness. Mr. Hoffman's first term as Mayor was then drawing to a close.. The popularity which he had gained in the discharge of his duties made his renomination a foregone conclusion. The Tam- many Convention met on the Saturday evening succeeding the- State election. A great concourse of people gathered around the hall, and when it was announced that Hoffman had been' nominated without a dissenting voice, the air rang with the- cheers of the satisfied populace. In this canvass Mayor Hoff- man had two competitors, Fernando Wood, Mozart Democrat, and Wm. A. Darling, Republican. The result of the election was significant. Hoffman carried every ward in the city. His vote was the largest ever given to any candidate in New York. His majority over both his competitors was nearly equal to the total vote of either. With this unmistakable indorsement he entered upon his second term as Mayor, on the 1st of January,, 1868. His third annual message as Mayor contained a reiteration of his views on the question of city government ; which views were simply the old theory of Jefferson, that in local affairs the 34 6S0 MEN OF OUR DAT. local authorities should rule. Simple and sensible as this doc- trine appears, its enunciation gained the Mayor some vigorous abuse from his political opponents. But in despite of this, his popularity had g^o^vn so great that when the National Democratic Convention met at New York, in July, Mayor Hoffman's name was suggested by many of the Western delegates in connection with the Vice- Presidency. But he neither sought nor desired this honor, and the nomination of Governor Seymour for President placed it out of the power of the Convention to urge it upon him. On the 13th of August, 1868, the State Committee, together with many prominent Democrats, met in Utica, for consultation. This meeting developed the fact that Mayor Hoffman would again be the Democratic candidate for Governor. The canvass of 1866 had brought him in contact with the people who, every- where, felt that he had earned this honor, by the earnest and effective service he performed in that disastrous year. When the Convention met, in September, the name of Sena- tor Murphy, who was Mayor Hoffman's chief competitor, was withdrawn, and John T. Hoffman was, for a second time, nomi- nated by acclamation, for Governor of the State of New York. The Republicans had previously placed in nomination .John A. Griswold, of Rensselaer. He was heralded as the builder of the first '' Monitor," and this service, together with his record in Congress, were dwelt upon until considerable enthusiasm was aroused among the people in his behalf. Both the candidates were young men, and the personal quali- fications of each were admitted by all ; but the c^mvass was one of peculiar bitterness. Victory seemed within the grasp of either party, and the pendency of the Presidential campaign roused partisans to extraordinary efforts, and lent additional in- terest to the srubernatorial contest. Mavor Hoffman canvassed JOHN THOMPSON HOFFMAN. 531 the State in person, and addressed the electors at many of the principal towns. His presence inspired confidence among his supporters, and his speeches, although they evoked sharp criti- cism from Republican sources, cemented the elements of his strength. At the election, which occurred on the 2d of November, 1868, he was chosen Governor by a majority of 27,946. But opposi- tion to Governor Hofthian did not cease with the closing of the polls. The cry of " fraud " was set up and persisted in by those whose candidates had met defeat. This cry is no new catch- word for politicians of either party ; but the vigor with which it was pressed in this particular instance made it somewhat effec- tive in producing a feeling of popular prejudice against Gover- nor Hoftman. How quickly this feeling was dissipated, after the Governor had taken his seat, is a matter of common knowledge. His bit- terest enemies became his eulogists; Republican newspapers commended his course, and an opposition Legislature indorsed, almost without a dissenting voice, every veto message which he submitted to their consideration. These vetoes were numerous, and were aimed chiefly at the evil system of Special Legislation, which cumbers our statute books with innumerable unnecessary laws that seldom prove beneficial except to individuals whose personal schemes are ac- complished at the cost of the tax payers. In three sessions of the Legislature, he vetoed, in all, four hundred and two bills. In every instance when the Legislature was in Session, and had an opportunity, under the Constitution, of passing the bill, notwithstanding his veto, they acquiesced in his reasons, and allowed the bill to die. Part of this time his political opponents held control of both houses. The popular judgment has with rare unanimity approved of all his nume* 532 MEN OF OUR DAY. rous vetoes, his political opponents never venturing to find fault with them. His is the most extensive and most successful exer- cise of the veto power in the history of the United States. In 1870, he was again elected Governor by a majority of 33,096, over Stewart L. Woodford. In July, 1871, occurred the so-called Orange riots. A procession of Orangemen had been arranged in the city of New York, for the 12th of July, but in consequence of threats of its being seriously disturbed by a combination of disorderly men, the city authorities had forbid- den the procession. Their order to this eft'ect was made public on the morning of the eleventh. Governor Hoffman left the capital of the State, and came to the city in person, induced the eity authorities to revoke their order, issued a proclamation promising the Orangemen protection, took personal command of the militia, being at his headquarters fifteen hours that day, and gave the procession such efficient protection that it marched over its proposed route uninjured, although in the riot created by its assailants, four soldiers of the escorting force were killed. Of the mob, about thirty were killed and many wounded. Governor Hoffman has introduced a valuable reform in the administration of the pardoning power. During every year of his administration he has submitted to the Legislature (and thus to the public) a report of the pardons granted, and of the reasons which, in each case, governed his action. The law re- quires no such reports ; but it is easy to see that his wholesome example will have to be followed by his successors. During the excitement of 1871 and 1872, over the frauds of Tweed, Connolly, Sweeny, and others, in New York city, zeal- ous efforts were made by Governor Hoffman's enemies to impli- cate him in these frauds ; but when subjected to searching in- vestigation, these efforts failed to sustain a single charge made agaihst him. That he had been politically affiliated with these JOHN THOMPSON HOFFMAN. 538' men was unquestionable ; that some of them, before he knew of their wrong-doing, had been his personal friends, was also true ; but as those who knew the Governor best were satis- fied beforehand, not an iota of evidence could be produced to show that his hands had ever been soiled with bribes, or that he had ever participated in the slightest degree in' these gigantic frauds. In personal appearance Governor Hoffman is above the me- dium height, and has a strong, well-knit frame. His weight is 180 pounds. His hair is dark and abundant; his forehead is broad and particularly developed in what phrenologists call perceptive faculties ; his eyes are of a deep brown color ; his nose is large; his chin prominent, and his mouth shapely and indicative of firmness. He wears a full moustache but no beard. As a speaker he is plain, clear and straightforward in manner as well as in matter. His voice is full, round and sonorous, but he practises kw of the tricks of the orator, and seldom embellishes his speeches with rhetorical flourishes. As a writer he is argumentative rather than imaginative, and his style is too analytical to be florid. He possesses, however, a certain happy power of poetical description, which he displayed to good advantage in the Agricultural Address delivered by him before the Ulster County Fair, September, 1869. In his intercourse with his fellow man, Governor Hoffman is frank and genial; he has nothing of the demagogue's overbear- ing pomposity, and he is free from the sycophant's affectation of cordiality. He makes no promises which he does not keep ; he holds out no false hopes to applicants for his favor; he is loyal to truth, and he cherishes his personal integrity as some- thing more valuable than any political power. EDWIN D. MORGAN, LATE UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM NEW YORK, IT nE ability whicli is developed in an active business life, in great commercial transactions, and the rapid changes and fluctuations of trade and finance, have proved in practice as valuable in the management of the public affairs of the State and nation, as that which comes from the exclusive study of law. The accomplished merchant, banker, or financier, is, indeed, more likely to take a plain, common- sense view of the questions of state, and to be unembarrassed by the quibbles, chicanery and superfine distinctions and defi- nitions of the lawyer, than the man who has been trained in the school of precedents, authorities, and legal hair- splitting. To this class of business-men, Ex-Gov. Morgan belongs, and the signal services he has rendered to the State and nation, are due, in perhaps equal measures, to the eminently practical and sensible constitution of his mind, and to the thoroughness and carefulness of his business training, Edwin Dennison Morgan was born in Washington, Berk- shire county, Massachussetts, February 8th, 1811. In early childhood, he developed a fondness for mathematics, and an aptitude for trade, which indicated very plainly his future vocation. At the tender age of eleven years, he became clerk to a grocer in Hartford, Connecticut, and was so faithful and attentive to his employer's interests, and so courteous as a salea- 534 EDWIN D. MORGAN. 535 man, tbat, in 1831, when lie was but twenty years of age, he was oftered a partnership in the store, which he accepted. These nine or ten years of boyhood and youth had not been confined merely to the drudgery of the grocery ; the hours of leisure had been diligently employed in the culture of his mind, and the next year he was chosen a member of the city council of Hart- ford, at a time when it v/as composed of intelligent and able men. The little city of Hartford did not long furnish a sufficiently wide sphere of action for the aspiring young grocer ; so, in 1836, he removed to New York city, and engaged in mercantile pursuits with his brother, and the firm grew and prospered, till in a few years it attained a high rank among the safest and most extensive commercial houses of the metropolis, its trans- actions reaching to all parts of the United States and Europe. In 1849, Mr. Morgan was chosen an alderman of New York, and the same year elected to the State Senate, and served there for two terms (four years). In 1855, he was appointed com- missioner of emigration, and held the office until 1858. His early political affiliations were with the Whigs, though he was strongly opposed to slavery. When the Republican party was formed, he gave it his adhesion, as representing his views, and at the National Republican Convention, in Pittsburgh, in 1856, was one of its vice-presidents, and from that time till 1864, chairman of the National Republican Committee. In 1858, Mr. Morgan was nominated by the Republicans as their candidate for Governor of the State of New York, and elected by a handsome majority. His administration was one of the ablest which the State had had for years, and com- manded such general approval, that he was nominated for a second term without opposition in his party, in 1860, and elected by a very heavy majority. This second term was one of immense labor, care, and responsibility to the governor He 636 MEN OP OUR DAT. promptly responded to the President's call of April 15th, 1S61, and regiment after regiment went forward to Washington, and other points on the border, and among them, the gallant New York seventh, at whose coming loyal citizens of Washington, fbr the first time, felt safe; the twelfth and seventy-first; the fight- ing sixty-ninth (Irish) ; and the stately seventy-ninth (Scotch) ; the Brooklyn fourteenth, composed, as some writers said, of boys who looked as if they ought to be in school, but who fought with all the steadiness of veterans ; the twenty-sixth, a Utica regiment of great gallantry ; and others of perhaps equal merit, all of whom participated in the bloody field of Bull Run. The militia could only be required to serve out of the State for three months at a time, and Governor Morgan had no sooner dispatched these to the seat of war, than he commenced organiz- ing, as rapidly as possible, volunteer regiments to serve for three years, or the war. President Lincoln had commissioned him, in the spring of 1861, major general of volunteers, in order to facilitate his labors in raising and organizing regiments. He held this rank till the close of his term of office as governor, (January, 1S63,) but declined all compensation. No officer under his command was, however, more constantly and laboriously engaged in his duties, than the governor. Yet with his systematic business habit.*!, the ability acquired by long practice to manage and control great enterprises, he was never flurried, but maintained constantly the most perfect order, and quietly performed his duties, as they required his attention. In the twenty mouths of his administration, during the war, he raised, organized, and sent forward from his State, two hundred and twenty-three thousand troops. In the guberna- torial election of 1862, Governor Morgan was not a candidate, having withdrawn from the canvass to give place to the gallant EDWIN D. MORGAN 537 soldier, General James S. "Wads worth, who, however, was not elected, the Democracy prevailing by the popular cry of " a more active prosecution of the war," in electing a man who was wholly opposed to the war. The Legislature was, however, Republican, and at its session, Governor Morgan was elected United States Senator, for the term ending March 4:th, 1869. His course in the Senate was uniformly dignified and honora- ble to the State which he represented. He seldom spoke ; never unless on important questions, and was then always listened to with attention. During his entire Senatorial career, he held an important position on the Committees on Commerce, Manufac- turing, the Pacific Railroad, Military Aftairs, Finance, and Mines and Mining, and on all these great national interests he ren- dered material and permanent service to the country. On the retirement of Secretary Fessenden from the office of Secretary of the Treasury-, President Lincoln oflfered Senator Morgan the position, but he declined it, much to the r'^gret of the President. Since the expiration of his Senatorial term, Ex-Gov. ^[organ has taken no active part in political affairs, but has been occu- pied with his extensive commercial and financial enterprises. He still maintains an interest, however, in the measures and progress of the Republican party. JOSEPH RUSSELL HAWLEY, LATE GOVERNOR OF CONNECTICUT. I OSEPH EUSSELL HAWLEY, journalist, soldier and politician, was born October 31st, 1826, in Kichmond county. North Carolina, where his father, a Congrega- \5 tional minister, and a native of New York, was then engaged in home missionary work. Some years after he re- moved to central New York, where he became a near neighbor of Gerrit Smith, at Peterboro', and the boy, gaining his educa- tion at good Northern schools, entered Hamilton College, at Clinton, New York, whence he graduated in 1847; studied law, and responding to the invitation of an uncle, David Plawley, a well-known city missionary, at Hartford, Connecticut, went to that city about 1850, and commenced the practice of his chosen profession. At first he had a "hard row to hoe;" but threw himself "body and soul" into the Free Soil movement, and was one of a little band of some sixty (among whom were Dr. John Braddock, Rev. Dr. Patton, now editor of The Advance, Chicago, Illinois, and others) "Free Soilers," who, at every election, for years, regularly went to the polls with open ballots. He was conspicuously active in State conventions, and deservedly ac- quired the reputation of being an active party man, and a forci- ble and eloquent speaker on all themes of public importance. "Meanwhile his law business had improved, but his taste for 538 JOSEPH RUSSELL HAWLEY. 539 political debate preponderated, and in company with Mr. Faxon, he bought out the Rejyuhlican newspaper, and commenced in its stead the Hartford Evening Press, of which he assumed the editorship, and gave up the practice of law. The Press, which was thoroughly Republican in its principles, was a decided suc- cess, and Mr. Hawley wielded the editorial pen with pleasure and profit until the outbreak of the Civil Rebellion in 1861, that event which so suddenly turned the current of so many men's labors and lives. Upon the receipt of Governor Buckingham's proclamation to the people of Connecticut, Hawley and two others met in the office of his paper, and drew up and signed an informal enlistment paper, as volunteers in the first regiment ; and at a public meeting held the same evening, presided over by the Lieutenant-Governor, the list was filled, and the company was formed. Hawley was made first lieutenant in Rifle Com- pany A, First Regiment Connecticut Volunteers, which was mustered into service April 22d, 1861, for three months. By the promotion of the colonel of the regiment soon after, Hawley became captain of his company, and displayed much activity in the organization and equipment of his men, for whom he ordered arms on his own personal credit, from the Sharpe Rifle Factory. He took a fair share of fighting in the battle of Bull Run, July 18th, and his was one of the few companies which did not run. The company being disbanded at the end of their short term of service, July 31st, we next find him as Lieut.-Colonel of the Sixth Connecticut Volunteers, organized August, 1861, for three years' service ; which was assigned, upon its arrival in Washington, to the Department of the South. It was present at, and honorably mentioned in the official reports of the day, in the attack on Fort Wallace, November 7th, under Colonel (after- wards General) Terry. During 1861, '62, the sixth was at Hil- ton Head ; took part in the reduction of Fort Pulaski, April and 540 MEN OF OUR DAY. March; in the Battle of James Island, Jane 14tli ; Pocataligo, October 22d; and in the expedition to Port Royal. Meanwhile, by the appointment of Col. Terry as brigadier, Lieut.-Colonel Haw- ley had become a colonel. He had command of the sixth during the operations at Hilton Head, Morris Island, and Fort Wagner, in Gilman's campaign against Charleston, in the spring and summer of 1863. He was then placed in command at Fernan- dina, Florida, obtaining for his men, while there, the breech- loading Spencer Rifle, to the merits of which the War Depart- ment were blind until near the close of the war; he commanded a brigade detailed to destroy railroads near the Suwanee river, and also at the battle of Olustee, Florida, February 19th, 1864. His Florida service terminated May 4th, by the transfer of him- self and command to the army of the James, where he had charge of a brigade in Terry's division, in Butler's attack on Bermuda Hundred. At Chester Station, Deep Bottom, Deep Run, Cha- pin's Farm near Richmond, New Market Road, Darbyton Road, Charles City Road, and other places where battles and skir- mishes occurred during the summer and fall campaign of 1864, Hawley's command was more or less actively engaged. He was commissioned September 17th, 1864, as Brigadier-General of Yol- uuteers ; when, in November of that year, and in consequence of threats of violence at the polls, made by the peace men of the North, and alarming frauds discovered, having for their object the stuffing of ballot-boxes in New York City with fraudulent votes, Gen. B. F. Butler was transferred to the command of the Department of the East, he was accompanied by a division of soldiers under Gen. Hawley, consisting of 8000 Connecticut troops. Hawley's headquarters were on the small steamer, Moses Taylor, anchored off the foot of Twenty-third street. New York, and the exposure, fatigue and responsibility of that service, stowed away in close quarters, on board the boats, etc., JOSEPH RUSSELL HAWLET. 541 with lu\If rations, were quite as severe to the troops engaged in it, as most of their experience "at the front." After the elec- tion, which, thanks to their presence, passed off peaceably, they returned to the army in the field, and Hawley again saw fight- ing at Fort Fisher, North Carolina, in January, 1865. Subse- quently, when Gen. Terry was placed in command at Richmond, Virginia, Gen. Hawley was called from his position at Wilming- ton, North Carolina, as his chief- of-stafi;j and there the two gal- lant soldiers, friends in arms, and wearing the honors so worthily won in the fore-front of battle, strove, during the months of 1865, to bring peace out of hostility, evolve order from chaos, and constrnct a broad base upon which might be erected a genuine democracy, taking the place of that so-called aristo- cracy which had borne such bitter fruits, not only in the Old Dominion, but throughout the South. They were, indeed, ''par nohile fratrum,^^ well fitted for harmonious action, display- ing admirable qualities of executive skill, fidelity, military vigor, promptness and patriotism. State and city were gov- erned with "an iron hand in a velvet glove." They occupied as headquarters the residence of the whilom Confederate Presi- dent, Jefferson Davis; and there, on the 1st of August, 1865, Gen. Hawley was the recipient of a general ofiicer's regulation sword, gokl mounted, of rare richness of design, and valued at $1150, which was presented to him from the citizens of Hart- ford, Connecticut, in the presence of a large assemblage of loy- alty and beauty, of both civil and military circles. On the 28th of September, Gen. Hawley received a commission as Major-General of Volunteers. The military record of Gen. Haw- ley was adorned by acts of courage and composure in the most trying circumstances, and by an unfaltering devotion to the cause of justice, humanity and freedom. Capable and cool under fire, urbane in his dealings with all, yet firm as a rock 542 MEN OF OUR DAY. against all enemies to the republic, wlietlier open or covert, and devoting all his energies to the work of suppressing disloyalty, he speedily gained the esteem and confidence of his comrades in the field, and his friends at home. It was not strange, there- fore, that he should have been deemed worthy to guide the home councils of the State, which he had so well represented abroad. He was elected Governor of the State of Connecticut, from 1866, '67. His administration was successful and honor- able both to himself and the State; but declining a renomina- tion, he returned to his editorial duties, being still as before the war connected with the Evening Press. In 1867, the Hartford Press and Connecticut Courant were con- solidated under the latter title. Gen. Hawley being chief pro- prietor and editor. In 1868, he had the honor of presiding over the National Republican Convention which nominated Grant and Colfax ; and during the present year was chosen President of the National Centennial Celebration of the Declaration of Independence, which is to be held at Philadelphia, July 4th, 1876. He was the candidate of the Republican party for United States Senator for the term commencing March 4th, 1873, but was defeated by the coalition of the Democrats and bolting Re- publicans, who re-elected the present Senator, 0. S. Terry. Gen. Hawley is in the prime of manhood, a man of fine and commanding presence, of great energy and eloquence, and wide and generous culture. He is by nature and disposition a reformer, and will strike his heaviest blows when he has some giant wrong to battle, some monster evil to throttle and destroy. If he lives he will yet be heard from in our country's history, and that on the right side. His late defeat will only in God's good time prove the stepping stone to some higher and better success. There is for him a future of honor and fame, if he wills it. ^. -^ ^ , _ KSviKJkVKn hH- A iS.\VAI.T»R,r««»tAD^' HORACE GREELEY. '/[J GRACE GREELEY was born at Amherst, New Hamp ^T I shire, on the 3d of February, 1811, being the third ^(^ of seven children, two of whom had died before his c) birth. His father, Zaccheus (a name borne, also, by his grandfather and great-grandfather), was a native of Lon- donderry (now Hudson), New Hampshire, and was of the Massachusetts clan, " mainly farmers, but part blacksmiths," who traced their ancestry to one of three brothers who emigrated to this country, about 1650, from Nottingham- shire, England. All the Greeleys are said to have possessed marked and peculiar characters — distinguished for tenacity of vitality, opinions, preferences, memory, and purpose. Few of them have ever been rich, but all, as far as known, have been of respectable social condition, industrious, honest, and loyal. Mary Woodburn, the wife of Zaccheus, and the mother of Horace Greeley, was also of Londonderry, New Hampshire, of that fine old Scotch-Irish stock which settled that toAvn — Irish in their vivacity, generosity, and daring ; Scotch in their frugality, industry, and resolution — a race in whom Nature seems, for once, to have kindly blended the qualities which .tender men interesting with those which render them prosper- ous. The Greeley and Woodburn farm adjoined, and so it 543 54:4 MEN OF OUR DAT. came about that Zaccheus GreeJey fouud furor in the eves of Mary "Woodburn, and was married to her in the year 1807, he being then twenty-five years of age and she nineteen. He inherited nothing from his father, and she had no property except the usual household portion from hers — so the young couple settled down at old Mr. Greeley's— supporting, for a while, the old folks and their still numerous minor children; but this did not last long. Young married people crave inde- pendence, and, ere long, Zaccheus Greeley managed to pur- chase, partly with his earnings and partly "on trust," a small and not over fertile farm at Amherst, where, as we have seen, Horace first saw the light. In New England, farmer's sons learn to make themselves useful almost as soon as they can walk Feeding: the chickens, driving the cows, carr\ino; wood and w ater, and all the light oflices which are denominated " chores^^ fall to their lot ; and Horace (as the eldest son of a poor and hard working farmer struggling hard with the sterile soil to pay ofi" the debt he had incurred in its purchase, and to support his increasing family) vras by no means exempt iiom his share of daily toil and responsibilities. Grubbing in the corn hills, " riding the horse to plow," burning charcoal in the neighbor- ing woods, and " picking stones," were among the occupations which the boy carried on — and that right faitJi/iiUy^ too, although his heart rejoiced not in them. The last named labor he seems to have disrelished exceedingly. " Picking stones," says he, in his autobiography, " is a never-ending labor on one of those New England farms. Pick as closely as you may, the next plowing turns up a fresh eruption of boulders and pebbles, from the size of a hickory nut to that of a tea-kettle, and as this work is mainly to be done in March or April, when the earth is saturated with ice-cold water, if not also whitened with falling snow, youngsters soon learn to regard it witli detesta- HORACE GREELEY. 545 tion. I iiliallj love tlie ' Granite State,' but could well excuse the absence of sundry subdivisions of lier granite." The fact seems to have been that, however faithful and careful in the performance of these farm duties, repulsive as they were to him, Horace's mind, from early infancy, craved knowledge. As a very young child, he took to learning with the same prompt instinctive and irrepressible love with which a duck is said to take to the water. Like many other distinguished men, he found his first and best instructor in his mother — who possessed a strong mind, a retentive memory, a perpetual over- flow of good spirits, a great fondness for reading, and an exhaustless fund of songs, ballads, and stories — to which latter,, the boy listened greedily, sitting on the floor at her feet, while she spun and talked with equal energy. '' They served,"' says Mr. Greeley, *' to awaken in me a thirst for knowledge, and a lively interest in learning and history." At the maternal knee — and ever with the hum of the spinning wheel as an accom- paniment — the boy learned, also, to read, before he had learned to talk; that is, before he could pronounce the lotiger words;, and from the fact that the book lay in her lap, he soon acquired a facility of reading from it sidewise, or upside down, as readily as in the usual fashion — which knack became " a subject of neighborhood wonder and fixbulous exaggeration." At three- years of age he could read easily and correctly any of the books- prepared for children, and, by the time he was four years old, any book whatever. His third winter was spent at the house- of his grandfather Woodbarn, at Londonderry, where he at- tended the district school, as he continued to do most of the winters and some of the summer months, during the next three years. At this school he soon attained remarkable distinction by his cleverness at spelling^ which was his passion. In this he wag unrivalled— no word could ever puzzle him — he spelt in 35 546 MEN OF OUR DAY. school and out of it — at work or at play — and, for hours at a time, he would lie upon the floor of his grandfather's house spelling all the hard words which he could find in the Bible and the few other books within reach. Of course, he was the great hero of the " spelling match" — that favorite diversion of New England district schools — and there are some still living who love to recount how Horace, then a little " white, tow- headed boy," would sometimes fall asleep (for these •' matches " were generally held in the evening) and when it came his turn, his neighbors would give him an anxious nudge, and he would wake instantly, spell off his word, and drop asleep again in a moment. Frequently carried to school when the snow was too deep for him to wade through, on his aunt's shoulder, the eager little fellow stoutly maintained his place among larger and older scholars, and manfully mastered the slender information which he could glean from the pages of Webster's Spelling Book (then displacing Dil worth's), Bingham's Grammar, called "The Ladies' Accidence" and "The Columbian Orator." This latter, the first book he ever owned, had been given him by an uncle, while he lay sick with the measles, in his fourth year, at his grandfather's. It was his prized text book for years, and he learned all its dialogues, speeches, extracts of poetry, by heart, among others that well-known oration, so familiar to our boyish memories, commencing, " You'd doarce expect one of my age. To speak in public on the stage." "When he was six years old, his father removed to a larger farm in Bedford, New Hampshire, which he had undertaken to work " on shares," and until his tenth year, Horace's school- ing was combined with a pretty fair share of work. " Here," he says, "I first learned that this is a world of hard work. HORACE GREELEY. 547 Often called out of bed at dawn to " ride horse to plow" among the growing corn, potatoes, and hops, we would get as much plowed by nine to ten o'clock A.M., as could be hoed that day, when I would be allowed to start for school, where I sometimes arrived as the forenoon session was half through. In winter, our work was lighter ; but the snow was often deep and drifted the cold intense, the north wind piercing, and our clothing thin; besides which, the term rarely exceeded, and sometimes fell short of, two months. I am grateful for much — schooling in- cluded — to my native State; yet, I trust her boys of to-day generally enjoy better facilities for education at her common schools than they afforded me half a century ago." Young Greeley had no right to attend the school at Bedford, as he did not belong to the district — yet he was complimented by a per- mission granted by an express vote of the school committee, that " no pupils from other towns should be received" at their school, '■'except Horace Greeley almie^ Among the few adjuvants to knowledge which the boy enjoyed, was the weekly newspaper which came to his father's house, " The Farmerh Cabinet^'' mild in politics and scanty, if not heavy, in its literary contents ; but, for all that, a " connecting link" between the little homestead and the great outside, unknown world. Perhaps it uncon- sciously strengthened the youth's impulse toward becoming a printer and a newspaper man. For, it is related of him, that previously to this, while one day watching, most intently, the operation of shoeing a horse, the blacksmith observed to him : " You'd better come with me and learn the trade," " No," was the prompt reply, " I'm going to be a printer," a positive choice of a career by so diminutive a specimen of humanity, which mightily amused the bystanders. In his tenth year, however, a change had come to the family fortunes. His father, like many other hard-working farmers in 548 MEN OF OUR DAY. New Hampsliire, was not able to " weather the storm," which made the year 1820 memorable to many as " hard times." Ho failed, and having made an " arrangement with his creditors" (for he was a truly honest man), gave up his farm, temporarily, and removed to another in the adjoining town of Bedford, where he commenced the raising of hops, mostly on shares. In two years, however, despite his industry, he came back to his old Amherst home poorer than ever ; and, finally, became utterly bankrupt, was sold out by the sheriff, and fled from the State to avoid arrest. He wandered away to Westhaven, Katland county, Vermont, where he fortunately succeeded in hiring a small bouse, to which, in January, 1821, he brought his family. Stripped of all but the barest necessities, the little family now commenced life literally anew. Horace's life at "Westhaven, during the next five years, was much the same as before — plenty of hard work — rough fare, and an insatiable cramming of book knowledge, varied, sometimes, by playing draughts, or " checkers," in which game he is a great proficient. Yet the Yankee element was strong within him. He was always doing something, and he always had something to sell. He saved nuts and pitch pine roots for kindling wood, exchanging them at the country store for articles which he needed. The only out-door sport which the boy seemed to like, was " bee-hunting," which frequently yielded a snug little sum of pocket-money ; and when a peddler happened along with books in his wagon, or pack, the hard earned pennies were pretty sure to leave Horace's pockets. But, while he could mm, he had little or no faculty of hargaining^ or of making money. In hia eleventh year, he heard that an apprentice was wanted in a news- paper of&ce at Whitehall ; and, true to his old fancy of becom- ing a printer, he trudged over there on foot, a distance of nine miles, but was refused the place on account of his youth. HORACE GREELEY. 