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Yale University Library

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YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

JOHN A. ANDREW

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John Albion Andrew in 1860

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THE LIFE OF
JOHN A.ANDREW
GOVERNOR OF MASSACHUSETTS
1861-1865 BY
HENRY GREENLEAF PEARSON
IN TWO VOLUMES
VOLUME I

BOSTON AND NEW TOKK
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY
(3tfre RtoerjSibe $re#J, Cambribflt
1904

COPYRIGHT I904 BY HENRY GREENLEAF PEARSON
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

Published Afril ZQ04 T

For the sake of History itself, let us deal honestly and fear
lessly with the record our predecessors have left behind them.
For the sake of every science needful for the development of
human society, its emancipation from avoidable error and
pain ; and for their own sake too — who, now removed from
the distractions of this world's allurements, must desire, more
than all things, the universality of Justice and Truth — let us
explore the lives and actions of men, and their generations,
with pious carefulness, but with impartial fidelity and inde
pendence. — John A. Andrew, Address delivered before the
New England Historic-Genealogical Society, January 2, 1867.
What he did as Governor of the Commonwealth, during
the late slaveholding rebellion, both for the State which he
represented and the nation whose liberties he upheld, is
it not a signal part of the history of the times, to be admir
ingly rehearsed by a grateful posterity ? — William Lloyd
Garrison, Letter to the Testimonial Committee, March 12,
1868.

PREFACE
It is hard to imagine a man of a more transparent
nature than John A. Andrew. Yet, for all that his
character hes open to the understanding, there was
about him a quality which compels one to recognize
at the outset the impossibility of presenting him fully
to the reader. In his own degree, he was a man of
genius. Therefore, though his deeds may be set
down in black and white, his ways escape the record
of the pen.
Inasmuch as this story treats of the Civil War from
the point of view of one of the great commonwealths
composing the nation, the picture that it presents of
Abraham Lincoln is complete only within local and
contemporary limits. To set forth without reserve
and to render intelligible Andrew's opinions about
the man and the President with whom he had to
deal is all that I have attempted. The reader, having
a sight of Lincoln as he appeared to the war gov
ernor of Massachusetts, can make for himself the
allowance demanded by history.
Andrew's correspondence, covering his five years
as Governor of Massachusetts, was preserved in files
and in letter-press books carefully classified and fully

viii PREFACE
indexed. The official correspondence is still kept in
the rooms of the Executive Department at the State
House, and may be consulted only by permission of
the governor. For this permission my thanks are due
to Hon. W. Murray Crane, Governor of Massachu
setts from 1900 to 1903. The remainder, contain
ing personal or confidential communications, is the
property of Miss Edith Andrew, and has been placed
freely at my disposal. Miss Andrew has lent me, too,
the volumes in which her father preserved, with the
same elaborate system, his correspondence after he
left the State House, and she has put into my hands
such of his earlier letters as are still in existence. I
have had access to many letters of John M. Forbes,
through his daughter, Mrs. W. H. Hughes, and,
thanks to the kindness of Miss Mary Woodman, to
the carefully kept files and letter-press books of her
father, Cyrus Woodman, and to the scrap-book of
newspaper clippings which he began at the time of
Andrew's death. From Mr. C. S. Bird I have received
letters of Francis W. Bird, and from Mrs. Nathaniel
Gage and Miss Ada Andrew of North Andover many
family letters. One long letter of Andrew's has
come to me through Mr. Horace P. Chandler.
In printing letters I have ventured upon the ex
periment of reproducing in type the idiosyncrasies
of the writers in matters of punctuation, capitaliza
tion, spelling, and even grammar. The chief excep
tions to this practice are the use of the word " and "

PREFACE ix
for the character " &," and of the contraction " etc."
for " &c." ; also, in the long note at the end of chap
ter xii., and in some of the letters in chapter xv.,
where the punctuation was chaotic rather than char
acteristic, changes have been made for the sake
of clearness. I fully appreciate the typographical
blemishes which, by reason of my course, many of
the pages contain, and cheerfully relieve the print
ers of responsibility ; if in any degree the personal
quality which is such a significant thing on the writ
ten page shall have been suggested by the printed
page, I shall be satisfied.
As to the numerous omissions indicated in the
letters, they represent invariably redundancies or
irrelevancies. Andrew's natural style was exhaus
tive; moreover, when writing letters he habitually
sat back in his chair and dictated to one of his
secretaries, correcting the pages afterwards by
additions rather than by excisions. Of course almost
every letter contains repetitions ; it is only the man
who is not hurried who has time to be brief. Under
these circumstances I have felt that my first duty
was to preserve not the integrity of Andrew's let
ters but the patience of the reader. Irrelevancies I
have had no hesitation in omitting altogether or
transferring to their proper places in the narrative.
Finally, these two reasons are the sole causes for
my omissions. I may attest the truth of what was
written by the late Edwin P. Whipple, who, selected

x PREFACE
soon after the death of Andrew to write his bio
graphy, read the thirty thousand or more pages of
his letters but only began the work of composition.
"Under the microscope," he declared, "nothing
could be detected, even when passions were raging
the fiercest, which had the least taint of envy, jeal
ousy, meanness, bigotry, or any unworthy feehng." 1
To those who knew Andrew, whether at college,
at the bar, in pohtics, in social hfe, or at the State
House, and who have aided me, whether in conver
sation or by letter, my sincere thanks are due. Par
ticularly must I make acknowledgment of gratitude
to Mr. Daniel H. Chamberlain, Mr. Robert S. Ran
toul, and Mr. John Austin Stevens, for important
criticisms on some chapters. Mr. Rantoul has also
kindly lent the original of the letter printed on pages
252 and 253 of volume ii., that a characteristic ex
ample of Andrew's handwriting may be presented.
Mrs. William S. Robinson has kindly allowed me to
consult the scrap-books of her husband (" Warring
ton"), thereby saving me the trouble of searching for
his letters in the files of the newspapers for which
he wrote them. Here also I wish to express my in
debtedness to Miss Leslie Hopkinson for her reading
of the proof-sheets.
When a man has finished writing a book he is
made aware, as he looks back over his work, of the
1 Memoir of Governor Andrew, Peleg W. Chandler, p. 141.

PREFACE xi
way in which it has been bound up with the famihar
events of his daily life. Times and places, experi
ences of sorrow and of joy, associate themselves
with this and that subject or page so vividly and in
evitably that the substantive quality seems to reside
not so much in what has been written as in what has
been lived. All this is generally no business of the
reader's. His concern is only with the printed page.
But if he reads in this book I cannot have him un
mindful of the counsel and assistance given by my
wife from the first hours of preparation to these ulti
mate hours of completion, — a service which has
ranged from the care of multitudinous details to the
broadest questions of scope and treatment, and which
has bettered every page. This companionship in
work has been my inspiration ; let the last word
written in this long labor be of gratitude to her.
Boston, 16 February, 1904.

CONTENTS
CHAP. PAGE
I. Windham and Brunswick : 1818-1837 ... 1
II. Boston • 1837-1857  23
HI. Politics : 1858-1860  68
IV. First Months as Governor  130
V. War  176
VI. The Regiments op 1861  214
VII. The Day's Routine  252
VHI. Adjustments of Authority  280

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
PAGE
JOHN ALBION ANDREW .... Frontispiece
From the drawing by Fabronius in 1860
JOHN ALBION ANDREW  138
From a photograph by Black & Case in 1861
Autograph from a letter to Hon. Robert S. Rantoul
THANKSGIVING PROCLAMATION, 1861 ... 322

JOHN A. ANDREW

CHAPTER I
WINDHAM AND BRUNSWICK : 1818-1837
In the month of July, 1817, Jonathan Andrew
brought his bride to his little house in the coun
try town of Windham, Maine. He was a native
of Salem,1 who for the sake of his health had some
1 By way of genealogical information it should be said that on
May 29, 1668, died in Rowley Village (now Boxf ord), Massachusetts,
a certain Robert Andrew, — otherwise Andrews, Andress or An-
dross, — a householder and large landowner, who with his wife Grace
had settled there, coming possibly from England. Their son Joseph,
born September 18, 1657, one of ten children, the last of the line to
spell his name other than Andrew, married somewhat late in life for his
second wife the widow Abigail Walker, of an old family of Graftons,
and moved with her to Salem. There he reared his family (six chil
dren by his first wife and two by his second), and there he died in
1732. His son Nathaniel, born August 10, 1705, and married Septem
ber 30, 1729, to Mary Higginson, a great-great-granddaughter of
Rey. Francis Higginson, first minister of Salem, also died there, on
February 4, 1762. Of Nathaniel's seven children, John, the young
est, was born September 27, 1747, and married Elizabeth, daughter
of Abraham Watson and Elizabeth Pickering — the Pickerings being
another Salem family as old and honored as the Higginsons. John
Andrew carried on a profitable jeweler's and goldsmith's business at
the " Sign of the Gold Cross." Soon after the close of the Revo
lutionary War, he removed his family to Windham, Maine, a town

2 JOHN A. ANDREW
ten years before settled in Windham near a married
sister; now, at thirty-five, he was the prosperous
owner of the " store," where the farmers came to
barter. His wife,1 a woman of great personal attrac
tiveness, had, strangely enough for those times, pur
sued her vocation of teacher until the age of thirty-
three unmarried. The first child of this union, John
Albion Andrew, was born on May 31, 1818. A year
later came another son, Isaac Watson, and in the
next five years two daughters, Sarah Elizabeth and
Nancy Alfreda.
From the reminiscences 2 which Isaac Andrew
wrote out in later hfe of his brother and their child
hood, one may gather scattering facts, interesting and
at times significant.
John Albion was so named for a brother of his
mother, a remarkably bright, promising young man,
who died while a member of college. John Albion,
or Albion, as his parents used to call him, early
fifteen or sixteen miles from Portland. In 1791 he met his end by the
discharge of his own gun in his own hands. Three of his daughters
married farmers and were settled in Windham or the neighboring
towns. The widow with her younger children returned to Salem,
and there Jonathan, the eighth child, born in 1782, received his
education and went into the grocery business.
1 Nancy Green Pierce, born in Westmoreland, New Hampshire,
July 27, 1784, married to Jonathan Andrew on July 14, 1817, was
the daughter of John Pierce and Sally Farnsworth. Her father was
born in Groton, Massachusetts, and was connected with the family of
President Franklin Pierce ; her mother, born April 12, 1755, was
one of the eight children of Deacon Isaac Farnsworth, of Groton, and
Anna Green, who were married December 4, 1744.
2 Concerning the quotations from Isaac Andrew in this chapter,
see note on p. 14.

WINDHAM AND BRUNSWICK 3
learned to talk. . . . When he was quite young, some
of the good old ladies conceived the idea that the
baby was tongue-tied, and unknown to his mother,
who was still confined to her bed, sent for an old
gentleman who was supposed to be good for such
operations, to come and cut the offending strings.
He came, but failing to see the case in the same light
as the women did, dechned doing anything, on the
plea that his hand was too unsteady for him to per
form the job with safety. His parents used to say in
after years, when Albion's tongue had been running
fast as usual, " that it was lucky that the old gen
tleman did not cut that boy's tongue, unless to cut
a piece off, for if he had there would have been no
hving with him." . . . He was a feeble child for a
long time, and indeed he was never up to the average
of country children in health and vigor. His father
in after years, when speaking of the infancy of this
son, used to say, " He did not look as tho' he was
worth raising."
The boy was short and very stout ; his features were
good, his eyes bright blue, and his head was covered
with tightly curling blond hair. He was too deli
cate to look sturdy, and too fat and curly not to be
somewhat funny of aspect ; yet the dominant im
pression made on those who talked with him and
looked at his open, sunny face, was of manliness. His
father used often to call him Governor ; his mother
said that she had never known him to tell a lie.
Isaac Andrew's reminiscences go on with a vivid
account of one of their amusements. On the Pre-
sumpscot River, at a short distance from their father's
house, which stood on high ground above it, were a

4 JOHN A. ANDREW
mill and a dam, at which were gathered every spring
the logs coming down on their way to the saw-mills.
There was a small building . . . built upon a raft
in about the middle of the river, which was called
the counting-house. In this rude structure a man sat
for several weeks ... as the logs were being driven
past, and took account of them, their marks being
called over by one of the men, who was famihar with
the different characters cut upon each log and de
signating the different owners. . . . [Some of the men
guided] the logs one by one from the boom above
down through the narrow passage in front of the
building, while one in sonorous tones would call out
the names as follows : " Single A." " Down," would
respond the accountant. " Squabble S." " Down."
" Crooked River W." " Down." ..." 2yy upside
down." "Down." "Maj. Pierce's Pipe." "Down."
And thus they would go on hour by hour while Al
bion and I would sit on a log near by and listen to
them with childish admiration. During the highest
of the season the river was full of logs, and fre
quently they would get badly jammed, as it was
termed, at the foot of the dam. Then with how
much dehght we used to watch the river drivers, all
clad in their red flannel shirts, work at breaking the
jam. There were exciting scenes, and often attended
with much danger.
Of the father and mother there exist several en
lightening records. Jonathan Andrew, though he
lived on a farm, did not work it himself. His son
Isaac says that he could not drive oxen or mow, and
that he had not enough mechanical ability " to make
a respectable cider-trap." Another reason for his

WINDHAM AND BRUNSWICK 5
managing the farm in the easiest possible way was
the state of his wife's health. " Our mother," writes
Isaac, " was a dehcate woman from my earliest re
collections of her, was very gentle and kind to us,
and being so intelligent and sociable was a great
favorite with the visitors who came there. Father
was a small talker. He had not the gift of language
that mother had, and used often to say that he had
much rather sit and hear her than talk himself. She
was a good singer and fond of music. Father, tho'
fond of music, did not know one note from another.
They were both very neat and orderly in their
habits. Father always took care of his horse and cow
in the barn without a lantern, no matter how dark
it was. He always expected us boys, after we were
large enough to go to the barn, to leave everything
exactly in its place, and if the pitchfork or the shovel
had been moved only a few inches, it was entirely
out of place." Jonathan Andrew was equally in
flexible in regard to the proprieties of speech and
manners ; Albion's first letter from college which
began "Dear Father," and ended, "Yours affec
tionately," he returned with the reminder that the
words should have been, " Honored Sir," and " Your
dutiful son." Under his reserve and formality it
was not always easy to read his thoughts. At the
time when the temperance movement began his wife
was eager that he should give up his long-estab
lished custom of selling liquors at the " store."
" For weeks, the children used to hear her, after
retiring, lecture their father on the subject with

6 JOHN A. ANDREW
earnest volubility. He kept silent ; but at length,
one night after a discourse of unusual length and
vivacity, told her quietly that he had given up the
sale for some months." *
Of Jonathan Andrew and his wife Peleg Chan
dler writes : —
Both . . . were above the ordinary mark. Jonathan
Andrew was a quiet, reticent man, of much intelli
gence and a keen perception of the ludicrous. Firm,
courageous, and resolute, he was at the same time
shy, and so unobtrusive as to pass for less than his
worth, except to those who knew him well. Of his
wife it is almost impossible to speak in terms of ex
aggeration. She was well educated, with great sweet
ness of temper, and altogether highly prepossessing
in appearance . . . admirable in her domestic ar
rangements, judicious, sensible, energetic, and a rigid
disciplinarian of her children. There was a rare
union of gentleness and force in this woman, ¦which
made her generally attractive, and especially en
deared her to all who came under the influence of
her character.2
Once, so the story is still told in Windham, when a
woman who was employed to cut the grass about
the house and had deposited her baby in a safe
place by the front door missed the child, she was
astonished and reassured to see Mrs. Andrew bring
it forth, clothed afresh in the long-disused garments
of her own babies. Something in the telling of this
story goes to show that the neighbors were not on
1 Memoir of Governor Andrew, by Peleg W. Chandler, p. 14.
2 Ibid. p. 12.

WINDHAM AND BRUNSWICK 7
intimate terms with Mrs. Andrew, — even that they
suspected her a Uttle of holding herself above them.
The character of Jonathan Andrew's business, as
well as his native ability, contributed to distinguish
him too from the rest of the townsfolk, who labored
with their hands. He was a deacon of the church
and owner of twenty pews ; he was at. one time
the postmaster ; at his house the ministers who vis
ited the town were entertained. Slight though the
difference was, it was one which the smallness of the
community tended to magnify.
The sense of separateness felt by the elders of
the family showed itself nowhere more markedly
than in the pains which they took with the children's
schooling. At first the boys were taught by their
mother, assisted by a young niece. Then, after one
or two unsuccessful experiments in sending them to
the district school, Jonathan Andrew built a tiny
schoolhouse near his house, and there the four chil
dren were instructed together. With his mother as
guide and companion, Albion acquired a fondness
for reading which always meant much more to him
than any lesson. When he came to the age at which
he needed more advanced schooling, he was sent first
to the academy at Portland, then to that at North
Yarmouth, then to that at Bridgton, always board
ing, as the custom was, in some private family. At
Bridgton he stayed for a year and a half, — that is
to say, until the end of 1831, Isaac being with him
there during the last term. These academies, all of
them well estabhshed and flourishing, furnished to

8 JOHN A. ANDREW
the youth of the surrounding country the education
by which boys were prepared for college and girls
were " finished." The perfect adaptation of the in
stitution to New England life, the spirit of hard
work and high endeavor in which these young men
and women met and mingled, every one understands
who has read the winning pages of Harriet Beecher
Stowe's Oldtown Folks. The standard of excellence
which had been held up to Albion Andrew at home
was also kept before him in this, the next stage of
his education.
In the winter of 1831-32 Mrs. Andrew's health
had reached such a critical state that she and her
husband were unwilling to have the two boys away
from home. Neither of them went to school ; Albion
helped his father with the post-office work, mean
while reviewing his studies and reading history by
himself. Toward the end of February Mrs. Andrew
fell acutely ill, and after a sickness of a few weeks
died. Albion's nature was emotional ; that the sorrow
went deep with him is not surprising. But there was
more. The crisis brought into action in him powers of
sympathy and of tenderness which amazed all those
who watched him. His care sought out not only the
younger children but his broken father. From that
time on the tact of human sympathy never failed
him, and the memory of his mother, which, as he
said long afterward, kept him " from many youthful
errors," became for him consecrated above all things
else. The door was opened for him into manhood.
The relatives in Salem had always remembered

WINDHAM AND BRUNSWICK 9
Jonathan Andrew kindly, for the sake of his youth
passed there, and now, being drawn to him in the
time of his trouble, became greatly interested in his
oldest son, who took off his father's hands the whole
burden of replying to their letters. In the summer
of the same year, when the boy came to visit the
family of his uncle, John Andrew, in their stately
house on the Common, their interest in him quickly
changed to warm regard ; Albion, on his part, ac
quired a sense of possession in Salem which was to
grow stronger with repeated visits.
After his wife's death Jonathan Andrew could
not bear to be parted long from his sons. The
nearest academy, at Gorham Corner, was only four
miles away, and there it was possible, except in the
middle of winter, for them to attend school while
still hving at home. Isaac has described their jour
neys to and fro.
Previous arrangements having been made with
Capt. Robie to allow the use of a portion of the shed
connected with the meetinghouse at Gorham Corner
for our horse and chaise, at the commencement of
the summer term, the old white horse and yellow-
bodied chaise was bro't out and Albion and his
brother . . . were started for school. Taking our
dinners with us, as well as hay for the horse, we
attended daily through that summer and the next
fall term. It was a pleasant ride and we enjoyed it,
only Albion used to regret having to spend so much
time on the road which he thought might be better
employed in studying. While riding to and from
school at Gorham he learned many a lesson and

10 JOHN A. ANDREW
committed to memory much that he used to declaim
on the stage at the academy. He and I used to take
turns in driving our horse. . . . When the weather
would allow, no sooner [had he] given up the reins
than he would take a book and would usually read
or study aloud. He was very fond of poetry, and
from a small boy was in the habit of committing a
good deal of poetry to memory. He learned the
most of Charles Sprague's poems on " Curiosity,"
as well as his poetic 4th of July oration, much of
which he used for declamation, while riding, reading
and reciting while in the chaise aloud.
A fondness for eloquence was one of the boy's
most noteworthy characteristics. In an extempora
neous speech delivered at the Windham Centennial
in 1862, the man recalled certain far-away preachers
of his boyhood to whose words he had listened as a
child seldom listens in church.
How there comes up . . . [to mind] the old
meetinghouse on the hill where my parents wor
shipped — the venerable form of old Father Kellogg,
not an eloquent man, but what is more than all that,
a good man ; the old gentleman who led the choir
and pitched the tunes. . . . Here, too, is the yellow
house on the farm south of ours . . . whence I used
to hear the voice of Paul Little,1 whose exhortations
at the httle meetinghouse will be among the last of
1 In Governor Andrew's Fast Day proclamation for 1863, he used
the expression " leading us in the way which is hewn out for the ran
somed to walk in, where the vulture's eye never saw, and the lion's
whelp never trod." When be heard that some one had objected to the
clause as a misquotation of Scripture, he said, " They don't know
that though the idea is in Job, the language is from old Paul Little."

WINDHAM AND BRUNSWICK 11
my recollections of public speaking. Let me remind
you of another man, not of our town, who first re
vealed to my childish intellect the idea of eloquence
— Elder James Lewis ; his clear utterance and warm
heart cannot be forgotten. And Elder Wight —
venerable and majestic ; a sweet touch of poetic
fancy ran through his sermons, and his oratory was
the first which touched my heart. Nor can I forget
the calm and quiet meetings of the Quakers —
always visited twice a year at their quarterly meet
ings by Franklin Huzzy — and among whom was
Noah Reed, whose heart and hat were big enough
to cover the whole town.
His diligence in hstening to this Sunday eloquence
Albion put to good use on his own account. With
a good memory and an admirable power of mimicry,
he soon caught the trick of reproducing sermons
with the original intonation and manner rendered
to the life, and from this practice he developed an
extraordinary readiness in improvisation. On stormy
Sundays he used to gather the younger children
about him and preach to them " in loud tones and
with many gestures." At the academy auditors
were never wanting. The fame of his juvenile elo
quence spread about the town and finally brought
him an invitation to speak at a meeting of the tem
perance society. The incident, as narrated by his
proud and affectionate brother, makes a delightful
story. It was a pleasant afternoon when the meeting was
held, and there was a full attendance. . . . Albion

12 JOHN A. ANDREW
took his seat with the audience near the rear of the
house, and a little to the speaker's right. After the
President of the society had delivered his address
and some others had spoken upon the subject, Albion
was called upon to make some remarks. I well re
member the time, place, and scene. Occupying a
seat close behind him, I had a good chance to hear,
as well as watch him. He rose to his feet, cool, calm
and collected, with the dignity of a man, and the
modesty of a child, and began. Commencing with
the child who is early taught to partake of alcoholic
drinks and following him along his downward career
he pictured his wretched end. In contrast to this,
was shown the onward and upward life of those who
early resolved upon a life of temperance. And to
illustrate this point, [he] directed his hearers to look
upon some eminent men, whose names he gave them.
The company was held almost spellbound. . . . Elder
Shaw afterwards said to my father, " Albion beat us
all." . . . Though forty years have passed away
since that occurrence, I can distinctly see in my
mind's eye that short, fat, chubby, curly headed little
fellow, as he stood in that old church and with ear
nestness and eloquence gesticulating with his right
arm, he advocated the cause of temperance and be
sought the young as well as the old, to beware of
strong drink.
The boy's control of language served him not only
in monologue ; on subjects of theological dispute
he came to be a ready debater, versed in all points
of difference between Congregationahsts and Free
Will Baptists, and past master in Biblical quota
tion. On political topics, too, he talked fluently,
showing a quickness of thought and a comprehen-

WINDHAM AND BRUNSWICK 13
sion of facts which amazed the grown men with whom
he conversed. Isaac Andrew has left it on record
that as early as Jackson's first nomination, in 1828,
the little boy took a great interest in politics, and
amused his elders by calling himself, like his father,
an " Adams man." Indeed, in many a political dis
cussion the father was more than content to keep
silence and let his son contend alone. More than
once the local doctor, a " Jackson man," neglected
his patients for the sake of talking politics with the
boy. Isaac remembered, too, that in all arguments
Albion took sides against expediency, insisting al
ways that " Truth is mighty and will prevail." It is
easy to believe that he found his favorite theme
when the doctrine of immediate emancipation began
to be preached. On January 1, 1831, Garrison pub
hshed in Boston the first number of the Liberator ;
Whittier's Justice and Expediency and Lydia Maria
Child's Appeal in Favor of that Class of Americans
called Africans appeared in 1833. The moral objec
tion to slavery was now treated as paramount, and
the boy of fifteen, eager to be a champion, made the
negro's cause his own. From a weekly religious paper
called The Christian Mirror he chiefly drew his anti-
slavery inspiration, and to go for the mail in which
it was due became the great excitement of his week.
His ardor one may read in the hnes which he wrote
on the fly-leaf of a copy of Mrs. Child's book : —
To my two sisters this little volume is affection
ately presented, with the fervent aspiration that the
instruction contained in it, and inculcated by one of

14 JOHN A. ANDREW
the gifted ones of their own sex, may prompt their
hearts to pity for the oppressed African, may uproot
all prejudice that maybe implanted there against
those immortal beings, whose only crime is that of
being unfortunate and having a skin of a darker hue
than their own, and may teach them to remember
that " of one blood, God made all the nations of the
earth." Your brother Albion.
Meanwhile Albion carried on at Gorham Academy
the course of studies necessary to prepare him for
Bowdoin CoUege. His master, Reuben Nason, was
one of those fine old teachers for whom that genera
tion was famous, — invincible in Homer and Virgil
and mathematics, outrageous in discipline, and, ac
cording to the wisdom of his time, having no place
in either theory or practice for the duUard. With
his feet braced against the scorching air-tight stove,
he heard recitations unerringly without the book ;
his certificate that a boy was fitted to enter Bow
doin made the oral examinations at the college a
mere form.
In the class ahead of Albion at Gorham Academy
was a boy named Cyrus Woodman. Though there
were four years between them, the two boys made
the beginning of what was to be a lifelong friend
ship. There stiU exists a note from the younger to the
elder, which belongs to the time when Woodman was
aheady in his Sophomore year at Bowdoin and when
Albion, for some unknown reason, was doing at Gor
ham the first term's work of a Freshman.1
1 Cyrus Woodman made a practice of keeping all the letters he

WINDHAM AND BRUNSWICK 15
South Windham, Oct. 13, 1833.
Friend Woodman, — I just take a few moments
to say a few words. I should like if you would take
the trouble to answer me before long, as I should
like to know how I am getting along compared with
the rest of the class. I have got more than half of
80 pages of the first book of Livy, some in Xeno
phon, and I am now going at algebra. I have been
reviewing Greek reader a httle. Please to find out
what they are doing. ... If there is any one asks
for me, just tell them I am in the land. Am well —
aU Gorham folks are about as you left them. The
academy goes on about so. In haste,
Your friend, etc.
John Albion Andrew.
Bowdoin CoUege, in the three and a half years of
Andrew's course (from February, 1834, to August,
1837), contained about one hundred and forty stu
dents, mostly boys from the surrounding country.
The president was WiUiam AUen, a Congregational
minister ; the professors were six in number, the
young Henry Wadsworth LongfeUow being one of
them until 1836. The coUege was, in fact, an acad
emy raised to the next higher degree.
Under the influences of this restricted community
the characteristics which were to distinguish Andrew
began to take form. He dehghted in reading, but in
his prescribed studies he took no special interest.
His sociable disposition was strong. He was fond of
received and copies of all he wrote ; after Andrew's death he formed
a scrapbook of newspaper clippings entitled " John Andrew.'' It was
at his request that Isaac Andrew wrote out in 1873 the reminiscences
quoted in this chapter.

16 JOHN A. ANDREW
hanging about in students' rooms, of telhng yarns
and anecdotes and mimicking the college preachers
for the benefit of whoever would listen. To what
degree his classmates and friends took him seriously
it were hard to say. Intellectual thoroughness he
showed in the zeal with which he probed to the bot
tom the questions on history, poetry, or what not,
which they constantly referred to him ; there was
undeniable earnestness, too, in the ardor with which
he defended his views on such subjects as prison re
form, and temperance as opposed to total abstinence ;
but from day to day he was a jovial and rather lazy
undergraduate, a tireless talker, whose personal pre
sence was a constant reminder of the incongruity of
even his own seriousness.
Nevertheless, seriousness was the quality prevailing
in his relation to the coUege organizations of which
he was a member. The rival college " societies,"
known as the Peucinian and the Athensean, were of
exactly the same nature, the chief interest of each
being the accumulation of a hbrary. In some inex
plicable way, however, the Athensean, the newer of
the two, was held to be less orthodox and respect
able ; characteristically, it was the Athensean that
Andrew joined. In his Junior year, at its annual
public meeting on Commencement Day, he delivered
the " poem." As orator on one occasion of the
Peace Society, of which he was the founder and the
first president, he won laurels, both by the maturity
of his discourse and by his skill in improvising a
passage to supply the loss of a few pages of his man-

WINDHAM AND BRUNSWICK 17
uscript. For the meetings of the Peace Society he
also wrote a hymn, which was to be sung to his favor
ite tune of Coronation. In the college debating
club, which was caUed the Theological Society, he
apparently took Uttle interest. Its topics for debate
were such subjects as : " Ought the young men pre
paring for the ministry in this state who are natives
of the state to remain in the state ? " " Is the general
tendency of protracted meetings good?" "Will
there be a time when all the people upon earth will
become righteous ? " These very titles in themselves
connote a narrowness of view which must have re
pelled Andrew, in spite of his fondness for speech
ifying. A richer rehgious life, with its powers less
frequently in abeyance, than that which John A.
Andrew hved is rarely found ; and if, as one likes
to believe, the chief inspiration of it was his mother,
it is unhkely that he should at coUege have been
passing through an arid tract that yielded nothing
to experience. Moreover, the coUege was under
strong denominational influence, and, since its avowed
purpose was the making of evangelical ministers,
the admonitions of the professors were addressed
as often to the student's religious as to his mental
state. Nevertheless, it would appear that the reli
gious life which surrounded him there worked upon
him, if at all, mainly by the force of contraries.
That rehgious life, as it expressed itself in the stu
dents' "Praying Circle," was concerned with the
egotism of individual " experiences " and with petty

18 JOHN A. ANDREW
details of conduct such as the immorality of going
to the post-office on Sunday and of " scraping," —
that is, shuffling feet in recitations, — this last prac
tice being: ranked in the constitution as an offense
equaUy heinous with that of " denial of any of the
fundamental doctrines of the Bible." Although
Andrew joined the Praying Circle in his Freshman
year, much as a matter of course, the meetings soon
proved little to his taste. In his Senior year his
backsliding was so open that a committee, appointed
"to examine into the state of delinquent members,"
summoned him and a classmate1 to meet the Circle
and answer charges made against them of neglect
of its meetings and unseemly levity in speech and
behavior. Andrew answered the charges in person ;
but when the Circle, after pronouncing judgment,
summoned him before it to be admonished, he refused
to come, — a course of action which at once led the
society to appoint a committee to effect a reconcfl-
iation. As for church-going, which of course was
compulsory, he was not a church member, and he cut
chapel so much as to affect his rank in the class. He
was one of the few students who asked permission
to attend the Unitarian church in the town, but
this fact is probably of little significance, except
as showing his desire for listening to shorter ser
mons. At all events, when he left college he con
sidered himself of impeccable orthodoxy. The truth
undoubtedly is that whatever rehgious life he had in
these years was fed not from public exercises but
1 The late Dr. Fordyce Barker of New York.

