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 IN MEMORY 
 
 ROBERT C WINTHROP 
 
 DANIEL GOODWIN 
 
 DELIVERED BEFORE THE CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB, NOVEMBER 36, 
 
 1888, AND THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
 
 NOVEMBER 20, 1894 
 
 CHICAGO 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED 
 
 1894 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
IN MEMORY 
 
 ROBERT C. WINTHROP 
 
 BY 
 
 DANIEL GOODWIN 
 
 BEFORE THE CHICAGO LITERARY CLUB, NOVEMBER 26, 1888 
 
 AND THE CHICAGO HISTORICAL SOCIETY 
 
 NOVEMBER 20, 1894 
 
 ' '' ', ' > J i J , i > J , J , -J , 
 
 CHICAGO 
 
 PRIVATELY PRINTED 
 
 1894 
 

 R. R. DONNELLEY & SONS CO., CHICAGO 
 
 I'i '. .' \ ■ 
 
 • ^- I'c"^ : [ ,\ 
 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction, - - - - - - 7 
 
 Essay on " Our Supreme Eulogist Before the 
 
 Chicago Literary Club, Nov. 26, 1888, - 9 
 
 Genealogical Tree, - - - - - 48 
 
 Memorial Tribute at the Annual Meeting of 
 
 THE Chicago Historical Society, Nov. 10, 1894, 49 
 
 List of Winthrop's Eulogies, - - 51 
 
 WiNTHROP's Estimate of Abraham Lincoln, - 54 
 
 In Re The Dearborns, - - - - 55 
 
 In Re Edwin C. Larned, - - - - 57 
 
 Letters, ------ 59 
 
 Winthrop's Address on The Flag of Our Union, 62 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The first thought which occurred to me when 
 I learned of the death of Robert C. Winthrop 
 was the great Eulogist has surrendered, and all 
 the scholars of the English and French speaking 
 nations of the world owe his memory a return in 
 kind. 
 
 Webster and Everett, Choate and Phillips 
 were his rivals in popular oratory; Bancroft and 
 Prescott, Ellis and Frothingham, Parkman and 
 Motley were his rivals as historians; Story and 
 Quincy, Holmes and Lowell, vied with him 
 in graceful and courteous table talk and post- 
 prandial eloquence: but I know of no record of 
 any man who has had such opportunities *and 
 who has so perfectly satisfied the hopes and 
 tender anxieties of relatives and friends in pro- 
 nouncing fitting eulogies upon the great dead of 
 America. Nor has he been the eulogist of Amer- 
 icans alone. Connected by blood with some of 
 the noblest families in England he has, since 
 1847, ^^^^ acquainted with the foremost men of 
 Great Britain and France, and as President of the 
 Massachusetts Historical Society and chief trustee 
 of George Peabody he has told the story of most 
 of the great men who have been gathered among 
 the stars for the last fifty years. 
 7 
 
8 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The numerous societies, historical, religious 
 and philanthropic, of which he was a member; 
 the city of his birth and death ; the congress 
 of the country where he was once Speaker and 
 Senator will, in due time and with proper ceremony, 
 weave for him those laurel leaves which the Muse 
 of history' prepares for the great of earth. In the 
 meantime I present to a few of my own friends 
 the tribute I prepared for Mr. Winthrop in 1888 
 for the Chicago Literary Club, with the addition 
 of an appendix illustrating possibly the man and 
 his surroundings confident in the hope that they 
 will appreciate them as the humble tribute of 
 one who most highly honored his subject, and 
 was grateful for his friendship. 
 
 If any of these pages shall drift from the 
 " world's White City " to our Eastern seaboard, 
 let it be remembered by those who may peruse 
 them, that they are the spontaneous tribute of a 
 western friend who is alone responsible for the 
 choice of subjects considered, for the genealogical 
 chart constructed entirely from material in our 
 own Historical and Newberry Libraries and for 
 the meagre glance at Mr. Winthrop's political 
 career, which has been almost entirely ignored in 
 deference to the warmth of sentiments felt by 
 so many of his contemporaries and their successors. 
 
 The following Essay was read before the Chi- 
 cago Literary Club on the 26th of November^ 
 1888, Mr. James L. High, President; Mr, 
 Henry S. 3outell, Secretary pro tern. 
 
OUR SUPREME EULOGIST. 
 
 When Robert C. Winthrop, as president of 
 the Massachusetts Historical Society, had pro- 
 nounced his eulogy upon the memory of his 
 associate, John Lothrop Motley, he called upon 
 James Russell Lowell to follow him. Mr. 
 Lowell began in language which has met my eye 
 since my present subject was chosen, but which 
 seemed to me very expressive and significant. 
 He said, " Mr. President, you assign me a duty of 
 w^hose danger you only are unconscious, in asking 
 me to add anything to the w^ords of one who by 
 common consent is a master in the perilous 
 oratory of commemoration." 
 
 Perilous and difficult indeed many of us have 
 found it, and it may not be labor lost to occupy 
 the hour assigned to us to-night in a brief study 
 of the life, the works, the character and the style 
 of that man who has been so by common consent, 
 in the chief home of our literature and arts, 
 denominated the master of eulogy. 
 
 Who of us has not been led into that perilous 
 walk by some strong chord of sympathy or affec- 
 tion ? Certainly no clergyman has ever escaped 
 it, either as a duty or a choice, and rare indeed 
 are the lawyers, or physicians, or artists, or men 
 of business, or soldiers surviving from the tented 
 9 
 
lO ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 field who have not been called upon to record 
 their admiration or their love for friends who 
 have fallen before them and whose memories 
 they were not willing to let die. 
 
 From the cradle of the human race — from the 
 first green sod that covered the stricken and life- 
 less form of the first man to this hour, the world 
 has been sounding and reverberating the eulogies 
 of the dear departed. Poetry and music have 
 given their perpetual offering ; the flowers of the 
 field and the garden have mutely expressed their 
 sweet and tender remembrance; the orator and 
 historian have with sonorous sentence and 
 eloquent illustration recorded the virtues of the 
 departed. 
 
 Most of these eulogies have passed away like 
 the flowers over which they were spoken, their 
 transient loveliness all gone with the occasion for 
 which they grew; and when we have found a 
 man whose speech is golden, whose words of 
 eulogy have been set in the volumes of our per- 
 manent literature, and w^hen we find that he has 
 said the right things, at the fitting time and place, 
 concerning more than a hundred of the 
 uncrowned kings of thought, and literature, and 
 statesmanship, covering more than half of this 
 most wonderful of all the centuries since the 
 world began, we may well pause and look a little 
 into the sources and causes of such marked excel- 
 lence, such countless endeavor, such perfect suc- 
 cess. 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 1 1 
 
 I. 
 
 HIS FAMILY AND GENEALOGY. 
 
 When Thomas Lindall Winthrop married 
 EHzabeth Bowdoin Temple in Boston, Massa- 
 chusetts, July, 1786, the wedding brought 
 together in one ancestral tree a very rare and 
 remarkable union of families; the most rare and 
 most remarkable I have ever yet examined. 
 
 If you w^ill take the family branches and con- 
 struct them in the ordinary genealogical style into 
 a great tree, the trunk of w^hich shall be, if you 
 please, the great orator who forms the topic of 
 my essay, and call that trunk by the name of 
 " Robert C. Winthrop," and from it build up the 
 branches with the names of Winthrops, Temples, 
 Bowdoins, Ervings, Lyndes, Portages, Lindalls, 
 Dudleys, Tyngs and Nelsons, you will sound the 
 names of men and families marked for conspicu- 
 ous ability and public services for the last three 
 centuries. 
 
 Enumerating his American ancestry alone, 
 our subject is descended from two Governors 
 Winthrop; from Chief Justice W^ait Winthrop; 
 from both Governors Thomas and Joseph 
 Dudley; from Governor James Bowdoin, of 
 Huguenot blood; from Hon. John Erving, one of 
 the King's Council before the Revolution ; from 
 Hon. Edward Tyng, one of the King's Council 
 in 1687; from Hon. Simon Lynde, the father and 
 grandfather of two Chief Justices Benjamin 
 Lynde; from Francis Browne, the ancestor also 
 
12 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 of Justice Joseph Story. His mother's father 
 was Sir John Temple, the friend of Frankhn, 
 and son-in-law of Gov. Bowdoin. Temple was a 
 kinsman and protege of the great Chatham and 
 the younger Pitt, and of the same family with 
 Earl Temple and George Grenville, the late 
 Lord Palmerston and the Dukes of Buckingham 
 and Chandos, a family distinguished in English 
 history for nineteen generations. 
 
 These distinguished ancestors have also 
 brought him into collateral kinship with number- 
 less families of deserved prominence, such as the 
 descendants of Alexander Hamilton, Governor 
 Stuyvesant, Governor Sullivan, the Amorys and 
 Sears, Livingstons, Schuylers and Van Rensse- 
 laers. 
 
 II. 
 HARVARD UNIVERSITY. 
 
 To you, gentlemen, who graduated from our 
 oldest University, the name and fame of Mr. 
 Winthrop has a peculiar interest. 
 
 Harvard University was to him as much an 
 inheritance as Boston Common, or the old State 
 House, or Faneuil Hall. 
 
 Indeed the University itself was largely 
 indebted for its very existence to John Winthrop, 
 who had graduated at Trinity College, Cam- 
 bridge, England. President Edward Everett, at 
 the Harvard Second Centennial in 1836, repre- 
 sented Governor Winthrop as making the speech 
 which led the legislature of the infant colony to 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. I3 
 
 vote the original endowment under which the 
 college was established, and President Quincy in 
 his history of the university says, " Next to John 
 Harvard, John Winthrop, the leader of the 
 Massachusetts Colony and twelve times its elected 
 governor, deserves grateful commemoration. His 
 donation of books was large and valuable. His 
 name and influence were always given in its sup- 
 port. There is probably no one to whose patron- 
 age the college was more indebted during the 
 period of its infancy, weakness and dependence." 
 
 Nearly all of his male lineal ancestors had grad- 
 uated at Harvard for generations, not to mention 
 numberless collaterals. His father was of the 
 class of 1780. 
 
 One of his father's grandfathers, Francis Bor- 
 land, was of the class of 1774, and another of his 
 grandfathers, Governor James Bowdoin, was of 
 the class of 1745, and among his other lineal an- 
 cestors were Timothy Lindall of 1695, Governor 
 Thomas Dudley of 1651, and Governor Joseph 
 Dudley of 1665, and John Tyng of 1691. 
 
 When Mr. Winthrop entered Harvard, in 1823, 
 we were fairly started on the up-grade of letters 
 and "learning, following our second war of inde- 
 pendence which terminated so gloriously in 18 15, 
 and among his college-mates were numbers who 
 have contributed to the peerless position occupied 
 by our country to-day. 
 
 Graduating at nineteen years of age, the third 
 in a class of fifty-three, and with a commence- 
 ment oration which was soon put into the school- 
 books as a model of English eloquence, he showed 
 
14 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 from the very start that his family wealth and dis- 
 tinction were not crutches to be leaned on, but that 
 he had inherited the glorious aspiration to toil and 
 labor for the good and glory of mankind. 
 
 Some of his speeches at the alumni meetings 
 have been reported and published, and are replete 
 with interesting reminiscences of the great men 
 who had been connected with the university as 
 officers or students in his day. 
 
 At the alumni meeting in 1852, he said : " We 
 are here to bless the place of our earliest and best 
 opportunities. We come one and all to bear our 
 united testimony to the value of this venerated in- 
 stitution. We come to bring whatever laurels we 
 have acquired, whatever treasures we have accu- 
 mulated to adorn its hallowed shrines. We come 
 to pay fresh homage to the memory of our fathers 
 for having founded and reared it. We come 
 to renew our tribute of gratitude to its earlier 
 and its later benefactors. We come to thank 
 God for having prospered and blessed it. And 
 we come, above all, to acknowledge our own 
 personal indebtedness to it and to make public 
 recognition of the manifold obligations and re- 
 sponsibilities to God and man which rest upon us 
 all by reason of the opportunities and advantages 
 which we have here enjoyed. 
 
