mm
 
 v 
 
 ^i^
 
 THE LIFE A^■D TIMES 
 
 OP 
 
 SAMUEL BOWLES 
 
 BY 
 
 GEORGE S. MERRIAM 
 
 IN TWO VOLUMES 
 VOL. I 
 
 XEW-YOEK 
 THE CENTUKY CO. 
 
 1SS5
 
 COPTKIGHT, 1885, by 
 GEORGE S. MERKIAM.
 
 5 
 V.I 
 
 A 
 
 <Urp 
 
 f 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 THIS book is an attempt to faitMully portray the life of 
 a man. It includes, as the appropriate backgi'ound 
 of such a portrait, a sketch of the pubhc events which wrought 
 on him and on which he wrought. 
 
 The first interest of the general pubhc in the career of 
 Samuel Bowles arises from the fact that he was an eminent 
 joumahst. He was one of the representative men through 
 whom a new power in society has been developed and exer- 
 cised. His field was in one sense narrow, for the Springfield 
 Beinihlican was pubHshed in a provincial town, and limited 
 to a comparatively small circulation ; but it exercised a wide 
 influence. The best measure of its editor's attainment was 
 not the number of readers he reached, but the theory and 
 ideal of joumahsm which he exemplified. His personal history 
 touches the principles of the art of newspaper-making. 
 
 The justification for sketching a nation's story as part of the 
 story of a joiu-nahst's life is that the joumahst has become an 
 important factor in national affairs. Mr. Bowles's editorial 
 work covered the period from the annexation of Texas to the 
 close of reconstruction under President Hayes. He was a spec- 
 tator and actor in the struggle which ended in the overthrow 
 of slavery, and also in the problems which taxed the nation in 
 the years following the war. A great part of the significance 
 and value of his life lay in his contribution to these debates. 
 Vol. I. iii
 
 IV PEEFACE. 
 
 Their reflex influence on him was among the strongest forces 
 that shaped his growth. We do not rightly appreciate the his- 
 tory of a nation, except as we see it entering into the thought 
 and character of the individual citizen ; nor do we appreciate 
 the citizen, especially if he be a leader among his feUo^^s, 
 unless we keep before our eyes the fortunes of the great com- 
 munity of which he is a member. 
 
 The sketch here given of the more prominent events of the 
 country's pohtieal history makes no pretensions to profundity 
 of research or originaHty of view. It follows the line of central 
 interest, — the slavery question, the war, reconstruction, and 
 reform, — touching collateral issues but hghtly. It deals with 
 thoughts and motives rather than with outward action; and 
 the scenes of its drama he more in the minds of the common 
 people than in battle-fields or the chambers of Congress. Its 
 materials have been drawn partly from standard works and 
 partly from the volumes of the Bepuhlican. The files of a 
 newspaper must not be trusted always to give the ti-ue propor- 
 tion of the events which they narrate from day to day, and 
 their record must be open to large correction from other 
 sources. But, picturing the scene as it appeared to actors and 
 contemporaries, and giving details caught by the reporter's 
 pen before memory has had time to grow treacherous, they 
 yield most abundant and vivid material. 
 
 The more essential part of the book is that which deals 
 with the personal hfe of its subject. Few men in his genera- 
 tion had a more striking personahty than '' Sam Bowles," and 
 few were more widely known. He was a man of strong, racy, 
 many-sided individuahty, — a man richly worth knowing even 
 by report, if the biographer has at aU succeeded iu represent- 
 ing his true quahty. It has been my desire to show him just 
 as he was, — in his virtues and in his faults ; in the successive 
 phases of his growth ; in the aspects in which he disclosed him-
 
 PEEFACE. V 
 
 self to the public, to his friends, to his enemies. I have tried 
 to discern and present the underljing and governing forces of 
 his life. Whatever has been my success or failui'e ia this 
 attempt, I have at least been able to show one characteristic 
 aspect of the man, unwarped and uncolored by any misin- 
 terpreting medium, in the large selections from his private 
 letters. One may say of them what Emerson says of Mon- 
 taigne's essays : *' The sincerity and marrow of the man 
 reaches to his sentences. Cut these words and they would 
 bleed; they are vascular and ahve." 
 
 I acknowledge warmly the generosity with which his family 
 and his most intimate friends have placed his coiTespondence 
 at my disposal. In some cases with • no small saciiflce of 
 personal feehngs, they have contributed the material toward 
 showing him to the world with something of the charm which 
 they knew in him. The reader of the book will scarcely need 
 to be apprised that while the members of Mr. Bowles's family 
 have given verj' valuable matter to the writer, he is solely re- 
 sponsible for the judgments which are expressed. 
 
 For the rest, the work must speak for itself. It addresses 
 itself to the common interest of humanity. The writer says to 
 his readers : Behold a man ! Thus he looked, thus he acted, 
 thus he grew; this was his work, these were his joys, these 
 were his battles, his defeats, his victories ; such was the front 
 he wore to the world, and so he opened his heart to those he 
 loved ; this was the outcome of his life, and this is its signifi- 
 cance and appeal.
 
 CONTENTS OF VOL. I. 
 
 PAET I. 1826- 1S48. 
 
 CHAPTEE I.— The Ancestral Inheritance: Six generations of 
 Yankees. — Samuel Bowles, the father. — Early struggles. — Estab- 
 lishes the Weekly Bepublicmi 1-4 
 
 CHAPTER II. — The Early Environment: New England's first 
 two hundred years. — The seed, the soil, the tree. — Theocracy and 
 democracy. — The Puritan religion. — The growth of the nation. — 
 Early Unitarianism. — An old-time country town. — The unchanged 
 face ; 5-14 
 
 CHAPTER III.— Boyhood: A New England household.— The 
 mother. — The boy's moderate promise. — At school. — No hands. — 
 " Not much boyhood " 15-19 
 
 CHAPTER rv.— The Beginning of the Daily "Republican": 
 Son follows father. — A bold project. — Life's load shouldered 
 early. — The first break-down. — Newspaper letters. — A quarrel, 
 a rival, and an impulse 20-25 
 
 CHAPTER V. — The Old and the New Journalism: A new 
 epoch in journalism and politics. — The old-time newspaper and 
 the new. — The Herald and the Tribune. — The old country 
 weekly 26-31 
 
 CHAPTER VI.— Early Years op Work — Ashmun and Calhoun : 
 No early brilliancy. — A hard worker, a good reporter. — An un- 
 stimulating community. — No vice except overwork. — William B. 
 Calhoun : " The public man of Springfield." — Services and charac- 
 ter. — George Ashmun. — A master of men. — Brings Douglas and 
 Lincoln together. — Devotion to Webster. — Social charm . . 32-44
 
 Vlll CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER vn.— The Mexica^i War and the Free-soil Party: 
 Annexation of Texas. — Polk and Clay. — Conquest and Spoliation 
 of Mexico. — Whig opposition. — The Wilmot proviso. — Webster's 
 Springfield speech. — The Abolitionists. — The Bejmhlican^s atti- 
 tude. — The dilemma of the Northern conscience. — Taylor's nom- 
 ination. — Free-soil and Van Buren. — Mr. Bowles's first political 
 writing. — "Why not a Free-soiler 45-55 
 
 PART 11. 1S48-1852. 
 
 CHAPTER Vin. — Personal and Family Life: Marriage. — An 
 ally found — and lost. — Dr. Holland comes. — The first child. — 
 Father dies. — Overwork and sickness 56-60 
 
 CHAPTER IX. — The Developing Newspaper : The home nest. — 
 Dz'. Holland : lay preaching and literature. — The two blades of 
 the scissors. — Toil and thrift. — Life-blood spent — and freely. — 
 "We will never take public office." — Advance payments. — Inde- 
 pendence: how achieved. — The growing ideal. — Unwillingness 
 to own mistakes. — Independent journalism in a nut-shell. .61-72 
 
 CHAPTER X.— The Compromise of 1850 : Growth of anti-slav- 
 ery sentiment. — The question as to the new territory. — Henry 
 Clay's compromise. — Webster's seventh of March speech. — The 
 moral element ignored. — The Republican's embarrassment. — The 
 Fugitive Slave bill 73-81 
 
 CHAPTER XI. — The Fugitive Slave Law: Compromise ac- 
 cepted. — Must we surrender fugitive slaves? — Humanity rersMS 
 law. — Obedience or anarchy. — Shadrach rescued. — Simms re- 
 turned. — Two kinds of mobs. — George Thompson in Springfield. 
 — A bloodless riot. — Democrats and Free-soilers coalesce. — Sum- 
 ner goes to the Senate. — Degenerate Whigs. — The '52 conven- 
 tions surrender to the South. — Party above principle 82-96 
 
 PART IIL 1853-1856. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. — The Journalist at Work — His Lieutenants : 
 News first. — A new civilizing agency. — Working the home 
 field. — Dr. Holland's local contributions. — Mr. Bowles as a 
 news-gatherer. — A traveler. — Clark W. Bryan. — Election re- 
 turns. — Business expands. — Joseph E. Hood. — Portrayed by his 
 chief 97-109
 
 CONTENTS. ix 
 
 CHAPTER XIII.— The Awakening of the North : Douglas pro- 
 poses repeal of Missouri Compromise. — The North roused at last. 
 
 — The Repuhlican on the new era. — "Popular sovereignty." — Its 
 uncertain meaning. — Kansas-Nebraska bill passed. — How unite 
 the opposition? — The rendition of Burns. — No more slave-hunt- 
 ing ! — A Republican party attempted. — The rise of Know-noth- 
 ingism. — Its triumph in Massachusetts 110-127 
 
 CHAPTER XrV. — The Struggle in Kansas and in Massachu- 
 setts: Lawful and lawless invasion. — A usurping legislature. — 
 President Pierce's Administration. — First anti-slavery ^detory at 
 Washington. — Punishing Judge Loring. — Personal liberty law. — 
 Henry Wilson. — Philadelphia Know-nothing council. — Organiza- 
 tion of the Republican party in Massachusetts. — Its defeat by the 
 Know-nothings 128-1-15 
 
 CHAPTER XV. — The Fremont Campaign: Brooks's assault on 
 Sumner. — Two confusing influences. — Nomination of Buchanan. 
 
 — First national Republican convention. — The situation in Kan- 
 sas. — In Massachusetts. — Governor Gardner. — Henry L. Dawes. 
 
 — The character of the Republican party. — Defeated, not dis- 
 couraged 146-161 
 
 CHAPTER XVI.— Letters (1851-56) : To Charles Allen, Henry 
 L. Dawes, and Mrs. Bowles. — Too busy to go a-fishing. — A 
 convalescent. — "Newspapers not machines to suppress informa- 
 tion." — Judge Loring. — Reporting a convention. — Religious 
 observances. — All the reward I seek. — Don't croak. — I bide my 
 time. — Fremont's prospects. — The fight for Dawes. — Invited to 
 Philadelphia 162-178 
 
 PART IV. 1857-1861. 
 
 CHAPTER XVIL— The Boston "Traveller": Fit for a wider 
 field. — An ambitious project. — Its early failure. — The causes. — 
 A heavy undertaking: divided councils. — Return to the Be- 
 pubUcan 179-188 
 
 CHAPTER XVIIL— The Ripening Journalist : The education of 
 the times. — Republicanism, a school of statesmanship. — Partisan- 
 ship and independence. — The Republican's declaration of inde- 
 pendence. — Instinct for news. — Attitude toward public men. —
 
 X CONTENTS. 
 
 Fondness for change. — Epigrammatic power. — Dr. Holland's in- 
 novations. — Timothy Titcomb's Letters 189-202 
 
 CHAPTER XIX.— Personal Relations : As seen by his readers. 
 
 — By his family. — Homesickness. — Relish for humanity. — Auster- 
 ity in public, charity in private. — Personal manner. — Attitude 
 toward friends. — Their words about him. — Burning his own 
 smoke. — Love of old associations. — '' Two men in him." — Differ- 
 ences and reconciliations. — The nervous strain. — Friendships 
 with women 203-218 
 
 CHAPTER XX. — Dred Scott and Lecompton : The logic of 
 events. — The Dred Scott decision. — Its reception at the North. — 
 President Buchanan and Governor Walker. — The Lecompton con- 
 vention and constitution. — A break in the Democratic party. — 
 Douglas a rebel. — The English bill. — Kansas free 219-231 
 
 CHAPTER XXI. — Douglas and Lincoln : Shall the Republicans 
 accept Douglas? — His fatal defect. — Abraham Lincoln. — Early 
 life. — Position as to slavery. — ''A house divided against itself." 
 
 — The joint debates.— The tide turns 232-245 
 
 CHAPTER XXII.— John Brown : The South on the defensive.— 
 The attack on Harper's Ferry. — Brown's character. — How judged 
 by the North and by the South 246-255 
 
 CHAPTER XXIII.— The Election of Lincoln: Disunion threat- 
 ened. — The North incredulous. — The Charleston convention di- 
 vides. — Nomination of Lincoln, Douglas, Breckinridge, Bell. — 
 The menace of secession. — ''Let's try it!" 256-268 
 
 CHAPTER XXIV.— Secession : South Carolina acts.— The mo- 
 tives of secession. — The North uncertain. — Let them go. — Shall 
 we concede anything ? — The ultimatum in Congress. — The Con- 
 federacy organized. — Beleaguered Sumter. — The Star of the West. 
 
 — Seward pours oil. — The Crittenden and Adams schemes. — Lin- 
 coln takes the helm. — Fluctuations of opinion. — The emerging 
 purpose. — The storm breaks 269-288 
 
 CHAPTER XXV.— Letters (1857-60): To Mr. Allen, Mr. 
 Dawes, and Mrs. Bowles. — The Philadelphia project. — The Trav- 
 eller. — Dawes's first speech. — State polities. — "Nil nisi bonum." 
 
 — The day's work never done. — The Covernment printing. — 
 Horace Mann— Thurlow Weed 289-304
 
 CONTENTS. xi 
 
 PAET V. 1861-1864. 
 
 CHAPTER XXVL— III Health: The engine overdriven.— Im- 
 possibility of rest. — Lack of inertia. — Compensations of illness. — 
 Crippled at the nation's crisis. — Among water-cure patients. — Off 
 for Europe 305-315 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIL— Letters (1860-62): To Mrs. Bowles, Chil- 
 dren, Mr. Allen, Mr. Dawes, and Miss Whitney.— A crisis in health. 
 
 — Lincoln and Seward. — Recommendations for office. — Better to 
 give than receive. — In the White Mountains. — At the Water-cure. 
 
 — Domestic details. — Bent double with sciatica. — The convales- 
 cent mother. — A winter landscape. — History and theology. — Dis- 
 cussion of religion, philosophy, life. — Good-by 316-340 
 
 CHAPTER XXVIIL— The Civil War: Temper of North and 
 South. — A bird's-eye view. — The uplift of spirit. — The nation's 
 chief. — The journalist's part. — How deal with slavery? — The 
 proclamation. — Two objects instead of one. — The course of par- 
 ties. — Politics in Massachusetts. — Presidential nominations. — 
 What kind of a peace? — Triumph at last 341-363 
 
 CHAPTER XXIX.— In Europe: Letters to Mrs. Bowles, his 
 daughter, Mr. Allen, Miss Whitney, and the Eepiiblican. — Old 
 friends in England. — Loneliness. — A birthday. — Among the Alps. 
 — Wayside companions. — Before the Matterhorn. — Across the St. 
 Theodul. — Wedding-day at Chamouny. — By the Lake of Geneva. — 
 The war. — Sense of exile. — Gain of health. — Influence of high 
 mountains 364-385 
 
 CHAPTER XXX.— Office AND Home — Letters (1863-64): The 
 growth of the staff. — A new home. — Letters to IMrs. Bowles, Miss 
 Whitney, F. B. Sanborn, Charles Allen. — Suggestions as to making 
 a newspaper. — A Sunday morning. — The finest of epitaphs. — 
 The death of friends. — The battle with disease. — Home pictures 
 for the wife and mother. — Unitarian convention. — Gardening 
 and baby-tending. — Theodore Parker. — Church organizations. — 
 Slavery abolished : the final scene. — Honor to Massachusetts. — 
 Health the first requisite 386-419
 
 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF 
 
 SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 The Ancestral Inheritance. 
 
 SAMUEL BOWLES was born ou the ninth of Feb- 
 ruary, 1826, in the quiet country town of Springfield, 
 Massachusetts, and in the beautiful valley of the Connect- 
 icut. He came on both sides of old New England stock. 
 His father, named Samuel also, had some antiquarian 
 taste, and made research into the genealogy of his family ; 
 faithful, patient, and exact in that as in all he did. A 
 little pamphlet which he printed tells that the English 
 family of Bowles, sometimes spelt BoUes, figures in the 
 records of the genealogist Burke; but that the Ameri- 
 can family which spells its name as here printed was 
 descended from John Bowles, an elder in the church 
 of Roxbury, Mass., in 1640. He was one of the found- 
 ers of the Roxbury Free School and a member of the 
 Artillery Company. John the second (1653-1691) was 
 baptized by the " Apostle Eliot," and married his grand- 
 daughter; was graduated at Harvard in 1671; became 
 a ruling elder in the church ; was elected a repre- 
 sentative to the ''General Court" — the Massachusetts 
 legislature — and was speaker of the House. John the 
 Vol. I.— 1 1
 
 2 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 third (1685-1737) was also graduated at Harvard in 
 1703 5 was early and long engaged in managing the 
 affairs of Roxbury town ; and was major in the militia, 
 and representative in the General Court for ten succes- 
 sive years. His son, Joshua Bowles (1722-1794) was a 
 carver of furniture in Boston. Says the pamphleteer, 
 the grandson of Joshua : '' He never had much property. 
 Indeed, I do not think our ancestors were ever distin- 
 guished for the acquisition of wealth. But he has been 
 represented to me as a very benevolent, pious man. An 
 old lady who knew him well in her youth, told me that 
 when walking behind him in the street, she had heard 
 him praying audibly. Like some other good men of his 
 day, he had a queer way of intermingling religious and 
 secular thoughts and words. My father told me that in 
 a letter to him he once wrote : ^ Dear Samuel : Strive to 
 live in the fear of God, and write me word how the boat 
 comes on' (a pleasure or sail boat kept to be let)." Of 
 Joshua's sons, two served in the Revolutionary war, as ser- 
 geant and captain, but Samuel, first of the name (1762- 
 1813), was only thirteen years old when the war broke out. 
 In those troubled times he got but scanty schooling, 
 at the hands of Master Tileston, a well-known Boston 
 school-teacher. He and his wife grew up under the relig- 
 ious influences of the '' Old South Church." He learned 
 the pewterer's trade, found his business spoiled by the 
 war, went to Hartford, Conn., and kept a grocery store, 
 in which he seems to have thriven in a modest way. 
 His son writes : '' He was a man of good sense, quick 
 wit, tender feelings, and strict honesty. Though not a 
 member of any church, he was a faithful and liberal 
 member of the Baptist Society, and governed by a sense 
 of religious duty in bringing up his family." 
 
 *' Good sense, tender feelings, strict honesty, sense of 
 religious duty" — true marks these are all of his son
 
 THE A^^CESTEAL INHEKITANCE. 6 
 
 Samuel (1797-1851), who has part in our story as father 
 of its hero. ''Quick wit" could hardly be ascribed to 
 him : he was slow in his mental action ; cautious, canny, 
 thrifty ; a prim, sober man, respected and trusted by every 
 one ; laughed at sometimes for little stiffnesses and odd- 
 ities ; undemonstrative in his family, as was the wont 
 of New Englanders, but with warm and faithful affec- 
 tions. He received as a boy a common-school education, 
 went into his father's shop at the age of fifteen, and at 
 his father's death a year later inherited nothing but an 
 old gold watch and the family Bible. He was then ap- 
 prenticed to a printer. " During my apprenticeship," he 
 wrote in his matm'ity, " I was one of some ten or fifteen 
 who formed an association for the improvement of the 
 mind. I was one of the most zealous and steadfast of 
 the club till it ran down. We met once a week, had dis- 
 cussions and listened to readings, original and selected. 
 Here I acquired a taste for reading and mental cultiva- 
 tion. Before this my inclination was almost entirely for 
 social pleasure and for evening carousals with young as- 
 sociates. And I was not very particular in the choice of 
 my company. My connection with the debating club I 
 consider an important era in my life — a sort of redeem- 
 ing season, saving me from dangerous tendencies. It 
 gave a good direction to my habits, strengthening my 
 mind to resist temptation, and led me to prefer mental 
 to sensual pleasure." When his apprenticeship was com- 
 pleted, he worked at the printing trade for six years, as 
 journeyman and foreman, in Hartford and New Haven. 
 These were years of struggle and dubious success ; he 
 was embarrassed by incompetent associates, got in debt, 
 and underwent some hardships. While in Hartford he 
 was prostrated for the greater part of a year by typhus 
 fever of extraordinary severity ; a most luckless illness 
 for himself and his posterity, for it left him with a weak-
 
 4 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 ness of the bowels which became chronic, and his death 
 resulted from an attack of dysentery; while a weak 
 digestive system was inherited by his children, and to 
 his son Samuel was a misfortune through life. But 
 the young printer struggled pluckily on, and in the 
 course of time took to himself a wife, Miss Huldah Dem- 
 ing, of "Wethersfleld, a woman of goodness, sense, and 
 energy, a descendant of the Pui'itan captain. Miles 
 Standish. In 1824 the young printer undertook the en- 
 terprise of a new weekly paper in Springfield. He came 
 up the river in a flat-boat, with his young wife and 
 their baby daughter, Julia, bringing a hand printing- 
 press and some scanty furnishing for the new home. 
 Friends in Springfield advanced a little money, and on 
 the eighth of September appeared the Springfield Bepuh- 
 lican. Proprietor, publisher, editor, reporter, compositor, 
 and pressman appear to have been united in Samuel 
 Bowles ; and it must be owned by one who reads the first 
 numbers of the paper that one man might have produced 
 it all without any dangerous strain on his powers. But 
 it was the day of small things in journalism, and the 
 Republican satisfied the moderate requirements of the 
 newspaper readers of that day. It had at the start two 
 hundred and fifty subscribers, at two doUars a year ; it 
 slowly and steadily prospered, outran or absorbed its 
 local rivals, and seems to have soon yielded a modest 
 but sufficient livelihood for its proprietor and his grow- 
 ing family. His first child, Albert, was born in 1823, 
 and lived but seven months ; the next was Julia ; then, 
 in the second year of his residence in Springfield, came 
 the son who was named after his father and grandfather; 
 and to these succeeded another daughter, Amelia, and 
 another son, Benjamin Franklin. All of these except 
 the first-born lived to maturity.
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 The Early Environment. 
 
 THE generation to which "Sam Bowles" belonged — 
 for by that name every one called the magnetic and 
 mercurial man, whom the stiff Biblical trisyllable Samuel 
 never fitted — was the generation in which New England 
 broke through the sheath of Puritanism, and flowered 
 into broader and more various life. Two centuries be- 
 fore, certain grave and resolute Englishmen had turned 
 their backs on the refinements and corruptions of the 
 Old World, to found a pure spiritual commonwealth in 
 the wilderness. They and their descendants had been 
 trained in a confiict for existence under rigorous physical 
 conditions. They had been compelled to win a livelihood 
 from soil which asks a hard price for all it yields. They 
 had battled with a climate of extreme and swift fiuctua- 
 tions. They had been separated by the ocean's breadth 
 from the resources with which the Old World ministered 
 to comfort, taste, and imagination. Three advantages 
 attended them : — they came of picked English stock, they 
 were free from all political inequalities among themselves, 
 and their community was founded under a lofty religious 
 impulse. Two hundred years had developed and con- 
 firmed them as a shrewd, serious, hard-headed people. 
 They had grown strong in the robust qualities of man- 
 hood. Nature had said to each man, " Work or you
 
 6 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 starve ! " Society had said to eacli man, '' Work, and 
 all yon get shall be your own ! " So they became reso- 
 lute and patient to labor and careful to save. The 
 fields of interest open to them were the household, the 
 political community, and the divine realm of which the 
 visible symbol was the church. In these currents ran 
 the New Englauder's life, in a stream quiet, somber, 
 and deep. 
 
 The ideal at which the founders of New England aimed 
 was a theocracy. The peculiarity of their theocracy was 
 that it assumed, as the authoritative interpreter of the 
 divine will, not any official class, but a book — and a book 
 on whose interpretation no one could place a limit. In 
 the practical government of the community they followed 
 the forms and usages which had grown up during many 
 centuries of English life, but subject to certain modifica- 
 tions : — there was no privileged class ; the authority of 
 crown and parliament was remote, and when it began to 
 press closely was thrown off altogether ; and the imme- 
 diate affairs of each town and hamlet were ordered by its 
 inhabitants in a popular assembly. The clergy, though 
 not invested with secular authority, were for a long time 
 the most influential class in the community. With the 
 progress of time the political and religious life of the 
 community flowed more and more into separate chan- 
 nels. The decadence of the Puritan theology is to be 
 measured, not so much by open revolt against it, as by 
 the withdrawal of intellectual energies into other fields. 
 The two great and antithetical intellects which New Eng- 
 land produced in the eighteenth century were Jonathan 
 Edwards and Benjamin Franklin, — the one a metaphy- 
 sician and mystic, the other a man of science, of public 
 affairs, and of philanthropic humanity. Franklin got his 
 chance by going to Philadelphia and thence to England ; 
 he would not have found room enough in Massachu-
 
 THE EAELY ENVIRONMENT. 7 
 
 setts. Then the Revohition brought to the front the 
 lawyers, the soldiers, the statesmen, and left the clergy 
 compai'atively in the rear. The temper of the Revolu- 
 tionary patriots was far different from that of Cromwell's 
 Ironsides. With the next generation came the disestab- 
 lishment of the Congregational churches. Then, slowly 
 at first, began the prodigious development of the physical 
 resoui'ces of the country ; then came invention, discovery, 
 enrichment ; and men, toughened but cramped for two 
 centuries, found a continent beckoning them to stride 
 into possession. There was expansion of energy and 
 opportunity in every direction. 
 
 While the collective forces of the community had 
 thus been undergoing a gradual diversion from the 
 ecclesiastical into the secular field, the religious life — 
 that which was recognized as such — still remained one 
 of the most striking features of the New England devel- 
 opment. The '^ meeting-house " was the most conspicuous 
 building in every town, and the church society ranked as 
 first beyond comparison among social organizations. 
 
 Religion may be said in a broad sense to include three 
 elements — theology, worship, and ethics; in other words, 
 an intellectual explanation of the universe, a conscious 
 relation of the human soul to the divine and infinite, and 
 an ordering of the practical conduct of life. Puritanism 
 made theology the corner-stone of religion. Theoreti- 
 cally it took the Bible as its law; but what it really 
 offered was a scheme of the universe; — God in three 
 persons ; the race of man ruined through the sin of its 
 first parent ; a sacrificial atonement ; the appropriation 
 of that atonement through faith as the sole condition of 
 an eternal Heaven, and its rejection the seal of an end- 
 less perdition. This view confronted the soul directly 
 with the most tremendous realities and immeasurable 
 issues. It was a view which in its essentials was com-
 
 8 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 mon to all branclies of the Christian church ; but in its 
 practical application was elsewhere softened, by inter- 
 mediary elements of priesthood and sacrament, and ven- 
 erable and beautiful forms of worship. Puritanism 
 steadily rejected all such aids and interpositions, and 
 set the trembling soul face to face with its Maker, whose 
 sovereign decree had destined it irreversibly to measure- 
 less bliss or woe. The Puritans renounced the authority 
 and mediation of the church on which the soul might 
 comfortably repose ; they rejected the vision of inter- 
 ceding saints filling the air ; angelic ministrations faded 
 almost out of view, while Satanic activity was vividly 
 imagined ; and the liturgies and forms of worship which 
 the genius of ages had enriched were almost wholly 
 thrown aside. The English Puritans turned Beauty out 
 of the service of Religion. For their American descend- 
 ants, the resulting barrenness was intensified by the 
 absence of all artistic creations in the New World. The 
 worshiper had no aid to his imagination from sculptured 
 aisle or swelling organ ; no gi*acious Madonna looked 
 down on him ; the prayers to which he silently listened 
 were but the improvisation of his minister ; the beauty 
 of nature was without meaning for him. The spirit of 
 worship languished in so thin and innutritions an at- 
 mosphere, and the mass of the community tended to a 
 dry formalism in their religious observances, save when 
 lifted by the wave of a " revival." But the theological 
 spirit was very active. The founders of New England 
 included many clergymen among their leaders, and most 
 of these were Oxford or Cambridge graduates. In every 
 town they planted the school beside the church, and no 
 population in the world had so high an average of edu- 
 cation. In the dearth of literary and social resources, 
 the minds of the clergy, and largely of the intellectual 
 class in general, continued to work eagerly and unceas-
 
 THE EAKLY ENVIRONMENT. 9 
 
 ingly on the problems of the universe. The main line 
 of their speculation was a series of modifications of Cal- 
 vinism. The attempt to apply these abstruse specula- 
 tions to the conduct of individual life produced a strange 
 result. A highly metaphysical system was made the 
 basis upon which every man must work out his salvation 
 from hell, and a mystic experience of conviction of sin, 
 self-despair, and conversion was required of the soul with 
 the definiteness of an apothecarj^'s prescription. It was 
 a theory of life which gave constant exercise to specu- 
 lative natures ; by turns exalted and depressed the sen- 
 sitive ; and lost its practical hold on the mass of the 
 community long before it was confessedly modified by 
 the clergy. 
 
 But Puritanism, while it was narrow in its philosophy, 
 and by its lack of beauty and of tenderness stinted the 
 fountains of spiritual feeling, was strong in its appeal to 
 moral purpose. It roused men with the idea of a great 
 destiny. Its tremendous presentation of the issues of 
 existence woke an energy like that which is inspired by 
 man's conflict with the elemental forces of nature. The 
 ideal of conduct which it offered was austere but lofty. 
 It appealed to the sense of obligation rather than to 
 S}Tnpathy or delight. It made men strong rather than 
 sweet ; it made them sober, chaste, and upright. From 
 whatever source derived, — from Puritanism, from the 
 older Christianity, from English stock, from Hebrew re- 
 ligion, from primitive humanity, — the sense of duty lay 
 deep in the New England character. Conscience was the 
 bed-rock of the typical New Englauder, as granite is the 
 foundation of his soil. Deficient in spiritual imagination, 
 severely logical in intellect, he was in the practical con- 
 duct of life the loyal servant of Duty. To Calvinist, 
 Unitarian, or Rationalist the sovereign ^vord was I ought. 
 
 The interests of the state had an absorbing interest
 
 10 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 for its citizens sucli as is hardly known in our modern 
 community, whose tastes are fed from a thousand sources 
 of literature, art, and amusement. Almost every man 
 was a politician. It was not merely that each had a stake 
 and a voice in the commonwealth, but in their monoto- 
 nous lives the place of theater, travel, and newspaper was 
 filled by political debate. 
 
 To the Puritan fathers, the chief end of all human 
 doings had been the salvation of the soul from future 
 perdition. They regarded the ordering of the state as 
 only an incidental step in this process. But under the 
 practical necessities of their situation, they and their 
 descendants had worked out the experiment of political 
 democracy, under the most favorable conditions that had 
 ever existed for it. In and after the Revolutionary war, 
 the sister commonwealths had entered on the vastly more 
 difficult experiment of a great federal democracy. In 
 this creative epoch of the new nation there were found a 
 large group of men with rare capacity for nation-build- 
 ing, — men trained under the Puritan traditions of New 
 England, in the mingled Dutch and English school of 
 New York, in the softened Quakerism of Pennsylvania, 
 and the aristocratic democracy of Virginia and the Caro- 
 linas. The foundations were settled ; the great question 
 between federal and state authority reached a stable 
 equilibrium; then followed nearly half a century in 
 which the young political system was exercised in only 
 moderate difficulties, as if getting well knit for the tre- 
 mendous tasks and problems awaiting it. But the strug- 
 gles between Whigs and Democrats, about tariffs and 
 national banks and internal improvements — the com- 
 bats of Jacksonians and Clay men and Adams men — 
 these, besides their intrinsic importance, shared with 
 religion in furnishing the chief intellectual exercise of 
 a people poor as yet in literary and artistic develop-
 
 THE EAPtLY ENVIEONMENT. 11 
 
 ment ; and they were a constant training in tlie noblest 
 and most complex of social arts — the self-government 
 of the community. Religion and polities were the two 
 main subjects of thought in the community in which 
 young Sam Bowles grew to manhood. It was these 
 themes that gave zest and largeness to lives otherwise 
 somewhat dry and narrow; on these topics wits were 
 sharpened; from these came a touch of ideal greatness; 
 from these sprang passions nobler even in their excesses 
 than the struggle for material gain, — a consciousness of 
 membership in a mighty body politic, and a sense of 
 place in a divine order transcending the seen and finite. 
 
 The primitive period of New England may be taken 
 with sufficient exactness at two hundred years, — lapping 
 over by a quarter of a century into the nineteenth. It 
 was not until then that its second great function began 
 in pouring its sons forth to people the West, while from 
 Europe there set in a tide of immigration which is chang- 
 ing the constituent elements of the population. Since 
 then, too, there have come immeasurable changes in the 
 conditions of intellectual and social life. It was just as 
 the old was broadening into the new that the boy of our 
 story grew up to manhood. The surroundings of his 
 childhood retained in large measure the characteristics of 
 the early time. He belonged to a family and a commu- 
 nity of which the inheritance and possession were sobri- 
 ety, industry, and self-control, unmodified by literature, 
 art, and the social graces and amenities. 
 
 The Unitarian controversy had arisen in Massachusetts 
 a few years before the elder Bowles came to Springfield, 
 and he united with the Unitarian church, which had been 
 established there by a secession from the old First 
 Church that was coeval with the town. In the separa- 
 tion the families of higher social pretensions went 
 generally with the new movement, and the ecclesiastical
 
 12 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 schism divided the society of the town, not with viru- 
 lence, yet to the weakening of the social forces. Early 
 Unitarianism was but a ripening of a long-growing 
 alienation among the intellectual class from the severi- 
 ties of Calvinism. It was from the beginning intel- 
 lectual, decorous, reverent, rather than popular and 
 enthusiastic. Its ministers kept with little alteration 
 the ecclesiastical tone of their Orthodox brethren, and 
 a solemnity verging sometimes on lugubriousness. Of 
 such ministers was the Reverend William B. O. Peabody, 
 pastor of the Unitarian church in Springfield from 
 1820 to 1847. He was a man of piety, refinement, and 
 intellectual cultivation, whose name is still held in 
 honored memory in the denomination, and by the com- 
 munity at large. Dr. Horatio Stebbins's testimony shows 
 how one youthful mind was affected by his ministry : 
 " Here Peabody prophesied and prayed, and his words 
 fell upon my heart like rain upon the tender grass ; and 
 my mature experience makes no abatement from my 
 boyhood's impression of the singular elevation of his 
 mind, and the penetrating purity of his spirit." Yet to 
 most of his youthful auditors. Dr. Peabody was awe- 
 inspiring rather than winning. In his sermons he laid 
 constant emphasis on the perils, the woes, and trausitori- 
 ness of the present life. The sentiments of a creed outlive 
 for a time its intellectual form ; and the view of earthly 
 life as tolerable only because it may lead to something 
 better — a view inherited from the burdened Middle Ages 
 — colored much of the preaching of the early Unitarians. 
 Dr. Peabody used to wear in the pulpit a black gown 
 and black silk gloves. His manner and tones, both in 
 and out of the pulpit, were to a child decidedly solemniz- 
 ing. Of his church the elder Bowles was a steadfast 
 member ; he became a deacon and superintendent of the 
 Sunday-school. His children went to church twice every
 
 THE EAKLY ENVIRONMENT. 13 
 
 Sunday. In their home were practiced the usual re- 
 ligious observances, family prayers every morning, and 
 the '' blessing " before each meal. 
 
 The stream of the community's life flowed slow and 
 tranquil as the Connecticut that glides through the 
 level meadows. The first railroad reached Springfield 
 when the boy was thirteen years old; and just as he 
 was coming of age the fii-st message was flashed over 
 the telegraph wires. Steam and electricity are fit sym- 
 bols, as well as agents, of the revolution that has gone 
 through American society since then. 
 
 In those days Springfield was a country town, its 
 inhabitants principally farmers, centering in a village 
 of residences and a few shops. It was settled, in 1636, 
 by a colony from Roxbury, Mass., shared the experiences 
 of colonial times, and was burned by the Indians in 
 King Philip's war. It drew its prosperity mainly from 
 the fertile meadows bordering the Connecticut, and 
 remained the principal town in Western Massachusetts, 
 but with no special importance or marked growth until 
 it became a railroad center, at the intersection of the 
 great lines joining Boston with Albany and New York 
 with Northern New England and Canada. The town 
 had the characteristic features of New England life, 
 with probably more general prosperity along the rich 
 river basin than was found on the granite-ribbed, bowl- 
 der-strewn soil which characterizes much of the state ; 
 while of mental activity there was less than in Eastern 
 Massachusetts. The families which were recognized as the 
 social aristocracy of the town derived their consequence 
 from wealth acquired in local trade by themselves or their 
 immediate ancestors. The United States Armory gave 
 employment to a class of sturdy and intelligent mechanics. 
 
 The natural scenery of the region is full of various 
 and tranquil beauty. The Connecticut, here about a
 
 14 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 fourth of a mile in width, loiters between its verdant 
 banks, like a great meadow-brook ; beside it, like a nest 
 by the brook-side, lies the town of Springfield, ascending 
 by gently sloping hills, and running off eastward over 
 dry and breezy plains. From many a knoll and terrace 
 one may look upon endless variations of the broad, fair 
 landscape, — the placid river flowing in the midst; away 
 to the west, the blue hill-country of Berkshire ; eastward, 
 the wooded and pastured slopes of the Wilbraham hills, 
 answering the aspects of the sky in ever-changing play 
 of light and shade ; twenty miles to the north, the sharp 
 outlines of the Holyoke range, and Mount Tom lying 
 like a couchant lion. Over the meadows are scattered 
 noble elms ; elms and maples line the streets of the 
 town, so that, seen from the neighboring heights, it 
 seems to lie in a forest. The landscape is clothed through 
 the summer in richest green, heralded in the spring by 
 marvelously delicate and various tints, and ripening into 
 autumnal glory. Across the brown soil of March the 
 flash of a bluebird's wing and a thrilling song tell that 
 winter is past. Over the waving grass-fields of June, 
 the bobolink, tipsy with joy, pours his bubbling laughter. 
 From the arbutus to the aster, a long procession of flow- 
 ers mark the year's almanac, — shy northern blossoms, 
 hardy darlings of the frost, and hues warm as the tropics. 
 Up and down the river lie ancient villages, flavorous of 
 the olden time ; the one broad street overarched with 
 patriarchal trees, the fine old houses dreaming over their 
 past. The tall chimneys of the outlying mill villages, 
 growth of the last half -century, even now scarcely break 
 the aspect of rural peace, which steals in soothing de- 
 light over the beholder's heart. To-day, as fifty years 
 ago, one looks on the homes of a thriving, free, and \dr- 
 tuous people ; — now, as then, he looks on Nature in her 
 aspect of peaceful charm.
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 Boyhood. 
 
 THE Bowles family formed a hard-working, frugal 
 household ; united by a deep but undemonstrative 
 affection ; pushing on with slow steps and sure grip to 
 moderate prosperity ; sincerely and decently pious ; with 
 little of recreation or social enjojTuent. Their home 
 was in a modest two-story frame house, on the north 
 corner of Union and School streets. The oldest son was 
 born in an earlier residence, known afterward as the 
 " Osgood house," near the corner of Main and Howard 
 streets. The family consisted of father, mother, four 
 children, and several apprentices. Sam shared his bed 
 with the youngest apprentice, Chauncey White, who 
 afterward became his foreman, and two other appren- 
 tices had their bed in the same room. The day began 
 with breakfast at six o'clock, the year round, and at 
 seven the master and apprentices were at work ; doing a 
 general printing business in addition to the newspaper. 
 The mistress of the household had a potent voice in all 
 her husband's affairs. She was a woman of plain exte- 
 rior, of quiet and prim manners, under which lay energy 
 and spirit ; even-tempered ; with quicker, more inci- 
 sive mind than that of her husband, and greater force of 
 character and will ; practical rather than intellectual in
 
 16 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 her tastes ; of decided religious character ; a good wife 
 and good mother. ^' She was smart as a whip/' says an 
 apprentice of those days ; " she knew as much of the 
 ofi&ce as her husband did." Of the two parents it was 
 the mother to whom the son bore more intellectual like- 
 ness. But it was the common remark in later years that 
 Sam Bowles was not like his parents, — was not like any- 
 body but himself. In his boyhood he seems to have 
 given no indication of anything remarkable in mind or 
 character, nothing in any way salient or striking. He 
 was a good boy, not wayward, not infected with any 
 vice ; obedient, in the fashion of those days when obe- 
 dience was the first element of family training ; making 
 friendships with other boys, some of which — with David 
 A. Wells, Charles O. Chapin, F. H. Harris, and others — 
 lasted through a life-time ; given to admiration of one 
 girlish charmer after another, for the village boys and 
 girls met freely in the wholesome American way ; with 
 little relish for boyish sports, but a marked fondness, 
 when he did take part, for being leader and captain ; 
 with no aptitude or inclination for manual work ; as a 
 student, faithful, rather slow in acquisition, but retentive 
 of what was once learned. 
 
 He went to the public high school, taught by Dr. Vail, 
 and afterward, at the age of thirteen or perhaps earlier, 
 to the private school of Mr. George Eaton, which he 
 attended for several years, completing there his school 
 education. Mr. Eaton is remembered by his old pupils 
 with high regard. His scholars, boys and girls, were 
 mostly from Unitarian families in Springfield. Young 
 Sam Bowles, in addition to the usual English studies, 
 made some progress in Latin, and read portions of Csesar, 
 Virgil, and Cicero. He wished to go to college, and had 
 Mr. Eaton's sympathy and encouragement in that desire, 
 but his father did not approve of the project and it
 
 BOYHOOD. 17 
 
 was not carried out. In later years Mr. Bowles was 
 wont to speak of this as a severe disappointment, 
 and the want of a college training was a life-long regret 
 to him. 
 
 The father's first purpose was that his oldest son should 
 learn the printer's trade, just as he had done ; but he was 
 sometimes discouraged, and feared the boy would never 
 succeed, because he had so little skill with his hands. If 
 a kite was to be made, or so much as a nail driven, his 
 younger sister was apt to be called to his help. To the 
 end of his life, his hands — long, pale, delicate — had a 
 look of helplessness. He did once go into the printing- 
 room for the purpose of regularly learning its art and 
 mystery; but a few hours of type-setting was enough 
 for him, and he left at the end of the fii'st half-day. 
 At odd times he picked up, after a fashion, the mechan- 
 ical part of the business, but never so far as to have 
 any expertness in it. 
 
 The Yankee boy of those times was wont to have 
 a regular set of "chores" to do, such as cutting and 
 bringing in wood, making fires, and the like. But whei^ 
 there were apprentices in the family, custom assigned 
 this work to the youngest of them ; so Sam escaped these 
 labors, except when his father especially allotted to him 
 a piece of manual work, and even then he could some- 
 times coax one of his companions to act as substitute. 
 Yet he was trained in various ways, as a boy in those 
 days could hardly fail to be, '^ to make himself useful." 
 He di'ove the cows to and from their pasture, carried the 
 "Weekly Bepuhlican to a round of subscribers, and had 
 more or less outdoor and indoor work to do. One sum- 
 mer, when he was perhaps fifteen, his father put him in 
 charge of the garden, and he kept it in trimmest con- 
 dition, disciplining the other childi-en if they let a paper 
 or a wisp of straw lie in the paths. He was very neat in 
 Vol. I.— 2
 
 18 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 his person and clothes, not solicitous about the style and 
 fit of his garments, but fastidious as to their condition, 
 showing in this respect a delicacy and daintiness which 
 was characteristic of him through life. 
 
 Mr. Eaton was in the habit of taking his scholars once 
 a week on a ramble in the woods. The favorite resort was 
 Blake's Woods, a noble pine forest near the town, of which 
 a sadly reduced remnant yet lingers as one of the chief or- 
 naments of the place. Here the teacher, enthusiastic and 
 sympathetic, gave his pupils one of the finest and most 
 serviceable elements of education, by wakening in them 
 the love of Nature. Some of the boys, Sam Bowles among 
 them, used to make up parties to bring flowers from the 
 more distant woods and swamps. He was in those days 
 shooting up fast into a tall, slender boy; carrying his 
 head a little projected forward, as was also his father's 
 habit ; finding companions and favorites among the 
 girls that visited his sisters ; spending his time in school, 
 in the family, a little in his father's office, and sometimes 
 in evening gatherings of the young folks at each other's 
 houses. He was never an adept at skating, ball-playing, 
 and such boyish exercises, nor very fond of them. His 
 comrades had hard work to coax him out to join them in 
 coasting down the long hills near by ; or if he kept them 
 company for once in the thrilling swift descent, the long 
 upward trudge was so little to his liking that he soon 
 returned to the house. No doubt this distaste for hardy 
 sports was partly due to some want of physical vigor ; for 
 though his health as a boy was fairly good, it was never 
 robust; there was no surplus or overflow of vitality. 
 His favorite occupation was reading. The house had a 
 good supply of what was then considered classic English 
 literature, — classic American literature being yet in its 
 early beginnings, — but it was not these solid volumes 
 that attracted the boy so much as the newspapers and
 
 BOYHOOD. 19 
 
 magazines, witli occasionally a new book, that came into 
 his father's office. " Over these he would pore so deeply," 
 says an old associate, " that sometimes you might speak to 
 him half a dozen times and he would not know it." In 
 his last sickness, Mr. Bowles said to a friend, in review- 
 ing his busy life, "I was never much of a boy, — I had 
 very little boyhood." The sobriety of the community 
 and the household, with a want of full vitality and ani- 
 mal spirits, made his early years somewhat colorless. 
 The first strong wakening of life came with the call to 
 manly work.
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 The Beginning op the Daily "Republican." 
 
 IT is almost a matter of course that a father who is fond 
 of his own business and succeeds in it should wish 
 his eldest boy to follow in his footsteps. So it was with 
 Sam Bowles's father, and the boy himself was nothing 
 loath. To be the maker of a newspaper was an attractive 
 prospect, and the opportunity was right before him. The 
 father had no foresight of the high power which the son 
 was to develop, and saw no occasion for giving him a 
 much broader and more liberal education than had fallen 
 to his own share. When the son left school, at the 
 age of seventeen, he began the miscellaneous duties of 
 " office-boy," with sometimes a turn of work in the print- 
 ing-room ; passing on gradually to write occasional items 
 of local news, and to practice the various duties of a 
 country editor, except the writing of " leaders." Such 
 few of these as the paper contained were done by an 
 older hand, generally one outside of the office. The boy 
 had no distinct ideal of what he was to do or be. He did 
 faithfully and laboriously his work as it lay before him, 
 conscientious and thorough even in drudgery, as his 
 father had been. 
 
 But in young Bowles there soon showed itself a push- 
 ing, ambitious spirit, which aimed at higher things than 
 had contented his father. When he was eighteen years
 
 old, a bold enterprise shaped itself in his mind. He 
 proposed to his father to make the Republican a daily 
 paper. He was at first by no means favorable to the 
 idea. There was not a daily paper in the state outside 
 of Boston. There was nothing in the size or charac- 
 ter of Springfield that seemed to him to promise favor- 
 ably for such a venture. He had worked through early 
 failures and hardships to a moderate success. The 
 Weekly Eepuhlican was now a well-established concern ; 
 its editor was n earing his fiftieth year ; why increase his 
 toils and risk what had been gained '? 
 
 But the son was persistent and persuasive. His will 
 was strong and his tongue skillful to plead. Railroads 
 were coming in ; already there were daily trains to Bos- 
 ton and Albany, and soon would be to Hartford and 
 New York ; the town must grow under their influence, 
 and outlying towns be brought near ; Hartford had its 
 daily paper ; the Weekly Republican was a good basis to 
 start from. All this and much more the boy urged on 
 his father, who at last gave consent as far as this : " If 
 you, Sam, will take the main responsibility of working 
 and pushing it, the daily shall be started." That was 
 enough. The plans were made ; father and son went to 
 Hartford to inspect the methods of making a daily pa- 
 per ; and on the twenty-seventh of March, 1844, appeared 
 the first number of the Daily Republican. It was an even- 
 ing paper, a small four-page sheet, with just two columns 
 of original matter, including prospectus, editorial, and 
 local news. So the ship was launched and the young 
 man's life-work begun. 
 
 Work it was from the start, and hard work. The 
 father toiled steadily, in his slow, assiduous way : on the 
 son it feU to break the new paths, invent methods, and 
 carry from the start the larger part of the brain-work 
 and pen-work requisite to meet the inexorable daily de-
 
 22 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 mand. The alert mother used to set rocking-chairs at 
 the table at meal-times : '• Mr. Bowles and Sam work 
 hard and have so little time to rest." Almost at the out- 
 set there came to the young man an ominous breakdown. 
 A weakness of the bowels became severe and chronic, 
 and it was feared that his lungs were in danger. In the 
 winter of 1844-5, he was obliged to seek a warmer climate, 
 and spent several months in the Southern states, for the 
 most part in Louisiana. When he left home his father 
 gave him a Bible, with this inscription on the fly-leaf: 
 
 " Deae Samtel : Read this book often and prayerfully. 
 Let it be your chief counselor and fi-iend. Let it strengthen 
 your heart to resist temptation. May it be yoiu" support in 
 affliction, and may God protect and bless you in your absence, 
 and restore you in health to Youi* Parents." 
 
 The young man was lonely and homesick, but he came 
 back with health restored, and having made his first 
 marked success as a writer. From the South he sent 
 home a series of fifteen letters to the pajDcr, which gave 
 to the local public its first impression that " Young Sam 
 Bowles was a smart fellow." It was not a showy^, boyish 
 smartness that the letters showed, but the eye of a good 
 observer and the pen of a good reporter. The writer 
 notes the climate, the productions, the business resources 
 of the places he visits ; describes the cultivation of cot- 
 ton and sugar ; tells something of manners and morals ; 
 gives an occasional bit of picturesque description ; 
 touches observantly on local politics ; and infers that 
 slavery is worse for the masters than for the slaves. 
 The letters are written in a clear and simple style, in- 
 elegant sometimes, but never pretentious or obscure. 
 They show a young man with quick eye and ear and 
 shrewd brain, observant of practical affairs, skillful to 
 gather facts and to tell a plain story.
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE DAILY "eEPUBLICAN." 23 
 
 The traveler came home, — with health so strengthened 
 that it was seven years before he again succumbed, — and 
 resumed the stroke oar in the RepubUcan. The paper 
 kept steadily on, gaining a little in quality and standing. 
 It began without a subscriber, and at the end of two 
 years claimed only three hundred. In December, 1845, 
 it became a morning paper, and with that change came 
 the hours of late* night- work for its editors. One chief 
 item in the younger man's work was for a good while to 
 gather and write the items of local news. After a while 
 he developed a talent for condensing into brief and read- 
 able form the long and heavy articles in which the great 
 political papers of the day discharged their thunder. On 
 these he began to practice that great art of '' boiling 
 down " which his paper afterward carried to such perfec- 
 tion. For original writing, beyond news, he did not 
 know that he had capacity, and the reporting and gen- 
 eral work of the paper gave him ample occupation. 
 
 In the last year of his life, Mr. Bowles was asked 
 by a friend : " Do you trace your success to any special 
 impulse at the beginning?" He answered, " Yes. Soon 
 after I took hold of the paper there was a quarrel about 
 the management of the Armory. The men who differed 
 from my father made it a personal matter against him, 
 and tried to break down his business by starting an 
 opposition paper. That roused my ire, and I determined 
 that we would not be beaten. I threw myself into the 
 paper with aU my might. After a year my opponents 
 came to me, and wanted a truce, but I said, ' No ; you 
 began the fight and now you shall have it.' And they 
 did, till they were driven from the field. That fight got 
 my steam up, and after that I kept on." 
 
 This hostility to the RepuMlcan took form in the estab- 
 lishment of the Bailif Evening Gazette^ changed from a 
 weekly to a daily paper in April, 1846, when the younger
 
 24 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 Bowles was in his twenty-first year. The trouble arose 
 upon the transfer of the United States Armory, which 
 was the principal manufactory in the town, from civil to 
 military control. The new superintendent, Major Ripley, 
 an able and energetic officer, introduced a different re- 
 gime from the easy-going ways that had been in fashion. 
 Regular and sharply enforced hours of work, marks and 
 fines for tardiness or neglect, a military exactness and 
 formality, — these and the like were new features to a set 
 of independent Yankee workmen, accustomed to doing 
 their work in their own way. There were loud com- 
 plaints against the superintendent, the citizens took sides 
 in the matter, and the dispute came to have a good deal 
 of acrimony. It culminated in a military court of in- 
 quiry, which acquitted Major Ripley. The BepuUican 
 had criticised him, but in a very temperate manner, and 
 had by no means made the subject a prominent one. 
 But feeling ran high ; and just before the conclusion of 
 the court, the Gazette was changed from a weekly to a 
 daily, by way of retaliation on the Bepuhlican. The lat- 
 ter paper engaged in no wordy warfare with its rival. 
 Its columns showed at this time not a trace of that ready 
 and brilliant combativeness which was so marked a dis- 
 tinction of the later Bepuhlican. But one who studies 
 the files sees unmistakably a marked and steady growth 
 in the merit of the paper from this time on. For two 
 years it had done little more than sustain the quality 
 with which it began. But through 1846 it grows broader 
 and better, and after that it does not cease to grow. It 
 shows gradually an increase of reading matter, a better 
 arrangement, and an abler style of discussion. During 
 this year first appears that prompt, full, and admirable 
 reporting of the state election returns — upon a system 
 like that originated by the Boston Atlas some years 
 before — which became one of the paper's brilliant feat-
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE DAILY "REPUBLICAN." 25 
 
 ures. The size of the sheet was repeatedly enlarged, and 
 the subscription list steadily increased. Through these 
 years Sam Bowles was putting into the paper his hardest 
 work, his best life-blood. The situation appealed to his 
 pride, his combativeness, his filial feeling, and that de- 
 light in journalism for its own sake which was becoming 
 in him a master passion. The immediate struggle ended 
 in victory, in July, 1848. The Gazette was absorbed in 
 the Eepuhlican, and its editor, Mr. William Stowe, a man 
 of character and ability, was added to the Bepublican's 
 working force.
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 The Old and the New Journalism. 
 
 THE first editorial, beyond a paragraph, whicli ap- 
 peared in the Daily Republican, April 24, 1844, was 
 a vigorous protest against "The Annexation of Texas," 
 for which a treaty had just been signed by President 
 Tyler. With that annexation may be said to have be- 
 gun the new era in American politics, in which the issue 
 was directly tried between slavery and freedom, and at 
 last between secession and union. In the second month 
 of the paper's life, on May 27, 1844, it told of the first 
 telegraphic dispatch between Washington and Baltimore. 
 Thus it was at the very point of transition between the 
 old and the new politics, and between the old and the 
 new journalism, that Samuel Bowles began his career. 
 
 In the great cities a new race of newspapers had begun 
 to supplant the older dynasty. The papers of the earlier 
 time had been in every sense heavy ; big in size, high in 
 price, dull, long-winded, intensely partisan, and mainly 
 used as the instruments of the party chiefs. Of these jour- 
 nalists — represented by such names as the elder Blair, 
 Gales and Seaton, Major Noah, Richard Haughton, and 
 Colonel Greene — Mr. Horace White says : '' These men 
 and their generation were given over to the 'leading 
 article* as the sole end and aim of journalism. They 
 were a strong-limbed and hard-headed race, but they had 
 
 26
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW JOURNALISM. 27 
 
 never learned that 'variety is the spice of life,' and 
 ' brevity the soul of wit.' The railway had not reached 
 out its arms, the telegraph had not spread its wings for 
 them. They were ruled by their environment, and the 
 journalism they produced consisted of a diurnal succes- 
 sion of essays more or less learned, and more or less bel- 
 licose, but as regular as the succession of day and night, 
 or of seed-time and harvest." 
 
 But within a dozen years there had sprung up in New 
 York the first of a new class of newspapers, such as the 
 Sun, begun in 1833, and the Herald, in 1835. They were 
 sold for one or two cents (the older papers were not sold 
 by single copies, being sent only to regular subscribers); 
 they aimed at news more than discussion ; their style 
 was lively and dashing ; they were swift to seize and 
 invent new methods in every direction ; they brought 
 steam into their press-rooms and organized special ser- 
 vice by land and by water for getting the earliest infor- 
 mation. They struck into many veins of social interest, 
 — trade, religion, and personal gossip, — which the older 
 papers had ignored. They discussed politics without 
 asking orders from the chieftains at Washington and 
 Albany. It was in papers of this class that American 
 journalism came of age. Hitherto the newspaper had 
 been a minor and a servant. It had been an instrument 
 to promote some other interest, generally that of a po- 
 litical party or a personal clique; controlled by the 
 leaders of the clique or the party, and sustained by their 
 patronage. In the new journalism the newspaper became 
 its own master. It was an independent enterprise, as 
 much so as a cotton mill or a cheese factory. So far as 
 financial success was the object, — and such success was 
 generally a main object, and always the necessary con- 
 dition of any further achievement, — the resource was 
 no longer subsidies from a political party, but the pay-
 
 28 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BO^^XES. 
 
 ments of its buyers and advertisers. The buyers were 
 to be won by giving people sucb a paper as they wanted. 
 It was, in a sense, the discovery of James Gordon Ben- 
 nett, — his great contribution to the journalistic art, — 
 that what people most wanted in a newspaper, and 
 were most willing to pay for, was news. Grive news, and 
 you gain subscribers ; gain subscribers, and you will have 
 advertisers ; that is the formula of newspaper success. 
 
 In the new journalism this solid commercial fact of a 
 successful business enterprise was the basis which the 
 journalist might, if he pleased, use as a platform from 
 which to say to the world his word of advice or exhorta- 
 tion, of preaching or scoffing. Thus there was born a 
 new social power. The journalist might use his position 
 for good or for evil, but henceforth his class must be 
 reckoned with as a force not less distinct than the clergy 
 or the law-makers. 
 
 The New York Herald was the first conspicuous ex- 
 ample in America of the new journalism. Its sole object 
 was money-making ; its creed was expressed by the edi- 
 tor when he wrote, " We have never been in a minority, 
 and we never shall be " ; its political sympathies were 
 generally Democratic ; its temper was one of rollicking 
 impudence ; and it neither feared God nor regarded man. 
 Its enterprise in news-gathering won popular favor, and 
 drove its dull and respectable rivals either to imitation 
 or to death. Its mocking temper and its open worship 
 of material success shocked the moral sentiment of the 
 community, and its reckless personalities showed at full 
 height the virulence of a period of bitter partisanship 
 and low culture. By its merits as a newspaper it won 
 the reward it sought — wealth and notoriety. 
 
 In 1841, Horace Greeley established the New York 
 Tribune. Mr. Greeley's characteristic and best ambition 
 was to be a teacher of men. He was a sincere enthusiast
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW JOURNALISM. 29 
 
 in social and political ideas, a master of pithy and elo- 
 quent speech to the common people, and he found in the 
 newspaper his best instrumcDt. The influence of the 
 time, and the associates he found, gave prominence to 
 the news element of the Tribune, but its especial service 
 was as a social educator. He was an ardent politician, 
 and his paper heartily supported the Whig and after- 
 ward the Republican party, though with a considerable 
 degree of independence. But politics was not its exclu- 
 sive field. Through its earlier years it gave more of 
 education and leadership than any other American jour- 
 nal in literature, education, reform, and all the higher 
 forms of social activity. 
 
 The journalistic features of the period just following 
 the establishment of the Daily Republican were thus 
 summed up by Mr. Bowles, thirty years later : 
 
 "American journalism was undergoing the greatest trans- 
 formation and experiencing the deepest inspiration of its whole 
 history. The telegraph and the Mexican war came La together j 
 and the years '46-'51 were the years of most marked growth 
 known to America. It was something more than progTess, it 
 was revolution. Then the old Sun was in its best estate ; then 
 Mr. Bennett was in the prime of his vigorous intellect, and 
 his enterprise and independence were at the height of their 
 audacity. He had as first lieutenant, Mr.. Frederic Hudson, 
 the best organizer of a mere newspaper America has ever seen. 
 Then Mr. Greeley and Mr. Dana were harmoniously and vigor- 
 ously giving the Tribune that scope of treatment and that 
 inteUectual depth and breadth which have never departed 
 wholly from it, and which are perhaps the greatest gifts that 
 any single journal has made to the journalism of the country. 
 Then Mr. Raymond commenced the Times and won for it at 
 once a prominent place among its rivals. And then began that 
 horde of provincial daily journals, springing up like mush- 
 rooms all over the land. Hardly a town of 10,000 inhabitants 
 but that essayed its diurnal issue in those fertile years."
 
 30 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 It was in this field of provincial journalism that Mr. 
 Bowles's work was done. Of the old-fashioned country 
 newspaper he once wrote : 
 
 " News had grown old when it was published. The paper 
 did the work of the chronicler or annalist merely, and was the 
 historian of the past rather tlian a spectator and actor in the pres- 
 ent. It was not upon the printed column that the events of the 
 day struck the heart of the living age, and drew from it its sparks 
 of fire. In those times that place of contact was found in the 
 personal intercourse of men. News ran then along the street, 
 from mouth to mouth ; the gossiping neighbor carried it ; the 
 post-rider brought it into the groups gathered at the village 
 store. By and by came the heavy gazette, not to make its 
 impression but to record the fact. . . . The joumahsm was 
 yet to be created that should stand firmly in the possession of 
 powers of its own ; that should be concerned with the passing 
 and not with the past ; that should perfectly reflect its age, and 
 yet should be itself no mere reflection ; that should control 
 what it seemed only to transcribe and narrate ; that should 
 teach without assuming the manners of an instructor, and 
 should command the coming times with a voice that had still 
 no sound but its echo of the present." 
 
 Among the country newspapers of its time, the Weekly 
 Eepuhlican, before 1844, stood well. It had outlived and 
 absorbed several rivals during its twenty years' exist- 
 ence, and thus had satisfied the test of the survival of 
 the fittest. But one who now turns over its old files will 
 find scanty material even for the chronicler or annalist. 
 A file of the Weekly Repuhlican for any of the years of 
 its later history affords a most graphic and vivid week- 
 to-week history of the period. These volumes will be a 
 rich treasury to the future historian. But, between the 
 years 1826 and 1844, the pages of the Bepiiblican throw 
 little light upon the social life of the times. It has two 
 chief staples — political discussions, and scraps of miscel- 
 laneous unassorted news. The politics are more vigorous
 
 THE OLD AND THE NEW JOUKNALISM. 31 
 
 than lucid. Personal and party names do service largely 
 in place of rational discussion. Nothing is more char- 
 acteristic of the younger Bowles's methods in his ma- 
 turity than his constant reference to general principles 
 in his writing, — the special question or incident being 
 illumined by its relation to some broad idea. In his 
 work we have continually, "philosophy teaching by 
 example." But the father's paper followed largely the 
 easier method which assumes that the editor and his 
 readers are of the same mind, and simply reiterates under 
 a variety of forms that they are right and their oppo- 
 nents wrong. Political discussion forms the central inter- 
 est, and occupies half the space, of the Weekly Repuhlican 
 before 1844. For the rest it is filled generally with some 
 selected " tale " ; with an odd collection of miscellaneous 
 news items, in which " shocking accidents," " mysterious 
 occurrences " and " sad calamities " predominate ; and 
 with scraps of literary and religious matter. There is 
 an occasional piece of local news, meagerly told, some- 
 times with mild attempt at humor. But there is nothing 
 like a systematic presentation of the week's occurrences 
 even in the town and neighborhood, still less in more 
 distant fields. In reading the meager chronicle one is 
 moved to ask, " Did nothing happen in those days ? Or 
 did no one know how to tell what happened ! "
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 The First Years of Work : Ashmun and Calhoun. 
 
 SUCH was the general condition of American jour- 
 nalism when Mr. Bowles began his work, and such 
 was the paper which was his school and his basis to 
 build upon. The first development which he showed 
 was in solid rather than brilliant qualities. In the 
 words of one who knew him long and weU, '' The fire, 
 spirit, life, which in his prime he was so full of, did not 
 appear in his early years. There was not much to de- 
 velop him at first. He went away from home little, and 
 he had not an inspiring circle of acquaintances. He was 
 plodding, industrious, saving, — that was his reputation. 
 But he whom in later years we knew as Sam, Bowles was 
 not there, — not even the suggestion of him." 
 
 In these first years, he was under the pressing neces- 
 sity of unresting work. The best editorial writing at 
 this time was done by one or two men outside of the 
 ofl&ce. Except this, almost all the business and editorial 
 labor came upon father and son, and most heavily upon 
 the son. He worked late at night ; vacations and holi- 
 days were unknown ; of recreation and general society 
 he had almost nothing. 
 
 The fij'st special power he showed was in the faculty of 
 seeing a thing clearly and telling it as he saw it. He 
 was quick to find out what was going on. His big eyes 
 
 32
 
 THE FIRST YEAES OF WORK. 33 
 
 — of SO dark a brown that they often seemed black — saw 
 everything that men were doing about him. In his news 
 items the community began to find a little daily history 
 of itself. Springfield was probably in reality much the 
 same town in 1848 as in 1843 ; but as reflected in the 
 Republican it has become a much more interesting place. 
 
 Mr, Bowles was at the outset a slow writer and a slow 
 thinker. Even his news reports were written patiently 
 and laboriously. His epigrammatic brilliance, his genius 
 for terse and telling phrase, belonged altogether to his 
 later development. So did his power of managing men, 
 
 — a power compounded of magnetism and tact. His 
 first foreman had been his room-mate as a boy, and, 
 being a stiff-grained Yankee, was not very amenable to 
 the management of his old companion, and gave him 
 many a troublous hour. The editor managed to hold 
 his own, but at home he sometimes cried with vexation 
 over the difficulties of the composing-room. 
 
 He seems to have had no marked period of mental 
 fermentation and deep questioning. Among his con- 
 temporaries in New England, there was much unsettling 
 and relaying of foundations. Emerson and Carlyle 
 were uttering their quickening words. Transcendent- 
 alism was at its height, and all manner of reforms and 
 agitations were in the air. The Abolition movement was 
 stirring the social and political world with thrills of 
 wrath and of sympathy. It was a yeasty time : intel- 
 lectual America was in the stage of uneasy adolescence, 
 with its passion, self-questioning, aspiration, and revolt, 
 A few years later, no man was more sensitive to the 
 moral atmosphere of the community than Mr, Bowles, 
 But in his youth he was not especially stirred by what 
 we now look back to as the vital and prophetic forces of 
 the time. With those forces, as social influences, he did 
 not come in close contact. The town he lived in was 
 Vol. I.— 3
 
 34 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 provincial as uo place is provincial in these days of 
 railroad and telegraph. The movements of thought, 
 which, as we look back on them, appear like tidal waves 
 agitating the whole community, were in reality narrow 
 currents, which left the greater part of society a long 
 time unmoved. Boston and its neighborhood awoke 
 to the new life long before the rest of the country. The 
 social atmosphere of the Connecticut Valley was conserv- 
 ative and in a degree materialistic. It was little respon- 
 sive to the passionate cry of the Abolitionists. That dry- 
 ness of the old New England life, that want of color and 
 warmth and spiritual insight, against which Emerson 
 and Thoreau and the Transcendentalists revolted, so per- 
 vaded and incrusted the general community that only 
 the more sensitive and restless spirits answered to the 
 call for something better. At the time of life when a 
 young man is most liable to questioning and mental un- 
 rest, Mr. Bowles was held too closely by work and re- 
 sponsibility to have any leisure for exploring excursions 
 into the infinite. His whole early bent was practical 
 rather than speculative. He found his great interest, 
 beyond his personal work, in that broadest of practical 
 subjects, the political life of the nation. His finest work 
 as a reporter was his account of political conventions; 
 and his journeys to these, with the contact into which 
 they brought him with leading men, were a great step 
 in that intercourse with humanity in which lay much of 
 the education of his maturity. He had grown up in a 
 family and a community in which the solid and practical 
 qualities were more cultivated than the graces and amen- 
 ities. He had by nature an instinct to claim the first 
 place ; and the early struggle for success, in which every 
 foot of ground had to be fought for, was not likely to 
 lessen that disposition. His associates found him some- 
 times selfish and sometimes crusty. The sweeter and
 
 THE FIKST YEARS OF WOEK. 35 
 
 mellower traits needed years and experience for their 
 full ripening. 
 
 His habits were pure, and only in work was he given 
 to injurious indulgence. With early manhood began 
 the lavish, unstinted drain of nervous power through 
 excessive toil and shortened sleep. There appeared no 
 lack of nervous force until in later years this steady 
 drain had weakened him. Indeed, the immense activity 
 which in effect condensed half a dozen life-times into 
 his fifty-two years, showed that his original endowment 
 of nerve and brain power was magnificent. It seems 
 probable that the quiet and unstimulated character of 
 his boyish years was no bad preparation for the intensely 
 energetic career that was to follow. From the time when 
 the first friction of manly work and struggle struck fii-e 
 within him, the flame never ceased to burn. But through 
 his boyhood and adolescence nature had slowly and 
 quietly ripened and stored her forces within him, amid a 
 sedate household and a tranquil community. 
 
 The two men whose influence on the early life of Sam- 
 uel Bowles and the Bepuhlican was most marked, were 
 William B. Calhoun and George Ashmun. To Mr. Cal- 
 houn more than to any other man the paper owed its 
 first high merit as a political teacher. The editorials in 
 which the little provincial sheet, even in its earlier days, 
 spoke sometimes with a voice as forcible and as lofty as 
 the best of the great journals, were for the most part 
 written by him. Mr. Ashmun made less immediate con- 
 tribution to the Repuhlican, but his was the most brill- 
 iant and impressive personality at that time in western 
 Massachusetts, and he fascinated and helped to mold the 
 young man who was his near neighbor. Mr. Bowles 
 once said, toward the end of his life, that the only man 
 he ever felt dominate him was George Ashmun. He 
 sketched the portraits of Calhoun and Ashmun at the
 
 36 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 time of their deaths. Those portraits deserve to be given 
 here, at least their most salient features, — not only as 
 among the best specimens of Mr. Bowles's style in its 
 maturity, but because the two men acted upon his char- 
 acter from different sides as strong formative influences ; 
 and because each illustrated a conspicuous type among 
 the New Englanders of the last generation ; — the one, a 
 modernized Puritan, the other a personal and political 
 disciple of Daniel Webster. 
 
 The obituary of Mr. Calhoun, November 9, 1865, says 
 of him : 
 
 "A vigorous constitution, simple habits, and great care have 
 long withstood sharp disease, combiniag consumption, catarrh, 
 and dyspepsia ; — it was not in humanity to resist such union of 
 assault longer or more bravely ; and he died with the dignity 
 and the courage and yet the submissiveness with which he had 
 always lived. 
 
 *' Mr. Calhoun was beyond any other man of past or present 
 generation the public man of Springfield. No one was ever 
 more truly popular among us than he; no other citizen ever 
 held so many high pubhc trusts, or so long, as he ; and no 
 man, perhaps, ever gave more satisfaction to his constituents, 
 or more faithfully fulfilled his duties." 
 
 There follows a summary of the events of his life. 
 He was born in Boston in 1796, educated at Yale, came 
 to Springfield a young lawyer; was sent to the legisla- 
 ture (House) from 1825 to 1835, and for the last two years 
 was Speaker ; was in Congress for Hampden and Hamp- 
 shire counties from 1835 to 1843 ; failed then in health ; 
 went to the State Senate and was its president in 1846 
 and 1847 ; then was Secretary of State for three years ; 
 was a State Bank Commissioner for three years from 
 1853 ; lived on his farm in the intervals of public service ; 
 was mayor of Springfield in 1859, and again was repre- 
 sentative in the legislature in 1861.
 
 THE FIKST TEARS OF WOEK. 37 
 
 " This was the last of his pubHc service. Since, his retire- 
 ment has been inexorable from the growing power of his disease, 
 now at last finally victorious. But the cordial respect and 
 tender thought of the communities he had so long and so faith- 
 fully served waited on him in his invaUd home ; and never was 
 there a party emergency, or popular want of leader, that his 
 name was not mentioned, and his incapacity lamented. 
 
 "None of this popular confidence, none of these popular 
 trusts, were due to what are understood in pohtical cii'cles as 
 'popular quaUties.' There was no self-seeking, no placating 
 manner, very httle warming, magnetic quaUty, in Mr. Calhoun. 
 We never knew him to seek an office ; he yielded to the oppor- 
 tunities for it oftener than he would but that he was poor, and 
 ill-health and disrehsh unfitted him for the successful practice 
 of his profession ; but we never could detect the slightest ele- 
 ment of the demagogue or the office-seeker in his character or 
 his manners. The atmosphere of his presence forbade any 
 such ideas. He was consistently, radically, democratic in his 
 thought and principles 5 as true a republican as ever Uved ; but 
 his appearance and his manner were always dignified, self- 
 respecting, unimpassioned. When he spoke, particularly when 
 he addressed a pubUc audience, there was more of enthusiasm, 
 and he was always earnest in conviction and utterance. In 
 writing, too, his style was far more spirited, popular, and en- 
 thusiastic than would have been imagined by those not famihar 
 with this expression of his life. He did nothing so weU as this, 
 indeed. His style was pure, the purest, yet popular and entic- 
 ing. It was both vigorous and effective, simple and elevated. 
 For many years he was an occasional editorial writer for the Re- 
 publican, and for several years quite a voluminous contributor to 
 its columns. He wrote very readily and with great perfection 
 in detail. No copy was ever so clean as his. His electioneer- 
 ing paragraphs were especially admirable, — the fashion is gone 
 out with us now ; but his appeals to the old Whigs to rally at 
 the polls, to vote early, to get out the sick, to stand by the 
 polls till night, and generally to save their party and their 
 country, in the pending crisis, had as much pith and ring to 
 them as Thurlow Weed's, and more of culture and rhetoric.
 
 38 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 '^ The one superior element in Mr. Calhoun's character and 
 life was its high moral quahty. It was this and the subtle 
 magnetism of it that made him so strong with the people, that 
 gave him such influence with them, and such power in pubhc 
 places. No man we ever knew was more gifted in this respect; 
 it seemed an endowment of nature, indeed, more than a disci- 
 pline of life, with him — it seemed as if he were born into it, 
 and had always lived in it. His rehgious character grew out 
 of this, and became in middle life and since a conspicuous and 
 even dominating influence with him. He was very much ab- 
 sorbed in rehgious and theological reading ; probably his 
 hbrary is the richest in these respects in all this region ; and 
 the old Pm'itan habits and thoughts appeared to grow firm 
 into his nature with his study and experience. 
 
 '' Mr. Calhoun began his pubhc life the very season the 
 Bepuhlican was started, forty years ago, and he and it have 
 always been in pohtical sympathy. He was an habitue of its 
 office and writer for its columns when we began to sweep out, 
 caiTy papers, and play ' roller boy.' He has been its familiar 
 ever since ; though not so frequently a visitor as before the 
 death of his intimate friend and contemporary, the original 
 proprietor and editor, and his own broken health. We imagine 
 he felt a little shy of the youthful rashness that succeeded to 
 the helm, as we never wholly outgrew the feeling of awe and 
 distant respect that his tall, erect form, his sober face, and his 
 stiff, iron-gray hair, as well as the weighty and measured wis- 
 dom of his editorials, created in our boyish breast. Years and 
 invalid experience have unlocked for us some of the mysteries 
 of his hfe ; we knew him better lately without seeing him at 
 all ; — and we knew, too, that honorable and useful as his life 
 has been, it would have been more effective and even more 
 successful in a worldly sense had he not ever borne torture and 
 weakness in his body ; but that it could hardly have been nobler 
 and more faithful, or earned a higher glory in Immortality." 
 
 Upon the death of Mr. Ashmun, in the summer of 
 1870, Mr. Bowles wrote of him : 
 
 '' No citizen of western Massachusetts, of all her generations, 
 ever made that impress upon his feUows, ever more stimulated
 
 THE FIRST YEARS OF WORK. 39 
 
 the hope and stiiTed the pride of his own neighbors and friends, 
 than George Ashmun. Other men have made larger use of 
 their opportunities and their gifts. The very wealth of his own 
 seemed to make him careless of them, and he Hved and died, 
 himself sharing the vexation of his admirers at what might 
 have been." 
 
 An epitome of his life up to 1854 is given, in a note 
 of his own to the editor : " Born at Blandford, Mass., 
 1804 ; graduated at Yale ; studied law and began prac- 
 tice in Springfield in 1828 ; was sent four times to the 
 Massachusetts House of Representatives, and was its 
 Speaker in 1841 ; went twice to the State Senate ; and 
 was in the National House from 1845 to 1851. Such," 
 he writes, " is my public history during the fifty years 
 which are completed to-day ! I have had too much of 
 public life for my own good, and more than is good for 
 any man who wisely seeks the happiness of himself or 
 his family, and not enough to be of any service to any 
 one else, or worth being put upon record." 
 
 " Early," writes Mr. Bowles, " he became both a per- 
 sonal and political favorite, and there never has been a 
 time when the people of Springfield, almost without re- 
 gard to party, would not join with enthusiasm in elevat- 
 ing him to any public station within their power." In 
 his profession he was associated from 1834 until his sub- 
 stantial retirement in 1851 with Reuben A. Chapman, 
 afterward chief justice of the state. He was not a se- 
 vere general student, but always mastered his cases ; the 
 day before the trial he might be off with his dog and 
 gun, but the struggle found him prepared. 
 
 '' He comprehended as by instinct not only the strong points 
 of his own case, but the weak points of his adversary's, and he 
 was alert and vigorous in following up every advantage. Sub- 
 tle or simple, attentive or negligent, indifferent or absorbed ; 
 vehement and overpowering in assertion and bold invective, or
 
 40 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 calm in statement and modest in appeal, he really had no 
 match in the profession in all this part of the state, and if he 
 had chosen to give himself up to the law with any consistent 
 and persistent following, his triumphs in it would have swept 
 through the state, and gone into the higher courts of the 
 large cities. . . . 
 
 " But perhaps his great power in trying a case, as indeed his 
 great power in politics or in social life, was his personal influ- 
 ence over men. He was a student of human nature, and some- 
 what prided himself upon his attainments in tliis respect. He 
 had all the elements of great personal attraction, and added to 
 this a subtle and cogent way of putting a case from the stand- 
 point of the man whom he was seeking to influence. By being 
 master of himself and superior to the reasons which influenced 
 his own mind, it was that he became capable of giving the rea- 
 sons which should influence other minds. His career in pubhc 
 life is full of striking illustrations of this great power of his. 
 Probably the most notable was the result of his interview with 
 Stephen A. Douglas, directly after the rebels fired on Fort 
 Sumter, and the rebellion was fuUy launched upon the land. 
 Such were his appeals, such the force of the arguments he ad- 
 dressed to Douglas, that the great lUinoisian rose up superior 
 to partisanship, superior to disappointment, and took his stand 
 with the country, ' Now,' said Mr. Ashmun, although it was 
 very late in the night, * let us go up to the White House and 
 talk with Mr. Lincoln. I want you to say to him what you 
 have said to me, and then I want the result of this night's de- 
 liberations to be telegraphed to the country.' That interview 
 at the White House between these three men — Lincoln, Doug- 
 las, and Ashmun — should be historical. Then and there Mr. 
 Douglas took down the map and planned the campaign. Then 
 and there he gave in, most eloquently and vehemently, his ad- 
 hesion to the Administration and the country. Mr. Ashmun 
 himself briefly epitomized the story, and it went by telegraph 
 that night aU over the country, to electrify and encourage 
 every patriot on the morrow. 
 
 " In pubhc life, not only by such address as this, but by 
 abihty in debate, by wisdom in council, by adroitness in deal-
 
 THE FIKST YEAES OF WORK. 41 
 
 ing with the circumstances of the moment, and the prejudices 
 and passions of friends and foes, he wielded great influence, 
 and had in fact no peer on the floor while in Congress, and was 
 always put forward by his fi'iends to manage any difficult case, 
 to discomfit any dangerous opponent. He was always true to 
 the advanced ideas of the Whigs of Massachusetts " upon the 
 great questions of the time. *' Though his great friend, Mr. 
 Webster, abandoned the Wilmot Proviso principle, Mr. Ashmun 
 could not and did not. . . . His intimacy with and admira- 
 tion for Mr. Webster, more than any other circumstance, per- 
 haps, shaped his public career and intennipted his growth in 
 pubhc life. It always seemed to us a remarkable circumstance, 
 as a striking testimony of the consistency and firmness of Mr. 
 Ashmun's principles, that Mr. Webster did not confide to him in 
 advance, as he did to many others, the character of his famous 
 seventh of March compromise speech. The letters which Mr. 
 Ashmun then wrote to his correspondents at home would now 
 be regarded as valuable pohtical revelations. * Don't beheve,' 
 said he, day after day, * what you hear about Mr. Webster's 
 forthcoming speech. He will make no such concessions as are 
 attributed to him. To use his own words, " the past at least is 
 secure," and he will take no steps backward.' " When the speech 
 came, Mr. Ashmun was as much surprised as any one ; it did 
 not shake his personal loyalty to Webster, but he would not go 
 with bim in giving up the Wilmot Proviso. " But his personal 
 feelings were so strongly in sympathy with the man that, with- 
 out giving up his piinciples, he espoused Mr. Webster's side in 
 the ensuing pohtical and pei^onal quarrels, and went out of 
 pohtical life in consequence. Never was there greater evidence, 
 it seems to us, of the real personal power of Mr. Webster, than 
 the fact that this strong man, before whom and to whom aU 
 others yielded, surrendered himself almost completely to him, 
 shared his controversies, and accepted voluntarily his fate. Nor 
 do we ever find the evidence that Mr. Webster truly appre- 
 ciated this great tribute to his power, this great gift of self- 
 sacrificing friendship. It seems to be the weakness of men of 
 the Websterian position and supremacy to regard men nearly 
 aU alike, and make no true distinction between the characters
 
 42 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 of those who give them their friendship." Mr. Webster showed 
 always a warm and high regard for Mr. Ashmun, but appar- 
 ently "he did not measure the true degree of heroic friend- 
 ship and generous self-saciiflce which Mr. Ashmun laid at his 
 feet. Other men owed what they were to their friendship for 
 Mr. Webster ; Mr. Ashmun, in a sense, lost all he was and all 
 he had a right to hope of being, by that friendship. But his 
 devotion to his great friend truly marked the innate heroism of 
 his nature. Perhaps it was the only occasion of his life that 
 brought it out in full measure, but the quahty was there, and 
 no one ever came near and saw into him but detected this great 
 instinct of heroism. ... 
 
 " Not until long after Mr, Webster's death did Mr. Ashmun 
 recover tone and toleration for public life. Living at Washing- 
 ton most of the time, he was in contact with leading men of 
 all parties, but whUe he never gave up his old anti-slavery 
 Whig principles, and early sympathized with the idea and 
 movement of the Republican party, his views of public life 
 were all tinged by the Websterian experience." He was in- 
 duced to go to the Chicago convention that nominated Lincoln in 
 1860, and served ably as its presiding officer. Upon this followed 
 a pleasant intimacy with President Lincoln, and an influential 
 private position at Washington ; but he was not acceptable 
 to the Massachusetts congressmen, and no office was offered to 
 him that he would accept. '^ We remember his bringing to us 
 the first intimation of Mr. Lincoln's desu'e for re-election, long 
 before it had been manifest to the pubhc. Walking together 
 under the trees of the pubhc grounds, the President gave his 
 confidence to our townsman. He said, in his quiet, plain way, 
 that, now he had got used to the machine, he thought he should 
 like to run it four years more. 
 
 *' But it was in social life, perhaps, that both the power and 
 the charm of Mr. Ashmun's character came out most fully. 
 Sometimes he was imperious, as he was always imperial ; but it 
 was rare that he was not kindly and winning and instructive. 
 He was not a great reader of books, though a devoted admirer 
 and re-reader of Scott. But he knew life and nature, and his 
 observations on the men who walked, the birds that flew, and
 
 THE FIRST YEAKS OF WORK. 43 
 
 the fishes that swam, were always original and suggestive. He 
 had sti'ong domestic affections, and his friendships were sincere 
 and permanent. All his senses were keen j he was ahve to the 
 beauties of landscape, flowers, and poetry. He was choice 
 and dehcate in his food. He had a quick sense of humor, 
 and a magnetic force in conversation. His words were loaded 
 with conviction. He did not write much, but his letters or 
 his newspaper contributions — for he was a fi'equent contrib- 
 utor of editorial paragraphs or communications to the Me- 
 piiblican — were always in a pure, incisive Enghsh style, 
 noticeable chiefly for their strength, and yet were not without 
 frequent felicities of expression. He struggled in early life 
 against the family tendency to consumption. It was this that 
 drove him so much out-of-doors, and to his free, generous 
 way of hving. But whether it was natural or acquired, or 
 partly both, he grew to have great enjoyment in field sports, 
 and he drew from them a quality of happiness and invigora- 
 tion which undoubtedly heightened his facilities and certainly 
 prolonged his hfe. 
 
 " At his own or a friend's dinner-table he was almost incom- 
 parably feUcitous. He had a thought and a word for every- 
 body at the table, man, woman, or child, and it fitted exactly 
 to the level of each hfe. Of pohtics ; of fishing or hunting ; of 
 flowers or natui'e in general ; of the raising of vegetables ; of 
 meats and their cooking — no housewife but could learn some- 
 thing from him here ; of litei-ature ; of men, women, things ; — 
 while there was nothing pedantic, he yet had a thought and a 
 knowledge upon them all. A royal night, we remember, he 
 gave a few of his friends when Thackeray was in Springfield. 
 He led in the feast of good things, skillfully avoiding all pos- 
 sible shoals, smoothing any ruffling of feathers that might 
 come from any transatlantic prejudices or a thoughtless re- 
 mark. The company floated out for hours on a tide of humor, of 
 brilhant gossip and suggestive criticism, in which i\rr. Ashmun 
 was astonishingly seconded by his fiiend from Greenfield," — 
 George T. Davis, — "the most briUiant table-talker of Amer- 
 ica ; so that even Thackeray, accustomed to the finest society 
 of England as well as of America, often laid down his knife
 
 44 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 and fork, — a thing he was not wont to do without occasion, — 
 and hstened or applauded with wonder. 
 
 " For several years, while his brain has been clear and 
 strong as ever, and his digestive faculties healthy, there has 
 been growing over him a palsy of the nervous system, accom- 
 panied with great suffering, and with a growing inability to 
 move. . . . He has now passed away, — a man greater in 
 nature and in capacity than in deeds, but yet supreme among 
 his fellows in. all action. We do not forget his failings and his 
 misfortunes, but there arise above them aU the peerless quah- 
 ties of mind and heart that made him walk a king among men, 
 and drew aroimd him a circle of devoted and loving friends."
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 The Mexican Wak and the Free-soil Party. 
 
 THE strength of the Daily Republican from the first 
 lay largely in its political discussions. While as a 
 newspaper it was still insignificant, it often handled the 
 political questions of the day with a breadth, intelligence, 
 and vigor which few journals then or afterward sur- 
 passed. The most effective of these articles, during this 
 early period, were undoubtedly from the pen of Mr. Cal- 
 houn. But the general attitude of the Republican upon 
 the national questions of the time was determined by the 
 Bowleses ; others might influence, but never dictate. 
 
 The beginning of the Daily Republican coincided with 
 the appearance of the Slavery question as a chief factor 
 in American politics. In 1844, the birth-year of the 
 paper, a treaty for the annexation of Texas was signed 
 by President Tyler, and a joint resolution approving the 
 treaty was introduced in Congress. This thrust upon 
 the nation the question of an aggressive policy toward 
 Mexico, involving the probability of war and the annex- 
 ation of more slave territory. The Whig party as a 
 whole was opposed to the acquisition, partly on anti- 
 slavery grounds, partly as the traditional champion of a 
 moderate foreign policy. Its presidential candidate, 
 Henry Clay, was supposed to be hostile to the annexation, 
 but his position was somewhat ambiguous, and he lost
 
 46 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 the confidence of Seward and the New York Whigs. The 
 Democrats and their candidate Polk were for immediate 
 annexation, with the resulting increase of slave territory, 
 and at the price of war if necessary. The " Liberty 
 party " — organized in 1840 by those of the Abolitionists 
 who believed in political action for the gradual sup- 
 pression of slavery, and who at that time separated 
 from Garrison and his immediate associates — nominated 
 James G. Birney for President. Their action drew enough 
 votes from Clay to give the presidency to Polk. 
 
 During this period the Eepuhlican was anti-slavery and 
 Whig. In its first number, March 29, 1844, an article 
 was quoted in regard to Mr. Clay, — already recognized 
 as the coming presidential candidate of the Whigs, — 
 representing him as a champion of protection, internal 
 improvements, close commercial alliances with Mexico 
 and the South American republics, and '^ a system of 
 American policy." The first long editorial, April 23, de- 
 nounces the annexation of Texas, just brought before 
 Congress for its confirmation, and makes a vigorous and 
 stirring appeal to the North to oppose it. Through the 
 ensuing campaign the Republican heartily supported 
 Clay, and urged as the leading issues the defeat of annex- 
 ation and the maintenance of a high tariff. 
 
 The election of Polk was a popular sanction of the 
 annexation of Texas, which was accordingly consummated 
 by President Tyler's administration as its closing act. 
 Texas had recently won its independence from Mexico. 
 It had been greatly aided therein by immigrants from 
 the neighboring American states ; and by their influence 
 slavery, abolished by Mexico, had been reestablished. 
 Texas, with the assent of its people, was now admitted 
 to the Union as a slave state. The boundary line be- 
 tween Texas and Mexico was in dispute, Texas insisting 
 on the Rio Grande as the dividing line, and Mexico
 
 THE MEXICAN WAK AND THE FKEE-SOIL PARTY. 47 
 
 claiming the Nueces. President Polk threw into the dis- 
 puted region a military force under command of General 
 Taylor ; Taylor's forces and the Mexicans came into col- 
 lision; and Congress hastened to declare war. Taylor 
 won a succession of brilliant victories and penetrated 
 deep into the Mexican territory ; and General Scott cap- 
 tured Vera Cruz, fought his way to the capital city, 
 and took it. The war lasted two years, and was ended 
 early in 1848 by a treaty in which Mexico gave up 
 the immense region afterward organized as California, 
 New Mexico, and Utah, and received fifteen million 
 dollars. The acquisition of this territory was the real 
 purpose of the conquest which the United States achieved 
 over its weak neighbor. 
 
 The war had its chief support in the South and in the 
 Democratic party. It roused at the North a strong pro- 
 test, in the name of peace and of freedom, — a protest of 
 which the lasting literary memorial is the " Biglow Papers." 
 The Whig party in general, and especially its Northern 
 wing, opposed the war throughout, and was emphatically 
 hostile to the acquisition of any more slave territory. 
 When in 1846 a proposal was made in Congress to give 
 the President $2,000,000, with which to purchase an ad- 
 vantageous ^eace, David Wilmot, of Pennsylvania, moved 
 in the House to add a proviso declaring that in all new 
 territory that might be acquired slavery should be pro- 
 hibited. The proviso passed the House, receiving almost 
 the solid Northern vote, but it was defeated in the Sen- 
 ate. The " Wilmot Proviso " became the watchword of 
 the Northern Whigs. 
 
 The Republican was in hearty sympathy with the anti- 
 war and anti-slavery sentiment. Indeed, of open oppo- 
 sition to that sentiment there was very little to be found 
 in the state. Webster presented in the Senate a resolu- 
 tion affirming the principle of the Wilmot Proviso, which
 
 48 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 had been adopted in the Massachusetts House by a unan- 
 imous vote. The political situation is well illustrated by 
 the action of the Whig State Convention at Springfield, 
 September 30, 1847. Scott had given the finishing stroke 
 to the war by the capture of the city of Mexico a fort- 
 night before, though the fact was not known until four 
 days later. The Democratic Convention had nominated 
 for governor General Caleb Gushing, who was fighting 
 in Mexico ; had voted down a Wilmot Proviso resolu- 
 tion ; and in its platform had ignored the slavery ques- 
 tion. Of the Whig Convention George Ashmun was 
 president. Webster, the idol of the Massachusetts 
 Whigs, made one of his lucid and powerful speeches. 
 He declared that the Whigs of the entire country are 
 opposed to the addition of any new territory, free or 
 slave ; that the Southern Democrats want more slave 
 territory, and the Northern Democrats more free terri- 
 tory ; and the two wings have combined to rob Mexico, 
 leaving the disposition of the plunder to be settled later. 
 He said : '^ I never have voted, I never shall, I never will 
 vote for further annexation to this country with a slave 
 representation upon it. Slave representation in a political 
 point of view is an all-important subject. The moral 
 view is great, I know, but it is with the former that I 
 have only to do in my capacity as legislator." The reso- 
 lutions of the convention called for " Peace with Mexico 
 without dismemberment." They declared that there 
 should be no addition of Mexican territory to the 
 American Union ; but should any be annexed, it must 
 be free. Webster was named for the presidency. These 
 resolutions having been unanimously carried, another 
 was proposed, declaring that the Whigs of the state will 
 support no man for the presidency who is not opposed 
 to slavery extension. This resolution was supported by 
 Sumner, Palfrey, and C. F. Adams, and opposed by
 
 THE MEXICAN WAK AND THE FKEE-SOIL PAKTY. 49 
 
 Robert C. Winthi'op and others, and was defeated by a 
 large majority. The Republican approved the conven- 
 tion's action and Webster's speech, but maintained that 
 the additional resolution ought to have been adopted. 
 