WINDHAM AND BRUNSWICK 19
from the long thoughts of youth brooding on human
destiny, from the hope of a world where there should
be no more war, of a nation in which there should be
neither bond nor free. These were not mere dreams ;
a determination on his part to serve humanity gave
his thoughts substance and direction.
Even early in his coUege career he began to see
the part that he himself might play in causing these
ideals to become reahties. The complacent evangel
ical attitude of the students on the subject of negro
slavery was expressed by a Colonization Society,
which on the day of its annual meeting gathered all
the conservatism of the college into a procession that
reached weU round the college yard. The profes
sor of mathematics and natural philosophy, William
Smyth, had, however, collected a small group of in
dependents into an Anti-Slavery Society. In the fall
of 1834 a great impetus was given to its activity
by two visits from George Thompson, the English
abolitionist, who was addressing audiences in several
towns of Maine. Students and townsfolk went in
large numbers to hear him. At meetings in the after
noon and on the next morning he answered their
questions and entered into discussions with them ;
in the evening he " lectured " in his impassioned
manner to an audience which listened to him with
breathless attention. To Andrew, then at the be
ginning of his Sophomore year, this oratory was a
wonderful revelation. He saw how much a winning
power of speech might do for an unpopular cause,
and was fascinated by Thompson's superb command

20 JOHN A. ANDREW
of his art. To try to imitate it was his immediate
instinct, and soon it was a favorite demand of his
friends that he should give them Thompson's speech.
One of his classmates, recalling this famihar inci
dent, says : " Andrew would stand in the college
grounds or in his room with the window thrown
open and give us the repetition of the lecture almost
verbatim ; and to one hstening with averted face, it
was generally agreed that the redelivery of the lec
ture was scarcely a whit inferior to the original pre
sentation in its rhetorical finish." 1
The influence upon Andrew of Thompson's visit
did not, however, end here. The preaching of the
gospel of immediate emancipation for the slave con
firmed him in the faith and roused him to action.
Andrew's own account of the impression which he
then received, as he looked back upon it in the light
of his anti-slavery experience, is well worth quoting.
At a reception given in Music Hall to George Thomp
son on February 23, 1864, he said, recalling the first
time that he heard the " lofty, stirring, and com
manding eloquence " of the British orator : —
I remember a single sentence which fell from his
lips, and has adhered to my memory, and will last
there whUe memory itself endures. ..." Sirs, I
hesitate not to say, that in Christian America, the
land of Sabbath schools, of religious privileges, of
temperance societies and revivals, there exists the
worst institution in the world. There is not an insti
tution which the sun in the heaven shines upon, so
1 Letter from E. Bond to Cyrus Woodman, printed in the Bruns
wick Telegraph, July 22, 1887.

WINDHAM AND BRUNSWICK 21
fraught with woe to man as American slavery."
These were the words of George Thompson thirty
years ago. I remembered that I was an American ;
that all my destiny, humble though it might be, and
the destiny of all my own posterity, was bound up in
the destiny of that America ; that I and they, and all
of us, were linked indissolubly, by eternal bonds, to
that " worst institution in the world," so long as it
should exist ; and I dreamed by night, and mused in
leisure hours, and read and thought by day, and won
dered if the " worst institution in the world " would
forever last, and if it would cleave hke the dead car
case to the living body, to the name and fame, and
fortunes, and future of my country.1
For aU this inspiration, Andrew made his anti-
slavery vows with a difference. Thompson was a loyal
British subject ; WUliam Lloyd Garrison, American-
born, boasted that his country was the world. An
drew, as the last sentence of the quotation shows,
was content to be merely a citizen of the United
States, and to help in its upbuilding as a nation. At
the time of his graduation he wrote in the album of
a classmate : " Stand fast, hold on, fear not ; a few
bullet-holes through the bodies of reformers, though
they destroy mortal life, are only so many sky-lights
for the truth to shine through, — and so much the
1 Liberator, March 4, 1864. It would seem that Thompson's sen
tences had a way of burning themselves into the memory. In the
year 1900, Elijah Kellogg, who was a student at Bowdoin in 1834,
recalled word by word, in much the same way as Andrew in this
speech, a sentence which he had heard then, and which, fixed in his
memory by the orator's fiery passion, he had ever afterwards had at
his command.

22 JOHN A. ANDREW
sooner will its light illumine the nations." 1 But an-
other part of the same inscription, — the sentiment
"one Constitution, one country, one destiny," showed
his loyalty to the school of Webster. The evil of
slavery must be fought; but it must be crushed
out not together with the Constitution, but through
the Constitution. Andrew, a descendant of the Puri
tans, a true Yankee of his own time, with a bent for
mixing morals and pohtics, could not but ally him
self with the men whose idealism was well ballasted.
If one thing is more notable than another in An
drew's coUege career, it is the fact that he graduated
with less scholarship and more skUl in speaking than
most of his class. The point at which he most nearly
reached full development was his interest in the large
humanitarian aspect of moral questions. This inter
est was nothing more than another form of his sym
pathy with individuals. The easy-going enjoyment
of college companionship, the greater interest in his
friends than in his work, — in fact, everything which
prevented his mates from thinking that he could win
distinction, — these quahties, when generalized and
turned to the service of a great cause, such as that
of human freedom, became the chief means by which
he reached his high place. At the time of his grad
uation, in August, 1837, his age was only nineteen
years and two months, but he was beginning life with
a clearer conception of what he wanted to do with it
than has many an older man.
1 Quoted by William Claflin in his speech at the unveiling of the
Andrew statue at the State House.

CHAPTER II

BOSTON: 1837-1857

During Albion's years at Bowdoin College the fam
ily hfe at Windham had gone on quietly. The father
at fifty-five was old beyond his years. After his
wife's death outward affairs had less hold upon him ;
more and more he retired within himself. In worldly
matters he was prosperous, and the son at coUege
was not stinted in money. Isaac, who at the time
of Albion's graduation from Bowdoin was eighteen
years old, had chosen to be a farmer, and as the
farm at Windham was not to his mind, he now per
suaded his father to return to Massachusetts. Ac
cordingly Jonathan Andrew bought a farm in Box-
ford, a town about seventeen miles from Salem, and
here, in October, 1837, the famUy made its home.
The running of the place Isaac took charge of ; his
father, making no attempt to establish any sort of
business in his new home, was content to live an old
man, cared for by his children.
Perhaps one of the causes for the removal from
Maine, which was made to coincide with Albion's
graduation from coUege, was that the family might
be near him, whether he should decide to pursue his
law studies in Salem, in the office of his cousin John

24 JOHN A. ANDREW
Forrester Andrew, or in Boston. It is pretty clear
that through his Senior year he looked forward to
entering a " law-shop," and in reply to Cyrus Wood
man, who was already studying law in Boston, and
who not long before Commencement had urged
him to come and hve with him, he wrote : " I know
of nothing that would make me more happy than
to study and live near you. There is no one of my
old friends with whom I have been so much and
with whom I should feel so much at home." A re
mark in a letter to his brother Isaac, written at about
the same time, shows that he had indeed centred
his hopes on a lawyer's career.
You would not change places with me, nor I with
you perhaps, having each chosen the path best suited
for us. However, if when I get to studying law,
bard work, close attention and aU the effort I am
capable of making wUl do anything, I shall give my
friends no reason to blush.
A month or so after his graduation, Andrew ap
peared one morning at the office in Boston where
his friend had a desk, and asked advice. Woodman
took him to Henry H. Fuller, senior member of the
firm of Fuller and Washburn, who at once offered
to receive him as a student. Andrew accepted the
offer, and early in November began his studies.
By way of making his expenses as low as pos
sible, for he was still dependent upon his father,
Andrew agreed to Woodman's suggestion that he
should share his attic room at Mrs. Blodgett's, a

BOSTON : 1837-1857 25
typical " West End " boarding-house on Howard
Street, which was a favorite resort of young men
from Maine come to the centre of New England
life to seek their fortunes. One of these young men,
Peleg W. Chandler, a graduate of Bowdoin of the
class of 1834, became Andrew's fast friend. Chan
dler has given sprightly reminiscences of the exu
berant life sheltered in that attic, of crowded, scan
tily furnished quarters, of tremendous psalm-singing
in the early hours of the morning, of a table presided
over by a " gallant militia-colonel, who . . . occupied
the best room," *and by the landlady, who "kept her
boarders well in hand." 2 Woodman soon abandoned
the study of law in Boston for business which took
him to Wisconsin ; but Andrew for eleven years
was to continue a nomadic boarding-house existence,
with its touch-and-go intimacies.
Andrew passed his examinations and was admitted
to the Suffolk Bar in 1840. For a year or so he was
in partnership with N. T. Dow, under the firm name
of Dow and Andrew ; then, in October, 1841, at
Fuller's invitation, he went back to his old master's
office as junior partner. As this arrangement con
tinued for five years, the first nine years of his pro
fessional life were dominated by one man.
It always seemed to me [writes Chandler] that
his character was much affected by contact with that
somewhat remarkable and much misunderstood law
yer. The attraction between him and young An
drew was mutual. They became almost like brothers.
i Chandler, p. 76. 2 Pbid. p. 78.

26 JOHN A. ANDREW
The student sat at the same desk with the master,
entered into all the business affairs of the office,
wrote letters from dictation, and was consulted on
almost every subject that came up ; so that they
seemed, in fact, like one person. Mr. FuUer had an
extensive acquaintance with all sorts of men. He
knew the personal history of almost every citizen of
the town and of aU public characters, living and
dead. He had decided opinions, which he never hes
itated to pronounce on any suitable occasion. Mr.
Andrew, with the curiosity of a young man fresh
from the country, took this all in ; but what is re
markable, while some of the pecuhar traits of the
master stuck to the pupil, the latter had decided
opinions of his own, especially in regard to American
slavery, which were sometimes in ludicrous contrast
with those of his senior. Mr. Fuller was a conserva
tive of conservatives. He stood by the ancient ways
even in the cut of his coat and the shape of his hat ;
his ruffled shirt, his white cravat, shirt-collar, and
taU bell-crowned hat of real fur, were significant of
a past generation.1
In 1846 the obligations which Fuller felt toward
a young nephew made it necessary for him to sepa
rate from Andrew. The letter in which he broached
the unwelcome necessity shows how young Andrew
appealed to men's affections. " I can hardly bring
myself to think of dissolving the partnership be
tween yourself and me," Fuller wrote. " It has been
in all respects so happy and agreeable, — you have
ever been so acceptable, so worthy, so just what I
would have you to be, — that I feel great pain and
1 Chandler, pp. 16-18.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 27
melancholy, at the thought of dissolving our con
nexion." Early in 1847 Andrew formed a partner
ship with Theophilus P. Chandler, the brother of
Peleg. The new firm estabhshed itself at Number 4,
Court Street, on the corner of Washington Street,
and continued in existence for fourteen years.
Andrew's early progress at the bar was slow. The
cause of this was perhaps his juvenUe aspect and
behavior, perhaps his disinchnation to bring himself
to the notice of men who might employ him. His
greatest difficulty, however, was the lack of the habit
of steady application to work. For one thing, he was
constantly interrupted by headaches ; for another,
he liked to talk better than to work. At the office it
was his wont to entertain the half-dozen law students
connected with it, and everybody who happened to
drop in, after much the same fashion in which he
had amused his college mates. A well-thumbed copy
of Byron had a place on his desk, and his reading
of it was as often aloud as to himself. As a letter
which he wrote to Woodman after four years at the
bar shows, if he did not at once overcome the obsta
cles which stood in his way he at least comprehended
the nature of them.
The truth is, I am a terrible procrastinator ; I am,
by nature, irregular, averse to labor, always thinking
of something else ; I am forever dreaming about
doing, but half my time I am either insufferably lazy
or too unwell with my old enemy (if I have a right
to caU anything so that is so much by me), the head
ache, for any exertion.

28 JOHN A. ANDREW
As for real work, what may rightly be called so,
it is not for me to pretend that I spend a great many
hours, taking the days together, in any steady occu
pation ; and yet the time steals over me, it runs past
me, I grow tired and sleepy and go to bed. It would
be, very often, a hard matter for me to give any
strict account of many of my days, which seem, as
they pass, to be, nevertheless, in some way, used up
in what went at the time for employment.
When at last the moment came beyond which a
given task could not be postponed, " it was amusing
to see him with his coat off in the midst of a pile of
books digging out the legal roots with the painstak
ing effort of one to whom such study was not con
genial, all the while telling stories and indulging in
jocose remarks. But he had a manly courage, united
to great pertinacity of purpose, and never left a
point until he had thoroughly mastered it, although
it cost him far more labor than it does those whose
minds are early disciplined by earnest application to
the prescribed studies of school and college." 1 Once,
however, he was on his feet in court, he was a dif
ferent man. He was thoroughly at ease; aU his
faculties were at their best. By instinct he had the
right way with a jury ; his examination of witnesses
was keen and thorough ; he stoutly stood up for
his rights and privileges against the intimations of
judges in a hurry to get through the docket ; the
lawyer retained for the other side usually found him
a dangerous opponent. According to Chandler,
" courage, perseverance, spirit, and a dash of old-
i Chandler, pp. 83, 84.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 29
fashioned but manly temper" characterized his
method of trying a case. He sought success, and
was satisfied to gain it even on the most technical
points. Another thing which hindered Andrew's speedy
rise at the bar was the fact that his personal ambi
tion was not so strong as his philanthropic interests.
From the early years of his residence in Boston, it
was his habit to devote Sunday afternoons to visit
ing the prisons. From listening to stories of mis
fortune the step was a short one to making offers of
help, particularly as the listener had at his command
the only power that avafls to open prison doors, —
that of skill in the law. Then other unfortunates
began to come to him.
No one [writes Chandler] who had a " hard case,"
with no money to pay for legal assistance, was ever
turned away from his office for that reason ; and no
one however guilty was denied whatever assistance
his case was fairly entitled to receive.
A disposition and a reputation of this sort bring
clients enough, such as they are. Nor can any one
outside of the profession justly appreciate how much
good may be done by hstening to the stories of the
poor who are charged with crime, and by carefully
investigating the circumstances of cases which to a
casual observer have nothing but evU about them.
" I thank God," a lawyer once exclaimed to Andrew,
" that there is one man at the bar to look out for
the poor devils of criminals who are guilty enough
and have no friends and no money."
. . . He was employed a good deal in divorce

30 JOHN A. ANDREW
cases, especially on behalf of the weaker sex. One
of his sympathetic temperament would be easily as
well as deeply affected by the circumstances ordina
rily attending such a business. An injured woman
— especially if she were poor, and more especially
if she were interesting in manner — would secure
his most earnest efforts at once. It must be confessed
that in these cases he was sometimes grossly deceived
by the fair sex, and the guilt which was as plain as
possible to others had no existence in his opinion.
Nor could he always repress his indignation that
others did not agree with him.1
This attitude toward his profession meant an ex
traordinary singleness of purpose and simplicity of
nature. No matter what miserable wretches of both
sexes frequented his entry, Andrew bore the rally
ing of his brother lawyers with good-natured equa
nimity. For the evil prejudice that this dispensary
work might be to his regular practice he cared not
a whit ; it was not in him, as he wrote of himself
later in life, "to consider the effect of an action
back upon" himself. Though the proportion of
these cases decreased as the years went on, he always
stood ready to help an unfriended prisoner. Once
in 1859 his attention was drawn to the case of a man
sentenced to death for piracy. Andrew did not
know the man and had had no part in the trial ; but
having satisfied himself of the injustice of the sen
tence, he took the matter into his own hands, went
to Washington, and procured the man's pardon from
1 Chandler, pp. 79-82.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 31
President Buchanan. AU this he did of his own
motion and at his own expense.1
The strong moral sense in the light of which
Andrew regarded his work as a lawyer showed itself
not merely in his efforts for individuals. He was led
by it to scrutinize the body of statute law, searching
out its injustices and inconsistencies and bending
his efforts toward their removal. His legal work in
the anti-slavery cause, which properly comes under
this head, may be discussed more conveniently later ;
here mention may be made of the energy with which
he put his shoulder to the wheel in behalf of the
abolition of capital punishment. Under the guid
ance of Robert Rantoul, the chief champion of the
cause in Massachusetts, he worked faithfully, pre
paring petitions, attending legislative hearings, and
performing much of the work that is known as
" agitating the subject." The need of reform in
the laws governing usury and divorce he learned
from his own practice and urged in similar ways.
In short, it proved impossible for him to work at his
calling merely as a lawyer ; within its own limits and
after his own fashion he must bring to bear upon it
the spirit of the reformer.
To a young man of Andrew's openness of mind,
no environment could have offered more distraction
from the law than the Athenian ferment of new ideas
which characterized Boston in the early Forties. One
of the most significant events of the decade was the
1 See Andrew's testimony on p. 190 of the Report of the Senate
Committee. The Harper's Ferry Invasion.

32 JOHN A. ANDREW
appearance in Boston of James Freeman Clarke, and
his attempt to leaven the hard lump of Unitarian
ism by founding the Church of the Disciples. This
smaU and unfashionable congregation Andrew, who
had formed no religious ties in the city, sought out
as by the operation of affinities. The quahties in
the church and its pastor which attracted Andrew
are described in the following extracts from letters to
his friends. The first, from a letter written in 1841,
gives his impressions of Clarke after hearing him
for the first time.
In the first place I liked the flavor of the man.
He carried his service as though he felt it a good
thing to worship God and wanted the people to feel
the same. I liked his sermon thoroughly. It was
upon well-seasoned speech. " Let your speech be
always with grace, seasoned with salt, that ye may
know how ye ought to answer every man." And the
sermon was itself a good Ulustration of the theme.
Its spirit was Christian to the core, and did not dis
turb my Orthodox conscience in the least. I think I
felt the catholicity of the man ; he did not say a
word that could be fairly understood to touch any
man's honest convictions ungently. The whole ser
vice I enjoyed heartily ; and not the least agreeable
experience was the being invited to seats at least
half-a-dozen times while I was waiting for my friend
at the entrance.1
The second extract is from a letter to Cyrus Wood
man, dated a year later, when Andrew had been a
member of the new church for some months.
1 Hale's Memoir of James Freeman Clarke, p. 313.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 33
Mr. James Freeman Clarke, formerly of Louis-
viUe, Ky., of whom I think I have spoken to you
in some of my former letters as preaching here in
Boston, continues to remain and has a very flourish
ing society in Amory Hall. His preaching is morn
ing and evening, not afternoon, and his hall is
crowded to its utmost capacity. I think next sea
son he must be provided with new quarters. His
church is based entirely on the voluntary principle,
and is always to remain so, there being no taxation
or letting out of seats. It is now and is to be always
free. The expense of ministers etc. is paid by sub
scription. The mode of worship is somewhat novel,
the congregation repeating the Lord's Prayer with
the minister, and also reading from the Psalms with
him, and the singing is performed by the people and
not by a choir. There is also a short period of silent
prayer after the sermon which adds to the effect of
the whole. There is much more zeal and earnestness
among the people than is often found, there being
other meetings than those on Sunday and all in a
social way. I think you would be greatly pleased if
you were here. Mr. Clarke is himself a young man.
. . . He has the best mind, style, and everything for
a minister that there is a-going. None of his people
would change for anybody. He is logical, sensible,
earnest, pious, forcible, solemn, quiet and calm, in
fine, my beau ideal of a pulpit orator and a private
gentleman and christian. This is high eulogy, but
deserved. The novelty of method which so attracted Andrew
was more striking then than now, when the princi
ples for which the Church of the Disciples stood and
stands have been disseminated far and wide. In

34 JOHN A. ANDREW
1841, when conventional church-going meant httle
more to most families than the act of sitting every
Sunday in the pew that was as much their property
as house or sflver, the practices that James Freeman
Clarke instituted and the spirit that he breathed
into them made to the young and eager an appeal
as stirring as that made by Brook Farm or Ralph
Waldo Emerson. On Andrew the church had a fur
ther claim by answering precisely to the intimate
demands of his nature. Probably up to this time
there had existed in Boston no church in which he
could feel really at home. At the Church of the
Disciples he found, besides devotional fervor and
warmth of feUowship, — one might almost say good
fellowship, — a hearty subscription to the principle
of toleration. In this atmosphere, the laying aside of
the old creed must have been as natural for him as
is the putting by of northern clothing when one has
moved to southern latitudes. Whatever may have
been the way of Andrew's theological beliefs, his
entrance into the privileges of the new discipleship
was immediate and hearty. The first time that
Clarke ever saw him was one Sunday afternoon
when the minister went to the large Bible class of
the Sunday school, which was conducted by its lay
members in turn. " The presiding member," he says,
"... seemed scarcely more than a boy. His cheeks
were rosy red, and his head covered with thick
curls, and his mouth was quivering with interest." 1
This was the beginning; from that time on An-
1 Clarke's Memorial and Biographical Sketches, p. 8.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 35
drew's rehgious nature developed steadfly. It was
not a plant of delicate nurture, growing in shade
and in sUence ; it was of a growth that flourished
on sunlight and fresh air. He loved the democratic
quality of common religious experience ; he gladly
gave his religious confidence, and received that of
others ; he was full of religious fervor. He delighted
in worshipping at Father Taylor's Bethel for sailors
in North Square, or with Brother Grimes' colored
congregation, — with any company, in fact, where
he could indulge in what he called " a good warm
time." To a man for whom religious expression
was such an easy matter of course, the practice of
the Church of the Disciples touching the conduct
of services by laymen offered a welcome opportunity.
He was always ready to take his turn as leader, and
for a number of years he was superintendent of the
Sunday school.
One of Clarke's chief reasons for establishing the
Church of the Disciples was his desire to make re
ligion go through all the days of the week. An ex
pression of this need was the " Wednesday Evening
Meeting," at which the church, turning itself into a
sort of club, took thought and action on whatever
the interest of the hour made worth whfle. The
meeting "was not so transcendental but that it
could send rifles to Kansas ; it was not so practical
but that it could discuss free-wfll and fore-know
ledge." 1 Here was a powerful impulse to quicken
Andrew's philanthropic legal work, and to arouse
i Hale's Memoir of Clarke, pp. 202, 203.

36 JOHN A. ANDREW
his interest in " humanitarian " enterprises. One of
these was the Boston Port Society, which sustained
Father Taylor's Bethel, and of which Andrew was
secretary from 1846 until his death. Another was
the Christian World, a weekly newspaper which
was meant to hold toward the Christian Register,
the regular Unitarian " organ," much the same re
lation that the Church of the Disciples held toward
the older and conservative Unitarian churches. As
assistant to George Channing, the editor, Andrew
wrote book reviews, and articles with such titles as
The Confession of Christ, a personal appeal to
embrace salvation, and The Death of Christ, a
theological discussion. He also reported for the
paper the meetings of " Anniversary Week " and
Unitarian conventions in other cities as well as in
Boston. All these labors he undertook with an
earnestness that, even among Clarke's earnest con
gregation, made him conspicuous.1
In one incident of the history of the Church of
the Disciples it feU to Andrew to play a part which
1 In a letter written about this time, Cyrus Woodman rallies An
drew on the expansiveness of his humanitarian zeal. " I presume you
are still exerting yourself in behalf of 'downtrodden humanity,'
striving to free the slave from his bonds and the felon from the
halter. The annexation of Texas (that bloodless conquest ?) is con
summated, and on that subject your heart is sad and your harp is
on the willows. The principal subject of your discourse is now, I
imagine, the unlawfulness of war in general and of the war in Mex
ico in particular. Alas for poor Jennie [Mrs. Blodgett's daughter],
whom for an hour past you have been besieging on that subject and
to whose unlistening ears you are still talking about the ' harlequin
of the nineteenth century,' and endeavoring to prove that the soldier's
glory should be but shame."

BOSTON : 1837-1857 37
brought his name for the first time into something
like public notice. Early in 1845 Clarke arranged to
" exchange pulpits," as the phrase is, with Theodore
Parker. This offer, made at a time when Boston
Unitarianism was torn by the strifes that followed
Parker's sermon on The Transient and Permanent
in Christianity, was meant to express simply the
broad toleration for which the Church of the Dis
ciples was to stand. A division within the church,
however, soon made plain the fact that to some
minds there were degrees even of toleration. A man
must at least be a Christian, it was said, and Parker,
in rejecting the supreme authority of the Scriptures,
had put himself beyond the pale. Therefore, since
according to the theory of the church all its mem
bers might be held responsible for the acts of their
pastor, those most violently opposed to Parker threat
ened secession.
Andrew, if doubtful of the expediency of his
pastor's act, at any rate, now that it was caUed in
question, was earnest in defence of the principle on
which Clarke had acted. At the meetings held by
the distressed church to find a way out of its trou
bles, he argued that Parker's denial of paramount
authority to the Bible was not different from that
of Roman Catholics, Quakers, and Swedenborgians,
who had not thereby forfeited their right to the
name of Christians ; moreover, the Church of the
Disciples itself founded its behef not on the Bible
but on Christ. As for seceding, the true way to treat
all who seemed to be in error was " not to go from

38 JOHN A. ANDREW
them, but to go to them ; not shut them out, but
take them in." His concluding sentences made a
deep impression. " Brethren," he said, " I do not
beheve in the principle of come-outer-ism. I am not
a come-outer. I am a stay-iner. I shaU not leave
this church because the majority may differ from me
on this or other questions. You may, indeed, turn
me out; but you cannot make me go out of my
own accord. If you turn me out of your meetings I
wiU stand on the outside, and look in through the
window, and see you. If I cannot do this, I wUl
come the next day and sit in the place where you
have been, and commune with you so. I cannot be
excommunicated, for I shaU continue thus always
in your communion." x His appeal did not prevent
the schism ; fifteen members of the church severed
their connection with it. Still his words and his act
were remembered. At a moment of great strain
he had come forward and had put the principle as-
saUed into effective words, making, according to
Clarke, a speech " seeming at the time as powerful
in argument and persuasive in appeal as any I ever
heard."2 The words quoted from this speech of Andrew's
furnish, too, the best testimony to what the Church
of the Disciples meant to him in the way of friend
ship. It was here that he first struck down into the
life of Boston, — that he had, as it were, a domicile.
1 Sketch of the Official Life of John A. Andrew, by A. G. Browne,
Jr., pp. 20, 21.
2 Ibid. p. 19.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 39
Here he formed intimate and permanent friendships,
of which the chief was with his pastor. Clarke, the
elder by eight years, was a man of thirty-one when
Andrew first knew him, — old enough to have
worked out of the baffling iUusions of youth into cer
titude of thought and action, and yet not so old as
to be out of sympathy with the young man in whom
the process of finding himself was still going on.
The power of eliciting sympathy and loyalty was a
gift which they had in common ; in Clarke's posses
sion of it to a supreme degree hes the secret of the
life of the church between 1850 and 1854, when his
sickness and slow recovery forced him to give up his
pastoral work and to go away for rest. Of the little
company that met from time to time for the Com
munion service, keeping the church alive in spite of
diminished vitality, and on Clarke's return rendering
it back to him to work new wonders with, Andrew
was one ; and by these years of trial its members
were drawn still more closely together. In Salem,
too, Andrew had a group of friends, of which the
family of John Forrester Andrew was the centre.
At that house he was so welcomed at all times and
was so often the moving spirit in hospitalities that
it came to seem to him hke a home.
The best comment on the practical effect of
Clarke's gospel that religion is meant for week days
as well as for Sundays is the fact that Andrew
through his work in the Christian World became
familiar with the politics of the day. One of the ob
jects of the paper was to urge upon its readers the

40 JOHN A. ANDREW
moral aspect of poUtical questions. After the first
year or more, Andrew's rather youthful composi
tions on rehgious subjects gave place to firm and
definite treatment of the slavery question. The im
mediate cause that drew him into pohtical discus
sion was the imminence of the annexation of Texas.
The more he studied the subject and the more the
course of events revealed the schemes of the an
nexationists, the more was his indignation roused.
He wrote leader after leader urging on ministers
and the rehgious press the duty of protest. After
the war was forced on Mexico, he followed it step
by step, protesting against the injustice of its in
ception and demanding repeatedly that it should
be stopped. This writing, which covered a period of
about four years, coming to an end in the spring of
1848, was the beginning of his political apprentice
ship. The Garrisonian cry of " No union with slave
holders " he put in the same category with the watch
word of the " come-outers " of the Church of the
Disciples, " No union with errorists ; " his writing
was addressed to those who, submitting themselves
to the yoke of the Constitution, sought freedom for
the slave through the slow circumstance of political
change. Local as weU as national anti-slavery agitation
also began to engage Andrew. In particular he was
quick to act upon any hint of infringement by the
slave-power on the laws of Massachusetts. In the
summer of 1846 the brig Ottoman, which was
owned in Boston, entered the harbor from New

BOSTON : 1837-1857 41
Orleans, bringing a fugitive slave who had hidden
himself in the hold of the vessel before she sailed.
The captain, anxious to stand well with his patrons
in New Orleans, left the negro on an island in the
harbor and made arrangements for his return by
the next vessel of the hne. The negro escaped, was
pursued, was recaptured, and, in spite of the efforts
of anti-slavery people, carried back to slavery.
His would-be rescuers, thus baffled, resolved to vent
their indignation by a meeting in Faneuil Hall.
Among the handful of men who on September 13
met at the house of Dr. Henry I. Bowditch to make
arrangements were Dr. S. G. Howe and Andrew,
who was made secretary. Howe was chosen chairman
of the committee of arrangements, and to Andrew
was entrusted the work of coUecting testimony with
a view to presenting the matter to the grand jury.1
At the FaneuU Hall meeting, which was held on
September 24, the great card was the presence of
John Quincy Adams, who, though feeble in frame
and weak in voice, consented to preside. Howe gave
at length the facts of the case, the Boston ship
owners coming in for a hon's share of the blame.
After this Andrew read the resolutions which had
been prepared, and speeches followed from Charles
Sumner, Stephen C. Phillips, Wendell Phillips, The
odore Parker, Charles Francis Adams, and others.
The assembly broke up after a vote on the resolu-
1 Upon his first application with evidence, the grand jury had too
much other business ; upon his second, his evidence was pronounced
insufficient.