 " We arrogate nothing to ourselves in the way 
 of distinction or privilege. We are not blind to 
 the fact that there are those around us, who have 
 enjoyed none of our academic opportunities, who 
 have outstripped not a few of us, in the practical 
 pursuits of literature and of life. We do not for- 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 15 
 
 get that there are some of them who have sur- 
 passed us all in the highest walks of art, of 
 science, and of patriotic statesmanship. Honor, 
 honor this day from this assembled multitude of 
 scholars to the self-made, self-educated men who 
 have adorned our country's history. Honor to the 
 common schools of our land, from which such 
 men have derived all which they have not owed 
 to their own industry, their own energy, their own 
 God-given genius. 
 
 " Bowditch, Fulton, Franklin, Washington ;" 
 when will any American university be able to point 
 to names upon its catalogue of alumni which may 
 be likened to these names for the originality and 
 profoundness of the researches, for the practical 
 importance of the accomplishments, for the gran- 
 deur and sublimity of the inventions and discov- 
 eries, or for the noble achievements and glorious 
 institutions with which they are indissolubly asso- 
 ciated ? Well may we say, as we proudly inscribe 
 their names upon our honorary rolls, ' They were 
 wanting to our glory, we were not wanting to 
 theirs.' 
 
 "Nor are we here to indulge in any invidious 
 comparisons between our own Harvard and other 
 universities and colleges in the state or in the nation. 
 It is pardonable to love our own mother better 
 than other people's mothers. It is natural that 
 we should 
 
 * Be to her faults a little blind, 
 Be to her virtues very kind.* 
 
 " Indeed, as we run our eye over her long list 
 
l6 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 of children and see what a glorious company she 
 has sent forth into every field of Christian service, 
 and follow her along her starry way for more 
 than two centuries, we might be almost pardoned 
 for forgetting that she has or ever had any faults. 
 Could we but see something of a higher moral dis- 
 cipline, something of a deeper religious sentiment, 
 something of a stronger spiritual influence min- 
 gling with the sound scholarship which pervades 
 her halls and giving something of a fresher and 
 fuller significance to her ancient motto, ' Christoet 
 Ecclesiae^ there would be little or nothing more 
 to be desired in her condition." 
 
 I have quoted but the prelude to his oration on 
 the obligations and responsibilities of educated 
 men. One other page of it seems to me to so 
 fully show forth the vital principle and the style 
 of the man that I cannot forbear quoting it : 
 
 " How much better, and purer, and nobler a lit- 
 erature might we not have, and how much more 
 just and elevated a public sentiment as its result, 
 if every man who is educated to the use of the pen 
 or of the tongue could be made to feel within him- 
 self, as he sits down to his desk or rises to the 
 rostrum, 'The word that I write or that I speak 
 to-day is not for the moment or for myself alone. 
 It is not mine to minister merely to my own 
 pleasure, to my own profit, to my own fame. It 
 is not mine to pander to some popular delusion, 
 to fan some popular prejudice, to flatter some pop- 
 ular favorite, or to adorn some plausible falsehood. 
 It is to produce an influence far beyond that 
 which it immediately proposes. It is to enter. 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 17 
 
 somewhere, in a greater or less degree, into the 
 very springs and issues of human action. It may 
 influence individuals. It may influence masses. 
 It cannot rest indifferent. It cannot return unto 
 me empty. It will mingle with the great current 
 of public opinion in some part of its course where 
 it winds through some quiet valley, or takes its 
 way beneath some cottage window, if not where 
 it foams and roars around some splendid capital or 
 some mighty metropolis. This very word which 
 I speak or write to-day may rouse up a resolute 
 human soul to a newer and better life, or it may 
 turn back some timid and wavering spirit from its 
 truest and best ends, unsettle its faith, unship its 
 anchor, and leave it wrecked for time and for eter- 
 nity. It may stir the breast of a mighty nation to 
 the maintenance of law or the vindication of Hb- 
 erty ; or it may stimulate and infuriate it to the 
 overthrow of the noblest institutions, in a mad pur- 
 suit of impracticable philanthropies and reforms. 
 It may elevate and ennoble the hopes, and views, 
 and aims of mankind, and advance the cause of 
 peace on earth and good-will among men; or it 
 may blow up the smouldering embers of interna- 
 tional strife, and kindle a conflagration which 
 shall wrap a world in flames. I am, I must be, 
 responsible for the result." 
 
 Those of you who have had the privilege of 
 visiting the Memorial Hall and Sanders' Theatre 
 in Cambridge, may feel interested in recognizing 
 Mr. Winthrop's aid in starting those beautiful 
 buildings. On the 17th July, 1857, (Vol. 
 II, 354.) he presided at the Alumni meet- 
 
l8 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 ing, and after eloquently praising the host of 
 laborers who were there trained up and sent forth 
 into every field and vineyard of church and of 
 state, of theology, medicine, law, literature, 
 science, philosophy, commerce, legislation, philan- 
 thropy and patriotism, he expressed a longing for 
 some ample and commodious hall for the secular 
 services and festivals of the university. 
 
 He said, " I envy the individual name which 
 shall be inscribed on such a building. I have 
 sometimes ventured to cherish the hope that the 
 Alumni as an Association might be willing and 
 able to undertake the work, and that a stately and 
 commodious hall like the Senate house at Old 
 Cambridge or the Theatre at Oxford might be seen 
 standing on some appropriate spot of the college 
 grounds bearing on its front, 'The Alumni of 
 Harvard to their *- Alma Mater,'''''' where the exhi- 
 bitions, and Class days, and Commencements of 
 the University might find worthy accommodations ; 
 where the living alumni might hold their anniver- 
 sary festivals and where the memorials of the dis- 
 tinguished dead might find a fit gallery for their 
 display." 
 
 Within forty-eight hours after Mr. Winthrop's 
 speech was reported, Mr. Charles Sanders, of the 
 class of 1802, started the scheme to which he 
 ultimately gave more than $60,000 and by his ef- 
 forts greatly aided in procuring that remarkable 
 building. 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 19 
 
 III. 
 MR. WINTHROP, THE STATESMAN. 
 
 Coming upon the historic stage with the 
 widest range of distinguished ancestors, our sub- 
 ject was fortunate in the time and place of his ad- 
 vent. He was born in Boston, on the 12th of 
 May, 1809, in the house occupied by his father, 
 Lieutenant-Governor Winthrop, and belonging to 
 James Bowdoin, minister to Spain and patron of 
 Bowdoin College. He attended the Latin school 
 on School Street w^here the Parker House now 
 stands (which was kept by Samuel Greeley the 
 father of our genial brother Samuel S. Greeley), 
 and he here won the Franklin medal and a gold 
 medal for a Latin poem. 
 
 After graduating at Harvard in 1828 he studied 
 law under Daniel Webster, and was admitted to the 
 bar in 1831. On the 23d of October, 1833, when 
 twenty-four years old, on behalf of the young men 
 of Boston, he made the welcoming speech to Henry 
 Clay at the Tremont, and indicated the cardinal 
 principles which revealed the needle of that polit- 
 ical compass by which he, and almost he alone, 
 has been guided for more than half a century. 
 Few indeed of his contemporaries or his succes- 
 sors but have been led by some influence, or forced 
 by some circumstances, to change their course or 
 their principles, but a close examination of the rec- 
 ord of Mr. Winthrop from 1833 to 1888 will show 
 the same old conservative Whig, devoted to the 
 Constitution and the Union, opposed to slavery 
 
20 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 wherever the Constitution permitted opposition, 
 opposed everywhere to its extension, and in favor 
 of universal education, proper protection to our 
 trade and manufactures, and the largest possible 
 development of internal improvements. 
 
 In 1834 he was elected to the Massachusetts 
 house, and in 1835 ^^ made a speech remarkable 
 for its eloquence, its fire, its lofty spirit of liberal- 
 ity and justice in favor of compensating the Cath- 
 olics for the destruction of the Ursuline convent 
 in Charleston by a mob. (Vol. I, p 174.) He was 
 at this time and for many years an earnest sup- 
 porter of the Boston militia companies, which by 
 their close connection with the voters are the bul- 
 warks of civil liberty and order. He was captain 
 of the Boston Light Infantry, lieutenant of the 
 Ancient and Honorable Artillery Company, and 
 on the staff of three successive Governors, John 
 Davis, Samuel T. Armstrong and Edward 
 Everett. 
 
 In December, 1838, he delivered an address be- 
 fore the Boston Lyceum on Free Schools and 
 Free Governments, taking advanced ground upon 
 the importance of political education, holding 
 " that children should be educated as those by 
 whom the destinies of the Nation are one day to 
 be wielded, and free schools cherished as places in 
 which those destinies are even now to be woven." 
 He has inculcated the same principles for fifty 
 years, and he, more than any man, stamped them 
 upon the great mind of General Grant, whom he 
 had brought into the board of trustees of the Pea- 
 body fund, and had the pleasure of reading that 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 21 
 
 great hero's declaration at the army reunion in 
 1875, in Iowa, when General Grant said, " Let us 
 labor for the security of free thought, free speech, 
 free press, pure morals, unfettered religious senti- 
 ment, and equal rights and privileges for all men, 
 irrespective of nationality, color or religion ; en- 
 courage free schools, and resolve that neither State 
 nor Nation shall support any institution save those 
 where every child may get a common-school edu- 
 cation unmixed with any atheistic, pagan, or secta- 
 rian teaching." 
 
 In 1839 Mr. Winthrop's reputation outgrew 
 its local celebrity at Boston, and he delivered an 
 address at New York City in December on the 
 " Pilgrim Fathers," which gave evidence of his 
 full appreciation of the wonderful work done by 
 his forefathers and that the eternal fitness of 
 things demanded great, permanent and national 
 work from himself. He had been a member of 
 the Massachusetts house for five years, and had 
 the honor of being elected its Speaker at an 
 earlier age than any one before or since. He had 
 been married and given hostages to fortune in the 
 shape of two sons, who still survive — a solace to 
 his old age. 
 
 In 1840 the name and fame of Mr. Winthrop 
 became the property of the nation. With the 
 ardor of a youth of thirty-one and the concen- 
 trated energies of as good Puritan and Huguenot 
 blood as ever flowed, with the eloquence of a 
 Massachusetts patriot and the well-balanced judg- 
 ment of a disciple of Washington and Franklin, 
 he went into the campaign of 1840 with General 
 
22 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 Harrison and was triumphantly elected to Con- 
 gress as sole Representative from Boston. 
 
 In this connection it may be well to state Mr. 
 Winthrop's understanding of the creed of the 
 Whig party, because they have been the princi- 
 ples upon which he has acted all his life. 
 
 In his interesting and instructive eulogy upon 
 Henry Clay, in August, 1879, ^f^er he entered 
 upon his seventy-first year, Mr. Winthrop said: 
 
 "What was this Whig party which he led so 
 gallantly, before disappointed ambition, and 
 inconsiderate philanthropy, and headlong fanati- 
 cism and secret know-nothing lodges, and corrupt 
 coalitions at one end of the Union conspired with 
 mad and monstrous schemes in the interest of 
 African slavery at the other end to draw off so 
 many of its members into new ranks, and doom 
 it to a lingering death? What was the party of 
 which Henry Clay and Daniel Webster were so 
 long the shining lights, and of which Abraham 
 Lincoln Was so long one of the luminaries? 
 