 While party politics were taking this course, a little 
 band of the most zealous Abolitionists, with G-arrison at 
 their head, were uttering fierce denunciation against the 
 sin of slavery, but stood aloof altogether from the 
 voter's function and from the whole political system of 
 which Southern slavery was an integral part. Garrison, 
 who had never acted with the ** Liberty party," reached 
 in 1844 the position of directly assailing the Constitu- 
 tion, by which slavery was protected as a local institu- 
 tion, and the Union in which a slave-holding element 
 was a factor. Thenceforth his cry was '' The United 
 States Constitution is a covenant with death and an 
 agreement with hell." Before this, he and some of his 
 associates had begun to denounce the American churches, 
 for their complicity with slavery. They thus struck at 
 two of the most powerful sentiments among the better 
 class of Americans, — ecclesiastical Christianity and 
 loyalty to the nation. They smote as unsparingly as 
 the Hebrew prophets rebuked the ceremonial system 
 when it cloaked impiety. They denounced the churches 
 and the Union at the same time that they were attacking 
 one of the strongest material and political forces in the 
 country, and def jdng the basest prejudices of the mob. 
 
 The Eepuhlican, like the great majority of Northern 
 people, had no sympathy with the principles or methods 
 of the Garrisonian Abolitionists. It was hostile to them 
 in their assaults on the Union and the churches, was 
 offended by their violence of language, was unsympa- 
 thetic toward the brood of reforms with which they often 
 made common cause, and showed little appreciation of 
 the self-sacrificing earnestness and the grasp of one great 
 Vol. I.— 4
 
 50 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 truth which ennobled their cause. The early attitude of 
 its leading editor toward slavery may be illustrated from 
 his letters to the paper, when traveling in the South in 
 the winter of 1844-5. In these there is little mention 
 of slavery ; but the closing letter contains this para- 
 graph : 
 
 " The fact is, in regard to slavery, the owners are generally 
 much more the objects of pity and sympathy than the slaves ; 
 they suffer from its bhghting cm-se greatly and sensibly, while 
 the latter are more contented, better fed and clothed, than the 
 free blacks either at the North or South. This is true, if my 
 observation the past winter has been worth anything, and I 
 ftdly beheve that a great majority of citizens of the slave 
 states are fully aware how great the curse is which weighs 
 them down, and would gladly throw it off, if it could be done 
 in any reasonable and proper manner, without completely im- 
 poverishing them, or endangering their personal safety and 
 
 Evidently the young man — he was only nineteen — ob- 
 served and judged for himseK ; but his observation did 
 not yet go below the surface of things. He judged by a 
 materialistic standard ; — the slaves he saw were well fed 
 and clothed ; why pity them overmuch ? But the system 
 was bad economy for the masters ; trust their self-interest 
 to get rid of it ! This materialism, this want of moral 
 intuition and enthusiasm, tinged all the early course of 
 the Republican on the Slavery question, and made it con- 
 stantly unjust to the Abolitionists. Yet the Republican's 
 condemnation of slavery during these years was sincere 
 and earnest, and expressed that grave conviction of its 
 wrong and folly in which the general sentiment of 
 New England was agreed. The practical difficulty and 
 divergence came upon the question of what political 
 action was advisable in the matter. It was impossible
 
 THE MEXICAN WAK AND THE FEEE-SOIL PAKTY. 51 
 
 to make political attack on slavery where it abeady 
 existed, without disregarding the Constitution and de- 
 stroying the Union. To this the great majority of the 
 Northern people — the majority too of the conscientious 
 and intelligent — were always opposed. On the question 
 of breaking up the whole political fabric to eradicate 
 slavery, — or rather to relieve the North from complicity 
 in it; since after disunion the South would still have 
 retained slavery, — on this question the extreme Aboli- 
 tionists were always a small minority. But when the 
 question arose whether the national authority should 
 establish slavery within the national territorial domain, 
 and even whether new territory should be conquered that 
 slavery might be extended, — then the most conserva- 
 tive of citizens, the most constitutional of Whigs, could 
 unite to maintain the cause of Freedom. 
 
 When the presidential election of 1848 was approach- 
 ing, and Greneral Taylor came into prominence as the 
 Whig candidate, the Bepublican urged two questions: 
 What is his position as to the annexation of slave terri- 
 tory, and what as to the spoils-of-ofBce system! But 
 neither General Taylor nor his friends made any answer 
 to such questions. Of his political opinions almost noth- 
 ing was known ; his personal reputation was that of an 
 honest, soldierly man, — '■'■ Old Rough and Ready " ; his 
 recommendation as a candidate was the fame he had won 
 in a war which the Whigs had from first to last denounced. 
 But the national convention sacrificed everything to suc- 
 cess. Webster and Clay, the brains and the heart of the 
 party, were discarded in favor of Taylor. In deference 
 to the party's Southern wing, the resolutions wholly 
 ignored the living questions of territorial extension and 
 slavery. It was a most inglorious surrender of principle 
 to expediency. On the floor of the convention two Mas-
 
 52 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 sachusetts delegates, Henry Wilson and Charles Allen 
 of Worcester, declared that they would not support the 
 party nominee. They went home, and with such men 
 as Sumner, C. F. Adams, and Samuel Hoar, leaders of 
 " the conscience Whigs," — as the phrase now went, — met 
 in convention, and sent delegates, chosen equally from 
 the three existing parties, to the national Free-soil Con- 
 vention at Buffalo. In that body were Chase and Gid- 
 dings of Ohio, and a strong representation from a section 
 of New York Democrats, who were in revolt against their 
 party on grounds partly anti-slavery and partly personal. 
 The Liberty party was merged in the Free-soil, whose 
 creed was the exclusion of slavery from the territories ; 
 and Martin Van Buren and C. F, Adams were nominated 
 for President and Vice-President. 
 
 Here was a party that stood clear and strong on the 
 great coming question. Yet the political situation had 
 still its grave embarrassments for the anti-slavery voter. 
 There was no chance of Van Buren's election. The 
 presidency lay really between Taylor and the Democratic 
 nominee. General Cass of Michigan. The dilemma was : 
 to assert a principle, and build up a party of the future, 
 at the risk of letting in the worse candidate at present ; 
 or to aim at an immediate gain, by the choice of the less 
 objectionable of two leading candidates. Fresh in mind 
 was the election of four years before, and the disastrous 
 result of Birney's candidacy, in the election of Polk, and 
 the Mexican war. The Free-soil party had an unattractive 
 element in the New York Democratic seceders — "■ Barn- 
 burners" in the slang of the time — who cared little for 
 anti-slavery, and much for avenging the wrongs of Van 
 Buren and Silas Wright. Whigs as strongly anti-slavery 
 as Seward and Greeley thought that that party still 
 offered the best practical ground for opposing slavery 
 extension. It was one of those perplexing situations
 
 THE MEXICAN WAR AND THE FREE -SOIL PARTY. 53 
 
 "which must often occur in politics; — or in any other 
 field where men seek to obtain the ideal under the limita- 
 tions of the real. 
 
 It is at this juncture that we can first identify Mr. 
 Bowles's personal work as a political writer. ''For a 
 good while," says his old foreman, Chauncey "White, '' he 
 didn't do much political writing. But one evening in a 
 presidential campaign — it was in the Taylor year — he 
 had been out to report a speech, and he came in tearing 
 mad, and sat down and wrote a reply to it. The article 
 was so spicy that it pleased Ashmun, who came in to 
 ask who wrote it. I think that was about the beginning 
 of Mr. Bowles's political writing." This must have been 
 the article published June 3, 1848. The occasion was a 
 Free-soil speech in Springfield, by Joshua Griddings, fore- 
 shadowing the nomination of Van Buren. The editorial, 
 in comment and reply, is marked by a good-tempered 
 vigor and pungency.* It takes issue with Mr. Giddings 
 chiefly on the question of Van Buren's fitness to repre- 
 sent opposition to slavery extension, and cites his record 
 as a supporter of slavery and its aggressions. 
 
 " What then, up to the month of June just past, has Martin 
 Van Buren done, that should win for Mm the praise of anti- 
 slavery men ? During his whole pohtical fife, he has been the 
 most abject tool of the slave power. He earned by his readi- 
 ness, nay, his eagerness, to serve their interests and forward 
 their purposes, the name of ' the Northern man with Southern 
 principles.' If he has, in the retiracy of his private life, at last 
 discovered and forsook the errors of his whole previous exist- 
 ence, and come to the stool of repentance, weU and good. We 
 rejoice. No one wiU do so more heartily. But while the sad 
 results of the betrayal of Northern rights, interests, and prin- 
 cii)les are so vividly before us, we cannot join in the high- 
 sounding pgeans of praise to his character that we hear from 
 some quarters. We cannot join in efforts to elevate him to a 
 place he once so wrongly and so injuriously to the country's
 
 54 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 prosperity occupied. No, not at least until his acts speak for 
 Ms repentance as well as Ms words. We give in to no man in 
 opposing the extension of slavery. We are for Free Soil and 
 Free Labor. Our efforts are pledged to this end. But we can- 
 not yet see our way clear to follow Mr. Giddings' lead. That 
 nasty word ' Compromise' is already introduced into the Senate. 
 Congress is the battle-gi'ound of Slavery and Freedom. We are 
 ready to meet the shock. If the North stands by its rights, we 
 triumph ; if not, we fall. Our motto is, ' No compromise ' ; 
 ' No more slave territory.'' " 
 
 Upon this ground, through the ensuing campaign, the 
 paper opposed Van Buren. It supported Taylor as an 
 honest, patriotic, and moderate man, who could be trusted 
 to oppose all aggressive and dangerous measures. The 
 impression generally prevailed that as a matter of per- 
 sonal opinion he was opposed to the extension of slavery. 
 But on this supreme question he made no public utter- 
 ance. This campaign brought a great access of strong 
 leaders to the Free-soil party in Massachusetts. From the 
 Democrats came such men as Robert Rantoul and N. P. 
 Banks ; from the Whigs, Charles Sumner, Henry Wilson, 
 and C. F. Adams. The moral enthusiasts, and the men 
 of practical instinct for the coming future, tended to the 
 party which stood distinctly for freedom. It was such a 
 company as the Samuel Bowles of a few years later would 
 have been sure to be found in. But he had not yet got 
 his growth, and the influence of Ashmun doiibtless did 
 much to hold the Reiniblican among the loyal followers 
 of the Whig flag. Horace Greeley, who at a late day 
 and with reluctance yielded his support to Taylor, was 
 perfectly frank in avowing his dissatisfaction with his 
 attitude upon slavery. He expressed this regret in his 
 printed campaign addresses to the Whigs of doubtful 
 states ; and by that very frankness, he added weight to 
 his appeals, — appeals in which common sense, logic and
 
 THE MEXICAN WAE AND THE FKEE-SOIL PARTY. 55 
 
 passion were blended with an effectiveness which hardly 
 any other American has equaled. The Repuhlican made 
 no such frank admission as to Taylor's deficiencies. It 
 made the best of him, not with extravagant laudation, 
 but with skillful magnifying of his strong points and 
 silence as to the weak ones. In this it followed the 
 fashion of loyal partisanship. 
 
 The Whigs won the day. The Southern Whig, Taylor, 
 received 163 electoral votes, and the Northern Democrat, 
 Cass, 127, — drawn in pretty equal proportions from the 
 two sections. Van Buren got no electoral vote ; of his 
 popular vote of 290,000, almost a third was drawn from 
 New York state; there and in Massachusetts he had 
 more votes than Cass. The Free-soil party owed its 
 strength largely to a local and temporary feud of the 
 Democracy, which added to it nothing permanent. But 
 it had laid a foundation for the Republican party. At 
 present, the anti-slavery element among the Whigs was 
 strong. Webster and his followers had given only a 
 half-hearted support to Taylor, and were disaffected to- 
 ward his administration from the first. But Seward was 
 elected to the Senate from New York ; and Seward had 
 already declared, in a speech at Cleveland : " Slavery can 
 be limited to its present bounds ; it can be ameliorated ; 
 and it can be abolished ; — and you and I must do it."
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 Personal and Family Life. 
 
 WHILE a boy in Mr. Eaton's school, Mr. Bowles had 
 met among his fellow-pupils Miss Mary S. D. 
 Schermerhorn, a daughter of H. V. R. Schermerhorn, of 
 Greneva, N. Y., and grand-daughter of James S. Dwight, 
 the leading Springfield merchant of the first quarter of 
 the centmy. Miss Schermerhorn while attending the 
 school lived in an uncle's family ; she had numerous rel- 
 atives in the town; and when school years were over, 
 the two young people had opportunities for continued 
 acquaintance, which ripened into an engagement. They 
 were married at the bride's home, September 6, 1848. 
 No time for a wedding journey ; they were married on 
 Wednesday, and on the following Saturday the editor 
 was back at his post. The young wife identified herself 
 from the fii-st with her husband's interests and aims. 
 Thi'ough their thirty years of married life she gave an 
 entire devotion to his comfort and happiness, and was 
 repaid by a loyal affection, and a constant and consider- 
 ate helpfulness which the most exacting demands of his 
 profession never abated. He had now the resource with- 
 out which no worker is rightly equipped and no man is 
 a full man. When in his later life he was asked by one 
 of his younger Ueutenants the cause of his success, he 
 answered "I married early, and I worked with all my 
 might." 
 
 66
 
 PEKSONAL AND FAMILY LIFE. 57 
 
 The young couple made theii' home with the parents. 
 The elder Mrs. Bowles gave a mother's kindness to the 
 young wife, who had lost her own mother while still a 
 child. The son was receiving from his father five hun- 
 dred dollars a year for his services, and on that sum he 
 and his wife at fii'st lived. After a year or two, a prop- 
 erty of $10,000 coming to him, he bought with a portion 
 of this money a part of the block into which the paper 
 had been moved. It had exchanged its first quarters 
 over the Chicopee Bank, on the corner of Main and Elm 
 streets, for rooms on the north-east corner of Market 
 and Saudford streets. For the sum thus invested he re- 
 ceived from his father the ownership of one-half of the 
 paper. 
 
 After Mr. Stowe had worked with the Repullican for 
 a few months, he was called to another position. In his 
 place came Samuel H. Davis, a son of Rev. Dr. Davis, 
 of Westfield. Young Davis was a man of fine parts and 
 good education. In him the young editor found for the 
 fii'st time a thoroughly competent ally in the higher de- 
 partment of his work. He was not only a good writer, 
 but was able and willing to share the responsibility for 
 the executive labor of the paper. The younger Bowles 
 looked hopefully to him as the coming writer of the 
 Bepuhlican. So he used to tell his friends, saying that 
 for himself he did not expect to accomplish much as an 
 editorial writer, — the general management of the paper 
 would be his province. Mr. Davis slept in the office, and 
 took his meals with the Bowles family, which included 
 father and son with their wives, the unmarried son, 
 and two or three apprentices. The working day of the 
 younger Samuel Bowles began before noon and lasted 
 till one or two in the morning. His wife shared in the 
 household work, and sometimes late at night went down 
 to the office; and when there came a little leisure, the
 
 58 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 last " copy " having gone to the printers and the proof not 
 yet returned, husband and wife would read aloud to each 
 other from some book. The one leisure evening of the 
 week was Saturday, — Mr. Bowles's ideal of ^' a paper every 
 day in the year " being unrealized till thirty years later. 
 
 But in the early spring of 1850, Davis was taken sud- 
 denly ill. Mr. Bowles took him home and put him in his 
 own room ; a sharp, brief illness followed, and the young 
 life so full of promise came to its end. To Mr. Bowles 
 it was the loss of a brotherly comrade, and the right 
 hand of his enterprise. Whoever might sicken, whoever 
 might die, the daily paper must go on, and go on well. 
 Through these hard days when Davis lay sick, and after 
 his death, its pages were just as full and vigorous as be- 
 fore. The assistant's place was not vacant long. Dr. J. 
 G. Holland, who had just come back to the town after a 
 year or two of teaching and school superintendence at the 
 South, was invited to take the place of associate editor, 
 and entered at once on the work. The first year he was 
 paid $480; the next year, $700; and then there was sold 
 to him a quarter of the paper for $3500. The elder Mr. 
 Bowles had come to be engaged wholly in the affairs of 
 Ihe counting-room. For four or five years the whole 
 editorial work of the paper was done by the younger 
 Bowles and Dr. Holland. 
 
 Through these years, Mr. Bowles's family life was 
 eventful. His first child, a daughter, Sarah Augusta, 
 was born in June, 1850. Sometimes, coming home from 
 work after midnight, he would walk the floor with the 
 baby in his arms, to soothe it, so fatigued that he stumbled 
 over the furniture as he walked ; but to this his wife 
 soon put a stop by assigning to him a separate room. 
 The second child, a son named after his father, was born 
 in October, 1851 ; and a second daughter, Mary, in Janu- 
 ary, 1854.
 
 PEESONAL AND FAMILY LIFE. 59 
 
 In the early autumn of 1851 came a succession of be- 
 reavements. His sister, Mrs. Julia Foote, lost a child, 
 and died ten days afterward. Ten days later the 
 illness of the elder Mr. Bowles ended in his death. 
 To the son that death brought a great sorrow, and 
 also heavier work. The responsibility of the counting- 
 room came now on him, in addition to the editorial 
 management. The strain was too great ; his overtaxed 
 eyes began to suffer, and loss of sight was feared. He 
 went in the spring of 1852 to the home of his sister, Mrs. 
 Henry Alexander, in Brooklyn, to consult New York 
 physicians. In the middle of the night he was attacked 
 by ten-ible pain in the head ; a time of acute suffering 
 followed, from a succession of abscesses in the head; 
 and to this ensued a siege of inflammatory rheumatism. 
 At one time there were fears for his life. His wife was 
 bound at home by the sickness of the two babies ; but 
 his mother came to watch beside him. During his con- 
 valescence his presence brightened his sister's home. In 
 health he was sometimes irritable, but in sickness he was 
 wonderfully patient. The household remembered the 
 visit with delight. The moment that strength began to 
 return, his keen interest in public affairs revived; and 
 he dictated to his sister many letters about politics. 
 When he went back to Springfield, it was with health 
 still delicate, and for a year or two following he was 
 obliged to use his eyes sparingly. It was not the old 
 home to which he returned. A great project had been 
 consummated during his illness ; his own little family 
 had left his mother's and moved into a house of their 
 own. The step had become of clear expedience, but he 
 had shrunk from it somewhat ; he hesitated at leaving 
 the mother's roof and encountering the unknown cares 
 and responsibilities of a separate establishment while the 
 burdens of his work were so heavy. But he accepted
 
 60 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 the united counsel of mother and wife, and the wife 
 oversaw the removal of the household goods, when by his 
 absence he was spared all burden of the details. Through 
 these earlier years, she took almost the whole of the 
 household care. Afterward, when children were numer- 
 ous, and the enlargement of the paper's force lightened 
 his load, he relieved her of a part of the domestic man- 
 agement. 
 
 A man's establishment under his own roof-tree is 
 generally an era only less important than his choice of 
 a profession, his marriage, and his first child. It is an 
 especially momentous event to a man for whom mental 
 labor, with its sharp strain on nerves and brain, creates 
 necessity for a home in which his repose can be made 
 the first object. That advantage Mr. Bowles fully en- 
 joyed from this time onward. The new house was on 
 Maple street, on the lower slope of "Ames's hill," — a 
 two-story wooden structure, tasteful and comfortable, 
 commanding from its rear a fine view of the town, half- 
 hidden by trees, the river, the valley, and distant hills. 
 Its occupants took as rooms for constant use those in 
 the real', looking toward this view. With full mutual 
 agreement, they furnished the house modestly, according 
 to their means. Now the wife had her rightful prov- 
 ince, — a cosy nest for the increasing little brood ; and 
 there was a quiet resting-place for the husband in the 
 intervals of probably the closest, hardest work that was 
 then done by any man in the whole region.
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 The Developing Newspaper. 
 
 THE accession of Dr. Holland to the BepuhUcan was an 
 important event in its history. He and Mr. Bowles 
 supplemented each other. Mr. Bowles was a born journal- 
 ist, and showed early an instinct for news, an aptitude for 
 poKties, and a skill in administration. His development 
 as a thinker and writer came later. Dr. Holland, who 
 was seven years his senior, came to the paper equipped 
 with more of literary culture and taste, and was always 
 a writer rather than an editor. He was strong in his 
 convictions, warm in his feelings, sensitive to the moral 
 element in any question, and the master of a forcible, 
 lucid, and popular style. His interest lay not so much 
 in politics as in the personal conduct of life, and social 
 usages and institutions. His editorials in the Republican 
 were one of the earliest signs that the newspaper press 
 was beginning to exercise, along with its other functions, 
 that of direct moral instruction, which had hitherto been 
 almost a monopoly of the church. Many of his articles 
 were short and pithy lay sermons. They dealt du*ectly 
 with morals and religion, in their practical rather than 
 theological applications. They discussed such topics as 
 the mutual duties of husbands and wives, of laborers and 
 employers ; the principles of conduct for young men and 
 young women, and the like. This was an innovation in 
 
 61
 
 62 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 journalism. It found favor among a community which 
 takes life seriously and earnestly. It signified in truth 
 an expansion of the newspaper's possibilities, which has 
 as yet only begun to be worked out. Dr. Holland was 
 admirably qualified for a pioneer in this kind of work. 
 He was so far in sympathy with the established churches 
 and the accepted theology that he reached and held a 
 wide constituency, while he was little trammeled by 
 theological or ecclesiastical technicalities. He was quite 
 as impatient as Mr. Bowles of any assumption of author- 
 ity by a party or a church, and the Repuhlican early 
 showed an independence of the clergy, and a willingness 
 to criticise them on occasion, which often drew wrath 
 upon its head. But its attitude toward the churches and 
 the religion they represented, though an indej)endent 
 was also a friendly one. Such theological coloring as 
 the paper had, came from Dr. Holland rather than Mr. 
 Bowles, and was what would now be described as liberal 
 orthodox. The tone was conservative as to the observ- 
 ance of Sunday, and similar questions, and even op- 
 posed the theater as an immoral institution — a position 
 from which Dr. Holland receded at a later time, while 
 Mr. Bowles perhaps never shared it. Toward the aggres- 
 sive social and intellectual movements of which New Eng- 
 land was prolific thirty or forty years ago, — Woman's 
 Rights, Abolitionism, Transcendentalism, — both editors 
 were unfriendly. 
 
 In general, Dr. Holland added to the paper a higher 
 literary tone, and a broader recognition of human 
 interests. He had a sympathetic perception of the 
 pathos, the humor, the dignity, in the lives of the com- 
 mon folk. He wrote one article on " The little tin pails," 
 carried by the early and late procession of laborers ; the 
 suggestion of homely fare, of wifely provision, of the 
 long day's labor cheered by the thought of the evening
 
 THE DEVELOPING NEWSPAPEK. 63 
 
 welcome. He was emiuently a man of sentiment and 
 feeling. It belonged to his mind, and to his somewhat 
 narrow education, to vividly see and present one side of 
 a question, rather than to comprehend its entirety ; and 
 this was at once his limitation and his strength, for the 
 average reader follows most sympathetically a writer 
 who goes straight to a conclusion, and does not embar- 
 rass him with qualifications and balancings. Mr. Bowles, 
 on the other hand, guided himself by his reason more 
 than by his feelings, and had a growing instinct and 
 capacity for looking at all sides of the question. It was 
 he who gave its central inspiration to the RejJuhJican, and 
 who held its helm, though Dr. Holland's contribution to 
 the paper was important and unique. The two men 
 worked together harmoniously, but never came into 
 personal intimac3^ Dr. Holland had not a little of the 
 clerical attributes. While in his social tastes he was 
 democratic, he avoided the companionship of men whose 
 moral standards were different from his own. His faith, 
 his feeling, his sentiment, — all perfectly genuine, — were 
 freely expressed to the world ; they were the material of 
 his writing ; they found expression in his conversation. 
 He craved appreciation and recognition. He was a man 
 of striking and handsome presence, and in his bearing 
 there was something a little suggestive, as it were, of 
 gown and bands, — a touch of self -consciousness. Mr. 
 Bowles, on the other hand, was always ready to hob-nob 
 with any man, saint or sinner, in whom he found any 
 likable quality. His highest aspirations, his finest feel- 
 ings, were not carried in sight of the world, — they were 
 seldom openly expressed in his writings, or in his ordi- 
 nary conversation. He bore himself like a man of the 
 world. Any approach to assumption or display of reli- 
 gion provoked his sarcasm or scorn. No doubt Holland 
 often thought Bowles irreverent, not to say heathenish,
 
 64 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 and Bowles thought Holland something of a prig. 
 There were no collisions between them ; each of them 
 respected the other's rights and guarded his own ; but 
 they kept always at a little distance, and their terms 
 of mutual address were never more familiar than '' Mr. 
 Bowles " and '^ Dr. Holland." Each man liked to have 
 the first place in his world, though the one cared more 
 for the reality of power and the other desired the out- 
 ward signs of recognition. Opposite as they were in 
 some respects, they both had the adaptiveness and the 
 self-control to work together harmoniously and efficiently 
 for many years, until circumstances parted them. 
 
 The Repuhliciui was all the time growing broader, 
 brighter, fuller of information. It was making itself a 
 necessity to everj^body. It reaped continually from wider 
 fields. Telegraphic news was now a constant feature. 
 In 1850 there had come to be a regular column of " Local 
 Items," which was probably the first thing that most 
 readers looked at. About the same time, Mr. Bowles 
 began a weekly column of " Religious Intelligence " — a 
 new thing in secular journalism. By Dr. Holland, seem- 
 ingly, there was given for a time in each Saturday's 
 paper a chapter of " Sunday Thoughts," — practical ap- 
 plications of Christianity. The paper showed a growing 
 capacity for getting hold of whatever could interest its 
 readers. Its editorial matter was less in long articles, and 
 more in pithy and pungent paragraphs. Politics was still 
 the chief staple of its discussions, and was treated always 
 with lucid vigor. It had not yet come to be a pioneer 
 of political thought. It announced itself as " Whig " — 
 " thoroughly, devotedly, but not blindly Whig " (January 
 16, 1851), long after the Whig party really had no dis- 
 tinctive opinions on the great rising questions. 
 
 The papei*'s growth was won by unsparing labor, by 
 close economy, by making the utmost of each day, yet
 
 THE DEVELOPING NEWSPAPER. 65 
 
 looking always toward the future. After six years of 
 existence, it claimed (May 8, 1850) a larger circulation 
 than any daily paper in New England outside of Boston. 
 " Up to the present time," it added, '' the RepuhJican has 
 been no direct source of profit to its proprietors. As fast 
 as money has been made, it has been invested in im- 
 provements, and even to a greater extent, by several 
 thousands ; but we have now reached a point where we 
 hope to see the scale descending on the other side." 
 
 Dr. Holland, just after Mr. Bowles's death, wrote as 
 follows : 
 
 " As I think of my old associate, and the earnest exhausting 
 work he was doing when I was with him, he seems to me like 
 a great golden vessel, rich in color and roughly embossed, fiUed 
 with the elixir of hf e, which he poured out without the shghtest 
 stint for the consumption of this people. This vessel was only 
 fuU at the first and it was never replenished. It was flUed for 
 an expenditui-e of fifty or sixty years, but he kept the stream so 
 large that the precious contents were aU decanted at thirty. 
 The sparkle, the vivacity, the drive, the power of the Republican, 
 as I knew it in the early days, the fresh and ever eager interest 
 with which it was every morning received by the people of 
 Springfield and the Connecticut VaUey, the superiority of the 
 paper to other papers of its class, its ever widening influence — 
 aU these cost life. We did not know when we tasted it and 
 found it so charged with zest that we were tasting heart's blood, 
 but that was the priceless element that commended it to our 
 appetites. A pale man, weaiy and ner\'ous, crept home at mid- 
 night, or at one, two, or three o'clock ia the morning, and 
 while aU natui-e was fresh and the birds were singing, and 
 thousands of eyes were bending eagerly over the results of 
 his night's labor, he was tossing and trying to sleep. Yet 
 this work, so terrible in its exactions and its consequences, 
 was the joy of this man's life — it ^vas this man's life; and as 
 the best exponent of this kind of devotion to an idea and a 
 life-work I have ever known, I give its memory most affec- 
 tionate reverence. 
 
 Vol. I. — 5
 
 66 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 " His love of thorouglmess was united with a firm personal 
 belief that no one could do his work as well as he could do it 
 himself. His strong conviction that his way was always the 
 best way led him to fret and worry over the work of others, 
 and to do aU that he could with his own hands. I have known 
 him in the early part of his career to sit up at night for hours 
 that he might read a httle batch of unimportant proof, which 
 was measurably sure in the foreman's hands to come out right 
 in the morning, — little fancying that he was selling his life at 
 that petty price. Mr. Bowles died of overwork and over- 
 watching, and proved that the man who, in a large administra- 
 tive place, undertakes, in any considerable degree, to execute 
 his own plans in their unimportant details, must suffer the 
 penalty of death," 
 
 There is much truth in this criticism. Yet it was only 
 by the closest devotion to his work, and to every part 
 of his work, that Mr. Bowles, starting from the mea- 
 gerest foundations, built up in a small provincial town 
 one of the best newspapers in America. He may have 
 done more than was needful ; he may have sometimes 
 waited for a proof when it was unnecessary ; but in a 
 broad way it was because the proof-room, the press- 
 room, the counting-room, as well as the sanctum, all felt 
 the ceaseless vigilance, the unresting energy, of that one 
 man, that the paper became what it was. 
 
 The permanent inroad of overwork on his strength did 
 not show itself for a number of years. But beyond doubt 
 its secret effect was early wrought. The injury to his 
 brain of which he died was doubtless begun before he 
 was twenty-five, — during those years when he used often 
 to take a bottle of cold tea to the office, and work till one 
 or two in the morning ; while on two nights in the week 
 he snatched but a few hours' sleep on a lounge in the 
 office, and was at work with the daylight. It may well 
 be that at that time there was wrought an actual lesion 
 of the brain, which left only a thin shell between the
 
 THE DEVELOPING NEWSPAPER. 67 
 
 citadel of life aud its enemy. To this it should be added 
 that he formed during these early years a mental habit 
 of literally unresting activity, which he never afterward 
 could throw off. He was splendidly developing all his 
 powers of work, but he lost, never to fully recover it, the 
 power of rest. When, in later years, circumstances gave 
 him the opportunity of frequent abstinence from work, he 
 had forgotten — indeed he had never learned— the art of 
 repose, and could only exchange one activity for another. 
 
 He was spending his life-blood, — but he got a great 
 price for it. He knew what he was doing — at least he 
 thought he did. When his friend Edward B. Gillett, of 
 Westfield, once remonstrated with him about his over- 
 work, he answered : " I know it just as well as you do. 
 When my friends point out that I am working toward a 
 breakdown, they seem to think that is to influence my 
 action. Not at all ! I have got the lines drawn, the 
 current flowing, and by throwing my weight here now, 
 I can count for something. If I make a long break or 
 parenthesis, to get strong, I shall lose my chance. No 
 man is living a life that is worth living, unless he is 
 willing if need be to die for somebody or something, — 
 at least to die a little ! " 
 
 He was developing as the maker of a newspaper, as a 
 political writer, and also in the management of men. 
 He admired Thurlow Weed's combination of power, — at 
 the same time a journalist and a mover of the springs of 
 public affairs through personal intercourse. He saw that 
 as soon as an editor became an office-seeker, he compro- 
 mised the independence on which his real power depended. 
 Both Raymond and Grreeley fell into this mistake : Ben- 
 nett and Weed avoided it. Mr. Bowles used to say to 
 Dr. Holland, " So long as you and I are on this paper, we 
 will never accept a public office." He came to be skillful 
 in the manipulation of men, and to be felt as a personal
 
 68 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 as well as a journalistic power in local political circles. 
 ^'I fii'st appreciated liis political ability," said Dr. Hol- 
 land, " at a city election of which I cannot give the date. 
 He carried the day, and used both the paper and his 
 personal influence so skillfully that I saw and said he 
 would become a political power in the state." " I think," 
 added Dr. Holland, " that his strongest passion was the 
 love of power." 
 
 It was during these years that he established the sys- 
 tem of requiring advance payments from subscribers. 
 A few of the great city papers had led the way in this 
 innovation, but it was so contrary to the tradition of 
 provincial journalism that many predicted utter discom- 
 fiture for the rash experiment. But it succeeded. It 
 was a great step to a firmer business footing ; and it was 
 also a sign of the new attitude which newspapers were 
 taking in the community. The old-time journal was very 
 deferential to its subscribers and advertisers. It spoke 
 of them as its " patrons." It was ready to praise the 
 wares which they advertised, and to give all manner of 
 friendly notices and puffs. It was patient, though some- 
 times plaintive, toward their delay in making payment. 
 The possible message, " Stop my paper," hung over the 
 editor's head, keeping him docile and respectful. All this 
 was swiftly changing. The newspaper, strengthened by 
 railroad and telegraph, was becoming so strong that it 
 needed not to ask favors or depend on them. The Ue- 
 puhlican took the lead among provincial papers in this 
 independent attitude, of which the advance-payment sys- 
 tem was the commercial sign. It had never a master, 
 either among the political chiefs or in the classes with 
 whom its business interests lay. It depended on their 
 support for its existence ; but the editor won that sup- 
 port by making it for their interest to subscribe for his 
 paper, and to advertise in it.
 
 THE DEVELOPING NEWSPAPER. 69 
 
 The great achievement of Samuel Bowles was that he 
 built up uuder the limitations of a country town a pay- 
 ing newspaper which expressed the editor's personal 
 opinions, bound by no party, by no school, by no clique. 
 What began to be talked of as "independent journalism" 
 during the G-reeley campaign, in 1872, was, in the Repub- 
 lican's case, only a particularly bold manifestation of a 
 character at which it had aimed from the beginning. Its 
 editor was in full sympathy at first with the Whig and 
 afterward with the Republican party; he criticised 
 them in details, but on the general issue his convictions 
 did not bring him into fundamental opposition until 
 1872. But from its early years the paper avowed its 
 opinions and made its criticisms, with a freedom which 
 provoked frequent and often emphatic dissent among 
 its readers. The nature of its field made this independ- 
 ence hard to maintain. A great city offers an immense 
 and various constituency, and a paper which can make 
 itself readable to one large class, can afford to ignore 
 even a wide and weighty disapprobation from other 
 classes. But the Republican was in a small community; 
 it could reach, at most, only a circle of country towns ; 
 the utmost number who would take a daily paper was 
 limited ; and the paper could ill afford to drive off sub- 
 scribers, or incline them toward the local rivals which 
 from time to time disputed the ground with it. Besides, 
 a provincial neighborhood is full of strong prejudices. 
 It has its heroes who must not be lightly spoken of, its 
 traditional code of manners and morals which must be 
 deferred to. There is still a deal of very stiff stuff in the 
 descendants of the Puritans, but the community thirty 
 years ago was far more provincial, more conservative, 
 more set in its preferences and prejudices, than it is to- 
 day. The environment was by no means favorable to 
 the outspoken independence which was a growing trait
 
 70 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 of the Repiiblican. The editor conquered his environ 
 ment. He did it by making so good a newspaper that 
 the people had to buy it. By industry and skill he won 
 the opportunity for independence. 
 
 There grew up in Mr. Bowles's mind an ideal of "jour- 
 nalism," — a combination of principles, methods, and in- 
 stincts, based partly on ethics, partly on expediency. 
 With him, to say a thing was or was not "good journal- 
 ism " was to put the final seal upon its character. It 
 belonged to good journalism, in his idea, to tell all the 
 news, and as a part of this to give every side a fair hear- 
 ing. His opponents and critics could always find place 
 for their articles, under reasonable conditions, in his 
 paper. But it also belonged to his ideal of journalism 
 that a paper should as seldom as possible own itself in 
 the wrong. Accordingly, if a man wrote to him in cor- 
 rection of a statement, or in defense against criticism, he 
 generally found his letter printed, but with some editorial 
 comment that gave the last word tellingly against him. 
 It was commonly said that to seek redress from the 
 Repiiblican did more harm than good. This trait was 
 partly due to deliberate unwillingness to weaken the 
 paper's authority by admission of error. But it was 
 probably more due to a personal idiosyncracy. In many 
 ways a most generous man, Mr. Bowles always hated to 
 admit that he had been in the wrong. Sometimes he did 
 it, — not often, — in private life; but in his paper never, 
 when he could help it. " We sometimes discussed this," 
 said Dr. Holland, " and he once said : * I sympathize 
 with the Boston editor, to whom a man came with the 
 complaint, " Your paper says that I hanged myself, and I 
 want you to take it back." " No," said the editor, " we're 
 not in the habit of doing that, but we will say that the 
 rope broke and you escaped." ' " 
 
 But it must be said that this fault lies at the door of
 
 THE DEVELOPING NEWSPAPER. 71 
 
 a good many papers besides tlie Bepuhlican. It is a 
 characteristic sin of journalism — one of the vices of 
 irresponsible power. The English press is assumed to be 
 more fair and decorous than the American, But Trol- 
 lope, that faithful photographer of English manners, 
 characterizes the Times upon this point. " Write to the 
 Jiqnter,'" counsels Bishop Grantley to the aggrieved jMr. 
 Harding, who has been misrepresented by that paper. 
 " Yes," says the more worldly-wise Archdeacon, " yes, 
 and be smothered with ridicule ; tossed over and over 
 again with scorn ; shaken this way and that, as a rat in 
 the mouth of a practised terrier. A man may have the 
 best of causes, the best of talents, and the best of tem- 
 pers ; he may write as well as Addison or as strongly as 
 Junius ; but even with all this, he cannot successfully 
 answer when attacked by the Jupiter. Answer such an 
 article ! No, Warden ; whatever you do, don't do that." 
 The \dtal principle of independent journalism, as Mr. 
 Bowles understood it, was illustrated by an incident 
 which occurred in 1856. While Mr. Bowles was out of 
 town, a prize-fight was attempted in Springfield, and 
 among those who gathered to witness it were some young 
 men of good social standing, among them several rela- 
 tives of Mrs. Bowles. Dr. Holland treated the incident 
 in a very sharp article, as an instance of the coarse im- 
 moralities in which the rapidly growing town was begin- 
 ning to imitate the worst features of the great cities. 
 The article stated that the matter would come up in the 
 police court, and those who had been concerned in it 
 might expect full publicity to be given to their conduct. 
 Before the trial, Mr. Bowles returned to town. In the 
 evening, sitting on the door-step, his wife said to him, 
 " Can't you let this thing drop ? If you publish these 
 young men's names, it will wound and alienate a great 
 many of our friends." He answered, '' Mary, I have eon-
 
 72 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 sidered it all, most thoughtfully and conscientiously. 
 The blame must be given where it is deserved. This is 
 the time to put an end to prize-fighting in Springfield." 
 The trial was fully reported in the Repiiblican, includ- 
 ing the names of those who as attendants at the prize- 
 fight were called as witnesses ; and the paper commented 
 in a few vigorous words on their presence at such a 
 scene. Family alienations did follow, painful and not 
 soon healed. But there never was another prize-fight in 
 Springfield. In this and similar cases, the morals of the 
 town were vastly the gainer by the unsparing publicity 
 given to the misdeeds of men who had reputations to 
 suffer. Just as the introduction of street-lights into 
 cities did more to stop nocturnal crime than constables 
 and courts could do, so by its reports of wrong-doing has 
 the modern newspaper added a new safeguard to social 
 morality. To exercise that great function as free from 
 fear or favor as the judge on the bench, was the aim of 
 the BepuUican. Its editor liked to make his power felt, — 
 he liked to use it for the public good, — but the per- 
 sonal alienations which it brought were none the less 
 painful to him.
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 The Compromise of 1850. 
 
 MR. BOWLES'S special activity as a political writer 
 began at just the time when national politics were 
 assuming a distinctively new phase. Hitherto upon the 
 questions connected with slavery, there had been room 
 for constitutional anti-slavery men to act effectively 
 within the Whig party. That party had opposed, though 
 unsuccessfully, the war with Mexico and the spoliation 
 of its territory in the interest of slavery. But when the 
 slavery question in new aspects thrust itself upon the 
 nation, the Whigs fell back from their anti-slavery 
 ground. They yielded, or evaded, or compromised. 
 They planted themselves on the ground of devotion to 
 the Union, directly menaced by a strong faction at the 
 South, and denounced by a small number of extreme 
 Abolitionists at the North. The party was held together 
 by this genuine Union sentiment, by old habit and asso- 
 ciation, and by devotion to its personal leaders. Between 
 it and the Democratic party the differences in principle 
 and policy became in reality of small importance. Both 
 organizations strove to keep in abeyance the dangerous 
 question of slavery ; in each, the Southern wing repressed 
 any active anti-slavery tendency in the Northern wing. 
 At the South, the disunion element made some tentative 
 efforts at organization, but found itself for a time in a 
 
 73
 
 74 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 hopeless minority. At the North, the Free-soilers made 
 no gains except through temporary or local coalitions 
 with one of the two great parties. The extreme Aboli- 
 tionists were very active, through press and platform, 
 but they were few, and their denunciatory temper won 
 for them an extreme unpopularity ; their hand was 
 against every man, and every man's hand against them. 
 The sacred principle of liberty to the slave was ignored 
 by the great parties ; commercial interest sought to stifle 
 it; the sentiment of love to the Union was arrayed 
 against it; personal ambitions, ecclesiastical conserva- 
 tisms, party associations, — all were hostile to it. It seemed 
 scarcely to have any friends except a handful of heroic 
 fanatics. Yet in truth, there was throughout the North 
 a wide, deep and growing sentiment of opposition to 
 slavery. It found voice through agitators like Garri- 
 son and his associates; through poets like Lowell and 
 Whittier ; through the mighty voice of Theodore Parker 
 in the pulpit, and a few ministers in every denomination, 
 who, often at heavy cost, were true to the prophetic 
 function of rebuking national sin ; through Free-soil 
 pohticians and orators, and througli a few Whig and 
 Democratic leaders who were in advance of the party 
 lines, but had not yet broken them. The cause was 
 strong in a multitude of men and women who did not 
 yet see their way clear to action. 
 
 The slavery interest had urged the country into war 
 with Mexico, and had gained Texas with the promise of 
 four more slave states to be carved out of it in the 
 future ; and Mexico had been further despoiled of a vast 
 area of territory, comprising what was afterward organ- 
 ized as California, New Mexico, and Utah. The question 
 which now came to the front was, should this territory 
 be slave, or free ? It had been free under Mexican law, 
 and its physical conditions were unfavorable to slave
 
 THE COMPROMISE OF 1850. 75 
 
 labor. As a question merely of the balance of power 
 between the two sections, the North felt itself entitled to 
 some counterpoise to Texas by the admission of Califor- 
 nia as a free state. The people of California adopted a 
 state constitution which prohibited slavery ; they elected 
 state officers and Congressmen — all Democrats — and 
 applied to Congress for admission. But the Southern 
 extremists objected. By the Compromise of 1820, it had 
 been established that, except the state of Missouri, all of 
 the territory then acquired by the Louisiana purchase 
 lying north of the line of thirty-six degrees, thirty min- 
 utes, north latitude, should be forever free ; the status of 
 that south of the line was left indeterminate. Now the 
 Southern extremists demanded that this same line should 
 be extended across the domain won from Mexico to the 
 Pacific ; that in all territory south of that, slavery should 
 be established, and that California should be divided by 
 that line ; its southern portion being organized as a slave 
 state. A more extensive demand had been made by 
 Calhoun, who in 1847 declared that slavery was entitled 
 to protection by Congress, throughout the whole of the 
 national territories. The South could not yet be united 
 in support of this claim, but the mass of the Southern 
 politicians seized every practicable chance for a fresh 
 advance of slavery over new territory. The Free-soilers 
 took the logical opposite of Calhoun's position ; they de- 
 clared, " Freedom, not slavery, is national, and slavery, 
 not freedom, is sectional ; Congress has no more power 
 to establish slavery than to establish monarchy." Be- 
 tween these two positions stood the majority of the 
 politicians, not prepared for either extreme, seeking to 
 settle each case as it arose by the guidance of established 
 precedent and the special circumstances of the occasion. 
 The present occasion seemed to Henry Clay to be one 
 that called for mutual concessions. Both sides were
 
 76 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 bringing forward their grievances. The South was ex- 
 asperated by the Abolitionists' attack, and it complained 
 that there was no adequate provision for the return of 
 its escaped slaves ; Northern men complained that on the 
 common ground of the national capital slavery was sanc- 
 tioned, and men and women were sold at the auction 
 block. Clay had been a promoter of the Missouri Com- 
 promise ; he disliked slavery, and in the ensuing debates 
 he declared with emphasis that he would never give his 
 vote for the express sanction of slavery on a single foot 
 of territory that was already free. But his greatest 
 anxiety was, that by mutual concessions between the 
 two sections the storm which seemed gathering and 
 menacing the national Union might be dispelled. In 
 the winter of 1849-50 he brought forward his famous 
 Compromise resolutions. These provided, in substance, 
 for the admission of California under the free state con- 
 stitution ; for the organization of New Mexico (including 
 what is now Utah) as a territory, with no provision by 
 Congressional law for either legalizing or prohibiting 
 slavery; for a national fugitive slave law; for the con- 
 tinued maintenance of slavery in the District of Colum- 
 bia, but the abolition there of the slave trade. 
 
 Over this scheme was fought the great Compromise de- 
 bate of 1850. It was at first assailed even more strongly 
 from the extreme South than from the North. But the 
 great incident of the debate was Webster's famous 7th 
 of March speech. Before its delivery there was confi- 
 dent anticipation that he would take ground as the 
 champion of the constitutional rights of freedom. Mr. 
 Ashmun — as Mr. Bowles has related — shared that con- 
 fidence, and he inspired the Eepuhlican with it. That 
 paper took strong ground against disunion, and still 
 stronger against slavery. Thus it said, February 22, 
 1850 :
 
 THE COMPROMISE OF 1850. 77 
 
 *' The will of the majority of these states is, that not one 
 inch of territory now free shall ever be trod by the foot of a 
 slave. If, therefore, the Union cannot be preserved without 
 introduction of the leaven of corruption in a still greater pro- 
 portion than now pervades it, we declare our conviction that 
 freedom, rehgion, and honor demand that we allow the tie of 
 Union to be severed by those who assume the teiTible responsi- 
 bility. . . . Let Northern men and all the friends of free- 
 dom, while wiUing to concede names and forms, yield not an 
 inch of teiTitory to slavery while they have it in theii* hands." 
 
 Two weeks later Webster spoke. He rose to the full 
 height of his intellectual power. He held the scales even 
 between North and South, For Southern Disunion, for 
 Northern Abolitionism, he had equal rebuke. His plea 
 was for the faithful maintenance of the Constitution 
 and the Union. When he described the civil strife which 
 any attempt at secession was sure to precipitate, he 
 spoke with a prophet's foresight and a prophet's fervor. 
 Toward Mr. Clay's Compromise scheme he was substan- 
 tially favorable. He declared himself ready to waive 
 the formal exclusion of slavery from the New Mexican 
 territory, inasmuch as its soil and climate were a virtual 
 prohibition of slavery, and a legislative enactment would 
 therefore be a superfluous reenactment of the natural 
 law of God, and a needless affront to the South. He 
 affirmed the constitutional obligation of the North to 
 return fugitive slaves. He spoke in the spirit of com- 
 promise ; he spoke with a lucid, massive, and at times 
 impassioned eloquence, which even at this distance of 
 time lays the reader under its spell, and as he reads 
 almost convinces him, — iintil he looks up from the 
 printed page, upon the field of history and the eternal 
 lights of justice. 
 
 A single fault vitiated his whole treatment of the ques- 
 tion. He viewed it as a question between two terri-
 
 78 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 torial sections, with their respective systems of labor, 
 both systems being entitled to equal recognition and 
 respect, and the statesman's problem being to mete out 
 to each its equal share, and thus keep the two sections 
 harmonious and united in a common country. From 
 this stand-point, his plea was unanswerable. The one 
 fact he ignored was that the system of slavery was a 
 profoundly wrong and mischievous system, which it was 
 part of the statesman's business to discourage and re- 
 press. He treated the question as one between North 
 and South, instead of between freedom and slavery; — 
 he made the supreme object to be peace instead of right. 
 
 A storm broke upon Webster's head when that speech 
 was read in Massachusetts. The heart of the state was 
 shaken with indignation and grief for her favorite son. 
 The mass of his own party supported him, but that party 
 was at the next election driven from its long-time control 
 of the state. His friends rallied in his defense; the magic 
 of that imperial presence and irresistible personality won 
 its triumph ; the Whig party of Massachusetts stood by 
 Webster, — but he had given the political death-blow to 
 himself and to the party. 
 
 The speech fell upon the BepubUcan office as a great 
 surprise. While it was reported only in abstracts, the 
 paper deferred its comments, pleading meanwhile for a 
 full and fair hearing of the great chief. It published the 
 speech in full, in an extra sheet, March 13, and made its 
 comment : "• We regard the speech as a whole as strictly 
 Websterian — broad, patriotic, and honest. We be- 
 lieve that it will have a good effect, not only upon the 
 fiery South in soothing Disunion agitation, but upon the 
 North, in impressing upon it its constitutional obliga- 
 tions. We are among those, however, who wish it had 
 been more than it is," — who wish, in short, that more had 
 been said in behalf of the North and of freedom. But
 
 THE COMPKOMISE OF 1850. 79 
 
 then and afterward the paper was steadfast in loyalty to 
 Webster. It was always hearty in his defense, and qnali- 
 fied and mild in its dissent from him. Real censure upon 
 him it never pronounced. Through the six months of 
 Congressional debate that followed, this personal loyalty 
 to Webster was the most salient feature of the Republi- 
 can's politics. It did not, however, follow him in sup- 
 porting the Compromise scheme, but neither did it 
 combat that scheme with much warmth or \'igor. At no 
 period before or after did it deal with public questions so 
 ineffectively. It maintained, however, that the admis- 
 sion of California as a free state and without any 
 additional measures, was the true course. This course 
 was favored by President Taylor, who thus justified the 
 expectations of his anti-slavery supporters. But in mid- 
 summer he died. With his death the controlling influ- 
 ence of Mr. Seward in the Administration disappeared 
 wholly, upon the accession to the presidency of his great 
 opponent in New York politics, Millard FiUmore. Mr. 
 Webster became Secretary of State. His personality was 
 far stronger than Mr. Fillmore's, and was felt with more 
 decisive weight in the new Administration. The influ- 
 ence of the Executive was now turned in favor of the 
 Compromise measures, which were soon after adopted. 
 
 That one of them which provoked the strongest oppo- 
 sition at the North was the fugitive slave bill. Driven 
 to acknowledge the constitutional obligation to return 
 fugitive slaves, the anti-slavery Whigs based their oppo- 
 sition to this particular bill upon its denial of a jury trial 
 to the alleged fugitive. This was the ground taken by 
 the Republican, which, on this question, followed Web- 
 ster unreservedly. When Webster brought in a bill of 
 his own on the subject, gi^dng the alleged fugitive the 
 right to claim a jury trial, the Republican said, " We can 
 scarcely doubt nine-tenths of all the people in the free
 
 80 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 states will approve of the provisions of this bill when 
 they become known to them." Webster's bill was thrown 
 out, and the law in its most obnoxious form was passed, 
 receiving only three votes from Northern Whigs, and 
 with Mr. Winthrop — the successor and representative 
 of Mr. Webster in the Senate — opposing it. Thereafter 
 Webster and the Whigs, and the Bepublican with them, 
 treated it as the law of the land, entitled to loyal obedi- 
 ence. " That nasty word, Compromise," had been spoken 
 with effect, and the Bepuhlkan had made but faint 
 opposition. The anti-slavery ground, which it had main- 
 tained until now with such heartiness and vigor, was 
 hereafter, for a time, scarcely avowed except in a per- 
 functory way. The paper was governed by loyalty to an 
 individual and a party, rather than allegiance to an idea. 
 
 Webster's position was not without elements of strength. 
 As to the fugitive slave question, he stood on constitu- 
 tional ground. His devotion to the Union was a great 
 and worthy sentiment. But, waiving all question of 
 ambitious or unworthy motives on his part, he was blind 
 to the handwriting on the wall, which declared an irre- 
 pressible conflict between freedom and slavery; and he 
 was insensitive to the moral element, the wrong of slavery, 
 which underlay all constitutions and compromises. In 
 supporting him through this period the BepuUican sub- 
 ordinated its own best instincts and tendencies. 
 
 Yet history, in its calm retrospect, recognizes that 
 Webster and his followers were far other than the mere 
 apostates to freedom which they seemed to the men 
 possessed by the passion of anti-slavery. Webster was 
 identified with a sublime idea — the idea of American 
 nationality. He wrought a supreme service in the earlier 
 days, when in his duels with Calhoun he overmatched 
 the acute logic which claimed for each of the states an 
 independent sovereignty, by maintaining with equal
 
 THE COilPKOMISE OF ISoO. 81 
 
 acumen an organic national unity, and evoking in its 
 defense a gt-ander and mightier sentiment. No American 
 of the first half of this century did so much to root the 
 love of the Union in the minds and hearts of the people 
 as did Webster. It was that love, more than hostility to 
 slavery, which animated the North in the war which 
 established the Union and destroyed slavery. Webster 
 failed to measure the evil of slavery, and the Abolitionists 
 failed no less to measure the evil of disunion. Each of 
 them was devoted to one great idea ; and the two ideas, 
 which conflicted for a while, were destined to blend at 
 last into a harmonious and irresistible force. The high- 
 est distinction of the radical anti-slavery men was that 
 they gave disinterested service, in which they had gen- 
 erally nothing to gain and much to lose ; while in the 
 forces which opposed them patriotism had its allies in 
 the ambition of politicians, the timidity of churches, and 
 the selfishness of commerce. 
 
 Vol. I.— 6
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 The Fugitive Slave Law. 
 
 THE Compromise of 1850, inasmuch as it did some- 
 how put an end to the immediate open questions 
 regarding slavery, was accepted by the country with 
 singular unanimity. Two years later, the only party 
 which sought to reopen any of its conclusions — the Free- 
 soil — cast only about 156,000 votes in a total of over 
 3,000,000. In this acceptance, the Bepuhlican was in 
 entire harmony with the general drift, and with the 
 Whig party. Upon the adjournment of Congress, it 
 said, October 1, 1850 : 
 
 " The measures which have at last been carried form a new 
 era in our history. Time alone can develop the beneficence 
 and efiiciency of their operations. They have been the best 
 that could he carried to save the Union from dangers which 
 threatened it, and satisfied with this we may only hope they 
 will work out the great and happy results for which they were 
 designed." 
 
 And it steadily advocated the observance of all the pro- 
 visions thus adopted. 
 
 Among these provisions there was one which brought 
 the subject of slavery home to the keenest sensibilities of 
 the Northern people, and forced upon them the sharpest 
 dilemma between the obligations of humanity and those
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 83 
 
 of citizenship. This was the Fugitive Slave law. The 
 constitution expressly required the rendition from the 
 free states of fugitives who had fled from their masters. 
 By an early act of Congress, provision had been made 
 for the execution of this provision by magistrates in the 
 several states. This law had not been often put in 
 operation. Several of the Northern states had recently 
 enacted statutes intended to obstruct its operations. 
 There were demands from the South for more effective 
 measures. A bill for this purpose, by Mr. Mason of Vir- 
 ginia, was incorporated in the Compromise scheme, and 
 enacted. An efficient bill for this object could not be 
 acceptable to the North. The point for which the Whigs 
 contended — that the alleged fugitive should be tried by 
 a jury — had its only real importance in the unconfessed 
 presumption that Northern juries would decide not ac- 
 cording to the facts but according to their sympathies, 
 and so nullify the law. As adopted, the law gave the 
 decision on the master's claim to a United States com- 
 missioner. The law went into operation. It roused 
 throughout the North a wide excitement and exaspera- 
 tion. Many thousands of men and women who had braved 
 hardship and peril in their escape from bondage were 
 living in Northern towns and cities. They were a peace- 
 ful, inoffensive class, earning their living by humble 
 labor, in kindly relations with their white neighbors. 
 To every one of these the law came as a deadly menace. 
 Men and women were carried back to bondage from 
 Massachusetts; not by secret kidnappers, but in broad 
 day, with the whole community looking on, with the 
 whole country apprised by telegraph of each step in the 
 rendition, and under the shadow and sanction of the 
 stars and stripes. 
 
 To resist was to break the law. To organize resist- 
 ance was to organize rebellion. The master was in the
 
 84 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 exercise of his legal rights. The stipulation which 
 secured to him those rights was one of the mutual con- 
 cessions through which was made possible the great 
 American republic. If any one may break and resist a 
 law of which he personally disapproves, there is an end 
 of civil government, of social order, of civilization. So 
 argued one party. 
 
 Said others : '' Not all the laws in the world can jus- 
 tify a direct violation of the sacred obligations of human- 
 ity. Human law can no more make such an act right 
 than it can make theft, adultery, murder, right. There 
 is a higher law than that of Congress — it is the law 
 of God. We will aid the fugitive to escape, and if 
 it comes to strife we will side with him rather than his 
 oppressor." 
 
 When the bill was under debate, a correspondent, 
 " H.," wrote to the Republican (June 3, 1850) that the 
 people of the North '' will aid in the recapture of the 
 fugitive slaves when they forget the Christian law and 
 become callous to every human sentiment — not before. 
 The fate of Mason's bill, or any other on this subject, 
 is of little practical importance. . . . It is much too 
 late to think of enforcing a law so repugnant to the 
 public conscience. Practically and forever this question 
 is settled. Let the slave escape beyond the slave states, 
 and the southern border of the free states, and he will be 
 aided in his escape by every one with whom he meets. 
 And it will be done, not only at the spontaneous prompt- 
 ing of sympathy, but as a sacred duty. No more false 
 pledges should be given to the slave-holders. It is better 
 to teU them honestly : ' It is so writ in the bond,' but it 
 is morally impossible ; we cannot and will not do it ! 
 If your human cattle escape, we bid them God-speed in 
 the race for liberty, and we cannot do otherwise as long 
 as we are men."
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 85 
 
 Against this plea, the MepubUcan argued at length that 
 civil government and social order depend on obedience 
 to the law, " The Constitution does not require us to be 
 slave-catchers, nor to withhold our God-speed to a fugi- 
 tive. Our sympathies are all with him, and they always 
 will be with him. Our simple duty is, when ownership 
 is proved to us through regularly appointed officers, to 
 offer no resistance to his reclamation. If we do, our 
 Constitution is as worthless a piece of parchment as a 
 Mississippi bond." 
 
 Through all the exciting discussions and events which 
 followed the passage of the law, the Repiiblican main- 
 tained this ground. It earnestly opposed the " higher 
 law " idea as subversive of all civil government. It de- 
 clared (March 31, 1851) that the only legitimate resource, 
 where the law requires from the individual the active 
 performance of what he thinks wrong, is to decline to 
 obey, and accept the penalty. "All sober men, and all 
 good members of society, agree that the laws of society 
 must he either actively or passively obeyed ; that the be- 
 hests of society, uttered through its recognized channels 
 of authority, are to be wrought out by the individual or 
 suffered in the penalty attached to them." Under the 
 caption " Under which King ?" (March 21, 1851), it pressed 
 the alternative — obedience to the law, or disunion and 
 anarchy. " We put it to every man in the community 
 who has cheated himself, or been cheated, into the belief 
 that it is right for him to resist the execution of any of 
 the laws of the land, whether he is willing to assume the 
 political position of Garrison, and thus preserve his con- 
 sistency, and stand where he can alone defend himself. 
 Will you be a friend or an enemy to the Government ? 
 WiU you be a citizen or an alien ? Will you be a sub- 
 ject, or, in aU essential signification of the word, an 
 outlaw ? "
 
 86 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 These tliings were not said by way of abstract specu- 
 lation. A few weeks before, a colored man, Shadrach, 
 had been arrested in Boston as a fugitive, and a mob 
 had carried him from the court-room into safety and 
 freedom. A little later, in the same city, Thomas Simms 
 was arrested, and by the United States Commissioner 
 was remanded as a slave. The state Supreme Court was 
 vainly appealed to in his behalf. The city authorities 
 cooperated with the Federal officials to guard him from 
 rescue. He was marched through the streets surrounded 
 by three hundred armed policemen, with a body of militia 
 held in reserve in Faneuil Hall, was placed on shipboard, 
 and returned to his master. This was the BejmbUcan's 
 comment the day after (April 14, 1851) : 
 
 " It is a relief to know that this painful affau* has ended, and 
 a source of gratification that the laws of the nation, so boldly 
 threatened in the spirit of mobocratic resistance, have been 
 sustaiaed. Yet this rehef and this gratification, as they must 
 be to every peaceable and law-loving and law-abiding heart, 
 are dimmed by the sense of individual and social wi'ong, which 
 is thus brought directly home to us as the result of slavery in 
 our country and our constitution. It is a deep and bitter evO, 
 an anomaly in our Republic, giving the he to every line of our 
 profession as a people and a nation, and yet a fijxed fact, that 
 must be met and treated in a broad and cathoUc spmt, and not 
 with the cowardice of fanaticism, which would pull down the 
 whole fabric because it has one gi*oss imperfection in its fi-ame. 
 We find no immixed good anywhere, — not even at the hearth- 
 stone of home, — and yet we do not propose therefore to destroy 
 our famUy firesides and put asunder what God has joined 
 together." 
 
 At this period there were two forms of occasional dis- 
 turbance of the peace. Resistance to the return of fugi- 
 tives was not very frequent, because these renditions 
 were not often attempted, so strong was the popular
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 87 
 
 antipathy to them, while the public authority was yet 
 generally formidable enough to forbid any active resist- 
 ance. The other class of disorders was much more 
 frequent, consisting in riotous demonstrations against 
 Abolitionist speakers. The Abolitionists — Garrison, 
 Phillips, and their associates — stood in aggressive op- 
 position to the strongest current of the time. When the 
 mass of the politicians and the people were declaring 
 that the slavery question was settled by the Compromise, 
 the Abolitionists with fresh energy declared it to be a 
 delusive and wicked peace. While the mass of the 
 Northern people felt themselves to have made some 
 sacrifice of feeling for the sake of strengthening the 
 Union, Garrison and his followers assailed the Union 
 itself as cemented in crime and deserving immediate 
 overthrow. They were held in detestation by most of 
 the conservative and respectable elements of society, 
 and those elements did not always care to check the 
 outbreak of popular \dolence from the lower class against 
 the agitators. 
 
 In February, 1851, it was announced that George 
 Thompson, doubly obnoxious as an Abolitionist and an 
 Englishman who had come over to attack American 
 institutions, would speak at a public meeting in Spring- 
 field. The meeting was appointed for Monday the 17th. 
 It was loudly threatened that Thompson would not be 
 allowed to appear, A committee of prominent citizens 
 was appointed to warn him that the town was in an 
 excited and dangerous condition. Sunday morning, an 
 efBgy of Thompson, and another labeled "John Bull," 
 were found hanging in the principal square of the town. 
 A handbill was widely circulated, headed " Regulators, 
 Attention," making a \dolent appeal against the "paid 
 emissary and spy of England." It was an undisguised 
 summons to mob Thompson if he attempted to speak.
 
 80 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 The Bepublican of Monday morning reported the facts 
 of the situation, and said, " If Mr. Thompson attempts 
 to fulfill his engagement, there will be a very serious dis- 
 turbance. "We should deeply regret such an occurrence, 
 because it would be subversive of those principles of law 
 and order that are at once the foundation and the safe- 
 guard of a republican government ; because a gross 
 violation of the free speech of which we boast as one of 
 the greatest liberties guaranteed by our constitution ; 
 because disgraceful to our town and country; and be- 
 cause it would tend greatly to assist Mr. Thompson and 
 his American associates in their crusade against our 
 constitution and our government." In another column it 
 said that Mr. Thompson, accompanied by Garrison and 
 Phillips, was to speak in the evening, "for the purpose, 
 we presume, of denouncing the American constitution, 
 libeling the Christian church, and abusing the greatest 
 and best men, living and dead, that have ever impressed 
 their names on the country's history. We allude to this 
 meeting more in sorrow than in any stronger or harsher 
 sentiment, for we presume it will be made, like its long 
 line of predecessors in this and other towns, the scene of 
 pitiful fanaticism, blind perversion of truth, and such 
 handling of sacred things as shaU wound the moral sense 
 like the naked blow of blasphemy." It advised citizens 
 to stay away from the meeting, and thus consign it to 
 insignificance and obscurity. The selectmen of the town 
 appointed a few special constables, and notified the pro- 
 prietors of the hall that the town would not be responsi- 
 ble for any damages ; whereupon the proprietors refused 
 the use of the hall, and there was no meeting that day. 
 In the evening a riotous crowd thronged the streets, with 
 bonfires, drums, fifes, bells, and crackers. " Rowdyism was 
 in the highest degree rampant," said the Bepublican next 
 morning; and it rebuked especially the intelligent and
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 89 
 
 respectable men whose latent support emboldened the 
 mob. It thus enforced the moral : " In the Faneuil Hall 
 reception of Mr. Thompson, in the treatment he has 
 received here, and in the recent fugitive slave mob in 
 Boston " (the rescue of Shadrach), '^ there is a trampling 
 upon great principles that shows ' something rotten in 
 the state of Denmark.' We fully understand the motives 
 which were the mainspring of each of these proceedings ; 
 we fully appreciate the strength and abstract rightfulness 
 of the feelings that prompted the actors therein ; but we 
 mourn in bitterness the terrible lack of judgment and 
 forecast that those professing to be and holding the places 
 of leading men in society, display in countenancing such 
 violation of the first principles of our government." 
 
 That day a room was obtained by Mr. Thompson and 
 his friends, in which they held meetings in the forenoon 
 and afternoon. The attendance was small, there was no 
 disturbance, and the speakers were very severe upon 
 the mob, the city authorities, and the Republican. Mr. 
 Thompson charged that the inflammatory handbill was 
 printed at the Bepublican ofi&ce, and that the paper had 
 incited the mob. Mr. Bowles addressed a note to Mr. 
 Thompson denying and demanding proof of these state- 
 ments, and Thompson replied by sharp denunciations. 
 In the evening it was considered unsafe to hold a meet- 
 ing. Again there were riotous demonstrations, and Mr. 
 Thompson was burned in effigy in front of his room at 
 the hotel. There was no overt violence, and no arrests 
 were made. The Republican the next morning made 
 these occurrences the text of a long editorial on the 
 " Higher Law," an idea of which it declared the mob to 
 be a logical and practical outcome. It recalled the fact 
 that when, a little while before, Marshal D evens visited 
 the town, for the purpose, as was at first believed, of 
 arresting some fugitive slaves, there had been free talk
 
 90 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 of resisting him by violence ; and this manifestation, it 
 declared, was a precedent and parallel of the demonstra- 
 tions against Thompson ; both were outcroppings of the 
 same lawless spirit. The whole stress of this article was 
 directed not against the mob that forbade Thompson to 
 speak and hanged and burned him in effigy, nor against 
 the respectable classes that had encouraged and tolerated 
 this violence, but against those who had declared that 
 they would disobey or resist the law for the return of 
 fugitives. Mr. Thompson's charges against the Bejmb- 
 lican were met by denials and rebuke, and there followed 
 a long and bitter controversy between him and the 
 paper. For several weeks the disturbance was a leading 
 topic in its columns ; and upon this and similar occur- 
 rences the same tone was maintained, of condemnation 
 equally severe theoretically of those who mobbed Aboli- 
 tionist speakers and those who rescued fugitives from 
 their captors ; but with the sharpest stress of rebuke 
 against the latter. 
 
 Meantime the politics of the state had taken a singular 
 course. The Free-soilers remained throughout the coun- 
 try generally in a minority, whose small number is 
 remarkable when we consider that their principles were 
 equally anti-slavery and constitutional, and that their 
 leaders included such men as C. F. Adams, Sumner, Wil- 
 son, Palfrey, John P. Hale, Giddings, Chase, and others 
 of like quality. The party was very small, but in some 
 states it held the balance of power between the two great 
 parties, and by a temporary alliance with one of them 
 could win some important position. In Massachusetts, 
 Webster's defection from the anti-slavery cause, in which 
 the Whig party as a body followed him, offered a chance 
 of success to the opponents of that party, if they could 
 unite their forces. Hitherto the Democrats had been 
 less friendly than the Whigs to Free-soil principles. In
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 91 
 
 several Congressioual districts, at the election of 1850, 
 the Free-soilers and a part of the Whigs united upon a 
 candidate. Horace Mann, who had represented the old 
 district of John Quiney Adams as an anti-slavery Whig, 
 lost the party renomination by his opposition to Webster 
 after the 7th of March ; he was nominated by the Free- 
 soilers led by C. F. Adams, and was elected. There were 
 some other similar cases. But a different plan of coali- 
 tion was proposed for the legislature. Each of the three 
 parties had its own candidates before the people for 
 governor and state officers, but it became clear that 
 neither would have a majority, and in that case the 
 choice would devolve on the legislature. That body was 
 also to elect two United States senators, one for an un- 
 expired term of a few weeks, the other for a full term 
 of six years. It was proposed that in the legislature the 
 Free-soilers should join forces with the Democrats, to 
 give the state offices to the latter and the long-term 
 senatorship to a Free-soiler. This arrangement was 
 opposed by some of the Free-soil leaders, including 
 Adams, Palfrey, and Whittier, but most of their number, 
 including Henry Wilson and F. W. Bird, favored the 
 agreement, and an understanding was openly established 
 with the Democrats. 
 
 Such a combination, in which the two parties are not 
 united by a common principle for which each makes some 
 sacrifice, but by a direct exchange of votes, one set of 
 offices being given to men of one political creed, and 
 another set to men of another creed, is sure to arouse 
 severe criticism. The two parties to it will always be 
 charged with trading their principles for office and power. 
 The Massachusetts Whigs, no longer able to appeal to 
 anti-slavery sentiment, assailed with effect the incon- 
 gruity of the coalition against them. The BepuUican 
 was the enthusiastic champion of the Whig party. It
 
 92 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 attacked the Democrats as insincere, and told the Free- 
 soilers they were being made a cat's-paw, and would 
 never get their promised reward. The enthusiasm of a 
 party name and history ; the claim of consistency and 
 sincerity, opposed to a hybrid coalition for the spoils of 
 oifice ; the allegiance to a great party chief, — these senti- 
 ments gave ardor to the politics of the Repuhlican. It 
 was whole-hearted in its devotion to the "Whig party — 
 Whig cause cannot be said, for in truth the party stood 
 no longer for living ideas. It was rich in memories, but 
 bankrupt in great principles, save that of devotion to the 
 Union, and even as to that it had at the North little dis- 
 tinction above its chief opponent, the Democracy. As 
 had been foreseen, no one of their state tickets secured a 
 majority in the popular vote. The election devolved on 
 the legislature. The coalition was then made definite 
 and binding. A Democrat, George Boutwell, was chosen 
 Governor, with Democratic associates in the state offices, 
 except a few minor places given by compact to the Free- 
 soilers. To the fragment of a senatorial term Robert 
 Rantoul was elected as a Democrat. For the long term, the 
 Whig candidate was Robert C. Winthrop, and the coali- 
 tion supported Charles Sumner. After a contest of some 
 months, — a minority of the Democrats obstinately refus- 
 ing to support Mr. Sumner, — the necessary votes were 
 gained to elect him. The Republican fought the coalition 
 with vigor, but with no such bitterness as it expressed 
 toward the disunion Abolitionists. It treated most of 
 the coalition leaders with personal respect, spoke well of 
 Governor BoutweU, and when at last Mr. Sumner was 
 elected to the Senate, said of him (May 2, 1851) that he 
 was a man of brilliant parts, a theorizer, and an honest 
 humanitarian, with no experience in legislation, with no 
 proved claims as a debater or statesman, and with his 
 future in his own hands.
 
 • THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 93 
 
 By a strange transposition, the Democratic party in 
 Massachusetts had become for the time more friendly to 
 freedom than the Whig. In the Democratic convention 
 of this year, 1851, there was a great deal of strong anti- 
 slavery talk. But in the Whig convention held in 
 Springfield, September 11, there was not one voice in 
 rebuke of slavery aggression. The Compromise, the 
 Union, and Webster, were the unanimous cry. The 
 resolutions in one paragraph declare: ''The Whigs of 
 Massachusetts will faithfully perform every duty im- 
 posed upon them by the Constitution of the United 
 States, and they call upon their brethren in every state 
 in the Union to respect and observe all its constitutional 
 provisions." The only " duty imposed by the Constitu- 
 tion " as to which there was the least question in the 
 public mind, was the return of fugitive slaves. To this 
 the resolution evidently pointed, and to enforce this 
 duty was the chief burden of the address to the people 
 issued by the convention. No wonder that Palfrey said, 
 when in the following week he allied himself with the 
 Free-soil party at its convention, that the Whig resolu- 
 tions and addresses had sent him there : " No man 
 could read those resolutions without being struck down 
 by conviction as St. Paul was." At the Springfield 
 convention the Webster influence dominated everything. 
 Winthrop was nominated for governor, and Ashmun, 
 Everett, and Seth Sprague were appointed delegates to 
 the national convention of the following year. 
 
 The Republican was enthusiastic over the harmony 
 and success of the state convention. It cheered on the 
 Whigs through the ensuing campaign, throwing its 
 weight mainly upon state issues, in which the coalition 
 had by no means made a brilliant success. It also had 
 something to say for a high tariff. The coalitionists 
 gave prominence rather to national than state issues.
 
 94 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 They again carried the legislature, though by a reduced 
 and narrow majority, and with it the state ofifices. For 
 governor, the popular vote was, in round numbers: 
 Winthrop, 65,000; Boutwell, 44,000; Palfrey, 28,000,— a 
 fair measure of the relative strength of parties. 
 
 The national conventions of 1852 were held, and the 
 nominations made. The Democratic platform declared 
 that the Compromise of 1850 must be accepted as the 
 end of the controversy upon slavery. In the Whig con- 
 vention, Ashmun was chairman of the committee on 
 resolutions. The Southern delegates to the convention 
 agreed in advance upon a resolution on which they 
 would insist, and this resolution in substance was 
 adopted by the committee and the convention. It de- 
 clared that the compromise measures, including the 
 Fugitive Slave law, were accepted and acquiesced in by 
 the Whig party, " as a final settlement in principle and 
 substance of the dangerous and exciting questions which 
 they embrace," and that all further agitation of such 
 questions should be discountenanced. This platform 
 was adopted by 227 votes to 66, For the presidential 
 nomination the rivals were Mr. Fillmore, Mr, Webster, 
 and General Scott, The latter was supported by the 
 anti-slavery Whigs, — for little apparent reason save that 
 he was not as objectionable as his competitors, — but was 
 chiefly prominent from his military prestige. Webster 
 had little support save from Massachusetts, whose dele- 
 gation stood by him, with the exception of Henry L. 
 Dawes, who voted for Scott, The real contest was be- 
 tween Scott and Fillmore, and at last Scott was nomi- 
 nated. He cordially accepted the platform, and thereby 
 took away all enthusiasm from the anti-slavery element 
 of the party, while such Southerners as Stephens and 
 Toombs of Georgia refused to support him because the 
 anti-slavery wing had favored him. The Democrats had
 
 THE FUGITIVE SLAVE LAW. 95 
 
 in Franklin Pierce an obscui-e candidate, but they were 
 more harmonious than the Whigs. They had re-absorbed 
 the New York seceders to Free-soilism in 1848, and they 
 were more trusted than the Whigs by the South. The 
 Free-soilers nominated John P. Hale. Their platform 
 re-affirmed that freedom must be regarded as national 
 and slavery sectional ; pronounced slavery a sin against 
 Grod and a crime against man ; denounced the Fugitive 
 Slave law, and declared that no human law can be a 
 finality ; and gave the watchword of " Free soil, free 
 speech, free labor, free men ! " This became the rallying 
 cry of the Republican party only four years later ; and 
 the principles thus announced closely resembled those 
 applied by the Republican party to somewhat altered 
 circumstances, save that the latter never made an issue 
 of the Fugitive Slave law, and was much more explicit 
 and careful in affirming the local rights of slavery than 
 the Free-soilers ever troubled themselves to be. But 
 the latter party never had much popular strength, and 
 now, deprived of its Democratic allies of four years 
 earlier, its vote fell off from that of 1848 by 100,000, 
 and reached only 156,000. The Democrats swept the 
 country, carrpng all but four states (Massachusetts, 
 Vermont, Kentucky, and Tennessee), though with a 
 popular vote only a very little larger than their two 
 opponents combined. 
 
 The Republican's tone through this campaign of 1852 
 was unreservedly and heartily Whig. The first stage of 
 its political history ends here. In comparison with Mr. 
 Bowles's course in later years, it is noticeable how thor- 
 oughly during this period he was swayed by the alle- 
 giance and enthusiasm of a party, when that party had 
 no longer any distinctive principles or any inspiring 
 idea. The ardor of the Bepublican for the Whig party 
 in these years was in reality, if analyzed, an ardor partly
 
 96 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 for individuals, — Webster, the great light of the system, 
 and Everett, Choate, Ashmun, Winthrop, and the rest, 
 revolving around him, — partly for a name, a tradition, 
 an association, which had imperceptibly become emptied 
 of any solid idea or vital principle. This enthusiasm 
 for a party name and associations, in distinction from 
 an intelligent attachment to ideas and principles, domi- 
 nated Mr. Bowles in these earlier years ; in later years 
 it was against just such unreasoning partisanship that 
 he was to do effective service. As a young man he had 
 not yet broken away from the materializing influences 
 which prevailed in the community about him. That 
 ardor of intellectual and moral progress which burned 
 on the Massachusetts coast had scarcely kindled in the 
 valley of the Connecticut. The great men of the region, 
 the " river-gods," were very far from moral enthusiasts. 
 The " respectable " sentiment of the town was stronger 
 against George Thompson than against the men who 
 mobbed him. When on that occasion the pastor of the 
 Unitarian church, Rev. George Simmons, spoke manfully 
 for the rights of free speech, it cost him his dismissal 
 from the parish. He was on a sick-bed when the church 
 meeting was held, and his physician warned those pres- 
 ent that any hostile action on their part at that time 
 might endanger his life, but in the face of this warning 
 they passed a vote of dismissal. Mr. Bowles started on 
 a level with his environment. The sensitiveness to the 
 moral element in politics, the insight into the real mean- 
 ing and drift of things, were to be developed in him later.
 
 CHAPTER XIL 
 
 The Journalist at Work : His Lieutenants. 
 
 THE course of the ReiniMican upon great public 
 questions can be briefly recorded, but it is im- 
 possible to record, almost impossible to suggest, the 
 history of the paper itself, as a daily chronicle of news 
 and opinion. As one turns the })ages of its old files, at a 
 distance of many years, there is in them a vigor and 
 sparkle which fascinate. Read now, it is history in its 
 most vivid and stirring form. Read then, as the sheets 
 yet damp from the press were caught up and eagerly 
 scanned by thousands of eyes, it was history in the very 
 making. These bird's-eye glimpses of the world's life 
 for a day, these stories of myriad activities of good and 
 evil, these quick suggestive paragraphs, stamped an 
 influence on the mind and character of the people who 
 read them. The newspaper was a factor in the lives of 
 the individual and the community more potent than 
 they knew. 
 
 The especial genius of the Bepuhlican and its editor 
 lay in giving the news. Said the prospectus of Decem- 
 ber 23, 1851 : 
 
 '' We aim first of all to make a live newspaper, — to give 
 everything in this region that people want, briefly, intelli- 
 gently, succinctly stated — to weed out the verbiage and present 
 the kernel. . . . After news, — which is the gi-eat distinc- 
 VOL. I.— 7 97
 
 98 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 tive object of the Republican, and to wMch all other things must 
 bend, — we aim to discuss pohtics, morals, religion, physics, — 
 everything in fact which editors may discuss nowadays, — as 
 honestly, fairly, frankly, and iatelhgently as our abihties, 
 knowledge, and time will admit." 
 
 The decade in which the telegraph came into use was 
 the swift and wonderful adolescence of the news-gather- 
 ing function of journalism. The Eepuhlican had its first 
 telegraphic dispatches in the latter part of 1846. An 
 editorial on '^ The Newspaper," January 4, 1851, shows 
 how the incoming order of things impressed the men 
 through whom it was wrought out. The very style of 
 the article illustrates the habit of thought and expression 
 which the rush of news, and the swift energy it exacted, 
 created in the editor, when he was a man of power and 
 sensitiveness. 
 
 " Nothing can be more evident to the pubhc, and nothing 
 certainly is more evident to pubUshers of newspapers, than 
 that there is a great deal more news nowadays than there used 
 to be. . . . Publishers of country weekhes used to fish with 
 considerable anxiety in a shaUow sea, for matter sufficient to 
 fill their sheets, whUe daihes only dreamed of an existence in 
 the larger cities. . . . Now all is changed. The increase 
 of facihties for the transmission of news brought in a new era. 
 The railroad car, the steamboat, and the magnetic telegraph 
 have made neighborhood among widely dissevered states, and 
 the Eastern Continent is but a few days' journey away. These 
 active and almost miraculous agencies have brought the whole 
 civilized world in contact. The editor sits in his sanctum, and 
 his obedient messengers are the lightning and the fire. He 
 knows a fire has raged in London before the wind could waft 
 its smoke to him; the hghtning tells him of an explosion in 
 New Orleans before they have counted the dead and wounded ; 
 the debates of Congress are in his hands, though hundreds and 
 thousands of miles from the Capitol, before the members who 
 participated in them have eaten their dinner ; a speech is
 
 THE JOURNALIST AT WORK : HIS LIEUTENANTS. 99 
 
 under his eyes before the hurrahs it awakened have died away ; 
 and there he sits day after day, as if he were the center of the 
 world, to whom all men and things are accountalile, and all 
 actions returnable. These events are chronicled and explained, 
 and then they are given to his messengers, the rushing engines, 
 which carry them to thousands of greedy eyes, waiting to see, 
 in one brief transcript, the record of the world's great struggle 
 the previous day. . . . The appetite for news is one of those 
 appetites that grows by what it feeds on. . . . The mind 
 accustomed to the gossip of nations cannot content itself with 
 the gossip of families. . . . The tendency of this new state 
 of things has as yet hardly claimed a moment's consideration 
 from the moralist and the philosopher. Nations and individuals 
 now stand immediately responsible to the world's opinion, and 
 the world, interesting itself in the grand events ti'anspu*iiig in 
 its various parts, and among its various parties, has become, 
 and is still becoming, hberalized in feeUng ; and being called 
 away from its exclusive home-fields has forgotten, in its uni- 
 versal interests, the petty interests, feuds, gossips and strifes of 
 fa mili es and neighborhoods. This wonderful extension of the 
 field of vision, this compression of the human race into one 
 great family, must tend to identify its interests, sympathies, and 
 motives. . . . The press is destined, more than any other 
 agency, to melt and mold the jarring and contending nations 
 of the world into that one great brotherhood which through 
 long centuries has been the ideal of the Christian and the philan- 
 thropist. Its mission has but just commenced. A few years more 
 and a great thought uttered within sight of the Atlantic will 
 rise with the morrow's sun and shine upon miUions of minds 
 within sight of the Pacific. The murmur of Asia's multitudes 
 will be heard at our doors; and, laden with the fruit of aU 
 human thought and action, the newspaper will be in every 
 abode, the daily nourishment of every mind." 
 
 This was the ideal view of the matter. But meantime 
 the RejiuhUcan was making its mark especially through 
 a close attention to the home field and its homely details. 
 At this period its especial claim was to report and repre-
 
 100 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 sent its own section of tlie state. The aim it announced 
 December 23, 1851, was " to give the gist of everything 
 transpiiing at this active period of the world's history, 
 and to do it in such a shape and with such directness as 
 to suit in particular the tastes and wants of the people of 
 western Massachusetts." A special department of west- 
 ern Massachusetts news was organized. Dr. Holland 
 wrote in a weekly serial the local history of this part of 
 the state. The publication of this " History of "Western 
 Massachusetts " was begun with the year 1854, in weekly 
 numbers, and continued for over a twelvemonth. It 
 traced the annals of each town in the western counties 
 from its earliest settlement, and outlined the general 
 social history of the community. The work was done 
 with immense industry, with strong sympathy with the 
 local traditions and sentiment, and in that popular and 
 readable style of which Dr. Holland was a master. It 
 was his first large literary work, and was followed by a 
 historical novel, ''The Bay Path," of which the scenes lay 
 in the early colonial time of Springfield and its neighbor- 
 hood. These writings appealed to local patriotism, and 
 strengthened it, and through them the paper's roots 
 struck more tenaciously into the local soil. At the same 
 time its range was widening and its power increasing. 
 In the new era of politics, at the birth of the Republican 
 party, it will be seen how it rose to a leadership) of nobler 
 quality and wider scope, and it was with ample justifi- 
 cation that its prospectus for 1856 advanced a broader 
 claim than before. "Its highest ambition is to be the 
 representative of New England sentiment, and the ser- 
 vant of New England interests." This always remained 
 its highest claim and its proudest boast — to be the repre- 
 sentative newspaper of New England. 
 
 The faculty in which Mr. Bowles fij'st showed emi- 
 nence — the germ as it were from which his powers
 
 THE JOUKNALIST AT WOEK : HIS LIEUTENANTS. 101 
 
 developed — was skill in gathering news. Said IVIr. Bryan, 
 who was added to the paper's force in 1852 : " He and I 
 would go into a little restaurant on Sanford street, and 
 one and another would di'op in and exchange a few 
 words, and while we were eating our lunch he would pick 
 up half a column of news." Said a friend in a neighbor- 
 ing town : " I would meet him on the street, we would 
 chat a few minutes about the events of the day, and 
 next morning I would find in the paper everything I 
 had told him." In the political conventions which he 
 attended and reported, he was in his native element. He 
 button-holed everybody, and offended nobody ; found out 
 the designs of every clique, the doings of every secret 
 caucus, got at the plans of the leaders, the temper of the 
 crowd, sensed the whole situation, — and the next morn- 
 ing's Republican gave a better idea of the convention to 
 those who had staid at home than many of its partici- 
 pants had gained. These reporting expeditions were 
 full of education to him. His mode of growth was by 
 absorption. Other people were to him sponges out of 
 which he deftly squeezed whatever knowledge they could 
 yield. As yet, the work of the paper held him pretty 
 closely to Springfield, and allowed but few of those flying 
 trips to the centers of intelligence which in later years he 
 used constantly to make. But he made the most of every 
 opportunity. In the winter of 1852-3 he was appointed 
 messenger to carry the electoral vote of the state to 
 Washington. It was the first time he had been there 
 since his invalid journey southward, eight years before. 
 George Ashmun showed him all sides of the city's life. 
 
 Another journey he made in 1854 to Chicago, and 
 thence "N^ith a great excursion party to the Falls of St. 
 Anthony. He wrote to the Bepuhlican a series of letters 
 describing this journey. One passage, written at Niagara 
 Falls, illustrates how in this early stage of his develop-
 
 102 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 meiit the grandeur of Nature, instead of carrying him 
 into a different realm from that of humanity, stimulated 
 his sense of the intense human activities in which his 
 life was merged. 
 
 " America is written all over the Falls. Its roar is that of 
 the nation. Its majestic sweep typifies the gi'and progress of 
 America. The maddenuig, dashing, seething, bafiiing, pitch- 
 ing, uneasy flood typifies the intensity of the American mind, 
 and the vitahty of American action. Here is the fountain of 
 true young America — here the breast which gives it milk — 
 here the nurture which gives it vitahty. And then the rain- 
 bows hovering over and about the scene, do they not signify 
 the promise which America gives to mankind, the hope which 
 it implants in weary-laden hearts, the home which it furnishes 
 to the outcast and wanderer from governmental oppression and 
 social villainy elsewhere *? " 
 
 Gradually co-laborers and lieutenants were added to 
 Mr. Bowles and Dr. Holland. Mr. Clark W. Bryan, pre- 
 viously the conductor of the BerhsMre Courier, of Great 
 Barrington, came as an addition to the force in Novem- 
 ber, 1854, and continued with it for twenty years, — 
 a man of high fidelity and capacity, greedy of work, 
 warm-hearted, and thoroughly loyal to his chief. For 
 several years he had been employed to collect the elec- 
 tion returns from southern Berkshire. The gathering of 
 the returns from western Massachusetts was a special 
 achievement of the Republican. Says Mr. Bryan, in the 
 Paper World, April, 1880 : " The writer scoured south- 
 ern Berkshire, driving personally fifty miles by horse- 
 power and the same number on a locomotive, between 
 the closing of the polls in the hill towns of Berkshire 
 and the hour of eleven P. M., when the returns of every 
 town in western Massachusetts — with only one excep- 
 tion, on two occasions — were in the Bepublican otRce." 
 From the southern border the returns were gathered to
 
 THE JOURNALIST AT WOEK : HIS LIEUTENANTS. 103 
 
 Great Barrington, thence fleet horses took them to Pitts- 
 field, where they were met by a hand-car from North 
 Adams, bringing Henry L. Dawes with the reports from 
 the northern towns ; and from Pittsfield Mr. Bryan took 
 them by locomotive to Springfield. The river counties 
 were covered by special locomotive from South Vernon, 
 connecting with horse-expresses along the way. The 
 organization of such an achievement was a congenial 
 enterprise for Mr. Bowles, and brought him into acquaint- 
 ance with energetic and capable men throughout the 
 region. 
 
 When Mr. Bryan came to the paper, Mr. Bowles was 
 still partially disabled by the weakening of the eyes 
 which preceded and followed his severe sickness in the 
 spring of 1852. From November to the next September, 
 he was not much engaged in the editorial rooms, except 
 in making up the Weekly. This task he kept in his own 
 hands, with rare exceptions, till the end of his life. He 
 made the Weekly always his special concern. It went to 
 a more distant circle of readers than the Daily ; it was 
 likely to receive more leisurely reading ; and the work of 
 skimming for it the cream from the pages of the Daily 
 was one which he seldom trusted to another hand. The 
 general editorial work through these months was done 
 by Dr. Holland and Mr. Bryan, with no reporter or regu- 
 lar assistant. Dr. Holland worked through the day till 
 eight or nine in the evening. Mr. Bryan worked in the 
 office from eleven in the morning till four, then went to 
 the depot for the Boston papers, returned to the office 
 and worked on local and telegraphic news till two in the 
 morning. After nearly a year of this, he broke down in 
 a severe illness. On his recovery, a new arrangement 
 was made; a job printing-office was bought, and the 
 firm, now including Mr. Bryan, carried on a general 
 printing and book-binding business, which became very
 
 104 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 prosperous. Of this Mr. Bryan took charge, along with 
 the publishing department of the newspaper. He was 
 succeeded in the editorial room by Mr. Alanson Hawley. 
 To purchase the printing business, the partners had to 
 unite in borrowing four thousand dollars. There was 
 no further need to put in capital, and thereafter the 
 profits steadily increased. 
 
 Of Mr. Bowles, Mr. Bryan wrote in the Paper World, 
 some time after his death : 
 
 " Labor was his relaxation, toil his daily meat and drink, 
 perseverance his amusement, and achievement his recompense. 
 . . . Once placed on the high road to fame and fortune, the 
 Mepublican made rapid strides in the way of achievement and 
 success, but Mr. Bowles never slackened his hold on the reins of 
 government and management, or eased his shoulders from the 
 heavy burden of labor which he assumed at the outset. He 
 was omnipresent. He knew everything, saw everything, dic- 
 tated everything, and his dictation dictated every time." 
 
 Between Mr. Bryan and his chief the personal inter- 
 course in these hard-working years was harmonious and 
 kindly. There were morning horseback rides together; 
 and walks in which plans and prospects were eagerly 
 and sympathetically discussed. The impression made by 
 Mr. Bowles upon his comrade was that of a winning and 
 charming personality, yet not without occasional alterna- 
 tions of hardness and severity. " Yet all our early rela- 
 tions," says Mr. Bryan, " were most pleasant, — some of 
 my happiest days were as we walked and talked and 
 planned and hoped together." 
 