549 Westhaven, at tliat time, was a desperate place for drinking, and Horace and his brother had early imbibed a thorough aver- fiion to the use of intoxicating liquors and tobacco. Asking his father, one day, what he'd give him if he would not drink a drop of liquor till he was twenty-one; his father thinking it, perhaps, a mere passing whim of the boy's, replied " I'll give you a dollar." It was a bargain, and from that day to this, Horace has not knowingly taken into his system any alcoholic liquid, and has been a distinguished and fearless advocate of teetotalism. During his Westhaven life, also, he became— although surrounded by orthodoxy, and descended from ortho- dox parents — by the natural process of his own reasoning, a Universalist — yet he never entered a church, or heard a sermon, of that faith, until he was twenty years old. This all arose from his chance reading, in a school book, of the history of Demetrius Poliorcetes, one of Alexander the Great's generals, whose conduct towards the ungrateful Athenians, as related by the earlier historians, prese-nts an example of magnanimity, as sublime as it is rare. Reflecting with admiration on this case, Greeley, young as he was, " was moved," as he says, " to inquire if a spirit so nobly, so wisely transcending the mean and savage impulse which man too often disguises as justice, when it is in essence revenge, might not be reverentially termed divine ;" in fact, if it did not " image forth" the attitude of an all- wise, just, yet merciful God, toward an erring humanity. And though, in his career, the subject of our sketch has confined himself, by the very necessity of his nature, chiefly to the advancement of material interests, yet it is not to be doubted that this early change of religious belief gave to his subsequent life much of its direction and character. By the spring of 1826, Horace had exhausted the schools and the capabilities of his teachers, and was impatient to be at the 550 MEN OF OUR DAT. types. To his oft repeated importunities, his father strongly objectei — partly, because he needed the lad's help at home oa the far.n ; partly, because he feared that one so young, so gentle, awkward, and with so little " push" about him, would be unable to battle his way among strangers. But, one day, Horace saw in the Northern Spectator^ a weekly sheet (Adams in politics), published at East Poultney, Vermont, eleven miles from hia home, a notice of a " boy wanted" in the office. Wringing from his father a reluctant consent to his applying for the place, he walked over to Poultney, came to an understanding with the proprietors, and returned home. A few days later, April 18th, 1826, his father took him down to the office and entered into a verbal agreement with the parties, for his son's .services, to the effect that he was to remain at his apprenticeship with them till he was twenty years of age, be allowed his board only for six months, and thereafter $40 per annum for clothing. Leav- ing Horace at work in the printing office, Mr. Greeley returned home ; and, shortly after, removed his residence to Wayne, Erie county, Pennsylvania. The new apprentice's experience at Poultney is thus related by himself: "The organization and management of our establishment were vicious ; for an apprentice should have one master, and I had a succession of them, and often two or three at once. These changes enabled me to demand and receive a more liberal allow- ance for the later years of my apprenticeship ; but the office was too laxly ruled for the most part, and, as to instruction, every one had perfect liberty to learn what he could. In fact, as but two or at most three persons were employed in the printing department, it would have puzzled an apprentice to avoid a practical know lei Ige of whatever was done th re. I had not been there a year before my hands were blistered and my back lamed by working off the very consid.;rable edition of the paper on an old-fashioned, two-pull Eam ige (wooden) press — a task beyond mj boyish strength — and I can scarcely recall a day HORACE GREELEY. 551 wherein we were not hurried by our work. I would not imply that I worked too hard — yet I think few apprentices work more steadily and faithfully than I did througliout the four years and over of my stay in Poultney. While I lived at home, I had always been allowed a day's fishing, at least once a month, in spring and summer, and I once went hunting; but I never fished, nor hunted, nor attended a dance, nor any sort of party or fandango, in Poultney. I doubt that I even played a game of ball. Yet I was ever considerately and even kindly treated by those in authority over me, and I believe I generally merited and enjoyed their confidence and good-will. Very seldom was a word of reproach or dissatisfaction addressed .to me by one of them. Though I worked diligently, I found much time for reading, and might have had more, had every leisure hour been carefully improved. * * * They say that apprenticeship is distasteful to and out of fashion with the boys of our day ; if so, I regret it for their sakes. To the youth who asks, ' How shall I obtain an education ?' I would answer, 'Learn a trade of a good master.' I hold firmly that most boys may thus bet- ter acquire the knowledge they need than by spending four years in college." lie speedily became one of the leading members of the vil- lage Debating Society, or Lyceum, as it was styled ; and, to use the words of an old comrade, " whenever he was appointed to speak or to read an essay, he never wanted to be excused ; he was always ready. He was exceedingly interested in the ques- tions which he discussed, and stuck to his opinion against all opposition — not discourteously, but still he stuck to il, replying with the most perfect assurance to men of high station and of low. He had one advantage over all his fellow members; it was his memory. He had read every th:ng, and remembered the minutest details of important events; dates, names, places, figures, statistics — nothing had escaped him. He was never treated as a boT/ in the society, but as a man and an equal ; and 552 MEN OF OUR DAY. his opinions were considered with as mucli deference as those of the judge or the sheriff — more, I think. To the graces of oratory he made no pretence, but he was a fluent and interest- ing speaker, and had a way of giving an unexpected turn to the debate by reminding members of a fact, well known but over- looked ; or by correcting a misquotation, or by appealing to what are called first principles. He was an opponent to be afraid of; yet his sincerity and his earnestness were so evident, that those whom he most signally floored liked him none the less for it. lie never lost his temper. In short, he spoke iu his sixteenth year just as he speaks now." It may be added that then, as now, he was utterly oblivious of the niceties — we had almost said the proprieties — of dress, and his ill-fitted, and really insufiicient clothing, excited the pity of a few considerate ones, and the frequent derision of many unthinking ones. But the forty dollars a year which was allowed him by his employ- ers for clothing, was carefully husbanded and sent to his father, who was struggling with the difficulties of a new farm in the wilderness on the other side of the Alleghanies ; and twice, during his Poultney residence, he visited those beloved parents, traversing the distance of six hundred miles, partly on foot, and partly by the tedious canal boat Among the incidents of his sojourn in Poultney that which made the most impression on his mind, was a fugitive slave chase. The State of New York had abolished slavery years before, but certain born slaves were to remain such till twenty-eight years old. One of these youDg negroes decamped from his master, in a neighboring New York town, to our village ; where he was at work, when said master came over to reclaim and recover him. "I never saw," says Mr. Greeley, " so large a muster of men and boys so suddenly on our village-green as his advent incited ; and the result was a speedy disappearance of the chattel, and the return HORACE GREELEY. 553 of his master, disconsolate and niggerless, to the place whence he came. Every thing on our side was impromptu and instinc- tive ; and nobody suggested that envy or hate of " the South," or of New York, or of the master, had impelled the rescue. Our people hated injustice and oppression, and acted as if tliey couldn't help it^ In June, 1830, the Spectator and its office were discontinued, and Greeley, released from his engagement some months earlier than he had expected, started off, with little else than a ward- robe which could be stuffed into his pocket, a sore leg, a reten- tive memory and a knowledge of the art of printing — to see his father. After a while we find him working for eleven dollars per month, in the office of a "Jackson paper," at Sodus, New York, and still later for fifteen dollars per month in the office of the Gazette, a weekly paper published at Erie, Pennsylvania. At first he was refused work on account of his extremely ver- dant appearance; but, finally, was taken in on trial and ere long was in high favor with all who knew him. Seven months passed away, and again we find our hero trying his fortunes in a new place — this time, in New York itself His arrival and adventures in the " Great Metropolis," in which he was, in the course of years, to become so well known, much talked about, and useful a citizen, are best described in his own words. "It was, if I recollect aright, the 17th of August, 1831. I was twenty years old the preceding February; tall, slender, pale and plain, with ten dollars in my pocket, summer clothing worth perhaps as much more, nearly all on my back, and a decent knowledge of so much of the Art of Printing as a boy will usually learn in the office of a country newspaper. But I knew no human being within two hundred miles, and my un- mistakably rustic manner and address did not favor that imme- diate command of remunerating employment which was my most urgent need. However, the world was all before me ; my 554 MEN OF OUR DAY. personal estate, tied up in a pocket-handkerchief, did not at all encumber me ; and I stepped lightly off the boat and away from the sound of the detested hiss of escaping steam, w.'dking into and up Broad street in quest of a boarding-house. I found and entered one at or near the corner of Wall ; but the price of board given me was six dollars per week ; so I did not need the giver's candidly kind suggestion that I would probably prefer one where the charge was more moderate. Wandering thence, I cannot say how, to the North River side, I halted next at 168 West street, where the sign of " Boarding" on a humbler edifice fixed my attention. I entered, and was offered shelter and subsistence at $2.50 per week, which seemed more rational, and I closed the bargain. Having breakfasted, I began to ransack the city for work, and, in my total ignorance, traversed many streets where none could possibly be found. In the course of that day and the next, however, I must have visited fully two thirds of the printing-offices on Manhattan island, without a gleam of success. It was mid-summer, when business in New York is habitually dall; and my youth and unquestiouable air of country green- ness must have told against me. When I called at the Journal of Commerce^ its editor, Mr. David Ilale, bluntly told me I was a runaway-apprentice from some country office ; which was a very natural, though mistaken, presumption. I returned to my lodging on Saturday evening, thoroughly weary, disheartened, disgusted with New York, and resolved to shake its dust from my feet next morning, while I could still leave with money in my pocket, and before its alms-house could foreclose upon me. But that was not to be. On Sunday afternoon and evening, several young Irishmen called at Mr. MoGolrick's, in their holi- day saunterings about town; and, being told that I was a young printer in quest of work, interested themselves in my effort, with the spontaneous kindness of their race. One among them happened to know a place where printers were wanted, and gave me the requisite direction ; so that, on visiting the designa- ted spot next morning, I readily found employment ; and thus, HORACE GREELEY. 555 when barely three days a resident, I had found anchorage in New York. The printing establishment was John T. West's, over McElrath & Bangs' publishing-house, 68 Chatham street, and the work was at my call, simply because no printer who knew the city would accept it. It was the composition of a very small (32mo) New Testament, in double columns, of Agata type, each column barely twelve ems wide, with a centre col- umn of notes in Pearl, barely four ems wide : the text thickly studded with references by Greek and superior letters to the notes, which of course were preceded and discriminated by corresponding indices, with prefatory and supplementary re- marks on each Book, set in Pearl, and only paid for as Agate. The type was considerably smaller than any to which I had been accustomed ; the narrow measure and thickly-sown Italics of the text, with the strange characters employed as indices, rendered it the slowest and by far the most difficult work I had ever undertaken; while the making up, proving, and correcting, twice and even thrice over, preparatory to stereotyping, nearly doubled the time required for ordinary composition. I was never a swift type-settter ; I aimed to be an assiduous and cor- rect one; but my proofs on this work at first looked as though they had caught the chicken-pox, and were in the worst stage of a profuse eruption. For the first two or three weeks, being sometimes kept waiting for letter, 1 scarcely made my board: while, by diligent type-sticking thrcjugh twelve to fourteen hours per day, I was able, at my best, to earn but a dollar per day. As scarcely another compositor could be induced to work on it more than two days, I had this job in good part to myself, and I persevered to the end of it. I had removed, very soon after obtaining it, to Mrs. Mason's shoemaker boarding-house at the corner of Chatham and Duane streets, nearly opposite my work; so that I was enabled to keep doing nearly all the time I did not need for m -als and sleep. When it was done, I was out of work for a fortnight, in spite of my best efforts to find more; so I attended, as an unknown spectator, the sittings of the Tariff Convention, which was held at the American lusti- 556 MEN OF OUR DAT. tute, north end of the City Tlall Park, and presided over by Hon. William Wilkins, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. I next found work in Ann street, on a short-lived monthly, where my pay was not forthcoming ; and the next month saw me back at West's, where a new work — a commentary on the Book of Genesis, by Rev. George Bush — had come in ; and I worked ou it throughout. The chirography was blind ; the author made many vexatious alterations in proof; the page was small and the type close ; but, though the reverse of fat^ in printers' jar- gon, it was not nearly so abominably lean as the Testament; and I regretted to reach the end of it. When I did, I was again out of work, and seriously meditated seeking employment at something else than printing; but the winter was a hard one, and business in New York stagnant to an extent not now con- ceivable." From January, 1832, and through the dreary "cholera sum- mer," Greeley worked on the Spirit of the Times^ a nevv sporting paper, and there gained the devoted friendship of its foreman, Mr. Francis V. Story, with whom he afterwards entered into partnership. The main dependence of their business was the printing of Sylvester's "Bank-Note Reporter;" and the publi- cation of Dr. II, D. Shepard's "penny-paper," The Morning Post, • and the pioneer of the cheap-for-cash dailies in New York City. Hiring rooms on the south-east corner of Nassau and Liberty streets, the young " typos" invested their scanty capital (less than $200) ; obtained $-iO worth of material, on credit, from Mr. George Bruce, the eminent type founder, and coinnienced their business career. The Post, however, was " ahead of the Age" — and died, when scarcely a month old, leaving its printers "hard aground on a lee shore, with little prospect of getting off." Fortunately, however, they escaped total bankruptcy, by a successful sale of the wrecked paper to another party, in whose hands it was teetotally extinguished, "forever and aye." Working early and late, looking sharply on every side for jobs, HORACE GREELEY. 557 and economizing to the last degree, the firm were beginning to make decided headway, when Mr. Story was drowned, in June, 1833. His place was taken by his brother-in law, Mr. Jonas Winchester — since widely known in the newspaper world ; and again the concern was favored with steady and moderate pros- perity, until, in March, 1834, they issued the fir.st number of The New Yorker^ a large, fair, cheap weekly, devoted to current literature, etc., of which Mr. Greeley took the sole editorial supervision for the next seven years and a half. Two years after its birth the partnership was dissolved and Greeley took the New Yorker, which held its own pretty well until the commer- cial revulsion of 1837. In July, 1836, Mr. Greeley had mar- ried, deeming himself worth $5000 and the owner of a remune- rative business. To a man of so singularly independent and honest a character as his, the debts incurred were a source of the most terrible mental anxiety and suffering. In his autobi- ography, he speaks most feelingly of the horrors of bankruptcy and debt, closing with these intense but truthful remarks : " For my own part — and I speak from sad experience — I would rather be a convict in State prison, a slave in a rice- swamp, than to pass through life under the harrow of debt. Let no young man misjudge himself unfortunate, or truly poor, so long as he has the full use of his limbs and faculties and is substantially free from debt. Hunger, cold, rags, hard work, contempt, suspicion, unjust reproach, are disagreeable; but debt is infinitely worse than them all. And, if it had pleased God to spare either or all of my sons to be the support and solace of my declining years, the lesson which I should have most earnestly sought to impress upon them is — "Never run into debt! Avoid pecuniary obligation as you would pestilence or famine. If you have but fifty cents, and can get no more for a week, buy a peck of corn, parch it and live on it, rather than owe any man a dollar?" Of course, I know that some men must do business that involves risks, and must often give notes 658 MEN OF OUR DAY. and other obligations, and I do not consider liini really in debt who can lay his hands directly on the means of paying, at some little sacrifice, all he owes; I speak of real debt — that which in- volves risk or sacrifice on the one side, obligation and depend- ence on the other — and I say, i'roin all such, let every youth humbly pray God to preserve him evermore 1" The New Yorker came to an end in March, 1841, with an out- standing book account of some $10,000 due to its editor and proprietor, of which, it is needless to say, he neveY afterwards saw the first cent. Among the " memorabilia" of its history is the fact that Hon. Henry J. Eaymond, late the chief editor of the New York Times, and a "power" in the American press, commenced his editorial life as assistant editor of the New Yorker on a salary of $8 a week. While running this paper, Mr. Greeley, in addition to supply- ing leading articles to the Daily Whig for several months, undeuook, in March, 1838, the entire editorship of the Jeffer- sonian, a weekly campaign paper, published lor a year, at Albany, by the Whig Central Committee of the State of New York. The sheet had a circulation of 15,000, its editor $1000 salary and it was a " rousing" aond political paper, aiming " to convince,not to inflame, to enlighten, not to blind." The energy, industry, and courage (mental as well as physical), required to edit a weekly paper in New York City and another in Albany, can be imagined only by those who understand the nature of an editor's duties. Into the Harrison campaign of 1810, Greeley threw his whole energies, issuing, on the 2d of May, the first number of The Log Calnn, a weekly ])aper, appearing simultaneously in New York and Albimy, for the six months' campaign. It was conducted with wonderful spirit and made an unprecedented hit, 48,000 of the first number being sold in a day and the issue increasing to between 80,000 and HORACE GREELEY. 559 90,000 copies per week, Greeley's own interest in the questions at issue was most intense, and his labors were incessant and arduous. He wrote articles, he made speeches, he sat on com- mittees, he travelled, he gave advice, he suggested plans, wliilc he had two newspapers on his hands and a load of debt upon his shoulders." Designed only as a campaign paper, the Log Cabin survived the emergency for which it had been created, and, as a family political paper, continued with moderate suc- cess until finally merged, together with the New Yorker, in the Tribune. The Tribune first saw light on the 10th of April, 1841, with a " start" of 600 subscribers, and a borrowed capital of $1000. 1 15 first experiences were not altogether promising, but it was full of yZy/i^, and the foolish attempt of a rival. The Sun, to crush it, aroused the pugnacity of its editor to its fullest extent. The public became interested, also ; and by its seventh week, it had an edition of 11,000. New presses became necessary — adver- tisements poured in ; and then — just " in the nick of time" — Mr. Thomas McElrath was secured as a business partn(ir, and with him came alsf) the order and efficiency, wliic^h huve rcnderc'd the Tribune estal;lishrnent one of the best conducted ncwsp;q)cr offices in the world. Now came another epoch in Horace Greeley's career — viz.: that of Fourierism,. A Socialist in theory he had Ijccn for years before the Tribune was commenced — and, when Albert Brisbane returned from Paris, in 18-11, full to overflowing of the principles of the Apostle of the Doctrine of Association, Greeley became one of his earliest and most devoted followers. Jie wrote, talked, lectured on Fourierism; — but, with the famous six months' newspaper discussion of the subject, in 18-10, between Greeley and his former lieutenant, H. J. Raymond, then of the Courier and Pluquirer — the subject died out of the 560 MEN OF OUR DAY. public mind. In April, 1842, the Tribune, which had started as a penny paper, commenced its second volume at two cents per number, without any appreciable loss of its subscription. At the same time, Greeley and McElrath commenced a monthly ]nagazine, called " The American Lahorer^^'' devoted chiefly to the advocacy of protection. Gradually, also, they got into a some- what extensive book publishing business, which, however, proved unprofitable and was relinquished, excepting the " Whig Almanac," a valuable statistical and political compend, which, in 1868, enjoyed the honor of being entirely reprinted by the process of photo-lithography. In 1843, began the Evening Tribune, and in 1845, the Semi-Weekly. Water-Cure, the Erie Railroad, Irish Repeal, Protection and Clay were the principal objects to which the Tribune gave the full weight of its powerful influence. In 1845, the Tribune office was burned; and that year and the two following were years full of hard knocks received, and good earnest blows heartily given, against Capital punishment, the Mexican War, Slavery, Orthodoxy, the Native American party, the drama, etc., etc. In 1848, Mr. Greeley was chosen to represent the Congressional District in the House of Representatives for a short session; and hardly was he seated there before he introduced a Land Reform Bill ; " walked into" the tariff; made in the Tribune a grand expose of the Congressional Mileage system (which roused the wrath of that honorable body and became the talk of the nation), and "pitched into," generally, all the money-spending, time-wasting expedients by which public interests and business were delayed. The tide of corruption, however, was too great to be success- fully stemmed by one honest man, and Greeley's three months career as a Congressman may be summed up in this, that " as a member of Congress, he was truer to himself and dared more in HORACE GREELEY. 561 behalf of his constituents than any man who ever sat for one session only in the House of Eepresentatives." Meantime, the Tribune establishment was on the high road to success; and was valued by competent judges at $100,000, a low estimate perhaps, when we consider that its annual profits amounted to over $30,000. Both of its proprietors were now in the enjoyment of incomes more than sufl&cient for what they needed — and now they determined to give a practical proof of their belief in a doctrine which they had earnestly advocated for several years previous — viz.: the advantages of associated. labor and profit. The property was divided into one hundred $1000 shares, each of which entitled the holder to one vote in. the decisions of the company — thus conferring the dignity and; advantage of ownership on many interested parties, while the^ contesti:hg power practically remained with Greeley and. McElrath. It is needless to say that the " Tribune Association"' has been an eminent success. In 1850, a volume of Mr. Greeley's lectures and essays was; published, under the title of " Hints toward Eeforra." In April,, 1851, Mr. Greeley visited England, to view the " World's Fair"' and, on his arrival there, found that he had been appointed, by the American commissioner, as a member of the jury on hard- ware. The first month of his brief holiday was conscientiously employed in the discharge of the tedious and onerous duties, thus assigned him ; — and, at the banquet, given at Richmond, by the London commissioners to the foreign commissioners,, he had the honor of proposing, with a speech, the health of Joseph Paxton, the architect of the Crystal Palace. He also didi good service to the cause of cheap popular literature, by his evidence given, as an American newspaper editor, before two sessions of a committee appointed by Parliament for the con- sideration of the proposed repeal of " t^^^^j^ on knowledge," viz.: 36 562 MEN OF OUR DAY. the duty on advertisements, and on every periodical containing news. A rapid " run" througli the continent, and Greeley was back in his sanctum in the Tribune building, by the middle of August, and his experiences were given to the world in an interesting volume entitled, " Glances at Europe." With the defeat of General Scott, and the annihilation of the old Whig party, in November, 1852, the Tribune ceased to be a party paper, and its editor a party man. The same year he performed a sad but grateful token of regard to the memory of one whom he devotedly admired, by finishing Sargent's Life of Henry Clay. And, as he found himself now released from the shackles of party politics, he began to yearn for the repose and calm delights of moral life. He purchased a neat farm of fifty acres in Westchester county, where, in such scanty leisure as his editorial life allows him, he has put into practical operation some of his long cherished theories in regard to farming, etc. In 1856, he published an able " History of the struggle for Slavery Extension, or Restriction, in the United States, from 1787 to 1856 ;" and, in 1859, he made a trip to California, via Kansas, Pike's Peak and Utah, being received, at many princi- pal towns and cities, by the municipal authorities and citizens, whom he addressed on politics, the Pacific railroad, tem- perance, etc., and on his return, published the facts in regard to the mining regions which he had observed, in a duodecimo volume, which sold largely. Into all the momentous issues of the war of the rebellion, Mr. Greeley, as was to have been expected from ms position and his antecedents, threw the full weight of his immense influence and endeavors. During the great " Draft Riot" of New York, in July, 1863, he was " marked" as an obnoxious person, and a house where he had formerly boarded was entered and com- pletely sacked by the mob. The office of the Tribune was also HORACE GREELEY. 563 attacked by tlie mob, who sought diligently for him, but tte gallant efforts of the police soon dispersed them. In July, 1864, he was induced, by the pretended anxiety of certain parties claiming to represent the Confederate Government, and who desired to enter into negotiations for peace, to use his per- sonal influence with President Lincoln for an interview, but Mr. Lincoln's adroitness soon elicited the fact that these self- styled pacificators had no real authority to act in the premises, and the matter resulted only in the issue of the celebrated '' To whom it may concern" message. In 1865-67, Mr. Greeley's history of the war was published in two volumes, under the title of *' The American Conflict," had an immense sale, and is justly regarded, North and South, as the best political history of that struggle, yet presented to the public. Since the completion of that work, he has also published a series of essays on "Political Economy," giving in his own peculiar yet forcible way the arguments, new and old, in favor of protection to American industry ; a revised and enlarged edition of his autobiography, or "Recollections of a Busy Life," a volume of *' Letters from the Southwest and Texas," first contributed to the Tribune while he was visiting that sec- tion of country ; and a very sensible and, on the whole, modest book on agricultural topics, entitled " What I Know About Farming." This work, mainly in consequence of its title, has been the fruitful source of innumerable jokes, good, bad and indifferent, by all the newspaper wits and witlings from Maine to Mexico. Probably not one in fifty of them ever saw the book or read a page of it. Mr. Greeley is a very good farmer ; not, perhaps, so observant of all those niceties and elegancies which make fancy farming ordinarily so brilliant but costly a luxury as some others, but a farmer who understands how to make farming pay, even when 564 MEN OF OUR DAY. the farm was originally a poor and unpromising one. His book is a plain and graphic account of his own experiences, not spar- ing his blunders, and it is a book from which any practical farmer can derive many beneficial hints and suggestions. It has always been a matter of wonder to us, who have known Mr. Greeley for so many years, that he should be ambitious for office. That he possesses the qualifications in the way of broad and comprehensive views, large political and politico-economical attainments, and unflinching honesty and uprightness, which would fit him for almost any office in the gift of the people, we do not doubt. He might be the better for a higher degree of re- finement and greater courtesy of manner ; but his bluft' and some- times awkward address is a part of his nature, and is as inseparable from him as his skin. Yet why he should be am- bitious to be a member of Congress, a Governor, a United States Senator, or a President, has always passed our comprehension. As editor of the New York Tribune, he wielded an influence in- finitely greater than any Congressman, Governor, Senator, or President could ever hope to exercise. From a quarter to half a million of men believed in Horace Greeley as religiously as they believed in their Bibles, and many of them reverenced his opinions more than those of any other human being. He was, in the Eepublican administration, and had been for a dozen years and more, "the power behind the throne greater than the throne." It could not be for the emolu- ments of office, for though he can hardly be called rich, being too liberal and lavish a giver ever to roll up a fortune, still his income was very little, if at all, less than that of the President of the United States, and it was not for a four years' term, but for life. Yet there could be no question about the ambition. Though seldom gratified, (he had been a member of Congress for one HORACE GREELEY. 