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MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 
 
 Life and Character 
 
 Henry Wilson, 
 
 ( VICE-PKESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES. ) 
 
 /ERED IN THE 
 
 Senate and House of REniESENTATivEs, 
 
 January 21, 1876, 
 
 WITH OTllEK 
 
 CONGRESSIONAL TRIBUTES OF RESPECT. 
 
 HUntlSllliD IIV ORDER OK CONGRESS. 
 
 WASH! NOT ON: 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
 I S76. 
 
 ^•17- 
 

 ^^ 
 
 ^ 
 
 AUG 6 1908 
 B'Mft. 
 
THE DEATH, FUNERAL SERVICES, AND BURIAL 
 
 OK 
 
 Henry Wilson, 
 
 VICK-PRESIDENT OF THE "UNITED STATES, 
 NOVEMBER 10— DECEIVIBER 1, 1875. 
 
 Henry Wilson, Vice-President of the United States, was taken 
 ill at the Capitol, ou the morning of November 10, 1875, and was 
 taken to the Vice-President's room, where, after his friends had 
 began to regard him as nearly well again, he passed away on the 
 morning of November 22, at 20 minutes after 7 oclock. 
 
 The funeral ceremonies over the remains of the Vice-President 
 were performed in the Senate Chamber on Friday, November 26, 
 under the direction of a committee of arrangements, consisting of 
 Senators Thurman, of Ohio, and Morrill, of Vermont; Eepresenta- 
 tives Garfield, of Ohio, and Kaudall, of Pennsylvania ; the Hon. 
 Hamilton Fish, Secretary of State ; the Hon. Mr. Justice Cliflbrd, 
 'of the Supreme Court; and the Hon. William Dennisou, a Com- 
 missioner of the District of Columbia. 
 
 The President of the United States and his Cabinet, the Diplo- 
 matic Cor[is, the Supreme Court, members of Congress, Depart- 
 ment officials, officers of the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps, dele- 
 gations from the New England Republican Association and the 
 Grand Army of the Republic, citizens of Massachusetts, and per- 
 sonal friends and relatives of the deceased, were assigned seats 
 on the floor of the Senate Chamber. 
 
4 THE DEATH, FUNERAL SERVICES, AND BURIAL OF 
 
 At half past ten the remains were brought from the Rotunda 
 into the Senate Chamber, preceded by Eev. Dr. Sunderland the 
 Chaplain of the Senate, the Sergeant-at Arms of the Senate, and 
 the committee of arrangements, and escorted by the pall-bearers, 
 Senators Edmunds, Sherman, Bayard, and Whyte, and Eepre- 
 sentatives Blaine, Mills, Wood, and Kasson; as the body was 
 brought into the Senate Chamber, the Chaplain read a passage 
 from the Bible, commencing: "Lord, make me to know thy ways." 
 
 After the coffin had been placed on thie catafalque, Hon. T. W. 
 Ferry, President of the Senate ^ro tem., announced that appropri- 
 ate services would be performed. Kev. Dr. Sunderland then read 
 brief selections from the Bible, followed by — 
 
 J^HE yWtEMORIAL piSCOURSE, 
 BY REV J. E. RANKIN, D. D. 
 
 Rev. XIV, 13: "And I heard a voice from Heaven, saying unto 
 me. Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from hence- 
 forth: Tea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labors, 
 and their works do follow them." 
 
 All that is mortal of Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, Vice- 
 President of the United States, lies enshrined in death's stillness 
 before us. He rests from his labors, and his works do follow him. 
 The nation pauses in her grief beside his open grave. Her great 
 men, her chief captains, her mighty men, every bondman that was. 
 and every freeman that is, brings some tribute of honor and of love 
 to lay upon his dust. Her deep- voiced cannon lament him. Her' 
 proud ensign, which his twenty years of public service contributed 
 so much to leave full high advanced, ay, to cleanse of every stigma 
 and shame in the world's eye, and in the eye of posterity, droo[)s 
 tenderly above him. Even Nature herself has put on the spirit of 
 heaviness, and the very clouds drop tears. 
 
 In this honored place, whose chief seat is now vacant, a place 
 which has so often echoed to his voice, and where he has always 
 stood, the unflinching, the incorruptible defender of human dig- 
 nity and human rights; where he has "battled for the true and the 
 
X 7 
 

HENRY WILSON. 
 
 just," we, the highest aud the lowliest, his Associates in Goveru- 
 ment, his fellow-citizeus — heirs alike of the heritage of freedom, 
 which he has done so much to transmit unimpaired, replenished 
 with new life— gather for a brief solemnity. It is fitting that our 
 words be few. 
 
 Henry Wilson was the product of New England. If there was 
 iron in his blood, if there was strength in his muscle, if there was 
 backbone in his frame, he owed it, in part, to the tuition of that 
 sterile and rocky soil ; to the cold aud inclement, the stern aud 
 serious aspects of that uninviting coast to which the Pilgrims came. 
 Ay, more than this, Henry Wilson was the product of the New 
 England idea — now become the American idea : That man is man, 
 and nothing can be greater ; and that when God made man in His 
 own image, He made him to have dominion, first, over himself, and, 
 then, over just as vast an empire among men, as, under God, he 
 could subject to himself. 
 
 Henry Wilson was ambitious. Let us thank God that he was. 
 When, on the 16th day of February, 1812, he first saw the light of 
 mortal life, he was the heir of three generations of poverty; the 
 descendant of three generations of ancestors who had barely kept 
 soul and body together; who, in that rough and rugged half- wilder- 
 ness of his native New Hampsire, had, one after another, fought a 
 losing battle with life, until the grave covered them. Apprenticed 
 to asmall farmer at ten years of age,and taking the hard knocksand 
 sore deprivations of a choreboy, at that period, when more favored 
 young men are nursed and pampered and crammed In school and 
 in college; studying the rudiments of his native tongue and the 
 history and politics of his native country by the light of pine-knots, 
 and by the midnight flashes of smoldering back-logs, he needed 
 all his ambition. 
 
 Henry Wilson was ambitious ; but his ambition was ambition to 
 serve, to bear burdens, to meet responsibilities, to perform labors; 
 to stand in the front rank — not so much that he might lead, as 
 that he might take the hard knocks of a leader; that he might 
 somewhere and at some time, anywhere and at any time, do the 
 country yeoman service, like that ol' Washington and Jeflerson aud 
 Adams; that he might enter into the labors of these men, into 
 whose spirit he had been baptized as he worked that sterile Yankee 
 
THE DEATH, FUNERAL SERVICES, AND BURIAL OF 
 
 larm. And duiiug all that dreary apprenticeship of his boyhood 
 and youth, illn mined only as he forecast the possible future — 
 during all those self denying night-hours of toil; and, later in life, 
 at Natick, in the State of his adoption, under the shadow of Bun- 
 kei's Hill monument, and in close neighborhood to Lexington and 
 Concord, wheu he was thinking out his thoughts to the music of 
 the hammer upon the lapstone; when he was measuring his sword 
 in debate with the merchants and lawyers of Boston, he was gird- 
 ing himself less for leadership, less for dignities and honors, thau 
 for life-long service. He sought places of service; he always served 
 in them. It was to hini, as though he had caught this counsel from 
 his communings with the Eevolutionary period— as though the 
 genius of his native land had said to him, in the dreams of his boy- 
 hood, " Whosoeverof you will be the chiefest, shall be servant of all ;" 
 and as though he had been determined in his inmost soul, that by 
 that sign he would conquer. It was thus that he came — 
 
 To mold a mighty State's decrees, 
 
 And shape the whisper of the throne. 
 In making up our estimiite of this man's character, the vast, the 
 proiligious achievements of his life, let us remember its humble 
 beginnings; let us remember that when Charles Sumner, the 
 Chevalier Bayard pf Freedom, whose snow-white colors were 
 always seen in the thickest of the tight, and stained, alas ! with 
 his own blood, was studying Classics in the Boston Latin School, 
 and walking beneath the favored shades of Harvard, a lad, to 
 whose moral intuitions, as a leader of the Free Soil movement, he 
 was to owe his first seat in the United States Senate, and who was 
 to become his worthy associate and compeer in this foremost body 
 of the nation, was earning his livelihood by day, and storing his 
 mind by night, on a poverty-stricken farm of New Hampshire; 
 and that wheu Charles Sumner was sitting at the feet of such men 
 as Judge Story, was in the Cambridge Law School as scholar and 
 teacher; was traveling and residing in Europe; when he was 
 drinking at the very fountain-heads, both at home and abroad, 
 the principles of international and constitutional law, Henry 
 Wilson was working in his shoemaker's shop at Natick until mid- 
 night, speaking in debating societies made up of his fellow-work- 
 men, and slowly lifting himself up until he became the man whom 
 
HENRT WILSON. 
 
 Massachusetts delighted to honor, and by whom she has been so 
 honored in return. 
 
 And in the great cause of Human Freedom, it is beautiful to see 
 how these two great men of Massachusetts, born only one year 
 apart, starting so differently in life, educated so differently, sup- 
 ported and complemented each other. The one a man of books, 
 the other a man of men ; the one a man of ideas, the other a man 
 of facts; the one a man of the few, the other a man of the many; 
 the one closely following his ideal standard ; sometimes almost 
 losing himself and being lost to the country in his distance of 
 advance before the nation, the other always keeping step with the 
 grand movement of the people, going forward only so fast as his 
 true popular instinct taught him that the people were ready to 
 follow. In these two men, so unlike and yet so representative of 
 extremes in American society, the patrician, the plebeian, was the 
 New England idea, incarnated, represented on this floor. 
 
 Henry Wilson had a cause in which he believed. He believed 
 in it as the cause of man ; ay, he believed in it, also, as the cause 
 of God, who had become incarnate and walked among men that 
 he might impress it upon us; that he might show the value of 
 man; that he might illustrate.His own Golden Rule. In fact, Mr. 
 Wilson never could advocate anything in which he did not believe. 
 He was not of such facile make, that he could put on the semblance 
 of sincerity and earnestness. At the basis of all his action, must be 
 sincere moral conviction. He never could take what he conceived 
 to be the wrong side of a question, even in the Natick Debating So- 
 ciety. He would always buy off or beg off, and get upon what be 
 regarded the right side, and then he was himself; then he was a 
 host ! He was never afraid of being lonely, if he was on the right 
 side. He knew the meaning of these lines of the poet Paber — 
 
 Thrice blest is he to whom is given 
 
 The instinct that can tell 
 That God is on the field, when He 
 
 Is most invisible. 
 
 When, as a delegate from Massachusetts to the National Conven- 
 tion in Philadelphia in 1848, he repudiated the action of the con- 
 vention ; standing, as he did, almost alone, resisting the compli- 
 mentary attentions, shall I say blandishments, of such a man as 
 
Daniel Webster and the other great leaders of the Whig party, 
 these were his words to his coustitiieiits : "No bope of political 
 reward, no fear of ridicule or denunciation will deter me from act- 
 ing up to my convictions of duty." There spoke the men of IGliO; 
 the men who bad left England and Holland for conscience' sake. 
 But even the sage of Marsbtield, who daily looked off upon the sea 
 which brought tbem hither, and who bad aided in building their 
 tombs and garnishing their sepulchers, even he did not know 
 their voice. Whig men knew, and Democrat tbey knew, but 
 what was tbis? Here was a new factor in American politics. 
 Conscience and God had entered there. Convictions of duty! Mr. 
 Wilson had espoused the cause of Freedom from convictions of 
 duty; and from that moment bis pathway to the eminence he se- 
 cured, and from which he stepped off into the unseen world, was 
 just as sure as there is a God in Heaven, or that He bas said, 
 "Them that honor Me I will honor." 
 
 It is customary to speak of the services which great men render 
 a sacred cause. Others, on other occasions, will speak of Mr. Wil- 
 son's services to the cause of Freedom. There is another aspect 
 of this subject quite as important, and for us more appropriate. 
 No great man ever helps a great cause, so much as tbat great 
 cause develops, elevates, and ennobles him. For, if to belittle 
 truth, belittle a man, to accept and defend it, ennobles him. 
 
 It was the peculiar good fortune of Henry Wilson, that be had 
 the moral instinct to espouse the cause of Freedom ; to send down 
 the roots of his maturing manhood into sucb strong and generous 
 soil. And all the buffetings and storms of the conflict which be 
 encountered only made him stronger and more heroic, rooted his 
 nature deeper in the great principles which are at the foundation 
 of all human progress. 
 
 Mr. Wilson did not espouse a cause, to ride on it into power. 
 He took it for better or worse ; to rise with it or fall with it ; and 
 when this cause rose, he rose upon its crest, and that, partly, be- 
 cause the cause itself and his consecration to it had made him 
 worthy to rise — had made him one of its truest and best exponents 
 and champions. And if other men have failed under the severe tests 
 which he withstood, if their feet have been tangled in the snares 
 whicli the Tempter sets for great men as well as for other men, it 
 
HENRY -WILSON. 
 
 may be partly because they were never so under tuition to the same 
 holy cause; in serving that cause they were serving themselves. 
 If you tell me that Henry Wilson devoted his whole life to the 
 cause of Human Freedom — that there was no danger he would not 
 dare, no toil he would not endure, no self-sacrifice he would not 
 make to advance it, to make its triumphs permanent — then you 
 have explained to me the phenomenon of such a man. If he ad- 
 vanced the cause, the cause also advanced him. No man can devote 
 his life-time to the study and advocacy of such principles as lie at 
 the foundation of our Free Institutions, without being ennobled. 
 It was what made the giants of a hundred years ago. It is what 
 has made the giants of our own time. 
 
 Mr. Wilson had remarkable native endowments, prodigious en- 
 ergy, industry, and persistence ; the profoundest conception of the 
 sacredness and value of free institutions ; a prophetic instinct as 
 to their ultimate triumph ; but he was all the time breathing the 
 atmosphere and under the tuition to the principles of the cause 
 which he advocated ; and that gave a glow and a glory to his 
 character and his life, as when the morning sun greets the uplifted 
 Dome of this structure, within which he served, and where he sur- 
 rendered his spirit back to the God who gave it. There is a sense 
 in which it is not irreverent to say that he was inspired by that 
 cause. It was inspiration to him, that he was permitted to fill up 
 that which was behind in the labors of those who had gone before 
 him. This gave him patience under provocation ; a spirit of forgive- 
 ness and forbearance toward those arrayed against him; compos- 
 ure and serenity alike in defeat and success. He knew that the 
 cause was moving on, in sunshine and cloud ; whether in debate 
 upon this floor, whether upon the battle-fields, where our soldiers 
 were using other arguments. He saw the pillar of the cloud by 
 day and of the fire by night, always leading on the Hosts of Free- 
 dom ; moving as they moved, pausing as they paused, never for- 
 saking them. 
 
 It was no after-thought with Mr. Wilson, it was no measure of 
 political expediency, which led him in 1875, to travel over portions 
 of the South, giving utterance to sentiments of kindliness to those 
 who had lately been in arms against the nation. On the 1st of 
 May, 1862, when the blood of Massachusetts men had scarcely 
 
THE DEATH, FUNERAL SERVICES, AND BURIAL OF 
 
 dried iu the streets of Baltimore, when the guns which had been 
 pointed at Fort Sumter, and which had driven bacli our forces 
 upon this city after the first battle of Bull Run, were still making 
 the ears of this nation tingle with shame, Mr. Wilson had said 
 upon this floor, "After the conflict, when the din of battle has 
 ceased, the humane and kindly and charitable feelings of the 
 country and of the world will require us to deal gently with the 
 masses of the people who .are engaged in the rebellion." He had 
 no hostility against men in that conflict. He had hostility only 
 against that crime against man, and that siu against man's 
 Creator, with which the Judge of all the earth was dealing with 
 the nation upon the battle-field. And when God had given judg- 
 ment, he was content; for the enemies of his country were also 
 men, and they were not the first of whom it might be said, 
 " Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do." 
 
 It was natural that Henry Wilson should become a Christian, 
 the very moment he gaw? his careful attention to the claims of the 
 Lord Jesus as a Teacher and a Saviour. It was like him, when he 
 became a Christian, to confess it before men. He never sup- 
 pressed his convictions of duty. He had never been wanting in 
 the moralities of life. He was a pure-minded husband and a 
 tender father; a dutifnl son; a firm and untiring advocate of the 
 temperance cause; for many years president of the Congressional 
 Temperance Society ; a man strictly straightforward and upright 
 in all his dealings with men. But he saw that neither upon the 
 basis of public service nor of private worth, could he stand before 
 Him with whom we have to do. He therefore made a public con- 
 fession of his repentance for sin, and faith in the Lord Jesus, and 
 united with the Congregational Church in Natick. 
 
 Confronted with eternity, all men are equals; just as some of 
 the heavenly bodies are so remote from earth as to annihilate 
 their distance from each other. The same truth which comforted 
 and re-assured those humble fishermen of Galilee, soothed and sus- 
 tained and cheered this dying statesman of the American Eepub- 
 lic. Two thousand years of earthly change and progress in insti- 
 tutions, in customs, in manners have not changed the heart of 
 man, have not changed the eternal truth of God. It was the 
 sagacious instinct, the moral genius of Napoleon I, which led him 
 
HENRY -mLSON. 
 
 to say, "Christ proved Himself to be tbe Son of the Eternal, by 
 His disregard of time. All His doctrines signify one and tbe 
 same thing — Eternity." And so when any man, with the instinct 
 of immortality stirring within him, comes to the verge where he 
 looks off upon eternity, when no longer "far inland," but upon the 
 very brink — 
 
 His soul has sight of that immortal sea, which brought him hither, 
 he loses all his earthly peculiarity ; all that which has distinguished 
 him from the rest of his race — the elevation to which the men of 
 his generation have lifted him; the isolation of honor to which he 
 has been consecrated ; tbe loneliness of tbe great — and becomes 
 only, purely man again; with the same frailties, the same anxieties, 
 the same affectionate yearnings and tenderness ; with the same 
 need of a Divine Comforter, as the humblest and most unknown 
 of his fellow-mortals. 
 
 It Ciinnotbe said of Heney Wilson that he died and made no 
 sign ; that living in the nineteenth century which dates from the 
 birth of tbe Lord Jesus Christ, living when tbe power of His life 
 and death has been felt by every nation on the face of tbe earth; 
 has gone into institutions; has gone into laws; has made even 
 tyranny and oppression endurable; has clothed the horrors of war 
 with something of gentleness ar.d humanity ; has lifted tbe nations 
 into a kind of universal brotherhood, so that the chief rulers of 
 the earth have become nursing fathers and nursing mothers in His 
 kingdom ; and the prediction of the prophet (hat men shall learn 
 war no more, seems less and less like a distempered dream — 1 say 
 it cannot be said of Henry Wilson that, living at such a period, 
 he died like— 
 
 A pagan, suckled in a creed outworn ; 
 he died as though life and immortality had not been brought to 
 light in the Gospel. It is no vain curiosity which makes a Chris- 
 tian nation ask what its rulers think of Christ. Would that they 
 asked it oftener before they selected them — before they came to die. 
 It is only a few days since — alas ! that we are separated from it as if 
 by centuries — that the first few verses of the fourteenth cbai)ter 
 of John were read at Mr. Wilson's bedside. When the reading 
 reached the third verse: "And if I go and prepare a place for you, 
 
THE DEATH, FUNERAL SERVICES, AND BURIAL OP 
 
 I will come again and receive you uuto myself," he interrupted; 
 with a kindling eye and a cheek aglow, "What clearer revelation," 
 said he, "could there be of a hereafter — of heaven as a place, of 
 the continued personality of our beiug — of the power to recognize 
 and to love those whom we have known in this world! And how 
 could such a Being as the Lord Jesus utter such words unless 
 they are true? It is impossible to believe him an imposter. It 
 is equally impossible to believe that he would raise in us expecta- 
 tions never to be realized." Of course I do not undertake to give 
 the exact language of the remark, nor can I give you any concep- 
 tion of the beauty and thrilling power of what he said. I only 
 know this, that when we rose from the prayer which followed, the 
 faces of many of us were bathed in tears. And, when that many- 
 voiced monitor, that precious memento of his last hours, came into 
 my hands, the volume kept under his pillow and read and marked 
 at intervals, day and uight, while he knew not at what hour his 
 Lord would come, aud I saw these penciled stanzas: 
 
 The eye that shuts in a dying hour 
 
 Will open the next in bliss ; 
 The welcome will sound in the heavenly world 
 
 Ere the farewell is hushed in this ; 
 We pass from the clasp of mouruing friends 
 
 To the arms of the loved and lost ; 
 And those smiling faces will greet us there 
 
 Which on earth we've valued most ; 
 
 and when I turned to the close of the volume and found pasted 
 upon flyleaves, photographs of his sainted wife and his soldier- 
 boy who died, then I thought that I understood the personal 
 application of bis words. 
 
 Mr. Wilson at first hoped to live ; expected to live. He told me 
 the day o( his first attack, " There is one thing that I want to finish 
 before I go." Without specifying it, I knew that he referred to his 
 "History of the Else and Fall of the Slave Power in America;" 
 a treatise which of itself is enough for th?, life-work of any single 
 man ; but which he was writing in his ease with dignity, as though 
 the pastime of an invalid. Did ho have premonition that his 
 expectations were to be disappointed 1 Was it for this reason that 
 the day before his death he was closeted for hours with an iuti- 
 
HENRY WILSON. 
 
 mate persoual frieud ? And did be arise at midnight, open that 
 little volume, and read — 
 
 But after all these duties I have done, 
 
 Must I, iu point of merit, them disowu 
 And trust in Heaven, through Jesus' blood alone? 
 
 Through Jesus' blood alone f 
 
 thinking that perhaps he already heard the footfall of his com- 
 ing Lord : thinking of His own words, " Watch ye, therefore, for 
 ye know not when the Master of the house cometh, at even, or at 
 midnight, or at the cock crowing, or in the morning ; lest coming 
 suddenly he find you sleeping f 
 
 Having long ago settled all questions relating to that eternity 
 to which he was so near ; accepting anew the testimony of the In- 
 fallible Witness respecting it; tender, forgiving, grateful toward 
 man ; wondering at the way in which God bad led him ; his spirit 
 flooded with a kind of celestial summer; keeping vigil, as it were, 
 upon the very scene of his greatest services aud greatest triumphs ; 
 ministered to by the affectionate and faithful servants of the na- 
 tion herself, as though his sickness could be of no private interpreta- 
 tion ; his pathway to the tomb, literally and figuratively, sprinkled 
 with flowers ; the very atmosphere of the whole nation throbbing 
 with messages of solicitude aud love ; the press giving united tes- 
 timony to his worth, ay, winged to God on the prayers of this 
 Christian nation ; thus died Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts, 
 Vice-President of the United States. 
 
 It only remains, reverently to bear this sacred dust back to the 
 keeping of the old Commonwealth of Massachusetts: Mother of 
 statesmen and of men ; to soil consecrated in the beginning by 
 the ashes of the Pilgrim Fathers; to soil which has already, 
 during the first century of our national life, gathered to itself the 
 dust of the elder and later Adams, the dust of a Webster, an 
 Everett, a Sumner— names that will never die! Into such com- 
 pany, and worthy of it, Henry Wilson shall enter unchallenged. It 
 was his to see with unwavering trust in God and in man, that which 
 the great statesman of Marshfield dreaded so much to look on with 
 his dying eye — one portion of this Union in arms against another. 
 But it was his also to participate in the extermination of that evil 
 which had so taxed and defeated the ingenuity aud statesmanship 
 
THE DEATH, FUNEEAi, SERVICES, AND BUUIAL OF 
 
 of master-iniuds before him. It was bis also to assist in briugiug 
 order out of the chaos of civil war; iu securiDg their birthright 
 to a uation uew-boru ; aud, though passing through such troublous 
 times, it was his crowning blessing to die iu peace, with not one 
 feeling of resentment toward the living or the dead. 
 
 Others may be left to determine whether such a mau was a great 
 man, and how great he was; to weigh him iu scales and compre- 
 hend him in a balance. It is enough for us to thank the God of 
 our fathers that he still raises up such men ; men after the old type 
 of men; and to believe that so long as lie is careful of this type, 
 so long as they continue, the Republic will be safe. For there is 
 still- 
 One God, one law, one element, 
 And one far-oflf, divine event, 
 To which the whole creation moves. 
 
 And only those men can bless humanity who, lu that movement, 
 are content to be liumble workers together with (Jod ! 
 
 Eev. Dr. Sunderland followed the funeral discourse by an im- 
 pressive prayer. He alluded to the deceased as the Immlile 
 believer, the faithful citizen, the earnest man, the patriot, the 
 philanthropist, and the Christian. He thanked Divine Providence 
 for all that He had enabled him to accomplish, aud for that noble 
 perseverance and endurance through which he won so many tri- 
 umphs. He thanked God that the Vice-President died in faith 
 and hope — that he died iu peace with God and mau — a child of 
 God, an heir-expectant of the coming resurrection aud the glorious 
 immortality of the blessed. He invoked the Divine blessing upon 
 our rulers and all others in authority over us. He besought our 
 Heavenly Father to remember this nation whose heart is touched 
 with grief and whose banners droop iu sadness. In conclusion, 
 he asked the Diving blessing upon those who would go to bear 
 the sacred ashes of the dead to their last repose. 
 
 Kev. Dr. Sunderland then pronounced the benediction. 
 
 The remains were escorted to the railroad-station by a brig- 
 ado of Regulars and volunteers, commanded by Major-General 
 
HENEY WILSON. 15 
 
 W. H. Emory, U. S. A., aud followed by a long procession, although 
 it rained. During the passage of the procession minute-guns were 
 fired, bells were tolled, and the bells of the Metropolitan Church 
 rang out funeral chimes. 
 
 The governor of Massachusetts having sent a delegation to 
 Washington to obtain the remains, they were formally delivered 
 to them at the railroad-station by Senator Thurman, who said : 
 
 "Gentlemen op Massachusetts: The funeral ceremonies at 
 the National Capitol over the remains of the late Vice-President 
 are here concluded, aud we now deliver them to you to convey 
 them to the State of which he was a citizen, and by which he was 
 so much honored, and which he so well served. In the performance 
 of your mournful duty you will carry with you the sympathy of 
 the nation, and everywhere meet with sincere marks of respect for 
 the illustrious dead." 
 
 Col. Edward Wyman, senior aid-decamp to Governor Gaston, of 
 Massachusetts, said, in reply, that he and those associated with him 
 accepted the precious trust confided to them, and would convey the 
 remains to Massachusetts, there to receive all the honor that love 
 and aflection can bestow. He added an expression of his thanks 
 for the admirable arrangements which had been perfected, aud for 
 the courtesies extended to himself and his colleagues. 
 
 High honors were paid to the remains of the deceased Vice- 
 President in Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, Boston, and 
 Natick, where they were interred on the 1st of December, 1875. 
 
ADDRESSES 
 
 Death of Henry Wilson. 
 