 "It was a constitutional union party, which 
 regarded the union of the States and the Federal 
 Constitution as the only formal condition and 
 bond of that Union, as things to be reverenced 
 and maintained at all hazards. It was a law and 
 order party, which tolerated no revolutionary or 
 riotous processes of reform. It was a party of 
 principle and purity, which consented to no cor- 
 ruption or traffic as a means of securing office or 
 success. It was a conservative party, and yet a 
 party of progress which looked to the elevation 
 of American labor and the advancement of our 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 23 
 
 national welfare by a discriminating adjustment 
 and an equitable collection of duties on imports, 
 by an honest currency, by a liberal administration 
 of the public lands, and by needful appropriations 
 from time to time for the improvement of rivers 
 and harbors. It w^as a party of peace — domestic 
 peace and foreign peace — opposed to every law- 
 less scheme of encroachment or aggrandizement, 
 at home or abroad, and studiously avoiding what- 
 ever might occasion internal commotion or 
 external conflict. It was above all things a 
 national party^ extending over the whole 
 country and systematically renouncing and repu- 
 diating all merely sectional organizations or 
 issues." 
 
 Will it not somewhat puzzle the students of our 
 next century to understand how it was that a 
 small body of Free-soilers combining with the 
 Conservative Democracy of Massachusetts could 
 be able to defeat such a man as Winthrop, so true 
 to the principles prevailing in his state? When 
 they had elected Mr. Sumner his successor, he was 
 forced to plant himself practically upon the plat- 
 form of Mr. Winthrop. He said (works of 
 Sumner, Vol. 2, p. 429) : 
 
 "We propose to wait and work patiently under 
 and through the Constitution that our purposes 
 may be peaceably accomplished in the spirit of 
 that instrument and of our fathers. We are con- 
 stitutionalists and Unionists. We reverence the 
 Constitution of the United States and seek to 
 guard it against infractions, believing that under 
 the Constitution Freedom can be best preserved. 
 
24 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 We reverence the union of the States, believing 
 that the peace, happiness and welfare of all de- 
 pend upon this blessed bond." 
 
 Nay, the Republican party itself was obliged to 
 stand upon Mr. Winthrop's platform, and after 
 Mr. Lincoln was elected President, solemn reso- 
 lutions were adopted by us, in and out of Con- 
 gress, pledging our party not to interfere with 
 slavery in the states and offering to embody it by 
 an amendment to the constitution itself. 
 
 Mr. Winthrop was constantly reelected from 
 Boston for ten years, and in 1850 was appointed 
 United States Senator to fill the position vacated 
 by Daniel Webster, who went into President 
 Fillmore's Cabinet. These were ten years of 
 active service. His youth and energy, his happy 
 command of illustration, both from books and 
 life, his genial and persuasive address, his splendid 
 social position, and his intimate acquaintance with 
 the leading scholars and statesmen of Great 
 Britain and France made him the favorite leader 
 of the House under Henry Clay and Daniel 
 Webster, and lifted him in 1847, when only 
 thirty-eight years old, to the Speakership of the 
 House, a position regarded by many as the most 
 honorable, as well as one of the most influential, 
 under our Government. It is possible for an 
 inferior man to be elected President or Vice-Presi- 
 dent, but not as Speaker of the House, which 
 chooses its own presiding officer. 
 
 Mr. Winthrop's career as Speaker was 
 eminently successful. The late Mr. Charles E. 
 Hazewell said, " It was a common remark, and no 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 25 
 
 one heard it without assenting to the truth of the 
 words expressed, ' Mr. Winthrop was born for 
 the chair.'" Mr. James G. Blaine says, "The 
 chief reason for liis selection as Speaker was his 
 preeminent fitness for the important post. He 
 was but thirty-eight years of age, but he earned 
 so valuable a reputation as a presiding ofiicer that 
 some of his decisions have been quoted as pre- 
 cedents in the National House and have been 
 incorporated in permanent works on ' Parliamen- 
 tary Law.' " 
 
 In 1 84 1 he made an elaborate speech on the 
 tariff, in favor of protection to American labor 
 and manufactures (Vol. 2, p. 306.) In 1843 he 
 submitted, in behalf of the Committee on Com- 
 merce, strong resolutions against the imprison- 
 ment of free colored seamen from vessels touch- 
 ing at ports in the Southern States. 
 
 In 1844, when the great question as to the right 
 of petition came before the House, and whether the 
 anti-slavery petitions from Massachusetts pre- 
 sented by John Q. Adams should be received, 
 Mr. Winthrop made a powerful speech in their 
 support, breathing the liberty-laden air of 
 Faneuil Hall and the Old South Church. He 
 argued for " the inherent and inextinguishable 
 elasticity of opinion, of conscience, of inquiry, 
 which, like the great agent of modern art, gains 
 only new force, fresh vigor, redoubled powers of 
 progress and propulsion by every degree of com- 
 pression and restraint; it is this to which the 
 world owes all the liberty it has yet acquired, and 
 to which it will owe all that is yet in store for it. 
 
26 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 Well did John Milton exclaim in his noble 
 defense of unlicensed printing, 'Give me liberty 
 to know, to utter, and to argue freely above all 
 liberties,' for in securing that we secure the all- 
 sufficient instrument for achieving all other 
 liberties." 
 
 In January, 1845, •^^* Winthrop made a 
 powerful speech against the annexation of Texas 
 upon the ground that it involved an extension of 
 domestic slavery, and he made several speeches 
 against the war with Mexico as an unjust contest 
 for the acquisition of territory. 
 
 While recognizing the constitutional rights of 
 the South to some provision for the return of 
 fugitives, he refused to consent to any law which 
 did not provide for a fair trial by jury and the 
 writ of habeas corpus. 
 
 He said, " I hold it to be a just and reasonable 
 provision, and one which ought to form a part of 
 any bill which shall be passed for this purpose. 
 There is a preliminary question, and that is 
 whether he is a fugitive at all, whether he 
 belongs or owes service to anybody. It must 
 always be a question whether such a person be 
 your slave or whether he be our freeman — a 
 question which should be tried where he is seized 
 and when the immediate liberty which he enjoys is 
 about to be taken away from him. I am in favor 
 of recognizing the right of trial by jury in all 
 cases where a question of personal liberty is con- 
 cerned." 
 
 It was while Mr. Winthrop was Speaker of 
 the House, in 1848, that the great opportunity of 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 27 
 
 his lifetime occurred in being selected to pro- 
 nounce the oration when the corner-stone of the 
 Washington monument was laid. 
 
 When the corner-stone of Bunker Hill monu- 
 ment was laid, in 1825, there was anxious and 
 careful consultation as to who should pronounce 
 the oi'ation. The choice fortunately fell upon 
 Daniel Webster, whose oration, as Mr. Winthrop 
 said, "shook the school-benches of New Eng- 
 land," and passed into the classics of a language 
 which the genius of Webster has shown to be the 
 strongest, the subtlest, the smoothest, the best of 
 modern times. When that magnificent monu- 
 ment was completed, in 1843, there was no 
 anxiety, no discussion, no doubt as to what orator 
 should stand beside it, for all the world felt that 
 no voice but Webster's should announce the 
 words " It is finished." And so it was with the 
 still grander monument to Washington in our 
 national capital. When its corner-stone was laid, 
 in 1848, it was a matter of thought, discussion and 
 anxiety as to who should give expression to a 
 nation's reverence for its greatest and most rep- 
 resentative character and hero. The choice fell 
 almost by accident upon a young man less than 
 forty years of age. Most eloquently did the 
 young orator perform his difiicult task, and when 
 after thirty-seven years of labor and trial these 
 United States had through the convulsions of 
 civil war become fused into a compact and solidi- 
 fied Nation, and finished the grandest monument 
 ever erected by a Nation to the honor of a single 
 man, there was among our fifty millions of peo- 
 
28 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 pie no doubt or discussion as to who should pro- 
 nounce the words " It is finished." Without 
 distinction of party or locality, of creed or color, 
 both North and South, East and West, moved by 
 a common impulse pronounced the name of Rob- 
 ert C. Winthrop, of Massachusetts. 
 
 Mr. Winthrop's seventeen years of political 
 service came to an end in 1851. A coalition 
 between the most radical wing of Free-soilers and 
 the pro-slavery Democracy divided the offices and 
 defeated the conservative, anti-slavery Whig party. 
 After a hard fought battle the coalitionists 
 triumphed carrying both branches of the Legisla- 
 ture, but the conflict for Senator went on for 
 months, and Charles Sumner was at last chosen 
 by a bare majority. On the 26th ballot April 24, 
 1 85 1, 384 votes were cast, 193 being necessary to 
 a choice. Mr. Winthrop received the full Whig 
 vote 166, Mr. Henry W. Bishop, (the father of 
 our brother member) received 11, and Mr. Sum- 
 ner 193 votes, mostly Democrats and a few Free- 
 soilers. At the next State Election the Whigs 
 insisted on running Mr. Winthrop for Governor. 
 He received 60,000 votes, the Democrats cast 40,000 
 for George S. Boutwell, and the Free-soilers 
 30,000 for the eminent historian John G. Palfrey. 
 The constitution at that time required a majority 
 of all votes and so the election was thrown into 
 the House, and the coalition elected Governor 
 Boutwell. 
 
 Since 1852 Mr. Winthrop refused all political 
 candidacies and appointments, and has devoted 
 himself to literature, to history, to philanthropy. 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 29 
 
 IV. 
 
 PRESIDENT OF THE MASSACHUSETTS HIS- 
 TORICAL SOCIETY. 
 
 Mr. Winthrop was a member of the Massa- 
 chusetts Historical Society for nearly sixty years, 
 and was its president for thirty years, from 1855 
 to 1885. It is the oldest and leading society of its 
 kind in America, and composed of such men as 
 the Adamses, Quincys, Everetts, Motley, Pres- 
 cott, Saltonstall, Samuel Hoar and his sons, the 
 Judge and Senator; Palfrey, Bancroft, Ellis, 
 Parkman, and Winsor. 
 
 ARTS AND SCIENCES. 
 
 He was also for forty years an active member 
 of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; 
 established in 1780, in the midst of our Revolu- 
 tionary War, by his great grandfather. Governor 
 Bowdoin, who was its first president. Among 
 its other presidents were the three illustrious 
 Adamses — John Adams, John Quincy Adams 
 and Charles Francis Adams. Among its members 
 were Franklin, Faraday, Rumford, Agassiz, 
 Audubon, Arago, Bache, Su- David Brewster, 
 Darwin, Humboldt, Lafayette and the Lowells. 
 
 It is difficult to overestimate the past and pos- 
 sible future benefit of this society to the world. 
 At its centennial, in 1880, Mr. Winthrop re- 
 marked ; 
 
30 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 "Could the founders of this academy even 
 now look down from the skies upon our own 
 little State of Massachusetts, with what rapture 
 would they behold encircling this academy as 
 their original nucleus a natural history society, 
 with its manifold and growing collections and 
 cabinets; a technological institute, with its admira- 
 ble curriculum of scientific education; a splendid 
 museum of the fine arts ; an observatory, with its 
 comet-seekers and transit instruments, and with 
 its noble refractor; the Lawrence Scientific 
 School; the chemical laboratory of Prof. Cooke; 
 the garden and herbarium of our great botanist. 
 Dr. Gray; the magnificent Agassiz Museum of 
 Comparative Zoology, and close at its side the 
 Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnol- 
 ogy; and all our thriving associations of history 
 and literature and music, of horticulture and agri- 
 culture; and, better than all, the hosts of busy 
 and devoted students in these and other institu- 
 tions, who are engaged day by day and night by 
 night in searching out the mysteries of nature, 
 and extorting from her so many of the secrets 
 which have been hid from all human eyes and all 
 human conceptions from the foundations of the 
 world! 
 
 "They would bje heard exclaiming with one 
 accord, in the sublime words with which our first 
 president concluded his inaugural discourse a 
 hundred years ago, ' Great and marvelous are 
 Thy works. Lord God Almighty ; in wisdom hast 
 Thou made them all ! ' " 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 31 
 
 VI. 
 