565 session, aud a member of the Constitutional Convention, beside some minor appointments, not wliolly political,) its exis- tence was evident always. It was, perhaps, most conspicuous in his letter to the old firm, as he termed them, of Seward, Weed & Co., first published ten or twelve years ago, and which he has republished himself within the present year. From any other standpoint than the somewhat peculiar one occupied by Mr. Greeley himself, the complaints that Mr. Seward had not bestowed upon him this or that office, seem whimsical and child- ish. At the time when this letter was written, tlorace Greeley wielded a power essentially greater than William H.Seward had ever exerted. He was the cause of Mr. Lincoln's nomination and Mr. Seward's defeat in the struggle for the Presidency, in 1860 and through the civil war, as through European wars since, if he did not organize victory, he often precipitated action. It has been a characteristic of Mr. Greeley hitherto, that greatly as he might desire office (and we are bound to believe for no ignoble purpose, but solely that he might benefit his country), he was very sure by bringing forward some whim or crotchet, which he knew to be unpopular, but which he had adopted, to destroy his chances of election. He had done this so many times that his warmest friends had begun to be doubt- ful of the propriety of giving him a nomination. That he had any aspirations for the Presidency would two years ago have been regarded as a huge joke. But it is pretty well settled that he has been for years aiming in that direction. Though he has acted with the Hepublican party ever since its existence, except in some local matters, where a bolt was cer- tainly allowable, yet he was known to entertain views differiii Secretaries. J. H. Rhodes, J Hon. Horace Greeley. New York City, HORACE GREELEY. 571 To this communication Mr. Greeley replied, on the 20th of May, as follows : New York, May 20th, 1872, (tEntlemen : — I have chosen not to acknowledofe your letter of the 3d inst. until I could learn how the work of your Convention was received in all parts of our great country, and judge whether that work was approved and ratified by the mass of our fellow-citizens. Their response has from day to day reached me through telegrams, letters, and the comments of journalists independent of official patronage and indifferent to the smiles or frowns of power. The number and character of these unconstrained, xmpurchased, imsolicited utterances, satisfy me that the movement which found expression at Cincinnati has received the stamp of public approval, and been hailed by a majority of our countrymen as the harbinger of a better day for the Republic. I do not misinterpret this approval as especially complimentary to my- self, nor even to the chivalrous and justly esteemed gentleman with whose name I thank your Convention for associating mine. I receive and wel- come it as a spontaneous and deserved tribute to that admirable Platform of principles, wherein your Convention so tersely, so lucidly, so forcibly, set forth the convictions which impelled and the purposes which guided its course — a Platform which, casting behind it the wreck and rubbish of worn- out contentions and bygone feuds, embodies in fit and few words the needs and aspirations of to-day. Though thousands stand ready to condemn your every act, hardly a syllable of criticism or cavil has been aimed at your Platform, of which the sxibstance may be fairly epitomized as follows: I. All the political rights and franchises which have been acquired through our late bloody convulsion must and shall be guaranteed, main- tained, enjoyed, respected, evermore. II. All the political rights and franchises which have been lost through that convulsion should and must be promptly restored and reestablished, so that there shall be henceforth no proscribed class and no disfranchised caste within the limits of our Union, whose long estranged people shall reunite and fraternize upon the broad basis of Universal Amnesty with Impartial Suffrage. III. That, subject to our solemn constitutional obligation to maintain the equal rights of all citizens, our policy should aim at local self-govern- ment, and not at centralization; that the civil authority should be supreme over the military ; that the writ of habeas corpus should be jealously up- held as the safeguard of personal freedom ; that the individual citizen- should enjoy the largest liberty consistent with public order; and that there shall be no Federal subversion of the internal polity of the several States and municipalities, but that each shall be left free to enforce the 672 MEN OF OUR DAY. rights and promote the well-being of its inhabitants by such means as the judgment of its own people shall prescribe. IV. There shall be a real and not merely a simulated Reform in the Civil Service of the Republic; to which end it is indispensable that the chief dispenser of its vast official patronage shall be shielded from the main temptation to use his power selfishly by a rule inexorably forbidding and precluding his reelection. V. That the raising of Revenue, whether by Tariff or otherwise, shall be recognized and treated as the people's immediate business, to be shaped and directed by them through their Representatives in Congress, whose action thereon the President must neither overrule by his veto, attempt to dictate, nor presume to punish, by bestowing office only on those who agree with him or withdrawing it from those who do not. VI. That the Public Lands must be sacredly reserved for occupation and acquisition by cultivators, and not recklessly squandered on the pro- jectors of Railroads for which our people have no present need, and the premature construction of which is annually plunging us into deeper and deeper abysses of foreign indebtedness. VII. That the achievement of these grand purposes of universal bene- ficence is expected and sought at the hands of all who approve them irre- spective of past affiliations. VIII. That the public faith must at all hazards be maintained, and the national credit preserved. IX. Tliat the patriotic devotedness and inestimable services of our fellow- citizens who, as soldiers or sailors, upheld the flag and maintained the unity of the Republic shallever be gratefully remembered and honorably requited. These propositions, so ably and forcibly presented in the Platform of your Convention, have already fixed the attention and commanded the assent of a large majority of our countrymen, who joyfully adopt them, as I do, as the bases of a true, beneficent National Reconstruction — of a New De- parture from jealousies, strifes, and hates, which have no longer adequate motive or even plausible pretext, into an atmosphere of peace, fraternity, and mutual good will. In vain do the drill-sergeants of decaying organi- zations flourish menacingly their truncheons and angrily insist that the files shall be closed and straightened : in vain do the whippers-in of par- ties once vital because rooted in the vital needs of the hour protest against straying and bolting, denounce men nowise their inferiors as traitors and renegades, and threaten them with infamy and ruin. I am confident that the American people have already made your cause their own, fully re- solved that their brave hearts and strong arms shall bear it on to triumph. In this faith, and v»rith the distinct understanding that, if elected, I shall be the President not of a party, but of tlie whole people, I accept your nomination in the confident trust that the masses of our countrymen, North and South, are eager to clasp hands across the bloody chasm which HORACE GREELEY. 573 has too long divided them, forgetting that they have been enemies in the joyful consciousness that they are and must henceforth remain brethren. Yours, gratefully, Horace Greeley. To Hon. Carl Schurz, President; Hon. George W. Julian, Vice-Presi- dent; and Messrs. William E. McLean, John G. Davidson, J. H. Rhodes, Secretaries of the National Convention of the Liberal Republi- cans of the United States. There can be no question that this movement if successful, must result in the breaking up of old party lines and organiza- tions, and in the development of new issues and questions on which men who have hitherto been ' bitterly opposed to each other will find themselves working shoulder to shoulder ; while many heretofore marching in the same ranks, will henceforth rally under difi'erent leaders and banners. Perhaps this may be well ; at all events it is very likely to come ; but whether the motley host who raise the Greeley banner, can, in the event of their success, be kept together for six months is not so certain ; and whether Mr. Greeley will be the man to unite them in a harmonious party, when the great majority have hardly an opinion in common with him, is equally uncertain. It had long been supposed by all who knew Mr. Greeley, that nothing but death could separate him from his beloved I'ribune ; but it is due to him to say that within a week after his nomina- tion he withdrew from the editorship of the paper, which is, however, carried on in his interest by Mr. Whitelaw Reid, his able managing editor for the past three years. We cannot, perhaps, better close this sketch of Mr, Greeley, than with the summary of his character given by his friend, Rev. Dr. Bellows, of the Liberal Christian, a summary which is as true as it is happy in its characterization: *' At home in city and country, and on both sides of the con- 574 MEN OF OUR DAT. tinent ; with all tLe qualities of the Yankee — simple as shrewd, and shrewd as simple ; good-natured as a healthy child, and passionate as the same on occasions ; a wide lover of his species, and a tremendous hater of many of its individual varieties ; open as the day, and inscrutable as the night ; devoted to princi- ple when not absorbed by measures ; strong as a giant when some political Delilah has not shorn his locks in her lap ; so pure that dirt won't stick to him, which makes him a little too free in going into it ; not to be known by his associates, because quite superior to many of them ; capable of a superhuman frank- ness and a Trappian silence — certainly America finds in him at this moment its most characteristic representative. He is the American ]par excellence.^'' WILLIAM S. GROESBECK, OF OHIO. "'^^ MONG the Democratic members of Congress from Ohio, l|5 few, if any, have been more highly esteemed by all par- ties than Mr. Groesbeok. He has always borne the reputation of being a fair and honorable man, not a bitter partisan ; and though he clings with all the tenacity of his ancestry to the Democratic faith, he holds to its large and really beneficent theories of human government, rather than to the narrow and pettifogging views of the lower order of poli- ticians, who proclaim themselves Democrats without any just understanding of the real meaning of the name. William S. Groesbeck was born in Albany county, New- York, in 1826. He was of Dutch ancestry, the Groesbecks being a numerous and highly respectable family among the early set- tlers of the Mohawk valley. We think he did not have the advantage of a full collegiate course, but he has been a diligent student, and is specially well versed in English literature. He studied law in Albany, and after being admitted to the bar removed to Cincinnati, in 1847, or 1848, and engaged in the practice of his profession. His legal attainments were such as speedily to bring him into prominence, and doubtless, into a lucrative practice. In 1852, we find him at the age of twenty- six, employed as a member of a commission in the difficult and 575 576 MEN OF OUR DAY. responsible work of codifying the laws of Ohio ; he had already (in I80I) been a member of the State Constitutional Conven- tion ; and in both duties he had distinguished himself. In 1856, he was elected a Representative in Congress from Cincinnati, and was then a member of the Committee on Foreign affairs, an important position for so young and new a member. In Jan- uary and February, 1861, he was a member of the "Peace Con- gress," and favored compromise measures. The next year he was a member of the Ohio Senate, but never a bitter opponent of the war. In 1866, when the "National Union Convention," or as it was appropriately named by a New York wit, "the Arm-in-arm Convention" met in Philadelphia, Mr. Groesbeck was one of its ablest members. Here, too, his best efforts were made in behalf of conciliation, and a reunion of the hitherto dis- cordant elements at the North and South. When, in 1868, Pre- sident Johnson was put on his trial, he secured the services of Mr. Groesbeck as one of his counsel, and his whole bearing during that protracted trial was such as to win for him the respect of his opponents. Since 1868, Mr. Groesbeck has devoted himself very sedu- lously to his profession, but his party claim him as one of their very ablest men, and many of them have been very anxious to nominate him for the Presidency, but he has steadfastly resisted all overtures of the kind, and is understood to favor for his party the nomination of the Cincinnati candidates for the com- ing Presidential campaign. Mr. Groesbeck is more a jurist than a politician, and though h-e possesses the ability to fill with credit any position, he would, we believe, enjoy judicial much more than political honors. THOMAS A. HENDRICKS, EX-UNITED STATES SENATOR FROM INDIANA. HE name of Hendricks is an honorable one in Indiana. WHliam Hendricks, a kinsman of Thomas, and an early- settler in the territory, was Secretary of the Constitu- tional Convention which formed the present Constitu- tion of the State, its first and only representative in Con- gress from 1816 to 1822 ; its Governor from 1822 to 1825, and a United States Senator from 1825 to 1837. Thomas, the subject of the present sketch, was born in Musk- ingum county, Ohio, September 7th, 1819. He graduated from^ S. Hanover College, Indiana, in 1841, studied law in Ohio and in Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, and was admitted to the bar in 1843. He removed immediately to Indianapolis, Indiana, and entered upon the practice of his profession, in which he soon attained reputation and success. But the law in Indiana as well as elsewhere in the West, is only a stepping-stone to a political career, and so Mr. Hendricks very naturally glided into politics. In 184:8, he was elected to the State Legislature, but the follow- ing year declined a re-election; in 1850, he was an active and useful member of the Indiana Constitutional Convention, and in the autumn of that year was elected to Congress from the Indianapolis district. He was re-elected in 1852, and at the expiration of his second term (in March, 1855,) was appointed ^"t ' 677 578 MEN OF OUR DAT. Commissioner of the General Land Office, in which post he was continued by President Buchanan, but iu 1859 resigned. In 1862, he was elected United States Senator, serving from 1863 to 1869, and was a member of several important com- mittees. Though belonging to and voting with the small Demo- cratic minority in the Senate, during his whole Senatorial term. Senator Hendricks was not factious or bitterly partisan. He secured the respect of his opponents by his manly and dignified course, and retained the confidence and regard of his constitu- ents, though the Republicans were in the ascendancy in the State during most of his term. » Since leaving the Senate, Mr. Hendricks, though active in politics, has not sought office. He exerts a controlling influence in Indiana, and has the confidence of the rank and file of the party, as a man of pure and patriotic motives. He has been often named for the Presidency, but is wise enough to see that his time has not yet come. He has recently been nominated by the Democrats for Governor of the State, and is understood to favor a coalition with the Liberal Republicans. WILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON. IILLIAM LLOYD GARRISON, one of the earliest, the most persistent, and consistent of American abolitionists, was born at Newburyport, Massachusetts, on the 12th of December, 1804. His mother was a native of the Province of New Brunswick, of English stock, born in the faith of the established church, beautiful, spirited, and gay. At the age of eighteen, she was led by curiosity to attend the meetings of some itinerant Baptists, was converted and became a member of that church. For this her parents closed their hearts and their doors against her, and she was indebted to an uncle for a home until ber marriage. She was a woman of marked in- dividuality, earnest convicUons, enthusiastic temperament, and possessed a native gift of eloquence in prayer and exhor- tation, which was frequently exercised in public, as was allowed by the custom of that denomination. His father, Abijah Garrison, was master of a vessel, engaged in the West India trade, and was possessed of considerable literary ability and taste. Unfortunately, however, he became a victim to in- temperance ; and, under its baneful influence, abandoned his family. Ilis wife, thus left with her children, in utter poverty, adopted the calling of a nurse ; and, in 1814, went to Lynn, Massachusetts, and "William was placed with Gamaliel Oliver, a Quaker shoemaker of that town, to learn the trade. So small 579 580 MEX OF OUR DAY, for his ngo, was ho, that his knees trembled under the weight of the hxpstone; and liis mother Ihidin};, at the end of a low months, that tho business would not agree with her boy, sent him hack to Nowburyport. There he was placed at sehod, and taught the usual ri>utine of New Mngland distriet schools, at that time — reading, writing, ciphering, and a little graninuir. lie lived in the family of Deaeou E/.ekiol Bartlett; ami, as an equivalent for his board, employed himself, when out of school, in assisting the deacon in his occupation of wood-sawyer, going with him from house to house. In 18 lo, ho ai>eonipanied his mother to Baltimore, where, after a year sjient in the capacity of " chore-boy," he returned to Nowburyport. Jn 1818, he was apprenticed to Moses Short, a cabinet-maker of Haverhill, Massachusetts, bi\t linding tho trade very repugnant to his feelings, ho finally succeeded in persuading his employer to release him, anil in October of the same year, became indentured to Kpliraim W. Allen, editor o[' the ^^ Ni'wbnryport //em/(/," to hvirn the art of printing. Ho Inul, at last, found an om[>loyment congenial to his tast(\>^, and speedily beeamo expert in tho mechanical part of the business. His mind, also, developed into activity ; and, when only sixteen or seventeen years of ago he began to conti'ibute to the columns of the j^aper, upon j^olitieal and other topics — carefully prosetving, however, his incognito. On one occasion, the apprentice, who thus had the pleasure of setting his own contributions in type, was the amused an 1 flattered recipient oi' a letter of thanks from his master, w' o urged him ti> continue his communications, A considerable time elapsed before Mr. Allen became aware that the correspondent, whose communications he so valued and eagerly welcomed, was his own apprentice. The ice once broken, however, young Garrison launched out somewhat more extensively in tho literary line, his contributions bei ng accepted, WILLIAM LLOYD (JAimiHON. 081 with inucli favor, by the; " A'a/c/n (iazdlv.^^ tlio ^^ JIavcrhill OuztUlc,^' und the ^^ JJuslou Conr/ncrcial (/azdle,^^ ospooially by the latter, the editor of wliieli, Samuel Ij. Knapp, was a iiiaii of marked eulturc and ;/ooy Itobert Walsh, then editor elling of a word, or shades of thought too nice to be distin- guished by any common mind, or in some other equally profitless pursuit, which should squander, rather than exercise his great gitls. But he was happily diverted to more profitable and useful labors, by the great events which occurred, just as he came into public life. 596 MEN OF OUR l^AY. It was the era of the first great anti-slaverj excitement. TLe whole country was in arms at the behest of the slave power, which demanded the putting down of the men who had dared to question its authority. For his attacks on this monster iniquity, William Lloyd Garrison, as we have already seen, wad first assailed with the most bitter and abusive language, and afterwards dragged through the streets of Boston by a mob, for his advocacy of the cause of freedom. The people of the North, with but few exceptions, were wedded to the idol of slavery, and were indignant that any man should dare to ofiend the South, by whose trade they had their gain. Phillips had witnessed the indignities offered to Garrison, and his cruel persecution for his bold defence of freedom against oppression; and the old patriotic, freedom-loving blood which had made the Phillipses among the foremost of the patriots of the Revolution, was stirred within him. He avowed himself an abolitionist and co-worker with Garrison in 1836, and in 1839 withdrew from the practice of law because he could not con- scientiously take the oath to support and defend the Constitu- tion of the United States, believing, as he did, that that docu- ment was tainted with complicity with slavery, and hence, aa he forcibly expressed it, was " a covenant with death and an agreement with hell." He threw himself into the front of the battle against slavery, and for thirty years and more has fought oppression ; at first with a little but gallant band, abused, hated, threatened, a price set on his head, and the object of all the obloquy and scorn men could visit on him. After years of this strife, in which he and Mr. Garrison were always the standard bearers, there began to be signs of coming success for their principles ; then Phillips always took a long stride forward, and fought on, waiting for the masses to advance. His mind is so constituted that so long as WENDELL PHILLIPS. 697 there is a possible good to be obtained, an ideal, however vague and shadowy, to be reached, he cannot rest, and if the whole world were to advance to his ideal of to-day, he would be found far beyond in the distance, with aims and hopes and ends yet to be attained. With how much of suffering and anxiety he has maintained this long struggle, none but himself can ever know. He put aside for it a brilliant future in his profession, and made opposi- tion to slavery the great business of his life. Yet such was his winning eloquence, his vast learning, and his brilliant and versatile powers as a lecturer, that when he could be induced to lecture on any other subject, he drew larger audiences than any other man. He knew the unpopularity of his favorite topic, and shrewdly availed himself of his great abilities to secure for it a hearing. For years, when the lecture com- mittees applied to him to address audiences and asked his terms, his reply was: " If I speak on slavery, nothing: if on any other subject, one hundred dollars." His first noteworthy speech on slavery was unpremeditated, but its thrilling eloquence told on the audience, nine-tenths of whom were bitter!y opposed to him. The occasion was this. In the autumn of 1837, Rev. E. P. Lovejoy had been murdered at Alton, Illinois, and his press broken up, by a mob, mostly from Missouri, on account of the anti-slavery principles he had avowed in his paper. A meeting was called in Boston, by Rev. W. E. Channing and others, to assemble in Faneuil Hall (the use of which was at first denied but finally reluctantly granted), to notice in a suitable manner Mr. Lovejoy's death as a martyr to freedom. After some addresses, a Mr. Austin, attorney- general of Massachusetts, rose and defended, in a very bitter and violent speech, the rioters, declared that Lovejoy came to hia death by his own imprudence, and that the utterance of such 598 MEN OP OUR DAY. sentiments as he had avowed, ought to be suppressed. Mr. Phillips replied in one of the most eloquent and scathing speeches ever delivered, running a parallel between the conduct of Warren at Bunker Hill, and Lovejoj at Alton, so effective, thai the audience, who had, at first, been determined that he should not be permitted to speak, at last greeted him with cheers. Mr. Phillips was most thoroughly in his element at the anni- versaries of the American Anti-Slavery Society, when, from year to year, he would review the progress made, and hail upon the pro-slavery leaders and partisans such a storm of invective, every sentence polished but keen as a battle axe, that those of them who were present would writhe under it, as if in intense agony. Year after year, such men as Isaiah Rynders and his comrades, would attempt to break up these anniversaries by mob-violence, and often was Mr. Phillips' life threatened ; but he coiild not be put down. There was that power and dignity in his manner, which would quell and silence the fiercest mob ; and when they were hushed, he would take the opportunity to say his severest and bitterest words. No man living excels him in power over an audience. The writer once listened to his lecture on Toussaint L'Ouverture, and was surprised to see a man in the audience well known as a Democrat and a strongly pro-slavery partisan, applauding him to the echo, and most vigorously in those passages which were most intensely anti-slavery, and most decided in their depre- ciation of the white general (Napoleon), as compared with the negro (Toussaint). At the close of the lecture, falling in with this Democrat, the writer could not avoid saying to him, "How happens it that you, an intense pro-slavery man, should applaud and enjoy the hard hita and telling blows of Wendell Phillips against slavery?" " Oh I" was the reply, "of course I don't believe a WENDELL PHILLIPS. 599 word he says, but he did say it so well and so neatly, that 1 couldn't help applauding." Nothing but genuine eloquence of the highest character could have produced such an effect as that. When Mr. Delane, of the London Times, was in this country, a friend asked him to go with him and hear Wendell Phillips; he declined at first, saying that he had no wish to listen to a foaming abolition lecture ; but at the urgent request of his friend finally consented. The lecture closed, his friend, who had watched his countenance during the lecture, asked how he was ]:)leased. " Pleased !" answered the editor, " I never heard any thing like it ; we have no orator in England who can compare with him. He is the most eloquent speaker living." Mr. Phillips has not expended all his force on opposition to slavery; temperance, peace, the rights of woman, and other measures of reform, have ever found in him a ready, powerful, and eloquent advocate. His devotion to woman partakes much of the lofty character of the best days of chivalry, and leads one inevitably to the conviction that his own wife must have very nearly filled his exalted ideal of the true woman. The few review articles from the pen of Mr. Phillips on other than reform topics, his published volume of orations, and the lectures on scientific subjects which he had delivered (the lec- ture on " The Lost Arts" has been repeated, it is said, many hun- dreds of times), indicate the breadth of his scholarship, and the great loss which science and literature have sustained, in relin- quishing him to become the Apostle of Reform. Since the war, Mr. Phillips has not, as Mr. Garrison did so gracefully, accepted the verdict of the people that his work was accomplished, and that henceforth he might peacefully enjoj the victories which his good sword had won. A little younger than his friend Garrison, he has more of the Ironsides blood iu 600 MEN OF OUR DAY. him than he, and he prefers to fight on, though it be with invisible foes, or even with windmills, like the chivalric Don Quixote. His ideal man is placed on a higher level than ever before, and his long continued use of invective has made him soured and bitter toward all men who do not fully come up to it. He is a man who will always do best to head a forlorn hope, always win the greatest triumphs when in a minority. Indeed it is impossible for him to be anywhere else. The atmosphere of a majority, in agreement with him, oppresses him as an en- -closed house does a Rocky Mountain trapper. He cannot breathe in it. Though affiliated by all his past labors and the convictions ..of many years with the Republican party, he persistently refuses to work with it ; now denouncing its candidates with the utmost bitterness, and anon accepting a nomination, without the slightest hope of success, for Governor, from the Labor- Reform party; an apostle of temperance for five and thirty years, he accepts the support of the Anti^Prohibitory Liquor Law men in Massachusetts, to shatter and rend the party there from whom he has received all his honors and applause ; and after thus seeking its disruption, turns about and berates it furiously for not doing as he desired. But these vagaries are, after all, but spots on the sun ; we could wish them away, or at all events less conspicuous ; we could wish our peerless orator more practical and more tractable ; but we cannot forget his brave deeds when he stood almost alone against the world; we cannot cease to remember that he was in those days always in the forefront of the hottest battle ; and though some of the hard blows he then received have made the veteran a little crusty, yet we can well afford to bear with him for the good he has done in the past. WENDELL PHILLIPS. 601 In private life Mr. Phillips bears the reputation of being one of the most genial and lovable of men, and in all the social relations of family and friends, his presence adds new zest to society, and gives increased pleasure to the circles which are favored with it. GERRIT SMITH EKE we called upon to point out a man whose whole course of life had been controlled, both in public and private, by the conscientious desire to obey the great law of love, " whatsoever things ye would that men should do unto you, do ye even so unto them," we should have no hesitation in selecting Gerrit Smith as that man. He may have erred in judgment at times ; his measures for accomplishing good may have failed, in some instances, either from their own imperfection, or the weakness, stupidity or un- worthiness of those whom he has sought to benefit ; he may, in his anxieties to benefit his fellow-man, have been led into erroneous and dangerous views of the plans, purposes, and revelation of Him, v.'hom yet, in his heart of hearts, we believe be reverently worships ; but of his earnest desire to do his whole duty to his fellow-man there can be no question. Gerrit Smith was born in Utica, New York, March 6th, 1797. His father, Hon. Peter Smith, was known in the early part of the present century as one of the largest land-holders in the United States. At his death his great fortune was divided mainly between his two sons, Peter Sken Smith and Gerrit Smith, the former receiving the larger share of the personal, and the latter the greater part of the real estate. Gerrit Smith was graduated at Hamilton college, Clinton, 602 GERRIT SMITH. . 603 New York, in 1818. He never entered himself as a student of law, but was admitted to practice in the State and Federal courts of New York in 1853, and has participated in several important trials. His philanthropic disposition led him at an early age to take an active part in the benevolent enterprises of the day. In 1825, he connected himself with the American Colonization Society, in the hope that it would facilitate the emancipation of the slaves. He contributed largely to its funds, but finally becoming satisfied that it was not the intention of its founders or directors to promote general emancipation, he withdrew from it in 1835, and has been ever since identified, heart and soul, with the voting portion of the anti-slavery party. Gifted with a simple and natural eloquence, very effective with the masses, he has plead the cause of the slave for thirty years past with great earnestness, and a confiding faith in the eventual triumph of the principles of emancipation ; and that his faith might not be unsustained by works, he has given, with a princely liberality, to every effort for the promotion of the abolition of slavery. It is a characteristic of Mr. Smith's mind that he must push his views of philanthropy to their ultimate logical conclusions, and he cannot rest in any thing short of these. Thus holding that slavery was wrong, and that no man had a right to enjoy the rewards of the enforced labor of another, he came to the farther conclusion, that it was wrong to purchase or use any thing produced by the labor of the slave, and hence he refused to wear or use any article made of cotton, unless he could be satisfied that it was free labor cotton, any sugar except that produced by free labor, any rice except that grown in India or China. But his philanthropy was not confined to the slave; the 604 . MEN OF OUR DAY. victim of intemperance was equally an object of his syinpatby and commiseration, and his own eloquence, and bis means, were freely expended in the endeavor to restrain or prohibit the sale of intoxicating drinks. He was strongly opposed to the use of tobacco, and aided in the publication and circulation of tracts to dissuade people from its use. He believed woman oppressed by the laws, and exerted himself to have them changed so aa to better her condition. He aided in prison reformation and the establishment of juvenile reformatories ; and when the news of the attempts to fasten slavery iipon Kansas came to his ears, though in general a peace-man and non-resistant, he contributed largely for the purchase of Sharp's rifles, and for the outfit and forwarding of large bodies of sturdy northern settlers to that territory. Though by inheritance and purchase from his fellow-heirs, one of the largest land-holders in the United States, he had convinced himself of the wrongfulness of land monopoly, and practically illustrated his views, by distributing two hundred thousand acres of land, partly among institutions of learning, but mostly among the poor white and black men, to whom he allotted, in tracts of about fifty acres, one hundred and twenty thousand acres of land, accompanying the deed in many instances with a sum of money sufficient to enable them to erect a cabin, and procure a little stock. Some of his colonists did well ; but many, a majority, we fear, proved unworthy of his kindness, and after receiving his bounty, abandoned their lands, and reviled him because he would not support them in idleness. It was in connection with these gifts of land, that he first became acquainted with John Brown, afterward of Kansas. Mr. Brown was of great service to him in the care and instruc- tion of his colored colonists, and some of them, under his influence, did well. In the Kansas troubles, Mr. Smith put GERRIT SMITH. 