 In studying the files of the Bepuhlican, the reader 
 notes, about the year 1856, an added breadth and pun- 
 gency in the editorial writing which seemed to indicate 
 some marked addition to the force. Such an addition 
 there had been ; for the staff was now increased to four
 
 THE JOUKXALIST AT WOKK : HIS LIEUTENANTS. 105 
 
 by the inclusion of Mr. Joseph E. Hood. The few who 
 personally knew Mr. Hood held but one opinion of his 
 character and genius. At the time of his death that 
 character and genius were portrayed by Mr. Bowles in a 
 letter to the Bepiiblican of December 2, 1871, from Den- 
 ver, Colorado, where he had been sitting by the bedside 
 of the dying man — one of the best of the unknown ser- 
 vants of mankind, whose high fortune it is " to widen 
 knowledge, and escape the praise." 
 
 '' So little of personal fame and public observation, with so 
 much of real pubUc service, and so much of real influence, it 
 seems to me, was never united ia one life as in that of this late 
 associate of ours. For more than a quarter of a century he had 
 been a constant writer upon the weekly and daily press of Amer- 
 ica,— doing a gi-eater amount of first-class work than almost 
 any other man who has hved and labored in this generation, — 
 yet only a very few of the men and women who daily read and 
 were daily instructed and inspired by his writiugs on pohtical, 
 social, and rehgious questions, knew to whom they were 
 indebted, or were aware even of his personal existence. . . . 
 His hl-health was one cause of this retirement ; but the main 
 reason was a simple modesty of mind that shimned the haimts 
 of men, and found its chief pleasures in his work, in his papers 
 and books, and in the company of the chosen few of his home 
 circle. 
 
 " Bom at Amesbury, Mass., in 1815, Mr. Hood never saw his 
 father, who was a sea captain and was drowned while upon a 
 voyage, and inherited from his mother a feeble and consump- 
 tive constitution, and yet a tenacious, nervous, fibrous hold on 
 life that carried her on to old age, and would probably have 
 similarly preserved him under more favorable circumstances of 
 residence and avocation. The neighbor and companion in 
 youth, the friend in manhood, of the poet Whittier, he greatly 
 resembled him in purity and simphcity of character, and in 
 fineness of intellectual feeling, as he even exceeded him in 
 breadth of culture, in capacity of expression, and in practical 
 usefidness in life. He shared with Whittier, also, an early
 
 106 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 advocacy of the anti-slavery cause, and while in Dartmouth 
 College made himseK famous among his fellows as a leader 
 therein. At that time, it wih be remembered, the abohtion 
 agitation was unpopular ; parties frowned upon it, the church 
 was at least cold toward it, and the college authorities strove 
 to crush out its growth among their students. To be what 
 young Hood then was, a pioneer and leader in it, indicated 
 high character — an independent conscience and an unflinching 
 courage — and what did not necessarily f oUow, also, but what 
 was always conspicuous in him, a sweet and unassuming 
 modesty and personal self-abnegation in walking iiiTnly the 
 path of duty. 
 
 '' From Dartmouth College, where he graduated in 1841, he 
 soon went to the Andover Theological Seminary, intending to 
 fit for the ministry ; but, finding after a year's experience 
 there, partly on account of his antagonism to the popular 
 church organizations on the slavery question, and partly 
 on account of an independent spirit of inquiry and thought 
 on theological questions, that he was not hkely to be in 
 such close sympathy with the churches that Andover repre- 
 sented as his conscience would require of him to take a 
 pastorate, he surrendered this purpose, and turned his atten- 
 tion to journahsm." He began at Hanover, N. H., as editor 
 of a small temperance and anti-slavery paper, the Family 
 Visitor, which in 1844 he removed to Concord, enlarged, and 
 re-named the Granite Freeman. The paper was the organ of the 
 Liberty and afterward the Free-soil party, and was merged 
 in the Independent Democrat. In 1849 Mr. Hood left jour- 
 nahsm to engage in the telegraph business, and this employ- 
 ment brought him to Springfield. '' It was while thus living in 
 Springfield that his abilities as a journalist became known 
 to the Bepublican, and after waiting a year or two to grow 
 strong enough to employ him, it engaged his services in 1855. 
 From that time until 1869 — full fourteen years — he held a 
 leading position in the editorial department of that journal. 
 He had no taste for business ; he declined executive responsi- 
 bilities, and had no capacity for what may be called the direct- 
 ing and managing of a public journal ; but in the details of
 
 THE JOUKNALIST AT WORK : HIS LIEUTENANTS. 107 
 
 its columns — for writing editorials not only on the cuiTent 
 topics of polities and life, but on abstract questions of civil and 
 political economy, on practical and theoretical religion, on 
 literature and science, indeed on all the conceivable questions 
 that come within the greedy grasp of the modem newspaper, 
 as well as in condensing and arranging news and making 
 selections, I never saw a man who was even his equal, either 
 in the character, variety, or amount of the work that he could 
 and did do. IiTCgularity in hfe and labor was impossible to 
 him ; day in and day out, month after month, and almost year 
 after year, he was as steady as a clock in attendance at the 
 ofi&ce, and in a constant and quiet and yet rapid execution of 
 every species of editorial labor. His style was admirable, — 
 simple, direct, pure, forcible without being passionate, pungent 
 without being vulgar, often deUcately sarcastic and deliciously 
 humorous, never egotistical, never suggesting the writer, 
 always representing the journal, and this as the voice of the 
 people, — he was by nature, by culture, by experience the model 
 modem working journaUst. He saw the world without, partly 
 through others, but chiefly through its own words, interpreted 
 to him by his own divine instincts. The Bepuhlican has had 
 many capable and faithful servants, but no one who united so 
 much of capacity with so much of fidelity as Mr. Hood ; and 
 few of its readers knew how much of the varied charms and 
 value of its columns during these fourteen years was due to his 
 sagacity of thought, varied culture, hvely interest in all prog- 
 ress, and dehcate deftness of expression. His life seemed very 
 naiTOW ; he knew as few people personally in Springfield as in 
 Denver ; yet to him it was very rich. He loved his work only 
 less than he loved his home ; he spent his time between his pet 
 comer in the office and his family fireside ; the one sustained 
 and upheld him for the other ; together they more than satis- 
 fied all his nature. He felt the great though unseen power he 
 was exerting through the paper ; he had no ambition to stand 
 in nearer or more personal relations to his audience ; his wife 
 and children gave him all he wanted else. 
 
 '* But the infirmities of inheritance were brought out by these 
 years of indoor labor, though long restrained by simple and
 
 108 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 regular and liealthful habits of living and laboring, and in 1868 
 his attendance at the office began to be iiTegular, and he had to 
 confront the sad necessity of a change." He passed a spring in 
 Kansas, and in 1869 settled permanently in Colorado, where he 
 found rehef from bronchial consumption and chronic dyspepsia, 
 and did various journalistic work, including regular editorial 
 writing for the RocJcy Mountain News, aU of high quality. 
 " But stiU he could never do elsewhere what he did on the Be- 
 puhlican, — he left his heart, as he had done his life's best and 
 great work, in it ; and even these tenderer skies and drier airs 
 could not bring him up to his old enthusiasm and dehght in his 
 labor. He loved Colorado and the few dear friends he made 
 here, but his chief desire, almost his only hope, was to be able 
 to go back some time to his old associates and his old work in 
 the Republican office. He knew it was not to be, but it was a 
 pleasure to him to think it might be. 
 
 *' In the spring of 1871, the weaknesses of lungs and stomach 
 obhged him to give up all work. The summer was to him that 
 of a quiet but growing invahdism — he was better and worse, 
 but the worse grew upon liim, and within the last month he 
 has rapidly failed. He held on till his old chief and friend, — 
 nominal master, but real pupil in all that was sweetest and pur- 
 est and noblest in personal and professional hfe — came to sit 
 by his bedside and to exchange for the last time greetings and 
 partings. Then he quietly sank away — in peace and in resig- 
 nation, with sweet thoughts of the past, with sweeter faith in 
 the future. No hfe was ever better hved than this ; no man 
 ever did more and better work on earth, and made less noise 
 about it; no memory could be more grateful to friends and 
 relatives; no example purer and nobler. He was both an 
 honor and an ornament to the profession of American journal- 
 ism — he was more and better, a glory to humanity. 
 
 '* It is fit, before closing, to say something of Mr. Hood's 
 religious character. It was both pecuhar and positive ; the 
 spirit of Christ was indeed abroad in his nature and in his life ; 
 theology was a favorite study of his, and with the Scriptures 
 he was most familiar, — few ministers are more learned in both 
 respects ; and he often said the work he could do the best was
 
 THE JOUKNALIST AT WOKK : HIS LIEUTENANTS. 109 
 
 a commentary upon and exposition of the Bible ; but he thought 
 not always with the priests and teachers, and his soul was 
 always open to every form and shade of honest and intelligent 
 behef , Though he was attached through aU his hfe to what is 
 known in New England as Congregational orthodoxy, and fel- 
 lowshiped with its churches, he was, in the largest and best 
 sense, a Liberal Christian, and preached, alike in life and writ- 
 ings, the gospel of love and charity to all. As to his personal 
 and practical Christianity, if there ever was a disciple of his 
 Lord, it was Joseph E. Hood." 
 
 Mr. Hood's accession to the Bepiihlican may be fairly 
 regarded as an epocli in the history of the paper and of 
 Mr. Bowles. The presence of so able and versatile a 
 journalist brought to the paper a strength which allowed 
 to its chief a freer way of work, a wider range of travel 
 and reading, than had before been possible. Mr. Hood, 
 too, was the first instrument he found that was perfectly 
 adapted to one of his peculiar powers — the transmis- 
 sion of his own ideas through another's personality. 
 In Mr. Bryan's words : '' Mr. Bowles would talk to Hood 
 for five minutes, giving him points for an article, and 
 then go off, and Hood would work it out perfectly." To 
 thus use another man's brain and hand is one of the 
 special gifts of a great journalist. Mr. Bowles had it in 
 a high degree, and he found in Mr. Hood an almost per- 
 fect medium for such transmission. One result for him 
 was an economizing of vital force, and a corresponding- 
 liberation of energy for other uses.
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 The Awakening op the North. 
 
 IN the political field the struggle between slavery and 
 freedom in America went on only in preparation 
 and skirmishing until the year 1854. Up to that time, 
 the two great parties treated it as a side issue. Then, 
 when the truce made by the compromise of 1850 was 
 broken by the repeal of the Missouri compromise, the 
 contest suddenly expanded until the whole country 
 became its theater. 
 
 When, in 1820, the state of Missouri was organized 
 out of a part of the immense north-western territory 
 acquired from France years before by the Louisiana 
 purchase, there was a struggle in Congress as to whether 
 slavery, which had a foothold in the new state, should 
 be excluded therefrom as a condition of its admission. 
 The question was settled by allowing Missouri to retain 
 slavery, but upon condition that it should be forever 
 prohibited in all the rest of the Louisiana purchase lying 
 north of the line of thirty-six degrees thirty minutes 
 north latitude, — the line which marks the southern 
 boundary of Missouri. The debates of 1850 had no 
 reference to this region, but concerned that other vast 
 country which had just been conquered from Mexico. 
 Now, in the winter of 1853-4, a proposal was made to 
 organize, under territorial government, — first as one
 
 THE AWAKENING OF THE NOETH. Ill 
 
 territory of Nebraska, but soon, as the two territories of 
 Nebraska and Kansas, — an immense district lying west 
 of Missouri and wholly north of the " thirty-six thirty " 
 line, — a part of that very domain which it had been 
 decreed in 1820 should be forever free. The bill origi- 
 nated in the Senate, and it was a Northern man, Stephen 
 A. Douglas, of Illinois, — for many years a senator, and a 
 politician eagerly ambitious for the Presidency, to which 
 the road seemed to lie through Southern favor, — who, 
 as chairman of the committee on territories, incorporated 
 in the bill of organization a clause declaring that the 
 prohibition of slavery north of 36° 30, by the act of 1820, 
 had been " superseded by the principles of "the legislation 
 of 1850," and was " inoperative and void." 
 
 This proposal — instantly and eagerly seized by the 
 South — stirred the North with a thriU of resentment 
 and resistance. From this time began a wholly new 
 epoch in the political action of the Northern people. 
 Unnoted by the politicians and the worldly-wise, the 
 antipathy to slavery had steadily widened and deepened 
 among the common people. The more it was thought 
 of, the more odious it became to them. The occasional 
 return of fugitives thrust the horrors of the system upon 
 their notice. The men and women of keen moral 
 instincts who had long recognized it as the great 
 national sin, served each as the center of widening 
 circles of conviction. Millions who had been unmoted 
 by the denunciations of Garrison and Phillips, had been 
 conquered by the pathetic story of " Uncle Tom's Cabin." 
 But for all this rapidly growing volume of opinion and 
 feeling, there had lacked a political outlet. Love of the 
 Union, love of peace, regard for the established social 
 order, had united with commercial interest and personal 
 ambitions to hold the North in acquiescence. Now, the 
 South and its allies struck a sudden blow at peace, at
 
 112 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 ancient compact, and at liberty. Slavery grasped openly 
 at universal extension and supremacy in tlie nation. 
 The assault set free all that hostility to human bondage 
 which the North had been almost dumbly harboring, 
 swept into its tide a multitude who before had been 
 indifferent, 
 
 " And all the long-pent stream of life 
 Dashed downward iu a cataract." 
 
 The aggression roused an opposition on other than 
 moral grounds. Northern politicians who cared nothing 
 about slavery were alarmed at the prospect of a prepon- 
 derance in Congress and the electoral college to be 
 gained for the South by the creation of new slave states. 
 The men of the Clay and Webster school, who had been 
 anxious to keej) the peace by keeping an even balance of 
 power between the two sections, saw the scales rudely 
 jostled. Clay and Webster and Calhoun were dead. 
 Calhoun's spirit had mastered the South, and made 
 aggressiveness its key-note. The work of the great com- 
 promises was undone ; and two opposite civilizations, two 
 opposite moralities, were to wrestle for the supremacy. 
 
 The RepuMican^s tone at this time, in contrast with its 
 course in 1850, is a good illustration of the changed tem- 
 per of the nation. From the first introduction of Mr. 
 Douglas's bill, it made frequent and sharp comment upon 
 its unprincipled and mischievous character. When the 
 measure had reached full development, and its adoption 
 by Pierce's administration foreshadowed its success in a 
 strongly Democratic Congress, the Bepiihlican (February 
 8) treated the subject in a masterly article of two col- 
 umns and a half. It clearly and soberly rehearsed the 
 whole history of the Missouri compromise; and said of 
 the proj)osed repeal :
 
 THE AWAKENING OF THE NORTH. 113 
 
 "It is a monstrous proposition. It is a huge stride back- 
 wards. It proposes to undo the work of freedom performed by 
 our fathers. It makes the government of the great Republic of 
 the world an engine for the strengthening and advancement of 
 the worst sort of human slaveiy. It is legislation against the 
 spirit of the age, against the spirit of republicanism, against 
 the decent opinions of the decent part of the world. 
 
 " Besides, it is a re-opening of the slavery agitation, quieted 
 for a long series of years, as all supposed, by the compromises 
 of 1850. The North had acquiesced in these compromises ; it 
 sustained them and abided by them. But the South and its 
 Northern poUtical aUies have broken the peace of the country. 
 They make fresh and monstrous demands. These demands 
 win arouse the whole nation ; they wiU widen and deepen the 
 anti-slavery feeling of the country as no other conceivable 
 proposition could. The signs are unmistakable. No mere 
 party or faction wiU array itself against this Nebraska scheme. 
 The whole people are against it. The moral force of the 
 North — the influence, the learning, the wealth, and the votes 
 of the North — are against it, and wiH make themselves effect- 
 ively heard, ere the agitation, now re-opened by the insanity of 
 the slave-holding interest, and in behalf of the schemes of am- 
 bitious partisans, shall have ceased. The South and its allies 
 have sown the tvincl, — tcill they not reap the lohirlwind f 
 
 " The measure will have a potent influence upon the poUtics 
 of the country. Out of it now promise to grow new and im- 
 portant aiTangements of parties, and new and important results 
 in our country's history. We await theu' issue cahnlj^, hope- 
 fully, trustingly. But we shall not, because we cannot, be pas- 
 sive spectators of the strife. Our sympathies, our convictions, 
 are all with freedom and liberty, and against slavery and 
 oppression. And wherever it leads us, we shall battle for the 
 right against the wrong, for freedom against slavery, for 
 progress against retrogradation, — not with blind fanaticism, 
 but we trust with an enhghtened liberaUty that will give us 
 the company of the wise and good, of the earnest and the 
 thoughtful, of all who place country above party, throughout 
 the free states." 
 
 Vol. I.— 8
 
 114 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 In these declarations, the Eepuhlican entered upon a 
 moral leadership, such as it had never before exercised. 
 Its chief editor's greatness lay largely in his capacity for 
 growth, his susceptibility to enlarging and ennobling 
 influences. The new impulse which swept through the 
 nation found him open to its full influence. He saw 
 with clearness and spoke with force what right-minded 
 men were beginning to see and speak everywhere. The 
 paper noted, February 16, that all the Whig and Inde- 
 pendent papers of the North, with very many of the 
 Democratic, are opposed to the Kansas-Nebraska bill. It 
 gave for several weeks a daily column of " Public 
 Opinion," containing the declarations of papers and men 
 on the great question. It was largely by thus giving the 
 news, of opinion and fact, that the Republican maintained 
 its cause. Its own argument and appeal had their place ; 
 but the story of what men were saying and doing was 
 the strongest weapon. Thus, there occurs from this 
 time a frequent column of news items about slavery, 
 under such headings as " The Patriarchal Institution," 
 relating incidents characteristic of the system and its 
 abuses. Among these frequently appear sympathetic 
 notices of escapes, attempted or successful, — the "con- 
 stitutional duty" to return fugitives having fallen, alas! 
 quite out of sight. Thus we read, April 28 : " The 
 underground railroad " — the system of secret assistance 
 to slaves escaping to Canada — "was never doing a larger 
 business, we apprehend, than at present. We find no 
 quotations of the stock, but it must certainly be above 
 par. The travel is large, and there are few or no acci- 
 dents. The signal success of its operations speaks well 
 for the ability and discretion of its management." 
 
 The struggle over the Kansas-Nebraska bill continued 
 till the end of May. In the policy which Mr. Douglas 
 advocated, there lurked a fraudulent element. His pro-
 
 THE AWAKENING OF THE NOKTH. 115 
 
 fession was that the question of slavery was to be 
 remanded to the (white) people of each territory to settle 
 for themselves. This he called "popular sovereignty," 
 and the name and the theory had a considerable attrac- 
 tion for a people attached to local self-government. The 
 peculiarity of totally ignoring that fraction of the local 
 population most interested was hit exactly by Abraham 
 Lincoln, in his debates with Douglas four years later, 
 when he said: "Mr. Douglas's popular sovereignty 
 means that if one man wants to make a slave of another, 
 a third man has no right to prevent him." But, even 
 apart from this, the pretense of remanding the subject 
 to the territorial population was insincere. Mr. Douglas 
 finally made this addition to the clause declaring the 
 Missouri compromise void : " It being the true intent 
 and meaning of this act, not to legislate slavery into any 
 territory or state, nor to exclude it therefrom, but to 
 leave the people thereof perfectly free to form and regu- 
 late their domestic institutions in their own way, subject 
 only to the constitution of the United States." This was 
 the specious theory by which Mr. Douglas kept his hold 
 on a part of the Northern Democracy. Yet, right upon 
 the adoption of this amendment in the Senate, Senator 
 Chase tested its sincerity by proposing to add this 
 clause: "Under which the people of the territory, 
 through their appropriate representatives, may, if they 
 see fit, prohibit the existence of slavery therein"; — and 
 this was instantly voted down — 36 to 10 — by the whole 
 strength of the Administration party, Douglas among 
 them. In subsequent debate, Southern senators openly 
 avowed that the bill gave slave-holders the right to take 
 slaves into the territory and hold them there. Senator 
 Butler, of South Carolina, declared that if in such case 
 attempt was made to free the slaves by territorial law, 
 the master would answer "that he held the slave as
 
 116 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 property under a higher law than the enactment of a 
 territorial legislature, — under the great fundamental law 
 of the country." " This/' said the BepnUican (March 22), 
 "is the Southern view of the question, and it is the view 
 that will prevail and be sustained by the courts, if the 
 bill becomes a law." This prophecy was more than ful- 
 filled in the Dred Scott decision of the United States 
 Supreme Court. 
 
 The battle went on in Congress. In the Senate, Seward, 
 Sumner, Chase, Fessenden, and their associates, in a 
 minority of one to three, stood their ground against 
 Douglas, Cass, Mason, Benjamin, etc. In the House, 
 Campbell, Banks, the Washburns, Gerrit Smith, and 
 Thomas H. Benton, with other Whigs, Democrats, and 
 Free-soilers, found themselves strangely associated to- 
 gether against a narrow majority, led by Richardson 
 (Douglas's Illinois lieutenant), Alexander Stephens, Breck- 
 inridge, and others. Party lines went down ; the South- 
 ern Democrats supported the bill ; the Southern Whigs 
 held a separate caucus, but failed to agree ; the Northern 
 Whigs were against the bill, and the Northern Demo- 
 crats were divided. The decisive vote was reached in 
 the House, May 22, and the bill was passed by 113 to 100. 
 Its supporters consisted of 57 Southern Democrats, 12 
 Southern "V\'Tiigs, and 44 Northern Democrats. Its oppo- 
 nents were 44 Northern Whigs, 43 Northern Democrats, 
 4 Free-soilers, 7 Southern Whigs, and 2 Southern Demo- 
 crats. The final assent of the Senate to the bill was 
 given. May 25, by 35 votes to 13. Not a vote in its favor 
 was from Massachusetts. 
 
 The Repuhlican said. May 27, '^ What the North should 
 do " was to pour into the new territories a tide of immi- 
 grants whose votes would keep them free, to reelect to 
 Congress every member, of whatever party name, who 
 had opposed the Kansas-Nebraska scheme, and to return
 
 THE AWAKENING OF THE NOETH. 117 
 
 no member who had supported it. The greatest prob- 
 lem which confronted the friends of freedom was to 
 unite their forces in a harmonious and effective organiza- 
 tion. The work was one of immense difficulty^ and was 
 not instantly achieved even under the uplifting and 
 heroic impulses of the time. On the morning after the 
 passage of the biU, a meeting of about twenty members 
 of the House was held, at the suggestion of Israel Wash- 
 burn, Jr., of Maine, at the rooms of Edward Dickinson 
 and Thomas D. Eliot, of Massachusetts ; and after some 
 discussion and a little talk of trying to identify the Whig 
 party with the cause of freedom, it was generally agreed 
 that the only hope of victory lay in a new party, for 
 which the name Republican was judged appropriate.* 
 Michigan took the lead among the states ; her Whig and 
 Free-soil organizations cooperated to establish the new 
 Republican party, which carried the autumn election. In 
 Ohio, a union was effected on an " anti-Nebraska " dele- 
 gation to Congress, and the state was carried by 70,000 
 majority. In New York the Whig party, controlled by 
 Seward and Thurlow Weed, kept its organization on 
 an anti-Nebraska basis, and elected the state officers, 
 while in the Congressional districts all the anti-Nebraska 
 elements united with very general success. 
 
 In Massachusetts, the Whigs had in the preceding year 
 regained their ascendency. The Coalitionists had pro- 
 posed several constitutional amendments which were de- 
 feated on a popular vote, and the Whigs had won back 
 the state government. The coalition, a heartless and 
 artificial affair, was dead beyond resurrection ; the revival 
 of the slavery issue set its two elements at hopeless dis- 
 cord. The Whigs had lost by death, two years before, 
 their great leader, Webster ; the mass of them gravitated 
 
 * This is Henry Wilson's statement. "Rise and Fall of the Slave 
 Power," ii., 410.
 
 118 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 to a strong anti-slavery position ; but the leadership of the 
 party was deeply infected with selfishness and timidity. 
 Within a week after the passage of the Kansas-Ne- 
 braska bin, the Repuhlican (May 31) published a letter, 
 urging that the Whig party was the best instrumentality 
 for forwarding the cause of liberty; and the editorial 
 reply discussed the situation with breadth and force : 
 
 '' Will the seceding Democrats, the Whigs, and the AboH- 
 tionists unite into one party to effect success on this point 
 against the Administi*ation ? United they will succeed ; di- 
 vided as now, and the Administration maintains itself over 
 them. The opponents of the Administration have got to hang 
 together or they will hang separately. What is the objection 
 to their hanging together ? What have the Northern Whigs 
 to hope by spuming association with other opponents of the 
 Administration ? The national Whig party is siu-ely a defunct 
 organization. It has been totteriug for some years, resorting 
 to various devices to sustain itself, but has finally gone by the 
 board. Those of the slave states who represented it in Con- 
 gress have, with two or three honorable exceptions, deserted its 
 colors, turned traitors to their Northern associates, and gone 
 over body and soul to the administration of General Pierce 
 and the embrace of Stephen Arnold Douglas. The Northern 
 Whigs cannot and will not, of course, have anything to do 
 with such men. The Southern Whigs having gone to the 
 Administration, where will the Northern Whigs go °? We trust 
 they wiU not stand stiU and suck their thumbs, because of old 
 prejudices and old quaiTels with those who, fonnerly in opposi- 
 tion, are now animated by the same sentiments, and bum with 
 the same desire to defeat and overthrow the Administration. 
 For ourselves, — whatever others may do, — we shall advocate 
 the sentiments we have enunciated, party or no party. In the 
 great internal struggle between slavery extension and slavery 
 non-extension, we plant ourselves with the non-extensionists, 
 and we shall join that organization, whatever its name, what- 
 ever its leaders, that promises most successfully, most safely, 
 and most surely for the common weal, to carry out and estab-
 
 THE AWAKENING OF THE NOKTH. 119 
 
 lish the non-extension principle. Past enmities, past preju- 
 dices — let them go. The times demand it. The North and 
 Freedom demand it. Every right which Slavery enjoys by the 
 constitution let it have, and be protected in to the fullest ; but 
 beyond that let Freedom rule. Here we stand. Here the 
 great bulk of the people at the North are ready to gather, 
 if those who direct public opinion and lead the masses will only 
 let them do it." 
 
 The teaching of events came fast and hard. On the 
 very day that the Nebraska bill finally passed the Senate, 
 Anthony Burns was arrested in Boston as a fugitive 
 from slavery in Virginia. The warrant was issued by 
 C. Gr. Loriug, United States Commissioner, and also a 
 Massachusetts Judge of Probate, and by him the case 
 was tried, a week intervening before the final decision. 
 The city and the commonwealth were stirred with pity 
 and indignation. Mass meetings were held; the fiery 
 eloquence of Theodore Parker and Wendell Phillips sum- 
 moned the people to armed resistance ; with them united 
 such men as Samuel G. Howe, Albert G. Browne, Jr., and 
 T. W. Higginson, to plan a forcible rescue of the captive. 
 The attempt was made prematurely and failed. In the 
 closely guarded court-house, the prisoner was defended 
 by R. H. Dana, Jr., and Charles M. Ellis. When Simms 
 was sent back, three years before, the mass of the people, 
 the Repiiblican among them, had grudgingly consented 
 that Shyloek should have his pound of flesh. But the 
 times and the people's temper had changed. Said the 
 Repiiblican (May 29) : 
 
 '' The embittered feehngs of the North receive fresh irrita- 
 tion, in the new instances of the execution of the odious fugi- 
 tive slave law. The peril of the Union in 1850 was nowise so 
 great as that in which it hes at this moment. The bold aggres- 
 siveness of slavery is striking fatal blows at the perpetuity 
 of our Republic, and accustoming the people of the North to
 
 120 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 serious calculations of the value of a connection which produces 
 scenes so revolting to humanity and so odious to every decent 
 feehng of Uberty, while its government disregards and destroys 
 other and higher interests that it may stimulate and extend 
 that which is the parent of such scenes, and about whose exist- 
 ence clusters every foi-m of evil, social degradation, and anti- 
 repubhcan doctrine." 
 
 The final scene was tlius characterized (June 3) : 
 
 *' The fugitive has been remanded. Law and order and 
 slavery and bayonets and slave-catchers triumph. The decis- 
 ion of Commissioner Loring was on Friday morning rendered, 
 amid such scenes as Grod forbid shall ever be witnessed in 
 Boston again." 
 
 The captive was marched down State street, sur- 
 rounded by a hollow square of one hundred special 
 deputies of the United States Marshal, armed with cut- 
 lasses and pistols, escorted by marines with a cannon, a 
 thousand militia, and the whole police force of the city. 
 He was placed on board a revenue cutter assigned by the 
 President, and carried back to Virginia. The Republican 
 said: 
 
 " The world now understands, if it never understood before, 
 that the interest cherished most warmly by the American gov- 
 ernment is property in human flesh. ... Is there no eaU 
 for the burial of aU past differences among good citizens, for 
 the one great object of changing the spirit of the legislation of 
 this country ? Slavery rules to-day — blacks and whites ahke. 
 Shall it always do this ? Aye ! so long as we fraternize pohti- 
 caUy with men who have made us their slave-catchers, and use 
 our haUs of justice for slave pens." 
 
 The people of Massachusetts looked upon the return 
 of Burns with bitter, brooding indignation. Constitu- 
 tion or no constitution, never again would the state lend
 
 THE AWAKENING OF THE NOETH. 121 
 
 her officers, her militia, or her soil, for man -hunting. 
 The leaders in the attempted rescue were held for trial, 
 but the indictment was quashed. The next year the 
 legislature passed by an overwhelming vote a statute 
 which, without expressly nullifying the Fugitive Slave 
 law, aimed to prevent its enforcement, and, had a case 
 arisen under it, might have brought the state into direct 
 collision with the general government. But no one cared 
 to try further experiments in slave-catching on New 
 England soil. 
 
 Political union of all the opponents of slavery, — this 
 was the moral the Bepuhlican constantly drew from the 
 events of the time ; this was the end it sought with 
 earnestness, with sagacity, and in a broad and concilia- 
 tory temper. It forbore from recriminations toward its 
 former opponents, and was in nowise exacting as to 
 means or as to details. When an anonymous call for a 
 Republican state convention was issued, the Eejmblican 
 expressed regret that it had forestalled a more promising 
 movement led by well-known names, but said (July 10) : 
 " Things being as they are, however, we advise men of 
 all parties to cooperate heartily and zealously in the 
 gathering on the 20th, at Worcester." It urged its old 
 friends, the Whigs, to throw themselves cordially into 
 the movement. But the event showed that the Whig 
 leaders were not ready for it. Of the convention of 
 July 20, the paper said : " Though respectable in both 
 numbers and character, it was in neither respect a just 
 indication of the sentiments of Massachusetts. It was 
 wanting altogether in leading representative men." Al- 
 most all of its members were from the Free-soil party. 
 "We do not think the impracticable folly and short- 
 sightedness of the Whig organization justified the Free- 
 soil leaders, who, in consequence thereof, found them- 
 selves in control of the convention, in further impeding
 
 122 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 that concentration of action among the friends of free- 
 dom in Massachusetts, which they professed so earnestly 
 and so sincerely and solely to desire." It especially 
 blamed the hasty call for a delegate convention to nomi- 
 nate state ofl&cers. The true course, it argued in subse- 
 quent articles, was to seek a union upon Congressional 
 candidates only, as was being done in New York, — the 
 time being clearly unripe for a full consolidation, extend- 
 ing to state officers, such as was possible in Michigan. 
 As the Whig convention drew near, a month later, it 
 urged upon that body — clearly tending to a narrow and 
 selfish policy — to rise to the height of the situation. It 
 pointed out (August 14) that the course of the Southern 
 Whigs had broken up the party as a national organiza- 
 tion, and that the supreme necessity was union against 
 slavery extension. " We must realize the altered condi- 
 tion of things, and meet the crisis with generosity, with 
 boldness, and with wisdom." It urged that if the suc- 
 cessful ticket of last year was renominated, it would, as 
 a matter of fact, be taken by the Free-soilers as a gaunt- 
 let of opposition ; and that new candidates, such as 
 Julius Rockwell and John G. Palfrey, would draw 
 together the elements whose union was needed. But 
 the convention satisfied itself by passing strong resolu- 
 tions as to the aggressions of slavery, — including a 
 demand for the amendment or repeal of the Fugitive 
 Slave law, — and made no advance toward union with its 
 old opponents. It renominated Governor Emory Wash- 
 burn and the other incumbents of the state offices. 
 Upon this untoward result the Eepublican made scanty 
 comment, but yielded a late and cool support to the 
 party nominations. It reiterated that the old Whig party 
 alone could not hope to overthrow the Administration, 
 and that its only place was as a body-guard and nucleus 
 for the army of the opposition. The Republican con-
 
 THE AWAKENING OF THE NORTH. 123 
 
 vention (September 8) had among its members, Sumner, 
 Amasa Walker, and John A. Andrew. It nominated 
 Henry Wilson for governor ; and its constituency proved 
 to be hardly other than a small minority of the old 
 Free-soilers. Upon state issues the Whigs had a better 
 record than their opponents, and were the advocates of 
 desirable reforms. 
 
 But meantime a side current had swept suddenly and 
 silently upon the advancing tide of anti-slavery politics. 
 A wholly different issue seized for the moment the public 
 attention. The preceding years had witnessed an im- 
 mense increase of foreign immigration. The immigrants 
 of this period were chiefly Irish Catholics. At various 
 points they came into somewhat irritating collision with 
 the feelings, tastes, and convictions of the native pop- 
 ulation. They tended to settle in masses in the great 
 cities, where their numbers and ignorance made them an 
 injurious element in the body politic. Their subjection 
 to the Catholic Church gave offense to the intense Prot- 
 estantism which America had inherited from England. 
 That church was shrewd to push her own interest, and 
 on some subjects, especially the public schools, that 
 interest was clearly hostile to the ideas cherished by 
 most of the American people. The political support of 
 the foreign element was assiduously cultivated by dema- 
 gogues, notably by those of the Democratic party. 
 Against these tendencies, a reaction and protest took 
 form in the organization of a secret society, called the 
 " Know-nothings," which originated in 1853, and spread 
 with extraordinary rapidity. Its secret ceremonies fed 
 that love of mummery and mystery which so often 
 lingers in man, a sort of survival from childhood ; and 
 it found a great opportunity in the disintegration of the 
 old parties. In the South, where anti-slavery politics 
 were not tolerated, and Whiggism was dead. Know-
 
 124 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 nothingism became a rallying-place for the opponents 
 of the Democrats. At the North, the party was joined 
 by multitudes of anti-slavery men, eager for political 
 revolution, and impatient at the delay of the old leaders. 
 It fell largely under the control of obscure and inferior 
 men, but there were some prominent politicians who 
 seized it as an instrument for their own ends. When, as 
 " the American party," it took the field in 1854, it sur- 
 prised the country by its strength, winning many local 
 and municipal elections ; and in the next two or three 
 years it carried a number of state elections both North 
 and South. Its success was very brief ; its permanent 
 effects upon legislation extremely slight; but it played 
 a prominent part in the transition era. In Massachu- 
 setts, the elements it included were, first, men who hon- 
 estly believed in its avowed principles ; secondly, men 
 who were impatient to break down the old parties; 
 thirdly, a great many who joined the "lodges" for 
 curiosity or amusement; and last, but not least, a few 
 leaders like Wilson and Burlingame, who made it a tool 
 to serve their personal ends. 
 
 The RepiiUican first took note of Know-nothingism as 
 a serious movement March 31, 1854, when it said of it : 
 
 " We are as much opposed as any one can be to a sectarian 
 or foreign influence in the affairs of the government, but 
 the means adopted by the Know-nothings to put it down are 
 just as objectionable, m. every way. Secret political organiza- 
 tions, in a Republican government, are in the last degree 
 reprehensible, though we doubt whether they ever become 
 dangerous in America, for the principles and good sense of the 
 people must be against them. Besides, the policy is bad. It is 
 good poHcy to Americanize everything resident in America ; 
 and organized opposition to any portion of our population must 
 beget opposition, and tend to keep ahve prejudices and influ- 
 ences which it is for the interest of all to do away with."
 
 THE AWAKENING OF THE NORTH. 125 
 
 From this position the Bepublican never swerved, steadily- 
 opposing Know-nothingism as un-American, and hostile 
 to the spirit of religious equality. The political strength 
 of the party first began to appear in Massachusetts after 
 the barren results of the Whig and Republican conven- 
 tions. The party nominated for governor Henry J. 
 Gardner, whose political record was that of a conserv- 
 ative Whig. The Bepiihlican said that the nomination 
 was managed by Henry Wilson and Anson Burlingame, 
 as part of an arrangement by which Wilson was to be 
 sent to the Senate, and Burlingame to the House. The 
 approach of the election found all the prophets at fault. 
 But the result came as an amazing surprise. The Know- 
 nothings swept the state like a hurricane. G-ardner re- 
 ceived 79,000 votes ; the Whig candidate, Governor 
 Washburn, came next with 26,000; Beach, Democrat, 
 had 14,000, and Wilson 7000. Every one of the twelve 
 Congressmen chosen was a Know-nothing, and the 
 state legislature was almost solidly of the same party. 
 
 The Bepublican treated the result with the good- 
 natiu'ed philosophy which it always showed under 
 defeat ; and the people generally seemed to pause from 
 their accustomed seriousness, to indulge in a great laugh 
 at their own escapade. The paper thus interpreted the 
 event (November 15) : 
 
 " The result of Monday's voting means that the people were 
 out of humor with the old political org-auizations, and desu-ed 
 to extinguish them, break down the differences, vmite and re- 
 divide as the new and more important practical questions of 
 the time shall indicate to be necessary or appropriate. This 
 was the voice of common sense and the feeling of the great 
 mass of the people. They sought satisfaction in a fusion upon 
 the slavery question; but the quietists and the velvet-footed 
 philanthropists on one side, and the selfish schemes of party 
 leaders and committee men on both, brought effort here to
 
 126 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 nought." The people, it continued, disappointed and vexed, 
 seized on Know-nothingism as an instrument foi* breaking to 
 pieces the old parties. This involved the misfortune of dis- 
 placing many good and tiied pubHc sei-vants and putting 
 novices in their stead. Thus in the Springfield disti'ict the 
 Whig candidate for re-election to Congress, Edward Dickinson, 
 whose course on the Nebraska question had been above re- 
 proach, was replaced by an untried man. Dr. C. C. Chaffee. 
 *' But the aggregate popular mind is apt to go straight to its 
 object hke an anny in battle, without much regard for the inci- 
 dental injustice it does, or the new dangers it creates." 
 
 But the broad result was favorable to freedom. The 
 Massachusetts Congressmen and legislature were strongly 
 anti-slavery. In the country at large, the anti-Nebraska 
 movement had triumphed. Under various party names 
 it had won a plurality of the national House. It lacked 
 consolidation; its elements became partially separated 
 again before their final fusion; but a great beginning 
 had been made. 
 
 The battle being over, the Bepuhlican gave its interior 
 history, so far as the Whigs and itself were concerned, 
 with great frankness, — a frankness which it never after 
 this time postponed till after election. It referred to the 
 first outburst against the Kansas-Nebraska scheme. 
 
 "We reproached ourselves that we had stood thus gazing 
 stupidly on the deepening shadows of that overspreading des- 
 potism. We felt that the danger was one that trifled all f onner 
 knowings — and that union of all friends of freedom was the 
 imperative necessity. The Whigs ought to have initiated a 
 cathohc imion of aU the opponents of slavery. But certain 
 sagacious men had discovered a more excellent way. Under 
 the plurahty rule we might crush out all opposition. How de- 
 sirable to be done! We might keep everything. The party 
 would be saved. The offices would all be ours. And this was 
 to be our reward, this our satisfaction, our answer when the
 
 THE AWAKENING OF THE NORTH. 127 
 
 multitudes of the unborn shall stand up to curse us ! . . . 
 These councils prevailed, and by them the state convention 
 was governed. . . . For ourselves, it was not possible to 
 act with any other association. We resolved to remain where 
 we were. Yet our moral sti-ength was gone. There was left 
 nothing worth contending for. Thousands of young men, 
 ready to have thrown themselves into the Repubhcan move- 
 ment with an enei'gy that could have defied opposition, had 
 left us for a new connection. We felt that the ship was sink- 
 ing. And yet when that odd-looking Know-nothing craft 
 came up under a press of sail and offered us a free passage and 
 good berths, we refused to leave. We stood at oui' post, and 
 fired the signal guns over the settling wreck." 
 
 But, it concludes, the power of names is broken ; there 
 exist the material, the motives, the opportunity, for a 
 new order of things ; the Know-nothing creed is far too 
 narrow to last long-, and a better future is near.
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 The Struggle in Kansas and in Massachusetts. 
 
 THE struggle for slavery extension was begun in 
 Congress, and gained its victory in tlie passage of 
 the Kansas-Nebraska bill. This transferred the contest 
 to the territory of Kansas, while at the same time an 
 appeal was taken to the great tribunal of the American 
 people. Through the succeeding years the strife lay in 
 these three fields, — Kansas, Congress, and the popular 
 elections. 
 
 While the Kansas-Nebraska bill was still under debate, 
 a movement had been initiated in Massachusetts for pro- 
 moting an emigration that should determine the political 
 and social character of Kansas. Under the lead of Mr. 
 Eli Thayer of Worcester, the New England Emigrant 
 Aid Society was incorporated by the legislature in Feb- 
 ruary, 1854 ; and in the following July, its first colony, 
 of twenty-four members, founded the town of Lawrence. 
 In two weeks came another company of seventy, whose 
 outfit included a steam saw-mill. Similar societies were 
 founded in other free states, and a moderate but steady 
 stream of emigration was poured into the new territory. 
 The South was wholly unable to compete with the North 
 in this direction. It had no such material of hardy and 
 enterprising yeomanry to send out as settlers. But right 
 upon the Kansas border, and across the direct route 
 
 128
 
 THE STEUGGLE. 129 
 
 to the free states, lay Missoiu'i, whose western section 
 abounded in a lawless and ruffianly element, devoted to 
 the slave-holding interest, and encouraged and led by 
 men of high political standing. It was with this ma- 
 terial that the attempt to make Kansas a slave state was 
 urged on. The first settlers of Lawrence, while still 
 living in tents, were visited by a baud of two hundred and 
 fifty armed Missourians, and ordered to leave the terri- 
 tory. They held their ground, and the invaders retired 
 without attempting force. There followed a long series of 
 incursions, murders, and outrages. A systematic attempt 
 was made to usurp the government of the territory. At 
 the first election of a delegate to Congress, in November, 
 1854, bands of Missourians poured over the border, dis- 
 tributed themselves at the voting-places, cast their votes 
 for the pro-slavery candidate, J. W. Whitefield, and then 
 returned to their homes. In this way three thousand 
 votes were cast, though it was afterward proved that 
 there were only half that number of voters resident in 
 Kansas. Senator Atchison of Missouri, formerly presid- 
 ing officer of the United States Senate, took a leading 
 part in these operations. In March, 1855, at the election 
 of a territorial legislature, the invasion was repeated on 
 a larger scale aud under such systematic arrangement 
 that every legislative district was carried, except one 
 which lay far remote from the border. The legislature 
 chosen by such means proceeded to enact a code of laws 
 with the especial object of establishing slavery. Decoy- 
 ing slaves from their masters was made punishable by 
 death, or hard labor for not less than ten years ; the cir- 
 culation of books or writings inciting slaves to revolt 
 was punishable by death ; the assertion by speech or 
 writing that slavery was not lawful in the territory, or 
 the introduction or circulation of any book or paper con- 
 taining such denial, was made felony, and punishable by 
 Vol. I.— 9
 
 130 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 hard labor for not less than two years. The free state 
 settlers — almost the entire population — refused to ac- 
 knowledge this legislature or its laws. In the autumn 
 of 1855, they elected a convention, adopted a state con- 
 stitution, and petitioned for admission to the Union as a 
 state. The acts of the pro-slavery legislature were syste- 
 matically vetoed by the territorial governor, A. H. Reeder, 
 who had been appointed by President Pierce as a Demo- 
 crat. The bills were passed over his vetoes, and a legisla- 
 tive memorial for his removal was addressed to the 
 President, who finally recalled him and appointed as his 
 successor Wilson Shannon, who gave his support to the 
 usurping legislature. During this period of misrule and 
 anarchy, the Administration and its party in Congress 
 gave their fullest countenance to the faction which by 
 fraud and violence was trying to fasten slavery on Kan- 
 sas. Franklin Pierce was a man of fair ability but no 
 strength of character. In his cabinet were William L. 
 Marcy of New York, Secretary of State, who held aloof 
 from the Kansas controversy ; Jefferson Davis, Secretary 
 of War, who by no means held aloof ; and Caleb Cushing, 
 Attorney-Grcneral, who gave his adroit and conscienceless 
 brain to the service of the slave power. In the Senate, 
 the Administration had still an overwhelming majority. 
 In the House, which assembled in December, 1855, parties 
 were so evenly balanced — the Americans being an uncer- 
 tain and divided element — that only after many weeks 
 of balloting was N. P. Banks elected Speaker, — the first 
 great national victory for the party of freedom. But the 
 House, almost evenly divided, and overborne by the 
 Senate, could give no substantial relief to Kansas. In 
 that territory slavery remained in a nominal ascendency, 
 but with no real foothold ; the legislature, backed by the 
 national authority, was not acknowledged by the people ; 
 murder and outrage were frequent and unpunished ;
 
 THE STRUGGLE. 131 
 
 peace and order as weU as liberty were at stake. Con- 
 gress was divided ; the Executive upheld the "wrong ; 
 the only resource lay in appeal to the highest court, — 
 the vote of the whole people. To make clear the issue, 
 to bring the friends of freedom into harmony, to inaugu- 
 rate the Republican party and lead it to victory — this 
 was the great work which fell largely to the newspaper 
 press. 
 
 There was in Massachusetts during this period a singu- 
 lar mixture of political elements. The mass of the people 
 entertained a deep dislike of slavery. But Boston long 
 remained friendly to the South and its " peculiar insti- 
 tution." This was due partly to commercial interests, 
 partly to the course of Webster and his followers, and 
 the timid conservatism of elegant scholars like Everett, 
 and Winthrop, and Hillard. The Whig party of the 
 state was the inheritor of honorable traditions, and re- 
 tained to the last a kind of genuineness and dignity, but 
 its managers proved fatally narrow and short-sighted in 
 face of the new emergencies. They who should have 
 been the leaders would not lead. The Democratic party 
 contained some men of ability, but it had little numerical 
 and less moral weight, and, whatever useful ideas it 
 might have represented in the past, was now animated 
 chiefly by a fixed hostility to anti-slavery of any sort. 
 The distinctively anti-slavery men were divided into two 
 sections, of widely different characteristics. The non- 
 voting Abolitionists sacrificed all immediate results in 
 politics to an abstract idea; while the Free-soil mana- 
 gers pushed their cause with less scruple as to methods 
 than honorable politicians are wont to have. The body 
 of the party were men of pure intentions, but its active 
 conductors in Massachusetts relied too little upon appeal 
 to the moral sense of the people, and too much upon 
 artifice, — and to this was probably due its failure to gain
 
 132 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 strength among tlie common people of the state. This 
 was largely owing to the influence of Henry Wilson. 
 Wilson thought anything fair which served his purpose. 
 He was at home in trades and coalitions. He was skillful 
 in public affairs, generous and kind-hearted, of popular 
 manners, and a firm friend. Having gone into the Know- 
 nothing party, and thereby got the senatorship, he was 
 ready to betray the order to which he had sworn fidelity, 
 if he could advance the anti-slavery cause by doing so. 
 Sumner was in many points the opposite of Wilson, — 
 high-minded, little versed in practical affairs, by taste a 
 scholar, self-conscious, making few friends. He origi- 
 nally owed his seat in the Senate to a bargain made by 
 other men, but during his long service there he repre- 
 sented an unswerving, often unpractical, devotion to 
 high aims. If Sumner's principles and Wilson's tact 
 could have been united in one man, he would have 
 been a statesman. Of all the Republican leaders the 
 greatest — regarding moral and intellectual qualities 
 together — was John A. Andrew. Banks was too much 
 devoted to his own ends, and the ability he seemed to 
 show during the years before the war was not evinced in 
 later time. 
 
 Out of the mixture of principles and policies, old organ- 
 izations and new, honest and timid leaders, shrewd and 
 demagogic leaders, earnest and groping people, — it was 
 slow and puzzling work to build up a party which should 
 do the work that the time demanded. The Know-noth- 
 ing victory — filling the legislature and offices with 
 untried and generally incompetent men — was like a 
 land-slide which had buried the old and crooked paths 
 and forced the cutting of new ones. The road had to 
 be cleared foot by foot. 
 
 The rendition of Burns had its political consequences 
 in the legislature of 1855. By that body a memorial was
 
 THE STEUGGLE. 133 
 
 addressed to the governor, asking him to remove Com- 
 missioner Loring from his state office of judge of pro- 
 bate, on the ground of his action in returning the 
 fugitive. This movement the Bepuhlican supported. Its 
 argument was that a man who voluntarily acted as the 
 instrument of a cruel Federal law ought to feel the just 
 resentment of the state by being shut out from its places 
 of public honor and trust. In its reply to a correspond- 
 ent who argued against the removal, it said (February 
 17,1855): 
 
 "We have great respect for law. We mean to abide by it. 
 But it is not the perfection of human reason, nor the beginning 
 or end of all things, though it be one of the great instrumen- 
 tahties of good order and civilized society. We beUeve that 
 there is something besides and something higher. We are not 
 ashamed to say that we beheve in a higher law. We would 
 not resist law, unless we were prepared for rebellion and revo- 
 lution. But we would refuse to obey or execute some laws, and 
 the Fugitive Slave law is one of them. Coleridge was not much 
 of a lawyer, but he was something of a man ; and he says : 
 ' With our grandfathers " the man who squares his conscience 
 by the law " was a common synonym for a wretch without any 
 conscience at alV 
 
 " There is a conservative justification of the proposed I'emoval 
 of Judge Loring. The state should be and we beheve wiU be 
 content with estabhshing the principle that she wiU neither 
 obey nor resist the Fugitive Slave law. To the clear estabhsh- 
 ment of this principle, the removal of Judge Loring seems nec- 
 essaiy, as making evident the feeling of the commonwealth, as 
 an example to such other officers and citizens as are lawyers 
 and nothing else, and as proclaiming to the world, in unmistak- 
 able terms, the position of Massachusetts. Failing in this, 
 there wiU be new strength added to the efforts aheady maMng 
 for a law of resistance and active nullification. And Massa- 
 chusetts most likely would find herself in open rebellion against 
 the general government. For that we ai'e not ready. That 
 proposition we deprecate. But there is a strong popular de-
 
 134 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 mand for the expression of the convictions of Massachusetts. 
 The state seeks to declare itself. It is better that Judge Lor- 
 ing should fall a victim to his own want of sympathy with the 
 great heart of the commonwealth than that the state should be 
 more strongly tempted to go beyond the true doctrine of state 
 rights and place itself in open opposition to the general gov- 
 ernment." 
 
 It further urged the matter thus (March 10) : 
 
 "About the independence of the judiciary: Do we hold it 
 desirable as an end or only as a means ? Do we wish our 
 judges placed above accountabihty — legal accountability, for 
 acts that indicate shameful obhquity of moral sense ? Have 
 we made them independent, not only of sudden and fitful pop- 
 ular impulses but of those strong, radical, and abiding sentiments 
 which, marking the race of men, mark also the will of the 
 Supreme Law-giver? Is it meant, in short, that they should 
 be the independent administrators of justice or of wrong — of 
 the law of God or the law of the devil *? " 
 
 After a long consideration, the petition for removal 
 passed the legislature, but Governor Gardner declined to 
 accede to it. Judge Loring's offense however was not 
 forgotten or forgiven ; when Banks became governor in 
 1858, he assented to the renewed petition of the legisla- 
 ture, and removed the judge of probate, who was then 
 placed by President Buchanan on the bench of the Court 
 of Claims. 
 
 The BepubUcan's anticipation of more radical legisla- 
 tion was fulfilled. A " personal liberty bill " was passed, 
 aimed directly against the Fugitive Slave law. It forbade 
 any state official to take part in the rendition of a fugi- 
 tive, disqualified any attorney who should advocate a 
 master's claim, provided for the appointment of state 
 commissioners to defend the interests of any alleged 
 fugitive ; and, in addition to other particulars, provided
 
 THE STRUGGLE. 135 
 
 that any one arrested as a fugitive might be brouglit by- 
 writ of habeas corpus before any state judge or justice 
 of the peace, and by him be given a jury trial for his 
 liberty. This bill, one of a class which at this time be- 
 came law in several states, was passed by the legisla- 
 ture, but vetoed by the governor. He pointed out that 
 to thus by summary process remove a prisoner from the 
 legal jurisdiction of the United States was in direct con- 
 travention of the legitimate authority of the general gov- 
 ernment. But the legislature passed the bill over the 
 veto by overwhelming majorities. 
 
 The Kepuhlican, from the first, characterized the bill as 
 practical nullification, at once wrong in principle and 
 useless in effect. In reply to an Alabama correspondent 
 who repnisented that this class of laws had strengthened 
 the Secession element at the South, the Republican de- 
 clared (July 14), that the South had no right to com- 
 plain,— it had received only a fair reprisal for its own 
 course in regard to Kansas. "But," it continued as to 
 the personal liberty laws, " we can see neither the wisdom 
 nor policy of such action. The cause of liberty needs 
 not to be aggressive or unjust. It rests on no such 
 foundation as slavery, — it needs no such instrumentali- 
 ties to advance its power. It cannot afford to resort to 
 them. Not from regard to the South, but from regard 
 for its own unity and power should they be avoided. 
 They divide the North and thus secure its defeat." The 
 law in question is of no practical use ; " it is only an ex- 
 pression of feeling, and practically impotent at that. It 
 is worse, — it is mischievous, by dividing the sentiment 
 and action of the state, and of all the free states. Massa- 
 chusetts cannot be united upon it — the North cannot be 
 united. It is among the impracticable schemes upon 
 which the free states have spent their energy and dissi- 
 pated their sentiments. Twenty saw-mills, a like number
 
 136 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 of school-houses, and one thousand Sharp's rifles, sent to 
 Kansas with men at the back of them, would be a more 
 valuable contribution to freedom than all the personal 
 liberty laws that the ingenuity of Abolition lawyers 
 could devise, or legislators enact in a generation of time. 
 The first is action, — the latter impotent words. How 
 much more valuable too than such an act would be an 
 organization of one hundred thousand voters in Massa- 
 chusetts, pledged to union, harmony, and action in be- 
 half of no more slavery outside of the slave states .^" 
 
 Up to this year, the Republican had been politically 
 hostile to Henry "Wilson. It had charged the failure to 
 consolidate a party of freedom in 1854 largely to his per- 
 sonal ambition, which was gratified by his election the 
 following winter to the United States Senate. But, once 
 in the Senate, his course on the slavery question was 
 such as to win approval from those who were disposed to 
 look forward rather than back. The paper declared 
 (March 10) : 
 
 " Never was the voice of Massachusetts so well and so boldly 
 uttered in the United States Senate on this question as General 
 Wilson uttered it during the great debate on the bill to 
 strengthen the Fugitive Slave law." It gave him the right hand 
 of fellowship in saying, April 7 : " He does not carry with him 
 the moral feehng of Massachusetts as Mr. Sumner does, though 
 we believe he is a truer representative of its practical opinions, 
 and will prove a more effective operator in their behalf. . . . 
 Animated by no personal enmity in our opposition to his elec- 
 tion; seeking only the best good of Massachusetts and her 
 most effective and truthful representation at Washington ; 
 fearing not to denounce General Wilson as the mere politician 
 and party trickster, — we have no more hesitation in approving 
 and praising General Wilson as the senator of the common- 
 wealth, faithfully and boldly announcing and defending her 
 views to the representatives of the nation. The press has a 
 higher ambition than to perpetuate old feuds, and a wider
 
 THE STRUGGLE. 137 
 
 faithfulness to truth than that which denounces indiscrimi- 
 nately the good and bad deeds of a political opponent." 
 
 The unknown quantity in the political problem was 
 the Know-nothing or American party, which had sprung 
 up almost in a night, like Jonah's gourd. A National 
 Council of the party was held at Philadelphia, in June, 
 1855, which was the scene of an exciting struggle. The 
 members were bound by their oath of secrecy, but from 
 some source, which could not be discovered, the proceed- 
 ings were reported each day with much fullness and 
 accuracy in the New York Tribune; another excellent 
 report was given in the Springfield Republican, and dis- 
 patches of a similar tenor appeared in the Boston Atlas. 
 The sympathy among the Northern Know-nothings with 
 the movement against slavery extension had injured the 
 party in the South, and, in consequence, it had just been 
 defeated in Virginia by the Democrats, under the lead of 
 Henry A. Wise. The Southern members of the Council, 
 with strong support from the North, and especially from 
 New York, tried to commit that body to resolutions 
 denjdng to Congress the power to exclude slavery from 
 the territories, and appro\dng all the existing legislation 
 in favor of slavery. An opposite resolution was offered, 
 demanding the restoration of the Missouri compromise, 
 the protection of actual settlers, and the admission of 
 Kansas and Nebraska as free states. A hot battle was 
 fought in the convention. Wilson led the party of the 
 North. After a session of eight days, the Southern plat- 
 form was adopted, by a vote of eighty to fifty-nine. The 
 next morning a meeting was held by Northern delegates, 
 who adopted an address to the people, avowing the senti- 
 ments of the minority resolution. The result was a tem- 
 porary division of the party. 
 
 The result at Philadelphia gave great encouragement 
 to the anti-slavery sentiment, which had there proved
 
 138 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 strong enough to break the ranks of the new party, and 
 make itself felt as the issue which dwarfed all others. 
 The Tribune^s correspondent wrote (June 16) : 
 
 " Thank God ! There is a North. The South is aghast. It 
 does not know what to make of it. The North never acted so 
 before. They beg, they implore, they plead ; but the North is 
 inexorable. It is not a child to be toyed back by sweet words. 
 It asked simply the restoration of what the South had stolen : 
 it was insultingly denied, and, as if that were not enough, it 
 was told the robbing was right in spirit and substance, and 
 forbidden longer to complain of it. . . . No man went into 
 the council with more elements of distrust and opposition com- 
 bined against him than Henry Wilson ; no one goes out of it 
 with such an enviable fame, or such an aggregation to his 
 honor. He is worthy of Massachusetts, and worthy to lead the 
 new movement of the people of that state, which the result 
 here so fitly inaugurates." 
 
 Mr. Bowles stood in intimate relation to the events in 
 Philadelphia. He was himself the correspondent of the 
 Trihine, the Bejmhlican, and the Atlas, and the author of 
 the daily revelations which focused public opinion upon 
 the proceedings meant to be shrouded in oath-bound 
 secrecy. The moral scruple against getting information 
 from men in violation of oaths of secrecy was probably 
 outbalanced in his mind, not only by the temptation to a 
 brilliant exploit in news-getting, but by the advancement 
 of the cause he had at heart, and the belief that the 
 attempted secrecy was against all public interest. But 
 to most minds it will seem a notable instance of a warp- 
 ing of conscience by the ruling passion. 
 
 He was on terms of intimate association with Mr. 
 Wilson, and through him and other Massachusetts mem- 
 bers exercised a direct influence upon the council. It 
 was Mr. Bowles, as Mr. Wilson relates, who wrote the 
 resolution on which the Northern members planted them-
 
 THE STRUGGLE. 139 
 
 selves. When tlie end was reached, a conference was 
 held between Mr. Wilson, Mr. Bowles, and Ezra Lincoln 
 of Boston, a prominent Whig leader, and it was agreed 
 that the time was ripe for a united Republican movement 
 in Massachusetts, and that Robert C. Winthrop was the 
 man to lead it. Mr. Winthrop proved unwilling to 
 renounce the old gods of Whiggism. But Mr. Bowles 
 bent his whole energy to effecting a general union in the 
 new party, not only through his paper but by private 
 influence and action. 
 
 The paper declared, June 26, " The Republican fusion 
 movement failed last year in Massachusetts, because the 
 Whig organization, proud of its supposed strength, in- 
 sisted that everybody should come to it. It invited con- 
 cessions, but made none. The result was the utter 
 overthrow of that organization. Fusion and Wliiggery 
 were buried in a common grave." This year, it continues, 
 the Know-nothings must avoid a like mistake. Three 
 days later it recorded that the state Know-nothing coun- 
 cil had decided to continue its organization, which it 
 pronounced a great blunder. It was the same mistake, 
 it averred (July 3), which the Whigs had made the year 
 before ; and now the best resource was a call, broad and 
 catholic, signed by men of recognized influence and 
 representing all the past organizations, for a state con- 
 vention, to inaugurate a party of freedom. The new 
 party must originate spontaneously from the people. It 
 stated (July 7) that aU the old Whig press, all the Free- 
 soil, and all the independent journals but two or three, 
 in the whole commonwealth, were in favor of a new 
 party. Such a union had been accomplished in Ohio, 
 and had nominated for governor Mr. Chase, whose creed 
 on slavery was in one word '^ Denationalization." A 
 private consultation was announced as impending (July 
 21), of two or three hundred representative men, to fully
 
 140 THE LIFE AND TBIES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 discuss the ways and means to Republican fusion. But 
 this conference was delayed to await the action of the 
 state Know-nothing council, which met in Springfield, 
 August 7th. That body virtually abolished the secrecy 
 of the order, including all the oaths of membership. Its 
 main proposition in regard to the foreign element was 
 that a residence of twenty-one years should precede 
 naturalization. It took strong and satisfactory ground 
 against slavery extension ; but on the practical question 
 of a union on this issue with those who were indifferent 
 to "Americanism," its attitude was ambiguous, though 
 apparently favorable. It gave this matter in charge to 
 a committee. This action did not satisfy those who had 
 begun to move for a new party, and a call was issued for 
 the proposed conference for August 16th. Mr. Bowles's 
 name headed the call, but the Eejmhlican stated (August 
 13) that this was done by mistake, in his absence (he was 
 engaged in reporting the Amherst and "Williams Com- 
 mencements) ; and that he would have preferred a 
 previous consultation with the American committee. 
 However, it says : " The way is open for the right result. 
 Let us all, disregarding private views as to the best 
 means, raUy to the accomplishment of the great and 
 glorious end." The conference was held at the United 
 States Hotel in Boston. Mr. Bowles, in consequence of 
 the position of his name at the head of the signatures, 
 called the meeting to order. A committee was appointed 
 to summon a state convention ; among its members were 
 Mr. Bowles, Samuel Hoar, R. H. Dana, Jr., C. F. Adams, 
 George Boutwell, Stephen C. Philips, George Bliss, and 
 H. L. Dawes. This committee at once consulted with com- 
 mittees representing the Know-nothings, the " Know- 
 somethings" — a short-lived rival society — and the Re- 
 publican organization of 1854. These all favored the 
 new movement, except the Know-nothings, who were
 
 THE STRUGGLE. 141 
 
 evidently reluctant, and a call was issued for a mass con- 
 vention at Worcester, September 20, with a recommenda- 
 tion for a delegate convention at the same time and 
 place ; — the latter proving to be the more important 
 gathering of the two. 
 
 The spirit which gave dignity to these details of ma- 
 neuver was expressed by the RepuUican (August 24) 
 under the heading of " Confidence Necessary to Union " : 
 
 " The irmninent danger in which the country is placed by the 
 recent movements in behalf of slavery has elevated men's 
 minds, and brought them up above the low level of petty party 
 and personal prejudices. Scarcely any of us who feel at aU 
 upon the outrages of Congress and the mob in Kansas, have 
 failed to experience this purifying, elevating emotion ; and 
 while we recognize its presence ui oui'selves, we should recol- 
 lect that other men have passed through a hke experience. If 
 we are led to feel hke forgiving and forgetting aU for the sake 
 of united effort against the common danger, we must think that 
 others are moved to hke concihations, and are elevated to a like 
 sincerity and honesty of motive. . . . We must open a new 
 set of books Tvdth aU who say they are ready to move together 
 against the strides of slavery into free tenitory, watching one 
 another closely, if the past has led to distrust, but never con- 
 victing upon the past, or by the help of its prejudices. Let us 
 stand or fall one with another, not by the past, but by the 
 future." 
 
 The Massachusetts Democratic Convention (September 
 5) praised the Administration, denounced Know-noth- 
 ingism and Sectionalism (meaning Northern opposition 
 to slavery), and indorsed '^ the great doctrine of popular 
 sovereignty for territory and state, whether violated by 
 the unjust action of Abolitionists of the free states, or by 
 border aggression from the slave states." It nominated 
 for governor E. D. Beach, of Springfield, already the 
 candidate of the opponents of liquor prohibition.
 
 142 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 Over the coming Republican Convention hung a cloud 
 which was indicated (September 16) by the editorial dec- 
 laration that no man ought to be nominated who will not 
 sink or swim with the new party. This was aimed at 
 Governor Gardner, whose position was fully discussed in 
 the paper the next day. Gardner, the Republican de- 
 clares, is not honestly identified with the Republican 
 party. If it does not renominate him, he will be a can- 
 didate in opposition. His friends make plain their pur- 
 pose to either rule or ruin the Republican movement. A 
 nomination thus forced upon the convention will discredit 
 its work from the start, and have no binding force. 
 
 " There is but one way to carry forward this movement ; that 
 is honestly, fairly, openly. ... If Republicanism cannot 
 start right, fair and honest, it had better wait. It can afford 
 to wait rather than start otherwise." 
 
 On the morning of the convention, the paper said : 
 
 " But one man stands in the way of the successful inaugura- 
 tion of Republicanism in this state, at this moment. That man 
 is Henry J. Gardner. With him withdrawn aU would be peace, 
 confidence, faith, success." 
 
 The convention was a spirited and vigorous assemblage. 
 N. P. Banks was its president. The resolutions rose to 
 the height of the occasion. They declare, " That slavery 
 as a state institution is not within our power or respon- 
 sibility ; but slavery in its relations to the nation, is the 
 concern of every man in the nation ; in its relation to the 
 free states is the concern of every man in the free states"; 
 that the aggressions of slavery, and especially the repeal 
 of the Missouri compromise, '' have made slavery in its 
 national relations and its relations to the free states, the 
 paramount practical question in the politics of the coun- 
 try"; that "the repeal of the Missouri compromise ren-
 
 THE STRUGGLE. 143 
 
 ders every inch of the national domain a battle-ground 
 between freedom and slavery. It makes the admission 
 of every new state a conflict between freedom and 
 slavery. The issue thus forced upon us we accept ; we 
 commit ourselves to God and our country ; and may it 
 be by no fault of ours if another slave state is added to 
 the Union, or any of the territories left open to the pos- 
 sibility of slavery." 
 
 There was much debate upon the nomination for gov- 
 ernor. The alliance of the Americans evidently de- 
 pended on whether Gardner was nominated. To many 
 it seemed sound and legitimate policy to thus conciliate 
 them. But it was obvious that Gardner and his imme- 
 diate friends were with the new party only on condition 
 that it served his personal advancement. A call for an 
 American convention had already been issued, and the 
 signatures included nineteen of the members of the 
 Republican convention. By a close vote, the convention 
 gave the preference over Gardner to Julius Rockwell, 
 an old Whig, whose ability and sincere attachment to 
 the cause were alike unquestioned. He illustrated his 
 sincerity by declining in advance a supplementary nomi- 
 nation from the Whig convention, which met twelve 
 days later. That body represented the dignified and 
 respectable conservatism which was still blind to the 
 new issues, and shrunk from the "abolitionism" and 
 " sectionalism " of the Republican party. Its candidate 
 was Samuel H. WaUey. Of the resolutions, the Bepub- 
 lican said (October 3) that heretofore Whig conventions 
 had always had something to say against slavery; but 
 now, with slavery rampant and aggressive, " not a word 
 escapes the lips of those pretending, ^^ar excellence, to be 
 the Whigs of Massachusetts, on this subject — not a syl- 
 lable is uttered against the administration that permits, 
 sustains, and encourages these aggressions."
 
 144 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 The Americans renominated Gardner. Up to the day 
 of the election, the Republican declared with confidence 
 that either Rockwell or Beach would be elected. Mr. 
 Bowles's expectations of what was to be were often 
 colored by his conviction of what ought to be. Rockwell 
 and Beach represented the two sides of the only great 
 question before the people ; Gardner represented no defi- 
 nite policy or idea ; he had not even a strong and 
 attractive personality; he had behind him only a per- 
 sonal following, an organization, and the prestige of the 
 last year's victory. But when the votes were counted, 
 he had (in round numbers) 50,000, to 37,000 for Rockwell, 
 35,000 for Beach, and 14,000 for WaUey. The Repulj- 
 lican^s comment was : "A man has triumphed over a 
 principle. And at his feet lies wounded the cause of 
 freedom." 
 
 Elsewhere, too, the confusion of the true issue caused 
 by the American party, together with some reaction from 
 the first great enthusiasm that had carried the North for 
 freedom the year before, gave a set-back to the Republi- 
 can movement. The Americans were successful in New 
 York and California, the Democrats in Pennsylvania, 
 New Jersey, Indiana, and Illinois. The Bepuhlican drew 
 the inference (November 17) that the American party 
 was to play a part in the coming presidential contest. 
 Its own support of the Republican party was neither at 
 this time nor afterward a blind and unreserved allegiance. 
 When for the city election nominations were made by the 
 Republicans, Democrats, and Americans, its word was 
 (December 3), '^ We exhort every voter to go to the 
 polls, and, acting independently, vote for those whom he 
 considers the best men, and only those." 
 
 So closed the year 1855, with some reaction and con- 
 fusion, and little visible progress toward the triumph of 
 liberty. But good work had been done by the Eepubli-
 
 THE STRUGGLE. 145 
 
 can. No more useful work was ever done by it tlian in 
 these years when old things were passing away, and the 
 forces were being harmonized and organized for the 
 decisive struggle. In this year Mr. Bowles took a much 
 more active part in the personal conduct of politics than 
 was his habit. For the difficult and essential work of 
 drawing men once antagonistic into friendly cooperation, 
 for shaping the lines of a new party at once broadly and 
 distinctly, for keeping the main issue and the details in 
 right proportion, — for aU this he had high qualifications. 
 WhUe in his paper he often by his outspokenness gave 
 offense, he had in personal intercourse a tact and mag- 
 netism which few could resist. Never a public speaker, 
 he was in private gatherings skillful to plead, to har- 
 monize, to adjust. From the beginning of the Kansas 
 struggle he exhibited a power to take broad and states- 
 manlike views, an appreciation of the moral elements 
 involved, and a large wisdom and etficiency in reaching 
 practical results. In his later period his reputation was 
 largely that of a critic and iconoclast. But in these great 
 and decisive years he showed an eminent power in the 
 line of harmonizing, constructive political work. 
 
 Vol. I.— 10
 
 CHAPTER XV, 
 
 The Fremont Campaign. 
 
 THE year 1856 opened with an annual message from 
 President Pierce to Congress in which he elabo- 
 rately justified the repeal of the Missouri compromise, 
 and ignored the outrages in Kansas. The message of the 
 Governor of Massachusetts was equally silent regarding 
 those outrages, pleaded for the repeal of the personal 
 liberty law, and discussed at length the favorite topics of 
 Americanism. The national House of Representatives 
 sent a committee to investigate the situation in Kansas, 
 and their report of facts had a power beyond all argu- 
 ment to teach the Northern people what they had to deal 
 with, A still more startling lesson was given them. 
 Charles Sumner made a speech in the Senate, in which 
 the rhetorical finish and observance of parliamentary 
 forms made ouly more effective the biting severity 
 against the slave power and its leading representatives. 
 His sharpest edge was turned against Senator Butler of 
 South Carolina. A day or two later a nephew of Mr, 
 Butler, and member of the House, Preston S. Brooks of 
 South Carolina, came upon Mr, Sumner as he sat at his 
 desk in the empty Senate chamber, knocked him down 
 with a heavy cane before he could rise or resist, and beat 
 him so severely that he was incapacitated for senatorial 
 service for four years afterward. Indeed, he never after- 
 
 146
 
 THE FEEMONT CAMPAIGN. 147 
 
 ward was the same man, — to splendid physical vigor 
 there succeeded a life-long struggle with ill health. Mr. 
 Brooks was punished only by a paltry fine in the local 
 court. In the House, a motion of expulsion failed to re- 
 ceive the necessary two-thirds vote. Receiving a formal 
 censure, he resigned, but was instantly and triumphantly 
 reelected and resumed his seat. He was a Southern gen- 
 tleman, and his standing among Southern gentlemen was 
 not impaired by his act. From many places in the South 
 he received votes of thanks, and canes marked '* Hit him 
 again." In Congress, only the mildest disapprobation 
 was uttered by his political allies from either section. It 
 was left to Republican congressmen to rightly charac- 
 terize the assault. Wilson, in the Senate, called it '^ bru- 
 tal, murderous, and cowardly." Brooks sent him a 
 challenge, and in reply he refused to withdraw his words, 
 and repudiated the duelist's code. In the House, Bur- 
 lingame denounced the assault, in the name not only of 
 humanity and civilization, but of '^ that fair play which 
 bullies and prize-fighters respect." Brooks challenged 
 him ; he accepted, and named a meeting-place in Canada, 
 but Brooks declined to follow him there. The duelist's 
 way of redi'ess was not the Massachusetts way. Burlin- 
 game lost nothing at home by his action. But when 
 after five years more of patience the state struck her 
 blow, it was not against an individual, but against 
 slavery, and by the arms, not of one man, but of sixty 
 thousand. 
 
 At the South, Brooks was treated as a hero. At a 
 gathering to do him honor in the following October, 
 Senators Butler and Toombs participated, both of them 
 taking occasion to utter threats of disunion in case the 
 Republicans elected their President. Senator Mason of 
 Virginia wrote of Brooks : " I know of none whose public 
 career I hold more worthy the fuU and cordial approba-
 
 148 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 tion of his constituents than his," and added that if a 
 Republican President was elected, but one course re- 
 mained for the South, " immediate, absolute, and eternal 
 separation." 
 
 The Repuljlwan (May 29) treated the assault as an 
 illustration of the reigning influence in the country. It 
 sought to turn the passionate resentment of the hour 
 into the practical channel whereby alone redress was pos- 
 sible. It said : 
 
 '' There is no denying the humiliating fact that this countrj'' 
 is under the reign of ruffianism. Ruffianism has become na- 
 tional. It is the policy of the Administration, the poHcy of the 
 Democratic party, and decidedly and confessedly the poUcy of 
 the nding interest in the country. The Administration backs 
 up ruffianism in Kansas, and, under its sanction, ruffianism prac- 
 tices its cowardly acts in Congress. Free men are denied a set- 
 tlement on the pubhc domain, are denied the privilege of making 
 their own laws, and have even to struggle for hf e against a ruf- 
 fianly mob and a ruffianly Federal government. Free speech is 
 denied in Congress, and may only be indulged in at the cost of a 
 broken head. The highest representative of the noblest of the 
 ' Old Thirteen ' wins laurels for himself and the commonwealth 
 only to have them soaked in his own blood. What do you think 
 of this, men of the North ? The remedy for mffianism resides in 
 a united North. Old party names must be forgotten, old party 
 ties sui-rendered, organizations based upon secondary issues 
 abandoned, momentary self-interest sacrificed to the country 
 and its welfare, and aU must come together and fight and labor 
 side by side until the great question which overshadows all 
 others has found issue in the triumph of justice." 
 
 The great need of the time, the great service of the 
 press, was to bring into clear light the question on which 
 the people must divide and decide. Two influences were 
 at work to obscure and confuse the main question. One 
 was the American party ; the other was the duplicity of
 
 THE FKEMONT CA^iIPAIGN. 149 
 
 the Democratic leaders upon the subject of ^^ popular 
 sovereignty." Another National Council of the Americans 
 was held in Philadelphia in February, and again Mr. 
 Bowles reported its proceedings for the Bepulilican and 
 the Tribune, but this time the convention made no at- 
 tempt at secrecy. The Southern element was "sdctorious; 
 a substantially pro-slavery platform was adopted, and 
 Millard Fillmore was nominated for the presidency. 
 Again there was a secession of Northern members. The 
 organization in Massachusetts hung doubtful. A major- 
 ity of the state council — differing from those of all the 
 other New England states — accepted the nomination of 
 Fillmore. A secession — such as had become a regular 
 incident of almost every Know-nothing gathering — took 
 place, and delegates were sent to a Northern American 
 convention in June. 
 
 The Democratic Convention met first, in Cincinnati. 
 Mr. Bowles reported it for his paper. Pierce and Doug- 
 las were discarded as candidates in favor of James Bu- 
 chanan, — an old Pennsylvania politician, who had been 
 Pierce's minister to England, and had engaged in dis- 
 creditable maneuvers toward gaining Cuba for America 
 and slavery, but otherwise had not been involved in 
 recent controversies, and was of good personal repute. 
 The Republican (June 10) gave the reason why Pierce 
 and Douglas, faithful and efiicient servants of the South, 
 had been rejected and Buchanan preferred. 
 
 " There is a game to be played with the people. The re- 
 spectable name of James Buchanan — the name of one who, 
 with becoming pmdence, has contrived to keep himself dis- 
 sociated fi'om the acts which have made that of Franklin Pierce 
 execrable — has been put forward as a gilded bait to troU upon 
 the pohtical waters, to make the simple fish forget that it is 
 tied to a string of resolutions every strand of which is either a 
 cheat or a falsehood."
 
 150 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 The convention declared in its resolutions for " non- 
 interference by Congress with slavery in state or territory, 
 or in the District of Columbia." What interpretation 
 this was sure to receive in practice, Mr. Bowles pointed 
 out (June 9) : 
 
 " The right of the people of territories to decide upon the 
 existence of slavery in the administration of the territorial gov- 
 ernment, which was the original intent and meaning of squatter 
 sovereignty as expounded by Mr. Cass, is nowhere stated. The 
 power over slavery in the territories is denied Congress and 
 given to no other authority. The rights of the citizens over it 
 are not supposed by this platform to begin until they proceed 
 to form a state government, and in the exercise of such a right 
 then no party has denied them, or proposed to deny them, fuU 
 power. The Repubhcan doctrine is simply that Congress has 
 the right and should exercise it, of excluding slavery from the 
 territories while they are territories. The Democratic platform 
 solely, in tei-ms, denies this. But in its purpose and meaning 
 it goes farther, and justifies and protects slavery in the terri- 
 tories if slave-owners choose to carry it there. So it will be 
 translated at the South, — so it was accepted by the unanimous 
 vote of the South in the convention to-day. The substance of 
 the resolutions in this respect is that slavery is the equal of free- 
 dom everywhere mider the constitution and in the administra- 
 tion of the general government." 
 
 But the resolutions had been so worded that it might 
 be maintained at the North that the Democratic theory 
 was that of a real, bona fide self-government by the peo- 
 ple of the territories. Thus stated it seemed to put the 
 territorial residents entirely on a level with the residents 
 of a state, in the control of their local affairs. This was 
 undoubtedly the plea by which the Democratic ticket 
 won rftost of its votes at the North. The candidate for 
 Vice-President was John C. Breckinridge, of Kentucky. 
 
 The first National Republican Convention met at Phil- 
 adelphia. It nominated for President John Charles Pre-
 
 THE FREMONT CAMPAIGN. 151 
 
 mont, of California; for Vice-President, William L. 
 Dayton, of New Jersey. Colonel Fremont was a man of 
 small political experience, but with high reputation as 
 an intrepid explorer and soldier ; regarded as a prompt, 
 resolute, and honorable man of action, and a chivalrous 
 gentleman. His youth, his freedom from the soils of 
 political intrigue, a certain personal fascination, and 
 the dignity with which he bore himself under a torrent 
 of bitter calumnies, made him a sort of ideal hero, most 
 congenial to the high enthusiasm with which the young 
 party of freedom fought its first great fight. He was 
 wholly untried in statesmanship, was in reality little 
 known to the country, and his subsequent development 
 showed him little fit for any high trust. But his per- 
 sonality caught the popular fancy. Yet the fight was 
 for a principle, not for a person, save as he seemed to 
 embody the principle. Said the Republican (September 6) : 
 
 " Pure as is the life of Colonel Fremont, spotless as is his 
 reputation, noble as are his traits of character, high as are his 
 accomphshments, and devotedly as the people love him, his 
 name ia any public assembly of Republicans awakens no 
 responses like those which greet the annunciation of the sen- 
 timents which he represents." 
 
 The Republican platform declared it to be " the right 
 and the imperative duty of Congress to prohibit in the 
 territories those twin relics of barbarism, polygamy and 
 slavery." It demanded the immediate admission of Kan- 
 sas as a free state, and denied the authority of Congress 
 or a territorial legislature to give legal existence to 
 slavery in any territory. Of the temper of the assembly 
 Mr. Bowles wrote (June 24) : 
 
 " Certainly we never saw a pohtical convention in which 
 there was so much soul as in that at Philadelphia. It was poh- 
 tics with a heart and a conscience in. it. . . . Cincinnati
 
 152 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 gathered the remains of a once powerful national party, and 
 contiibuted to its further sectionahzation and destruction. 
 Philadelphia called together the heart, the independence, and 
 the brains of all parties, to estabhsh a broader and juster na- 
 tionality. Such a fusion of contradictory elements was never 
 witnessed in this countiy before since the times of the Revolu- 
 tion. Nor could it happen now save under a great emergency, 
 and from a controUing necessity. Such a combination of the 
 material and mental forces of the Republic as was represented 
 in the Philadelphia convention, and united in its enthusiastic 
 and hannonious results, has more power than any pohtical 
 combination ever formed before in this country, and cannot in 
 the nature of things be long kept in the background. There is 
 no law more certain than that which will throw such a union of 
 the moral strength, intellectual activity and youthful energy of 
 the nation, into supremacy, and that right speedily. It may 
 be delayed for a season, but its course is onward and its victory 
 is certain." 
 
 The Northern American Convention, meeting before 
 that of the Republicans, nominated Mr. Banks, who de- 
 clined the position ; he had been very active in securing 
 the Republican nomination for Fremont, and to him the 
 anti-slavery American support was transferred. 
 
 Side by side with the presidential campaign went on 
 the struggle in Kansas. The Free-state settlers, disown- 
 ing the pro-slavery legislature, organized under a Free- 
 state constitution, and chose a governor of their own 
 whose authority was only nominal. The purpose of the 
 Administration was to have its territorial governor a 
 Northern Democrat, but presence on the scene of action 
 had a tendency to convert each governor to the Free-state 
 side. So it had been with Governor Reder; his suc- 
 cessor, Wilson Shannon, was unstable iu habits and char- 
 acter, and wavered between the parties. The scandal of 
 his administration, and of the anarchic state of affairs, 
 was too heavy to be carried by the Administration in the
 
 THE FEEMONT CAMPAIGN. 153 
 
 face of the coming elections, and with the great state of 
 Pennsylvania hanging doubtf nl. As Shannon's successor 
 the President appointed, perhaps at Mr. Buchanan's sug- 
 gestion, JohnW. Geary, a Pennsylvanian of good character 
 and ability. Following his private instructions, he did not 
 force matters to extremity with the Free-state men, and 
 some degree of temporary pacification ensued. The 
 pro-slavery legislature was sustained by the Federal 
 territorial court, under the presidency of Chief-Justice 
 Lecompte, and the Free-state leaders had been judicially 
 harassed, while the lawless ruffianism of their enemies 
 went unpunished. In September, the Repuhlican had for 
 some time a standing paragraph in italics: " Keep it be- 
 fore the people that to this day no man in Kansas has 
 ever been punished by law for offenses committed against 
 members of the Free-state party, — not one ! " The facts 
 in Kansas were too strong for many men whose theories 
 had made them adverse to the Republican movement. 
 Thus, a prominent Conservative Whig, Reuben A. Chap- 
 man, of Springfield, afterward chief-justice of the state, 
 wrote in September to the Boston Advertiser to disclaim 
 a participation assigned him in a meeting of the Fillmore 
 party — a party which was appealing not without some 
 success to the old "Whigs. Mr. Chapman expressed un- 
 mitigated dislike for the "Free-soil agitators of the 
 North." But he saw in the American party a sectarian 
 and proscriptive organization; while as to the Kansas 
 legislature '^ every intelligent man and every lawyer 
 know that such a government has no legality." A study 
 of its statute-book had mightily wrought upon the Massa- 
 chusetts lawyer. "I have been amazed that any body 
 of men could be collected from any quarter, without rob- 
 bing the gallows and the penitentiaries, who could enact 
 laws so atrocious." The Democratic policy, he concludes, 
 is dictated by a purpose to make Kansas a slave state at
 
 154 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 whatever cost of violence or fraud; that conservative 
 and national party for which he longs can come only 
 when the Democracy has been buried ; and Fremont he 
 esteems not an unsafe man for President. 
 
 The presidential struggle was doubtful until the Octo- 
 ber election ; then the scales were seen to incline to the 
 Democracy. Pennsylvania was carried for the Buchanan 
 ticket over a coalition between the Fremont and Fillmore 
 men, but by a majority so narrow that the result in 
 November was by no means sure. The Republicans had 
 been hopeful to the last of winning the state, but there, 
 and in Indiana, the Democrats lavished money in bribery, 
 while the Republican party was young, virtuous, and 
 poor. Fillmore lost ground: his friends fell off to one 
 or the other of the two candidates who represented an 
 idea. In the Springfield congressional district (then 
 the tenth) the Democrats, the old Whigs, and the Fill- 
 more Americans, all united on a congressional and 
 county ticket against the Republicans. So it goes all 
 over the country, said the Republican (October 10) : " The 
 debris of all the old parties, the office-holders, the old 
 hunkers, the weak, wicked, and old-womanish, are hud- 
 dling together to make a last effort to avert the im- 
 pending storm, and save themselves and the slave power 
 from overthrow." That power was beginning to loudly 
 threaten to break the Union if it could not rule it. In 
 Virginia the election turned on the question whether if 
 Fremont was elected secession should follow: Henry 
 A. Wise leading the Democratic and disunion party, 
 and John M. Botts the Unionists, — himself for Fill- 
 more but not unfriendly to Fremont. The Repuhlican 
 pointed out (August 4) that while all Southern Dis- 
 unionists were for Buchanan, the few Abolition Disunion- 
 ists at the North — Phillips, Pilsbury, and their asso- 
 ciates — were all against Fremont, because he represented
 
 THE FREMONT CAMPAIGN. 155 
 
 a constitutional opposition to slavery, which was unfavor- 
 able to their war on the constitution. The Southern 
 threats of disunion the Republican treated as insincere, 
 and meant only to frighten the North into submission ; in 
 which view it illustrated its characteristic insensibility to 
 panic, which led it sometimes to underrate real dangers. 
 But iu truth the South had so often cried disunion that 
 most people at the North had little belief in. its sincerity. 
 In state politics the American party remained a stum- 
 bling-block. In July their convention in a tumultuous 
 session renominated Governor Gardner, who was as yet 
 non-committal between Fremont and Fillmore, though 
 the FiUmore men seceded from the convention after his 
 nomination. The remnants of Whiggery met and nomi- 
 nated Luther V. Bell for governor, and approved Fillmore 
 for President. The Republican convention was not called 
 by the representatives of the last yeai''s party, but, like 
 that, was summoned from independent sources. It was 
 proposed that Governor Gardner be made its candidate, 
 and this course was urged in the convention by Banks 
 and Wilson, the latter saying that the Republicans could 
 afford to be liberal in dealing with an expiring and 
 substantially defunct organization. The Republican's 
 grounds of opposition to Gardner were thus summed up 
 (September 15) : 
 
 " He is a positive man and has made a positive administra- 
 tion. No administration in this state for ten years has been so 
 full of important schemes and important results as this [Ms two 
 annual terms] . None has so swollen the expenses of the state. 
 His vetoes of important measures, involving high questions of 
 principle and state poUcy ; the creation of numerous unneces- 
 sary oflB^ces for the multiplication of executive patronage and 
 personal retainers ; his active interference in the pecuhar 
 province of the legislature ; his fatal opposition to the proposi- 
 tion for an appropriation for the rehef of our feUow-citizens ui
 
 156 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 Kansas at a time when such an appropriation would have been 
 an immense benefit to the cause of free Kansas ; the oveniding 
 of an express constitutional provision to make a new batch of 
 executive appointments, — these, with other corresponding feat- 
 ures of his government, unite to make it the most extravagant 
 and corrupt which this commonwealth has ever experienced, 
 and have established issues of state policy which can only be 
 kept out of the canvass by keeping him out." The Repub- 
 hcans, it concludes, may perhaps make no state nominations, — 
 not the highest coui'se to pursue, but not essentially wrong, 
 as would be the nomination of Gardner. 
 
 The convention (September 16) deliberated whether to 
 accept Gardner, to nominate Charles Sumner for gov- 
 ernor, or to refrain from nominating ; and the latter 
 course was adopted by a large majority. This signified 
 that Gardner's election as an American was to be allowed, 
 rather than to risk the alienation of American votes from 
 Fremont. A union with that party upon an electoral 
 ticket was agreed on, and provision made for an agree- 
 ment on congressional and local nominations. 
 
 In the tenth district Dr. Chaffee received a renomina- 
 tion from the Republicans and Fremont Americans ; all 
 the other parties uniting on W. A. Fowler. The eleventh 
 district, including Berkshire and a westward strip from 
 the river counties, became the scene of a contest into 
 which Mr. Bowles threw himself as heartily as into any 
 of the many battles of his life. The Republican candi- 
 date was Henry L. Dawes. Rev. Mark Trafton, chosen 
 two years before as a Know-nothing, and a rival of Mr. 
 Dawes in the '^Fremont Union" Convention, took the 
 field as an independent candidate, while the Democrats 
 had a popular nominee in Dr. Weston. Mr. Bowles had 
 become acquainted with Mr. Dawes when the latter wrote 
 for him a series of letters from the legislature, about 
 the year 1852, and the foundation had been laid for a
 
 THE FEEMONT CAMPAIGN. 157 
 
 life-long friendship. He was deeply interested in Mr. 
 Dawes's success. His letters, given in the next chap- 
 ter, will illustrate the keenness of his interest, and the 
 thoroughness of the electioneering work in which he was 
 the chief organizer and inspirer. Dr. Holland, his effi- 
 cient co-worker in the general contest, although habitu- 
 ally not active in political management, took an energetic 
 part in the canvass for Mr. Dawes ; and on the Satui'day 
 before the election visited every one of the Hampden 
 county towns in the eleventh district, to give the last 
 word of encouragement and exhortation to Dawes's 
 friends. 
 
 Never had a party approached an election in a nobler 
 mood than did the Republican party in 1856 — never 
 afterward did it rise to a grander spirit, save when 
 with a fervent and solemn resolution, wrought out in 
 four years of war, it reelected Abraham Lincoln in 1864. 
 The RepuhUcan''s editorials on the eve of the decisive 
 day were filled with the high spirit of the time. They 
 rose above passion, — they read events with that broad 
 and clear view to which men of disciplined mind and 
 high purpose are lifted by an emergency. Thus the paper 
 spoke (Nov. 1) of the Republican party : 
 
 "It is a vital party. At its heart bums a great truth, of 
 which each member feels the thiill, and to which each nerve 
 and filament responds. It is the party of the country, and it 
 holds within itself that principle by which this Union can alone 
 be perpetuated — the true democratic principle. If the princi- 
 ]ple upon which this party is estabhshed do not prevail, then 
 the days of this confederacy are numbered ; for slavery is not 
 right, slave inile is not right, the whole pohcy growing out of 
 wrong is wrong, and a government which recognizes wrong as 
 the controUing force within it fosters the seeds of its own abso- 
 lute and inevitable dissolution. The great pohtical sea is 
 covered with the floating fragments of defunct organizations.
 
 158 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 Disappointed leaders are clinging with a death-grapple to the 
 wrecks, and many of their crews, bound to them by ties of 
 interest, or borne to their side by an impulse of not ignoble 
 chivalry, cling with them, determined to save something or go 
 down together. Some chng to the wreck of the old Whig 
 ship. A crowd still tumble among the frail timbers of Know- 
 nothingism. A still greater crowd sail with the piratical craft 
 of modern Democracy, unaware of her crazy condition, and 
 unthinking that in the next rough sea she must go down even 
 if mutiny on board should not break out before the storm 
 comes on. It is amidst this turmoil of dissolution, and the 
 beating of governmental pohcy against the foundation stones 
 of the Repubhc, that the Repubhcan timbers have been laid, 
 and the stanch bark launched upon the sea. 
 