42 JOHN A. ANDREW
tions, which called for the formation of a Vigilance
Committee of forty members.1
In spite of the presence of Wendell Phillips, the
character of the meeting was not abolitionist, but
anti-slavery. The fact that Phfllips found in the re
solutions too much law and Constitution to suit his
restless spirit shows within what sober bounds the
managers of the movement constrained their indig
nation. In the address which was put forth a month
later by the Vigilance Committee, and which, with the
proceedings of the Faneuil Hall gathering, was is
sued in pamphlet form, the extreme declaration that
" Any longer voluntary allegiance to the Union
would be sin towards God and treason to humanity "
was precipitately qualified by the words " unless we
conscientiously use every effort to effect the speedy
change in those political relations, which deny the
right of trial by jury in a matter of more than life
and death to any member of our community ; which
enable the slave-owner to trample upon the Habeas
Corpus." It having been decided to raise the sum of
one thousand dollars for the work of the Vigilance
Committee, the Committee on Finance, of which An
drew was chairman, prepared a circular appealing
for contributions. " The committee mean to spare
no rightful effort to secure every human being upon
the soU of Massachusetts, in his right to liberty,
against the contrivances of slave-hunters and their
agents. . . . The committee, and many others, know
what, probably, the pubhc does not know, that there
1 See Pierce's Life of Sumner, vol. iii. pp. 130-132.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 43
are, almost constantly, cases occurring where the
hberty of human beings, oftentimes under circum
stances the most affecting, demands the aid and sup
port of firm and watchful friends." These words
declare Andrew's purpose to abide by the law, but
to wring from it the utmost protection for any per
son on Massachusetts soil whose liberty was called in
question under the laws of the United States.
The Whigs of Boston had renominated for repre
sentative to Congress Robert C. Winthrop, who had
given his sanction to the Mexican War by voting
for the resolutions which declared that war existed
" by the act of Mexico." The group of men with
whom Andrew had associated himself — " Young
Whigs " they called themselves — determined to
protest by nominating an independent candidate to
run against Winthrop. A meeting was called for
October 29 in Tremont Temple, and to Andrew was
assigned the work of preparing resolutions and
finding a candidate. Everything pointed to Charles
Sumner as the man. Though it was barely a month
since he had for the first time taken part in a caucus
or political meeting, he had in the mean time pub
hshed his open letter to Winthrop charging him with
having by virtue of his vote set his name to a false
hood. Andrew, who knew Sumner well at Number 4,
Court Street, pressed him to accept the nomination ;
Sumner, unwilling to enter political hfe, left with
Andrew, as he started for a lecturing trip in Maine,
a positive refusal. Nevertheless Andrew decided
that he was justified in going counter to Sumner's

44 JOHN A. ANDREW
instructions, and the resolutions which he read at
the meeting in Tremont Temple, after condemning
the war and scourging Winthrop, concluded with
the name of Charles Sumner, as the man best fitted
" to represent the interests of the city, and the car
dinal principles of truth, justice, liberty, and peace,
which have not yet died out in the breasts of her
citizens." Though this was acting Providence for
Sumner with a vengeance, it was manifestly the
only and right thing to do, and Andrew, as soon
as he got to his desk the next morning, began
a letter to justify himself in Sumner's eyes. After
explaining the complicated circumstances which op
erated at the time, he did his best to make Sumner
accept the direction of destiny. " Are we not all of
us," he urged, " are not all men in a high and true
sense — providential men ? Does not an unerring
finger point us, visibly and often, to a duty at once
irksome and dangerous, but still as certain and clear,
as the fiery cross of Constantine ? Are you not the
man, if there is or can be one, for this crisis in our
affairs ? If I know anything, I know that, I know
it both by outward observation and the inner hght,
it is in the faces and on the tongues of a host of
young men in Boston." The letter was to no pur
pose ; Sumner, on his return, insisted that his name
should be withdrawn. In this, according to his bio
grapher, he was unwise ; for " he was by nature,
and already in action, more a politician than he
thought." 1 S. G. Howe was persuaded to stand in
1 Pierce's Sumner, vol. iii. p. 136.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 45
his place, and on November 5 a meeting was held in
Tremont Temple to support his candidacy. Sumner
and Adams spoke ; Andrew was in the chair. The
result of this httle bolt of " Young Whigs," as de
clared by election day, showed that Howe had taken
from Winthrop " hardly more than five hundred
votes." x The significance of the movement was not
measurable by numbers. A moral principle had been
made a rallying cry in pohtics ; a group of young
men had received practice in united action, — prac
tice which two years later made easy the formation
of the Free-Sofl party.
In this pohtical training the young apprentices
paid attention, it must be admitted, to the ideal side
of the business somewhat at the expense of the prac
tical. Chandler2 tells a story which goes to show
that when it came to the manipulation of a caucus,
Andrew and Sumner were sadly to seek.
There was at one time great excitement about the
Boston schools, when Horace Mann had his contro
versy with the school committee. At No. 4 Court
Street, we wished to have Charles Sumner chosen a
member of the committee in old ward four, where he
resided. Anticipating the difficulty of obtaining the
nomination of one who had so httle popularity with
the people, and who uttered such pronounced opin
ions in regard to Mr. Mann, considerable preparation
was made for the contest. Andrew lived in that
ward and was rehed on to manage the affair. It was
a wretched failure, and the candidate who afterwards
became so distinguished was severely snubbed by his
i Pierce's Sumner, vol. iii. p. 138. 2 Pp. 90, 91.

46 JOHN A. ANDREW
own neighbors. Sumner was present, and I think not
much surprised ; although, as an intimate friend of
Mr. Mann, he earnestly desired the place. But the
indignation of John A. Andrew was great. In giving
an account of the meeting, he wound up with this
remark, in order to contrast Sumner's magnanimity
with that of one of his opponents, " There was
 " (a disagreeable Cambridge graduate, who had
an office in the street and affected to despise Sum
ner, and who has long since passed out of sight
and memory), " he did aU he could against Sumner,
and the latter voted for him as one of the ward in
spectors ! "
Through undertakings such as these Andrew came
into close friendship with Sumner and Howe. In
1846, Andrew's age was twenty - eight, Sumner's
thirty-five, Howe's forty-five. Sumner was a man
whose presence produced an effect of beauty beyond
the power of words to describe, but his uncompromis
ing spirit had already won him enemies in Boston.
Howe was director of the Asylum for the Blind, —
the creation of his own brain, — and was famous
for his work with Laura Bridgman. He who had
fought for hberty in Greece was not hkely to refuse
to speak for liberty in Boston, and from this time
on he was active in anti-slavery politics. In spite
of this activity, he was always a favorite in society.
Besides Sumner and the Chandlers, there were other
lawyers at Number 4, Court Street, with whom An
drew formed ties of acquaintance and sympathy.
Richard Henry Dana, Jr., was one ; George S. Hil
lard, the early friend of Sumner, was another. Hfllard

BOSTON: 1837-1857 47
and P. W. Chandler were conservatives ; the others
belonged to the little party of reform, but to Andrew
none so stood for the ideal reformer as Sumner and
Howe. In 1848, when aU signs pointed to the nomina
tion for President by the Whigs of General Taylor,
the Louisianan slaveholder who had never voted,
the Young Whigs found new cause to work together.
Meeting at the office of Charles Francis Adams in
Boston before the date of the Whig convention,
they agreed that if the nomination should fall to
Taylor or one of his hke, they would create in Mas
sachusetts a new party organization based upon anti-
slavery principles. The result was the Free-Soil
party. Through aU the campaign Andrew's work as
a member of the state committee was hearty, tire
less, inconspicuous. He presided at meetings, he
drew up and reported resolutions, he tailed along
with a speech near the close of meetings in Fan-
eufl Hall, he performed other inglorious labors such
as one does for the joy of the working. To have
just touched thirty in the Free-Soil campaign of
1848, to have brought into the arena of politics all
one's ideals in fuU panoply, to have carried them
undimmed and undented from the field, to have
sounded the caU for "free soU and free men, free
hps and a free press, a free land and a free world,"
to have seen the Whigs, neglecting their old en
emy, gather all their forces to repel the new, — to
have gone through this experience could hardly
fail to confirm in an ardent spirit like Andrew's

48 JOHN A. ANDREW
the faith that righteousness is indeed a power in
politics. Throughout aU these years the course of the
young lawyer in Boston, with his many avocations
along the lines of politics, religious and philanthropic
work, and journalism, was watched with affectionate
pride by the other members of his family, who con
tinued their quiet farming life at Boxford. He was
kept constantly in touch with them by letters from
both the sisters, especiaUy from Alfreda, the more
intimate and expansive correspondent. Sarah fol
lowed the orthodox ways of her father and Isaac,
but Alfreda, by reason of a winter's residence in
Boston, while attending school, claimed Albion's be
liefs as her own. He, in turn, though his visits and
his letters were never frequent enough to satisfy his
sisters, showed his devotion by doing them every
service in his power, and by keeping them abreast
of all his interests by a constant supply of news
papers. Chandler, indulging in cheering recollec
tions, has given a picture of the Andrew family as
he saw it in 1846. Soon after Thanksgiving the
Chandlers and Cyrus Woodman paid a visit to Box-
ford to hear John A. Andrew give the opening lec
ture in a lyceum course which had just been started
in the town. The address, which he had prepared
two years before for the annual meeting of the Athe
nsean Society at Bowdoin, was an earnest working
out of the proposition that college men should apply
themselves to politics with " devoted enthusiasm."

BOSTON : 1837-1857 49
If, as some ironical flings in Alfreda's letters lead
one to think, the lecturer did not reap the full mea
sure of appreciation from the audience gathered in
the " fearfully heated schoolhouse," 1 the merriment
of the rest of the evening proved ample justification
for this winter excursion into the country. " After
lecture," writes Chandler, glowing with reminiscence,
" we drove home in the cold and bracing air, about
as fuU of fun as mortals can be. . . . There was
cider, the inevitable doughnuts, and aU the Yankee
' fixings,' with a blazing fire that it is good to think
about. What a time it was ! What shouts of laugh
ter at our own jokes ! How we egged each other
on for ' more ; ' whUe Deacon Jonathan Andrew sat
in the chimney-corner by himself, with his hand over
his face, but the latter aU aglow with the mirth he
tried to conceal." 1
Jonathan Andrew often recurred to the evening
with joy and pride. His daughter wrote that he was
" wonderf uUy brightened up by our visitors — I
never saw him seem to enjoy more. . . . Father
seems to look upon your lecture as the only one
ever dehvered and that nothing can equal it. He is
greatly stirred up by it." 2
Not until Andrew was almost twenty-nine could
the famfly at Boxford complain of a divided devo
tion. " I have often thought it very queer that a
fellow with such strong home feelings, so fond of
women as a mass, i. e., inclined to be interested by
i Chandler, pp. 133, 134.
2 Jonathan Andrew died in 1849, at the age of sixty-seven.

50 JOHN A. ANDREW
the sex, should never manage to pump up any more
particular regard — should never feel an individual
flame." Thus wrote Andrew to Cyrus Woodman at
the age of twenty-six. In the spring of 1847 he
became engaged to Eliza Jones Hersey, whose home
was in the old town of Hingham, on the south shore
of Massachusetts Bay. He had first seen her about
a year before in a tableau at the anti-slavery fair ;
she was young and very pretty, and he sought her
acquaintance on the spot. The story of his courtship
he gave in a letter to his sister Sarah soon after
the engagement was announced. This letter teUs
admirably aU that one should be glad to know, and
gives the key to the method of action which was be
ginning to characterize its writer, — an endeavor to
think out clearly from his own point of view and
to execute in straightforward deeds a line of conduct
which should approximate justice. Remembering
the strong emotional bias of the man, one cannot
fail, even while one smfles at the lover's desire to
appear cool, to note appreciatively this counterbal
ancing trait. The letter begins with an account of
the way in which the newly engaged couple passed
a Sunday in Hingham, with enhghtening remarks
on the sermon, — the Herseys were Unitarians, —
the Hersey household, the look of the town, and the
character of the minister. Then it continues : 1 —
For myself, I am entirely satisfied that I have
acted as I have done. — I hke Ehza better, the more
1 This letter bears no date, but the envelope is postmarked " Bos
ton, 27 Mar."

BOSTON : 1837-1857 51
I see her. I was pleased with her from the first time
I ever saw her face, — more than a year ago. But I
would not and did not think about her. Still, meet
ing her constantly for many months, once in a while,
when she happened to be in Boston, either at some
lecture, or at church, or in the street, or somewhere or
other, . . . and seeing her in Hingham somewhat,
... I could not repress the idea, that there was a
certain "internal harmony" between us, that I had
not been conscious of, in regard to myself and any
other person. I then, but not until I had happened
to see her two or three times late in the fall, deter
mined to become more acquainted, when she should
next visit Boston, which was to be towards the close
of December. Everything had always been wholly
accidental — as it seemed — (perhaps I should say,
though, providential) ; — and then, when she came at
Christmas time : when I took some pains to be with
her, I found it was just as natural and easy as if we
had been much more acquainted. I was certain she
had rather a good opinion of me, and I became more
positive of what were our true relations to each other.
My attentions to her soon attracted some observa
tion. But that made no difference with her nor with
me. And, after she had been here some ten or twelve
days, being most anxious, not to seem to be carrying
on a mere flirtation, which I should despise doing,
and wishing to be perfectly manly and open in the
matter, I wrote Eliza a brief note, telling her my
true intentions towards her. I did not then propose
an engagement. That I thought would not be best.
I wished her to know me weU ; and to be known to
her friends : and wait until matters ripened them
selves naturally to such a point. But, I wanted to
occupy an unequivocal position. After that we were

52 JOHN A. ANDREW
more together than before. I waited upon her a
good deal — as Alfreda knew at the time, and in
that way we graduaUy knew each other more. But,
perhaps, less than many others would have done,
with less reserve than both she and myself have.
She is as reserved as to her own private, inward self,
as I am, or as Alfreda is. But it hes under great
frankness of manners. I went to see her once at her
house in Hingham. . . . When she came up again,
she stopped at her uncle's, in Summer street. . . .
We did not make an open and acknowledged engage
ment until she returned home. There was every
thing, you might say, but that ; — we understood our
own position. But, having some notions of my own,
of dehcacy towards a young lady under such circum
stances, such as I have before indicated, I did not
feel it quite right to propose that, until she should
have returned home, and had an opportunity of
seeing her own father and mother, after this visit
was over. It was enough for me, to feel sure that
we were mutuaUy attached to each other ; and I did
not wish to run the risk of any possible embarrass
ment to her, by precipitating the aspect of our re
lations. Indeed, it was better for me, too, not to be
doing anything having the appearance, to my own
friends, of rashness and sudden impulse, beyond the
necessity of the case. And, as it happened, from
the beginning to the end, everything worked exactly
right — so far as I have traced matters through, —
and my mode of conducting the whole matter has
surprised me, almost, by finding how accurately it
fitted the case. But, it was, in reality, nothing but
conforming to my own notions of propriety, delicacy
and honor. Eliza is not the girl, I imagine, whom
the most of my more judicious friends, in the exercise

BOSTON : 1837-1857 53
of that most judicial, but still, in such cases, almost
always, superficial judgment, which people bring
into the service of third persons, upon such occa
sions, would have chosen for me. They would have
somewhat mistaken her and me both, in coming to
their conclusion. ... I have a strong belief that I
have surprised almost everybody. ... In our church,
Bro. Clarke says, the people are so friendly to me,
from the long and intimate associations I have had
there, that it is feared, because they do not know
Eliza, . . . that I have not done as weU as they wish
for me. Not that they have any objections now, but
that they wish they knew enough to have a decided
opinion. . . .
Eliza has fine qualities. She is warm-hearted,
generous, affectionate, hopeful and mirthful ; but at
the same time, strong in her purposes, very honest
with herself, sincere and frank, a lover of reahty and
a hater of seemings, governed very httle by forms
or customs, — indeed quite independent throughout,
conscientious as to that which goes to the substance
of right and wrong, and not at all difficult to be in
fluenced where her affections and respect are united
upon one who should attempt to exert an influence
over her. She has a good womanly mind ; i. e., a
woman's tact and insight. She is not what would
be called a literary person. She is not given to dis
cussing books or hterary topics. Nor is she the re
verse of that. If she really lacks anywhere, it is in
training and disciphne of mind. But, she is quick
to appreciate what is elevating in books or persons,
I think ; and quick to feel their power. She always
takes most, (I have noticed from the first), to sen
sible people, those who have something in them, and
she denounces very soon, one who is merely siUy or

54 JOHN A. ANDREW
empty. Her mirthfulness makes her sportive with
those who do anything to excite it ; — but still such
persons do not satisfy her the best. She evidently
likes in me, my solemn and more earnest side, bet
ter than my gayer one. Her feelings are gentle and
quick. She cannot endure irony, or harshness in one
she loves. . . .
The truth is, I think Eliza is extremely well
adapted to me. ... I never have seen any one else
of whom I could say as much. ... It is not possible
that I should fafl in getting along pretty well, with
almost any moderately weU disposed person : but I
suppose that with some I can be more at my ease
than with others, and that some would be happier
with me than would others. In this case, I think
that if I do my duty by Eliza, she will be true and
good to me, and, I might say, I think she will do
right, even if I do not. — I am not blinded by love,
nor am I made captious by a desire to have the objects
of my regard become perfect beyond others. I can
judge of her, as I would of you or Alfreda, with the
same justice to the right and the wrong, as I under
stand it. I am not wont to admit faults in those I
love. I choose to over-look them, if I can. I wish
aU to be free, not desiring their freedom to be sunk in
conformity to me, nor to anyone. And I will not ad
mit to others, what I see myself, when it is none of
their business. . . .
On Christmas eve, 1848, the two were married at
Hingham in the New North Church. They began
their married life in a boarding-house in Bowdoin
Square ; then, for a number of years, principally for
the sake of their children, they lived in Hingham, in
different houses belonging to the Hersey family. In

BOSTON : 1837-1857 55
Hingham, in October, 1849, their first child, Charles
Albion, was born. The young father wrote : —
From the moment the little hero blew his trumpet,
aU was well. . . . We are aU so pleased, that it is
hard to tell which of us seems the most silly. Ehza
lies and laughs [and] looks at him, calling him " so
cunning," and aU that. They think he is very much
like me. His eyes are dark blue, large nose, brown
hair and inclined to curl. Eliza's mother says he is
the prettiest baby she ever saw ; and that she would
say so, if it had no relation to her.
Within a year the baby died ; two months afterward
a second son, John Forrester, was born ; between
this time and the year 1858 came three other chil
dren : Elizabeth Loring, Edith, and Henry Hersey.
For nine years after Andrew's marriage (Decem
ber, 1848— December, 1857) his activities were almost
entirely other than political. First of all was the
necessity of building up his practice ; his spare time
was absorbed by his rehgious and philanthropic in
terests ; until the fall of 1855 he lived all the year
round at Hingham, going to and from Boston every
day, in summer by boat, in the other seasons by train.1
In that year the importance of his practice justified
him in buying a small house in a brick block on
Charles Street,2 and this was his city home for the
rest of his life.
1 Once during this period he was a candidate for the State Senate
from Hingham, but was defeated.
2 The house, at first No. 71 and then and still No. 110, stands on
the water side of the street, between Pinckney and Revere streets.

56 JOHN A. ANDREW
As intermittent as Andrew's part in politics during
this time was his share in protecting the rights of Bos
ton negroes. Though during the first months after the
enactment of the Fugitive Slave "Bill " in the fall of
1850 he may be said to have lived in the very midst
of the excitement produced by the escape of William
and Ellen Craft, the rescue of Shadrach, and the ren
dition of Sims, stiU he kept steadily at his law busi
ness, thinking hard and feeling deeply on the great
matters of the day, but giving no labor except that
devolving upon him in the Vigilance Committee as
member of its Committee on Finance.1 An indication
of this detachment is Clarke's description of Andrew
on the day in June, 1854, when " a posse of many
hundred constables and policemen, the marines from
Charlestown, cavalry, infantry, and a hght battery
with shotted guns " was the measure of force deemed
necessary to return Anthony Burns to slavery. " John
Andrew's office," writes Clarke, " at the corner of
Court and Washington streets was the centre of the
excitement, and filled with people. Some of his friends
were draping it in front with black cloth. On the
opposite corner swung a coffin, under which the es
cort must pass. But Andrew sat quietly at his desk,
writing, the only calm man in the room. He had
done aU he could to prevent the rendition before,2 —
1 In the Liberator of February 18, 1860, Andrew's name is signed
to a report which states that the six thousand dollars subscribed since
1850 has been used up in giving assistance to some four hundred fugi
tive slaves, and ends with a call for more subscriptions.
2 There is no evidence that he had taken any formal steps in the
matter.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 57
now he could do no more, and sat at his desk as
serene as if no such events were taking place around
him." 1 When, to prevent another such rendition,
the eccentric Anti-Manhunting League was organ
ized, Andrew was one of its members ; but as he was
physically unsuited for its robust duties, his member
ship must have been largely a matter of form.2
The chief connection which Andrew had with the
exciting incidents marking the history of the Fugi
tive Slave Law in Boston was in serving as one of
the counsel to defend the men arrested for attempt
ing the rescue of Anthony Burns on the night
of May 26, 1854. Indictments were made against
Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and five others,
for inciting the mob, either by inflammatory speech
or by action. The part assigned to Andrew was an
argument to prove one of the flaws in the drawing
of the indictment, but when the time came for the
trials, the presiding judge, Benjamin R. Curtis, or
dered the indictments quashed; both sides, doubt
less, were content to let the matter go no further.3
1 Memorial and Biographical Sketches, pp. 38, 39.
2 For some account of the operations of this mysterious organiza
tion, the only secret society to which Andrew ever belonged, see pp.
271-282 in vol. i. of the biography of its founder, Dr. Henry I. Bow-
ditch. 8 Some of the cases in which Andrew gave his services in behalf
of negroes deserve slight mention. Becoming interested in Seth
Botts, a fugitive from Virginia, he raised from time to time enough
money to buy the freedom of Botts' wife, three children, and
brother-in-law. The affair, owing to litigation and other delays,
bade fair, as he wrote Sumner, to " last as long as the siege of Troy."
Another case (1855) was that of Betty, a slave who was travelling
through Boston with her master and mistress, and whom some

58 JOHN A. ANDREW
Although in these years up to the fall of 1857
there were so few intervals when Andrew was not
occupied strictly with his lawyer's work, it must not
be supposed that he was out of touch with whatever
was doing politically in Massachusetts. By reason
of his connection with a private dining-club which
met every Saturday at two, he had full knowledge
and share of the Free-Soil councils. The informal
president of the club was Francis W. Bird, an owner
of paper mUls in East Walpole. Among Bird's char
acteristics were an incorrigible passion for independ
ence in political action and a social gift so marked
that it was no more than natural that where he sat
should be the head of the table, and that the group
of diners should be called the Bird Club. Statements
as to the origin and early membership of the club
differ somewhat, according to the memory of the
man who makes them, but it seems to be clear that
its meetings became regular about 1850, the time of
the " Coahtion." Perhaps Bird's own account is as
good as any.
In those times which tried men's souls, when a
little handful of Free Soilers grappled with the giant
Whig party of Massachusetts, a half-dozen, more or
less, of the faithful found themselves around the
zealous person brought into court on a writ of habeas corpus. Andrew
was her counsel, and had little to do beyond acceding to the proposi
tion of her owners and their counsel that she should herself choose
between an immediate freedom in Boston and a promised freedom
in Tennessee with her husband and children. Still another case
(1857) was that of the negro for whom Andrew and William L.
Burt were counsel in a suit brought against the Howard Athenseum
for excluding the man from its " Family Circle " because of his color.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 69
same table on Saturday afternoon. It was a venial
offence, for heaven knows our legs were never under
a genteel mahogany in Boston. I think John A.
Andrew, James W. Stone, Henry L. Pierce, William
S. Robinson 1 and myself were nearly or quite all the
original members. GraduaUy the numbers increased,
and, emerging from the narrow quarters of No. 30
School street, where a luncheon was served from a
neighboring eating house, we attained the dignity of
a room at Parker's. Then came the Know-nothing
1 Robinson, better known by his pen name of " Warrington," was
a newspaper writer who never swerved a hair's breadth from the
truth, who demanded full and free speech for himself, and whose
biting ridicule made him an opponent much to be dreaded. At the
same time he was full of genuine kindliness and was wholly at
ease in the world of men. Limited means he accepted as a necessary
concomitant of the position of free lance in journalism. As " our
own correspondent " from Boston, he sent letters to whatever paper
would employ him ou his terms of absolute freedom of speech. For
the weekly letter to the Springfield Republican, the paper with which
he was longest and most familiarly associated, he was " Warrington,"
having taken the name from his beloved Pendennis ; for the Worces
ter Transcript he was " Boythorne ; " for the New York Tribune
" Gilbert." His range was narrow, including state and national poli
tics, an occasional criminal trial, and a review of the latest number
of the Atlantic Monthly ; but in the field of politics, especially local
politics, he was master. There was not a public man of any sort in
Massachusetts the details of whose career he had not at his finger
tips. He absorbed the gossip of party committee-rooms ; and no
man could touch more surely the personal note which is the essence
of American journalism. Though he was intensely radical in his
own political opinions and was almost as incorrigible as Frank Bird
in his treatment of party ties, he was remarkably clear-sighted.
Thus for the student of the early days of the Republican party in
Massachusetts his letters are almost invaluable. Though in form
they are as hasty and fragmentary as the events which they record,
one is under constant temptation to quote from them for the sake of
their vividness and their closeness to the living realities which they
describe.