 Mr. Winthrop was president of the Boston 
 Provident Association for twenty-live years, work- 
 ing with such men as Dr. Peabody, Dr. Lothrop, 
 Bishop Huntington and others. When he re- 
 tired, in 1879, the Executive Committee said of 
 him, " He brought to us not only the respect due to 
 eminent national services and an honored name, 
 but the power of organization and skill in admin- 
 istration which were natural to his character and 
 had been matured by experience of weighty and 
 conspicuous public affairs. His constant and 
 punctual presence at our meetings has added both 
 dispatch and dignity to the transaction of our busi- 
 ness. His name has brought to us the most im- 
 portant of the legacies which we have received, 
 and it is within bounds to say that for the gener- 
 ous endowment of our association we are as much 
 indebted to him as if it had been his direct gift. 
 The future historian of Boston can never pass by 
 the important services which Mr. Winthrop has 
 rendered to its charities." 
 
 Mr. Winthrop was a member of the vestry of 
 Trinity Church, Boston, for nearly sixty consecu- 
 tive years, and a delegate to the General Conven- 
 tion of the Protestant Episcopal church in Ameri- 
 ca for more than a quarter of a century. His 
 record, however, as a Christian was too broad to 
 be hemmed in even by that most beautiful of all 
 the parish churches in Christendom. He had the 
 good fortune to worship for nearly thirty years 
 with his grand Christian rector, Phillips Brooks, 
 
32 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 who was born in Boston at about the period when 
 Mr. Winthrop was first elected a vestryman of 
 old Trinity. Mr. Winthrop was president of the 
 Massachusetts Bible Society and connected with 
 many other religious societies. Not the least in- 
 teresting of his addresses are those to the Bible 
 societies and Young Men's Christian Associations. 
 I would call attention especially to that one deliv- 
 ered April 9, 1859, at Boston, and repeated on 
 May 5, 1859, ^^ Richmond, Va., on " Christianity, 
 neither Sectarian nor Sectional, the Great Remedy 
 for Social and Political Evils," from which we 
 take the following extracts (Vol. II, pp. 418 et 
 seq.) 
 
 " Few persons can contemplate the present im- 
 proved condition of the Christian world without 
 lamenting that the best energies of Christian 
 sects are still so often employed in criticising, cen- 
 suring and condemning each other. I pray 
 heaven that no accident and still more that no de- 
 sign may revive the slumbering embers of relig- 
 ious strife. Rarely does the strongest side prevail 
 or even come off best from such encounters. Not 
 often does even the right sidie, whether it be 
 strongest or weakest, escape from them without 
 damage or detriment. Principles indeed can 
 never be conceded nor compromised. We can 
 never abandon the Bible, even in the schools. 
 We can never compromise the Lord's prayer or 
 the ten commandments. We cannot spare a note 
 or a chord of the time-honored and glorious har- 
 monies of Old Hundred. Yet everything except 
 principles, everything that is merely formal and 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 33 
 
 conventional, may well be the subject of concilia- 
 tory arrangement under proper circumstances, and 
 at the proper time for the sake of Christian peace. 
 I can never think of the bitterness and rancor 
 w^hich is so often allowed to enter into religious 
 differences and controversies, without remember- 
 ing how much our religious opinions, our religious 
 creeds, our religious connections have been deter- 
 mined — pre-determined, providentially determined 
 — for us all by the mere influence of early and 
 seemingly accidental associations. The place of 
 our birth, the circumstances of our condition, the 
 surroundings of our childhood, the fascination of 
 some beloved and faithful pastor the paternal pre- 
 cept and example, the mother's knee, the family 
 pew have after all done more to decide for each 
 one of us the peculiarities of our religious faith 
 and of our religious forms than all the catechisms 
 of assemblies, the decrees of councils or the canons 
 of convocations. We delight to worship God 
 where our fathers and mothers worshipped him, 
 to kneel at the same altar at which they knelt, to 
 unite in the same prayers or it may be to utter the 
 same responses, in which their voices were once 
 heard and which they first taught us to lisp or to 
 listen too as children. The memories of fathers 
 and mothers and brothers and sisters with whom 
 we have " taken sweet counsel together and 
 walked to the house of God in company" cluster 
 sweetly around us as we sit in the old seats and 
 sing the old psalms and hymns. We almost 
 shrink from trying to get to heaven by any other 
 road than that which they traveled, lest we should 
 3 
 
34 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 miss them at our journey's end. Every man 
 who has opportunity and education should read 
 the gospel of Christ for himself and bring the 
 best lights within his reach to aid him in its inter- 
 pretation. But mysteries there are in that gospel 
 which constrained even the great apostle to say, 
 "Here we see through a glass, darkly." Mys- 
 teries there are which the reason of the natural 
 man was never made or intended to penetrate, 
 which it may be were expressly designed to 
 humble the presumption and confound the pride 
 and mortify the vanity of mere human wisdom, 
 and to leave larger room for the childlike graces 
 of humility and faith, and the speculative differ- 
 ences which such mysteries must ever and inevita- 
 bly engender should be regarded with mutual 
 deference and charity — never forgetting that it 
 were an impeachment of the love of God and an 
 imputation upon the mercy of Christ, to imagine 
 that the essential elements of a true Christian faith 
 have been placed beyond the easy reach and ready 
 acceptance even of the humblest and simplest un- 
 derstanding." II. 423. 
 
 " I hail this union of young men of so many dif- 
 ferent Christian sects in a single association for 
 Christian ends and objects, as a pledge that the 
 jealousies and rivalries which have so long divided 
 the church of Christ on earth, will be more as- 
 suaged and extinguished, that religious men of all 
 denominations will more and more bear in mind 
 the great and glorious things in which they all 
 agree, and will strive to narrow instead of wid- 
 ening their causes of alienation and estrangement. 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 35 
 
 The day may come when the cause of Chris- 
 tianity may require the cordial and vigorous un- 
 ion of all who acknowledge God as their Father 
 and Christ as their Redeemer and Saviour, and the 
 Bible as the word of God and the only text-book 
 of eternal truth, in order to withstand and resist the 
 progress of a downright infidelity — cloaking itself 
 ,ainder a thousand specious forms of positive and 
 speculative philosophy, of materialism, spiritual- 
 ism and pantheism. Let us prepare seasonably 
 for such a day, and for the conflicts it will involve 
 by uniting together in a league of Christian char- 
 ity — holding our faith in the unity of the Spirit 
 and in the bond of peace. Let us pursue our 
 Christian work in the true spirit of Christianity 
 — a spirit of love to God and of love to man — 
 maintaining our peculiar and distinctive tenets 
 firml}' but never arrogantly, boldly but never of- 
 fensively, uncompromisingly but never aggres- 
 sively ; ever respecting our neighbor's conscience 
 as we claim our neighbor's respect for our own 
 conscience, and not forgetting that our final respon- 
 sibilities are not to each other but to that common 
 Master before whom we must stand or fall. Who 
 does not rejoice, as Sunday after Sunday comes 
 round, to see the multitudes that keep holy day, 
 thronging our streets and sidewalks and ex- 
 changing the smiles of recognition or the greetings 
 of friendship or the formalities of ceremony as they 
 make way for each other in passing along to their 
 various places of religious worship. To human 
 eyes indeed thiey seem to be moving in widely 
 different directions, and so it may prove to have 
 
36 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 been with some of them ; but so have I seen on a 
 summer sea, in yonder bay, alike in calm and in 
 storm, vessels of every sort and beneath every 
 sign, sailing in widely different and diverging 
 courses, crossing and recrossing each other's tracks 
 and seemingly propelled by the most opposite and 
 contrarious forces. Yet the same wind of heaven, 
 blowing where it listeth, was the common source 
 of their motive power, giving impulse and direc- 
 tion to the progress of them all alike, and bring- 
 ing them all to be moored at last in one common 
 haven of rest." 
 
 The broad-minded, beautiful tolerance of Mr. 
 Winthrop is admirably illustrated by the following 
 quotation from his oration on the 250th anniver- 
 sary of the Landing of the Pilgrims : (Vol. Ill, 
 p. 105.) 
 
 " Let those who will, indulge in the dream, or 
 cherish the waking vision of a single universal 
 church on earth, recognized and accepted of men, 
 whose authority is binding on every conscience 
 and decisive of every point of faith or form. To 
 the eye of God, indeed, such a church may be visi- 
 ble even now in ' the blessed company of all faith- 
 ful people,' in whatever region they may dwell, 
 with whatever organization they may be connect- 
 ed, with Him as their head 'of whom the whole 
 family in earth and heaven is named.' And as in 
 some grand orchestra, hundreds of performers, 
 each with his own instrument and his own sepa- 
 rate score, strike widely variant notes, and pro- 
 duce sounds, sometimes in close succession and 
 sometimes at lengthened intervals, which heard 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 37 
 
 alone would seem to be wanting in everything 
 like method or melody, but which heard together 
 are found delighting the ear and ravishing the 
 soul with a flood of magnificent harmony, as they 
 give concerted expression to the glowing concep- 
 tions of some mighty master, even so — even so, 
 it may be, — from the differing, broken, and often 
 seemingly discordant strains of sincere seekers 
 after God, the divine ear, upon which no lisp of 
 the voice or breathing of the heart is ever lost, 
 catches only a combmed and glorious anthem of 
 prayer and praise. But to human ears such har- 
 monies are not vouchsafed. The Church in all its 
 majestic unity shall be revealed hereafter. The 
 'Jerusalem which is the mother of us all, is above,' 
 and we can only humbly hope that in the provi- 
 dence of God, its gates shall be wider, and its 
 courts fuller, and its members quickened and mul- 
 tiplied by the very differences of form and of doc- 
 trine which have divided Christians from each 
 other on earth, and which have created something 
 of competition and rivalry, and even of conten- 
 tion, in their efforts to advance the ends of their 
 respective denominations." 
 
 VII. 
 
 THE PEABODY TRUST. 
 
 Great and striking as have been Mr. Win- 
 throp's contributions to politics, to Harvard Uni- 
 versity, to the charities of his vicinage, to histor- 
 ical and literary work, to the arts and sciences, and 
 
38 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 to his beloved church, it seems to me his last work 
 in life, begun at an age when most of us are will- 
 ing to rest upon our oars and float upon the 
 stream, especially if the current of our lives runs 
 through peaceful and beautiful shores, is the most 
 touching and affecting of all his work. 
 
 On the 7th of February, 1867, his friend 
 George Peabody, a philanthropist without prece- 
 dent or parallel, preeminent among the benefac- 
 tors of his age and race, like Washington among 
 patriots and Shakespeare among poets, committed 
 to Mr. Winthrop in sacred trust millions of dollars 
 for the intellectual, moral or industrial education 
 of the young of the South, " without other distinc- 
 tion than their needs and the opportunities of use- 
 fulness to them." In the first paragraph of Mr. 
 Peabody's letter he alludes to Mr. Winthrop as 
 "the distinguished and valued friend to whom I 
 am so much indebted for cordial sympathy, care- 
 ful consideration and wise counsel ; and the details 
 and organization of the trust I leave with you, 
 only requesting that Mr. Winthrop may be chair- 
 man and Governor Fish and Bishop Mcllvaine 
 vice-chairmen of your body." 
 
 How singular and grand it was that this great- 
 est benefaction of modern times should come from 
 a son of Massachusetts to the poor children of 
 many who had slain thousands of her loveliest 
 sons in battle, and that the descendant of John 
 Winthrop the Puritan should be the chief execu- 
 tor and trustee to those desolate children of the 
 South. 
 
 From February, 1867, to the present time the 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 39 
 
 choicest labor of Mr. Winthrop has been in the 
 execution of this noble trust, and in its execution 
 he has had the hearty cooperation of such men as 
 Bishops Mcllvaine and Whipple, Chief Justices 
 Waite and Fuller, Hamilton Fish, General Grant, 
 President Hayes, William M. Evarts, and others 
 of similar eminence. 
 