 " Who form the strength of this party ? Precisely those who 
 would most naturally be expected to, — the great middling- 
 interest class. The highest class, aristocratically associated and 
 affihated, timid, afraid of change, and holding in their hands 
 the sensitive cords of commerce ; and the lowest class, igno- 
 rant, deceived with a name, fed by the rich man's money and 
 led by the rich man's finger — these are the forces arrayed 
 against RepubUcanism as a whole. The horde of office-holders 
 and office-seekers, and the slave interest, these are what the 
 party serves. Those who work with their own hands, who hve 
 and act independently, who hold the stakes of home and fam- 
 ily, of farm and workshop, of education and freedom — these 
 as a mass are enrolled in the Repubhcan ranks. They form the 
 very heart of the nation, as opposed to the two extremes of 
 aristocracy and ignorance, and their wiU and word cannot be 
 disregarded." 
 
 On the morning of the election (November 4), the situ- 
 ation was thus reviewed : 
 
 '' The real abstract question at issue between the two parties 
 is, whether Congress shall control the destinies of the territo- 
 ries, and dedicate them as of old to freedom, or whether they 
 shall be left for bitter and bloody struggles between the settlers,
 
 THE FKEMONT CAMPAIGN. 159 
 
 like those which, in Kansas now shock the moral sense of civili- 
 zation everywhere. Practically the question is whether the 
 influence of the national government shall be used to extend 
 slavery, and aggregate its pohtical power, or to limit its bounds 
 and weaken its hold over the pohtics, the business, and the 
 rehgion of the nation. Were the issue thus plainly known of 
 all men, there would be no dispute of the result. . . . The Amer- 
 ican party stepped in at an inopportune moment, overwhelmed 
 the true issue before the coimtiy, and turned aside the minds 
 of many men by the gUttering success which it momentarily 
 won. And if the Republican party faUs to-day to inaugurate 
 that revolution iu the national government, — which must come 
 ere this generation passes away, or the government itself per- 
 ishes, — the responsibihty cannot be escaped by the American 
 organization. To its door must the defeat of John C. Fremont 
 and the election of James Buchanan be laid. 'By implanting 
 in many minds a weak substitution for the strongest issue, and 
 by keeping temporarily in the Democratic ranks many who but 
 for their opposition to Americanism would have rallied around 
 the Republican standard, it has given fresh strength to the 
 Democracy, and enabled them to contest this election with a 
 fair prospect of success. . . . The result of the struggle is in 
 great doubt, and the eagles of victoiy are as likely, perhaps, 
 to perch on the one side as on the other, to-morrow morning. Of 
 the two contestants, the Repubhcans can alone afford to be 
 beaten. With the Democracy, defeat is destruction. The 
 party is only held together by its aUiance with the national 
 treasury, and the slave-holder. Separated from one, it becomes 
 useless to the other, and its power is gone. But a reverse 
 cannot break the Repubhcan column. It has an enduring 
 vitahty in its principles, and a glorious destiny, as sure as the 
 Repubhc has an existence. Whether it enters upon the affirm- 
 ative exercise of its mission now, or four years hence, is to 
 aU seeming the only question of to-day. Time will only vindi- 
 cate its tnithfulness, its necessity, and its strength. It can 
 afford to wait, if the countiy and the world can afford to have 
 it. But the countiy cannot afford to wait for its healing, peace- 
 ful mission, and though we look not upon the day's struggle
 
 160 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 with confidence of victoiy, we await its result with a buoyant 
 hope that the day and the hour of redemption have come." 
 
 The next morning's tidings were of defeat. The states 
 on which the result hung — Pennsylvania and Indiana — 
 had voted for Buchanan. New England was solid for 
 freedom ; New York gave its vote to Fremont ; so did 
 Illinois and most of the states of the great West. Mas- 
 sachusetts had given Fremont a majority of two to one 
 over both his opponents. But the next national admin- 
 istration was to be Democratic. 
 
 The Republican in the same issue that told the first 
 sharp news of the defeat thus addressed itself to the 
 future : 
 
 '' The sturdy hickory saphng, bent to the ground by the 
 incumbent snows, snaps back to its thrifty altitude when the 
 jar of a passing host removes the load. So the great party 
 of freedom, pressed down and chilled beneath the accumu- 
 lations of defeat, with firm roots and well-knit fibers, springs 
 backward, as the great results of the election sweep by. It has 
 taken its position for 1860, — stronger to-day than ever before." 
 
 Governor Gardner's reelection was a matter of course : 
 he fell about 13,000 behind Fremont's vote. The tenth 
 district sent back Dr. Chaffee by 6000 majority ; and in 
 the eleventh, Mr. Dawes was nearly 3000 votes ahead of 
 each of his rivals. 
 
 The Republican (November 8) laid stress on the power 
 and responsibility of the Republican party, in its capacity 
 of a minority in the government ; and thus enforced one 
 lesson of the defeat. 
 
 " We are beaten by the ignorance of the people. The excel- 
 lent common-school systems of the New England states and 
 New York have given those states to Fremont. In every sec- 
 tion of those states where a great mass of ignorance existed.
 
 THE FREMONT CAMPAIGN. 161 
 
 the votes showed that Buchanan was in advance. Pennsyl- 
 vania, with no common-school system worthy of the name, 
 New Jersey, notoriously behind the times in aU matters per- 
 taining to popular education, Indiana, with its large settlements 
 from the South of individuals to whom common schools are 
 entire strangers, — these have gone for Buchanan. The pubhc 
 mind is thoroughly to be educated, the pubhc heart to be 
 Christianized, before they yield to the claims of justice and 
 right, and before they wiU comprehend and rationally and con- 
 scientiously decide upon the issues before them." 
 
 Vol. I.— 11
 
 CHAPTER XVI. 
 Letters: 1851-1856. 
 
 THIS chapter might have its title in the form of a 
 stage direction : " Enter Sam Bowles." For in this 
 he first speaks freely and at length in his own person. 
 In selecting these letters, the aim has been to show him 
 in his every-day guise, just as he appeared to his friends. 
 Some of the letters are slight and even tri^dal in their 
 contents, — they are given as the best practicable repre- 
 sentation of the lighter moods, which have perhaps as 
 much of human interest as the hours of graver cares 
 and conflicts. 
 
 To Charles Allen, of Greenfield. 
 
 Springfield, June 10, 1851. 
 
 Were you ever in love, fortune favoring, smiles a plenty, and 
 everything considered siu-e, when to the one great question of 
 life you got an imexpected and bewildering no ? Or, as this 
 is hardly a supposable case with so fresh and buoyant a young 
 gentleman, did you ever get a shower-bath when you least of 
 aU expected it and were least of ah prepared for it *? 
 
 If so, if either, but especially the first, you may perhaps 
 '' phansy my pheelinks." I am dished, — can't go a fishing, — 
 must stay at home, — disappoint myself, disappoint my friends, 
 and a' that. Well, it's always so. I'm the poor victim of the 
 accidents and incidents of a daily newspaper. This morning 
 our pressman broke down, the foreman must take his place, 
 
 162
 
 letters: 1851-1856. 163 
 
 and I must stay to make up deficiencies and di'ill all hands. 
 Besides, I am wounded in my own household. My wife's Irish 
 girl, who takes care of the baby, took it into her head, as Irish 
 girls will, to take herself off last night, and in j)ui-suance of the 
 love-honor-and-obey contract, I ought to help my wife out of 
 the scrape. Moreover, — but I won't rehearse the long-drawn 
 tale of sorrows, — " the sorrows of Werther " were no touch to 
 them. Suffice it, that misfoi-tunes never come singly, and I'm 
 their victim. I don't care for myself, for I fancy that ten years 
 of this galley-slave's life has used me to disappointment and 
 self-denial of this kind, but you, whom I have troubled, bothered, 
 and promised so much, — bah, I couldn't look you in the face. 
 I feel mean, and like vowing as I have a hundred times ah'eady 
 in my editorial life that I never will attempt to go away again, 
 or make an engagement to go away, for I am sui'e to have 
 something turn up and disappoint myself and my friends. 
 
 Now forget me and all my promises, — go off and catch your 
 fish, and don't ever invite me to come to Greenfield again, or if 
 you do, don't beheve me when I tell you I'll come. It's no use. 
 Thy provoked and ashamed friend, 
 
 Sam'l Bowles, Jr. 
 
 May 19, 1852. 
 
 Have you any recollection of one Bowles ! If so, give me 
 some evidence of it. Burnish up your memory, and when 
 found make a note of him for the benefit of future generations. 
 
 Are you dead or in love ? Here I've been sick these five 
 weeks, here and in Brooklyn, and I have not had the first word 
 of condolence, nor the first trout of sjTupathy, from you. Why, 
 man, where's your humanity ? You would not treat a nigger 
 so bad, especially if he was a voter iu Frankhn county. Come 
 and see me, write me, blow me up, traduce me, insult me, re- 
 view me a la Eugene Batchelder, anything in short — but don't 
 forget me. 
 
 Rode out to-day for the first time since my relapse into the 
 Slough of Despond, Getting better slow, but I trust sure. Am 
 as weak as the mother of six new kittens, and am 
 
 Yours truly.
 
 164 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 November 20, 1854. 
 You seem to have a somewhat similar idea of the use of 
 newspapers to that one of the old fathers had of language. He 
 said it was an invention to conceal thought. You think news- 
 papers machines to suppress information. You teU me lots 
 of good news, and then put on the stopper with " don't you 
 print ! " So I hold in, and have the satisfaction of seeing the 
 news trotted out in Boston, Greenfield, and all along shore, 
 and of hearing it talked about in great detail by my friends, 
 who wonder at the stupidity of the Bepublican in not printing. 
 Thanks to Chapman and my imagination,* I have done, I hope, 
 partial justice to your Know-nothing row, but not until it was 
 old news — confound you. 
 
 February 22, 1855. 
 
 I would not on any account abridge the freedom with which 
 you may be pleased to write me privately, and I will not here- 
 after use any of your private correspondence for the benefit 
 of the world at large, except by your expressly obtained per- 
 mission. 
 
 Judge Loring's removal I look upon as a decided piece of 
 conservative legislation. If it be not done, the advocates of 
 an elective judiciary for short terms will double instanter in 
 Massachusetts, and our judiciary will be placed where every 
 passing popular breeze can reach them, which I would dejjre- 
 cate as much as you. Nor can I admit the distinction you 
 make between morals and law. It seems to me that they pos- 
 sess intimate connection and dependency ; that every law, in a 
 country like ours, can really be no law, certainly no wise or 
 useful law, unless grounded in the moral convictions of the 
 people. The laws of the country are the mere exponents of the 
 virtue^ and morahty of its people. That is a phase of the ques- 
 tion which I would hke to discuss. 
 
 * The phrase "thanks to my imagination" may perhaps refer to an occa- 
 sional practice of Mr. Bowles when he did not feel at liberty to relate as 
 fact what had been communicated to him, yet wanted to give the public an 
 inkling of it, and would write " We surmise," "we imagine," or " we pre- 
 dict" that so-and-so is the case.
 
 letters: 1851-1856. 165 
 
 I am just fi'om a two days' visit to Norwich, Ct., with Mrs. 
 B. ; and when I next come to Greenfield — if that ever is — I 
 shall bring her with me. 
 
 To his wife, while reporting the Know-nothing Council 
 in June, 1855, Mr. Bowles writes : 
 
 Philadelphia, Wednesday. 
 
 Your letter of yesterday came this afternoon, and rejoiced 
 me by its various good news. I continue well, but feel lazy 
 and stupid, and have loafed about quietly aU day, accomplish- 
 ing nothing as yet but a letter to the Tribune. I am going to 
 stir about more to-morrow, and see the various interesting 
 sights of this beautiful city. You would be veiy much pleased 
 to be here with me, and I should be very pleased to have you. 
 What a pity we can't both be pleased! Philadelphia would 
 gratify you more than either Boston or New York. The streets 
 are so much neater, are so regular, and bear such a finished 
 look in their stores and dwellings, and the stores are the most 
 magnificent in the country. The great number of large and 
 elegant stores is surprising. Broadway does not compare in 
 this respect Avith Chestnut street. . . . The ladies get them- 
 selves up here on a magnificent scale, and the number of beau- 
 tiful women magnificently dressed who may be seen up and 
 down the great street — Chestnut — is beyond what any other 
 city can furnish. They are all arrayed in their summer cos- 
 tumes, and some of these would quite *'stun" oui* country 
 folks if displayed on Main or Maple St. How long I shall stay 
 here is uncertain. If the Tribune people desire it, I may stay 
 through the farce, for such it is getting to be. I shall consult 
 my own ease and comfort about it very largely. 
 
 Give my love to A , and congratulate her for me on her 
 
 new step forward. It is a happy day in any one's fife that 
 records such a step, — that finds the heart fitted to lay hold 
 on eternal life. Heigh-ho ! I do not know as I shall ever 
 get to such a pitch of goodness and right feeling ; and yet 
 I should be unhappy if I did not believe I should '' some 
 time or other."
 
 166 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BO^TLiES. 
 
 Kiss the '' childer" ; remember me to Mother, Amelia, and 
 Hannah, and reserve for yourself a generous share of all the 
 loving and husbandly affection which the subscriber respect- 
 fully places at your disposal. Write me often, and, remember, 
 take good care of yourself. You can't be too prudent. 
 
 Philadelphia, Friday night. 
 
 My Dearest Mrs. Bowles: Trusting that the fact that 
 the letter due from you to-day did not come does not augui- 
 any abatement of affection, or any return of iU health (dii-e 
 calamities both !), I proceed to make my daily bulletin : pulse 
 regular, appetite fair, though httle duUed now by a pint of 
 strawben'ies and cream and several mutton chops ; temper 
 happy "as could be expected under the circumstances," viz., 
 absence from the benignant light of your presence, only partly 
 counterbalanced by two glasses of " fine old port," accom- 
 plished with the aforesaid mutton chops and strawbeiTies ; per- 
 sonal appearance as bewitching as usual, — fill out the balance 
 to suit yourself. 
 
 Yesterday was quite wann — to-day is cool and delightful. 
 I am enjoying myself passably, and pohtics in a quiet way, but 
 am impatient to be off, partly because people are beguming to 
 suspect me as the correspondent of the Tribune, which is not so 
 pleasant as an incog., and partly because I have had enough of 
 it for play, though as work it is amusing enough. ... I 
 hope affah's continue comfortable at home, and that your 
 strength and health mend together. You can hardly tell what 
 a relief it would be to me to have you well and strong again. 
 I try to believe that what is, is right, unless we can see it to be 
 the result of some negligence or imprudence of our own. . . 
 But we wiU try not to repine, for though everything is not 
 as we would have it, still ouj* sources of happiness are above 
 the average of humanity in richness and deepness. 
 
 Give my love to all, including the rosy-cheeked and good- 
 natured Hannah ; kiss the babies, — tell A I hope the new 
 
 responsibilities will not make her any more solemn or severe, — 
 and accept yourself what a wife ought to have from her affec- 
 tionate, and he hopes faithful, husband.
 
 LETTEKS: 1851-1856. 167 
 
 Philadelphia, Monday evening. 
 
 Your long and piously disposed letter came yesterday morn- 
 ing, and had to answer the purpose of going to meeting, as I 
 behave it did, and more too. For though I staid at home, and 
 ■wrote a long letter to the Tribune, I nevertheless beheve that 
 your kind preaching more than made up for the wickedness of 
 that perfoiTuance, which is more than I could say of the dis- 
 courses I ordinaiily get of a Sunday. The subject to which 
 you allude with so much appropriate earnestness is one I often 
 think of, though, as you are aware, rarely if ever speak. I 
 have not much faith in myself, but I would encourage you to 
 go forward in your determination. I never could get up much 
 interest in the forms of devotion, though I know they are essen- 
 tial — more, however, to some minds than to others, more per- 
 haps to yours than to mine. The essentials of manhness and 
 goodness, of justice and mercy, I put first. In them I always 
 feel an interest, and stiive, though at a distance, to follow. I 
 win readily join in such simple acts of rehgious devotion as are 
 consistent with my feehngs and position, if you desire it, in the 
 hope, also, that it may prove more a source of satisfaction and 
 improvement than I have found before. 
 
 I am detained here still, but expect now to get off some 
 time to-morrow. The thickest of the fight is now on, and if 
 it comes to an end to-morrow morning I shall quit immediately. 
 I am impatient to return home, but I feel that I am greatly 
 useful to myself and the paper by remaining here, and I mean 
 to make the Tribune pay all the bills. We have had a good 
 deal of excitement here, and much fun. I have made some 
 very pleasant and very valuable acquaintances, and done some 
 good to the right side of the political questions of the day, and 
 so ought to feel satisfied that I came on. 
 
 To Henry L. Dawes. 
 
 August 6, 1855. 
 . . . I put into my paper all I know and aU I feel as to 
 pohtics. I have an abiding faith in fusion, and don't allow 
 myself to be disheartened by open opposition, lukewarm friend- 
 ship, or timid advocacy. I am very certain it has got to come,
 
 168 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 and the means by which it shall be achieved are of httle moment 
 to me, so that they succeed. There will be a quarrel in the 
 K. N. convention to-morrow, perhaps a spUt. I am indifferent 
 to it. It cannot put off the end long. If it denies fusion, it 
 will IdU itself, as the Whigs did last year. I confess it is up- 
 hill work bringiag people together, and the state is reapiag in 
 the harvest of iU feeling, bitter prejudices, and unconquerable 
 aversions, the evils of Coahtionism, Know-nothingism, and 
 hunker Whiggery. Thank God, I do not feel responsible for 
 either. I shall keep the Mepublican untrammeled and inde- 
 pendent, doing everything it can for fusion, favoring any 
 proposition that looks to it, and denouncing everybody against 
 it. We get plenty of abuse for our course, and myself am per- 
 sonally and weekly denounced and vilified in the Anti-fusion 
 American papers, but I can stand it, and am only troubled by 
 the reflection that it may inspire me with the ridiculous idea 
 that I am an important individual, and breed that meanest of 
 aU delusions, a pohtical ambition. 
 
 Everybody is holding back and waiting for something to turn 
 up. If fusion does come, as I am sure it will, and I have any 
 influence in its future operations, I hope to remember with 
 effect some of the cowards of the day. 
 
 I am glad the agony has given place to the joys of maternity. 
 I am glad it is a boy. Boys are institutions. They have a 
 future, a positive futiire. Grirls are swallowed up, — they are 
 an appendage, — a necessary appendage, it may be,— probably 
 they are, — but still they are appendages. I hope the boy wiU 
 live, will grow up, will be worthy of his father and mother, wiU 
 inspire in them hope and confidence and trust, and moreover 
 that he won't always Uve in North Adams, so long as there are 
 such fine places as Springfield outside of it. 
 
 And so hoping, beheving, and trusting, and wishing that you 
 may so hope, beheve, and trust, I am yours truly 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 September 11, 1855. 
 
 Have you deserted your old friends *? Or are you not recov- 
 ered from your sea voyage to Nantucket ? I never had my
 
 LETTEKS: 1851-1856. 169 
 
 promised letters, nor have I learned even indirectly the ex- 
 perience of that journey, yet I have a severe suspicion that it 
 was a bad failm*e. We have sad accounts of the sickness of 
 yom' brother's wife. How is she ? 
 
 I see old Aiken is on the side of the righteous, while you 
 and George T. remain out in the cold for the present. WeU, 
 the gaUery has its advantages, but I am not permitted to enjoy 
 them if I would, and I would not if I could. I have an abid- 
 ing faith that out of the present chaos of pohtical debauchery 
 we shall get some decent pohtics by and bye. May be not this 
 year, but sooner or later. And I can afford to wait, since I 
 already have aU the reward I seek, — the consciousness of being 
 right, making a mark, and securing an enviable position for 
 the Eepublican. 
 
 But if you are in the land of the Hving, shout, if but to say 
 *' damn." 
 
 To H. L. Dawes. 
 
 October 10, 1855. 
 
 Croak, croak, croak! Why the devil can't Berkshire do 
 something besides ? Let those who are right go to work. 
 The K. N's are playing the brag and lying game most awfully. 
 That story you mention is all a he. There never was any 
 arrangement about bolting at Worcester on the part of the Re- 
 pubUcans, that I know or heard of, and I certainly shoidd know 
 it if there had been. 
 
 We shaU elect Rockwell. If not, I shall invite the foreign 
 missionary society to look into Massachusetts. How many 
 speeches may I promise you for in this region dm-ing the three 
 weeks preceding election ? 
 
 If there had been such a bolt as the K. N. story says the 
 RepubUcans threatened at Worcester, it was all right and justi- 
 fiable. Gardner's speech proves this. And though there was 
 no concert, no arrangement, no nothing except individual 
 opinion that such must result if Gardner was forced upon the 
 convention, — a bolt was justifiable and proper and necessary, 
 if it could be useful. That is the only question — and I am 
 prepared to accept any issue the enemy choose to make on this 
 question. Gardner sustains us aU. I will not deny there would
 
 170 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 have been a bolt. I only deny that any preparations were 
 made for one. 
 
 Wilson says we are sure to carry the state. I do not see how 
 any other result is possible. The partisans of Gardner do not 
 know of what they speak. They are stronger now than they 
 will be at any future day. The K. N's are all broken up. In 
 a few places like Amherst, Palmer, and North Adams, — where 
 courageous villains and timid saints dwell, — they are strong, 
 but elsewhere I cannot find they have any power worth fear- 
 ing. They are weak in character, bankrupt in respectabCity, 
 rotten in morals, and can only succeed by frightening other 
 people. With such a cause as oui's, we shall only be beaten by 
 our own inaction, want of confidence, and timidity. The heart 
 of Massachusetts is with us. The head will be, if we only dare 
 to claim it, and teach it. Hampshire county will do nobly,^ 
 we perhaps badly, through rum. The Bepiiblican says no more 
 than it believes. We haven't any private opinion. The can- 
 vass is changing daily, and the changes are all on our side and 
 in our favor. Do, for God's sake, stop this croaking and do 
 sometliing up in Berkshire. Eastern Massachusetts is winning 
 all the laurels. We shall beat if we will. We can conquer 
 if we will deserve to. Five such Whigs as John Z. Goodrich 
 and five such Free-soil Know-nothings as Wilson would give 
 us the battle. 
 
 I am weak and sinful and cross enough, anyway, but such 
 epistles as yours to-night, after all day chasing cattle-shows 
 and buttonholing every second man on poUtics, make me 
 swear. I have resolved to keep cool this campaign. I shall in 
 my paper, thoroughly so. But that renders more necessary a 
 httle private explosion now and then. So excuse this. I don't 
 know all that's in it. I won't read it over. Thank you for 
 your hquor law expose. It is what I wanted, only stronger. 
 I am not clear yet where or when to use it. 
 
 To Charles Allen, after the birth and death of a child. 
 
 November 20, 1855. 
 It is over, and sadly over. ... I should be sorry to feel 
 that you are never to be blessed with wife and children ; with-
 
 letters: 1851-1856. 171 
 
 out, there is little reaUy worth the hving for ; but I pray you 
 and youi-s may be spared the agony of our last twenty-foui- 
 hours. Mrs. Bowles is perhaps less comfortable than is com- 
 mon, but with good fortune she will mend rapidly. She feels 
 her loss terribly. Though a disappointment, it is a small mat- 
 ter to me, only as it affects her. 
 
 To H. L. Baives. 
 
 April 19, 1856. 
 I still hve, I thank you, and had been thinking of you lately 
 and wondeiing why, since I heard you had been in Boston, you 
 did not lay over a train and see your Springfield friends, either 
 going or returning. Perhaps you took warning by the Bee. 
 Indeed, I think it is rather dangerous to cultivate my friend- 
 ship, and I shan't blame my old friends if they are a trifle shy. 
 However, thank God, there is a future. I do not think there 
 was a purpose beyond crushing me out in the Gardner and 
 Brewster articles in the Bee, — nothing whatever. The Ameri- 
 can paper here was just expiring, when the two came up this 
 week, and wound up the machine again. But spite to the Ee- 
 piiblican cannot keep it up long. Newspapers demand health- 
 ier food. B fluttered badly — was it not a good hit ? That 
 
 is the only paragi'aph I am really proud of in the whole con- 
 troversy. There are no laurels to be won in such fights. One 
 only gets diiiied. I aimed only to show my indifference, and 
 point out the sources and motives of the assault. This last I 
 know I did, spite of denials. Did you see the Bee's last article ? 
 I feel well enough that I am " under a cloud"; that even those 
 disposed to be my fi'iends feel that there was more or less of 
 truth in the Bee's assaults ; that my rashness makes me a dan- 
 gerous intimate and an unsafe leader. But I bide my time. I 
 know I am not prudent — I don't want to be — but I know 
 what I am about. I know, too, my motives, and I am not 
 afraid to make comparison with those of open enemies and dis- 
 trustful friends. I don't wish anybody to be responsible for 
 me or my paper. The more thoroughly independent I can 
 make it, the better I shall be satisfied, and the more really
 
 172 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 influential and prosperous will it be. But I do not feel it nec- 
 essary to vindicate myself to you. So let that pass. 
 
 Massachusetts will go Republican this fall anyhow, though it 
 may be after a hard and nasty fight. I shall not trouble my- 
 seLE about home poUtics, nor make any particular fresh efforts 
 at conciliation. My ambition fattened last year in caucusing 
 and management. But everything looks bright outside. If 
 this Fremont movement holds, we shall sweep the country be- 
 yond peradventure. We shall take from twenty to thirty per 
 cent, of the Northern Democrats, and come in flj^ing. That's 
 the way things look now. The secret of the campaign is at 
 Cincinnati [the Democratic national convention]. The Repub- 
 hcan candidate will really be nominated there. My letters 
 from Washington, both from our own and Western members 
 of Congress, are very encouraging. Sam Galloway of Ohio, 
 just returned from home, says the Fremont movement is going 
 hke prairie fire there, taking in Americans and Republicans 
 and one-third of the Democrats. Stopping at Harrisburg, as 
 he came along, he found the fever high in the Pennsylvania 
 legislature, possessing Americans as well as Repubheans, and 
 ten or twelve of the Democratic members, who looked upon him 
 as the Moses to lead them out of captivity. Galloway is him- 
 self against Fremont, and for Judge McLean, — so this report 
 is impartial. Fremont is thoroughly with us, and if we can 
 win with him we must put him. on the course, for victory is 
 indispensable to freedom. Greeley is for him. The other 
 Tribune people rather cool, but keeping their eyes open. Se- 
 ward wants to be the candidate, and Dr. Bailey of the National 
 Era is for him, content to wait tiU 1860 for a victory. But that 
 won't do. 
 
 What friends had Mrs. Mary Hinman Graves, in North 
 Adams '? Twenty years ago, when I was ten, she came, a 
 bride, to my mother's to board, and I remember her with a 
 great deal of interest and affection. I wish I had known she 
 was dying in your village. But I had not even heard of her 
 for many, many years. 
 
 My family are well, — business never better, — I keep cool and 
 grow saucy ; and would like to see you.
 
 letters: 1851-185G. 173 
 
 June 25, 1856. 
 
 The tunnel trip I'll make. The other and longer I want to, 
 but am doubtful. If the obstacles to Fremont's election can be 
 removed within a few days, or put in train for removal, I 
 shaU feel it ahke a pleasure and a duty to devote myself to 
 saving the Union for the season. If not, I shall play as much 
 as I can. 
 
 I think the chances are rather against my accepting the 
 Tribune offer, yet it presents so many inducements that I shall 
 not decide against it at present. It woiild take me to Wash- 
 ington as my home, the place being the head of a Washington 
 editorial and correspondential bureau for the Tribune, and of 
 course one of much responsibility and influence. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 August 26, 1856. 
 
 . . . There is a gi'eat pressui'e on our folks to nominate 
 Gardner, or set up nobody against him. Clifford, Banks, and 
 the Boston Atlas are in it. I think it cannot succeed. K it 
 does, Lawrence will be elected governor by Fremont votes. 
 The only difficulty is, there is not a candidate on whom we can 
 command a union of the Fremont vote against Gardner, — none 
 but Sumner, and I suppose it would be hard to get him. K we 
 could get him to stand, everything would be plain sailing. 
 Gardner would be lapped up in a moment. I think, too, we 
 could easily put Davis on with Sumner. But everything is at 
 loose ends. The fellows are putting the screws to me to go for 
 Gardner ; they got Dana of the Tribune to beheve that opposi- 
 tion to Gardner will endanger Sumner's reelection, and he has 
 written to me that we must treat with the devil rather than 
 lose that. I mention this to show how they are managing. 
 But I win see them in a very hot place before I wiU support 
 Gardner. 
 
 September 17, 1856. 
 Can't you come down over Sunday? Or if not, then next 
 week ? I have much to say to you, and your letter provokes
 
 174 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 more. Come, and let us cuss and discuss these political antics, 
 wMcli, however, have a deeper meaning than you attach to 
 them. With you, I shall support Dr. BeU as the best man ia 
 nomination, unless some other man is in the field with whom 
 there may be a chance to defeat Gardner ; and not only sup- 
 port him by my vote, but urge him in the Bepuhlican. And I 
 can do this cheerfully and honestly. I am glad, too, that I am 
 not a Repubhcan to be sold out. I wish there were more of 
 your and my kind of Republicans as to that. And yet your 
 denunciations of our Free- soil friends are not altogether equal 
 and exact justice. Some of the most determined opponents of 
 Gardner's nomination, or even no nomination, were old coah- 
 tion Free-soilers, — Alvord (who was perfectly raving on the 
 subject), Erastus Hopkins, Rodney French, and a dozen others 
 I might name ; while Banks and Wilson were supported for 
 Gardner by some of the most old-fogy and conservative Whigs, 
 Homer Bartlett, Linus Childs, Ezra Lincoln, George BHss, 
 George Dwight, etc., who aU worked for Gardner, and used as 
 a principal argument that it was only the ultra ''long-heel" 
 Abohtionists who opposed Gardner, and that because he was 
 conservative (of the truth !), etc. The truth is, these coahtions, 
 bargains, etc., are incidental to the destruction of the old 
 parties and the reorganization of the new. You see them 
 everywhere. The Whigs are " selling out " to the FiUmore 
 Americans, the meanest of the breed, and vice versa; and now 
 the Buchanan and Fillmore parties, each of themselves fresh 
 compounds of factions of old organizations, are meditating a 
 grand national and natural bargain and sale for the purpose 
 of defeating Fremont ; and I hope it wiU succeed, that is, in 
 the union proposed, for it is legitimate and proper and might 
 as well come now as next year. You and I never lived in such 
 a time as this before, for parties have been regular and estab- 
 lished aU through the previous day ; but the history of the 
 former changing period — 182-1-32 — has similar pages of coali- 
 tions, bargaining, etc. Every man must be his own judge how 
 far he wtU engage in such things. When done with decent 
 men and to secure great and important results — in trimnphs of 
 principle — they are not unworthy of any man. Though I saw
 
 LETTEKS: 1851-1856. 175 
 
 at Worcester men going' in for Gardner, because, as I thought, 
 it would help them to certain offices, great and smaU, I met 
 many others who beheved it a matter of patriotic duty, as 
 necessary and important to the great object of defeating Bu- 
 chanan and electing Fremont; who took Gardner as a mere 
 incident, a dose of medicine, because in order to get the good 
 results they must take it, determined and expecting to get rid 
 of him next year. There is much force in the view of these 
 men, and did I beheve that it was necessary, as they affected to, 
 for the gi'eat results, I should at least acquiesce quietly iu the 
 adoption of Gardner, though I never could vote for him. I 
 would pursue towards him the pohcy you pursue towards poli- 
 tics in general. But I do not believe in the necessity or pohcy 
 of swallowing Gardner, at least to any further extent than of 
 making no nomination as a party against him. That on the 
 whole will have a good effect in certaia states on the presi- 
 dential election. It shows the overriding importance of the 
 national election, and the depth of feehng as to that in Massa- 
 chusetts, that such men as met at Worcester yesterday were 
 willing to throw away their certainty of flaxing out Gardner, 
 for the sake of the moral effect abroad of a grand union and 
 peace here in Massachusetts, against the Administration party. 
 
 October 29, 1856. 
 
 . . . Say to Dawes I find great encouragement to work in 
 Berkshire. The result ia No. 11 depends on the work done on 
 Saturday and Monday. I wish you and he would arrange for 
 an old Whig and an old Democrat to visit every town in Frank- 
 lin county in the district, on those two days iu addition to aU 
 other work done and being done. I want them to pray with 
 the leaders, and make 'em promise to do everything possible 
 for Dawes on Tuesday. This is the work that teUs, and he who 
 does the most of it on those two days wins the victory. 
 
 Southern Berkshire looks better. Senator Wilson has sowed 
 good seed. Banks's letter amounts to little or nothing — does 
 not take ground for Trafton as against Dawes. I have ar- 
 ranged a meeting of the faithful at Pittsfield, Friday, with the
 
 176 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 assurance that the county shall be mapped out afresh, and 
 every town visited Satiirday and Monday. Dawes is gaining, 
 and so is Weston. The fight is between them, it seems to me, 
 and Weston's friends are quite confident of victory. Dawes is 
 the only man that can beat him, — that is the word to pass 
 along the hne. 
 
 To H. L. Dawes. 
 
 November 10, 1856. 
 
 What with forty-two hours continuous work Tuesday and 
 Wednesday and Thursday, without sleep, and getting over it, 
 last week, I had not time to write you. But you know what I 
 would say, — and how I felt, and how I whooped, and how 
 good all over I felt ; so good that not even Fremont's defeat 
 could take the joy out of me. Was not the vote great, and the 
 result magnificent, and that Berkshire should do the best part 
 of it too ! I had faith, strong faith, after I saw how your 
 friends responded to the final call for work, but I was not pre- 
 pared for such a victory. Your" friends everywhere worked 
 well and with a hearty good wUl. It is something to have such 
 friends. AU deserve appreciation, and no one above another, 
 and I know all will have it from you. 
 
 It seems now as if you must have been elected any way ; 
 but there's no doubt that both Weston and Trafton thought 
 they were ahead a week before the election, and with reason. 
 You gained rapidly in the last six days, and immensely in the 
 last three. Our feUows went over the district after Weston and 
 Trafton had got through. I verily believe that every town in 
 the district was visited on Saturday and Monday. It was cer- 
 tainly so this side the mountains. 
 
 You shall pay the biU now that you are elected — that is, all 
 the expenses, for it is right. Had you failed it would have been 
 different, for I felt we could well afford to invest $50 or $100 in 
 yoiir behalf at a venture. The principal item is for the 5500 ex- 
 tras, which being printed in the night in order to get them out, 
 cost more than they ordinarily would. I have paid some bills at 
 Northampton, and have some to pay at Greenfield. The whole
 
 letters: 1851-1856. 177 
 
 will be -within $75,* but pay all the rest first and let this remaia 
 till you have cash on hand and "owe no man anything." 
 Please do this. I'll take a mortgage on your first mileage. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 Springfield, December 21, 1856. 
 . . . I had just settled down for the winter, determined 
 not to be seduced out of Springfield for the present, when I got, 
 on Saturday, the note I enclose [the suggestion to estabhsh a 
 newspaper in Philadelphia] . I hardly know what to think about 
 it, much less what to say. It's fiattering, of course, and appeals 
 somewhat to a proper ambition, and yet I have a dread of deep 
 water. I feel a good deal as did the bashful boy, whose father 
 was urging him to go and marry a certain girl of the neighbor- 
 hood. " I was married — your mother was married — and you 
 must expect to be." '^ But," blubbei'ed the youth, " you married 
 mother, but you want me to go and marry a strange gal ! " I 
 can edit a paper in Massachusetts, but the strange gal in Phila- 
 delphia I have some horror of. However, I shall hear what 
 they have to say. If I could dictate the terms as to capital, 
 etc., and have supreme control, and make an independent 
 paper with Republican leanings, and not a Republican paper 
 with independent leanings (like the Tribune and Republican) I 
 should like to see what I am made of somewhat more than I am 
 likely to here. Please return me Dana's note, and of course say 
 nothing of the suggestion in its present shape, unless it be to 
 G. T. D., whose opinion I should respect. 
 
 December 25, 1856. 
 
 The compliments of the season ! . . . My Philadelphia 
 man came yesterday, but I told him I could and would do noth- 
 ing with him ; that I could only talk seriously of the matter 
 when I saw a combination of capital, of which I was to be the 
 
 * Characteristic of tlie region and time, — the chief manager in a hot 
 congressional contest spends less than a hundred dollars ; and the sharp 
 decisive work of the final rally is done on Saturday and Monday, without 
 infringing on the intervening Sunday. 
 
 Vol. I.— 12
 
 178 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 representative and salaried agent, taking such interest of course 
 myself as to inspire confidence in my fidelity. He says Dana, 
 Snow, and M'Elrath, of the Tribune, are ready to invest in the 
 enterprise if I will take hold. I said, very well : when you and 
 the other Philadelphia gentlemen and Dana & Co. want to 
 talk with me on my basis, summon me to New York for con- 
 sultation, and I will come down. And so he left after half an 
 hour's talk, evidently fuU in the faith that the combination 
 would be made, and that I should be summoned to its head. 
 But we wiU see. There is undoubtedly a chance to make a 
 property costing from $30,000 to $50,000, worth $100,000 within 
 one to two years, with good and resolute management ; but I 
 shall be stiff with 'em, — depend upon it.
 
 CHAPTER XVII. 
 
 The Boston "Traveller." 
 
 AT the close of the presidential campaign of 1856, the 
 Jl\- Republican had fairly achieved the position which 
 the New York Tribune soon after accorded to it, of " the 
 best and ablest country journal ever published on this 
 continent." It had won its place by the hardest work, 
 by its editor's natural genius for journalism, and by the 
 opportunity of a gi'eat political epoch. It had for several 
 years been steadily earning money for its proprietors ; it 
 was constantly increasing the quantity and quality of its 
 matter; it had won a high reputation, had made 
 many enemies, and was acknowledged by both friends 
 and enemies as a power in public affairs. But it seemed 
 to have reached a limit which forbade much further 
 growth. It had gained almost as large a circulation 
 as was possible in the country neighborhood to which it 
 was necessarily restricted. After several more years of 
 prosperity, in 1860, the entire circulation of the Daily 
 was 5700. Of this number 1850 copies were taken in 
 Springfield, of which the population was about 15,000 ; 
 giving one paper to every eight inhabitants, — a very 
 high rate, and one from which scarcely any advance 
 could be expected, though in fact within two or three 
 years the circulation of the Daily was more than doubled 
 owing to the rapid growth of the town through the 
 
 179
 
 180 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 enlargement of the Armory, and the increased demand 
 for news in time of war. The Weekly had, in 1860, a cir- 
 culation of 11,280, of which 7271 were in Massachusetts. 
 The special field of the paper was in western Massa- 
 chusetts, though both editions had a limited circulation 
 elsewhere; and there was no state or territory, except 
 Mississippi and Utah, in which the Weekly had not regu- 
 lar subscribers. But the substantial paying circulation 
 was necessarily confined to the immediate neighborhood, 
 and could never rise beyond a small fraction of the con- 
 stituency possible for the journals of a great city. The 
 advertising patronage, of course, was under a like limi- 
 tation. All this implied that the Republican must be pub- 
 lished upon a very economical basis : that it must deny it- 
 self many of those resources by which a wealthy newspaper 
 can increase its attractions ; that its chief conductor must 
 spend his own vitality freely to make up for the limita- 
 tions of his exchequer, and that he must content himself 
 with a far scantier measure of influence than the journal- 
 ist who numbers his readers by the hundred thousand. 
 
 This was the barrier which Samuel Bowles had now 
 reached in his career. It was impossible but that such a 
 spirit as his should seek to pass it, and to find a wider field. 
 He was only thirty years old, — an age when the best of a 
 man's work should be still before him. He had in him- 
 self every qualification for filling a large place. He 
 might well feel a strong self-confidence when he looked 
 toward a wider field. From the great established news- 
 papers, under the recognized master-journalists, advances 
 were repeatedly made to him. Propositions more than 
 once came from the ofiBce of the Tribune, a paper with 
 which the Bepublican was largely in sympathy, and with 
 whose staff its editor was on friendly terms. In 1856, as 
 one of his letters has shown, a project was discussed for 
 his taking the head of the Tribune bureau at Washing-
 
 THE BOSTON "TRAVELLER." 181 
 
 ton. But probably no situation as lieutenant, under 
 however great a Caesar, would have suited him. 
 
 Early in 1857, a scheme was planned in Boston, and 
 broached to Mr. Bowles, of a great newspaper enter- 
 prise there under his direction. The Boston Trav- 
 eller was to be taken as a basis, and its name retained ; 
 the Atlas and the Telegraph and Chronicle were to be 
 bought up and consolidated with it ; there was to be a 
 large staff, with distinguished correspondents ; the paper 
 was to be Republican, independent, progressive, and IVIr. 
 Bowles was to be editor-in-chief. 
 
 The plan seemed full of brilliant promise. It proposed 
 such a paper as Boston had never seen before, and offered 
 to its editor a leadership of the whole New England press, 
 and a place in the little group of newspaper kings of 
 America. Ambition made quick response to the call ; 
 imagination fired at it ; prudence took a hasty survey, 
 and said, " Try it ! " A favorable decision was quickly 
 reached, and the details settled without delay. The 
 editor was to receive about one-tenth of the stock of the 
 new company as a bonus, and a salary of three thousand 
 dollars. He took in addition ten thousand dollars' worth 
 of stock, paying for it with money he had laid up from 
 the Bepublican's earnings. The subject was first sug- 
 gested to him in February, and in April the new 
 Traveller was launched. Its ambitious programme was 
 thus stated: 
 
 " The grand idea of the new paper is that of universahty — a 
 full presentation and a Hberal discussion of all questions of 
 public concernment, from an entii*ely independent position, 
 and a faithful and impartial exhibition of all movements of 
 interest at home and abroad." 
 
 It was a hasty step on Mr. Bowles's part. Yet he was 
 not altogether deserted by the caution which he had
 
 182 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 inlierited, and by which he had thus far kept secure 
 every step once gained. He avoided the risk taken by 
 many a brilliant journalist who stakes all he has won 
 in a long course of subordinate labor, upon a doubtful 
 venture. Mr. Bowles staked only his surplus earnings. 
 He kept unimpaired his interest in the Republican 
 establishment. He did not break up his Springfield 
 home, but left his family there, though it involved for 
 him the discomfort and loneliness of a bachelor resi- 
 dence. The Bejmhlican, too, was well enough equipped in 
 its editorial and business departments, with Dr. Holland, 
 Mr. Hood, Mr. Bryan, and the sub-editors, to maintain 
 itself fairly, while it was troubled by no considerable 
 rival in its local field. So, its old chief said his farewell 
 in a brief editorial, transmitting his authority to Dr. Hol- 
 land, and regretfully leaving the paper into which he 
 had ^' freely and honestly poured the second and best 
 fifteen years of his life." The phrase is noticeable, — 
 at thirty-one a man's best fifteen years should not be 
 behind him. 
 
 The new Traveller made a good though not a brilliant 
 beginning. It was a sheet of eight pages, a form then 
 unfamiliar to Boston journalism. It was fairly good in 
 its various departments, but strongest in the editorial 
 page, which showed on political subjects the vigor and 
 independence which were characteristic of the chief 
 editor ; while it gave also a variety of topics and breadth 
 of treatment, which, if they did not fulfill the ambitious 
 promise of universality, were a marked advance beyond 
 the ordinary newspaper field. But the paper lacked the 
 good work in every detail, the individuality, the spice, 
 the unique charm of the Bepiiblican. It was not to be 
 expected that the Boston paper should be a mere enlarge- 
 ment of the Springfield journal, and for it to develop a 
 homogeneous and powerful character of its own there
 
 THE BOSTON " TRAVELLEE." 183 
 
 were needed time and growth. The public found the 
 Traveller a strong, readable, and weU-informed paper; 
 but while it was still "in the gristle," before it had 
 gained a symmetrical, impressive individuality, or got a 
 firm hold on its constituency, — in a little more than 
 four months, — came the withdrawal of Mr. Bowles and 
 the relinquishment by the paper of its new character. 
 
 The general verdict by the wise ones was that " Sam 
 Bowles and Boston did not suit each other " ; that the 
 stronghold of tradition, propriety, and mutual admira- 
 tion, was no place for an audacious and irreverent f eUow 
 who was perfectly ready in the way of debate to crack 
 the crown of his dearest friend, or to stab under the 
 fifth rib the greatest man of his party, and who was 
 quite capable of speaking disrespectfully of the State- 
 house dome. But it would probably be juster to say 
 that his personality offered the very elements then most 
 needed by Boston journalism. In no other respect was 
 the city so deficient in leadership as in its newspapers. 
 It stood, as it still stands, preeminent above all other 
 American cities as the home and mother of scholars, 
 thinkers, and reformers. It was then as now the dis- 
 seminating center of the best influences inherited from 
 Puritanism, and the most hospitable port to the advent- 
 urous craft of modern thought. Nowhere else wUl one 
 see so large a proportion of intelligent and earnest faces 
 as in the crowds that throng its narrow streets. Even 
 with all its modern degeneracies, and the deterioration 
 due to its later importations from Europe, the town still 
 shows itself the true descendant of the Puritan fathers. 
 If " holiness to the Lord " is not written on the bells of 
 the horses, yet the horse-car passenger is warned by 
 placard to follow the prescribed way of paying his fare, 
 with an appeal to his conscience, "Not to do it is wrong ^'; 
 and the sign above the bootblack's stand on the Common
 
 184 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 impressively addresses the patriot : ^' It is a discredit to 
 you, and a disgrace to the conimomvealth of Massachusetts, 
 to let your boots be dirty," 
 
 Thirty years ago, the newspaper press of Boston, while 
 representing in its different journals a wide variety of 
 ideas, was in its methods of journalism very unprogres- 
 sive. It was far behind the press of New York in enter- 
 prise of news-gathering, in intellectual force, and in 
 influence upon the country at large. The superiority on 
 which it chiefly prided itself was that of decorum. Such 
 a free lance as Sam Bowles was sure to considerably 
 startle his new constituency. But in his principles of 
 journalism and his own powers, there were, as it would 
 now seem, the very elements to supplement and enlarge 
 the traditions of the Boston press, and to make a news- 
 paper which should be to Boston what Horace Greeley's 
 Tribune was to New York. 
 
 But the Traveller enterprise was ill-planned, and pre- 
 destinate to failure. The three newspapers which it 
 amalgamated were financially weak and morally incon- 
 gruous with each other. The old Traveller had not had 
 any decided character as a newspaper, except perhaps 
 that it was semi-religious ; and it had not obtained any 
 commercial patronage or advertising, — this was all 
 absorbed by the Advertiser and the Post. The Atlas had 
 formerly been the leading Whig paper of New England. 
 It had gone heartily into the movement for a new party 
 of freedom, and had thereby alienated a part of its old 
 supporters ; it had lost subscribers, advertisers, and pres- 
 tige. The Chronicle had been started as an anti-prohibi- 
 tion paper, and its stock had never been worth anything. 
 The new Traveller added to these original elements 
 a moderate financial capital, a brilliant editor-in-chief, 
 and inharmonious owners. It started with a flourish 
 of trumpets, proclaiming that Boston had never had a
 
 185 
 
 good newspaper, and was now to see Sine plus ultra. It 
 had powei'ful rivals in the Journal and the Transcript. A 
 paper begun on the scale of the Traveller needs either an 
 ampler capital than that paper possessed, or an extremely 
 able management inspired by perfectly united councils. 
 The councils of the Traveller's conductors were not and 
 could not be united, because there was among them a radi- 
 cal difference as to the fundamental principles of newspaper 
 management. From the day he began his work in Boston, 
 ]Mr, Bowles found that his associates, who represented 
 the principal capital and business management of the 
 concern, were out of sympathy with him both as to the 
 principles and details of their joint enterprise. He was 
 in nominal control of the editorial department, but while 
 some good and satisfactory workers were secured, other 
 employees owed their position to the favor of the other 
 partners in the business, and gave neither the amount 
 nor Idnd of work that was needed. Deficiencies of this 
 sort were in part made good by the editor, who threw 
 himself into the breach and did what other men ought to 
 have done ; in part they could not be made good at all. 
 Other trouble arose. With a limited capital and heavy 
 expenses, the necessity was felt for wise and delicate 
 financial steering. G-ardner and his friends were looking 
 about for newspaper help to strengthen his tottering 
 estate. Under such circumstances, a clear and full agree- 
 ment among the papei-'s owners was needed, as to what 
 class of considerations was to be paramount in its con- 
 duct ; whether financial or moral success was the prime 
 object; whether and how the necessary means of finan- 
 cial support could be obtained without any compromise 
 of principle. As soon as these questions began to come 
 up, Mr. Bowles found himself at odds with his principal 
 associates in the ownership, to a degree that ere long 
 resolved these questions into the single one of how to
 
 186 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 dissolve their ill-mated partnership. There was a time 
 of painful and wearying discussion and negotiation, and 
 then the end was reached, — Mr. Bowles withdrew from 
 the editorship and management ; the money he had in- 
 vested was left in the concern with the other capital 
 until such time as it could be safely withdrawn ; and a 
 new organization was made for the conduct of the paper. 
 Bankruptcy was avoided, and the Traveller continued its 
 existence, but sailing under other colors and on a differ- 
 ent course from that so hopefully entered upon a few 
 months before. 
 
 Mr. Bowles's brief card announcing to the public his 
 withdrawal said : 
 
 " The explanation of this change lies in the different princi- 
 ples of newspaper economy held by the respective parties. 
 Mr. Bowles, finding from this cause and his own health that 
 the expectations under which he was induced to take the edit- 
 orship of the Traveller were not hkely to be reahzed, has in- 
 sisted on withdrawing, in justice to himseh and in order that 
 his associates might without embarrassment conduct the paper 
 after a pohcy in which they have great confidence, but which 
 he cannot approve." 
 
 His associates rejoined next day, laying chief stress on 
 the non-success of the eight-page form and professing 
 entire content with their own " principles of newspaper 
 economy." The paper returned in a few days to the 
 large four-page sheet and to the old style in general. 
 Under Mr. Bowles the Traveller had supported the Re- 
 publican party and opposed Governor Gardner. It said 
 (July 10) that the governor was trying to secure some 
 newspaper organ in Boston : " Time works wonders, and 
 it would surprise no one who is acquainted with the un- 
 der-currents of the political sea to behold his Excellency's 
 name at the head of columns now devoted to anything
 
 THE BOSTON "TRAVELLER." 187 
 
 else than the setting forth of his claim to excellence." 
 The paper of September 10 — the same in which the 
 retu'ing editor took leave — spoke of Gardner's impend- 
 ing renomiuation by the Americans as directly hostile to 
 the Republican and Anti-slavery cause, of which Banks 
 was already and worthily the candidate. The next day 
 the paper spoke of Gardner in a different tone, and before 
 the end of the month it was the active advocate of his 
 reelection. 
 
 To Mr. Bowles the issue could not but bring deep 
 chagrin. He had made a great venture and had lost. 
 The financial loss was inconvenient, but not distressing. 
 But his ambition had met with a check, and his pride 
 was deeply touched. He bore himself steadily, without 
 wailings or reproaches. He took by way of rest a brief 
 trip to the West with Charles Allen and his sister ; and 
 then came back to his home, to the quiet little town and 
 the beautiful Connecticut valley, and before very long to 
 his first and last love, the Eepublican. The paper had 
 undergone no marked change in his absence. It had 
 lacked something of breadth and brilliance. Dr. Hol- 
 land had impressed it more than before with his own 
 special vein, of direct and vigorous preaching on the 
 personal conduct of life ; he had fairly maintained, with 
 his associates, the character of the paper, but his gift 
 and taste (and this was also true of Mr. Hood) lay rather 
 toward writing than toward general editing. He volun- 
 teered to relinquish to Mr. Bowles the editorial control, 
 at the same time selling his interest in the paper, and 
 withdrawing from all editorial work except writing. 
 The offer was accepted, perhaps with a little regret 
 and reluctance by both men, the one at resigning the 
 place of power, the other at assuming without inter- 
 mission the full burden of responsibility, yet each drawn 
 by true instinct toward his right place. Dr. Holland
 
 188 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 devoted himself hereafter partly to contributions to the 
 paper, partly to lectui'ing and book- writing. Mr. Bowles 
 threw himself into his old work with a new energy. 
 Whatever he felt of regret or of wounded pride at the 
 failure in Boston, was alleged neither by spoken com- 
 plaint nor by brooding, but by harder work. He had 
 sought a more favorable environment, and, failing in 
 that, he essayed the higher task of making a narrow 
 environment serve his purpose.
 
 CHAPTER XVIir. 
 The RiPExmG Journalist, 
 
 AINIAN'S life may be measured by two great tests, — 
 his work and his character ; what he does and what 
 he is. Mr. Bowles's return to Springfield iu the autumn 
 of 1857 may be taken as a point whence in some marked 
 respects his life became broader, deeper, and more diver- 
 sified, and gives fit opportunity for a review of his per- 
 sonal development. There was an immense educating 
 force in the public events of the time for one whose busi- 
 ness it was to report, to discuss, and to help to shape the 
 course of things. The civil contentions about slavery 
 afforded not only a moral but an intellectual education. 
 Whoever reads the history of the Republican movement 
 against the extension of slavery will see how different 
 it was from a simple moral crusade against wrong. It 
 was allied with other sentiments and motives — a per- 
 ception of the economic folly of slavery, a sense of 
 injury to Northern white men by the aggressions of 
 slavery in the territories, a growing resentment at the 
 domineering temper of the Southern leaders, a determi- 
 nation that the countiy should no longer be governed 
 by an arrogant sectional faction, with Northern politi- 
 cians for its allies, and patronage and corruption for its 
 instruments. It was political self-respect, and care for 
 white men's rights and interests, more than regard for 
 
 189
 
 190 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 the slaves or moral condemnation of slavery, whicli 
 brought the Republican party into power. Yet Aboli- 
 tionism had no monopoly of the conscience of the North. 
 The obligation to support the existing form of govern- 
 ment, as the bulwark of social order, was felt honestly 
 and keenly by a great class of minds, many of which 
 were at the same time fully alive to the wrong of slavery. 
 To find the practical reconcilement of the two sentiments 
 was as hard a problem as the brain and heart of a peo- 
 ple ever struggled with. If the motives of Repub- 
 licanism were less single than those of the Abolitionists, 
 its methods were more practical. Abohtionism was a 
 passionate sentiment ; Republicanism was statesman- 
 ship. The task of the Abolitionist was often heroic, 
 often perilous, but it was extremely simple, being sim- 
 ply to reiterate ^' Slavery is a crime." How to free the 
 slaves the Abolitionists hardly attempted to show. The 
 only course they indicated for Northern voters was to 
 abstain from voting, and to dissolve the Union. Their 
 chief apostle. Garrison, was as much opposed to war as 
 he was to slavery ; and when at last the slave's fetters 
 were cut by the sword, the way was as hostile to his life- 
 long teaching as the result was congenial. The Aboli- 
 tionists as a class were as brave, intense, and narrow as 
 the early Puritans, but without the Puritan aptitude for 
 state-building. But the Republican leaders were men of 
 affau's. They took it as their business to sail the ship 
 of state. The Constitution and the established forms of 
 government were the instruments by which they were to 
 work : these were the organic framework of civil society. 
 The framework might not be altogether of the best, and 
 might need gradual improvement; but to discard or 
 ignore it outright was to plunge into anarchy and chaos. 
 Seward, Chase, "Wilson, Lincoln, and their associates 
 had that large wisdom in adapting means to ends which
 
 THE BIPENING JOUENALIST. 191 
 
 is statesmanship; with that especial wisdom in ascer- 
 taining public opinion^ educating it, leading it if possible, 
 and in the last resort obeying it, in which consists the 
 statesmanship of a democracy. 
 
 A similar wisdom, at once philosophical and practical, 
 must belong to the journalistic leader of opinion. Gree- 
 ley and Raymond had it, — the one with more of moral 
 sentiment and passion, the other with greater breadth 
 and adroitness. Mr. Bowles too grew eminent in this 
 statesmanlike quality of mind. In a democracy the 
 people are greater than the government, and the jour- 
 nalist who influences and educates the people, and in 
 their name points out the ends which government ought 
 to seek, often fills a place of larger power than repre- 
 sentative or senator. 
 
 The limitation of the moral power of politician or 
 journalist is that in order to lead he must in a degree 
 conform. In a democracy no kind of leadership is free 
 from that necessity, save that of the pure idealist — the 
 poet or the prophet. On all others conformity lays its 
 heavy hand. But under the firmest rein of all does it 
 hold the man who makes it his business to take active 
 part in government. Agreement with the majority is 
 the inexorable price of his personal success. As often 
 fes election day comes round, he must have the approval 
 of a majority of his constituency or be turned out of his 
 work. The journalist's necessity, on the other hand, is 
 to make a paper that men will buy. One way to that 
 end is to express sentiments agreeable to his readers, — 
 to soothe them with assent and approval. Another way 
 is to make a newspaper so attractive by its general merits 
 that men will buy it even though they dissent from its 
 doctrines. That was the path which Mr. Bowles chose 
 for the Republican. Not till near the end of his life was 
 the paper confronted with the severe test of dii'ectly
 
 192 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 opposing, in a presidential campaign, the party to which 
 the mass of its readers belonged. But at a much earlier 
 stage it committed itself to the then novel position of 
 criticising with entire freedom the special measures and 
 the individual leaders of the party to which it gave a 
 general support. The old theory of party allegiance — 
 a theory still substantially practiced in this year of grace 
 1885 by a large majority of American journals — is that 
 the individual, or the newspaper, shall support the party, 
 as the patriot stands by his country, or the believer by 
 his chui'ch. Interior discussion and guarded criticism 
 are allowable, but are always to be subordinated to the 
 prime object of victory over the foreign foe, the heretic, 
 or the opposing faction. The approved temper toward 
 the party is to 
 
 "Be to its faults a little blind, 
 Be to its virtues veiy kind." 
 
 Three obstacles must be set aside or overcome by the 
 truly independent journalist. He forfeits his freedom if 
 he becomes a place-seeker — whether for the presidency 
 or a post-office. Next, he must not be afraid on due occa- 
 sion to give offense to his subscribers ; — he must either 
 counteract such offense by the irresistible attractiveness 
 of his paper, or he must put up with a diminished sub- 
 scription-list. Lastly, and this is by far the hardest, he 
 must, in his own mind, rise above the domination of the 
 public opinion environing him. The worst aespotism of 
 party is exercised within a man's own mind. It consists 
 in his proneness to believe that all truth and goodness 
 are found in his own creed or sect. 
 
 The Eepuhlican, after it became a daily, was never 
 extreme in its partisanship. But for its first decade it 
 virtually owned allegiance to the Whig party. When, for 
 example, the Whig party leaders in 1854 adhered to its
 
 THE EIPENING JOURNALIST. 193 
 
 organization, against the Republican's remonstrance, the 
 paper, still considering the party preferable to the Know- 
 nothings, or the then abortive Repnblican party, tookdnr- 
 ingthe campaign the course now taken by moderate party 
 organs when similarly dissatisfied. It professed no en- 
 thusiasm, but forbore to hurt the cause by " speaking 
 out in meeting" till election was over. But that was its 
 last act of perfunctory allegiance to the Whig party, or 
 any other. The editor's ripening comprehension of the 
 journalistic idea fell in opportunely with his paper's estab- 
 lished financial success, and with a time of political 
 disintegration which weakened all party bonds. The Be- 
 puhlicmi's declaration of independence was made on the 
 third of February, 1855. At that time the paper took a 
 forward step by making its regular Saturday x^aper one 
 of double size, with eight pages instead of four. It began 
 at the same time with a new press and new type, and 
 marked the occasion by a review of its own history from 
 the start, and a notice of the general advance of jour- 
 nalism, dating from the invention of the telegraph. It 
 continued : 
 
 " With the dawn of a new national growth upon the press of 
 America, at the period of which we speak, came also a more 
 perfect intellectual freedom from the shackles of party. The 
 independent press of the countiy is fast supplanting the merely 
 partisan press. Parties are taking their form and substance 
 from the press and pulpit, rather than the press and pulpit 
 echoing merely the voice of the party. A merely party organ 
 is now a thing despised and contenmed, and can never take 
 rank as a first-class public journal. The London Times, the 
 great journal of the world, is the creator, not the creature, of 
 parties. There is not in New York, where journalism in this 
 country has reached its highest material and intellectual per- 
 fection, a single party organ in existence. All are emancipated. 
 None conceal facts lest they injiu-e their party. None fear to 
 speak the truth lest they utter treason against merely partisan 
 Vol. I.— 13
 
 194 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 power. The true purpose of the press is understood and prac- 
 ticed upon. They are the mirrors of the world of fact and of 
 thought. Upon that fact do they comment with freedom, and 
 to that thought do they add its freshest and most earnest cumu- 
 lations. 
 
 '^ Such in its sphere, does the Bepublican aim to be. What- 
 ever it has been in the past, no more shall its distinction be that 
 of a partisan organ, blindly following the will of party and 
 stupidly obeying its behests. It has its principles and pui-poses. 
 But these are above mere party success. To these it will de- 
 vote itself. Whenever and wherever the success of men or of 
 parties can advance those principles and purposes, the Bepub- 
 lican will boldly advocate such success ; whenever men and 
 parties are stumbling-blocks to the triumph of those principles, 
 they wiU be as boldly opposed and denounced." 
 
 To one who bears in mind the character of the New 
 York press, and the American press in general, during 
 most of the thirty years since this was written, this de- 
 scription of its impartial character reads like a sarcasm. 
 The era of journalistic independence was as brief as that 
 of the disintegration of parties. When the new lines 
 had been drawn, the newspapers fell into place on one 
 side or the other, — not upon the whole with the old sub- 
 servience, yet with a degree of partisan fidelity which 
 grew with the growth of party discipline, as the Repub- 
 lican party matured and the Democratic party recovered 
 from its successive disruptions ; so that in 1872 '^ inde- 
 pendent journalism " was greeted by the general public 
 as a new phenomenon. There were of course exceptions 
 among the press, to trace which would belong to a general 
 history of joiu-nalism. But through the iuterveningperiod, 
 whether heartily favoring, or criticising, or opposing the 
 general course of the Republican party, — Mr. Bowles's 
 paper never hesitated to pronounce a frank, independent 
 judgment on the measures and men of that party and of
 
 THE RIPENING JOURNALIST. 195 
 
 all parties. Its political news was honest. Its readers 
 could always find the views of its opponents faii-ly quoted 
 and ungarbled. Its regular correspondents at Washing- 
 ton and elsewhere were always under instructions to give 
 the facts as they were, whether they suited the editorial 
 views or not. In the correspondents' galleries in the 
 capitol, one may sometimes hear such remarks as this : 
 " The situation looks to me so and so — but the old man 
 at home wiU not let me say so in my dispatches." The 
 Bepuhlican's correspondents had no occasion to say that. 
 They were chosen with due regard to their general agree- 
 ment with the paper's views, but the instructions given 
 them were to tell the truth. They were allowed, too, to 
 tell it largely from the stand-point of their personal 
 convictions. It was often the case that the paper's 
 Washington dispatches were considerably more radical 
 in their tone than the editorial columns ; while the biting 
 criticisms of " Wan-in gton," the Boston correspondent, 
 fell often on the measures and men that the EejmbUcan 
 editorially approved. 
 
 One great source from which the chief editor drew his 
 knowledge and power was his personal intercourse with 
 public men. Among these he cultivated so wide an 
 acquaintance that in his later years scarcely another 
 journalist or politician in the country had so large a 
 personal knowledge of the leading men of the time. He 
 was thus able to judge of public questions, not as abstrac- 
 tions, but with a keen appreciation of the personal factors 
 involved in them. Through all these years it was his 
 habit to visit and report the national conventions of all 
 parties, as well as the important conventions in his own 
 state. In times of special crisis, he made flying ^dsits to 
 the state or national capitol, felt the beats of its pulse, 
 and came home to judge more clearly and correctly the 
 drift of things than those who either remained in the
 
 196 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWXES. 
 
 central heats or had no contact with them. Whenever 
 he left his home it was always to go into the midst of 
 people, and the most interesting people he could find. 
 He had a rare faculty for penetrating direct to the real 
 man. He caught with quick and subtle instinct the 
 characteristic quality, the true self; and he exercised a 
 magnetism and charm which drew people to open them- 
 selves, to talk of what they cared most for, and show 
 what was in them. Men and women were to him a per- 
 petual education and inspiration; they were his uni- 
 versity and library, his teachers and pupils, his work 
 and recreation. He lived always in the atmosphere of 
 humanity. 
 
 His estimates of character were swift and, as a rule, 
 sagacious, but by no means unerring ; his likes and dis- 
 likes were quick, and he sometimes took strong fancies 
 or unreasonable prejudices. 
 
 His change of attitude toward Henry Wilson has been 
 described. They remained on excellent terms with each 
 other; in each there was a strong element of good-fellow- 
 ship ; and Wilson had a communicative disposition which 
 fitted Bowles's thirst for news as a spring of water 
 fits with a pump. With Charles Sumner Mr. Bowles 
 had much slighter personal acquaintance, but Sumner's 
 sincerity and ability won for him a hearty and warm 
 recognition and a steady support. Of Mr. Banks, after 
 his distinguished success as speaker of the House, Mr. 
 Bowles had great expectations, which were strengthened 
 by his able administration as governor. He discerned 
 no more than others the promise of Lincoln's great- 
 ness, — in truth, evidence of it was scarcely visible to 
 human eyes until tested by the event. Nor did he fully 
 recognize the quality of John A. Andrew until the war 
 showed the man; he thought his nomination in 1860 
 unwise, and was at first inclined to disparage his judg-
 
 THE RIPENING JOUENALIST. 197 
 
 ment and ability. But, when the exercise of power 
 showed their true quality, the Bepuhlican gave a stauch 
 support to Governor Andrew and to President Lincoln, 
 and cordially recog:nized the power and integrity which 
 each showed in his own sphere and way. A friend who 
 was with Mr. Bowles when the news came of Andrew's 
 death relates that he was almost overcome by it, — though 
 he had known him only in his public capacity, he felt 
 his death like the loss of a friend. He was for many 
 years on very cordial terms with Schuyler Colfax ; was 
 his companion in several tours in the far "West, and 
 inscribed ^'Across the Continent" to him. 
 
 If some of his political estimates and predictions illus- 
 trate Mr. Bowles's fallibility, — and infallibility was the 
 last thing to be claimed for him, — they illustrate, too, 
 how completely some great men of a day or a year are 
 dethroned by Time, and how imperfectly the most saga- 
 cious observer fathoms the drift of public affairs. Sel- 
 dom has political foresight been more baffled than by 
 the outcome of the struggle over American slavery. Its 
 issue in a gigantic war, which left the Union impregna- 
 ble and the slaves free, was wholly beyond the presage 
 alike of the fathers of the republic ; of Webster, Clay, 
 and Calhoun ; of Seward and Greeley and Douglas and 
 Lincoln ; of Garrison and John Brown. When the war 
 came, the whole nation, like one man, was held sternly to 
 that tremendous discipline in which the only possibility 
 is to meet the hour's duty, and leave all beyond with 
 the unseen power that rules human destiny. It is the 
 presence of this mysterious power as the supreme actor 
 in the drama, which gives the deepest impressiveness to 
 that critical period of the nation's life. The suspense 
 and agony of the conflict lifted men into a sense of sub- 
 limer relations than they had felt in quiet days ; and 
 now we look back with wonder to see how a result was
 
 198 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 "wrought out transcending all human plan and calcula- 
 tion ; men's wisdom or folly, heroism or cowardice, 
 counting always as potent factors, yet as instruments to 
 an end which no human eye foresaw. 
 
 Among the influences which molded Mr. Bowles's 
 mind, there is to be considered the effect of his work as 
 a daily editor, with its ceaseless activity and stimulus. 
 One quality which this pressure developed in him was 
 an extreme rapidity of mental action. He had been a 
 slow boy, but he became one of the swiftest of men. 
 An editorial writer in the New York Times — evidently 
 one of his old pupils — said after his death : " His think- 
 ing was like the working of a perfected machine. The 
 apt conclusion came quickly, without groping or exterior 
 suggestion. He was not in the habit of waiting till he 
 had read his exchanges before writing his leading arti- 
 cles. He wrote, as he thought, with astonishing facility. 
 If with his own pen, it flew over the page with a di'ead- 
 ful disregard of legibility that tortured and impover- 
 ished the unhappy compositor ; if by an amanuensis, he 
 kept him at the stretch of his powers. But the literary 
 excellence of his style was remarkable. The apt word, 
 the terse, incisive phrase, and the sentence full of pres- 
 ent meaning and later suggestion, were in his ready 
 control." 
 
 There grew the aptitude and desire for something 
 always new. The constant freshness of the Reiniblican 
 was one of its most marked qualities and strongest 
 charms. The editor said to a friend : " It is no trouble 
 to me that the paper contradicts itself. My business is 
 to tell what seems to me the truth and the news to-day, 
 and the same to-morrow. That is one of the paper's 
 fascinations. It's a daily journal. I am not to live to 
 be as old as Methusaleh, and brood in silence over a 
 thing till, just before I die, I think I have it right!"
 
 THE KIPENING JOUKNALIST. 199 
 
 He seemed almost to become weary of having the sun 
 rise every morning in the East. He was constant always 
 to his principles, but he was so ready for a change of 
 method that it put him in a degree outside of the sym- 
 pathies of the mass of men who like to move in channels 
 and ruts. His judgment of political situations was some- 
 what warped by his own impulse toward novelty. He 
 was constantly looking for such a break-up and new crys- 
 tallization as comes but once or twice in a generation. 
 He took part in one such grand re-formation, and assisted 
 in the unsuccessful attempt at another ; but he predicted 
 them a great many times when they did not come. 
 
 He was growing constantly in the power of condensed 
 and telling expression. The editorial of a column, or a 
 column and a half, grew less frequent and prominent. 
 The paragraph was superseding it in the place of honor, 
 and the column of brief '^ Note and Comment " was get- 
 ting always stronger and brighter, till it became the 
 most characteristic feature of the paper. The editor had 
 a genius for pregnant and terse diction. He knew 
 how to condense an editorial into a paragraph, a para- 
 graph into a two-line item, an item into a word. As he 
 came to his full growth, hardly another hand in the 
 profession equaled his in shaping phrases which " make 
 a hole in the target." His epigrammatic sentences went 
 the round of the press. They snapped like a whip and 
 sometimes cut like a knife. 
 
 It is often difficult or impossible to distinguish with 
 confidence the editorial wi-iting of Mr, Bowles from that 
 of his associates. They caught something of his style. 
 He had "the masculine faculty of impregnating other 
 minds." Some writing in the paper seems indicated as 
 Mr. Hood's by a certain scholarly ease and grace; a 
 finished style as of one who when he is writing his 
 article is doing his day's sole work, instead of having a
 
 200 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 hundred other things to attend to ; and a philosophical 
 quality which firmly grasps and clearly presents the 
 central principle underlying the immediate question. 
 This philosophical habit grew with Mr. Bowles as years 
 advanced, and the obligation to Mr. Hood which he so 
 warmly expressed may have lain partly in this direction. 
 Dr. Holland's distinctive contribution to the Republi- 
 can was twofold. He was more a man of books than his 
 colleague, and gave to the paper in its early years the 
 discussion of literary topics which did much to broaden 
 it beyond the field of politics and news. But he added 
 too a more novel and striking feature. It was said of 
 him at the memorial service following his death : 
 
 '' Dr. Holland was essentially a preacher. He was ordained 
 by natural endowment, and by steady, enthusiastic purpose, to 
 the ministry of moral guidance and inspiration. That voca- 
 tion has hitherto been largely exercised by personal speech from 
 pulpit or platform, and largely through the instrumentality of 
 the church. But his life fell at a time when a new engine of 
 influence is supplementing and in a degree supplanting the old. 
 While those who speak from the pulpit are glad to number 
 their hearers by hundreds, the daily editor counts his by tens 
 of thousands. While the chui'ch is anxiously debating how it 
 can reach and hold the people, every man looks on his door- 
 step for his morning paper before he goes to his breakfast. 
 The newspaper beyond any other teacher now comes home to 
 men's business and bosoms. The limitation upon that influ- 
 ence is that it too often lacks that clearness and emphasis of 
 moral piupose which has largely characterized the ministry of 
 the pulpit. It was the especial distinction of Dr. Holland that 
 he used the newspaper's power to serve the preacher's purpose. 
 He enlarged and ennobled the function of journalism, by put- 
 ting it to a new and higher use. He showed that a newspaper 
 might do something more than tell the news ; something be- 
 sides discussing affairs at Washington ; something more even 
 than to act as guide and judge in literature and art and public 
 affairs. He used the daily or the monthly journal to jjurify 
 and sweeten the foimtains of personal and family life. He
 
 THE EIPENING JOUKNALIST, 201 
 
 spoke continually the word that should inspu-e young men to 
 be pui-e, and women to be strong ; the word that shed poetry 
 over the home life ; the word that threw on every interest the 
 Ught of conscience and the wannth of moral feeling." 
 
 The innovation in which Dr. Holland was perhaps be- 
 yond any other man the pioneer consisted not in using 
 periodical publication for the moralist's purpose, — such 
 use is as old as the time of Addison, — but in successfully 
 grafting that function upon the modern daily, and mak- 
 ing religion compete successfully there for men's atten- 
 tion with the press and throng of other interests. He 
 opened a noble field which has as yet been but scantily 
 worked. Much of his editorial writing had this quality, 
 but his conspicuous success began when he wrote 
 " Timothy Titcomb's Letters to Young People." He 
 had previously contributed to the paper some series of 
 letters on light social topics, and Mr. Bowles one day 
 suggested that he should do something more of the same 
 kind. " I thought at first," said Dr. HoUand, " that I 
 had written myself out, but without premeditation I 
 made a dash at another line of subjects, and wrote that 
 forenoon the first of the ' Timothy Titcomb Letters.' " It 
 shows how little expectation he had of attracting marked 
 attention, that he borrowed a pen-name which had been 
 used by Thackeray in one of his minor wiitings. His 
 unexpected success was an illustration of Cromwell's 
 saying : '^ A man never rises so high as when he knows 
 not whither he is going." The letters were in three series, 
 the first addressed to young men, the next to young 
 women, and the third to young married people. They 
 were plain, familiar talks on the conduct of life, aimed 
 neither too high nor too low for the average reader, 
 familiar in illustration, pervaded with practical and 
 undogmatic Christianity. They met with instant and 
 wide favor. "When gathered into a book, they had a
 
 202 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 sale which at once gave Dr. Holland rank with the 
 most popular authors of the country. Many a man and 
 woman to-day remember them with gratitude. They 
 were followed by other serials in a like vein, which proved 
 equally popular, and won for the Republican a new hold 
 on public regard. 
 
 These contributions, of which the authorship was soon 
 known, gained for Dr. Holland a personal reputation in 
 connection with the paper which for a time rivaled that 
 of Mr. Bowles. Yet he did not find in daily journalism 
 his most congenial field. After 1857, he gradually di- 
 verted his labors into lecturing and book-writing, and 
 his contributions to the Republican ceased entirely about 
 the year 186-4. The culmination of his career was as one 
 of the founders and the editor-in-chief of Scribner's 
 Montlihj (now The Century Magazine). In his later years, 
 sitting on a piazza overlooking the Hudson with a friend, 
 he said, pointing to the river, that his present life was to 
 his earlier like the Hudson to the Connecticut. 
 
 With the exception of the brief Traveller episode, Mr. 
 Bowles was from first to last identified heart and soul 
 with the Republican. It was his hand that shaped its 
 course, and assimilated the elements of its strength. It 
 is the com-se of national events on which the historian 
 of a newspaper naturally dwells most, and which was 
 always the leading topic of the Republican. But the 
 paper was continually seeking other and widening fields. 
 Religion, social reform, literature, nature, amusements, 
 personalities — it took them all as its province. In a 
 little country town it presented the amplest range of 
 human interests ; it was as broad and various as human- 
 ity. It drew from many a worker who gave to it the 
 best of his heart and brain. But it took its central 
 inspiration and distinctive character from one many- 
 sided and intensely vital man.
 
 CHAPTER XIX. 
 
 Personal Relations. 
 
 SAM BOWLES/' as he was known to the Bepuhlican's 
 readers, and the " Sam Bowles " whom his friends 
 and acquaintances knew, were the same, yet different. In 
 truth, if almost any one of us could be seen as his image 
 exists in the minds of different people, — if he could be 
 seen successively as his wife sees him, as his children, 
 his servants, his business associates, his enemies, his 
 intimates, see him, — the result would be a portrait gal- 
 lery of many different people, with sometimes not even 
 a family resemblance. 
 
 AU his readers recognized Mr. Bowles's power, but 
 all by no means admired him. He gave frequent and 
 wide offense. Thoughout the Connecticut valley, the 
 sentiment toward the paper was a strange mixture of 
 admiration, pride, and hostility. Every one wanted to 
 read it, and those who declared they did not, and stopped 
 their papers, were drawn back to read it again, even 
 while they abused it. To those who had grown accus- 
 tomed to its well-flavored repast, it was a necessity. 
 Any vigorous and outspoken paper, like any vigorous 
 and outspoken man, will make enemies. The quality in 
 the Beimhlican which roused most hostility was its free 
 criticisms upon institutions, parties, and every person and 
 event of public concern. This freedom of judgment, 
 
 203
 
 204 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 subject to no limitations save those of truth, the editor 
 claimed as his right, asserted as his duty, and exercised 
 with a width of range and deftness of stroke which in- 
 creased as the years went on. There is nothing which 
 almost any man so quickly resents as unfavorable criti- 
 cisms upon himself, his friends, or the institutions he 
 believes in. When the criticism is public, it has a ten- 
 fold sharper sting. There was not a day in which the 
 Repiiblican did not touch something or somebody with 
 the thong of its whip. Its vocation was to make report 
 and comment on the whole course of events, and frequent 
 blame was its necessity. If it had been as just as Omnis- 
 cience, it would still have given frequent offense. Being 
 entirely human and fallible, it gave offense continually. 
 
 By the mass of the paper's readers this critical, sharp- 
 speaking quality was probably regarded as the chief 
 characteristic of Mr. Bowles. But to his personal ac- 
 quaintances he showed a side as different from this as 
 May from January. Many of them saw and felt both 
 sides by turns, but to some he was always May. 
 
 From the earliest, his family affections were deep-seated 
 and constant. His father's was one of those New Eng- 
 land households in whose undemonstrative and outwardly 
 meager life the domestic attachments strike tenacious 
 root, like pine-trees in rocky soil. In later years his own 
 family was the first object of his care and the center of 
 his dearest affections. His chief aim in life was not to 
 make for himself a career, a name, or a fortune, but to 
 provide for the happiness of his wife and his children. His 
 wife's aim in turn was to make their home above all else 
 a resting-place for the husband. The habit and law of 
 the house was that " Father's " rest was to be shielded 
 and made comfortable. '' I remember," says one of the 
 children, — there were now two daughters and a son, — 
 " how we used to be kept quiet through the early forenoon.
 
 PERSONAX, RELATIONS. 205 
 
 because Father was asleep, and how we were taught to 
 look out for the first early delicacies of spring, to tempt 
 his appetite. I recollect his late breakfast, — Mother 
 roasting oysters for him at the gi*ate, and we children 
 standing around expecting some of the juice, like 
 open-mouthed birds." It was not in his nature to be a 
 mere passive recipient from any one, least of all from 
 those he loved most. He charged himself with a close 
 oversight of the welfare of wife and childi'en. In his 
 absences, however full of occupation he might be, his 
 letters to his wife were as constant and devoted as any 
 youthful lovely's. At home, his care for the various in- 
 terests of the household was as vigilant as for the man- 
 agement of the newspaper. To spend and be spent, in 
 every direction, was the law of his life. 
 
 In some of the chapters of this biography, extracts 
 from his domestic correspondence are given with a good 
 deal of freedom. It is impossible to do justice to the 
 portraiture without giving these glimpses of the rich- 
 ness and sweetness of his household affections. Were it 
 permissible to draw the portrait without any reserves, 
 the fuller light would only bring out more distinctly the 
 fineness of the traits. Browning says : 
 
 " God be thanked, the meanest of his creatures 
 Boasts two soul-sides — one to face the world with — 
 One to show a woman when he loves her." 
 
 And the side which Mr. Bowles showed to the world 
 made no disclosure so fine as the sweeter side he showed 
 at home. Only in that intimacy were fully revealed 
 the tenderness, the patience, the seK-control which were 
 in him. 
 
 His sojourn in Boston during the Traveller experi- 
 ment was a painful exile to him. He once said to a 
 friend who was about to be married : " You are going
 
 206 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 to live in Boston. Now you know I once lived there 
 awhile, — if it was living, — and I was about the most 
 wretched creature in that little city. Social life did not 
 touch me anywhere, nor I it. I want you, for my sake, 
 to have an eye out for such poor, forlorn creatures as I 
 was, — away from wife, babies, everything that makes 
 life sweet. Take them in ; let them sit by your fire, talk 
 about their home, take xij) your children — if you have 
 any — and kiss them for their own. I have walked 
 through the streets in Boston, and seen families seated 
 at their table, in the bright light, and it seemed as if 
 I couldn't bear it. I wanted to ring the bell and say, 
 ' For heaven's sake take me in and comfort me.' Why 
 didn't I take letters of introduction ? I didn't believe in 
 them. I didn't wish to be thrust upon people to dine 
 and wine, — there was my work before them every day ; 
 my name was in the paper. I would not speak of this 
 if it were not to show you where you can tread in the 
 path of the saints and do good." 
 
 At home he went between his house and his office with 
 hasty or with tired step ; tall, his head bent forward a 
 little ; with shaggy, projecting brows ; luminous dark 
 eyes, that noted everything, and seemed always to look 
 straight to the heart of whatever they fixed on; and 
 with passing words of direct, alert address. In the 
 town — which grew from three thousand to thirt^^-five 
 thousand inhabitants while he lived in it — he knew and 
 was known by everybody. Outside of the town he 
 had a circle of acquaintances which widened until it 
 reached from England to the Pacific. His main recrea- 
 tion was traveling, and wherever he traveled he found 
 his chief interest in humanity. He would talk with 
 every man upon his own subject, and get all that he 
 could give. He was a master of that supreme secret 
 of education, the art of listening. He listened so recep-
 
 PERSONAL RELATIONS. 207 
 
 tively and engagingly, and the contact of his mind was 
 so stimulating, that people as they talked with him were 
 put at their very best. The characters thus opened to 
 his eye won from him a quick and warm admiration for 
 whatever was fine or lovable. Thus from an observer 
 he grew to be a lover. 
 
 In his newspaper he regarded himself as a public censor, 
 bound to render to every man his strict desert. In pri- 
 vate life he welcomed to his acquaintance every man who 
 had any attractive or interesting trait. He was as chari- 
 table and catholic in his personal relations as he was in 
 his public relations austere. The range of his taste was 
 wide : people of high culture, plain country folks, states- 
 men, backwoodsmen, artists, actors, business men, liter- 
 ary women, boys and girls, babies, — none came amiss 
 to him, so they were genuine and human. He had his 
 resentments and his quarrels, but a good lasting hatred 
 he could keep up against nobody except a liar or a hum- 
 bug. If, in any matter of public moment, he saw in a 
 man a single fault, the Bepuhlkan named and blamed it 
 though the man might possess all the other virtues. In 
 private life, if a man had one agreeable merit, and only 
 one, Mr. Bowles would give him fellowship on the 
 strength of that. In his newspaper he was a judge on 
 the bench ; out of it, and toward the same people, he was 
 the most appreciative and tolerant of companions. 
 
 From the plain and unpolished bearing acquired 
 through his early experiences, he grew to have at his 
 command a singularly winning manner. There was 
 nothing about him of diffusive and cheap geniality, no 
 stereotyped or meaningless smiles. He not infrequently 
 carried himself with a slight reserve and dignity. 
 " Billy," he said to one of his special friends, " why don't 
 people clap me on the shoulder, with a ' How are you, 
 old feUow,' as they do you '?" '' Because," was the plain-
 
 208 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 spoken answer, "you go along with a look that says 
 'Keep away from me — d — n you!'" But this touch of 
 unconscious hauteur belonged to his dyspeptic turns more 
 than to his habitual bearing, and at the worst was quick 
 to disappear. He could always assume at will an easy 
 and charming manner. An occasional political associate 
 says: "When, in arranging some point together, we 
 would see that some man was going to be rather trouble- 
 some to manage, he would say, 'Send him up to me'; 
 and after a talk with him the man would go away 
 pleased with himself and delighted to feel he was doing 
 Mr. Bowles a favor." In his visits to Washington, es- 
 pecially in the later years after the war, he was on good 
 terms with every one he met. He would encounter some 
 congressman whom he had been pounding in his paper, 
 and in half an hour would have that man his friend and 
 telling him his secrets. He delighted to thus conciliate 
 people whose friendship was of no earthly use to him 
 except for its own sake. This charming address came to 
 be his spontaneous habit whenever he was free from 
 the absorption of work and the depression of suffering 
 nerves. He conquered hearts like a charming woman, 
 and with a feminine sense of power and pleasiu'C in his 
 conquests. Nor did he lightly abandon them. 
 
 To the world he was a great journalist, but to many a 
 man and woman he was known as the truest and most 
 generous of friends. Those whom he loved felt that his 
 friendship was inspired by an appreciation of their in- 
 most self ; that he saw what was best in them and ideal- 
 ized it. Such recognition is in itself one of the dearest 
 tributes and one of the strongest inspirations to excel- 
 lence. His friends felt that they were worth much to 
 him ; that he counted on them, depended on them, drew 
 from their friendships the fullness of his life.
 
 PEESONAL KELATIONS. 209 
 
 He had a great command of the language of affection ; 
 his letters sometimes display a mastery of what Dr. John 
 Brown calls " that language of love which only women, 
 and Shakespeare, and Luther, knew how to use." On 
 lighter occasions he could pay a compliment so charm- 
 ingly that its grace pleased more than the tribute to 
 self-love. There was '' just a soft tang at the tip of his 
 tongue," when he chose. But with his real friends he 
 oftener used a pungent and piquant way of speech, never 
 clo\dng them with sweetness. Where he felt at home he 
 liked to exercise an entire freedom, and an off-hand 
 brusqueness that had a laugh behind it. Said the mis- 
 tress of a house in Springfield where he was a familiar 
 ^dsitor : '' He used to come in for a few moments, on his 
 way back and forth between his home and his office, and 
 would perhaps sit with both legs hanging over the arm 
 of a chair, his hat low down over his eyes, and talk sarse 
 as he called it." Says another lady : " I remember how 
 my acquaintance with an intimate friend began by his 
 introducing us to each other on the street, — ' This is 
 
 Lizzie R , and this is C W , one of the Rox- 
 
 bury saints. You are going to be friends, — I ordain 
 it, — I predict it. Now don't go looking each other over, 
 but pitch in, and talk. Yes, of course,' — reading our 
 
 glances with his quick eyes — ' Lizzie R is orthodox, 
 
 and you are a kind of come-outer, but you will like each 
 other for all that, — better for that.' " 
 
 In his friendship he was very free from egotism. He 
 sought to converse on his friends' subjects rather than 
 his own. Closely wedded as he was to the BepuMkanj 
 he left it behind him when he talked with his intimates, 
 unless they turned the conversation that way. With 
 some of them he scarcely ever discussed it ; there were 
 some who even disliked the paper. This was the senti- 
 
 VOL. I.— 14
 
 210 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 ment of one man who knew the editor through twenty- 
 five years, whose home was his frequent resort, and who 
 said years after his death : " The two great losses of my 
 life have been my father and Sam Bowles." Yet this 
 same man, a New Englander, stanch and stiff in all his 
 convictions and prejudices, said at the same time, ''I 
 never liked his paper. I was an old Whig, and after the 
 Repuhlican left the Whigs it was always ready to de- 
 nounce them. Its course on many subjects was distaste- 
 ful to me. I pitched into him so sharply about the 
 paper sometimes that at last my wife cautioned me to 
 stop or I should endanger oui' friendship. But Sam 
 Bowles was to me like a brother. I discussed with him 
 the most intimate and personal affairs of my life." Said 
 another life-long friend, an active man of affairs, " I 
 loved him as I never loved any other man, — as I never 
 supposed I couJd love." 
 
 Henry L. Dawes, in a private letter written some time 
 after his death, speaks thus of their early intercourse : 
 
 " When I first knew him, lie and I were both young, and in 
 our respective spheres ardent and ambitious. We were never 
 tired of talking together over our respective callings, some- 
 times visionary in our notions, but always sincere. Notwith- 
 standing his usual buoyancy of spirit and courage, I have 
 known occasions when he was ready to give up, when he would 
 be just as far over on the dark side, and everything and every- 
 body seemed to go wrong. He would come out of these moods, 
 however, as the sun comes out of a cloud, and hght up every 
 idea with the briUianey of his conceptions. In those days he 
 used to come up and see me very often [at North Adams] , and 
 on those occasions he seemed to me to be as entertaining and 
 fascinating as at any other period in his life. His passion for 
 news, and for currents of thought, which has ever been the 
 distinguishing characteristic of the Republican, was among the 
 earliest developments of his character. He would go every- 
 where, he would write everywhere, and he would ask everybody
 
 PERSONAL RELATIONS. 211 
 
 everything, in order to be the first to get sight or sound or 
 sign of something new. Then he would sit down and talk over 
 matters of personal interest in one's private affairs, just as if 
 he had nothing else to think of. I never knew a man who 
 knew him who wouldn't rather have him at his table than any 
 other man in the world." 
 
 Intercourse with him had always the charm of keen 
 vitality. There was never an empty word or a dull mo- 
 ment. He gave the kind of stimulus which, instead of 
 fatiguing, refreshes and cheers. By his unceasing men- 
 tal activity he wore himseK out ; for the last twenty 
 years of his life his nerves and stomach were in chronic 
 rebellion ; heavy clouds, of dyspepsia, sciatica, sleepless- 
 ness, exhaustion, came often and staid long. It was 
 impossible that the shadow of these clouds should not 
 sometimes tinge his intercourse with those about him, 
 and the edge of his suffering sometimes wound others. 
 But whatever was felt of this fell almost entirely on 
 those who were associated with him in work or business. 
 Outside of the paper and its concerns, he maintained 
 habitually a wonderful kindness and good cheer. Over- 
 worked as he was, other overworked people found rest 
 and refreshment in him. No man under like pressure 
 ever " burned his own smoke " more bravely and success- 
 fully. His easy talk, with its shrewd comments and 
 quick wit, his sensitiveness to nature and humanity, 
 his unexacting cordiality, his strength and delicacy, 
 were to a tired brain as restorative as sunshine. A 
 woman who sometimes visited in his family, a teacher 
 and writer, said : "I used sometimes to go there when I 
 was so jaded I felt as if I could never write anything 
 again ; and after a day or two I would come away 
 rested, all ready to write an essay or two, — not so 
 much from anything he said as from the vital impulse 
 lie gave."
 
 212 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 He exercised toward his friends a considerate gener- 
 osity. He did not wait for help to be asked, but planned 
 and offered it unsought, in counsel and in deed. He had 
 some friends who kept a school in Springfield, and 
 one day coming to them, he said : ^' I have learned that 
 
 Mr. is to give up his school " (a rival of theirs) 
 
 " at the end of the year. That will give you a new op- 
 portunity, and you must meet it half-waj'," — and then 
 went on to suggest changes and enlargements, planned 
 as wisely as kindly. A woman, worn to exhaustion and 
 illness by the hardest and best of work as a teacher, was 
 taken by him and his wife into their home, nursed and 
 cheered, until after several weeks she went home reno- 
 vated. His life was full of such acts. He learned that 
 an old friend was embarrassed in his business, and going 
 to him said, " I know you are in difficulties, — now, I can 
 afford to do for you so much," naming a sum, "and I 
 want you to take my help." Such help he gave repeatedly 
 even to men who were not his near friends. To young 
 men especially he was generous in lending his indorse- 
 ment on their notes. He was ingenious and fertile in 
 benevolence to his friends, and aided them with an un- 
 obtrusiveness and grace which sweetened the gift. 
 
 All old ties and old associations were dear to him. He 
 loved the familiar localities, and whatever recalled the 
 early ways. " When I go by your house," he said to a 
 woman, " I always stop to lean over your fence and take 
 a good look at your sarse-garden, — you've got the only 
 old-time sarse-garden in Springfield ! " The town itself, 
 its varied loveliness of view, the river, the guardian 
 hills, all had a hold on his affection that tightened as 
 years went by. 
 