605 money into Brown's hands frequently, to distribute among the poor in that territory. Brown visited him a few months before his Harper's Ferry raid, but did not communicate to him his plans. In 1852, Mr. Smith was elected to Congress from the twenty- second Congressional district of New York, but resigned at the close of the first or long session, on account of the pressure of his private affairs, and his extreme disrelish for public life. After the John Brown raid, in 1859, an attempt was made by Virginians, and other pro-slavery leaders, to identify hirn and other prominent anti-slavery men at the North with the move- ment, and to demonstrate that it was an extensive conspiracy against the South. The charge was absolutely false ; but Mr. Smith being at the time in very feeble health, and being excited by the virulent attacks made upon him, became for a short time insane. He speedily, however, recovered his reason, with the improvement of his general health. In 1861, he entered with great spirit and patriotism into the efforts for raising regiments and sustaining the Government in a vigorous prosecution of the war. He addressed a number of large gatherings on this subject, and, as usual, gave liberally for it. The war over, he inclined to the policy of extreme mercy to the South, and in May, 1867, at the request of one of Mr. Jefferson Davis's counsel, became one of the signers of his bail- bond, qualifying in the sum of five thousand dollars for hi3 appearance. His course in the matter, like that of Mr. Greeley, occasioned considerable animadversion, but both gentlemen defended themselves by published letters, to the best of their ability. For several years past, Mr. Smith has advocated, both by published speeches, and public essays and appeals, a larger liberty of opinion, and freedom from what he believed the 606 WEN OF OUR DAY, bondage of sect. These views, which at first took only the form of a protest against denominationalism, have gradually, from his habit of pushing his speculations to their ultimate conclusions, developed into a modified deism, rejecting many of the cardinal doctrines of the Christian faith, and assailing, with great vehemence, the Christian church, and to some extent, the Scriptures. In this crusade he has made very few converts, and in common with most of' his friends, we believe his errors to be rather of the head than the heart. Under his abundant, almost lavish giving, Mr. Smith's princely estate has diminished till he is now comparatively poor. Yet his generous nature remains, and we doubt not he suffers more than the applicant for his bounty, when he is obliged to denv or diminish the amount of his beneficence. Mr. Smith published a volume of his "Speeches in Congress,*' in 1856 ; a volume entitled " Sermons and Speeches by Gerrit Smith," in 1861 ; and numberless pamphlets and broad sheets. His latest pamphlets are, '' The Theologies," 1866 ; " Nature's Theology," 1867; "A Letter from Gerrit Smith to Albert Barnes.'' 1868 ; and several other pamphlets, mostly political, in 1870-72. He has taken very decided ground in favor of Presi- dent Grant's reelection, and against his old friend Greeley, in the spring and summer of 1872. REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER. IE hazard little in saying that there is no living nan in America whose name is more widely known than that of the Plymouth pastor. Other clergymen, other public lecturers, other authors, other reformers (for he is equally popular in all these capacities), may have a wide spread local reputation ; they may be quite well known in one section or another of the country, and their names may have some currency in all sections, but from the inhabitant of the re- motest province of the Dominion of Canada on the northeast, to the Rio Grande in the southeast, from Alaska to the Capes of Florida, there is no man of ordinary intelligence, black or white, who does not know something of Henry Ward Beecher. Yet this man has held no civil office, or been a candidate for any ; he has commanded no armies, fought no battles with carnal weapons ; he is not a millionaire, nor has he ever pos- sessed the fortune to endow or establish a college, a hospital, a seminary, or an asylum. He is eloquent, but he has not the musical voice, nor does he utter the polished periods of Phillips, or the grand and stately sentences of Sumner ; he is brave and fearless, but pluck is not so rare an attribute in American character, as to make its possessor an object of such universal note. 607 603 MEN OF OUR DAY. Yet it is certain that he possesses qualities and talents which have made him, in some respects, the foremost man, and the finest representative of the best traits of American character our country has yet produced. For twenty-five years, he has drawn to the plain church edifice in which he preaches, in winter and summer, in spring and autumn, a constant congregation of from twenty-five hundred to three thousand persons, in fair weather and foul, and very often hundreds more have endeavored in vain to get within the sound of his voice. Among his audiences, are men from every State in the Union, some of them renting sittings for the year, to secure seats during the month or two they may be in New York. The annual rental of the pews of this church brings in a revenue of from $50,000 to $60,000, and has steadily increased from year to year. !N o such audience could have been maintained for a fourth of that period by any clap-trap or artifice on the part of the preacher; certainly not in a community as intelligent as that of Brooklyn. But the delivering of three discourses a week, of such wonderful freshness, originality, and eloquence, that when re- ported for the press, as they have been regularly, they have secured hundreds of thousands of readers (and during the w^hole period of twenty-one years, he has never repeated a sermon, so affluent is his imagination, and so abundant his mental re- sources), and the pastoral care of a church now numbering about two thousand members, have by no means exhausted the extraordinary vitality of this remarkable man. During a period of ten or twelve years, he was a constant contributor to the Indepencknt newspaper, his articles being signed with an asterisk, and was generally, but erroneously supposed to be the editor of the paper. From 1861 to 1863, he was its editor-in- REV. HENRY WARD BEECH ER. 609 chief, and wrote such vigorous stirring leaders, .is are seldom found anywhere, and after withdrawing from that paper he was a constant contributor to others, and since 1869 has been the brilliant editor of the ChristiaH Union, now the most widely cir culated religious paper in the world. For the whole twenty-rive years he has been an able and promi- nent leader in most oi the measures of reform, addressing audiences all over the country at least thirty or forty times in the course of the year, on Anti-Slavery and Republican topics, Temperance, the Reformation of Morals, Juvenile Reform, etc., and until the past two or three years delivered about fifty lyceum lectures a year, trom Maine to Minnesota. As the best extemporaneous platform speaker in America, he has always been in demand on all anniversary occasions, and never failed to acquit himself with credit. He has found time to prepare several books of his own, and to revise volumes of his sermons, selected passages from his discourses, etc., which others have compiled. Within the past year and a half he has written and published, first as a newspaper serial, and afterwards as a volume, a novel of New England', life, and is now engaged upon a "Life- of Christ," of which the first volume has recently appeared. In the abundance of these avocations, and the immense correspon- dence which they necessitate, he finds leisure for the cultivation of his artistic tastes, and his intense love of the beautiful, both in nature and art. lie ranks very high as a connoisseur in all art matters. Ilis bouse is filled with choice pictures; his large library contains the best works on art, many of them with costly illustrations ; and both in Brooklyn and at his Peekskill farm,, where he spends much of his time during the later summer and> early autumn, he has a great profusion of flowers. Let us turn now to the life history of this man, so wonderful for his genius, the versatility of his talents and his untiring 39 610 MEN OF OUR DAY. industry, and see if, by so doing, we can obtain any insight into the sources of his great powers. The Beecher family is one of extraordinary gifts and intel- lectual power. They trace their ancestry to John Beecher, who came over to New England with Davenport in 1636, and set- tled, with his mother, in New Haven, His descendants seem to have been favored in their choice of wives, and some of the best Scotch and Welsh blood in the nation has mingled with the powerful physique of the English stock, to produce a combination of remarkable vitality and intellectual energy. Eev. Lyman Beecher, D, D., the father of Henry Ward, was one of the most remarkable men of the last generation. It was said of him that he was the father of more brains than any other man in America," and the remark was undoubtedly true. Of his thirteen children eleven grew up to adult age, and all his seven sons became clergymen, and most of them were distinguished for intellectual ability, while of the four daughters, two. Miss Catharine E. Beecher, and Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, have won a world-wide reputation, the former by her able works on education, physiological, social, intel- lectual and domestic ; the latter by her brilliant fictions, which have achieved a greater success than was ever accorded to those of any other writer. Dr. Lyman Beecher was brought up on a farm, but entered Yale college in 1793, and graduated in 1797, with a fair standing. He was a vigorous original thinker, and after he entered the ministry soon attained a high reputation for the keenness of his dialectic powers, and the energv and fire which he threw into his public and private teachings. He vras eloquent, wonderfully so, after, his fashion, and his powerful denunciations of intemperance, and of the Unitarian dogmas, have never been surpassed in vividness or point. He wrote, too, on controversial subjects, with decided REV. HENRY WARD BKECHER. 611 ability, and his written productions were remarkahle for finish and purity of style. He was successively pastor of a Presby- terian church at Easthampton, Long Island, a Congregational cliurch at Litchfield, Connecticut, and the Hanover Square (afterwards Bowdoin street) Congregational church, Boston. In 1882, at the age of nearly fifty-seven, he was called to the presi- dency of the Lane Theological seminary, near Cincinnati, Ohio, where he remained till 1851, when he returned to Boston, and in 1856 to Brooklyn, where his last years were spent. He was thrice married. His first wife, the mother of Henry Ward Beecher, was a Miss Eoxana Foote of Guilford, Connecticut, a woman of remarkable intellectual powers, great personal attrac- tions, and a most gentle, lovely, and engaging temper. The subject of our sketch inherits, from his father, his abundant vitality, his intellectual vigor and earnestness, his overflowing humor, and his power to move and thrill the masses ; and from his mother, his artistic tastes, his fondness for nature, his intui- tions toward the beautiful, and that delicacy, tact, refinement and amiability, which have made him so widely popular. Henry Ward Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut, June 24, 1813. The first thirteen years of his life were passed in this quiet rural village, which had then a circle of intellec- tual, cultivated men and women, such as are not often found in much larger towns. When he was but little more than three years of age, he lost his mother, a great loss for a sensitive, affectionate, and thoughtful child ; but one made up, in part, by the influence of the gifted and accomplished woman, who, some fourteen months later, took her place as the wife of Dr. Beecher. It is indicative of his thoughtfulness and affection, young as he was, at the time of his mother's death, that having heard that she was to be buried in the ground, and again that she had gone to heaven, he commenced digging very earne.stly under the 612 MEX OF OUR DAY. Window of her room, and could hardly be persuaded to desist, saying that " he wanted to dig down and get to heaven, where his mamma wa8." As he grew older, lie was a healthy, robust boy, active in all outdoor sports and exercises, a little clumsy perhaps, but affec- tionate and loving. He gave at this time but little promise of his subsequent intellectual power ; his voice was husky and thick, and he spoke so indistinctly that it was a cause of anxiety to his family ; he was shy, and had the misfortune of losing his memory, or rather becoming confused, from shyness, when called on to repeat what he had learned. In one of those inter- esting reminiscences of his childhood, in which he is prone to indulge in his lecture-room talks, he tells us that he was at times very unhappy in childhood, from the difficulty he found in obtaining from any body any clear explanations of the great ethical and theological questions which haunted his soul. He had been brought up under a very rigid, Calvinistic training, and the dogmas of that creed puzzled and distressed him, and any efforts which were made to explain them, only confused him the more. In the end, however, this exercise of the mind with great, though but partially understood thoughts, may have been a benefit, for it made him more anxious, in ois own minis- try, to use the utmost clearness and simplicity in explaining these truths to the young, the simple and the ignorant. On his father's removal to Boston, he found himself in a new sphere. He was sent to the Boston Latin school, but the impatience of what seemed to him unmeaning forms, and the deficiency of his verbal memory, made the formal training there inexpressibly irksome to him. The wharves, and the ships, with their precious cargoes from the far orient, which lay beside them, roused his passion for the sea, and boy like, he resolved to become a sailor. His father somehow ascertained his restless craving, and like a BEV. HENRY WARD BEECHER. 613 skilfal tactician, did not discourage it, but turned it into a better channel. He was sent to the Mount Pleasant school, at Amherst, Massachusetts, to study mathematics and other branches, to qualify himself, should he subsequently desire it, to enter the navy. Here, he fell under the care of excellent and skilful teachers, who roused his interest and ambition in mathematical studies; by careful and protracted training greatly improved his elocution, and gave him that impulse to study which made him a really brilliant student. Physiological stu- dies, and indeed those appertaining to physical science generally, had a strong attraction for him, and the charming illustrations drawn from nature and natural scenery which have begemmed so many of his discourses and lectures, have been among the re- sults of these favorite pursuits. Though decidedly a religious man in his college course (for he entered Amherst college in 1830) the superabundance of the humorous element in his nature, made him something of a wag, never given to malicious or practical jokes, but brimfull and-. running over with fun; and those who know him now, do not need to be assured that he did not leave all his humorous propensities behind him at Amherst. Yet this ga}'-, joyous temper, was but the sparkle and foam at the surface ; below it there were depths of earnest tenderness, which demonstrated the truth of the old ejugram, that "tears are akin to laughter." His thorough previous training had given him more than the usual time for general reading and culture, and apart from his physiological and phrenological researches, he read largely of the works of the great divines and authors of the seventeenth century, and thus imbibed that intense love for the vigorous Saxon of that period, which has been one of the many elements of his great success as a preacher. The taste thus formed has been since sedulously cultivated, and it would surprise a person 614 MEN OF OUR DAY. whose attention had not previously been called to it, to note how verj few words, not of direct Saxon origin, are to be found in his sermons. He has, indeed, been charged with making an unwarrantable use of the sermons of the old divines, but the charge is as absurd as it would be to accuse him of borrowing from Webster's dictionary. He has borrowed their quaint modes of thought, at times, but that was inevitable in the effort to express the ideas of our time, in the garb of Saxon undeiiled which they used and delighted in. Beyond this there has been no plagiarism on his part. His college course was not completed till 1834, two years after his father had accepted the presidency of Lane seminary, and thither he went to pursue his theological studies, and to find his father in the fore-front of the fierce battle, then waging between the old and new school parties in the Presbyterian church. Under such circumstances, his theological training was likely to be dialectic, rather than practical ; but it was not in the power of even his father's great influence to make him a controversialist. He reverenced his father, and, as in duty bound, took up arms in his defence, but his own theology was of a more peaceful, even if a less logical character, and though in the battle, he was not of it. His theological course completed, he married, and was ordained as pastor of a Presbyterian church in Lawrenceburg, Indiana. His fine descriptive powers, and the intensely sympathetic character of his preaching, led to his transference, two years later (in 1839), to the pastorate of the First Presbyterian church in Indianapolis. Here a wide door opened before him. He had not been long a resident of the capital of the State, before his church was thronged with crowds, eager to hear the young preacher, whose vivid word painting and power, in presenting Christ in his relations to humanity in all the forms of joy and sorrow, was something so REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER. 615 new and impressive. He delivered a course of lectures to young men while in Indianapolis, which were published, and had an immense sale, which has continued to the present day. Even thus early, his tendency to combine, with his pastoral duties, labors not usually regarded as clerical, began to manifest itself. For a few months before his ordination, he had edited the organ of the Presbyterian church, at Cincinnati, in the absence of its responsible editor ; but at Indianapolis, in addition to his other duties, he undertook the editorship of an agricultural paper, and discussed, learnedly and interestingly too, the rota- tion of crops, manures, the best methods of cultivation, breeds of cattle, horses and swine, and other topics which most interest the farmer. He could not avoid, however, having a depart- ment for floriculture, and in that he poured out the wealth of his love of nature. The paper was popular, and reached a large circulation for a paper of that class. Meantime his reputation as a preacher was growing also. Eastern men, making a tour of the West, were attracted by the fame of the young Indianapolis pastor, went to hear him from curiosity, and were delighted. Some of these men being about to establish a new Congregational church in Brooklyn, New York, resolved to make the effori to obtain him for their pastor. Their call was, after some hesitation, accepted, and in the autumn of 1847, he entered upon his labors with this new church in Brooklyn, to which the name of Plymouth church had been given. They met at first, and till their church edi- fice was erected, in a rude, plain, but capacious " tabernacle ;" and this was at once filled to overflowing. It very soon be- came the fashion to "go and hear Beecher;" and those who went once, were very sure to come again. The boyish-looking pastor (for though thirty-four years old when he removed to Brooklyn, he had a very youthful appearance), with his easy, 616 MEN OF OUR DAT. careless ways, had a faculty, when the inspiratioa was on him, of winning all hearts, now creating a smile by the aptness and homeliness of some illustration, or by the slight touch of humor which he could not wholly suppress, and anon melting them to tears by his deep pathos, and his vivid portrayal of the Divine love. When the church edifice was completed, that too was soon filled, nay, crammed, with eager listeners. People said that it would not last ; that as soon as the excitement was over, his congregation would dwindle till it was no larger than that of other pastors : but it has kept up to its first standard, or rather increased, for twenty-fiive years. Repeated attempts have been made by other denominations to find a man who would draw to their churches such a body of worshippers, but in vain. Meantime, Mr. Beecher never seemed elated by his success ; he knew, of course, as every strong man does, his power, but it did not make him vain. His church grew in numbers, and has been, for years past the largest evangelical church m the Northern States, if not in the country. In the Sunday-school, in the mission -schools, and in its ample support of all noble and good enterprises, Plymouth church has been worthy of its pastor. When he was installed as pastor, the congregation gave him a yearly salary of fifteen hundred dollars. They have increased it, till now, for two or three years past, it has been twenty thousand dollars. As we have already said, Mr. Beecher does a vast amount of work outside of his duties as preacher and pastor. He has so much vitality, such a power for work in him, that he would be wretched if he could not expend his vital force on good and worthy objects. He has made good use of his physiological studies in keeping himself always in the best possible condition for efl&cient labor. He takes much active exercise, avoids EEV. HENRY WAKD BEECHER. 617 whatever is likely to impair his health, and trains himself to those economies of time and toil which are the result of thorough system. When he works intellectually it is with all his might, and when he rests, he does it as thoroughly. Ilia labors as contributor and editor of the Independent, his plat- form speeches, his lectures, his efforts to benefit the city of his adoption, his active political canvass in 1856 and 1860, for Fremont and Lincoln, his great expenditure of time, strength, zeal and money in raising the Long Island regiment and other troops for the war, his constant and effective labors in behalf of the Sanitary and Christian Commissions, and the efforts necessary to keep so large a congregation at a white heat, in their interest in behalf of the war and its objects, though in him only the natural and easy manifestation of hia great capacity for work, would have been of themselves more than most men could have endured. Yet except during hia visit to Eugland in 1863, he intermitted none of his ordinary pulpit labors during the war, nor did he manifest any less than his usual fervor and eloquence in them. It must be acknowledged, however, that his extraordinary exertions, during the first two years of the war, together with the editorial charge of the Independent^ and his duties as preacher and pastor, had, for once, sapped his strength, and were making inroads upon a constitution so vigorous as pre- viously to require no seasons of relaxation and rest. He found himself compelled to take a voyage to England, and endeavor thus to restore his wasted strength, and fit himself the better for the arduous toils yet to come. It was his intention, as he went solely for the restoration of his health, not to preach or speak in public during his absence, and to this resolution he adhered during his first visit to England and while on tlie Con- tinent. But, on his return to England, in October, 1863, he 618 MEN OF OUR DAY. found that our friends there required encouragement, and that there was a necessity for disabusing the minds of the English people of the errors and falsehoods, which had been widely pro- pagated among them by the emissaries of the South. He spoke at Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Liverpool, and London, to audiences of many thousands, and though, in Manchester and Liverpool, the friends of the rebellion had assembled mobs to prevent his speaking, and had attemped to accomplish this, not only by noise, but by threats of personal violence, he succeeded, by dint of fearlessness, good humor, and the power of his voice, in calming the tumult and making himself heard on all the points of the controversy between the two great parties at home, as well as on the dif&culties between the United States and European nations. These addresses were of great service iu strengthening the hearts of our friends in England, in diffusing correct and much needed information in regard to the real issues at stake, and in encouraging the true men at home. It was a noble service, nobly rendered. After his return, Mr. Beecher entered with renewed zeal upon the work of aiding our soldiers, providing for the wounded and their families, and upholding the administratiou, during the trying period of the great battle year, 1864. After the close of the war, he went to Charleston, and assisted in raising the old flag upon Sumter, making an eloquent address on the occasion. Since that time, in addition to his clerical and editorial labors (on the Christian Union, since 1869,) he has been active in other literary enterprises, has devoted much time to public addresses of all sorts, political, literary and religious; and during the past year (1872) has delivered a course of theological lectures on jreaching (on the Safe foundation) to the Yale Divinity School. Mr. Beecher's disposition, though brave, as becomes his REV. HENRY WARD BEECHER. 619 lineage, is yet greatly inclined to mercy. When the war was over he was in favor of the formula of Mr. Greeley, " Uni- versal Amnesty and Universal Suffrage," and was so much inclined to forgive the rebels, whom he supposed to be gene- rally penitent, that he would have been disposed to accept the universal amnesty without the suffrage, for the present, believ- ing that this would come by and by. He had full confidence, too, in Mr. Johnson's good faith and real desire for the recon- struction of the rebellious States on righteous and just prin- ciples. For a while, these views alienated from him some of those who had long been his warmest friends, and caused those who had been his bitter enemies to praise him, and to offer him political positions. This and the course of events soon opened his eyes to the false position in which the promptings of his generous nature had placed him. It is needless to say, that he had never, for an instant, faltered in his devotion to the great principles for which he and his friends had so long contended. It was only a question of the propriety of certain measures, and ere long, he saw his mistake, and took his place with the earnest friends of reconstruction on the principles laid down by Congress. In the campaign of 1872 he supported President Grant, though not with the ardor of some of his previous campaign speeches, and with a fairness and justice toward those who held other views, which was higiily honorable to him and worthy of gen- eral imitation by public speakers. We conclude, then, this sketch of Mr. Beecher, with the earnest hope that a life, so full of usefulness, so active in 'every good cause, so earnest in the promotion of all patriotic meas- ures, may be long protracted, and that a generation yet to come may be blessed by his ministrations. MATTHEW SIMPSON, D.D., LL.D., BISHOP OF THE METUODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. HE bishopric of the Methodist Episcopal Church involves for the discharge of its multifarious duties such an in finitude of labor, such constant and active exercise of all a man's powers, physical, intellectual and moral, that it seems wonderful that any of the bishops can ever find a moment's opportunity to get out of the rut of official duty. There are Conferences to be presided over, on both sides of the continent, causes to be heard and decided (for the bishops are each in their way appellate judges), the missionary affairs, involving an expenditure of one or two millions, to be superin- tended, and the other great interests of the denomination looked after, and rightfully or wrongfully, every itinerant who has just the charge he did not want, and every church which has just the pastor they did not ask for, feels that the bishop has been led astray by some enemy of theirs. But if this is ordinarily the case, how much more onerous have been the duties of the bishops for the last few years, when owing to the death of seve- ral of their number, and the failing health of others, the work which eight men could not acccomplish, and for which sixteen would not have been too many, was laid upon the shoulders of four, none of them very vigorous. How a man so overworked can find time for any literary or philanthropic labor outside of his offie^ial duties passes our comprehension. Yet Bishop Simp- 620 MATTHEW SIMPSON, D.D., LL.D. 621 son has, during the past ten or twelve years, accomplished an amount of work outside of his episcopal duties which most men would consider sufficient to entitle them to a retiring pension. Matthew Simpson was born in Cadiz, Ohio, June 21st, 1810. While he was yet an infant his father died, and his mother, an accomplished and highly educated woman of great piety and judgment, undertook to educate him for the ministry. She early grounded him in the English branches, and finding him an apt and ready scholar, with a remarkable facility for acquiring the languages, encouraged him to commence the study of Ger- man when he was but eight years of age. He mastered the language so readily that the following year he read the Bible through in German. He subsequently studied Latin, Greek and Hebrew, as well as some of the modern languages. He also became a proficient in physical and philosophical studies. In 1829, he graduated from Madison College, though he had attended but very few terms there. The same year he joined the Methodist Church, but seemed averse to preparing himself for the ministry, which had been the goal of his mother's hopes. He preferred, on the contrary, the medical profession, and after a very thorough course of medical ,study, graduated M. D. in 1833. But though he entered upon the practice of his profession with zeal and the best prospect of success, his mother's prayers and entreaties still followed him, and almost without being con- scious of it, he found himself drawn toward the ministry. At first he contented himself with exercising his gifts according to the custom of his church as a local preacher ; but presently he began to devote himself to theological studies. In 1835, he was admitted to deacon's orders, and in 1837, entered the itineracy. But while he possessed rare abilities as a preacher, his thorough and extensive scholarship caused his services to be in demand for the collegiate institutions of his church. In 1839, he was 622 MEN OF OUR DAY. called to the Presidency of Indiana Asbury University, and in 1841, transferred to the Vice-Presidency of Alleghany College, and the Professorship of Natural Sciences there. He remained in this position till 1851, but from 1848 took upon him the added duties of editor of the Western (now the Pittsburgh) Christian Advocate, which he conducted with marked ability till his elevation to the bishopric in 1852. He was, when elected, the youngest of the bishops, and though all have been abundant in their labors, and several have gone down to their graves from overwork, it is no disparagement to the others to say that Bishop Simpson has been the hardest worker in the episcopate. Blessed with a vigorous constitution, great powers of endurance, and a remarkable aptitude for the rapid dispatch of business, he had not until the last year shown any symptoms of exhaustion under his multitudinous labors. But of late his physicians have insisted that absolute rest was necessary to the preservation of his valuable life. From 1852 to 1860, as the junior bishop, his duties were per- haps no more arduous than those of his colleagues, though as a pulpit orator of rare eloquence and power, he was constantly called upon to preach or deliver addresses on subjects not con- nected strictly with his episcopal duties, and sometimes not with Methodism itself. But after the commencement of the war, how the man did work ! While neglecting none of his ofl&cial duties, he seemed the very embodiment of patriotism, and like a fire on the prairies, he set everything around him aflame with his zeal. He was an intimate friend and often the wise and judicious counsel- lor of President Lincoln ; from East to West he preached and lectured on the duty of the people to uphold our Government, and rendered more efficient aid than almost any other man to the Christian and Sanitary Commissions. His eloquence in MATTHEW SIMPSON, D.D., LL.D. 623 pleading the cause of our country and its wounded heroes was unsurpassed, and after his appeals, so full of pathos, so touching in their simple beauty, his audiences with eyes streaming with tears, were ready to empty their purses into the colIecto;'s' plates, only lamenting that they were not larger and fuller. Other clergymen of all denominations labored zealously, and accom.plished great things for the country in its hour of extreme need ; but I think only one, or perhaps two others * equalled Bishop Simpson in the vast extent of their beneficent influence over the nation. Certainly no one surpassed him in this regard. Since the war, though overtasked with his episcopal duties from the unprecedented mortality among his colleagues, Bishop Simpson has not lost his interest in his country. Often, amid the utmost weariness and physical exhaustion, he has lifted up his voice in warning of national errors or in the encouragement of the nation's faith, and it is largely due to his powerful influ- ence that the great denomination of which he has been so earnest and faithful a leader has kept step so truly and uniformly to the music of the Union. "We can spare our politicians ; a hundred of them might die and our country and the world be none the worse ; but a stanch, earnest, true-hearted patriot like Bishop Simpson cannot be spared. May it please God long to preserve his life to benefit our ^nation and the world. * Rev. Henry Ward Beecher, and possibly Bishop Rosecrans (Roman Catholic) of Ohio. JAY COOKE, BANKER AND FINANCIER. fe6/f N the times tLat tried men s souls, the dark days of our ^i . . ■^ Qi\\ revolutionary epoch, there was a time when there was ^^f the greatest possible danger that the sufferings, the ^ bloodshed, and the sacrifices of our patriotic heroes, might all fail of accomplishing our independence, from the want of the sinews of war, the means of paying the troops, of supplying rations, clothing, arms, and ammunition. At this crisis, when the treasury of the confederation was bankrupt, and there seemed no more room for hope, a Philadelphia banker, Robert Morris by name, came forward, and taking upon his own shoulders the financial burden of the nascent republic, obtained for it, by the pledge of his own credit and private re- sources, the aid it could not otherwise command. To this noble, self sacrificing patriot, as much perhaps as to any other man of the revolutionary period, not less even than to Washington himself, do we owe it, that we are not, to this day, dependencies of the British crown. In our second war of independence, so recently passed, a war which has had no parallel in ancient or modern times, in the extent of the forces brought into the field, or the vast scale of its expenditure, we had at one time drawn fearfully near the vortex of national bankruptcy. Our currency was greatly 624 !i.;RAVEDBy Samuel SARTAiM.Piiii. JAY COOKE. 