60 JOHN A. ANDREW
deluge, whose subsidence left in our quiet retreat
considerable driftwood. Some practices obtained
which were distasteful to a portion of our friends
and we parted by a natural cleavage, we migrating
to Young's Hotel.1
The individual characteristics of men like Bird,
Andrew, and Robinson were typical of the general
temper of the club. They stood, above all things, for
ideals as the guides of political action. In their creed,
what constituted leadership in a democracy was
adherence to a theory, a plan, an inward vision, —
to something beyond the accommodation of the mo
ment. The natural outgrowth of this principle was a
scorn of those who " pretend to be convinced when
the votes are counted against them," — of " the spir
itual slavery of the few to the majority,"2 and a
pitying contempt for the men who, trusting to poli
tics for a living, could not afford to be unsuccess
ful. Some sentences from Andrew's address to the
Athensean Society on this theme show what an inva
sion of the ordinary notion of democracy men of
this stamp were wiUing to make in the interests of
exceUence. " He is unfit to be the object of popular
regard who bows to the dictation of old authority or
to the voice of the people, until he is convinced by
reasons before which his mind naturally gives way."
" No man places implicit confidence in the infalli
bility of his neighbors, and the doctrine of the in-
1 F. W. Bird in the Boston Journal, October 29, 1870.
2 From Andrew's Address to the Athensean Society, printed with
Chandler's Memoir.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 61
fallibility of the people can find no basis in the prac
tical sense of mankind." " As one of the people my
self, I say that we are oftener wrong than otherwise,
and so we have the right to be." To these principles
the right to bolt is a natural coroUary ; by Bird and
his friends it was deemed a sacred privilege which
they exercised again and again.
If such organized ideahsm as the Free-Soil party
and later the radical element in the Republican
party exemplified in American politics be regarded
as an abnormal phenomenon, it must be accounted
for by the abnormal condition of things. When de
scendants of Puritans were hving under an organic
law which preserved the rights of an institution
so moraUy tainted as slavery, some group of men,
sooner or later, was bound to respond to a poUtical
raUying cry against this moral wrong. At first the
protesters were in a hopeless minority, for the great
commercial and social forces of the whole land were
against them ; but, being practical Yankees as well
as idealists, they kept to their purpose of working
through politics and under the Constitution. Their
force was enough to threaten and alarm the great
parties, if nothing more ; by the Coalition of 1850
they put their leader, Charles Sumner, into the
United States Senate. Within the next decade they
endured many vicissitudes, but in the end they
achieved a victory great in proportion to the
magnitude of the evil against which they had con
tended. The Kansas-Nebraska Act of 1854, by which the

62 JOHN A. ANDREW
Missouri Compromise was repealed and Douglas'
principle of " popular sovereignty " was enacted, to
become later the rock which should split the Demo
cracy, drew Andrew again into active political work.
No man with red blood in his veins could witness
the outrage offered the nation and not be moved to
personal protest. The Free-SoUers, taking heart of
grace, gathered themselves together and proposed a
new party to stand in opposition to the " Nebras-
cals." One of the first moves was a "Free Demo
cratic" State Convention which met in Music Hall,
Boston, on June 1, 1854, when the ink on the new
law was scarcely dry. It was Anniversary Week ; in
this same week the conservatism of Beacon Street
and State Street had been shaken to its foundations
by the arrest and trial of Anthony Burns. At this
meeting, after the audience had been edified and
inspired by speeches from Hale, Giddings, and Wil
son, Andrew, the last speaker, was listened to with
attention as he enlarged upon the legal victory which
slavery was then on the point of winning in Boston,
and explained the helplessness of Massachusetts
with no law to prevent one of her own state officers
from giving his aid in the rendition of a fugitive
slave. The anti-Nebraska convention held at Wor
cester on July 20 as the outcome of this meeting
proved, in spite of every effort to bring in men from
all parties, merely a gathering of Free-Soilers. They
were, however, Free-SoUers with their youth re
newed. They appointed a provisional State Com
mittee to make arrangements for the nominating

BOSTON : 1837-1857 63
convention to be held at the end of the summer,
and made Andrew its chairman.
To Sumner, who, through the long session of
Congress, had never ceased his denunciations of
Douglas' scheme, the Massachusetts Free-SoUers
turned as the splendid champion of their cause.
When the Southern Senators had caught him up,
after an outburst on the unconstitutionality of the
Fugitive Slave Law, and bade him say whether his
oath to support the Constitution did not bind him
to support the hated act, he had dared to utter the
scornful retort : " Is thy servant a dog that he
should do this thing ? " Such a rare sight of bravery
stirred the blood of thousands of men who, hereto
fore, accepting Daniel Webster's ominous advice,
had been satisfied to " conquer their prejudices "
against slavery as the price of union. Thanks to
the South and to Douglas, the day of compromise
was now gone forever, and men's souls were free.
To bring these new voters within the fold Sumner's
presence at the nominating convention was indis
pensable, and Andrew wrote at once to secure
him. You will have seen [he wrote on July 22 to Sum
ner], before receiving this note, the report of the
meeting at Worcester, at which a new party was
begun, and the steps preliminary to a State nominat
ing convention taken. I think, in spite of strong op
position from the Whig presses and fuglemen, which
cannot bear to give up their factitious powers and in
fluence, that there is a great popular movement com
menced, which may — under proper cultivation —

64 JOHN A. ANDREW
disclose a splendid result in the fall. — But, more
depends upon the aid you can give, than upon
that of any other man. Your recent battles in the
Senate have shut the mouth of personal opposition,
wrung applause from the unwilling, excited a State
pride and gratitude, such as rarely it is the fortune
of any one to win. Your presence at the nominating
convention ... is a point which must be agreed to,
at once. It wUl secure a most triumphant meeting,
certainly in point of numbers and enthusiasm. I
want you to write to me at once, permitting me to
say to any of our friends that you will attend the
meeting. A speech of hah0 an hour, or an hour, is
all that you need make though you could have three
hours, if you would use them.
On the appointed day, Andrew called the conven
tion together at Worcester. Sumner was present and
spoke eloquently ; all was harmony and enthusiasm.
The name " Republican " was adopted for the new
party ; but of its practical identity with the old party
of freedom a significant indication was the nomina
tion for governor of Henry WUson, who had been
the Free-Soil candidate in the preceding year. No
sooner, however, was the new party fairly launched
than perfl beset it. In this year of political disinte
gration and redintegration,1 that strange organization
of Know-Nothings, upon which historians have ex
hausted their vocabularies, came mysteriously upon
1 "The Summer of 1854 was emphatically the season of con
ventions. Conventions growing out of the Burns rendition, anti-
Nebraska, Free Democrats, Free Soil, Republican, to say nothing of
Whig, Democratic, and Dark Lantern conventions, occurred almost
every week." — F. W. Bird, in the Worcester Spy, June 6, 1857.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 65
the scene, the incarnation of the principle of destruc-
tiveness, which in the end was turned upon itself.
Not content with drawing into its lodges tens of
thousands of voters, — anti-Nebraska men, ripe for
Republicanism, — it ensnared Henry Wilson him
self. At the end of October, a few days before the
election, he sent to the chairman of the State Com
mittee a letter, dechning to run at the head of the
Republican ticket. The committee met and, after an
agitated session, voted not to accept the resignation.
It was too late to put another man into the field,
and, though in these times of uncertainty no man
was to be trusted, and ugly rumors were afloat as to
a deal whereby the Know-Nothings, in return for
Wilson's aid, were to give him the Senatorship which
was about to become vacant, the distracted leaders
had nothing for it but still to hold to a man who
had in aU probability sold them out. In the election
the Know-Nothings swept to victory with 81,000
votes in round numbers ; the Whigs had 26,000 ;
the Democrats 13,000 ; and Wilson, who as Free-
Soil candidate the year before had polled 30,000
votes, this year received 6000. For thus bringing
24,000 men into the Know-Nothing camp the astute
politician received in due time the recompense of
reward, — a seat in the United States Senate.
This verdict of fate and the Know-Nothings upon
Andrew's attempt at political management he ac
cepted phflosophicaUy. From 1855, when under
other guidance the Republicans made a fresh start,
until 1857, when at last the strayed Know-Nothings

66 JOHN A. ANDREW
were gathered into their proper fold in sufficient
numbers to elect N. P. Banks as governor, Andrew
held aloof. In the stirring Fremont campaign of
1856, whatever may have been his interest in the
fortunes of the national Republican party, he and
the bolters of the Bird Club were at odds with the
state organization, and Andrew did no more than let
his name be used as candidate for Attorney-General
on the " Honest Men's Ticket " which Frank Bird
put into the field.1 Just as, after the beginning of
1848, he had dropped out while his comrades who
continued in the work had grown in political skill
and importance ; so after 1854 he had the same for
tune, and was left behind by another set of men.
His work at the law absorbed him more than ever,
and from it he was getting a better return in both
profit and honor. Besides acquiring a remarkably
full knowledge of state anti-slavery legislation, he
had shown skill in cases involving matters of consti
tutional interpretation and of international law. In
1855 he defended the British consul in Boston on
a charge of violating the neutrality laws during the
Crimean War ; a year later he argued the petition
for a writ of habeas corpus to test the legality of
the imprisonment of the Free State officers of Kan
sas at Topeka ; and there were other cases of equal
1 The Republicans, for the sake of drawing the Know-Nothing
vote to Fremont, had agreed to put no candidate in the field to run
against Gardner for governor. Bird and his friends bolted, and the
ticket which he made out a few days before the election, with Josiah
Quincy at its head, polled some five thousand votes.

BOSTON : 1837-1857 67
importance. If Andrew's friends of the Bird Club
looked forward to his being of future service to the
" Cause," it was undoubtedly not in the field of poli
tics, but through his position and attainments as a
lawyer.

CHAPTER in
POLITICS : 1858-1860
The beginning of Andrew's larger service to the
anti-slavery cause was in the fall of 1857, when he
accepted the nomination on the Banks ticket as
representative in the lower house of the General
Court for Ward Six in Boston. He had taken no
part in the state campaign ; he was nominated only
four or five days before the election ; he and George
P. Clapp, the other candidate on the ticket from that
ward, were elected by satisfactory majorities. Banks
carried the State by a vote of 60,978 to Gardner's
37,716 ; the Legislature was for the first time in
both branches strongly " Republican," though that
term was not then used as a distinctive party name.
In order to follow the part which Andrew was now to
play, it is necessary to get some notion of the con
dition of state politics when he came upon the stage.
The triumph of the Know-Nothings in the year
1854 resulted in making Massachusetts predominat
ingly anti-slavery. The prestige of the Whigs was
gone forever; the Democratic party was rendered
insignificant. The real contests in the State in the
next few years therefore arose from the division made
in the anti-slavery ranks between Know-Nothings

POLITICS : 1858-1860 69
and Repubhcans by the Know-Nothing cry of " Amer
ica for the Americans." The history of the Know-
Nothing party is one not of growth but of decay.
It reached its maturity in its first campaign ; from
that time on its story is one of decline. By 1857,
this fact, together with the conservative and Whig-
gish tendency of its administration of state affairs
under Governor Gardner, had come out so strongly
that the more decided anti-slavery men in the party
were ready to return to their old aUegiance, pro
vided the nominee for governor should be accept
able to them. Nathaniel P. Banks, who had just
finished his term in the Thirty-Fourth Congress,
during which he had been speaker of the House,
had many points of availability. In these difficult
years he had so successfully steered his course that
he had committed himself irretrievably against
neither Repubhcans nor " Americans." The party
which under his lead achieved victory was naturally
far from homogeneous. It caUed itself sometimes
" Banks American," sometimes " American-Repub
lican," and finaUy " Republican." Its political status
was weU described by "Warrington"1 to the readers
of the Springfield Republican, in August, 1858, and
the characterization applies with even more force to
the state of things at the beginning of the year,
when Andrew took his seat in the state House of
Representatives. The party, said " Warrington,"
1 Whenever hereafter " Warrington " is quoted, the quotation is
from the Springfield Republican, and the date is that of the letter,
not of the issue in which it appeared.

70 JOHN A. ANDREW
needed " a definition of itself, a disciphne, a bound
ary, a habitation, doors to let people in, walls to
keep them in, and a recognized head of the house
to look up to as a provider. It has none of these
things now, but inhabits a sort of ten-acre lot, half
the bars of which are down three-quarters of the
time. You admit one squad, and another escapes at
the same moment." In general, however, the Re
publican members of the Legislature of 1858 repre
sented either "the old-fashioned Whigism . . . which
sets its face with tolerable steadiness against all
amelioration and reform of our statutes, and thinks
a return to the respectability of the best days of
Gov. Briggs is the highest thing to be looked for,"
or " the more progressive and radical tendencies " J
of such men as Andrew.
Now that at last both legislative and executive
branches of the state government were in the hands
of men elected on the broad principle of opposition
to slavery rather than on the narrow doctrine of
" America for the Americans," there was strong
popular demand that they should exercise their power
by doing one long-delayed piece of anti-slavery jus
tice. At the time of the rendition of Anthony Burns
in 1854 public indignation had vented itself upon
Edward Greely Loring, the United States Commis
sioner before whom the negro had been brought.
It happened that Loring also held the state office of
Judge of Probate for Suffolk County. The Legisla
ture of the next year, wishing to prevent, so far as
i « Warrington," February 26, 1858.

POLITICS: 1858-1860 71
was possible through state enactments, another ren
dition under the Fugitive Slave Law, and desiring,
in common with other Northern states, to pass some
act of retahation upon the South for its violation by
the Nebraska bfll of the Compromise of 1850, enacted
what was known as the Personal Liberty Law (stat
ute of 1855, cap. 489). State courts, state jails, and
state militia were by this law forbidden to be used
in the case of any negro claimed as a fugitive, and
no man serving as United States Commissioner was
allowed to hold a judicial office within the gift of the
State. Unfortunately for the credit of this law the
Legislature by which it was framed was a picnicking
affair, whose chief aim seemed to be to scandalize
people in the interests of the Know-Nothing order.
It was not strong in able lawyers, and some of the
provisions of the act were so drawn as to be of
doubtful constitutionality. Other provisions, such as
the double penalty of a fine of from one to two
thousand dollars and imprisonment for from one to
two years for any member of the volunteer militia
who aided in the rendition of a slave, even when
acting under military orders, were grotesque ex
cesses. By the enactment of this statute Judge Lor
ing was put in the position of holding his office of
Judge of Probate illegally. Of the two methods by
which his removal could be effected, impeachment
or an address to the governor by both branches of
the Legislature, the second was immediately set in
operation. This precipitate action on the part of the
Legislature, by which it created an offence and then

72 JOHN A. ANDREW
instantly turned to the work of punishment, met
with strong opposition from the more temperate of
the Free-Soilers, particularly from Richard Henry
Dana, Jr. When, however, the address reached Gov
ernor Gardner, who, though he was as darkly Know-
Nothing as the Legislature, had been originally a
conservative Boston Whig, he refused to act. Lor
ing, on his part, would not budge, maintaining that
the section of the Personal Liberty Law in question
was unconstitutional. In 1856 the matter rested ;
in the next year the Legislature, repeating the action
of that of 1855, met with a similar rebuff from
Gardner's conservatism. By 1858 Loring's con
tumacy in holding out against the law for three
years, together with constant attacks on him by
•Garrison, PhiUips, Parker, and even moderate anti-
slavery men, had aroused a strong popular feeling
throughout the State, and it was plain that the
'great pohtical excitement of the session would centre
about the address to the governor for the removal of
.Judge Loring.
In the Legislature of 1858 there was a return to
the proportion of able and high-minded men which
had characterized Massachusetts legislatures before
the Know-Nothing deluge. The most striking figure
in the lower branch, however, was that of a Demo
crat. Caleb Cushing of Newburyport, who for four
years had been, as Attorney-General in Pierce's Cab
inet, the leading spirit of his administration, now
devoted himself with the same zeal to the service of
his native town as one of its representatives. He

POLITICS: 1858-1860 73
was fifty-eight years old ; he was one of the ablest
lawyers in the United States ; he was an out-and-out
adherent of the principles of the Southern wing of
the Democracy. The members of the Legislature
could not fail to be impressed by the fact that a
man of his commanding talents should be wUling
to take his place among them to help in the law
making business of the State, and his influence was
out of aU proportion to the smaU numbers of the
Democratic minority. So cogent was his speech that
in the smaU matters of debate, not one of which
escaped his notice, he regularly led the House a
game of " f oUow-your-leader ; " on the other hand,
when he pressed his Southern principles too vigor
ously upon the honest anti-slavery majority, they
had no means of answering him but by the silent
power of votes. " It must certainly be confessed,"
wrote Robinson to the New York Tribune, " that
this method sometimes looks cowardly, and an im
pression has gone abroad among some of the people,
that if there is no answer to be made to Mr. Cush-
ing's arguments, perhaps his measures might as weU
be adopted. . . . When the great question of Judge
Loring's removal comes up, Cushing must be met
in argument, or the House and the people wUl not
be satisfied." 1
In this last sentence is found the reason why An
drew was wUling to turn aside from his briefs and
undertake service in the Legislature. Since the cruel
silencing of Sumner at the hands of Brooks in May,
i February 8, 1858.

74 JOHN A. ANDREW
1856, the old Free-Soil element in the new party
had had no strong and uncompromising voice. Dana
and Charles AUen were devoted to the law ; Stephen
C. Phillips was dead ; Charles Francis Adams was
for the time withdrawn from public hfe. With Wil
son, Banks, and Burlingame conviction was too often
tempered by interest. For lack of the right man
the radical wing was likely to lose its prestige, and
the new party was in danger of becoming little more
than the old Whig party, galvanized into life by
anti-Nebraska indignation. By Andrew's friends at
Number 4, Court Street, it was thought possible that
he might become the under-study of Sumner.
In the first weeks of the session Andrew kept well
in the background ; but he at once began preparing
to meet Cushing. Some letters to Sumner show his
hand.1
Feb. 4, 1858.
I was obliged to you for the suggestion you made
the other day in my office ... I shaU esteem be
yond aU price any thought, fact or reference you
may send me. If you can give me anything you
would like to see rammed down into the gun, espe
ciaUy anything from Cushing's past pubhc speeches
or anything said by anyone of authority, which
1 The thought of Sumner at this time touches one to the quick. The
effect of his injuries still kept him from his seat in the Senate, ex
cept when his vote was needed. He was compelled to content him
self with digging out references for others to use in the " Cause ; "
and, for the rest, to work up interest in the art of engraving from
such specimens as he could find in Boston, New York, and Philadel
phia. The sight of him, coming idle into Number 4, where all his
old friends were hard at work, was enough to bid them gird them
selves anew to crush the powers that had struck him down.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 75
might be wisely quoted, I shall receive it thankfully.
By and bye, on Loring, or on the personal hberty
law, a legitimate [occasion] wiU spring up. Feb. 9.
... I was shamed and pained by the declaration
of Mr. Vose ; that toe oppose all agitation of the
slavery question ; that we wish quiet, and that by
suppressing discussion, is not the truth. Our people
do not feel so. We want no sham debates. The Re
publican majority, responsible for the conducting of
the session, wish to have the debate come oppor
tunely, and to make progress in the business of the
people first. But they do not wish, I am sure, to he
down in the silence of Pharaoh and his host, beneath
the waters of the Dead Sea ; and let the waves of
advancing despotism roll over them forever.
I have a good deal of matter on hand or in a
rough condition, accumulated from time to time —
on which to draw, as it may be needed. But, in
several hours search last Sunday p. m. and evening,
I c'd not find the evidence of Jeff. Davis' disunion-
ism. I wish you w'd refer me to his declarations,
and to those of Toombs and other leading disunion-
ists of the Democratic party.
There was, I remember, a public dinner to Brooks of
S. C, at a place in S. C. called " 96," at which senti
ments the most unpatriotic, as weU as inhuman, were
pronounced, and which meeting was attended, per
haps not addressed by Mr. (now Mr. Speaker) Orr.
I don't find that I have preserved the newspaper
account of it. Can you refer me to it? Probably
in Washington it can be got at. . . .
In spite of Andrew's purpose to hold himself in
reserve at first, it was inevitable that he should some-

76 JOHN A. ANDREW
times come into collision with Cushing in small
matters of debate. One such prehminary encounter
"Warrington " related with much satisfaction.
Yesterday, Mr. Cushing varied the exercises a lit
tle, by giving us something in the " national vein."
The petitioners for Judge Loring's removal must be
snubbed. What right had they to have an opinion
as to the propriety of one of their State Judges be
coming a slave catcher ? What right had the anti-
slavery men to " print petitions " and send them
about the state, to extort public opinion which would
not otherwise be made manifest? What right had
a dozen citizens of Amesbury to ask the great Mr.
Cushmg to do au act which would hugely displease
the slave-holding aristocracy of the country ? These
men must be snubbed, and Mr. Cushing proceeded
to snub them. So he called them aU sorts of names,
and then sat down apparently in great wrath. Be
fore long a petition concerning the Danvers Rail
road was presented, which was also " in print." The
Argus-eyed Cushing did not notice it. Perhaps if he
had, he would not have said anything about it, in
asmuch as there was nothing in it displeasing to the
slaveholders. But John A. Andrew caUed attention
to the fact, and there was a general smile aU around
the house at Cushing's discomfiture.1
When the session was two months old, Andrew sent
another report of himself to Sumner. March 6.
I have had a great deal of legislative work to do,
as chairman of Prob. and Chancery Courts ; I am a
new member, feeling myself but little known to most
of the house, while Mr. Vose of Springfield, Duncan
1 Springfield Republican, January 28, 1858.

POLITICS: 1858-1860 77
of Haverhill and Hale of Boston, are experienced
members, (one of them an Ex-M. C. & Ch'n of Fed.
Rel.) one the Ed. of the most influential journal1
of his party in this part of the state, and Chn. on
Finance, another, Ch'n of the Judiciary, not a new
member, and having great influence by his legislative
and geographic position. All these and some others
have, from the start, looked on me as a dangerous
character. They have watched me at every step, and
I have ... on two or three occasions had to face all
of them on matters not pohtical but of progressive
legislation. As yet, I have kept ahead of them, in
the support of the house, on such occasions ; that is,
by my forbearance, concUiation and devotion to busi
ness, yielding personal preferences as to times and
occasions, to the opinion of men whose position en
titled them to a good deal of influence, I have been
enabled to have a stand in the house, to carry my
report as a committee man and to earn a reputation
for some capacity and judgment among the great
masses of the members. And now, after two months,
having got known by and acquainted with the most
of them, so that I do not now fear being thought a
mere intruder, I have begun " to speak for myself."
Andrew's opportunity to " speak for himself " was
on the occasion of his presenting a petition from
colored citizens of Massachusetts which protested
against the Dred Scott decision. His motion to print
the petition he used, as he told Sumner, simply as a
peg on which to hang a speech. The speech itself
was an elaborate legal analysis of the decision of the
Supreme Court, which had been pronounced just a
1 The Boston Advertiser.

78 JOHN A. ANDREW
year before. Into the technical maze through which
he made his way, no one except the student of con
stitutional interpretation would now care to foUow
him ; the damaging diversity of opinion among
the judges, however, he made perfectly clear, and
he emerged triumphant, having reached the con
clusion that the manifold inconsistencies of the de
cision rendered it ineffective as a weapon for the
Democratic party. Dealing then with its wider ap
plication, Andrew refuted, by a long series of his
torical citations, the doctrine that a negro could not
be a citizen, and closed with a vigorous attack upon
the decision as being made by the court for political
purposes in the interest of slavery. Long and tech
nical as the speech was, its mastery of the subject
and the energy of its delivery made a deep impres
sion.1 It naturally brought Caleb Cushing to his
feet. He made against Andrew the threadbare accu
sation that he was trying to estabhsh the equality of
the black and the white races, and then, following
the phflosophizing bent of his mind, he characterized
Andrew's remarks as " the emotional outgrowth of
two elements of the Puritan character, which were to
carry out abstract principles to their extremes, and
a matter of fact condition of mind unequalled by
any other class of men." Andrew, already excited
by his long speech, needed but this spark to kindle
all his eloquence.
1 " The best, and clearest, and most incisive analysis ever made of
the Dred Scott decision was by John A. Andrew while a member of
the Massachusetts Legislature." — New York Nation, April 7, 1892.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 79
I accept [said he] the gentleman's definition of
the Puritan character — his description of them as
men and as a society. Inspired by that sentiment
which drove them across the stormy sea, and im
pelled them to build a home in the wilderness, be
cause they could not be free elsewhere, . . . their
descendants will adhere to this very protest against
the doctrines which the gentleman so ably maintains
on the floor of this house and elsewhere. . . . This
year is the child of that year which saw the May
flower dancing upon the waters of Plymouth bay,
freighted with a cargo of humanity — small by count,
but infinite in truth and moral power. I care not
how smaU the minority with which to-day I am as
sociated in the opinions I have the happiness to own.
The sun of a new morning begins to dawn. I see
its foreshine already on the mountain tops, when
these opinions will be accepted and justified by the
great heart and intellect of regenerated America.
This unanticipated peroration, with its quick answer
to Cushing's challenge, reflected a glory over An
drew's whole legal argument, and furnished the per
sonal note needed to set the house ringing with
enthusiasm. With matters of state business out of the way,
the Legislature was at the point where it must face
the question of Judge Loring's removal. In spite of
the numerous petitions urging bold action which
were already in the hands of the special committee
on Removal by Address, the House could by no
means be depended upon. In addition to the de
clared opposition of the Democrats, who lost no
opportunity to hint the unconstitutionality of that

80 JOHN A. ANDREW
part of the Personal Liberty Law under which the
removal would have to be made, there was the much
more threatening secret opposition of the conserva
tive Republican leaders. Unwilling to be responsible
for any such thorough-going anti-slavery demon
stration as the direct removal of Loring by address,
they hit upon the expedient of effecting the same
end by a consolidation of the court of probate with
the court of insolvency. In thus acting, they were
carrying out the wishes of Governor Banks, who,
with an eye to national fame, — possibly to the
Repubhcan nomination in 1860, — was reluctant to
have laid at his door any act which might injure
him in the Middle States and at Washing-ton. Ac
cordingly Banks saw to it himself that the joint
committee to which the scheme of consolidation was
to be referred should be so constructed as to report
favorably. " Soon after the committees were ap
pointed," writes Eben F. Stone, who was chairman,
on the part of the Senate, of this committee, " Banks
sent for me, and told me that he regarded this mea
sure of consolidation as a measure of great impor
tance, and hoped that the committee would attend
to their duty without delay, and make their report
to the Legislature as soon as possible." 1 The com
mittee set about its work diligently ; the change
proposed was a radical one, and many hearings and
much discussion were necessary. Andrew, who was
chairman of the committee on the part of the House,
1 Sketch of John Albion Andrew, by Eben F. Stone. Historical Col
lections of the Essex Institute, vol. xxvii. p. 6.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 81
though assenting to the desirabihty of consolidation,
was less in sympathy with the Governor's desire for
haste. The political bearing of the measure was, of
course, patent to everybody, as was also the fact that
whichever of the two bills should be first reported was
hkely to be the only one passed. It was thus a race
between the two committees. " Nearly every day,
for some two weeks," says Stone, " the Governor
sent a special messenger to me ... to inquire con
cerning the progress of business, and enjoined upon
me the importance of despatch." The radical Re
pubhcans, on their part, were not weU organized ;
indeed, Andrew was almost their only active man.
" He is working nobly," wrote T. P. Chandler to
Sumner. " By prudence, industry, and good judg
ment, he has done very much towards bringing the
members up to the point." 1 Bird also wrote to Sum
ner : " We lack a few brave men in our Legislature.
Andrew alone fights." 2 It was not Andrew, how
ever, but Robert C. Pitman of New Bedford, who,
by a bold stroke of parhamentary tactics, secured
precedence of one day for the report of the com
mittee on the Address. On the tenth and the
eleventh of March the Address was debated. The
chief speech was made by Pitman, who summed up
in eloquent form the moral as well as the legal
grounds for Loring's removal. Cushing, on behalf
of the Democrats, Charles Hale, on behalf of the
L Chandler to Sumner, March 10, 1858. Pierce-Sumner Collection,
in the Harvard College Library.
3 Bird to Sumner, March 8, 1858. Pierce-Sumner Collection.

82 JOHN A. ANDREW
moderate Republicans, opposed the measure. The
remarks that carried most weight, however, were
those of the aged Marcus Morton, ex-governor, and
ex-judge of the Supreme Court of Massachusetts.
He announced his intention of voting No, for though
Judge Loring's behavior had been contumacious,
he was not guilty enough to deserve removal ; yet
he declared with emphasis that the Legislature had
full power to employ the Address for the removal of
Loring and that the section of the Personal Lib
erty Law in contempt of which Loring held his two
offices could not justly be called unconstitutional.
The weight of this opinion was increased by the
sUence of Caleb Cushing, who, when challenged from
the Republican side of the House to declare the sec
tion unconstitutional, evaded the question. When
Andrew spoke, he took his stand squarely on the
ground that the offices of United States Commis
sioner and Judge of a state Probate Court were in
compatible, citing by way of Ulustration the possi
bility that in the existing state of things the same
man who as Judge of Probate might have charge
of the rights of negro orphans might as United
States Commissioner be called upon to decide with
regard to these identical negroes whether they were
slave or free. With these points made, — that the
section was both constitutional and reasonable, — it
was possible when the vote was taken in the House
to secure for the Address 127 yeas as against 101
nays, eleven members being absent. When the Sen
ate also had passed the bill, it went to the Governor,

POLITICS : 1858-1860 83
concerning whose probable action upon it aU the
world was in the dark. What he did in this crisis
was thoroughly characteristic. In spite of aU that
he had done to prevent the removal of Loring by
address, he now took his stand at the head of the
winning side with a grace and alacrity that sought
to convey the impression that he had never stood
anywhere else. Having thus yielded to the trium
phant majority, he threw a sop to his conservative
friends by calling the attention of the Legislature to
the inconsistencies and excessive penalties of sections
10-14 of the Personal Liberty Law. The office of
justice of the peace, the Governor thought, should
be excepted, as being beyond the chance of incom
patibility with the office of commissioner ; the pro
hibition of attorneys who acted in behalf of slave
owners from practising in the courts of the State he
wished to have repealed ; to the swingeing punish
ment meted out to members of the militia who aided
in the return of a fugitive slave, he strongly objected.
He thus brought anew before the Legislature in its
last hours the vexed question of the Personal Lib
erty Law.
The Governor's message was transmitted to the
House on March 20. Expectation ran high ; it was
felt that this day would be the chmax of the session.
Such a golden opportunity for himself the leader of
the Democratic opposition was sure to take advan
tage of ; now if ever must he be met and the course
of the Repubhcans justified before aU men. The
message was read in due order, and then Andrew

84 JOHN A. ANDREW
made the proper motion for referring it to a joint
committee. Those who were spectators of the dra
matic scene that followed were never weary of de
scribing its more intense moments. By a combina
tion of several narratives, the scene may be elucidated
even if there is lacking the atmosphere of tingling
excitement in which the debate was carried on.
" Anticipating a debate upon the reception of the
message," writes Stone, " I had left the Senate Cham
ber, and had taken a seat in the House. Cushing's
place was on the Speaker's right, about three seats
from the front, a good position to see and command
his audience. . . . He had measured swords with the
self-appointed leaders on the republican side, and,
conscious of his superiority, anticipated an easy vic
tory. The audience, which had filled the haU to its
utmost capacity, was respectful, attentive and eager
to hear."
Cushing made one or two preliminary remarks on
the propriety of Andrew's motion ; then, " in a lu
gubrious tone, but with an affected solemnity of
manner," 1 he announced the words of his text :
"And now, sir, the deed is done."2 "'Amen!'
shouted the Methodist member from the Cape, Mr.
Dodge of Chatham, in a stentorian voice, and with
aU possible unction, eliciting such explosions of
laughter and bursts of applause as required all the
Speaker's energy with his maUet for some time to
restore order. Even Mr. Cushing was disconcerted,
and compeUed to join in the general hUarity."1
1 Liberator, March 26, 1858. * Advertiser, March 18.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 85
When order was at last restored, he repeated his
text and launched into his attack. In the editorial
column of the Advertiser which lay on the desk of
every member, the blame for the removal of Judge
Lormg was charged to the factious agitation of the
opposition. Seizing upon this accusation, Cushing
speedily showed the foUy of it, and with great vigor
proved that the removal was really due to the party
in power. Then, with insincere congratulations, he
welcomed Governor Banks' protest against the ex
cesses of the Personal Liberty Law, rejoicing that
he himself no longer stood in a minority of one on
that subject. He sweepingly denounced the law,
which he called "the Personal Slavery Act," and,
working himself up into a frenzy of defiance^ de
clared his wilhngness to incur its every penalty,
whether as a lawyer, in being excluded from the
courts of the State, or as a mUitiaman, in being sub
jected to excessive fines and. imprisonment. " When
he took his seat, there was a profound pause. . . .
The radical men of the party . . . were angry and
exasperated. . . . The party was responsible, and all
the republicans felt that, if possible, it should be
defended against such a strong and sharp attack." J
"C. C. Hazewell, political editor of the Traveller,
when Cushing finished, said to me, ' The man who
can successfully reply to that  speech ought
to be made Governor of Massachusetts.' " 2 " But
1 Stone, p. 9.
2 " Franklin " in the Saturday Evening Gazette, writing in correc
tion of the speeches made before the Massachusetts Club, January
28, 1888.