 Of the men who had relations with him both as a 
 friend and in the conduct of his newspaper, almost all 
 agree in saying, " There were two men in him ; one
 
 PERSONAL RELATIONS. 213 
 
 gracious, charming, delightful, — the other hard and 
 severe." The existence of two opposite natures in one 
 man need not appear strange to any self-observant per- 
 son, who may have found in himself twenty different 
 selves, resolving themselves on the whole into two ; and 
 may have found it to be the chief and proper business of 
 his life to bring one of these two selves into due ascend- 
 ency over the other. In Mr. Bowles's case, the contrast 
 between his different sides had the vividness which be- 
 longed to his whole nature, so that it impressed men as 
 something unique. His faults lay almost wholly on the 
 side of self-will and pride. He was by nature master- 
 ful — fond of having his own way and the first place. 
 His life as a journaUst in some respects confirmed that 
 disposition. The BepuUican^ s attitude of entire independ- 
 ence sometimes ran into excess and caprice. It was 
 never servile, but it was sometimes arrogant. In the in- 
 ternal administration of the paper, Mr. Bowles was, and 
 always would be, master and chief; and the man has 
 seldom lived in whom absolute mastery did not breed 
 something of despotism. Among his business associates 
 and subordinates he was like a captain on his quarter- 
 deck. As soon as he entered his office, his whole frame 
 seemed to grow tense ; his orders were directly and 
 briefly spoken ; his mere presence kept the whole staff 
 up to concert pitch. His genial ease of manner was laid 
 aside as a man throws off his dressing-gown to take hold 
 of work. He did not indulge in scolding — a word or 
 look was enough. The men who worked under him 
 felt admiration, loyalty, and a touch of fear. While 
 work was going on they were to him like parts of the 
 great engine he was driving, and he urged them as 
 remorselessly as he did himself. He always meant to 
 be just, but he had a strong feeling that the Bepubli- 
 can was his creation and possession, and within its
 
 214 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 sphere lie recognized no man's claims as on an equality 
 with his own. 
 
 When his personal friends received public criticism 
 from the Republican, it was not in human nature that 
 they should not frequently resent it. But, besides the 
 plea of public duty, Mr. Bowles was apt to assert in his 
 defense a distinction which nobody recognized but him- 
 seK, — that he was not to be held responsible in his private 
 capacity for the paper's utterances. No journalist ever 
 identifled himself more closely with his paper ; yet, when 
 a friend complained of comments in its columns, he would 
 answer, '' The Republican is one thing and Sam Bowles is 
 another, and you mustn't identify them." This, as the 
 aggrieved person perfectly knew, was a distinction with- 
 out a difference. Once engaged in combat, too, he always 
 became aggressive and struck hard. " The Republican 
 will not be put on the defensive ! " he used to say — " We 
 shall carry the war into Africa." So, a public retort 
 from a man who felt himseK aggrieved often drew out a 
 severer attack, and it was when thus provoked that the 
 Republican said its most unjust things. When the 
 quarrel was over, Mr. Bowles was quick to forget and 
 ignore it — it became to him as though it had not been. 
 He was too proud to make open amends, but his resent- 
 ment quickly died away, his old friendliness returned, and 
 he looked for equal readiness on the other side to forgive 
 and forget. It was frequently an unreasonable expecta- 
 tion. Most memories are as tenacious of an injury as a 
 kindness. An injury from a friend seldom heals per- 
 fectly without some open word of reparation or regret. 
 So, in a long succession of controversies, — controversies 
 which in their public aspect were often the Republican's 
 best contributions to the common good, — many a private 
 hurt was given, of which the memory rankled in him 
 who received it 5 and from some close friendships a bloom
 
 PEKSONAL KELATIONS. 215 
 
 was brushed which never quite came back. This was 
 a deep pain to him. And if he gave some wounds 
 whose scars did not heal, it must be said that the 
 wounds he received — and no man got more hard 
 thrusts — were wont to heal quickly and kindly. If he 
 was loath to express regret or reparation, neither did he 
 exact it from others. To any overtures of reconciliation 
 he made prompt and winning response. " The pleasant- 
 est man to make uj) with that I ever knew," said a life-long 
 acquaintance. Such collisions as he had with his friends 
 and acquaintances were almost alwa^^s connected in some 
 sort with the Republican. In the conduct of the paper, 
 he meant to have his own way. Its success was the 
 object of his life ; its character he prized dearly as his 
 own ; its independence was his glory. Hardly even for 
 friendship's sake would he permit it to swerve a hair's- 
 breadth from its wonted course. To make an explicit 
 correction, or to withhold a piece of news which he 
 thought the public entitled to, was a great and rare favor. 
 A friend relates one such experience with him. " A man 
 here got into a disreputable scrape, and many people 
 knew it, but the papers hadn't got hold of it. His wife 
 was a good woman, and I wanted to spare her the dis- 
 grace of having it all spread before the world. So I went 
 to Mr. Bowles, and, seeing he knew nothing of the story, 
 I gave it all to him. ^ Thank you,' said he, ' you have 
 given me a valuable bit of news; we'll use it at once.' 
 Said I, ' I don't want you to print it.' We argued a 
 while, but it did no good. At last I got up from my 
 seat and said, ' Mr. Bowles, suppose your daughter had 
 married, and her husband turned out a scoundrel, and it 
 was proposed to spread it all out before the whole coun- 
 try — how would you feel?" He gave me one of his 
 infernal looks, black as a thunder-cloud, and said nothing 
 for half a minute j then he said, '■ Well, if the other papers
 
 216 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 will say nothing, we will say nothing.' So it was kept 
 quiet. After that I'd have gone through a block of 
 burning buildings for him ! " 
 
 He was a man who could unite an entire and life-long 
 loyalty to one woman, the partner of his life, the mother 
 of his children, and the mistress of his home, with 
 intimate and mutually helpful friendships with other 
 women. People often said of him that he was irreverent, 
 but no one who knew him ever charged him with irrev- 
 erence toward womanhood. He honored good women, 
 he learned of them, and he used to say that the best 
 wisdom and inspiration of his life had come through 
 them. His attitude toward them in personal inter- 
 course was manly and delicate. In the homage he paid, 
 there was nothing of perilous sentiment, no philandering 
 or flirtation. He met them with chivalrous appreciation 
 of what was womanlj^, and on a footing of entire equality. 
 His closest intimacies were with women of a characteris- 
 tic New England type. There is in that section a class 
 of such who inherit a fine intellect, an unsparing con- 
 science, and a sensitive nervous organization ; whose 
 minds have a natural bent toward the problems of the 
 soul and the universe ; whose energies, lacking the outlet 
 which business and public affairs give to their brothers, 
 are constantly turned back upon the interior life, and 
 who are at once stimulated and limited by a social 
 environment which is serious, virtuous, and deficient in 
 gayety and amusement. There is naturally developed in 
 them high mental power, and almost morbid conscien- 
 tiousness, while, especially in the many cases where they 
 remain unmarried, the fervor and charm of womanhood 
 are refined and sublimated from personal objects and 
 devoted to abstractions and ideals. They are platonic 
 in their attachments, and speculative in their religion ;
 
 PEESONAL RELATIONS. 217 
 
 intense rather than tender, and not so much soothing 
 as stimulating. By the influence of such women Mr. 
 Bowles's later life was colored — his views were broad- 
 ened, his thoughts refined, his friendships exercised in 
 offices of helpfulness and sympathy. By their acquaint- 
 ance he was educated to a conviction of the entii'e equal- 
 ity of the feminine with the masculine mind, and its claim 
 to an equal place in shaping the public and private life of 
 the community, as well as its need of larger outlet and 
 freer scope than society had hitherto assigned to it. 
 
 Among the strongest shaping influences of his life 
 were those of the men and women with whom he came 
 into intimacy. The formation of these friendships was 
 among the chief epochs of his history. He owed to them 
 something like that which the Mississippi owes to the 
 Missouri, the Ohio, and all the streams that swell its 
 waters from their early obscurity to an imperial flood. 
 He was indebted less than most intellectual men to 
 books. Newspapers were his chief literary food; and 
 newspapers, with all they teach, teach but little of the 
 heights and depths of humanity, and hint but scantily 
 at its sublimity and tenderness. These higher lessons 
 he learned by what was wrought out in him as he man- 
 fully did his work and bore his burden, and in no small 
 degree from the human souls which opened their wealth 
 to his insight and sympathy. 
 
 He gave his friends of his very best in thought and 
 labor, but above all other gifts was contact with his own 
 vital, fructifying personality. All analysis will seem 
 cold and all praise meager to those who knew and loved 
 him best. Their common sentiment toward him was 
 expressed by one who wrote, '^ Not to see you some- 
 times, not to hear from you, is a kind of eclipse." There 
 were not a few whose feeling was akin to that expressed
 
 218 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 by a Massachusetts judge, now dead, who wrote to him 
 after a critical illness : 
 
 " As you know better than any one else, I do beheve I should 
 have gone over the dam from sheer depression, but for my wife 
 and the cheerful words of half a dozen friends, of whom I put 
 your name first on the hst. God bless you for that, Sam Bowles ! 
 Now, I don't think you have committed many sins in the Re- 
 publican " (this was in 1873, after the paper had brought on 
 itself wrath and tribulation by its support of Greeley). ** There 
 is the same old tone to your paper, always on the side of honor 
 and honesty, and I stand by you even in your mistakes, if they 
 are mistakes. But you may perpetrate what you please from 
 now till doomsday, in the columns of your paper, — you shall 
 never make me feel you are any other than the kind sympa- 
 thetic friend, who took his friend by the hand and with singu- 
 lar appreciation of his condition ministered to him as no one 
 else could."
 
 CHAPTER XX. 
 
 The Dred Scott Decision. — The Lecompton 
 Constitution. 
 
 IT was under Buchanan's administration that the tide 
 turned decisively against slavery. His election was 
 its last victory. He was elected by an alliance of three 
 powers, — the slaveholding interest, the Northern Demo- 
 cratic party, and those Northern conservatives who 
 dreaded a sectional and aggressive tendency in the Re- 
 publicans. His inauguration was closely followed by a 
 decision of the Democratic Supreme Court which was a 
 shock to all real conservatives. His Administration gave 
 countenance to such usurpation in Kansas that a revolt 
 was provoked among Northern Democrats. Then John 
 Brown's attack on Harper's Ferry filled the South with 
 fears of Northern invasion and negro insurrection. This 
 was the logic of events which united the North, and by 
 its vote chose a Republican president, and led the South 
 to leave the Union in which it had lost the mastery. 
 
 President Buchanan's inaugural, on the fourth of 
 March, affirmed the right of the people of a territory 
 to determine their institutions ; but as to whether that 
 right was to be exercised prior to their action in organiz- 
 ing a state government, — the only real point of con- 
 troversy, — he referred deferentially to the arbitrament 
 of the Supreme Court. On the sixth of March the 
 
 219
 
 220 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 Court pronounced its decision on a suit whicli it had 
 long held under consideration. It was brought on an 
 appeal to determine the status of Dred Scott, a slave in 
 Missouri, who, twenty years before, had been taken by 
 his master into the free state of Illinois for a term of 
 residence, and also to Fort Suelling on the Mississippi, 
 within the territory where by the Missouri compromise 
 slavery was prohibited ; and who now as plaintiff in this 
 suit claimed that he was made legally a free man when 
 his master took him upon free soil. The Court's decision, 
 stripped of all technicalities, was to this effect : it dis- 
 missed the case for want of jurisdiction, on the ground 
 that no person who was of slave descent or African 
 blood could ever be a citizen of the United States, or 
 have a right to sue in the courts. Nevertheless, the 
 Court proceeded to discuss the grounds on which the 
 plaintiff claimed his freedom, and declared that the pro- 
 hibition of slavery north of 36° 30' was unconstitutional 
 and void, Congress having no power to exclude slavery 
 from the national territories. As to the effect of the 
 residence of a slave, by his masters will, in the free state 
 of Illinois, followed by a return to the slave state of 
 Missouri, the Court held that the question belonged to 
 the Missouri courts, and that their renderings were 
 adverse to the claim of freedom.* There was a consider- 
 able division among the judges as to various points in 
 the decision, and Justices Curtis and McLean — the two 
 Northern Whigs upon the bench — dissented emphatic- 
 ally both from its reasoning and its conclusions. The 
 chief spokesman of the majority of the Court was Chief- 
 justice Taney. His dictum, that no person of African 
 descent could become an American citizen, was based 
 on the inferior and degraded condition in which these 
 
 * Dred Scott afterward became the property of a daughter of his master, 
 and was by her manumitted.
 
 THE DEED SCOTT DECISION. 221 
 
 people were held when the Declaration of Independ- 
 ence and the Constitution were adopted, they being 
 regarded at that time, said the chief -justice, " as so far 
 inferior that they had no rights which the white man 
 was bound to respect " ; so that there could have been 
 no intent to include them in the " all men " of the Decla- 
 ration, and similar phraseology. The unconstitutionality 
 of the Missouri compromise was maintained by an argu- 
 ment which was thus tersely summed up by Lincoln : 
 The Constitution of the United States forbids Congress 
 to deprive a man of his property without due process of 
 law ; the right of property in slaves is distinctly implied 
 in the Constitution ; therefore, if Congress shall under- 
 take to say that a man's slave is no longer a slave when he 
 crosses a certain line into a territory, that is equivalent 
 to depriving him of his property without trial or verdict. 
 The whole dispute as to slavery under the Constitution 
 is involved in this statement of the master's claim, ad- 
 mitted thus by the Supreme Court, Once granted that 
 a man's slave was absolutely his property, — as much so 
 as his horse, — and his right to take him into the national 
 territory, just as he might take his horse, was indispu- 
 table. That a slave was in this absolute sense his prop- 
 erty, was, to the slave-holder's mind, a fact beyond denial 
 or doubt. The answer was, that a slave was property 
 only by the creation of local law, and that when a slave- 
 holder took his human chattel into a territory, he did 
 not carry with him that state law by which alone, in 
 exception to the general usage of mankind, property 
 in man was recognized. As to the other main point of 
 the decision, that negroes were incapable of American 
 citizenship because that incapacity existed at the era of 
 the Constitution, Justice Curtis pointed out that at that 
 period free negroes had the right of suffrage in five of 
 the thirteen states.
 
 222 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 But, whether on just grounds or not, the highest 
 Court in the nation had decided that no negro could be 
 an American citizen, and that slavery could not be 
 legally excluded by Congress from any territory. How 
 that decision was received by moderate men at the 
 North, may be illustrated by the Republican's editorial of 
 March 11 : 
 
 " We cannot overrate the significance of the recent opinion 
 of the majority of the Supreme Court, as given in the case of 
 Dred Scott. The history of judicial decisions in this country 
 contains nothing so important as this. . . . The case on 
 which the new opinions were given did not necessarily caU for 
 them. It could have been disposed of without discussing or 
 disturbing the great principles of slavery which the Court has 
 Tindertaken to settle. . . . The majority of the Court there- 
 fore rushed needlessly to their conclusions, and are justly open 
 to the suspicion of being induced to pronounce them by parti- 
 san or sectional influences. The decision was of the utmost 
 importance to the slavery interest and to the Democratic party, 
 as based upon it. They were in desperate circumstances. The 
 present territories of the country are almost certain to become 
 free states. Nothing but violence can prevent them from com- 
 ing to this decision." The new rule, the paper proceeds, is 
 designed for practical effect more especially in those further 
 acquisitions of territory in Mexico and Cuba which the slavery 
 interest is bent on gaining. But, " the expectations of the per- 
 petrators of the new scheme for protecting and advancing 
 slavery, that it will be acquiesced in by the country because it 
 is the voice of the Supreme Court, will not be realized. It will 
 widen and deepen rather than aUay agitations. It wih be 
 heeded in practice only by those who approve of it in theory. 
 The people are the court of last resort in this country. They 
 wiU discuss and review the action of the Supreme Court, and if 
 it presents itself in a practical question will vote against it." 
 
 The Dred Scott decision showed how far the forms of 
 law could be wrested, not only against justice and hu-
 
 THE DEED SCOTT DECISION. 223 
 
 manity, but against the traditions and spirit of judicial 
 procedure. The authority of the Court was invoked by 
 a trick which removed the mooted questions from the 
 arena of legislative and popular debate, where the people 
 were giving judgment against slavery. The weakness of 
 the decision, from a purely legal standpoint, was thus 
 characterized by the Bepuhlican (March 18) : 
 
 " There was but one question before the Court, and that was 
 a question concerning its own juiisdiction in the case. In fact, 
 the Court gave no judgment and simply dismissed the case for 
 want of jurisdiction. . . . There is probably no rule ui law 
 more firmly established and widely recognized, than that the 
 opinion of any court, touching any question outside of that be- 
 fore it, is of no binding force whatever. The question before 
 the Court was whether it had any jurisdiction in the case. It 
 decided that it had not. Everything beyond this uttered by 
 the Court is just as binding as if it was uttered by a Southern 
 debating club, and no more. It undoubtedly shows how the 
 Court will decide in cases involving the questions which it 
 argues, and this gives its extra-judicial opinions their only power 
 and significance." 
 
 These quotations illustrate the general temper of the 
 free states. The New York legislature promptly enacted 
 that neither color nor African descent shall disqualify 
 from citizenship ; that every slave brought by his master 
 into the state becomes free ; and that any attempt to re- 
 tain such persons as slaves shall be punished by from 
 two to ten years' imprisonment. It passed a resolution 
 declaring that the Supreme Court has lost the confidence 
 and respect of the people. A year later, Seward said in 
 the Senate : '^ The people of the United States never can 
 and never will accept principles so unconstitutional, 
 so abhorrent. Never, never ! Let the Court recede. 
 Whether it recede or not, we shall reorganize the Coui't, 
 and thus reform its political sentiment and practices and
 
 224 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 bring them in harmony with the Constitution, and with 
 the laws of Nature." Lincoln said at Quincy in 1858 
 that while the Republican party did not propose to de- 
 clare that Dred Scott was a free man, they did not believe 
 the Court's decision was a political rule binding the voters, 
 Congress, or the President ; and they intended so oppos- 
 ing it as to have it reversed if possible, and a new judicial 
 rule established on the subject. 
 
 President Buchanan surrounded himself with a cabinet 
 as much identified with Southern interests as his prede- 
 cessor's. Its members were Lewis Cass, Isaac Toucey, and 
 Jeremiah S. Black, from the North, and Howell Cobb, 
 Jacob Thompson, Aaron V. Brown, and John B. Floyd, 
 from the South. He was a very weak man, despotic, but 
 without the skill to rule ; arbitrary when he should have 
 been tolerant, and yielding when he should have been 
 firm. He sought to enforce a rigid party discipline, and 
 to that end made freest use of all the weapons of patron- 
 age ; but he had not the breadth or tact to harmonize his 
 party, nor the strength to keep his own pledges. He 
 held a strongly Southern view of the Constitution, and 
 lent himself to an unscrupulous scheme to make Kansas 
 a slave state. He had no sympathy with the disunion- 
 ists, but he was utterly powerless to cheek their intrigues. 
 He was the luckless mariner who opened the bags of 
 ^olus, and the storms which issued drove the ship far 
 over seas. 
 
 Governor Geary had done his best to promote justice 
 in Kansas, but found himself abandoned by President 
 Pierce, and resigned just as the new Administration came 
 in. For his successor, Mr. Buchanan selected Robert J. 
 Walker, of Mississippi, a man of character and ability. 
 Walker was very unwilling to take the place, for it had 
 been the political ruin of every man who had held it. But 
 the President gave him the strongest assurances that he
 
 THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION. 225 
 
 should be supported in giving the Kansas people a per- 
 fectly fair opportunity to organize their own institutions. 
 Thus fortified, Walker went to Kansas. The usurping 
 legislature had provided for the election of a convention 
 to form a state constitution. The delegates were to be 
 appointed upon the basis of a census, which the legisla- 
 ture intrusted to certain county officials. In many of 
 the counties the free-state party disowned altogether 
 the existing territorial organization, and kept the form 
 of a state government, under a constitution framed by 
 themselves at Topeka, so that there were no officials 
 recognized as competent to take the census. For the 
 approaching convention, no voters were registered and no 
 representation allotted in fifteen out of the thirty-four 
 counties ; thus half the territory was disfranchised, and a 
 predominance was given to the districts which lay con- 
 veniently for an invasion from Missouri. This confirmed 
 the disposition of the free-state party to keep wholly 
 aloof from all proceedings instituted by the territorial 
 legislature. The new governor did his utmost to induce 
 them to take part in the coming election, but as he was 
 powerless to change the apportionment, his appeals were 
 unheeded. The convention was elected by a very small 
 vote, and postponed its action for a time. In the interval 
 came the election of a new territorial legislature. Wal- 
 ker's appeals and assurances to the free-state men 
 began to take effect. Senator Wilson had visited Kansas 
 and counseled with the leaders, and given them the 
 shrewd advice of a practical politician, — to take part in 
 the legislative election, trusting to their overwhelming 
 numbers even under the unfair apportionment ; and to 
 get hold of the working machinery of government, 
 rather than stand too long on theory and punctilio. 
 Most of them finally followed this course, and in Octo- 
 ber, at a peaceful and undisputed election, in which both 
 Vol. I.— 15
 
 226 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 parties participated, the free-state men, by a majority 
 of two to one, carried both houses of the legislature. 
 But the fruits of their victory were snatched at. From 
 the Oxford precinct — a place with eleven houses — a 
 return was sent in with the names of 1624 persons; 
 copied, as it turned out, in alphabetical order from a 
 Cincinnati directory. An equally fraudulent document 
 was sent in from McGee County. The two would have 
 transferred the balance of power in the legislature. 
 Both these returns were rejected by Governor Walker. 
 The authority was used against him of the territorial 
 Chief -justice Cato, — a creature of the Administration, 
 like his predecessor Lecompte, — but the governor dis- 
 owned his jurisdiction in the premises. From this time 
 the Administration threw its whole weight against the 
 governor. 
 
 The convention met at Lecompton and drew up a 
 constitution, in which was one section affirming that the 
 ownership of slaves was a right of property, higher than 
 any constitution, and inviolable ; and forbidding legisla- 
 tion hostile to such ownership. Among the other pro- 
 visions, one forbade the residence of free negroes in the 
 state, and another prohibited any amendment of the 
 constitution before 1864. The convention ordered that 
 a vote of the people should be taken, not on the accept- 
 ance or rejection of the constitution, but as between 
 " constitution with slavery" and ''constitution without 
 slavery." Except this single section, the whole organic 
 law of the new state was assumed as fixed and beyond 
 amendment for six years, by the convention itself — a 
 body whose authority most of the people disowned, and 
 in whose election only a small minority had taken part. 
 The free-state men refused to sanction this proceeding 
 by taking any part in the vote on the slavery clause. 
 They staid away from the polls, so that, practically
 
 THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION. 227 
 
 without opposition, the slavery clause was fixed in the 
 Leeompton eonsi;itution. 
 
 The Administration now bent all its energies to obtain 
 the admission of the state by Congress, under that con- 
 stitution. Already discontent was finding loud voice 
 within the party. Strong appeals were made to the 
 President, by men like Forney, — to whom probably, 
 beyond any one else, he owed the decisive vote of Penn- 
 sylvania, — not to make Leeompton the test of party 
 fidelity. But Buchanan was obstinate, misled by the 
 flatteries of office-holders and office-seekers, and wholly 
 committed to the effort to make Kansas a slave state. 
 In December he forced Walker into resignation, but 
 the governor, in an indignant letter, exposed the Pres- 
 ident's treachery to him, narrated his own policy of 
 reconcilement and justice, and declared that *' insurrec- 
 tion and civil war, extending, he feared, throughout the 
 country, were alone prevented by the com'se pursued by 
 him ; and the whole people, abandoning revolutionary 
 violence, were induced by him to go for the first time 
 into a general and peaceful election." 
 
 It was amid the rising of these angry clouds, toward 
 the end of 1857, that Mr. Bowles took again the laboring 
 oar in, the Repuhlican. Congress was just assembling, 
 with a Democratic majority in both Houses. The situa- 
 tion was perilous. While the struggle was going on in 
 Congress, February 8, 1858, the Repuhlican, never an 
 alarmist, said: "It seems to us that the issue of civil 
 war is involved in the questions which now agitate the 
 country." The course of wrong, it continues, has gone 
 on step by step, till forcible resistance seems near at 
 hand. " All these operations are like the demonstrations 
 of a problem in Euclid. A moral certainty is made of 
 as stern and unrelenting stuff as a mathematical ; and 
 so truly as this Leeompton constitution is attempted to
 
 228 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 be forced on the people of Kansas, and the people of 
 Kansas, driven to the wall, retain their manhood, will 
 there be a civil war, for which alone the Administration 
 will be responsible." 
 
 Either from such an issue, or from the political sub- 
 jugation of Kansas, the only resource lay in a division 
 of the Democratic party. When Congress met, it was 
 known that Douglas was hostile to the Lecompton 
 scheme, and might even break with the Administration 
 upon the question. " Mr. Douglas," said the Repullkan, 
 December 1, 1857, '' better than any other man, now 
 stands in a position to dispose of the Kansas question at 
 once and forever ; while in doing so, he would go far to- 
 ward installing himself in the confidence and respect of 
 the country, without regard to party. He has heretofore 
 turned toward the public his demagogue side ; he has 
 now but to show some of the qualities of the statesman, 
 to be useful alike to the country and himself." 
 
 When a few days later the President in his message 
 declared unreservedly in favor of the Lecompton scheme, 
 the BeimUican said that he had lost the golden chance 
 for leading the party to throw off the yoke of the South- 
 ern extremists, and the opportunity of the future lay 
 again with the Republicans. 
 
 '' But to occupy this position they must open wide their 
 doors, accept new leaders, and cease leveling the Philadelphia 
 platform, revolver-like, at everybody who seeks admission into 
 their ranks. They must make it easy for old opponents to join 
 them. Mr. Buchanan's assumption of the quarrels and rascah- 
 ties of Fernando Wood has already given them New York City. 
 Forney can transfer to them Pennsylvania, Douglas holds out 
 lUinois and Indiana. Blair has Missouri already ; Bell can give 
 them Tennessee, and mayhap Bi-eckinridge will offer Kentucky, 
 and Wise, Virginia, while Kenneth Raynor is eager to transfer 
 North Carolina, and New Orleans's attachment to the Union
 
 THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION. 229 
 
 will sm*ely give them Louisiana. The Administration, in 
 omitting its golden opportunity, has thi'ust another before 
 its opponents. Will they rival its stupidity or profit by its 
 blunder ? " 
 
 Such a programme was very characteristic of Mr. 
 Bowles, — critical of associates, hospitable to opponents, 
 impatient of party lines, and eager for new combinations. 
 But the central figure in the kaleidoscopic picture — 
 Douglas as a Republican leader — was at this time at- 
 tracting many of the wise men of the party. Douglas 
 took issue with the Administration on the Lecompton 
 question, and carried with him enough followers to 
 render the battle in Congress a doubtful one up to the 
 very end. Meantime, very friendly relations were estab- 
 lished, though no open alliance, between him and the 
 Republican leaders at Washington. In truth, Douglas 
 was a coarse-grained, self-seeking man, to whom politics 
 was merely a game of personal advancement. He had 
 for many years been subservient to the Southern interest ; 
 he had proposed the repeal of the Missouri compromise, 
 and had sustained the usurping Kansas legislature, and 
 the whole course of slavery propagandism in the terri- 
 tory, until the refusal to submit the constitution to a 
 vote of the people. For him to assent to this last out- 
 rage would have been a self-confessed abandonment of 
 every vestige of that " popular sovereignty " which had 
 been his whole stock in trade before the Northern 
 people. He saw that the tide was turning at the North, 
 and his place in the Senate depended upon a reelec- 
 tion in the following year. In the winter of 1857-8 he 
 opposed the Administration upon its leading measure, 
 and induced such party chiefs as AVilson, Colfax, and 
 Burliugame, and such editors as Greeley and Bowles, to 
 warmly favor his return to the Senate unopposed by the 
 Republicans.
 
 230 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 The struggle in Congress was long and sharp. Finally 
 the Senate voted to admit Kansas under the Lecompton 
 constitution. Senator Crittenden, of Kentucky, elected 
 as an American, and one of the best representatives of 
 the moderate Southern sentiment, had proposed a bill, 
 submitting the constitution to a direct vote of the 
 people, its acceptance to be followed by immediate ad- 
 mission, or its rejection by the choice of a new constitu- 
 tional convention. This bill, defeated in the Senate, was 
 in substance passed by the House, the Republicans and 
 their friends supporting it. A committee of conference 
 was appointed ; for a while each House insisted on its 
 own measui'e ; finally the committee reported a singular 
 compromise. Mr. English, of Indiana, who had hitherto 
 been a leader among the Douglas Democrats in the House, 
 was the author of this measui'e, which was known as the 
 " English bill " ; and it was accepted by the Administra- 
 tion party, as the best they could get; while enough 
 Anti-Lecompton men supported it to secure its passage 
 through both Houses, — Douglas and a part of his allies 
 uniting with the Republicans in opposing it. Its pur- 
 port was the submission of the entire constitution to a 
 vote of the people; if they accepted it Kansas was to 
 immediately become a state, and to receive an immense 
 land grant from the general government ; while if they 
 rejected it, the territory was not to become a state till 
 it had the full population requisite for a representative 
 in the House, — 93,340, — and no land grant was offered. 
 It is, said the Be2mbUcan (April 22), 
 
 " An attempt to drive the people of the territory into assum- 
 ing for themselves what the Administration has failed to force 
 upon them ; and the hopes of its success with them are based 
 on the supposition that a majority of the voters care more 
 for getting into the Union, and fingering the rich grants of
 
 THE LECOMPTON CONSTITUTION. 231 
 
 land offered as a bribe, than they do for their own consistency, 
 honor, and inherent right to fashion their own institutions." 
 
 The English bill was in appearance a lame and illogical 
 conclusion to a great controversy. But, substantially, it 
 was a half -retreat from the four years' struggle to make 
 Kansas a slave state. The election under the bill a few 
 months later was the end of the contest. The Lecomp- 
 ton constitution was defeated by a heavy majority. The 
 destiny of the state was too obvious to be longer resisted, 
 and Kansas ceased to be a battle-ground. A new consti- 
 tution was framed at Wyandotte, ratified by the people, 
 and the final admission of the state — delayed by a suUen 
 Democratic opposition — was effected when the departure 
 of the seceding Southern members left the Republicans 
 with a majority in the Senate, as well as in the House, 
 in the winter of 1860-'61. The effort to make it a slave 
 state had resulted in making it not only free, but the 
 most tenaciously Republican state in the Union.
 
 CHAPTER XXI. 
 
 DouGXiAS AND Lincoln. 
 
 " T"T was notorious among well-informed politicians," 
 J- said the Eepublican of March 15, 1860, " that for 
 weeks and months " — early in 1858 — " Mr, Douglas 
 was in full consultation with leading Republicans at 
 Washington, openly seeking their influence to get the 
 Illinois Republicans to make no opposition to his re- 
 election, and making plenty of promises for cooperation 
 to depose not only the Administration but the ' power 
 behind it.' It was, ' we could do this, and we would do 
 that.' All the leading Eastern Republicans responded to 
 his ideas ; nearly every Republican senator, and most of 
 the representatives, were desirous that the Republicans 
 should withhold their fight, and let Mr. Douglas come 
 back to the Senate with the Republican mark upon him. 
 He sought this himself in every way consistent with the 
 outside independent position which he had taken, and 
 which was necessary to his purpose of dividing and 
 breaking down the Democratic party. But the Illinois 
 Republicans could not if they would, and perhaps would 
 not if they could." Now that the lives of Douglas and 
 Lincoln are finished, it is easy for us to pronounce 
 wisely on this question. But it was not so clear when 
 the sole way to Republican victory seemed to lie through 
 Democratic division, and Douglas was the leader of a
 
 DOUGLAS AND LINCOLN. 233 
 
 revolt which in its effect had turned the scales in favor 
 of free Kansas. The argument of policy was stated 
 by the Bejniblican, June 19, 1858, in reply to a corre- 
 spondent who pointed out with much force that Douglas 
 was the same man who had given leadership, support, 
 or connivance to every aggression of the slave power 
 up to the preceding winter. Its reply was : " The Re- 
 publicans of 1856, in order to turn out the present 
 slavery administration of 1860, must have help from 
 somewhere — from men who voted for Buchanan or for 
 Fillmore, or from both, and who, if they did not applaud 
 the Nebraska bill and the assault on Sumner, at least 
 acquiesced in them both and were silent." Former oppo- 
 nents, it continued, stand ready to become allies, — such 
 Americans as Crittenden, Bell, Marshall, Fillmore, and 
 the Brookses, — such Democrats as Douglas, Broderick, 
 Stuart, Haskins, and Montgomery. " Shall we step in 
 and ask them what they think of the repeal of the 
 Missouri compromise, the brutality of Brooks, and the 
 capacity of Fremont, before we join hands in a beneficent 
 and patriotic duty of to-day ! " 
 
 The Bepublican had, too, a reason of its own for coun- 
 tenancing Douglas. Its editor hated the rule of party 
 almost as heartily as he hated negro slavery. The paper 
 protested against party tyranny vigorously in behalf of 
 Seward when, in the preceding winter, some attempt was 
 made to discipline him for voting against his associates 
 in favor of an Administration bill for the increase of the 
 army. Now, its hearty sympathies went to the brilliant 
 rebel who had defied the tyranny of the President and 
 the Southern leaders, and was like to pay the penalty in 
 political ruin, unless the Republicans welcomed him to 
 their ranks. Only when Douglas had dexterously united 
 the Democratic party in his support at home, against the 
 spiteful but feeble opposition of the President, did the
 
 234 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 Bepiiblican yield a reluctant approval to his opponents. 
 It recognized then that, " through his own timidity and 
 the folly of the Illinois Republicans," he had become 
 again the most formidable of Democratic chiefs, and 
 his defeat desirable. 
 
 The weak spot in the plea for accepting Douglas as a 
 Republican leader lay in his moral untrustworthiness. 
 Two years later, the Repuhlican judged him with entire 
 correctness when it said, April 14, 1860 : 
 
 " There is one essential deficiency in his political character. 
 He does not recognize the moral element in politics in the 
 slightest degree ; makes no account of it ; never appeals to 
 conscience, and in effect despises and scouts its authority. Yet 
 as a politician he is successful, and no man carries the massed 
 with him so easily. In his own state and at the West every- 
 where his success on the stump is perfect. Yet his arts are 
 those of the demagogue and the sophist, and the fame and 
 iafluence built on such foundations must necessarily be perish- 
 able. Yet, with a courage amounting to audacity, a wdl that 
 marches scornfully over every obstacle, and a magnetic power 
 to inspire and control men, his ambition may reach its goal, 
 in spite of the great moral deficiencies which make him an 
 unsafe leader, and which wiU give him a much lower place in 
 history than he wiQ hold during the period of his vigor and 
 influence. It is precisely this lack of the moral quahty that 
 stands in the way of his aspirations more than anything else. 
 Men do not trust him. Nobody can be sure what he will do 
 to-moiTOW. If placed in the presidential chair, those who elect 
 him will tremble for the result. They can never be sure of him 
 for any given period of time, and this notwithstanding the 
 tenacity, amounting to doggedness, with which he sticks to 
 his own purposes." 
 
 The Illinois Republicans in 1858 already knew their 
 old foe far too well to accept him for theii' leader. They 
 were willing, as Senator Trumbull said, to " take him on 
 probation " ; but they by no means proposed to make
 
 DOUGLAS AND LINCOLN. 235 
 
 him at once the head of their church. So he rallied to 
 him his old party, and was proclaimed its senatorial 
 candidate. Against him the Republicans pitted Abraham 
 Lincoln. They knew Lincoln as '' Honest Abe," a shrewd 
 politician, a thoroughly trustworthy man, and a moder- 
 ate but resolute opponent of slavery. To the country at 
 large he appeared as a backwoods lawyer, who had served 
 one term in Congress a dozen years before, with little 
 distinction. No one yet recognized in him the typical 
 and foremost man of American democracy. 
 
 Mr. Lamon, the fullest historian of Lincoln's ante- 
 presidential life, gives a graphic portraiture of the cir- 
 cumstances under which he grew to manhood. His father 
 was an immigrant from Kentucky to Indiana, an igno- 
 rant, thriftless, coarse man. Left with two motherless 
 children, he returned to his early home, and brought 
 back to his cabin a second wife, in every way his supe- 
 rior, who found that she had married poverty and degra- 
 dation. She improved the one possibility which her lot 
 offered, by becoming a true and tender mother to the 
 ragged and neglected boy and girl. Her love and care 
 exercised a gracious influence over their lives. The boy 
 grew up, working now on a farm, now on a flat-boat, 
 now as clerk in a country store; read voraciously the 
 few books he could get hold of ; studied law-books, lying 
 stretched at full length before the store with his heels 
 raised against a tree ; went as a volunteer in the Black 
 Hawk war ; was sent to the legislature ; served one term 
 in CoDgress as a Whig in 18-47-8, and then gave way to 
 another aspirant of his party ; practiced law, and, in his 
 own words, ** was losing interest in politics when the 
 repeal of the Missouri compromise roused him again." 
 As a young man, in the rough backwoods country, he 
 was known as the most powerful wrestler and fighter of 
 the region, when driven into a fray ; but a peace-lover
 
 236 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 prompt and skillful to allay incipient brawls by his tact 
 and good nature. He was full of good-fellowship, yet a 
 solitary man. His humor was a refuge from underlying 
 sadness. There was in him a deep constitutional mel- 
 ancholy. In his youth the death of the woman to whom 
 he was betrothed depressed him so that for a few weeks 
 he was insane. His ambition met with no great suc- 
 cess. His domestic life was clouded. His nature on one 
 side impelled him to activity in large public affairs. He 
 was a shrewd, long-headed politician, with sagacity to 
 read men, and tact and patience to manage them. On 
 the other side that nature was deeply meditative. He 
 brooded in solitude over the problem of human life. In 
 his youth he had accepted the hard materialistic infi- 
 delity of the West. Its loud-voiced negations did not long 
 satisfy him ; he was weighed upon by the heavy mys- 
 teries of human existence, and found no wings to rise 
 above them. Said his partner, Herndon : " His melan- 
 choly dripped from him as he walked." But if a friend 
 met and heartily saluted him, he would answer with a 
 cordial " Howdy, howdy," and detain him to hear a com- 
 ical story, the fun dancing in his eyes and playing over 
 every feature. 
 
 The popular title of " Honest Abe " hit a central trait 
 in the man. His character and his mind were veracious 
 to the core. This is the quality which gives to his written 
 speeches their power and charm. One feels that the 
 speaker is alwaj^s going as near as he can to the heart of 
 the matter. There are no mellifluous nothings. Every 
 word stands for something. His mind laid hold with 
 firm grasp on every fact it could reach. It combined 
 and interpreted its facts in the daylight of plain com- 
 mon sense. It confined itseK to the solid earth ; its 
 movements were slow, but without pause or retreat. The 
 man was true, with a painful fidelity to the facts of each
 
 DOUGLAS AND LINCOLN. 237 
 
 present situatiou, weigliing, testing, hesitating, while 
 prophets and theorists rushed with fiery energy to their 
 conchisions. But his path of action once chosen, he 
 moved on as inflexibly as gravitation. Personal ambi- 
 tion he had in abundance ; but he held it subject to a 
 profound sense of justice and a sensitive humanity. 
 
 Lincoln's attitude toward slavery was that of the 
 humane and conscientious men throughout the North 
 who were not Abolitionists. He hated it ; he opposed 
 its extension ; but, as existing in the Southern states, it 
 had to him the sanction of an established political order, 
 which could not be defied without inviting anarchy. In 
 1855 he wrote to his friend, J. F. Speed, of Kentucky : 
 
 " I acknowledge your rights and my obligations under the 
 Constitution in regard to your slaves. I confess I hate to see 
 the poor creatvires hunted down, and caught, and carried back 
 to their stripes and unrequited toils ; but I bite my hps and 
 keep quiet. In 1841, you and I had together a tedious low- 
 water trip in a steamboat from Louisville to St. Louis. You 
 may remember, as well as I do, that from Louisville to the 
 mouth of the Ohio there were on board ten or a dozen slaves 
 shackled together with irons. That sight was a continued tor- 
 ment to me ; and I see something hke it every time I touch the 
 Ohio or any other slave border. It is not fair for you to 
 assume that I have no interest in a thing which has, and con- 
 tinuaUy exercises, the power of making me miserable. You 
 ought rather to appreciate how much the great body of the 
 Northern people do crucify their feelings, in order to maintain 
 their loyalty to the Constitution and the Union. I do oppose 
 the extension of slavery, because my judgment and feelings so 
 prompt me ; and I am under no obligations to the contrary." 
 
 A mind which is deeply tenacious of concrete facts and 
 chary of theories and abstractions, when it sometimes 
 rises, perhaps suddenly, to a broad and. commanding view, 
 speaks with a deliberate weight of inmost conviction. It
 
 238 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 is this feeling of solid reality which gives their majesty 
 to Lincoln's Gettysburg address and second inaugural. 
 Those utterances stand for us among the noblest chap- 
 ters of that national history which Carlyle says makes 
 for every people its own Bible. It was with some such 
 illumination that Lincoln spoke in the address with 
 which he began his campaign against Douglas in 1858. 
 
 *' A house divided against itself cannot stand. I believe this 
 government cannot endure permanently half slave and half 
 free. I do not expect the Union to be dissolved, — I do not 
 expect the house to fall ; but I do expect it will cease to be 
 divided. It will become aU one thing or all the other. Either 
 the opponents of slavery will arrest the further spread of it, 
 and place it where the pubhc mind shall rest in the belief that 
 it is in the course of ultimate extinction, or its advocates will 
 push it forward tiU it shall become ahke lawful in. aU the 
 states — old as well as new, North as well as South." 
 
 This declaration was followed by a lucid exposition 
 of that march of aggression by which successively the 
 barrier of the Missouri compromise had been thrown 
 down ; theu the permission to a territorial population to 
 exclude slavery had been refused by Congress ; next a 
 Supreme Court decision given that slavery had an in- 
 alienable title to exist in all the territories ; and a door 
 carefully left open in this same decision for a future 
 ruling that the master might take his slaves into the free 
 states. In the whole speech there was no passion and no 
 exaggeration. He summoned the North to resistance only 
 through the ballot-box. He went no further than oppo- 
 sition to any extension of slavery. The extinction of 
 slavery where it already existed, he anticipated as a 
 probability on broad philosophic grounds, but did not 
 for a moment regard it as the legitimate object of politi- 
 cal action on the part of the North.
 
 DOUGLAS AND LINCOLN. 239 
 
 Lincoln, as Lamon narrates, read this speech in ad- 
 vance to a council of his friends, and they all, with the 
 single exception of Herndon, — an old Abolitionist, — pro- 
 tested against it, as far in advance of the time, of 
 doubtful truth, and full of danger to his prospects. Lin- 
 coln made sober answer that he was con\dnced its opin- 
 ions were true, and needed to be spoken ; if he was to go 
 down because of saying it, then he chose to go down. 
 " This nation cannot live on injustice ! " The speech did 
 injure his standing with the people of Illinois, and tended 
 to his defeat in the immediate contest. It was arranged 
 that the two rivals for the senatorship should address 
 the people at the same place and time, in a series of joint 
 debates. These debates were watched with great interest 
 not only in Illinois but throughout the North. The sub- 
 ject discussed was mainly the question of congressional 
 exclusion of slavery from the territories, as against 
 " popular sovereignty." Each did his best to drive his 
 opponent to disadvantageous positions. Each offered a 
 series of questions to which the other was bound to reply. 
 It was a tug of skilled wrestlers. Douglas's appeal was to 
 the coarsely selfish man, jealous for his own rights and 
 not sensitive to the rights of others. Democracy of the 
 vulgar and self-assertive kind has never found a better 
 mouth-piece. He was loud in proclaiming his own indif- 
 ference to slavery ; he " didn't care whether slavery was 
 voted up or voted down." His plea was, in substance, 
 " You have a right to go into a territory, and there you 
 and your neighbors have the right to settle your own 
 affairs as you please, and neither Congress nor anybody 
 else has a right to interfere." He made great capital out 
 of the prejudice, strong in Illinois, against the negro 
 race ; he represented Lincoln as a negro-lover, an Aboli- 
 tionist, a foe to the South. Against these attacks, and 
 in reply to Douglas's questions, Lincoln took ground —
 
 240 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 wliicli was quite consistent with all Ms utterances and 
 sentiments up to that time — against any equality of the 
 two races. He said, '' I am not, nor ever have been, in 
 favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qual- 
 ifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white 
 people ; and I will say in addition to this that there is a 
 physical difference between the white and the black races 
 which I believe will forever forbid the two races living 
 together on terms of social and political equality. And 
 inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do live 
 together there must be the position of superior and infe- 
 rior, and I, as much as any other man, am in favor of 
 having the superior position assigned to the white man. 
 I say upon this occasion, I do not perceive that, because 
 the white man is to have the superior position, the negro 
 should be denied everything." 
 
 The Republican said of the debates, two years later: 
 " The judgment of all men of mind upon the Illinois 
 canvass is in favor of Lincoln as against Douglas. Caleb 
 Gushing said but recently that these debates showed 
 Lincoln the superior of Douglas ' in every vital element 
 of power ' ; and Mr, Gushing added what we believe is 
 equally true, that ^ the world does not yet know how 
 much of a man Lincoln really is.' " ^' He handled Doug- 
 las," said the Republican, " as he would an eel — by main 
 strength. Sometimes perhaps he hugged him so strongly 
 that he slipped through his fingers." But the eel did 
 not get away on the occasion when it most behooved 
 him to do so. The weakest spot in Douglas's position 
 was the contradiction between the Dred Scott decision — 
 to which he had expressed his adherence — which carried 
 slavery by its own right into every territory, and the 
 idea of '^ popular sovereignty " by which each territorial 
 population was its own master on the subject. About 
 this inconsistency Douglas habitually threw a cloud of
 
 DOUGLAS AND LINCOLN. 241 
 
 sophistication ; his genius lay in covering np the real 
 facts as much as Lincoln's in disclosing them. But 
 among the questions which Lincoln in the coui-se of 
 debate was entitled to propound, he slipped into the 
 middle of a series, of which the other inquiries were 
 harmless conundrums, this query : " Can the people of a 
 United States territory, in any lawful way, against the 
 will of any citizen of the United States, exclude slavery 
 from its limits '? " It was a most legitimate question ; it 
 simply probed home the position of Douglas on the main 
 topic at issue. But it impaled him on a fatal dilemma : 
 if he said Yes, he lost his Southern support; if No, 
 his Northern. Douglas so answered as to wiu in the field 
 where he was then fighting. " It matters not," he said, 
 '' what way the Supreme Court may hereafter decide as 
 to the abstract question whether slavery may or may not 
 go into a territory under the Constitution," — the weight 
 of the already pronounced decision, as most people con- 
 strued it, Douglas always belittled. "It matters not," he 
 said ; " the people have the lawful means to introduce or 
 exclude it, as they please, for the reason that slavery 
 cannot exist a day or an hour anywhere, unless it is sup- 
 ported by local police regulations. Those police regula- 
 tions can only be established by the local legislature ; 
 and if the people are opposed to slavery, they wiU elect 
 representatives to that body who will, by unfriendly 
 legislation, effectually prevent the introduction of it into 
 their midst." The reply might be satisfactory to the 
 audience who heard it, but, as Lincoln had foreseen and 
 predicted to his friends, it put Douglas in a position 
 where the South would never accept him. That phrase, 
 "unfriendly legislation," was fatal to him as a presi- 
 dential candidate in the party controlled by the South. 
 
 At the opening of the canvass, Lincoln was aware of 
 the dubious regard with which the Republican leaders 
 Vol. L— 16
 
 242 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 elsewhere looked at his opposition to Douglas. In his 
 opening speech he said : 
 
 ** They remind us that he is a very great man, and that the 
 largest of us are very small ones. Let this be granted. But 
 ' a hving dog is better than a dead hon.' Judge Douglas, if 
 not a dead hon for this work, is at least a caged and toothless 
 one. How can he oppose the advances of slavery ? He don't 
 care anything about it. His avowed mission is impressing the 
 ' pubhc heart ' to care nothing about it." 
 
 Meantime congressional and state elections were ap- 
 proaching throughout the country. The Dred Scott 
 decision, the Lecompton scheme, the divisions in the 
 Democracy, the weakness of Buchanan, had greatly 
 strengthened the hands of the Republicans. In most of 
 the doubtful states they were on more friendly terms with 
 the anti-Lecompton Democrats than in Illinois, though 
 not enough so to satisfy the Beptiblican, which was 
 eager for a more comprehensive policy. It went so far 
 as to actively favor, for a time, the adoption of a bona 
 fide ^' Popular Sovereignty " doctrine in place of the 
 party's original dogma of congressional exclusion. It 
 urged that Kansas had shown how certainly the Northern 
 immigration would predominate in the new territories ; 
 that practical results were more important than a theo- 
 retical consistency, and that it was equally safe and politic 
 to meet half-way the anti-Lecompton Democrats. But 
 as to these, most of the Republicans evidently opined 
 that it was not necessary for the mountain to go half-way 
 to meet Mahomet. The popular wind was blowing too fair 
 and too strong for them to care to go upon the other tack. 
 Moreover, the theory that Congress should leave the ter- 
 ritorial populations to settle the slavery questions for 
 themselves never found favor among either the most 
 strenuous foes or friends of slavery. Both of these were
 
 DOUGLAS AND LINCOLN. 243 
 
 eager to grasp and wield the full power of the central 
 government on the question they had most at heart. In 
 the Republican ranks, voices were becoming louder and 
 clearer as to the magnitude and intensity of the whole 
 struggle. Seward in New York made a declaration which 
 was equivalent to Lincoln's " House divided against 
 itself." Said he : 
 
 " The United States must, and will, sooner or later, become 
 either entirely a slave-holding nation or entirely a free-labor 
 nation. Either the cotton and rice fields of South Carolina 
 and the sugar plantations of Louisiana will ultimately be tilled 
 by free labor, and Charleston and New Orleans become marts 
 for legitimate merchandise alone, or else the rye-fields and 
 wheat-fields of Massachusetts and New York must again be 
 surrendered by their farmers to slave culture and to the pro- 
 duction of slaves, and Boston and New York become once more 
 markets for trade in the bodies and souls of men." 
 
 He declared that one of these alternatives must be the 
 issue of the '^ irrepressible conflict " between slavery and 
 freedom. The RejmbUcan (November 13, 1858) said that 
 these utterances had been widely misinterpreted, as if 
 they conveyed a menace of direct political action against 
 slavery in the slave states ; although in this very speech 
 Mr. Seward disclaimed any purpose or expectation of 
 giving universal freedom "otherwise than through the 
 action of the several states cooperating with the federal 
 government, and all acting in conformity with their re- 
 spective constitutions." Nevertheless, the BepHlUcan 
 held his bold prediction to be incautious, improbable of 
 fulfillment, and likely to injure Mr. Seward and the party. 
 
 Massachusetts had in 1857 chosen a Republican state 
 government. Banks, fresh from his brilliant career as 
 Speaker of the House, had been nominated with enthu- 
 siasm by the Republicans and one wing of the Ameri- 
 cans, and elected over Gardner, whom the rest of the
 
 244 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 Americans supported. His administration was able and 
 successful, and an easy victory fell to him and the party 
 in 1858. He could scarcely be claimed by the Conserva- 
 tive, certainly not by the Radical, wing of the party. 
 The Eepuhlican was his cordial supporter. In this year 
 the intensifying anti-slavery sentiment of the party — 
 though it still in its resolutions stood steadily on con- 
 stitutional ground — found voice through the president 
 of the state convention, John A. Andrew. '^ I believe," 
 said he, '' in the Republican party, because I believe that 
 slavery, the servitude of humanity, has no business to 
 exist anywhere ; because it has no business to exist and 
 no right to be supported where the sun shines or the 
 grass grows or water runs." 
 
 The Repuhlican foretold ill to the party in the doubt- 
 ful states for want of a broader policy. On the 12th of 
 October — election day in Pennsylvania, Ohio, and In- 
 diana — it said: ^^ The undertow of politics is running 
 against the Republicans." But the next day's news was 
 of victory along the whole line. The voice of the great 
 central states was decisive. " Mr. Buchanan," said the 
 Bepuhlican, October 16, '^ has been in office a little less 
 than two years, and his Administration and himself are 
 practically overthrown. The popular voice is declared 
 against him and his policy, and he falls no more to rise. 
 The South, which has flattered and fooled him, will for- 
 sake him in the end, for his power is gone. Sic semper 
 tyrannis ! . . . It is now plainly seen that it is in the 
 power of those who are opposed to slavery, and in favor 
 of free labor, to elect the next President of the United 
 States." 
 
 The November elections confirmed the October verdict. 
 The Republicans had obtained a majority in the House 
 of Representatives. The Senate was still Democratic. 
 But Kansas was free beyond reversal, and the Repub-
 
 DOUGLAS AND LINCOLN. 245 
 
 liean party was on the high road to possession of the 
 government. In Illinois, the Republicans had a small 
 majority of the entire vote, but by the apportionment of 
 districts it fell out that a Democratic legislature was 
 chosen, and Douglas was reelected. He returned to 
 Washington, to be deposed from the chairmanship of 
 the Committee on Territories by the Southern and Ad- 
 ministration influence, but still the foremost man of his 
 party in the estimation of the people. Lincoln returned 
 to private life and to comparative obscurity.
 
 CHAPTER XXII. 
 John Brown. 
 
 IN reality, as we now see, after the elections of 1858 
 tlie slave power began to feel itself on the defensive. 
 Yet it still grasped at fresh conquests. A demand was 
 urged by some of the leaders that Congress should enact a 
 code for the regulation and protection of slavery through- 
 out the territories ; it being clear that whatever abstract 
 right it possessed there under the Dred Scott decision 
 would avail little without active Federal protection. The 
 Administration conducted some ineffectual negotiations 
 with Mexico for the purchase of more territory. There 
 was a little talk about bujdng Cuba. An American ad- 
 venturer, William Walker, made repeated attempts at 
 conquests in Nicaragua, without effective hindrance from 
 the Administration, and with considerable sympathy from 
 the South. There was a greatly increased activity in the 
 importation of African slaves to Cuba, and numerous 
 vessels were sent out from New York for the traffic. 
 Our government had been notably remiss in fulfilling its 
 treaty stipulations with England for cooperation in the 
 suppression of the slave trade; but when some of the 
 English cruisers in the West Indies went a step be- 
 yond discretion, in examining suspected vessels under 
 the American flag, our government bristled with "v^Tath, 
 war vessels were sent, and congressmen of both parties 
 
 246
 
 JOHN BROWN. 247 
 
 threatened loudly. England conceded the rights of the 
 flag ; and the exemption from search, for which we had 
 forty years before fought a war, that we might protect 
 our sailors from impressment, without gaining a word 
 of explicit concession, was now formally recognized in 
 order to guard our sensitive honor against the inspection 
 of ships which from their appearance might he slavers. 
 But the Administration was roused to bestir itself against 
 the trade, and a number of captures were made by our 
 cruisers. The crew of one slaver, the Eclio, captured 
 with her freight of misery on board, were, against the 
 clearest evidence, acquitted by a Charleston jury. One 
 or two cargoes of Africans were landed at the South, 
 and there was some agitation by Southern newspapers 
 and politicians in favor of legalizing the traffic. 
 
 But none of these projects, for a congressional slave 
 code, for the acquisition of slave territory, or for the 
 re-opening of the African slave trade, had any prospect 
 of success. The power of successful aggression had 
 passed away from the slave-holding interest. The lead- 
 ers of that interest saw in the steady march of the Repub- 
 lican party to power the approaching end of their own 
 long control of the government. Meantime fresh events 
 were teaching to both sections the irreconcilable hostility 
 of their sentiments. 
 
 On the 16th of October, 1859, a company of nineteen 
 men, led by John Brown, entered the little town of 
 Harper's Ferry in Virginia, seized the United States 
 Armory, killed, wounded, or captured several of those 
 who resisted them, and maintained their position for 
 thirty hours, when they were overcome by a company 
 of United States marines. Eight of them, including two 
 sons of Brown, were killed in the fighting ; five escaped ; 
 and six, with Brown among them, were captured. The 
 first news of the event — in a time of absolute ci\dl peace
 
 248 THE LIFE A^^D TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWT,ES. 
 
 and comiDarative political qiiiet — amazed the whole 
 country. Then, as its significance, as an attempt to free 
 slaves by force and on the widest scale, was perceived, 
 the South was filled with alarm and anger. The chronic 
 latent dread of every Southern household was that of 
 a negro insurrection. Brown was at once believed to 
 be the product and representative, if not the direct 
 agent, of the Republican party. Behind his single form 
 the imagination of the South saw looming the whole 
 power of the North. It read in the Harper's Ferry affair 
 the menace of invasion, united with the horrors of ser- 
 vile insurrection. The Southern people did not credit 
 the loyalty of the Republicans to the Constitution. That 
 strong anti-slavery sentiment should co-exist with scru- 
 pulous respect for the legal rights of slavery was beyond 
 their belief, and perhaps beyond their comprehension. 
 Their own friends at the North, of the Democratic and 
 " Union " parties, habitually encouraged this distrust by 
 their charges against the Republicans. These political 
 allies of the South now made haste to fix the respon- 
 sibility for John Brown on the Republican party. What 
 they said insincerely for political effect, the South be- 
 lieved with passion and with fear. 
 
 The majority of Northern people could ill comprehend 
 the alarm of the South. They did not appreciate how 
 slavery was interlinked with every usage and sentiment 
 of Southern life ; how much of kindliness and mutual 
 attachment softened its rigors and quieted the mas- 
 ter's conscience ; nor, on the other hand, how the 
 dangers attendant on it, both real and imaginary, en- 
 vironed every plantation and every fireside. The alarm 
 which Brown's raid inspired was to most Northerners 
 inscrutable and almost despicable. The Republicans, 
 too, were so far from any responsibility for Brown, 
 or any disposition to favor projects like his, that they
 
 JOHN BKOWN. 249 
 
 scarcely felt solicitude even to defend themselves against 
 the imputation. Their attention, and that of the whole 
 country, was soon closely fastened on John Brown 
 himself. 
 
 Brown was a man of conscience, courage, and sim- 
 plicity. Living amid a complex civilization, he was 
 governed by ideas few and simple as those of an ancient 
 Hebrew. He was a devout Presbyterian, and his library 
 was the Bible. He had gone with his sons to Kansas, 
 where he became a leader in the border warfare. Most 
 of the free-state settlers had the aversion to violence 
 which characterized the people of the Northern states, 
 they stood on the defensive, and fought only when 
 obliged to. Brown was of a different make ; peaceful 
 and inoffensive when not assailed, yet in a worthy cause 
 of quarrel he was as ready to take up arms as the ordinary 
 citizen is to take his case to the courts. He was prompt 
 not only to repel the invaders but to retaliate on them. 
 He accepted the situation as one of open warfare. Among 
 other reprisals he crossed the Missouri line, and set free 
 a few slaves ; and this seems to have suggested to him 
 the demonstration at Harper's Ferry. He fell into 
 disfavor with his party ; his way of settling the issue 
 was by arms, theirs was by first exhausting all civil 
 remedies. Lea\'ing Kansas, bereft of a son in the 
 conflict, he meditated an attack on the whole institution 
 of slavery. The moral question was entirely simple to a 
 mind like his : Slavery was wrong, — then make war on 
 it. His j)lan was to seize the arms at Harper's Ferry and 
 establish in the mountains of western Virginia a forti- 
 fied camp of refuge, to which the slaves should be invited 
 to flee. His ultimate expectation seems to have been to 
 so unsettle and disturb slave property that the institu- 
 tion would not be worth maintaining and would collapse. 
 It was a scheme that miscalculated almost every element
 
 250 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 in the situation, — the temper of the slaves, the strength 
 of the government, the disposition of the Southern and 
 Northern peoples. The attempt broke down at the very- 
 outset : if it had gained a brief success, it would have 
 been put down by the whole power of the nation. The 
 Northern people, two years later, showed themselves ready 
 to fight in defense of the Union, but scarcely a handful 
 of them would have opposed the Federal government in 
 putting down a slave insurrection, had Brown's attempt 
 gained headway. That attempt in its failure contributed 
 to great results ; but there is no reason to suppose Brown 
 foresaw those results. There was no large forethought 
 in his plan; — it was inspired by a generous heart, a 
 brave will, and an erratic mind. He had in his confidence 
 only a few Massachusetts men, who were impatient of 
 debate and delay and longed to see a blow struck — Dr. 
 Samuel G. Howe, George L. Stearns, T. W. Higginson, 
 and F. B. Sanborn. They were not Republicans, nor in 
 any sense representative either of the Republican party, 
 the Abolitionists, or the Northern people. Several years 
 later, Mr. Sanborn was a writer for the Repuhlican; at 
 this time he had no connection with it. 
 
 It was Brown's failure which immortalized him. As a 
 helpless prisoner the grand traits in his character shone 
 clearly. In counsel short-sighted, in action bafiled, he 
 suffered with heroism and faith. During his imprison- 
 ment the simple courage which marked every deed and 
 word impressed the imagination and won the heart of 
 all mankind, except that section to which his act was 
 a menace. He was a fanatic, as all men recognized ; 
 but to the South the inspiration of his fanaticism 
 appeared to be hostility to their rights of property and 
 their social order, while the North recognized that, in 
 however crude a way, he was aiming at obedience to the 
 Golden Rule. The North, disowning his act, yet hon-
 
 JOHN BKOWN. 251 
 
 ored him as a hero and mourned his death as that of a 
 martyr. The South saw the sympathy, and disbelieved 
 the disavowal. The hearts of the two sections were so 
 far apart that the unclasping of hands was sure to follow. 
 The impression which John Brown made at this time 
 upon the Northern people at large is fairly illustrated by 
 the comments of the Bepuhlican — wholly dissociated as 
 that paper was from the extreme anti-slavery men. On 
 the same day when it reported the conversation of the 
 wounded old hero with the political leaders who gathered 
 about him — in which his nature towered above self- 
 seeking and worldly men like ''the conscience of a saint 
 among his earthly members" — it said of him, after 
 referring to personal knowledge of him through his 
 residence at one time in Springfield : 
 
 *' He is so constituted that when he gets possessed of an idea 
 he carries it out with unflinching fidehty to all its logical con- 
 sequences, as they seem to him, hesitating at no absurdity and 
 deterred by no unpleasant consequences to himself personally. 
 He is a Presbyterian in his faith, and feels that it is for this 
 very purpose that God has reared him up. This is evident in 
 the answers given to his catechism, as he lay chained and 
 bloody, with fierce eyes against him and hearts thirsting for 
 his blood. His perfect coolness and self-possession, his evident 
 truthfulness and transparent sincerity, and the utter absence 
 of fear in his manner, commanded the respect of aU about him. 
 The universal feeling is that John Brown is a hero, — a mis- 
 guided and insane man, but nevertheless inspired with a genu- 
 ine heroism. He has a large infusion of the stern old Puritan 
 element in him." 
 
 The paper protested, October 24, against the haste and 
 unfairness of his trial. 
 
 " The whole manner in which the trial is conducted shows 
 that the Virginians have not recovered from their original fright. 
 They scent a rescue in the air, surround their poor wounded
 
 252 THE LIFE AKD TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 and worn prisoners with bayonets, and promise to bring them 
 to the gallows within thirty days. Let them go ahead in their 
 crazy cowardice, and see if their ' ain roof-trees ' are any firmer 
 for it." 
 
 Of his speech, on receiving his sentence, it said, Novem- 
 ber 4: 
 
 " In calm dignity, in the conscious rectitude of good inten- 
 tions, in an honest and hearty faith in Christianity, it has in it 
 heroic elements that elevate it toward the sublime. ... If 
 he had been a weak man or a wicked man, a felon in the com- 
 mon acceptation of that word, when the sentence was pro- 
 nounced upon him there would have been a general and 
 tumultuous demonstration of satisfaction in the Charlestown 
 court-room. Instead of that, the impressive silence was broken 
 only by the clapping of a single pair of hands, and the people 
 were shocked and mortified that even one man should have 
 been found in Virginia who appreciated so poorly the character 
 of the prisoner and the nature of his condemnation. This scene 
 shows the wonderful impression made by Brown upon those 
 about him. It is this great sincerity and heroic self-sacrifice 
 to what he believed to be right that gave him such influence 
 over the men who enhsted in his scheme, and that has so im- 
 pressed the Virginians with respect, from Governor Wise down, 
 and that will make it a difficult thing to hang him." 
 
 And again, November 12 : 
 
 " We can conceive of no event that could so deepen the 
 moral hostihty of the people of the free states to slavery as 
 this execution. This is not because the acts of Brown are gen- 
 erally approved, for they are not. It is because the nature and 
 spirit of the man are seen to be great and noble, and every- 
 body feels that he acted from feelings that do honor to human 
 nature, and that are to be condemned only because they were 
 not directed by wisdom and soundness of mind. John Brown 
 is neither a traitor nor a murderer in intention. His death will 
 be a result of liis own folly, to be sure, but that wiU not pre-
 
 JOHN BEO^V^NT. 253 
 
 vent his being considered a martyr to his hatred of oppression, 
 and all who sjTnpathize with him in. that sentiment will find 
 their hatred grow stronger and deeper as they contemplate his 
 death. Nobody can respect an institution to the safety of which 
 the death of the too ardent lover of Uberty is essential. If 
 Virginia were wise she would see this and be magnanimous ; 
 but she is neither wise nor magnanimous in anji;hing that 
 concerns her property in human brains and bones, and so we 
 suppose the appointed hanging will occur." 
 
 Defiant responses came from the Southern press. Said 
 the Richmond Whig, November 16 : 
 
 "Virginia and the South are ready to face all the conse- 
 quences of the execution of old Brown and his associates. 
 Though it convert the whole Northern people without excep- 
 tion into furious, armed, abohtion invaders, yet old Brown will 
 be hung ! That is the stern and irreversible decree, not only 
 of the authorities of Virginia, but of the people of Virginia 
 without a dissenting voice. And therefoi'e Virginia and the 
 people of Virginia will treat with the contempt they deserve all 
 the craven appeals of Northern men in behalf of old Brown's 
 pardon. The miserable old traitor and murderer belongs to the 
 gallows, and the gallows will have its own, in spite of all the 
 threatenings and maledictions of the North and the world 
 combined." 
 
 Upon the morning of his execution, December 2, the 
 RepnhJican said : " The calmest man in aU Virginia 
 to-day will be he who knows that he will be in another 
 world before the sun has reached its meridian." And so 
 it was. The old hero walked serenely out of his prison ; 
 said, when asked if he suffered from fear, that he had 
 always had a constitutional insensibility to physical 
 dread, and had suffered far more from bashfulness than 
 he ever did from fear ; and, with demeanor as simple and 
 unconscious as a man going to his night's rest, ascended
 
 254 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 the gallows and met his death. His fellow-prisoners 
 were executed a few days later. 
 
 On the day on which John Brown was hanged, the 
 church bells were tolled in Springfield, as in many 
 another Northern town. Said the Republican, next 
 morning : 
 
 "John Brown still lives. The great state of Virginia has 
 hung his venerable body upon the ignominious gallows, and 
 released John Brown himself to join the ' noble army of mar- 
 tyrs.' There need be no tears for him. Few men die so happUy, 
 so satisfied with time, place, and circumstance, as did he. . . 
 A Christian man hung by Christians for acting upon his con- 
 victions of duty, — a brave man hung for a chivahous and 
 self-sacrificing deed of humanity — a philanthropist hung for 
 seeking the hberty of oppressed men. No outcry about violated 
 law can cover up the essential enormity of a deed hke this." 
 
 "When the Northern voice thus applauded John Brown, 
 the South beheved that the Northern heart fully approved 
 the act. It discredited all disclaimers of such approval 
 as insincere or haK-hearted. If we can imagine a per- 
 manent alienation and hostility between the poorer and 
 the richer classes of New England; the sympathy of the 
 Western people given to the New England operatives, 
 and their employers denounced as criminals, and a peace- 
 ful town like Springfield invaded by a band of armed 
 men from the West, its citizens shot down, and its opera- 
 tives called on to rise in arms; — if we can imagine the 
 leader of the invaders treated by the Western people as a 
 hero, and his execution as a judicial murder, though with 
 disclaimers of any intention to follow his example, — we 
 may then appreciate how the South was affected by the 
 act of John Brown and by the spirit in which the North 
 regarded it. 
 
 And in truth, John Brown's death went far to reveal 
 to the North itself how irreconcilable was its hostility
 
 JOHN BEOWN. 255 
 
 to slavery. Its loftiest and serenest thinker, Emerson, 
 said: 
 
 " Our blind statesmen go up and down, with committees of 
 vigilance and safety, hunting for the origin of this new heresy. 
 They will need a veiy vigilant committee indeed to find its 
 birth-place, and a very strong force to root it out. For the 
 arch- Abolitionist, older than Brown, and older than the Shen- 
 andoah Mountains, is Love, whose other name is Justice, which 
 was before Alfred, before Lycurgus, before slavery, and wiU 
 be after it."
 
 CHAPTER XXIII. 
 
 The Election of Lestcoln. 
 
 THE session of the new Congress which followed close 
 on the John Brown raid was full of wordy storms. 
 The Southern members interpreted Republicanism in 
 the light of that event. Their leading men declared 
 that sooner than submit to the rule of the Republican 
 party, their section would leave the Union. No great 
 questions of practical legislation were under debate. In 
 the House the chief text of discussion was the election 
 of a Speaker, and a resolution condemning the approvers 
 and indorsers of a noted book. Helper's "Impending 
 Crisis," a vigorous exposition of the folly of the slave 
 system, which had been used as an anti-slavery campaign 
 document in the border states. The resolution was 
 especially aimed at John Sherman, the Republican can- 
 didate for the speakership, who had given to the book a 
 qualified approval. In the Senate, the main discussion 
 was upon resolutions introduced by Jefferson Davis, and 
 embodying the Southern ultimatum ; — the rebuke of all 
 anti-slavery agitators, the enforcement of the fugitive 
 slave law and repeal of the personal liberty laws, and 
 the recognition of property in slaves as an indefeasible 
 right of territorial settlers, entitled to congr ssional pro- 
 tection. The Senate finally adopted these resolutions, 
 nearly by a party vote. Only six Republicans opposed 
 
 256
 
 THE ELECTION OF LINCOLN. 257 
 
 the resolution as to fugitive slaves. Douglas stood upon 
 his Popular Sovereignty ground, but unsupported except 
 by Senator Pugh of Ohio. He professed entire defer- 
 ence to the Supreme Court, but could find nothing con- 
 clusive in the Dred Scott decision, and declared that 
 whenever a territorial legislature should prohibit slavery, 
 and the prohibition be brought before the Court, the 
 decision then pronounced as to its constitutionality should 
 be final. He also introduced a bill to prevent invasions 
 of one state from another; and on the whole steered 
 the bark of his personal fortunes with wonderful skill 
 amid the storms born of genuine convictions and passion- 
 ate sentiments. In the House, meantime, the Repubhcans 
 had left the talking mostly to their opponents, and had 
 shown the discipline and tactics of a powerful young 
 party, educated in opposition and confident in the near 
 prospect of full victory. They at last exchanged Sher- 
 man for a candidate regarded as more conservative, 
 William Pennington of New Jersey, and at once gained 
 the necessary votes to elect him Speaker. The salient 
 feature of the session in both houses was the emphatic 
 declaration of Southern leaders that their constituents 
 would never submit to the government of the country by 
 the Republican party. They gave the loudest warning of 
 impending secession and disunion, should Seward, or 
 any man of like principles, be elected president. Most of 
 the Republicans regarded this talk as mere bluster. 
 Almost the only men at the North who treated it seriously 
 were those who were in close political afiiliation with the 
 South. The New York Herald was fanning the flame of 
 excitement. A Washington correspondent of the Bepub- 
 lican — Mr. Bowles apparently — wrote, December 9 : 
 
 ''It is amusing' to see the greed with which the Herald is 
 snatched up and devoured on its earUest anival here in the 
 evening; and, what is worse, to see the simphcity of these 
 Vol. I.— 17
 
 258 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 Southern fellows who seem to pin their whole faith upon it. 
 Where Northern men look at it only for amusement, as they 
 would look at Punch or Frank Leslie, Southern men swallow it 
 gravely with a sigh and a knowing shake of the head." 
 
 The Eepublican declares, December 13, that the " Union 
 meetings " held in the great Northern cities are worse 
 than useless, because they are managed by an insignifi- 
 cant clique of men, whose aim — with a few patriotic 
 exceptions such as Everett — is to save trade and make 
 Democratic votes ; and they mislead the South by repre- 
 senting that their little coteries have a monopoly of love 
 of the Union in their section. At the North, said the 
 paper, December 14, there are but two disunion papers, 
 the Liberator in Boston and the Standard in New 
 York, — and they advise a dissolution by the harmless 
 means of staying away from the ballot-box. No poli- 
 tician, no Democratic or Republican paper, no caucus 
 or convention, in the North raises a voice for disunion, 
 while at the South disunion is rampant everywhere, 
 and unrebuked. 
 
 The South was in deadly earnest, and gave ample 
 proof of it. The proscription of anti-slavery men went 
 on with such vigor as never before. From Berea, in 
 Kentucky, a whole company of anti-slavery men were 
 forcibly driven away. Cases of expulsion and violence 
 all over the South were constantly reported during the 
 winter. The exclusion of anti-slavery documents from 
 the mails was enforced with new zeal, and with the 
 assent of the Post Office Department at Washington. 
 In many of the states, postmasters refused to deliver to 
 subscribers papers like the Tribune and the Republican. 
 John Brown had sent home to the '^ business and bosoms " 
 of millions, as a keen personal apprehension, ideas which 
 had before been hardly more than the politicians' stock 
 in trade.
 
 THE ELECTION OF LINCOLN. 259 
 
 The South wrongly believed that the North meant 
 aggression, and stood ready to grasp at secession as a 
 remedy. The North wrongly believed that the Southern 
 excitement was a transient fever fit, fostered as a political 
 maneuver. The few Cassandras of the time were dis- 
 credited ; their sentiments were so alien to the Northern 
 heart, that their predictions fell idly on Northern ears. 
 In Faneuil Hall, in December, Caleb Gushing declared of 
 the Republican party : 
 
 "A band of dmnken miitiiieers have seized hold of the 
 opinion of this commonwealth — the avowed and proclaimed 
 enemies of the Constitution of the United States. . . . And 
 so the good ship of state drifts, — drifts, with the storm still 
 howhng around her, — drifts into the gulf of perdition, with the 
 black flag of the pirate hoisted at the mizzen, — aye, and the 
 piratical death's head at the fore, — black, black, black, from 
 deck to keelson, — I say the good ship of state drags on to 
 perdition." 
 
 At such talk, as at the threats of disunion by the Orrs 
 and Wises and Davises and Toombses of the South, 
 most Northern people only laughed. The presidential 
 campaign, the decisive game in the long controversy, 
 went on at the North like the campaigns before it; — 
 with the maneuvers and intrigues of aspirants and their 
 friends ; the wonted play of ambition and oflSce-seeldng ; 
 while the people continued their farming and trading, 
 discussed good-naturedly the parties and their candidates, 
 and cast their votes with their wonted confidence in the 
 finality of a popular decision. 
 
 The Democratic Convention met at Charleston in the 
 last days of April. Douglas, ostracized by the Adminis- 
 tration, and almost alone in the Senate, was very strong 
 with the people. He had for them the attraction which 
 a virile, audacious man — a dominant personality, a nat-
 
 260 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 ural leader — always exercises upon the crowd, whatever 
 may be the ideas which he represents. He had behind 
 him that great element of the Northern democracy, which, 
 like the Republicans, was provoked to resistance of the 
 South's dictatorship, but, unlike the Republicans, cared 
 very little about slaverj^ At the same time he had 
 trimmed his sails so shrewdly to conciliate the South, 
 that it was by no means without hope of using him 
 eventually as a subservient ally. But it insisted that 
 the convention must first of all pronounce the pro-slav- 
 ery shibboleth. There was a hot fight upon two sets 
 of resolutions. The friends of Douglas favored a re- 
 affirmation of the Cincinnati platform of 1856, with the 
 addition only of a clause declaring that doubtful points 
 as to constitutional interpretation were to be decided by 
 the Supreme Court. But the thorough- going Southern- 
 ers insisted on an explicit declaration that slavery could 
 in no way be excluded from the territories. For the 
 Douglas men to accept this would have been humiliation 
 for them and sure defeat for the party. Neither he nor 
 any other candidate could carry the doubtful Northern 
 states on such a platform. On the other hand, the def- 
 erence to the Supreme Court which his friends offered to 
 pledge left the old convenient ambiguity on which to 
 win votes, with an open door for all the South wanted, 
 through a Democratic Administration and Court. If 
 the question were merely one of dexterous strategy for 
 winning the presidential election, the advantage lay all 
 on the side of the Douglas resolutions. But the South 
 was in dead earnest for something more than the presi- 
 dency, — for an absolute, unequivocal guaranty that slave 
 property should be as fully recognized and protected as 
 any other property. The Douglas resolutions were car- 
 ried, and thereupon the members from the Gulf states 
 left the house, and organized a separate convention.
 
 THE ELECTION OF LINCOLN. 261 
 
 Even then Douglas was not at once nominated ; the 
 Administration had still many friends left in the con- 
 vention, including its president, Caleb Gushing ; and it 
 was decided that the old rule making a two-thirds vote 
 necessary for nomination should be construed as includ- 
 ing in the canvass of membership the places of the 
 seceders, — and Douglas could not obtain a two-thirds vote 
 in this case. Finally the convention adjourned for sev- 
 eral weeks, to meet in Baltimore. 
 
 When it re-assembled there at the end of June, there 
 was another struggle. Douglas delegations, which had 
 been elected from some states to fill the places of the 
 seceders, were admitted against a protest of a minority 
 of the convention. Thereupon this minority, including 
 Gushing, General Butler, and a majority of the Massa- 
 chusetts delegates, added themselves to the orig-inal 
 seceders. Those who remained then nominated Douglas. 
 The second place on the ticket was given to Herschel Y. 
 Johnson, of Georgia. 
 
 The rival convention also adjourned, to meet in 
 Baltimore, at the same time with the other — the two 
 bodies being nearly equal in numbers. It re-afBrmed the 
 Gincinnati platform, but dispelled its ambiguity by added 
 resolutions, declaring that so long as the territorial gov- 
 ernment exists — being in its nature temporary and pro- 
 visional — all citizens of the United States have an equal 
 right to settle, without the impairing of any of their 
 rights of person or property, either by congressional or 
 territorial legislation; and that Gougress is bound to 
 protect those rights — including the slave-owner's — until, 
 upon organization as a state, the people decide the ques- 
 tion of slavery for themselves. The convention nomi- 
 nated John G. Breckinridge, of Kentucky, for the 
 presidency, and Joseph Lane, of Oregon, for the vice- 
 presidency.
 
 262 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 The Republican, June 25, said : 
 
 '' We rejoice tliat there has been at last a determined and 
 successfTil North in a Democratic National Convention ; and we 
 honor Stephen A. Douglas, that he has had the firmness and 
 the will to lead it. We rejoice, not chiefly because this fact 
 dissevers and destroys the Democratic party, and renders a 
 Repubhcan triumph easy and welcome to the country ; but be- 
 cause, party aside, it is an important element in the pohtical 
 revolution now rapidly coming to a head, and in the pacifica- 
 tion of the sectional strife which has raged so bitterly for the 
 past twelve years. . . . The fight and the victory of the 
 Northern Democracy are an anti-slaveiy fight and an anti- 
 slavery victorj'. . . . The way is now easy to the completion 
 of the revolution by the entrance of the Repubhcan party into 
 the possession of the government, with the acquiescence of the 
 great mass of the people of the nation, and with the disposition 
 on all sides to give it a fair practical trial." 
 
 Between the Charleston and Baltimore conventions, 
 the Republicans had met at Chicago. George Ashmun, 
 of Springfield, was made president of the convention. It 
 adopted a long series of resolutions, which condemned 
 disunion and inter-state invasion ; were silent as to the 
 fugitive slave and personal liberty laws; and on the 
 territorial question took direct issue with the Southern 
 position, by denying the right either of Congi-ess or a 
 territorial legislature to legalize slavery in a territory. 
 The great interest of the gathering centered in the 
 struggle for the nomination, a struggle principally 
 between the friends and foes of Mr. Seward. He was 
 unquestionably the foremost man of his party. All 
 that could prevent the nomination was the doubt 
 whether he could be elected. Thurlow Weed led the 
 party of Seward, Evarts was its foremost spokesman 
 on the floor, and Greeley was active among his oppo- 
 nents. Mr. Bowles, who reported the convention for
 
 THE ELECTION OF LINCOLN. 263 
 
 his paper, was an admii-er of Seward and of Weed. 
 But he thought that the consideration of expediency- 
 should under the circumstances be decisive, and that to 
 nominate Seward was to seriously imperil the victory of 
 the party. The Bejmblican^s favorite candidate had been 
 Governor Banks, but he found no support in the con- 
 vention. Seward's leading rivals had been supposed to 
 be Senator Chase, and Edward Bates of Missoui'i — the 
 latter supported by the Tribune. Lincoln became promi- 
 nent only at the last. He had an enthusiastic support 
 from the West. Simon Cameron was a nominal candi- 
 date, and controlled the Pennsylvania delegation. Lamon 
 circumstantially narrates that Lincoln's friends, without 
 his knowledge, made a bargain with Cameron's repre- 
 sentatives for the votes of the delegation, to be repaid 
 by a place for Cameron in Lincoln's cabinet ; and that a 
 similai* compact was made in behalf of Caleb B. Smith, 
 of Indiana, — both agreements being reluctantly kept by 
 Lincoln when he was told of them. The argument that 
 he could carry the doubtful states was effectively used 
 with other delegations. The great crowd of spectators 
 were loud for him. On the fii'st ballot, Seward was far 
 ahead ; on the second, Pennsylvania changed from Cam- 
 eron to Lincoln, and he came up abreast of Seward; on 
 the third, four votes from Ohio turned the scale, and, 
 with universal acquiescence, Lincoln was nominated. 
 Experience in administration he had none, and in legis- 
 lation very little. For the problems which a Republican 
 president would encounter, his capacity was almost un- 
 known. He was recognized as an able debater, a man 
 thoroughly honest, by origin and associations identified 
 with the common people, and very popular in his own 
 state. His nomination over Seward was supposed to be 
 the preference of unobjectionable mediocrity to greatness 
 which had made dangerous enemies. For the vice-presi-
 
 264 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 dency, Hannibal Hamlin, of Maine, was nominated. That 
 the two candidates on the ticket were both from the 
 North — in 1860 as in 1856 — was contrary to the general 
 usage of parties, and was an illustration of the "sec- 
 tionalism " urged against the Republicans. If they had 
 nominated a vice-president from the South, he would have 
 been fortunate if he met with nothing worse than exile 
 from his home. 
 
 There was a fourth ticket in the field. John Bell, of 
 Tennessee, and Edward Everett were nominated by a 
 ''Constitutional Union" convention which met at Balti- 
 more early in May. It was a sort of remnant of the old 
 Whig party. Its resolutions were simply a declaration 
 for " The Constitution of the Country, the Union of the 
 States, and the Enforcement of the Laws." It repre- 
 sented an attempt to make the preservation of the Union 
 and the Constitution the supreme issue, and to wholly 
 ignore the slavery question. The result showed that this 
 was the predominant sentiment in the great tier of border 
 slave states. But the party was laughed at by the stren- 
 uous combatants on either side. " Its ticket," said the 
 Kepuhlican, '^ is universally respectable. It is worthy to 
 be printed on gilt-edged satin paper, laid away in a box 
 of musk, and kept there. . . . It is the party of no 
 idea and no purpose. ... It might as well have 
 taken the multiplication table and the decalogue for its 
 platform as the Constitution and the Union." Yet this 
 party recognized what the Bepublican and its party 
 wholly failed to appreciate — that the Union was in 
 imminent danger. 
 
 The campaign at the North was a quiet, decorous, and 
 almost languid one. The election of Lincoln was fore- 
 seen from the first. There were no "burning questions" 
 of immediate practical administration, such as Kansas
 
 THE ELECTION OF LINCOLN. 265 
 
 had furnished in 1856. The broad question at issue was 
 whether a party disposed to restrict and discourage 
 slavery wherever the Constitution gave it scope to do 
 so, was to administer the government. Specific ques- 
 tions other than that of the territories were little 
 discussed on either side. The South gave the most 
 substantial issue to the canvass, by the threat of seces- 
 sion if the Republicans were successful. Douglas, being 
 questioned during a speech at Norfolk, Va., declared 
 that the election of Lincoln would not justify secession, 
 and he would support a Republican administration in 
 putting down nullification by force. He asked that 
 Breckinridge would state his position on this question, 
 but Breckinridge took no notice of the inquiry. The 
 North remained incredulous of the South's purpose of 
 disunion, but the menace of it was recognized as giving 
 significance to the election. The Bepiiblican thus spoke, 
 August 25, of '' The Issues of this Campaign " : 
 
 " The South, through the mouth of many of its leading poU- 
 ticians and journals, defies the North to elect Abraham Lincoln 
 to the presidency. It threatens secession in case he shaU be 
 elected. It arrogantly declares that he shall never take his 
 seat. It passes resolutions of the most outrageous and inso- 
 lent character, insulting every man who dares to vote for what 
 they caU a ' Black Republican.' To make a long matter very 
 short and plain, they claim the privilege of conducting the 
 government in all the future, as they have in ah the past, for 
 their own benefit and in their own way, with the alternative of 
 dissolving the Union of the states. Now, if the non-slave- 
 holding people have any spirit at aU, they wiU settle this ques- 
 tion at once and forever. Look at the history of the last two 
 administrations, in which the slave interest has had undisputed 
 sway. This sway, the most disgraceful and shameless of any- 
 thing in the history of the government, must not be thrown 
 off or else the Union wiU be dissolved. Let's try it ! Are we
 
 266 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 forever to be governed by a slave-holding minority 1 Will the 
 passage of four years more of misrule make it any easier for 
 the majority to assume its functions ? 
 
 " There are many reasons why we desire to see this experi- 
 ment tried this fall. If the majority cannot rule the country 
 without the secession of the minority, it is time the country 
 knew it. If the country can only exist under the rule of an 
 ohgarchy, let the fact be demonstrated at once, and let us 
 change our institutions. We desire to see the experiment tried, 
 because we wish to have the Southern people, who have been 
 bUnded and cheated by the politicians, leam that a ' Black Re- 
 pviblican ' respects the requirements of the Constitution and will 
 protect their interests. Harmony between the two sections of 
 this country can never be secured until the South has learned 
 that the North is not its enemy but its best friend. We desire 
 to see it tried, that the whole horde of corrupt of&cials at Wash- 
 ington may be swept by the board, and something of decency 
 and purity introduced there. We desire to see it, that the 
 government may be restored to its original integrity. And any 
 Northern man who has not pluck enough to stand up and help 
 do this thing is a paltroon. It will be tried, and our minority 
 friends may make up their mind to it." 
 
 Just before the State Republican Convention, Governor 
 Banks declined a renomination. The Bejnihlican enthu- 
 siastically declared for Mr. Dawes as his successor. 
 Against John A. Andrew's nomination it objected that 
 his " more than Republican position " on the slavery- 
 question made him an inappropriate representative of 
 the party, and would repel some moderate men. In the 
 convention, the western Massachusetts delegates were 
 not fully united upon Mr. Dawes, and he received but 
 326 votes to 723 for Mr. Andrew. The Republican'' s com- 
 ment was, August 30 : 
 
 ** We do not beheve this a wise or politic nomination; yet we 
 have no doubt he wiU prove a wise and politic governor. He 
 has a warm heart but a cool head ; he may be hot and extreme in
 
 THE ELECTION OF LINCOLN. 267 
 
 individual expression, going' beyond, as he often does, the lines 
 of the Repubhcan organization and platform, but he feels 
 keenly the responsibilities of power and follows kindly the con- 
 servatising influences of position, . . The RepubHcans can 
 lose 10,000 votes on Mr. Andrew and not endanger his election. 
 His John Brown sympathies and speeches, his Garrisonian affil- 
 iations, his negro-training predilections and all that sort of 
 extreme anti-slaveryism with which his record abounds, will 
 be trumpeted far and wide in the state to injure him, and out 
 of it to harm Lincoln ; and though it wiU doubtless have its 
 effect in frightening timid and conservative recruits, it wiU 
 strengthen others to labor, and can hardly anywhere change or 
 endanger results." 
 
 But Andrew was the man for the time. From the days 
 of the Liberty party he had been identified with consti- 
 tutional opposition to slavery. He was lion-hearted and 
 woman-hearted. He represented the purest conscience, 
 the clearest intelligence, the most earnest purpose, of 
 New England — and at last the New England idea was 
 to be tried out against the South Carolina idea. 
 
 While the South was imputing to the North the most 
 hostile designs against slavery, no other action against 
 it was intended or expected among the Republicans than 
 the gradual appearance of emancipation as a local politi- 
 cal issue in the border states, and their slow conversion 
 to freedom, and the encouragement of a Republican 
 party at the South by the influence of the Administration. 
 " What changes may occur within the next half-century," 
 said the UepiibUcan, October 20, 1860, "to hasten the 
 work of negro emancipation on this continent, no one 
 can foresee, but present appearances indicate its gradual 
 retreat southward, and an irrepressible conflict in the 
 slave states, protracted long after the question has been 
 completely removed from national politics." 
 
 It was the division of theii* opponents that gave 
 the election to the Republicans. Of the popular vote.
 
 268 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 Lincoln received about 1,860,000, Douglas 1,370,000, 
 Breckinridge 840,000, and BeU 590,000. In the electoral 
 college, Lincoln had 180 votes, Breckinridge 72, Bell 39, 
 and Douglas 12. Lincoln had the electoral vote of every 
 Northern state save New Jersey, which was divided be- 
 tween him and Douglas ; Douglas had in addition only 
 the vote of Missouri ; Bell carried Kentuck}', Tennessee, 
 and Virginia; and the other Southern states were for 
 Breckinridge. Massachusetts gave Andrew 104,000 votes, 
 Beach (Douglas) 35,000, Lawi-ence (Bell) 24,000, and 
 Butler (Breckinridge) 6000. 
 
 '' To completely remove the question of slavery from 
 national politics," leaving each state to slowly work out 
 the problem for itself — that was the expectation with 
 which the Bepuhlican, a sagacious, representative New 
 England newspaper, welcomed the approaching presi- 
 dency of Abraham Lincoln. The North for the most 
 part looked for a subsidence of all slavery agitations, 
 and the direction of the government's energies to pro- 
 mote the material prosperity of white people in general, 
 instead of as heretofore the exclusive interest of the slave- 
 holding states. The Abolitionists were little elated — 
 freedom for those in bondage scarcely looked nearer for 
 a Republican victory. The South was looking forward 
 to a career as an independent nation. The four million 
 slaves looked for no change in their lot, and were either 
 unconscious of the struggle or indifferent respecting 
 its issues.
 
 CHAPTER XXIV. 
 
 Secession. 
 
 THE result of the election was no sooner known than 
 the South Carolinians began to take action for the 
 secession of their state with a vigor which allowed no 
 doubt of the seriousness of their purpose. An energetic 
 movement in the same direction began at once in 
 all the Gulf and cotton states. The North was almost 
 as much surprised as if it had received no warning. 
 Mr. Seward had said toward the close of the canvass: 
 "I do not think these threats before election are evi- 
 dences of revolution and disunion after election, for the 
 simple reason that I have always found that a man who 
 does intend to strike a fatal blow does not give notice so 
 long beforehand." Such reasoning was good as against 
 the idea of a secret plot of a few conspirators, to which 
 the North was long inclined to impute the origin of 
 secession. But in truth the movement toward it was as 
 open, and its causes as patent, as in the case of any other 
 revolution. The South saw in the election of Lincoln 
 the triumph of a party whose central principle and 
 motive was hostility to the South's most character- 
 istic institution. The avowed doctrine of the Republican 
 party was the exclusion of slavery from the territories. 
 The sentiment which underlay and inspired that doctrine 
 was dislike to slavery in itself and everywhere ; — so much
 
 270 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 the South knew, and it had no faith that the sentiment 
 would be restrained in its expression by that loyalty to 
 the Constitution which the Republicans professed. Its 
 unbelief was not so totally unfounded as the Republicans 
 themselves supposed. The sentiment which lies deepest 
 at the heart of a man or a party has a constant tendency 
 to draw into line with itself the workings of the mind, 
 to convert the head, and finally to direct the act. Beyond 
 question, a Republican administration would give effect- 
 ive aid to any party of emancipation that should grow 
 up within a slave state. Such a party was already 
 formidable in Missouri, and was likely soon to spread 
 through the border states. An influence vast though 
 indirect would be exerted to loosen the hold of the slave 
 power on the Southern people. So far the Southern 
 leaders were right in their apprehensions, — slavery was 
 menaced in its own home by the election of Lincoln. 
 