 I will not enter into any detail of the immense 
 amount of work accomplished by this board, but 
 those of you who are teachers can imagine the 
 study and travel and anxiety and responsibility in- 
 volved when I state that the board has already 
 distributed nearly three millions of money from 
 the income of their fund. They have given to 
 Alabama $89,800; to Arkansas $97,050; to 
 Florida $61,375; to Georgia $102,552; to Louisi- 
 ana $95,600; to Mississippi $71,378; to North 
 Carolina $131,365; to South Carolina $74,425; 
 to Tennessee $202,700; to Texas $99,850; to 
 Virginia $259,550; to West Virginia $139,000 
 and to the Normal College at Nashville 
 $303,000. 
 
 It is pleasant to be able to state in this connec- 
 tion that the generosity of Mr. Peabody and his 
 Trustees has drawn with its magnet of sympathy 
 other helps in the shape of a donation of 100,000 
 books from D. Appleton & Co., and about 100,000 
 more from A. S. Barnes & Co. 
 
 No wonder that the name of Winthrop is hon- 
 ored and reverenced all over the lately desolated 
 South, next to that of Washington and Peabody ; 
 that States and cities and individuals should have 
 covered his name with blessings. In South Carolina 
 
40 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 the General Assembly incorporated its training 
 school for teachers by the name of " The Win- 
 throp Training School," and its board " Re- 
 solved that the 12th day of May, the birthday 
 of the Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, be set apart as 
 an annual memorial day, in commemoration of the 
 beneficence by which the school was founded." 
 
 In this epitome of the records, which could well 
 be amplified into volumes, I have merely sought 
 to explain why it was that Robert C. Winthrop 
 has been so situated, so connected and so gifted as 
 to make him our ''''supreme Eulogist.^'' I know 
 no other man who has had such opportunities, and 
 who has so perfectly realized the hopes and re- 
 lieved the anxieties of relatives and friends by 
 pronouncing fitting eulogies upon the great dead 
 of his century. 
 
 He has survived almost every one of the toilers 
 who kept step with his early years. My hour 
 would not permit me to enumerate even the sub- 
 jects of his formal eulogies. 
 
 Had I a magician's wand which could sum- 
 mon from their homes the spirits of those whose 
 memories have been commemorated by the 
 tongue of Mr. Winthrop, I should draw around 
 us to-night such a company as the world could 
 hardly have duplicated. He has delivered more 
 than one hundred and forty public eulogies, of 
 greater or less length and fullness. Leaving out 
 his peerless Washington the majestic father of 
 his country, and Franklin the great Bostonian, 
 and Governor Bowdoin, and Governor Winthrop, 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 4^ 
 
 and Luther and Dante, and a few others whom 
 he knew only in the spirit and by their words and 
 works, and confining ourselves only to those 
 whose hearts were clasped with hooks of living 
 steel to his own, what a company should we see! 
 
 At the head of the column come their coun- 
 try's defenders, those who bared their breasts to 
 the shot and shell of foreign or domestic enemies 
 that America, the hope of the world, might be 
 preserved. Prescott, Knox, Lafayette, Rocham- 
 beau, Steuben, Dearborn, Preble, Sullivan, 
 Decatur, Scott, Harrison, Taylor and Grant are 
 all in line acknowledging in patriotic salute the 
 eloquent words with which he has pictured them 
 on the records of our history. 
 
 Following them comes that great company of 
 statesmen whose voices were heard with his own 
 in the State House and Faneuil Hall at Boston, 
 or in the House or Senate Chamber at Washing- 
 ton : Webster, Calhoun and Clay, Adams and 
 Everett, John Bell, John P. Kennedy, Nathan 
 Appleton and William C. Rives, Thomas Benton 
 and Lewis Cass, Josiah Quincy and John H. Clif- 
 ford, Robert J. Breckenridge and John J. Critten- 
 den ; and among all those voices, now stilled 
 forever, where was one which spoke more often, 
 more feelingly for our Union and our Constitution 
 than Robert C. Winthrop? 
 
 The somewhat saddened procession of patriots, 
 remembered as more or less connected with our 
 country's storms and tempests, gives way to 
 another filled with the perpetual sunshine of 
 
42 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 letters and the arts. The great singers go 
 marching by, headed by Dana, Halleck, Long- 
 fellow and Bryant. 
 
 In the broader field of literature the double 
 column widens into a battalion and brings us 
 numbers from beyond the seas, headed by Irving, 
 Motley, Prescott, Palfrey, Savage, Sparks and 
 Channing. 
 
 The true and only way to understand and 
 appreciate Mr. Winthrop's work is to read his 
 published addresses. They are an autobiography 
 of his own life and mind and a history of his 
 country and times, as well as a tribute to the 
 hundreds of great men with whom, he has lived 
 and labored. His style is so simple and pure and 
 runs so smoothly that one can read his speeches 
 through consecutively without weariness. When 
 readiag the orations of his great predecessor, 
 Webster, you feel as if you were always on 
 mountain tops, but reading Mr. Winthrop is like 
 a journey through his own beautiful New Eng- 
 land, mounting at times to the highest altitudes 
 of thought and expression, but constantly dipping 
 into different grades — enjoying sometimes the 
 running stream, the babbling brook, the hum of 
 neighboring industry and the perfume of rural 
 flowers. 
 
 His eulogies of individuals have been truly 
 historical, and the salient points of their lives 
 have been skillfully formulated and presented. 
 Among his contemporaries might especially be 
 mentioned his eulogies upon Nathan Appleton, 
 Thomas Aspinwall, William H. Prescott, Josiah 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 43 
 
 Quincy, Edward Everett, John H. Clifford and 
 George Peabody. 
 
 The various powers of the orator are admir- 
 ably displayed by his beautiful treatment of those 
 most capable men, all so great in character and 
 works, yet so different and distinct in individual 
 peculiarities. 
 
 But of all others his tributes to Washington, 
 to Franklin, to Henry Clay, and Daniel Webster 
 are preeminent. Did time permit I would select 
 from his countless treasures a few jewels from 
 each, and weave a chain of gems that you could 
 carry away with you instead of any thoughts or 
 words of my own, but time compels me to limit 
 myself to a few specimens of his tributes to one 
 subject only for illustration of his style and 
 manner : 
 
 As long ago as 1837, while Mr. Webster was still 
 alive, Mr. Winthrop said (Vol. I p. 216): — "The career of 
 Mr. Webster is before the country. Let him retire 
 when he will — he needs no defense, he requires no 
 eulogy, he fears no investigation. Retire when he will, 
 he will leave light, imperishable, unfading light behind 
 him, and that not only gilding his own memory and 
 casting glory upon our common wealth, but cheering 
 and guiding and illuminating the path of constitutional 
 patriotism throughout all generations. Other stars 
 may have reached a higher ascension, may have 
 sparkled with a more dazzling luster, may have shot 
 with a wilder fire. Meteors too may have flashed 
 and flamed and glared and cast a moment's wonder 
 or a moment's fear and passed away. But as long as our 
 glorious Constitution shall be borne up upon the waves 
 of trial, and its banner of union and liberty be seen 
 streaming to the winds, in every moment of doubt and 
 danger the passengers and the pilot will be found 
 
44 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 turning alike for their direction to our own Northern 
 Star, 
 
 " Of whose true fixed and resting quality 
 There is no fellow in the firmament." 
 
 In 1876 at the unvailing of Webster's statue in 
 Central Park, N. Y., he said (Vol. III. p. 438): "To 
 have seen and heard him on one of his field days was a 
 privilege, which no one will undervalue whoever enjoyed 
 it. There was a power, a breadth, a beauty, a perfection 
 in some of his efforts which distanced all approach and 
 rendered rivalry ridiculous." 
 
 <' Among those who have been celebrated as orators 
 or public sj>eakers, in our own days or in other days, 
 there have been many divei-sities of gifts and many 
 diversities of operations. There have been those who 
 were listened to wholly for their intellectual qualities, 
 for the wit or the wisdom, the learning or the philosophy, 
 which characterized their efforts. There have been 
 those whose main attraction was a curious felicity and 
 facility of illustration and description, adorned by the 
 richest gems which could be gathered by historical re- 
 search or classical study. There have been those to 
 whom the charms of manner and the graces of elocution 
 and the melody of voice were the all-sufficient recom- 
 mendations to attention and applause. And there have 
 been those who owed their success more to opportunity 
 and occasion, to some stirring theme or some exciting 
 emergency, than to any peculiar attributes of their own. 
 But Webster combined everything. No thoughts more 
 profound and weighty. No style more terse and telling' 
 No illustrations more vivid and clear-cut. No occasions 
 more august and momentous. No voice more deep and 
 thrilling. No manner more impressive and admirable. 
 No presence so grand and majestic, as his. 
 
 That great brain of his, as I have seen it working, 
 whether in public debate or in private converse, seemed 
 to me often like some mighty machine, — always ready 
 for action, and almost always in action, evolving 
 much material from its own resources and researches* 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 45 
 
 and eagerly appropriating and assimilating whatever 
 was brought witin its reach, producing and reproducing 
 the richest fabrics with the ease and certainty, the pre- 
 cision and the condensing energy, of a perfect Corliss 
 engine. 
 
 And he put his own crown-stamp on almost every 
 thing he uttered. There was no mistaking one of Web- 
 ster's great efforts. There is no mistaking them now. 
 They will be distinguished, in all time to come, like 
 pieces of old gold or silver plate, by an unmistakable 
 mint-mark. He knew, like the casters or forgers of 
 yonder statue, not only how to pour forth burning 
 words and blazing thoughts, but so to blend and fuse 
 and weld together his facts and figures, his illustrations 
 and arguments, his metaphors and subject matter, as to 
 bring them all out at last into one massive and enduring 
 image of his own great mind!" 
 
 When the Webster Centennial Banquet was held at 
 Boston, January i8, 1882, it was thought that Mr. Win- 
 throp would not be able to speak, or would feel as if he 
 had already said all he could say. Our associate Mr. 
 Dexter told me at the time, that he went on purpose to 
 hear Mr. Winthrop and that it was one of the greatest 
 treats of his life, and with one quotation from that even- 
 ing's speech I will close: 
 
 (Vol. IV., p. 377.) "Living and dead he has been the 
 theme of the most eloquent orators, of the most faithful 
 and loving biographers of our land — Everett, and 
 Choate, and Hillard, President Felton of Harvard, Presi- 
 dent Woods of Bowdoin, and Mr. Wm. M. Evarts — to 
 name no others — have found in him the inspiration of 
 some of their most celebrated efforts, who may well be 
 content to live on the applauses and praises which their 
 efforts have called forth from immediate hearers and 
 admirers. They will enjoy at least a reflected and tra- 
 ditional fame. But Webster will always stand safest and 
 strongest on his own showing. His fame will be inde- 
 pendent of praise or dispraise from other men's lips. 
 He can be measured to his full altitude, as a thinker, a 
 writer, a speaker, only by the standard of his own im- 
 
46 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 mortal productions. That masterly style, that pure 
 Saxon English, that clear and cogent statement, that 
 close and clinching logic, that power of going down to 
 the depths and up to the heights of any great argument, 
 letting the immaterial or incidental look out for itself, 
 those vivid descriptions, those magnificent metaphors, 
 those thrilling appeals, — not introduced as mere orna- 
 ments wrought out in advance and stored up for an 
 opportunity of display, but sparkling and blazing out in 
 the very heat of an effort, like gems uncovering them- 
 selves in the working of a mine, — these are some of the 
 characteristics which will secure for Webster a fame 
 altogether his own, and will make his works a model 
 and a study long after most of those who have praised 
 him, or who have censured him, shall be forgotten. 
 