86 JOHN A. ANDREW
who could do it ? Who, among the repubhcans, was
a match for Cushing ? They looked around the haU
in despair, now at Vose of Springfield, now at Wells
of Greenfield, and now at Hale of Boston, the three
men, who, until then, had taken the lead on their
side of the House, with the hope that one of them
would attempt a reply. But neither of them made a
sign. . . . The suspense became painful. The speech
was a challenge, and it looked for a moment as if it
would pass unanswered, and leave Cushing master of
the field. . . .
" Andrew had, until then, taken no conspicuous
part in the proceedings, and was only known to a
few of the members. Very few had thought of him
as the man that could answer this speech. I saw,
however, that he was uneasy. . . . Sitting by his side
was Albert G. Browne of Salem, an intense anti-
slavery man, who was not then a member of the
House, but who had been in the Governor's Coun
cU, and was an intimate personal friend of Andrew.
I saw Browne speak to him, and in a moment to the
surprise of nearly every one present, Andrew took
the floor. . . . For a moment he proceeded somewhat
hesitatingly. I listened with great interest. I had
been with him that session, in committee for three
months, and had heard him discuss this question re
peatedly, with great eloquence and abihty. I knew
the stuff was in him, and that he only needed to be
excited to a point where he could overcome a certain
diffidence, to make an effective speech. He had a
habit which I had observed in committee, when he

POLITICS : 1858-1860 87
became earnest in discussion, of turning up the sleeve
of his coat. Presently I saw Andrew turning up his
sleeve, and said to a fellow senator by my side, ' An
drew is getting warm ; he is turning up his coat
sleeve; now you wfll have it.' In a moment his
voice broke out in a higher key, and struck a note
beyond the compass of its natural tones, penetrating,
resonant, triumphant ; and for more than half an
hour, he spoke with a rapid, vehement and over
powering eloquence, which I never heard equalled
before, or since." *
To reply to his opponent's points one by one was
Andrew's cue. He began by attacking the manifest
insincerity of Cushing's triumphant tone. " I have
been struck," he said, " with admiration at the dex
terity with which the gentleman has been endeavor
ing to steer between his griefs and his dissatisfac
tions upon the one side, and his expected exultation
upon the other." Then he proceeded to make a direct
personal rejoinder to the first of Cushing's charges.
The deed that was done, he said, was not the action
of a party ; for once, the Governor, the Legislature,
and the people were at one. " There is one purpose
which animates and inspires every heart, and that is
the purpose to preserve and protect liberty. ... If
any gentleman on this floor expects that one single
provision of that infernal statute [the Fugitive Slave
Law] shall ever become, for a single moment, other
than hated by Massachusetts, I reply to him in the
language of the poet : ' Lay not that flattering unc-
i Stone, pp. 9, 10.

88 JOHN A. ANDREW
tion to your soul.' " To meet Cushing's charge that
now for the first time a judge had been removed
for pohtical reasons, he took from the storehouse of
weapons which he and Sumner had been gathering
the neat example of a case in Maine precisely paraUel
except that there the removal had been made by the
Democratic party, with the sanction of Caleb Cush
ing. In a speech of this nature it was impossible that
Andrew should not touch upon the Southern pohcy
of the Democratic leaders, and in prophesying their
speedy defeat he was, according to Stone, " particu
larly effective and impressive. ... In a moment
of exaltation, appearing to see in his mind's eye, in
the near future, the shadow of coming events, his
voice rang out with an exulting cry." J " They may
go on ; but the day of reckoning is at hand. Behind
that party stalks the headsman ! ' Because sentence
is not speedUy executed against an evil work, there
fore the hearts of the sons of men have it fully set
in them to do evil.' But the judgment will come.
We have laid our ears to-day near enough to the
ground to hear the muttering thunder of its terrible
reverberations." Cushing's praise of Banks Andrew matched with
praise that had the true ring. The Governor's act, he
said, had set Massachusetts in the foremost rank of
the anti-slavery forces. " We have grown more than
the hfe-time of a generation of men since the inaugu
ration of Governor Gardner," he exclaimed. Then,
with great good-humor he turned the laugh on
1 Stone, p. 11.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 89
Cushing for the latter's safe offer to do service as a
Massachusetts militiaman in behalf of slave-owners.
" When the Sheriff of Massachusetts," he began,
swinging into one of his long legal periods, " holds in
his hand the writ of personal replevin, or of habeas
corpus, issued out of the Supreme Judicial Court
of Massachusetts, to take into his possession . . .
a man who, on the soil of Massachusetts, was in
actual possession of his freedom, up to the time of
his seizure — prima facie, presumptively free —
. . . and when the Sheriff of the county calls upon
the posse comitatus to assist in the service of that
writ, and when the Governor orders out the troops to
protect that officer in the performance of his duty,
I expect the pleasure of walking arm in arm with
my learned friend from Newburyport." While the
House was recovering from the fit of merriment into
which it had been thrown by this picture of mUitary
fraternization, the Speaker requested Andrew, since
it was time for the noon recess, to finish his remarks
at the afternoon session. This was unnecessary ;
Andrew needed to add only one clinching sentence.
"I echo the declaration of the gentleman from
Newburyport, that the deed is done ! Yes, sir ! It was
well done — and it was done quickly ! " J " When
he took his seat," continues Stone, " there was a storm
of applause. The radical men had found their pro
phet. The House was wild with excitement. For a
moment, the speaker was unable to preserve order ;
1 The quotations from this speech are taken from the Advertiser
of March 20, 1858.

90 JOHN A. ANDREW
some members cried for joy ; others cheered, waved
their handkerchiefs and threw whatever they could
find into the air." Cushing joined the crowd about
Andrew and, shaking hands with him, added his con
gratulations to theirs.
Andrew's triumph, as briUiant as it was unexpected,
was whoUy a personal one. "If a speech is to be
measured by its effect upon its hearers," is Stone's
comment, " that speech of Andrew is beyond all
comparison the most eloquent and the most remark
able that has been made in Massachusetts in this
generation." It was not only that he had vanquished
the dreaded leader of the Philistines with the ease
and sureness of a David, and restored the prestige of
the old Free-Soil element in the Republican party ;
he had sounded the note of anti-slavery conviction
in the old fashion of Sumner, with a warmth and
vigor of emotion that was aU his own. No matter
how near to victory caution and compromise may
bring a party, a mightier weapon to prevail is truth
rightly proclaimed and rightly defended. To the
man uttering this principle so grateful to the in
stincts of our race, and yet so rarely proposed as a
working hypothesis, the response of his hearers was
that of men welcoming with their whole hearts a new
leader. The work of the Legislature was now practically
over. In the week which remained, the chief event
was the action on Governor Banks' recommendations
about the Personal Liberty Law. At the evening
session before the last day, the House, with some

POLITICS : 1858-1860 91
murmuring at the haste necessary, proceeded to pass
the bfll reported. It showed its anti-slavery temper,
however, by adopting Andrew's amendment retain
ing the section which shut out attorneys from the
state courts if they had served as counsel against
negroes held under the Fugitive Slave Law ; but when
the Senate refused to concur, it immediately backed
down.1 The last morning was devoted to compli
mentary speeches, in which the man who both gave
and received the most praise was Caleb Cushing.
Indeed, there was not a member of the House who
was not sensible of the flattery implied in the dili
gence and courtesy with which the great man had
devoted himself to its business. Andrew in his speech
declared his expectation of not returning to the
Legislature. Though he gave no reasons, it was plain
1 The positive value of the Personal Liberty Law in protecting
free negroes in Massachusetts is well illustrated by a passage from
Andrew's inaugural address of 1861. " On the propriety of exerting
all the constitutional power which we possess (but none other than
that), for the protection of the liberties of the people of the Com
monwealth against kidnappers, there can be no debate ; and its ne
cessity is illustrated by the surrender of persons claimed as fugitive
slaves under the Act of 1850, who are known to have been free. In
one case which I recall, the commissioner denied to the accused per
son time to send for his free papers, and declared that they would not
be admissible on such a hearing. In another instance, the person
carried off was found by the claimant, as soon as he saw him, to be
the wrong man, and was honestly allowed to regain his liberty. In
still another, a woman who is ascertained to be of unmixed Caucasian
blood, with her daughter and grandson, were saved by ransom, only,
from the operation of a decision directing their rendition into slavery.
And I may add that in at least one case in this Commonwealth, a
man was sent out of our jurisdiction, as a slave, the warrant against
whom did not appear on its face to have been issued by any magis
trate authorized by the Act of Congress."

92 JOHN A. ANDREW
that he had accomphshed the work for which he
had taken the office, and that having accomphshed
it, he felt bound to return with his whole devotion
to the law.
From this time, throughout the State, the name of
Andrew was always received with enthusiasm. At
the time of the Repubhcan State Convention in the
fall of 1858, at which he had made a successful
presiding officer, Robinson wrote of him : —
I think this gentleman possesses now more of the
confidence and good wUl of the distinctive anti-slav
ery men of the Republican party, than any other
man except Senators Sumner and Wilson. And he
is personaUy very popular, and puts himself upon in
stant good terms with all men with whom he meets.1
The social gift of which Robinson speaks contrib
uted distinctly to Andrew's popularity, and interest
in the man himself always disposed an audience to
listen to him indulgently. For aU that, the basis of
his favor undoubtedly rested on the skiU with which
he could touch anti-slavery questions with an elo
quence that carried an audience off its feet. He
never hghtened his discourse with stories or illustra
tions, he was fond of rather long poetical quota
tions; yet his rapid succession of short climaxes,
loosely bound together, all preparing the way for
one strong stroke at the end, never faUed to hold an
audience captive. A story told by Eben F. Stone of
this same convention of 1858 gives some notion of
what Andrew's power was like.
1 New York Tribune, September, 1858.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 93
After the business of the convention was con
cluded the delegates waited in expectation of some
words of advice and encouragement from their natu
ral leaders. The nominations had excited no special
interest, and had taken place as a matter of course
without any serious opposition. The proceedings had
been tame and uninteresting, and the members were
looking for some good speeches that would arouse
their courage and enthusiasm. They caUed for their
favorite speakers, WUson and Banks and Elliott and
others. WUson responded and made a good speech,
but without any marked effect.1 EUiott, of New Bed
ford, foUowed. He spoke weU, but he faUed to ex
cite any special enthusiasm. The convention was
disappointed and dissatisfied. Presently some one
caUed out Andrew, and immediately it was taken up
and repeated from all parts of the hall. Andrew was
embarrassed. As presiding officer it was not his
place to speak at that time. He hesitated, but the
demand was too general and too peremptory to be
denied. He stepped to the front of the platform, and
his appearance was greeted with a shout of applause
which changed at once the character of the audience.
His feehngs had evidently been somewhat exercised
by the faUure of the previous speakers to produce
the desired effect and their failure gave him the
needed impulse. He was in the mood, and when he
began, his voice rang out with that high and pene
trating note, so rich and so inspiring, which later in
life, when his vocal organs had lost something of
their strength and flexibility, was beyond his reach ;
and for half an hour, elevated and transported by
the force and fervor of his emotions, he held his
1 In point of fact, Wilson was not present. " Elliott " is T. D.
Eliot. The other speaker was Eli Thayer.

94 JOHN A. ANDREW
audience as by a speU. Cheer upon cheer echoed and
reechoed through the haU, as sentence foUowed sen
tence in quick succession, each better than the last ;
till the convention, which a short time before was
half alive and undemonstrative, caught the fire of
the speaker, and, wUd with enthusiasm, was ready to
obey his order and to execute his will.1
This incident typifies the nature of Andrew's
power, and his way of using it. Both the speech and
the effect of the speech belonged to the moment.
The speech could not be prepared, the effect could
be neither repeated nor preserved. His eloquence
" gushed forth from his mind hke a flood of delir
ious music, in obedience to an irrepressible law of
his organization." This quality had its defects ; for,
as Stone goes on to say, " He was too easily moved
himself, always to observe and maintain that disci
phne and self-control, which, in the opinion of a
select and deliberating assembly, — the ordeal by
which the highest eloquence is tested, — is needed
to separate that sort of impassioned speaking which
is true eloquence of the highest kind, from another
form which is liable to degenerate into rant and
declamation." Nevertheless, in his proper field, in
a mass-convention or before a mixed audience, he
was " superior to any man of his time in this state,
except PhiUips." 2
1 Stone, p. 19.
* Ibid. pp. 17, 18. A capital instance of Andrew's fondness for
strokes the effect of which should be instantaneous, — as well as of his
habit of poetical quotation, — is his introduction of George Thompson
at the meeting in Music Hall, on February 23, 1864. In 1835 Boston

POLITICS : 1858-1860 95
After Andrew's distinguished sendee in the Gen
eral Court, higher pohtical office was of course the
next possibUity. If the time should come when the
anti-slavery men in Massachusetts needed to put
forth their full strength, Andrew must obey the
summons. That he might keep himself free, he re
fused the offer which Banks made to him in 1859
of a seat on the bench of the Massachusetts Superior
Court. Andrew's notion of what the future might
have in store for him is hinted at in a letter to
Cyrus Woodman, dated May 22, 1859.
You wiU probably have seen that, — contrary to
what was your reasonable inference from the fact of
my nomination, — I did not accept the judgeship.
In truth it was made against my declared inabUity
to take Qffice. . . .
I do not easUy change my mind. With whatever
criticisms I might make on the practice of the law,
and many things in it are irksome to me ; I still
cannot yet think of giving up my personal freedom
even for the dignity, quiet and certainty of the
bench. had mobbed the English anti-slavery orator; in 1864 it could not do
enough to honor him. Reaching the end of his speech, Andrew said:
" Mr. Thompson, I propose now to present you and this audience each
to the other. Speak — for their hearts wait for the eloquence of your
lips ! Speak — speak now — for to-day is fulfilled before our eyes
the prophecy of the seer-poet of New England, —
" * Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again ;
The eternal years of God are hers ;
But Error, wounded, writhes in pain,
And dies among her worshippers.' "
At the first line of the stanza, the audience caught the point of the
quotation, and went wild with enthusiasm. See the Liberator, March
4, 1864.

96 JOHN A. ANDREW
As to pohtics. They are mainly accidental to me ;
not of the substance and woof of my conscious
scheme of life. I have always definite opinions on
most pohtical questions, I regard them with interest,
and express them without reserve. I have some un
sought pohtical influence. It comes merely from the
natural weight of the truth, sincerely and fearlessly
uttered. That is always to be sure a good deal
controlled and modified in this world by a million
of secondary causes and interests. But it is worth
something to me, and to my sense of responsibility.
I should not like to seek any political station. I
cannot afford to take any. But when if ever I am
thought by others worthy to take any place where
I see a chance td be useful and to do some good I
want to see done and to which I feel caUed, — I may
not refuse. I hope I shall never desire office beyond
the simple desire to do a citizen's duty. I have seen,
read and thought too much and am dazzled too lit
tle by anything transitory to have much desire for
"place." To confirm Andrew as leader of the radical Re
pubhcans, there was needed an act as clear and un
compromising as his utterance. Such an act the
tense temper of the times soon brought to pass.
When John Brown, with the vision and the courage
of a hero and the unbalanced judgment of an en
thusiast, threw his little band upon Harper's Ferry,
he pressed upon every thinking being, North and
South, a personal problem the solution of which
was desperately urgent. To Andrew the deed was
first of aU a direct and instant summons to action.
Over and above his strong sympathy for Brown as

POLITICS: 1858-1860 97
an anti-slavery hero in the Kansas days, he was
moved by his sense that everything must be done to
give him the fairest possible trial under the circum
stances. The natural thing, of course, would have
been for Andrew to offer his own services, as he
had so often offered them for prisoners unable to
obtain counsel, but his political position was now
a httle too prominent to make him of real use
to Brown in the Virginia courts. Accordingly, he
wrote straightway to Montgomery Blair,1 a Repub
lican, son of Francis P. Blair and a weU-known
lawyer in Washington, asking him to act. Blair, pre
vented by engagements, secured Thomas Chilton,
another Washington lawyer, who arrived at Charles
town, Virginia, on the morning of the fifth day of
the trial. Until his arrival John Brown's interests
were in the hands of George H. Hoyt, a very young
Boston lawyer, who, in his eagerness to be on the
ground, had rushed off to Charlestown on his own
responsibUity. Through him Andrew made his first
appeal to the court for delay. Some pecuharities in
John Brown's manner had struck Andrew on the
single occasion when the two men had met, and now
he conceived that a good defence could be made
on the plea of insanity. " Let the best counsel be
obtained," he charged Hoyt; "let them know that
they wiU be paid by relatives and friends of Brown,
who wish fair play, and sorrow for the condition in
which he and his associates have placed themselves.
Any reasonable sum could be raised to aid these
1 See note on p. 204.

98 JOHN A. ANDREW
prisoners in a legal defence. And it cannot be
doubted that Virginia counsel could be obtained of
the highest character whose sense of professional
pride and duty would compel them to do (what is
never refused to be done here), and that is to make
the stoutest and utmost defence possible to profes
sional skiU. If a retainer is needful it can be sent."
Brown, however, refused to allow the plea of in
sanity to be made, and there was no one to gainsay
him. He was tried on the charge of treason, of in
citing servUe insurrection, and of murder in the first
degree, and after a trial which lasted five days, the
jury returned the verdict of " Guilty."
MeanwhUe Andrew had been busy raising the
necessary thousand doUars for Chilton's fee. On the
streets, in the courts, at the Wednesday evening
meeting of the Church of the Disciples, he spoke to
everybody he met ; his friends did the same for him,
one of them, at his request, going through the
Legislature, then in special session. In this way
the money was coUected in a very short time. After
the sentence had been pronounced, Chilton sought
to obtain a writ of error before the Court of Appeals
of the Supreme Judicial Court of Virginia. To this
end Andrew guaranteed a fee of three hundred dol
lars for WiUiam Greene, a lawyer of Virginia. There
being now a prospect of a new trial, which Brown's
counsel would do aU in their power to have held in
a United States court, Andrew was brought face to
face with the fact that it was possible for a United
States judge to summon and compel the attendance

POLITICS : 1858-1860 99
of witnesses from Massachusetts. This state of
things he disclosed to Dr. S. G. Howe and Mr. Frank
B. Sanborn, each of whom had consulted him, and
each of whom knew altogether too much about what
John Brown's plans had been to look upon a jour
ney to Virginia as either pleasant or safe. " Massa
chusetts," declared Howe, in a " card " to the pub
lic, " is so trammeUed by the bonds of the Union,
that, as matters now stand, she cannot, or dare not,
protect her citizens from such forcible extradition ;
and that each one must protect himself, as he best
may." 1 To Canada, accordingly, Howe betook him
self. As for Mr. Sanborn, he preferred to remain at
his home in Concord, trusting to a " tumult " in his
behalf in case he should be arrested.
While these preparations were still making, word
came that the writ of error had been denied. Further
legal action was hopeless. The Virginia courts,
yielding to the clamor of popular terror, had acceler
ated the course of the law at every possible step.
In Boston the desire to help Brown that had been
so strong now turned with doubled force to his fam
Uy, and a meeting was planned for the purpose of
raising a fund for them. The speakers were to be
Emerson and Wendell Phillips, Dr. Manning of the
Old South, and the young minister of a prosperous
Unitarian society ; Andrew was chosen to preside.
When the meeting assembled in Tremont Temple,
on Saturday evening, November 19, Andrew rose
and read a letter from the young minister which
i Br. S. G. Howe, by F. B. Sanborn, p. 270.

100 JOHN A. ANDREW
explained that he had stayed away from the meeting
because, far from wishing to applaud John Brown's
movement, he was " severely opposed to it." In short,
he was afraid to " strike at the hand that fed him,"1
and the audience responded enthusiasticaUy to An
drew's sharp comment that he hardly thought there
were "two sides to this question whether John
Brown's family, wife and chUdren, should be left
to starve or not." As a lawyer, a Repubhcan, and
a man with a pohtical reputation to make, Andrew
too had something to lose by showing sympathy with
Brown, and for that very reason his words had more
telhng effect than anything which could be said by
a Philhps or an Emerson. " I pause not now to
consider," he said, " because it is wholly outside the
duty of this assembly to-night, whether the enterprise
of John Brown and his associates in Virginia was
wise or foolish, right or wrong ; I only know that,
whether the enterprise itself was the one or the
other, John Brown himself is right." This unquali
fied statement was received with a storm of ap
plause. Andrew went on : —
I sympathize with the man. I sympathize with
the idea because I sympathize with and believe in
the eternal right. They who are dependent upon
him, and his sons and his associates in the battle at
Harper's Ferry have a right to caU upon us who have
professed to beheve, or who have in any manner or
measure taught, the doctrine of the rights of man
as applied to the colored slaves of the South, to
1 The words of George S. Hillard's taunt to Richard Henry Dana,
Jr., at the Massachusetts Constitutional Convention of 1853.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 101
stand by them in their bereavement, whether those
husbands and fathers and brothers were right or
wrong. This clear-cut assertion of Andrew's that " John
Brown himself is right " was the sign by which the
meeting was ever after remembered. It was a ring
ing chaUenge, not merely to the South, but to the
timorous Repubhcans who stUl regretted the Whig
party. If the supreme need of the moment were
analysis and cool judgment, Andrew's words were
ill-timed and misleading ; if the supreme need were
fearless speech to match fearless deed, Andrew was
as squarely right as he declared Brown to be.
By the side of this emphatic testimony of An
drew's in behalf of the man who sought to over
throw slavery by violence, must be put the letter
which he wrote to WUUam Greene, the lawyer in
Richmond whom he had employed to present the
petition for a writ of error. The letter sets forth
the rational basis of his opposition to slavery, — his
conviction that it was a stumbling-block to be got
out of the way of the nation's progress ; it also
reveals the human and reasonable way which he
took with a man who differed from him, even in a
matter of vital belief.
JOHN A. ANDREW TO WILLIAM GKEENE [Date wanting.]
My dear Sir, — Your letter, which came to me
by the last mail, was received, and read with interest
and pleasure. I regret the defeat of the application

102 JOHN A. ANDREW
presented by yourself and Mr. ChUton, and of the
positions so ably and admirably illustrated by the
amplest learning and reason. I esteem it a great
blunder of the court (if I may use that word in
such a connection), that they did not aUow an
argument, and place their own reasons before the
world. . . .
There are some things I would be glad to say to
you in the same friendly and courteous spirit in
which your remarks on " the great question " were
conceived. I can understand and can sympathize
with your feelings, position, and attitude ; and I
am sure that if the question of slavery rested, for
its solution, solely with gentlemen of education, cul
ture, and refinement, instead of being managed by
speculators in pohtics, land, and negroes, who take
no thought for the future of men and nations, I
should have no fears. But slavery must be the ulti
mate ruin, I hold, of any people, however grand and
virtuous otherwise, by whom it is treated as if it
were a normal institution, or as the normal condition
of any of the human race. . . .
I beg leave now only to say, that while I agree
that the course of conduct at Harper's Ferry is in
defensible and wrong, and that no such violence
ever could be justifiable (unless a revolutionary pro
cess of emancipation by external force could be de
fended, which I should utterly deny if I could find
anybody to assert it), still I recognize great and ad
mirable properties in Brown, of both mind and char
acter, and an apparent consciousness of a self-sacri
ficing and noble purpose, and a heroic devotedness
to his own long-cherished view of truth ; which,
whUe they may stamp him a fanatic, can never allow
him, in calm history, to be regarded as a felon.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 103
Those men only are criminals to be punished
who, with wicked purpose, fly in the face of society,
and break its laws because their own selfish purposes
lead them over the laws and over other men on the
way to their gratification.
To confound [them with] enthusiasts, no matter
what they may do (men who in the fear of God
break the laws of man), no matter how wrong they
may be in fact, is one of the greatest mistakes of
which society is capable; yet in all history every
people, to their cost, have frequently made it. Vir
ginia would do a grand and worthy act reflecting
credit upon her character, magnanimity and con
scious strength, could she see her way clear to save
the life of Brown and the lives of those he led. But
she will not do it, and too late she wUl see her error.
History is inexorable, and forgives nothing. A man
may innocently blunder. A people in their blunders
are criminal, for the collective wisdom of society is
bound to be absolutely right. If it is not so time
always transfers the crown.
I am opposed to slavery simply as one of the ob
stacles in the way of human progress. There is a
better hope for aU races than that. It cannot be
perpetual ; nor can any unnatural thing or social
wrong be immortal. The ages will conquer it. Shall
it conquer us too ? The stone wiU grind to powder
him on whom it faUs. ShaU it faU on slavery, and
crush us, the American people, in the faU ? God
knows how much I believe in the force and con
quering power of the truth itself. I feel sure that
our general freedom to think, to know and to utter
will secure the ultimate triumph of truth and justice,
and ultimate freedom and happiness to the whole.
In that faith, according to my measure, I speak to

104 JOHN A. ANDREW
others, as I now do to you, with that respect to
other men, and that kindness and patience, I feel
to be due from one honest man to another.
Believe me very respectfuUy and faithfully yours,
John A. Andrew.
A man with the clear sight which this letter re
veals beholding Virginia, fate-driven, take her course
of vengeance, could not but be oppressed with a
growing sense of further violence to come. On the
Friday on which Brown was hanged Andrew was
in no mood for office work, and, with two or three
friends, got into a carriage and drove about the
streets. They said but httle ; Andrew sat, watch in
hand ; when the fatal moment was passed he uttered
the words, " John Brown is dead." They went by a
gunsmith's shop, and Andrew, contrasting his life
long peace principles with his present regard for a
man of violence, told his friends that he had never
fired a gun and probably never struck a blow in his
life. His whole attitude in these John Brown days
shows his sense that a new era had begun.
"... some day the live. coal behind the thought . . .
Bursts up in flame ; the war of tongue and pen
Learns with what deadly purpose it was fraught." *
That day, he felt, was near at hand. Whenever it
should come, peace man though he was, the spirit
was in him " To front a lie in arms and not to yield."
Andrew's unequivocal acts in Brown's behalf,
which had drawn upon him the attention of the
1 Commemoration Ode, Lowell.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 105
whole city of Boston, also brought him to the notice
of the committee of the United States Senate which,
at the instance of James M. Mason of Virginia, had
been appointed to investigate all the circumstances
connected with the raid at Harper's Ferry. The
inquiry into which the Southern members of the
committee threw themselves with most zest was, in
the words of the Senate resolution, " whether any
citizens of the United States not present were impli
cated therein, or accessory thereto, by contributions
of money, arms, munitions, or otherwise." That is to
say, Mason and Jefferson Davis, leaders of the South
ern wing of the Democracy, sought to fix upon the
leaders of the Republican party, or upon any promi
nent anti-slavery men of the North, the responsibility
for John Brown's attempts to incite a slave revolt.
Vf ith this end in view, they naturally considered the
Boston lawyer who had secured counsel for Brown's
defence a highly suspicious person, and straightway
summoned him to Washington to testify before them.
Their first questions referred to the circumstances
under which Andrew had engaged Chilton and
Greene. With a preface of apology to the chairman
that he had no intention of being disrespectful to
Virginia, Andrew proceeded to remark that the first
news which came to Boston of the speed with which
Brown's trial was being pressed led him and his
friends to consider such a proceeding " a judicial out
rage." " It was wholly unlike anything I had ever
known or heard of in my practice as a lawyer," he
added. " When some persons had been indicted for

106 JOHN A. ANDREW
kidnapping, in Massachusetts, last September, the
court gave General Cushing, their counsel, two or
three months after their arraignment before he was
required even to file a plea." After referring to the
suggestion that he himself should go to Virginia,
and his reasons for disregarding it, he explained,
with lawyer-like detail and precision, the whole story
of the employment of ChUton and Greene. The
manner in which the thirteen hundred dollars was
raised to pay the two fees next concerned the com
mittee ; following that, they went into the difficult
question of motives. " Will you state, sir," Mason
asked him, " whether your reason for volunteering
your aid in this matter . . . was founded on the
impression that Brown was not going to have a fair
or just trial, or was it founded on a disposition to
aid in his defence, because of his career against the
institution of slavery ? " Andrew, having first set
forth his admiration of Brown's services for freedom
in Kansas, and having explicitly announced that far
from being in sympathy with " his peculiar conduct
touching which he was then indicted," he instead
" felt injured by that, personaUy, as a Republican,"
made the plain statement that if Brown had been in
the way to have a fair trial, " I should have felt that
I had no occasion to interfere." To Ulustrate what
he " might do, even for a stranger," in the way of
such interference, he told the story aheady referred
to1 of his voluntary efforts to secure pardon from
the President for a man sentenced for piracy. All the
1 Vide supra, p. 30.