 But the menace was a remote and indirect one, and at 
 this point the Southern people misjudged. They imputed 
 to the Republicans sentiments and purposes of active 
 aggression such as even the Abolitionists had never enter- 
 tained. Thus in Georgia's declaration of secession, one 
 of the ablest documents of its class, and attributed to 
 Toombs, it is said of the party which had just elected 
 Lincoln : 
 
 " The prohibition of slavery in the territories, hostiHty to it 
 everywhere, the equaUty of the white and the black races, dis- 
 regard of all constitutional guaranties in its favor, were boldly 
 proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers." 
 
 This was the ordinary tone of the Southern politicians 
 and newspapers. Charges of disloyalty to the Constitu- 
 tion and indifference to the Union were constantly and 
 freely made at the North by the Democratic and " Union- 
 ist" opponents of the Republicans. Douglas said in the
 
 SECESSION. 271 
 
 Senate in January, 1860, that the Harper's Ferry outrage 
 was the natiu-al, logical, and inevitable result of the doc- 
 trines and teachings of the Republican party, as expressed 
 in the party platform, by the party presses, and in the 
 speeches of the party leaders. Up to the election and 
 afterward, the Boston Courier — the representative of a 
 party which included such men as Everett and Win- 
 throp — habitually charged the Republican party with 
 John Brownism and disunionism. And thus the South, 
 misled by this rage of party spirit, grossly exaggerated 
 and misconstrued the purpose of the Repiiblican party. 
 
 Such was the immediate provocation, real and imagi- 
 nary, to secession. It is to be remembered that slave 
 labor was the chief element in Southern industry; the 
 foundation of its agiiculture and of its commerce ; the 
 environment of its family life, with personal relations 
 often of the kindliest; the corner-stone of its social 
 system. That system was thoroughly aristocratic, with 
 the slaves as its base, an intermediate stratum of poor 
 and debased whites, and at the summit a proud, luxuri- 
 ous, and brilliant aristocracy, made up in the country of 
 planters, and in the cities of their mercantile and profes- 
 sional allies and associates. For this aristocratic class 
 politics was the highest field of energy and ambition, 
 and engaged the best ability of the community, such as 
 at the North found outlet largely in great industrial 
 enterprises or in literature. Thus the South was far 
 more dominated by politicians than the North, and the 
 personal ambition to rule, which in the one section had 
 to fit itself to the sentiments of the common people, could 
 in the other section dictate to the people. Throughout 
 the community public sentiment had for many years 
 been intensifying in support of slavery. The position of 
 toleration or apology had been exchanged for one of 
 enthusiastic advocacy. To this change two main factors
 
 272 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 had contributed — the growth of the cotton-raising in- 
 terest and the denunciations of the Abolitionists. The 
 practice of the latter, for thirty years continued, of de- 
 nouncing slave-holders as the worst of criminals, had 
 somehow failed to convert them from their sins. What 
 the Abolitionists said passionately, the civilized world 
 was beginning calmly to say and to feel. The South, 
 thus criticised, was stung to self -justification until it ex- 
 alted slavery, on grounds economic, social, and religious, 
 as among the greatest of earthly blessings, and for the 
 benighted Africans the providential opening of eternal 
 salvation. 
 
 The ruling power at the South was intensely intolerant. 
 All dislike of slavery, however mildly expressed, was 
 frowned upon, all open dissent was crushed out. Purse 
 and passion were on the same side; the South's great 
 industry was agriculture, and of its agriculture the staple 
 was cotton raised by slave labor. In a word, the South 
 gloried in slavery, and the North abhorred it. In a 
 democracy such convictions tend to express themselves 
 in political action, — and so the two opposite sentiments 
 drifted irresistibly toward collision. The North, having 
 on its side the forces of nature, and finding political 
 ascendency coming within its reach, — being moreover by 
 habit patient and law-abiding, and also having no imme- 
 diate contact in its interior life with the subject of dis- 
 pute, — was well content to trust the issue to time, and 
 to established and peaceful procedure. The South, hav- 
 ing for ten years found its victories barren ones, and 
 having now lost the control of the Federal government ; 
 feeling itself endangered more or less, in the chief muscle, 
 the most sensitive nerve, of its social organism ; and 
 being always of a masterful temper and hot blood, 
 was prompt to cut the knot of a union that had grown 
 irksome and hateful.
 
 SECESSION. 273 
 
 Ready to its hand for the purpose of separation stood 
 a political theory long cherished at the South and repu- 
 diated at the North, — state sovereignty. The North in 
 general held that while the powers of sovereignty were 
 divided between the individual states and the Federal 
 Union, yet that the latter was an organic union of the 
 whole people, and indissoluble. The South in general 
 held that the Union was an alliance of independent states 
 which might separate at will. To the Southern mind, 
 therefore, secession was not revolution; the issue which 
 it presented to the state was not of loyalty but of expe- 
 diency ; and when the state had decided, the obedience of 
 the citizen was due, not to the Union, but to his state, 
 whether in the Union or out of it. It was this conviction, 
 that paramount allegiance was due to the state, which 
 was decisive after their states had left the Union, 
 in the minds of men like Robert E. Lee, — men as con- 
 scientious and high-minded as any who fought against 
 them. But in the original Secessionists the motive was 
 the maintenance of slavery and of the political power 
 of the aristocracy. 
 
 The South Carolinians, then, being pretty much of one 
 mind in the matter, proceeded immediately on the elec- 
 tion of Lincoln to dissolve the connection of their state 
 with the Union. The Federal judges, marshals, and 
 other officials throughout the state resigned their offices. 
 The United States senators, Hammond and Chestnut, 
 resigned. A convention was called by the legislature, 
 chosen by the people, and before the end of December it 
 had declared the state independent of the Federal Union. 
 The other Gulf states moved more slowly. There was 
 some debate and division among their leaders; some 
 waiting to see w^hat Congress would do — waiting that 
 ended when, early in the new year, their congressional 
 representatives telegraphed home in favor of prompt 
 Vol. I.— 18
 
 274 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BO\\TLES. 
 
 secession ; and, before the end of February, Georgia, 
 Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, and Louisiana had fol- 
 lowed South Carolina's example, and organized with her 
 a Southern Confederacy, with a constitution closely re- 
 sembling that of the United States, and with Jefferson 
 Davis as its president. 
 
 The secession movement found the North unprepared, 
 amazed, and distracted with conflicting views and pur- 
 poses. There were no precedents for such an emergency, 
 no clear principles for dealing with it. The Administra- 
 tion was utterly helpless. The Republican party had 
 never contemplated such a state of things, nor agreed on 
 even the most general attitude toward it. There was a 
 chaos of opposing counsels. Men did not know their 
 own minds, and changed from day to day. The Seces- 
 sionists had a clear purpose, and followed it steadily and 
 successfully. They made all the Gulf states their own ; 
 they gained a strong and growing hold on the border 
 states ; forts and navy yards fell into their hands 5 not a 
 shot was fired against them, not a blow was struck ; 
 their Confederacy was organized ; within four months 
 they could boast of creating a new nation. The Federal 
 government had done nothing to protect itself; the 
 North did not even know what it wanted to do, was not 
 resolved to fight, was not willing the seceding states 
 should go, was unsure of its own people and its own heart. 
 Yet, hesitatingly, gropingly, its mind was working to a 
 clear purpose, its heart was nerving itself for a mighty 
 effort. 
 
 When, within a week after the election. South Carolina 
 made evident her piu-pose to secede, there was on the 
 part of some Republicans a willingness to let them go if 
 they wished to. The Tribune said : 
 
 " If the cotton states shall decide that thej'- can do better out 
 of the Union than in it, we insist on letting them go in peace.
 
 SECESSION. 275 
 
 Whenever a considerable section of our Union shall 
 deliberately resolve to go out, we shall resist all coercive meas- 
 ures designed to keep it in. We hope never to hve in a republic 
 whereof one section is pinned to the residue by bayonets." 
 
 Thus, one strong sentiment of the hour was that of the im- 
 possibility of maintaining by force a Union which should 
 have any value; the impossibility of self-government with- 
 out the consent of the governed. The Repuhlicaii's first 
 position was (November 10) that all the Southern states 
 except South Carolina would decide against secession ; 
 that it was obviously against their interest to secede; 
 that Soiith Carolina might go if she would, but must not 
 touch the Federal forts in her borders, or refuse to pay 
 the Federal duties on her imports, under penalty of 
 armed coercion. It held (November 15) that if South 
 Carolina would seek a dissolution by peaceable negotia- 
 tions and mutual agreement, it would be and ought to 
 be granted. "A Union that must be maintained by force 
 is not desirable." No such withdrawal, it continues, is 
 contemplated or provided for by the Constitution, but it 
 would be legitimate and expedient to grant it if South 
 Carolina lays her grievance before the country and seeks 
 a peaceable dissolution of partnership. But South Caro- 
 lina, it was soon apparent, would do nothing of the kind; 
 she did not ask a favor, but claimed a right, and drew 
 her sword to enforce it if resisted. She at once began to 
 arm. Throughout the neighboring states the martial 
 fever spread, among a population accustomed to the use 
 of arms and fond of military glory. 
 
 Of the former political allies of the South, many were 
 loud in calling for conciliations and compromise. Among 
 the Republicans in general the disposition was strong 
 against any material concession. The prevalent temper 
 of Massachusetts was against any concession whatever. 
 When the Republican advocated the repeal of the per-
 
 276 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 sonal liberty law, it had against it almost the whole 
 strength of the party. The paper urged that the law, 
 while perhaps not in its letter unconstitutional, was 
 intended to thwart the execution of a United States 
 statute ; that it had never been of the least practical 
 use, and that by repealing laws of this class, the North 
 would remove the one real grievance of the South, and 
 would show not cowardice but a manly willingness to do 
 right. Governor Banks, in his parting message, argued 
 in the same direction. But the inaugural of his suc- 
 cessor, Grovernor Andrew, took opposite ground, and 
 Andrew and not Banks was the representative man of 
 the party. 
 
 Thurlow "Weed, in the Albany Evening Journal, was 
 urging as a basis of agreement, the restoration of the 
 Missouri compromise line, and instead of the rendition 
 of fugitive slaves the payment of their money value. 
 The Eeptthlican (DecemJoer 11) objected to any proffer on 
 the part of the North of a restoration of the boundary 
 line which had been overthrown by the South's own act ; 
 but it was willing that if the South would propose such 
 restoration, and be content with it, it should be accepted. 
 The yearly number of escaping fugitives, it remarked, 
 was not above 2000, at an outside value of $2,000,000, 
 and the payment of such sum, as a commutation for a 
 distastefiil obligation, was legitimate, and was preferable 
 to the consummation of secession. 
 
 But it was soon apparent that no such concessions as 
 these would satisfy the South. Congress met ; the Presi- 
 dent's message argued that secession was not permissible, 
 but that there was no authority to prevent it or to coerce 
 a state ; and in both Houses the leaders of the two sec- 
 tions met each other with final question and reply. The 
 North saw at last that the South, the Gulf states at least, 
 were serious in their purpose to leave the Union ; would
 
 SECESSION. 277 
 
 the North pay the price they demanded as theh' right 
 and as the condition of their remaining-? That price 
 was — as Toombs summed it up in the Senate — that 
 slave-holders should be allowed to take their property 
 into the territories ; that slave property should be recog- 
 nized by the government in all its departments as equally 
 sacred with any other kind of property, save in states 
 which excluded it; that offenders against the laws of 
 slave states should be surrendered to justice in those 
 states; that fugitive slaves should be returned; that 
 Congress should prohibit and punish insiu-rection and 
 invasion. In a word: Will the Federal government 
 take slave property under its immediate and special pro- 
 tection ; shall slavery be made national and general, and 
 freedom be the sectional exception ? " Never ! " said the 
 North, through its congressmen. " Then," said the men 
 of the Grulf states, " we will leave you ! " That was the 
 sum and substance of a month's debate, and early in 
 January the senators and representatives of six states 
 bade a stern farewell to their associates in Congress, left 
 their places vacant, and went home to organize and arm 
 a new nation. 
 
 '^ How shall we deal with the seceders ? " was a question 
 sorely puzzling. " Say to them, ' erring sisters, go in 
 peace ! ' " was the counsel of some, like the Trihune. 
 " Yes, go — but touch the national forts in your harbors, 
 or refuse to pay the customs duties, at your peril ! " So 
 said Senator Wade, a representative spokesman of his 
 party in the Senate. "Be patient; give them time to 
 cool ; offer a national convention to talk matters over," 
 said men like Weed and Seward and Adams. But within 
 two months from Lincoln's election, the tide of feeling 
 had swept the nation to the verge of war. Charleston 
 harbor was the focus where the rays of passion centered. 
 A little company of troops under Major Anderson held
 
 278 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 forts Moultrie and Sumter. The Carolinians threw up 
 around them a circle of menacing fortifications. Would 
 the government reenforce them, as they lay almost at the 
 mercy of their besiegers 1 " Oh for an hour of Jackson ! " 
 cried the Bepuhlicmi, December 17, when Buchanan de- 
 clined to risk bloodshed by sending reenforcements. 
 Cass left the cabinet in disgust at the refusal. Major 
 Anderson, December 26, deftly withdrew his handful of 
 men from Moultrie on the mainland, and planted himself 
 in water-locked Sumter ; and the watching North cheered 
 his successful maneuver. The President changed his 
 mind and sent the steamer Star of the West with troops 
 and supplies; the forts at the harbor mouth (January 
 9) opened fire on her, and she turned in silence and 
 went back. Those guns woke in the North a pulse 
 of wrath ; compromise had failed at Washington ; the 
 Gulf states were seceding, — now the South had struck 
 at the flag. " Thus," said the Bepuhlican, January 12, 
 "the final act of the disunion drama has opened upon 
 us by the perversity of South Carolina." Three days 
 before it had said, '' There is but one voice from men 
 of all parties in the free states, and it calls imperatively 
 for the defense of the Union and the enforcement of 
 the laws." 
 
 But the tide which seemed about to sweep away all 
 barriers of peace once more ebbed for a little. The 
 nation's heart might be hot, but while Buchanan was 
 President its hand was as forceless as an empty glove. 
 The Southern members of the cabinet had resigned, after 
 doing their utmost to aid the seceders ; their places were 
 filled by Northern men of character and force, — Dix and 
 Stanton and Holt, — but the President shrank from all 
 vigorous action. It was scarcely to be regretted ; for the 
 Northern mind was not yet clear nor its purpose fixed. 
 Seward, regarded as the foremost man in the coming
 
 SECESSION. 279 
 
 administration, spoke in the Senate, January 12, and his 
 voice was weighty for a calm, patient effort toward peace- 
 ful reunion. He yielded nothing of Republican princi- 
 ples, but he offered a programme of conciliation. He 
 proposed that all unconstitutional legislation against the 
 return of fugitives be repealed ; that non-interference 
 with slavery in the states be guaranteed, if the South 
 desired, by a new article in the Constitution ; that, seces- 
 sion being abandoned, and after a year or two's interval, 
 there be held a constitutional convention ; that any 
 proper legislation against inter-state invasion be granted ; 
 and that as a material bond of the whole country, two 
 Pacific railways be constructed. The temper of the 
 speech fell on the North like oil on troubled waters. 
 Congress, calmed by the withdrawal of the fiery seces- 
 sion element, labored assiduously with great special 
 committees to devise some scheme of restoration. The 
 most conspicuous project was that of Senator Critten- 
 den of Kentucky, of which the salient feature was the 
 restoration of the Missouri compromise line, as applica- 
 ble to all territory present or hereafter acquired ; each 
 new state to determine its own institutions. To this, as 
 contemplating future acquisitions of slave territory to 
 the southward, the North would not consent. Another 
 plan was that of Charles Francis Adams, then in the 
 House, which proposed the immediate admission of New 
 Mexico as a state, her people deciding the slavery ques- 
 tion for themselves (there were, said Mr. Adams, but 
 twenty-two slaves held there), — and thus virtually re- 
 stored the old line for all present territory. While Con- 
 gress debated such plans, a convention was held at the 
 call of Virginia, to which the states, except the six 
 seceders, sent delegates, to discuss the situation and 
 devise remedies. In all these discussions it was recog- 
 nized that the immediate object was to retain the yet
 
 280 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 unseceded Soutliern states. Those which had already 
 formed a confederacy were scornfully indifferent to all 
 such mild palliatives. But if the other Southern states 
 could be held, there was hope that after a time the "way- 
 ward sisters" would get tired of their isolation. The 
 border states were the prize for which both parties were 
 now working. On Virginia were now centered the 
 strongest hopes and fears. In Virginia, — and largely 
 also in Maryland, North Carolina, Kentucky, Tennessee, 
 and Missouri, — there were two powerful conflicting 
 forces, attachment to slavery and love of the Union. 
 Strong sympathy drew Virginia toward her sisters of 
 the Gulf ; strong ties, of revolutionary traditions, of a 
 proud place in the whole history of the nation, bound 
 her to the Union and its flag. She wanted the North to 
 concede the Southern demands; failing that, she wavered 
 as to her choice. A state convention was called ; im- 
 mediate secession was rejected ; the representatives of 
 the confederacy were strenuously persuasive ; the com- 
 promisers did their best. But all compromise came to 
 nothing. The fugitive slave law, the personal liberty 
 laws — nobody really cared much about them ; the Mis- 
 souri compromise talk was only galvanizing a corpse. 
 The South wanted just one thing — that property in 
 human beings should be put on an equality with property 
 in cattle or horses. Lincoln went to the bottom of the 
 matter when, in a speech at the Cooper Institute a year 
 before, after a sober and searching review of the whole 
 field, he said : 
 
 " What will satisfy them ? Simply this : we must not only 
 let them alone, but we must somehow convince them that we 
 do let them alone. . . . What wiU convince them ? This, 
 and this only : cease to eaU slavery wrong, and join them in 
 calling it right. And this must be done thoroughly — done in 
 acts as weU as in words."
 
 SECESSION. 281 
 
 So, now, all the talk brought matters no nearer a 
 settlement. Out of it all a single measure was finally 
 adopted, Congi-ess, at the close of the session, approved 
 an amendment to the Constitution, prohibiting any 
 future amendment to authorize Congress to interfere 
 with slavery where it was sanctioned by state law. 
 That — as the Thirteenth Amendment — was the last 
 proffer of the North to the South, It was a quite dif- 
 ferent Thirteenth Amendment which met the South on 
 its return after four years. 
 
 Any who had believed, as many did believe, Mr. Bowles 
 apparently among them, that the new President was to 
 be but the instrument of Mr. Seward, were undeceived 
 by the first words he spoke after assuming his office. 
 " No one," said the Republican, March 5, '' can doubt that 
 Mr. Lincoln is the sole author of his own inaugural." 
 One thing was clear, that the country had at last a man 
 for its chief ruler, — a man most genuine and veracious, 
 whose effort and longing were toward peace, but who 
 held a steadfast purpose toward national unity. The 
 inaugural was a sober, calmly reasoned, and weighty 
 appeal to the seceding states ; the avowal, firm, but with- 
 out a spark of passion, that secession cannot be recog- 
 nized, and that the President will if necessary use his 
 authority to hold the national forts and property and to 
 collect the imposts, though he will not use force for any 
 other purpose ; and the assurance that if the Southerners 
 will submit their grievances to peaceful arbitrament, they 
 shall be met with the fullest regard for every moral and 
 constitutional right. The language of the address, while 
 lawyer-like in its carefulness of statement, was yet homely 
 and familiar as the talk of a plain man by his own fiireside. 
 At the end it rose to a strain of pathetic sublimity : 
 
 '* I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We 
 must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it
 
 282 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of 
 memory, stretching from every battle-field and patriot grave to 
 every Uving heart and hearth-stone all over this broad land, 
 will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as 
 surely they wiU be, by the better angels of our nature." 
 
 The cabinet appointments were such as on the whole 
 gave encouraging assurance as to the President's catho- 
 licity and courage. It was not then known that he had 
 offered places to such Southerners as Guthrie, of Ken- 
 tucky, and Gilmore, of North Carolina. Among his official 
 councilors, he chose his foremost rivals, Seward, Chase, 
 and Bates ; the other places were filled by Montgomery 
 Blair, Gideon Welles, Caleb B. Smith, and Simon Cam- 
 eron. The new Administration was instantly engaged 
 with an army of place-hunters. Lincoln remarked that 
 the office-seekers would not leave him time to attend to 
 the country; he was, he said, like a man obliged to 
 negotiate with lodgers at one end of his house when it 
 was on fire at the other end. 
 
 While this had been the course of events, the mind of 
 the Northern people had been struggling with contra- 
 dictory impulses, and had by no means come to a clear 
 conclusion. The pages of the Republican reflect many 
 of these phases. Through the perplexities of the imme- 
 diate situation, the great substantial fact — the supreme 
 fact, as history now makes account of it — is recognized, 
 December 22, in an article which thus begins : 
 
 " Slavery seems to be gathering itself up for a decisive strug- 
 gle. The moral forces of the world have long assailed it, and 
 everywhere religion, morality, and poUtics are against it. 
 Its stronghold is in the Southern states of this 
 Union. . . . Only in this country is an attempt made to 
 throw around the system the sanction of rehgion, and to 
 uphold it as a good and proper thing in itself, and worthy to
 
 SECESSION. 283 
 
 be eherislied, protected, and extended over other lands. Here 
 it seems to be rushing upon a decisive battle-field." 
 
 With the closing year, December 25, comes the first 
 avowal, clear and firm, of " The Stern Purpose " — to 
 put down rebellion by arms. But the question was 
 speedily obscured again. The fighting temper ebbed at 
 the North. With Mr. Seward's conciliatory speech, and 
 with the subsequent effort toward a peaceful settlement, 
 the Beiniblican was in warmest sympathy. Mr. Bowles's 
 optimistic temper, his strong reliance on the prevailing 
 power of reason and self-interest, made him skeptical of 
 a warlike issue, and strenuous to avert it. The Eepuh- 
 lican did not compromise its anti-slavery principles ; it 
 would by no means concede the Crittenden plan, or any- 
 thing beyond the Adams proposition. But it criticised 
 the readiness of Governor Andrew and the legislature to 
 prepare for war, as overzealous and injurious. The state 
 was forward and prompt to meet the worst that might 
 come. The legislature, in January, by a unanimous vote, 
 called on the President to enforce the laws and maintain 
 the Union, and offered him whatever support of men 
 and money he might need from Massachusetts. The 
 Bepuhlican deprecated such measures, as showing a dis- 
 position to meet the South half-way on the war-path. 
 
 Men far less sanguine than Mr. Bowles were slow to 
 believe that the issue could come to actual war. Even 
 Lincoln said on his journey to Washington : " This crisis 
 is all artificial. It has no foundation in fact. It was 
 not ' argued up,' as the saying is, and cannot be argued 
 down. Let it alone and it will go down itself ! " 
 
 In the mind of the North, two sentiments were strong, 
 — that the government must not give up its own to the 
 seceders, must not surrender its forts or renounce the 
 collection of customs duties; but that it was impracti-
 
 284 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 cable to compel by arms the submission and return of 
 the seceded states. The practical contradiction resulting 
 from these two propositions was not for a good while 
 appreciated by the North. In reality it was out of the 
 question for a people claiming independence — like South 
 Carolina or the Southern Confederacy — to allow a foreign 
 power to collect duties on its imports, — by war-ships 
 outside of its harbors for example, as was sometimes 
 gravely proposed. Any such attempt meant certain 
 war, and in case of war defeat to the seceders must 
 mean their subjection to the national authority. But 
 this, so plain in the light of events, was not so plainly 
 seen beforehand ; and men went on saying that the gov- 
 ernment must not give up Fort Sumter, but must not 
 invade the seceded states. 
 
 There was another very grave uncertainty. It seemed 
 more than doubtful whether the Northern people had 
 any strong and passionate sentiment of love for the 
 Union, such as would inspire them to fight for its main- 
 tenance. There had grown up in truth a great alienation 
 between the two sections of the country. Many anti- 
 slavery men besides the Abolitionists thought the na- 
 tional partnership with slave-owners, if broken by the 
 act of the latter, was by no means worth restoring. 
 The sentiment of common country, the pride in a great 
 national destiny, had been dimmed by the hot struggle of 
 recent years. Said the Republican, November 22, '' The 
 fact is not to be disguised that the feeling at the North in 
 respect to the Union has considerably changed within a 
 score of years." Certainly, it says, the North does not 
 care enough for the Union — however orators may glorify 
 the name — to made any further compromises to save it. 
 The South has destroyed all liberty within its borders, 
 and denies to Northern men upon its soil the rights which 
 the country would exact in the case of a foreign power.
 
 SECESSION. 285 
 
 As late as March 23, the paper declared, in a gloomier 
 mood than usual, but with a misgiving from which few 
 then were wholly free, that loyalty, as an enthusiastic 
 sentiment, does not exist among Americans. 
 
 In the fii'st month of Lincoln's administration — while 
 as yet no blow had been struck ; while commissioners of 
 the Confederacy were at Washington trying to negotiate 
 for a peaceful separation ; while the Virginia convention 
 still debated whether the state should secede — one great 
 fact was becoming clear to the North. It was expressed 
 in a sentence of the President's inaugural : '' The central 
 idea of secession is the essence of anarchy." It was not — 
 so the North slowly perceived — a question merely whether 
 several states were to part company with the rest. It 
 was a question whether the bond of all national govern- 
 ment was to be dissolved ; whether a principle was to be 
 admitted which in its ultimate application would reduce 
 the country to a chaos of discordant states. The fact 
 of a common nationality, on whose preservation depended 
 ultimately the peace of society, the happiness of every 
 household, the hopes of future generations, was asserting 
 itself in the hearts of the common people. 
 
 The character of the seceders' act had been obscured 
 by that feature in our system which places very many 
 of the functions of civil government in the state, and 
 only a few in the Federal Union. In a centralized na- 
 tion, a revolt against governmental authority brings the 
 insurgents into immediate collision with the civil author- 
 ity, at every point where law touches the citizen. The 
 revolt of the Gulf states from the Union had not dis- 
 turbed the relations of their citizens to that frame-work 
 of local law which covers most of the questions and 
 interests of civil life. Business contracts, police, the 
 state courts, the ordinary functions of government, went 
 on as before. The scanty machinery of Federal admin-
 
 286 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 istration, in its local forms, had dissolved by the consent 
 of the people ; Federal judges and marshals had resigned ; 
 the post-offices had been easily transferred to the new 
 authorities. From their share in the government at 
 Washington the senators and representatives had with- 
 drawn. But at one point the relation was not effectu- 
 ally severed ; the supreme right of government, the right 
 of taxation, — exercised then by the Federal government 
 only through the customs duties, — remained fully as- 
 serted by the North in theory, and practically expressed 
 by the two or three forts over which the stars and stripes 
 still waved. This brought the whole matter to an imme- 
 diate practical test. To withdraw from the forts would 
 be a virtual renunciation by the government of the one 
 remaining function which testified to a vital, organic, 
 indissoluble relation between itself as an authority sov- 
 ereign within its sphere, and the seceders as rightfully its 
 subjects, within that sphere. 
 
 This was the logic of the situation. The concrete fact 
 was, a beleaguered fort, garrisoned by a company of 
 United States soldiers, with rapidly diminishing sup- 
 plies, menaced on all sides by the batteries of a people 
 exultant in their new independence, and eager to be free 
 from the last symbol of the authority they had cast off. 
 On that fort and its flag the eyes of both sections were 
 fastened ; and as men watched, the tide of feeling rose 
 higher and higher. Unrelieved, it must speedily fall. 
 Would the Administration reenforce it or withdraw 
 from it ? To hold it, said the military counselors, would 
 require twenty thousand men. It is worthless to us, 
 said Seward and others of the cabinet, and by holding 
 it we risk a collision which destroys the last hope of a 
 peaceful victory. Once the report went over the coun- 
 try from Washington that the garrison was to be with- 
 drawn. Such retreat was bitter for patriots, even for
 
 SECESSION. 287 
 
 those who sought peace, '^ The moral effect of the aban- 
 donment of Fort Sumter," said the Repiihlican, March 
 12, " will unquestionably be a degree of disappointment 
 and chagrin among loyal citizens of the North." Yet, it 
 adds, if it will deprive secession of its last opportunity, 
 it is a good move. Lincoln, as it now appears, was hop- 
 ing to gain a substantial advantage by a small sacrifice, — 
 to keep Virginia in the Union, by giving up Sumter. He 
 told a representative of the Virginia convention (so says 
 Henry Wilson) that if that body would immediately 
 adjourn, he would order Sumter to be evacuated. The 
 reply was that both Sumter and Pickens must be evacu- 
 ated at once, and assurance given that no attempt would 
 be made to collect revenue in Southern ports. This was 
 more than Lincoln could grant. At last, a relieving 
 squadron was secretly ordered to sail from New York 
 for Sumter. The government, keeping its promise to 
 the Confederate commissioners, that if Sumter were not 
 first attacked, no relief should be sent it without notice 
 being given, sent private word to the Charleston authori- 
 ties that supplies were to be introduced into the fort, — 
 peaceably if possible, otherwise by force. Throughout 
 the country, meanwhile, the hopes of peace which had 
 followed Lincoln's inaugural and Seward's pacific 
 counsels had been obscured by swiftly gathering clouds. 
 We read, April 6, that a warlike aspect has suddenly 
 come over the whole face of affairs ; that the Seces- 
 sionists are getting ready to strike, and the Adminis- 
 tration is on its guard. The tension of suspense was 
 nearing the point where something must break. It 
 paralyzed business, — so said the Republican, April 11. 
 With food abundant, with money plenty, there yet was 
 universal stagnation. Men felt thunder in the air, and 
 waited for the storm. " The time is come when the 
 North is entirely ready to see the issue decided as regards
 
 288 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BO^\T^ES. 
 
 Fort Sumter. If the Confederate conspirators refuse to 
 let food be conveyed to a starving garrison of American 
 soldiers^ the friends of the Union everywhere are ready 
 to know the reason why, and it will be a joy to the 
 country to have that question settled." Between Charles- 
 ton and Montgomery, the Confederate capital, secret tele- 
 grams were flying. Doubtless, the Secessionists counted 
 on the effect of a conflict of arms in sweeping the waver- 
 ing border states into union with the South. The effect 
 in uniting the North they did not foresee, — they be- 
 lieved the North to be divided, half-hearted, and without 
 spirit to fight. The decisive order was given by Presi- 
 dent Davis ; the fort received a summons to surrender, 
 and Major Anderson refused ; then from the surrounding- 
 forts a circle of flre opened upon it. For two days, April 
 12 and 13, the people North and South listened breath- 
 lessly to the pealing of the guns. Then the overmatched 
 garrison jdelded; Major Anderson agreed to evacuate 
 the fort, and its flag went down. One great passion of 
 grief, resentment, and purpose united the North as one 
 man. Hesitations, doubts, theories, vanished. Party 
 lines were forgotten. There was but one thought, one 
 feeling — to make the flag supreme again over the whole 
 land. The President called for seventy-flve thousand 
 volunteers, and the loyal states rushed to arms. Virginia, 
 North Carolina, Tennessee, Arkansas, and Texas joined 
 the Southern Confederacy. Pennsylvania troops were 
 thrown instantly into Washington to defend it, and close 
 after them came the Massachusetts Sixth Regiment. The 
 country was wrapped in a whirlwind of war.
 
 CHAPTER XXV. 
 
 Letters: 1857-1860. 
 
 TO turn from the story of a nation's crisis to details 
 of personal life gives at first an impression of 
 abrupt descent. It is like coming from the distant view 
 of a city in which its far-away grandeur charms the eye 
 and fires the imagination, into immediate contact with 
 its scenes of prosaic reality. But the deeper look sees 
 under these homely aspects the great drama of humanity. 
 The pictured tapestry of a people's fortunes has for its 
 warp and woof the thread of every-day lives — their toils, 
 pleasures, discomforts, losses, successes. Of the letters 
 in this and other chapters, not a few are given for their 
 incidental revelations of traits in the writer. Often the 
 thought may not be weighty, the judgment, perhaps, not 
 correct, but if the reader is helped to see the man as he 
 really was, something is gained. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 January 11, 1857. 
 
 With what meat are you consoling yourself in L 's absence, 
 
 and the want of my delightfiil chirography for the last ten 
 days ? I have been to New York and Boston, have gone to a 
 ball, andhave sat up till fouro'clock printing Governor Gardner's 
 message, besides experiencing several other unusual sensations, 
 Vol. I. — 19 asg
 
 290 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 since I last wrote you. I had a delightful breakfast with Dana 
 at Dehnonico's in New York, during which we settled the Phila- 
 delphia matter. He took it in hand, and told them that I would 
 go on and see them if they would agree to raise a $50,000 cash 
 capital, to which I should contribute $5000 — then make the 
 nominal capital $100,000, and give me twenty of the new shares, 
 or one-fourth of the whole concern, which he calculated would 
 be worth the $100,000 at the end of the year, or when the 
 $50,000 was used up ; — and besides give me supreme control and 
 $4000 salary. This was rather more magnificent than I should 
 have demanded myself, but he said they ought to do it, if I went, 
 and I told him to go ahead. The reply I have not heard — 
 probably it will end the matter, at least for the present. I 
 am content. On such terms I could hardly decline running 
 the small risk proposed. Rather than accept less, or much 
 less, I would remain here, or go to Boston, or go on the 
 Tribune itself. I shall get $4000, perhaps $5000, out of the 
 Republican this year, and had best stay unless I can make a 
 ten strike. 
 
 L I saw a few moments in Boston. She seemed in capi- 
 tal si^u'its, and promised to come around this way home. Is it 
 not about time for you to come down and see us again ? I feel 
 sort o' leisurely, have got a new anecdote or two, and the bliss- 
 ful fountains of ale are overflowing, while with a lemon and 
 some hot water we might save the Union after the more 
 
 approved fashion of the season. What say you ? L being 
 
 away, you must be lonely, and disposed to do something 
 desperate. If my wife were away, I'd come up and see you — I 
 would. 
 
 January 18, 1857. 
 . . . The Philadelphia people have replied, coming nearly 
 to my standard, but I have declined to abate a jot. I think 
 the only real point is my demand for supreme and absolute 
 control; there are one or two people who have an interest 
 in the movement, who, though wiUing and desirous to have me 
 lead, are yet bent on attaching themselves to the enterprise and 
 going to glory with it. This is aU right if they are worthy, but 
 if they prove drags I must have the right to slough them off.
 
 LETTEKS: 1857-1860. 291 
 
 I think here is tlie sticking-point. I am more and more indif- 
 ferent to going unless on my owti terms. 
 
 Monday. — My eyes, what a storm ! One of my ears was nip- 
 ped by the frost last night going home at eleven, and it bmias 
 to-day hke a bad conscience. But that last hot whisky, at the 
 noon of night, with Mrs. Bowles, was hke meat to a strong man. 
 It only needed you to make the thing complete. By the way, 
 Mrs. B. and I have been indulging in the weakness of being 
 crayonized this last week by Kimberly. The result is rather a 
 success. Come and see 'em. 
 
 To H. L. Dawes. 
 
 February 16, 1857. 
 
 . . . Our friends in the legislature are getting somewhat 
 exercised, but are not half so frightened as I wish they were. 
 Gardner wants to make the legislature long and unpopular, 
 and east upon it and us the extravagance of himself and crew, 
 and give the hunkers aid and comfort in their combination for 
 "reform." But it won't work, unless our fellows are natural 
 fools, which they are not quite, though I sometimes think near it. 
 If we had a decent press in Boston, it woidd straighten the 
 trouble out directly ; but we must only kick and cuff the legis- 
 lature into appreciating their responsibilities, and trust in Provi- 
 dence and the people to bring the matter out right duiing the 
 summer. 
 
 In national pohtics, matters seem to be di'ifting stiU, and the 
 exact form of the future no one knows. The Democratic party 
 cannot go unitedly through Buchanan's Administration. The 
 men that elected him will never choose another president, be- 
 cause then' organization is worn out, effete, and cannot stand 
 the rocks before it. 
 
 I wish you would come down here and go to Boston with me. 
 I think there wiU be a gathering of the " saints " early in 
 March, perhaps after Congress has adjourned, and then you 
 must appear on parade. We shoidd get those amendments out 
 of the way before we strike out for the summer campaign. 
 We want two planks; — non-extension of slavery, and state 
 reform.
 
 292 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 April 9, 1857. 
 
 . . . I am here for a day, and return to-night, to launch 
 the Traveller next Monday. My editorial staff is about made 
 up, and is rich and abundant, though not in all respects to my 
 taste. But that wiU work out in practice. It will number 
 in aU some fifteen, and be such as no Boston journal ever yet 
 dreamed of. 
 
 Charley Hale [editor of the Advertiser'] has nothing to fear 
 from us, but more from the revival of the Courier. He ought 
 never to have allowed it, but should have bought it up when 
 he could, a few weeks ago. Now it disputes places with him 
 boldly. I have not had time to talk with him, but shall seek 
 occasion. We seek to be the popular, progressive journal ; his 
 place is the conservative, respectable, high-toned ; and there is 
 no better or richer field than that before him, if he will only 
 properly cultivate it, and get the Courier out of the way. We 
 shall combine with him, because he is no rival of ours. Indeed, 
 if he feels properly his saddle, ours is the best move for him 
 that could be made. 
 
 To his Wife. 
 
 Boston, Sunday afternoon, April 26, 1857. 
 Your first letter was received yesterday morning, and I 
 meant to have replied by last night's mail, but was too busy. 
 Just now I have got your yesterday's letter, and rejoice to see 
 evidences in it of improvement in health and mental resigna- 
 tion. The only thing we can well say now about our new 
 enterprise and separation is that it is undertaken, that it is not 
 as hard as it might be, that it may work for good, that it must 
 result in good if we only insist on turning aU there is in it to 
 good account. With a weekly meeting, and the promise of 
 permanent reunion in a few short months, I think — with 
 plenty for mind and heart to do — we can endnre tiU the good 
 time coming. Separation even has its uses. We enjoy one 
 another the more when we meet, we learn to disciphne om-- 
 selves, to depend upon ourselves, to develop the inward powers ; 
 we concentrate happiness, and learn the better to appreciate it.
 
 letters: 1857-1860. 293 
 
 So let us neitlier repine nor quarrel with fate, but out of seem- 
 ing evil educe good. That is the true philosophy of Ufe, and 
 without philosophy there is vastly httle of life but a passion 
 and a struggle. 
 
 I have got down into my new room, and am slowly getting 
 out of chaos. But it must be a long while before affairs get 
 settled and everything works easy. I feel, however, that I 
 have passed the two hardest weeks, and I no longer feel any 
 serious question as to my abihty, in health or otherwise, to 
 master my position, in all good time. I have had a little cold for 
 several days, and that and the tire in me gives me some head- 
 ache to-day, but both are trifles, and only inspire caution. I 
 expect an easier week this, and feel now pretty certain that 
 I shall be able to go up to Spiiugfield next Saturday. 
 
 . . . I did not get up this morning in season to go to 
 church, though I had intended to. So I have spent the morn- 
 ing in reading and walking on the Common, which begins to 
 be very pleasant already. Colonel Lincoln has sent for me to 
 dine with him at five, and at seven I must come back to the 
 ofS.ce and work. My new night editor commences this week, 
 and as soon as he gets broken in I shall be reheved of late work. 
 Things move along veiy well on the whole ; of course there are 
 annoyances and rough places, but they wiU be overcome all in 
 due time ; and though I often think I was a fool for leaving 
 old Spi-ingfield, stiU the undertaking has been begun, and I 
 cannot and shall not turn back until it is thoroughly tried out. 
 Thank f oi*tune, I can afford to fail, but I don't mean to. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 Boston, May 14, 1857. 
 I make slow progress in commanding order, but the world 
 moves. I am not at aU satisfied with the paper, yet I can see 
 it is an improvement upon what went before. I am trammeled 
 by old engagements, and seek in vain for such men as I want 
 to gather around me. But I have courage and hope, generally. 
 Our daily circulation is 21,000, about neck and neck with the 
 Journal, and no more ; weekly, 16,000 } semi- weekly, 4000 to
 
 294 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 5000 ; all fair and promising, but not supreme enough to in- 
 dulge in a general bray. I am, of course, busy, yet can get 
 off for the theater, or a long dinner with a friend ; and I should 
 like above anything to see your face in these parts. I do wish 
 
 your mother or L would go down and spend a week with 
 
 my wife. 
 
 He writes to Charles Allen, June 2, to meet him in 
 Boston or Springfield, in regard to possible difficnlties : 
 
 "As I think it a duty to be prepared for emergencies and 
 accidents, I desire to talk with one who is both a lawyer and 
 a friend." 
 
 June 9, he writes : 
 
 " The matter of which I spoke to you is not so pressing as to 
 justify a journey. Indeed there is nothing specially new ; 
 nothing which I need not have expected, but yet as the course 
 is long on which I have entered, and the result is doubtful, I 
 have thought I should, like a good general, ' protect my rear,' 
 and how to do it is that which I desu-e to talk with you about. 
 I shall not increase my interest here until everything is in my 
 own way, or the result is absolutely certain. I can afford to 
 lose what I have put in, but I do not want to endanger what I 
 have in Springfield." 
 
 The next two months brought the internal difficnlties 
 of the TraveUer to a crisis. The letters are full of the 
 perplexing and worrying details of negotiations for a 
 dissolution of the partnership. The matter drags to an 
 end in September. He writes to his wife : 
 
 " There is nothing in my business troubles to give you any 
 serious annoyance. They are mortifying and disagreeable to 
 me, and I shall run the risk of losing a few thousand doUars — 
 beyond which, nothing. . . . The loss of the money is the 
 smallest of the sources of regret to me, — even if I do lose it, — 
 for I have no fears that I cannot easily replace it in good time. 
 . . . If I do not lose too much money, I do not intend to
 
 LETTEKS: 1857-1860. 295 
 
 go to work anywhere for a year, but to play for that time, if I 
 ca,h afford to, and it is not too hard work." 
 
 A little later he writes to Charles Allen : 
 
 '* As to going West, I must wait a few days at least. I dare 
 not start on a long journey in my present health. I am ten*ibly 
 used up." 
 
 A letter of October 29 marks the return to the old 
 work. 
 
 '* Holland is ready with an offer to vacate and go into a hter- 
 ary and lecturing hfe. He really wants to resign his place, he 
 chafes imder the drudgery and responsibility. I hold thq 
 matter under advisement, yet I think it is destined to result in 
 my taking hold at once. I would rather be ' fancy-free ' for a 
 few months or a year longer ; but how can a man in these 
 times ? " 
 
 To H. L. Daives. 
 
 February, 1858. 
 
 You are an apt scholar. The stunning accounts of your 
 speech come to us by every wave of the electric cun-ent. [It 
 was Mr. Dawes's first speech in CongTCss, in favor of a conces- 
 sion of time to an unwilling witness before a House committee.] 
 And to-day Hanscomb sends a letter " all about it," setting it 
 out with the accompanjdng '' sound of hew-gag." I wish you 
 had made youi- fii'st speech for something else than in behalf 
 of a man who wants to escape teUing the truth ; but I con- 
 gratulate yon that the agony is over, and that the haU has 
 kindly echoed the sound of your voice. Go on and conquer. 
 You cannot win a victory that I shall not glory in, no more 
 than suffer a defeat, or experience a son-ow, that I shall not 
 take unto myself. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 [1858.] 
 
 I take it you have a fresh disgust with politics. So have 
 I. Banks has, on the whole, made a failure in his appoint- 
 ments for the new coui-t ; that is, a considerable portion of his
 
 296 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 judges liave yet to vindicate the "wisdom of their selection. 
 He has made down here, too, some bad justice selections, if I 
 may beheve what the people say. However, the great world 
 lays no stress on the disappointment of individuals. So long 
 as their offices are decently flUed, they are weU enough satis- 
 fied. ... I have the gratifying satisfaction of knowing 
 that all the men I went for are defeated. Now, I hope nobody 
 will ever ask my aid again ; it is the meanest business I do, 
 asking for offices for people, and if I didn't love my friends I 
 never would do it. Now that they see I damage them, I guess 
 they had better leave me to enjoy the independence of asking 
 no favor of anybody, and grumbling at everybody. 
 
 The trout came, cold and fresh. I shared 'em with Deacon 
 Stearns — poor man — and we were both fiUed with gratitude. 
 We are in an awful phght at the house, just now in the thick 
 of it, and I have to eat at the cellars around town and wait 
 upon Irishmen, carpenters, masons, painters, et id omne genus. 
 
 April 8, 1859. 
 I had the present of a bottle of wine this week, from a woman, 
 with an affectionate note. We had some good food Fast-day, 
 and we drank the wine. We thought of you, lamented your 
 absence, and concluded to send you the label on the bottle — 
 much good may it do you. Otherwise, Fast-day was rather 
 
 stupid. caine around before I was up, and was willing to 
 
 talk about being judge, which I have no doubt he will be if 
 
 is not reappointed. It will be so invidious and difficult 
 
 making distinctions that I have thought and still think that the 
 whole common pleas bench will go by the board. I should 
 chiefly regret Aiken of this lot. I have imbibed a good deal of 
 respect for that man. Ben. Butler says he is an exaggeration 
 of the stage Yankee ; but he is fresh and hearty, and keen and 
 human, and says civil things about me — and of course I like 
 him. It seems to be a weakness of human nature to Uke those 
 people who hke us and praise us. But about the judges. . . . 
 I am prepared for some good and some bad appointments 
 — I don't think Banks's forte lies in flUing offices well. But 
 it seems to me expresses himself as to him with uncommon
 
 letters: 1857-1860. 297 
 
 and needless severity ; especially as we Unitarians don't believe 
 in a heU. I have no reason to believe he has shown any bad 
 faith towards Chapman, — nothing worse than lack of apprecia- 
 tion ; and that ought not to be held in this eiiiug world a 
 deadly offense. I think it is generally conceded here, and even 
 by Chapman's friends, that Hoar is the best appointment. My 
 knowledge is limited, yet I am incHned to agree. Hoar has 
 genius, insight, an edge to his mind, that I never discovered 
 in Chapman. ... I meant to say about the judges that 
 I am determined not to write to Banks for or against any 
 one. He has never seemed to place any value on my views 
 as to appointments, heretofore, and he won't have them 
 hereafter, without seeking them. Probably he will be able 
 to do without them. 
 
 April, 1859. 
 
 . . . My cold is only better, not cured. I have a heavy 
 back yet, but am mending, unless this night '*on" — I don't 
 expect to be through till four or five — gives me a set back. 
 It was well perhaps I cotdd not go up to Greenfield, for we had 
 a Saturday night call which ended in a Sunday visit from a 
 young man in WiUiams College, who writes poetry and stories 
 for the Republican, and is going to be a minister ; and seems to 
 have come on purpose ahnost to get some Christian, fatherly 
 advice, which I gave him. 
 
 I have taken violently and resolutely to horseback riding ; 
 went yesterday, and again this (Tuesday) morning, and mean 
 to foUow it up tUl it kiUs or cures. On the whole, I am 
 liking it. 
 
 It is a long way ahead to Saturday. I wish you would think 
 you could come down here — there is really no reason why you 
 shouldn't. But if you insist on holding me to my promise, I 
 shall go up, I think, unless something now unforeseen happens 
 to forbid. Of course ]\Irs. Bowles is always ready to say go ; 
 you know she would give up any gratification, or endure any 
 suffering, to give me a pleasure, or get me out of the way of a 
 half-day of work. But that doesn't make it always right that 
 I should take her at her word — by no means.
 
 298 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 To H. L. Dawes. 
 
 AprU 20, 1859. 
 
 I consider it more the duty of the members of Congress from 
 Massachusetts to secure the defeat of the two years' amendment 
 [to the state constitution, requiring that citizens of foreign 
 birth should after their naturahzation wait two years longer 
 before being allowed to vote] than any other set of men. The 
 standing of the state in national politics is in their hands ; and 
 they have to meet their brethren from other states at Washing- 
 ton, and answer for the conduct of their constituents. I can 
 have no doubt that you agree with me in this, as in the convic- 
 tion that that amendment should be rejected. And I presume 
 you are doing all you can, both pubhcly and privately, to con- 
 vince the people of Berkshire that they should vote against it 
 at the election on the ninth of May, Why, then, do I write ? 
 Simply because I am asked to do so — to stir up your pure 
 mind to labor, to faith, and to work. 
 
 And I am yours truly, at three o'clock iu the morning. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 July, 1859. 
 
 Our ride to Northampton was rather savage from the heat, 
 especially the last half of it, but the horse had the worst of it. 
 He was in trim at six, however, for a night ride to Springfield. 
 On the whole, we had a delightful excursion of it, and Mrs. 
 Bowles enjoyed it greatly. Our friends were all exceedingly 
 civil to us, and then the country was fine, and most of it new 
 to both of us. Of course I had to Tindergo a blistering at 
 Northampton for touching with profane hands the local gods, 
 combined in this case with the immaculate gentlemen of the 
 bar ; and even Mr. Delano himself, whom I met at the Mansion 
 House, gave me the satisfaction of showing he was wounded, 
 though putting me to the awkwardness of defending myself by 
 word of mouth. I am not good at talking — but in the long run 
 even the lawyers don't get the advantage of us. When I have 
 done anything mean, I generally find it out as soon as any- 
 body — but I don't discover it in this case of the Hampshire 
 bar and the new court.
 
 letters: 1857-1860. 299 
 
 I am aching to pitch into Choate, and shall do it yet, un- 
 gracious as Boston will think it. I don't believe he was a 
 bright and shining Ught to the profession in at least one very 
 important particular. And I hate the '^ Nil de mortuis,^'' &c. 
 What do men die for, except that posterity may impartially 
 judge, and get the full benefit of their example ? 
 
 November, 1859. 
 
 I go to New York Friday or Saturday for a few days, partly 
 for a little recreation, partly on business and to see some 
 fi-iends, and partly to see that I am not put in a false and dis- 
 agi-eeable position as to the printership of the House. I hear 
 nothing particular about the affair lately, and shall be quite 
 content to learn that Weed & Co. have abandoned their idea. 
 In the first place, for them to try me and fail would be unpleas- 
 ant ; and I am not so sure that the appointment would be a 
 good thing for me. I am content, however, in all these things 
 to let affairs take their course. I should like some money. I 
 should Hke to enlarge my position and power in the next cam- 
 paign. But I can be content with what I have of both. 
 
 I am very busy indeed. I never get through, nowadays. 
 Something of every day's work goes over, and I have submitted 
 to this as a sort of law of my life. My correspondence is sadly 
 neglected, and I cannot pretend to follow my friendly exchanges 
 with regularity or fidelity. Yet it seems to me that I accom- 
 plish much less than I used to ; but the range of work widens, 
 and the care of the paper gi'ows greater and gi-eater. And yet 
 I like it first-rate. I only wish it paid better, so that I could have 
 better assistance, and have more steady rehance on my men. 
 
 Your early rising is a gi"eat achievement, but good if you wiU 
 go to bed in proportionate season. You can't burn the candle 
 at both ends, and make anything by it in the long run ; and it 
 is the long jduII that you are to rely on, and whereby you are to 
 gain glory. — A tender turkey and fixin's to you all at the 
 " Hotel de Allen." 
 
 [November or December, 1859.] 
 . . . I have much to do this fall, and must ask my friends 
 to come and see me rather than exact my presence. The print-
 
 300 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 ing business I shall leave to the men who suggested it, Weed, 
 Greeley, and Dana ; I shall neither expect nor seek it ; and I 
 question even if, on such conditions as will accompany it, it is 
 wox-th my ha\ang. It will lead me out of my independent 
 position, and with my disposition and the demands of those 
 who wiU elect me, if I should be elected, I suspect the bulk of 
 the profits will be contributed to the party funds for the presi- 
 dential election. I did intend to go to Washington at the 
 opening of Congress, The suggestion of me for pi-inter will 
 keep me at home — I will have no hand in the dirty work of 
 election. [This came to nothing.] 
 
 Om- differences in politics, etc., do not oppress me. I trust 
 our fi'iendship can stand them all ; and indeed I am inclined 
 to beheve that it is somewhat through our differences that we 
 like each other. It would be stupid to always agree. Yet I 
 would not that we should diift too far from one another — we 
 must preserve sufficient points of sympathy for contact, and I 
 have sometimes thought that, in my disposition to respect your 
 independence, and leave you to work out your own views of 
 men whom I respect and am disposed to follow, I was not doing 
 quite the fair thing either by them, you, or myself ; especially 
 as other men who know them less, or no better, and who have 
 no better right to influence you, are yet apparently doing so 
 against them. For instance, I think my opinion of Banks is 
 
 quite as hkely to be connect as your Mr. 's. I know him as 
 
 well as ever he did, and that in his riper years and character ; 
 
 I think my capacity for judgment is quite as great as 's, 
 
 and I should be sorry if I had so narrow and prejudiced a soul 
 as he; and yet you rather take his estimate of Banks than 
 mine, — and simply I suppose because I have taken no pains to 
 instill mine into you, while he has his. Isn't it so ? 
 
 Horace Mann had qualities which by themselves deserve a 
 statue, by way of commemoration and example. Whether as 
 a whole he deserves a statue in the State-house yard next to 
 Webster, I am not so clear. I think his labors for the schools 
 would entitle him to it, if anything. He was not a statesman, 
 but a reformer and a teacher. He was not lovable, like Choate, 
 but he had sterner and more enduring stuff, and has left his
 
 letters: 1857-1860. 301 
 
 mark for a longer period. The bad thing about the Mann statue 
 business is that it has a chief impulse iu the fact that he quai*- 
 reled with Webster, and Webster is on the other side. But as 
 the money is not subscribed, nor the artist engaged to make 
 the statue, we may trust that feeling to wear out. The move- 
 ment wUl not go on long, or to success, upon such capital as 
 that. Let us have patience, and look all around a question. 
 
 Brown was insane on this point of his mission. He was 
 courageous, conscientious, a real old Puritan, but a pure mono- 
 maniac, hke George Lunt ; and I am inchned to think you as a 
 lawyer could wish for no better case than to defend either of 
 them for a murder committed in the line of their mania. The 
 Harper's Ferry affair will appear to kill Seward — but he was 
 dead before. He has no chance, and his apparent strength has 
 for some time lain gi-eatly in the fact that other men were not 
 ready to be brought forward, and that everybody wants to 
 please him and his friends, and have then* reversionary sup- 
 port when he breaks down. Banks stands the best chance 
 to-day. There are many obstacles to his nomination, which, 
 if powerfully combined, may prevent it ; but I think that he 
 will succeed both at the convention and before the people. 
 None of our pohticians more thoroughly appreciate " the 
 epoch " than he, and no man in the country will make a more 
 powerful and brilliant administration. There will be plenty to 
 quarrel with in it j but it will have great features and decided 
 character. 
 
 December, 1859. 
 
 I am waiting for Congress news, at 2 A. M., and in a duU 
 moment write to say there is nothing new about the printing 
 or the other thing. I am somewhat puzzled by the Tribune 
 offer, and what is best for me under the various aspects of 
 present and future. But I shall make no positive conclusion 
 at present. 
 
 I do not think you judge Parker's book on Choate quite 
 impartially. It seems to me that it is a book we should all be 
 glad has been written, while we may more or less quarrel with 
 the man who wrote it. We may say as the man said when he
 
 302 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 declined to go bail, he had no conscientious scruples against it 
 — he would as hef somebody else would do it. I wrote our 
 notice of the book, and I beheve it gives a better idea of Choate 
 than any other man in the country than Parker could (or 
 would) have given. Our children will appreciate it, as they 
 will John Brown, more fairly than we. 
 
 The ducks — my own raising — were as fine as any I ever saw 
 or ate, and I felt somewhat disappointed that you did not 
 come, — especially as you had no better reason. It is never 
 " ridicidous " to seek good food. Come Saturday, if you can 
 and will. 
 
 In our editorial to-daj^, you will recognize some of your ideas 
 and expressions as to Brown's final taking off. I didn't mean 
 my man should adopt the language, but only use the idea, with 
 the others that I fished up for him — but he said he could not 
 spoil yours, and brought it to me, as a quotation from a pri- 
 vate letter. This would not do, — and as there wasn't time to 
 wholly remodel the article, I made a nice piece of patchwork 
 of it, — only shrewd people will be amused by the abrupt 
 changes in style from feeble to forcible and back to feeble again. 
 However, I think it is a good article aU around, and if you 
 aren't ashamed of it I shall be reheved. 
 
 February 9, 1860. 
 Mrs. B. and I came back from Albany to-day, after a pleas- 
 ant visit. I saw various people, and learned a few new things. 
 The most interesting thing however was a dinner with Thurlow 
 Weed, and a long private talk with him. He is a great man — 
 one of the most remarkable men of our time — one whom I had 
 rather have had such an interview with than with any president 
 of our day and generation. He is cool, calculating, a man of 
 expedients, who boasts that for thirty years he has not in 
 pohtical affairs let his heart outweigh his judgment, — and yet 
 a man with as big a heart, as quick to feel and as prompt to 
 act, as the best of the men you and I have seen. He is quite 
 eneoiu'aged as to Seward ; if Douglas is not nominated, and a 
 Southern man is, at Charleston, he says Seward's election would 
 be a sure thing — he knows it. But enough of Lord Thurlow — 
 you shall have more of our talk when I see you if you want it.
 
 letters: 1857-1860. 303 
 
 To his Wife. 
 
 Chicago, May 18, 1860. 
 
 I have just received your letter of Monday night, for which I 
 had been anxiously waiting' for two days. The excitement is 
 tremendous, and the nomination of Abe Lincoln has just been 
 made. Mr. Seward's friends are disappointed and sad, but 
 everybody else feels that it is a right result, and that the Re- 
 pubhcans will succeed with him. We hope Mr. Banks will be 
 added for Vice-President to-night, but are content any way. 
 With Mr. Lincoln we shall have an administration that wiU 
 recognize him, and give him a chance for 1864, which is per- 
 haps early enough. 
 
 I am now disposed to go over to Burhngton (Iowa) to-mor- 
 row, and spend Sunday with Mr. Fitz-Henry WaiTen. Colonel 
 Lincoln and Mr. Hooper, of Boston, are going, and earnestly 
 desire me to accompany them. I shall be home in any event 
 next week, from Wednesday, but probably not till Friday or 
 Saturday. My cold is much better to-day, but I am wearied 
 out, and must rest a day or two somewhere before starting for 
 home. I shall probably be in Chicago on Tuesday or Wednes- 
 day next, and may be reached there by telegraph if occasion 
 requires. If rain is not abundant, have the trees in the yard 
 around the house, and in the lot, newly set out, freely watered. 
 The strawbenies should be watered every day if the weather is 
 dry, and every two or thi-ee days any way. Water is their need. 
 The grape-vines, too, must be freely watered. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 June, 1860. 
 
 As usual, I came home sick ; indeed, but for the thi-eatened 
 boil which disciplines me as Job of old was not comforted, I 
 should probably have remained in Washington over Sunday. 
 As it is I am unhorsed, literally and figuratively. 
 
 The news of Mr. Ripley's death followed quickly your fore- 
 shadowing ; but I did not know of it until I read Vose's para- 
 graph this morning,— for I did not go to the office, and it was 
 not known I was home. There were some things wanting to 
 the perfect man in F. R., but it is rare you find so much ster-
 
 304 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 ling stuff in one life as he lias put into his. We may well be 
 happy to compromise with our aspu'ations on such results as he 
 has shown — results, I mean, of life and character rather than 
 of worldly endowment. We shall hope to be softer — shall we 
 be able to be as just ? To your mother this must come with 
 sad and serious suggestion j and you all have our sjTnpathy 
 and thought. Singular, is it not, — or would be, if not so often 
 illustrated, — that his wife, hovering so long on the brink of the 
 grave, survives him, who bade fair for years more ? 
 
 I shall keep at home pretty closely now for six weeks, partly 
 because Hood goes off for a month, and partly because it is 
 best for me. With horse, and regular habits, and the consola- 
 tions of wife and babies, I can mend better here than away. 
 We want to see you, and you will come as early as you can, 
 advising me in advance, that we may have a clear field. 
 
 Once only, so far as is known, did Mr. Bowles " drop 
 into verse." Middle-aged people will remember a certain 
 kind of album once in vogue, with leaves of different 
 colors, devoted to autographs and friendly or sentimental 
 effusions. One of the women employed as compositors 
 on the Repuhlican brought her album to him for a con- 
 tribution, and he gave her this : 
 
 Our Lucy's album ! Come and write, 
 
 Young men and maidens all ; 
 Put dainty thoughts in phrases trite, 
 
 And make the pot-hooks small. 
 
 Lovers may write their hopes and fears 
 
 On leaves of blushing hue; 
 Wise women, getting into years, 
 
 Will scribble on the blue; 
 WTiite for the girls ; — why ! bless the dears ! 
 
 They've left the green for you. 
 
 Pass round the book, and let it claim 
 
 Free gifts from generous souls. 
 An album only asks a name. 
 
 Here, take it, 
 
 Samuel Bowles. 
 
 "Republican"' Office, September, 1860.
 
 CHAPTER XXVI. 
 Ill Health. 
 
 NOT long after Mr. Bowles's return to the Rejmhlican 
 in the autumn of 1857, he began to suffer from 
 violent headaches, — Nature's sharp signal that the engine 
 had heen overdriven. But he held close to his work, 
 and for three years more his power of labor was not 
 perceptibly impaired. From that time on to the end 
 of his life, he was in constant battle with physical in- 
 firmity. By avoiding such close application to his 
 work as had been his previous habit, and by a succes- 
 sion of journeys longer or shorter, he kept himself equal 
 to the main guidance of the Bepiihlican, and to a life very 
 full and rich in its activities. Yet through it all he was 
 a crippled man. The full delight and power of health he 
 never tasted, after the tide of vitality began to ebb when 
 he was only thirty-fom\ It was after that age that he did 
 his best thinking and writing, fought his greatest fights, 
 carried his newspaper to its highest attainment, and 
 ripened in his most characteristic personal traits. But 
 much of the work was done at sore cost, by strain of 
 will instead of free spontaneity, with penalty of suffering 
 days and restless nights. The actual achievement was 
 tantalized by the sense of higher possibilities, seen but 
 unachieved. 
 
 Vol. I.— 20 305
 
 306 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES, 
 
 There was really but one resource and hope for full 
 recovery, — rest, complete and long-continued. But he 
 felt the necessity, first, of winning a competence for him- 
 self and his growing family. He felt, too, as editor 
 and as citizen, the absorbing demands made by the swift 
 succeeding acts in the great national drama. When, 
 returning from the Traveller, he took again the working 
 oar in the Hejniblican, he wrote to a friend, October 19, 
 1857 : " I would rather be ' fancy-free ' for a few months 
 or a year longer, but how can a man in these times ? " 
 In " these times " the Buchanan Administration was try- 
 ing to force upon Kansas the fraudulent Lecompton 
 constitution. The Supreme Court had just denied the 
 possibility of American citizenship to any man with a 
 black skin, and given slavery a legal foothold throughout 
 the territories. Liberty, opposed by the government, 
 found its champion in the press. To take part in the 
 debate, — to express, and by expressing intensify, that 
 public opinion which was to dethrone slavery, — was a 
 task for which a man might well be willing to spend his 
 life-blood. 
 
 The circumstances of his early life had wrought into 
 Samuel Bowles like a second nature the habit of unrest- 
 ing activity. He had almost lost the power of mental 
 quiescence. In his own house, sheltered and watched 
 over, he might for some brief hours sink into the languid 
 torpor which the overtaxed system craved. But no home 
 in the same town with his newspaper could be to him a 
 refuge from the cares and thoughts connected with it. 
 The best resource was in going away for a time. But he 
 could hardly find any place where his social nature would 
 not soon engage him in stirring conversations with old 
 friends or new. How can a man get mental rest who 
 hates solitude and who stimulates every mind he meets ? 
 This man had no taste for solitude, no genius for lonely
 
 ILL HEALTH. 307 
 
 contemplation; no aptitude for that inward leisui'e in 
 which the mind lies fallow, and in almost nnconscious 
 repose accumulates the energy for new harvests. Even 
 Nature could not long hold him in silent communion. 
 If there be a spot on earth where all soothing influences 
 unite to woo man into self-forgetful passivity, it is 
 Mount Desert. But even there, between mountains and 
 sea, — with the lulling dash of the waves to soothe the 
 weary head, — the air strong with ocean's salt and fra- 
 grant with the breath of pines, — amid the enchant- 
 ment of sparkling bay and island cliffs and sun-steeped 
 hills, — the restless child of action could not be still. 
 Said a friend who was with him there in 1863 : " If we 
 lay down on the shore to watch the waves, he would 
 jump up in five minutes and be off to something else. 
 He used to say to me, ' I wish I had your power of 
 enjoyment.' The fault of his composition was, as Carlyle 
 says of Sterling, that he had no inertia." 
 
 Chronic ill health was henceforward the burden of Mr. 
 Bowles's life. Of his bearing of that burden, the most 
 significant circumstance is this, that neither the paper's 
 readers nor his personal friends were ever wont to think 
 of him as an invalid. To those who every morning 
 scanned his work, it seemed to issue from a fountain of 
 exhaustless vitality. It was almost impossible to believe 
 that the alert, courageous, various newspaper had as its 
 central inspiration a jaded and suffering brain. It was 
 almost as hard for the great cii-cle of friends, to whom 
 his presence brought reviving cheer, to think of him as 
 a man harassed by sleeplessness and all the subtle torture 
 which wrecked nerves inflict. It was not in human 
 nature that some of it should not have vent. His daily 
 associates in the oflBce found him sometimes moody and 
 severe ; to his home he often returned, jDale, silent, and 
 exhausted, but self -controlled and gentle.
 
 308 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 Ill health was not without its inner compensations to 
 him. It enforced something of leisure, and with leisure, 
 even though it be that of invalidism, comes a deeper 
 and more delicate sense of things passed by without 
 notice in the midst of strenuous activity. It taught him 
 lessons of patience, sympathy, and charity. Scarcely any 
 human experience is harder to bear than the torture of 
 mind and body, the suffering and the weakness which are 
 caused by nervous exhaustion. Yet out of these depths 
 the soul may bring an enlarged being, — a wider reach of 
 sympathy, a finer tenderness, a strength of endurance. 
 In the later half of Mr. Bowles's life, there was an alter- 
 nation of heavier shadows and softer lights. Whoever 
 compares the letters which immediately follow this chap- 
 ter with those that precede it, will recognize in the writer 
 a different man. If there is a loss of outward power, 
 there is a gain of something higher. 
 
 His nervous malady came upon him gradually. It 
 had begun to make itseK acutely felt in the early part of 
 October, 1860, when he wrote to Charles Allen : 
 
 " I am going through a ' crisis.' I don't know whether it is 
 religious, mental, or physical, but I shall be better or worse 
 when I get through. Whatever it is, it is awful night-mareish ; 
 not even twenty-three miles of saddle on Saturday drove it off. 
 If it doesn't move soon I shall send for Mrs. Cook to come back 
 and write my obituary, and for you to write my will." 
 
 Against the assaults of disease, his chief resources were 
 a careful regimen, horseback exercise, and occasional 
 absences from Springfield. His physician was Dr. David 
 P. Smith, a man with a genius and passion for his pro- 
 fession, a commanding will, and a volcanic temperament, 
 whose power showed itself best in cases requiring surgi- 
 cal or heroic treatment. He never took rest himself, 
 and it was not his habit to prescribe it for others. He
 
 ILL HEALTH. 309 
 
 used to tell Mr. Bowles in his stammering emphatic 
 way, " K-k-kill a horse and it will do you good ! " Mr. 
 Bowles learned of necessity to be more regular in 
 his hours, more careful in his diet, and to take more 
 open-air recreation. But the regimen which is ample 
 for preserving health is often quite insufficient to 
 regain it. 
 
 It was a time when no man whose business touched 
 public affairs could afford to be sick. Through the 
 winter of 1860-61 the air was stormy and electric. One 
 after another of the Southern states was seceding ; the 
 President was imbecile and his successor inexperienced 
 and almost unknown; councils were divided, and the North 
 did not know its own mind and heart or the temper of 
 its opponent. Mr. Bowles inclined to a hopeful view of 
 the situation, and looked to see the clouds blow over 
 without a storm, as they had so often done before. 
 Then came the day when news went over the country 
 that Fort Sumter was under fire, — then, while from 
 hour to hour men held their breath and waited, word 
 came that the stars and stripes had been lowered in 
 surrender. In one instant the nation shook off its 
 paralysis. One great impulse swept all doubt and un- 
 certainty to the winds. To restore the flag, — to save 
 the Union, — was the passionate desire of all. The 
 guns before which Sumtei*'s flag went down had dealt 
 the blow ''that turns the coward's heart to steel, the 
 sluggard's blood to flame." The inspiration of that 
 day — its grief and resentment, its sudden revelation, 
 like a resurrection from the dead, of a mighty love for 
 the endangered country ; the fusion of white-hot passion 
 into inexorable purpose — was the baptism for a life- 
 and-death struggle of four years. Into those years 
 was crowded for the actors the equivalent of au ordinary 
 life-time.
 
 310 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 The chief place in the drama belonged now not to 
 legislator, orator or journalist, but to the soldier. But 
 every man at home who could worthily act or speak 
 or write felt the call to give the best that was in him to 
 the common cause. How the Bepiiblican bore its part 
 will be told hereafter. Its chief editor shai'ed to the full 
 the intense feeling of the time. But amid the tremen- 
 dous rush of public events he was a disabled man. He 
 had gathered and trained the assistants who could carry 
 on the paper's work without any very marked flagging 
 in its quality. But for himseK, his ebbing strength had 
 almost 
 
 "Amid the Muses left him deaf and dumb, 
 Amid the gladiators halt and numb." 
 
 In the early spring of 1861 he rode with his wife in 
 a sleigh from Amherst to Springfield; a heavy snow- 
 storm blocked the highways ; in often getting out of 
 the sleigh, as the difficulties of the road required, he 
 took a chill which resulted in a violent attack of sciatica. 
 Such attacks recurred at intervals during the rest of 
 his life. 
 
 In July and August he took a carriage journey to the 
 White Mountains with Charles Allen, whose brotherly 
 fidelity and equable temperament yielded to him always a 
 wholesome and grateful companionship. The two friends 
 drove in a buggy up the Connecticut Valley, stopping 
 sometimes for a night or a day at a friend's house. Mr. 
 Bowles was struggling against his old enemy, a weakness 
 of the bowels. He found something of tonic in the long 
 days out of doors, the restful, unexacting companionship, 
 and such scenery of river and meadows and hills as was 
 well suited to soothe a weary brain. By every such out- 
 ing he made some gain, which soon was lost upon his 
 return to work.
 
 ILL HEALTH. 311 
 
 In the autumn he went for a month or two to Dr. 
 Denniston's water-cui'e in Northampton. A lady who 
 made his acquaintance there says : 
 
 " He was the life of the whole company. Bent over with 
 sciatica, suffering day and night, he gave cheer to us all, 
 though probably no one of us was suffering more than he. He 
 helped in all the common amusements, and was quick at aU 
 games. He had a happy and deUeate way of receiving kindly 
 attentions from women, without any sentimentahty. To every- 
 body his manner was gracious, but especially to plaia and 
 unattractive people, — he had a knack of di'awing them out, so 
 
 that they became agreeable and entertaining. Dr. , a 
 
 minister, was there at the time, sick and miserably depressed, 
 and Mr. Bowles seemed to put new life into him. With myself 
 and my husband there began a friendship that never was 
 broken or clouded. He had in him a great deal of the boy, — 
 sportiveness and plaj^uhiess. There was a genuine reverence 
 and seriousness, but it was his habit to mask it. AU his per- 
 sonal ways were deheate and dainty. In his pronunciation 
 there was a touch of Yankee intonation, — a shght flatness of 
 the vowels, — not disagi-eeable, just enough to give a rehsh of 
 the native soil." 
 
 In November he went with his wife to New York, 
 where they took rooms at the Brevoort House, and were 
 both for a number of weeks under the care of Dr. For- 
 dyce Barker. Upon their household had rested a suc- 
 cession of shadows. Following the three older children, 
 there had been born three others, who all died at bu-th, 
 and another time of anxiety was approaching. The event 
 was happy, — a son, Charles Allen, was born, lived, and 
 throve. Following these months of rest, there came to 
 Mr. Bowles enough recuperation and steadiness of nerve 
 to enable him to face and fully measure his own condi- 
 tion and necessities. A more radical treatment was nec- 
 essary. The situation as he and his associates saw it
 
 312 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 may be illustrated by a letter from Mr. Bryan and the 
 answer to it, 
 
 Springfield, January 14, 1862. 
 
 My dear Bowles : In the name of the Bepuhlican, Amen ! 
 Once more pardon me for saying to you what my sense of duty 
 compels me to say, without knowing whether it will be accept- 
 able to you or not. 
 
 I am satisfied from your note of Sunday, and from other 
 facts as weU, that you are in no condition to come back and 
 take up the oar of labor next month, and that it will be a most 
 suicidal act for you to attempt it. 
 
 Figuratively speaking, you are a steam engine, and you have 
 been driven beyond your physical capacity. The machine 
 worked well for a long time, and carried its load so easily that 
 the constant additions made to this load by the growth of years 
 were not noticed, until it had been overloaded and strained in 
 some of its most vital and intricate parts ; but when it began 
 to falter, it was discovered that the frame was not so strongly 
 built as we had supposed. Is it policy to attempt to keep this 
 machine running while rebuilding and repairs — acknowledged 
 necessary — are going on ? Shall we fit a cog here and a bolt 
 there while the wheels are revolving, and thus run the risk of 
 so complete a wreck as to be beyond repair ? Or shall we stop 
 the machine and thoroughly rebuild, depending in the interval 
 upon such motive power as can be brought to bear upon the 
 machinery to be driven, albeit that power should run imper- 
 fectly and unevenly ? I ask you, boldly, shall we thoroughly 
 rebuild, and rvm as best we may while the rebuilding goes on, 
 or shall we patch up and patch up, exposing ourselves to the 
 risk of a total break-down ? 
 
 You must not entertain the idea of going to work this spring. 
 I beseech you not to think of it. I pray you take warning by 
 the past. You cannot ward off disease by simply resolving 
 that you will ward it off. You have not the physical strength 
 sufficient to meet the severe demands heretofore made upon it, 
 and why renew the tax upon it in its enfeebled estate ? 
 
 But to come to the point. Without attempting to be dictato- 
 rial or presuming, I have to say affectionately and earnestly,
 
 ILL HEALTH. 313 
 
 you must go abroad. Dr. Holland must come back to tlie edi- 
 torial room as soon as his lecture season is over, and give time 
 and attention enough to the Bepublican to keep it in as good 
 shape as possible. We shall have our yearly settlement made 
 up in a few weeks, and then Ben can be spared to go abroad 
 with you, and I do not think you can find in the whole circle 
 of your acquaintance a more judicious, useful, and interesting 
 companion than he would be for you. 
 
 I am actuated by a desire to accomphsh mutual good, in thus 
 writing you, and have not stopped to ask myself whether my 
 epistle will be well or iU received by you. My appeal comes 
 from a grateful and affectionate heart, and I hope it may be 
 received in the same spirit in which it is made. Will you heed 
 it ? WUl you look the matter fairly and squarely in the face, 
 and resolve to "rebuild'"? 
 
 That the God of all goodness may guide and direct you in 
 
 this matter, and spare you to yourself, to your family, and to 
 
 the world, in a full measure of health and strength, is the 
 
 prayer of your friend, 
 
 Clark W. Bryant. 
 
 Brevoort House, New York, 
 
 January 17, 1862. 
 My Dear Bryan : Your kind letter is only another evidence 
 of the constant and generous thoughtfulness of youi'seK and 
 my other associates in business. I thank you very much for 
 its substance, and more for its spirit. I should be mean and 
 ungrateful to resent it in any way. The subject had been 
 already on my mind most seriously. I had foreseen the possi- 
 bUity that I could not resume my active hfe, as I had hoped, 
 this spring, and had contemplated the alternative of going 
 abroad quite early, say in March, to come back in early Fall. 
 I beheve I have made up my mind to do it, if my fears and not 
 my hopes are reahzed in the condition in which I find myself a 
 month hence. But I do not wish to consider the matter fore- 
 gone till after I have returned home, and been there a few 
 weeks at least. As to how and with whom I shall go, if go I 
 do, that may also be left. I am weU enough and courageous
 
 314 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 now to go alone ; and I cannot think it wise to take Ben from 
 the office merely as a companion. My absence will fall more 
 heavily, on the whole, on you than on any one else ; and so 
 would his — and that is reason enough why we should not both 
 be gone together. Rev. Dr. StoiTS and his wife have some idea 
 of going. If they do, I should wish no better company. If 
 they do not — and I must go — somebody will tiuTi up or I can 
 push off alone. Ben would be the most advantageous com- 
 panion possible, — he would reheve me of all thought and care, 
 and everything of that sort, and be truer to me than anybody 
 else, — I know all that ; but he must not go. That I consider 
 settled. You get along splendidly without me. I shall have no 
 fears or anxieties on that score. I should only feel oppressed 
 with the serious care and work thrown upon those I love, and 
 in whose health and happiness I have a personal interest, both 
 selfish and ujiselflsh. But we must follow what seems to be the 
 necessary and wise course, on the whole. And what that is we 
 will let February develop. I hope to be home the whole of 
 that month, and if I must go, to do many things that shall 
 lighten my absence for others. 
 
 . . . We send much love to your wife, and though I have 
 not written half I feel of your tender thoughtfulness and kind- 
 ness to me on this and all occasions, I know you wiU beUeve 
 that I do feel it all, — that it even burdens me while it blesses 
 me with its great weight. Good-bye — 
 
 Ever yours, 
 
 Sam'l Bowles, 
 
 The following weeks confirmed the necessity of the 
 foreign journey, and brought Mr. Bowles to the point of 
 taking his brother as a companion. It is hard for a haK- 
 sick man to leave home and wife and children. Europe 
 had not for him the strong fascination which charms 
 and draws so many Americans. The appeal of its asso- 
 ciations and its art, the background of a mighty past 
 which colors all its atmosphere, spoke to him less strongly 
 than the stirring American present, with which his life
 
 ILL HEALTH. 315 
 
 and labor and affections were blent. To go abroad 
 among foreigners while the nation's fate hung in doubt- 
 ful balance, was to all true Americans more than a 
 common exile. But to put the ocean between him and 
 the Bepuhlican, to find such restorative as there might 
 be in the green lanes of England and the Alpine snow- 
 peaks, was the best hope for him and for the work and 
 friends he loved. His last weeks were crowded with 
 preparations. Dr. Holland was recalled to the office to 
 take the helm. Everything in the paper which its chief 
 could foresee and plan for, was arranged. The house- 
 hold with aU its inmates was provided for with scrupu- 
 lous care. The good-byes were said, the home was left, 
 and at New York the brothers went on board the steamer, 
 the younger looking with vigilant care to the elder's com- 
 fort. The farewell letter to the wife was written in the 
 last minutes ; — and, utterly worn and weary, his last act 
 one of provision for a needy friend, his last word one of 
 courage and comfort for his family, he gave himself pas- 
 sive at last to the rough, kind cradling of the ocean.
 
 CHAPTER XXVII. 
 
 Letters: 1861-1862. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 January 12, 1861. 
 
 I THANK you for your note. I only except to its apology. 
 You and I are beyond hesitancy in expressing an interest 
 in one another's welfare. Some months ago I came substan- 
 tially to the conclusion you express. But I am in doubt as to 
 the form the absence shall take. To go off alone, to Europe or 
 elsewhere, would destroy half the benefits of relief from work — 
 perhaps all of them. I am not self -poised enough to travel 
 alone, without wife or dear friend, and get comfort and good 
 from it. My wife cannot well go just yet anywhere. She could 
 hardly go abroad any way. None of the three or four — two or 
 three — other people I could travel with happily, can leave. 
 The way does not seem to open. So I wait. Meanwhile I 
 mean to spend the winter as easily as possible, spending another 
 week in New York with Mary, and perhaps several in Wash- 
 ington. Also a week in Boston. I mean also to ride regularly, 
 and eat and drink more caref uUy even than usual, — and icork 
 much less. Then if, when spring opens, there comes no substan- 
 tial rehef, I shall break away more thoroughly — go abroad, 
 if circumstances invite — make a trip to the Plains — spend 
 some weeks or months in the country or at a water-cure — or 
 make a long trip on horseback, with Mrs. Bowles in the car- 
 riage, through New England. I duly appreciate the incapacity 
 that is on me, and hope I shall prove man enough to conquer 
 it, both morally and physically. We will see. Meanwhile I 
 
 316
 
 letters: 1S61-1S62. 317 
 
 thank you again for your kind interest and its expression. But 
 don't encourage in me the selfishness of sickness. Dr. Johnson 
 says, you know, that every man is a rascal as soon as he is 
 sick. 
 
 Mrs. B. and I now hope to run up and spend Saturday or 
 Sunday with you — we will do what we can. I keep better 
 since I am home ; yet my head is a constant pain. 
 
 To Miss Maria Whitney. 
 
 January 15, 1861. 
 
 I yield more readily to the inward suggestion to let you see 
 what I said about Holland's book, because but for my acquaint- 
 ance with you it could hardly have been written. What is 
 yours could hardly be told ; yet I am sure you are one of 
 three or fovir women to whom I am indebted for my rebeUion 
 at Dr. Holland's Miss Gilbert as a " representative woman." 
 The nub of the article is in the concluding remarks ; yet if you 
 have time — and are not to read the book — pray read all, and 
 catch some idea of what the volume is. 
 
 I find I bring back very pleasant memories of my New York 
 visit ; though most of the days were broken through the heavy- 
 weights I carried. Home brings soothing and sleep ; but I 
 foresee a long struggle is necessary to conquer my nervous 
 weakness. Yet there is a certain illumination with the dis- 
 order that is enchanting at times. 
 
 I hope I didn't shock Mrs. P with my freedom and 
 
 almost irreverence. Few women command my respect so thor- 
 oughly as does she ; and stUl she stimulates a sure antagonism, 
 and challenges an opposition that I am certain to be ashamed 
 of, the moment I have gone away. 
 
 I inclose your thought of the other day, as developed by 
 Emerson. Yet I am sure he has somewhere brought out the 
 other truth — that we are never sure of our knowledge, nor of 
 our ideas, till we have aired them in speech or on paper, and 
 thus looked at them from outside ourselves. But Emerson is 
 cathohc to all truth ; that is his merit, and his demerit as an 
 efficient reformer. To reform, one needs to hold firmly and 
 present savagely a single truth, or one side of truth, and this
 
 318 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BO^Ti^ES. 
 
 Emerson is too well poised, too broadly cultivated, to do. — I 
 have thought a good deal of your suggestions on the loss of 
 feehng and knowledge through their expression, for they inter- 
 ested me. There are some subtle distinctions to be drawn here, 
 yet I do not know but you were nearer right than I. But all 
 this will keep. 
 
 To H. L. Daives. 
 
 February 26, 1861. 
 
 I thank you for your notes. But I can't go on and help save 
 the Union. There are patriots enough at Washington now to 
 do that business. I have thi'own my sciatica, but I am o'er 
 weak, and could not stand the fatigue and excitement of your 
 capital city in this " crisis." Moreover, I am afraid I haven't 
 a vital interest in the present row. We shall come out of it, 
 sooner or later, safe and sound, and not a bit sooner for my 
 fretting, I have a great faith in everything but the Repub- 
 hcan party, and that, if it chooses, " may go hang." It seems 
 to care a deal more about getting Mr. Seward out of the cabi- 
 net than anything else just now. Lincoln is a '' simple Susan," 
 and the men who fought a week at Chicago to nominate him 
 have probably got their labor for their pains. But no matter 
 — Seward is a necessity; Chase or Banks ought to be, and 
 reaUy are, if the machine is to run its four years ; but let the 
 New Yorker with his Illinois attachment have a fair trial. I 
 mean to be as loyal as possible, and that isn't very loyal ; for 
 you know I do love to find fault and grumble, and thank 
 God I can afford to. There are a few friends so demented 
 as to want office, whom I desire to help ; and for that I may 
 go to Washington a few weeks hence, and then I shall retire 
 to nurse my health, and mayhap for that go to Europe, and 
 try the only perfect government on the globe — that of Loids 
 Napoleon. 
 
 What was apprehension about Andrew is now conviction. 
 He wobbles hke an old cart — is conceited, dogmatic, and lacks 
 breadth and tact for government. Yet withal one of the 
 cleverest, good-naturedest, and heartiest fellows alive. We 
 were right at Worcester last August ; and the people will yet 
 see it and perhaps acknowledge it.
 
 LETTEES: 1861-1862. 319 
 
 As to compromises, our people must do for themselves and for 
 the border states all they can afford to do. Thej' can afford a 
 national convention, and should have proffered it early — not 
 accepted it. So they can afford to grant the Adams proposi- 
 tions. It is not concession to traitors. It is only spitting on 
 our hands to take a fii-m hold of the government. My instincts 
 rarely fail me iu poHtics, and they are sure here. It is not 
 probable I should see this thing differently at Washington ; but 
 I am glad I am not there. I can keep cool here, and calm, and 
 am reading poetry, and pitjing my fiiends who can't. Heaven 
 bless and keep you, and bring you home happy. 
 
 TMs letter reads strangely, twenty-five years after it 
 was written. Lincoln " a simple Susan," Andrew a 
 good-natured incapable, compromise the way of safety, 
 the Republican party the weak element of the situation, 
 and the crisis only a transient panic, — and this the judg- 
 ment of a man whose "instincts in politics rarely fail 
 him, and are sure here ! " 
 
 Yet any one inclined to pronounce this confident 
 prophet a fool above aU his feUows, will do well to re- 
 member that Lincoln himself, on his journey to his 
 inauguration, said : " This crisis is all artificial. It has 
 no foundation in fact. Let it alone, and it will go down 
 itself." The time was full of baseless hopes and base- 
 less fears. But this letter illustrates one characteristic 
 mistake of Mr. Bowles during the years just before 
 the war. He failed to fathom the depth of that con- 
 test of principles which underlay the surface currents 
 of pontics. He did not habitually see that slavery and 
 freedom, justice and injustice, were mustering for a 
 great decisive struggle. Perhaps none had that insight 
 except the men who were themselves animated by a 
 profound devotion to the cause of the oppressed, — 
 and he was not one of those men. He, like many of 
 his countrymen, needed the schooling which the war
 
 320 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 was to give — a schooling by which some profited and 
 some did not. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 June, 1861. 
 
 The horseback trip [in company with Edward B. Gillett] was 
 wound up to-day by a ride from Westfleld. On the whole there 
 was much pleasure and I trust some good in it. I have found 
 out where the weak and where the sound spots in me are, and 
 that's something. The boUs the exercise brought out, and which 
 were the chief drawback to the happiness of the excursion, 
 show a poor state of blood. 
 
 We rode about twenty miles a day, had exceUent weather, 
 were treated with marked civility by distinguished citizens on 
 the route — spent Sunday at Lebanon Springs, and saw the 
 unkissed Shakeresses, and pitied them, but did not want to 
 kiss them — dined with Esq. Colt at Pittsfleld — and came over 
 the mountains fi*om Shefldeld on Tuesday and Wednesday. 
 
 Now, how are you, and what of the book, and our trip to the 
 White Mountains ? I am ready to start any time and go horse- 
 back or with a carriage, or if you prefer by the pubhc convey- 
 ances. Until we start I shah loaf around home probably, but 
 not going to the office much, if any. TeU me what you can and 
 wish to do, and then I wiU fit my case to correspond. 
 
 It is worth while to give a specimen of the letters 
 (very few) which passed between the editor and his 
 friend the congressman on the subject of appointments. 
 The following is a fair and sufficient illustration of the 
 grounds on which, before the days of '^ civil-service 
 reform," Mr. Bowles recommended men for office : 
 
 To H. L. Dawes. 
 
 July 6, 1861. 
 
 I have made some inquiries in regard to a new man for the 
 Westfield post-office, and the result is that if you decide upon 
 
 that course, and will not appoint Mr. R , you cannot do 
 
 better than recommend Mr. T . He is a young merchant.
 
 LETTEKS: 1861-1862. 321 
 
 very popular in the \'illage, of high character, a strong and 
 hearty worker ; and while he has been a moderate supporter 
 
 of R , his father-in-law, H , who is one of the leading 
 
 men of the town, has been a chief supporter of W . So far 
 
 as the rival factions are concerned, no choice could probably 
 be better ; while in aU other respects there could be no fitter 
 or wiser appointment. He represents the vital elements of 
 society and poHtics, and is himself an efiicient worker. 
 
 How is the Huntington post-ofB.ce ? If you seek a new man 
 there, Edwin Bowles will be found a satisfactory selection. He 
 is a young man of twenty-three, has been the real postmaster 
 for some years, and probably will be, whoever receives the ap- 
 pointment. He is a second cousin of mine, but that ought not 
 to hurt him. I do not know that I ever saw him — certainly I 
 have not for years. And I only suggest him for such a con- 
 tingency, or embarrassment, as you find yourself in with regard 
 to Westfield. 
 
 Heaven help you through these hot days at "Washington. 
 GiUett and I had a right good time on our horseback trip ; 
 and next week I am off to the White Mountains with Charles 
 AUen. Good-bye. 
 
 July, 1861. 
 
 My dear : . . . You must give if you expect to 
 
 receive — give happiness, friendship, love, joy, and you will 
 find them floating back to you. Sometimes you wiU give more 
 than you receive. We aU do that in some of our relations, but 
 it is as true a pleasure often to give without return as life can 
 afford us. We must not make bargains with the heart, as we 
 would with the butcher for his meat. Our business is to give 
 what we have to give — what we can get to give. The return 
 we have nothing to do with. It will all come in due time — in 
 this world or another. We shall have our dues. One will not 
 give us what we give them — others will more than we can or 
 do give them — and so the accounts wiU balance themselves. 
 It is so with my loves and friendships — it is so with every- 
 body's. There is no call for any of us to humble ourselves 
 before each other. To do right, to be generous, forgiving, 
 kind, charitable, and loving, is not humihty — it is only justice 
 
 Vol. I.— 21
 
 322 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 and truth to the God in us. We do not need so much to bai'- 
 gain with others as with ourselves. We should measure our 
 own powers and our duties — see what we can do — what is 
 most pressing — and do what we can — taking care always to 
 keep ourselves in good heart and body for the service of 
 life. It is as bad to overdo as to underdo. In doing a chief 
 duty, we must not neglect others, even if they are hghter. It 
 is not faithfulness to wife or husband or children to neglect 
 brother or sister or friend. Our faithfulness to the lesser duties 
 gives us strength and capacity and usefulness for the higher. 
 If, for instance, one can take full care of a child in four out of 
 twenty-four hours time each day, we do wrong to give him any 
 more time, to the neglect of other even if lesser duties. We 
 had best cultivate ourselves by other occupations for the twenty 
 hours, so that we can do all the child requu-es in the allotted 
 four. The length and intensity of devotion and care are of 
 less account than its intelhgence and usefulness. But I may 
 not write more ; and this is very stiffly written, for I am not 
 bright. Have patience with me till I am stronger and better. 
 
 To his Wife, on his White Mountain trip. 
 
 Plymouth, N. H., July 20, 1861. 
 
 . . . I have been too lazy and unambitious to do anything 
 aU the forenoon, but have lain on the bed most of the time, 
 reading the paper a little, sleeping a little, and dreaming awake 
 a good deal — wishing I was stronger and better, and able to 
 do more for my wife and children and friends. It is a week 
 last night since I left home, but it seems twice as long, and I 
 so much want to see you all again. It does not seem as if 
 I could wait another fortnight, without seeing home and all its 
 fond joys again. 
 
 Charles has been sick for the last day or two, so that he has 
 not enjoyed his food or his travel very much ; but he is recov- 
 ering now, and I expect to see him eat a hearty dinner. I hope 
 to have another letter from you before we start away this 
 afternoon, and to learn from it that you are much better. 
 I have read Dr. Holland's " Renimciation," on Mrs. Flutter 
 Budget and repose. It has its lesson for both you and me,
 
 LETTEKS: 1861-1862. 323 
 
 though he has not fairly and properly put the question in 
 issue. Sympathies and passions are gi'eater elements of power 
 than he admits. All they want is to have judgment equal to 
 and directing them. No matter how powerful, how acute they 
 then are — the more so the better. But sympathies and pas- 
 sions that run away with us are oftener a curse than a blessing. 
 You and I both need to strengthen our judgments and chasten 
 our sympathies and passions — not to subdue them, but to 
 wisely direct them. Don't you think so ? 
 
 We begin this afternoon to enter into the beauty of the 
 mountain scenery. What we have seen is but the taste and 
 suggestion — the shadow of coming grandeurs and beauties. 
 But regret that you are not here, to see with your own eyes and 
 enjoy it all as you can only — much more than I do — is ever 
 present with me. I should be so much happier in seeing and 
 feeling how greatly you enjoyed the scenery. But we won't 
 sorrow too much over that. You can come another time, when 
 I am better, and better able to enjoy it, and minister to your 
 enjoyment of it too. 
 