 In the ^enate of the JJnited ^tates, 
 Friday, January 21, 1876. 
 
 The Chaplain of the Senate, Rev. Byeon Sunderland, 
 D. D., oflered the following — 
 
 Ahniglity and everlasting God, the only self-immortal, 
 who dwellest in light unapproachable and full of glory, we 
 bless and adore Thy name, and give Thee hearty thanks. 
 Though we are mortal men and have om- habitation in 
 the dust, living under inevitable change, the years roUing 
 over us so that we sink into the grave, yet hast Thou for 
 us kindled amid this gloom the light of hope. As Thy 
 servants turn aside this day to remember him who so late 
 presided in this Chamber, we beseech Thee let the 
 heavenly assurance fall upon them, as it did upon him, 
 that Thou art their Father, Jesus their Savior, the Holy 
 
 3 w 
 
RESOLUTIONS OF RESPECT. 
 
 Ghost their sanctifier, heaven their glorious heritance 
 and lasting home, and all the host of angels and of the 
 general assembly and of souls redeemed the bright and 
 blessed company of their association finally and forever. 
 Tlu-ough Jesus Christ. Amen. 
 
 Resolutions of jR.espect. 
 
 Mr. BouTWELL. Mr. President, I rise to present resolu- 
 tions in honor of the late Vice-President of the United 
 States, and to ask for them immediate consideration by 
 the Senate. 
 
 The President pro tempore. The resolutions will be 
 read. 
 
 The Chief Clerk read the resolutions, as follows : 
 
 Eesolved, That the Seuate bas received with profouiul sorrow 
 the aunouncemeut of the death of Henry Wilson, hite Vice-Pres- 
 iflent of the United States, and President of the Senate, and who 
 had been lor eighteen years of consecutive service a member of 
 this body. 
 
 Resolved, That business be now suspended, that the friends and 
 associates of tlie deceased may pay fitting tribute to his public and 
 private virtues. 
 
 Resolved, Tliat the Secretary commuuicate these resobUions to 
 the House of Kepresentatives. 
 
 The resolutions were agreed to unanimously. 
 
 The President pro tempore. The Chair will lay before 
 the Senate the tribute to the memory of Henry Wilson, 
 late Vice-President, paid by American residents in Berlin, 
 transmitted tlu'ough the Secretary of State, which the 
 Secretary will now report. 
 
KESOLUTIONS OF RESPECT. 
 
 The Chief Clerk read as follows : 
 
 At a. meeting of Americans resident in Berlin, liolden at the 
 American chapel on Thanksgiving Day, November 25, 1875, Mr. 
 Nicholas Fish in the chair, it was — 
 
 Resolved unanimottsly, That we have heard with most profound 
 sorrow of the death of the Vice President of the United States, 
 IlENKY Wilson, and as a tribute to his memory we desire to re- 
 cord our appreciation of the high qualities which distinguished 
 him as a man and of the eminent and faithful services which in a 
 long public career he has rendered the country by his undeviating 
 devotion to the cause of the Union and adherence to the great 
 principles of human liberty. That copies of these resolutions be 
 transmitted to the President and to the Senate of the United 
 States. 
 
 The committee on resolutions : 
 
 H. Kreismann, Chairman. 
 
 William C. Eastlack. 
 
 Herm Rose. 
 
 Jos. P. Thompson. 
 
 A. H. Sylvester. 
 
 To Hon. Thomas W. Ferry, 
 
 President of the Senate of the United States, 
 
 Washington, D. G. 
 
ADDKESS BY MB. BOUTWELL ON THE 
 
 Address by Mr. Boutwell, of Massachusetts. 
 
 Mr. President, it is a satisfaction which the presence of 
 death even cannot extinguish nor qualify that we may- 
 record the testimony which we are disposed to give con- 
 cerning the character and virtues of those with whom we 
 liave been associated. 
 
 The late Vice-President of the United States was a 
 member of the Senate for the period of eighteen years, 
 and for nearly three years he was its Presiding Officer. 
 No man was better known to the Senate, and, of his con- 
 temporaries, no one was better known to the countr}^ 
 For more than a third of a century he had been in the 
 public service of the State of Massachusetts or of the 
 United States. The nature of his service was always the 
 same. He was, at various times and by repeated elec- 
 tions, a member of each branch of the Legislature of 
 Massachusetts, and for two years he was the president of its 
 Senate. This training was the best pi-eparation which our 
 system furnishes for service in the legislative branch of the 
 National Government. In this service and for twenty 
 years he gained constantly in the good opinion of the 
 people of the State and of the country. Such a career 
 was not an accident, nor was it due to what is called. 
 
LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 21 
 
 usually, fortune or favoring circumstances. Indeed, there 
 was no man of distinction among his contemporaries to 
 whom fortune had denied as much. His parentage was 
 honorable, and his ancestry for many generations, and 
 without inten-uption on either side, was of New Hamp- 
 shire blood and lineage; but they possessed neither wealth 
 nor careful culture. The training of a child born into a 
 family of wealth and high culture, without pretension or 
 pedantry, is of more value for the affairs of the world 
 than the education of schools and colleges. 
 
 Mr. Wilson had not the benefits of either, while many 
 of his contemporaries enjoyed the advantages of cultured 
 homes, cultured society, and the training and discipline 
 of school, college, and imiversity. 
 
 Others again, to whom these advantages were denied 
 as to Mr. Wilson, were blessed with the tokens of genius, 
 distinguishing them at once from the mass of men as 
 worthy of eminence and crowning them in anticipation 
 without apparent effort for themselves. 
 
 Mr. Wilson was not an orator; he had not the gift of 
 eloquence; he had not the power of logical reasoning so 
 as to command the assent of unwilling hearers, nor had 
 he extraordinary aptitude for scholarly pursuits. By 
 training and long-continued practice he became a clear, 
 self-contained, convincing ^vl•iter and speaker. At times 
 he Vvas more than this, and he exhibited occasionally 
 something of the power and quality of the orator. His 
 strengtii was chiefly, however, in the depth and earnest- 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. BOUTWELL ON 'J HE 
 
 ness of his convictions and in his knowledge of the sub- 
 jects that he discussed. 
 
 The denial to him of the advantages of early carel'ul 
 training, either in his home or in society or in school, of 
 high special gifts or unusual faculties in any of the quali- 
 ties essential to the successful orator or writer, forces 
 upon us the grave question, to what special form of 
 genius, power of nature, or accomplishment of art was he 
 indebted for the capacity for leadership in the great moral 
 and political struggle of historical times? This question 
 and its answer concern the American people, who raised 
 him to the rank of a leader and trusted, honored, and 
 sustained him as a leader, more than they concern the 
 reputation or even character of Mr. Wilson as an histori- 
 cal personage. First, he was endowed by nature with an 
 heroic resolution, which at once urged him to acquire 
 knowledge and sustained him in his ceaseless efforts to 
 accomplish whatever he undertook. The ability to labor 
 was his second great endowment. As he had more 
 obstacles to overcome than any other man that we have 
 known, so he had more abundant means for overcoming 
 the obstacles that were in his way. Resolution to work 
 arid ability to work are a substitute for everything except 
 genius, and often they become even the rival of genius 
 itself. The same restless, untiring spirit that he exhib- 
 ited among men in the open day upon questions and 
 topics of public political concern, whether of peace or 
 war, animated him in his efforts to overcome the defects 
 
LIFE AND CUARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. L'J 
 
 of early life, and finally to contribute to the history of 
 the country a faithful narrative of the great contest in 
 which he had acted so important a part. 
 
 But above all and over all as the chief of his endow- 
 ments was his fearless, conscientious devotion to duty in 
 political public affairs. He came into public life as a 
 member of the whig party, but as the representative and 
 exponent of the views and wishes of the workingmen. 
 
 The slavery question was soon forced upon us in the 
 project for the annexation of Texas. The success of that 
 project was followed by other measures designed to 
 strengthen, protect, or foster the institution of slavery. 
 To all these schemes Mr. Wilson was always and every- 
 where opposed. He used parties, he destroyed parties, 
 and he organized parties, and all to prevent, first, the 
 spread of slavery, and then to overthrow it. From the 
 year 1840, when I first met him, he was the unwavering 
 opponent of slavery. If other men made larger contribu- 
 tions to the intellectual and moral forces engaged in the 
 war against slavery, he was chief over all the chiefs in 
 the work of combining and organizing those forces for the 
 political contests of 1850, 1851, and 1852 in Massachu- 
 setts, and for the national contests of 1856 and 1860, 
 wliich gave the welcome triumph of freedom to a slavery- 
 accursed Republic. His power in this respect was due 
 solely to his capacity to present to others the moral and 
 political considerations which ought to guide them. 
 
 As a member of the republican party, he was a strict 
 
24 ADDRESS BY MR. BOUTWELL ON THE 
 
 party man. He believed in its principles, respected its 
 opinions, exulted in its power for good, and gloried in its 
 history. Ambitious personally, he never allowed his pri- 
 vate interests or wishes to interfere with the prospects of 
 his party. No man yielded more readily to the opinions 
 of his friends or subordinated local and personal claims to 
 the general welfare. 
 
 Daring the entire war he occupied one of the most im- 
 portant posts in the Senate, and in that post he was first 
 of all in the character and value of the services rendered 
 to the War Department and to the armies in the field. 
 Wlien the war ended he asked only that those who had 
 been in aims should accept in good faith the new Constitu- 
 tion and the emancipated bondmen as citizens and equals 
 in theory and in fact. If he had not the most prominent 
 part in amending the Constitution and in providing legal 
 means for the reconstruction of the Government, no other 
 man did as much to remove the prejudices of the people, 
 to encourage the timid, to arouse the indifferent, and, in 
 fine, to render those great measures acceptable to the 
 country. In this protracted and weary work he thought 
 less of himself than of his party and less of his party than 
 of his counti-y ; but he identified himself with his party in 
 the interests solely of his party, and he vindicated his 
 party as the only means of saving his country. Time 
 and history will justify him in these particulars. 
 
 He was a politician, a party man, and a statesman as 
 well. Of the political anti-slavery men of this country 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. l-'O 
 
 he is of the first and very small class, and history may, 
 with justice to all, assign him a leading place even in that 
 small class. When we consider the magnitude of the un- 
 dertaking by which slavery was overthrown, the military 
 operations attending it, in wliich he bore a conspicuous 
 and honorable part in the public councils, the difficulties 
 that waited upon every attempt to re-organize the Gov- 
 ernment, which he as much as any other man assisted in 
 removing, and all crowned in his own life with full suc- 
 cess, can his right to be counted among the statesmen of 
 America be denied ? 
 
 The preservation of this Government from 1861 to 1865 
 was a more difficult work than the maintenance of the 
 Declaration of Independence from 1776 to 1783, and its 
 re-organization was a more delicate task than the forma- 
 tion of the Constitution and the establishment of the 
 Union in 1787 and 1789; nor can I doubt that these 
 later events will contribute more largely to the weltare of 
 the human race. 
 
 While slavery existed our example was shunned by 
 many who otherwise would have been the advocates of 
 republican institutions in other counti-ies. Slavery has 
 disappeared, and no argument can be drawn from our 
 Constitution, and I trust that hereafter no argument will 
 be drawn from our conduct or policy, calculated to pre- 
 vent the spread of republican ideas. 
 
 As men prefer truth to falsehood, so they will prefer 
 freedom and equality to authority and subserviency, and 
 
26 ADDRESS BY MB. BOUTWKLL ON THE 
 
 therefore we may predict the spread of republican ideas 
 and the advance of republican institutions in other lands. 
 For these results and ends Mr. Wilson labored, and 
 these results and ends, when realized, will be a better 
 eulogy upon his life, character, and services than any pro- 
 nounced in pulpit or Senate. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 
 
 Address by Mr. flamlin, of Mair 
 
 Mr. President, until a very recent hour I did not expect 
 to participate in the proceedings of the Senate on this 
 occasion, and I rise now for the purpose of seconding the 
 resolutions submitted by the Senator from Massachusetts, 
 and in a very few words to pay that personal tribute to the 
 memory of oui* late Vice-President of which he and the 
 work of his Hfe are so eminently worthy. 
 
 In every age and in every country of the world hom- 
 age has been paid to the great and the good ; and still 
 more appropriately has the custom obtained of paying a 
 just tribute to the heroic and meritorious dead. The chisel 
 of the sculptor and the pencil of the artist have been in- 
 voked to preserve their form and features for other times. 
 
 It is well, then, that we pause amid the stirring scenes 
 that provoke discussion and sometimes bitterness in this 
 Hall, now shrouded with the drapery of mourning, to pay 
 a just and fitting testimonial to him who was so long a 
 member of this body and so recently its Presiding Officer. 
 
 Henry "Wilson, though of obscure origin, neither 
 learned nor eloquent, will justly stand in the history of our 
 country as one of its remarkable men. Struggling under 
 all the disadvantages of obscurity and poverty, and em- 
 barrassed in a position wliich would have deten-ed most 
 
28 ADDRESS BY MR. HAMLIN ON THE 
 
 men, step by step he advanced, until he occupied a seat 
 in the Senate, and thence to the position of its Presiding 
 Officer. No ordinary man could achieve that result ; and 
 it furnishes a striking example which illustrates the the- 
 ory of our Government, and it should, nay, it will, afford 
 a stimulus to others in their exertions for worthy and hon- 
 orable advancement. 
 
 I became acquainted with Mr. Wilson when he took 
 his seat in the Senate in February, 1855. I had known 
 of him as a public man whom the State of Massachusetts 
 had honored before that time, but I had not made his 
 acquaintance personally until he came to be a Senator ; 
 and from that time until his decease our relations were of 
 the most intimate character. 
 
 In running my eye over this body I find no Senator 
 save myself who then occupied a seat on this floor. 
 
 What shadows we are, .and what shadows wc pursue! 
 
 It was one of the last statements made by the late Vice- 
 President that more than eighty Senators with whom he 
 had served had preceded him in death ; and for the im- 
 pressive lesson which it teaches us I may, perhaps, be 
 excused for saying that during the time that I have been 
 connected with the Senate as a Senator and its Presiding 
 Officer, more than one hundred and thirty persons with 
 whom I have served and associated officially and person- 
 ally as Senators have passed from earth. 
 
 Here Mr. Wilson won the respect of all, and by his 
 zeal and industry succeeded in establishing the reputation 
 
LrFE ANB CHARACTEE OF HENRY WILSON. J'J 
 
 of a wise and able statesman. Statesman he may be 
 called. It is statesmanship that achieves results which 
 promote the best interests of the country, and that Mr. 
 Wilson did. During the dark hours of the war, as chair- 
 man of the Military Committee, his services were invalu- 
 able in preparing and carrying through the Senate all 
 measures for raising, equipping, and marshaling our 
 armies in the field. He was quick to see the wants of the 
 Government, and always prompt and ready to supply the 
 remedy. The people of our country can hardly appreci- 
 ate how much they are indebted to him for the f;xithful 
 pei-foi-mance of the onerous duties that then devolved 
 upon him, nor have I a doubt that the cause of that dis- 
 ease to which his strong frame at last suiTendered can be 
 traced to his excessive labors at that time. Of the valu- 
 able services rendered by Senator Wilson during the 
 short session of 18G1, General Scott paid him the high, 
 compliment of saying, " He had done more work in that 
 short session than all the chairmen of the Military Com- 
 mittee had done for the last twenty years." It may with 
 equal truth be said that his labors of that session were 
 only a true index of subsequent and continued industry 
 to the end. In the energy and untiring diligence with 
 which he discharged every duty devolving upon him he 
 had no superior in this body. To do right as he saw the 
 right was his rule of action. Inured to toil from early 
 life, to poverty, and to privation, he was a most fitting rep- 
 resentative of the State which he honored in his position ; 
 
30 ADDRESS BY MR. HAMLIN ON THE 
 
 and it often occuiTed to me during the long years thi-ough 
 which he held a seat here his State was most appropriately 
 represented in her two Senators, the one of its labor and 
 the other of its learning. His life was devoted to the 
 welfare and elevation of our people, morally, socially, 
 and politically. His able vindication of the free laborers 
 of the country when they were assailed and stigmatized 
 as the mud-sills of society demonstrates his sympathy 
 with those who toiled, and upon whose work rested the 
 prosperity of the country and by which alone can its 
 permanency be maintained. 
 
 During his whole life he was an earnest and consistent 
 advocate of temperance, which he made evident in his 
 practical life, and was for several years president of the 
 Congressional Temperance Society. The knowledge of 
 the good works by him accomplished in this noble cause 
 extends far beyond the limits of our country. 
 
 The grand work of his life is to be found in his long 
 and persistent efforts to break the shackles of the slave 
 and let the oppressed go free. In the providence of God 
 he lived to see the mighty work fulfilled; and for his effoits 
 to this end, and in belialf of all the great measures to pre- 
 serve the hfe of the nation, his name will be recorded in 
 imperishable history, while millions will cherish his 
 memory. He was a Christian gentleman, and his life was 
 adorned by Christian virtues, and in honesty and integ- 
 rity, even in times like these, he stood unassailed and 
 unassailable. 
 
 An honest man's the noblest work of God. 
 
LIFE AND CHAEACTEE OF HENEY WILSON. 
 
 Address by Mr. Cragin, of New Wampshre. 
 
 Mr. President, the emblems of mourning that darken 
 this Chamber, and all the public buildings in this capital 
 city, have reminded us for more than a month past that a 
 man in high position, and one greatly loved by the people, 
 has departed. One who had occupied a seat on this floor 
 for more than twenty years as Senator and Vice-President 
 was not here on the opening day of tliis session. He 
 came here after the leaves had fallen, and a few weeks in 
 advance of some of us, to be ready to enter anew upon 
 his duties ; but the invisible angel of death came into this 
 Capitol with him, and laying a cold hand upon the Vice- 
 President claimed liim for the grave. A struggle of a few 
 days' duration went on in a room near by this Chamber, 
 and hope tantalized us all, but the insatiate conqueror who 
 never knew defeat prevailed, and our friend was numbered 
 with the dead. The form so long familiar to many of us 
 is no longer seen among men ; the voice that has so often 
 echoed along these gilded walls in earnest and eloquent 
 tones of protest against wrong, and of sympathy for the 
 lowly and oppressed, is hushed forever. Henry Wilson 
 is dead ! And we set apart this day to crown his memory, 
 and to honor his character and services. What has hap- 
 pened to him is no uncommon thing, but rather the certain 
 
32 ADDRESS BY MB. CBAGIN ON THE 
 
 and common lot of all mankind. The dead many times 
 outnumber the living, and the living must all die. 
 
 More than eighteen hundred years ago St. John 
 described a great multitude of dead, "which no man 
 could number." Tens of millions have been added every 
 year since, till the imagination staggers in the attempt to 
 comprehend the vast and constantly-increasing number 
 who sleep in the valley of death. 
 
 Tlie battle of our life is brief, 
 The al.arm, the struggle, the relief; 
 Tbeu sleep we side by side. 
 
 ]\Iy acquaintance with Mr. Wilson began more than 
 twenty years ago, and I soon learned to respect and admire 
 him for his many good qualities, both of head and heart. 
 He was a good man, in that he cherished love for all man- 
 kind and always obeyed the impulses of a kind and gen- 
 erous nature. lie was not a great man in shining qualities, 
 but he was great in real, solid qualities. He was great in 
 honest, earnest purpose ; in sagacity, in practical knowl- 
 edge, and common sense. He was powerful in the advo- 
 cacy of truth and the rights of the people. He was a 
 humane, sincere man, always leaning to the side of the 
 weak and friendless. He always espoused the cause of 
 the masses, and labored faithfully and earnestly for every- 
 thing that tended to elevate the character and better the 
 condition of his fellow-men. He instinctively scorned a 
 mean action, and the man is not living or dead whom he 
 ever intentionally wronged. A man's character, physical, 
 mental, and moral, is molded largely by the climate, occu- 
 
LIPE AND CHAKACTEE OF HENRY WILSON. 33 
 
 pation, society, and other circumstances of his early life. 
 Our lamented friend was born in the obscure and humble 
 walks of life, and his pathway through cliildhood and 
 youth was one of extreme poverty and toil. He learned 
 by bitter experience the trials and wants of the poor, and 
 to the day of his death he was the true and trusted friend 
 of the people. He labored with the farmer in tilling the 
 soil, and with the mechanic in the workshop, and here he 
 became learned in common things and laid the foundation 
 for that wonderful common sense for which he was distin- 
 guished. 
 
 We have seen him here many years with a learned col- 
 league whose mind was trained and filled with the thoughts 
 of other men, and yet in practical abihty and common wis- 
 dom, which comes to minds attentive to their own thoughts, 
 he was more than the equal of Charles Sumner. His early 
 life Avas not wholly given to physical toil ; his young mind 
 was hungry for intellectual food, and found it to some ex- 
 tent. A good friend loaned him books, and he read many 
 after daylight had faded into night. But, after all, the 
 great book from which he learned most was the book of 
 nature — a book full of all knowledge, and one that no 
 man has or ever can fully read or understand. This book 
 is the work of the Infinite Author of creation, and is the 
 fountain from which finite men gather materials for books 
 and inspirations for thoughts. It is filled with the choicest 
 poetry, music, prose, and the demonstration of all science 
 and art. It is accessible alike to the rich and poor, and 
 
 5 W 
 
34 ADDUESS BY MR. CRAGIN ON THE 
 
 especially to the poor, and is to be found wide open in 
 the field, in the forest, in the workshop, in the moving 
 waters, in the singing of birds, in tlie habits of animals 
 and the speech of men, in the earth below and the starry 
 heavens above. Its language is universal, and he who 
 can read it well and take in its great truths is not only a 
 learned man but a Christian. 
 
 In after life and through his long public career Mr. Wil- 
 son was a student. He read and studied books, mostly 
 of a practical kind, and closely observed men and things. 
 He read less of poetry and fiction and more of liistory 
 and biography. He was specially familiar v?kh the history 
 of all great struggles for freedom and human rights in 
 modem times, and became a prominent actor in the con- 
 test that resulted in giving freedom to four million slaves 
 and placing them upon the high plane of American citizen- 
 ship. He was emphatically a self-made man, and, like 
 most men who have come up under adverse circumstances, 
 and to whom God has given great powers, he was a strong 
 man. He was strong in simplicity, strong in sincerity, 
 sti-ong in pm-ity, and strong in earnestness. He was clear 
 in his convictions, and bold and effective in maintaining 
 them. 
 
 He was not an orator in the common understanding of 
 that term, but he was a very able public speaker. He 
 had the power to hold the attention of his hearers, and to 
 carry conviction to their heads and hearts. This is the 
 purpose and effect of true eloquence. He made many 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 35 
 
 political speeches, and always with great effect. He 
 never soared in imagination up among the stars to get lost 
 in the " milky way," or strangled or bewildered his hearers 
 in sentences a mile long. He spoke to the common 
 understanding. He carried conviction by conviction. He 
 jjleased by his candor and truthfulness even those who 
 differed from him in opinion. He built upon facts, and 
 the structure stood after the sound of his voice had ceased. 
 He interested his hearers by the honest utterance and 
 honest faith of an honest man. He believed what he said, 
 and a zeal which only comes from devotion to truth kindled 
 corresponding fires in the hearts of his hearers. His purity 
 of character was a great element of his strength. He 
 wore no garment to conceal a deformity, but he was sim- 
 ple, plain, and honest in his every-day life. He was em- 
 phatically one of the people, and he studied the wishes, 
 the interests, and the condition of the toiling millions with 
 a heart always in accord with them and with an honest 
 purpose to serve them. He knew their mode of reasoning 
 and their wants with wonderful accuracy ; he therefore 
 became one of the best judges of popular feeling and 
 popular demand in tliis country. 
 
 It is inevitable that such a man should become a favorite 
 of the people. They honored, loved, and trusted him. I 
 never realized this so fully as when his dead body recentl}^ 
 passed through the city of New York on its way to Massa- 
 chusetts. I rode in the funeral procession from Jersey 
 City to Madison Square, a distance of several miles, and 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. CBAGIN ON THE 
 
 the sidewalks on each side of Broadway and all the sti-eets 
 leading into that great thoroughfare, the steps, balconies, 
 windows, and roofs of buildings along the whole line, 
 were densely packed with people. The procession was 
 late in starting, and many thousands had stood for an hour 
 in the cold to see the body of the people's friend pass. I 
 never before saw any sight like it, and it was proof of 
 the affection and confidence of the people which could 
 not be mistaken. It was estimated that more than two 
 hundred thousand men, women, and childi'en witnessed 
 the grand and solemn ceremony. It was agreed on all 
 hands that nothing like this outpouring of the people had 
 been seen in that city since the body of the lamented and 
 immortal Lincoln passed to its final resting-place. 
 
 IIeney Wilson was a native of New Hampshire, and 
 her people were ever proud of him. I mingle my own 
 personal grief with theirs on this solemn occasion, and de- 
 plore the loss not only of his native State but of the whole 
 nation in the death of this great and good man. I com- 
 mend his character and noble example to the young men 
 of my own and other States, in the hope that the Republic 
 may long live through the intelligence of the people and 
 a like patriotism, ability, and purity of its public men. 
 
 Within a little more than three years four natives of 
 New Hampshire who have made honorable places for them- 
 selves in history have obeyed the summons which no man 
 can resist, and gone the way of all the earth. The first 
 in order of time was Horace Greeley, the great journalist. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 37 
 
 He never held any high official position, except a seat in 
 the House of Representatives for a sliort time, but for a 
 long- time he was the head of the leading newspaper of 
 the land, and wielded a power and influence unequaled 
 by that of any other man on the continent. His head and 
 heart were both large, and the world is much better for 
 his having Hved. Then Salmon P. Chase, Senator, gov- 
 ernor. Secretary of the Treasury, and Chief- Justice of 
 the United States, passed to his final home. His was an 
 honorable career, and history will record his great deeds. 
 Next fell John P. Hale, my immediate predecessor in this 
 body. For sixteen years he was a member of the Senate, 
 and displayed great powers of genius. I have not for- 
 gotten, and the country will never forget, the time when 
 he stood here, with Sumnei-, Seward, Chase, Wade, Wil- 
 son, Collamer, and Foot, all champions of a great cause, 
 the cause of liberty and human nghts. The last of the 
 four to depart was Henry Wilson, the late Vice-President, 
 Avhom we honor and moum to-day. No State can point 
 to four nobler, purer, abler men who have served their 
 country longer or better. 
 
 Of all the Senators who occupied seats in this Chamber 
 when I first entered here as a member, only five, including 
 myself, remain. Two others Avho had been Senators be- 
 fore that time soon returned again and are now members. 
 
 Since the 4tli of March, 1865, I have served with one 
 hundred and sixty-nine different Senators — ninety-eight 
 of tliem are no longer here — and I recall twenty-five who 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. CRAGIN ON THE 
 
 have passed over the dark stream of death. Such have 
 been the changes in the membership of this body, and 
 such the work of death among those who were or had been 
 members, in ten short years. 
 