POLITICS: 1858-1860 107
work that he had then done, which included a week's
stay in Washington, he had undertaken although he
had no acquaintance with the man or his friends and
had no fee or the hope of any, and this was not the
only occasion on which he had thus acted. Though
he protested that it was " unpleasant for a man to
blow the trumpet of his own virtue " and that he did
not " profess to be a particularly benevolent man,"
stUl, no one could blame him for using an illustra
tion so pat. After this the committee had nothing
more to ask him on the subject of motives.
The other interesting point in Andrew's testimony
was connected with the effort of the chairman to
make it appear that a contribution of twenty-five
dollars which Andrew had once given to Brown
rendered him responsible for Brown's past and fu
ture acts. The description which Andrew gave of
the way in which Brown impressed him at the only
time when they met is exceedingly striking. It fur
nishes the best interpretation of what Andrew meant
when he said, " John Brown himself is right," and
also reveals in what sense Andrew considered him
insane. After having met Captain Brown one Sunday
evening at a lady's house, where I made a social
call with my wife, I sent to him $25 as a present.
... I did it because I felt ashamed, after I had
seen the old man and talked with him and come
within the reach of the personal impression, (which
I find he very generally made on people,) that I had
never contributed anything directly towards his as
sistance, as one who I thought had sacrificed and

108 JOHN A. ANDREW
suffered so much for the cause of freedom and of
good order and good government in the Territory
of Kansas. He was, if I may be allowed to use that
expression, a very magnetic person, and I felt very
much impressed by him. I confess I did not know
how to understand the old gentleman f uUy, because
when I hear a man talk upon great themes, touching
which I think he must have deep feeling, in a tone
perfectly level, without emphasis and without any
exhibition of feehng, I am always ready to suspect
that there is something wrong in the man's brain.
I noticed that the old gentleman in conversation
scarcely regarded other people, was entirely self-
poised, sefl-possessed, sufficient to himself, and ap
peared to have no emotion of any sort, but to be
entirely absorbed in an idea, which preoccupied him
and seemed to put him in a position transcending
an ordinary emotion and ordinary reason. I did not
regard him as a dangerous man, however. I thought
that his sufferings and hardships and bereavements
had produced some effect upon him. I sent him
$25, and in parting with him, as I heard he was a
poor man, I expressed my gratitude to him for having
fought for a great cause with earnestness, fidelity,
and conscientiousness, while I had been quietly at
home earning my money and supporting my family
in Boston under my own vine and fig tree, with
nobody to molest or make me afraid.1
Then Jefferson Davis, " the most arrogant man
in the United States Senate," 2 tried badgering the
witness. He demanded whether or not what Andrew
1 Report of the Senate Committee, p. 192.
2 Quoted by Rhodes (vol. ii. p. 454 ) from the New York Tribune of
AprU 14, 1860.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 109
caUed" the useful services rendered by him [Brown]
in Kansas for the preservation of good order and
government " included the Pottawatomie murders,
the incursion into Missouri for the purpose of run
ning off slaves, and the aUeged horse-stealings.
Andrew's reply to the first of these sarcastic queries
brought out the facts, — remarkable to-day as show
ing the ignorance of Eastern anti-slavery men of
one side of the Kansas struggle, — that he believed
Brown to have had no part in these " transactions,"
and that he himseK had never even heard of them
until after Brown's trial. To the second question
his answer was a blow straight from the shoulder.
I think that he [Brown] and his associates had
been educated up to the point of making an un
lawful, and even unjustifiable, attack upon the people
of a neighboring State — had been taught to do so,
and educated to do so by the attacks which the free-
State men in Kansas suffered from people of the
slaveholding States. And, since the gentleman has
called my attention again to that subject, I think
the attack which was made against representative
government in the assault upon Senator Sumner, in
Washington, which, so far as I could learn from the
pubhc press, was, if not justified, at least winked at
throughout the South, was an act of very much
greater danger to our liberties and to civU society
than the attack of a few men upon neighbors over
the borders of a State.1
After a few more random questions the committee
finished its examination of Andrew. In reading the
1 Report of the Senate Committee, p. 193.

110 JOHN A. ANDREW
whole body of testimony taken by the committee,
one is struck by the fact that in point of abUity,
legal knowledge, ignorance of Brown's plans, and a
natural fearlessness of speech, Andrew was in much
the best position of any of the witnesses to speak
out and give Mason and Davis as good as they gave.
To put the thing colloquially, he went through the
examination with a chip on his shoulder which neither
of the Southern senators deemed it wise to knock
off. Although Andrew thus gave his testimony fully,
he did not give it freely. He had become convinced
that the Constitution had vested no authority in
the Senate by which a committee might summon
witnesses for what was in effect the purpose of de
termining who committed a given crime. When he
obeyed the summons for his appearance he there
fore made at the same time an oral protest before
the committee against their right to compel his tes
timony. S. G. Howe, returned from his Canadian
sojourn, gave his testimony in the same way, filing
a written protest. Two of the witnesses, however,
whose attendance the committee desired, chose the
other course. One of them, Mr. Sanborn, when
arrested by a deputy of the sergeant-at-arms of the
Senate, was protected by that " tumult " of his
feUow-townsmen, on which he had relied in case
of a summons to John Brown's trial, and in which
the most effective incident was the hasty issuing
by Judge E. R. Hoar of a writ of habeas corpus.
On Mr. Sanborn's appearance before the Supreme

POLITICS : 1858-1860 111
Court of Massachusetts, Andrew's arguments se
cured his release as a matter of course. The other
witness, Thaddeus Hyatt, who had been the New
York member of the General National Kansas Aid
Committee, went to Washington but refused to
testify. He was anxious to take his case in person
before the Senate, and to this end Andrew and
Samuel E. Sewall, his counsel, furnished him with
an elaborate written argument. In view of the De
mocratic majority in the Senate, the course which
Hyatt adopted had httle practical wisdom ; there was
nothing left for him but to go to jail, — a martyr
dom of which he made the most for four months by
refusing to avail himself of a writ of habeas corpus.
Though in the hght of plain common sense Andrew
was satisfied with his own and Howe's course in
testifying under protest, his work for Hyatt aroused
his lawyer's instinct to a keener perception of the
danger that lay in the action of the Senate. " We
have furnished references, suggestions and points,"
he wrote to Sumner of his argument for Hyatt,
"which wiU enable a good debater to shake the
Senate and stir the country." In calmer times his
plea might have received attention ; in the present
stress he had to content himself with knowing that
it had gone on record.
These labors resulting from John Brown's raid
lasted weU through the winter, and before they were
over the convention met at Worcester to nominate
delegates for the National Repubhcan Convention
of 1860. Andrew's popularity throughout the State

112 JOHN A. ANDREW
is shown by the fact that out of 774 members vot
ing, only five were found unwUling to put his name
on their ballots ; the Massachusetts delegation to
Chicago therefore naturaUy made him its chairman.
Though the avowed candidate of its members for
the head of the national ticket was WiUiam H.
Seward, the sincerity of their support was a matter
of some doubt. "Massachusetts is overwhelmingly
in favor of Seward," wrote Bird to Sumner on
AprU 3, ". . . yet a majority of our delegates, I
fear, though elected as Seward men, and going to
Chicago nominally to support him, really mean to cut
his throat. (TeU him so, from me.) Well, the Lord
reigns! " Andrew's own position, which was perhaps
typical of the uncertainty of his f eUow delegates, is
expressed in a letter to Cyrus Woodman of April 2.
We are mainly for Seward. I am so, not for spe
cial liking for him ; but because he seems to be the
natural head of the party. I like him, it is true, but
I like Chase or Fessenden just as well. Chase would
be an admirable executive officer, methodical, direct,
clean, and judicious; Seward might fail I fear in
the economies, but he would be President and not
be overruled by irresponsible outsiders not even by
his cabinet I think. For Fessenden I have not only
respect but personal regard.
In the fearful maelstrom, with the Wigwam as its
centre, into which the Massachusetts delegation was
drawn on arriving in Chicago, its members were as
sailed by both Seward men and Lincoln men. The
" avaUabUity " claimed for Lincoln was urged by the

POLITICS : 1868-1860 113
Illinois politicians with a plausibUity and an intensity
which were almost irresistible, and on the evening
of Wednesday, the day before the first ballot, when
the Massachusetts men came together in caucus, it
appeared that, though the majority intended to stand
by Seward on the first baUot, a few men had already
gone over to Lincoln. After the third baUot, when
Lincoln's nomination was assured, Andrew, as the
spokesman for Massachusetts, was among the first to
transfer the vote of his State to the successful can
didate. In one of his quick, impromptu speeches he
won the ear and the applause of the convention.
When the work at Chicago was done, he went to
Springfield as a member of the committee appointed
to inform Lincoln of his nomination ; then he re
turned at once to Boston.
The whole ten days' experience was a great one
for Andrew. To a man as untravelled as he, his daily
path being regularly from his house to Number 4,
Court Street, and thence to the court-house in Bos
ton, East Cambridge, or Dedham, the mere trip in
itself was f uU of interest. On the way to Chicago he
broke his journey at Niagara, making it a point to
visit the battlefield of Lundy's Lane. His first letter
to his wife from Chicago he began, " Here I am at
last, more than 1000 mUes from home." Beyond the
experiences of the journey, beyond even the strain
and excitement of those hours in caucus and con
vention, was the impression made on him by Lincoln,
as he saw him for the first time. In spite of the lim
itations of what was but a brief and formal call,

114 JOHN A. ANDREW
Andrew, with the other members of the committee
of delegates, " saw in a flash that here was a man
who was master of himself. For the first time they
understood that he whom they had supposed to be
httle more than a loquacious and clever State politi
cian, had force, insight, conscience, that their mis
givings were vain." 1
This throng of impressions Andrew reported a
few days after his return at a meeting held in Fan-
euU Hall to ratify the Chicago nominations. To a
critical East, somewhat slow in waxing enthusiastic
over the name of a man of whom it had hardly heard
before, the party managers deemed it necessary to
impart somewhat of the fire brought by the return
ing delegates, and Andrew, as the chairman of the
delegation and as the most kindling speaker among
them, was asked to make the chief speech. Governor
Banks presided, and after a speech from him and one
from P. W. Chandler, who, conservative though he
was, had at last joined the Republican party, An
drew was introduced. He was still under the spell of
the experience ; he talked about it in the intimate
way and with the confidence of sympathetic under
standing on the part of his hearers which he would
have shown to a group of friends in his office. From
time to time his eager and almost boyish narrative
broke into bursts of eloquence, and at the end the
audience was in as complete sympathy with him and
as fuU of his excitement as if they themselves had
been under the roof of the Wigwam. Beginning with
1 Life of Abraham Lincoln, by Ida M. Tarbell, vol. i. p. 360.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 115
a reference to his own state of exhaustion after a
week of sleepless labor and forty hours of consecu
tive journeying, he described the trip from Niagara
to Chicago, — a distance of five hundred miles made
" at hghtning speed in fifteen hours,' ' — the crowds
along the way, eager to see and hear Eastern men
of note, the demonstrations of welcome at the end of
their journey. Then he described the early proceed
ings of the convention, characterized the three lead
ing candidates, Seward, Bates, and Lincoln, and told
the story of the three baUotings. Of the cheer which
rose inside and outside the buflding upon the an
nouncement of Lincoln's nomination, — a cheer
which was as intricate in incident and climax as a
drama, and which even writers of to-day cannot nar
rate dispassionately, — of this cheer it is not sur
prising that Andrew spoke with the utmost extrava
gance. " There rose," he said, " a peal of human
voices, a grand chorus of exultation, the hke of which
has not been heard on earth since the morning stars
first sang together, and the sons of God shouted for
joy." The spirit which animated the convention, he
said, noting a fact which has since become a common
place characterization of it, was one of high and
earnest purpose, — a sign that the hour and the man
had come. What a contrast, he exclaimed, to the
pitiable faUures of the Democracy, — to the Bal
timore convention, " which returned with two con-
didates and no platform," or to the convention at
Charleston, " which returned with two platforms and
nary candidate." He described the trip to Springfield.

116 JOHN A. ANDREW
" You ask me what Abraham Lincoln is like," he said.
" My eyes were never visited with the vision of a
human face, in which more transparent honesty and
more benignant kindness were combined with more
of the inteUect and firmness which belong to mas
culine humanity. I would trust my case with the
honesty and with the intellect and with the heart and
with the brain of Abraham Lincoln as a lawyer ;
and I would trust my country's cause in the care of
Abraham Lincoln as its chief magistrate, while the
wind blows and the water runs."
After the applause had subsided, Andrew began
again quietly. " Mr. President and Gentlemen : Ten
days ago, on a calm and beautiful Sabbath morn, I
visited the battle-ground and stood upon the sacred
soiLpf Lundy's Lane." Then, recalhng the famous
question and answer of that battle, — " Colonel MU-
ler, can you take that battery ? " " General Ripley,
I will try," — Andrew, on this motive, worked up a
final improvisation. In 1860 the issue of the battle
was far greater than in 1814 : " the safety and peace
of the Republic, the Union of the States, the preser
vation of the Constitution, the perpetuation of liberty
and of equal rights to all men, the salvation of the
unpeopled territories of the continent from the curse
of human bondage, the prevention of the opening of
the abominable trade in men from Africa to our own
shores . . . are the stakes for which we fight." The
batteries to be carried were the doubtful states of
Pennsylvania, Indiana, New Jersey. "And the heart
of patriotism, the impulse of country's love, the hope

POLITICS : 1858-1860 117
and heart of American youth and American age,
respond, with one long and loud resounding voice,
' By the help of heaven we will try — we wUl try ! ' !
It was characteristic of the simphcity of the man
that he should talk in this expansive way about his
personal impressions. It was a sign of the excite
ment which he was under that he let himself go in a
rhapsody such as no other man with the same balance
of judgment would have dared to indulge in. To
the opposition, and even to moderate Repubhcans,
the anti-slavery language in which he clothed his
party's principles was further proof of his dangerous
radicalism ; to the fastidious who read his words in
cold print the next morning his exuberance seemed
the rant of a demagogue. With the people at large,
however, the case was different. In the most signifi
cant events through which the nation had been hur
ried in the past year, Andrew had had a part; in
every case, what he had done with no thought for
himself had brought him into greater favor. In the
month of July, 1860, John C. Dodge, a Boston law
yer, wrote to Cyrus Woodman : " Our old friend
Andrew still rides on the high waves of popularity.
I verily believe that he is this day the most popular
man in Massachusetts."
Such a man the rank and file of the Republican
party would be glad to distinguish with some honor,
but the opportunity was lacking ; Banks, now serv
ing his third term as governor, was expected to hold
on for another year. To the radicals the situation
was pecuharly distasteful ; for, in spite of the fine

118 JOHN A. ANDREW
flourish which he had made at the beginning by
removing Judge Loring, when the body of the re
vised statutes came before him for approval in 1859
he had vetoed it in toto because in the militia laws
the word " white " had been struck out so that there
might be no exclusion of negroes. Still, it was pretty
plain that at the state convention in 1860 no strong
fight would be made against him. Andrew himself
had refused more than once during the summer to
entertain the suggestion that his name be used
against Banks, the more fitly to represent " the true
sentiment of Massachusetts ; " he declared that har
mony within the party was more important than the
distribution of its honors, and that its principles
might be trusted to take care of themselves.1 " War
rington's" letter of July 12 to the Springfield
Republican indicates the position of things.
Andrew is not a candidate, and is not likely to be,
so far as I can learn. This is only my impression,
but a guess is as good as a possible asseveration, if
you guess right. I am sorry this is so, for I want
to see Mr. Andrew governor. We have never yet
had a genuine, " regular built " anti-slavery man for
governor of this state, " clear down to his boots," as
the saying is. We have had men who have yielded
to the anti-slavery sentiment of the state, but none
who have led it and heartily sympathized with it.
Gov. Banks is no exception. He is a republican,
who wiU maintain the average doctrines of the party,
with average courage and success, but who will not
1 Recollections of John A. Andrew, by F. W. Bird, printed in the
Commonwealth, January 11, 1868.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 119
go beyond what they demand. . . . But there wiU
not (in my opinion) be an opportunity to use Mr.
Andrew's name ; there wUl be a considerable num
ber of delegates who wiU oppose Banks' re-nomina
tion by voting for somebody else. But I don't think
there will be much of a fuss. The stormy time for
Massachusetts repubhcanism wUl be in 1861, and not
in 1860. Then, stand from under, and look out for
another know-nothing avalanche, or something worse.
That a " stormy time " would ensue when Banks
should withdraw no one knew better than the Gov
ernor and his friends ; and none made more careful
preparations than they to weather it with safety to
themselves. Already Banks had accepted the presi
dency of the Illinois Central RaUroad, and had agreed
to begin his new duties on the first of January,
1861. His care now was to pubhsh this electrical
piece of news at the instant when it should be too
late for Andrew's friends to profit by it, and not
too late for the Banks men to concentrate strength
on the successor whom they had agreed upon. This
was Henry L. Dawes, at that time a member of the
lower house of Congress, a man of decidedly con
servative tendencies, and a resident of the western
part of the State, — this last fact being a consider
ation which, in view of the recent " shrieks of local
ity " from Berkshire Repubhcans, it was beheved
would be of great weight. The state convention was
to be held in Worcester on Wednesday, August 29,
and the precise political moment chosen by the man
agers for their revelation was the preceding Friday,

120 JOHN A. ANDREW
when the Governor was to make the announce
ment by letter to the chairman of the state com
mittee. The reason for the choice of Friday was
that the weekly newspapers in the country districts,
where Andrew's strength was supposed to he, went
to press on that day, but at an hour before this in
formation from Boston could reach most of them.
Thus those of the country delegations not as yet
chosen would come to the convention, hke the rest,
unpledged to Andrew, and would be amenable to
proper management. So weU was the secret kept
that " Warrington," in his weekly letter to the Sat
urday issue of the Republican, denied emphati-
caUy the rumor which had begun to spread that
Banks was not to be a candidate. One source of
the rumor was the Republican itself, for Samuel
Bowles, its editor, an enthusiastic friend of Dawes,
had arranged that the coming event should cast its
shadow in the Friday issue of the paper. To An
drew's friends in Boston the news came in a more
direct way. On Thursday night Governor Banks and
Wilham Claflin, the- chairman of the Republican
State Committee, were traveUing by boat from New
York to Boston. In the evening their talk of pon
tics was general ; but the next morning on the train
Banks showed Claflin the draft of the letter which
he was to send him later in the day. After leaving
the train, Claflin went at once to Charles Sumner's
house in Hancock Street, and told his story. " Give
me my boots," exclaimed Sumner, starting up. " John
A. Andrew must be the next governor of Massachu-

POLITICS : 1858-1860 121
setts." 1 Though Andrew's friends lost no time in
getting to work, they could afford to stop now and
then to denounce to each other the trick of the " ht
tle joker," and the dinner of the Bird Club on Sat
urday, at which Andrew was present before going
to Maine for a week of stump speaking, was devoted
to schemes for bringing Banks' plans to naught.
The arguments with which Andrew's claims for
the nomination were pressed are set forth in the
letter which " Warrington " hurried off to the Re
publican for its Monday issue.
I write for the purpose of apologising for my
stupidity in saying there was " nothing in it." But
the thing was so remarkably weU managed that it is
no wonder I was deceived. To-day the politicians
are aU ahve with excitement. The republican head
quarters are weU fiUed. Nearly everybody there is
for John A. Andrew, and you wUl find a body of
workers for him at Worcester next Tuesday and
Wednesday, who wUl astonish you. ... If Gov.
Banks' decimation had been known a week ago,
Andrew would have had four-fifths of the conven
tion. As it is, he will have two-thirds. And he
ought to have them. Why ? . . . John A. Andrew
has been the man talked of as the successor of Gov.
Banks, when he should see fit to retire. ... I don't
mean to say that other names have not been men
tioned, but his more than others. His friends have
refrained from pressing him so long as Gov. Banks
was in the field and. desirous of a re-nomination.
Nobody can accuse them, or him, of having been
factious or disorderly, or having done anything to
l Ex-Governor Claflin in conversation.

122 JOHN A. ANDREW
embarrass Gov. Banks or his administration. The
just expectations of his friends have therefore been
raised. Why should they not be gratified ? What
aUs John A. Andrew? Last spring he received the
entire vote of repubhcans for delegate to Chicago.
I take it that settled his status as a republican. He
was chosen chairman of the delegation. He voted
throughout for WUliam H. Seward, but acquiesced
cheerfully and heartily as any other man, in the
nomination of Abraham Lincoln. No man supports
Lincoln more earnestly and sincerely to-day. . . .
Now, as to ability. Does anybody dispute his ca
pacity for the office of Governor? Nobody who
knows him. He is a man of sohd and shining qual
ities — both. He not only makes admirable speeches,
but he is a thinker and an able man in every sense of
the word. And what is better he is a good man and
an honest man, and a true man to his friends and his
enemies. The rush and go of this letter is of a piece with
the enthusiasm with which the idea of Andrew's can
didacy swept over the State. As " Warrington "
foretold, the delegates of one town after another,
whether or not they had been chosen before the day
of Banks' letter, declared for Andrew. In the west
ern part of the State, much to the dismay of the Banks
men, two other candidates, Goodrich and Kellogg,
presented themselves. The " locality shrieks " of
their supporters, whose claims in this respect were as
valid as those of the adherents of Dawes, made it im
possible to effect a union of the "western" interests
for the benefit of Dawes, and so deprived him of
his fighting chance. This fact was recognized at

POLITICS: 1858-1860 123
Worcester the evening before the convention, and
the nomination of Andrew was expected on the first
baUot. On Wednesday the early morning trains
brought the usual crowd of delegates and spectators,
and the convention opened fuU of excitement. It
was the anti-slavery men's day ; the great leader who
had suffered so much in their cause was with them
for the first time after his long absence, lending
the weight of his name to Andrew's supporters and
devoting his eloquence to their principles. When it
came to the baUoting for a candidate for governor,
Dawes showed a strength of 327 votes ; KeUogg and
Goodrich were practicaUy deserted, receiving respec
tively only four and seven votes ; aU the votes of the
remaining delegates, 723 in number, were cast for
John A. Andrew. The triumph of the anti-slavery
men was complete.
Though extreme radicals hke " Warrington " has
tened to recommend Andrew to their conservative
Repubhcan brothers as " not a radical in any offen
sive sense," and as " too much attached to the rub
bish and rust which makes the legal profession, as
now administered, a stumbling-block and a nuisance,
to be classed as a genuine progressive," it was not to
be expected that the conservatives would immedi
ately recover from their chagrin at being so easUy
beaten. Bowles, who, having set his heart upon the
success of Dawes, adjusted himself with difficulty to
f aflure, could give only Laodicean praise to Andrew :
" He has a warm heart but a cool head ; he may be
hot and extreme in individual expression, going be-

124 JOHN A. ANDREW
yond, as he often does, the lines of the Republican
organization and platform, but he feels keenly the
responsibilities of power and follows kindly the con-
servatizing influences of position." Bowles admitted,
too, that "the Republicans can lose 10,000 votes
on Mr. Andrew and not endanger his election."
He could not, however, refrain from adding, for
the benefit of the triumphant radicals : " His John
Brown sympathies and speeches, his Garrisonian
affiliations, 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." l
If solid journals hke the Springfield Republican and
the Boston Advertiser were sensible of the weak
ness of Andrew's " more than Repubhcan position,"
it was not to be expected that the Democratic and
the conservative newspapers would be caught nap
ping. The Courier immediately opened the attack
by misquotations to prove that Andrew had declared
Brown's raid on Harper's Ferry to be "right."
When this lie was disproved, it revived a supposed
quotation from a speech of Andrew's made two years
before, to the effect that he believed that slavery
would be abolished within six years. At the time of
its first publication Andrew had shown to the editor
of the Courier, George Lunt, a correct report of
what he had said, and the editor had apologized
for his trespass. Now the same lie appeared again.
Andrew, full of wrath at the indignity offered to
1 Springfield Republican, August 30, 1860.

POLITICS : 1858-1860 125
the office of governor for which he was candidate,
instituted a suit for libel, — whereupon the Courier
quickly retreated. The " Constitutional Union "
party, too, composed chiefly of the elderly Whigs
who had refused to be gathered into the Republican
party, made the most of Andrew's " John Brown-
ism." Their timid merchant respectability found in
his extravagance of speech enough danger to out
weigh all his known solidity as a lawyer,1 and al
though their own candidate for governor, Amos A.
1 A typical expression of this feeling is found in the following ex
tract from a speech by R. C. Winthrop, delivered in Music Hall,
September 25, 1860.
" I shall not soon forget the emotions with which I received at
Vienna, last November, the first tidings of that atrocious affair at Har
per's Ferry. . . . But I confess to have experienced emotions hardly
less deep or distressing, when I read, not long afterwards, an account
of a meeting — in this very hall, I believe — at which the gallows at
Charlestown, in Virginia, was likened to the Cross of Calvary, and
at which it was openly declared that the ringleader of that desperate
and wicked conspiracy was right. Sir, if it had been suggested to
me then that before another year had passed away, the presiding
officer of that meeting would have been deliberately nominated by
the Republican party of Massachusetts for the Chief Magistracy of
the Commonwealth, I should have repelled the idea as not within the
prospect of belief, — as utterly transcending any pitch of extrava
gance which even the wildest and most ultra members of that party
had ever prepared us to anticipate. But the nomination is before us.
The candidate, I am told, is a most amiable and respectable gentle
man, and I have no wish to say an unkind word of him or of those who
indorse him. But I should be false to every impulse of my heart, if
being here at all this evening, if opening my lips at all during this cam
paign, I did not enter my humble protest, — as one to whom the cause
of Christianity and of social order is dear, as one who would see the
Word of God and the laws of the land respected and obeyed, — if I
did not enter my earnest protest against such an attempt to give the
seeming sanction of the people of Massachusetts to sentiments so im
pious aud so abominable." — Life of Robert C. Winthrop, pp. 213, 214.

126 JOHN A. ANDREW
Lawrence, had, as chairman of the Kansas Emigrant
Aid Committee, taken no smaU part in sending to
Kansas the very Sharps' rifles which John Brown
had afterwards used at Harper's Ferry, this fact did
not cause their attacks upon Andrew to abate. The
popular impression of Andrew's dangerous abolition
ism took form in a song full of ribald allusions to his
supposed fondness for negroes, of which the burden
was — Tell John Andrew,
Tell John Andrew,
Tell John Andrew,
John Brown 's dead.
To counteract this current of feeling the Repubhcan
State Committee prepared a pamphlet containing the
speeches which Andrew had made at Boston and at
Hingham J after his return from Maine, one or two
letters of reply to invitations to speak in Massachu
setts, his notorious speech at the meeting in aid of
John Brown's famUy, and finally, his testimony be
fore Mason's committee in the preceding winter.
This testimony, which had been given to the pubhc
for the first time when the report was printed in
June, was a veritable treasure-trove. Of the pam
phlet as a whole " Warrington " wrote, " These fel
lows who began to attack John A. Andrew so jubi
lantly and vehemently as soon as he was nominated,
have had their guns spiked. . . . We mean to see
if a man is going to lose votes for expressing his
sympathy for the old lion caught in the toils of the
1 The Courier delighted its readers with a parody of this speech,
entitled " At Hingham on the Brine."

POLITICS : 1858-1860 127
hunter, or for guaranteeing a large sum of money to
furnish him with counsel before the Virginia court
of errors, so that aU the resources of defence might
be exhausted, and the state saved from the disgrace
of hanging John Brown by Lynch law." 1 As a final
means for putting Andrew and his opinions in the
right hght before the people, it was decided by his
managers, much against his wiU, that he must stump
the State. Though during the campaign he was con
stantly under the fire of both Democrats and Con
stitutional-Unionists, he never gave way. He steadUy
made it clear that as a Repubhcan he did not go be
yond the Repubhcan doctrine that slavery must not
be extended within the territories ; nevertheless, he
stiU let it be known that, as a man, he abated not one
jot of his behef that slavery was wrong everywhere.
" I confess I have no particular power," he said in
one speech, " to act directly or indirectly upon any
institution or practice pecuhar to any other Common
wealth than Massachusetts. But I have a constitu
tional power to speak, to vote, and to act touching
the establishment and perpetuation of any institution
of which the government can take cognizance, within
any territory over which the American flag floats,
and where the national government has jurisdiction
exclusively to itself. Up to the full extent of what
ever pohtical power as a man, as a citizen, or as a
magistrate, I may possess, I mean to go. Just up to
that and no further." At another time he said :
" Our fathers endured everything for an idea. They
1 Springfield Republican, September 13, 1860.

128 JOHN A. ANDREW
braved the storms of the sea and endured the blasts
of a bleak coast for an idea." The words of the
Chicago platform, " The normal condition of aU the
territory of the United States is that of freedom,"
became, in his rendering, " The salvation of the un
peopled territories of the continent from the curse
of human bondage." If in one speech he seemed to
emphasize the pohtical at the expense of the moral
issue, in the next speech he restored the balance.
Thus, as the campaign went on, people came
to recognize the two quahties, — the cool head and
the warm heart, — which were so remarkably united
in Andrew, and to feel that he could be trusted as
their governor. When the ballots were counted on
election day, the ten thousand votes which, according
to the Springfield Republican, would measure the
degree to which he would be a drag on the national
ticket, amounted to a bare one thousand. This short
age was, in the opinion of that shrewd political
Quaker, John Greenleaf Whittier, the price of An
drew's John Brownism.
Our good Governor Andrew [he wrote] made a
blunder in the speech at the meeting, which, if he
is not sorry for, a thousand of his best friends are.
He was elected governor not on account of that
speech, but in spite of it, — on account of his great
and deserved popularity, and the universal conviction
of his integrity.1
Whittier was undoubtedly right ; but 'the significant
point is not so much the fact that Andrew's vote
1 Pickard's Life of Whittier, vol. ii. p. 434.

POLITICS ; 1858-1860 129
was less than Lincoln's, as that the difference was
so slight.
If one were to inquire what the Republicans of
Massachusetts expected from their newly elected
governor, the best answer is probably to be found in
the quotations from " Warrington " already given.
They knew that, as Sumner said in a campaign
speech, his integrity had already passed into a pro
verb ; the general interests of the State would be
safe in his hands ; with his legal knowledge he could
prevent the General Court from erring too widely
from the strait path of legislative wisdom ; reforma
tory and charitable institutions would receive the
care of a devoted and intelligent phUanthropisb. To
his radical friends the testimony of his triumphant
election was sufficient cause for rejoicing. They
rested in the certainty that, come what might in the
affairs of State or nation, he would fitly represent
the anti-slavery sentiment of the State. As for the
Constitutional -Union party, — "BeU-Everetts," as
they were caUed, — overwhelmingly defeated, they
were of the same opinion still ; to the respectabUity
of Boston Andrew was a person of no social conse
quence, a mere ranting abolitionist, a chief magis
trate both " impossible " and dangerous. From the
broader point of view of history, the main reason
for considering Massachusetts fortunate in having
John A. Andrew for her governor in the year 1861
was his power of acting out his convictions in fear
less independence.