 TeU everybody I am very well, and having a good time — 
 as I am. 
 
 North Conway, July 24. 
 
 . . . It is three days since I wrote you, partly because I 
 have not been where I could directly reach you, and partly 
 because I could not summon will enough to do anything but 
 eat and drive. I have been tired and duU, and leading rather 
 an animal hfe. . . . My sleep is stiU unsatisfactory, dis- 
 turbed and broken by dreams, but still I feel that I am grow- 
 ing better every way. . . . By your birthday I trust not 
 only to be with you, but to be driving down by the sea-shore 
 in your company. The last two weeks of August at least I 
 want to spend at the salt water quietly with you. The tempta- 
 tion and duty to go abroad decrease ; but if I do not I shall 
 probably be absent from home nearly if not quite aU the time 
 till November, and then you and I must begin to think of going 
 to New York for a while, you know. 
 
 We do not meet any very attractive people, and few that we 
 have ever seen before, aud have made no new acquaintances.
 
 324 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 I have no disposition to see or talk with strangers, and Charley 
 is a little too shy to commence, though he has done something 
 in that hne. These Boston people about here are hideously 
 plain. There are plenty of fine clothes, but a handsome face is 
 a rara avis. As Charley says, we shall have to take to hquor 
 for exhilaration. 
 
 I send a blue flower from the top of Mount Willard, with 
 my love. Eemember me as ever to the children; if I felt 
 weU enough I would wi-ite them — to AlHe, Mother, and "all 
 friends and relations." Don't forget Mrs. Cook in my remem- 
 brances ; her notice of Mrs. Browning was very good. Good- 
 bye — don't forget to be selfish in taking care of yourself. 
 
 Glen House, July 25. 
 
 This has been the most beautiful day since we have been in 
 the mountains. The sun has shone out steadily aU the day, 
 there were few clouds, and the highest mountains were clear 
 and distinct to the very top. The drive from North Conway 
 was pretty hard and long (five hours) over a muddy and hiUy 
 road. We stopped to see Glen EUis Falls, — a charming water- 
 fall, better and brighter than the Falls of Minnehaha in Minne- 
 sota, — and got here before two. I was quite tired, and had a 
 bad headache, but since dinner, a nap, and tea, am better. 
 We are right at the foot of the great mountains — Wash- 
 ington, Adams, Jefferson, etc., and their forms roU up against 
 a clear sky to-night most proudly. There is not a cloud, 
 and such mountain scenery I never looked upon before. 
 We have promise of a beautiful day for the ascent of Mount 
 Washington to-mon-ow — more beautiful than any for some 
 weeks. 
 
 . . . On the whole, I feel that I mend. But you must not 
 be impatient at slow improvement. It wiU probably be long 
 ere I get real well again. The nervous weakness of years' 
 acquii'ement is not to be broken in a month, or two, or three. 
 But I feel the old blood tingle once in a while in my veins, 
 and I long sometimes to get into action again. The war news 
 stirs me, and I want to be in the midst of the fray. If I 
 were well, I should certainly go down into the midst of the
 
 LETTEKS: 1861-1862. 325 
 
 camps, and see this great spectacle of the centurj'. But good- 
 night. Love to all. 
 
 Glex House, July 27. 
 
 I am just up, and have a moment before breakfast and the 
 closing of the mail to report myself as well and happy, and 
 "renew the assurances of my distinguished consideration" to 
 my wife and children. We had a dehghtful day upon the big 
 mountain, yesterday. We started at eight, and did not return 
 till five. The stimulus of the horseback-riding and the rare 
 mouatain air was wonderful ; it was hke champagne, and 
 everybody was full of glee and joy. Charles got up a flirta- 
 tion with a pretty Portland girl, and I contented myself with 
 civihties to a mairied woman and an engaged one. We dined 
 at the Tip-top House, and a stereoscopic picture was taken 
 with us in the foreground. — My sciatica is slowly wearing 
 away apparently, though I feel it some every day, and also 
 when tired some rheumatic feeling in my other leg. But it is 
 less than it was, and I do not worry about that. If I coiild 
 only sleep straight through the night, without waking or 
 dreaming all the while, and feel I had had enough of sleep 
 for once, I should be happy. But I hope I am getting the 
 better of that. 
 
 Littleton, N. H., Jiily 29. 
 
 This is the third stop we have made since I wrote you last, 
 and now we are again in the Connecticut valley, with our faces 
 set homewards. The river looks beautiful and familiar, and 
 we shall keep within sight of it for the week's drive that is be- 
 fore us. ... I have not seen the Eeptiblican for more than 
 a week. Only one copy has been sent to me since I left, and 
 now it is of no consequence, for I shall soon begin to find it 
 wherever we stop. You need not speak of this, however. I 
 presume it has been forgotten in the excitement. 
 
 We are now out of the mountains, and it has been a dehght- 
 ful experience in aU respects — one which I am very sorry you 
 could not enjoy with me. I will try to tell you about it all 
 when we get back. I wish you would give my love to Mrs. 
 Cooke, and thank her for her pleasant note. I wiU try to
 
 326 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 answer it before many days ; but in fact I am in no spirit for 
 letter-writing, and have a dozen letters now unanswered. I 
 liave written only one or two notes besides those to you since I 
 left home. Charley is bright and happy ; Poney keeps up his 
 vigor and spu-its, and you wiU think I have grown fat and 
 happy. I wiU write again to-morrow, and I hope a better 
 letter. This flower I found near the Crystal Cascade. Is not 
 this fern beautiful ? The woods are full of just such. I am 
 glad you are getting interested in the soldiers ; it will do you 
 good if not them. I meant to have told you and Mrs. Cooke to 
 
 see that [a soldier] had every desirable comfort that he 
 
 had not, at my expense ; and so far as can be now, I wish it 
 may be. Tell Mr. Bryan and Mr. Gillett that I shall try and 
 write them in a day or two. But good-night — Heaven bless 
 
 you. 
 
 Hanover, August 1. 
 
 I did not write you yesterday because I was iU with a bowel 
 difficulty. It kept me in pain and fretted from two o'clock in 
 the morning till night, and I could not have wi-itten a cheerful 
 letter — so I wrote none. We drove from Littleton to Bath in 
 the morning, and staid five or six hours — I lying on the bed 
 the most of the time, and Charles writing his law reports ; and 
 ia the evening we drove on to Newbury, Vt., and spent the 
 
 night. I went to see Sophy J at Bath, and found her very 
 
 weU ; she was glad to see me, gave me some late Springfield 
 papers, and sent her love to you. We stopped at a charming 
 old-fashioned tavern. I slept quite well for me, and I came 
 out recovered this morning, though not very bright. We 
 started at seven o'clock, and drove thirty miles at once, before 
 dinner, to this place. I was very tired and sleepy, and after 
 dinner had a httle nap. At three o'clock I got your last night's 
 
 letter, and was quite cheered by it. . . . I find Mr. H 
 
 and his family here at the hotel ; also Lucy M (Mrs. 
 
 F of Brattleboro) and her husband, on his peddling tour. I 
 
 called on her to-night ; she was prettier than ever, and appears, 
 on the whole, very well. 
 
 . . . I am glad you did what you did about , though 
 
 I do not think it well for him to have much money. What I
 
 LETTEKS: 1S61-1S62. 327 
 
 meant was that you should see he had clothes and Httle com- 
 foi'ts for camp life. However, I reckon he can be safely trusted 
 with $15 or $20, and I am glad, I say again, that you got it for 
 him. ... I want to take you off to the sea-shore with 
 Pone and the top -buggy, aU by ourselves, I shall wish to be 
 at home for a few days first, and I also wish to go down to 
 Boston for a day or two and see Col. Lincoln. You need not 
 be afraid of my fretting about office affairs, or the sight of the 
 paper distm-bing me ; I am vastly indifferent to all that, while 
 I am ill ; but I like to see the news, and know what is going on 
 about home, hke other folks. . . . Don't do too much, dear 
 Mary, either in housework or labor for the soldiers. Save 
 yourself. You will find you can do more in the long run by 
 doing a little every day, regularly, than by long and hard days 
 of work at intervals of excitement. I don't want to be preach- 
 ing to you on these subjects, but you do need constant thought- 
 fulness and care concerning yourself. . . . Do, do think of 
 aU this, and act cautiously ; avoid all work, all excitement, aU 
 wi'iting, at night. Let the evenings be given up to quiet 
 amusement and pleasure, and then you can sleep and be 
 refreshed. There, I won't preach any more. . . . While 
 
 L is with you, you must ride out often, and make her visit 
 
 pleasant in any quiet and unexciting way. I would not have 
 any set " companies," but invite in one or two to your ordinary 
 
 tea, perhaps every night. It is best, too, that is coming. 
 
 When she comes you had better inquire if she has left any 
 unpaid biUs behind her, and have them settled. See, too, 
 that she is comfortable, Avithout extravagance in clothes, and 
 let her stay in peace with us for the present ; something will 
 tvim up for her before the end of the season. ... I send 
 you a Harper's Weekly that I bought and have read to-day. 
 The niustrations will interest both you and the children. 
 Dickens's new story is finished in it ; I have read only this, the 
 last chapter, — but it is as sweet and touching and charming as 
 his last chapters always are. 
 
 I feel as the three months' soldiers do, I suppose, that, though 
 I ought to go away again, I want to go home first, and see the 
 dear home friends and scenes. It will be dehghtful to look
 
 328 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 you all in the eyes again, and see our pleasant parlors, and the 
 comer snuggeiy by the bedroom, with you in the arm-chau\ 
 Would you like to come up to Northampton on one of the trains 
 on Monday, and drive home with me ? 
 
 Don't tell anybody what I say about myself, except that I am 
 pretty well, getting very lazy, and enjoying myself very much. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 Springfield, August 8, 1861. 
 . . . Our trip is a bhssful memory to me. I enjoyed it 
 more than I expected to, and am sure it has done me good. I 
 cannot hope it is equally so to you. I was too much in a sub- 
 jective mood to give as much pleasure as I took ; but you can 
 have the satisfaction, if it is one, of having ** laid up treasures 
 in Heaven," and having further cemented a friendship which 
 has run many years with unalloyed comfort to me, and I trust 
 has an indefinite number of such yet in store for it. 
 
 To his Wife. 
 
 [From Dr. Denniston's water- c\ire, in Northampton, 
 October -November, 1861.] 
 
 What a dismal day and dreary rain ! I hope it don't fill your 
 heart and our home with sad and blue thoughts, but that you 
 reach out to the " Beyond," where reunion and happiness are. 
 The carpet-bag arrived yesterday morning, and opened its 
 treasures of comfort, beauty, and love. The flowers were but 
 little faded, and I gave them, after admiring them in detail, to 
 Mrs. S . 
 
 . . . Mr. H had a lot of grapes from Cincinnati 
 
 yesterday. We all had some for dinner, and A has just 
 
 brought me a private plateful to-day. The elder Mrs. D 
 
 gave me a fine basket fuU of big apples, which are a great 
 treat for me. Everybody is kind to me, and I only hope I de- 
 serve the thoughtful attentions I get from all, acquaintances as 
 well as friends. It is very pleasant, and does a httle something 
 towards making up for absence from home and those who love 
 me most and best.
 
 LETTEKS : 1861-1862. 329 
 
 . . . I am about as well as two days ago, and am getting 
 somewhat impatient at the slow improvement. Yesterday I 
 was quite blue and discouraged, but feel better and brighter 
 to-day ; but now the novelty of the life has worn off, I sup- 
 pose I shall find it a little harder to be reconciled to the slow 
 improvement of the water-cure, and grow impatient at the 
 restraint and the inability to do what I yearn to. 
 
 . . . I hope there are a good many people whom I shall 
 know and love in this world. I do not suppose people on the 
 whole are better or worse than myself ; and as I want to be 
 loved, and believe there is something in me worthy of love, I 
 believe there is something in others for me to love. I don't 
 expect to find perfection, and shall of course be subjected to 
 disappointment in some cases, by people turning out to be 
 what they do not at first appear to be. But that does not harm 
 me. We are blessed by what we give more than by what we 
 receive. We need returns, to be sure, but we can often live 
 on what we give of affection and faith and trust. 
 
 . . . Yesterday I drove Miss C , one of our patients, — 
 
 a friend of Miss L from New Bedford, who has come back 
 
 since you were here, — to church and back, and meantime 
 
 myself went in and saw M and M— — , who didn't go out. 
 
 I was too nervous to sit stiU in church ; besides, I can't bear to 
 exhibit my lame back to a miscellaneous crowd. 
 
 Let me know what the cows are doing ; and be sure that 
 Michael feeds them f uUy up to my directions — two quarts of 
 provender to each, each night and morning ; a half -bushel of 
 roots (turnips or mangels) at noon, and as much hay and other 
 stuff as they will eat clean, all the time. 
 
 There is not much new to write of life here. Yesterday I was 
 engi'ossed with Mr. Tiffany and Mr. Bryan aU day; to-day, Mr. 
 Osmond Tiffany called, and I found Austin Dickinson and John 
 B. Stebbins down street, and had a Httle talk with both, and 
 
 made a short call on Miss P . I also drove out Mr. Delano 
 
 for half an hour, and offered to drive out with his wife, but she 
 was busy with household affairs. Miss L and Miss C
 
 330 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 drove out with Pone yesterday afternoon, and have gone again 
 this afternoon. 
 
 Do not encourage anybody else to come up and see me. I 
 want more quiet than I have. I will send for the children, if I 
 feel like entertaining them, for Saturday; if not, they must 
 await my return next Wednesday evening or Thursday noon. 
 Do you get ready to go to New York on Friday, the day after 
 Thanksgiving. I wiU get some one to go with you if I am not 
 able ; but I expect now to be able to go. 
 
 Mrs. S is delighted with your basket, and blesses you for 
 
 it. Get another for yourself in its place. I play a game of 
 
 chess every evening after tea with httle Mary S , and she 
 
 beats me now, after two or three reverses. By the way, do you 
 see the Harper's Monthly f Tell Mrs. Cooke, if it comes to the 
 office, I should like it after she is through, for the children. I 
 want them to read the illustrated articles ; they are interesting 
 and instructive. In the November number is a sweet little 
 poem, too, '' A Game of Chess." 
 
 Bear me in sweet remembrance to aU friends, in and out of 
 the family. Console the children with kisses — let them have 
 "larks" and be happy, if "pa" and "ma" can't. Finally, 
 dearest sister, be calm and peaceful, and as happy as you can 
 be. " Thou knowest that I love thee " — and so, good-bye. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 Brevoort House, New York, November, 1861. 
 Mary stood the ride much better than I feared. Of coui'se it 
 was hard, but she didn't give out. We are cleverly quartered 
 in the fourth story of the Brevoort House — up three flights — 
 in a very quiet and retired part of the house. We have a nice 
 parlor and bedroom, ample in size and elegantly furnished, 
 with three windows looking on to Fifth Avenue. We go to 
 bed at ten, get up from seven to eight, breakfast at nine, and 
 dine at five ; taking our meals in our parlor all by ourselves. 
 It is somewhat cosy, but very odd. We are as genteel as may 
 be, but after all it is quite a prison-house. Maiy has not been 
 out, or down-stairs, and cannot go. I hobble down-stairs three 
 or four times a day, and outdoors for a little walk once or
 
 LETTEKS : 1861-1862. 331 
 
 twice. I have got out as far as Broadway three times, but have 
 to stop and rest there before coming back. 
 
 Dr. Barker has been in to see us several times, and has got 
 us both under his care — promising to bring us both out right. 
 Mary is pretty well, and hopeful I think, and I am better this 
 week than last — less headache and more sleep, and walk and 
 stand about as usual. 
 
 Mr. Dana came in to breakfast with us yesterday. Mrs. Dana 
 has also called, and several others of our friends. I read the 
 papers, some books, and do a little light editorial work. . . . 
 
 Let me hear from you as often as may be. Tell me all about 
 yourself, how you live, and what you do. I long to have you 
 weU settled in Boston. I believe it will be the beginning of a 
 long and prosperous business for you. Youth may not come 
 to us, save through our children, but health returning, and 
 prosperity staying, we will have deeper joys, though soberer. 
 
 To C. W. Bryan. 
 Brevoort House, December, 1861. 
 
 Our friends cheered us by their sympathy beforehand, and 
 now swell our thankfulness by their rejoicings — and none more 
 than you and your wife. " We make a note of it." I wonder 
 if ever baby was born, the object of more anxiety beforehand 
 and fehcitation afterward. Probably not, su\ It is a '* big 
 thing," sir, as the boys say; and the young man evidently ap- 
 preciates his being here, and don't intend to make any less 
 noise in the world than he has done already. He sounds a 
 regidar Chinese gong for five minutes before going to his meals, 
 and as these occur about once in fifteen minutes, as nearly as I 
 can estimate it, there is considerable of a sensation about all the 
 time. However, we all manage to make ourselves pretty com- 
 fortable, and Mary improves day by day. She is quite cheery and 
 comfortable, and perhaps the following bill of fare for her dinner 
 to-night wiU illustrate her condition better than any amount of 
 rhetoric. ^ ^^^^ ^^ stewed oysters. 
 
 4 slices of buttered toast. 
 A bowl of tea. 
 
 And there wasn't a " smitchel" left.
 
 332 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 All which please repeat to the sympathizing family, to 
 cheer them up during the Christmas solemnities. Young mas- 
 ter Charles Allen — to be called Al, or Alhe, out of regard for 
 our home " nuss " — sends his love to his brother and sisters, to 
 his grandma, to that excellent maiden who will be expected to 
 bring him up '' by hand," as Pip was — to his aunts and uncles 
 and cousins — and last but not least to all the members of the 
 " firm." 
 
 I get myself up straight now the first thing in the morning 
 by an half -hour's faithful and painful walking and family gym- 
 nastics, and then by taking care not to let it get cold I keep 
 the machine upright all the day. But the rubbing and the 
 exercise don't leave me much strength or pluck for anything 
 else, and I sleep well for me. 
 
 There's a' — that's all there is to say about personal matters. 
 For the rest, I beheve just as Hood does — he's right on all the 
 gooses. Except that I am rampant for war with England, and 
 a savage one at that [this was between the seizure of Mason 
 and Slidell, and their surrender to the British government] — 
 confiscating all English property here, and putting the John 
 Biills through the hardest sort of sprouts. They see that if we 
 maintain the Union intact, we shall have a high tariff on things 
 we can raise and make ; that they must buy cotton and pro- 
 visions of us, while we shall want none of their truck, and so 
 they must be continually paying us specie — and thus we 
 come up to the head of the commercial world. Hence their 
 ughness, their sympathy with the South, and their desire to 
 break us down. But good-bye — love to all, and many thanks 
 for vmnumbered blessings. 
 
 To his oldest Daughter. 
 
 Brevoort House, New York, December, 1861. 
 My dear Sallie : Mother devolves on me the duty of writ- 
 ing home to-night. We are both as well as usual, if not better. 
 Mother, I think, is quite as well as she was a few days ago, and 
 quite as well as she has been any time since we came to New 
 York. I am quite straight now, and have been for some hours,
 
 letters: 1861-1862. 333 
 
 but I shall probably jdeld to the pressure of fate, and be crooked 
 by to-morrow morning. But I think the straight is getting the 
 better of the crooked a Uttle every day, and I hope will over- 
 come it altogether by and by. There is not much new vnth. 
 us to-day. Grandpa comes in every day to see us, and talks 
 wisely, and goes away. Cousin Kitty calls nearly every after- 
 noon, and almost always brings Mother some pretty flowers. 
 She left a beautiful httle basket of them this afternoon. 
 Flowers are very cheap here ; you can buy a Uttle bit of a bou- 
 quet for ten cents, and a httle basket hke this of Mother's for 
 twenty-five cents, and a large basket for $1 or $2, Mother's 
 little basket contains two rosebuds, several carnation pinks, 
 some mignonette, and other little flowers. We got your long 
 and nice letter of family news this morning, and were glad to 
 hear you were all doing so well. It seems to me that Aunt 
 Allie is putting on airs ; tell her she must be humble, like a 
 good Episcopahan, and not snub people who are two hundred 
 miles off, and. sick, just because she is in authority. Tell 
 Michael to be sui-e and feed the cows just as I told him. . . . 
 Do you go to Mr. Townsley, and have him make you a new 
 pair of boots. But when you wear your rubbers, wear your 
 old boots under them, if you can. Be careful and not have the 
 house too hot — 68° to 70° is as warm as it ought to be at any 
 time. That is all the good advice I have got for you to-day. 
 Mother and I both send love and kisses to all. 
 
 New York, December, 1861. 
 My dear Children : Mother and I wish you all a " merrie 
 Christmas." We are soriy we cannot be with you, to help 
 make it merry, and be made merry too, in return. But you 
 must make the day as happy as you can for yourselves, for 
 each other, and for all around you. We shall think of you all 
 as happy and enjoying your Christmas-trees, your Christmas 
 visiting, your Christmas dinner, and your Christmas givings 
 and reeei\'ings. You can remember us, too, as very quiet down 
 here at the Brevoort House, but as very happy, too, in pleasant 
 thoughts of you all at home, in the possession of a new and 
 pretty little baby, and in the faith that we shall soon return to
 
 33-4 THE LirZ A>'D TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 onr dear home and family and frien<ls. in good healtli. and find 
 you all well and happy as of yore. Moths* is much better to- 
 day, and is feeling very happy indeed. The baby behaves 
 himself better than he did. — mother s appetite is improving. — 
 and in a very few days she will be able to sit up and to come 
 out into the parlor. It has rained here all day. and a httle 
 snow has fallen too. But the rain wouldn't let it look white, 
 and so we shall have no real winter for Christmas. You, I sup- 
 pose, have had snow all day. and will have shding and sleigh- 
 riding for your holiday. — I grow better every day. and have 
 stood up straight nearly all day. The rubbing man I guess 
 will cure me. and by the New Year's day I hope to say good- 
 bye to the old broken back. — Give Mother's and my love to 
 Grandma and Aunt Allie and aU the uncles and aunts and 
 cousins, and all the dear friends in Springfield. We kiss you 
 by telegraph, and with much love we bid you good-night. 
 
 To Charles AUen. 
 
 Springfield, February, 1S62. 
 . . . Tell Lincoln [Ezra], with my love, what I write. I 
 mean to write him in a day or two, though I have nothing new 
 to say. It is the same old thing, as Emerson says. — men and 
 prophets have tried it, and found nothing new or better — to 
 love and be beloved. 
 
 To Miss Whitney. 
 
 •Jantiary. 1862. 
 . . . How can you utterly desert the country, these pure 
 and beautiftd days of winter, and lose these magnificent 
 stretches of vision — the long, white meadows sentineled with 
 trees — the vacant stretch of the river, with its qtuck life be- 
 neath a cahn surface, like the great human soul with its out- 
 ward peace and inward beating — and away beyond the gray 
 and blue hills, with their curtain of hoar-frost, like the white 
 veil that heightens bridal beauty — and the evening reddened 
 light of the sun, that even Gifford never yet transfigured, set 
 off on the eastern horizon with the cold gold of the rising
 
 LETTEKS: 1861-1862. 335 
 
 moon — that same moon now grown round and full like om- 
 friendship — whose first faint outline we looked at together 
 from Fifth Avenue two weeks ago yesterday morning — how 
 can you leave all this and more, the pure bracing air, the 
 still, calming hush of Nature? You, country -bred, country- 
 loving — you are unloyal — you are " secesh " against your 
 birthright — you seU yourself for the mess of pottage, the routs 
 and excitement of the city — the adoration of men and women, 
 the fascinations of gas and furnaces. I know what you will 
 say — you wiU shut me up by telling me that warm and loving 
 hearts are sweeter than the cold beauty of Nature, shine it ever 
 so brightly — that — that — well, state your own case. I am 
 not going to convince myself. I stick to my upbraiding. And 
 I do wish you could parade my western piazza with me in the 
 first flush of morning, and again in the rich red of sunset — 
 where the eye travels its twenty miles at one look — and then 
 for exercise walk off upon the open plains, bounded by our 
 familiar friends, Tom and Holyoke, beckoning us to their 
 embrace with the old loving sunny sides and the gilded tops. 
 Can you stay away ? We wiU try that you shall miss nothing 
 if you will come. 
 
 The weather and the coimtry are very beautiful, in truth, 
 since we came home. I never knew that I loved the country 
 so much in the winter before. Only I get nobody to enjoy it 
 with me. Mary is shut up with measles and baby, and is not 
 
 strong for walking. M is not enterprising enough, and so 
 
 I have to push off on the road sohtary and alone, save my 
 
 thoughts. If, now, you and would come and join me, 
 
 how we would rolhck under the inspiration of cold Nature and 
 warm humanity ! 
 
 I am trying " ) read a httle, yet it is only a little. I exhaust 
 my Uttle nerve power in a few hours of writing and talking, 
 and when reading time comes, I am too weary even for that. 
 There is nobody to read to me — nobody that I want, and so I 
 get on slowly. John Brent is good, though — you must read it. 
 Winthrop belonged to the men of '' fine forces," and he recog- 
 nized them in others, and portrays character and experience, 
 nature and art, with most subtle and sweet power. Then the
 
 336 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 scenes and experiences described are new and fascinating and 
 refreshing, as much so as pure soul after long travail with 
 dirty humanity ; as after boarding and Broadway femi- 
 ninity ; or, to come to your apprehension, as hot whisky to a 
 parched throat. I am only a third through with John Brent, 
 and only wait for you to join me. ShaU you read it in New 
 York, or wait tUl you get home 1 Do you want my copy ? Then 
 I have attacked Dr. Walker's sermons, which I have been wait- 
 ing for for some months. I have much respect for and faith in 
 him — have you ? I have read only one, and that was on The 
 Mediatorial Mystery, and left it mystery stiU. The others wiQ 
 fit me better, I hope ; and if they do, I shall ask you to read too. 
 Thank you, too, for Mr. F 's [Frothingham ?] sermon ; it has won- 
 derfully fine passages — beautiful and exhaustive of the philoso- 
 phy of hf e ; but I read it too late to appreciate it aU. Events 
 have thrown its material pictures out of hne. I copy [in the Re- 
 publican] some of the exquisite passages. But I am not satisfied 
 yet ; let me read more of him before I pass opinion upon him. 
 I do not feel the j)resence of that greatness I worship yet. I 
 have got out my neglected Macaulay (history) also, and hope 
 to resume that. This is the sort of reading that widens and 
 greatens me ; it confirms me in my philosophy of history, my 
 views of life and progress. The God in History, when recog- 
 nized to the extent of faith, gives us aU patience and charity, 
 even with those who differ widely from us, and denounce us 
 and our opinions. The statesmen and politicians of England, 
 in the formation period of her polity, are the same types as 
 those we see about us now — the conservatives, radicals, and 
 middlemen, of every grade and shade. But you know my 
 opinions on these and kindred subjects ; though I suspect I am 
 really more of a radical and progressionist than you beheve 
 me. I have talked with you of men more radical and hot and 
 impatient, and so probably have not done justice to my own 
 tendencies. Then, too, you must remember I have necessarily 
 schooled myself to coohiess and philosophy, and to the look 
 ahead. Otherwise my life would have killed me years ago. 
 
 Brent, "Walker, and Macaulay are my reading for the present. 
 Think of me in each.
 
 letters: 1861-1862. 337 
 
 Bless you, my dear friend, for opening to me so freely your 
 religious life and faith. Had I not been gradually recognizing 
 it for the last two or three months, I should have been aston- 
 ished to find it is so great a thing to you. And I am siu-prised 
 and impressed that yours was that common experience of reve- 
 lation and rest by a sudden flash, as it were. There must be, 
 I suppose, preparation and thought ; but the finishing stroke 
 seems God-given, and fastens itseK in a way that must be 
 wonderfully impressive. As to my own opinions, it would be 
 pretty difficult to describe them. Perhaps you have done it as 
 nearly as it can be done — yet I do not wholly recognize it as 
 my condition. AU these things have seemed very much a mud- 
 dle to me — my mind never could solve them. I can generally 
 average and condense the intelligent views and opinions of 
 others on most subjects ; but here the wide divergence of great 
 and good men, the contradictions of revelation and science, the 
 variant testimony of all our sources of information, have been 
 too much for the grasp and condensation of my mind. So I 
 have just put it aU aside — and waited. I have striven to keep 
 my heart and my head free and unprejudiced, open to all good 
 influences — ready to receive the gift, but perhaps not reaching 
 out for it — and not reaching out, perhaps, again, because when 
 I made the effort I felt a sickening feeling of hypocrisy, mixed 
 with the apprehension that to go ahead was for me to go back. 
 And that the faith of the fathers and the testimony of good men 
 forbade me to do. So I have seemed forced to be content to 
 grow in goodness in my more practical way, and to leave 
 theories and faith to time. I try to make my life show the 
 result of Christianity and godliness, if I have not the thing 
 in its theoretical form. Patience, charity, faith in men, faith 
 in progress, have been lessons that I have been learning 
 these many years. Purity of life too has been a steadfast 
 aim. Measured by my fellows, I have been successful — more 
 successful than many who have firmer foundations, or affect 
 to have. But this consciousness is injurious to me. It is lead- 
 ing me to be content. It is perhaps reconciling me to a little 
 sin. And indeed I do not expect ever to be perfectly good, or 
 to find any other person so. I do not see how that is possible 
 
 Vol. I.— 22
 
 338 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 with any nature. That is, I mean by goodness, purity of soul — 
 perfect purity in thought as well as action. Deeds may be com- 
 manded, though that is rare, and I do not know that I ever 
 saw or expect to see a person who can do it, — but the thought, 
 never, it seems to me, so long as we are human. Indeed, does 
 God expect or demand it of us ? We cannot crucify our earthly 
 desires, — that has been tried, and it was semi -barbarism. They 
 are the elements of growth, of usefulness, of progress, almost 
 as much as the yearnings of a higher and holier nature. Strike 
 out from the world the deeds or that portion of them done 
 through the promptings of what may be called the human side 
 of our nature — ambition, selfishness, passion, love, hate, etc. — 
 and the world would stop, retrograde. There is not force 
 enough in the divinity within us to carry on the machine. Does 
 not God understand this better than we do ? Are we not made 
 as we are with a view to produce the greatest results ? Let any 
 candid mind, honest but severe, examine the motives which 
 lead it to the execution of its highest and noblest deeds — I 
 imagine it will find subtly but not always feebly working there 
 some elements of selfishness, pride, ambition, desire to appear 
 well, make an impression, gain the applause of the multitudes 
 or the one. Did you ever think of that ^ I have, and watched 
 myself and others — and sometimes I have thought there was 
 never an absolutely pure action — pure I mean of any human ele- 
 ment, wholly divine. And why should there be ? Can human 
 beings become divinities — wholly, exclusively 1 When they do 
 they will cease to be human, and go hence. So I learn patience 
 and charity, even for myselE. All progress, all good, is but an 
 approximation. The end is never reached, never can be, per- 
 haps never could be, — but the effort should be continuous 
 and earnest. It should also be intelligent. It should not be 
 self-upbraiding and morbidly dissatisfied with itself. Praise is 
 said to be useful to others — is it not to ourselves from our- 
 selves ? Justice is the better word — we should be just and 
 generous to ourselves. There are some people — are you not 
 one •? — charitable and loving and generous to everybody else, 
 but hard and severe to themselves. This is cruel, wicked. It 
 Hmits their happiness and their usefulness. One of our first
 
 letters: 1861-1862. 339 
 
 duties is to ourselves — to make ourselves happy. Then we can 
 make others happy, and make them grow, and grow with them. 
 Of eoui'se, indulgence is not always the way to make ourselves 
 happy — and yet there are some indulgences that we should 
 permit ourselves. The philosophy of life is understood by but 
 few. Our humanity makes us oftener blindly practice and 
 illustrate it, than spread intelligent theories. We practice 
 better than we preach. Mr. Staples's sennon had some fine 
 illustrations bearing on this point — the protests and conquer- 
 ing protests of human nature against dogmas and creeds and 
 theories, that seemed to be of God at the time, — you remember 
 them. There is no end of the application of this philosophy ; 
 the difficulty is in the intelligent apphcation. Give one man the 
 doctrine I have enunciated, and he would run away to the 
 de^al under it. And in the apphcation of it, there will occur 
 thousands of cases full of doubt and tiial — questions of Love 
 and Duty — Duty to ourselves and Love to others. . . . And 
 indeed in the apphcation of any rule there would spring up a 
 new crop of questions below the fii-st — and so on and on. 
 Here is the field for our higher inteUigence, our purest justice 
 to ourselves and to others. Every one must be a law unto 
 himself. If I should tell you what to do, in the case of 
 
 , it might be impossible for you to do it — it might give 
 
 too httle to yourself or too little to him. — And all this is hf e. 
 "We grow in all ways and by all sorts of means — here by indul- 
 gence, there by restraint. But I think you, and such as you, 
 as often do yourselves wrong by restraint as by indulgence, by 
 being unjust to yourselves in your great desire to do no injus- 
 tice to others. ... I have meant to speak generally, and 
 to utter very generally my views of rehgion and life and 
 humanity. Perhaps you think it is low — that it betrays lack of 
 faith in humanity as weU as faith in God. Consider it again and 
 you will think otherwise, I have great faith in man, and the 
 faith in God is perfect, only it cannot describe and take hold of 
 the object. But I have run away from my rehgious hfe. I know 
 what I want and lack — it is a higher inspu-ation. It would 
 not change my theories, but it would lift up my hfe, give it 
 more play, more richness, more power for daily good.
 
 340 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 To his Wife before sailing for Europe. 
 
 Brevoort House, Tuesday night. 
 Dearest: We are in the midst of a snow-storm, but the 
 Cunard steamers wait for nothing, and besides it will probably 
 be clear to-morrow. I was very deeply drained by the last few 
 days at home, but surprised that I was able to stand so much. 
 There was a cheery crowd of men at the depot ; the Briggses 
 and Merricks were on the train ; and I had a pleasant call at 
 New Haven with the Whitneys, and got in here in good season 
 at night, and went to bed by eleven o'clock, and had a fair 
 sleep for me. To-day I have been about a Httle, but not so 
 much as I had proposed. The weather was bad, and I could 
 not go over to Brooklyn without too great fatigue, and so I cut 
 that and some other calls I had intended to make. I find it 
 very easy to say good-bye to friends after the hard strain of 
 parting with home and its nearer and dearer ones. On the 
 whole I feel better and cheerier about my going away than I 
 have done. I have faith that it will aU work out rightly and 
 happily for my and our happiness and health. At any rate, we 
 must both act and hve as though we expected and beheved 
 that. But as I have kept clear of emotional indulgences since 
 I left home, I will not get back to them now, for if I do I 
 shall break down. You know how I feel and what I should say 
 if I yielded to the impulses of the heart and the occasion. . . . 
 
 Brevoort, 9 o'clock, Wednesday. 
 
 Dearest : Now good-bye for a few months. We shall come 
 together again, healthier and happier — both better I trust for 
 the separation. Don't shut yourself up. Go out, circulate 
 around, see your friends, and know always that I never shall 
 be so happy as when I know you are well and happy and en- 
 joying all that hfe gives you of home and friends and beauty 
 and love around you. . . . 
 
 has just come in to say good-bye. He will write you. 
 
 He accepts our offer. I am very glad of it. Now send him 
 and the money regularly, and teU nobody. . . . 
 
 Kisses and love for children, and love for every friend.
 
 CHAPTER XXVIII, 
 The Cr\^iL War. 
 
 UNTIL April, 1861, politics was but an incidental and 
 minor interest of the American citizen. The peo- 
 ple of the Northern states plowed and reaped, builded 
 and traded, and were absorbed in the interests of the 
 family and the neighborhood. They read the newspa- 
 pers, talked over the news of the day, went to town- 
 meeting or to the polling-place once or twice a year, 
 and seemed to leave the affairs of the nation mainly to 
 congressmen, editors, and wire-pullers. Then the aspect 
 of the country changed as suddenly as when the curtain 
 rises on a new scene in the theater. These men of peace 
 left theii" plows and shops and forges, and by hundreds 
 of thousands enlisted for the discipline of the camp and 
 the perils of the battle-field. The flower of the popula- 
 tion resolved itself into an army. Back of that army lay 
 the resources and the hearts of the entire community. 
 
 The people of the South fought to vindicate their po- 
 litical independence and in defense of their homes. To 
 the typical Southerner, always attached to his state and 
 his section more than to the Union, the defense of the 
 Confederacy against invasion was as natural an impulse 
 as was his forefathers' maintenance of American inde- 
 pendence against Great Britain. A minority had opposed 
 secession as politically inexpedient. But the moment 
 
 341
 
 342 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 the invasion of Northern armies was seen to impend, the 
 instinct to defend their firesides roused the whole white 
 population into a resistance as united and as resolute as 
 ever a people made. The slaves remained peacefully at 
 their work, save when the approach of the Union armies 
 tempted the more adventurous to flight. Many of them, 
 when emancipated in the course of the war, enlisted in the 
 Union armies, and showed abundant courage as well as 
 capacity for discipline. The masters of the slaves did not 
 venture to enroll them as troops, but families were freely 
 entrusted to their fidelity on many a lonely plantation. 
 
 The people of the North had not their independence to 
 fight for, or their homes to defend. Secession, if success- 
 ful, would have left to the Northern communities the 
 same independence as to the Southern. There was no 
 immediate menace to Northern firesides. But what was 
 menaced was the unity of the American nation. By a 
 marvelous instinct the common people of the Northern 
 states realized that the breaking up of the Union was an 
 ultimate danger to the personal freedom and safety of 
 all its present and future myriads. It was the first step 
 in the dissolution of a great social order into warring 
 atoms. They recognized, by an intuition deeper than 
 logic, that the welfare of each household in the land was 
 bound up with the organic life of the nation. They saw 
 in the stars and stripes the imperiled symbol of the com- 
 mon good and the common right. To defend that they 
 staked their fortunes and their lives. 
 
 The North began the war in a temper of passionate 
 ardor and hope, looking for speedy victory. The defeat 
 at Bull Run was a bitter disappointment ; but after the 
 first shock came a bracing of the sinews for a longer 
 effort, — very long, they thought, it could not be. Then 
 followed the organization and slow training of McClel- 
 lan's army ; the schooling of the nation in patience ; a 
 confident expectation that the Peninsular campaign in
 
 THE CIVIL WAR. 343 
 
 early summer of 1862 was to be the decisive stroke ; — 
 then the seven days' struggle, and the heart-sickening 
 sense that it had failed. Fresh calls for troops followed ; 
 then the rebels' invasion of Maryland and their repulse 
 at Antietam ; — the successes in the West, the resistless 
 march down the IVIississippi and its tributaries, to meet 
 the conquerors of New Orleans; — but for the brave 
 army of the Potomac fresh repulses, and the slaughters 
 of Chancellorsville and Fredericksburg. So went 
 the tremendous alternation, hope now drooping at 
 delay, now flushed by triumph. The story was not sin- 
 gle but million-fold, as in the homes of East and West 
 the eyes of fathers and mothers and wives and sisters 
 were fastened on their soldier in the field, while they fol- 
 lowed with scarce less eagerness the fortunes of the cause 
 to which they had given so much. 
 
 Slowly tui'ned the doubtful tide of war. Lee's army 
 taking the offensive met at Gettysburg a great disaster; 
 thrown again on the defensive, again it held at bay 
 the overwhelming numbers which the North poured 
 against it. Vicksburg fell and Port Hudson; — "the 
 father of waters," said Lincoln, " flows again unvexed to 
 the sea." Grant, the conqueror of the West, was called 
 to lead the final assault on the rebel capital ; then came a 
 summer of multitudinous slaughter; — meanwhile, Sher- 
 man's victorious march through the heart of the exhausted 
 South, — then the winter before Petersburg, besieger and 
 besieged locked in the last grim clutch, — until outnum- 
 bered, starved, overborne, but dangerous to the last, 
 Lee's army fell. The agony was ended, — the nation was 
 one, and free. 
 
 The North's first impulse of loyalty to the Union 
 became mixed as the struggle went on with both finer 
 and coarser forces. It fought at first for an unbroken 
 nationality. Soon rose in many minds the purpose, not 
 only to preserve but to purify that nationality, — to make
 
 344 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 an end of the legalized wrong against a race. That pur- 
 pose was opposed for a while by the legalists, the timid, 
 the selfish — but it prevailed; and the North fought 
 through the last half of the war for universal freedom as 
 well as for national unity. At bottom the South was 
 fighting for the power to hold men in slavery, and the 
 North was fighting to break down that power. 
 
 Yet other motives had large place. The North had a 
 great material stake in the contest. To the West, the 
 possession of the lower Mississippi by a foreign power 
 meant commercial vassalage. While the South was 
 utterly impoverished by the war, — its one product, cot- 
 ton, being shut off from market by a blockade which also 
 excluded all imports, — the teeming population and mani- 
 fold industry of the North were not exhausted by the 
 drafts of the conflict. Its shipping was driven from 
 the seas by the Confederate cruisers, but its commerce 
 went on though under foreign flags. Its farms and facto- 
 ries and shops and colleges were full and flourishing. The 
 equipment and supply of the armies created temporary 
 activities ; general business throve ; the expansion of the 
 currency gave a feverish activity to trade. Great for- 
 tunes were made out of army contracts, honestly and 
 dishonestly ; and the poor cloth sometimes furnished for 
 uniforms gave a new name, " shoddy," for sudden and 
 ill-gotten wealth. The volunteers of the early years were 
 largely from the best class of citizens; but as the supply 
 of such recruits slackened, recourse was had to large 
 bounties; forced drafts were made; and the men thus en- 
 rolled, and those who enlisted for the high pay, were of 
 an inferior class. Politics became more passionate than 
 rational, and a class of politicians flourished who traded 
 on passions which they did not share. 
 
 But in its broad aspect it was an ennobling period. 
 Men learned to live for something larger than self. The
 
 THE CIVIL WAE. 345 
 
 air was charged with a religion which made men willing 
 to die for men. Life was exalted. Its outlook was wider, 
 its temper more heroic. Men woke to consciousness of the 
 higher relationships, — they felt as never before that 
 
 " 'Tis not the whole of life to Hve, 
 Nor all of death to die." 
 
 No state took a heavier share of the common burden, 
 and none was more forward and resolute to push the 
 war to the highest issues, than Massachusetts. She con- 
 tributed none of the great commanders, but the Massa- 
 chusetts regiments were always recognized as among the 
 finest material in the Northern armies. The high intelli- 
 gence of the rank and file made them easily amenable to 
 discipline. There was a brain and a conscience behind 
 every musket. The proudest historic names were on the 
 muster-rolls. In its politics the state was more than 
 Republican, — it was Radical. Its representative public 
 men were such as Andrew and Sumner. The tide of 
 patriotism lifted people above the barriers of sect. In 
 communities like Springfield, where a social partition 
 line had run between Orthodox and Liberals, it almost 
 disappeared when men of the different churches shoul- 
 dered their muskets in the same ranks, while at home 
 their wives and sisters were working together to provide 
 supplies or raise funds for the Sanitary Commission. 
 The humanitarian spirit in literature assumed a new 
 form. For many years, poets and reformers had decried 
 war as much as slavery. Now Humanity Avas seen as a 
 warrior goddess. Emerson and Holmes and Whittier sang 
 battle-songs ; Hosea Biglow's verse no longer satirized 
 war, but was charged with the passion of those who 
 fought and the pathos of those who watched. 
 
 The higher life of the nation in the war was epitomized 
 in Abraham Lincoln. With all his heart he loved peace
 
 346 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 and abhorred violence. His whole instinct was to govern 
 by appeal to right and reason. But when the higher 
 powers had set the great issue to be tried by the ordeal 
 of battle, his resolution was inexorable, his patience inex- 
 haustible. The joy of combat was foreign to his nature. 
 It was the suffering of the people, as much as his own 
 responsibilities, that furrowed his face with wrinkles. 
 He scarcely felt the conscious thrill of victory before 
 he bent every energy to heal the wounds of war. He 
 had grown and lived among the hardest materialities of 
 the West, and amid the selfishness and pettiness of 
 practical politics. He had an easy-going tolerance for 
 men and practices far below the ideal standard. Yet the 
 bed-rock of the man was moral fidelity. His was a 
 careful and considerate conscience, guided by reason, 
 amenable to logic, scrupulous to look well at all sides of 
 a question. He was thoroughly teachable; he listened 
 to every speaker ; he let the preachers preach to him, 
 and gave his ear to statesmen of every shade of opinion ; 
 he talked freely with plain men and women ; he con- 
 sulted Sumner, as the barometer of the nation's con- 
 science ; he turned to Seward's diplomacy when a foreign 
 complication was to be averted ; he utilized the fiery 
 energy of Stanton and the financial genius of Chase. 
 His administration in its details was under a perpetual 
 storm of criticism, but the people never doubted that an 
 honest man was at the head of the government ; and his 
 homely common sense, his humanity, his humor, won for 
 him more and more their trust and love. By nature 
 deficient in that faith which is buoyant confidence, he 
 was rooted in that deeper faith which is unswerving 
 fidelity. Accustomed to guide himself by logic and by 
 the outward sight, rather than by spiritual vision, there 
 grew in him under the schooling of events an awed sense 
 of some divinity guiding the affairs of men. His service
 
 THE CIVIL WAE. 347 
 
 to his country was perfected by his death. Martyrdom 
 gave to his worn and homely figm*e the last touch of 
 radiance in the eyes of his countrymen. A nation's 
 highest treasures are the heroes in whom something of 
 ideal greatness is realized, and who become the guides 
 and prophets of its future. The greatest of America's 
 servants to-day is Abraham Lincoln, as he lives in the 
 hearts of the people. 
 
 To trace in detail the story of the war is a task which 
 does not belong to these pages, save at the points of special 
 contact with the history of the Republican. Americans 
 never read their newspapers so eagerly as in those days. 
 Every household had either members or friends in the 
 ranks of the armies. "Women were concerned no less 
 deeply than men in the war, shared vicariously in its worst 
 sufferings, made its greatest sacrifices, and breathlessly 
 watched its daily fortunes. The newspaper was the me- 
 dium through which all these anxious hearts looked out on 
 the strife. So newspapers as a class prospered and grew. 
 The RepuUkan prospered, though its limited means for- 
 bade any such splendid enterprises of news-gathering as 
 the great city journals achieved. The New York Herald is 
 said to have spent half a million dollars for its war news. 
 The Republican could afford no " special war correspond- 
 ents." It had occasionally a soldier's letter ; and it had 
 one series that ran through the whole war, in which, 
 under the name of " Dunn Brown," Rev. Samuel Fiske, 
 who served in the ranks of a Massachusetts regiment, 
 described his experiences in a pithy, off-hand style, full 
 of spirit and humor and color. But the leading feature 
 of the paper was the daily report of the various cam- 
 paigns, a story read then with breathless interest, but 
 which is now to be studied as it has been winnowed and 
 condensed into histories of the war.
 
 348 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 The effect of the war while it lasted was to magnify 
 the function of news-giving and relatively lessen that of 
 shaping opinion. Fighting once begun, the people needed 
 little leadership except in the field and the cabinet. The 
 press scarcely needed to give education, beyond the story 
 of what was passing. Such other education as was needed 
 was not so much the imparting of new ideas as the artic- 
 ulate expression of those sentiments which already lay 
 more or less clearly in the readers' minds. "When the 
 nation was nerving itself for the final effort, the Repub- 
 lican (August 27. 1864) said of '' The Journalist as a 
 Leader " : 
 
 " His power does not lie wholly or chiefly in the ability to 
 convince or the gift to persuade. He has marvelous resource 
 in the mere power of expression. There is virtue enough at 
 this hour in the yeomanry of our country to save it, but it is 
 dumb. It is his duty to give it voice. Heroism unuttered is 
 robbed of half its force. . . . The joumahst can unite all 
 those who have high and generous thoughts, even though they 
 may have them unconsciously, by giving utterance to those 
 thoughts, by making his readers feel that thrill of sjmipathy 
 with the virtue of others which shall quicken their own. There 
 is a world of self-sacrifice, of endurance, of resolve in the 
 masses, to which the leader has only to appeal. Their very 
 silence is listening for his voice. Their voiceless thought is a 
 sword which it is his i^rivilege to unsheathe. Their coiu-age 
 and self-devotion are motive forces like steam or water power, 
 waiting for his pen as for the machinist's hand to bid them put 
 their shoulder to the wheel. 
 
 " The vast majority in this country are men of moderate 
 means and simple habits, to whom the interests of labor and 
 the rights of mere manhood are vital. It is of the first impor- 
 tance to them that this war should close not by concession or 
 compromise, but by the victory of the right. Inured to hard- 
 ship and privation, their whole life is a moral tonic that has 
 strengthened them for the hour. They have muscle enough to 
 fight their battle, they have thrift enough out of their modest
 
 THE CIVIL WAE. 349 
 
 industry to pay its cost, they have energy enough to use their 
 resources effectively and well. They want merely that the 
 press should be true to its mission, to lead them to the charge. 
 Men of action, they wait for the men of words. Let them not 
 wait in vain." 
 
 The Repnhlicati did its own part manfully and well. It 
 reflected and expressed the unfaltering determination 
 with which the people of Massachusetts, like those of the 
 whole of the North, carried through the costly work of 
 the war. Its instinct toward criticism and extreme inde- 
 pendence was subordinated to the great necessities of the 
 time. It not only upheld without faltering the Union 
 and the war; it supported with equal steadiness the 
 government of President Lincoln. In that government 
 there was a great deal to provoke criticism. A peace- 
 maker \>y every instinct of his nature, and almost wholly 
 without administrative experience, Lincoln found himself 
 the nation's captain in a gigantic war, and the chief 
 administrator in a governmental system the work of 
 which had been suddenly and immensely increased. 
 Military interests sometimes suffered because the supreme 
 commander was a civilian and a politician. There were 
 mistakes and groping and terrible waste of resource. 
 The heaviest burden of the nation was that its toils 
 and sacrifices seemed so often thrown away by bad gen- 
 eralship. The President underwent fierce and frequent 
 criticism. But the mass of the people stood by him 
 through aU, because they were certain of his patriotism 
 and his honesty. The Repullican stood by him always. 
 He had none of that brilliancy and magnetism which 
 were apt, as in the case of Douglas, to win the paper's 
 sympathies ; his faults were often those of slowness 
 and hesitation, with which it was not wont to have 
 patience. But, because it recognized his entire moral 
 soundness, and his position as necessary leader in the
 
 350 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 great work in hand, it supported him through evil and 
 good report. 
 
 It is unnecessary to write any detailed history of the 
 opinions expressed by the Republican in those years : it 
 will be enough to outline its course on two subjects — 
 slavery and party politics. That stumbling-block of 
 intelligent consciences, the conflict between the legal and 
 moral aspects of slavery, passed out of sight while seces- 
 sion gathered to a head, and in the outbreak and first 
 shock of the war; and then it reappeared. The first 
 object of the war was to put down the rebellion and 
 restore the authority of the government. That was the 
 view which Lincoln maintained. But soon a sentiment 
 found expression that the war should be openly directed 
 against slavery as well as against the rebellion ; that it 
 should be made avowedly a war for emancipation. This 
 sentiment was strong in Massachusetts and in many 
 parts of the North. The old Abolitionists and anti- 
 slavery men were reenforced by others who thought that 
 the former legal rights of slavery had been canceled by 
 the slave-holders' rebellion. In opposition to these, the 
 President for a time, and the more conservative of the 
 Republicans, as well as the entire Democracy, maintained 
 that the sole object of the war was to restore the suprem- 
 acy of the Constitution, and bring back the insurgent 
 communities to their former status ; and that the obliga- 
 tions of the Constitution regarding slavery and all other 
 matters were in no whit impaired by the defection of 
 one section from its allegiance. This view was held for 
 a time by the Bepublican. It thus argued the matter, 
 October 2, 1861, under the heading " Shall it be a war of 
 emancipation ? " 
 
 '' About half the sermons preached on the late day of National 
 Fast — and by the leading city preachers, who are accounted
 
 THE CIVIL WAK. 351 
 
 the representative men of the various sects — assume that God 
 requires that the war should be made a war of emancipation, 
 as a condition of success, and that the defeats and failures 
 hitherto encountered are in consequence of the neglect of gov- 
 ernment to fulfill this condition. Not Dr. Cheever alone, but 
 Dr. Bacon, Dr. Cleveland, Dr. Tyng, Dr. Bellows, and a host of 
 other titled and untitled divines, of all denominations, took the 
 same view. . . . Let us not rashly accept a conclusion 
 invoh-ing such tremendous consequences. If we adopt it, the 
 war is no longer a war for the Constitution and the Union. It 
 sets aside the Constitution ; it is a counter-revolution at the 
 North against the revolution at the South. It releases the 
 South from its constitutional obhgations and makes the contest 
 one of sections and institutions." Those, says the paper, who 
 beheve that the Constitution is " a covenant with death and an 
 agi'eement with hell " may consistently call for a war of eman- 
 cipation. " But those who adhere to the Constitution and the 
 laws, and seek the restoration of the Union as the fathers made 
 it, can join in no such revolutionary cry. . , . This is 
 neither the time to discuss amendments to the Constitution, 
 nor to violate any of its existing pro\'isions. If it were certain 
 that the rebels could be more easily subjugated, as some con- 
 fidently assert, by proclaiming general emancipation, we are to 
 remember that it is characteristic of the just man (and the just 
 nation as well) that ' he sweareth to his own hurt and changeth 
 not.' . . . It is taken for granted by the divines who have 
 furnished us a text, that God designs the damage and destruc- 
 tion of slavery by this war. We hope so. But let us follow 
 Providence instead of undertaking to dictate or dii-ect its 
 course. The struggle that is upon us opens daily with wider 
 scope and greater power, and the more extensive and formida- 
 ble it becomes the gi'eater will be its effect upon the monstrous 
 social crime in which the rebellion has had its origin and from 
 which it derives its mahgnant spirit. We need not fear that it 
 will not be sufficiently damaged if we adhere with unflinching 
 fidehty to our constitutional obhgations ; and the supposition 
 that we need to break our oaths, and to violate the very instru- 
 ment in defense of which we fight, in order to assist the divine
 
 352 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 plan, shows distrust rather than confidence in the power of 
 Providence to accomphsh its own ends. No, — let us walk 
 firmly on the straight line of duty and right, and trust God for 
 
 results." 
 
 It is unnecessary to elaborate here the objections urged 
 against this view : — that it was very tender of the tech- 
 nical rights of the master, and wholly oblivious of the 
 moral rights of the slave ; that the familiar plea of the 
 legalist against the humanitarian was out of place when 
 final appeal had been taken to the arbitrament of force ; 
 and that it was an odd interpretation of a man's consti- 
 tutional rights which allowed you to shoot him, but for- 
 bade you to set free his slaves. 
 
 As the war went on, the question of slavery in various 
 practical aspects was forced upon the government, which 
 for a time decided questions of detail in favor of liberty, 
 while avoiding any sweeping measures. The return to 
 their masters of slaves who came within the lines of the 
 Union armies was forbidden. Slaves actually employed 
 in the service of the rebellion were declared free. Then 
 Congress enacted that all slaves owned by rebels or the 
 aiders and abettors of rebels should be free as soon as 
 they were included within the lines of our armies. But 
 when General Fremont in Missouri, and afterward Gen- 
 eral Hunter in South Carolina, issued proclamations of 
 freedom to all slaves of rebels within those states, the 
 President disapproved and canceled their action. Event- 
 ually, a vehement pressure was brought to bear upon the 
 President to declare all slaves of rebels free, by virtue of 
 his military authority, as a measure necessary to the suc- 
 cessful prosecution of the war. During the summer of 
 1862 the more radical Republicans plied the President with 
 all forms of importunity and sometimes with reproach 
 and invective. The Repuhlican opposed this demand as 
 unnecessary and useless. It said, August 30, 1862 :
 
 THE CIVIL WAE. 353 
 
 " The gist of the whole case is this : we have emancipation 
 by law ; the law wiU be enforced and the slaves freed as fast as 
 the armies penetrate the Southern section ; a proclamation of 
 military emancipation could be enforced no farther, — therefore 
 there is no real foundation for the issue which some of the 
 Repubhcans attempt to raise against the President, and the 
 only way in which General Fremont and the rest of us can help 
 enforce the law and free the slaves is to go into the field and 
 defeat the armies of the Rebellion. Every victory is a victory 
 over slavery. Every victory is a grand proclamation and act 
 of emancij)ation. We have emancipation as a law. The mus- 
 ket and the cannon must enforce it. . . . If emancipation 
 is proclaimed as a war measure, it can be reahzed as a fact only 
 as fast as the adverse section is subdued, and thus much is 
 already secured by the act of Congress. Neither laws nor 
 proclamations execute themselves." 
 
 Lincoln meanwhile was anxiously brooding over the 
 question whether the war should be directed against 
 slavery. His moral repugnance to slavery, and his oath 
 to maintain the Constitution; — the people's will as inter- 
 preted now by enthusiasts like Sumner and Phillips, now 
 by the Conservatives; — the need to satisfy the Northern 
 conscience, the need to hold the loyalists of the border 
 states, — these were the conflicting considerations with 
 which his mind was laboring. At last he reached a con- 
 clusion, which he shared with no counselor, until he read 
 to his cabinet the proclamation of freedom, and told them 
 his purpose was fixed. The supreme constitutional duty, 
 he reasoned, was to save the nation's life. The rebellion 
 which imperiled that life was supported by the labors of 
 four million slaves : to declare freedom to the slaves 
 was to strike at the sinews of the rebelliou, and was thus 
 justifiable as a military necessity. That was the logic he 
 used with himself and with the nation ; but an instinct 
 finer than logic told him that the hour was come, and 
 that the people would support him in abolishing the 
 Vol. I.— 23
 
 354 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 great wrong. On the 23d of September, 1862, appeared 
 the proclamation of emancipation. It was moderate and 
 guarded ; three months were allowed the rebels to return 
 to their allegiance before the final decree of freedom 
 should be issued ; it was to apply, if issued, only to the 
 communities in actual rebellion; and it was based on 
 grounds not of absolute right, but of military necessity. 
 But it pledged the government, at a near date and upon 
 a contingency almost sure to be realized, to maintain the 
 freedom of the great body of the slaves. The President 
 when he issued it declared in effect that the war was to 
 be for emancipation as well as for the Union. His action 
 temporarily weakened his party ; it helped to give New 
 York to the Democrats ; it shook the loyalty of many 
 Unionists in the border states. It did not impair by a 
 man or a musket the fighting force of the South. The 
 slaves took no advantage of their new theoretical rights, 
 until their masters were conqiiered by the Northern 
 armies. But the proclamation declared to the world 
 that the contest was for human freedom. It formally 
 invoked to the Union cause the mightiest ally, — the 
 justice of men and of God. 
 
 The Bepuhlican welcomed the proclamation heartily, if 
 not with entire consistency. It said, September 24 : 
 
 " The President's action is timely — neither too soon nor too 
 late. It is thorough — neither defeating itself by half-way 
 measures nor by passionate excess. It is just and magnan- 
 imous — doing no wrong to any loyal man, and offering 
 no needless exasperation to the disloyal. It is practical and 
 effective — attempting neither too little nor too much. And 
 it will be sustained by the great mass of the loyal peojile, North 
 and South; and thus, by the courage and prudence of the 
 President, the greatest social and political revolution of the 
 age will be triumphantly carried through in the midst of a 
 civil war."
 
 THE CIVIL WAE. 355 
 
 Wlien, with the opening of 1863, the final decree of 
 freedom was issued, the Bepublicaii's comment was : 
 
 " Theoretically we are pursuiiig emancipation as a means ; 
 practically we are pursuing it as an end. Practically we must 
 pui-sue it as an end, until the end come. . . . Let every 
 loyal man feel grateful that he has two good and great ends to 
 look for and to fight for, instead of one." 
 
 The course of party politics requires notice. In the 
 first summer of the war, with the autumn elections in 
 view, the RepuhUcan strongly lU'ged that old party lines 
 be ignored, and no issue recognized save the prosecu- 
 tion of the war and the maintenance of the Union. It 
 pleaded that the issue of " no slavery in the territories," 
 which had furnished the central article of Republican 
 doctrine, had been completely submerged by the greater 
 issue of the war. It called for a union of men of all 
 parties upon that single question. The response to this 
 was very wide and very hearty. The chief of the Demo- 
 cratic leaders were ready to agree. The Boston Post., Ben- 
 jamin F. HaUett, and even Caleb Gushing, were strongly 
 in favor of waiving party lines in support of the govern- 
 ment. The call for the Republican convention had been 
 worded in very liberal terms, but it was issued by the 
 party committee, and the purpose was manifest to secure 
 the renomination substantially of the party ticket. In 
 both parties the professional politicians controlled " the 
 machine," and the desire of the people for an unpartisan 
 union lacked practical leadership. The Bepuhlican made 
 the novel suggestion that in the emergency the editors of 
 the Boston daily papers should issue a call for a Union 
 convention, which would cut the ground from under the 
 feet of the old parties. But Boston journalists, who had 
 never agreed upon any point, could hardly be expected 
 to agree upon this. For one of them to suggest such a
 
 356 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BO^XES. 
 
 convention Tvould have been enough to secure the opposi- 
 tion of all the others. The party organizations were main- 
 tained. The Democrats met first, and, in the absence of 
 their ablest leaders, — Butler being in the war, and Hallett 
 and Gushing absent, — a set of small men managed the 
 convention, adopted strong Union resolutions, but de- 
 nounced the Republican party and took a highly partisan 
 tone. The Republican convention, under the presidency 
 of ^Ir. Dawes, was both patriotic and catholic in its 
 spirit ; Governor Andrew was renominated with enthu- 
 siasm, and places on the ticket were given to a Demo- 
 crat and a Bell-Everett man, — both of whom ultimately 
 declining, the nominations were bestowed upon Repub- 
 licans. The convention's temper and action were praised 
 by the RepuhJican, but with regret that no escape had 
 been found from a party contest. The election that 
 followed was spiritless, but Governor Andrew and his 
 associates were chosen by a majority of 3-1,000 — two to 
 one. 
 
 In Xew York there was in 1861 a Union ticket, headed 
 by an old Democrat, Daniel S. Dickinson, which defeated 
 by a great majority a partisan Democratic opposition. 
 In other states, then and afterward, during the war, 
 there were some similar fusions. But in general the two 
 parties kept up their organizations. 
 
 In the autumn of 1862, — a time of general discom-age- 
 ment, — the Democrats carried New York by a close 
 vote, electing Horatio Seymour governor. Pennsylvania, 
 New Jersey, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois gave small Dem- 
 ocratic majorities. The Republicans had a reduced ma- 
 jority in the national House, and the Senate was still 
 theii's by four to one. The Democracy in general main- 
 tained throughout the war an attitude of protest against 
 the Administration for errors and usurpations, and for 
 its growing tendency to an emancipation policy. The
 
 THE CIVIL WAK. 357 
 
 tone of Democratic speeches, newspapers, and conven- 
 tions varied according to time and place from stanch 
 support of the war to denunciation of it. The "War 
 Democrats" sometimes voted for the Republican candi- 
 dates, sometimes carried their own party for the war and 
 for a merely legitimate criticism of the Administration. 
 Whatever there was at the North of sympathy with the 
 Southern cause allied itself with the Democracy, and 
 sometimes controlled it, as when Fernando Wood was 
 a magnate in New York City, or when Vallandigham 
 led his party to overwhelming defeat in Ohio in 1863. 
 That the Democrats as a body were disloyal is disproved 
 by abundant facts. The great state of New York was 
 governed by that party during the latter half of the 
 war, and in the presidential election of 1864 the party 
 cast forty-five per cent, of the popular vote of the coun- 
 try. But whatever there was of devotion to universal 
 freedom, and of unreserved allegiance to the national 
 cause, found its most congenial place among the Repub- 
 licans. To most members of that party, its success 
 became identified with that of Union and freedom ; the 
 whole passion and fervor of the war-time assured their 
 party fidelity ; and it was in those years that the party 
 name became so dear to the hearts of earnest men, that 
 its ascendency was safe, against whatever errors it might 
 commit, until a large part of that generation should have 
 passed away. 
 
 In the summer and autumn of 1862, when Mr. Bowles 
 was in Europe, and the paper was under Dr. Holland's 
 control, it came into an attitude of pronounced hostility 
 to the management of the Republican party in the state. 
 The radical element of the party were in the ascendant, 
 and Sumner was their hero. There was among them, 
 before the emancipation proclamation, a very critical 
 disposition toward Lincoln. The state convention in its
 
 358 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 resolutions said not a word in commendation of the 
 national Administration, and lavished all its praises on 
 Senators Sumner and Wilson. The Bepublican declared 
 in great disgust that the convention had been managed 
 exclusively with a view to Sumner's reelection. That 
 reelection it opposed. It declared that Sumner was a man 
 of but one idea; that as a practical legislator he was 
 gravely deficient ; that Massachusetts desired no senator 
 who was not thoroughly anti-slavery, but that she also 
 wanted a man of broad views and business capacity. 
 Throughout the state there was a good deal of sentiment 
 unfavorable to the dominant radicalism. It took form 
 in a "People's convention," — a kind of last rally of old- 
 fashioned, highly respectable Massachusetts conserva- 
 tism. It nominated General Devens for governor, and 
 Charles Francis Adams for senator. But the Democrats 
 damned the movement by indorsing its candidates, while 
 resolving against " secession and abolition " as equal 
 evils, denouncing emancipation " in the name of civil- 
 ized humanity," and opposing pretty much everything 
 that the best people of the country had at heart. The 
 name of Mr. Adams — absent as minister to England — 
 was promptly withdrawn by his son John Quincy, in 
 accordance with his father's previously expressed wishes. 
 The Mepiiblican, which had been sympathetic toward the 
 People's movement, though never fully committed to it, 
 gave it up on seeing the sort of alliance which it received 
 from the Democrats. It expressed a preference for Mr. 
 Sumner over " any man who is likely to be nominated 
 against him," and for the Republican ticket as represent- 
 ing a better cause than its rival, while it continued to 
 protest against the folly of party divisions at such a 
 time. At the state election the Republicans kept their 
 old advantage.
 
 THE CIVIL WAE. 359 
 
 Mr. Bowles spoke afterward in private with strong 
 regret of the course of the Repuhlican in opposing Sum- 
 nei-'s reelection. The hand of the chief soon appears in 
 the paper after his return in November, 1862; it becomes 
 broader and calmer in its tone, with more of news and 
 variety. From this time on, it was to be counted with 
 the progressive rather than the conservative element of 
 the Republican party. It had felt the teaching of the 
 times. Its chief had brought back from his half-year of 
 exile a fuller health, a broader and calmer vision, a finer 
 sensitiveness to moral elements. The next chapter, giv- 
 ing his European letters, will show how he chafed at 
 being absent in the crisis of the nation's struggle ; but 
 that absence, with its rest for body and mind, its long 
 and silent musings, its new perspective of events, served 
 as a preparation for the higher leadership he was to take 
 in the new era of the nation. 
 
 The Republican was in harmony with the Republican 
 party during the state election of the next year ; there 
 being little controversy, and Governor Andrew being 
 chosen again, by a vote of more than two to one. But 
 the paper exhibited its independence by opposing some 
 of the party nominations for the legislature, supporting 
 in one case a Democrat, and in another Daniel L. Harris, 
 a bolting Republican. In local elections its advice always 
 was to vote for the best man, on whatever ticket his name 
 might be found. 
 
 The Democratic National Convention of 1864, which 
 met at Chicago in August, contradicted itself. By its 
 nomination for president, it approved the prosecution 
 of the war : by its resolutions, it advocated peace. Gen- 
 eral McClellan was an excellent representative of the war 
 Democrats. He was an undoubted Unionist; he had 
 shown high merits in the field ; and he had suffered from
 
 360 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 the Administration a damaging interference with his 
 military operations, and finally, in consequence probably 
 of his open hostility to the President's emancipation 
 policy, a removal from command. The resolutions upheld 
 the Union and the Constitution, but mainly complained of 
 the usurpations of the Administration, and disapproved 
 of the continuance of the war. They called for an im- 
 mediate armistice, to be followed by a convention of the 
 states, or other peaceable measures for the restoration of 
 the Union. McClellan, in accepting the nomination, 
 ignored the platform, and declared strongly for the per- 
 sistent maintenance of the Union. His associate on the 
 ticket was George H. Pendleton, of Ohio. 
 
 The only serious opposition to the renomination of 
 President Lincoln by the Republicans came from a group 
 of captious Radicals, who met in convention and nomi- 
 nated General Fremont. He had after the first years 
 of the war been kept out of active service; by the Ad- 
 ministration's jealousy of him as an emancipationist and 
 a popular leader, said his friends ; by his own false pride 
 and ambition, said others. His candidacy was soon 
 abandoned. The Republican convention, meeting at 
 Baltimore in June, gave its voice without division for 
 Lincoln ; joined with him for the second place Andrew 
 Johnson, of Tennessee, in recognition of the Southern 
 loyalists ; fully indorsed the emancipation policy ; and 
 declared in favor of the constitutional abolition of slav- 
 ery, and the prosecution of the war until the rebellion 
 was wholly subdued. 
 
 The Republican (August 2) summed up the issue be- 
 tween the parties, thus : Peace, it says, is sure to come 
 soon, but what kind of a peace depends on the presi- 
 dential election. " Sliall this peace he what the nation has 
 fought for, or what the rebels have fought for ? This is 
 the grand vital question of the presidential campaign,
 
 THE CIVIL WAR. 361 
 
 by the side of ■whicli all others sink into nothingness." 
 When McClellan was nominated, it said of him, Sept. 18 : 
 
 " With respectable talents, a pure character, and patriotic 
 purposes, he is wanting in that high moi'al sense that perceives 
 the truest truth, and that high moral courage that does and 
 dares in its behalf. He waits, he hesitates in the presence of 
 great opportunities ; he compronaises with time and with truth ; 
 and he is no fit man to deal with the sharp exigences and the 
 subhme occasions of this hour. He wants and would try to 
 save the country; but he would hinder rather than help the 
 people, who ivill save it in the long run, despite their own 
 occasional fickleness and faint-heartedness, — because he fails 
 to see and use quickly the moral and material agencies by which 
 it is to be saved, and because he is no match for the men who 
 are bent on its ruin. . . . The platform is weak in words 
 and wicked in intention. It lacks vigor, sharpness, and high 
 principle. The breaking purpose shines through every sentence. 
 Its words for the Union are hesitating, guarded, shuffling ; 
 while its clamor for experiments that woidd endanger it, its 
 want of condemnation for those who have struck at it, and still 
 hold aloft the bloody flag of disunion and destruction, and its 
 petty arraignment of those who are wielding the power of the 
 government to sustain and secure it, all show that the real 
 sympathy of its authors is with the enemies rather than the 
 defenders of the Union. . . . "We are very sure that neither 
 the ticket nor the men who wiU vote for it — all of them — are 
 so mean as their platform seems to us." 
 
 In Massachusetts, Governor Andrew was again renom- 
 inated. The vigor and success of his administration, 
 the great-heartedness of the man, and his popularity as a 
 '^ war governor," left no room for successful rivalry. 
 The presidential campaign, somewhat doubtful in the 
 early autumn, moved at the close to a clearly foreseen 
 result. Men cast their votes for President Lincoln less 
 under the feeling of a doubtful contest than with a 
 solemn sense that the people were accepting and ratify-
 
 362 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 ing the prosecution of the war at whatever cost, till 
 union and freedom were won. Only Delaware, Kentucky, 
 and New Jersey gave their electoral votes for McClellan. 
 In a total of four million votes, Lincoln had a majority 
 of 400,000. New York was for him by a narrow margin 
 of 7000 ; Illinois by 30,000 ,; Ohio by 60,000 ; and Massa- 
 chusetts led the column with 127,000 for Lincoln to 
 40,000 for his opponent. The day after the election, 
 November 9, the Repuhlican said : 
 
 " The appeal to the avarice and cowardice of the people was 
 a strong one, and it was vigorously plied by the opiDOsition. 
 The burdens of the war are fearful, and they are severely felt. 
 The people would rejoice with joy unspeakable in the restora- 
 tion of peace. But they have rejected aU solicitations to a 
 premature and dishonorable peace. They have declared that 
 they prefer any sacrifice of ease, property, life, to the sacrifice 
 of the Union and the surrender of the nation to the slave-hold- 
 ing oligarchy. The decision is honor and safety to the country 
 and to all who have contributed to it. 
 
 " Let the victors be magnanimous. The great body of the 
 Democratic party have meant well for their country in their 
 votes against the Administration. Copperheads and sympa- 
 thizers with treason are but a fraction of that party, and the 
 party has lost by its concessions to their influence. The masses 
 of the Democratic party will stiU stand by the country, fight its 
 battles, and rejoice in its victories. Let their patriotism have 
 generous recognition, and let them still further exhibit and 
 attest it by ready acquiescence in the decision of the majority, 
 and by cordial support of the Administration indorsed so 
 strongly by the people." 
 
 The completion of emancipation, by extending it over 
 the whole Union and making it irrevocable, had been 
 inaugurated early in 1864, when the Senate passed 
 the Thirteenth Amendment, abolishing slavery. In the 
 House it failed of the necessary two-thirds vote. The 
 Republican National Convention insisted on " the utter 
 and complete extirpation of slavery." The EepuUican
 
 THE CIVIL WAE. 363 
 
 declared (November 10) that by tlie reelection of Lincoln, 
 and yet more explicitly by the congressional elections, 
 which gave the party more than two-thii*ds of the House, 
 the destruction of slavery was assured. 
 
 ^' The amendment will be adopted by the next Congress " [it 
 was in fact adopted by the old Congress in its final session], 
 " and the people will ratify it with eagerness and delight the 
 moment they can get a chance. Thus will slavery be legally 
 and constitutionaUy abohshed throughout this Union. This 
 I'esult of Tuesday's effort is even more important in its ultimate 
 consequences than the reelection of Mr. Lincoln. It is the crown- 
 ing glory of the peaceful victory of the day. It is a triumph 
 for all time. It settles the vexed question which has brought 
 war, bloodshed, and debt upon the nation, and precludes the 
 possibility of another rebellion in behalf of slavery. The grand 
 triumph is nearly completed. Let us thank God and push on." 
 
 The political questions of the time have offered the 
 salient points for quotation and comment in this chap- 
 ter. But the war itself is the great drama which is seen 
 through the daily pages of the newspaper file from April, 
 1861, to April, 1865. There it aU stands vividly out — the 
 four j^ears' experience which so deeply impressed the 
 lives of all who shared it. There is the first eager and 
 passionate rush against the foe; there are the first 
 defeats, the disappointments, the perplexities, the ever- 
 growing sacrifices ; then the deep breath of anticipated 
 triumph when one week saw Gettysburg won at the east 
 and Vicksburg captured at the west ; the brightening 
 hope ; then the industries of peace recovering and multi- 
 plying themselves in the midst of war; the dogged, 
 desperate rally for the last tug of the Wilderness and 
 Petersburg ; the equal valor of North and South ; the 
 myriads of lives lost and homes desolated; the new 
 manliness wrought by heroic endurance into North 
 and South alike ; the birth of a race into freedom, the 
 restoration of a people to unity.
 
 CHAPTER XXIX. 
 
 In Europe. 
 To the ^' BepublicMi.''^ 
 
 London, April 28, 1862. 
 
 ONLY five days have gone since we landed at Liverpool, 
 yet they seem as many weeks. . . . It is curious to 
 notice how many of these EngUshmen I seem to know as old 
 acquaintances. Punch and Thackeray and Dickens and the 
 Illustrated Neios have made one-half of them as famihar to my 
 eyes as my home neighbors. We had a faint Lord Dundreary 
 on the ship coming out. The custom-house officers that boarded 
 us in the stream were unmistakable as if they had borne printed 
 labels. . . . The village butcher, the magistrate, the mem- 
 ber of the town council, the hotel waiter, milord Tom Noddy's 
 valet let loose for an afternoon, Betsey the cook, and Mary the 
 chamber-girl, all pass before you in familiar guise. You almost 
 unconsciously nod your head as they go by. As yet I get my 
 waiters and ministers of the estabUshed church sadly mixed up. 
 They dress just alike, and so far I have to give the preference 
 for impressiveness of manner and mental alertness to the wait- 
 ers. Certainly a big man in white canonicals, who mouthed a 
 lot of incoherent stuff at a popular audience in Westminster 
 Abbey last night, would do the world and his Maker better 
 service in bringing bread and cheese and pouring beer in a 
 country inn than in disgusting and befogging people from a 
 pulpit in the matter of the highest import to their happiness. 
 But a shoemaker I saw at Chester was the very St. Crispin
 
 IN EDKOPE. 365 
 
 himself, and it was by great effort of will that I kept myself 
 from rushing m^to his arms as if he had been a " long-lost 
 brother." 
 
 So, too, does Nature come to you here iu half-friendly and 
 familiar forms. She is new, yet old. She reproduces to your 
 mind the descriptions of poets and moralists that you had 
 read and forgotten long ago. You look and wonder where you 
 ever saw the same before ; confident you have, yet sure you 
 never could, — as stem and strange events call to mind a 
 di'eam thereof not tiU then remembered. The wide, green 
 fields, — greener far than even 'New England meadows, — 
 bright with yellow cowshp and white daisy ; the long hedge- 
 rows of hawthorn, sprinkled often with sweet-brier ; the hoUy, 
 the yew, the dark, mournful cypress and juniper, soberly sway- 
 ing in gi-and masses as if keeping time to the slow, deep 
 beatings of a widowed heart; the spreading bushes of the 
 rhododendi-ons, filling the ground for rods and rising to ten or 
 fifteen feet in height, bursting with the buds of the white, or 
 putting out the green leaves with the wealth of scarlet bloom ; 
 the parks of oak ; the Httle white cottages, covered with blos- 
 soming peas or flowering vines ; the low, dark, stone parish 
 chiu-ch, moss-covered and ivy-crowned; the suiTounding 
 church-yard with the low-lying monuments of half a dozen 
 generations, gi-ass-grown and time-faded, but still hallowed by 
 a posterity that lives in the same cottages that they lived in, 
 and will he where they he ; the long, narrow pathways through 
 the fields ; the stile where Mary's lover sat and sung for her, — 
 all "stand dressed in hving green" before you, and caU up 
 memories and associations and persons that have lain buried 
 and forgotten for half a life-time. You rub yoiir eyes, and look 
 for the people who ought to be among the famihar scenes, — 
 for Mrs. Poyser and her children coming home from church, 
 for Maggie Tulhver running away to join the gypsies, for 
 Adam Bede stalking sternly forth to his work or to search for 
 his lost Hetty, for the lovers walking arm in arm through the 
 fields, or sitting fondly under the hedge, regardless of all curi- 
 ous eyes, for the cruel gamekeeper in pursuit of the skulking 
 poacher, for the humble but devoted country curate going
 
 366 THE LITE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 about doing good, '' passing rich, on forty pounds a year." 
 They are all here, and I have seen some of them, and shall see 
 the rest before I leave England. 
 
 To his Wife. 
 
 London, April 29, 1862. 
 I have on the whole enjoyed the stay here. But I 
 am glad to go away — I should be sick of it in two days more. 
 I have taken in a general sense of the city, and am indifferent 
 about details. We shall probably spend four or five more days 
 here in June, to see the great Exhibition, then complete and ia 
 order, the British Museum, Windsor Castle, and one or two 
 other specialties ; and yet but for the country of England I 
 could hardly be tempted back. I cannot begin to tell you, 
 Mary, how beautiful that is to me already, and how rich its 
 promise is for June. You know how " Plainfleld," and that 
 part of West Springfield where the market gardens are, look in 
 their best estate ; and this gives you the best suggestion I can 
 think of, of all England. It is literally a garden. The hedges, 
 the evergreens, the ivy, the flowers, are rich with rural beauty ; 
 and then it is such a comfort to a tired American — th-ed of our 
 fret and hurry and unfinish — • to see something done and com- 
 pleted and pohshed. 
 
 As for my health — the first eight or ten days of the voyage 
 pulled me down considerably, but ever since I have been 
 improving, and now I am surely better than when I left home. 
 I get thoroughly fatigued physically every day, without com- 
 monly too much nervous excitement or exhaustion, and this 
 has a favorable effect upon my sleep. I think I get more of it, 
 though still the great trouble is broken and dreaming nights. 
 I am, on the whole, quite satisfied with the improvement I have 
 made in the short time I have been away. At Paris we shall 
 settle down into a more quiet and regular life than we have 
 Hved ia England, and I expect to enjoy that city much more 
 than London. But I look forward to our proposed week on the 
 Isle of Wight, another week in the Lake country of northern 
 England, and the mouth or six weeks in Switzerland, with the 
 largest anticipations of pleasure and improvement. The great
 
 IN EUROPE. 367 
 
 drawback, however, to it all is that you are not here to see and 
 participate in this new hfe. I knew it would be so, and yet 
 the feeling is greater and more ever-present than I anticipated. 
 Hardly an hour goes by that I do not see something that I wish 
 you in particular to see and enjoy; and it is a constant fret 
 that I cannot have you by my side, and feel not only my enjoy- 
 ment of it, but yours in addition. When I was on the steamer, 
 I thought I never would bring you across the ocean, and was 
 glad you were not with me to sviffer the torture and discom- 
 fort ; now it seems to me as if I could not let you stay away 
 another month. I want aU my friends with me — one for this 
 and one for that, — but you for aU; you who have had so little 
 of the outward life of society and nature, but are so greedy of 
 it. Well, well, we won't chafe any more than we can help 
 about it ; the true course is to make the best of things as they 
 are, and seem selfish that we may gi'ow into the power to be 
 generous by and by. But I do wish I had the power of inter- 
 preting what I see and enjoy to you more literally than I have. 
 That would give some satisfaction in seeing and enjoying so 
 much that you do not share. But you must take it aU in 
 results — in the blossoming, I trust, of a richer life. We can- 
 not share oiu* daily food with those far away, but they may 
 have the effects of it in health and strength. But this is phi- 
 losophizing, and cheap at that, instead of gossiping. 
 
 To the " Bepublican.''^ 
 
 London, June 15, 1862. 
 . . . I have avoided England's politics and politicians, and 
 let alone the questions that now embitter America toward them ; 
 and so I have found generally both pleasure and profit in my 
 travels. I do not expect to find any country or any people I 
 like better, and I do not know that I want to. They are nearer 
 to us than any other — more like us — with more of our traits, 
 more of our faults, and more of oiu* excellencies, than any other 
 nation ; and all the meanness of her government, all the jealousy 
 of her aristocracy, and the selfishness of her commerce cannot 
 crush out the sympathy her intelligent, independent, progres- 
 sive middle classes feel for us, now and always. Perhaps I
 
 368 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 may sum up England with the sarcasm of Macaulay, or Sidney 
 Smith, or somebody else, on her greatest philosopher and states- 
 man (Lord Bacon), and say she is at once the gi'eatest, wisest, 
 and meanest of nation-kind. [Of course " eveiy intelligent 
 school-boy " can conect this quotation, and give the authorship 
 rightly — and he shall be left to do it ! ] 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 Baden-Baden, July 7, 1862. 
 
 You see I have taken you at your word, and not written — 
 but I can't stand it longer — I must send my message of 
 friendship to you across the water, to give you visible evi- 
 dence of my constant thought of you, and to prove to you 
 that the old fire still burns. One day last winter, as I was 
 walking up Sixth Avenue, New York, two plainly di'essed 
 Germans met each other near me, and the cold ah' instantly 
 grew warm with their cordiahty. One said : " I t'inks of you 
 every day," That seemed to me the perfection of compli- 
 mentary friendship. I beheve I can say the same of you. This 
 banishment only brightens into stronger relief all my home 
 treasures, aU my home friends — and especially during the last 
 month, the anniversary of our expedition to the White Moun- 
 tains, have I had recollections of you and that experience 
 brought keenly to mind. I have hved those days aU over, and 
 found new pleasure in the remembrances of them. 
 
 Your letters were very grateful to me — I have had two, I be- 
 heve — and I hunger for more. I want to know aU about your- 
 self, your life and prospects, and then about " the folks " both 
 with you and at Greenfield. Also your views about pubhc 
 affairs, and any gossip of personal or pubhc nature that gets to 
 you. I have no coiTespondent but you for all that latter class 
 of subjects, and I do not read the papers much, and try not to 
 think greatly about pohtics and revolutions at home — and yet 
 I do not care to remain m. entire ignorance, and your summaries 
 and gossip will just suit me. So, if you can keep up a one- 
 sided correspondence, pray do so. 
 
 For myself, there is not much to be said that Mary has not 
 probably told you already. I write to her pretty fully every
 
 m EUROPE. 369 
 
 week, and little or nothing else. Now that I have commenced, 
 I want to write an occasional letter, say once in three or four 
 weeks, to the paper, especially as Frank [the younger brother 
 was called sometimes Ben, sometimes Frank] doesn't take to that 
 thing as he promised to. But I shaU hardly do enough in that 
 business to harm me. A fellow hke me must have some httle 
 outlet, and I can't talk the lingo so as to amuse myself with 
 the people ; there are no women to chaff with, and to rub your 
 mind out of its morbidity — what was hunger with us at the 
 White Mountains last year in this respect is famine here and 
 now — and I have no disposition to read beyond the guide- 
 books and old copies of the Mepublican. It could hardly be 
 otherwise than an interesting and instructive summer to me ; 
 the joui'ney is full of material, and I only want society and a 
 httle more head to be quite content and happy. ... I 
 have got through with my sight-seeing experiences, and am 
 now fairly launched on the summer's plan of out-door life, 
 which I have great faith will build up the weak points in my 
 system. I must expect it to be slow work, for the decay was 
 slow. Nobody knows how I have abused my brain but myself, 
 and I therefore ought to be the most patient with its maladies. 
 The daily life is simple and virtuous enough to suit an an- 
 chorite. I go to bed from ten to eleven, get up from seven to 
 nine, breakfast on weak coffee and bread and butter (and such 
 bread and butter you never saw in America for goodness) with 
 eggs, fruit, or a little meat — one of the three generally — in 
 addition. Then for four or five hours out-doors in excursions, 
 looking at the shops in the cities, and lounging in our room. 
 If an early breakfast, a light lunch of bread and butter or fruit 
 at eleven, and a dinner of soup, beef or mutton, and bread and 
 butter at five, with a httle beer, light wine or porter, for drink. 
 Then more walking and saimtering around till bed-time. I 
 am diinking no hot and rebeUious spirits at all, and very little 
 of the hght sorts, and these only at dinner. Could a man be 
 more virtuous and live ? There are very few Americans to be 
 met abroad, and those few of httle interest. I had a very 
 
 charming Sunday and Monday with Carrie D , at Sheffield, 
 
 and at Edinburgh a strong-miaded Miss Bird, who writes books 
 
 Vol. I.— 24
 
 370 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 and reviews, and did write some letters for the Republican, 
 made herself very agreeable to us. I met her at Erastus Hop- 
 kins's, some years ago, when she was in America. Also at 
 Edinburgh the County Parson fed me and chatted with me. 
 Beyond this I have had no society but my brother, and he isn't 
 a talkative chap, you know. I ought to except Paris, however, 
 for there at dinner we always met two or three clever young 
 Americans, and Mrs. Bigelow and Mrs. Doremus, of New York, 
 gave us two or three pleasant evenings. 
 
 But the women of Eui-ope don't fascinate me very much. It 
 is easier to be virtuous among them than I supposed. You see 
 occasionally a pure and pretty English girl that reminds you 
 of our young American beauties, but the Continental dames 
 have few attractions any way. At Paris and these German 
 spas the most beautiful and best got up are the demi-monde, 
 but they savor too much of high art to beguile such a lover of 
 the natural and true as I. But the demi-monde are a class to 
 which we have no counterpart in America ; they are respect- 
 able disrespectabilities, lead the fashions, and give the tone to 
 the society in the outside, superficial world. You ought to see 
 them on the street, in the gardens, and around the gaming- 
 tables at the watering-places. There are many things I see 
 that would greatly entertain you, but I cannot write of them. 
 Paris is a perfect George T. Davis place, — he would be in 
 heaven there, after getting the hang of it. But I must cut this 
 short. Tell Lincoln about me, and give him and his my love. 
 
 Let me be remembered also to our pleasant friend Miss B . 
 
 Ditto to Judge Chapman. To L and your mother much 
 
 love and many good wishes. Also remember me to the Green- 
 field home. 
 
 To Miss Whitney. 
 
 Interlaxen, Switzerland, July 26. 
 
 . . . August 14 is Mary's birthday; you wiU get this 
 letter — ''errors excepted" as the merchants say — before that 
 date, and if you can get away from home, I want you to go 
 down that day and make her a surprise visit — teU her you 
 have come to keep her birthday with her. I will pay you
 
 IN EUKOPE. 371 
 
 some time, or try to ; and if I don't and can't, only let it go to 
 the saintship- accumulation, and the individuals of coming gen- 
 erations that get your disembodied soul wiU be the bigger and 
 the richer for it. Then — at that time or later, after yoiu* sum- 
 mer visitors have flown — I want you if you can to go down 
 and stay a long month at Hotel de Bowles — play with the 
 children, happify the mother, and ride the horse — and leave 
 the aroma of your spii-it for me to fatten on when I come 
 back. Don't you think you can do it — and that it wiU do you 
 good "? 
 
 . . . I have to thank you very, very much, my dear friend, 
 for your late Uttle visit to Mary. Could I quote to you what she 
 writes of it, I am sure you would feel repaid for whatever of 
 sacrifice or trouble it cost you. Yours is the priceless privilege 
 of making others happy — no life is cheap or baiTcn or lonely 
 that is so rich in gifts of this sort as yours. ... I am eager 
 to talk to you of the several leading topics of which you write, 
 and in which I either have been ah^eady interested, or you 
 interest me freshly. As to writing of them, that is impossible 
 now. My convictions are not clear and positive enough to be 
 stated concisely, and I shall not jield to the temptation of wi'it- 
 ing at length till I am stronger in health and fresher in spirit. 
 There are some considerations in my mind on the question of 
 immortality, as well as upon the origin of language, that it 
 seems to me you do not sufficiently take into account. Nor do 
 you, I beheve, quite fairly state the most intelligent and reason- 
 able view of the future state as felt by its behevers. The great 
 idea of it, the great want of it, is Rest. Nobody is happy in 
 this life, save idiots, and the feeling that creatures of such 
 capacities and endowments are entitled to a higher Ufe and a 
 more peaceful one, it seems to me, Ues at the bottom of most 
 of the popular behef in a future existence. How rest in its 
 higher sense is compatible with growth and progress, perhaps 
 no one of the believers can tell ; nor can we tell, any of us, of 
 other mysteries that we believe in. Certain it is that the 
 laws of life in the other world, if there be one, must be dif- 
 ferent from those here ; we must put off all that weariness and 
 striving, all that want that torments us here. God there,
 
 372 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 must be to us all that our dreams and ideals are here. . . . 
 I am willing to wait. My views of this life would be the same 
 under either view of the other, — there I agree with you most 
 fully. 
 
 . . . Mary will tell you as to my health — it is so-so-ish — 
 not so good as we hoped, but yet improving. I keep very 
 much on the surface of hfe, as you will see from all my letters. 
 The days go by listlessly, — and the best sign is that I grow 
 lazy and indifferent to all but the going home. 
 
 To Us Wife. 
 