 What if those six noble volumes of his were obliter- 
 ated from the roll of American literature and American 
 eloquence! What if those consummate defences of the 
 Constitution and the Union had never been uttered, and 
 their instruction and inspiration had been lost to us 
 during the fearful ordeal to which that Constitution and 
 that Union have since been subjected! Are we quite 
 sure that we should have had the Constitution, as it was, 
 and the Union as it is, to be fought for, if the birth we 
 are commemorating had never occurred, — if that bright 
 Northern Star had never gleamed above the hills of 
 New Hemisphere? Letit be, if you please, that its light 
 was not always serene and steady. Let it be that mist 
 and clouds sometimes gathered over its disk, and hid its 
 guiding rays from many a wistful eye. Say even, if 
 you will, that to some eyes it seemed once to be shoot- 
 ing madly from its sphere. Make every deduction 
 which his bitterest enemies have ever made for any 
 alleged deviation from the course which had been 
 marked out for it by others, or which it seemed to have 
 marked out for itself, in its path across the sky. Still, 
 still, there is radiance and glory enough left, as we con- 
 template its whole golden track, to make us feel and 
 acknowledge that it had no fellow in our firmament. 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 47 
 
 It may be truly said of Mr. Winthrop as 
 he said of Mr. Webster at the Webster centen- 
 nial banquet in Boston in 1883 : 
 
 "After all, what are all the fine things which 
 have ever been said of him, or which ever can be 
 said of him, to-night or a hundred years hence, 
 compared with the splendid record which he has 
 left of himself as a debater in Congress and as an 
 orator before the people? We do not search out 
 for what was said about Pericles or Demosthenes 
 or Cicero or Burke. It is enough for us to read 
 their orations." 
 
 Mr. Winthrop will be remembered by differ- 
 ent men in various characters as an historian, a 
 scholar, a statesman, a dispenser of hospitality to 
 distinguished visitors from the Old World, as a 
 Christian or a philanthropist. 
 
 But where and how will he be remembered 
 longest and best? 
 
 When the young men of future generations 
 pay their first visit to Bunker Hill, and behold 
 the speaking statue of Colonel Prescott, they will 
 surely be told to read of its graphic story from 
 the orator who unveiled it to an admiring popu- 
 lace. 
 
 When they behold the lifelike statue of the 
 philosopher and patriot Benjamin Franklin, in 
 front of the old court house in Boston, so near 
 the place of his birth and the grave of his 
 parents, they will be told by whom that statue 
 was inaugurated and the admirable oration pro- 
 nounced upon its completion. 
 
 When they visit the memorials of our great 
 
48 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 men in New York, and behold the colossal statue 
 of that colossal genius Daniel Webster, they will 
 be directed to the grand oration spoken at its first 
 exhibition by his pupil and friend, who more than 
 any other orator of our times has pictured him to 
 us in w^ords that will live. When they visit the 
 sandy plains of Yorktown, one of their chief 
 delights will be the story there told before the 
 representatives of three nations upon the 
 hundredth anniversary of the triumph of Ameri- 
 can arms. When they repair to the capital of 
 our country and stand beside the monument to 
 Washington, of all the figures which will come 
 trooping before their excited imaginations there 
 will be few indeed which will stand out more 
 vividly than that of the tall, slender, courteous 
 orator who was part of its corner stone and its 
 capstone; and in fancy they will still hear his 
 ringing tones as he said : " Build it to the skies, 
 you cannot outreach the loftiness of his princi- 
 ples ! Found it upon the massive and eternal 
 rock, you cannot make it more enduring than his 
 fame ! Construct it of the peerless Parian 
 marble, you cannot make it purer than his life ! 
 Exhaust upon it the rules and principles of 
 ancient and of modern art, you cannot make it 
 more proportionate than his character!" 
 
C: 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 RESOLUTIONS. 
 
 At the regular annual meeting of the Chicago 
 Historical Society, on the 20th day of November, 
 1894, Mr. Edward G. Mason, President. 
 
 Upon motion of Mr. Daniel Goodwin, 
 seconded by Mr. Charles MuUiken, the following 
 memorial tribute was unanimously adopted. 
 
 Whereas, the Chicago Historical Society has 
 learned through the Public Press of the death of the 
 Hon. Robert C. Winthrop, who for many years has 
 been one of our honorary members, and for fifty-five 
 years was a distinguished member of the Massachusetts 
 Historical Society, we desire to put upon our records 
 our great estimate of the deceased as a historian, orator 
 and philanthropist. 
 
 Mr. Winthrop came from historical stock, his father, 
 Thomas Lyndall Winthrop having been for many years 
 President of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 
 
 In his varied positions as member of the Massachu- 
 setts Legislature; of the House of Representatives and 
 Senate of the United States; as President of the Massa- 
 chusetts Historical Society for thirty years from 1855 to 
 1885; as President of the Bunker Hill Monument Asso- 
 ciation and as President of the Trustees of the Peabody 
 Education Fund he has commemorated the lives of 
 more than one hundred and fifty of the leading men of 
 our own country and many of his great contemporaries 
 of foreign lands, and has so accomplished the difficult 
 tasks as to write a history not only of his own times but 
 of our entire country from its cradle days until now. 
 His eloquent pictures of the great men of this country 
 will live for lovers of biography and history as long as 
 we possess a national flag and an undivided country. 
 
 Like his predecessors in the United States Senate, 
 
 4 49 
 
50 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 Daniel Webster and Edward Everett, his whole heart 
 and his wonderful eloquence were devoted to the con- 
 stitution of his country. 
 
 Plymouth chose him for the orator of the day on 
 celebrating the 250th anniversary of the Landing of the 
 Pilgrims on Plymouth Rock, December 21, 1870. 
 
 The City of Boston claimed him for her looth anni- 
 versary on the 4th of July, 1876. 
 
 The City of New York chose him for her orator 
 when the bronze statue of Daniel Webster was unvailed 
 in Central Park in 1876. 
 
 The Bunker Hill Association selected him for its 
 orator June 17, 1881, when Col. Prescott retook the hill 
 where he led the most thrilling and picturesque battle 
 since Marathon and Thermopylae. 
 
 The United States pointed to him as the foremost 
 man of her then forty millions to deliver the oration at 
 Yorktown on the 19th of October, 1881, the looth anniver- 
 sary of the final triumph of the patriot army. 
 
 He was the chosen orator of our Government to lay 
 the corner stone of the Washington Monument at our 
 National Capital in 1848, and to deliver the oration at its 
 final completion in 1885 
 
 In these most conspicuous and trying positions Mr. 
 Winthrop so acquitted himself as to answer the 
 demands of the literary critic, the precise historian and 
 the full-hearted patriot. 
 
 We cannot limit our eulogy to Mr. Winthrop as an 
 historian and orator, for he was no less conspicuous as a 
 Christian philantropist. As President of the Boston 
 Provident Association for twehty-five years, he exhibi- 
 ted such skill in organization and administration as to 
 point him out as the proper executive head of the great 
 Charitable Trust endowed by George Peabody in 1867, 
 and which in the extent and magnitude of its charities 
 and the exalted station of its directors eclipses every- 
 thing of its kind in history. Therefore, be it 
 
 Resolved, that a copy of this memorial minute be 
 spread upon our records, and that copies of the same be 
 sent to Massachusetts Historical Society, to the Trustees 
 of the Peabody Education Fund, and to the American 
 Historical Society. 
 
LIST OF MR. WINTHROP'S EULOGIES. 
 
 DELIVERED VOL. PAGE 
 
 Adams, John _ 
 
 Adams, John Q 
 
 Agassiz, Louis 
 
 Aiken, Gov. Wm 
 
 Ames, Seth 
 
 Appleton, Nathan 
 
 Appleton, Samuel . . 
 
 Appleton, William 
 
 Aspinwall, Col. Thos. 
 Bacon, Rev. Leonard- 
 Barnes, Gen. Jos. K __ 
 
 Bartlett, Wm. S_- 
 
 Bell, Luther V. ._.._. 
 
 Bigelow, Dr. Jacob 
 
 Bigelow, ErastusB .__ 
 
 Bowdoin James 
 
 Bowdoin, James. 
 
 Brooks, William G... 
 Bryant, William C _ 
 Budington, William I. 
 Bulloch, Alexander H. 
 
 Burton, John Hill 
 
 Calhoun, John C 
 
 Chadbourne, Paul A _ 
 Channing, Wm. E ___ 
 Chastellux, Mqs. de .. 
 Circourt, Adolph de__ 
 
 Clav, Henry 
 
 Clifford, Gov. John H. 
 
 Crittenden, J. J 
 
 Cushing, Caleb 
 
 Dana, Richard H 
 
 Dante ._ 
 
 Davis, George T 
 
 Davis, Gov. John 
 
 Dearborn, Henry 
 
 Dearborn, Henry A. S- 
 
 Dexter, George 
 
 Dix, John A 
 
 Emerson, Geo. B 
 
 Everett, Edward 
 
 Felton, Cornelius C. 
 
 1735- 
 
 1826 
 
 1767- 
 
 1848 
 
 1807- 
 
 1873 
 
 1806 
 
 
 1805- 
 
 1881 
 
 1779- 
 
 1 861 
 
 1766- 
 
 1853 
 
 1786- 
 
 1862 
 
 1786- 
 
 1876 
 
 1802- 
 
 1881 
 
 I8I7- 
 
 1883 
 
 1809- 
 
 1883 
 
 1806- 
 
 1862 
 
 1787- 
 
 1870 
 
 I8I4- 
 
 1879 
 
 1727- 
 
 1790 
 
 1752- 
 
 1811 
 
 1807- 
 
 1879 
 
 1794- 
 
 1878 
 
 I8IS- 
 
 1879 
 
 I8I6- 
 
 1882 
 
 1809- 
 
 1881 
 
 1782- 
 
 1850 
 
 1824- 
 
 1883 
 
 1780- 
 
 1842 
 
 1734- 
 
 1788 
 
 1800- 
 
 1879 
 
 1777- 
 
 i8t52 
 
 1809- 
 
 1876 
 
 1787- 
 
 1863 
 
 1800- 
 
 1879 
 
 I8I5- 
 
 1882 
 
 1265- 
 
 1321 
 
 I8I0- 
 
 1877 
 
 1787- 
 
 1854 
 
 1751- 
 
 1829 
 
 i783- 
 
 i8si 
 
 _ 
 
 1883 
 
 1798- 
 
 1879 
 
 1797- 
 
 1881 
 
 1794- 
 
 1865 
 
 1807- 
 
 1862 
 
 Dec. 16, 1873 
 Feb. 24, 1848 
 April 16,1874 
 
 Sept. 8, 1881 
 Aug. 8, 1861 
 Sept. 17, i8f;5 
 Feb. 18, 1862 
 Oct. 12, 1876 
 July 12, 1882 
 Oct. 3, 1883 
 Dec. 13, 1883 
 Mar. 13, 1862 
 Feb. 13, 1879 
 Dec. II, 1879 
 Sept. 5, 1849 
 Sept. 5, 1849 
 Jan. 9, 1879 
 June 13, 1878 
 Dec. II, 1879 
 Feb. 9, 1882 
 Sept. 8, 1881 
 April I, i8i;o 
 Mar. 8, 1883 
 April 18,1880 
 May 13, 1859 
 Jan. 8, 1880 
 Aug. 1879 
 Jan. 13, 1876 
 Aug. 13, 1863 
 Jan. 9, 1879 
 Jan. 12, 1882 
 May II, 1865 
 Oct. II, 1877 
 April 26, 1854 
 
 April 10, 1884 
 
 April 10, 1884 
 Jan. 10, 1884 
 May 8, 1879 
 Mar. 10, 1881 
 Jan. 30, 1865 
 Mar. 13, 1862 
 
 293 
 614 
 312 
 
 280 
 
 502 
 
 222 
 
 516 
 
 432 
 
 372 
 
 452 
 
 474 
 
 515 
 
 23 
 
 III 
 
 90 
 
 90 
 
 18 
 
 510 
 
 381 
 281 
 
 651 
 
 4:1 
 131 
 485 
 116 
 
 39 
 342 
 558 
 
 19 
 372 
 664 
 
 477 
 179 
 
 319 
 
 495 
 496 
 481 
 
 34 
 229 
 
 653 
 
 517 
 
 SI 
 
52 
 
 ROBERT C WINTHROP. 
 