 Every seventh man has closed his earthly record. So 
 it has been, and so it must always be. 
 
 Ever since the world began the lessons of death have 
 been taught. Man is here to-day and gone to-morrow. 
 
 Our brief journey here ends in the tomb, but fixith points 
 to eternal life beyond. 
 
 Art is long, and Time is fleeting, 
 And onr hearts, though stout and brave, 
 
 Still, like muffled drums, are beating 
 Funeral marches to the grave. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 
 
 Address by Mr. Cameron, of Pennsyh 
 
 Mr. President, the memoiy of a man dying in posses- 
 sion of a great place, endowed witli high mental force, 
 true to his convictions of right, and earnest in the discharge 
 of duty, is a study which always commands respect and 
 honor; and such a man was the late Vice-President. Of 
 his devotion to his principles it may be truthfully said that 
 this began at a period, and was displayed on a theater, 
 where it required more than ordinary enthusiasm to keep 
 the devotee unfaltering, and more than the average courage 
 to keep him finn. But in his long public career no evi- 
 dence occurs to insinuate that Heney Wilson lacked either 
 the enthusiasm or the courage for his work; and that is 
 saying much. But that which makes his pathway in life 
 most interesting to me is the humbleness of his origin, the 
 energy he displayed in raising himself to a higher level 
 of life, and the blessed suiTOundings which enabled the 
 poor, unfriended, but ambitious lad to mount from his 
 native obscurity to the second place in the civil magistracy 
 of a republic of forty millions of free, enlightened, and 
 discriminating people. Of the earlier straggles and the 
 cruel sufferings of his youth those who know intimately 
 their particulars have spoken, and it is an important matter. 
 
 My knowledge of the dead Vice-President began after 
 
40 ADDRESS BY MB. CAMKRON ON THE 
 
 all these had been successfully overcome and passed. 
 And I speak only of the acts of his vigorous prime and 
 his public life. In the hotly- contested slavery agitation 
 he was known, not as the earliest champion of universal 
 freedom, but as the product of that determined polemical 
 war that surged about him in his youth. His political bonds 
 and party predilections were not strong enough to keep 
 the natural enthusiasm of the young man in leading- 
 stiings; for, breaking away from these, he followed the 
 dictates of his conscience rather than the teachings of mere 
 political leaders. And so he came to this Senate the un- 
 compromising representative of a cause many — j^^rhaps a 
 majority — of his supporters did not consider of primary 
 importance at the time they concentrated their votes to 
 send him to Washington. Like his great colleague, he 
 was chosen a Senator because the moving forces of that 
 avalanche both did so much to precipitate had already 
 divided the minds of men in both the old political parties 
 in New England, so that neither could concentrate on men 
 who opposed or ignored free-soil and its consequence, the 
 abolition of slavery. Whether the coalition that sent 
 Henry Wilson to the Senate knew precisely what sort 
 of man they were choosing, I cannot tell. But if they 
 did not, then they builded wiser than they knew. He 
 entered into the war of opinions like a true knight, and 
 fought gallantly and faithfully. 
 
 As time wore on the great issue came to a head. The 
 civil war broke on the land, and all political barriers were 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 41 
 
 broken down for a time. Called on to take a somewhat 
 active part in that tremendous struggle, I found it a matter 
 of profound interest to study the characters of the public 
 men on whose fortitude and steady devotion the successful 
 prosecution of the war for the Union depended; for by 
 the laws of Congress, passed to strengthen the liands of 
 the Administration, only could the Administration act. 
 And in that anxious penetration to discover uncompromis- 
 ing supporters, the late Vice-President was quickly set 
 down as one in whom there was "no shadow of turning." 
 In eveiy measure designed to bring back peace by the only 
 methods then possible to us, Mr. Wilson uplield the execu- 
 tive authority with an eager industry which left him no 
 time for criticism or carping. 
 
 The first reverse to our arms caused many to pause, and 
 some to doubt and fear. The answer fi'om Henry Wilson 
 to that disaster was a request by him to the then Secretary 
 of War for authority to raise a regiment for three years. 
 This was eagerly given. And in a very brief time a 
 splendid body of men came marching along Pennsylvania 
 avenue, as thoroughly armed and equipped as any regi- 
 ment the world ever saw. His influence, seconded by 
 the tireless energy of Grovernor John A. Andrew, supplied 
 this excellent force; and then the colonel laid down his 
 commission to resume his seat in the Senate, where his 
 best services could be given to the countiy, leaving his 
 second officer to lead the regiment in the field — a work 
 for whicli he was especially fitted and carefully chosen. 
 
42 ADDRESS BY MR. CAMERON ON THE 
 
 What followed is a part of the history of the nation Henry 
 Wilson so steadfastly loved. His patriotic constituents 
 again returned him to this body. And then the country 
 demanded of Massachusetts the son she had delighted to 
 honor, that he might be yet further exalted. The grateful 
 Republic placed him at the head of the body in which his 
 life had been so useful and so honorable. And now we 
 turn aside from the cares and duties of the hour to record, 
 however feebly and imperfectly, our ti-ibutes to his patri- 
 otism, his devotion, his courage, and his purity. The 
 patriot has gone to his reward, and we may gather lessons 
 of wisdom from his successful and useful life. 
 
LIFE AKD CHAUACTEK OF HENRY WILSON. 
 
 Address by ^Ar. yVlorrill, of y^ 
 
 Mr. President, Henry Wilson was early removed from 
 parental guidance, but he fortunately possessed a resolute 
 will and a sober sense of duty, which led to the pursuit 
 of that course of life which to him, bound to hard labor, 
 seemed best, and which promised the most advantages to 
 the growth of a young man whose habits had not been 
 rooted in the precious memories of home example, and 
 whose culture, in the land of schools, had been conspicu- 
 ously omitted. His curiosity for reading appears to have 
 been veiy early aroused and to some extent gi'atified, 
 though in a desultory manner. The story of man in all 
 ages, of peace and war, of liberty and despotism, of civ- 
 ilization and barbarism, and of his own relations to his 
 Maker and to his fellow-men, engaged his attention, and 
 thus, while yet in obscurity, he laid the foundations for 
 leadership among men upon the broad principles of dem- 
 ocratic equality and upon the living sentiment of universal 
 lumian liberty, which subsequently won for him national 
 renown. 
 
 The late Vice-President belonged to the class of men 
 most commonly described as self-educated, which, in this 
 instance, as in many others, means that he had been 
 endowed by natm-e with something more than a moderate 
 
44 ADDRESS BY MB. MOEKILL, OF VERMONT, ON THE 
 
 share of brain-power, energetically supported by bone and 
 muscle, but had received in his youth little or no artificial 
 aid from schools. Of this outfit, however, he wasted 
 nothing. Shunning no labor, his stock of useful infor- 
 mation was ever increasing. It is no slender encomium 
 upon Henry Wilson that, as the successor here of the 
 most classic orator of New England, of one who might 
 have been called the finished product of culture and 
 learning, he filled the place of Senator so well that he was 
 never humiliated by unfavorable comparisons; and, what- 
 ever his deficiencies of scholastic learning may have been, 
 his merits as a man and Senator were so plainly to be seen 
 that Massachusetts, not ^vithout other ambitious resources, 
 fom- times returned him to this body as the right man in 
 the right place. With a long term still before him here, 
 at the command of the nation he took the higher seat of 
 Vice-President. 
 
 Henry Wilson loved his whole race, and served the 
 race next to his God. He sought their acquaintance — 
 their approbation — and, Avhen elevated himself to higli 
 positions, gladly mixed with common people, opening to 
 them a great heart full of symjDathy, and they admired 
 and loved him in return. Rising from the mechanic's 
 bench, and as much as St. Paul the master of a trade, he 
 respected labor, and laborers first saluted him with honors. 
 He spoke to them and for them, and they were proud of 
 him. If he exalted their destiny, he did not refrain from 
 exposing their laults. If they were intemperate, he 
 
LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 45 
 
 denounced not them, but intemperance. If they were 
 idle, he set them an example of unflagging industry. If 
 they were laboinng for stinted wages, he urged employers 
 to a more equitable division of profits. If they were 
 illiterate, he showed how some knowledge could be gained 
 by the evening blaze of tallow candles and by the light 
 which breaks through the crevices of the early morning. 
 Wlien he lashed slavery, he had at the same time pity for 
 the slave-holder as well as the slave. When he lauded 
 freedom, he failed not to count the cost, and knew that it 
 could only be sustained by an increased demand on the 
 \'irtue and intelligence of both nilers and people. 
 
 In his speeches he never was betrayed into any ambi- 
 tious use of language, and seldom decorated anything 
 with borrowed scraps. It was enough if he was squarely 
 understood; but he was ambitious to set forth such facts 
 as would sui-ely find a lodgment in the hearts of his 
 hearers, and he never grew weary in the utterance of 
 generous sentiments in behalf of the poor and lowly. 
 
 In politics he belonged to the party of movement, and 
 believed nothing politically nght which to him seemed 
 morally wrong, or that was susceptible of improvement. 
 He would have men in high places teach by example. 
 His patriotism was of the broadest character and always 
 ablaze, and for those who had served their country as 
 soldiers or sailors there were no wages too high, no pen- 
 sions not earned, and no bounties undeserved. 
 
 Henry Wilson was not a philosopher thoughtfully 
 
46 ADDRESS BY MR. MORRILL, OF VERMONT, ON THE 
 
 guided by profound research and unyielding logic, nor a 
 wit who surprised and captivated his hearers with brilliant 
 thoughts, nor was he eminent in any special branch of 
 knowledge, and it cost him very little to change his 
 opinion in matters of mere expediency if he found himself 
 in error, or if he found later and better supports for a dif- 
 ferent opinion ; but when once fully identified with any 
 measure of principle, or with any matter that touched the 
 tender sensibilities of his heart., he never deserted it, and 
 had all the courage required to lead even a forlorn hope. 
 If he was incapable of great essays on gi-eat subjects, he 
 never lacked enthusiasm in a great cause, nor the will in 
 such a cause to offer himself as "the man of all work," 
 and he came to the front in shaping and pushing forward 
 events. He was not only the earnest adherent of all 
 measures for the advancement of the welfare of mankind, 
 but he made his earnestness contagious. He was for 
 thirty-five years conversant with public men and public 
 affairs, and this gave elevation to his character and dig- 
 nity to his career. He quickly fathomed the general 
 sentiment of the public, and knew how to organize suc- 
 cess. Officially he hardly aspired to be great, or to shine 
 in the routine discharge of his duties, but as ever-stirring 
 Henry Wilson he was great; great in his confiding sim- 
 plicity, his homespun integrity, his unbounded love of 
 country, and his knowledge of men and their opinions. 
 True, he sought office, but not for its trappings and emol- 
 vmients; he sought it because he honestly believed, with 
 
LIFE AND CHAEACTEB OF HENEY WILSON. 47 
 
 the leverage of power to be obtained, he could be useful 
 to his country, and seldom has the country been called to 
 mourn the loss of a more unselfish public servant, a more 
 courageous champion of human rights, or a more devoted 
 lover of his country. 
 
 He was on the side of those who won in the contest for 
 the emancipation of a race, and the result marks the age 
 and satisfies a Christian world ; but he never exulted over 
 those who lost, and can-ied no trophies of the contest in 
 his belt and no unspent anger in his bosom. All he asked 
 was that no step backward should be taken, and that free- 
 men should have the rights of freemen. 
 
 Little qualified as he might be supposed to have been 
 for the work of a historian, yet, having selected the great 
 theme of "The Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in 
 America," he fortunately was able here to concentrate his 
 life-thoughts and to marshal the large aiTay of facts which 
 had long crowded his memory, or which he gathered with 
 tireless industry, in so creditable a manner, so full and so 
 fair, as possibly to make this, though left incomplete, the 
 most prominent work of his life, and the one which may 
 serve longest to perpetuate his memory and give the most 
 enduring luster to his name. 
 
 He was a peace-maker. Careful himself not to give 
 ofi"ense, he was pained when any sti-ife arose among his 
 associates, and made haste to obtain, if possible, explana- 
 tions leading to a restoration of harmony and good-will. 
 If successful, he at least was made happy. He was not 
 
48 ADDRESS BY MK. MOKRILL, OP VERMONT, ON THE 
 
 ashamed of his poverty, and yet never failed to dilate 
 with pride upon the amplitude of the wealth of his native 
 land. He died poor, but rich in the greatest of estates — 
 the affections of his countrymen. 
 
 Senators, we are witnesses that all of his capabilities, 
 whether of natui-e or nurture, were ever actively em- 
 ployed — no fragment of his strength nor of liis time ran 
 to waste. If, as it occurs to most busy public men travel- 
 ing toward the undiscovered country, his tired hand left 
 unfinished some share of his projected work, we know he 
 passed away in full faith that he was summoned to higher 
 work, and, whatever he might here leave unwritten, that 
 he would find his own name in the Book of Life wiitten 
 by a hand divine. 
 
LIFE AND CnAKACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 
 
 Address by Mr. Stevenson, of Kentucky. 
 
 Mr. President, I have listened with interest to tlie elo- 
 quent tributes of respect to the memory of the distin- 
 guished dead which have been offered by the Senators 
 who have preceded me. From their stand-point, little 
 could be added to their pathos, to their beauty, or to 
 their justice; and yet, I should feel that my duty were 
 but half performed, if I did not on this occasion, tender to 
 the i)eople of Massachusetts, the heartfelt sympathy and 
 condolence of the Commonwealth of Kentucky upon the 
 sad bereavement, which, in removing from our midst the 
 Vice-President of the United States, deprives that ven- 
 ei-able Commonwealth of one of her most distinguished 
 sons. 
 
 The Hfe of Henry Wilson is full of instruction. It is 
 wonderful in its incidents; it is novel in its results. His 
 success is a just and beautiful commentary on American 
 institutions. It is an example of their excellence; it un- 
 folds their beneficence ; it illustrates most grandly their 
 equality. 
 
 Self-exertion was the key to his success. He was 
 born in obscurity amid the wilds and snows of New 
 Hampshire. Without friends, without influence, extreme 
 
50 ADDRESS BY MR. STEVENSON ON THE 
 
 poverty forced him at an early age into close compan- 
 ionship with the manual tillage of New Hampshire's 
 sterile soil. He was cheerful, healthy, contented, and 
 industrious. His early years were spent in the Spartan 
 simplicity and purity of New England Hfe. Without 
 books, he coveted knowledge. That very want created 
 the independence of thought which afterward became 
 so prominent an element in his life. Self-wrought, self- 
 rehant, Henry Wilson was molded in that massive type 
 of New Hampshire manhood, of which Woodbury, and 
 Chase, and Webster were the grander and more conspicu- 
 ous exemplars. 
 
 Subsequently, agricultural labor was exchanged for 
 the manufacture of shoes. In 18.")5, by self-culture, 
 industry, and study, the shoemaker of Massachusetts 
 became the Senator of that Commonwealth in tliis 
 Chamber of Equals. Seventeen years later, and the 
 humble cobbler of Natick was called by the people to 
 become Vice-President of the United States. What a 
 struggle ! What an issue ! What a triumph ! What in- 
 centives to virtuous and lofty exertion do the incidents of 
 his hfe hold out to the industrious and friendless youth 
 thi-oughout the length and breadth of this vast land! 
 And, as homage is paid to vhtue, as an incentive to its 
 cultivation, how just, how meet, how proper, that the 
 good, the great, and the noble should be honored and 
 their names preserved ! 
 
 This is not the time, nor am I the person to enter into 
 
LIFE AND CHAUACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 51 
 
 the consideration of the pubHc cliaracter and political 
 services of the late Vice-President, interwoven as they 
 have been with the history of ovir country during a period 
 of intense sectional excitement, including, too, within its 
 range, a gigantic, bloody civil war. He was, in my judg- 
 ment, more of an enthusiast and of a politician, than of 
 a clear, philosophical, well-balanced statesman. Human 
 liberty to him seemed an exti-avagant day-dream! Its 
 very excess, without limitation, without restriction, in 
 violation of law, was an accomplishment earnestly, con- 
 stantly, and most sincerely desired 
 
 Could Henry Wilson have known it, there were states- 
 men in southern portions of the old thirteen States, who, 
 could they have willed it, would have removed slavery. 
 There were others in the State in wdiich he was born, and 
 that in which he lived, and where he now sleeps, who 
 also would have rejoiced to see slavery extii-pated. But 
 these wise men would have regulated that removal by 
 law. They would have taken no step which did not find 
 its sanction in the Constitution. Such men were part 
 and parcel of that band whose valor won our liberty, 
 and whose wisdom sought its preservation under a sys- 
 tem of constitutional self-government, binding into a 
 common brotherhood, thirteen sovereign States, with their 
 diverse domestic institutions, and varied interests, under 
 one common government for mutual defense, protection, 
 and external intercoiu-se, but leaving each State free and 
 unrestricted, under its separate constitution, to manage 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. STEVENSON ON THE 
 
 and regulate its own internal polity. Such was the Union 
 born of the Revolution and ordained by the Constitu- 
 tion of the United States. 
 
 But I forbear. The life, public character, and services 
 of Henry Wilson will be upon another occasion intrusted 
 to other hands. Be mine the poor privilege to-day to speak 
 only of traits in the character of the dead which commanded 
 my admiration, and which, now that he is gone, I shall 
 love to dwell upon with melancholy pleasure. 
 
 I knew Hknry Wilson for eighteen years. When I 
 entered the House of Representatives in 1857, he had 
 but a short time before, taken his seat in this Chamber. My 
 intercourse with him was then formal but friendly. When 
 I subsequently entered the Senate in 1871, he received 
 me with a kindness and cordiality which I can never 
 forget. The official conduct of Mr. Wilson was always 
 unexceptionable. As a Senator, he was dignified, m-bane, 
 kind, and respectful. As its Presiding Officer, he was just, 
 honest, and impartial, and sought always to do right. No 
 man could have been more simple and unostentatious 
 in his tastes, or, as it seemed to me, more self-denying 
 and frugal in his life. But it is just to say, that my 
 intercourse with Vice-President Wilson extended only to 
 public and personal intercourse within these halls. I never 
 followed him into those closer circles of domestic life 
 where all the virtues and all the affections of the human 
 heart blossom and entwine themselves around the loved 
 ones who constitute the charmed circle of home. So far 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 5.'} 
 
 as I know — so far as I believe — he was ujiinght, virtuous, 
 temperate, just, and, in the latter part of his public career, 
 when the meridian heats of party strife had given way to 
 those autumnal and clearer tints of life's declining sun, 
 his heart seemed to expand, and, as he more than once 
 told me, its love embraced every section of his entire 
 country. He said he was tired of the strife, discord, and 
 sectional alienation with which the Congress of the United 
 States had of late so much abounded. 
 
 But, Mr. President, he is gone — gone from us for 
 
 •ever! 
 
 He died suddenly. He died in the Capitol. He died 
 with the harness on. His sun went down without a cloud 
 upon its disk. Its last rays were clear, bright, and tran- 
 quil. His spirit, we would fain hope, intrepid and unter- 
 rified, resting with faith upon its Saviour and upon its God, 
 was borne safely through the dark valley of the shadow 
 of death. Peace, then, to his ashes ! 
 
 Senators, death, it seems to me, of late years has been 
 entering oftener and more frequently into this Chamber. 
 Year by year its monitory messages addressed to our frail 
 individual lurmanity come oftener and come quicker. But 
 they all bear the same solemn, unwelcome truth — 
 
 The paths of glory lead but to the grave I 
 
ADDUKSS BY MU. INGALLS ON TUB 
 
 Address by Mr. Tngalls, of Kansas. 
 
 Mr. President, it has been common to allude to the his- 
 tttry of men like Henry Wilson as peculiarly American, 
 and to declare that such careers are possible only under 
 republican institutions. Nothing could be further from 
 the truth. The world has had few leaders who Avere born 
 to an inheritance of power. Its real kings have not been 
 the sons of kings. Its acknowledged monarchs have not 
 descended from monarchs. The founders of its philoso- 
 phies have not been the children of philosophers, nor of 
 its dynasties the heirs of emperors. The framers of the 
 creeds, the inventors of the faiths and religions of the hu- 
 man race, have come from the manger, the forge, the car- 
 penter's bench, and not from the church. The great 
 leaders of its amiies have not sprung from wamors ; and 
 those who have written the di-amas and pronounced the 
 orations that are immortal have inherited neither their pas- 
 sion nor their eloquence. A pedigree may be gratifying 
 to pride but it is not consoling to ambition. 
 
 The choicest products of nature are developed in her 
 valleys, and not on her summits; and in the lower social 
 strata we find the origin of the most successful men. 
 
 In the profession of public affairs or statecraft, it may 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 55 
 
 be that the operation of this universal law is more ap- 
 parent under a political system like ours, where the hard 
 restrictions and limitations of custom, precedent, and con- 
 vention do not prevail ; but our history gives ample illus- 
 tration of its truth. To discriminate among the living 
 would be ungracious, but if we inquire who among the 
 illustrious servants of the Republic in the past have most 
 ineffaceably stamped their ideas and purposes upon the 
 institutions and irrevocably shaped the destinies of tlie 
 nation, the answer would designate those who had not 
 been favored by bii-th or fortune. Jackson and Lincoln 
 among the Presidents, Webster, Clay, and Douglas among 
 the statesmen, are imperishably associated with the first 
 century of the Republic. Emerging from an obscurity 
 more profound than either of these, and reaching an ele- 
 vation that gives him a permanent position in our history, 
 Hi;xRY Wilson demands to-day the last formal recogni- 
 tion and tribute tliat his country can extend to his acts 
 and his fame. 
 
 The story of his life has been told by his successor, 
 whose powerful delineation of his character and services 
 has left nothing to be recounted save the lessons of his 
 marvelous career. 
 
 It is perhaps not too much to say that he succeeded less 
 in spite of his disadvantages than because of them. The 
 defects of his training and scholarship, the laborious pov- 
 erty of his youtli, the humble avocations of his early 
 manhood, were favorable to his fortunes. They kept him 
 
5G ADDRESS BY MR. INGALLS ON THE 
 
 on a level with the masses of the people and enabled him 
 to inteqjret their purposes with prophetic accuracy. It 
 was by reason of this that he became a popular orator 
 Avithout being eloquent, that he became a voluminous 
 author without the advantages of preliminary education, 
 that the men of Massachusetts ignored their patricians and 
 sent the Natick cobbler to the Senate, and finally to die 
 in the Capitol of the nation. 
 
 He possessed in an eminent degree that peculiar assem- 
 blage of physical, mental, and moral qualities that are 
 requisite to political success in a popular government. He 
 was from and of the people pre-eminently; not alienated 
 from them by extraordinary endowments or great wealth 
 or superior cultm-e, but exhibiting only a higher degree or 
 a more vigorous activity of the virtues and powers that 
 are common among men; industry, diligence, patience, 
 and scrupulous integrity. So that the great body of 
 citizens in supporting him seemed to be indirectly paying 
 a tribute of respect to themselves, and not yielding either 
 a Avilling or reluctant obedience to a superior or ruler. 
 
 But no public man, whatever may be his qualifications, 
 can succeed unless he identifies himself with some idea or 
 conviction existing in the minds of the people. He who 
 would lead must follow. And in this respect the Vice- 
 President was especially fortunate. He entered public 
 life at the commencement of that great revolt of the na- 
 tional conscience against human slavery, and thenceforth 
 he devoted all his energies to its extinction. He became 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. iti 
 
 one of the great exponents and representatives of this 
 idea. It gave form, substance, and complexion to all his 
 efforts. He mastered its statistics, defined its purposes, 
 and in the great contest that followed he bore a notable 
 and conspicuous part. He gave expression to the resolve 
 of the loyal millions that in the country of Washington 
 the creed of human liberty should not be an unmeaning 
 formula nor the brotherhood of man an empty dream. 
 This the measure of his work and its reward. 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. BOGY ON THE 
 
 Address by Mr. Bogy, of Missouri. 
 
 Mr. President, I met Mr. Wil.son for the first time in 
 March, 1873, when he administered to me the oath as a 
 Senator. A few days afterward I called on him at his 
 lodgings to pay him my respects, and a short time after 
 this he returned me the visit. This was the extent of our 
 intercourse, besides exchanging a few friendly words on 
 the floor of this body. I therefore cannot claim to have 
 known him personally very well ; but his history as a pub- 
 lic man is not unknown to me, ahd it is in this character 
 that I desire to speak of him on this occasion His career 
 was certainly very remarkable, and both suggestive and 
 instructive. He was born in New Hampsliire, but it is as 
 a child of the old State of Massachusetts that he is known 
 to the world. We are informed that he was bora in the 
 humblest station and had no advantages of early educa- 
 tion, compelled at the outset of life to learn a trade so as 
 to earn his livelihood. 
 
 The State in which his lot was cast is known for its 
 wealth, social refinement, high education ; for its numer- 
 ous men of distinction in all the professions, and also for 
 its large number of distinguished public characters, many 
 of whom have been known to the country as men of the 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 5'J 
 
 most exalted abilities. It was among svich men and in 
 such a society and under such circumstances that he 
 had to make his way, from way down, up to fame and to 
 distinction, and yet he successfully secured both. Was 
 this the result of accident, of wiiat is vulgarly called luck, 
 or was it the reward of great intellectual gifts'? It was 
 neither. Mere luck will not secure such a prize. Yet 
 there must have been sometliing in his character to have 
 enabled him to accomplish what he did accomplish. Luck 
 or favorable circumstances alone will accomplish nothing. 
 But the existence of favorable circumstances, which 
 exist at some time or other for all men, in all countries, in 
 all ages, and under all forms of government, wisely and 
 intelligently understood and firmly and with a fixed pur- 
 pose taken advantage of, will lead to fame or fortune as 
 may be desired. Men of action — I mean by this that class 
 of men who acquire either political or military fame — never 
 have acquired or ever can acquire distinction without fa- 
 vorable circumstances. "Washington would have lived as 
 an intelligent and good fanner in Virginia, and never have 
 been known to the world without the circumstance of the 
 American Revolution; yet this circumstance was not of his 
 creation. It may be safely said that other men did more 
 at the outset to bring it about than he did ; yet he wisely 
 took advantage of it, and it enabled him to secure a name 
 and fame Avithout a parallel in the world. So it may be 
 said of Cromwell. Without the English revolution he 
 would have died unknown ; yet, taking advantage of it, 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. BOGY ON THE 
 
 he ruled not only the destinies of England but of Europe, 
 and, indeed, of the world for a time. So it may be said of 
 Napoleon. Without the French revolution, with the be- 
 ginning of which he was in no way connected, he would 
 have lived and died on the island of Corsica ; yet, the cir- 
 cumstance of this great uprising of the French people 
 occurring, he took advantage of it, and he too for a time 
 ruled the destinies of his country and of Europe, and 
 acquired a name for military genius and broad statesman- 
 ship unequaled by any one in any age of the world. 
 