 Interlaxen, August 3, Sunday. 
 The week has introduced me to some of the finest scenery 
 of the Alps. Oui' excursion along the necks of the higher 
 Bernese range — Jungfrau, Monch, Eiger, Wetterhom, etc. — 
 was a most fortunate one. The weather has been fine all the 
 week, warm, summeiy, clear, with pure, fresh air — a new 
 moon o' nights, and starry heavens such as we never see at 
 home, save in those clear winter nights when the stars crowd 
 and jostle each other, they are so thick. . . . The two really 
 novel and indescribable features of Swiss scenery are the high 
 snow-peaks and the glaciers of snow and ice extending down 
 fi'om them through the gorges, and the waterfalls. The latter are 
 most exquisite, and shake their coquettish beauties at you at 
 every turn. More than anything else they surprised and de- 
 hghted me. The mountains themselves, that is, the higher ones, 
 are simply great masses of rock, bare and bald, save where cov- 
 ered with snow, and majestic and overawing rather than pictur- 
 esque and beautiful. The verdure of the lesser mountains and 
 vaUeys is wonderfully rich, timid in height, but thick and ex- 
 quisite in variety and color. The turf seems more Uke moss 
 than grass, and it is as thick with httle bright wild flowers as the 
 heavens are these nights with stars. The mountains of rock 
 and snow seem strangers to you, you cannot grow friendly 
 with them, they frown rather than smile, hke an orthodox 
 di^'inity ; but the little meek-eyed flowers are as sweet and fa- 
 miliar as the " Suffer httle children " of Jesus ; you are on
 
 IN EUROPE. 373 
 
 loving terms at once ; and you only want, at least I only 
 wanted, the presence of human love and friendly hearts and 
 faces to feel full delight in their company. But the tantaliza- 
 tion 1 have often before expressed robbed aU of half its 
 pleasures. I can't seem to be a complete humanity, and I 
 think I suffer quite as much as I enjoy in the presence of these 
 novel sights and rare spectacles of nattu'e. After aU, human 
 nature is the most fascinating of nature to me. I want some- 
 thing that speaks, and that in a familiar tongue, and with a 
 sjTnpathe tic heart. '' Come over and help us" — do! . 
 There are lots of Enghsh evei-jTvhere, but so long as they let 
 us alone, we do them. I shrink from getting into serious con- 
 versation with any one, most of all with an Englishman, for he 
 woidd be sure to want to talk about the war, and that is a theme 
 I cannot talk with any one about, friend or foe. The Enghsh, 
 however, do not make themselves especially obnoxious to us, 
 I ought to say, and I had an amusing experience with a man 
 and his wife at lunch, the other day. I called for some English 
 porter ; the woman looked at the man, and he at her, and both 
 at me, with an expression half of astonishment and haK of 
 dehght. Finally he spoke : " I beg your pardon, but did you 
 say porter f'' " Certainly, sir." "But do they have it here?" 
 " Yes, sir ; and very good." The woman's eyes fairly danced 
 with delight, and she immediately offered me a cold boiled 
 potato that she didn't want. When ray porter came I begged 
 them to taste of it, which they did with increased satisfaction, 
 and since then they have treated me with great condescension. 
 They have e\'idently erected a monument in their hearts to me 
 for having introduced to them the fact that their pet home bev- 
 erage could be had in Switzerland. The gentleman invited us to 
 join in a waltz in the public room, last night, and offered to get us 
 partners, but we dechned as out of practice. I must learn to 
 waltz after my French and German are acquii'ed. These are 
 the only acquaintances I have made among the English on 
 the continent, and our discourse has confined itself so far to 
 porter and dancing! . . . Frank found *'the girl he left 
 behind him " on the Wengern Alp, seven years ago, when he 
 was sick and she took care of him. She is now mamed,
 
 374 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 and has a pretty baby. I was introduced, and made my 
 profouudest bow. She gave him a souvenir in the shape of 
 a watch-case, and he has returned the compliment with one 
 of his purchases, sending it by her husband, whom he found 
 down here. 
 
 Monday morning. ... In the evening, my conscience, and 
 bad weather which forbade walking, drove me to the Enghsh 
 chapel, and I had my usual bad luck — a stupid, unelevating 
 sermon, all about the brazen serpent and the Israelites and the 
 severity of Grod ! I took some money to pay for the preaching, 
 and then was so disappointed and disgusted I resolved I would 
 not give a cent, but I had not courage to pass the plate-holder, 
 especially as he tm'ned out to be Mr. Brown Stout, as I call my 
 English porter acquaintance. So I gave in, and paid ! 
 
 To his Wife. 
 
 Geneva, August 31. 
 
 . . . Saturday, rode on horses three hours (from Visp, in 
 the Rhone Valley), walked four hours, to Zermatt — cloudy, 
 bad weather. Sunday, beautiful day — God's invitation to " go 
 up higher " — so we went — Unitarians piously ; Orthodox pro- 
 testingly, hui't their consciences and stopped haK-way — saints 
 went on, and had magnificent views of glaciers and snow-peaks, 
 whereof I have written on the spot, in a sheet inclosed. 
 
 [Inclosure in Pencil. 
 
 Gomer Grat, near Zermatt. 10,200 feet high. Dearest 
 Maiy : This commands the finest Swiss view — the highest 
 mountains, the most snow, the largest and finest glaciers. On 
 every hand, the mountains covered with snow, — before us the 
 higher hills, twelve, thu-teen, or fourteen thousand feet high, 
 covered with thick snow-fields, piled up in immense drifts and 
 of the purest white. The chasms between are filled with com- 
 pact ice and snow, stretching down into the valleys, and feed- 
 ing the rivers with vehement toiTents. Such a panorama of 
 rocky mountains and hard and unrelenting ''virgin nature" 
 I never saw before — never imagined. No trees, no grass, — 
 here and there a flower, — all else barren land, or rock, or
 
 IN EUKOPE. 375 
 
 snow, or ice. It is vast, impressive, sublime — not soft, not 
 picturesque, not poetical, not soothing, but wonderfully impres- 
 sive. Of all the scenes in Switzerland, this is the gi'andest, 
 the gi-eatest, the most sublime. ... I wish you could be 
 here for an hour or two — you and all our friends. So vast, so 
 imposing, so wonderful a scene cannot be expressed in words or 
 sketch, — it must be felt through eyes in an acheless head to be 
 understood. The egoism of my headache is a great drawback 
 to me — one never gets out of himself with such a malady. 
 But stiU it is great — it almost hf ts me out of myself, and that 
 is the best tribute I can pay to its vastness and magnificence. 
 But a good-morning to you, dearest — I think of you aU among 
 all sights and in aU experiences.] 
 
 This was a great experience. Monday repeated the sight. 
 Orthodox going this time, and finding no sin. Tuesday — big 
 day — up at two A. M. — off at three to cross the St. Theodul 
 pass into Italy — sunrise on the hiUs — immense thing — " must 
 be seen to be appreciated," as the man said of his monkeys. 
 Stopped at seven for second breakfast " a la fourchette," with 
 five-tined forks, — then on to the snow for three hours — up, up, 
 up, — snow for miles on aU sides, thousands of feet deep, — 
 stopped on summit at stone hut to wann, — 11,000 feet high, — 
 highest point we have been, — twice as high as highest White 
 Mountains, — found at hut large party, including two or three 
 women, making the trip from other side. For two hours in 
 crossing the snow, we had to be tied together, — strung on a 
 rope six feet apart, guide ahead, so as to prevent any one being 
 lost off by falling into the crevasses, great cracks in the snow 
 and ice, fathomless, across which we jumped. Danger not very 
 great, just enough to be exhilarating. Snow cold, struck to 
 bowels; sick — ate sugar and brandy — didn't do any good. 
 Down into Italy, through splosh, and under the bluest of 
 skies — very blue — struck down and met the snow striking 
 up, and was blue aU over and through. Got to dry land about 
 noon — better — dined and pushed on — tramp, tramp, — rode a 
 mule an hour or two — harder than walking — Ben sick and 
 parted company ^vith his dinner, — but on, in shadows of night, 
 till nine p. m. — eighteen hours on road ! — when we reached Cha-
 
 376 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 tillon, and supped on fresh figs and grapes. Wednesday, general 
 sense of stiffness and stupidity through company — breakfast 
 of fruit — rode in carriage fifteen miles to Aosta, and agreed to 
 call it a day's work. This, Italy — dirty, nasty, goitre and 
 cretins abundant — worse than Switzerland or Germany — and 
 yet through dirt occasionally a sweet face and an Italian eye, 
 borrowed of heaven's own blue. Thursday, rainy, but off for 
 the great St. Bernard Pass — bought grapes for two cents a 
 pound, same kind that B. K. Bhss sells for seventy-five cents, 
 and ate, and ate — also peaches and pears — turned om'selves 
 into fruit -jars, covered with umbrellas to keep the air and the 
 rain out — long walk, eight hours, all rain — last two hours 
 hard cUmb — struck snow-storm before we got to the hospital, 
 and made the last half-mile under a blinding squall — had to 
 put our noses to the path and move on. Warm reception at 
 hospice, di-y clothes, fire, and supper. Bleak, dreary place — 
 scene of Longfellow's Excelsior. Morning, still rainy — saw 
 the St. Bernard dogs, big yellow and white feUows — saw the 
 building where they stick up the dead bodies of people lost in 
 going through the Pass in bad weather — a ghastly, grinning 
 collection of skeletons in all stages of decay — among the rest 
 a mother and child in her arms — air so rare and pure up 
 here it is not necessary to bury, and so they dry up and faU to 
 pieces as they stand around the walls. Down back into Swit- 
 zerland — walked an hour and rode five to Martigny, in valley 
 of Rhone. This was Friday, and Saturday we intended to walk 
 (nine hours) over to Chamouny, but the weather was still bad, 
 and we turned off here by rail to pass the Sunday, recruit our 
 strength and our purses, get some clean clothes, and wait for 
 fine weather. And so here we are — place where John Calvin 
 ruled and preached, and a great musical fete going on of Sun- 
 day, — grand concert in Cathedral, Protestant church — pro- 
 cessions, flags, salvos of artillery ; and to-night a banquet 
 and a torchhght procession and illumination. We have spent 
 two hours at a concert — marvelous chorus singing — and 
 came out to write. That's all, I believe. As to health, up and 
 down — bad days and good days, but think I can feel steady 
 improvement.
 
 IN EUEOPE. 377 
 
 To his Wife. 
 
 Chamount, tmder Mt. Blanc, 
 
 14th "Wedding-day, September 5. 
 So I celebrate the blessed anniversary ! The morning is wet 
 and foggy, mountain flights are forbidden ; I have been dream- 
 ing over open fires and reading old Repuhlicans ; now I vary 
 the action, but keep ever the thought of thanks for the past 
 and hope for the future — for our past and our futirre. New 
 health coui-ses in my veins, and that, too, gives joy. Push 
 back the tragedies to-day — room for the joys, for pleasure, for 
 happiness, for thankfulness — for life, for wife, for home, for 
 children, for friends ! If I were a poet, I would write a love- 
 song ; if I had a voice, I would sing it; I am a mau, and I 
 feel it ! God grant you all feel it with me to-day ; that my 
 renewed content and happiness subtly communicate itself to 
 you, and that in the Connecticut valley as in that of Chamouny, 
 there are joyous hearts inspired by the same love and faith 
 and hope ! . . . 
 
 To his Wife. 
 
 . . . Such love was hardly ever given to man before, and 
 it has kept me up by its exaltation when all other resources 
 failed. We are all lifted up by the good opinion of others ; and 
 though, of course, I can never di-eam of reaching the high pin- 
 nacle to which your idoUzing ideahsm exalts me, I am sure it 
 never has made me for a moment careless of your happiness. 
 It has always been a stimulant, an inspiration, a call to better- 
 ment, and the only grief it has produced has been that I was 
 unworthy of such adoration. ... I do not talk much 
 about these things, because it is of no avail, and because such 
 talk is apt to run into morbidness, and spend itself and satisfy 
 itself in mere talk ; but I think and act a good deal. My life, 
 if it has character and eloquence in it, expresses itself best in 
 action. Words are bom largely of intellectual stimulations 
 and contact ; the life, which is yours in its daily effort and 
 thoiight and striving, has deeper roots and firmer hold, and 
 may be ti-usted longer.
 
 378 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOTVTLiES. 
 
 To his oldest Daughter. 
 Vevay, Switzerland, September 15, 1862. 
 
 My darling Sallie : Your many dear little letters deserved 
 special answer long ago, but I felt you would have patience 
 with me and not expect " Une for line." But I see even you 
 are giving out, and demand recognition, and count up what I 
 have written others, and remember that I have written you 
 nothing. But here goes now, and you will forgive past neg- 
 lects, won't you 1 Your letters have given me great pleasure 
 and much news. I have been glad to notice the care and 
 scholarly perfection of their composition. Now you must seek 
 to acquire elegance and ease in writing, and also in expression. 
 These will come with practice and famiharity with language. 
 There is no better disciphne than writing compositions, and I 
 hope you like it well enough to seek every opportunity and 
 excuse for exercise in it. 
 
 I do not know what I can tell you about myself or my travels 
 that win be new to you. I confess to Mother so fully of all 
 my daily doings and undoings that there is nothing left. To 
 be sure, there, are details of excursion, and daily experiences, 
 but these are long stories, and can hardly be written in letters. 
 Some time I hope to tell you some of them, though you know, 
 too, that I am not so good as Mrs. Cook at story-teUing. . This 
 is a bright and beautiful morning, and I anticipate great pleas- 
 ure in going out into it. I am still in my room, and have just 
 eaten my breakfast here, consisting of three pounds of grapes, 
 and of nought else. They were beautiful grapes, eight great 
 bunches, greenish white in color, turning to yellow on the sides 
 exposed to the sun, and very rich and sweet. How I wish I 
 could lay down a great basketful for you and the other children 
 and Mother and Aunt Alhe, in our dining-room. 
 
 . . . Our hotel is located right on the banks of the lake — 
 Lake Leman or Lake Geneva, — a small garden and yard in 
 front lead directly to the water, and boats are always ready to 
 take people out to ride. We mean to go to-day, and I shall 
 try to learn to row, so that I can beat ** Aunt Maria," as I 
 beheve you call her, when I come back. You should see the 
 water of the lake, — it is so exquisitely pure and blue. The
 
 IN EUEOPE. 379 
 
 Rhone River comes in at one end, dirty and muddy as the 
 dirtiest "soap-suds" on washing-day ; but it soon settles and 
 clarifies, and when the rivei* goes out at the other end, it is as 
 pure as crj'stal, and blue as the bluest sky you ever saw. It is 
 a charming sight to see this ti'anspareut and richly colored 
 water dancing and foaming as it rushes out of the lake into 
 the narrow river- way right through the city of Geneva. No 
 matter how much dirt is thrown into it, nor how many muddy 
 streams pour into it — it turns all to purity and crystal — just 
 as, a miuister would say probably, a pui-e and tnie life changes 
 everything and everybody that comes into contact with it into 
 ti-uth and goodness. 
 
 Only think, — two months from to-day, November 15 — if no 
 accidents happen, I shall be at home. I shall clasp you all in 
 my arms, and once more the old home circle will be fuU, and 
 we wiU be happy together ! Won't that be nice ? I think of it 
 every day and every hour, and am growing dreadfully impa- 
 tient for the day and the hour. There — I have filled up my 
 sheet, and yet have not said half the things I had to say to you. 
 But they will keep tiU I come. You must give great love to 
 Sammy and Mamie and Uttle Charlie — wonderful baby — but 
 we always have wonderful babies at our house, you know — 
 and to Aunt AUie and Grandma and all. Please^ too, hand the 
 accompanjnng sheet to Mrs. Bowles, with my most affectionate 
 regards. I kiss my hand to you across the land and over the 
 ocean ! Good-bye. Your fond and proud father. 
 
 To Miss Whitney. 
 Vevay, Switzerland, September 20, 1862. 
 What will you have — if you can get it ? A pound of fresh 
 grapes, a row on the lake with me, or a stroll out among the 
 %T.neyards and the groves, and up the hill-sides ? Come, and 
 you shall have your choice — all three if you are greedy. 
 There are grapes enough to share with you — I should suffer 
 no lack ; and as to the other things, why, your company 
 would be better than the room ! We woidd '• welcome you 
 with open arms," and take care not to shock you by closing 
 them — if we could help it !
 
 380 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BO^VLES. 
 
 We count our remnaut of Euxope by days, and the heart 
 beats quicker with every lessened day. The passage is en- 
 gaged by the Boston boat of November 1. ... It was 
 " awful jolly," as an Englishman would say, the way Mary's 
 birthday went off. I fairly clapped my hands with glee at the 
 news of how it all came out. Thanks to you for hieing so 
 quickly to do your part. The whole thing was as good as a 
 play. . . . 
 
 I have been learning to row lately, so as not to be ashamed 
 when you take me out in your boat. We men so hate to have 
 a woman more clever than we are in anything but worsted 
 work, playing the piano, and darning stockings. I have become 
 quite proficient in short practice ; that is, I have splendid blis- 
 ters on every finger- joint. This lake is charming boating- 
 ground, and I wished my flannel-skh'ted boat- woman was here 
 to do the work for me while I sat enjoying the dolce far niente 
 at the end of the boat. My laziness would have overcome my 
 pride, and the woman's rights should have been indulged for 
 once. 
 
 But all this is not replying to your late letters — as fresh and 
 delightful and suggestive as ever. My brother wonders if get- 
 ting married would spoil such a woman as you. For you see he 
 reads and enjays, too. But you must excuse me from going over 
 Swedenborgianism, slavery, the war, and all the solemn ques- 
 tions, and sad, too, started since Eve tempted and Adam fell. 
 I shall do so much better justice to my profound and philo- 
 sophical and altogether original views, when I can see you face 
 to face. You and I would hardly differ as to the negroes, on a 
 full statement of our respective views ; however, I shall 
 always appear to you somewhat conservative on most topics — 
 while almost everybody else finds me radical — because that is 
 what you rather need from me ! My mind of late years has a 
 pestiferous way of seeing pretty much all sides of questions ; 
 and though both from nature and principle I am identified 
 with the progressive and radical side, I still do not forget there 
 is another, and when I come in contact with such as you, I am 
 apt involuntarily — especially if I love them — to give them the 
 benefit of it. The only difference that I notice between us just
 
 IN EUEOPE. 381 
 
 now on tliis particular topic is that wMle you are willing to 
 trust God on all other questions connected with the war, you 
 are not as to slavery — and I am willing to trust him on that 
 and not on the others. In other words, I feel sure that my 
 %'iews of his purposes as to slavery agree with my wishes ; 
 while as to others, I am in sad doubt. There can be no doubt 
 that slavery is done for — that the war growing out of it must and 
 will end it. To be sure, I am impatient with the progress of both 
 Abe Lincoln and the Almightj^ — but what can we do ? But 
 we do not free ourselves from responsibility for the e\'il by 
 mnning away from it. Would a father relieve himself from a 
 child's sins — partly the result of his education and toleration — 
 by diiving him out of his house, or letting him run away and 
 riot to the full in his wickedness ; when by holding him in his 
 household he could alternately flog and nurse the sin out of 
 him, as rapidly as digestion and grace could operate ? Tell us 
 that, my fair logician. But then, in the present case, slavery 
 goes by the board in our day. All the suffering and blood- 
 shed and cost will atone for the past, and give us an im- 
 mediate entrance into the heaven of Freedom. Hoiv, don't 
 ask me. The winds will blow, the rains fall — but I cannot 
 make them, or foretell them, or explain them — but they do 
 and they iciU. 
 
 . . . Will anything come out of your study of Sweden- 
 borgianism ? It has certainly much to appeal to such natures 
 as yours, and yet I think the ceaseless, quer5n.ng, arithmetic 
 part of youi' brain will reject it. Christ will grow more to 
 you, surely. For, looking at him without any but the mere 
 mortal eye, there is no such other character in history. As 
 Ai'temus Ward said of Washington, his principal distinction is 
 that there is nobody else like him. ... I often wonder 
 if when people forget Theodore Parker's iconoclasm, his ne- 
 gations, he will stand out as Martin Luther and John Calvin 
 do — the founder of a new church, a new faith. There is a 
 chance of it. He was much like them — had he lived earlier be 
 would have burned his enemies, as Calvin did, and gloated over 
 it. He came as near it as the times wovdd allow. But of all 
 this by and by.
 
 382 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWXES. 
 To the '^ Eepiiblican.''^ 
 
 Vevay, Switzerland, September 22, 1862. 
 
 Two months and a half since we gossiped together, Rexmh- 
 Zicaw readers ! How you have escaped, and how I have the dis- 
 cipline of ministers to '' a mind diseased," for insisting on not 
 forgetting you, nor letting this right hand forget its cunning. 
 You must know that even these superficial gossipings of my 
 European summer are forbidden indulgences, and have to be 
 done on the sly. Then — as we would not be lugubriovis and tell 
 you of the low and sad side of the summer — how can we talk 
 gaily of pleasures and places, of lazy life in luxm-ious countries, 
 to men and women whose hearts' blood is pouring itself out for 
 the sake of our common heritage of country and government ? 
 It seems but cruel mockery in us to tell you of sweet Alpine 
 valleys, of snow-crowned mountains in midsummer, of lovely 
 lakes and poetic cataracts, of daily joui*neyings that have no 
 end but rest for eye and mind, and ease for body — no object 
 but comfort and pleasui'e — while such things be at home. We 
 would rather you would forget we are here and not there — we 
 would rather forget it oui-selves. But the days of exile are 
 numbered — we count the few that separate us from our coun- 
 try with impatience. She may not need our presence, but we 
 need hers. The tortm-e of absence to every right-feeling 
 American at this time is indesci'ibable, no matter how feeble 
 might be his presence and his contribution to his nation's 
 struggle for eivihzation and right. It robs the day of its glory, 
 the night of its rest — it puts a blur upon the face of natm-e. 
 We see everywhere and in everj'thing strugghng, bleeding 
 America — friends fallen and falling, hearts desolated and homes 
 despoiled ; and we are not there even to give the sympathy we 
 feel, or gain that which we crave. Here there is none asked and 
 none to be had. Europe is in ignorance or in opposition. Eng- 
 land suffers in her only sensitive spot, her pocket, and turns 
 upon the country that she feared in prosperity and hates in ad- 
 versity ; while famished but stiU blatant Southerners flaunt at 
 the hotels, and poison the sweet surface of this repubhcan Lake 
 of Geneva with the presence of their banner of barbarism.
 
 IN EUROPE. 383 
 
 Two montlis and a half suffice most American travelers for 
 seeing the whole continent. We have revolved in a narrow 
 space — two weeks in the Black Forest portion of Germany, 
 and two months in Switzerland. But our views have been 
 mostly a-foot; and instead of glances we have had sight — 
 instead of impressions, conviction. Our tramp in the Black 
 Forest country was a fitting prelude to Switzerland. Its 
 scenery is a sweet proem to the Alps. . . . Save the fruit 
 trees, that hne the roads here as generally throughout Ger- 
 many and Switzerland, there is often not a tree or a shrub to 
 be seen that is not an evergi-een of deepest, darkest hue. The 
 effect of the long succession of hiU-sides, dotted with these 
 firs as thickly as they can grow, sending out their sharp needles 
 into the air at every angle — sometimes proud and erect to 
 heaven, then drooping as if in somber sorrow, and again with 
 hesitating horizontahsm — is magnificent and gi'and in the 
 extreme. You think of Mrs. Browning's 
 
 " Hills running up to heaven for light, 
 Through woods that half-way ran ; 
 As if the wild earth mimicked right 
 The wilder heart of man; 
 Only the hUls are greener far, 
 And gladder, than hearts ever are." 
 
 Yet one of these hill-sides, when in shadow, symbolizes and 
 sympathizes with, as no other scenery I ever beheld, the deep, 
 unutterable pathos of humanity. It looks out upon you hke a 
 great human soul in imperishable and unspeakable sorrow. 
 These woods, too, are the paradise of mosses and ferns. The 
 amateur in these should make a special pilgrimage to the Black 
 Forest. The mosses, thick, soft, and of every hue of green, 
 shaded with yellow and red, are not content to cover the 
 groimd with a carpet that no tapestry can rival, but often 
 mount the trees themselves, and clothe the trunks and branches 
 with their fascinating resurrection life. 
 
 Our tour of Switzerland has been quite f uU and satisfying. It 
 is certainly a very delightful country when the sun shines. But 
 for its full appreciation, besides, are needed an anti-dyspeptic 
 stomach, a stout pair of legs, and a head that is not forever
 
 384 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 egotistically reminding you of its existence. . . . No coun- 
 try has such contrasts, such variety of natural scenery, — the 
 grave and the gay, the beautiful and the sublime, — that which 
 woos with soft poetic grace, and that which oppresses by its 
 majestic severity. Health seems, however, to be in all its 
 veins ; the mountain air is tonic, like perpetual champagne ; it 
 sets the soul free from the flesh, the body falls away into for- 
 getfulness under its inspii-ation, while the lower heights and the 
 valleys, and particularly the lake shores, are almost universally 
 soft, dry, and equable. . . . Switzerland, if you come near 
 to her, lasts, while the rest of Europe is lost in your soul or 
 only remembered as a faint dream. 
 
 . . . These later weeks in Switzerland, it may interest 
 personal acquaintances to know, have told favorably upon my 
 maladies. The brain forgets itself sometimes, and the nights 
 are not all profaned by wakefulness. 
 
 The more fruitful half of Mr. Bowles's working life 
 may be dated from his seven months of European travel. 
 No immediate recovery showed itself. He returned to 
 work when he was yet by no means fit for it. He was 
 unable for years to do his old amount of labor, and, as 
 his letters will show, he continued for some time to be 
 doubtful of the issue of his case. But in the half-year 
 of absence and rest there had been a refilling of the 
 exhausted springs, and from this time he slowly regained 
 some measure of the old vigor. It was by far the com- 
 pletest and longest rest he ever gave himself, and un- 
 der conditions the most favorable. The very isolation 
 from society which he so constantly lamented, gave the 
 jaded brain that rest from stimulation which it needed, 
 and which it never would have accepted voluntarily. If 
 his enjoyment had been fuller his rest would have been 
 less. 
 
 The journey included several weeks in Paris, some 
 days in the Netherlands, a trip up the Rhine, and a walk- 
 ing excursion on the Moselle. His letters show with
 
 IN EUKOPE. 385 
 
 what thoroughly American eyes he looked on all he 
 saw, — how entirely he belonged to his own country 
 and his own age. In Paris he goes on Sunday to the 
 American chapel, hears Dr. McClintock preach on gen- 
 eral and special pro\ddence, and writes to a home corre- 
 spondent of that favorite old problem of theologians. 
 In writing of the churches everywhere, he speaks of 
 hardly anything but the preaching. Almost his only 
 mention of Westminster Abbey is a complaint of the 
 dull sermon he hears there. Cologne Cathedral is dis- 
 posed of in five lines. He was too wholly a child of the 
 present to respond to that spirit of the past which 
 speaks through the antique services of cathedrals and 
 the incomparable architecture of the Middle Ages. 
 Neither history nor art touched him with any such 
 power as li\dng humanity and external nature. It is 
 deeply interesting to trace the growing effect upon him 
 of high mountain scenery. At first, the snow-peaks 
 strike cold and alien on his tired and sensitive heart. 
 Even the Jungfrau and her sisters are to him simply 
 " great masses of rock, bald and bare, save where cov- 
 ered with snow." When he reaches the Gorner Grat, 
 before the Matterhorn and Monte Rosa, he fully owns 
 the sublimity of the scene, though still with a subdued 
 regret for more sootliing and picturesque effects. At 
 Vevay, when the sights he has witnessed have had time 
 to settle to right proportion in his mind, he writes : 
 '' Switzerland, if you come near to her, lasts, while the 
 rest of Europe is lost in your soul or only remembered 
 as a faint dream." In later years, when he had re- 
 visited Europe, and had seen and described the western 
 " Switzerland of America," he wrote to a friend : " I 
 ascribe my later growth of heart and head in great part 
 to the inspiration of high mountains. There is noth- 
 ing that sinks deeper, spreads wider, lasts longer." 
 Vol. I.— 25
 
 CHAPTER XXX. 
 Office and Home : Letters (1863-1865). 
 
 TO the Reiniblican as a business enterprise the war 
 brought increased circulation, larger profits, and 
 the power to strengthen its working force. It had little 
 rivalry in its immediate field. One after another, several 
 dailies had been started in Springfield, but none of them 
 could maintain themselves against so strong a competi- 
 tor. The last of these was the Argus, a Democratic 
 paper, which was set up for the Buchanan campaign in 
 1857, but soon went down. After this, the Repuhlican 
 had no rival in Springfield, until, in January, 1864, the 
 Evening Union was established and became a permanent 
 institution, though for its first eight years an insignifi- 
 cant one. The Hepuhlican gave a cordial paragraph to 
 the Union at its commencement, saying that there was 
 room and opportunity for such a paper. When the 
 Argus died it had chronicled the fact under its regular 
 heading of " Deaths." But it never recognized the exist- 
 ence of its local rivals, save at their birth or death, by so 
 much as a word. All of them found a large part of their 
 material in a warfare against the ReimhUcan, but they 
 never could get the satisfaction of a syllable in reply. 
 No journal had livelier controversies with other papers 
 than the Repuhlican, but it would not wage them in its 
 own town.
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTERS (1S63-1S65). 387 
 
 The firm of Samuel Bowles and Co. continued down to 
 1872 to do a general printing and binding business as 
 well as to publish the Bepuhlican. It was one of the first 
 houses in the country to begin, in 1861, the manufacture 
 of photograph albums, and within three years it was at 
 the head of the business in the United States, employing 
 one hundred hands in this department alone. Leaving as 
 heretofore the general business mainly to the care of 
 his partners, — among whom had now been included for 
 some years his brother, Benjamin F. Bowles, in special 
 charge of the finances and accounts of the concern, — Mr. 
 Bowles was now able to so enlarge his editorial staff that 
 the daily work of the Bepuhlican was provided for inde- 
 pendently of his personal presence, leaving him free to do 
 as much or as little as he felt able. His genius for select- 
 ing, training, and using men now came into full play. 
 He gradually surrounded himself with a group of young 
 men, some of whom became permanent members of the 
 staff, while the greater part, after two or three years 
 of training, were graduated to other fields of service. 
 The Repuhlican office came to be recognized as a school 
 of journalism. It educated its pupils so well that their 
 services became more valuable than the paper could 
 afford to employ in its subordinate positions. The staff 
 was brought to complete organization in 1864. Dr. 
 Holland's connection with the paper closed about this 
 time, though in 1864 he contributed another series of 
 Timothy Titcomb letters under the title, " Letters to the 
 Joneses." Mr. Hood was, after Mr. Bowles, the lead- 
 ing editorial writer. William M. Pomeroy was made the 
 managing editor — a man whose fidelity and judgment 
 Mr. Bowles could thoroughly trust, and in whose hands 
 the paper was safe against any reckless steering. Under 
 Mr. Bowles's training he grew to marked skill in the 
 range of work which his chief once sketched in these
 
 388 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 terms: "To know what news is, and where to find it, 
 and how to present it; to detect the truth from false- 
 hood among rumors and speculations ; to perceive what 
 is probable and what otherwise ; to learn how to write 
 a paragraph and turn a news item and make a heading ; 
 to insure freshness and correctness in detail; to know 
 what to put in and what to leave out, — to learn, in short, 
 how to edit a paper, is something very different and very 
 much more difiScult than to know how to write for one. 
 There are many good writers in this country, but there 
 are very few good editors." At this time Joseph H. Ship- 
 ley was night editor. Charles H. Sweetser, afterward 
 editor of the Bound Table, gave place after a few months 
 of service to Edward H. Phelps, who took charge of the 
 local department, including the whole New England field. 
 At this time, and for a number of years, the literary 
 editor was Mrs. Frances H. Cook, a lady of fine intellect- 
 ual accomplishments, and a thorough and careful worker. 
 Some of the ablest reviews were written by Mr. Hood, 
 and outside contributors were occasionally employed in 
 this department. The paper still gave that large con- 
 sideration to literary topics which it originally derived 
 from Dr. Holland. Of its regular correspondents the 
 most noticeable was "Warrington," — William S. Robin- 
 son, whose Boston letters covered most of the years be- 
 tween the birth of the Republican party and the Greeley 
 revolt. He was strongly anti-slavery and radical, often a 
 long way beyond the paper itself in these directions, well 
 informed in all the personalities of politics, a sharp con- 
 troversialist and a dangerous foe, and caustic to a degree 
 which gave constant exasperation to a large part of the 
 paper's readers. In the Bepuilican's salad he was the 
 cayenne pepper. The Washington correspondent was 
 D. W. Bartlett, under the signature of " Van." Outside 
 of its regular force the paper had contributors not a few,
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTERS (1863-1865). 389 
 
 some of whom first won in its columns a reputation 
 which grew beyond the provincial field. Among its 
 writers at different times were Bret Harte, — who was 
 first introduced to an Eastern audience in its columns, — 
 Edward King, Frank B. Sanborn, "Washington Gladden, 
 David Ames Wells, Prof. A. L. Perry, Charles H. Webb, 
 Alice Gary, Mary Clemmer Ames, Kate Field, Caroline 
 S. Whitmarsh, and Adeline Trafton. 
 
 In 1860, besides Mr. Bowles and Dr. Holland, there 
 were only three men in the editorial office ; in 1864, Mr. 
 Bowles had a staff of seven assistants ; and in 1877, the 
 last year of his life, the number had grown to fourteen. 
 Until the changes in the office in 1872, Mr. Pomeroy and 
 Mr. Phelps remained his chief lieutenants. For this 
 period of about eight years, he was more the master of his 
 own time than ever before or after. The paper was still 
 his absorbing interest, but no longer to the same degree 
 as before his inexorable taskmaster. He lightened his 
 labor, too, by learning to dictate his articles to a stenog- 
 rapher. Ultimately he used the same method in most 
 of his private correspondence. But in the case of his 
 editorials, he at last, after several years, directed his 
 amanuensis to write in long-hand, except in the case of 
 brief paragraphs, saying that the quicker method tempted 
 him to be too diffuse and careless. Whatever work he 
 did on the paper he did at high pressure. "I have known 
 him," says one of his assistants, " to keep five good com- 
 positors steadily engaged on his copy." Every man on 
 the paper felt the chiefs eye on his work. " Sometimes," 
 says one of them, " he would take up the file of the paper 
 for a week when I thought I had been doing pretty well, 
 and go through my work, and completely riddle it. It 
 was fine training for me." The daily stint was no 
 light one in those times. Mr. Shipley, the night editor, 
 thus describes his daily routine : " I went to the office as
 
 390 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 soon as I was up — about noon. The afternoon was 
 spent in reading the general exchanges, and woe to me 
 if I overlooked anything! Then I had charge of the 
 night work, from 7 P. M. to 3 a. m. That was the regular 
 labor assigned to me, and Mr. Bowles said, ' You'll find 
 it about enough ; but if you see anything else you can 
 do, try it.' So I did try my hand at condensations, then 
 at editorials, etc., and his praise and encouragement 
 helped me on." 
 
 In 1864, the residence on Maple street was exchanged 
 for one on Central street, which had been built and 
 occupied by Francis Tiffany, the pastor of the Unitarian 
 Church, and a personal friend of Mr. Bowles. The new 
 house was larger, better built, and more commodious 
 than the old one ; it stood in close neighborhood to the 
 beautiful cemetery, and was surrounded by shade-trees 
 and shrubbery. Mr. Bowles threw himself with hearty 
 enjoyment into the work of finishing and planting the 
 grounds. He had a relish for the cultivation of the earth, 
 and no mean knowledge of the farmer's and gardener's 
 art. Here was his home for the rest of his life, here his 
 children grew up, and here was exercised a generous hos- 
 pitality to a various and brilliant circle of guests. 
 
 The best illustrations of the personal and home life of 
 this period are given by his private letters. 
 
 To F. B. Sanborn. 
 
 Feb. 16, 1863. 
 If the Commomcealth enterprise were mine, and I desired 
 alike its success and its power for good, I should make it the 
 representative of the extreme right of the Republican party, 
 — of Sumner, Andrew, Chase, Stanton, Amasa Walker, etc., — 
 and not of the Wendell Phillips school. I would have it very 
 positive, earnest, and enthusiastic, sometimes perhaps a httle 
 malignant, but bearing, on the whole, with as much patience as
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTERS (1S63-1865). 391 
 
 possible, vnth. the more laggard and conservative elements of 
 the party, — with Lincoln, Seward, and with Boston, etc. ; and 
 remembering always the chief duty of giving the most constant 
 blows to the common enemy, — that there are various ways of 
 fighting battles in this world, — that strategy, flank movements, 
 patient waiting and pleading, and even digging, have their 
 uses and their reasons, as well as open front assaults, and that, 
 though the latter was our style and choice, we must not forget 
 that those who used the other means were also our allies. I 
 should be full of the *' Come up hither ! " and not repulse by too 
 much denunciation and want of candor our fi'iends and allies. 
 Such a paper, properly published and edited, and backed 
 by somebody's pocket for a year or two, will soon become self- 
 supporting and a power in New England and Boston, and very 
 Ukely make 'the basis of a daily. Such we need, Boston needs, 
 and New England needs. 
 
 You propose to grasp too much in your details. You would 
 want a sheet of twice the size, and that is not possible now. It 
 seems to me you should seize two or three strong points: 
 1, pohtical position with the foremost Eepubhcans ; 2, identifi- 
 cation with the use and development of the negro, theoretically 
 and practically ; and, 3, hteratui-e of choice and original char- 
 acter. Thus, I would — keeping the paper of form and size 
 as now, for the present, but gi'V'ing it the tj'pographic air of 
 a journal of the 19th instead of the 18th century — give up 
 the first page to political selections, documents, speeches, 
 pubhc opinion, etc. ; the second and third pages to editorials 
 — not too many, say two of a column and f ovir of a quarter- 
 column, and half a dozen shorter and biting editorial para- 
 graphs — and correspondence and news ; and the fourth page 
 to literature. As to correspondence, a weekly letter from 
 Washington, and one from New York, or once a fortnight 
 perhaps as well, should be your chief rehance. These should 
 be written by people of sense as well as talent — no Gurowski 
 stuff, except as an occasional salad — should be gossipy, specu- 
 lative, and newsy ; that from New York should make art and 
 hterature leading themes, and may be by a woman — better, 
 indeed. They should both be paid for, at $5 each. As to
 
 392 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 army correspondence, when you can get some good, and from 
 leading points, have it. Poor is abominable, and rather than 
 that read and select from the New York papers. For news, 
 there should be a compact review of the week of say 
 two colunms, and then a column or so of items, fresh and 
 piquant, — nothing more. Let the farmer, the mechanic, and 
 all other specialties, slide — make your paper for men and 
 women, not for specialists. And yet, if you can have once 
 in a while a strong, suggestive, fresh article on special and 
 side themes, right well. But don't have a paper of depart- 
 ments. As to literature — variety, freshness, and a higher 
 character than any American paper has, or ever had. Avoid, 
 as a rule, continued stories, though they may be very well as 
 an exception, if very, very good. A good, short, piquant story 
 of three or four columns once a fortnight, and for the rest, 
 reviews of new books, selections, choice discussions, literary 
 reminiscences, etc. You ought to make this the second great 
 feature of your paper, and keep the negro out of it. Let it be 
 such that people wiU, must, take the paper for that alone, 
 if rejecting the other. 
 
 There, that wiU do, I guess. I hope you wiU be " master of 
 your situation," and be able to say no, not only to everybody 
 else but to yourself. A newspaper should have its own indi- 
 viduahty and conscience apart from any man, and the " able 
 editor" is the man who can respect that more than his own 
 passion. If you succeed, you will find you must keep some- 
 where near the people, not abreast, but not so far ahead 
 as not to be seen and appreciated. A great newspaper is not 
 a reformer, not a radicahst, but may be and should be a 
 leader — a go-between for the head men and the masses. But 
 this is not to your purpose now, though it should not be for- 
 gotten. In lajing the foundation, it is well to be conspicuous 
 and ultra. A minority is always more radical than a majority. 
 But don't put yourself out of the pale of the world. An indi- 
 vidual can be Wendell Phillips or M. D. Conway, but a news- 
 paper cannot, and have circulation and tolerance. 
 
 As to times and men, of what use to prophesy or pass judg- 
 ment *? The present duty is clear — to push on the war, conquer
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTERS (18G3-1865). 393 
 
 all "sve can, as fast as we can, and stir up the " social institution" 
 of the South as deeply as possible. "We may have to stop, or be 
 stopped, any time. The future is not clear. But what we want 
 is to make sure that slavery^ shall be destroyed, whether there 
 be peace or war. The white man seems to have failed us, and 
 so the black man, as yet ; but God is on our side, and it must 
 come right. Butler is playing poker with fortune, and plays 
 as always desperately. He is to be trusted as far as he gives 
 security. But he is a bold, bad man, with quick instincts, 
 sudden resolutions, and desperate resorts. He makes great 
 successes and great failures. It is disgusting, the way some 
 of your people favor him, yet he deserves praise, recogni- 
 tion, and authority — and yet must be watched. I see no 
 reason to question Banks. He riijens more slowly than I 
 expected, and has done nothing yet. But he beheves in 
 God and progress and regeneration, and wiU not cheat us. 
 Give him a fair chance. He may fail — he may not dare 
 enough — sometimes he distrusts himself and the people and 
 hesitates — but when his moments of inspiration come, they 
 are all right. 
 
 I wish you would come and see me, and then we would talk 
 over all these matters. I am glad you are man-ied, and are 
 taking strong hold of life. I wish you every success, and am 
 sure you have the opportunity and the power. 
 
 This is rapidly, badly written — but I hope you can spell it 
 out. You will find it difficult to get such correspondents as you 
 wish, or such other writing ; but keep your purpose high, and 
 they will come after a while. A newspaper is a slow growth, 
 and there is a great lack of ready newspaper talent in 
 America. 
 
 To Miss Whitney. 
 
 May^ 1863. 
 
 . . . The Atwater farm property is put before me again 
 by Mr. A.'s pressing my purchase. It is quite temptations, but 
 too big for me. Yet I shaU coquet with it a httle. I have of 
 late a passion for real property, knowing that it survives wars, 
 crises, and even death — and that the rest of my possessions
 
 394 THE LIFE A^^D TIMES OF SAMUEL B0^T:.ES. 
 
 hardly will.* Mary is pretty well this week, and we are both 
 busy with spring cares and work. This afternoon we have our 
 usual Saturday dinner with some old boyhood friends of mine. 
 I love to keep up, after a fashion, all the old acquaintanceships, 
 and revive my young friendships and feelings. They freshen 
 hfe, and they serve greatly to keep us in sjTupathy with oui* 
 ehildi'en's wants and feelings and fancies. It is not much that 
 I do for my children, but I never want to lose sight of myself at 
 their ages — then the little I do can be done more inteUigently. 
 
 There is need of new patience and faith in the war. I am 
 
 glad I do not see Mrs. often. She has always all the 
 
 badness of things and people. And I had rather not know, 
 since I cannot largely help. The fight goes on tiU slavery^ is 
 thoroughly uprooted — that seems to be it. And we must carry 
 it on, so far as possible, with negro soldiers. The government 
 seems to reahze this. Organize the negroes, and put them to 
 service, offensive and defensive ; make them work out the free- 
 dom of their race. 
 
 I shall read Faustina, because it stands for something to you. 
 I feel strongly, however, that I shall not hke it. The closing 
 sentences seem the key, and such stories I do not like. They 
 lessen what is waning too fast in me for my happiness — trust 
 and faith in man and woman. They sap that reverence for 
 woman — that holy worship — that was early and deep in me, 
 but does not seem so strong as it was. I cling to all and everj' 
 thing that freshens and inspires it. The characters, the books, 
 the people, that strengthen the waning faiths of hard expe- 
 rience, that bring back youth and ideals, that bring the good 
 and the great and the unselfish into prominence and activity — 
 rather than the opposites — are the characters, the books, the 
 people, I seek and need. I am afraid I don't have so much 
 faith in myself as I used to, as I ought to, as is best for me and 
 my content. Perhaps that is the trouble. So much higher do 
 people rate me than I deserve that it causes me to react against 
 myself. But don't you dare to put me lower! To you and 
 
 * In fact, however, it so happened that a part of Mr. Bowles's real estate 
 investments proved ultimately an embarrassment, while his newspaper 
 was a steady source of revenue during his life-time and afterward.
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTERS (1863-18G5). 395 
 
 Mary and the children I must always be great — else the school 
 would be dismissed ! 
 
 June, 1863. 
 
 . . . How warm and sticky the days are getting ; it fright- 
 ens me that the summer comes on so fast and far, and we 
 have had no horseback rides. But the nights are compensat- 
 ing to those who are then aUve and fresh. These splendid 
 moonlights will be gone ere you get to Hastings, and won't 
 distract you from man's identity, and geologic strata, and such ! 
 I am glad of it, for your sake ! It must be trying for such 
 many-sided people to be tempted in all ways at once ! Com- 
 mend me to your narrow, one-stringed fiddles of humanity 
 for content and peace and happiness. 
 
 Fix it as I will, my days seem crowded and huiTied with care 
 — always more left over than is done. The mere running of a 
 daily paper like the Republican produces friction enough to keep 
 one set of nerves on the stretch. There is always some line 
 somewhere that grates on somebody, — a name wrong in a mar- 
 riage, a birth that didn't happen, that the "editor-in-chief " and 
 nobody else must hear all about, and apologize for and cor- 
 rect. Hood's absence, too, gives me a large share of the detail. 
 Think of your friend collating rehgious intelligence ! But that 
 is one of the things I do well. I have a soul for the petty 
 strifes of parishes, and take delight in disciphning good men — 
 to say naught, as you know, of good women. 
 
 Did I tell you Mary's dehcious scheme for a piano present to 
 
 failed ? It was too bad. It required $50 each from some 
 
 six or eight to insure it, and only two or three were prompt 
 and hearty. The rest absolutely refused. 
 
 Sunday, June, 1863. 
 Talk of Hastings-on-the-Hudson ! You should see Spring- 
 field-on-the-Connecticut, this blessed June Sunday morning ! 
 It is the " perfect day." The rain is over, the green at its 
 full, the sun not too kind, — the love of friendship, not of pas- 
 sion, — and the bobolink's song comes up from the lower meadow 
 and steals in the open window. The air is the breath of roses 
 and grass and leaves, cool and sweet, and only silence is
 
 396 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 golden. To speak above a whisper would seem sacrilege — 
 would break this sacramental beauty of morning. Come and 
 see if it be not so. But speak not, upon your peril. You can- 
 not, with all your tongues, including Greek ! improve upon the 
 stiU small voices of the lower orders, — the pushing vegetable^ 
 life, the grasshoppers, the birds, the frogs, — all ripening into 
 ultimate disagi'eeable, fretting, anxious, exacting man ! No ; 
 I reject the development theory ! The growth is backwards. 
 Reverse Darwin and Huxley, and I will beheve. Pity the poor 
 bird, happy now, that shoiild be a girl, anxious and unhappy 
 about her spring bonnet. Let us " go to grass " rather than go 
 on to more unhappy man. 
 
 Our company is gone ; we are alone with our garden and the 
 baby and Pone. I have cut " morning service," and am going 
 to drive with Mary and the small boy — he with a dreadful 
 mumps-looking face, because of teeth that wiU come, and yet, 
 fearing their fate, hesitate — and in the conflict huii;. 
 
 There is nothing else fresh in our Hves. Mary is really better 
 and stronger and happier, — and I grow buoyant under the 
 inspiration. 
 
 It is pleasant to feel that you are ha\ang such a gay time 
 with your friends. We try to think it would be even better 
 here, — but I am afraid don't succeed in the delusion. How- 
 ever, we do what we can ; and what more would j^ou ask ? 
 " She has done what she could " was the finest epitaph ever 
 written. I shouldn't hunger for any other, if I could reach that. 
 — When you have tried them all, come back to us, and try us 
 over ; and be the morning Uke this you shall be content — for 
 the last of such mornings is the finest that ever was, and 
 sends the soul to its higher level. Beside, there be fi'esh straw- 
 berries and green peas here, and I am sure the earnaUties are 
 not wholly extinct in you. You will come back from Greek and 
 Pre- Adamite- dom and Braceville, to breakfast — I am certain. 
 
 And so, nothing new — we give you the old ; we have nothing 
 better : it is our best. 
 
 June, 1863. 
 
 We do not permit our selfish satisfaction that you are not to 
 leave us for so far and long to cover our grief with you at the
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTEKS (1S63-1S65). 397 
 
 loss of the beloved and blessed sister. Believe that both Mary 
 and I are touched with the tragic fate that has fallen upon her, 
 away from home and friends, and are in deep appreciation 
 and sjTnpathy with you. That remorse that death brings 
 to those that are left has been often in my mind, deeply 
 and sadly, of late ; and I am sure it is much easier to be the 
 one to go than to stay. It is inevitable to every tender heart, 
 however self-saciificing and devoted it may have been. Do aU 
 we may or can, none of us can do everything, — and there wUl 
 ever be the after-thought that we might have done more, tor- 
 tui-ing oui' hves, and mocking the bhss of the memory. And 
 yet could we know the heart away, we should probably find it 
 blessing us for what we had done, and with never a thought 
 that we could or should have done more for it. Only we, 
 foi-tunately, know our failures ; and, alas, how well we know 
 them ! And yet, out of our very selfishness, out of our very 
 neglect, God buildeth us up ; so that what we do perform for 
 kindred and friends takes on larger power and gives deeper 
 bhss than if in a narrow way we had given more hours and 
 thought and sei"vice to the beloved. It is a shadowy, tender 
 hne between service to oui'selves and service to others. 
 
 But think of other things in connection with the sister. 
 There must be many a pleasant, grateful thought of your deep 
 sjTBpathizing natural exchanges, of her life as locked with 
 yours, of her memory, and of her character. Gather hold of 
 aU that enlarges and ennobles her place in yoiir heart, and do 
 not let the black cloud overshadow or dim it. She will be ever 
 to you an inspu-ation and a guide. Only think of what you 
 might have done for her and did not, to prompt to clearer duty 
 hereafter. I always think of this lately, — I hardly know why, 
 since I am no more likely to go first than those who will most 
 miss me, — that I must not do, or omit to do, that which if one 
 among those to whom my Uf e is locked should die, would leave 
 a sting and a sorrow in my whole life. Of course it does not 
 always check the hasty word, the unjust thought, the neglected 
 duty ; but " it helps weel," as the Scotchman said. 
 
 I want to know more about your sister. We must talk largely 
 and freely of her. She must indeed have been large-headed
 
 398 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 and large-hearted to have taken such a hold upon all yovir 
 family, and upon your nature especially. Pray let me know 
 her fully, and learn to admire and love her character and her 
 soul. 
 
 These are hot, oppressive days. In spite of much discom- 
 fort, I am pretty well, in some respects better than usual. I 
 cannot get away, as I meant to before this, because I must 
 wait and see where the draft strikes in our estabUshment, and 
 what havoc it wiU create. I hope to run away Saturday or 
 Monday for an exploring tour along the coast, to get a snuff 
 myself, and find a spot for Miss Easter and the children for two 
 or three weeks. 
 
 Evening. Affairs are so threatening all around — riots every- 
 where, and confusion and doubt — that I shall not think of 
 leaving my post tiU the air is clearer. A bold, decisive, mili- 
 tary suppression of the New York mob would have settled 
 everything; now, the draft must be abandoned, or several 
 cities put under mihtary surveillance. 
 
 East Eden, Me. [Bar Harbor] , August, 1863. 
 . . . The point of doubt as to recovery lies in the hver, I 
 think, — the rest may be managed with time and care ; that 
 may be so dulled as to defy all effort, as it probably does all 
 ordinary medication. It is at least a rather settled, hard case 
 of nervous dyspepsia, — and I, as weU as all my friends who 
 propose to stick to me, have need of all patience and indulgence 
 with its caprices, its vagaries, and its incapacities. One thing 
 I have strongly resolved on ; to resort to an effort of will as 
 rarely and as hghtly as possible for any purpose of reading, 
 writing, or working. My wiU has carried me for years beyond 
 my mental and physical power; that has been the offending 
 rock, — and now, beyond that desirable in keeping my temper, 
 and forcing me up to proper exercise and cheerfulness through 
 light occupation, I mean to call upon it not at all, if I can 
 help it — and to do only what comes freely and spontaneously 
 from the overflow of power and hfe. This will make me a light 
 reader, a small worker, and a poor and irregular correspondent. 
 WlU you, my friend, to whom I owe so much, and who appeal
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTEES (1863-1865). 399 
 
 to me so strongly in all intellectual and emotional ways, have 
 patience and indulgence with me in this resolution, — and help 
 me to carry it out ? I cannot always write to you, even when 
 there is time and much to say, because it is hard to come to you 
 with mere nothings ; you inevitably appeal to my best, and I 
 shrink from and put off writing to you often because I cannot 
 make up my mind to give you poor thought or none at aU, 
 and there is spirit and power for nothing more. The indis- 
 position to read, or even to be read to, is quite singular with 
 me. This fortnight I have been here I have read nothing ; and 
 
 M has only read to me once for half an hour, and then 
 
 with no interest at all on my part. I do not think well to yield 
 to it altogether ; hght, instructive reading is better than loose, 
 morbid thinking, — and yet even here 1 am sure the path of 
 safety is not to force myself beyond the jioint of fuU pleasure 
 and lively interest. 
 
 M has enjoyed her trip and visit very much ; though I 
 
 have been able to contribute nothing to it save the bringing 
 her. She has fitted in well with the rest of the company, and 
 entered heartily into all the excursions and amusements. She 
 is disposed to be too grateful for the opportunity. Such gifts 
 are of the smallest and cheapest of generosities. The things we 
 omit to do — what we withhold — often cost the most. The un- 
 seen gifts are the largest ; those of charity, love, forgiveness, 
 patience, and self-restraint, and of these people give me more 
 than I can possibly give them. 
 
 Under favorable stomachic influences, I find my muscular 
 power quite fresh and responsive. I have taken several rough 
 walks of six and eight miles with good effects on the whole ; 
 
 and yesterday I led M up a high mountain, — an hour and 
 
 a half up and an hour down. She faltered a little going up, 
 but stood it on the whole well, and comes out to-day better than 
 ever. 
 
 I long to be at home again. Every absence endears more 
 and more the valley and its possessions to me. I feel there 
 some power, some ownership ; away, I am " nothing to no- 
 body," and nobody anything to me. There is my native soil — 
 my field, my hfe — all that I have done, aU I can hope to
 
 400 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 do — and there the six feet by two of Mother Earth that is all 
 I can hope to call my own beyond the fleeting years of this 
 generation. 
 
 The following letters were among those written to his 
 wife, when she, with Miss Whitney as a companion, was 
 in New York at the Brevoort House, again under the 
 care of Dr. Barker, at the time of the birth of another 
 son, named Dwight. 
 
 October, 1863. 
 
 The children are first-rate — never better — fact, and no 
 rose-coloring. I am pretty well — a trifling cold, and the old 
 headache, but better than usual, — happy and hopeful, as be- 
 fits a man with the elements of joy in his hfe that I have. 
 
 Great crowd here to the convention. Springfield all full, and 
 running over into Chicopee and Holyoke and perhaps North- 
 ampton. Great many Unitarians this year, especiahy sisters, 
 who like to visit the Connecticut Valley at this beautiful sea- 
 son of the year, and get free board. Mr. Putnam came this 
 noon, the Robinsons to-night. Mr. P. has not come home to 
 tea ; gone probably with some of the sisters of his flock who 
 are up here with him. 
 
 Everything going on rapidly at greenhouse and barn ; both 
 will be pretty much finished this week 5 then, ho for grading, 
 draining, fencing, planting ! Margaret's nephew, or " niece," 
 as he introduced himself to me to-day, has come from " over 
 the say," and I have set him at work. He starts off; Uke a 
 steam-engine. 
 
 Let me have a word every day from one of you, to know how 
 you get along — don't write much yourself ; it exhausts head and 
 heart, and makes you nei-vous more than anything you can do. 
 
 The weather is beautiful — between nine and five. Mora- 
 ings and evenings, cold and damp, and grapple with you hke a 
 vice. I am so glad you are out of this wretched climate. 
 
 Live well — count every joy and comfort twice — and forget 
 those you miss — but don't forget your always loving husband. 
 
 My most profound bow, my heartiest faith, to the contents 
 of the other blue dress !
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTERS (1863-1865). 401 
 
 During these weeks the Eepublicmi is unusually brill- 
 iant ; there is no mistaking the chief's presence and in- 
 spiration. The discussion of the war prospects is wise, 
 steady, and hopeful. The Unitarian National Convention 
 is reported intelligently and sympathetically, apparently 
 by Mr. Bowles. The summing up is by him, beyond 
 doubt. It is warmly commendatory. "Not a stupid 
 thing nor an unpleasant thing was said." Some of the 
 talk was too fine-spun for edification. "In the discus- 
 sions, especially on the last day," when the topics were 
 such as optimism, the question whether all evil is but 
 disguised good, etc., " there was manifest the old effort, 
 ever recurring, to get upon God's side of the universe, 
 and see the Infinite through finite eyes, in which origi- 
 nate all the puzzles and contradictions of the theologies. 
 Perhaps those who attempted it thought they succeeded, 
 but it cannot be done, and all inferences from what men 
 suppose they see on that side are phantasms and falla- 
 cies." " The talk against creeds amounts to little. Uni- 
 tarians are just as strenuous in their negations as others 
 are in their affirmations, and have no more toleration 
 for the ideas they think false than other Christians." 
 As to the mooted right to the name of Christians, says 
 the paper, that name belongs to whoever accepts Christ 
 as an infallible teacher (as, apparently, no speaker in 
 the convention refused to do). 
 
 To Ms Wife. 
 
 October, 1863. 
 
 Everybody is well; ehildren, cow, horse, and all, — just as 
 well as they can be ; and the world moves on as well as it can 
 with you out of it. There is a hole here in this circle, and will 
 be till you come back ; but considering that, we are all as well 
 as coiild be expected. I have been very busy to-day. I had 
 to send Pomeroy to Pittsfield, and am only afraid I can't get 
 him back in time to send to Amherst, and going myself is out 
 Vol. I.— 26
 
 402 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 of the question. This forenoon I rode to Chicopee on business, 
 stopped at Henry's coming back — downcast but comfortable, 
 and sister still there — and then to the cattle-show on the Park 
 for a little while. This afternoon, in the garden for an hour, 
 at the office for an hour or two ; a caU on Mother, who has a 
 cold ; and then home to entertain Mr. Flint, secretary of the 
 Agricultural Board, at tea. He has gone now, and I am writ- 
 ing in haste for the mail at nine o'clock, after which I shall go 
 to the office for a httle while. Mrs. King won't give up Kate, 
 the washerwoman, and Sarah is doing the washing and ironing. 
 Doesn't that fructify your economical soul ? I don't hear a bit 
 
 of family news. and his wife are here, — saw him for a 
 
 moment ; didn't find humihty written on his forehead. Bryan 
 is in Boston, or was to-day. Mrs. as frigid as an ice- 
 berg. We are growing dreadfuUy apart — and because she 
 can't wait till I outgrow dyspepsia, and wiU insist that I shall 
 treat her with at least as much consideration as she thinks I 
 show some other people ! Ah, well ! People won't twit me 
 much longer on having so many friends. That crime is passing 
 from my soul ! 
 
 I am going to introduce hominy to the Hotel de Bowles. I 
 suppose you wiU begin by turning up your dainty nose at it, 
 and end by eating an extra share ! Then I am going to have 
 baked instead of fried fish-cakes ! You see I believe — as to 
 eating — that it is worth doing well, since it must be done. Yet 
 what unspiritual business it is ! I don't see how a sentimental 
 young lady can stand seeing her lover eat, especially if he eats 
 
 like Thackeray or or some other people I wot of. I have 
 
 dropped one or two promising friendships myself on this score. 
 Vulgar but absolute necessity ! Don't vex your economical 
 spirit now, but have what you want, and be comfortable. 
 What's the use"? There's money enough ; pray enjoy it. Then, 
 you know my perversity : if I find you're doing some self-denial 
 for the sake of half a doUar, I shall certainly squander two, in 
 order to balance it. 
 
 Mary, don't you let my fretful, downcast moods annoy you. 
 They are unworthy of me, and I ought to rise above them, and 
 control them. But sometimes they master and overpower me.
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTEKS (lS63-18Ga). 403 
 
 I want to give it all up sometimes. Nobody can understand 
 the spell that is upon me. It cannot be described — it doesn't 
 seem as if anybody else can ever feel it. Consider me if you 
 can as a little child, sick and peevish, wanting love and indul- 
 gence and petting and rest and peace. There, this ought not 
 to have been written. But it can't be unwritten, and it is too 
 late to write anything else. It is morbid ; but there's truth, 
 sometimes the clearest, in our morbid reflections. Health is 
 too often independence, selfish philosophy, and indifference. 
 
 ]My heartiest love to Maria. Get and give as much comfort 
 and pleasure as you can, — between you. You mustn't urge 
 her too much to stay with you when I am also with you. It wOl 
 be a disappointment to me to miss her altogether, but she has 
 other friends — and she is giving us our fuU share — more than 
 we can repay — and after her Sunday vacations she wUl come 
 back fresh and hearty for your entertainment. 
 
 Keep up good courage ; believe all is well at home — that I 
 will take as good care of every detail as possible ; and above 
 all feel ever that my thought, my love, and my prayer are with 
 and for and about you. 
 
 November, 1863. 
 8 p. M., Tuesday [Election day]. 
 
 Busy with election returns, and you must take a word. 
 Everybody well at house. Children never better, high and 
 low. All but baby over at Amelia's to tea — that is, all the 
 children. The boy has got his new cap, and is as proud of it 
 as his mother is of him. 
 
 My going to New York this week depends upon what I hear 
 from you. I stand ready for marching orders. Let me hear 
 from you constantly and at once. 
 
 Are you interested in our election news ? Have you read 
 to-day's Bepublican ? The Republican bolt against the reign 
 of Judge Shurtleff, Trask & Co. is triumphant. Harris chosen 
 [D. L. Harris, to the legislature] , and Sturtevant defeated by 
 a tie vote with Bond. I am afraid there is a great deal of hard 
 swearing against ''Sam Bowles" around in secret places to- 
 night. The whole is the choicest bit of fun I have had this 
 long while.
 
 404 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 If you and Maria can take the responsibility, buy the three 
 dresses, — seven yards for Mamie, nine for Sallie, and nine of 
 Empress cloth (double or extra width) for AUie. The latter 
 dark-green or brown. Then you may stop the miUinery and 
 dry goods department tiU you get home and well. 
 
 The baby grows fat and rosy — talks better and acts more 
 like a man. AU owing to the excellent example of his fond 
 father and your loving husband. 
 
 Wednesday. 
 
 I am real tired to-night, but very well for me. It was Uke 
 old times, staying up at the office last night tiU after midnight, 
 coming home and sitting over the fire, eating grapes and 
 drinking mild brandy and water, aU alone, for an hour, and 
 then to bed. I slept weU notwithstanding, and called the girls 
 and the children at quarter past six. George Reynolds and his 
 teams and men have commenced grading to-day. The green- 
 house begins to assume form and character. My rural fence 
 has got to go over. Nell took a French breakfast this morning, 
 or I'ather an American breakfast in French style, and got up 
 in time to avail herself of an invitation to Ameha's to 
 dinner. I was bidden, but could not go. She reports a pleas- 
 ant time ; she staid all the afternoon. Lizzie Rice came up 
 here to tea, and has gone with AUie to Church — capital C — 
 expecting to hear the Rev. Dr. Huntington, who is reported 
 in town. 
 
 The children are well and happy ; SaUie cyphering ; Mamie 
 and Sammie playing cards and checkers with Nelhe ; and the 
 grand boy asleep with Mistress Keen brooding over him, 
 
 I was busy all the morning with the Weekly and election 
 returns. This afternoon I had a long horseback ride, — out 
 nearly to Chicopee and back, — a fine sunset, and clear and cold 
 air, which I am sure has fitted me for a good night. 
 
 That was a brave feat of yours yesterday, and I am glad of 
 it. But be very careful. Don't let your impatience lead you 
 into any rash actions. Wait a httle longer, and you wiU be 
 paid for aU your suffering and trial. 
 
 Everybody inquires lovingly for you. Everybody is waiting 
 anxiously and hopefully.
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTERS (1863-1865). 405 
 
 Miss Whitmarsh I do not see yet. She and Lizzie are grow- 
 ing together. They were off in the woods, this morning, 
 painting. 
 
 So you have our Hfe in brief : just as good as being here, 
 isn't it? 
 
 Courage, care, patience, Molly ! 
 
 Sunday, November, 1863. 
 We have fine weather and fine spirits to-day. It is odd 
 for me to be here and not there, for over Sunday, and I am 
 not reconciled to it quite. . . . Mr. Shipley came up to 
 dinner, and I have had a long walk with him. Mother has 
 seen the greenhouse and garden and barn, and approves. The 
 small boy is roUieking with the Easter down-stau-s. He is really 
 getting to be a very fine boy, weU-behaved and reasonable. 
 He was on a spree last night, however, and I tried my hand at 
 getting him to sleep, walking back and forth upstairs. He was 
 eminently good-natured so long as I pictured to him the 
 dehghts of horseback riding and whipping Pone ; but when I 
 subsided into di-ivel, or nursery songs, he was impatient and 
 wanted to go back to Alhe. He promised to behave himself 
 and go to sleep if I would take him back, and the bargain was 
 kept on both sides. Allie said he grew restless once in a while, 
 but on her reminding him of his promise to me he would sub- 
 side and go to sleep again. 
 
 November, 1863. 
 
 It is good for sore hearts to see your hand of writ again, to 
 read your overflowing words of tenderest love, and to know 
 strength and life are coming back so cheerily and rapidly 
 to you. 
 
 We have heavy, dreary rain to-day, spoiling all my j)lans for 
 work. With fine weather, I should have seen the end of things 
 by to-morrow night, and dismissed most of the men. Now I 
 am afraid I shall have to go " right in the suds," as the washer- 
 women say. But go I shall and mvist. I must have the rest and 
 recreation and sight of you. 
 
 I must teU you both of an interview I had with Miss 
 
 to-day. I had to decline one of her letters, which " pitched into "
 
 406 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 the editors of the Bepuhliean personally. She didn't like it 
 much ; but I took high gi-ound, and she couldn't quan*el very- 
 well. But I guess she won't like me quite so well, after this. 
 Women don't like to be crossed better than men. 
 
 The children are all well, and full of " charades," or rather 
 small acting plays for Friday night. Charley Allen was here 
 two hours last evening on his way from Greenfield to Boston. 
 I shall go down in the evening train. But it is day before 
 Thanksgi^dng, and the trains will be full and late. I ought to 
 be in 65 by twelve o'clock, but don't worry if I am not for 
 an hour or two later. I would come in the day train, but I 
 am so full — it is impossible. I expect you both wUl be glad 
 enough to see me to intermit the usual disciphne. I shall be 
 tired and cross, I presume, and shall require great indulgence 
 and the proper amount of feminine petting. 
 
 December, 1863, 
 
 Beloved Wipe, and Proud Mother ! All well at this end 
 of the rope, and nothing new. I am up to my ears in work 
 under the hill ; had nine men and six horses all in harness to- 
 day — grading, making embankments and grape-borders, set- 
 ting fences, drawing sand and turf, transplanting, etc., etc. I 
 have been out nearly all day superintending and clearing 
 strawberry beds, — and I am the better for it. But I see so 
 many things I want to do that I almost despair. I shan't stop 
 tUl the snow shuts down on me. 
 
 Sleep — sleep — let Mrs. E. and Maria experiment on the 
 baby. Don't fret over him — they can't harm him — only you 
 can, and that by nervousness and anxiety and overdoing. 
 This is solemn truth — heed it, an' thou lov'st him and me. For 
 the rest, be of good cheer, and wait. Think over all the joys 
 in your life, and how few have so many, and how many so few 
 sorrows. Get all the comfort you can from Maria, and give 
 her all you can in retxim — and you can give her a great deal. 
 
 December, 1863. 
 
 I wish you could breathe this clear, cold air. There is tonic 
 in it beyond bark, iron, and quinine ; soothing beyond opium j
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTEKS (1863-1865). 407 
 
 stren^hening beyond beef tea. We will save some up for you. 
 I will try to bring you. some. 
 
 Babies all well and hearty, individually and aggregately. 
 School is in progress, and the three are in it with zest. Skating 
 too has opened. 
 
 I enclose Mr. Pomeroy's grateful letter — perhaps you can 
 pick it out, when you sit up. If not, it is of no consequence, 
 though it helps to know him. 
 
 I dine with Curtis at Walker's to-morrow — nobody else. 
 To-night Briggs gives a supper to his friends because of his 
 election as alderman. Sallie wants to know why I am not 
 elected to anything. The children wiU begin to look upon me 
 with contempt, unless I hold some office. So the American 
 mind is early debauched by respect for office as such. What 
 could I say to her, save that the people didn't seem to want me, 
 or perhaps it was because I wouldn't give suppers'? Henry 
 treated at the hotel, which was well for Amelia's carpets. 
 
 I pray you prosper in strength, freedom from pain, and hope 
 and courage. The children send abundant love and kisses. 
 " Even more I," as Paul says. 
 
 Dec, 1863. 
 
 Dear Girls in 65 : It is good news you send to-day. Keep 
 on getting better. There is nothing so good to put babies to 
 sleep as a strong arm around them and a strong wiU behind it. 
 The connection between weak and nervous mothers and nurses 
 and sleepless and nervous children, is just as quick and siu'e 
 '^ as the play of the magnet — the joy or sorrow of two loving 
 hearts. 
 
 I am so weary with a long day outdoors, digging and weed- 
 ing! I have only just now — dark — put on whole clothes 
 and "washed up." You must excuse the few words in which 
 I write, and be assured of the sympathy and the Jove behind 
 them. 
 
 It has been a sweet, soft day here, and everybody is well. 
 The boy never looked heartier or handsomer. He is practic- 
 ing on Yes and 3Iamtna, — but aU his efforts at the latter melt 
 sweetly into Papa — so ravishingly! The children are aU. in 
 high glee, and the town calm.
 
 408 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 It is so provoking my Tuesday letter did not reach you 
 yesterday. I wrote you each, as I did also last night. Be sure 
 I give you something every night — of the written word — while 
 the thought is full and constant, and always as you would 
 wish. 
 
 And so, love and grace be with you. 
 
 December, 1863. 
 
 The good news you send us, my dearest wife, to-day, is quite 
 cheering. It gladdens my heart very much ; and everybody 
 rejoices that there is such a promise of your early return. 
 Home is waiting and yearning for its lost head. But pray be 
 cautious ; a Httle overdoing now, a httle fussing and anxiety, 
 and too much care of baby, wiU pull you all down again. So 
 put clogs on your outstretching wings. Be content to keep 
 them folded a httle longer, so when you do fly, it shall be clear 
 to Springfield. 
 
 I have had a long, fuU day at office and house, but have been 
 well sustained, and am Yevj weU for me. The family are in 
 fine condition. The school term closed to-day, and a vacation 
 of two weeks opened. You will hear now oftener from the 
 children. They are very busy, you know, during the last 
 weeks of school term. And it is not so easy for them to write ; 
 it is a larger undertaking than for you or me. They don't 
 think of you any the less often, love you any more feebly, re- 
 joice less keenly in your new joy, or sigh less warmly for your 
 return, because they don't put it all in writing daily. You know 
 there are higher and hoher expressions of love than poor words 
 can give. 
 
 The work in the garden goes on apace. I have borrowed 
 more money. If I go on long at this rate, you wiU have to go 
 on short allowance of gowns and gaieties next year. But the 
 time for dividends at the office is coming, and the album busi- 
 ness is good. So have a plate of fresh toast, if you please. 
 
 I shan't come down to-morrow night, unless you get into 
 sorrow or trouble. It was hard for me to give it up, and I only 
 did to-day ; but I must husband every hour here at home 
 while the frost and snow hold off. So wait patiently and lov- 
 ingly, as I win try to, till Wednesday night.
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTEES (1863-1865). 409 
 
 To Miss Whitney. 
 
 December, 1863. 
 I return you Renan. Keep it if you will. Hood's review will be 
 rather orthodox-y — suiting our readers better than I, I reckon ; 
 but you wouldn't do it and I couldn't. Tending baby and sick 
 friends, and trying to satisfy clamoring outsiders, isn't favor- 
 able for high theology, is it *? It seems to me Renan is very 
 puerile and ridiculous in parts, and very magnificent in others. 
 Some of his suggestions are harder to swallow than the mira- 
 cles, but his general conception of Christ is large, comprehen- 
 sive, perhaps as high as any yet written, though not above some 
 felt. But it is comforting to people with free and vagrant 
 heads to feel that there is even a Christianity back of and 
 without Christ, and to which he seems rather interpreter and 
 disciple than founder. Do you see the story that Strauss has 
 recanted — come over to Orthodoxy — converted by his critics'? 
 Odd, is it not ? What is certain in this life but Death and 
 Love? 
 
 [Probably 1864.] 
 . . . We shall have to be counted converts to your Mr. 
 Frothingham : we went again on Sunday, — he was a trifle too 
 radical for Mary, but he on the whole voices my philosophy 
 more fully than any other preacher I ever heard. I don't 
 see why he isn't Theodore Parker improved; he has all 
 his philosophy and spirituaUty, and little of his hot temper, 
 gross conceit, and bigotry. Yet because of these lacks he will 
 have smaller power. The congregation seems large and grow- 
 ing, and he has a more hopeful, successful air. . . . Froth- 
 ingham was on the whole the greatest enjoyment in New York. 
 There were drawbacks on all else, and even on that — but that 
 possessed me more, made me forgetful, for the time, of my own 
 wants, my egoism — which was well. 
 
 I have changed my habits somewhat now, under Dr. Barker's 
 suggestions. I come to the office about ten, and stay till four, — 
 intending a walk and light lunch from twelve to one, — and 
 dine at five. I mean to do all my work, and read all my 
 papers, at the office in those hours — and for the rest, exer- 
 cise, home cares, and amusement. Pray for patience and
 
 410 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 persistence in well-doing for me. These seem to be the neces- 
 sities of the case. 
 
 January, 1864. 
 
 . . . I have glimmers of health enough to read. It is like 
 a peep into heaven. There are so many things I want to read, 
 and so much enjoyment and consolation in the reading. And 
 yet, reading is not my life, and never can be, unless it is re- 
 made. Still, when there is power enough in the brain, I think 
 I shall read more and to better purpose than ever before. 
 
 Februai-y, 1864. 
 
 Parker's book is out [Weiss's " Life of Theodore Parker"] , but 
 not here, and I have sent for copies for you and me. We shall 
 both want to read it and own it. I have read the Examiner''s 
 review of it with interest. That side of his character which you 
 felt, and a few others, the afl&rmative, constructive, as well as 
 the sentimental and soft and pious, is now coming out only to 
 the world. And so now we shall begin to see, as never before, 
 his effect upon religious thought. But I do not yet reahze that 
 he made a new rehgion ; and yet it is much more than likely 
 that he will take his place along with Luther and Calvin as 
 remedying and improving the defects of the old — seeing more 
 clearly than his contemporaries the religion that Christ estab- 
 hshed, out of the Heart of the Great Father. It impressed me 
 that Parker only began his real work at thirty-five. All before 
 was getting ready. He began at the age where I left off. I didn't 
 get ready — he did. Only so, he won his great glory, — only so, 
 I won my small one. If I had waited to get ready, I should 
 have done nothing. There was not fire enough in my stomach 
 to have done it save as it was forced on me in the puerile pas- 
 sion of youth. So oddly are lives contrasted, and work done — 
 only one should not think of one's little self when reading of the 
 great Parker. 
 
 But how very sad it is to see that such great-headedness and 
 great-heartedness — so much nobility — carries along with it, 
 as by a necessity of its very power and greatness, so much 
 meanness and hatefulness ! Or must we carry the burden and 
 blame over on to our poor humanity, which can only be waked
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTERS (1863-1865). 411 
 
 ap through such debasing and marring of true gi'eatness ? So 
 it would seem. Ah, but Christ escaped this law, this necessity, 
 that belongs to aU other great men and reformers in history ; 
 yet how he has projected himself into and over the world's 
 life ! Calvin imprisoned and burned ; Parker came as near 
 it as our civilization would permit — but Christ '' forgave them, 
 for they knew not what they did." Yet he did drive the 
 money-changers from the church, and he did denounce Phari- 
 sees as generations of vipers ; and there is where he was 
 human ! 
 
 . . . I do not know what there is that I can do for you in 
 the preparations for Cahfomia. I would do much, everything, 
 — I suppose the best ser\ace is to keep out of the way, and not 
 interrupt the flow of preparations, or depress by vain sorrow. 
 You will wish to carry a little Ubrary, a few choice books, such 
 as you will fall back on and read and re-read. Now these I 
 wish to furnish, and you must let me, and tell me what they 
 are. I think of Mrs. Browning — in full ; Emerson, ditto ; Whit- 
 tier, the poet of liberty and humanity ; Dana's " Household 
 Book of Poetry," which has so many of the gems of aU ages and 
 countries, — and now, what else 1 I am ashamed to say I don't 
 know you well enough to enlarge the list with confidence. Any 
 novels, and what ? There must be more, and as you have not 
 been generous enough to me to let me freely enough into your 
 book tastes and dependencies to enable me to tell, you must 
 now, by catalogue. The more, the happier I. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 May 9, 18&4. 
 
 I shall deUght to have you notice Frothingham's book for us, 
 and he would, doubtless, be pleased, too ; and if he would 
 think of it to tell his publishers to send his books to us, they 
 would always have a friendly notice. 
 
 I reaUy don't see why you should fash yourself about my 
 blackguard way of editing the Bepubliean. You tell me only 
 pubhe facts, such as you would teU anybody, such as are at the 
 getting of us all. I use them as I see fit, and am responsible. 
 The only difference between you and me is that you abuse and
 
 412 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 blackguard in court, where the law, which you fellows have 
 made, protects you ; while we blackguard in the papers, where^ 
 the law, which you make, doesn't protect us ! I think you are 
 savage and harsh in court ; but that is none of my business. 
 Let us each be responsible for our own individuaUsms, and for 
 no more. You will have a heavy load if you undertake to 
 carry mine. 
 
 Bushwhacking is very annoying to guerillas, but it is some- 
 times the only way to fight them. Defended on strictly legal 
 principles in court, we should be beaten in the suit. But if we 
 break down their character, expose their misdeeds, and make 
 them notorious — we have driven them out of court; at least, 
 out of the jury-box. Our plan is to stimulate and foment this 
 investigation at Washington ; and for this nothing is so useful 
 as newspaper talk. The members don't care a copper for your 
 private letters, but what you print sets them agoing always. 
 
 Come down this way, and drink some rum, and confess that 
 there is more than one way to do a thing, sometimes. 
 
 To Miss Whitney, 
 
 Sunday, September 4, 1864. 
 
 It is 10 1-2. I have had my bath, my hour on horseback, 
 my breakfast, a half -hour (for digestion !) with the papers, have 
 picked vegetables and fruit for dinner — won't you come and 
 dine at one? — have put on my blue suit, and after worshiping 
 you for a few moments, especially, shall go to church. Mary 
 has been bustling about all the morning, doing the work of her 
 three girls, and getting them and the children off to church 
 and Sunday-school. The baby, your baby, has made his 
 advent this morning in short clothes and leather shoes — the 
 second stage of babyhood. He is well, too fat almost to be 
 
 beautiful, and M says has *' kiUing eyes." When you 
 
 come back, he will fascinate you as a young gentleman, and 
 you can try your theology dodge on him, if you dare ! 
 
 This week we have here a great cattle and horse show, by 
 the New England Society ; and think of it, — in the stress of 
 war time, — it is hkely to be the grandest agricultural exhibi-
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTERS (1863-1865). 413 
 
 tion ever known in New England. Hampden Park is almost 
 covered with sheds and tents for its accommodation. The 
 town will he running over full, and where and how the crowds 
 will sleep and eat, I have no idea. We expect nobody in par- 
 ticular, unless George Morgan comes, but can hardly avoid 
 filling all oui* spare room. Had I felt up to it I should have 
 in^dted Governor Andrew and his staff, but the burden would 
 be too great on me in my weakness. 
 
 Sherman has finished his splendid campaign with Atlanta, 
 and the tone of the North stiffens and grows brave. But for 
 poUtics and pohticians, we should substantially get out of the 
 woods this fall. Lincoln's triumphant election, if it can be ac- 
 complished, will be the final coup de grace ; it wiU raise up at once 
 a reactionary party in the South — a peace party that would 
 be controlling, with the aid of oui* arms. But now, aU is imcer- 
 tain in the political field, though growing better apparently. 
 Do you notice that the Anti-slavery Standard and the Liberator, 
 the representatives of the old Abohtionists, are both earnest for 
 Lincoln f Yet a new crop of radicals have sprung up, who are 
 resisting the president and making mischief. Chase is going 
 around, peddling his griefs in private ears, and sowing dissatis- 
 faction about Lincoln. Oh, how Uttle great men can be — the 
 larger the smaller. Or is it only the contrast, the conspicuous- 
 ness ? Or, again, does nature compensate for great gifts in one 
 direction by withholding in others ? You are a moral metaphy- 
 sician — study it up ! 
 
 But the beU rings — and I kiss my hand to you ! 
 
 Dr. Osgood, of New York, preached for us last Sunday and 
 to-day. I didn't get reconciled to his manner, and his matter 
 is not so overpoweringly good as to make one. Our people are 
 utterly at sea as to a minister ; the man they want they can't 
 have, and there is no one in sight that is satisfactory. The 
 Northampton society does not settle any one yet, as I see. It 
 is a shiftless, lamentable state of affau's ; the evil I do not quite 
 comprehend, nor can I see the remedy. But I have been long 
 thinking that the minister should be more the center, the 
 leader, the teacher, of his people ; that they should gather 
 around him as disciples, somewhat as of old in Asia, in Greece
 
 414 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 and Rome, — going to hear him and joining in his work because 
 they believe in him, what he teaches, and his ways of doing 
 good, — rather than centering in a church organization around 
 a few hfeless dogmas, and having for associates people whom 
 you have no sort of sympathy with, whose principles of life are 
 in most cases wholly at variance with your own, and for a min- 
 ister mayhap one equally discordant with your spirit ; or if not 
 with youi's, then with that of half the rest of the parish. Most 
 of the earnest and best work of our lives is not done with the 
 people who go to the same meeting with us ; with them we are 
 often wholly at variance ; whUe in other parishes we find those 
 of like spu'it and faith, and along with whom we yoke in the 
 best labor of our life. The church organization seems to me a 
 failure — at least that we have outgrown it, or are fast out- 
 growing it. Did you ever think of all this — and what ? 
 
 This is a quiet day, cloudy and now rainy — full of the Fall 
 feeling, and with a savor of sadness all in and over it. 
 
 Sunday, October 23, 1864. 
 
 . . . To-morrow I hope to go to Boston for a day or two. 
 It win be my first night out of this house since we moved into 
 it, more than three months ago. Is not that unusual steadiness 
 for me ? But the truth is, I have no pluck to break away ; I yield 
 cowardly to the httle daUy duties and cares, and don't seem to 
 have the ambition or the power to clear them off and get away. 
 But I mean to, and I wiU, — for I am growing duU and narrow, 
 and getting below — farther below — my soaring friend in 
 California. And I must keep within reaching distance, at least. 
 
 Election prospects continue to look well. So, on the whole, 
 does the military situation. The inner circles have great faith 
 in Grant's going into Richmond very shortly. But he is more 
 anxious to catch the rebel army than to take the town. The 
 two things would be the signal for the downfall of the rebellion. 
 '' Phil Sheridan " is our latest hero ; he has this last week shown 
 the highest quahty of a military commander, — the power to 
 wrench brilliant victory from a terrible defeat. He is a little 
 fellow, of Irish parentage, with brains enough to steady his 
 conceit, but not to conceal it.
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTERS (1863-1865). 415 
 
 Do you begin to hear about " Emily Chester," the new novel? 
 You will have seen Mrs. Cook's notice of it. I inclose Gail 
 Hamilton's, and mark Frank Sanborn's in the Comrnonicealth. 
 And the book itself I will try to send you by another steamer. 
 It seems to have power and merit. The author is said to be a 
 Baltimore girl, and this her first writing. How genius com- 
 pensates for experience. How this dower of great insight 
 divines all hearts, aU trials, aU experiences. It is this power 
 which is genius, and distinguishes it fi*om talent. 
 
 To Charles Allen. 
 
 November, 1864. 
 
 This winter caught my cabbages, grapes, roses, and a' that, 
 and in rescuing them I am losing Boston this week. Sorry ; 
 but agriculture and horticulture first. Colfax is to be here 
 Friday ; how long to stay, I do not know. 
 
 I took my old post election night, and sat through from six 
 P. M. to six A. M., and survived it capitally, suffering much less 
 than I feared. 
 
 There is nothing else new with me. I am organizing anew, 
 somewhat, at the office, with a view to still more rehef for my- 
 self. I want things to go whether I am around or not, so that 
 I can stay away days, evenings, or weeks, even, if so be I am in 
 the mood. But I think we have some good papers. To-day's, 
 for instance, was about as good as any of the *' metropolitans." 
 " The Case of the Florida " was Ashmun's. 
 
 To Miss Whitney. 
 
 Washington, Feb. 1, 1865. 
 Yesterday was a great day in our history. Congress then 
 perfected the abohtion of slavery through the amendment of 
 the Constitution. The scene in the House was of deepest 
 interest. The floor swarmed with distinguished individuals 
 besides the members, — the leading senators, members of the 
 cabinet, Chief-justice Chase, prominent generals, leading 
 anti-slaveiy men from all quarters. All hung with impatience 
 on the result. Hope fluttered. Doubt floated on and off like a
 
 416 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWT,ES. 
 
 cloud. But tlie Opposition wavered, broke, and the sky cleared 
 away in a complete triumph. Then such an outburst of feel- 
 ing — such enthusiasm and applause! The galleries rose to 
 their feet — so the members. The ladies floated their gauze 
 handkerchiefs and clapped their gloved hands. The soldiers 
 shouted and cheered. The members on our side threw up their 
 arms wildly and embraced each other. Joy rioted in crazy ex- 
 pression for some moments. The occasion was historic ; the 
 thought subhme. The day opened a new dispensation. To-day 
 a negro has been admitted to practice in the Supreme Court. 
 And the work goes on, or rather has just begun. 
 
 . . . It is deUghtful to see how Massachusetts looms up 
 in these times. Never was her influence greater, or so much 
 confessed. Never was her position, as the first of Christian 
 democracies so conspicuous. I feel more and more content to 
 live and die in her embrace — more and more proud to be a 
 small element in her progress, a small influence in her power. 
 And reallj' there is no state where so much of all the real com- 
 forts of life — material and spu-itual — can be secured as within 
 her borders. We who live there hardly reahze all this. It is only 
 when we get away, and see what Ufe is elsewhere, and hear the 
 testimony of men and women who know her from afar, by 
 obsei-vation and study and comparison, that we can appreciate 
 and acknowledge our fortune. You must never give uj) Massa- 
 chusetts, nor that best and sweetest part of it, the Connecticut 
 Valley. Its comforts and advantages and its power are to be 
 more and more realized and confessed as the new day of the 
 nation ripens into fullness. 
 
 To his Wife. 
 
 Washington, Sunday. 
 I wrote you of the melancholy morning yesterday. The 
 evening turned out quite dissipated, altogether quite a contrast, 
 and unexpectedly. I went out to walk and to do an errand for 
 Mr. Walker, and met Mr. Colfax on his way to Mrs. Lincoln's 
 reception. He insisted on my going along, and there I met the 
 Bankses and a few other people I knew. General Banks next 
 insisted we should go together to the reception of Mrs. Sprague
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTEKS (1863-1865). 417 
 
 (Miss Chase) ; there we met much the same people, though 
 rather more select. I came to the hotel, then, to find "Walker 
 over his sickness, and getting up. Then I went to Mr, Dana's 
 to dine, and again met Mr. EUiot, M. C, from New Bedford, 
 and we had a pleasant evening tiU 8 : 30, when I went to meet 
 Mr. Colfax and his mother at Dr. Peter Parker's (who is a re- 
 turned and retired missionary and doctor in China) where I 
 had a pleasant half -hour. From there at 9 : 30 we went to Mr. 
 Seward's reception, which was more select and brilliant than 
 either of the others. I met here JIary Morgan, daughter of 
 Mr. George Morgan, and Mrs. Stoekel (EUza Howard) with 
 whom I had agreeable talk. At 10 : 30 we left, Mr. Walker, 
 General Banks, and I, and we three went off and got some 
 steamed oysters, and home to our hotel at midnight rather used 
 up by the various dissipations. To-day we have been to the 
 Capitol to hear Rev. Mr. Channing preach, and a beautiful old 
 Quakeress from New Bedford exhort, and afterward to call 
 on Senator Sumner. Now I am resting (!) before going out to 
 drive with Mr. Ashmun. So you see I am rather alive and 
 " going it." I am pretty well to-day, and Mr. Walker is quite re- 
 covered, and our visit bears more cheerful promise than it did. 
 Your first note of Friday reached me last night. I am glad to 
 note your entei-prise in going out daily. I hope you will keep 
 it up. Take one hour or two every day for outside life, and 
 you will be better and stronger and do more inside in the other 
 twenty-two for it — depend upon it. 
 
 To Miss Whitney. 
 
 Home, Simday, March 12, 1865. 
 . . . Our society is still pastorless, and finds nobody that 
 suits it, that can be got. Our weekly ministrations are feeble 
 and uncertain. We want John Ware, who went to Baltimore 
 last year and who is not quite satisfied there ; and it looks now 
 as if we should wait another six months or a year, in hopes of 
 getting him. At any rate, there is no disposition to settle an 
 ordinary man. Our people were never stronger or more gen- 
 erous than now ; they offered Mr. Ware $3000 to $4000 salary, 
 Vol. I.— 27
 
 418 THE LIFE AND TIMES OF SAMUEL BOWLES. 
 
 and $500 outfit, if he would come. Mr. Wasson fails at Cincin- 
 nati by reason of ill health, and is coming back. Very likely 
 we shall have him to preach for us more or less during the 
 summer. But this vagabond condition is very unsatisfactory 
 even to me, so little dependent as I am on '' the minister," I 
 find I am longing for regular, dependable preaching, and a 
 leader reliable and faithful, in our pulpit. We hardly know, 
 indeed, how much we appreciate a good pastor, and in how 
 many ways we count on him, and make him useful to our lives 
 till we are without him. Tiffany I find I like more and more 
 as he is farther removed — he was so true and genial and 
 cultured and really pious. 
 
 Your letters of the 3d and 13th February have come since I 
 wrote last. They show better health than any you have 
 written in a long while. It is delightful to find you entering 
 upon your second year with so much courage and hope and 
 freshness, and with a strong con^dction too of your usefulness 
 — able to see you have done something — as I have no doubt 
 you have done much, everything, — and to comprehend how 
 much still you can do in the year that remains. It is a 
 great thing, in any life, to have this feehng that our work is 
 usefvd, to feel that we can command and comprehend it, and 
 to have, from whatever combination of motives, a heart for it. 
 The first requisite, I insist, for all life, for aU work, is health — 
 at least good digestion. After that, of coiirse, motive, object — 
 but that first. I have not got beyond that yet in my study of 
 the science of the ebb and flow of the soul-life. All things are 
 easy, possible, — I am brave for all life, I am almost equal to it, 
 when good digestion waits on appetite, and sleep on both. 
 When they fail, all fails, all is impossible — motives are blurred, 
 objects fall away, and I am only and absolutely disagreeable — 
 to myself most, to aU much. Nothing has so taught me charity as 
 invalidism. I am ready to pardon anything to man or woman 
 who can prove a clear case of dyspepsia, sluggish liver, or im- 
 potent sleep. Even murder would be excusable in my eyes 
 under such provocation, for there are moments in my life 
 when everything that is insane and wicked seems possible. 
 Let me add now, however, that the thaw and rain cleared off
 
 OFFICE AND HOME: LETTEKS (1863-1865). 419 
 
 Friday night, and carried off my extra neuralgic headache, and 
 since then I have been as well as I can hope to be at present ; 
 certainly not tempted to murder, and even intolerant of the 
 year that keeps you from me ! 
 
 . . . I have read with interest the book notices in the 
 AtlanUc for March. Bushnell's new book [" The Vicarious 
 Sacrifice "] , I have heard othei-wise well spoken of. I wish I 
 could read it. The httle I have read of his previous books 
 always pleased and elevated and instructed me. But I have 
 not got to book-reading yet. Last night, however, I was 
 hungry for something and turned to my old friend " Shirley " 
 for rehef . I beheve I like to read the last few chapters at least 
 twice a year. Her love-talks — conflicts rather — with Moore 
 are perfectly dehcious to me. 
 
 Sumner's behavior in preventing a vote on the Louisiana 
 question was perfectly unjustifiable. I shall henceforth be 
 intolerant of him, always. It was undignified, disgraceful.* 
 
 * The occasion of this passage was as follows : the Senate had under con- 
 sideration a bill for whose success President Lincoln was very anxious, 
 establishing a state government in Louisiana. Mr. Sumner was dissatis- 
 fied with it, as not conceding enough to the freedmen, and, unable to defeat 
 it if a vote were taken, he united with some of the Democratic leaders to 
 stave off action by parliamentary maneuvers, so that it failed by default. 
 Mr. Schurz has related the sequel. The Washington world believed Sum- 
 ner's course had made an irreconcilable breach between him and the Presi- 
 dent. But Sumner received a friendly little note from the President, 
 saying he would call in his carriage to take him to the Inauguration Ball. 
 The carriage came, Mr. Sumner joined Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln, and the 
 company in the ball-room were astonished to see the three come in to- 
 gether, Mrs. Lincoln on Mr. Sumner's arm. That was Lincoln's way of 
 assuring Sumner and the public that he was not going to quarrel. 
 
 END OF VOLUME ONE.
 
 m