CHAPTER IV
FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR
The election of Lincoln was the signal for action on
the part of the South, and the North, incredulous
for so many years of the wolf-cry of disunion, now
found the danger close at hand. The immediate
effect on many of those who had voted for Lincoln
was an abatement of Republican zeal. A stir for
compromise and conciliation was made ; the Repub
lican leaders were looked to to prevent the breach
from spreading further. In these weeks the mem
bers of the Constitutional-Union party, who during
the campaign had been unable to defend themselves
from ridicule, were now in a position to retahate.
The argument of " I-told-you-so " became their ef
fective weapon. Their first wish was to make the
South see that all anti-slavery men were now dis
credited in the very land of their triumphs, and so
great was the transformation since the fall campaign,
the definiteness of party lines having given place to
an inextricable tangle of opinions, that they, by
reason of their superior aggressiveness, were in a
fair way to attain their end.
Since Boston was the hot-bed of abolitionism, it
was not strange that the " Union-savers " found there

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 131
one of their first opportunities. As the first anniver
sary of the execution of John Brown drew near, an
undaunted httle group of his friends, chiefly negroes,
proposed to commemorate the day by pubhc services,
with a discussion of the best means of abohshing
slavery. It was easy to forecast the sentiments with
which the speakers, more noted for zeal than discre
tion, would improve the occasion ; and certain men,
equaUy zealous for the opposite cause, and equally
indiscreet, resolved, at the prompting of the Post
and the Courier, that this thing should not be. These
" rioters " who intended to break up the meeting,
or rather to capture it and turn it to their own uses,
were men of respectability, though not of distinction.
Their plans were aided by the pohce, who under
took " to stop the disturbance by arresting and eject
ing the quiet people and legal occupants of the
haU, and letting the rioters remain in peaceable
possession." a With the meeting in their control,
they passed a set of resolutions, the first of which
declared that " no virtuous and law-abiding citi
zens of this Commonwealth ought to countenance,
sympathize with, or hold communion with any man
who beheves that John Brown and his aiders and
abettors in that nefarious enterprise were right, in
any sense of the word." 2 The animus of such a
resolution was plain enough, and it was remarked
that one of the spectators in the hall was Amos A.
Lawrence, who, as the BeU-Everett candidate for
1 New York Tribune, December 5 ; Robinson's letter.
2 Boston Transcript, December 3, 1860.

132 JOHN A. ANDREW
governor, had fallen behind Andrew by some eighty
thousand votes. The demonstration as originally
planned would have made no stir, for the Boston
newspapers had agreed not to report it. They had
no hesitation, however, in relating what actually oc
curred, and Robinson, in a ringing letter to the New
York Tribune on the " Recent Respectable Riot,"
helped to spread the scandal of the proceeding far
and wide.
Another movement of the conservatives of Massa
chusetts, better organized and of far greater weight,
was a petition to the Legislature to repeal the Per
sonal Liberty Law. The first name signed to the
petition was that of Lemuel Shaw, who had just
resigned his position as Chief Justice of the Massa
chusetts Supreme Court. Among the thirty-four
names which followed were those of such men of
high standing as B. R. Curtis, ex-Governor Gard
ner, George Ticknor, Jared Sparks, Theophilus Par
sons, Levi Lincoln, George Ashmun. This petition
the Springfield Republican and the Boston Adver
tiser regarded with favor, and it rapidly gained
momentum throughout the State. The repeal or
modification of all personal liberty laws, the effect
of which was to block the execution of the Fugitive
Slave Law, was an act of conciliation which the
North might fairly make. Whether the South would
be satisfied with this concession was another matter,
and one which the conservatives, perhaps, did not
care to press.
Such was the situation, full of practical difficul-

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 133
ties, which the governor-elect of Massachusetts must
face, and as to which, on the day of his inaugura
tion, he must declare himself. The John Brown
meeting, with its object of discussing the best means
of abohshing slavery, gave him no trouble. The
newspapers of the day reported that he had replied
to neither of the two invitations sent him to attend,
and quoted him as having said that the meeting was
" injudicious and unnecessary, if not, in the present
condition of the country, actually criminal." 1 The
attitude which he should take toward the proposed
repeal of the Personal Liberty Law was, however,
a matter which he did not presume to decide for
himseK, and he resolved on a trip to Washington
to confer with the Repubhcan leaders in Congress.
Just at this moment he was seized with a severe fit
of sickness. The excitement and labors of the cam
paign, added to his regular professional work, brought
on a dangerous attack of bleeding at the nose. The
treatment for it, " plugging," was exceedingly pain
ful, and his doctor let him go about his business
only after a week of absolute rest, and then with the
warning that to a man of his apoplectic tendency
severe overwork might at any time be fatal. As
soon as he was fit to travel, he started for Washing
ton. The pohtical dilemma in which he found him
self was indeed one which demanded all the advice
that he could get. As he put it to one correspondent
who had advised a conservative course : " If / can't
or dare not say a free word when an effort has been
1 Boston Journal, December 5, 1860.

134 JOHN A. ANDREW
made to crush me out, in advance, by an array of
great names, to a formal indictment, intended as a
means of dividing and disheartening our party, —
the cry wiU at once be raised, that / by sUence ad
mitted that they were right, and that the people
of Massachusetts have been in the wrong, even to
the extent of intending to break the Constitution^
Nevertheless, if after consultation with the Massa
chusetts Delegation and other Repubhcan members
of Congress it appeared that the national welfare
demanded sUence with regard to recommendations
to the Legislature for future action, on that point
he was ready to abide by the decision. Seward and
Sumner went into the matter with him at great
length ; Charles Francis Adams, the most command
ing of the Massachusetts men in the House, the con
servative Dawes, Montgomery Blair, men from New
York and members of the Repubhcan National
Committee, who thoroughly understood the condi
tions in Washington and throughout the North, also
gave advice, and every man counsehed him to de
fend the good anti-slavery record of his State. For
Massachusetts, incorrigibly radical, to justify her
old position would precipitate no new danger ; if
things went weU, her firm stand might become a
raUying point for more timorous states. Here was a
strong defence against the petition of the thirty-five.
Although the main object of Andrew's trip to
Washington was to put himself in line with his
party on the Personal Liberty Law, its chief value,
as it ultimately proved, was of a far different sort.

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 135
AU through the campaign he, together with other
Repubhcan leaders, had scouted the charge that they
were fomenting disunionism. When the BeU-Everett
speakers asserted that the Southern leaders really
desired the election of Lincoln, since it would fur
nish them with a vahd excuse for secession, Andrew,
relying on the convenient but specious arguments
of Helper's Impending Crisis,1 had answered that
" the South can take care of its own disunionism.
There are Southern men enough to drive that mon
ster into the Gulf of Mexico without a Northern
man or gun. And if need be, they would do it." 2
In Washington in December, with secessionists invad
ing the Capitol and sitting in the Cabinet, he came
to see the truth. He talked with the Southern leaders
with his usual eager frankness, and a conversation
with Mason of Virginia, before whose committee he
had testified barely ten months earlier, made a pro
found impression upon him. Mason told him that
the Southern states were going out of the Union,
" because they would not hve in political society
with people who held the opinions entertained by
the people of the Eastern States, while the principle
of majority government prevaUed ; and that beyond
1 " The Impending Crisis of the South : How to meet It, was the title
of a book written by n. poor white of North Carolina, to show that
slavery was fatal to the interests of the non-slaveholding whites of
the South. . . . Had the poor white been able to read and compre
hend such an argument, slavery would have been doomed to destruc
tion, for certainly seven voters out of ten in the slave States were
non-slaveholding whites." — History of the United States, by James
Ford Rhodes, vol. ii. pp. 419, 420.
2 Letter to Jonathan Bourne, Jr., and others, September 6, 1860.

136 JOHN A. ANDREW
the inevitable dissolution of the Union lay a possi
ble reconstruction of the government, based on a
new distribution of political power ; into which new
Union the Northern States could be admitted on the
condition of repeahng all laws by which slavery was
prohibited within their own borders, including, in the
case of Massachusetts, a repeal of the clause in her
ancient biU of rights, . . . before which slavery fell
by judicial interpretation." x Here was the whole
thing in a nutshell. In the face of this bold declara
tion, with its gratuitous insult to New England, the
repealing of the personal liberty laws, the pressing of
Crittenden compromises stood revealed in all their
f utility. The only reply — and Andrew, knowing
the heart of the plain people as he knew his own,
was confident with what promptness the reply would
come — was war. It was easy for him to have mis
taken the temper of the South ; it was impossible
for him to mistake the temper of the North. With
the conviction that when the true issue was revealed
the North would infaUibly fight, Andrew could
frame clearly his principles of action : first, quiet
preparation for war ; second, avoidance of every act
that might put upon the North the odium of begin
ning the war. Other men there were, of course, who
through all the mists of concession and compro
mise saw the future as clearly. The difference in
Andrew's case was that he alone, among those who
foresaw that baUots must give place to bullets, had
a state militia at his command. Moreover, his good
1 Andrew's speech in Albany, October 17, 1864.

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 137
fortune or his genius brought to his aid a statesman
and a man of action, both of inestimable value. From
Washington, Charles Francis Adams, who had come
to the same conclusions as to the intentions of the
South, constantly advised him in regard to his next
move ; in Boston, John M. Forbes, a merchant, whose
foresight was the most valuable of his many assets,
stood ready to forward every work of preparation.
On his return to Boston, Andrew made no secret
of his opposition to the petition of the thirty-five.
Public interest in the way in which he would de
clare himself in his inaugural was heightened by
the rumor that Banks in his valedictory, to be de
hvered two days before Andrew's inaugural, would
take the other side. Such an act on the part of the
retiring governor was distinctly outside the pro
prieties, and could have no aim except that of per
sonal advantage. For this, however, Banks had al
ways been keen ; and when the day of his farewell
came, he added his voice to the commercial and con
servative clamor against "this inexcusable public
wrong." " Banks has dehvered an execrable thing,"
wrote Andrew to Sumner the next day, " but it
does n't disturb my soul at all." Conservatism had
had its last day of power in the government of Mas
sachusetts. The advantage, if not of prestige, at
least of clear and vigorous policy, was with the in
coming administration ; Andrew's word on the dis
puted statute, even if it were no more than a com
plete answer to the plea of unconstitutionality, must
be a shaping force of future action.

138 JOHN A. ANDREW
On the fifth of January, 1861, the Legislature
met in convention ; the inauguration took place in
due form, and Andrew read his address. Much of it,
of course, conformed to the usual style of such pa
pers : it set forth, with various suggestions for im
provement, the financial condition of Massachusetts,
the state of its agriculture, of its banks, of its chari
table and scientific institutions. The references to
capital punishment, and to the laws of marriage and
divorce, though brief, were frank statements of the
personal opinions which he was known to hold on
those subjects. In connection with the revision of
the statutes J he referred with ironic praise to the
" minute fidelity " with which Banks had examined
them, — the object of his search having been to run
down the omission of the word " white " in the mi
litia chapter, — and the " conscientious zeal " with
which he had labored to have the omitted word re
stored. After thus dwelling on domestic affairs, the
new governor turned to the subject for which aU
ears were waiting. " I cannot, however, forget at
this moment," he began, " some recent impeachments
of our legislation providing safe-guards for personal
Uberty." Then, with all the accumulated knowledge
of twenty years concerning this broad " field of ju
ridical inquiry and erudition," he plunged into a
legal defence of the constitutionality of the Personal
Liberty Law. The political argument received short
shrift at his hands. " This whole matter," he ex
claimed, " involves no question of comity, or inter-
1 Vide supra, p. 118.

A

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 139
state politeness. It is a naked question of right
between private persons, and of duty between the
Commonwealth and its subjects." On the ground to
which he had chosen to hmit the subject, his argu
ment was overwhelming. Not the least striking part
of it was the recital of cases in which, but for the
intervention of the statute in question, negroes of
proved freedom would have been remanded to slav
ery.1 Finally, the judicial tone in which he carried
forward the argument brought out inexorably the
smallness of the partisan debate which had been
going on.
When, at the end of his address, Andrew came
to the " Condition of the Country," it was his duty
to say nothing inconsistent with his behef as to what
the future had in store, and at the same time to
rouse no needless alarm. He must prepare the peo
ple of Massachusetts for war, without their realizing
the mental adjustment he was seeking to make for
them. The simplicity and directness of his method
were highly characteristic, and so transparent were
these quahties that his listeners could not believe
there were any depths of his thought to which they
did not instantly penetrate.
" I have for twenty years past," he said, " been
a constant and careful observer of pubhc men and
affairs ; and for twelve years, at least, I have been
intimately aware of the private as well as the pubhc
declarations and conduct of the representative men
in almost every town and vUlage of the Common-
1 Vide note, supra, p. 91.

140 JOHN A. ANDREW
wealth. I think I may claim also some mtimacy
with the great body of the people of Massachu
setts, of whatsoever party. This period has been
one of extraordinary and intense political interest.
The tenderest sentiments, the deepest convictions,
the warmest emotions, have aU been stirred by the
course of pubhc affairs. Bitter disappointments, the
keenest sense of injustice, the consciousness of sub
jection to most flagrant wrong, have fallen to the lot
of our people." Then, in compressed but eloquent
phrase, he recited the roll of those wrongs, from the
enactment of the Fugitive Slave Law to the secession
of South Carolina. " And yet," he continued, " dur
ing all the excitement of this period, inflamed by the
heats of repeated presidential elections, I have never
known a single Massachusetts Repubhcan to abandon
his loyalty, surrender his faith, or seal up his heart
against the good hopes and kind affections which
every devoted citizen ought to entertain for every
section of his country. During all this maladmin
istration of the national government, the people of
Massachusetts have never wavered from their faith
in its principles or their loyalty to its organization."
On this fact he based his conviction that Massachu
setts would stand by the Union at all hazards. Then,
by a reference to her Revolutionary history, he hinted
at the sacrifices to which her loyalty might summon
her. The records of her Revolutionary history declare
her capacity and her will to expend money, sympathy
and men to sustain the common cause. More than

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 141
hah0 the soldiers of the Revolution were furnished
by New England ; and Massachusetts alone contrib
uted more men to the Federal armies than were en
listed in aU the Southern States. She is willing to
make the same sacrifices again, if need be, in the
same cause ; — and her capacity to do so has increased
in proportion with the increase in her wealth and
population. The echoes of the thunder of her Re
volutionary battlefields have not yet died away upon
the ears of her sons, and the vows and prayers of her
early patriots stiU whisper their inspiration. . . .
Over the heads of all mere politicians and parti
sans, in behalf of the Commonwealth of Massachu
setts I appeal directly to the warm hearts and clear
heads of the great masses of the people. The men
who own and till the soil, who drive the mills, and
hammer out their own iron and leather on their own
anvils and lapstones, and they who, whether in the
city or the country, reap the rewards of enterprising
industry and skUl in the varied pursuits of business,
are honest, inteUigent, patriotic, independent, and
brave. They know that simple defeat in an election
is no cause for the disruption of a government. They
know that those who declare that they will not live
peaceably within the Union, do not mean to live
peaceably out of it. . . . Inspired by the same ideas
and emotions which commanded the fraternization of
Jackson and Webster on another great occasion of
pubhc danger, the people of Massachusetts, confid
ing in the patriotism of their brethren in other
States, accept this issue, and respond, in the words
of Jackson, " The Federal Union, it must be pre
served ! "
The tremendous reserve force in this address, which
the Advertiser considered to be eminently expressive

142 JOHN A. ANDREW
of that " pacific dignity which best becomes the chief
magistrate," is to be fully apprehended only in the
light of what followed when the Governor shut the
door of the executive room behind him, and ad
dressed himself to his first task. All through the
ceremonies of inauguration, engrossing as they were,
the warning which he had received that morning
from Charles Francis Adams must have held the
chief place in his consciousness.
CHARLES FRANCIS ADAMS TO JOHN A. ANDREW
(Private and Confidential.) Washington, 4 January, 1861.
Hon. J. A. Andrew, Boston, Mass.
My dear Sir, — It is beyond a doubt, that the
revolutionists have determined to take forcible pos
session of the Government at Washington before the
fourth of March, and perhaps within thirty days.
The State Legislature ought at once to take pro
visional measures to counteract the movement by
appropriations of money and organizing of men, in
both cases provisional. But it is of the last impor
tance that such measures should be carefully guarded
so as not to be misunderstood by the people of Mary
land, and the loyal portion of Virginia. They should
therefore be specificaUy directed to protecting the
president, the government offices, the Legislature, the
Judiciary, the archives and other public property.
The proceedings should emanate spontaneously from
the States, and not be traced to suggestions from
this quarter. Especially abstain from mentioning
me, or you would deprive me of the abUity to obtain
further information. I should think it best to avoid
making it a matter of special executive message ;

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 143
rather let it appear to be a matter originating with
the proper Committee of the Legislature. Current
information will justify it before this letter reaches
you, if it does not already.
Very truly yours,
Charles Francis Adams.
Mem. Private.
On the 8th of January at 12 o'clock, a hundred
guns should be fired at 12 o'clock, in every town
and vUlage, in honor of General Jackson, the flag
of the Union, the hero of Fort Sumter. But do not
let it appear to have been suggested from here.
What I have written to you to-day has been sug
gested also to the authorities of New York and
Pennsylvania, from sources which they will recog
nize. C. F. A.
To communicate this news and this message to the
other New England governors Andrew conceived as
his first duty. He arranged at once that the young
man whom he had chosen for his private secretary
should go to New Hampshire and Maine, and one of
the militia colonels to Vermont. It was Saturday,
and a wild snowstorm was raging, but as no time
must be lost, the messengers started at once on their
errand. The message to Governor Sprague of Rhode
Island was to be sent on Monday. The responsibility
for the salute on the eighth he took upon himself,
giving to inquirers the explanation that the people
needed " to get accustomed to the smell of gunpow
der." Thus, at the first moments of its existence,
the new administration embarked on a policy of
action.

144 JOHN A. ANDREW
Such, however, was the condition of the public
mind at the moment, that the guns booming on the
Common seemed to sound no sinister omen. For the
time being, the future looked hopeful. Buchanan's
administration had turned a corner ; his Cabinet had
been purged of secessionists, and Anderson was to be
supported by the federal authority in maintaining
his hold at Fort Sumter. In the revival of confidence
which ensued, Andrew's words merely expressed
what many were longing to utter, — a devoted be
hef in the supremacy and perpetuity of the national
government. So perfectly did they represent the
momentary hope of New England that the indiscreet
remarks dropped by the militia colonel along the line
of his journey as to the Governor's preparations for
war received no credit whatever, and their truth was
hotly denied in the Boston journals.
One of Andrew's first cares after his inaugura
tion was the selection of four aides to constitute
the personal staff which he was required to have as
commander-in-chief of the state militia. The incon
gruity of such functionaries in the case of a peace
man Uke Andrew had not escaped the wits of the
opposition during the faU campaign ; no gentleman,
so the wiseacres of the mihtia declared, could be
found wiUing to serve him as an aide. The plain
fact to be recorded is that whatever offishness
was exhibited by the men to whom the places were
offered soon disappeared before the Governor's
straightforwardness and tact. The senior aide,
Horace Binney Sargent, a man of good Boston

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 145
famfly, a graduate of Harvard, a devoted admirer
of Banks, on whose staff he had served, contented
himself with writing Andrew a letter stating the
points on which he differed from the Governor in
respect to the Personal Liberty Law; Henry Lee, Jr.,
to whom the fourth place was offered, a Free-SoUer
of the days of 1848, but also a man in close touch
both commercially and sociaUy with the conservative
interests of the city, had the good fortune to begin
his reply by telhng the Governor that he feared his
one-sidedness and lack of discretion. To this avowal
Andrew responded with equal frankness, and the
result was the foundation of a hearty friendship.
Lee, a man of Andrew's own age, was, both from
his solid abilities and his position in the world of
Boston, a person whose confidential assistance was
sure to be of incalculable value to Andrew. The
other two aides were Harrison Ritchie of Boston, —
"handsome Harry Ritchie," Mrs. Howe calls him in
her Reminiscences, — a bit of a military dandy, and
John M. Wetherell, of Worcester, a militia officer
of the opposite type.
The position of private secretary to the governor,
which, on Banks' recommendation, had just been
created, it was natural that Andrew should offer to
Albert G. Browne, Jr., of Salem, whose father had
been associated with him in anti-slavery politics, and
whose uncle, John W. Browne, who had lately died,
had for twelve years been Andrew's neighbor at
Hingham, and the man whom he had known more
intimately than any other man in his whole life.

146 JOHN A. ANDREW
Albert G. Browne, Jr., after his graduation from Har
vard in 1853, had obtained a doctor's degree abroad,
and then, returning home, had spent some months
roughing it in Kansas and Utah. Browne had also
done a little newspaper work, and had finally entered
Andrew's office as a student. He was hard-working
and ambitious, able, methodical to the last degree ;
he wrote a round and regular hand which it is still
a pleasure to read.
The only other appointment to be made in the
executive department was that of messenger to the
governor and council. This position Andrew fiUed
in a characteristic way which was a never-ending
source of ridicule and protest among his friends.
A young man by the name of Spear, whom he had
succeeded in getting out of jail and then employed
in his office as a sort of general factotum, was now
elevated with his benefactor to a place at the State
House. Spear had learned to serve Andrew in a
hundred ways. He wrote a clear, uniform, and un
tiring hand ; he was like the pen which the writer
cannot do without ; he performed countless errands,
both personal and official. In spite of the fact that
with some people at the State House his honesty was
always a matter of question, and that his constant
appeals for small loans made them anxious to give
him a wide berth, the Governor clung to him, —
partly from principle, partly because the man had
made himself indispensable.
The first few weeks of Andrew's term, which
under ordinary circumstances would have offered

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 147
nothing but routine, called upon him for several con
spicuous acts, and by the end of January there was
hardly a household in the State which had not passed
judgment upon him for good or evil. The first of
these acts was his promulgation of General Order
No. 4. The object of this order was to weed out
from the mUitia aU men who " from age, physical
defect, business or family causes, may be unable or
indisposed to respond at once to the orders of the
Commander-in-Chief made in response to the call of
the President of the United States," and to have their
places filled by men ready for " any public exigency
which may arise." Whatever might have seemed
ominous in this order was largely negatived by the
fact that it was merely the carrying out of a sug
gestion made by WUham Schouler,1 the Adjutant-
General, in his report to Banks the month before,
and by the added circumstance that in his inaugural
Andrew's reference to the militia had been merely
perfunctory. With but one exception 2 the companies welcomed
1 William Schouler, born in Scotland in 1814, died in Massachusetts
in 1872. He was an editorial writer for different Whig and Republican
papers ; in 1860 he was made Adjutant-General, and continued in the
office throughout Andrew's administration and longer. His work on
Massachusetts in the Civil War, containing many documents from the
executive and military records of the State, expresses his great admi
ration for Andrew.
2 From a Salem company came a protest in the form of a political
argument, for which an apology was immediately demanded by the
Adjutant-General and as promptly received. The retribution pre
pared for the writer is indicated in a letter of Albert Browne's from
Washington, written a few days after the beginning of Lincoln's ad
ministration : " Willard Phillips filed his bond and reed his commission

148 JOHN A. ANDREW
the order as a step in the direction of higher effi
ciency. They purged and prepared themselves, and
let the Governor know that whenever he called he
would find them quick to respond. In particular, the
Sixth Regiment, from LoweU and the surrounding
country, announced to him within a week's time that
it was ready for immediate service.
The storm centre of the month was the week which,
from its long association with the annual meeting of
the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, had come to
be known as Anti-Slavery Week. Throughout the
winter the disposition of anti-abolitionists in Boston
to disorder and violence had been increasing. The
capture of the John Brown meeting in December
was only the beginning. WendeU Phillips, preach
ing disunion one Sunday in each month to Theodore
Parker's congregation in Music Hall, needed the
protection of a stout band of friends as he walked
down the middle of Washington Street to and from
the haU. The demonstrations against him and the
threats against the " damned abohtionists," viciously
repeated from week to week, made it plain that there
was a weU-organized movement in Boston for sup
pressing by mob violence all disunion and aboli
tion agitation, — a movement backed by persons of
as Collector of Salem to-day, and his first official act in that capacity
has been to request the dismissal of Chas. H. Manning from ye office
of Weigher and Gauger — a citizen, who you may remember, in his
capacity of Captain of an Artillery Co. at Salem addressed a saucy
letter to you concerning General Order No. 4." It is a point by no
means unimportant that in November of the same year this captain
enlisted his battery for the war as a part of Butler's expedition. For
the circumstances under which it went to the front, see p. 292.

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 149
repute, and, what was worse, condoned by the mayor,
a Democrat named Wightman. Its golden oppor
tunity it hoped to find at the anti-slavery meetings
which were to be held on Thursday and Friday,
January 24 and 25, in Tremont Temple. The Mayor
did his part by refusing the request for police pro
tection which the officers of the society made to
him, and by threatening both the speakers and the
trustees of the hall with arrest if any disorder arose.
He could have things all his own way, for in case of
trouble the abohtionists, no matter how desperately
they might appeal to their friend Andrew, could get
no help from him, for there was no state pohce, and
the Governor had no right to caU out the militia
except on the appeal of the Mayor. Wightman and
his coadjutors were wiUing enough that the aboh
tionists should have a taste of a mfld mob, but if
they could lure the zealous governor into a violation
of the law, their glee would know no bounds.
On Thursday morning the mob, responding to
Wightman's imphed invitation, was on hand in
the gaUery at Tremont Temple in effective force.
It had leaders, of course, — men of acknowledged
respectability and conservatism. It was composed
largely of young men reputably employed in the
business quarter of the city, on State Street and
Franklin Street, whose employers, wiUing that the
monotony of clerking should be spiced with the
excitement of mobbing, had granted them a hohday
that they might serve the cause of Union after their
fashion. In spite of their presence, the leaders of

150 JOHN A. ANDREW
the meeting kept it in control during the morn
ing session. In the afternoon, however, the young
rioters, having discovered that the dozen policemen
sent by the Mayor were for ornament merely, grew
bold. They flung the cushions of the gallery seats
down upon the floor, they raised the familiar ribald
chorus of " Tell John Andrew John Brown 's
dead." x To John Andrew, meanwhile, the chairman
appealed for help, sending Wendell Phillips and one
or two others to the State House to urge upon him
their extremity of need. No help came ; the tumult
became more and more deafening. At last the Mayor
appeared, and, after much evasion, and whoUy
against his wUl, was forced, by very shame, to have
the gaUeries cleared. Then, having promised efficient
police protection for the evening meeting of the
society, he went back to the City Hall and filled up
the measure of his duphcity by issuing orders to
forbid the use of Tremont Temple in the evening.2
It is no wonder that Andrew afterwards declared
that Wightman was " a concentrated mob himself."
WhUe the tumult was at its highest, the main
issue had been fought out in the Governor's room
1 These mistaken young clerks, "broadcloth rowdies" as they
were called, served the Union to much better purpose when as mi
litia-men they marched to the defence of Washington in April, but
they had no more sympathy for the slave then than before. " If the
mob in Baltimore had known the men they attacked on the 19th of
April, they would have welcomed them with open hands instead of
with death." — Schouler's History of Massachusetts in the Civil War,
vol. i. p. 84.
2 For an account of the meetings of January 24 see William Lloyd
Garrison : The Story of His Life, told by His Children, vol. iv. pp. 3-7.

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 151
at the State House. Here was Andrew set squarely
against old friends in whose counsels he had taken
part and with whom he had for years defended the
rights of Massachusetts freemen. PhUlips had repeat
edly spoken of him as " the future Chief-Justice,"
deeming him in that position better than any per
sonal liberty law for the State. Realizing that on
himself depended the protection of the Anti-Slavery
Society and the reputation of the city for sobriety,
Andrew had already done all that unofficial persua
sion could do. He had sent Ritchie and Sargent to the
City HaU, and Sargent, after having heard the Mayor
instruct the Chief of Pohce to permit no disturbance,
had followed the detaU of pohcemen to Tremont
Temple, only to discover from their inaction that
Wightman had secretly countermanded his own
order. The case of the Anti-Slavery Society was des
perate ; but for all the importunity of WendeU Phil
lips, the spokesman of the committee, Andrew stood
firm on the ground that he had no right to call
upon the mihtia unless the Mayor admitted the in
adequacy of his own police force. When the abo
litionists proposed appealing to the House of Repre
sentatives for the use of its hall, he discouraged
them, because he had no body of state police with
which to keep order. Doubtless, since he at the
moment was exerting himself to save the Union, he
found it easier to withstand the friends of disunion,
who proclaimed their faith at this untimely season.
PhUlips, Uttle dreaming that he was the bait in the
Mayor's trap, put his entreaty in one form after an-

152 JOHN A. ANDREW
other, but the Governor was not to be moved. " Show
me my authority. Tell me what law of the State of
Massachusetts you ask me to enforce," was the sub
stance of his reply. At last Phillips exclaimed, " We
are wasting time," and withdrew. From that hour
he included in his philippics the name of Andrew as
that of a lost leader.1
The week was not to end without an opportu
nity for Andrew to display in a more characteristic
fashion his love for the Union. Saturday had been
selected as the day for his presenting to the Sen
ate two muskets of the Revolution, which Theo
dore Parker had bequeathed to the Commonwealth.
One, which had been captured at Lexington, was
" the first firearm taken from the enemy in our war
of Independence." They spoke the lesson of devo
tion to freedom even to the shedding of blood.
"For myself," wrote Andrew to Sumner, "I am not
ashamed to own that, in view of the present times,
and of the vividness with which the beautiful hero
ism of the ancient men and women of Massachu
setts shone out on me — as I was contemplating my
own remarks in the morning — I sat down, yielding
to a perfect tempest of emotion, and wept as I had
not done for years." Charged with such emotion,
and feeling that this was the moment "to bring
souls under conviction," he went, attended by his
1 See Memories of Wendell Phillips, by George W. Smalley, in
Harper's Monthly for June, 1894.
One result of this incident was the drafting of a. bill to establish
a board of Metropolitan police. It passed the House, but went no
further because Andrew, as Phillips declared, " intrigued " against it.