 The circumstance which presented itself to Mr. Wilson 
 was the slavery question. He saw, as he believed — and, 
 as events have turned out, he did so with a remarkable 
 prescience — that it would become the great question of his 
 day, particularly in his section. He early identified him- 
 self with it, and as it acquired strength and popularit}^ he 
 rose with it. Showing at the outset an intelligent com- 
 prehension of the question, and exhibiting purpose and 
 firmness to rise or fall with it, its success was his success; 
 and so it may be said of the three great characters first 
 mentioned. Had the great events with which they had 
 linked their destinies failed, they, too, would have failed. 
 
 Thus, Mr. President, it is seen that it is not mere bril- 
 liant genius and high intellectual endowments which secure 
 the largest prizes in fame's lottery; but purpose, will, man- 
 hood, courage, all presided over by inteUigence, although 
 this intelligence may be infinitely below that of Lord 
 Bacon. Hence I say that the life of Mr. Wilson is in- 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. Gl 
 
 structive to the millions of poor and obscure boys, how- 
 ever humble, who are scattered throughout this broad land, 
 and surely none can start from a humbler position than he 
 did; and as he attained fame and distinction, and died 
 holding the second office in this Government, to which he 
 had been called by a majority of his countrymen, why 
 may not many other poor and obscure boys do the same 1 
 They need not fear the want of favorable circumstances ; 
 they in some shape or under some peculiar condition exist 
 always in each and every generation. 
 
 Our epoch will be marked in history for having given 
 birth to three men, each one of whom was boi-n in such 
 lowly condition as to be nearly beyond the power of full 
 realization. Yet one of these men became by election the 
 President of this countr}-, and the two others were elected 
 to the second highest office — Lincoln, Johnson, and Wil- 
 son — all contemporaries, all in public life at the same time. 
 Many years ago, in a debate in the House of Representa- 
 tives, some one said that General Jackson had no educa- 
 tion. Mr. Randolph, of Roanoke, replied that this perhaps 
 was true, but that Jackson knew how to make his mark. 
 So it may be said of these three men ; they had no edu- 
 cation, or, at least, no perfect education, being all self- 
 taught, but each and all have made their mark in indelible 
 characters upon the pages of our history. 
 
 This occasion is suggestive to me of another great fact— 
 the march of empire, the spread of our grand system of 
 free government, which opens its portals wide and broad 
 
b2 ADDRESS BY MR. BOGY ON THE 
 
 to all the youths of this countr}'^, regardless of the advan- 
 tages of family, wealth, or high social position. Mr. Wil- 
 son was a child of New England. At the time of his 
 birth, my native State, which I in part have the honor to 
 represent on this floor, was the outboundary of the Re- 
 public, the home of a few French Canadians, whose fore- 
 fathers had penetrated more than a hundred years before 
 the vast wilderness of the West as hunters and trappers — 
 the true pioneers of the valley of the Mississippi. Mis- 
 souri was then in what is known as the first grade of ter- 
 ritorial goverament, and had within its extended boundaries 
 less than thii-ty thousand inhabitants. Now it has a popu- 
 lation of two millions. The secret of this rapid growth, 
 this vast extension, is to be found in the beneficent sys- 
 tem of republican government, which tells in language 
 not to be mistaken to all the youths of this country, the 
 rich and the poor, the high and the low, the perfectly edu- 
 cated and the self-educated, that the rewards and honors 
 of the great Republic belong to all, and will be awarded 
 to the most meritorious. Like the contest in the garden 
 of the Hesperides, the race is open to all — Athenians, 
 Spartans, Boeotians, and Macedonians. He who shall 
 prove the swifter in the race will secure the golden apple. 
 Mr. President, in conclusion I will say that it is my na- 
 ture — perhaps the effect of the circumstances which sur- 
 rounded my own early life in the wilderness of the West, 
 among the rugged but honest and brave pioneers of that 
 country — to entertain a profound admiration for such 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. l)J 
 
 chai-acters as Lincoln, Johnson, and Wilson — men who 
 were the architects of their own fortunes, and who rehed 
 alone on their own brave hearts and strong anns and a 
 beneficent Government for the fame and name which they 
 achieved. 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. MORTON ON THE 
 
 Address by Mr. Morton, of Indiana. 
 
 Mr. Pi-esident, I have had no time or opportunity to 
 prepare a fitting eulogy; and I can only utter those 
 thoughts that are uppermost in my mind in regard to 
 Henry Wilson. He was a man of very marked charac- 
 teristics, and his public career in some respects stands out 
 from all the statesmen of his day. Born in poverty, as 
 has been said, having no advantages of early education, 
 without riches and influential friends to push him forward 
 in the world, he was the architect of his own fortunes, and 
 it may be said in a very peculiar sense he fought his bat- 
 tles alone. He had no partisans. He cared little for 
 public patronage; but he relied upon the strength of pub- 
 lic opinion and the principles which he advocated. His 
 great strength was in his convictions. He was a man of 
 ideas, and relied upon ideas for his success. He was a 
 man of courage. He dared to follow his convictions 
 wherever they led him, and he was brave enough to refuse 
 to fight a duel in this capital at a time when the spirit of 
 dueling ruled here and heaped ridicule upon every man 
 who refused to acknowledge the "code." 
 
 The world will acknowledge hereafter that Henry 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 05 
 
 Wilson was right upon all great questions affecting human 
 liberty and the progress of the age. His political career 
 was cast at a time when there was more attention paid to 
 the discussion of the fundamental principles of our Gov- 
 ernment and the rights of man than to mere economic 
 questions ; and it was in the consideration of such ques- 
 tions that he derived his fame. He was not a man of 
 brilliant or showy talents, but he was a man of great 
 talents, if we can judge by results accomplished. Many 
 acquire reputation for great talents who never achieve 
 anything; but Henry Wilson, without having that repu- 
 tation, did achieve great results. 
 
 He was essentially a practical man. I was associated 
 with him on this floor for six years as a Senator, and 
 during all that time I never knew him to advertise an 
 effort ; I never knew him to speak for the applause of the 
 galleries. He spoke only to convince the Senate and to 
 accomplish the purpose he had in view. But, sir, it is 
 doubtful whether any man of his time had more influence 
 upon public opinion than had Henry Wilson. The 
 country had confidence in his devotion. He was right 
 upon the great questions, and the country will come to 
 beheve that. He was a quarter of a centmy in advance 
 of his time. 
 
 There is one respect in which the character of Henry 
 Wilson as a statesman will stand out from the men of his 
 time, and that is as the representative of the workingmen. 
 Of humble origin, brought up to labor, all his sjinpa- 
 
ADDRESS BY ME. MOETON ON THE 
 
 tines were identified with that class of our countrymen. 
 Respecting scrupulously the rights of property and of 
 capital, yet it was always his purpose and seemed to be 
 his aim to elevate the laboring men. He desired their 
 education, and sought in every way in his power to alle- 
 viate their condition, both male and female. 
 
 His life was somewhat lonely, especially the last years 
 of it, going into society sometimes, but never fondly. He 
 preferred his studies, and his great object was to complete 
 the work upon which he was engaged, "The Rise and Fall 
 of the Slave Power." He did not quite succeed in that 
 purpose. Had he been spared a few months, perhaps a 
 few weeks longer, the work would have been finished. I 
 have frequently heard him speak of it fondly, and of his 
 great desire to complete it. He wanted to leave that as 
 the literary record of his life. 
 
 He was kind-hearted. I believe he never entertained 
 malice. I do not remember that I ever heard him speak 
 iinkindly of any one, and while earnestly maintaining the 
 Union and zealous in suppressing the rebellion, he seemed 
 to entertain no malice toward the men who originated the 
 rebellion and carried it on. He seemed to believe his 
 work was done when slavery was abolished and the rebel- 
 lion was suppressed. Taking a deep interest in recon- 
 struction, he seemed to believe that that was a thing to 
 follow as a matter of course, and that victory was won in 
 the destruction of slavery aud suppression of the rebellion. 
 
 A man of simple character, utterly indifferent to dis- 
 
LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. (J7 
 
 play, and seemingly indifferent to fame, yet undoubtedly 
 keenly alive to the good opinion of his countrymen, he 
 has left behind him a memory that ought to be cherished, 
 and, as has just been said, he is an example to the youth 
 of our country of what can be accomplished by sound 
 sense, by industry, by patient devotion to study. 
 
 He was emphatically a self-made man. No man this 
 country has ever produced was more clearly entitled to 
 that distinction. As I before said, he fought his battles 
 almost alone; he fought without those aids that often 
 elevate men to power and distinction. He has won a 
 great name that will grow brighter and brighter as time 
 passes on 
 
 I cherished for him a wann friendship. I met him first 
 ill 185">, in the State of Indiana. It was about the first 
 appearance I had made in the poUtical field. A public 
 meeting was held in the city of Indianapohs on the occa- 
 sion of the anniversary of the ordinance of 1787 ; I think 
 it was on the 13th of July. I heard him make a speech 
 there, and it was my pri\alege to follow him in a short 
 address, and he spoke to me on that day words of kind- 
 ness and of encouragement that I shall never forget. A 
 friendship began then which grew stronger and stronger 
 until he was taken away. I shall personally revere and 
 cherish the memory of Henry Wilson, and so, I believe, 
 will all who knew him well. 
 
ADDRESS BY MB. ANTHONY ON THE 
 
 Address by Mr. Anthony, of Rhode Island. 
 
 Mr. President, it was well said by my friend from Ken- 
 tucky that the life of Henry Wilson fomis a chapter of 
 American history full of instruction ; it is full of cheerful 
 instruction, full of hope to languid patriotism, full of 
 encouragement to ingenuous }'outh. In his desolate and 
 unprotected childhood, in the early struggles through 
 which his faculties developed into strength and his virtues 
 hardened into consistency, in the steadfast purpose and 
 the gi-eat results of his manhood, we have an illustration 
 and a vindication of free institutions. "With no advan- 
 tages of birth or connection, he outstripped, in the career 
 of life, those who started with him in the enjoyment 
 of them all. The strength that he acquu'ed in overcoming 
 obstacles that friendly hands had removed from the paths 
 of others enabled him to meet, with greater vigor, those 
 obstacles which every man must encounter for himself. 
 Without assistance, at the age when assistance is most 
 needed, with little sympathy, till he had won a position 
 that made him independent of it, he raised himself to the 
 second place in the Repviblic, and, in the minds of many, 
 was designated for the first. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. h'J 
 
 I do not purpose to delineate liis character, or to recount 
 the story of his life. I should only repeat what has been 
 better said, here and elsewhere, by those to whom the 
 grateful duty was most appropriate. lilnough that, in an 
 age too much devoted to the pursuit of Avealth, he can-ied 
 his contempt for money to a fault; that in a time when 
 the luxuriousness of private hfe had invaded the purity and 
 threatened the safety of society, he preserved the simple 
 habits that best become a republican magistrate; that as he 
 had borne adversity without munnuring and with uncon- 
 querable detei-mination, so he bore success with modera- 
 tion; and that, in all his high employments, the possession 
 of power never provoked him to insolence in the exercise 
 of it. I will not adduce, among the evidences of his 
 merit, that his personal character mainly escaped calumny, 
 for the best men in public life are not the least vilified, 
 and political malignity seeks not the justice but the occa- 
 sion of assault. But even that malignity could find httle 
 upon which to fasten its fangs in one whose chief use for 
 money was to give it to others, and whose only use of 
 power was for the public good. 
 
 Nor was the occasion of his death inappropriate to his 
 life. It has been lamented that the inevitable hour found 
 him away from his home, and without the tender ministra- 
 tions of woman. In this regret I do not share. Where 
 should the patriot' warrior die, rather than on the field of 
 battle or on the slippery deck, with the flag of his country 
 victorious over him? Where should the patriot statesman 
 
70 ADDRESS BY MR. ANTHONY ON THE 
 
 whose life lias been devoted to freedom die, rather than 
 in the Capitol, whose uplifted Dome bears aloft the vin- 
 dicated statue of Liberty? 
 
 And home he had none. No man shared more largely 
 in the affections of the American people; no man was 
 more beloved by his immediate constituency; but those 
 pleasures which the greatest of American orators placed 
 above all the other immeasurable blessings of rational 
 existence, above the treasures of science and the delights 
 of learning and the aspects of nature, even above good 
 government and religious liberty, "the transcendent sweets 
 of domestic life," were no more for him. Those relations 
 which nature intended for the joy and the rapture of our 
 3'outh, for the happiness and the embellishment of our 
 maturer years, for the comfort and consolation of age, 
 had been severed by the remorseless shears of fate. No 
 eye grew brighter when he raised the latch that held his 
 lonely dwelling; no outstretched arms of wife, no ringing 
 laughter of children, welcomed his returning footsteps, 
 ivhen he crossed the threshold over which all that had 
 given life, and joy, and beauty to that simple abode, and 
 had lighted it up with a glory not of palaces, had been 
 borne never to return. He had nothing left to love but 
 his country. It was proper, then, that he should die here, 
 here where his greatest work had been wrought, here 
 where his greatest triumphs had been achieved, here where 
 his voice had been raised, till the outer corridors had 
 echoed back his words, for truth, fir justice, for right. 
 
LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 71 
 
 It was proper that from yonder Chamber, to which the 
 suffrages of his fellow-citizens had earned him, he was 
 borne to his final place of rest. He entered that town, 
 for the first time, a friendless lad, all his possessions car- 
 ried in a bundle which swung lightly in his hand. He 
 entered it, for the last time, accompanied by the pageantry 
 of a nation's woe, with muffled drums, and arms reversed, 
 and banners draped in black; from a thousand heights 
 the flag of his country di-ooped at half-mast; from fort 
 and arsenal and dock-yard the booming of a single gun, 
 at solemn intervals, announced the progress of the sad 
 procession. Tender and loving hands received him; 
 friends and neighbors, who loved him because he was 
 good, even more than they admired him because he was 
 great, stood tearfully around his open grave. The bleak 
 winds of a New England winter came down from his 
 native hills, and moaned his requiem thi-ough the leafless 
 trees. And there, with swelling hearts, but with unfal- 
 tering trust in the eternal promises of God, they laid his 
 manly and stalwart form to mingle with the dust of his 
 kindred. 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. DAWES ON 'J HE 
 
 Address by Mr. Dawes, of Massachuset 
 
 Mr. President, the life and work of the late Vice-Presi- 
 dent Avere in all respects so remarkable that they challenge 
 the study and admiration of the Ameiican j^eople. The 
 biography of distinguished men, the richest of a nation's 
 treasures, will yield large space to the one, and the record 
 of great and noble achievements, a nation's proudest mon- 
 ument, will comprehend the full measure of the other. 
 And yet, to the most intimate fiiend and companion, the 
 lesson is not easy. That life so fitly closed in the Capitol 
 of the nation to whose salvation and glory it was conse- 
 crated, and that work so graciously terminated at the goal 
 of all his desires, have neither prototype nor parallel. 
 Each stands out alone by itself, and is unlike any other 
 that has gone before or survived it. .He lived from infancy 
 to the end as no other man has lived. He worked, from 
 his first entrance into public life till his departure, as no 
 man ever worked before him. He was a creation, a spe- 
 cialty, a force all by itself, and yet ever in the midst and 
 always potent. No one could tell how he had attained 
 to this individuality, and yet no one would correctly cal- 
 culate the resultant of the ever multiplied and conflicting 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTEll OF UEiNKY WILSON. 16 
 
 influences bending political opinion who ignored this 
 factor. 
 
 Of so obscure and humble an origin that whenever 
 friendless poverty sought for a type or representative, 
 his name was spoken before any other ; of a public 
 life so pure and upright amid temptation and sin that 
 his exam{)le was held up for imitation before all others ; 
 deprived of opportunities for the acquisition of knowl- 
 edge as no other in youth or manhood, he nevertheless 
 sought out or created them, and availed himself of a 
 breadth of study far more than others to whom opportu- 
 nities come unbidden and among whom learning scatters 
 her treasures with the most lavish hand. He studied men 
 more than books, and his education came from personal 
 contact with the practical affairs of life, and not from the 
 study of other men's acquisitions in knowledge. His 
 whole life bore unmistakable evidence of the school in 
 which its lessons were learned. Tested by the standard 
 of those the world calls learned he was no scholar, but 
 tried by that which the world calls safe, practical, useful, 
 he was wise beyond his generation. While he read books 
 some and profited much by their perusal, he read men 
 more and thereby gathered a larger knowledge of the 
 practical duties of life than it was possible for him to have 
 acquired in any other way. 
 
 He had not genius, but he had what is more certain of 
 .success, industry and fidelity, and their rewards crowned 
 liis endeavors. No one can understand or properly esti- 
 
74 ADDRESS BY MR. DAWES ON THE 
 
 mate his character or career except by a study of the 
 elements which formed the one and furnished the instru- 
 mentalities which wrought out the other. It was impossi- 
 ble that he should be like other men, because the very 
 food wliich was his necessity the multitude of men shun 
 or escape. And thus it is that only by a proper study of 
 the school in which the heart and head of Henry Wilson 
 were developed can be found the key to that remarkable 
 life and noble Avork whose sublime termination we seek 
 by these ceremonies this day to commemorate. 
 
 The world upon which he first opened liis eyes was an 
 utterly barren waste, and nowhere, in all his journey 
 through it, did any green thing gladden his sight which 
 his own hands did not plant and his own fidelity water till 
 it bore its legitimate fruit ; nowhere an opportunity for im- 
 provement or work, nor an instrumentality for the accom- 
 plishment of good, which his own courage and indomitable 
 will did not pluck from the very jaws of an adverse fate. 
 And thus he was never educated for his life-work, but only 
 in and by it, and he grew to fitness for it, and to a mar- 
 velous power in it, just as the right arm of the blacksmith 
 grows strong through the very blows it strikes. 
 
 When taste led him into politics in 1840 he was without 
 education in public affairs, without experience as a speaker 
 or any of the natural gifts of an orator. But he had con- 
 victions. He believed that, under a Government by and 
 for all, it was the duty of all to study and to understand 
 their relations to it and their duties and oblig-ations under 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTEE OF HENRY WILSON. 7!) 
 
 it, and in that sense to be politicians — honest, earnest, 
 aggressive politicians. And in teaching others he taught 
 himself, till he became one of the most efficient political 
 teachers and leaders in his generation. The logic of the 
 schools and the arts of the rhetorician he never studied 
 and never knew, but of the logic of events and the eternal 
 fitness of things he seemed to have intuitive knowledge, 
 and 111 the enforcement of their lessons he was remarkably 
 effective. He had the courage of his convictions, and he 
 followed them, sometimes, though seldom, into the wrong, 
 but still he followed them fearlessly, across party lines, 
 into strange company, into seeming inconsistencies, and 
 into danger if need be. Wherever they led, there he fol- 
 lowed. 
 
 Mr. Wilson was a hater of slavery and every sort of 
 oppression and infringement on human rights from his 
 boyhood. He could not have been otherwise without 
 being false to himself and all the experiences of his life. 
 War on these wrongs became to him a mission, and he 
 took upon himself its work with vows and covenants, 
 never faltering so long as there was work to do. He sub- 
 ordinated to it all party ties and relations, keeping com- 
 pany with political associates and acknowledging fealty to 
 political organizations only so long as this higher purpose 
 of his life could, in his opinion, be promoted thereby. 
 This led him to become a disturbing element, disorganiz- 
 ing old parties and organizing new ones. Pie was a revo- 
 lutionist in politics, and bore a conspicuous part in every 
 
76 ADDRESS BY MK. DAWES ON THE 
 
 great political revolt existing organizations have encoun- 
 tered in his time. He first came upon the stage as a young 
 whig orator in the great political revolution of 1840, and 
 participated actively and efficiently in the memorable cam- 
 paign which in that year brought the whig party into 
 power. With more zeal, as he grew in years and in 
 strength, did he lead in 1848 in the organization of the 
 free-soil part}- for the destruction of both the whig and 
 democratic parties. In 1851 and 1852 he was the master- 
 spirit of a coalition between the free-soil and democratic 
 parties in his own State in a successful campaign .against 
 the whig party of that State, dislodging it from power and 
 dividing the offices between the allies, placing Mr. Sumner 
 in the Senate and a democrat in the governor's chair. In 
 1854, he was one of the leaders in the organization of the 
 American party of that day, which overwhelmed in a com- 
 mon defeat the whig, democratic, and republican parties, 
 carrying down, by his own efforts, his own name at the 
 head of the republican ticket for governor of the State. 
 By this party he was himself elected to the Senate of the 
 United States. In 1855 he again led, in the councils of 
 that same American party at Philadelphia, a revolt which 
 dismembered and disbanded it on its first attempt to con- 
 trol national politics ; and in the following year he was 
 found earnest and foremost in tlae work of organizing and 
 preparing the present national republican party for its ulti- 
 mate triumph in 18G0. With this party in its avowed 
 work he continued to act during the remainder of his life. 
 
LIFE AND CHAEACTER OF HENEY WLLSON. i I 
 
 He had often in those years to answer the charge of vacil- 
 lation and inconsistency and a desire for office and power 
 regardless of the means used for their attainment. He 
 met all these accusations with the bold announcement that, 
 with him, neither place nor power nor party was anything 
 hut means to an end beyond and above them all, and that 
 he would never seek nor serve either except for the attain- 
 ment of that end. He outlived many years the adverse 
 criticisms and enmities this course engendered ; and, as in 
 later years, amid the great events in which he bore so 
 prominent a part, his untiring zeal and absolute devotion 
 to the political elevation of the down-trodden stood out to 
 be read of all men, the general public judgment accorded 
 to him a sincerity, sagacity, and statesmanship in these 
 frequent changes of political relations which were not uni- 
 versally conceded at the time of their occun-ence. 
 
 Mr. Wilson rose rapidly from his first entrance into 
 public hfe in 1840. He was a member of the lower house 
 of the Massachusetts Legislature by repeated elections, 
 four times a senator, and twice the presiding officer of 
 that body. He was also a leading and influential mem- 
 ber, among the ablest men of the State, of the constitu- 
 tional convention of 1853. He was several times candi- 
 date of the party with which he acted for governor of the 
 State and for Representative in Congi-ess. In 1855, in 
 one of those remarkable political revolutions before 
 alluded to, he was elected Senator of the United States, 
 and took his seat in this body in February of that year. 
 
78 ADDRESS BY MK. DAWES ON THE 
 
 By repeated and nearly unanimous re-election he held the 
 office of Senator eighteen years, and resigned it only to 
 assume the duties of the office of Vice-President, to which 
 he had been elected in 1872, and which he held till his 
 death in the National Capitol on the morning of the 2 2d 
 of November last. 
 
 How he acquitted himself in the many positions of pub- 
 lic trust and responsibihty to which he was repeatedly 
 called by his own State the people of Massachusetts bear 
 testimony to-day in the sincere mourning which fills all 
 hearts, and in the universal feeling of irreparable loss 
 which finds expression in all her borders. How he bore 
 himself in this brosider field and under the weightier re- 
 sponsibilities and graver duties which the place and the 
 times devolved upon him is personally known to many of 
 you, Senators, before whom he went in and out daily in 
 the patient and self-sacrificing performance of the work 
 allotted him, and is now commended by a universal pub- 
 lic judgment. He entered this bodj' six years before the 
 war ; years of civil strife and commotion ripening into re- 
 bellion ; years big with the great events and greater con- 
 sequences of that national conflict. On the one side were 
 arrayed Jefferson Davis, Toombs, Hunter, Butler, Benja- 
 min, and their compeers, if not as yet menacing, certainly 
 intense, bitter, and uncompromising. With them, by 
 party affiliation, though not in sympathy, and vainly 
 struggling against the current of party policy, were Cass 
 and Douglas. On the other side, with whom Wilson 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. I'J 
 
 took his place, were, in the early morning of the struggle, 
 Clayton, Crittenden, and Bell ; and, all through its heat 
 and burden, Wade, Fessenden, Trumbull, Hale, and his 
 own great colleague, Sumner. The world has seldom, 
 if ever, witnessed a more imposing airay. Among the 
 questions debated and determined were the repeal of the 
 Missouri compromise, the Dred Scott decision, the forcing 
 of slavery into Kansas and a government of slave-holders 
 upon her people, the hunting of fugitives from slavery in 
 free States, and other kindred measures, involving the 
 very existence of the Republic. Never has the world lis- 
 tened to a debate on which were staked such momentous 
 issues. Among these great men and in these great argu- 
 ments Mr. Wilson was neither silent nor weak, but earned 
 a national reputation, lie was placed at the head of the 
 Military Committee of this body at the beginning of the 
 Avar, when its responsibilities and duties assumed an im- 
 portance never known before. The records of the Senate 
 and the contemporaneous testimony of the high officials 
 who leaned on this committee for support in the exigen- 
 cies of the war furnish ample evidence of the great abil- 
 ity and marvelous industry with which he met the diffi- 
 cult and delicate questions and incessant labors of this new 
 position. 
 
 The close of the war brought to Mr. Wilson no release 
 from active public service. He supported earnestly and 
 most efficiently that series of great measures rendered 
 necessaiy in the rehabilitation of the rebel States, and 
 
80 ADDRESS BY ME. DAWES ON THE 
 
 which ultimately wrought those grand changes in the or- 
 ganic law of the land that will ever mark this period as 
 an epoch in the world's history. Some of the most im- 
 portant of these measures originated with him, and in the 
 final shape and reach of others may be traced the wise 
 and practical counsel, never stumbling over forms nor 
 missing the substance, which so characteiized all his work. 
 The complete history of the Republic during the eventful 
 years of his service here— a history not yet written — will 
 alone do justice to the indefatigable endeavors and the 
 broad and patriotic statesmanship of Henky Wilson, and 
 to its judgment his name and fame may be safely com- 
 mitted. 
 
 The personal character of Mr. Wilson was full of noble 
 qualities, endearing him to his friends while living and 
 making his memory a constant delight. Kindness of heart 
 seemed to mellow his whole nature. There was in him 
 neither selfishness, nor envy, nor hate, and only generos- 
 ity, charity, and good-will. He would empty his pockets 
 and borrow of his neighbor to relieve suffering humanity 
 stretching out its hands at the corners of the sti-eets. He 
 Avould toil and travel, day and night, without i-ecompense 
 or hope of reward, if thereby he could contribute to lift tlie 
 humble and the lowly to manhood and its opportunities. 
 With physical strength and mental vigor was spent for 
 others his substance also, and when he died he left in all 
 less than the value of one year's salary. Underneath all 
 these gentle qualities there lived a personal courage which 
 
LIFE AND CUAKACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 81 
 
 never quailed in the face of danger. When, under a dis- 
 pensation now, thank God, forever passed away, his dis- 
 tinguished colleague, for words spoken in debate, fell upon 
 the floor of the Senate Chamber beneath the bludgeon of 
 one mad with the fury of the times, Mr. Wilson, though 
 one of the youngest Senators in service, and yet hardly 
 known to those among whom he stood, denounced in his 
 place the assault as " brutal, murderous, and cowardly." 
 And then, in answer to a challenge from the assailant him- 
 self, he had the greater courage to defy both him and the 
 barbarous code behind which such men skulk, in words 
 which will live as long as the history of those dark times 
 and darker deeds shall be read of men. From that horn- 
 till the day broke upon a regenerated Republic he carried 
 his life in his hand; but never, to save that life, did he 
 deviate a hair's breadth from the line of his duty. 
 