625 depreciated, the paper dollar being at one time worth, in tho market, but about thirtj-six cents in coin, and the prices of all goods of permanent value being inflated to such an extent as to alarm the cautious, and portend speedy ruin. Meantime the exigencies of the war demanded a constantly increasing force in the field, and the expenditure of the Government, mainly for the army and navy, was enlarging till it approached three mil- lions of dollars a day. At this juncture, when the ablest financial secretary who ever controlled the national treasury was almost in despair, another Philadelphia banker. Jay Cooke by name, brought to the aid of the Government his enterprise, financial skill and extensive credit, and undertook for a pittance which, if he had failed of complete success, would not have been sufficient to iiave saved him from utter ruin, to negotiate and sell a loan of five hundred' millions of dollars, an amount which would have staggered the Rothschilds. He not only accomplished this, but subsequently,, to meet the pressing wants of Government, sold eight hundred' and thirty millions more. More fortunate than Mr. Morris, in- that he did not, in the final result, lose his own fortune, but by the extraordinary enterprise he manifested, paved the way for' other and more profitable undertakings with private corpora- tions, Mr. Cooke yet manifested a spirit as truly patriotic as Mr. Morris, and like him, is entitled to the honor of rescuing' the nation from threatened bankruptcy. The Cooke family trace their lineage back to Francis Cooke,. one of the godly and goodly men who formed the company which' landed at Plymouth, Massachusetts, in the Mayflower, in 1620, and who erected the third house built in Plymouth. Of his- descendants one branch emigrated to Connecticut, and another to northern New York. From the latter stock, some of the descendants of which are still living in Granville, Washington 40 026 MEN OF OUR DAT. county, New York, came the father of Jay Cooke, Eleutheroa Cooke, an eminent lawyer and political leader of northern Ohio, Eleutheros Cooke was born in Middle Granville, New York, received a collegiate education, studied law, and after practicing for a few years in Saratoga and its vicinity, removed, with a company of his neighbors, to the vicinity of Sandusky, Ohio, in 1817. Here he speedily attained distinction in his profession, ranking as the leading lawyer of that part of the State, and being the first Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of Ohio. An active and influential Whig, he was elected to numerous positions of trust and honor, was the representative of his district in the State Legislature for many years, and in 1831 was elected to Congress. In his early candidacy for the State Legislature he found his name (Eleutheros) a great disadvantage ; the illiterate Germans of Seneca county could not comprehend, or write it correctly, and he was at one time defeated, by the throwing out by Democratic judges of a thousand ballots for defective spelling. lie determined thenceforward to give his children short and simple names. His eldest he called Pitt, after the great English minister; the second. Jay, after our illustrious chief justice, a third, Henry, and so on. Jay Cooke, the second son of this family, was born at Port- land (now Sandusky), Huron county, Ohio, August 10, 1821. His early education was obtained at home, for there were few good schools in that region at that early period. But though it was home teaching, it was none the less thorough on that account. Mr. Cooke was very anxious to have his children well educated. When at home, he instructed them himself, and when absent, his wife, a well educated lady, undertook the woik. In his more distant legal or political excursions, when- over he found a book store, he laid in a stock of books for the JAY COOKE. 627 honscliold at home. The boys were all quick to learn, and made progress in their studies. During Mr. Eleufcheros Cooke's term in Congress, there was a very general time of financial pressure in the "West, and on his return home, he found his affairs considerably embarrassed, and became somewhat de- pressed. Standing in his door one day, and seeing his three boys coming home from school, (for there was at this time a school of some merit in Sandusky,) he went to meet them, and putting his arms around them, said, half sadly and half in jest, " My boys, I have nothing left for you ; you must go and look out for yourselves." The elder and the younger remained silent and downcast, but Jay, then about thirteen years of age, look- ing up in his father's face with great earnestness, said, " Father, I am old enough to work. I will go and earn for myself." 'Mr Cooke did not regard this remark as any thing more than an expression of the boy's affectionate and enterprising nature, and as he had no intention of turning either of his boys out, ai ihat time, to earn their own living, he thought no more of it. But the next day, when the other boys went to school, Jaj slipped away, and went to the store of a Mr. Hubbard, in Sandusky. and asked him to employ him as a clerk. Mr. Hubbard, who was doing a thriving business, happened to be just then in vvant of a clerk, having dismissed his only one a few days before, for dishonesty. Jay was a favorite of his, and admiring his artless ness and resolution, he forthwith employed him. That night, when Mrs. Cooke reproached the boy for playing tiuant, he replied, with a flush of noble independence, " Why, mother, I won't be a trouble to you any longer ; I am now earning for myself." The parents, after consultation, determined to let Jay work out his own destiny, and the next day, and every day thence- forward, the boy was at his place promptly, and proved so fiutb 628 MEN OF OUR DAY. ful, intelligent and apt as a salesman, and was so ready and quick at figures, tliat his employer formed a strong attachment for him, taught him book-keeping, and instructed him in other branches which he had failed to acquire at school. After some time, Mr, Hubbard's partner left him for a long journey, and Mr. Hubbard himself fell sick, so that the whole oare of the store came upon Jay. He attended to it faithfully, and at evening took the keys and the day's receipts to his sick employer, with "whom he staid usually through the evenings. After he had been eleven months in Mr. Hubbard's employ, a Mr. Seymour who was about starting in business in St. Louis, prevailed on him to go with him to that city as clerk and book- keeper. The enterprise did not prove successful, and at the end of about nine months Seymour and Jay Cooke returned to Sandusky. While the latter remained at home for a time, awaiting a position, he attended an excellent school, in which he devoted his attention almost exclusively to algebra and the higher mathematics. In these he soon excelled. His only amusement was fishing, among the islands of Sandusky bay, a pastime which he still enjoys witn all a boy's enthusiasm. After a few months of close application, his brother-in-law, Mr. William G. Moorhead, then, as since, largely engaged in rail- road and canal enterprises, and residing in Philadelphia, visited Sandusky, his former home, and perceiving young Cooke's proficiency in mathematical and mercantile studies, offered him the position of book-keeper in his office. Jay accepted and spent a year in Philadelphia, when the firm was dissolved, and Mr. Moorhead received the appointment from the Government, of consul to Valparaiso. Jay returned to Sandusky and entered the school again, when his father received a letter from Mr. E. W. Clark, of E. W. Clark & Co., a leading banking firm of Philadelphia, asking permia* JAY COOKE. 629 sion to take liis son, Jay, of whom the firm had had very favorable accounts, into their establishment and give him a thorough training as a banker. The father, after some hesita- tion, decided to send his son to Philadelphia, and this proved the turning point in his fortune. The house of E. W. Clark & Co., was one of high reputation for probity and honor, and had its branches in Boston, New York, New Orleans, St. Louis, and Burlington, Iowa. It was at that time, and for several years, the largest domestic exchange banking house in the United States. Though not quite seventeen years old when he entered this house, Jay Cooke soon impressed the partners so favorably by his earnest zeal to understand thoroughly the whole business of finance, and his careful attention to business, that he was, for some time before he became of age, entrusted with full powers of attorney to use the name of the firm. An act of kindness thoroughly characteristic of him, at this time, was, during the war, perverted into an occasion of slander and abuse. It was stated by some of the daily papers in New York and elsewhere that he was of low origin, an obscure western banker, and that while in Philadelphia he had been bar tender to a third rate tavern. There was hardly the faintest shadow of truth, to serve as the basis of those preposterous stories. lie was never a western banker in his life, but as we shall show presently had been for twenty-five years a member, and the real head of one of the largest banking houses in the country ; he was from an honored and distinguished family in northern Ohio, and his only connection with a hotel in Philadelphia consisted in the fact, that, during his first residence there, he boarded with an excellent family who owned a small hotel, and who were very kind to him during his stay. On his return he again took a room with this family, and fin'Jing that the worthy landlor(^ 630 MEN OF OUR DAT. who was somewhat advanced in years and in feeble health, was in some financial difficulty, and had been obtaining heavy loans of Messrs E. W. Clark & Co., who had at last became apprehen- sive of his solvency, he persuaded the old man to let him examine into his condition. He found that he was nearly insolvent, and that he had been plundered by dishonest bar- tenders and book-keepers. He accordingly volunteered to make up his cash account for him every night, when he came from his office, and to do this was under the necessity of enter- ing his bar. He continued this kind service till the death of his old friend, and had the happiness of knowing that he had retrieved for him a part at least, of his fortune. For this he was sneered at, as a bar-keeper. At the age of twenty-one (in 1842), he became a partner in the house of E. W. Clark k Co., and remained in it until 1858, being for the greater part of that time its active business manager, and much of the time its real head. During this time Government had issued several loans, to which the firm had largely subscribed. In 1840, when but nineteen years of age, Mr. Cooke had written the first money article ever published in a Philadelphia paper, and for a year continued to edit the financial column of the Daily Chronicle, one of the three journals in the country, which then had a daily money article. On his retirement from the firm of E. W. Clark & Co., in 1858, Mr. Cooke had amassed a comfortable fortune, and had purposed to live thenceforth more at his ease. He still, however, nego- tiated large loans fot railroad and other corporations, and attended, in a quiet way, to other financial operations. At the commencement of 1861, Mr. Cooke formed a partner- ship with his brother-in-law, Mr. William G. Moorhead, in tlie banking business, under the firm name of Jay Cooke & Co. The object of both partners was to provide business openings JAY COOKE, C"l for tlieir sons. Mr. Moorliead brought to the firm a long and Buccessfal experience in railroad matters. In the spring of 1861, when the Government sought to place its first loan, tho firm of Jay Cooke & Co., procured and forwarded to "Washing- ton, without compensation, a large list of subscribers. The State of Pennsylvania required a war loan of several millions, and it was negotiated mostly by Jay Cooke & Co., who suc- ceeded in placing it at par, though it was at a time of great commercial and financial depression. These successful negotiations attracted the attention of the Secretary of the Treasury to their ability as financiers. Soon afterward, having failed to obtain satisfactory aid from the associated banks, Mr. Chase resolved to try the experiment of a popular loan, and to this end, appointed four hundred special agents, mostly presidents or cashiers of prominent banking institutions throughout the country. In Philadelphia, Jay Cooke k Company were selected, and they immediately or- ganized a system which resulted in the popularization of the loan, and secured the co-operation of the masses in the sub- scription to it. Of the entire sum secured by the four hundred agents, not quite thirty millions in all, one third was returned by Jay Cooke & Company. As this did not fill the treasury, whose wants were constantly increasing, with sufficient rapidity, Mr, Chase, after consultation with eminent financiers, determined to place the negotiation of the five hundred millions of five- twenty bonds, just authorized by Congress, in the hands of a special agent, as Congress had given him. permission to do. Mr. Cooke's success in this small loan, led Mr. Chase to select him for the agent. He accepted the appointment, and organized his plans for the sale of the loan, with what success is now a matter of history. A bolder and more daring financial undertaking than this ia 632 MEN OF OUR DAT. not to be found in the records of monetary history. The risks were frightful, the compensation, if no sales were made, nothing; if they were effected, five eighths of one per cent, on the amount sold, which was to cover all commissions to sub-agents, advertising, correspondence, postage, clerk hire, express fees, and remuneration for labor and superintendence. The Gov- ernment assumed no risks, and if the loan failed to take with the people, the advertising and other expenses alone would swallow up the entire fortune of Mr. Cooke and his partners. The commissions received by European bankers for negotiating such a loan, themselves assuming no risks, are from four to eight per cent., and there was not another banking house in the United States which would have taken it on the terms accepted by Mr. Cooke ; but his country was engaged in a deadly strife for the preservation of its liberties; it needed money in vast sums to conduct this gigantic struggle successfully, and if it did not have it promptly, the great sacrifices made already, would prove in vain. Some one, possessing an ample fortune, must have patriotism enough to take the risk, great as it was, and if it must be so, ruin himself in the effort to save his country. In the secretary's tendering him this position, first and unhesitat- ingly, there seemed to be a call of Divine Providence on him to undertake this great responsibility. He accepted it as a Chris- tian and a patriot, and it is no more than the truth to say, that in the history of the war, no enterprise was undertaken from a higher motive, or from a loftier sense of duty and patriotism. His labors, during this sale of bonds, were incessant; "he was," sa3'S a banker, a friend of his, " the hardest worked man in America." Public opinion, in favor of the loan, Avas to be created and stimulated ; the loan itself was to be made accessible to all classes, and all were to be shown that it was for their interest and benefit to invest all their surplus, be it little or JAY COOKE. 63S much, in these bonds of the nation ; every village must have its agent, so that all parties, the sempstress, the domestic;, the young journeyman, or the farmer's boy, who had but fifty dollars of their earnings to invest, the fruit of long savings and painful toil, might be as well and as promptly accommodated as the rich capitalist who wished to purchase his hundreds of thousands. Every loyal paper in the nation had its advertise- ments, and every vehicle of information by which the masses could be reached its carefully written articles explaining and commending the bonds. Over half a million of dollars were expended in this machinery, before the receipts began to come in. Mr. Cooke's partners were getting a little anxious, but his countenance was still sunny, and his faith in the loyalty of the nation, firm as a rock. Then, after awhile, the orders began to come ; first, like the few drops that betoken the coming storm, then faster and thicker, patter, patter, patter; then an over- whelming flood, that kept all hands busy till midnight, day after day. So great was the rush for the bonds toward the last, that when Mr. Cooke gave notice that no more could be sold after a certain day and hour, and that the five hundred millions were already taken, the orders and money poured in, till he was obliged to issue, and Congress to legalize, fourteen millions beyond the amount first authorized. It was a grand, a glorious success, and at once put Mr. Cooke in the first rank among the great financiers of the world ; but the immediate pecuniary profit from it was very small. As we have said, the commission to cover all expenditures was but five- eighths of one per cent., and from this were paid the advertising, review articles, clerk hire, postage, and express fees, and one fourth of one per cent, commission to sub-agents. But this was not all the deductions which were to be made on this gross commission The nation has never had an abler, nor a more 63-i MEN OF OUR DAY. really economical Secretary of the Treasury, thaii Mr. Chase. He was so careful, so scrupulous, in regard to the expenditures of his department, that even in these great enterprises, his economy almost approached to penuriousness. Though the sales of the five-twenty bonds were solely due to the almost superhuman efforts of Jay Cooke and the corps of agents whom he had trained, and he was entitled, therefore, to a commission on the entire amount, under the ordinary customs of financial transactions, a portion of the sub-agents had applied directly to the treasury department for their bonds, and Mr, Chase refused to pay him a commission on any of these, so that he actually received his commission only on three hundred and sixty- three millions. A selfish and mercenary man would have insisted on his right to the entire commission, and might very possibly have secured it, but it was from no selfish or mercenary motive that Mr. Cooke had entered upon this work, and he allowed the economical secretary, whose ability, integrity, and patriotism he never questioned, to settle the matter as he believed to be most for the interest of the nation. Mr. Chase believed that the popularization of this loan had so enamored the people with Government bonds, that he should find no difficulty in floating a five per cent, ten-forty loan, without the aid of the Philadelphia banking agency. He tried it, but the public mind was not prepared for it, and he projected a large issue of seven-thirty three year bonds, the interest payable in currency, and the bonds convertible at maturity into five-twenty six per cent, bonds, the interest pay. able in coin. Meanwhile the price of gold was constantly increasing, or rather the gold value of the currency was rapidly decreasing. The national banking system which he had inaugurated, and in which Mr, Cooke had rendered him most essential aid, was as JAY COOKE. 635 yet an experiment, and for the want of some additional pro- visions, subsequently made by Congress, the State banks and many of the large public and private bankers of the great cities were fighting the national banks with great ferocity. This system was destined ere long to become a magnificent success, and to displace all the State organizations with a rapidity which reminded the observer of the transformation of the genii of Persian story ; but for the present affairs looked gloomy. The great fighting was going on from the Eapidan to the James (for it was the early part of the great battle summer ot 1864), and every department of the Government was calling for more men and more money, and as yet no great victories had presaged the coming overthrow of the rebellion. Sick at heart, worn down with excessive labor, and feeling that his great efforts had not been fully appreciated, Mr. Chase suddenly re- signed, in June, 186-i, and Mr. Fessenden, an able financier, though of less sunny -temper, succeeded him. The rapid depreciation of the currency which ensued on the announcement of this change, is one of the cardinal points in the memory of the bulls and bears of our generation. In fifteen days, gold rose from 88 per cent, premium to 185 per cent., and there was a fierce outcry against the Governmeni, for all men feared impending bankruptcy. In this emergency, Mr. Fessenden applied to Jay Cooke, whose abilities he well knew, to put his strong shoulder again to the wheel, and lift the Government out of the slough of despond, in which it was fast settling. The appeal was not in vain. Again the army of sub-agents was organized ; again the loyal papers of every state teemed with advertisements, this time of seven-thirty bonds; again the pens of ready writers were in demand to write up the advantages of Government securities, and Mr. Cooke himself essayed the defence of the 636 MEN OP OUR DAT. financial paradox, "a national Debt, a national Blessing." Again were the mails burdened with orders, and men and woman, old and young, of all stations in life, hastened to secure the Government's promises to pay. Mr. Cooke and the houses with which he was in correspondence, had, meantime, opened the way for large transactions, at rapidly increasing prices, in our bonds, in Europe ; had diffused information, especially in Germany, Switzerland, and Holland in regard to them, till, early in 1865, nearly two hundred millions of United States Govern- ment bonds had been placed in Europe. This amount was subse- quently still farther increased to between four and five hundred millions, and those bonds are to-day as regularly called at the boards of London, Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfort, and Berlin, as at those of our American cities. The success of the three series of seven-thirty loans, was as great as that of the five-twenties had been ; greater if we take into account the larger amount, the already great indebtedness of the Government, and the depressing circumstances under which they were first put upon the market. In less than a year eight hundred and thirty millions of these bonds were sold. During this period, a part of the time, the Government expendi- ture exceeded three millions of dollars a day, but soon, under the heavy blows of great armies well fed and clothed, and abun- dantly supplied with money and all the munitions of war, one stronghold o!' the enemy after another fell into our hands, vic- tory resounded from one end of the country to the other, and the great rebellion was crushed. After the war, the house of Jay Cooke & Co., which still had its branches in Washington and New York, confined itself to the negotiation of loans for great corporate enterprises, dealing in Government securities, etc., etc., and still, in the vastness of its enterprises, the integrity and honor of its dealings, and the JAY COOKE. 637 consummate financial ability which has marked all its operations, retains and is ever increasing its past prestige. On the 1st of January, 1871, Mr. Cooke established a branch of his banking house in London, under the firm name of Jay Cooke, McCulloch & Co., the resident head of the London house being Hon. Hugh McCulloch, the late able and trusted Secretary of the United States Treasury. The new American Banking house in London at once took rank beside the leading financial institutions of the Old World, such as the Barings and the Rothschilds. During the first year of its existence, and in co-operation with the American branches of the house, it achieved a success in connection with United States Govern- ment finances which gave the house wide and deserved prestige, and brilliantly proved that the genius which enabled Mr. Cooke to accomplish such vast results in the troubled times of war, is also equal to the greatest and most difficult monetary negotia- tions in time of peace. Congress having authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to fund a large part of the public debt at lower rates of interest; in other words, to sell at par in coin new bonds bearing five and four and a half per cent, interest, and with the proceeds redeem an equal amount of outstanding six per cent, bonds, the Treasury Department attempted the negotiation of $200,000,000 new five per cents. After six months of active effort both in America and Europe, and after exhausting all expedients, the Government had been able to sell only some $60,000,000, which amount was almost wholly taken by the National Banks of the United States. Secretary Boutwell then placed the agency for the sale of the new loan in the hands of Jay Cooke & Co., and Jay Cooke, McCulloch & Co. The latter, having associated with themselves several leading houses in London and New York, promptly brought out the loan on the markets of Great 638 MEN" OF OUR DAY. IVitain and the Continent of Europe, and within twelve days of tiie first offering the remainder of the $200,000,000 was all sub- scribed and the loan closed. The brilliant success was as much a surprise to financial cir- cles in Europe as it was a gratification to the United States Government. In opposition to the prevalent views of theoretical financiers in America, it practically proved that the entire pub- lic debt could be funded at such low rates of interest as to save our people a yearly expenditure of twenty to thirty million dollars. Soon after the successful closing of the $200,000,000 loan, the house of Jay Cooke, McCulloch & Co., and that of L. M. Rothschild & Sons of London, made a joint proposal to the United States Government, looking to the negotiation of a fur- ther amount of $600,000,000 of the new bonds, on terms similar to tho^e attending the former. This proposition, coming from two such eminent houses, and covering the largest single nego- tiation known to modern finance, was favorably received by the Government, but diplomatic complications between the United States and Great Britain, growing out of the Alabama claims and the Treaty of Washington, temporarily postponed the final consideration of the matter. In addition to the above-named negotiations, and the general supervision of the regular and ordinary business of the several branches of his house, Mr. Cooke has since 1870 made something of a specialty of the finances of the Northern Pacific Railroad. After thorough and conscientious investigation his firm accepted the fiscal agency of this great corporation, and undertook the sale of its construction bonds. Under his careful and energetic financial management, this greatest commercial enterprise of the age is moving forward to assured success. The building of this second highway to the JAY COOKE. 639 Pacific is the leading agency in the settlement, development and tiivilization of the Northwestern part of the continent. Mr. Cooke still works hard, but he enjoys life, and whether at his city residence, or in that magnificent palace which Iuh princely fortune has enabled him to rear in the vicinity of Phila- delphia, or, in the summer months, at that beautiful country- seat on Gibraltar island in Lake Erie, where, as in boyhood, he enjoys trolling for the scaly denizens of the lake, he is the satne sunny-faced, genial, who^.e-hearted man, as when years ago he managed the affairs of E. W. Clark & Co. With all his hard work and great enterprises, the spirit of the boy has not died (Tut of him. Mr. Cooke's liberality is as princely as his fortune. Throughout the war, he was lavish in his gifts to the Sanitary Commission, to the hospitals, to sick and wounded soldiers, to the Christian Commission, and to all good enterprises. Since the war, the recording angel alone can tell how many of our crippled veterans he has helped to attain a competency, how many soldiers, widows, and orphans he has aided and blessed, how many homes, made desolate by the war, he has cheered and brightened. To Kenyon college, Ohio, he has given twenty-five thousand dollars, and to a theological seminary of his own church (the Protestant Episcopal) a still larger sum. In the vicinity of his home on Chelton Hills, near Philadelphia, he has built several country churches. ^ -"6 of the beautiful islands of Lake Erie, near Sandusky, he has erected a charming country-seat, and has built a nea' chapel for the residents of the island. Here he spends his sum- mer resting time, and plays as hard as he works the rest of the year. But he is not content to take his play-spell alone, and for some weeks before his annual visit there, his leisure moments are em- ployed in sending missives, usually with check enclosed, to hard G-iO MEN OF OUR DAY, worked country clergymen, inviting them to spend their sum- mer vacation with him on the island. Many a country parson, in a poor parish, with a scattered and illiterate population, when just ready to yield to discouragement, has found his heart cheered, his faith strengthened, and his capacity for efficient labor greatly increased, by a visit to the hospitable home of the Philadelphia banker. Wealth hoarded with miserly greed, withheld from all good and wise charities, or bestowed only on the gratification of pride, appetite, or lust, is a curse ; but wealth held in recognition of man's stewardship to the God who has given it, and scattered so wisely as to comfort and cheer the unfortunate, the helpless, and the n^edy, and to rear the institutions of religion, is a bless- ing for wi ich the world has cause to be grateful. ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART. oC\f4 BOUT 1825, an alert, sanguine, and active young man ^i*^ commenced the dry goods business in Broadway, nearly opposite his present wholesale warehouse, with a capi- tal of about three thousand dollars. In the three years 1865-'6-'7, this gentleman sold two hundred and three million dollars worth of goods. It is hardly necessary to say that the young man was Alexander Turney Stewart, whose income for 1864 was the largest of any merchant in the world. Carefully reared by a pious grandfather in Belfast, Ireland, Mr. Stewart received an excellent classical education in Trinity College, Dublin. His grandfather was very desirous that he should become a clergyman, but his death occurring before the grandson had completed his college course, a Quaker friend was appointed his guardian, and at his earnest solicitation procured for him letters of introduction to leading merchants of the Society of Friends in New York. On reaching New York, Mr. Stewart looked around for a career. He taught the classics, in which his careful study had made him singularly proficient, not with a view of making it a profession, but to oblige a friend. At length he formed a part- nership with a gentleman, who was to furnish a portion of the means and all the experience for a mercantile career. For some reason or other, this party abandoned the enterprise. Mr. Stewart, not daunted, went back at once to Ireland, converted the small fortune he had inherited into money, invested it all in 41 641 642 MEN OF OUR DAT. goods, principally Belfast laces, returned to New York, and opened a store, in 1825, at 262 Broadway. Almost in the first week of his mercantile career, he had the good or ill fortune to be discharged by one of his salesmen. The occasion was as follows : — One day an old lady came in and accosting the young man alluded to, asked to see some calicoes. She seemed satisfied with the style, but asked, with prudent caution — • "Will this wash?" " Oh ! yes, ma'am." " Then I'll take a little piece and try it, and if the colors are fast, I'll get some of it." ""What's the use of taking all that trouble," said the clerk. " I have tried it, and I know it holds its color." The old lady felt assured and took a dress. Ladies did wear calicoes, then. Mr, Stewart was an interested auditor during this discourse. When the lady departed, he stepped up and said : "■ But, Mr. , why did you tell that old lady such an untruth about that calico ?" " Oh I that's all in the way of business," said the salesman, "But," said Mr, Stewart, "that doesn't seem a good way of business. That lady will try the calico; it will fade — she will come and accuse us of misrepresentation and demand hei money back, and she will be right." "Oh! then I'll say, 'you are quite mistaken, ma'am; you never got the goods here ; you must have got them at the store above.' " " Well then, if that's the case," said the master of the business, ' don't let it occur again. I don't want goods represented fof what they are not. If the colors are not fast, it is easy to ex- ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART. 643 plain to them that certain colors are not fast, and cannot bo mad(( so for the price at which they are sold, and they will buy as soon, knowing the truth, as any other way." " Look here, Mr. Stewart," said the salesman, " if those are going to be your principles in trade, I'm going to look for another situation. You won't last very long !" And he was as good as his word. It appears, however, that Mr. Stewart's ideas of business were tolerably successful, for to- day he wields a capital of many millions. Apart from this rigor- ous devotion to principle in his business, Mr. Stewart owes much of his success to great delicacy of touch and \aste, and judgment in colors and textures, almost feminine in sensibility; add to these qualities a masculine grasp of events and an instantaneous perception of those shadows which are cast by events, and you have all the elements of the great merchant. Mr. Stewart early began to survey the political field, and when he forsaw a storm ahead, there would be a silent purchase of all of certain goods in the market, which would be sure to rise in a certain contingency. At other times he was the first to foresee a fall- ing market and to put his goods before the public with such swiftness and address that he cleared his shelves with the least loss — while his slower friends were carried under the current of thirty-seven, forty-seven, fifty-seven, or sixty-seven, as the case might be. (Our merchants are superstitious about the * sevens," and many think to-day that any year, with a seven in it, brings misfortune to the trade.) There was a time during the war when Mr. Stewart held more cotton goods than all the other dry goods firms put together. There was also a time when he was the first to sell at the reduced price. Mr. Stewart has a memory for his business as remarkable as that of others for languages and figures. He can tell to-day the ruling prices of staple goods for every year of the last forty. 644 MEN OF OUR DAY. Another peculiarity. The house of A. T. Stewart k Co. has always bought for cash — and one more and striking peculi- arity, full of its lesson to American merchants — he has never speculated one penny's worth outside of his business, nor, strictly speaking, in it. "When he has bought largely, it was to supply his customers with a greatly needed article — and when he reduced prices, it was not to injure others, but a ready submission to the inevitable in trade. His advantage consisted in knowing early what was inevitable. In connection with this, let us remark here, that reading this, one might suppose Mr. Stewart to be little more than a dealer in dry goods. There could be no greater mistake. He is a liberally educated gentle- man, as we said before. Like all leaders, business is easy to him and does not absorb his whole soul. There are few men in our country better qualified to derive enjoyment from Horace and Tacitus, than Mr. Stewart. He is the hope and refuge of artists — for he is an admirer and enjoyer of good works of art, and if he does not buy all that appears meritorious, it is only because the marble mansion in Fifth Avenue, and the brown stone opposite, will hold no more. There is in some circles an impression, studiously cultivated by a few, that Mr. Stewart squeezes out small dealers mercilessly — lest they grow too great for him. It is entirely unfounded. He conducts his business on business principles, and no business can last long, or become great, that is conducted otherwise. That Mr. Stewart regrets the inevitable injury to small dealers^ which his large operations cause, we have ample evidence. He said recently to a gentleman, who was making some inquiries : "They'll have me in the concert saloon business next." Laughing again, probably at the curious figure he would cut in that avocation, " The truth is, I intend only to enlarge the facilities for retail trade at the upper store, and group together ALEXANDER TURNEY STEWART. '645 those departments which should be properly associated, and which are now scattered on two floors, and cause a great deal of running up and down stairs. Here is the Yankee notion stock ; we have no room for it here, and it ought to be moved Tip to the other store. I am urged to do this constantly, but hesitate only for one reason. The moment we throw open that department to the retail trade, a great many smaller dealers ia the vicinity will suffer. The advantages we possess are so superior that competition of small dealers is out of the ques- tion, and the moment they feel the pressure they cry out against monopoly, and attribute all kinds of vindictiveness to the firm. But, after all, the public at large are benefitted. We are enabled to offer them the largest stock at the smallest cost, with all the guarantees that are inseparable from a responsible house, whose name and honor are part of the business. This seems to be the great advantage of the tendency to aggregate business interests of a kindred nature. It cheapens manufacture, and capital becomes a vehicle between the petty producer and the Consumer. Aside from the fact that the system economizes power, it should be remembered that it is better calculated to foster native industry in many cases. Take, for instance, the Ameri- can beaver cloths, made for this house expressly by ihe Utica Steam Mills. They are now conceded to be equal to any made anywhere, and lying side by side with imported goods, suffer no depreciiition. They are perfecting the manufacture so rapidly in cassi meres and similar goods, under proper stimulation, that already the demand for American manufacture exceeds the foreign. It is absurd to suppose, as is generally the case, that the increasing facilities and demands of a great business in New York, or anywhere, in fact, must be associated with rivalry or greed; generally thj magnitude of the business swallows up all ■uch eonsidtsratiofts ; in fact the growth and extension are not 646 MEN OF OUR DAY. Che subject of special endeavor, but are the inevitable conse- quence of a healthy organization. Any business beyond a certain point becomes germinal, and grows in all directions. The greatest care has to be exercised in its training and prun- ing. People come to me and ask me for my secret of success ; why, I have no secret, I tell them. My business has been a matter of principle from the start. That's all there is about it. If the golden rule can be incorporated into purely mercantile affairs it has been done in this establishment, and you must have noticed, if you have observed closely, that the customers are treated precisely as the seller himself would like to be treated were he in their place. That is to say, nothing is misrepresented, the price is fixed, once and for all, at the lowest possible figure, and the circumstances of the buyer are not suffered to influence the salesman in his conduct in the smallest particular. I think you will find the same principle of justice throughout the larger transactions of the house, and especially in its dealings with employees. I do not speak of it as deserv- ing of praise — we find it absolutely necessary. What we cannot afford is violation of principle." Here Mr. Stewart has given his whole theory of business. To another gentleman, who said to him one morning — " Mr. Stewart, you are a very rich man, why do you bother yourself building this immense place?" Said Mr. Stewart : " That is the very question I asked myself this morning, when I took a look at that big hole in the ground. The worst of it is," he continued, without giving a complete reply, and with a regretful tone, as if the thing must be done, and yet cause him sorrow, " my neighbors don't like it." The stories of Mr. Stewart's competition with other houses, large or small, are all mythical. There is room enough for all, ID his opinion, and we may say, that in our opinion, when an* ALEXANDER TURNKY STEWART. 6-47 otber man comes along with the qualifications of a Slew art, he will acquire the fortune of a Stewart. " The star of jour fate is in your own breast," says the Ger- man poet. Mr. Stewart is, of course, the recipient of a vast number of applications for every kind and form of charity. To deserving objects, his liberality is large and enduring — but he fights the many swindles and dribbles that eat away weaker men's for- tunes without helping the receiver, with a keenness and warmth that is acquainted with the tricks and manners of the begging tribe. Many old merchants of New York, who have failed in business, have had their declining years made easy by the kind- ness of Mr. Stewart, but he is as reticent of these deeds as he is of every thing that tends to personal praise. The large way in which he prefers to do things, is evidenced in his conduct during the last season of great distress in Ireland, during our war, when he bought a ship, loaded her with stores, shipped them to Bel- fast, his native town, and brought over in return, a ship load of young men and women, free of cost, to the land of hope — ■ America, and at the same time repaying to Belfast, with interest, the capital he had brought from thence at the commencement of his career. To the relief of the Lancashire operatives in 1863, he contributed $10,000, and to the sufferers from the Chicago fire $50,000, and subsequently $50,000 more. As to. his views on politics, Mr. Stewart has attempted, as far as he has been active at all, to get public affairs out of the hands of professional politicians, into those of men who will do the public business on the same principles upon which private business is done. This will be the case some day, but Mr. Stewart will not live to see it. lie was the strong and active friend of General Grant as a candidate for the Presidency, and was one of the large contributors to the present of one hundred 618 MEJf OF OUR DAY. thousand dollars, made him by the merchants of New York city, as an acknowledgment of his great services in the overthrow of the Rebellion. After General Grant's inauguration he was nominated Secretary of the Treasury ; but being a large importer he could not legally hold the office, and his name was withdrawn and Mr. Boutwell's substituted for it. Mr, Stewart is a man of progress— of the modern time — he is a man for improvement and enjoyment. When he builds, he does it with iron, and plenty of glass — fire proof — with abun^ dant light — the structure perfectly adapted to all its purposes, and securing the comfort of all within — no gothic dimness, or Grecian anachronism in architecture, has a chance with him. When he builds a house for another — as his marble palace in Fifth Avenue — to use his own words, "a little attention to Mrs. Stewart" — it is a different matter. That is to please her. Mr. Stewart is about sixty-nine years of age, but look^ good for twenty more. His eyes twinkle, as blue eyes often ao, with the coming light of a frequent good thing. He has a merry turn of mind, and enjoys himself in a little party with young folks, equal to any of his juniors, and can make fun, and take fun, equal to any. The operations of the ho\ise of A. T. Stewart & Co., are liter- ally world wide. Mr. William Libby, in New York, Mr. Francis Warden, permanently in Paris, and Mr. G. Fox, in Manchester, England, compose the firm. It has three foreign bureaus, or depots — one on a triangular square at Cooper street, Manchester, where are collected, examined, and packed, all English goods. One at Belfast, for linens, which partakes of the nature of a factory as well, the linens being bought in the rough, and afterward bleached and fitted for the trade. This establishment is about the size of a double New York store, that is fifty by one hundred feet. In Glasgow, the firm have a ALEXAWDKR TURNET STEWART. 649 house exclusively for Scotch goods. In Pans, the magazin, on the Rue Bergere, has been known to continental manufacturers for many years. Here are collected and arranged, for shipping to America, all East Indian, French and German goods, exclu- sive of woolens. In Berlin is the woolen-house, equal in size to three ordinary New York stores. There are also, at Lyons, two large warehrvuses for silk goods. All the continental buai* ness is transacted at the Paris bureau, payments are made there, and a general supervision extended over the other establish- ments. In addition to these, it must be remembered that there are a number of manufacturers who do work exclusively for this firm, and are really branches of the business. For instance, they have the house of Alexandre, in Paris, constantly manu- facturing kill gloves for Stewart & Co., exclusively, while in this country and Great Britain, mills run all the year round to supply the New York house with goods. One such customer taxes all their powers. Then there are buyers, one for each of the fifteen departments in this house, who are constantly travelling somewhere between Hong Kong and Chili, and who are in a measure responsible for the condition of those departments at home. Special agents, too, on important embassies of a confidential nature, putting up in Thibet, or Brussels, or found on the Ganges, or among the Chinese cocoons. In fact, the cosmopolitan part of the house, the circulating human capital, must be formidable in numbers and diplomacy if ever assembled. And they were as- sembled once, we believe, at Manchester. A rumor had got abroad in Europe, that Mr. Stewart had died. To correct it, and accomplish some important movement, Mr. Stewart telegraphed 'extensively over the hemisphere for his ministers to meet him in Manchester, on a certain day, and there is a legend in that place of a mysterious congress having been held there, though 650 MEN OF OUR DAT. public opinion was for a long time divided as to whether they were Orsini sympathizers, or Yankee invaders. In 1863, Mr. Stewart returned an income of $1,900,000— in 1864, one of $4,000,000, in 1865, of $1,600,000, and for 1866, of $600,000— an average of very near $2,000,000 per year. Whether this rate of profit can be kept up is a question, but it •s probable that the average will be increased instead of di minished. Mr. S^tewart is a large holder of real estate, owning three or four of the largest hotels in New York, besides nume- rous stores and dwellings, and unimproved lands. He has also within the past three or four years purchased a very large tract of land known as the Hempstead Plains, on Long Island, ten oi twelve miles from New York, where he is building a large city, and to which he has completed a railroad from the metropolis. Among his other benevolent enterprises is one now fast ap- proaching completion, of a hotel for workingwomen, where all the comforts, conveniences, and appliances of the best hotels are to be furnished to workingwomen, under such arrangements that pleasant, airy, and commodious rooms, well furnished, and excellent board can be had by those women for from $2.75 to $3.00 per week. He has projected a similar establishment for young men, and has also in view a large number of model tene- ment houses much after the plan of Mr. Peabody's in London. It is a grand example which this greatest of merchant princes is setting to the world, that of devoting the greater part of his colossal fortune to ameliorate the condition of the lowly. "Would that more of our rich men had the same spirit. ABIEL ABBOT LOW, PRESIDENT OF THE NEW YORK CHAMBER OF COMMERCE. 1^ E ACE, said Mr, Sumner, in one of his most classic and Y '[\\ eloquent orations, " hath its victories no less than war." cj^ 1*2 The merchant prince, whose enterprise has included with- al in its grasp the traffic of the far distant lands of the orient, whose ships are on every sea, and who brings to his bursting warehouses, the products of all climes, has really achieved as great a triumph, and one far more beneficial and bloodless, than the warrior who has led his conquering legions over desolated homes, and amid the ruins of sacked cities. And if this peaceful hero uses his wealth as wisely as he has acquired it, and by his large beneficence makes thousands and tens of thousands happy, then is his victory greater than that of any leader of a marshalled host, whose garments are stained with blood, for his triumphs are over the forces of nature, and the selfish and unhallowed passions of men, and " greater is he that ruleth his own spirit, than he that taketh a city," Among these heroes in the bloodless strife, Mr, Low is entitled to a high place of honor. During a long commercial life of wonderful success, and filled with great enterprises, he has ever maintained an enviable reputation for the highest honor and principle, and no unworthy deed or word has ever linked itself with his name. More than this, in all great mea- sures of benevolence, whether for aiding the poor of New 65i 652 MEN OF OUR DAY. York or Brooklyn, sustaining the government in putting down tlie rebellion, providing bounties for tlie soldiers, and supplies for the regiments, or succoring the families of our bravo defenders, sending aid to the famishing sufferers of Lancashire, sustaining the Sanitary Commission in its noble work, manifest ing the grateful emotions of the commercial class toward the leaders of our army and navy, establishing and endowing libraries and scientific institutions, or in the more direct pro- motion of the interests of religion. Mr. Low's contributions have always been among the most liberal. Other citizens of New York possess larger wealth than he, but none have made a more admirable and beneficial use of it. Abiel Abbot Low was born in Salem, Massachusetts, we believe, in 1796. His father, the late Seth Low, was himself an eminent merchant, and soon after Abiel had reached his majority, removed to New York, and made Brooklyn his place of residence. The house of Seth Low and Company, (after- wards Seth Low and Sons,) had, both in Salem and New York, been largely engaged in the China and East India trade, and it was not, therefore, surprising that Mr. Low should have desired to visit China, and acquire a knowledge of the business there, in which so many fortunes had been made. His excellent early business training, and the remarkable capacity for great enter- prises, which he had early manifested, rendered him peculiarly adapted to attain success in this position. Soon after his arrival iu China, he received the offer of a partnership in the well- known house of Russell and Company, of Canton, and accepted it in 1833. His connection with this house continued till 1841, and sometime before that date, he had come to be its head. He returned to the United States in 1841, and established with his two brotbers the great China house of A. A. Low and Brothers, retaining their correspondents in China. Under his wise and ABTEL ABBOT LOW. 653^ able management, this lias been for several years past tbe leading American house in the China trade. Its traffic in all descriptions of Chinese goods is enormous. Ships freighted with the teas, silks, crapes, nankeens, lacquered wares, ginger, porcelain, rice, and mattings of the flowery kingdom, are con- stantly arriving in New York, and others^departing laden with such goods as the Chinese require in their trade. Of late years this trade is not, to the extent it was formerly, the payment of silver on our part, and the delivery of their goods in exchange for that alone. Cotton goods, clocks, ginseng, and a yearly increasing list of our manufactured goods are taken by the Celestials in exchange for their products. Within a few years past, the Messrs. Low have turned their attention also to the Japan trade, and in the beginning of 1867, Mr. Low having visited San Francisco, sailed thence to Hong Kong and Yokohama, in the first steamship of the China mail line, and after establishing a branch house at the latter point, returned by the overland route to Europe, and thence home. During the war, few men in this country were as liberal, as patriotic, as judicious in their benefactions, and as wise in their counsels as Mr. Low. He lost heavily through the piratical conduct of the Confederate cruisers, several of his richly laden ships being seized, plundered and burned by those ocean marauders, Semmes and Maffit ; but amid all these losses, he was ever ready to aid the Government in every emergency, and to respond promptly to all its demands for counsel and encourage- ment. In that noble oJBfering of aid by our merchants to the famine stricken operatives of Lancashire, Mr. Low not only contributed largely, but acted as treasurer of the committee, and at no small personal inconvenience, kept its accounts, made its purchases, and transmitted its statements to the committee m England 654 MEN OF OUR DAY. The New York Chamber of Commerce, the most eminent body of American merchants on this continent, have twice called Mr. Low, the last time by acclamation, to preside over their deliberations for the year, and would have continued him in that high position for a succesj^.on of years, but for his absence from the CQijntry in 1867. This honor, so freely ac- corded, shows the estimation in which he is held by those who know him best for sound judgment, remarkable foresight, in- corruptible principle, and the highest executive ability. His action, and his words of cheer in the dark hours of our national history, and the critical condition of commercial affairs, and his skill in the management of the grave and often delicate and dif&cult topics which came up for discussion before tho chamber during this eventful period of its history, fully justified the confidence which was reposed in him. In all matters appertaining to the encouragement of art, literature, and higher education, as well as in all the charitable institutions of the cit_y^ State, and nation, Mr. Low's aid is con- stantly sought, and never in vain in a worthy caurfe. The institutions of religion find in him a zealous and consistent supporter. In private life, that true manliness of deportment, that scorn of every thing base and mean, and that genial and kindly nature, which have always characterized him in public, find still more adequate and complete expression, and m tho bosom of his family, he ever finds his highest happiness. CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. HE name of Cornelius Vanderbilt is inseparably asso- ciated witli the commercial history of the country, with the rapid growth and development of our mer- cantile navy, and, more lately, with our great national railway interests. With a steadiness and rapidity almost romantic he has pushed his way to a position in which he wields an immense influence over the material interests of his native land, and his energy, enterprise, and genius, are recognized the world over. From his ancestors, who were of the good old Holland stock which, over two centuries ago, settled that portion of the New Netherlands now known as New York State, he seems to have inherited the sturdy Knicker- bocker habits of industry which have so remarkably charac- terized his career. His father, whose name was also Cornelius, was a well-to-do farmer on Staten Island, in New York harbor, the island being, at that time, divided into large estates which were generally farmed by their owners, with especial reference to the supply of the city markets. In those days, almost every Islander kept his own boat for the purpose of carrying his farm products to the city ; and as the inhabitants increased and more extended facilities for communication became necessary, Mr. Vanderbilt fell into the custom, at times, of conveying to New York those who had no boat of their own. Out of this, and the b55 006 MEN OF OUR DAY. demand for some public and regular communication, grew up a ferry, which he established in the form of a " perriauger," which departed for the city every morning and returned every after- noon. To this farmer-ferryman was born, on the 27th day of May, 179-i, a son, the subject of this sketch — and, even as a babe, full of voice, will, and muscle. As infancy merged into boyhood, these characteristics developed more distinctly into a restless activity of mind and body which seemed to take a strongly practical turn. Old paths of thought and action, and the teachings of books and schools, were (much to the chagrin of his parents) neglected, and he intuitively sought to draw his knowledge from Nature herselt, whose wondrous book, so full of infinite knowledge and suggestions, claimed all his thoughts and time, frequently even to the exclusion of his meals. At the age of sixteen he made his first step mto the world of activity and independent life in which he was ulti- mately to hold so regal a sway. Living upon the Island, and being of necessity much upon the water, he early developed a fondness for that kind of life, as affording the widest scoj e for his ambition. He, naturally enough, washed to have a sail-boat of his own, and soon made known the desire to his father. Tninking him yet too young and inexperienced to have the sole control of a boat, his fiither sought to discourage him — ■ but, finally, yielding to his importunate pleadings, he gave a qualified promise to furnish him with the necessary purchase- money, provided he would accomplish a certain amount of work upon the farm. The " stent" given, w^as no slight affair, as the father probably intended by it to foil his son's project ; and the latter soon found that it would require more time than he could well afford to bestow upon it, with his enterprise delayed. The boy's wit, however, did not fail him in this emergency — in his father's absence he summoned to his aid all his CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 657 young companions in the neighborhood, witla whom he was a favorite, and bj their heartily-rendered assistance the allotted task was soon completed. Reporting the successful accomplish- ment to his mother, he claimed the reward — but was met with dissuasives, for her aversion to the proposed business was equal to that of her husband. Remonstrances, however, were use- less — and fearful lest his determined will, if thwarted in thia matter, might lead him to the still more to be dreaded alterna- tive of running away to sea — the sum of a hundred dollars was placed in his hands. Quickly hastening to the Port Richmond shore, he at once purchased a boat, which he had previously selected, joyfully took possession of his long coveted prize, and full of brilliant visions of future successes, set sail for home. But, alas, as the little boat, freighted with so many hopes, sped through the waves, it struck on a rock in the kills and the new fledged captain was barely able to run his vessel ashore before Bhe sank. Nothing daunted, however, the boy sought the: needed assistance, speedily had the damage repaired, and, in a. few hours later, brought his little craft, all safe and sound, alongside the Stapleton dock. He had now, in a measure, cut loose from his father's care ; and, as the owner and captain of a boat, had fairly launched upon life's broad sea, as a man of business. Older heads, and older and established reputations were to be competed with — and the boy-captain had the sense to see, and the courage to prove, that he who would make headway in the world's strife, must do so with stout heart and strong arm — working, not waiting, for coy Fortune's gifts. He was no idler — straightway he made vigorous attempts to secure business, and met with extraordinary success. He soon found plenty of remunerative employment in carrying, to and from New York, the workmen employed upon the fortifications then in process of construction, by the General Government, upon 42 658 MEN OF OUR DAY Slaten and Long Islands. Amid all bis success, however, his manly spirit of independence was not satisfied until, bj scrupu- lous and daily saving, from his first earnings, he was ena- bled to repay to his mother the hundred dollars she had given liira. The boy had, indeed, taken hold of life in earnest — • grasping its stern realities with a spirit far beyond his years. Among the self-imposed rules with which he sought to regulate his life, and which serve to show a fixedness of purpose aa invariable as the circuit of the sun, was a determination to spend less every week than he earned. This careful manage- ment soon produced its legitimate results, and ere long he was enabled to purchase another vessel of larger dimensions, and thus considerably to extend his business. And so he went on, until his eighteenth birthday found him part owner and captain of one of the largest perriaugers in the harbor of New York, and he shortly after became interested in one or two smaller boats engaged in the same business. His life, at this time, Avag a most active one, spent almost entirely upon the water, carry- ing freight and passengers, boarding ships, and doing every thing which came to his hand. In addition to all this vigorous day-work, he undertook and continued, through the whole war of 1812, to furnish supplies by night to one of the forts on the Hudson and another at the Narrows. It is said of him that •' his energy, skill and daring became so well known, and his word, when he gave it, could be relied upon so implicitly, that Corneile, the boatman, as he was familiarly called, was sought after far and near, when any expedition particularly hazardous or important was to "be undertaken. Neither wind, rain, ice, nor snow ever prevented his fulfilling one of his promises. At one time during the war (sometime in September, 1813), the British fleet had endeavored to penetrate the port during a severe southeasterly storm, just before day, but were repulsed CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 659 from Sandy Hook, After the cannonading was over, and tlie garrison at Fort Richmond had returned to quarters, it was highly important that some of the of&cers should proceed to headquarters to report the occurrence, and obtain the necessary reinforcements against another attack. The storm was a fear- ful one ; still the work must be done, and all felt that there was but one person capable of undertaking it. Accordingly, Vanderbilt was sought out, and upon being asked if he could take the party up, he replied promptly : " Yes, hut I shall have to carry them under water part of the viay P'' They went with him, and when they landed at Coffee-House slip there was not a dry thread in the party. The next day the garrison was re- inforced. Yanderbilt also showed, in these earlier days, what he has frequently exemplified in his later life, that he was very tena- cious of his rights, and determined that no one should infringe, them. On one occasion, during the same war, while on hia way to the city with a load of soldiers from the forts at the Narrows, he was hailed by a boat coming out from the shore, near the Quarantine. Seeing an officer on board, young Yander- bilt allowed it to approach him ; but as it came nearer, he saw that it belonged to one of his leading competitors, and that the owner himself was with the officer. Still he awaited their approach, preparing to defend himself in case of any unauthor- ized interference. No sooner, however, were they alongside of his boat, than the officer jumped on board, and ordered the sol- diers ashore with him in the other boat, for inspection, etc Young Yanderbilt, seeing that the