 
 TIME 
 
 DELIVERED VOL 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Fillmore, Millard 
 
 I 800-1 874 
 
 Mar. 12, 1874 
 
 3 
 
 307 
 
 Folsom, Chas 
 
 1 794-1872 
 
 Dec. 12, 1872 
 
 3 
 
 186 
 
 Frothingham, Nath'l. 
 
 1793-1870 
 
 April 14,1870 
 
 3 
 
 66 
 
 Frothingham, Richr'd 
 
 181 2-1880 
 
 Feb. 12, 1880 
 
 4 
 
 125 
 
 Goddard, Delano A __ 
 
 -1882 
 
 July 12, 1882 
 
 4 
 
 373 
 
 Graham, William A__ 
 
 1801-1875 
 
 Oct. 6, 1875 
 
 3 
 
 326 
 
 Grant, Gen. U. S 
 
 1822-1885 
 
 Oct. 7, 1885 
 
 4 
 
 574 
 
 Gray, John C .._ 
 
 1 793-1 88 1 
 
 Mar. 10, 1881 
 
 4 
 
 227 
 
 Grigsby, Hugh Blair. 
 
 1806-1881 
 
 May 12, 1881 
 
 4 
 
 235 
 
 Grinnell, Joseph _. . 
 
 1789-1885 
 
 Jan. 13, 1876 
 
 3 
 
 344 
 
 Hancock, John 
 
 1737-1793 
 
 Sept. 17, 1856 
 
 2 
 
 273 
 
 Haven, Samuel F 
 
 I 806-1 88 I 
 
 Sept. 8, 1881 
 
 4 
 
 281 
 
 Hillard, Geo. S 
 
 1808--1879 
 
 Feb. 13, 1879 
 
 4 
 
 26 
 
 Hudson, Chas 
 
 I 795-1 881 
 
 May 12, 1881 
 
 4 
 
 233 
 
 /ones, John Winter _ . 
 
 1791-1881 
 
 Sept. 8, 1881 
 
 4 
 
 281 
 
 'Kennedy, John P 
 
 1795-1870 
 
 Sept. 8, 1870 
 
 3 
 
 69 
 
 King, Daniel P 
 
 1801-1850 
 
 July 27, 1850 
 
 I 
 
 697 
 
 King, Rufus 
 
 1755-1827 
 
 Nov. 20, 1854 
 
 2 
 
 200 
 
 Knox,Maj-Gen. Henry 
 
 I 750-1 806 
 
 May 27, 1857 
 
 2 
 
 348 
 
 Laboulaye, Edw. R. L. 
 
 1811-1883 
 
 June 14, 1883 
 
 4 
 
 425 
 
 Lafayette, Gen 
 
 1 757-1834 
 
 Oct. 19, 1881 
 
 4 
 
 333 
 
 Langdon, Elwyn Alf'd 
 
 1804-1883 
 
 April 10,1884 
 
 4 
 
 494 
 
 Lawrence, Abbott 
 
 1 792-1855 
 
 Aug. 20, 1855 
 
 2 
 
 210 
 
 Lenox, James 
 
 I 800-1 880 
 
 Mar. II, 1880 
 
 4 
 
 128 
 
 Lincoln, Abraham . 
 
 I 809-1 865 
 
 April 29,1865 
 
 2 
 
 661 
 
 Livermore, Geo .. . 
 
 I1809-1865 
 
 Sept. 14, 1865 
 
 2 
 
 667 
 
 Lowell, John A 
 
 1 797-1881 
 
 Nov. 10, 1881 
 
 4 
 
 364 
 
 Luther, Martin 
 
 I 483- I 546 
 
 Nov. 10, 1883 
 
 4 
 
 467 
 
 Lyman, Theodore _._ 
 
 I 792-1 849 
 
 Oct. 24, 1885 
 
 4 
 
 608 
 
 Lyndhurst, Lord 
 
 1772-1863 
 
 Nov. 12, 1863 
 
 2 
 
 567 
 
 Manning, Thomas C._ 
 
 -1887 
 
 Oct. 3, 1888 
 
 
 
 Martin, M. Henri 
 
 I 810-1883 
 
 Jan. 10, 1884 
 
 4 
 
 479 
 
 Mcllvaine, Bishop ___ 
 
 1 799-1 873 
 
 July 16, 1873 
 
 3 
 
 255 
 
 Mendelssohn 
 
 1809-1847 
 
 May 21, 1857 
 
 2 
 
 341 
 
 Metcalf, Theron 
 
 1 784-1 875 
 
 Dec. 9, 1875 
 
 3 
 
 341 
 
 Mignet, Francis A .._ 
 
 1 796- 1 884 
 
 April 10,1884 
 
 4 
 
 487 
 
 Miles, James B 
 
 1822-1875 
 
 Dec. 9, 1875 
 
 3 
 
 340 
 
 Minot, William 
 
 1 783-1 874 
 
 Mar. 12, 1874 
 
 3 
 
 302 
 
 Motley, John Lothrop 
 
 1814-1877 
 
 June 14, 1877 
 
 3 
 
 467 
 
 Newell, William..... 
 
 I 803-1 88 I 
 
 Nov. 10, 1881 
 
 4 
 
 364 
 
 Palfrey, Dr. John G.. 
 
 1796-1881 
 
 Mav 12, 1881 
 
 4 
 
 238 
 
 Parker, Francis E 
 
 
 Feb. II, 1886 
 
 4 
 
 586 
 
 Peabody, George 
 
 1 795-1 869 
 
 Feb. 8, 1870 
 
 3 
 
 36 
 
 Perkins, Thomas H ._ 
 
 1 764-1 854 
 
 Oct. I 8'54 
 
 4 
 
 575 
 
 Phillips, John C 
 
 1839-1885 
 
 Mar. 12,1885 
 
 4 
 
 555 
 
 Preble, Geo. H. 
 
 1816-1885 
 
 Mar. 12, 1885 
 
 4 
 
 555 
 
 Prescott, Col. William 
 
 1726-1795 
 
 June 17, 1881 
 
 4 
 
 253 
 
 Prescott, William H.. 
 
 I 796-1 859 
 
 Feb. I, 1859 
 
 2 
 
 405 
 
 Quincy, Edmund 
 
 I 808-1 877 
 
 June 14, 1877 
 
 3 
 
 465 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 53 
 
 Quincj, Eliza S_ 
 
 Quincj, Josiah 
 
 Quincy, Josiah, Jr . 
 
 Sears, David 
 
 Sears, Barnas 
 
 Sparks, Jared 
 
 Salisbury, Stephen 
 
 Seward, William H __ 
 Somerby, Horatio G _ 
 
 Stanhope, Earl ._. 
 
 Stanley, Dean A. P__ 
 
 Sumner, Chas 
 
 Taney, Roger B 
 
 Taylor, Zachary 
 
 Taylor, Richard 
 
 Thayer, Nathaniel 
 
 Thomas, Benj. F 
 
 Ticknor, George 
 
 Tuttle, Chas. Wesley. 
 Upham, Charles W _- 
 Verplanck, Gulian C - 
 Visconti, Baron L. T.J 
 Waite, Morrison R__. 
 Walker, Pres. James _ 
 (( ii (< 
 
 Warren, Judge Chas.H 
 Washburne, Emory __ 
 Washington, Geo 
 
 Watson, Samuel 
 Webster, Daniel 
 
 Wetmore, Samuel... 
 
 Wilson, Henry. 
 
 *Winthrop, Benj. R. 
 
 Woods, Leonard 
 
 Wyman, Jeffries 
 
 TIME 
 
 1 798-1 884 
 
 I 744-1 775 
 1 772-1 864 
 1787-1871 
 I 802-1 880 
 1 789-1 866 
 1 798-1884 
 1800-1872 
 I 805-1 872 
 1805-1875 
 1815-1881 
 1811-1874 
 1 777-1864 
 I 784-1 850 
 1826-1879 
 I 808-1 883 
 1813-1878 
 1791-1871 
 I 829- I 88 I 
 I 802-1 875 
 I 796-1 870 
 1791-1853 
 1816-1888 
 I 794-1 874 
 
 I 799-1 877 
 1 732-1 799 
 
 -1877 
 I 782-1 852 
 
 1812-1885 
 181 2-1875 
 I 804-1 879 
 I 707-1 807 
 1814-1874 
 
 DELIVERED VOL 
 
 Feb. 14, 1884 
 Dec. 21, 1853 
 July 14, 1864 
 Feb. 2, 1881 
 Feb. 2, 1881 
 April 3, 1866 
 Oct. 9, 1884 
 Dec. 12, 1872 
 Dec. 12, 1872 
 Jan. 13, 1876 
 Sept. 8, 1881 
 Mar. 12, 1874 
 Mar. 13, 1873 
 June 26, 1872 
 Oct. 1, 1879 
 Mar. 8, 1883 
 Oct. 10, 1878 
 Feb. 9, 1871 
 
 Sept. 8, 1881 
 Oct. 14, 1875 
 April 14,1870 
 Jan. 24, 1881 
 Oct. 3, 1888 
 Oct. 14, 1875 
 Feb. 18, 1878 I 3 
 Oct. 14, 1875 I 3 
 April 11,1877 1 3 
 July 4, 1848 ! I 
 May 27, 1857 2 
 June 17, 1857 
 Feb. 22, 1863 
 Feb. 22, 1873 
 Feb. 22, 1885 
 Oct. 3, 1877 
 Feb. 15, 1837 ^ I 
 May 21, 1857 \ 2 
 Nov. 25, 1876 
 Jan. 18, 1882 
 Oct. 7, 1885 
 Dec. 9, 1875 
 Sept. II, 1879 
 Jan. 9, 1879 
 Feb. 18, 1878 
 
 PAGE 
 
 4B5 
 140 
 
 584 
 
 206 
 670 
 
 190 
 
 187 
 
 357 
 283 
 309 
 245 
 173 
 90 
 412 
 
 524 
 140 
 279 
 
 331 
 
 64 
 
 199 
 
 330 
 500 
 330 
 
 457 
 70 
 
 346 
 351 
 553 
 236 
 
 525 
 475 
 216 
 
 335 
 436 
 375 
 573 
 340 
 85 
 22 
 502 
 
 *Gov. John, Life and Letters, 1864-1867, 2 vols. 
 
 This list ends in 1886. Later Eulogies are scattered 
 through the published proceedings of the different 
 societies of which Mr. Winthrop was a member. 
 
54 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 MR. WINTHROP'S ESTIMATE OF ABRAHAM 
 LINCOLN. 
 
 (Vol. II. 66i.) 
 Beyond all doubt the life of President Lincoln was a 
 thousand fold the most precious life in our whole land; 
 and there are few of us I think who would not willingly 
 have rescued it at the risk, or even at the sacrifice of our 
 own. The cheerful courage, the shrewd sagacity — the 
 earnest zeal, the imperturbable good nature, the untiring 
 fidelity to duty, the ardent devotion to the Union, the 
 firm reliance upon God, which he has displayed during 
 his whole administration; and the eminent moderation 
 and magnanimity, both toward political opponents and 
 public enemies, which he has manifested since his 
 recent and triumphant reelection, have won for him a 
 measure of regard and of respect and of affection such 
 as no other man of our age has ever enjoyed. 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 55 
 
 IN RE TH^E DEARBORNS. 
 