 The gratitude of the commonwealth whose commission 
 in the public service he bore so long and with such signal 
 fidelity and ability, and her grief at his loss, would bid me 
 speak many things I must leave unsaid. A personal ad- 
 miration of his life and work, joined with an uninteiTupted 
 and confiding friendship of many years, has already ex- 
 tended the language of eulogy beyond the proper limits 
 of this occasion. The rest must be left to the history of 
 the times in which he lived, and of the Republic to whose 
 true glory his life was consecrated. 
 
 Mr. President, it is appointed unto all men once to die, 
 and an untimely death overtakes no one, however inscruta- 
 
82 ADDRESS BY MR. DAWES. 
 
 ble to mortal vision is the dispensation. But we seem to 
 see clearly, even now, that this great change came to Mr. 
 Wilson in the fullness of time. In the fierce battle of 
 life he had won the victory. The work to which he had 
 set apart that life was done; for his countrymen were all 
 free, were all equal before the law, and were at peace with 
 the world and with one another. He died full of years, 
 of honors, and in the blessed hope of a glorious immor- 
 tality. His mission here had indeed ended. 
 
 We cannot turn, however, from the contemplation of a 
 life so humble and lowly in its beginning, so full of pa- 
 triotic • endeavor and noble achievements through all its 
 progress, and so illustrious in its end, without reverently 
 exclaiming. Surely the ways of man are fashioned of God ! 
 
 And now, Mr. President, as a further mark of respect 
 to the distinguished dead, so recently our Presiding Officer, 
 I move that the Senate adjourn. 
 
 The motion was agreed to; and (at two o'clock and fifty- 
 one minutes p. m.) the Senate adjourned. 
 
PROCEEDINGS 
 
 HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 
 
 MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE. 
 
 A message from the Senate, by Mr. Sympson, one of 
 tlieir clerks, communicated to the House the resolutions 
 of the Senate on the announcement of the death of Henry 
 Wilson, late Vice-President of the United States. 
 
 The Speaker. The Chair will direct that the message 
 received from the Senate in regai'd to the death of the 
 late Vice-President be now read. 
 
 Mr. Holman. I ask unanimous consent that during 
 the consideration of the I'esolutions from the Senate, now 
 about to be brought to the attention of the House, the 
 privileges of the floor be extended to the delegation of 
 editors from Indiana who are now visiting this Capitol. 
 I believe this is in conformity with precedent. 
 
 There being no objection, it was ordered accordingly. 
 
 The Clerk read as follows: 
 
 In the Senate of the United States, 
 
 January 21, 1876. 
 Resolved, That the Senate has received with profound sorrow 
 tbo anilouncement of the death of Henry Wilson, late Vice- 
 
MESSAGE FROM THE SENATE. 
 
 President of tbe United States and President of tlie Senate, wbo 
 had been for eighteen .years of consecutive service a member of 
 tbis body. 
 
 Resolved, That business be now suspended tbat the friends and 
 associates of tbe deceased may pay fitting tribute to his public 
 and private virtues. 
 
 Resolved, Tbat the Secretary communicate these resolutions to 
 the House of Eepreseutatives. 
 
 Mr. Waeken. Mr. Speaker, I move tbe adoption of the 
 resolutions whicli I send to tbe Clerk's desk. 
 The Clerk read as follows: 
 
 Resolved, That the House of Eepresentatives has received with 
 profound sorrow the announcement of the death of Henry Wil- 
 son, late Vice-President of tbe United States. 
 
 Resolved, That business be now suspended to allow fitting 
 tributes to be paid to his public and private virtues; and that, as 
 a further mark of respect to the memory of the deceased, the 
 House at the close of such remarks shall adjourn. 
 
Address by Mr. Warren, of Massachusetts. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, again, and seemingly all too soon, Mas- 
 sachusetts calls upon the Houses of Congress to pause in 
 their customary labors and join her in paying ti-ibute to 
 the memoiy of one of her departed statesmen. This time 
 she has to mourn the loss of him who had been honored 
 by the highest office in the Federal Government attained 
 by any of her citizens during the last half century, Henry 
 Wilson, the eighteenth Vice-President of the United 
 States. 
 
 Born at Farmington, in the State of New Hampshire, 
 on the 16th day of Febi-uary, 1812, his early life was 
 passed in unceasing toil. Yet from childhood he had 
 such a thirst for knowledge that when at his maturity he 
 left his bu-th-place, he had not only read but had stored 
 in his memory, where it remained ever after available for 
 instant use, whatever the best authorities upon English 
 and American history up to that time had written. 
 
 In 1833 Mr. Wilson removed to Natick, in Massachu- 
 setts, and made that place his home. There he was mar- 
 ried, and there his remains now repose with those of his 
 wife and son. His business life, perhaps the least im- 
 portant part of his history, was confined entirely to the 
 
80 ADDRESS BY MR. WARREN ON THE 
 
 manufacture of boots and shoes, a branch of industry then 
 in its infancy in the part of Massachusetts in which he 
 resided. But in business he always exhibited the same 
 patience of labor and faithfulness in performance which 
 characterized all his undertakings. He was by no means 
 the least efficient among those whose ingenuity and exer- 
 tions brought that manufacture up to its present vast pro- 
 p(n-tions. 
 
 It is, however, in his public life that we are more 
 peculiarly interested. He took an active part in the can- 
 vass of 1840, which resulted in the election of General 
 Harrison to the Presidency, and was himself elected in 
 that year to the Massachusetts House of Representatives. 
 From that time forward his name has never been discon- 
 nected from the history of Massachusetts polities, except 
 so far as it is more intimately associated with the politics 
 of the whole country. Once defeated, he was in 1844 a 
 member of the State Senate, and Avas re-elected in 1845. 
 In this latter year he presided over a convention assem- 
 l)led to oppose the admission of Texas into the Union. 
 In 1846 he returned to the House of Representatives, hav- 
 ing declined a renomination to the Senate. In 1848 he 
 was a member of the national convention which nominated 
 General Taylor. This nomination was eifected against 
 the strenuous opposition of Mr. Wilson, who felt that 
 Mr. Webster should have received the honor. He conse- 
 quently was zealous in opposing the election of General 
 Taylor, and took part in the calling and organizing of 
 
LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. h/ 
 
 the Buffalo convention which nominated Martin Van 
 Buren for President and Charles Francis Adams for Vice- 
 President. He was chairman of the free-soil State com- 
 mittee in 1849. In 1850 he again sat in the State House 
 of Representatives, and was the candidate of his party for 
 Speaker. In the fall of that year he was one of the origi- 
 nators and chief supporters of the coalition between the 
 free-soil and democratic parties, which elected Mr. Bout- 
 well governor, Mr. Wilson himself to the State Senate, 
 and made him president of that body, and, after a severe 
 contest, sent Charles Siunner to the Senate of the United 
 States. In 1852 he was a delegate to the national con- 
 vention of the free-soil party held at Pittsburgh, Pennsyl- 
 vania; was chairman of the national free-soil committee; 
 failed of an election to Congress by less than a hundred 
 votes, and was again president of the i\[assachusetts sen- 
 ate. His address of welcome to Louis Kossuth, made the 
 same year as chairman of a legislative committee, won 
 the applause of all parties. In 1853 he was a member of 
 and took a prominent part in a convention called to revise 
 the constitution of the commonwealth. Here he made 
 his influence felt, although the convention contained the 
 ablest men in the State of every party. In the same 
 year he was the candidate of his party for governor, and 
 again in 1854, but was never elected to that office. In 
 the latter year he was actively engaged in organizing the 
 opposition to the repeal of the Missouri compromise. In 
 that year, also, he joined the native American or know- 
 
88 ADDRESS BY MR. WARREN ON THE 
 
 nothing party, as it was called, which elected its candi- 
 date for governor and a large majority in both branches 
 of the Legislature. That Legislature met in January, 
 1 855, and, on the resignation of Mr. Everett, elected Mr. 
 Wilson to the United States Senate. lie took his seat in 
 that body on the 10th day of February, 1855, and con- 
 tinued to occupy it until he assumed the office of Vice- 
 President, March 4, 1873. 
 
 Time would fail me were I to attempt to recount his 
 labors as a member of the Senate. Suffice it to say that 
 when the history of its memorable doings, for the last 
 twenty memorable years, shall come to be written, there 
 will be no chapter of the whole record that will not per- 
 force mention the name and speak of the labors of Henry 
 Wilson, of Massachusetts. And the history of the party 
 to which he belonged, and at whose birth he assisted, will 
 make mention of no man who did more to lead that party 
 from its early adversity and defeat to its final triumph 
 and long tenure of power; uo man who labored harder, 
 tlu-ough good and through evil report, with brain and 
 tongue and hand in the cause to which he was devoted; 
 no man who was keener in foreseeing and surer in taking 
 the precise step in which the people were ready to follow; 
 no man who understood better how to lead forward his 
 party from position to position until, through their sup- 
 port, every measure of policy which he deemed essential 
 was finally established, than Henry Wilson, of Massa- 
 chusetts. And so it happened that before and diuing 
 
LIPE AND CHAEACTEB OF UENKY WILSON. 89 
 
 and since our civil conflict he was all the time one of the 
 feremost leaders, one of the most trusted advisers, among 
 the men who in those periods in the main shaped the 
 destiny of our people. 
 
 With this brief sketch of the wonderfully successful 
 career of Mr. Wilson I might pause. But were I to do 
 so I might leave the impression that his life was hardly 
 an exceptional one in this new and growing country. 
 There are, it is true, innumerable instances in each suc- 
 ceeding generation of men who, from poverty and depriva- 
 tion, have worked their way upward to high position, and 
 meanwhile have educated themselves sufficiently to be 
 enabled to bear ofi" their honors bravely and do credit to 
 themselves and the State. But Mr. Wilson had to con- 
 tend against no ordinary odds. His was not the lot of 
 him who in a new country, by simple force of character, 
 energy, and industry, becomes a leader among the hardy 
 pioneers who surromid him. He went a self-taught youth 
 from his rustic home into the most populous portion of 
 one of the oldest vStates in the Union. He took up his 
 abode in the immediate vicinity of our most ancient seat 
 of learning. He chose as his political associates a party 
 comprising probably two-thirds of the people of Massa- 
 chusetts and an equal proportion of those who might truly 
 be called the educated and cultivated men in a community 
 behind none on this continent in intelligence and refine- 
 ment. It was Avith the picked men in such a community 
 and in siu-li a party that he was brought into comparison 
 
yU ADDRESS BY ME. WAEEEN ON THE 
 
 and finally into competition. And it seems to me the 
 great success of his life that he took a front rank among 
 such comjjetitors and finally superseded the foremost of 
 them in the leadership of his party. 
 
 lie must, then, have been possessed of some unusual 
 abilities besides mere intellectual power, general knowl- 
 edge, the gift of eloquence, or personal character. These 
 were possessed in sufficient degree by hundi-eds of his 
 compeers. True, he was not lacking in energy ; he shnmk 
 from no labor; his mind worked easily and he rarely 
 failed to detect the vulnerable point in his adversary's 
 position; he had no dearth of general information, and 
 even in his early days his style of oratory was far above 
 the average. But over and above all this he had in a 
 pre-eminent degree two especial qualifications for political 
 leadership. These were, first, an intimate acquaintance 
 with all the facts of our past and current political history. 
 A memory naturally tenacious had been trained and 
 crammed to hold this knowledge of political facts alwa3's 
 at command. This kind of knowledge has not of late 
 been common in Massachusetts. One efifect of the com-se 
 of education in that State during the last third of a cen- 
 tury, combined doubtless with other causes, has been to 
 produce a distaste for political life among men of the 
 highest education, and an aversion to any great familiar- 
 ity with the details of American political history. 
 
 In the second place, Mi-. Wilson had no superior as a 
 party organizer. There may be some who will deem the 
 
LIFE AND CHAEACTEE OF HENEY WILSON. 91 
 
 possession of the faculty for organizing men into a com- 
 pact and formidable body as not a subject for eulogy. 
 Such is not my opinion. English and American history 
 for centuries has been the history of parties. No other 
 instrumentality has been, none is likely to be devised 
 which will supplant them as the ready and necessary 
 means for molding the policy of the state. In a country 
 where new questions are constantly arising and former 
 ones becoming obsolete, the organizer is scarcely, if at all, 
 less important than the thinker. The student will spend 
 his life in the seclusion of his closet; the orator, be he 
 ever so impassioned and eloquent, will arouse only dis- 
 cord and ill-temper, until he appears who can transform 
 their speculations and declamation into a body of meas- 
 ures to the support of which he can bring a potent array 
 of his fellow-men. It was only through the organizing 
 skill of Henry Wilson that it became possible for Charles 
 Sumner to pass from a private station to the Senate of the 
 United States. If those who claim to be leaders of 
 thought and to possess superiority in culture and knowl- 
 edge in our community desire or e.xpect hereafter to re- 
 sume that guidance and control oyer our aflf;iirs Avhich 
 they have of late been wont to complain are not conceded 
 to them, they must, first, in knowledge of and fomiliarity 
 with national and local politics, and secondly, in learning 
 how to organize and direct masses of men, take a lesson 
 from the life of Henry Wilson, of Massachusetts. 
 
 With all these qualifications, however, continued sue- 
 
yli ADDRESS BY MR. WARREN ON THE 
 
 cess would rarely fall to the lot of any man who had not 
 some great pui-pose to accomplish. Knowledge of affairs 
 and skill in party organization would be acquirements 
 dangerous to the public weal unless accompanied by a 
 high sense of honor and unselfish devotion to a noble 
 cause. In the case of Mr. Wilson no one needs to be 
 told that the sentiment that controlled him was the anti- 
 slavery sentiment, which he shared in common with al- 
 most all the people of his State and section. But while 
 with most it was for a long time only a sentiment, with 
 him it became the pivot on which his political conduct 
 turned. And without even an allusion to the measures 
 and events which have for many years been uppermost 
 in the minds of us all, without speculating upon what 
 might have been done or what avoided, it is not too much 
 to say that at this time and in this place, where the people 
 of every State in the Union are once again fully repre- 
 sented, there is no man who will hesitate to do full justice 
 to the purity of motive, the sincerity of conviction, and 
 the elevation of sentiment of the earlier New England 
 anti-slavery men. 
 
 But it is the crowning glory of Vice-President Wilson's 
 life that while he never wavered in his hostility to an in- 
 stitution which in his view was a violation of human rights 
 and a standing insult to the dignity of labor, he never 
 permitted himself to cherish any bitterness of feeling to- 
 ward his political antagonists, even after the angry con- 
 flict of arms had for a time almost obliterated all kindly 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. \I6 
 
 feelings between the divided sections. Many and many 
 are the men in all parts of the South who in their hour of 
 distress have found in him a friend and benefactor, and 
 here almost within reach of my hand are those who bear 
 cheerful testimony to his efforts in their behalf whereby 
 their prison doors were opened and they themselves re- 
 turned to their homes and friends. 
 
 And so in a more pubhc manner in the last year of his 
 life, when he felt that his efforts in behalf of human free- 
 dom and the elevation of labor (for he always united the 
 two in his thoughts) had reached their full fruition, he set 
 himself at work to ascertain what might be done to allevi- 
 ate tlie distresses of the Southern people. Forgetting the 
 politician and the partisan, he remembered only that he 
 was a man and a Christian. And thus it happened that 
 when he came to die he left behind no personal or politi- 
 cal enemy, but was at peace with all mankind. A re- 
 united nation in mourning sympathy followed his mortal 
 part to its final resting-place, and to-day expresses a com- 
 mon grief in a common loss. He died on the 23d of No- 
 vember, within the walls of the Capitol — a most fitting 
 place. Bereft of wife and child, he could claim kindred 
 but with the Repubhc, and, as it were, in her embrace he 
 sank to sleep. Upon him, self-taught, self-trained, but 
 who had attained nearly all the honors his native land 
 could bestow, speaking, however unworthily, for the dis- 
 trict in which he lived, and for the university which is its 
 pride and boast, I can freely bestow that meed of praise 
 
\)i ADDRESS BY MR. WARREN ON THE 
 
 which the ,grecatest of Roman orators was constrained to 
 render to the foremost of Roman soldiers, ^^Fuit in illo in- 
 genium, ratio, memoria, Uteratura, cogitatio, diligentiay 
 
 And speaking for no single district, nor yet for any 
 single countiy, but in the nameof our common humanity, 
 I can, with the common consent, place a still higher trib- 
 ute, which Roman orator and Roman soldier knew not of, 
 the crown of that Christian charity which " suffereth long 
 and is kind, envieth not, vaunteth not itself, is not puffed 
 up, doth not behave itself unseemly," which "thinketh no 
 evil, rejoiceth not in iniquity but rejoiceth in the truth," 
 charity which " never faileth," upon the tomb of Henry 
 Wilson, of Massachusetts. 
 
LIFE AND CnAKACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 
 
 Address by Mr. flarris, of Massachusetts. 
 
 I rise to second the resolutions in honor of Henry 
 Wilson, late Vice-President of the United States, which 
 have just been presented to this House by my friend and 
 colleague from Massachusetts, and in a few words to urge 
 their adoption. 
 
 Standing here, Mr. Speaker, in the presence of so many 
 distinguished gentlemen who had the privilege of familiar 
 social, private, and public intercourse with Mr. Wilson, 
 who learned his ambition, his aspiration, and his holies, 
 who saw him in liis daily walks and heard his conversa- 
 tion, I know how feeble will be the tribute which I must 
 pay to him. Nevertheless, I bring my humble offering to 
 his grave. 
 
 He was, as has been already said, a man of the people. 
 He rose from the humble walks of life by great energy, 
 by gi-eat intelligence, to the highest position in the comi- 
 try save one. He died in the possession and enjoyment 
 of the second honor of the Republic. 
 
 Mr. Wilson understood the people. The people under- 
 stood him. He seemed to understand the voice of the 
 people and their judgment before it was uttered. He 
 
90 ADDRESS BY MR. HARRIS ON THE 
 
 stood for many years as if with bis hand upon the popu- 
 lar pulse. He felt every heart-beat of the people and 
 announced their coming judgment. 
 
 Mr. Wilson was a man of whom I think it may be said 
 that he was unsurpassed in private vii-tue. As a citizen 
 for the purity of his private life, as a politician for the 
 pui-ity of his purposes, he had no superior. However 
 men may diifer from him in the views which he enter- 
 tained, however bitter at times may have been the con- 
 tests in which he engaged, I think to-day there are no 
 persons within the sound of my voice who will say they 
 do not believe that he was sincere and honest in every 
 public and private act. 
 
 No man can sjjeak of Henry Wilson without making 
 reference to the relations which he occupied to party and 
 to the Republic. To speak of him otherwise than as an 
 advocate of liberty and as an adversary and opponent of 
 human slavery would be to do injustice to his memor3^ 
 He commenced early in his political career as an advocate 
 of the slave. At first he only sought to prevent the exten- 
 sion of human slavery. At last, when war bui-st upon the 
 country, he became the detennined advocate of the abo- 
 lition of that institution. I would not refer to any act of 
 his which might call back one bitter thought to any gen- 
 tleman upon this floor, but he believed that the Constitu- 
 tion of his country was a free Constitution, and, with 
 Washington and Jefferson, that the institution of slavery 
 was contrary to the genius of the Republic. And for 
 
LIFE AND CHAEACTER OF HENEY WILSON. t)7 
 
 many years he battled faitlifully, as lie believed, in the 
 cause of the human race. 
 
 He saw, Mr. Speaker, nothing in the Constitution which 
 needed amendment, and could his voice have been heard 
 — could those gentlemen in the South who to-day are 
 willing to pay tiibute to the memory of Henry Wilson — 
 could they have heard his voice when he urged gradual 
 emancipation; could they have believed him then; could 
 they have found in him then, as they do now, the faithful 
 and honest man — the change which had been decreed by 
 the Almighty power would have come without shock or 
 disaster, but mth benefaction alike to master and slave. 
 
 Mr. Wilson, as a pohtician, pressed his views upon the 
 public with persistency and zeal, but I do not think he 
 could properly be called a belligerent man. He did not 
 so much undertake to convince and convert his enemies 
 as to concenti-ate and combine his friends and sympa- 
 thizers into one grand power, with which to execute his 
 pm-poses. He, therefore, had few personal controversies 
 in his life, few personal encounters. I think I may say 
 he had as few personal enemies as any public man of his 
 time. Indeed, I doubt whether he can be said to have 
 had any personal enemies. 
 
 When war burst upon the country, Mr. Wilson left 
 nothing undone or unattempted which he believed would 
 lead up to the tiiumph of the Government and the 
 armies of the country. He was not a trifler in war or 
 peace, and when war did come, it was with him war to 
 
ADDRESS BY MB. HARRIS ON THE 
 
 the knife. But when the war was over, he was knid, for- 
 giving, and aflfectionate. To the poor victims of war liis 
 heart ovei-flowed with pity; with the tenderness of a 
 woman he wept as he staunched the wounds and assuaged 
 tlie woes of war. 
 
 After the close of that sad period he proved to the people 
 of the North and South that he had no hostility to the 
 men whom he believed the institution of slavery had 
 cursed. For them he had nothing but kindness and affec- 
 tion. He welcomed them back, asking only, when they 
 returned to live with him under a redeemed and purified 
 Constitution, that they would come with a sincere deter- 
 mination honestly and zealously to work with him for the 
 glory of the countr}^. 
 
 Mr. Wilson died in the Capitol of his country; a most 
 fitting place. He died after probably having accomplished 
 all that was left to him to accomplish. He died; and I 
 think he receives to-day the fittest eulogy from the people 
 of the country, the people of his own class, the humble — 
 for Mr. Wilson never forgot that he was from the poor, 
 that his origin was among the poor and the humble — and 
 the proudest eulogy which goes up is that incense which 
 rises from the hearts of the humble and the poor. 
 
 Now, Mr. Speaker, lest I shall trespass too long upon 
 the House, I hasten to conclude. I have spoken of Henry 
 Wilson only as a national man. Massachusetts to-day 
 mourns Henry Wilson, and Massachusetts, Mr. Speaker, 
 has cause for sorrow. John A. Andrew, Charles Sumner, 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY "WILSON. 99 
 
 and now Hexry Wilson; Henry Wilson the last of the 
 grand trio. Henry Wilson had the confidence of the 
 people of Massachusetts. He had their love, and they 
 bore him upon their arms into the office of the Vice- 
 President of the United States. He was their represent- 
 ative, and spoke their voice; and as they gather his 
 remains to their final resting-place they treasure his mem- 
 ory, and they will transmit his fair example to their sons, 
 and point to it as worthy of imitation and emulation for 
 the humble and the poor, and for their inspiration. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, John A. Andrew, at the opening of the 
 war, during the struggle, and at its close, was the governor 
 of that State. Charles Sumner and Henry Wilson spoke 
 her voice in tlie Senate of the United States. And I think, 
 sir, it is no aiTogance to say that the uttei'ance of those 
 three of her noble sons, now all departed, the utterance of 
 those three was the true utterance of the commonwealth 
 of Massachusetts, of the nation, and of the age in which 
 they lived. Charles Sumner passed away at the most 
 iitting and proper period, perhaps, for his death. He had 
 arrived at the highest honors. He had accomplished all 
 there was for him to do and he passed away; but Mr. 
 Speaker, not until he lifted his voice to welcome back to 
 the protection of the Constitution and into the fold of the 
 Republic every man who had left it during the war of the 
 rebellion. John A. Andrew before his death announced 
 with his ringing voice his desire that eveiy person in the 
 Ro])ul)lic should come back again and enjoy the privileges 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. HARRIS ON THE 
 
 and the franchises of the Republic; and Henry Wilson 
 before his death had shown to all the people that his voice 
 was for reconcihation, for peace, for amnesty. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, now as Massachusetts gathers to her bosom 
 the remains of her chosen son, what is the message, what 
 is the voice that she utters in the ears of the nation ! It 
 is not the voice of hate, it is not the voice of hostility, it is 
 not that: it is the voice of love, fraternal feeling, and con- 
 cord. May she not say, "These were the men who spoke 
 my voice; you have heard it, and after all was it not a 
 voice in favor of 'peace on earth and good- will to men?'" 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 
 
 Address by Mr. Kelley, of Pennsylvania. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, with whatever waimth of maternal affec- 
 tion Abigail Colbath welcomed the boy who was born 
 to her in Farmington, N. H., on the 16th of February, 
 1812, there was naturally a feeling throughout tlie 
 family that he was not a welcome guest. The event 
 doubtless evoked the sympathy of friends and neighbors, 
 for they knew that the chilling shadow of poverty dark- 
 ened the household; that want was to sit by the cradle of 
 the little one, and that it was probable he would at times 
 ask for bread when the mother would have none to give. 
 Could, however, Abigail and Winthrop Colbath have pen- 
 etrated the secrets of the future, they would have been 
 exalted with joy and a novel consciousness of pride. 
 They would have seen that, though poverty was to attend 
 his infancy and poorly-requited labor be his lot in youth 
 and early manhood, their child was destined to be a posi- 
 tive and beneficent force during one of the great epochs 
 in his country's history, and that, after a life closed in the 
 "sere and yellow leaf," his remains would be borne from 
 the Capitol of his country by a grateful and sorrowing 
 people to the State he had so long served and which in 
 
102 ADDRESS BY MB. KELLEY ON TUE 
 
 recognition of liis services bad honored him as it had few 
 of its citizens. 
 
 I have heard men say that Henry Wilson was not a 
 great man. This may be true ; but, if it be, it proves that 
 a good spii-it is a more potent social agent than great 
 parts. Henry Wilson, by his tidehty to conviction, by 
 his freedom from selfish ambitions, by liis powers as an 
 organizer, his capacity to combine for common objects 
 those who, differing widely on incidental points, agreed 
 only on the leading pm-pose of the day, and by his almost 
 ceaseless and seemingly unwearying labor, exercised dur- 
 ing the last quarter of a century an influence as powerful 
 and wide-spread as any among the most gifted of his fel- 
 low-citizens. 
 