whole affair was a trick to transfer his passengers to his competitor, at once told the officer that the men should not move, that his order should not be obeyed. The military man, almost bursting with rage, hastily drew his sword, as if about to avenge his insulted dignity, when 360 MEN OF OUR DAY. young Vanderbilt quickly brought him, sword and all, to the deck. It did not take him many minutes more to rid himself of the officer and his companion, and quickly getting under way again, his soldiers were soon landed, without further molestation, at the Whitehall dock." These anecdotes serve to illustrate the character of the man. By this time young Vanderbilt's labors had placed him in a position where he could reasonably entertain the prospect of maintaining a family and home of his own, and, on the 19th of December, 1813, he married Miss Sophie Johnson, of Port Richmond, Staten Island, and the next year took up his resi- dence at New York. About the same time he became the master and owner of the new perriauger "Dorad," which was at that time the largest and finest craft of that kind in the harbor of New York; and, in the summer of 1815, he built, in connection with his brother-in-law, De Forest, a schooner named the "Charlotte," which was remarkably large for her day, and which, under command of De Forest, was profitably employed as a lighter, in carrying Ireights between numerous home ports. Thus, up to the year 1817, with varied experi- ence but unvarying success, Mr. Vanderbilt continued in this business, improving the construction of vessels and adding to his reputation among nautical men, and with such profit that, in the four years preceding his twenty-third birthday, he had laid up the snug little sum of $9000 — hard won earnings. Yet his ambition was by no means satisfied. His comprehensive mind, ever on the alert to catch any thing new or valuable pertaining to his chosen profession, saw at an early date the inestimable advantages which would ultimately accrue to the interests of commerce from the use of steam, which had but recently formed a new application to the purposes of naviga- tion. Happening to become acquainted with Thomas Gibbons, CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. ^61 of New Jersey, a large capitalist, then extensively interested lu the transportation of passengers between New York and Phila- delphia, he received from him an ofl'er of the captaincy of a little steamboat, at a salary of one thousand dollars per year. This, to a man who had always been his own master, and who was then engaged in suf6.ciently lucrative business, presented but few inducements. But Vanderbilt's prophetic ken antici- pated the triumphs of steam, and he had resolved to participate in, if not direct them. He therefore accepted the proffer, and assumed the command, in the fall of 1817, of a little steamer, so small, that its owner soon re-christened it as " The Mouse of the Mountain." In a few months he was promoted to the " Bellona," a much larger boat, just ready for her trial trip, and employed on the Philadelphia line, carrying passengers between New York and New Brunswick, to which place (after a temporary few months' stay at Elizabethport), convenience dictated the removal of his family residence. At that time, passengers en, route for Philadelphia, stopped at New Brunswick over night, taking early stage next morning to Trenton, and thence boat to Philadelphia. The stage-house at which travellers stopped over night, was the property of Gibbons, whose management of it proved unfortunate, and who was, therefore, induced to offer it, rent free, to his new captain, shortly after his removal to New Brunswick, if he would, in addition to his other duties, take charge of it — its proper keeping being, of course, an indispen- sable condition to the prosperity of the whole route. Vander- bilt accepted the proposition, and, during the remainder of hia business connection with Mr. Gibbons, conducted it so success- fully that it became a source of considerable profit. In 1827, he hired of Mr. Gibbons the New York and Elizabethport Ferry, which, under two successive leases of seven years each, he managed so well that it proved very profitable, although pre- 662 MEN OF OUR DAT. viouslj it had been unremunerative. Twelve years had elapsed since he had entered Mr. Gibbons's employ ; and, during that time, his faithfulness, care, and persevering industry had so advanced the prosperity of the line that it was now netting, annually, the sum of nearly $40,000. Under his supervision, each new boat added to the line had been made better and fleeter than its predecessor, and his keen and fertile intellect was quick to make every new circumstance subservient to the interests of his employer and the improvement of steam navigation. To understand some of the difficulties with which Yanderbilt was surrounded, at the time he first became captain of the Bellona, we must recall the early history of steam navigation. It will be remembered that, in 1798, an act was passed by the Legislature of New York, repealing a previous act, and trans- ' ferring to Mr. Livingston, the exclusive privilege of navigating the waters of the State by steam. This act was from time to time continued, and Fulton was finally included in its pro- visions. In 1807, after the trial trip of the Clermont, the Legislature, by another act, extended this privilege, and in the following year, subjected any vessel, propelled by steam, to forfeiture, which should enter the waters of the State without the license of those grantees. These acts were in force when Vanderbilt entered the employ of Mr. Gibbons, and the Phila- delphia line violated the privilege thus granted, in case the boats stopped at the city of New York ; and hence, for a long time, whenever Yanderbilt ran a steamer in on the New York side of the river, as he was instructed by the owner to do, he was arrested, if he could be found. As an expedient to avoid arrest, he taught a lady how to steer the boat, and when it neared the New York dock, he would turn it over to her 'iharge, and disappear himself; so that the officers were fro- CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 66S quently compelled to return their writs against him non est. At this time, it will also be remembered, the New York Court of Errors had pronounced these acts constitutional ; the New Jersey Legislature had passed retaliatory acts, and a suit against Gibbons was in progress in the United States Court. To make this line prosperous, under such difficulties, and against such opposition, was, of course, no ordinary task ; still it was at once accomplished, as we have stated. At length, and in 182J:, the Gibbons's case was decided. Chief Justice Marshall delivering the opinion of the Court, to the effect, that, under the Constitution of the United States, no State could grant an exclusive right of navigation, by steam or otherwise, on any of the principal rivers of the country ; and, as a consequence, navigation of the Hudson, and elsewhere, became free to all. With this obstacle removed, Vanderbilt went to work with renewed vigor, steadily pushing forward his employer's enter- prise, until it produced the remarkable revenue noted above. In 1829, Vanderbilt determined to commence business again on his own account, but met with the most strenuous ob- jections, and the most liberal inducements — even to the offer of the ownership of the entire Philadelphia route, on almost hia own terms — from Gibbons, who confessed his inability to run the line without him. But these offers were firmly yet kindly put aside, and Gibbons, finding the life of his enterprise had gone, shortly after sold out the entire business. Once again Vanderbilt was his own master, and possessed such an intimate knowledge of the details and practical management of steam navigation, as placed him in a most favorable position for further usefulness and success. The next twenty years of hia life we must sketch rapidly. Applying to his work, the same wisdom and energy which he had ever shown, he built, during this period, a very large number of steamboats, and established 664 MEN OF OUR DAY. iteamboat lines on the Hudson, the Sound and elsewhere. Hia plan was to build better and faster boats, than those of his competitors, and to run them at the lowest paying rates. He was thus enabled, by furnishing passengers with the best and cheapest accommodations, to distance the corporations and companies, whose monopoly of the carrying trade had hither- to made travelling too expensive to be enjoyed by the many. It cannot be claimed, that in every act, he sought the public's welfare, yet the great result of his " opposition" lines has been decidedly beneficial to the community, for commercial growth and rivalry are inseparable, and competition is, proverbially, the life of healthy trade. Meantime, the gold of California had been discovered, and was drawing an immense rush of trade thitherward. The Pacific Mail Steamship Company began to run its steamers in 18-i8, and in 1849 the Panama railroad was surveyed and commenced. The same year, we find Mr, Van- derbilt, under a charter obtained from the Nicarauguan govern- ment, for a ship-canal and transit company, seeking another transit route, in connection with which he could establish a competing line between New York and the " golden land." This charter was subsequently enlarged by the grant of an exclusive right to transport passengers and freight between the two oceans, by means of a railroad, steamboats, or otherwise, and sepaiating the transit grant from the canal grant. In 1850, Mr. Vanderbilt built the Prometheus, and, in her, visited Nicaragua for the purpose of personally exploring the country, and satisfy- ing himself as to the practicability of the route. The harbor of San Juan del Sur, was fixed upon as the Pacific port — a little steamboat built, under his personal inspection, to run up the San Juan river — and finally, in the face of many obstacles, a semi-monthly line to California, via Nicaragua, was opened in July, 1851, and speedily became the favorite, as well as the CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 665 cheapest route to Sau Francisco. In January, 1853, Yanfierbilt sold his many and large steamers, on both sides, to the Transit Company, acting as their agent for several months — and then his connection with it ceased, until he became its president in January 1856. During the invasion of Nicaragua by " Filibuster Walker," that general, to whom Yanderbilt had refused transpor- tation for his men and munitions, issued a decree (February, 1856,) annulling all grants to the company, as well as its act of incorporation ; and, when the long series of plots and counter- plots to which this gave rise were settled, a sand-bar was found to have formed at the mouth of the San Juan, making it practi- cally useless. Mr. Vanderbilt had become a man of great wealth, and, in 1853, he conceived the novel, and, in some respects, grand design of making the tour of Europe, with his family, in a fine, large steamship of his own. For a single individual, without rank, prestige, or national authority, to build, equip, and man a noble specimen of naval architecture, and to maintain it before all the courts of Europe, with dignity and style, was an extremely suggestive illustration to the Old World, of what the energies of man may accomplish in this new land, where they are uncramped by oppressive social institutions, or absurd social traditions. Cornelius Vanderbilt is a natural, legitimate product of America. With us, all citizens have full permission to run the race in which he has gained such large prizes, while in other countries, they are trammelled by a thousand restrictions. Accordingly, a new vessel, called " The North Star," was built, as all his vessels are, under his own supervision, in a very complete manner, perfect in all its departments, and splendidly fitted up with all that could tend to gratify or please, and was the first steamer fitted with a beam engine, that ever attempted to cross the Atlantic. 666 MEN OF OUR DAY. On Friday, the 11th of May, 1855, the comrijodore and his party set sail. In almost every country visited they were re- ceived by all the authorities with great cordiality, as well as gre-.it attention. At Southampton, the North Star formed the topic of conversation in all circles, and the party was honored with a splendid banquet, at which about two hundred persons sat down. When in Kussia, the Grand Duke Constantine and the chief admiral of the Russian navy visited the ship. The former solicited and obtained permission to take drafts of it, which duty was ably performed by a corps of Russian engineers. In Constantinople, in Gibraltar, and Malta, the authorities were also very cordial and polite. But in Leghorn (under the government of Austria) the vessel was subjected to constant surveillance, guard boats patrolling about her day and night — the authorities not being able to believe that the expedition waa one of pleasure, but imagining that the steamer was loaded with munitions and arms for insurrectionary purposes. Thus, after a very charming and delightful excursion of four months, they returned home, reaching New York, September 23d, 1853, having sailed a distance of fifteen thousand miles. This cer- tainly was an expedition worthy and characteristic of the man who undertook it, and met with that decided success which his efforts ever seem to insure. Mr. Vanderbilt's observations, while abroad, satisfied him of the necessity of largely increasing the facilities of communica- tion between Europe and America; and, soon after his return, he made an offer to the Postmaster-General to run a semi- monthly line to England, alternating with the Collins line, carrying the mails on the voyage out and home for fifteen thousand dollars. The Cunard line was at that time withdrawn from the mail service on account of the Crimean war, and his plan, therefore, was to provide for weekly departures, filling up CORNELIUS VANDERBILT, 667 tliose thus left vacant. This proposition, however, was not accepted; but unwilling to abandon the idea, on the 21st of April, 1858, he established an independent line between New York and Havre. For this purpose he built several new steam- ships, and among them the Ariel, and finally the Vanderbilt, and the line was kept up with great spirit and success. Subse- quent to the building of the Vanderbilt, there was an exciting contest of speed between the boats of the different lines. The Arabia and Persia, of the Cunard, the Baltic and Atlantic, of the Collins, and the Vanderbilt of the independent line, were the competitors. Great interest was taken in the contest, as all will remember, but the Vanderbilt came out victorious, making the shortest time ever made by any European or American steamer. The subsequent history of this vessel, and the use which has since been made of it, are well known. In the spring of 1862, when the administration needed, immediately, large additions to its navy, to aid in carrying on its military operations (an occasion which many were eager to turn to their own advantage, at their country's expense). Commodore Vanderbilt made free gift of this splendid ship, which had cost $800,000, to the Government. For this magnificent act of patriotism he re- ceived, in January, 1864, a resolution of thanks passed by Congress, and approved by the President, and a gold medal, a duplicate copy of which was also made and deposited for pre- servation in the library of Congress. Commodore Vanderbilt (he was long since given the title ot commodore by acclamation, and as the creator and manager of so larg,e a fleet, he surely merited it) has, during his long career of activity, built and owned exclusively himself, upward of one hundred steamboats and ships — none of which have been lost by accident. He had extensive machine-shops, where the 663 MEN- OF OUR DAT. machinery was made according to his own ideas, and his vessels were almost invariabl}'' constructed by days' work, under his constant supervision and from plans entirely his own. It was his practice, also, to employ the most deserving and trustworthy commanders, and never to insure a vessel or cargo of any kind, believing that "good vessels and good commanders are the best kind of insurance ; " and also, that " if corporations could make money in the insurance business he could." It is now nearly ten years since Commodore Vanderbilt began to withdraw gradually from his marine enterprises, and to con- centrate his energies and his vast capital and influence upon railways, and his movements have been attended with their usual success. He began with the Harlem Railroad, which had been the football of the speculators and unfortunate in all its man- agement. Its stock had ranged from forty to seventy dollars the share. He obtained a controlling interest in it, equipped it anew, and made it one of the best as it had previously been one of the poorest roads leaving New York. The stock went up to one hundred and seventy-five and even higher. Next he obtained control of the Hudson River Road, and re- formed its management, and then stretched out his hand and grasped the New York Central. His management was so suc- cessful that he met with little or no opposition, when he deter- mined to consolidate the New York Central and Hudson River in one gigantic corporation, and lease the Harlem, which he had now extended to Vermont, to the new corporation. The stock of this mammoth corporation was largely watered, but under his efficient management it has paid liberal dividends. He has bought up all the branches and collateral roads which could be bought or leased, to serve as feeders for his great line. At one time he had almost secured control of the Erie Railway also (it mii-ht have been better for the stockholders if he had sue CORNELIUS VANDKRBILT. 669 ceeded); but the cage of unclean birds which in the spring of 1872 were ousted from it, by their sharp practices kept him out, though not without heavy expense to themselves. He next turned his attention to perfecting his connection with the Pacific Railways, and now controls not only the Lake Shore, Southern Michigan, Chicago and Rock Island, and Chicago and North- western, but numerous other connecting roads, and runs his palace cars without change from New York city to the Golden Gate. Hi3 only formidable competitor now for the monarchy of the railroad system of the United States is Col. Thomas A. Scott, the Pennsyl- vania Railroad king. Scott has youth in his favor, but the old commodore is tough, and carries his seventy-eight years as jaun- tily as if they were not half that number. He controls to-day, through himself and members of his family, railway property of the value of nearly, and perhaps quite, three hundred millions of dollars. His personal wealth is vast. He is unquestionably one of the three richest men in America, the other two being Wil- liam B, Astor and Alexander T. Stewart, and it is doubtful whether either could tell the amount of their property within ten millions. Commodore Vanderbilt makes no pretensions of philanthropy. He is not even for his means a large or liberal giver, yet, as we have seen, he sometimes gives in a princely way. He became very much interested four or five years ago in the efforts of Rev, Dr. Deems to establish a " church for strangers " in New York, and finding that the University Place Church was for sale, a fine and substantial edifice, he bought it, and presented it to Dr. Deems. He has, we are glad to say been ever since a frequent attendant on the Doctor's ministra- tions. Yet amidst his close and continued application to the busi- ness of life, the kindly feelings of childhood have remained unchanged. The eagerness with which he has anticipated 670 MEN OF OUR DAT. every desire of an aged mother, is only an evidence of the heart within him. He was as devoted to her in manhood, as she to him in early youth. The pretty home-like cottage con- structed for her under his eye, and in accordance with the tasto of both, surrounded by luxuriant vines and evergreens, was a continual joy to her during her life. There, near her old home, and overlooking the water, the scene of his early exploits, she happily lived, tenderly cared for, and, only a few years since, as happily and peacefully died. How consistent with all his conduct toward her was the thoughtfulness which prompted him, upon returning from his triumphal tour of Europe, to stop the steamer in passing up the bay, and give that mother his first greetings, and receive her welcome home. Few, aa they read, at that time, the newspaper accounts of his arrival, could have failed to notice, among the more exciting items, the statement of this simple fact, and to feel that it was an honor to the son as well as to the mother. The same kindliness of feeling he has always exhibited in every other position in life. Deceit and underhand dealing he has ever quickly detected and thoroughly hated, but frankness and honesty of speech and act have been sure to find a ready and kind response. During all his contests with men, he had exemplified the truth of this, ever being ready to act with the greatest generosity, when thus approached. A certain captain, interested in a line of boats to Hartford, took steps which Vanderbilt considered dishonorable, to injure his line of boats to the same place, and therefore Yanderbilt determined to run him off, and did it. About that time Captain Brooks, who is an intimate friend of the commodore, met the defeated party and asked him how he got on. " Why, I have put my hand in Vanderbilt's mouth, and of course I must give up," he replied. " But," said Brooks, " go and see him, and if you are CORNELIUS VANDERBILT. 671 frank to him, he will be generous to you." " Go 1" said he, " he would not see me." Yet afterwards he concluded to go, and sure enough, he came back not only with the difficulty healed, but with obligations conferred, which he will very long remember. Six feet in height, with a large strong frame, a bright clear expressive eye, thin white hair, and ruddy complexion, Mr. Vanderbilt combines in his temperament a perfect blending of the best vital motive and mental characteristics. His will, self-reliance and ambition to achieve success are immense, while integrity, self-respect and kindness of heart are not less strongly marked. Socially, he is one of the most affectionate of men. He is quick to read the characters and motives of others ; forms his own judgments with intuitive quickness and correctness ; executes his plans with rapidity and a conscious- ness of self-power. With such mental and vital characteristics, with or without education, the "Commodore" would, almost inevitably, have been at the head of any calling or profession which he might have adopted. Nature created him for a leader. THOMAS ALEXANDER SCOTT, RAILWAY KING. [T is greatly to the honor of most of our leading business men, as well as of some of our statesmen, that they are emphatically self-made men. Unfavored by fortune in their youthful days, struggling, perhaps, with gaunt penury, and while thirsting for knowledge as ravenously as the traveller in the desert thirsts for the cooling spring, they have been denied the opportunity to enter its halls and slake that thirst, and have been detained at the bench, the counter, or the manufactory, struggling wearily for a bare pittance for their own needs, or the support of those dear to them. If there is any one person endowed with all his natural faculties, who is excusable for not endeavoring to acquire a good and thonyugh education, that person is the child, who, after toiling through the long day to and even beyond his strength, finds that his only opportunity of improvement is in the evening hours. The more honor then would we bestow on the young clerk, mechanic or machinist, who, notwithstanding intense weariness of body, seeks most zealously for the opportunities of improvement. And when a lad thus struggles and fights his way up through diflSiculties which would appal an ordinary mind, and takes his position among the world's great men, he deserves to be reck- oned as a hero. It is in this class that Colonel Thomas A. Scott has won and maintained his position. 672 THOMAS ALEXANDER SCOTT 673 Thomas Alexander Scott was born in the village of Lou- don, Franklin county, Pennsylvania, December 28tb, 1824:. Of his early childhood we know little. It must have V)een one of poverty and narrowness, for in a large family, of which he was one of the youngest children, he attended the village school for but a short time, and had but a single teacher, Eobert Kirby, of Loudon. His father died when he was but ten years of age, and even before that time he had been striving to earn a living as clerk in a little country store. At his father's death his home was broken up, and he went to reside with an elder mar- ried sister, near Waynesborough, Franklin county, whose hus- band had a small store, in which Thomas was employed for eighteen months. From thence he went for a short time to Bridgeport, in the same county, where an elder brother was en- gaged in trade. A few mouths later he had obtained a situa- tion with a good firm in Mercersburg. When he was fourteen years old, another brother-in-law who had been appointed col- lector of tolls on the State road at Columbia, sent for him to be his clerk, and a year or two after he became a clei'k in the ex- tensive warehouse and commission establishment of the Messrs- Leech, of Columbia, where he remained until 1847. During all these thirteen or fourteen years, he had sought in every way pos- sible to train himself for a business life. Intensely fond of study, he yet subordinated his study to his employer's interests,. and did everything with an order, system and judgment which would have been highly creditable to a man of twice his years. Everywhere his quickness and energy, his correctness, ability and integrity inspired all who had to do with him with con- fidence in his business character and uprightness. In 1847, he came to Philadelphia as chief clerk under A. Boyd Cummings, collector of tolls at the eastern end of the puV)lic works, lie did not become connected with the Pennsylvania Central Rail 43 674 MEN OF OUR DAY. road until 1850, when he was appointed General Agent of their Mountain or Eastern Division at Duncanville, When the Western Division was opened he was transferred to that, and remained there until the health of General Lombaert, the Superintendent of the road, failed, when he was called to take his place. In 1860, on the death of the Hon. William B. Foster, Vice-President of the road, Mr, Scott was elected to that posi- tion, and it was from that time that the Pennsylvania Central railroad began to comprehend its position and facilities as a great trunk road. The executive ability, order, method and enterprize of the new Vice-President had here for the first time their legitimate field of exercise, and the road began at once to take its appropriate place as one of the four great highways which were competing for the traffic of the continent. But there was higher work than this for Mr. Scott to under- take. The civil war had commenced, and our War Department was inadequate with its antiquated and contracted machinery to manage the aftairs of an army of more than a million men scat- tered over half a continent. Mr. Scott's executive ability was already known at Washington, and he was called thither as Assistant Secretary of War, having special charge of .the trans- portation of troops, and their movement from one section of the country to another. He was at one time directed by the Presi- dent to take possession of all the railroad lines of the Central States, and combine them into one harmonious whole, so as to render the Government service both rapid and certain. No other man had ever attempted so extensive a control of rail- roads as this, and it is safe' to say, that there were not half-a-dozen men in the country who could have done it successfully. The late Secretary of War, Hon. Edwin M. Stanton, was one of the most tireless workers who ever occupied that position, and he had first and last at least a dozen assistants, all of them men of THOMAS ALEXANDER SCOTT. 675 remarkable business capacity, but most of them broke down under the tremendous strain of the work which the war pro- duced. Mr. Stanton was accustomed to say, that the only two assistants he ever had whom he could not kill with over-work, were Thomas A. Scott and Charles A. Dana. Returning to his work as Vice-President of the Pennsylva- nia Central, Colonel Scott (he had received a staff commission from the War Department) began at once to develop the vast capacity for work there was in him, and while most men would have found the management of that great road and its connec- tions with the West sufficient to occupy all their time and thoughts, to him it was mere play. He accepted the Presi- dency of the "Pennsylvania Company," the corporation by which the entire system of roads west of Pittsburgh, which are owned or leased by the Pennsylvania Central, is operated, and in that capacity he controls and manages over 4000 miles of railroad. He took the Presidency of the Union Pacific Rail- way, when its affairs were in a condition of great confusion, and m a few short months brought them out into an assured success. He is the right arm and successful manager of the "Southern Railway Security Company," in which, profiting by his experience during the war, he has brought into one orderly and harmonious system, and under one general control, the larger part of the Southern railroads, greatly to their advantage and that of the public. He has taken an interest as counsellor and manager in many other great railway enterprises, among which we may name the Kansas Pacific, the Denver Pacific, the Denver and Rio Grande Narrow Gauge, the Northern Pacific, the Texas Pacific, and other railways, including several on the Pacific coast. There must be a limit somewhere to the business capacity of even a man of Colonel Scott's comprehensive and methodical 676 MEN OF OUR DAY mind. "We do not know that be has reached or even approached that limit, but when a man has the care of some ten thousand miles of railway on his mind, when it depends upon his move- ments whether a capital of four hundred or live hundred mil- lions of dollars shall prove profitable or unprofitable, it cer tainly behooves that man to keep his head "level." Much may be accomplished, and undoubtedly in his case much is accom- plished, by the rare power he possesses of dismissing at will all care and anxiety from his mind. In his "off" hours, no man is more blithe, gay and hearty than he. To see him on such occasions you would hardly suppose that anything more serious than the tie of his cravat or the fit of his gloves ever occupied his mind; but there comes a time sooner or later, when the spectre of brooding thought will not down at a man's bidding ; when he cannot shake off care so easily, and then the over- wrought brain revenges itself for its excessive toil, and the man must rest or die. From such a fate, we trust, this noble- hearted and greatly gifted son of Pennsylvania may long be spared, to be a blessing not only to the State but to the nation. Colonel Scott is not an active politician, and, indeed, cares but little for political questions. He has warm friends in both parties, but has generally when voting at all voted with the Republicans. In the multiplicity of names mentioned for the Presidency, at a time of such general political upheaval, it is not surprising that a man of his rare executive ability should have been thought of, but he himself has no aspirations in that direc- tion. It is said that some months ago some anxious politicians {ipproached him on the subject, and he replied, with a merry twinkle of his eye, and an evident allusion to his well-known propensity to taking long leases on every railroad within his reach : " No, gentlemen, I cannot afford it ; time is altogether too short. If I could have a ninety-nine years' lease, I might think of it." CYRUS WEST FIELD, THE FOUNDER OF ATLANTIC TELEGRATHY. HE FIELD famil}^ is one of those instances of which there are several in our national history, in which the greater part of the children of a large family springing from a respectable, but not specially eminent ancestry, attain high distinction either in kindred or diverse pursuits. The Edwards, tlie Dwight and the Woolsey families in various degrees belong to this class; its most conspicuous example is " the Beecher family ; " but the descendants of Eev. David Dud- ley Field, D.D., who died at Stockbridge, Massachusetts, in 1867, are hardly less conspicuous though in more varied careers. Dr. Field had ten children, of whom nine grew up to maturity, viz. : seven sons and two daughters. Of the seven sons, David Dudley has attained high distinction and great wealth as a jurist, in Kew York City ; Timothy B. was a naval officer of great promise, but was lost at sea in 1836 ; Matthew D., a manufac- turer and civil engineer, has a high reputation in his profession, and has been a State Senator in Massachusetts ; Jonathan E., was a lawyer of great ability, several times a member of the Massachusetts Senate, and once or twice President of that body; Stephen J., also a lawyer, formerly Chief Justice of California, is now one of the Associate Justices of the Supreme Court of the United States; of Cyrus W. we shall have more to sav. Kev. Henry M., D.D., is an eloquent preacher and writer, and 677 678 MEN OF OUR DAY. for some years past has been editor and proprietor of tbe New York Evangelist, a very popular and widely circulated Presby- terian journal. The two daughters were ladies of high intellec- tual ability. Both were married, the elder to a missionary, with whom she spent some years in missionary labors in Syria. Several of Dr. Field's grandchildren have also achieved dis- tinction. Cyrus West Field was born in Stockbridge, Massachusetts, November 30th, 1819. He received a very thorough English and academical education, and at the age of fifteen went to New York as clerk in a mercantile house. After several years' ex- perience in that capacity, he entered the house as partner, and finally became principal. He was very successful, and in 1853, at the age of thirty-four, retired from business with an ample fortune. He spent six or eight months in travel in South America, and soon after his return was approached by Mr. F.N. Gisborne, Engineer and Telegraph operator, and the founder and chief promoter of the Electric Telegraphic Company, an organi- zation which had attempted the construction of a telegraphic line from New Brunswick to St. John's, Newfoundland, there to con- nect with a line of steamers to the Irish coast. This company had become bankrupt before the completion of their enterprize, and Mr. Gisborne was anxious to have their charter taken up by New York capitalists. Mr. Matthew D. Field, a brotlier of Cyrus, and an engineer by profession, had formed Mr. Gisborne's acquaintance, and became favorably impressed with his project, and he introduced him to his brother. Mr. Field was at first averse to the undertaking, but examining it carefully, and be- coming impressed with the feasibility of carrying a telegraphic wire across the Atlantic from St. John's, he began to give it more attention. He wrote at once to Lieutenant Maury, then at the head of the Naval Observatory at Washington, and author CYRUS WEST FIELD. 