 Boston, 2 April, 1884. 
 Dear Mr. Good-win: — I thank you sincerely for the 
 copy of your "Dearborns," which you have kindly sent 
 me, and still more for the discoiyse itself. I have read 
 it with great interest and gratification, and I cordially con- 
 gratulate you on so successful a production. If you 
 could send me another copy, addressed on the cover or 
 fly leaf to the Massachusetts Historical Society from 
 yourself, I should take pleasure in presenting it publicly 
 at their annual meeting on the loth inst. A copy should 
 go to the library of Bowdoin College. I rejoice that the 
 names of these good old friends of my boyhood and early 
 manhood are so pleasantly and deservedly reviewed. 
 Yours truly, 
 
 ROBT. C. WiNTHROP. 
 
 In presenting the book to the Massachusetts Histori- 
 cal Society, Mr. Winthrop said (Vol. IV., page 595), I 
 must not conclude these introductory remarks without 
 presenting to our library, in the name of Daniel 
 Goodwin Esq., of Chicago, a very interesting and notable 
 memoir of " The Dearborns," — a commemorative dis- 
 course delivered before the Chicago Historical Society, 
 on the eightieth anniversary of the occupation of 
 Fort Dearborn and the first settlement of Chicago, in 
 December last. It gives an excellent account of the 
 career and character of General Henry Dearborn, and 
 of his son General Henry Alexander Scammell Dear- 
 born, both of whom were long conspicuous in the history 
 of our country and our commonwealth; and it is illus- 
 trated by portraits of them both. The father was a gal- 
 lant officer of the Revolution from Bunker Hill to York- 
 town, and afterwards Secretary of War and Commander- 
 in-Chief of the United States Army. The son was Col- 
 lector of the Customs in this city, a member of Congress 
 from Norfolk, first President of the Massachusetts Horti- 
 
56 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 cultural Society, and prominently associated with the 
 erection of the Bunker Hill Monument and the estab- 
 lishment of the Mount Auburn cemetery. 
 
 Our thanks are due and will be returned, with the 
 sanction of the Society to Mr. Goodwin, for so just and 
 admirable a tribute to these patriotic and public-spirited 
 men, so long known and honored in our community. 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 57 
 
 IN RE EDWIN C. LARNED. 
 
 Those who have read Mr. Larned's great argu- 
 ment in the Fugitive Slave case will be inter- 
 ested to read Mr. Winthrop's speeches in favor of 
 a jury trial, and the right of the slave to the writ of 
 habeas corpus and against the extension of slav- 
 ery, or slave territory, and in favor of the admis- 
 sion of California under a constitution prohibiting 
 slavery. The world is accustomed to think of 
 Mr. Winthrop as a conservative and of Mr. 
 Larned as radical, but the sentiments, and princi- 
 ples, and moral convictions of the two were identi- 
 cal. The two following letters will explain 
 themselves: 
 
 Boston, 20 April, 1886. 
 Dear Mr. Goodivin: — Your handsome volume, in 
 memory of Edwin C. Larned, came this morning. 
 
 I desire to acknowledge it gratefully without delay. 
 I am just breaking up my winter home with a view to 
 returning to Brookline after a journey of three or four 
 weeks. I must therefore postpone doing justice to your 
 memoir until I am established in summer quarters. I 
 have read enough of it, however, to feel sure that I 
 shall be interested in reading the whole. 
 Believe me, with kind regards 
 
 Yours truly, 
 
 RoBT. C. Winthrop. 
 
 Brookline, Mass., 6 July, 1886. 
 Dear Mr. Goodwin: — I have at last found an hour in 
 my summer retirement to read the book you kindly sent 
 me many weeks ago, *' In Memory of Edwin C. Larned." 
 I can now thank you for it intelligently. Your address 
 is admirable, and so is that of Bishop Harris; the whole 
 
58 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 volume illustrates a character of great energy. The 
 argument in the Fugitive Slave rescue is strong and 
 brilliant, and exhibits power and eloquence. I had 
 never known Mr. Larned and am not sure that I had 
 ever heard of him until I read this volume. But I shall 
 remember him henceforth as one whom it must have 
 been a privilege to know, and whose memory it must be 
 a pleasure to you to recall and illustrate. Accept my 
 thanks for the volume and believe me. 
 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 ROBT. C. WiNTHROP. 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 59 
 
 LETTERS. 
 
 The following letter was written by Mr. Winthrop 
 after perusal of the foregoing essay prepared for the 
 Chicago Literary Club. 
 
 Brookline, 21 Nov., 1888. 
 
 Dear Mr. Goodwin: — You have been at great pains in 
 describing my career and I thank you for all your kind 
 and complimentary expressions. Your list of the persons 
 I have noticed atgreater or less length has come duly, and 
 I return it with the addition of three names, Judge Man- 
 ning of Louisiana, Chief Justice Waite of Ohio, and 
 Gov. Wm. Aiken of South Carolina. These tributes are 
 in our two last serials of the Peabody proceedings, pub- 
 lished since my fourth volume was made up. The list 
 is really a portentous one, reminding me forcibly of the 
 great number of friends who have passed away since I 
 began my public or quasi public life. All of them Avere 
 associated with me either in Congress or in the Histori- 
 cal Society, or on the Peabody Board, and my notices of 
 them have been in the way of duty. 
 
 You ask about my portraits. Eastman Johnson took a 
 crayon of me when I was early in Congress, and when he 
 was just beginning his career as an artist. Healy painted 
 a kit-cat portrait of me in 1846; Huntington of New 
 York painted a large family portrait of me in 1870. He 
 also painted the full length of me in 1881-2, which is in 
 the Speaker's corridor at Washington, presented by citi- 
 zens of Massachusetts in recognition of my Yorktown 
 oration. Huntington has since painted a third original 
 of me for the Historical Society, of Massachusetts, on 
 my withdrawal from thirty years presidency in 1885. 
 There is a medallion of me by Ball Hughes in 1841 
 and a lithograph by a celebrated French artist taken in 
 Paris, in 1847. 
 
6o ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 Accept my renewed acknowledgements of the 
 trouble you have taken in reviewing my record and for 
 the compliments you have paid me and believe me. 
 Very truly yours, 
 
 ROBT. C. WiNTHROP. 
 
 Boston, March 21, 1889. 
 Dear Mr. Goodwin: — I thank you for sending me the 
 little volume of sermons by our lamented friend Bishop 
 Harris. Gov. Baldwin sent me a copy of his Bohlen lec- 
 tures some years ago, and I have known him personally 
 and have heard him preach at our Trinity Church. He 
 was one of our ablest and best bishops, and he has been 
 called higher too soon for every one but himself. I 
 shall read these select sermons from time to time with 
 great interest. Believe me, with kind regards to Mrs. 
 Goodwin, Vours very truly, 
 
 ROBT. C. WiNTHROP. 
 
 P.S. I send you in a large envelope two of my latest 
 productions: one a long notice of Washington, the other 
 a shorter notice of John Winthrop. I prepared them at 
 the request of the editors of Appleton's New Cyclopedia of 
 American Biography — just published — the publishers 
 sent me a few oversheets containing both articles, and 
 I send you one of each. 
 
 Brookline, Mass., May 22, 1890. 
 
 Dear Mr. Goodwin: — I returned home recently to find 
 my table crowded with books, letters and pamphlets 
 which had accumulated during a month's absence. I 
 had been at New York, Washington and Richmond; 
 and time had taken the opportunity to add another unit 
 to the number of my years. 
 
 I avail myself of a moment's leisure to thank you for 
 the kind expressions of yowx letter on my birthday. 
 
 I have entered my 82d in better condition than I had 
 any right or reason to anticipate. But I am glad to be 
 quietly established in my summer home, where I can 
 •« rest and be thankful." I was grieved to see the 
 announcement of Wirt Dexter's death. He spent an 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 6l 
 
 an hour with me at Beverly farms last summer, while I 
 was passing a few days with my son. I thought he was 
 good for twenty years more of life and usefulness. 
 Believe me, with kind regards to your wife, 
 Yours very truly, 
 
 ROBT. C. WiNTHROP. 
 
62 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 Jy>-/^M/ 
 
 MR. WINTHR6P'S ADDRESS UPON THE FLAG 
 OF OUR UNION. 
 
 When I sent my essay to Mr. Winthrop in Novem- 
 ber, 1888, I asked him if there was any other point in 
 his career in which he would rather be remembered 
 than the memorable one alluded to in my peroration ; with 
 the exquisite courtsey which never failed him, and which 
 Dr. Ellis says he never saw omitted in a friendly inter- 
 course of more than half a century, Mr. Winthrop 
 gave me to understand that my choice was unexception 
 able, but still that his heart preferred one other and that 
 was **my utterances on the 'Flag of theUnion,' in con- 
 cluding my speech on Boston common when presenting 
 a United States flag to Col. Wilson's regiment on its 
 departure for the war in October, 1861." 
 
 Let us learn then to recall and remember him as he 
 himself would most love to be remembered and let his 
 own eloquent words close this chapter of our lives. 
 
 The tall and graceful orator was standing on Boston 
 common in sight and almost within hearing of the 
 houses and streets where he and six generations of his 
 patriot sires had lived since 1630 — overhead were waving 
 the old elms under which he and his ancestors had 
 walked and played since before the Revolution — before 
 him was a regiment of young men who had grown up 
 in the streets of Boston within sight of the great monu- 
 ment, the old State House, the old South Church, all of 
 them going out to meet death and many of them to fall 
 and die and never more to return. They were led by 
 Henrv Wilson, who left the United States Senate for the 
 battle field and who was afterward elected vice-president 
 of the Union with the immortal 1^*nc?eh*-. Thus environed 
 and thus placed as he should be sometime in enduring 
 
ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 63 
 
 bronze, our great and departed orator spoke the words 
 he would have his countrymen take home to their 
 hearts. 
 
 "I have said enough and more than enough to mani- 
 fest the spirit in which this flag is now committed to 
 your charge. It is the National ensign, pure and 
 simple; dearer to all our hearts at this moment as we 
 lift it to the gale and see no other sign of hope upon the 
 storm-cloud which rolls and rattles above it, save that 
 which is reflected from its own radiant hues; dearer 
 to us all than ever it was before, while gilded by the 
 sunshine of prosperity and playing with the zephyrs 
 of peace. It will speak for itself, far more eloquently 
 than I can speak for it. 
 
 Behold it! listen to it! Every star has a tongue; 
 every stripe is articulate. There is no language or 
 speech where their voices are not heard. There's 
 magic in the web of it. It has an answer for every 
 question of duty. It has a solution for every doubt and 
 every perplexity. It has a word of good cheer for every 
 hour of gloom or of despondency. 
 
 Behold it! Listen to it! It speaks of earlier and of 
 later struggles. It speaks of victories and sometimes of 
 reverses, on the sea and on the land. It speaks of 
 patriots and heroes among the living and among the 
 dead and of him, the first and greatest of them all, 
 around whose consecrated ashes this unnatural and 
 abhorrent strife has so long been raging. But before 
 all and above all other associations and memories — 
 whether of glorious men, of glorious deeds, or glorious 
 places — its voice is ever of Union and Liberty, of 
 the constitution and the laws. 
 
 Behold it! Listen to it. Let it tell the story of 
 its birth to these gallant volunteers as they march 
 beneath its folds by day or repose beneath its sen- 
 tinel stars by night. Let it recall to them the strange 
 eventful history of its rise and progress; let it re- 
 hearse to them the wondrous tale of its trials and its 
 triumphs, in peace as well as in war; and whatever 
 
64 ROBERT C. WINTHROP. 
 
 else may happen to it or to them it will never be sur- 
 rendered to rebels; never be ignominiously struck to* 
 treason ; nor ever be prostituted to any unworthy 
 and un-Christian purpose of revenge, depredation or 
 rapine. And may a merciful God cover the head of 
 each one of its brave defenders in the hour of battle." 
 
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