 I remember his advent to the politics of Massachusetts 
 as the Natick cobbler, in 1840, shortly before which date 
 I had ceased to be a working jeweler in Boston, whither 
 I had gone in the winter of 1834-35, in pursuit of em- 
 ployment, which the severity of a financial crisis denied 
 me in my native city. The earnestness of the man, the 
 simplicity and directness of his character, his knowledge 
 of facts, liis clearness of statement, and the language in 
 which he clothed thought and fact gave promise of a po- 
 tential futm-e, and his position in the politics of Massachu- 
 setts was at once assured. Mr. Wilson and I were then 
 members of opposing parties; he was a Avhig, I a demo- 
 crat. Having returned to my home and engaged in other 
 pursuits than those for which the labors of my youth had 
 
LIFE AND CHAKACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 103 
 
 fitted me, I had not obsei-ved his progress in connection 
 with public affaii-s, and he next came specially under my 
 notice in 1852, when he had been a delegate to the national 
 convention of the free-soil party, held at Pittsburgh in 
 1852, and been called to preside over that body, and also 
 made chairman of the national committee of that party. 
 From Pittsburgh he came to Philadelphia. I met him 
 soon after his arrival, and the interest we each felt in pre- 
 venting the extension to the Temtories of a system of un- 
 paid labor and to the creation of more slave States had 
 removed the political differences that had divided us twelve 
 years before. From that time we were to be co-workers 
 and friends, and our meetings were frequent, for thence- 
 forward it seemed impossible to conduct a campaign in 
 Pennsylvania without the aid of Henry Wilson's prudent 
 counsels and popular appeals. As a public speaker he 
 was welcomed to every part of our State, and I do not 
 exaggerate when I say that he addressed more people in 
 Pennsylvania than any other man who never resided 
 within her limits. In parts of the State he was loved as 
 he was by the reformatory and progressive people of ]\Ias- 
 sachusetts. His name never failed to attract a large au- 
 dience or his addresses to inspire with courage and the 
 purpose of determined and effective labor those who heard 
 him. 
 
 We shall hear his voice no more on our mountain sides 
 and in our beautiful valleys, but he has not ceased to be 
 an influence for good among us. The good men do lives 
 
104 ADDRESS BY ME. KELLEY ON THE 
 
 after them. The story of Henky Wilson's youth, if fitly 
 written, will be clothed in pure monosyllabic Saxon, that 
 untaught children may understand its full import. Nor 
 do the incidents of his matui'er life need rhetorical setting. 
 They speak for themselves with such force and directness 
 that his biographer who shall attempt by literary effort to 
 add to their force will mar the influence of his example. 
 To produce its just effect the statement of tlie means by 
 which he rose, step by step, from the shoemaker's seat to 
 the Legislature of Massachusetts, to the position of next 
 to the senior member of the Senate of the United States, 
 and subsequently to the Vice-Presidency, should be made 
 in his own simple and direct style. His example of frugality 
 and abstinence from theuseof all hurtful stimulants, hishabit 
 of personal economy, his indifference to worldly wealth, his 
 sympathetic generosity to the poor and afflicted, his unceas- 
 ing labors, and the honors that attended them, are inspiring 
 examples to every gifted child of poverty. Invaluable as 
 the story of Henry Wilson's life is to us of the North, 
 now that the temble apprehension of servile revolt and of 
 arbitrarily enforced social equality between the races, 
 Avhich filled many minds after war had emancipated the 
 slaves, that hung like threatening clouds over Southern 
 society, has vanished, it is far more valuable to the 
 South, among whose people are so many who will be 
 benefited by learning how a poor and almost fi-iendless 
 boy can find pleasure in books, and by their friendly as- 
 sistance mount from helpless obscurity to personal power 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OP HENRY WILSON. 10^) 
 
 and possible distinction. But not to tlie hnmble alone 
 does the life of Henry Wilson speak, for, properly con- 
 sidered, its great lesson is to tliose whose lot in life is 
 happier, whose privilege it is to legislate for and govern 
 others. In his career they will find proof that energies, 
 which neglected or ti-ained in vicious ways would be 
 dangerous to society, if turned toward self-culture and 
 directed to noble purposes, will add not only to the power 
 but to the glory of the state. 
 
ADDUKSS BV MU. KNOTT ON THE 
 
 Address by Mr. Knott, of Kentucky. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, it is no part of my purpose to pronounce 
 a studied panegyric upon either the genius or the public 
 services of the distinguished man to the memory of whose 
 virtues we would pay a becoming tribute of respect, and 
 tlie recollection of whose frailties, if any he had, we would 
 bury with his nioldering dust forever beyond our view. 
 I seek, sir, to add but a single leaf to the garland we 
 would hang upon his tomb. I rise simply to express the 
 unfeigned and heartfelt admiration of my people as well 
 as my own high appreciation of that genuine manliness 
 and true nobility of soul exhibited by the illustrious de- 
 ceased in one of the most unostentatious yet to my mind 
 one of the most singularly beautiful and touching acts of 
 his whole life. 
 
 But a short time previous to his death Mr. Wilson had 
 occasion to visit the metropolis of my native State, where 
 he was welcomed with that cordial, open-handed, warm- 
 hearted hospitality which I am proud to say has always 
 characterized its generous people. All classes, ii-respective 
 of political prejudices and party affiliations, vied with each 
 other in extending to him the evidences of that liig-h con- 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. ]07 
 
 sideration due to one of the most distinguished citizens 
 of the country, and especially to the high position he oc- 
 cupied as Vice-President of the United States. No atten- 
 tion which could possibly render his stay agreeable was 
 omitted by those into whose midst he had come. And no 
 one was better able to appreciate their courtesy than their 
 illustrious visitor. But while he was in the full enjoyment 
 of those amenities which were so genial to his own warm 
 and generous nature, cheered on every hand by friendly 
 greetings, welcomed, honored, and entertained in circles 
 of the highest refinement and culture, wliere all was joy 
 and happiness and peace, a far different scene was pre- 
 sented in an unpretending Kentucky home a little over a 
 hundi-ed miles away. There, around the hearth-stone of 
 one whom he had known in former years as an able and 
 detemiined political opponent, one from whom he had 
 been long separated by the fierce conflict of party strife 
 and the still fiercer clash of war, were gathered the wan 
 specter of anxiety and anguish and sorrow; for there the 
 proud form which had challenged the admiration of tliou- 
 sands in the forum, upon the rostrum, in the Senate, and 
 amid the crash of battle, stricken and prostrate h\ disease, 
 was wasting rapidly awa}'. There one of tlie grandest 
 spirits that ever illustrated the dignity and majesty of our 
 race was pluming its pinions for its final flight to brighter 
 climes. Breckini-idge the proscribed — the exile in his own 
 native land— the alien in the midst of his own people, who 
 loved him as a brother, lay dying. When the sad intelli- 
 
108 ADDRESS BY MR. KNOTT ON THE 
 
 geace was communicated to the great man whose memory 
 we mourn to-day, he threw aside all the fascinations of 
 the most refined and elegant hospitality, and with his great 
 heart full of friendship and fraternal feeling hastened to 
 the bedside of the dying statesman, who in the calm dig- 
 nity of his own majestic soul had borne for years the ban 
 of jiroscription, there to tender his sympathy and testify 
 his warm personal regard for one whom he had formerly 
 recognized as the exponent and champion of principles 
 which he himself had made it the great mission of his life 
 to oppose in every legitimate manner and with all the 
 earnestness and fervor of his own zealous and determined 
 nature. Ah, Mr. Speaker, what a scene was that! The 
 Vice-President of a proud and poweiful people, with every 
 feature of his benevolent face beaming with the kindest 
 sentiments of friendship and brotherly love, as he held the 
 emaciated hand of the dying hero in liis own warm and 
 cordial grasp ! What an example to the emulation of the 
 genuine American everywhere; what a total absence of 
 every trace of that bitter, unforgiving, relentless, remorse- 
 less hate that clings alone to the ignoble soul ! What a 
 sublime spectacle of that exalted magnanimity which 
 always belongs to a noble nature ! 
 
 Mr. Speaker, that simple act of manly courtesy secured 
 for our dead Vice-President a wai-m place in the heart of 
 every true Kentuckian. From that hour there was a total 
 oblivion of everything like prejudice that they may have 
 entertained against him. From that hour there was not a 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 109 
 
 household in my native State in which Henry Wilson 
 would not have been hailed as a welcome and an honored 
 guest. For, sir, that simple, touching, unostentatious inci- 
 dent proved him to be a generous, warm-hearted, high- 
 souled, noble man, and an honor to the proud old common- 
 wealth that gave him birtli. And, sir, when the lightning- 
 winged messenger whisi)ered over this land the melancholy 
 tidings of his peculiar, mournful death, it nowhere touched 
 a more responsive chord, nor will its memory be any- 
 where more tenderly enshrined, than in the grateful hearts 
 of Kentucky. 
 
ADDRESS BY ME. CLYMER ON THE 
 
 Address by Mr. Clymer, of Pennsyh 
 
 Mr. Speaker, during my brief service in this body the 
 commonweahh of Massachusetts has been chief mourner 
 among the States. Her great Senator, Charles Sumner, 
 was first summoned to his account, and then in quick 
 succession Alvah Crocker, Samuel Hooper, and James 
 Ikiffinton, members of this House during the last Congress, 
 each honored and distinguished and all beloved by those 
 who knew them, entered the dread portal! Now again 
 she is sorely stricken. One who had long and faithfully 
 served her in her own councils and in those of the nation, 
 one whom she had given to the Republic to occupy the 
 position next highest in dignity and power, has passed 
 away, and her sister commonwealths may not fail to assure 
 her of their common sympathy in this hour of her new 
 and sad bereavement. 
 
 It is my regret that the voice of Pennsylvania is not 
 heard through one who knew him more intimately than 
 myself, and if I fail to justly record his personal vu-tues or 
 to place a proper estimate on his public services, I pray it 
 
LITE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. Ill 
 
 may be attributed to the absence of those intimate per- 
 sonal relations which alone enable us to thoroughly appre- 
 ciate and understand the motives and actions of men. 
 
 Born in obscurity and reared in poverty, he early exhib- 
 ited that indomitable and unceasing energy which so 
 strongly marked his subsequent career. Amid the drud- 
 gery of his life, when bound apprentice to a former and 
 when learning the trade of a shoemaker, he was assiduous 
 in his efforts to acquire knowledge, and of him it may be 
 truly said that he was " a self-made man," for all his early 
 scholastic training was acquired by his own unaided exer- 
 tions, under the most difficult and often the most disheart- 
 ening circumstances. 
 
 His thirst for knowledge was intense, and his mind was 
 too vigorous and acute to be blind to the fact that mere 
 untutored and uncultured genius is of little avail when 
 brought into contact with trained and disciplined intel- 
 lect. The friendless condition of his boyhood, the grave 
 and pressing necessities of his early manhood, his constant 
 struggle with poverty, his unyielding determination to 
 rise above the condition in which he was bom, all tended 
 to develop in him a sturdy independence of thought and 
 action wliich was clearly exhibited at the Very threshold of 
 his public life. Sprung from the soil, knowing well its 
 hard condition, allied by his antecedents with the sons of 
 toil, never failing to recognize their rights, and ever ready 
 to defend their wrongs, he did not hesitate in their inter- 
 ests to break political alliances, then all-alluring and most 
 
112 ADDRESS BY MR. CLYMER ON THE 
 
 powerful, to assert the individuality of his convictions 
 and the sincerity of his motives. Added to this inde- 
 jiendence of thought and action, he had that which is so 
 necessary to great achievements, implicit faith in himself 
 and in the soundness of his own judgment, giving direct- 
 ness, force, and simplicity to his character. 
 
 In him there was, too, a large-hearted charity, a deep 
 human sympathy born of his early adversity, which im- 
 j)elled him during his whole life to befriend the poor and 
 lowly, to lift up and succor the weak, to cheer and 
 encourage the struggling, and to defend and protect the 
 friendless and opjDressed. And, sir, as I look back upon 
 the clouds and darkness from which we have emerged, and 
 consider what sacrifices he made, what obloquy he endured, 
 what labor he performed in order that this charity, this 
 human sympathy, might find expression, I may not fail to 
 avow my profound admiration for his sincerity, retaining, 
 nevertheless, my own convictions as to the justice and 
 propriety of the means by which he sought to accomplish 
 results. 
 
 It was this same catholic spirit which caused him, when 
 the civil war was ended, to devote all his energies to 
 healing its wounds, to drying up its tears, and to rebuilding 
 its places made waste and desolate. In him there was no 
 bitterness; his heart concealed no vengeance; "Vengeance 
 is mine ; I will repay, saith the Lord," was his childlike. 
 Christian faith, and in the last public act of his long career 
 he placed it on recoi'd for all coming time ; since it was 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 11^ 
 
 at his suggestion and by his desire and advice that the 
 State convention of his party in Massachusetts, held at 
 Worcester on the 29th day of September, 1875, over 
 which he presided, adopted the following resolution : 
 
 Tliat the republicans of Massacbusetts welcome all auguries and 
 evidences that the Centennial of American Independence will be 
 celebrated by the complete restoration of fraternity, and they ex- 
 press the opinion that the time has come for the removal of all 
 remaining political disabilities. 
 
 Had he lived to-day we may believe that the spirit of 
 this resolution would have received unanimous indorse- 
 ment here as it did during the last Congress. That it has 
 not is not the fault of him, being dead, nor of the people of 
 the great commonwealth who so loved and honored him. 
 
 To others I cheerfully leave the task of recounting 
 with particularity his labors in the Senate during his long 
 and eventful service. It is enough for me to say that, 
 being of robust mental and physical nature, he was capa- 
 ble of great labor ; that he was a worker in its true and 
 best sense, and that during the war his name is connected 
 either as author or advocate with nearly or quite all the 
 military legislation of the period. His presence and offi- 
 cial service were given to every public duty unselfishly 
 and freely. 
 
 As a humanitarian he was abreast of, if not in advance 
 of, public sentiment on every moral question, and he never 
 shrank from the public advocacy of his views, whatever 
 might be the effect on his ])olitical fortunes. 
 
 In contemplating his public life, the impulse is irresist- 
 
114 ADDRESS BY MR. CLYMER ON THE 
 
 ible to contrast it with that of Charles Sumner, his col- 
 league during the eighteen years of his senatorial career. 
 To him he was most unlike, and yet he was no less use- 
 ful. The one the pati-ician, educated in the groves of the 
 academy ; the other the plebeian, who, groping amid toil 
 and penury, sought knowledge and found it by his own 
 unaided efforts. Sumner was a man of books ; Wilson, 
 of men ; Sumner, of ideas ; Wilson, of deeds ; Sumner, 
 of theories ; Wilson, of action ; Sumner lived and moved 
 in the unreal world of thought ; Wilson moved and acted 
 among men. Each had strong convictions. Sumner 
 sought and would have his in paths chosen by himself ; 
 Wilson would accept results offered him by fortune or 
 won in modes he did not prefer. As statesmen, Sumner 
 acted in profound indifference, if not contempt, of the act- 
 ual forces which existed, looking confidently to the end 
 some time to come ; Wilson labored in the light of and 
 molded the influences which surrounded him, subordinat- 
 ing all minor matters to the object he desired to accom- 
 plish. As a result, Sumner theorized much, and left as 
 memorials many splendid phrases ; Wilson spoke much 
 and identified himself with all the distinguished measures 
 of his speech. Widely different in origin, tastes, thought, 
 and action, these two men supplemented and comple- 
 mented each other in a way so rare and yet so admirable 
 that the great commonwealth which ever honored herself 
 by honoring them may fail to find in long years to come 
 two men who shall so truly reflect all of her that is good 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. llu 
 
 and true, manly and generous, learned and refined. No 
 shadow fell upon their friendship in life, and they will go 
 into history so linked together by the unity of their serv- 
 ice and so bound together by the very dissimilarity of 
 their ti'aining and action that the one may never be men- 
 tioned without recalling the honored name of the other. 
 
 In seeking for the cause which so strongly bound these 
 two men together in spite of the obvious dissimilarity 
 which existed, it may be found in that absolute and per- 
 fect pei-sonal integrity which so clearly marked the con- 
 duct of each. And if the late Vice-President had no other 
 claim to the respect and admiration of the age in which 
 he lived, it would shed a halo of glory around his name 
 in all time to come to have it said of him with truth that, 
 having served State and nation for more than a quarter of 
 a century, he died poor. The statement of the fact is its 
 own commentary. Amid the license of civil war ; with 
 public conscience blunted ; when cupidity was excited by 
 opportunity ; when unmeasured wealth might have been 
 and often was wrung from the very necessities of a stricken 
 land without challenge and without reproof, he, leading a 
 life of almost Spartan simplicity, stainless and pure, died, 
 as he had lived, an honest man. 
 
 There was, su-, something very touching and sad in the 
 manner of his death. It did not come to him unheralded. 
 Long before the final stroke the warning messenger was 
 by his side, and for months it followed him silently as a 
 shadow, i-elentlessly as fate ! Ever afterward he went 
 
lib ADDRESS BY MB. OLYJrER ON THE 
 
 aboiit the land deeply solicitous for the common welfare, 
 bearing messages of fraternal love, of peace, of good-will 
 to all of every section. Walking daily in the very pres- 
 ence of death, envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitable- 
 ness found no home in his breast ; and as he ever prayed 
 for mercy and forgiveness, so, too, would he have extended 
 these rich blessings to every one everywhere. 
 
 Weeks before the meeting of Congress in December, he 
 came here in restless anxiety to complete the work which 
 is to be the record of his life and times. And here, in his 
 chamber of state, in high serenity, sustained by his faith 
 and willing to be judged by his motives and works, he 
 received the final summons, and, gathering his robes about 
 him, he fell asleep under the shadow of the Dome of the 
 Capitol. It was a fitting place for him to die. Wifeless, 
 childless — the light had gone out from his own house ; all 
 was dreary darkness there — and coming to this the home 
 of the nation he entered it as of right by virtue of his great 
 oflSce, and from its portal passed away forever, to find his 
 last home in the bosom of the State he had loved and 
 served so well, deplored and respected by the people. 
 
 Full of years and laden with honors, the most extrava- 
 gant political dreaius of his youth and manhood more than 
 verified; with but one possible ambition unsatisfied— who 
 may say he was not fortunate in his death? 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 
 
 Address by Mr. Kasson, of Iowa. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, the representative men of a great histori- 
 cal era are passing rapidly from this sphere of their duties. 
 One by one, while the country proudly recognizes in them 
 the souvenirs of its latest glory, they sink beneath that 
 tide which ovei-flows all mortal distinction. Lincoln, Win- 
 ter Davis, and Chase, Fessenden, Grimes, and Sumner, 
 leaders in the forefront of the late gigantic battle between 
 hostile ideas, had already passed from among us before 
 reaching the usual limit of human life. Again unwilling 
 to wait for the ripeness of age, death has summoned an- 
 other of the historic company to join his old associates 
 in the land beyond the sun. Heaven seems to have grown 
 avaricious, to seize so soon, and in the very vigor of his 
 years, another living star from the visible coronet of the 
 Eepublic. "We complain that the divine sickle could not 
 wait for all this human harvest until the whitened and 
 bending heads should incline with the weight of years 
 toward the earth which was destined to receive them. 
 
 When Henry Wilson, Vice-President of the United 
 States, received his summons, his form was still round and 
 erect, his eyes beaming with sympathetic intelligence, his 
 hearing open to every sound, his complexion fresh; his 
 
118 ADDRESS BY MR. KASSON ON THE 
 
 voice retained its earnest tones, his mind its vigor, and his 
 heart its patriotism. The ears of his countrymen in all 
 parts of the Union were still listening to his counsel, while 
 their understandings were informed by his practical wis- 
 dom. We justly pronounce his departure from public life 
 a national loss. It is the occasion of grief to kindred, to 
 neighbors, to friends, to associates, and to patriots. Kin- 
 dred and neighbors about his humble home on that eastern 
 coast of Massachusetts to which his dust was committed, 
 remember and celebrate his kindly private virtues and af- 
 fections. There remains to us who have been his comrades 
 in stormy times the recollection and celebration of those 
 loftier public qualities, which bore him from such lowly 
 beginnings to his exalted office, and which won for him 
 the large influence which he wielded at the time of his 
 death. 
 
 Sir, the two extreme forms of luiman government, des- 
 potism and democracy, touch each other at various points 
 in spirit and in action. Both are willful, full of force, and 
 delight in surprises, alternating in action between selfish- 
 ness and generosity. Despotism sometimes surrounds 
 itself with the splendors of high birth and the culture of 
 learning and the refinements of the arts and civilization ; 
 and again, indulges itself with the overthrow of all in- 
 herited rights and all claims of distinction, and elevates, 
 instead, some imlieralded and imknown servants, some 
 Daniel or Joseph, from the humblest ranks to the govern- 
 ing places of the state. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OP HENRY WILSUN. 119 
 
 So the limited, democracy of America lias indulg-ed its 
 will at one time in elevating the well-bred dignity and 
 worth of Washington and of Adams, the polished culture 
 of Jefferson, and the well-trained logic of Madison. Again, 
 it has taken the ruder strength of Jackson, and the sol- 
 dierly simplicity of Taylor. Later still, with an awakened 
 conscience, it chose a great-hearted, undisciplined child of 
 the people, and sent Lincoln suddenly to the ruling place. 
 Democracy in him manifested a grandeur of character 
 which was much sooner comprehended by the earnest 
 hearts of the common people, at home and abroad, than 
 by the more cultivated intellects of the world, who have 
 since hastened to crown his unclassic brow with the laurel 
 of histor3\ It was in this era, when our republican de- 
 mocracy was listening to its new-found conscience, that it 
 nurtured, watched, and developed another of its unheralded 
 children, amid the trials of poverty and the struggles for 
 even an incomplete education. 
 
 I trust, Mr. Speaker, that it is not too early to claim for 
 the late Vice-President the impartial and unimpassioned 
 judgment of the citizens of all parts of the restored Union. 
 In the decade which has elapsed since the fires of civil 
 war were extinguished, the inflamed minds of men have 
 also become more cool and dispassionate. Certainly a 
 thoroughly restored balance of judgment cannot be re- 
 gained suddenly, on the morrow of such a conflict. When 
 we remember how many years the passions Avere growing, 
 how at last they ripened into blood, how many sacrifices 
 
120 ADDRESS BY MR. KASSON ON THE 
 
 Avere endured on both sides before the fever departed and 
 the wounded nation rose to its feet once more, we find 
 cause for congi'atulation that the balance is so far redressed 
 as we find it to-day. For thirty years it was a contest of 
 oiDposing ideas respecting the proper constitutional organi- 
 zation of American society. These ideas were the invisi- 
 ble combatants, which finally incarnated themselves for 
 fight and waged their warfare till the earth trembled under 
 their clashing. In the intellectual struggle Mr. Wilson 
 early engaged, and on the side of that small minority which 
 seemed at the time to be a mere faction, hopeless of the 
 confidence of even a single State. When that faction grew 
 into a party, and the party increased to a majority, and the 
 majority obtained control of the State, then, in 1855, the 
 liberty -loving artisan replaced in the United States Senate 
 tliat polished scholar and orator whom Massachusetts found 
 unequal to the demand of the coming crisis. In that body, 
 and in its high debates, he was to be compared or contrasted, 
 by friend and foe, with such distinguished associates as Cass 
 and Seward, Chase and Douglas, Sumner and Mason, Crit- 
 tenden and Slidell, with whom he was to discuss the most 
 vital questions of the Union. 
 
 When Mr. Wilson left the plow for the bench of the 
 artisan, and abandoned that bench for the forum of public 
 debate, he had small store of learning, but a great sym- 
 pathy for all his brethren — the children of labor. The 
 field of liis knowledge did not include the courses of the 
 planets, the discoveries of science, the rules of art, nor 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. VJl 
 
 the pliilosopliy of antiquity, nor even the history of okler 
 nations. But his mind, with remarkable vigor, grasped 
 and comprehended the wants of his race on this continent. 
 His knowledge of American needs was at first more the 
 result of a sympathetic experience than of careful study. 
 He never separated himself, nor sought to separate him- 
 self, from the ground of his early experiences. That 
 ground was hard fact. Throughout his career he dealt 
 with facts. The genius of his childhood endowed him 
 with no gifts of imagination or of artistic invention, and 
 the wings of cultui-e were wanting to his fancy. He 
 could neither soar to the zenith, nor descend to the nadir; 
 but always moved along the line of the visible horizon. 
 There was no fever in his speech. Its most vigoi-ous pul- 
 sations manifested only the glow of great earnestness. 
 Without soaring, the movement of his eloquence was a 
 strong stride, every footfall of which struck the solid 
 ground and gave vigor to the next step. His whole politi- 
 cal landscape was marked by solid metes and bounds. 
 In the realm of American facts he was king, and in this 
 realm he was rarely, if ever, worsted in debate. Un- 
 trained in the law, he was not much given to theories of 
 constitutional construction, but was thoroughly imbued 
 with the spirit of that charier of American liberty. 
 Wherever there might seem to be a conflict of its provis- 
 ions, its grand guarantees of the rights of persons were 
 vastly more important, in his judgment, than its guaran- 
 tees of the rights of property. He interpreted it always 
 
V22 ADDRESS BY MB. KASSON ON THE 
 
 as illuminated by the diviner light of the Declaration of 
 Independence. 
 
 If ever his rhetoric touched the borders of enthusiasm, 
 if ever he seemed to have drank at some spring of oi'ator- 
 ical inspiration, it was when he asserted the right of labor 
 to freedom, and the right of freemen to labor -without 
 degradation. Then, filled with reminiscences of his own 
 early struggles, and expanding them to take in the trials 
 of millions like himself, and remembering those aspira- 
 tions which gilded the dark clouds of his laborious youth, 
 he kindled a flame in the hearts of his toiling countrymen 
 which was not destined to die. It was the harp of uni- 
 versal humanity whose cords he struck ; and such music 
 once heard is never forgotten. It sounds and resounds 
 from one home and hamlet of the toiling millions to an- 
 other, and its echoes will never cease till the divine edict 
 for the earning of bread shall be revoked. 
 
 Hear him for a moment in the Senate Chamber, in those 
 tempestuous times when labor was clamoring to be released 
 from the degrading thralldom of personal slavery. A Sen- 
 ator from South Carolina had just called the manual labor- 
 ers of the North "hirelings," "essentially slaves," "galled 
 by their degradation," and the "mud-sills" of society. 
 Henry Wilson, impatient and glowing, takes up the word 
 as if all the hills of New England were ready to burst with 
 resenting speech. He said : 
 
 This language of scoru and contempt is addressed to Senators, 
 who were not nursed by a slave ; whose lot it was to toil with their 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY "WILSON. 123 
 
 own bands; to eat bread earned, not by the sweat of another's brow 
 bat by their own. Sir, I am the sou of a hireling manual laborer, 
 who, with the frosts of seventy winter's on his brow, lives by daily 
 labor. I, too, have been a hireling manual laborer. Poverty cast 
 its dark and chilling shadow over the home of my childhood ; and 
 want was there, au unbidden guest. At the age of ten years, to 
 aid him who gave me being in keeping the gaunt specter from the 
 hearth of the mother who bore me, I left the home of my boyhood 
 and went to earn my bread by daily labor. Many a weary mile 
 have I traveled — 
 
 "To beg a brother of the earth 
 To give mo leave to toil." 
 