679 of a work on "The Physical Geography of tlie Sea," inquiring of him concerning the practicability of carrying an insulated wire or wires across the ocean, i. e., whether there were any insurmount- able physical difficulties in the ocean bed. At the same time he addressed a letter to Professor S. F. B. Morse (lately deceased) inquiring as to the possibility of transmitting electro-magnetic signals to such a distance through the ocean. Lieutenant Maury replied, transmitting a report he had just made to the Secretary of the Navy of Lieutenant Berryman's continuous soundings across the ocean, at the very points between which Mr. Field had thought the cable should be laid, showing that there was an oceanic plateau crossing the ocean, whose depth nowhere ex- ceeded two miles, and whose surface, composed of the debris of microscopic shells unmixed with sand or gravel, was almost as level as a western prairie. Professor Morse came to visit Mr. Field, and demonstrated the feasibility of the transmission of magnetic signals through the ocean to much greater distances. Having thus satisfied himself of the practicability of the enter- prise, Mr. Field next undertoook to enlist several capitalists in it, and succeeded in persuading Peter Cooper, Moses Taylor, Marshall O. Roberts, and Chandler White to join him in form- ing a company to undertake the work. Subsequentl\'- Professor Morse, AVilson G. Hunt, and an English Telegraphic Engineer, Mr. John W.Brett,- took some share in the enterprise. The asso- ciates visited Newfoundland, and procured from the provincial legislature a new and very favorable charter; bouglit up the pro- perty of the old Electric Telegraphic Company, and paid its debts; constructed nearly 550 miles of road and telegrapic lines from New Brunswick to Newfoundland, and at their direction Mr. Field visited England, and ordered a telegraphic cable to cross the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and this being lost, went again and procured another, which was successfully laid. At the end of 680 MEN OF OUR DAY two years, and with an expenditure of about a million of dollars, nearly all of which had come from their own pockets, the asso- ciates had reached Newfoundland, and were ready for another step in advance. Mr. Field again visited England, empowered either to obtain additional subscriptions to the New York, New- foundland and London Telegraph Company, organized by himself and his associates two years before, or to found a new company to lay the cable alone. The latter alternative was adopted, a company organized with guaranties from the British Govern- ment, and its capital stock fixed at 350,000?.,=$!, 750,000. Mr. Field took 88,000/.,=$M0,000 of this stock himself, but subse- quently disposed of $185,000 of it here. The cable was made by Glass, Elliot & Co. The first attempt to lay it was made in 1857. The United Steamships Niagara and Susquehanna, and the British Steamships Agamemnon and Gorgon perform- ing the work under the direction of Mr. Field and his associ- ates. The cable broke Avhen three hundred and thirty-five miles had been laid, in consequence of the clumsiness of the paying-out machine. The ships returned to England and landed the remainder of the cable, and Mr. Field returned to the United States, to find that in the financial panic nearly his entire fortune had been swept away. The next year the effort to lay it was made again, and after two or tliree failures, proved successful so far that the cable was laid, and' imperfect commu- nication kept up between the shores of the Atlantic for nearly a month, when it gave out entirely. Meantime Mr. Field had received a succession of ovations, one of them so glowing that it set on fire the cupola and roof the City Hall in New York, and came very near destroying the whole of the vast building. But the sudden news on the 5th of September, 1858, that " the Atlantic Telegraph was dead," would have killed a man less sanguine and resolute. Mr. Field, however, went to England CYRUS WEST FIELD. 681 repeated!}'-, and kept the matter in agitation, and under the en- couras^ement of added subsidies from the British Government, and the promise of guaranties if it should be made to write, succeeded in getting again under way. A new company was formed, called the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, in which Messrs. Glass, Elliot & Co., the manufac- turers of the cable, Thomas Brassey and others, were large stockholders; the Great Eastern secured to lay the cable, and in the summer of 1865 the effort was made again with a greatly improved cable. Between twelve and thirteen hundred miles were laid, not without some slight accidents, when once more the cable was broken by being fouled under the bow of the Great Eastern. For nine days the persevering directors and crew grappled for the lost cable ; three times they brought it up for a mile or more from the bottom (here two and a half miles in depth), but each time their apparatus gave way under the terrible strain, and finally, marking carefully its location with buoys, they left it. Not yet, however, did the brave Field give up to despair. Again he crossed the ocean, and after try- ing several other plans organized a fourth companj', in which the previous companies became stockholders, with three million dollars capital, had another cable made, and in the summer of 1866 it was laid, and has proved a complete success from that time to the present. -More than this; the same expedition which laid this grappled for, and brought to the surface the end of the cable of 1865, spliced it, and successfully completed that also. In 1869, a third cable was laid by a French companv, which has since passed into the hands of the London company, and although we believe but two of the three are now workino- successfully, yet there is very little danger now of a loss of our communication with Europe by telegraph, especially as one or two other lines are in progress 682 MEN OF OUR DAY Mr. Field's indefatigable zeal and persistency in thus strug- gling through thirteen years of discouragement and disaster to a final triumph, and his courage, which rose higher with each failure, are worthy of all praise. With his great enterprize, at last an assured success, and his outlays so long unproductive, at last yielding their golden harvest, it would seem that he would have been content to rest upon his laurels; but we notice that beside taking an interest in most of the telegraphic cables which connect the great divi- sions of the American continent and the adjacent islands, he led the way a few months' since in an application'to Congress for a charter for a Telegraphic Cable Company to cross the Pacific from San Francisco to Japan, taking the Sandwich Islands as a half-way house, and thus solving the problem of the Great Eng- lish poet and dramatist of "Putting a girdle round the earth in forty minutes." We have not yet heard that the company is fully organized, or the cable in process of manufacture, but just as sure as Cyrus W. Field has a controlling interest in it, it is bound to be carried through triumphantly. HON. EZRA CORNELL. [<^MONG the names of tte great benefactors of education, that of Ezra Cornell must always occupy a place in the front rank. Yery few men living or dead have contributed so largely to the diffusion of knowledge among men, as this plain, practical business man. Though deprived of the advantages of collegiate training in early life, he has sought to give to all classes the boon of a higher educa tion ; and he has done this so wisely and well, that numberless generations to come will rise up and bless him for it. Ezra Cornell was born at Westchester Landing, West- chester county, New York, January 11th, 1807. His 'parents were members of the Society of Friends. His father was by- trade a potter, and carried on the business extensively, at one time, in Tarrytown, afterward at English Neighborhood, New Jersey. Young Cornell made himself useful in his father's shop in attending to customers and delivering ware. In 1819, his father removed to De Ruyter, Madison county, New York, where he again established a pottery, and with the assistance of Ezra and a younger son conducted a farm. The advantages for early scholastic training which Mr. Cor- nell enjoyed were few, yet, such as they were, he eagerly availed himself of them. At De Ruyter, his father taught a district school during the winter terms, which he attended. 633 684: MEN OF OUR DAT. The last year of his " schooling," being then about seventeen years of age, he obtained, as it were, by purchase, he and his brother agreeing to clear four acres of wood-land in time to plant corn in the following spring. This was done, and an ex- cellent crop of corn secured, without the aid of a day's labor from other sources. Notwithstanding his limited facilities for tuition, Ezra made considerable advancement in the various bi-anches of common-school learning, and was even advised to teach on his own account. This advice he did not see fit to fol- low, but turned his attention to farming. In 1825, an incident occurred which called out his great natural mechanical ability. His father hired a carpenter to build a shop, and Ezra obtained permission to assist in preparing the frame. While the work was in progress, he pointed out to the carpenter an error in the laying out of one of the corner posts, and at the risk of a flog- ging, convinced him of his mistake. Soon afterward his fa- ther requested him to build a dwelling-house, and though he had never seen a book on architecture, taking the house of a neighbor as his model, he went bravely at it, and after weeks of persevering effort, although annoyed and thwarted by of- ficious and meddlesome persons, who were fearful that he would succeed, yet he finally triumphed in the construction of a sub- stantial and comfortable house, into which his father removed. The execution of this task obtained for him the admiration of his neighbors, and a good knowledge of carpentry. In 1826, we find the elder son leaving his father's house to seek his for- tune among strangers. During the next year he found employ- ment at Homer, Cortland county, iu building wool-carding ma- chines. In the spring of 1828, he went to Ithaca, and engaged with a Mr. Eddy to work in the machine shop of his cotton factory one year, at eight dollars per month and his board. His services were evidently appreciated, as he says himself: "I had HON. EZRA CORNELL. 685 worked six montlis on this contract, when Mr. Eddj surj rised me one morning bj saying to me that he thought I was not getting wages enough, and that he had made up his mind to pay me twelve dollars per month the balance of the year. I thanked him and continued my labors. At the end of the year, I had credit for six months, at eight dollars per month, and seven months, at twelve dollars per month, having gained one month during the year by overwork. Twelve hours were cre- dited as a day's work, and I have found no day since that time, which has not demanded twelve hours' work from me." In 1829, the success gained by him in repairing a flouring- mill at Fall Creek, Ithaca, led to his effecting an engagement with the proprietor of the mill to take charge of it, at four hundred dollars a year. He remained in this position ten years, during which period he built a new flouring-mill, containing eight runs of stones. This latter mill he worked two years, turning out four hundred barrels of flour per day, during the fall or flouring season, and employing only one miller. He had so admirably adjusted the mechanism of this mill, that manual labor was only required to take the flour from the mill. The term of his engagement having expired, he next engaged in business of an agricultural nature, conducting it partly in Maine, and partly in Georgia. His brother was associated in this business. Their plan was to spend the summer in Maine, and the winter in Georgia. These operations led to an acquaint- ance which terminated in his becoming interested in rendering available the magnetic telegraph, for the purpose of communica- tion between distant places. Mr. Cornell's history, in connection with the early introduc- tion of telegraphing, is highly interesting. During the winter of 1842 and 1843, while in Georgia, he conceived a plan for em- ploying the State prison convicts of Georgia in the manufacture 686 MEN OF OUR DAY. of agricultural implements ; and after thorouglily examining itg feasibility, went to Maine for the purpose of settling some un- finished business, preparatory to entering upon the execution of his project. While in Maine, he called upon Mr. F. O. J. Smith, then editor of the Portland " Farmer.''^ He was informed by Mr. Smith, that Congress had appropriated thirty thousand dol- lars toward building a telegraph, under the direction of Profes- sor Morse, between Baltimore and Washington, and that he (Smith) had taken the contract to lay the pipe in which the tel- egraphic cable was to be enclosed, and he was to receive one hundred dollars a mile for the work. Mr. Smith also informed Mr. Cornell that, after a careful examination, he had found that he would lose money by the job, and, at the same time, showed him a piece of the pipe, and explained the manner of its con- struction, the depth to which it was to be laid, and the difficul- ties which he expected to encounter in carrying out the design. Mr. Cornell, at this same interview, after the brief explanation which Mr. Smith had given, told him that, in his opinion, the pipe could be laid by machinery at a much less expense than one hundred dollars a mile, and it would be, in the main, a profitable operation. At the same time, he sketched on paper the plan of a machine which he thought practicable. This led to the engagement of Mr. Cornell by Mr. Smith, to make such a machine. And he immediately went to work and made patterns for its construction. While the machine was being made, Mr. Cornell went to Augusta, Maine, and settled up his business, and then returned to Portland and completed the pipe machine. Professor Morse was notified, by Mr. Smith, in regard to the machine, and went to Portland to see it tried. The trial proved a success. Mr. Cornell was employed to take charge of laying the pipe. Under his hands the work advanced rapidly, and he had laid ten miles or more of the pipe, whet> HON. EZRA CORNELL. 687 Professor Morse discovered that his insulation was so imper- fect that the telegraph would not operate. He did not, how- ever, stop the work until he had received orders, which orders came in the following singular manner. When the evening train came out from Baltimore, Professor Morse was observed to step from the car ; he walked up to Mr. Cornell and took him aside, and said, " Mr. Cornell, cannot you contrive to stop the work for a few days without its being known that it is done on purpose ? If it is known that I ordered the stoppage, the papers will find it out, and have all kinds of stories about it." Mr. Cornell saw the condition of affairs with his usual quick- ness of discernment, and told the professor that he would make it all right. So he ordered the drivers to start the team of eight mules, which set the machine in motion, and, while driv- ing along at a lively pace, in order to reach the Eelay House, a distance of about twenty rods, before it was time to " turn out," managed to tilt the machine so as to catch it under the point of a projecting rock. This apparent accident so damaged the machine as to render it useless. The professor retired in a state of perfect contentment, and the Baltimore papers, on the following morning, had an interesting subject for a paragraph. The work thus being suspended of necessity, Professor Morse convened a grand council at the Eelay House, composed of himself, Professor Gale, Dr. Fisher, Mr. Vaile, and F. O. J. Smith, the persons especially concerned in the undertaking. After discussing the matter, they determined upon further efforts for perfecting the insulation. These failed, and orders were given to remove every thing to Washington. Up to this time, Professor Morse and his assistants had expended twenty- two thousand dollars, and all in vain. Measures were taken to reduce the expenses, and Mr. Cornell was appointed assistant superintendent, and took entire charge of the undertaking. Ho 68S MEN OF OUR DAY. now altered the design, substituting poles for the pipe. This may be regarded as the commencement of " air lines" of tele- graph. He commenced the erection of the line between Balti- more and Washington on poles, and had it in successful operation in time to report the proceedings of the Conventions which nominated Henry Clay and James K. Polk for the presi- dency. Although the practicability of the telegraph had been so thoroughly tested, it did not become at once popular. A short line was erected in New York city in the spring of 1845, having its lower office at 112 Broadway, and its upper office near Niblo's. The resources of the company had been entirely ex- hausted, so that they were unable to pay Mr. Cornell for his services, and he was directed to charge visitors twenty-five cents for admission, so as to raise the funds requisite to defray ex- penses. Yet sufficient interest was not shown by the communi- ty even to support Mr. Cornell and his assistant. Even the New York press were opposed to the telegraphic project. The pro- prietor of the " New York Herald^'''' when called upon by Mr. Cornell, and requested to say a good word in his favor, emphati- cally refused, stating distinctly, that it would be greatly to his disadvantage should the telegraph succeed. Stranger still is it, that many of those very men, who would be expected to be en- tirely in favor of the undertaking, viz., men of scientific pur- suits, stood aloof, and declined to indorse it. In order to put up the line in the most economical manner, Mr. Cornell desired to attach the wires to the city buildings which lined its course. Many house-owners objected, alleging that it would invalidate their insurance policies by increasing the risk of their buildings being struck by lightning. Mr. Cornell cited the theory of the lightning-rod, as demonstrated by Franklin, and showed that the telegraphic wire would add safety to their buildings. Some HON. EZRA CORNELL. 689 persons still refused, but informed him that could he procure a certificate from Professor Ren wick, then connected with Colum- bia college, to the effect that the wires would not increase the risk of their buildings, thej would allow him to attach his wires. Mr. Cornell thought the obtaining of such a certificate a very easy matter, as certainly all scientific men were agreed upon the Franklin theory. He therefore posted off to Columbia college, saw the distinguished savan, stated his errand, and re- quested the certificate, saying it would be doing Professor Morse a great favor. To his utter consternation, the learned professor replied, " No, I cannot do that."' alleging that " the wires u'oi^/J increase the risk of the buildings being struck by lightning." Mr. Cornell was obliged to go into an elaborate discussion of the Franklin theory of the lightning-rod, until the professor confessed him- self in error, and prepared the desired certificate, for which opinion he charged him twenty -five dollars. This certificate enabled Mr. Cornell to carry out his plans. In 1845, he superintended the construction of a line of tele- graph from Xew York to Philadelphia. In 1846, he erected a line from New York to Albany in four months, and made five thousand dollars profit. In 1817, he erected the line from Troy to Montreal, by contract, and was thirty thousand dollars the gainer by it, which he invested in western lands. He also in- vested largely in telegraphic stock generally, other lines having Deen put up by other parties, being confident in the ultimate success of the magnetic telegraph. These investments in the past fifteen years, have so increased in value as to make Mr. Cornell one of the "solid men" of the country. He certainly has deserved success, especially as he was foremost in carrying the telegraph through the gloomy days of its early career. As a gentleman of fortune, he has exhibited great liberality 44 690 MEN OF OUR DAY. by contributing largely toward many benevolent enterprises. In 1862 be was President of the State Agricultural Society; and while in London that year he sent several soldiers from England to the United States, at his own expense, who joined our army on their arrival at New York. In 1862-3 he was elected a member of the New York Assembly, and in 186-l-'5 a member of the Senate. But the crowning glory of Mr. Cornell's career has been his munificent educational benefactions. He made Ithaca, New York, his home some years since, and discerning, in his quick way, the need of a public library there, he erected a building and gave an endowment of twenty-five thousand dollars, which he has since increased to fifty thousand, for the purchase of books, and the support of the necessary librarian, etc. At this time, two educational institutions had been started in central New York, intended to be State institutions, and with the promise of considerable endowments, if the State would lend its fostering aid in enabling them to get under way. These were the People's college at Ovid, New York, and the Agricul- tural college at Havana, New York. Both received large sums from the State, and a considerable amount from private benefac- tions, and were to divide between them the agricultural col- lege land grant of Congress, if they could comply with certain conditions. Both failed utterly, and rather from mismanage- ment than from lack of funds. Mr, Cornell had been an attentive observer of the course pur- sued by these two colleges, and had formed a plan for the erec- tion and endowment of a university which should not prove a failure. He was at this time a member of the State Senate, and having matured his plan, he asked for a charter for a univer- sity, to be located at Ithaca or its immediate vicinity, to be called HON. EZRA CORNELL. 691 the Cornell uuiversitj, which he proposed to endow with the Bum of five hundred thousand dollars. The charter was granted, but with one condition, which re- flects more credit on the shrewdness, than the honor of the lobby. It was that he should be permitted to make this muni- ficent endowment of a university, for the benefit of the youth of the State, if he would, over and above the five hundred thousand dollars, bestow an additional twenty-five thousand dol- lars upon Genesee college, at Lima, New York. Most men would have turned, with loathing, from a Legislature that could have the meanness to couple such a demand with their offer of a charter ; but Mr. Cornell was too deeply interested in the promotion of education to draw back, and he met their demand, paid the twenty-five thousand dollars, and received his charter. The next year, finding that both the colleges referred to had failed to comply with the conditions on which they were to re- ceive the agricultural land grant, he asked it for his univer- sity on the same conditions, and received it. He had been, during all this time, busy in procuring the views and plans of the most eminent educators in regard to the organization of his university, and having increased his endowment to $760,000, he now took upon his own shoulders the location and sale of the agricultural land scrip, amounting to 990,000 acres, for the university, and with such success, that the ultimate endowment, from this source, will probably reach two millions of dollars or more. The complete and ample endowment of the university, in the speedy future, being thus placed beyond a contingency, he has superintended the erection of the needful buildings, for commencing the work of instruction, and in connection with the trustees of the university, elected Hon. Andrew White, an accomplished scholar, in the very prime of life, as president, and a large corps of able professors and lecturers, and to this faculty 692 MEN OF OUR DAY. he confided the duty of settling the course of study, and the general principles on which education is to be imparted in the new university. The plan adopted, while by no means ignoring the classics, provides for optional courses of study, the require- ments in each being such as shall entitle the student, if he com- passes them, to a degree ; and they are so arranged, as to leave no loophole for any student to obtain his degree without severe and constant study, and an amount of attainment which, though more in the direction of his particular tastes, shall be fully equivalent to the demands of the best universities, either here or abroad. The university is most amply supplied with books, apparatus, museums, and all the appliances of successful study, which are to be found in any institution in the country, and its special and post graduate courses comprise many topics of study not hitherto connected with any university in the country. Other liberal souls have availed themselves of the opportu- nity of adding special endowments to the different departments of this great school ; and Cornell University, though an infant in years, has already taken its place among our collegiate insti- tutions of the first rank. A noble, grand, and praiseworthy benefaction is this; one whose blessed influences shall be felt in all the ages of the future, and shall exert an influence npon the nation, in en- larging its enterprise, elevating its purposes, and refining its intellectual aspirations. In Mr. Cornell's history, the young may see what industry and enterprise can accomplish ; the mechanic may learn the results of energy, and the possibility of the combination of a great success with an active benevo- lence ; and the rich may find that a wise beneficence brings in the largest revenue of happiness, and that it is better for a man of wealth to be his own executor, then to leave his fortune to be wasted by interminable lawsuits, and the bitter quarrels of heirs who neither knew nor loved him. DANIEL DREW. rj^'T would seem probable to an abstract reasoner that men "^ j whose early advantages for education were very limited, C^y but who by their enterprise and native capacity for ^ business have amassed large fortunes, would not bestow any considerable portion of their hard earned wealth on educa- tional institutions, however charitable might be their disposition toward other objects. Experience proves this deduction incor- rect. The largest benefactors to education, in the present age certainly, have been men who not only never received instruc- tion within college walls, but had but a scanty share even of the ordinary advantages of the district school. Peabody, Vassar, Cornell, Packer, Jay Cooke, are all examples of this, and the subject of our present sketch is not less remarkable in this respect than the others. Daniel Drew was born at Carmel, Putnam county, New York, July 29th 1797. His early years were passed on his father's farm, and his education in youth was only such as a country district school in that rocky farming county afibrded. "When fifteen years old his father died, leaving him to carve a fortune for himself. He directed his attention chiefly to the personal driving of cattle to market, and selling them, until 1829, when he made New York city his permanent residence, and there continued the cattle trade by establishing a depot, 693 694 MEN OF OUR DAY. and purchasing largely through agents anl partners. In 1834, Mr. Drew was induced to take a pecuniary interest in a steam- boat enterprise. From that time his history is identified with the inception and growth of the steamboat passenger trade on the Hudson river. By shrewd management, low rates of fare and good accommodations, the line which Drew promoted grew in favor with the travelling community, notwithstanding the powerful opposition brought to bear on it by other steamboat men, among whom was Commodore Vanderbilt. Competition ran so high, that at one time the steamboat Waterwitch, in which Drew had invested his first venture, carried passengers to Albany for a shilling each. In 1840, Mr. Isaac Newton formed a joint stock company, in which Drew became the largest stockholder. This was the origin of the famous " People's Line," which commenced busi- ness by running new, large, and elegantly fitted-up steamboats, and from time to time added new and improved vessels to their running stock. When the Hudson river railroad was opened in 1852, it was confidently expected by many that the steamboat interest was doomed. Drew thought otherwise, and refused to accept the advice of his friends, who admonished him to sell his boats and withdraw from a business about to fail. The event justified his course. The railroad served but to increase travel, and rendered the steamboats more popular than ever. The large steamers now attached to the " People's Line," which command the admiration of every visitor and traveler on account of their superb decorations, and the extent and com- fortable character of their accommodations, attest the prosperity attendant upon the management, a leading spirit of which Mr. Drew has been from the beginning. The Dean Richmond, St. John, and Drew are unsurpassed for model, machinery, speed, and finish, by any river steamboats in the wide world. DANIEL DREW. 695 Mr. Drew bas not only boldly adventured in " steamboatiug," but has won reputation and wealth in the much more uncertain sphere of stock-brokerage. In 1840 he formed a co-partnership with Mr. Nelson Taylor and Mr. Kelly, his son-in-law, in that business, which was carried on with marked success for more than ten years. Both these partners, although much younger than Mr. Drew, are sleeping in the tomb, while he is still employing some of his large capital in the same line through confidential hands. He has been for some years past an active director and very large stockholder in the Erie and several other of our trunk railroads, and his transactions in the stocks and bonds of these roads have been very large. The noble deed which has brought him into special promi- nence, and rendered his name, like those of Cornell and Pea- body, a synonym for active benevolence, is the founding of the Drew Theological Seminary, at Madison, Morris county. New Jersey. To this end Mr. Drew, at the recent centennial of Methodism, offered half a million dollars. The property pur- chased for the seminary is pleasantly situated in one of the most thriving towns, and in the midst of some of the finest scenery in northern New Jersey. Its distance from New York city is only twenty-eight miles. Besides this large benefaction, Mr. Drew has contributed extensively to various religious and educational institutions, among which the Wesleyan University and the Concord Biblical Institute are prominent. To these institutions he has given in all about $150,000. In Putnam county he owns upward of a thousand acres of land, on which large numbers of cattle are raised for the market. The pursuits of his early manhood have for him still strong attractions, but here again his management is marked by a generous spirit. On this estate he has been chiefly instru- 696 MEN OF OUR DAY. mental in the building of a church and school-house. In the latter, the advantages of a good education are afforded gratui- tously to the children of the place. lie has also established and endowed with about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars an excellent female seminary at Carmel, the county seat of this county, intended for the higher education of young women of the Methodist Church, to which he has recently made over this princely gift. In form and physiognomy Mr. Drew is not especially impres- sive. His height is about six feet, his person slender, and his general expression and manner unassuming and mild, but firm. He stands before us as an example of the persevering, energetic, shrewd, and successful business man, and not only so, but also as an example of the practical workings of an earnest and sin- cere philanthropy. THE END.