 Sir, I have toiled as a "hiring laborer" in the field and the 
 workshop, and I tell the Senator Irom South Carolina that 1 never 
 "felt galled by" my " degradation." No, sir; never. * * * i 
 was conscious of my manhood. I was the peer of my employer. 
 * * * I knew, too, that the world was before me; that its 
 wealth, its garnered treasures of knowledge, its honors, the cov- 
 eted prizes of life, were within the grasp of a brave heart and a 
 tireless hand; and I accepted the responsibilities of my position, 
 all nnconscious that I was a "slave." * * * In every position 
 of private and public life are our associates who were but yester- 
 day "hireling laborers," "mud-sills," "slaves." In every depart- 
 ment of human effort are noble men who sprang from our ranks — 
 men whose good deeds will be felt and will live in the grateful 
 memories of men when the stones reared by the hands of affection 
 to their honored names shall crumble into dust. Our eyes glisten 
 and our hearts throb over the bright, glowing, aiul radiant pages 
 of our history that record the deeds of patriotism of the sons of New 
 England who sprang from our ranks and wore the badges of toil. 
 While the names of Benjamin Franklin, Eoger Sherman, Nathanael 
 Greene, and Paul Revere live on the brightest pages of our his- 
 tory, the mechanics of Massachusetts and New England will never 
 want illustrious examples to incite them to noble aspirations and 
 noble deeds. 
 
 So spoke this champion of free labor. The same senti- 
 ment expressed by the rhymes of Robert Burns has echoed 
 
124 ADDRESS OF MB. KASSON ON THE 
 
 over two continents, and still warms the hearts of all the 
 English-speaking races. Sir, had this splendid assertion 
 of indignant manhood come down to us on some venera- 
 ble parchment which preserved the sayings of Greek or 
 Roman orators, our high-bred youth would echo it in all 
 our schools and universities as belonging to the most vig- 
 orous days of ancient civilization. It would have ranked 
 with the protest of St. Paul when he asserted his rights 
 as a Roman citizen, and appealed to Cresarfor their recog- 
 nition, as Wilson appealed to the Senate and to the Re- 
 public. No prouder, manlier utterance was ever heard on 
 the floor of the Senate or from a tribune of the people. It 
 presents the inner life, better than any words of my inven- 
 tion, of him whose funeral-rites we celebrate. 
 
 Of all the speeches of this eminent man of the people 
 known to me, this, from which I borrow an extract, in 
 reply to the challenge, imported from the drawing-room 
 into the politics of that day, and flung into the face of free 
 labor, is the most characteristic, as it was, perhaps, the 
 most effective. Its wide circulation in our valley of the 
 Mississippi roused strong emotion in the breast and nerved 
 the arm of toil. It was in 1858 that the worth of free 
 labor was thus vindicated in the preliminary war of the, 
 conflicting ideas of our social organization. Two years 
 later free white labor vindicated its own dignity by elect- 
 ing one of its own children to the first place of national 
 honor, and again a few years later, having destroyed the 
 adverse system, it elevated another of its family, its cham- 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 125 
 
 pion and the author of this speech, to the second pLace of 
 national dignity. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, often in reading the history of nations we 
 are siu-prised and awed by some striking evidence of 
 Divine intervention in the adjustment of human affairs. 
 The weahhy, the wise, the mighty, overtaken by some 
 improbable event, disappear from the stage, and their 
 places are filled by those who had been the scorned or 
 oppressed victims of their power ; and the result was not 
 foreseen of Inmaan contrivance. But in no country, except 
 in France, have the events of any quarter of a century of 
 modern history been more surprising and dramatic than 
 in ours. That political philosophy and thorough-bred 
 intellect Avhich prevailed here and rendered the chambers 
 of this Capitol illustrious thirty years ago have passed from 
 this theater with much of the wisdom of that epoch which 
 made them illustrious. Political theorists and theories, 
 doctrinaires and their doctrines, though crystallized in sol- 
 emn resolutions, dedicated to the names of powerful states, 
 and drawn by mighty political logicians, have gone down 
 before an enemy which never sleeps and always advances. 
 The lights of humanity, the ideas of its progress, have 
 gradually conquered or swept away all obstructions in the 
 way of its organized march, and we have begun a new era 
 wliich demands extraordinary foresight and vigilant care. 
 It is a halt in the march of our destiny, while the new 
 order is established. We are in the double peril of re- 
 action and of rash action. 
 
VM address by MR. KASSON ON THE 
 
 The counsel of the man we mourn to-day would have 
 been beyond price during this halting' decade of American 
 politics and society. He was one of the few living links 
 between the public life of twenty years ago and that of 
 the passing day. His mental comprehension of the coun- 
 try, both of its interests and of its sentiments ; his unim- 
 passioned judgment; his conciliatory regard for all citizens 
 of the restored Eepublic; his greater love of peace than 
 of violence; his sincere patriotism — all these were quali- 
 ties which gave him a rare endowment of utility for our 
 times. As I review his career, so early and so constantly 
 and so admirably devoted to liberty and to the state, it 
 seems that he must have been gifted at birth with the sen- 
 timent which Pericles uttered in his oration at the celebra- 
 tion of the funeral rites in Athens. Said the Greek orator 
 to the Athenians, "You must constantly keep before your 
 eyes the powers of the state, and must love them. Look 
 for happiness in liberty, and for liberty in your own cour- 
 age." 
 
 Mr. Sj^eaker, if the Congress of the United States were 
 to direct an inscription upon marble to portray in the 
 fewest and fittest words the essential sentiment of IIexuy 
 Wilson's career, they would boiTOw it from Pericles, and 
 would cut deep in the hard rock the words: "He con- 
 stantly kept before his eyes the powers of the state, and 
 he loved them. He sought for happiness in liberty, and 
 for liberty in his own courag'e." 
 
AND CIIARACTEK OF HENRY "WILSON. 
 
 Address by^Vlr. j^ynch, of ^Vlis 
 
 Mr. Speaker, not long since the sad intelligence was 
 flashed from one end of the country to the other that 
 Henky Wilson, late Vice-President of the United States, 
 was dead. This sad news carried a pang of sorrow and 
 grief to the heart of every lover of his country and to 
 every friend of liberty and justice. I shall not attempt 
 to do justice to the memory of this great and good man. 
 I shall refer more especially to his achievements as a 
 public man — as a representative man. 
 
 Mr. Wilson was known and recognized thi-oughout the 
 civilized world as a man of acknowledged ability and 
 admitted capacity. The period in which he Hved was 
 one that enabled him to make for himself a record that is 
 in every respect worthy of emulation. He was a man of 
 broad, liberal, and conservative views upon public ques- 
 tions. As was said of Henry Clay, it can also be said of 
 Henry Wilson: 
 
 His sympiitbies embraced all; the African slave, the Creole of 
 Spanish America, the children of renovated classic Greece— all 
 families of men, without respect to color or clime— found in his 
 expanded bosom and comprehensive intellect a friend of their 
 elevation and amelioration. Such ambition as that is God's 
 implantation in the human heart for raising the downtrodden 
 nations of the earth, and fitting them for regenerated existence in 
 politics, in morals, and religion. 
 
128 ADDRESS BY MR. LYNCH ON THE 
 
 In the person of Henry Wilson the poor have lost a 
 true and consistent friend, the oppressed an able advocate, 
 and the country a faithful public servant. He dedicated 
 his entire life to the cause of liberty, justice, and equal 
 rights. He regarded the institution of slavery as a foul 
 blot upon our system of government, our civilization, and 
 our Christianity. Recognizing tlie fact, as he did, that 
 the tree of liberty had been planted upon American soil 
 and watered with the precious blood of thousands of 
 patriotic advocates of freedom, that we could not consist- 
 ently tolerate and sustain an institution that was more 
 aggravating and disgraceful than that of which the found- 
 ers of our Government complained, and against which 
 they were justified in rebelling, he did not entertain any 
 feeling of ill-will toward those who did not agree with 
 him in his views, nor toward those who were i)ersonal]y 
 interested in perpetuating the existence of that institution 
 which he regarded as a national disgrace, and to the 
 destruction and abolition of which he devoted a long, 
 useful, and successful life. But he was actuated by 
 higher, nobler, and purer motives. He regarded the 
 toleration of an institution which recognized the right of 
 property in man as not only destructive of our system of 
 government, subversive of true democracy, and as having 
 a tendency to demoralize society, disturb the labor of the 
 country, corrupt the morals of the masses, and retard the 
 progress, happiness, and material prosperity of the people, 
 but he also regarded it as contrar}' to the laws of Deity 
 
LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 1-i'J 
 
 and at war with true Christian civilization. Throughout 
 
 his useful and eventful Hfe he never failed to raise his 
 
 voice, to use his pen, and to cast his vote in the defense of 
 
 those principles which he so consistently and persistently 
 
 advocated. For his labors in the cause of humanity and 
 
 justice the name of Henry Wilson will be gratefully 
 
 remembered by generations yet unborn. 
 
 During the memorable contest of 1856, over the 
 
 admission of Kansas as a State in the Union, with the 
 
 friends of freedom upon one side and the advocates of 
 
 slavery upon the other, Henry Wilson was one of the 
 
 few members of the United States Senate at that time who 
 
 took a bold, independent, outspoken position in ftxvor of 
 
 freedom for the slave. He did not oppose slavery simply 
 
 from a stand-point of political expediency, but because he 
 
 believed it to be morally and religiously wrong, as will 
 
 appear from the following quotation from one of his great 
 
 speeches that was delivered when the Kansas question 
 
 was before the Senate: 
 
 This question of slavery iu America is the graud ceutral idea 
 of the country and of this age. If Senators imagine that anything 
 that can be done in this or the other House of Congress, at this 
 session or at any session, is to make peace iu this country between 
 the great contending powers of freedom upon the one side and 
 shivery upon the other, they are greatly mistaken ; they do not 
 comprehend the vastness and extent of the issues. 
 
 When we adopted the Constitution of the United States we were 
 not responsible for slavery anywhere. If I had time, I could pass 
 on from 1789 up to this time and show you act after act, under almost 
 every administration, in which you have connected us with and 
 
 17 W 
 
130 ADDRESS BY ME. LYNCH ON THE 
 
 made us respousible for slavery. This legislation bas been iu 
 violation of the policy adopted by the fiamers of the Constitution 
 and the men who inaugurated this Goverument. Go back and 
 undo this ; disconuect us from sliivery ; put no responsibility on ud ; 
 and then our consciences and our judgments will be clear. If 
 slavery is wrong, as I believe it to be — and I believe it to be a crime 
 against man and a sin toward God, and I believe that to be the 
 sentiment of the free States — it is not our crime, it is not our sin. 
 
 Henry Wilson was an ardent and devoted lover of his 
 country. As chaii-man of the Senate Committee on 
 MiHtary Affairs dming the late war, he displayed such 
 remarkable ability as to make his power and influence 
 felt, acknowledged, and respected throughout the country. 
 His advice and counsel were often sought by the Govern- 
 ment, and seldom if ever rejected. His admonitions and 
 remonstrances were seldom disregarded but often heeded, 
 and never disrespected. He was justly looked upon by 
 the country as one of the chief pillars of the Government 
 during that important period of our country's history. 
 His able speeches, his patriotic utterances, his statesman- 
 like declarations, had the effect of giving renewed life 
 and vigor to the cause of the Union and of strengthening 
 the Union soldiers upon the field of battle. The Union 
 soldier knew that in the person of Henry Wilson he had 
 a true friend, an able advocate, and a strong defender. 
 
 Since the beginning of reconstruction Henry Wilson 
 has occupied a very conspicuous position. He was among 
 the fii-st to advocate the adoption of a broad, liberal, and 
 comprehens'ive system of reconstruction. I well remember 
 his pathetic appeals to the old-line whigs of Virginia, 
 
LIFE ANT) CHARACTER OF HENRY WELSON. 1^1 
 
 shortly after the adoption of the congressional plan of 
 reconstruction, to join with the newly enfranchised element 
 of the gi-and old Commonwealth in rehabilitating their 
 State government upon a firm, lasting, and solid founda- 
 tion. He appealed to them to lay aside their passions 
 and prejudices of race, the existence of which is known 
 and generally admitted to be the result of the toleration 
 of slavery and not from natural causes, and join in with 
 this new element that had been incoi-porated in the body- 
 politic of the Commonwealth in reconstructing then- State 
 government upon a basis that would prevent a repetition 
 of previous mistakes. His advice to the old-line whigs 
 of Virginia was no less applicable to the same element in 
 every one of the States similarly situated. It is doubtless 
 a source of serious regret to thousands of those he 
 addressed that his advice was not accepted by them. 
 They now recognize the fact that his object was to 
 prevent the formation of parties upon the race issue. He 
 could foresee the disastrous results that would follow a 
 bitter political contest between antagonistic elements, 
 whether it be based upon race, religion, or nationality. 
 He could foresee that, if reconstruction was made an 
 accomplished fact upon the basis of antagonism between 
 the two great elements of which southern society is com- 
 posed, passion and prejudice would take the place of 
 reason and argument, and that the material interests of 
 the people, the development of the resources of the 
 country, and the cultivation of friendly relations between 
 
l.;_' adi)i;k6;s by mu. lvmch on tiik 
 
 tlie sections would be made subordinate to the ambition 
 of unscrupulous politicians. The results that have fol- 
 lowed the rejection of Mr. Wilson's advice by those to 
 whom it was given have very clearly demonstrated the 
 wisdom of liis position. The serious apprehensions enter- 
 tained by him as to the disastrous results that would be 
 likely to follow the adoption of any other course have 
 been unfortunately realized to an extent that is almost 
 irreparable. It cannot be denied by those who are at all 
 familiar with southern politics that the present unfortunate 
 condition of affairs in that section of our country is due more 
 to the existence of this antagonism between the two great 
 elements in the South than to the faults and shortcomings 
 of local, temporary, and periodical administrations. I 
 believe there are but few who will not agree with me in 
 asserting that had the views of Henry Wilson been 
 accepted and generally acquiesced in, the Southern States 
 would be in a prosperous and flourishing condition to-day. 
 During the last two or three years of Mr. Wilson's life 
 he saw proper to advance a few ideas upon what may be 
 called the southern question, which subjected him to a 
 little unfavorable criticism on the part of a few of those 
 who are identified with the same political organization of 
 which he was a distinguished leader; but they evidently 
 did not understand his purposes nor appreciate his motives. 
 Those who knew Henry Wilson, who have carefully 
 watched his career since the beginning of reconstruction, 
 could see in his recent utterances upon that subject the 
 
LIFE AND CHAEACTEE OF HENEY WILSON. 133 
 
 same consistent determination to bring about, if possible, 
 a union of the best elements from the two great masses of 
 which southern society is composed. They could see the 
 same manifestations of an extreme anxiety on his part to 
 bring about hannony and a reciprocity of feeling between 
 the two races in the South, Avhich all must admit is the 
 most effectual if not the only remedy for the evils com- 
 plained of in southern politics. 
 
 Henry Wilson was a conscientious public man and a 
 true Chi-istian. His character for honesty and integrity 
 could never be questioned. His public career, though 
 long and eventful, was one that was particularly free from 
 everything that was impure, or even suspicious. His ex- 
 ample is one that is in every particular worthy of emula- 
 tion. The only thing that is consoling in the death of 
 this great and good man is the fact that he left behind him 
 a glorious record, and that, having lived the life of a pure 
 and devoted Christian, he was enabled to say, "I have 
 fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have 
 kept the faith." Let us hope, Mr. Speaker, that we may 
 live the life that Wilson lived, and die the death he died. 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. HURLBUT ON THE 
 
 Address by Mr. Wurlbut, of Illinois. 
 
 I shall not undertake, Mr. Si)eaker, to touch the details 
 of the life of Henry Wilson, to delineate his character, 
 nor to do more than refer to his eminent public service. 
 That will be better done by men who stood nearer to him 
 in his life, more competent to analyze the secret springs 
 of his success and the real value of his work. I prefer to 
 deal rather on this occasion with the general effect which 
 the man himself has produced upon the thoughtful people 
 Avho knew him only by the broad and general features of 
 character as these framed and molded his public course 
 and career. 
 
 There are two names which go straight to the heart of 
 that grand mass of thinkers and workers who constitute 
 the American people. Abraham Lincoln and Henry 
 Wilson, more than all others of our time, command the 
 sympathy and hold the love of the people of the Union; 
 both childi-en of adversity, both toilers from their infancy, 
 both winning their way by dint of brain-work and the 
 dominion of pure character to the high places of the Re- 
 public. Differing in many essential qualities, contrasted 
 in many elements of power, alike in the capacity of 
 
LIPE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. ISO 
 
 thorough conviction and of unfaUering action in the 
 straight Une of such conviction, each colored and per- 
 vaded by the pecuhar atmosphere of his special suiTound- 
 ings, both fearlessly, intensely, absolutely American, such 
 men could only be reared in one country; such men could 
 only have come to the fi-ont in one epoch of that country. 
 
 Henry Wilson, by the force of patient labor, of solid 
 will, of fearless belief, of effort to know the right and to 
 do the right, clove asunder the icy bamers which society 
 had placed between the New Hampshire boy and the 
 Massachusetts Senator. He had the heroism to stand by 
 the unpopular if he believed he stood by the true — a hero- 
 ism nearly as rai-e now as it was then — and he had the 
 rare satisfaction in his own life-time of seeing the right 
 thing pass from opprobrium and opposition to success and 
 accomplishment. 
 
 From his early days he abhoiTed slavery as deserving 
 curse from God and man, and he struck straight at the 
 heart of the hoary iniquity enthroned on the prejudice of 
 customs and buttressed though it was by unholy alliance 
 of church and state. His clear moral vision was clouded 
 by no cunningly-wrought veil; no device, no subterfuge, 
 no cheat in word or action, could dim the anatomic eye 
 which detected and exposed the loathsome lines that indi- 
 cated disease and death in the painted harlot who queened 
 it over the fairest portion of the Republic. The strict 
 constructionists of that day, North and South, denounced 
 him. Pilate and Herod struck hands, but the brave heart, 
 
j;;0 ADDRESS BV MR. IIUTJLBUT O.N THE 
 
 strong from continuous struggle, flinched in no wise fi'oni 
 the task self-imposed and self-sustained. He lived to see 
 the dead carcass of the great wrong bm-ied forever out of 
 the sight of men, and the once blackened bosom of the 
 nation pure again from that ancient sin. He lived to do 
 his part as a man should in the j)hysical struggle — the 
 trial of colossal foi'ces that shook our broad territory and 
 made its earth-fast foundations tremble with the step of 
 uncounted hosts. He saw the authority of the Constitu- 
 tion and the supremacy of law vindicated; he saw those 
 who rashly took the sword punished by the sword; he 
 heard the sounding hammer-blows of a hundred battles, 
 as in the white heat of the rebellion they welded the 
 nation into indissoluble unity. He heard the glorious 
 sentiment of his great predecessor, "The Union, now and 
 forever, one and inseparable," pronounced as the grand 
 lesult of the tremendous conflict, and wrought into the 
 life and conscience of millions of his countrymen as the 
 one primal, controlling fact before which all others were 
 dwarfed into insignificance. Filled himself with the largest 
 view of this intense nationality, he rejoiced that it filled 
 the heart of the nation. 
 
 As Senator, as chairman of the Military Committee, he 
 did much valuable work, work which the country hardly 
 appreciates 5'et ; and it stands to his eternal credit that in 
 the exercise of the Avide discretion and vast power held 
 by him in that capacity no sordid nor selfish nor sectional 
 preference ever impaired the justice of his action. 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. l6t 
 
 He took liis part fairly and well in all the legislation 
 which followed the war ; nor liav6 I ever heard any man 
 say that in anything done or said by him in all that time 
 there was personal bitterness or desire for revenge. 
 
 He was active as a politician, for he believed in the 
 necessitv of vigorous and enlightened political action. 
 He made enemies, as all strong men do ; but even this 
 time in which we live, prolific in slander and promi)t to 
 accuse, never charged HtXEV Wilson with dishonest act 
 or impure motive. 
 
 Kot standing in the rank of our greatest men, measured 
 by intellectual standards, his influence was due more to 
 faith in his personal character, his devotion to right, than 
 to pre-eminent mental stature. 
 
 He did the work set before him to do with the same 
 good faith and the same steady energy with which he 
 filled out the coarser tasks of his early manhood, and the 
 people for whom he labored so long and well heartily 
 unite in the plaudits of "good and faithful servant," as 
 they look back upon his long career of public service and 
 feel that it is well with any people when fi-om its institu- 
 tions and modes of life and thought can spring such a life 
 and such a character as that of Henry Wilson. 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. REAGAN ON THE 
 
 Address by Mr. Reagan, of Texas. 
 
 Some days ago it was suggested that I should take a 
 pai-t in the addresses on this occasion. I had then, on 
 account of the pressure of other duties, reluctantly to 
 decline to do so. Until I saw the list to-day of those who 
 were to make addresses I did not know that it was antici- 
 pated I should say anything on this occasion, and what I 
 do say shall be limited to stating an incident illustrative 
 of the character and \Ti'tues and the charity of the great 
 man whose memory is this day being honored. 
 
 My first personal acquaintance with Mr. Wilson was in 
 1857, and our associations were such as might spring up 
 between two men of different ages and different positions, 
 and differing in politics. At the close of the war I was 
 made, with others, a prisoner, and was taken, with Mr. 
 Alexander H. Stephens, now a member of this House, to 
 Fort Warren. In the fall of the year 1865, when we 
 were released, I immediately returned to the city of New 
 York, and while spending a few days there I met with 
 Mr. Wilson, who was then engaged in canvassing the 
 State of New York. We had a somewhat free conversa- 
 tion about the condition in which the country then was, 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WI1.S0N. 16'J 
 
 and especially about the condition of that section of the 
 country in which I lived. A short time before that, feel- 
 ing that I comprehended the condition of the country and 
 what would be necessary for the future, not only of the 
 southern portion but of all of it, I had addressed a com- 
 munication to the people of Texas from my prison, urging 
 them to accept promptly the inevitable results of the war 
 as the shortest and surest way to bring to an end the evils 
 which had sprung from it, advising them not only to 
 recognize the freedom of the slaves, but to secvire to them 
 the protection of the law and to concede to them the 
 qualified right of suffrage. This had been published, and 
 had come back and been read by Senator Wilson. It 
 became the subject of conversation. He asked my opinion 
 as to whether the people of Texas and the South would 
 accept the policy indicated in that communication. I had 
 to tell him that I could only express the hope they might 
 do so ; that for more than four years I had not been in 
 the State in which I lived or mingled with the people of 
 that State. He then said — and I repeat it now because it 
 is in accordance with what others, his personal friends 
 and acquaintances, say of his character ; for I would not 
 if it were different from that speak of what was merely a 
 private conversation — he then said he felt it was a duty I 
 owed to Texas and the South, as well as the rest of the 
 country, to return home and urge the people to adopt the 
 policy which I had suggested. He said to me at the same 
 time that if the people of Texas and of the South generally 
 
140 ADDRESS BY MR. REAGAN ON THE 
 
 would for themselves adopt that policy he would accept 
 it as a final basis of adjustment of the remaining differ- 
 ences between the North and the South, and would urge 
 its adoption in the Senate of the United States, with the 
 exception that he would ask that the cases of one or two 
 hundred of the leading men should stand over, and that 
 in addition to that which I had suggested he would urge, 
 if they saw proper to take that course, that all except this 
 one or two hundred he referred to should be at once 
 relieved from all liability on account of having pailici- 
 pated in the war. 
 
 In the condition in which I was then placed, with the 
 feelings I then experienced, remembering that I was 
 returning to a desolated country and a conquered people 
 to mingle again with them, looking abroad and seeing the 
 passions which the war had aroused, remembering the 
 earnest, active part which that distinguished Senator had 
 taken on the one side while he knew that I had been as 
 earnestly engaged on the other, I could not but feel 
 that there was something of a grand magnanimity in his 
 conduct, something of kindness and of generosity in his 
 expressions, which met with an earnest and sincere 
 response from me. 
 
 I may say one other thing. He then informed me that 
 while Mr. Stephens and myself were in prison at Fort 
 Warren he had come from his home in Massachusetts 
 twice to Washington to secure our release, not on account 
 of any application which had been made to him by us 
 
LIFE AND CHAKACTEE OF DENEY WILSON. 141 
 
 for that kindness, but because he felt that there was no 
 necessity for retaining us there; for he did not feel any 
 spirit of revenge, and, as was disclosed in the conversa- 
 tion we then had, he felt, as his great colaborer Horace 
 Greeley had felt, that it was not his desire in freeing the 
 slaves of the South to make slaves of those who had been 
 free in the South. He did not wish to see the passions of 
 the war protracted, and ui-ged as a reason why I sliuidd 
 endeavor to secure in the portion of the country where I 
 lived the policy I had indicated that the adoption of such 
 a policy was the only thing that could avert military 
 government there, the consequences that would spring 
 from it, and dangers which might result to the Union 
 from having to control large sections of the country by 
 military authority. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, words so spoken to one situated as I was 
 it will be understood would make an impression wliich 
 has gone with me from then till now. After my return 
 homo, when my friends in Texas who desired to bo 
 relieved at Washington, and who had no acquaintance 
 here, applied to me to see if there was some person here 
 who would take an interest in their behalf, I did not 
 hesitate on more than one occasion to write to Senator 
 Wilson on their behalf, and I never wrote to him without 
 getting a prompt and kindly answer, indicating a desire 
 to do what he could for the interests of our people. 
 Whatever differences in politics may have existed in the 
 past, and however divergent our views may have been on 
 
ADDRESS BY ME. REAGAN ON THE 
 
 great questions; however earnestly we may have struggled 
 on opposite sides in the days in which we had opposed 
 each other, expressions like these and kindness like this 
 made me feel that these were the expressions and the 
 kindness of a sincere and just heai-t, and it makes me 
 feel sincere gratification that I have the privilege of saying 
 so in this presence on this occasion. 
 
 I am not qualified by association or information to 
 dwell upon the historic features of his character, nor is it 
 necessary that I should do so if I were, after the eloquent 
 portraitures of his character which have been made upon 
 this floor to-day. I did not rise to make an addi-ess. I 
 only rose to speak of these incidents, and to speak of 
 them as having made me feel a sincere respect for him 
 while living, and feeling that his death, occurring when it 
 did, was a misfortune to om- common country. A year 
 ago, sir, when Mr. Wilson was making a torn- through 
 the Southern States, the people of Texas in large numbers, 
 and with whom I united, urgent!}' invited him to come to 
 Texas to enable us to testify our feeling of respect for his 
 generous and -manly conduct toward us in the hour of our 
 calamity and misfortune. 
 
LIFE AND CHAEACTER OP HENEY WILSON. 
 
 Address by Mr. Joyce, of Vermont. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, again a dark shadow covers the Capitol 
 and veils its lofty Dome in gloom. Relentless death has 
 again entered the Senate House, and with remorseless 
 fury struck down the chief 
 
 Henry Wilson is dead. His last work has been per- 
 formed, his last duty discharged, and he has gone to his 
 reward. 
 
 To-day a nation mourns its loss and bows in grief at 
 its bereavement; from Champlain to the GuLf; from 
 Faneuil Hall to the golden shores, the Republic is 
 shrouded in mourning, and its mighty heart ceases for a 
 moment its pulsations while humanity places the chaplet 
 upon the tomb of the philanthropist, the patriot statesman, 
 and the Christian. 
 
 0, what a wealth of sorrow; what a majesty of woe! 
 
 Among the millions who gather in sorrow around his 
 open grave, to pay the last sad tribute to his memory, 
 come the brave and patriotic people of my own State, and 
 claim a near aj)proach to that sacred spot. 
 
 Vermont comes to-day to add one more leaf to the 
 garland that decorates his tomb. 
 
 Outside the limits of the noble Commonwealth in which 
 
14i ADDUESS BY ME. JOYCE ON THE 
 
 repose his aslies — a State so rich in historical events, in 
 clustering memories, in great names, and in noble men — 
 there is no spot in the broad universe where he was more 
 loved and respected and where his memory is more 
 honored and revered than in the State I have the honor 
 in part to represent. 
 
 His name is as familiar as those of her own sons in 
 every cottage and cabin that nestles among her green hills. 
 
 It seemed to me that it would be eminently jJi'oper 
 that the descendants of Slade and Harrington, pioneers 
 in the cause of civil liberty, should come to the humble 
 tomb at Natick as near mourners of the illustrious dead. 
 
 The doctrine of human freedom and the political 
 equality of all men before the law is as firmly and deeply 
 rooted in the hearts of her people to-day as it was on the 
 morning when Allen was doomed to an immortality of 
 fame and Stark drove the mercenaries of King George, 
 routed and bleeding, from the plains of Bennington. 
 
 The whole pathway of histoiy sparkles with the names 
 of illustrious men and the noble deeds of heroes and 
 pati-iots; but it was reserved to the nineteenth century to 
 furnish the most remarkable body of men that has ever 
 existed in the world's annals. 
 
 Garrison, and Sumner, and Hale, and Lovejoy, and 
 Giddings, with whom were associated Slade, and Nichol- 
 son, and Fletcher, and Shaffter, and Marsh of my own 
 State, were among the leaders and heroes of the old anti- 
 slavery party — a party which embodied the very essence 
 
LIFE ANB CHARACTEE OF HENEY WILSON. 145 
 
 and spii'it of integrity, perseverance, independence,^ honest 
 convictions, high and exalted moral courage, and genuine 
 public virtue. With these men Henry Wilson was early 
 enlisted in the great work of emancipation and enfran- 
 chisement, to which he devoted every energy of body 
 and mind during his whole life. He espoused this un- 
 popular cause when it required physical as well as moral 
 courage to do it. 
 
 With CoUamer and Foot he bore the heat and burdens 
 of the day ; with them he bore the vexation and ignominy 
 of a temporary defeat, and with them at last rejoiced in a 
 complete and glorious \actory. And the last public act of 
 his life was an eloquent and stirring address to Vermont's 
 survivors of the gi-eat conflict, rejoicing with them in its 
 grand results, and imparting words of encouragement and 
 precepts of wisdom by which to shape the present and 
 guide them in the future. 
 
 New Hampshire may claim the honor of his birthplace, 
 Massachusetts his home and last resting-place, but his un- 
 tarnished fame and the history of his noble life cannot be 
 circumscribed by State lines. It is the nation's legacy 
 and the rich heritage of the Republic. 
 
 The period of Mr. Wilson's life was in some respects the 
 golden age of our country's history. It was a time which 
 called for men of iron nerve, of settled conscientious con- 
 victions, and manly independence. 
 
 It was a time which demanded men who were not afi-aid 
 to do right regardless of the consequences ; who were 
 
110 ADDRESS BY MB. JOYCE ON THE 
 
 willing to bear the taunts, sneers, and persecutions of the 
 champions of an accursed institution intrenched behind 
 power, wealth, learning, influence, and religious bigotry. 
 
 Such a man was found in Henry Wilson ; a man for- 
 tunate in his origin and iiseful life, and equally fortunate 
 in the time and place of his death. 
 
 In early life he was the child of poverty and domestic 
 sorrow ; he was cast out upon the cold chai-ities of the 
 world and left upon his own resources ; he labored and 
 struggled, buffeting the world's adverse fortunes and 
 storms with a strong arm and an honest heart, strong in 
 his own conscious rectitude ; and in God's own good time 
 was ushered at once into the public arena, to combat with 
 intellectual gladiatorial champions scarcely excelled in the 
 Avorld's history. 
 
 Manfully he bore himself in the great struggle, battling 
 for the right against w^ealth, arrogance, and power. Dis- 
 daining the codes and dogmas of honor, falsely so called, 
 he planted himself upon the eternal principles of self- 
 defense and personal preservation until victory crowned 
 his efforts and the voice of his country called him to the 
 second position in the nation. 
 
 Mr. Wilson's industry was untiring and knew no 
 bounds. He allowed himself neither recreation nor re- 
 pose, but, amid all the vast and multiplied labors of his 
 official position, devoted himself with unfoltering courage 
 to the second great work of his life, the gathering up and 
 preserving the facts and fragments relating to the rise and 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. HI 
 
 fall of the slave power in America, in order that some 
 future Bancroft may write the history of that gigantic 
 struggle and glorious victory. The work he peiformed 
 was immense, and a just and generous posterity will award 
 him the meed of praise which is justly and honestly his 
 due for his invaluable services in the cause of justice and 
 equal rights. 
 
 Of his long and honorable career in the National Legis- 
 lature I need not speak ; it is a part of the history of our 
 country, and the world knows it by heart. 
 
 His herculean labors at the head of the Senate Com- 
 mittee on Military Affairs during the war for the supremacy 
 of the Government are beyond description, and can be fully 
 known only by those who were his associates in anxious 
 solicitude and toil. 
 
 The great Lincoln leaned upon him in the dark hours 
 as a firm support, while every pulsation of his heart, dur- 
 ing the whole term of his official life, was for the honor 
 and welfare of the Republic, for human freedom, and the 
 emancipation and enfranchisement of the oppressed. 
 
 Among the foremost of the patriot band to whom, under 
 God, we are indebted for universal liberty, peace, and a 
 redeemed and reunited country, stood Heney Wilson. 
 He never flinched or faltered; when the hearts of the timid 
 quaked with fear he was always hopeful and courageous; 
 when others doubted and turned back he stood firm as a 
 rock in mid-ocean until the storm had spent its fury and 
 peace again brooded over the face of the great deep. 
 
148 ADDRESS BY ME. JOYCE ON THE 
 
 When grim-visaged war had smoothed his wrinkled 
 front, and the dark clouds which had lowered npon our 
 country were in the deep bosom of the ocean buried, he 
 was among the first to counsel forgiveness and brotherly 
 love ; and no man rejoiced more than he did in the era of 
 good feeling inaugurated at Lexington and Concord, 
 Ticonderoga and Bunker Hill, at the late centennial cele- 
 bration ; and he looked forward with a longing anxiety 
 and joyous delight to the gi-eat exposition at Philadelphia, 
 in 1876, when he hoped to witness the final burial of the 
 last sad relic of the great civil strife, and the principles it 
 had forever settled, and which he had helped so much to 
 crystallize and establish, should be honestly and in good 
 faith accepted by all, the rights of all men everywhere 
 respected, and peace and good-fellowship once more reign 
 thi'oughout the whole length and breadth of our favored 
 Republic. 
 
 Vice-President Wilson was not, perhaps, great as an 
 orator, a scholar, or a statesman ; but he was great in in- 
 dustry, in the power of intense and continued application, 
 in toil, in courage, in assiduous, conscientious devotion to 
 duty. 
 
 He was great in honesty and integrity, in his moral 
 courage, and in the faith and practice of Christianity. 
 
 He marched, by the power of his own will, his indom- 
 itable industry, and his patriotic impulses, from the bench 
 of the shoemaker to the Senate of the United States; from 
 his humble calling at Natiek to the responsible duties at 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 14"J 
 
 Washington. In all his conduct, both pubhc and private, 
 conscience was his constant monitor and guiding star. No 
 hope of earthly reward or preferment could swerve him 
 from the path of duty and no threats could silence his voice . 
 or cause him to abate his ardor in the great work to which 
 he had consecrated his life. Amid the storms and tem- 
 pests of political life, when the loved and honored were 
 suspected and shaken like a reed, he stood proudly forth, 
 pure and undefiled. No stain of corruption ever tarnished 
 the luster of his bright escutcheon and no bribe ever left 
 its plague-spot upon his hand. Surrounded during his 
 official life with the blandishments of power and the fasci- 
 nations of wealth, he preserved his character, and died 
 comparatively poor. While many of the gifted and 
 mighty were swallowed up in the whirlpool of dissipation 
 and crime, he walked among them with a charmed life, 
 and came out of the furnace with not so much as the smell 
 of fire upon his garments. 
 
 Every noble cause and genuine refonii found in him an 
 eloquent advocate and an ardent champion. He i-epre- 
 sented in an eminent degi-ee the noble elements of our 
 American nationality. His life was the natural and gen- 
 erous outgi-owth of our free institutions and of our higher 
 and purer civilization. His character and history demon- 
 strate what industry, will, determination, and integrity 
 can accomplish, and show the value and advantage of 
 steady perseverance and continued and honest adherence 
 to conscientious convictions 
 
].»() ADDKKSS BY MR. JOYCE ON THE 
 
 He lived to see the great work of his life accomplished: 
 the political equality of all men securely imbedded in the 
 organic law, and the emancipated and enfranchised bond- 
 man standing as the honored representatives of American 
 freemen in both bi-anches of the National Legislature. 
 
 If he had ambition, it was an ambition to do right, to 
 advance the welfere of his fellow-men, and be reckoned 
 among the woi'ld's benefactors. If he desired position, it 
 was because it would enable him to accomplish more for 
 humanity and render greater service to his country. 
 
 His convictions were clear cut and as firm as the granite 
 hills of his native State ; he believed in political parties, 
 and loved his own almost to idolatry ; but no partisan 
 blindness prevented his seeing its errors, and no timid, 
 time-serving policy could deter him from pointing them 
 out and demanding their correction. 
 
 If he had faults, they were of the negative kind, and 
 were so mixed up with bold and generous deeds that the 
 world could scarce discern them. 
 
 It is well that he died under the roof and almost upon 
 the very spot where he had won his earthly laurels and 
 helped to achieve one of the greatest victories recorded 
 upon the pages of human history. With worldly honors 
 thick upon him and the prayers of a grateful and generous 
 nation filling the whole land, his spirit took its flight from 
 the portals of the National Capitol, with the shackles 
 struck fi-om four millions of bondmen, the shining record 
 of a well-spent Hfe, and a \atal and living faith in a 
 
LIPE AND CHAEACTEE OF HENEY WILSON. 151 
 
 crucified Sa\'iour, to gain him admittance to the golden 
 city. Tender hands and loving hearts were there in the 
 trying horn* to smooth his pathway to the tomb and watch 
 the precious sands as they gently ebbed away. And then, 
 as was so beautifully said of another of Massachusetts 
 illustrious sons : 
 
 With .solemn steps aud sorrowing- hearts, they bore him back 
 to the State he served so ftiithfully aul which loved him so well; 
 aud to her soil, precious with the &:ist of patriotism and of valor, 
 of letters and of art, of statesmanship aud of eloquence, they 
 have committed the body of him who is worthy to rest by the 
 side of the noblest and the best of those who, in the century of 
 her history, have made her the model of a free Commonwealth. 
 
 His last public utterance was an admonition to those 
 with whom he had acted politically, which they will do 
 well to observe and heed ; it was characteristic of the 
 man ; it breathed a spirit of patriotic devotion to country 
 and an anxious solicitude for the prosperity and welfare 
 of her people. 
 
 And to-day, as we stand around the open grave of him 
 who harbored no malice, but whose love of country and 
 pure and lofty patriotism knew no North, no South, no 
 East, no West, let us bury every feeling of bitterness and 
 sectional animosity ; let us pledge ourselves anew to our 
 country and receive a new baptism into her service ; let us 
 all rally around the old flag with all its glorious histories 
 and recollections, drawing our inspiration from one living 
 fountain, and, with one heart, one purpose, and one impulse, 
 press on together to a common and glorious destiny. 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. LAWRENCE ON THE 
 
 Address by Mr. Lawrence, of Ohio. 
 
 Mr. Speaker : I ask the indulgence of the House for a 
 few moments while I pay a brief tribute of respect to the 
 memory of the illustrious dead. It was my good fortune 
 duiing seven sessions of Congress to board at the same 
 house and sit at the same table with the honored citizen 
 whose demise we now mourn. During all that time, and 
 more, I had the honor to share his friendship. I had many 
 opportunities to know the qualities of head and heart which 
 render his name dear to the people of every land, and which 
 have made it illustrious thi-oughout the world. It is Avell 
 that we should pause in the work of legislation to express 
 a profound respect for these, to study them as a means of 
 instruction for ourselves, and that we may be inspired 
 with an earnest purpose to profit by the lessons Avhich 
 they teach. 
 
 It is one of the advantages of our republican form of 
 government that it gives equal opportunity to all to fill 
 every place of public trust, to render useful services to 
 mankind, and to rise to the highest distinction which pri- 
 vate worth and public service and useful and meritorious 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OP HENRY WILSON. 153 
 
 labors can give. This fact is illustrated in a remarkable 
 degree by the life, character, and services of the deceased, 
 and by the fruits which they have borne. These have 
 been so fully stated, and are so widely known, and are so 
 interwoven with the history of our times and the gi-eat 
 movements of nearly half a century in behalf of humanity, 
 right, and good government, that it is wholly unnecessary 
 for me to speak of them in detail. It is well that these 
 should be studied by young men and all men, that they 
 may know the elements which made the life of Henry 
 Wilson a grand success. To some of these I may briefly 
 allude. First of all, Henry Wilson was "the noblest 
 work of God " — an honest man. Without this quality no 
 man can rise to and maintain permanent success. His 
 life illustrated a fact which cannot be too widely known: 
 that "there is no excellence without great labor" — Nil 
 sine magno vita labore dedit mortalibus. Few men ever de- 
 voted more hours to industrious study, to patient investi- 
 gation, to laborious attention to every duty, than did 
 Henry Wilson. The results of these are before us and 
 mankind, teaching their lessons of usefulness. His offi- 
 cial and literary labors were immense. In Congress he 
 was not a great declaimer, but he was a great orator. He 
 spoke ably and strongly for the right. Another charac- 
 teristic brought its rewards: he always dared to do right, 
 and tnist to God and the sober second thought of the 
 people to sustain him. 
 
 When oppression and wrong sit in places of power, or 
 
 20 w 
 
154 ADDRESS BY MR. LAWRENCE ON THE 
 
 for a time control the popular will, men who are not actu- 
 ated from a sense of duty may bow to the storm. These 
 are dangerous and unsafe men. Henry Wilson was not 
 of this class. In all he said or did he was guided by the 
 love and fear of God and a purpose to benefit mankind. 
 
 In all the relations of life the heart of Henry Wilson 
 overflowed with kindness and a tender regard for the feel- 
 ings of all his fellow-men. He was kindly and gentle in 
 his nature; he never turned away unheard the request of 
 the most humble or lowly. 
 
 His life and labors prove that his acquirements were 
 extensive and varied, and these he had the natural and 
 educated ability to apply so as to make them bring suc- 
 cess, and to enroll his among the "immortal names that 
 were not born to die." He has passed to his reward. 
 More than a nation mourns his loss. 
 
 The good he has done will live after him; it is a pail of 
 imperishable history in which he bore a useful and con- 
 spicuous part. His monument is more durable tJian brass. 
 It will be seen and known through the endlesf cyol 3s of 
 eternity. 
 
LIFE AND CHAKACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 
 
 Address by M.r. Lapham, of New York. 
 
 Mr. Speaker, it would perhaps become my position best, 
 not having been accustomed to speak on this floor, to 
 refrain from expressing any of the thoughts which are 
 crowding for utterance at the present moment. There is, 
 however, a single view of the life, character, and services 
 of the late Vice-President, alreadj^ referred to by those who 
 have preceded me, upon which I will dwell for a moment, 
 for I am not willing tliat the great State I have the honor 
 in part to represent should remain entirely silent on an 
 occasion like this. 
 
 When, at so short a period since that it seems but as yes- 
 terday, our Chief Magistrate was stricken down by the 
 hand of an assassin, all the civilized nations of the earth 
 united with us in mourning and sympathy for the great 
 loss we had sustained in the tragic death of our patriot 
 President. 
 
 Now that the second officer of the Government has 
 fallen almost as suddenly by the stroke of disease, our 
 grief is scarcely less intense. Such emotions of sorrow 
 arise not solely by reason of the exalted stations from 
 which these truly great men have fallen, but also from a 
 remembrance of the humble origin of each. Each had 
 risen from obscurity and poverty to such exalted station, 
 not by any sudden fortune, but by patient and steady 
 
ADDRESS BY MR. LAPHAM ON THE 
 
 steps of progress. Each furnislaed an example of that 
 gradual growth in greatness and goodness attainable only 
 under institutions of government like ours. They were 
 eminently the children of the Republic. 
 
 Mr. Wilson, amidst all the honors and blandishments 
 of office and place, never lost sight of the obscure condi- 
 tion from which he had risen. He was always full and 
 fervent in sympathy with suffering and intense hatred of 
 wrong. He lived a life of singular purity and of the most 
 unswerving fidelity to his convictions of duty. It was 
 this which endeared him to the masses of the American 
 people, and which renders his demise a source of the most 
 profound grief 
 
 Although the grave covers him, and all that was visible 
 to us is forever hidden from our sight, yet, sir, it is not 
 death. The noble example his wonderfully useful life 
 has furnished to the young of every station wiW long en- 
 dure, and serve to emulate the rising statesmen of the 
 Republic. 
 
 As has been so felicitously written by a Massachusetts 
 poet of the late distinguished colleague of Mr. Wilson in 
 the Senate, so it may also be fitly said of him : 
 
 Alike are life and death, 
 
 When life in death survives, 
 And the uninterrupted breath 
 
 Inspires a thousand lives. 
 Were a star quenched on high. 
 
 For ages would its light, 
 Still traveling downward from the sky, 
 
 Shine on our mortal sight ; 
 So when a great man dies. 
 
 For years beyond our ken 
 The light, be leaves behind him lies 
 
 Upon the paths of men. 
 
LIFE A>D CHARACTER OF HENRY 'WTLSON. 
 
 yi^ddress by JAr. Blair, of New Wampshire. 
 
 Mr. Sjieaker, the gi'eat men whose forms we have seen 
 and who in their lives have illustrated and vindicated the 
 principles of American liberty and of just government on 
 earth, who preserved them by the great deeds of the war 
 and crystallized the ideas evolved in the debates and bat- 
 tles of this momentous era into enduring forms of consti- 
 tutional legislation, are rapidly disappearing fi-om the 
 scene. 
 
 Among them all, with one pre-eminent exception, 
 whose apotheosis was by martyrdom, there was no man 
 who, by his early and intense convictions ; bis life-long, 
 zealous, judicious, and unwearied labors ; his perennially 
 youthful and steadfast faith in the final triumph of the 
 cause of freedom in the entire land ; who, by his resources 
 in disaster, his confidence even in seasons of despair, his 
 wise counsels, his sagacious perception and forecasting of 
 the currents of thought and of the actual condition of the 
 public judgment and of the impulses of the popular heart, 
 accomplished more in his life-time for his country and for 
 mankind, no man who better deserves to be immortalized 
 among the benefactors of humanity, than he whose name 
 
BY MK. BLAIR ON THE 
 
 dignified even the lofty official appellation of Vice-Presi- 
 dent of the United States, and whose memory draws 
 sweet tears from the eyes of thousands of his countrymen, 
 while over his new-made grave the frozen winds of dis- 
 tant New England are singing their requiem to-day. 
 
 Henry Wilson was a great man, not alone in moral 
 heroism, which was perhaps the strong aspect of his char- 
 acter, not alone because he was ever equally ready with 
 his most inflexible associates to dare and to do all things 
 fur his principles ; but more especially in this, that he 
 more than most of them knew how to so do and dare that 
 doing and daring might not be in vain. He was a prac- 
 tical statesman. He was great because he knew men and 
 dealt with them as men. He recognized the truth, which 
 must ever be applied by those who transmute abstractions 
 into human history and transfer the dreams of the ideal 
 into the concrete utilities of life, that means must be 
 adapted to ends, and that the average motives of a nation 
 must be reached and stimulated, in order to accompli.sli a 
 national result. 
 
 The industrial institutions of a people are seldom, 
 unless remotely, aflected by purely moral causes. It is 
 only when such forces have taken hold of material inter- 
 ests, that men will consent to overturn the existing state, 
 and it was given to Henry Wilson more clearly than to 
 almost any other of the great men who led the prevailing 
 sentiment of the nation during its last and great transi- 
 tion, to comprehend that practical democracy or republi- 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. 15!) 
 
 canism is equality in the conditions of toil. His own 
 rugged lot in early life, when he struggled with adverse 
 fate in his native New Hampshire, whose pride in his 
 career and earnest love for the pure life and noble man- 
 hood of her son are the sole reason why my voice is lifted 
 in this august presence to-day, enabled him to compre- 
 hend how real freedom is something more than mere 
 absence of legal restraint ; that the bondage of the colored 
 man was less the consequence of positive law than of 
 those relations and conditions of society, of which the 
 positive law itself was an outgrowth and consequence, 
 and not a cause. He comprehended how all laborers, 
 whether of the North or South and of whatever race, were 
 enslaved in a substantial sense by the existence of the 
 institution of slavery anywhere on the national domain, 
 and, whether sanctioned by the laws of the land or other- 
 wise, how impossible it was, and is, for these opposing 
 tendencies to co-exist permanently under one common 
 government. 
 
 He knew, for he was instinctively a statesman, that 
 unless the principle of absolutely free labor should pre- 
 vail, whatever might be the written law, the opposing 
 principle would wax stronger and stronger, until the labor- 
 ing man everywhere would be practically enslaved by 
 the custom of the country. It is a great mistake to im- 
 agine that all the slavery which existed within the limits 
 of the Union was confined to the colored race and to the 
 Southern States. The poison was in the atmosphere of 
 
160 ADDRESS BY ME. BLAIR ON THE 
 
 the continent and all over the country ; the white race, 
 too, was in partial bondage, and neither, although greatly 
 enlarged, is absolutely and practically free even to-day. 
 Ignorance is slavery. ■ Mighty prejudices, the fetters of 
 the soul, are still unbroken, and magnificent victories of 
 peace are yet to be won. We have entered upon a new 
 era, wherein the tendencies and prevailing influences point 
 to the ultimate emancipation of all men, to a period 
 wherein every yoke shall be broken, and the oppressed 
 shall some time in the millenial future be absolutely free. 
 In this great exigency of our generation, which we hope 
 we have passed fully through in crossing the Joi'dan of 
 this triumphant transition, it was given to Henry Wilson 
 to march conspicuously in front of the halting host for 
 many years, bearing aloft the standard of equality for all. 
 It was his to rally, as with the bugles of his native hills, 
 the moi-e elevated sentiments of the nation, to largely aid 
 to forge its stray convictions into a solid mass, until the 
 moral and material motives and forces of the people over- 
 came all opposition, and the broad theory of absolute 
 freedom for all has been established forever as the fun- 
 damental working model of the Government. In this great 
 work the war was but an incident, terrible, to be sure, but 
 inevitable ; past now, thank God, but full sure to return 
 unless its causes are avoided, its fruits garnered, and its 
 conclusions sacredly regarded; and it would, methinks, 
 increase the joys of -"he blessed dead to hear the generous 
 tributes to departed worth, with which these chastened 
 
LIFE AND CHARACTER OF HENRY WILSON. IGl 
 
 walls have this day echoed the eloquent grief of our sunny 
 and beloved South for him who lived and died the true 
 friend of every human being on earth. 
 
 Since the termination of the strife, no man has labored 
 more strenuously than the late Vice-President, not only 
 to secure the enactment of the decision of arms into 
 proper and endm-ing forms of constitutional law, but more 
 especially have his broad patriotism and humane senti- 
 ments made him indefatigable in his endeavors to secure 
 the full return of reciprocal love between the sections of 
 our country so unfortunately imbittered against each 
 other by the unavoidable animosities of fratricidal war. 
 
 Probably no man contributed more than he to the 
 revival of these gentler thoughts and more generous sen- 
 timents which are prevailing to-day, and which may God 
 grant us to cultivate more and more iintil no discordant 
 note shall mar the joy of our centennial year. 
 
 Henry Wilson is dead. His voice is hushed. His 
 great heart is still. His form has vanished. To-morrow 
 the Capitol will put away its badges of mourning, and 
 history alone will know aught more of him on earth for- 
 ever. But he has left to the patriot, the statesman, and 
 the Christian the lofty example of an unsullied and illus- 
 trious life ; to the toiling man and woman and child of 
 every race and clime, and of all ages to come, an inspira- 
 tion ; to his native and to his adopted State, and to the 
 whole country which he loved so well, the memory of a 
 character most rare and exalted, a charactei* which under 
 
1(12 ADDRESS BY MR. BLAIR. 
 
 the adverse conditions of his origin our precious institu- 
 tions alone could have made possible ; and as time rolls 
 away his fame will grow brighter and rise higher in the 
 firmament of history until it shines perpetually, a fixed 
 star in the resplendent galaxy of the greatest and best of 
 his generation. 
 
 The resolutions were then unanimously adopted and the 
 House adjourned. 
 
 t».0t m 
 
MEMORIAL ADDRESSES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 Life and Character 
 
 OF 
 
 Henry Wilson, 
 
 ( VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES, ) 
 
 DELIVERED IN THE 
 
 Senate and House of Representatives, 
 
 January 21, 1876, 
 
 WITH OTHER 
 
 CONGRESSIONAL TRIBUTES OF RESPECT. 
 
 PUBLISHED BV ORDER OF CONGRESS. 
 
 WASH I NO TON: 
 
 GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE. 
 1876. 
 
 m 
 
DOBBS BIIOS. "^ . " • , 
 
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