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 153
aides, to the HaU of Representatives, crowded with
members of the General Court and other spectators,
where the proper committee was waiting to receive
the arms. By a recital of the circumstances under
which, on the nineteenth of April, Captain John
Parker had captured the smaUer musket, he aroused
in his listeners the sentiments that are always asso
ciated with that day. Their evident sympathy reacted
upon him, and carried him beyond himself. Hold
ing the musket in his hand, he apostrophized it
" with throbbing heart and beating pulse, and dewy
eye and trembling lip." Then, as he was about to
deliver it to the chairman of the committee, he raised
it to his hps and kissed it. No symbolic action, when
submitted to cold scrutiny, could seem more distress
ingly unsuitable than that of imprinting a kiss upon
a gun. Nevertheless, it is an indisputable fact that
Andrew's audience was exalted to the pitch where
his act was a climax more fitting than any that could
have been framed in words. They felt the kissing
of the musket to be natural, spontaneous, inevitable.
Even critical spectators, such as Henry Lee, who felt
" cold chills run over " them, were forced to admit
that " the fervor which was natural to him and which
burst forth at times in a way which made some of
us who were fastidious shiver, was precisely what in
spired and kindled the people." 1 It was indeed " a
melting time," as Andrew said in his letter to Sum
ner, but he was also satisfied that it was " a good
day's work, happening in the right time."
1 MS. Reminiscences of Governor Andrew.

154 JOHN A. ANDREW
Whatever may have been the excitements of Anti-
Slavery Week, they were as midsummer breezes
compared with the tempestuous events of the week
that foUowed. The proposal of Virginia that the
States should send representatives to a peace con
ference at Washington made it necessary for Massa
chusetts to take part directly in the national crisis.
Among Andrew's friends it was taken for granted
that the proposal of Virginia would result in an
other compromise scheme, in which the North would
probably yield more than ever before, and that it
would, therefore, receive httle countenance from the
Governor. Indeed, on the twenty-sixth of January,
in reply to a question from Governor Dennison of
Ohio about sending delegates, Andrew telegraphed :
" We have not appointed nor decided to appoint. I
say postpone until after the inauguration." Sumner
at once bade Andrew " stand firm," but Adams and
the rest of the Massachusetts Delegation in Congress
agreed that the State must not be unrepresented in
the conference. The senator and the representative
were already hopelessly at odds over the compromise
scheme which Adams had reported to the House.
To Sumner, Adams' concession of New Mexico as
a slave state was a piece of treason to anti-slavery
principles which was sufficient to break the friend
ship of a lifetime. For any honest course of action,
even if mistaken, which a man may have taken in
that winter of confusion and trial, one must be chary
of blame ; still, one must not therefore be chary of
praise for the man whose clear sight and firm pur-

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 155
pose enabled him then to follow the line of conduct
which it is now plain was that of true statesmanship.
Given Adams' conviction that war must come, it be
came the bounden duty of the North to offer every
possible concession that would make for delay and
clear it from the charge of having challenged the
first blow. From this point of view a courteous
response from Massachusetts to the invitation of
Virginia was of the first importance. " I am a little
afraid," was Adams' moderate way of putting the
case, " that absence would confirm the charge of in
difference which is much used against us." Another
point which Adams made was, that if no authorized
representative came from Massachusetts, there was
great danger of " a volunteered representation . . .
that would scarcely represent our class of opinion." 1
The force of this argument lay in the fact that Ed
ward Everett, Amos A. Lawrence, and other active
" Union-savers " were then in Washington, presenting
a State Street petition, signed with fourteen thou
sand names, in favor of the Crittenden compromise.
This great " dough-face " petition, as " Warrington "
caUed it, had been the sensation of the hour in
Boston. In spite of many bogus signatures (" one
young rascal," wrote John M. Forbes, " complained
loudly that he ' had n't a chance to sign it only
fourteen times '"), it was really a witness to the ac
tivity and strength of the " Union-savers." That
such men, taking advantage of the division in
the Republican camp, should presume to speak for
1 Charles Francis Adams to John A. Andrew, January 28, 1861.

156 JOHN A. ANDREW
Massachusetts, was a thing to be prevented if pos
sible. Andrew, filled with his new sense of re
sponsibility, was soon convinced by Adams' argu
ments, and acted at once. A resolve approving the
Crittenden proposals was about to be introduced in
the state Senate. Andrew, sending for Dr. Robert T.
Davis, the member from FaU River, and handing him
a form of resolve drawn up by himself, whereby the
Governor was authorized to appoint commissioners
to the proposed Peace Congress, urged him to get it
through the Legislature as rapidly as possible.
These reasons why Massachusetts should take part
in the Peace Congress seemed none too cogent to
Andrew's friends of the Bird Club, — the men who,
beheving that they had put Andrew into office, ex
pected him unvaryingly to uphold their radical views.
When they beheld him deserting the uncompromising
Sumner and following the compromising Adams,
there was utter astonishment and grief among them.
Taking their cue from Andrew's telegram to Gov
ernor Dennison, and, indeed, prompted by Andrew
himself, Elizur Wright, F. W. Bird, and others had
already set to work in the Legislature and in a fugi
tive sheet called the Tocsin to rally the radicals. Al
though Sumner had written Andrew that he did not
wish to stand out against the Delegation, Bird and
his friends were supported by a telegram from him,
dated three days later than his letter to Andrew, in
which he said, " I am against sending Commissioners
to treat for the surrender ofthe North. Stand firm."
On this issue Bird and Andrew must perforce have it

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 157

out. The letters which passed between them show on
what i
based.

what reahties the mutual regard of the two men was

JOHN A. ANDREW TO FRANCIS W. BIRD
Council Chamber, Boston, January 30th, 1861.
My dear Bird, — I want to suggest that, when
ever you see or foresee the arising of a question
touching which you have decided opinions, I wish
you would, in the freest and fullest manner, give me
the aid of your advice ; but, also to suggest, that it
weakens me to criticise afterwards in respect to
things as to which I have not had the aid of pre
vious advice. I do nothing, at any time, but, under
the keenest sense of responsibility and with the
earnest desire to do good and serve the best interest
of the highest idea of justice and truth, — but, am
always hable to grave error, and need the kindest
sympathy and support of friends — of whom I count
you as one of the best.
Another thing ought also to be remembered, viz,
that, as to a large part of the various things pro
posed, it is of much less importance what is done,
than it is that the thing done shd be rightly di
rected in its manner, and should be under the right
auspices. Again — when I am clearly wrong —
dont be too serious and look as if I was going straight
to the devU — but treat me as if there might be a
remaining rehsh of salvation, and a chance of doing
better the next time.
[John A. Andrew.1]
P. S. Please apply these remarks to our inter
view of this p. m.
1 The signature has been cut out from the original.

158 JOHN A. ANDREW
FRANCIS W. BHtD TO JOHN A. ANDREW
Boston, Jan'y 31.
My dear Governor, — I have just rec'd y'r
kind — too kind letter. I am overwhelmed by its
kindness and don't know what to say.
I did not intend to " criticize." You will recol
lect that I said I did not come to argue ; only to
ascertain if it was true that you recommended a
measure which, two days before, you very strongly
disapproved. After hearing from you that you disapproved of
sending Commissioners, we at once set to work to
organize the defeat of the measure. I do not say
that y'r original approval would ; (it might) have
silenced our opposition ; but obtaining y'r disap
proval very much inspired us to work. Undoubt
edly, I exhibited, by looks and acts perhaps what no
language at my command, could express, the pain
and mortification and humiliation I felt when I
came to realize that the thing was to be done, and
you approved of it.
God forbid that I should for one moment doubt
the sincerity and unselfishness of y'r devotion to our
Cause ; nor have I any the less confidence in the in
finite superiority of the soundness of y'r judgment
over mine ; but I cannot — I cannot, escape from
my own deep convictions. They may not — probably
should not govern or influence others ; they must, me.
I feel that this is the first step downwards ; if we
stop before we reach the bottom, it wiU be the first
time in the history of the triumphs of slavery.
Let me thank you again for the great kindness
of y'r letter ; and beheve me,
Very truly and faithfully y'rs
F. W. Bird.

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 159
Close upon the heels of this crisis came another :
Sumner's letters about the Peace Congress, which
reached Andrew on Monday the 28th and Tuesday
the 29th, contained postscripts full of rumors of war.
Edwin M. Stanton, Buchanan's Attorney-General,
unable to communicate his fears in his own office,
where he was " surrounded by secessionists," had
met Sumner in secret at night and told him that
in Virginia, which would certainly secede, there was
a conspiracy "the most wide-spread and perfect."
" He does not think it probable, hardly possible
that we shall be here the 4th March," reported
Sumner. " Genl. Scott is very anxious. It is feared
that the Departments will be seized and occupied as
forts."1 Confirmation of these disquieting alarms
soon arrived in a communication from Stephen H.
PhUlips of Salem and ex-Governor John H. Clif
ford of New Bedford, who were in Washington on
behalf of the State in the dispute over the Rhode
Island boundary, which was then pending before the
Supreme Court. In the course of their frequent
meetings with Stanton they came to be on such
friendly terms with him that one evening he commu
nicated to them, with a great air of secrecy, all that
he had told Sumner. With Stanton's permission,
they that night despatched a letter to Andrew, and
this letter, with Sumner's warnings, the Governor
caused to be communicated to the state Senate. On
February 1 that body, under a suspension of the
rules, voted an emergency fund of one hundred
1 Letters of January 26, 28, 1861.

160 JOHN A. ANDREW
thousand dollars, to be placed in the hands of the
Governor. On Saturday, the 2d, the House, receiving
in secret session a full statement of the exigency,
gave its assent without loss of time. On the same
day, at a conference between Andrew and his staff,
it was agreed that the Adjutant-General should pre
pare estimates of equipments for the militia ; that
Ritchie should go to Washington to confer with
General Scott and to report on the situation from a
military point of view. To Henry Lee was assigned
the task of collecting information about means of
steamboat transportation for troops, a precaution
which had been suggested by Stanton in view of the
doubtful loyalty of Maryland and the probable ne
cessity of a water route to Washington. To discuss
these reports on equipments and means of transpor
tation, a meeting of military experts was called for
the following Monday.
It was at this point that John M. Forbes appeared
as Andrew's counsellor, undertaking to make cau
tious inquiries about steamers avaUable as transports.
Forbes as a youth had gone from the Boston Latin
School to China, and had returned thence seven
years later, a rich man. Now, at the age of forty-
eight, he was one of the leading merchants of Bos
ton. The Fremont campaign had brought him into
politics, and in 1860 he had been one of the electors
at large on the Repubhcan ticket. In politics, as in
society, the democratic ideal was both law and gospel
to him ; to the workings of democracy, as to those
of business, he apphed the severe test of efficiency,

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 161
and, being a man of extraordinary force, he was
pecuharly difficult to withstand. Forbes had first
come to know Andrew, otherwise than by reputation,
at Mr. Sanborn's trial the year before, and had been
struck at once with the " large infusion of common
sense and practicabUity mixed up with his enthusi
asm." J The combination, indeed, of these two quah
ties constituted a likeness between the two men
which with their honesty and disinterestedness made
the basis of their cooperation ; each combined with
devotion to principles an understanding of means
by which principles are converted into deeds. In
other respects they were the very antipodes of each
other. All through the winter the desperate state of
the nation had chaUenged Forbes' executive facul
ties ; he studied it, looking into the future, as if it
were a bad business tangle which he must unravel.
From the many sources of information at his com
mand, he became convinced of the imminence of
war ; and as a man of this faith he joined the
Governor's War Council.
On Monday morning there were present at the
meeting, besides the aides, the Adjutant-General,
and several of the major-generals of the militia,
George H. Gordon and George L. Andrews, both of
whom had been formerly in the regular army, and
old General Thayer of the United States Engineers,
who for many years was commander at West Point.
With the eyes of experts they scrutinized the esti-
1 Letter from John M. Forbes read at the Massachusetts Club
meeting on Governor Andrew Memorial Day, January 28, 1888.

162 JOHN A. ANDREW
mates which the Adjutant-General had prepared, —
2000 overcoats at $9 ; 2000 blankets at $3 ; 2000
knapsacks at $2.25 each ; they examined the lists
of possible steamers drawn up by Forbes and Lee,
and discussed the feasibility of sending mflitia by
water to Washington or to Fortress Monroe, as the
need might be. In further sessions their plans were
perfected, and at the regular meeting of the Execu
tive Council on Saturday the results of these con
ferences appeared as formal reports, which were ap
proved without delay.
Even whUe the military committee was still de
liberating, however, it became clear that for the pre
sent at least Washington was safe. The election in
Virginia on February 4 assured the loyalty of that
State until after Lincoln's inauguration, and a spe
cial committee of Congress on the same day reported
that it had been able to find no trace of conspiracy.
On Wednesday an authoritative telegram to An
drew from Ritchie — " There is not the slightest
probabUity of any immediate call " — made assur
ance doubly sure. His letters which followed ex
plained that the mflitia would hardly be called for by
Buchanan because the President doubted his con
stitutional power to act in the premises. As for An
drew, the very act of preparation for the worst had
calmed and steadied him. When Philhps and Clif
ford, having read in the New York papers on their
way home of the rapid passage of the emergency loan
bill, hurried to the State House and poured out their
fears of impending war, he met them with : " Let it

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 163
come. In fact, it has come." 1 On Monday, Febru
ary 4, the day on which the military committee had
its first conference, Andrew wrote in a letter to Cyrus
Woodman : " I am as quiet and calm as a phUoso-
pher ; but I stand surprised beyond measure at the
content with which others receive the efforts of
traitors to break up the government. For I think I
know why I am calm. But I don't believe people
generaUy know why they are, — I mean the people
mostly found in Boston ! I think the masses, — the
glorious and free democracy, know far better than
State Street, — or its merchant class."
Although fears for the safety of Washington dur
ing the week of February 10-17, on the Wednes
day of which the electoral vote was to be counted in
the Senate, were now overpast, yet every message
from the capital urged the necessity of mihtary pre
paration. " We think now," wrote Charles Francis
Adams on February 8, " that we can go on until
the Inauguration without danger. But if Virginia
should finaUy go, it would carry Maryland with her,
and this would insulate the District, and place the
new Administration in the hands of its enemies. In
that case it would not be safe to stay without a force
of twenty thousand men. General Scott will by that
time have concentrated a considerable portion of the
army here. But there wUl be needed, besides, a
good number of men whose fidelity can be relied on.
I recommend it to you therefore to have a provi
sional force ready for some stay in case of need."
1 Stephen H. Phillips in the New York Sun, June 11, 1893.

164 JOHN A. ANDREW
For the details of preparation Ritchie brought back
fuU instructions from Scott and Colonel Keyes of
his staff. The sea route, with a landing either at
Baltimore under the guns of Fort McHenry, or at
Annapolis, was recommended as the only safe method
of sending the troops ; and the aide was charged
with a message to his too outspoken chief on the
importance of secrecy.
WhUe the executive branch of the state govern
ment was busying itself with the works of war,
the Legislature was in a turmoU over the Senate
resolve authorizing the Governor to appoint Peace
Commissioners. After the radicals had blocked the
measure for two days, they were overborne by the ar
gument that, excepting Sumner, the Massachusetts
Delegation wished the State to be represented in the
Congress. On February 5 the resolve passed ; the
names of the men appointed were immediately an
nounced,1 and on the next day they started for
Washington. That the Commissioners would pledge
Massachusetts to nothing contrary to her traditions
Andrew felt sure. " J£ these men," he wrote, " come
home and report in FaneuU Hall that New England
must stand alone, — alone we can stand there. I
have arranged the men on careful thought, clear
conviction, independent judgment, and under a sense
of the responsibihty attaching perhaps to the most
weighty act of my life."
1 They were John Z. Goodrich of Stockbridge, Charles Allen of
Worcester, George S. Boutwell of Groton, Francis B. Crowninshield
of Boston, Theophilus P. Chandler of Brookline, John M. Forbes of
Milton, and Richard P. Waters of Beverly.

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 165
Another act in persuading the Legislature to
which Andrew had much trouble, was that of guar
anteeing to the extent of $2,000,000 the issue of
bonds whereby the Secretary of the Treasury was
endeavoring to repair the financial state of the na
tional government. For many members of the Gen
eral Court it was a considerable stretch of loyalty
thus to come to the rescue of a bankrupt Democratic
administration, and to bring these men to their senses
Andrew needed many private conferences, backed
up by repeated and urgent representations from the
Congressional Delegation.
MeanwhUe, both in the General Court and else
where, the agitation for the repeal of the Personal
Liberty Law was kept up. The petition of the thirty-
five had been foUowed by a series of articles in the
Boston Journal written by Professor Joel Parker of
the Harvard Law School, who, having recently given
the law a careful examination in his capacity as chair
man of the commissioners on the revision of the
Massachusetts statutes, was now in a position to at
tack its weak points with great vigor. In spite of
the high ground of unconstitutionality taken by the
" Hunkers," it was plain enough that they were mak
ing use of the issue in order to split the Repubhcan
party ; it was therefore incumbent on the Committee
on Federal Relations, to which the petition had been
referred, to discover a course upon which both con
servative and radical Republicans could unite. In
the statute as it stood the legal procedure was not in
conformity with that prescribed by the Fugitive Slave

166 JOHN A. ANDREW
Law, and the removal of this inconsistency was se
lected as a concession which could be made justly,
without jeopardizing the liberty of free negroes in
Massachusetts. To bring about unanimity in the
committee on this point was a delicate piece of work,
but E. F. Stone, the chairman, using the influence
of the Governor's name, at last succeeded in getting
the members into line. On February 17, Andrew
was able to announce to Sumner with some exulta
tion the unanimous report of the committee. "I
had no original expectation," he wrote, " of getting
such a result ; but I told some persons that they
could not get anything thro' this room [the Council
Chamber] not conformable to certain principles, and
which did not contain [certain] details, unless they
marched it thro' by dragoons." 1
This show of concession, coming at the time when
it did, was of great service to the Massachusetts mem
bers of the Peace Congress. It furnished them an
argument which they could use with the hesitating
1 A characteristic act of Andrew's in connection with this amend
ment shows that he never let the legal overshadow the humane as
pect of the question.
" The hearing," he wrote to Sumner, " last Friday before the Com
mittee on Federal Relations about Fugitive Slaves etc. was crowded
in the House of Representatives. It will be resumed to-morrow
morning. I have arranged to have our ' Ida May,' and a large num
ber (say ten to twelve) of other handsome and bright freed-slaves,
exhibited before the Committee, as persons touching whom kid
nappers might get up full ' records ' and ex-parte affidavits, and
whose freedom it would not be open to us to prove before the Slave
Committee. " A live man ! woman ! child ! — these are great arguments to
human hearts.''

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 167
states of Virginia and Maryland, being, as Andrew
wrote to Forbes, " proof of a universal sentiment of
good neighborhood and kindness toward friendly
men, mingled with personal self-respect and devo
tion to our own sense of duty — a divided duty it
is true, — but susceptible of being discriminately
performed on both sides." J
So far as Andrew's enemies were concerned, his
record of unfitness was now pretty well made up. In
the first two months of his term he had more than
fulfilled their most pessimistic predictions. Demo
crats and Constitutional-Unionists ahke scornfully
gloated over his errors, from the defence of the Per
sonal Liberty Law in his inaugural and the " emo
tional orgy " at the presentation of the Parker arms,
to his " absurd " military preparations. Their feel
ings were summed up in one of Bowles' letters to
his friend Dawes, — the same epistle in which he
characterized Lincoln as a " Simple Susan." " What
was apprehension about Andrew is now conviction.
1 The law of 1855 (see Rev. Stat, of 1860, cap. 144, § 19) attempted
to secure a jury trial for an alleged fugitive, and assimilated the trial
to a criminal case. The change made was as follows : —
" Nothing contained in the statutes of the Commonwealth shall be
construed to authorize the taking of any person by writ of habeas
corpus out of the custody of the United States marshal, or his deputy,
holding him by legal and sufficient process, issued by any court or
magistrate of competent jurisdiction: provided, however, that this
shall not affect the authority of the supreme judicial court, or its
justices, in accordance with the provisions of the constitution of the
United States, and of this Commonwealth, to investigate and deter
mine upon the validity and legal effect of any process which may be re
lied on to defeat the writ, or any other matter properly arising." —
Cap. 91, § 3. The Personal Liberty Law was repealed in 1868.

168 JOHN A. ANDREW
He wobbles like an old cart — is conceited, dog
matic, 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 wiU yet see it and per
haps acknowledge it." J Sometimes, as these same
enemies were forced to admit, Andrew had blun
dered into the right way. He had appointed com
missioners to the Peace Congress ; he had " backed
down " from his radical stand upon the Personal Lib
erty Law. This credit to his account, however, was
as nothing when compared with the war panic which
he had raised. The Union-loving and profit-loving
merchants of Boston, when they thought on their
Governor's pose as a man of war, had an access
of terror which their ridicule but feebly disguised.
They beheld the chief executive of the State of
Webster outdoing the abolitionists in zeal for dis
union, seeking to rob them at one stroke of their
Constitution and their customers. With the Peace
Congress at work in Washington all would soon
be well; though the South were threatening, this
was no time to respond in kind. " From land's end
to land's end, I was reviled last winter for a little
warlike preparation,"2 wrote Andrew afterwards of
this time ; and Henry Lee, recaUing these weeks in
later years declared that " You had only to men
tion the word overcoat or speak of ' kissing the
musket ' ... to excite the risibles or call down the
1 February 26, 1861. Life of Bowles, Merriam, vol. i. p. 318.
2 To F. W. Bird, December 14, 1861.

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 1C9
objurgations of any of the scoffers, to whom these
timely acts seemed the height of folly or wicked
ness." J On the other hand, Andrew's friends of the
Bird Club were far from finding him the champion
of the radical cause that they had hoped for. S. G.
Howe, writing to Frank Bird of Andrew's con
senting that Massachusetts should join the Peace
Congress, exclaimed : "Andrew is hke a noble horse
harnessed in with mules ; how long he wiU retain
his virility, I know not." His yielding to conserv
ative clamor, so they felt in their amazement and
desperation, utterly belied the Andrew whom they
thought they knew. Thus, in his first three months
of office he disappointed the expectation of over-
zealous friends and fulfilled that of over-zealous
enemies. The only interpretation, in truth, by which An
drew's conduct ceases to be " wobbling " and be
comes straightforward and consistent is that which
takes into account the conviction which he brought
back from Washington in December. The South
meant to fight ; therefore he as Governor must have
his state mihtia ready to move as soon as the first
blow was struck. On the other hand, since the
Buchanan administration was paralyzed by incom
petence if not by treason, since Buchanan himself
was likely to refuse to summon the militia, it was im
perative that the rebels should be held off by a show
of concession until the fourth of March was safely
past. Finally, the strategic advantage of not being
1 MS. Reminiscences.

170 JOHN A. ANDREW
the party to strike the first blow was worth manoeu
vring for. Some sentences in Adams' letter to An
drew of February 8 show the course which they both
were steering.
All of our opponents await only the final dis
ruption of the States to bring up a general charge
that we desired it to happen and to that end refused
all conciliation. ... I hold the dissolution of the
Union, if in any way promoted by us, as in this
stage of the slave question, a great pohtical blunder,
if not a crime.
When one judges Andrew's conduct from this point
of view, the only act which has the appearance of
error was the risk he ran of imperiUing the peace
movements at Washington and endangering the loy
alty of the border states by lack of secrecy in his
military preparations. Though on this point he had
sufficient warning, he could not escape the law of
his nature which compeUed him to share with others
all his processes of thought, all his motives for
action. Thus, for the time being, his enemies had
him at a tremendous disadvantage. It is true that
he desired to prepare the minds of the North
for what was coming, but it is one thing to fire a
harmless salute on Boston Common and have a
" melting time " over Revolutionary muskets, and
quite another to order pubhcly two thousand over
coats for men who drilled in comfortable armories.
Error or not, it soon mattered Uttle. It needed
but the shock of Sumter to bring home to the
North the reahty of war. Then' the Governor's re-

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 171
vflers were forced to admit that John Andrew was
right. To interrupt the narrative of preparation for war
with a recital of the rush and scramble for office that
began even before the fourth of March has a strong
note of the incongruous, but it is no more incon
gruous than the actual situation. Lincoln's descrip
tion of himself as a man letting rooms in one end of
his house while the other end was on fire is a graphic
statement of the feelings of every Republican hold
ing at that time any position to which patronage was
attached. The Massachusetts leaders accustomed to
plead the " Cause of Immortal Ideas " were now con
cerned with the dispensing of third-class postmaster-
ships and minor clerkships. Andrew had almost
nothing within his own gift and had nothing to ask
for himself,1 but he was constantly beset with re
quests to aid other people's petitions, and he natu
raUy wished to have his share in the adjustments
which the state managers of the party were making.
It is worth whUe, for the sake of demonstrating
the theories of those days about appointments in the
civil service and of showing the straits which the Re
publican leaders were in, to quote from one of An
drew's letters on the subject. His version of Gover
nor Marcy's famous maxim, " To the victors belong
the spoils," is as foUows : —
Why in the name of aU good pohcy and statesman
ship should we forego the instant presence and inau-
i Except a position in the Custom House for his brother Isaac, who
continued in it till advancing age compelled him to resign in 1888.

172 JOHN A. ANDREW
guration of that influence, power and prestige, which
will pertain to the Rep. party when all its important
Federal offices shall have been filled by able, strong
and sincere Republican men ? Every delay helps drift
us astern.1
The heaviest pressure on Andrew came from men
seeking office in the Boston Custom House, a place
as remote from his control as any could well be. In
despair, he exclaimed to Sumner, " I wish we were
back where we were last year ; and had a good 20
yrs. fight before us. I fear our beard is not yet
grown, and that we 'd better stayed a while longer
in Jericho." 2 The most diverting of aU the contests
was that for the Boston postmastership, the office
which was Sumner's particular plum. For the story
of this exciting race, in which Dr. John G. Palfrey
was the winner,3 there is unfortunately no space here,
unless it be for one extract from a letter of An
drew's to Sumner.
I have just had a call from Mr. Alley [Repre
sentative in Congress from the Sixth District]. He
thinks it a great responsibility for you to decide the
appt of Boston P. M. and thinks for yr own ease etc.,
you 'd best refer it to the delegates. He names no
one, himself, but I find is very much of opinion that
Pangborn wd be a bad appt, evidently, of the two,
favors Phelps, thinks / ought not to have any opin
ion. I told him / shd load and fire, on all subjects,
1 To Charles Sumner, March 11, 1861.
2 March 26, 1861.
8 The last obstacle to his appointment was removed when he tele
graphed Sumner that if necessary he could change his residence from
Cambridge to Boston in three days' time.

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 173
according to the real opinion I might at any time
have, not claiming any right to be regarded, but
holding myself perfectly free to speak, as if I was a
private man, and claiming no more right to influence,
— not wishing to be "kept in bondage unto fear,"
as the apostle says.
Among Boston Repubhcans, Peleg Chandler was
one of those most in demand for indorsing petitions.
In the course of his lively correspondence with the
Governor he exclaimed : " Did you ever know such
a rush for places ? I never again wish to be in the
majority. T. P. C. and I only wish to get Chute and
Isaac Andrew something, and then wfll cry quits."
He wound up with a joke which is inserted here
because it hints at the expectations of Andrew's
friends for him.
Now there is one word for myself. I want an
office ! ! — It is yours. It has occurred to me within
a few days that you will probably be in political hfe
for years, and may wish to give up your room in
No. 4. If so, I want the refusal of it. . . . Don't
forget me in this, and I resign all claims for any
thing else. ... It is aU nonsense about your return
ing to practice, at least for several years.
By the first of AprU Andrew's mUitary prepara
tions were completed. In accordance with General
Order No. 4, the companies throughout the State
were filled with young men ready for active service ;
the Governor had the power to raise the limit of fifty
privates in a company to sixty-four, and the author
ity to enlist companies, if necessary, over and above

174 JOHN A. ANDREW
the maximum of five thousand men aUowed by the
law ; contracts for the two thousand overcoats and
other equipments had been given out, and an ap
propriation of $25,000 had been made by the Legis
lature to pay for them. That body, having thus
committed itself on the one side, took a step in the
other direction by repealing the Emergency Fund
BUI passed in February. Thus, after its adjournment
on AprU 11, Andrew had no money to draw upon.
His men, however, were ready, even impatient. In
the early weeks of AprU, when the strain of watch
ing Charleston Harbor had become almost unendur
able for both North and South, when the Pennsyl
vania Legislature, at Lincoln's request, was voting
$500,000 for better organization of the militia, when
the spirit of loyalty was spreading through the North
and West, Andrew tried to secure the use of the
forts in the harbor. Here his regiments could go
into camp, get the drfll which they so much needed,
and be ready to move at an instant's notice. But the
new Secretary of War, Simon Cameron, was deep in
the cares of patronage and paid no attention to the
request. There was nothing to do except to wait,
but the waiting could not be long. The young Al
bert Browne, watching events in Washington and
sending careful reports to Andrew, expressed, in a
letter the quaint epistolary contractions of which
he was soon to slough off, the universal sense of an
imminent crisis.
i" am glad to see ihat you keep up the mili
tary preparation in Mass., for from everything I

FIRST MONTHS AS GOVERNOR 175
have seen and heard (and my eyes and ears have
been very busy during ye fortnight), I sincerely be
lieve that the chances are that Virginia wUl go out
and take the capital with her; — that as matters
stand ye chances are that ye next congress of ye
U. S. will not meet at Washington.
I sat in ye gaUery during ye last hour of ye ses
sion of ye Senate and wondered whether it was not
an historic scene I was witnessing — whether it was
not ye last hour of ye last Senate of ye United
States.
Though it was indeed a time of last days and last
things, though the capital might again drift into
danger, Andrew, with the ready militia at his caU,
was resolute that at least a gaUant rescue should be
attempted.

CHAPTER V
WAR
Since they wUl have it so, — in the name of God,
— Amen ! Now let all the Governors and Chief men
of the people see to it that war shall not cease untU
Emancipation is secure.
If I can be of any use, anywhere, in any capacity
(save that of spy) command me.
These were Dr. Howe's words to Andrew on Sat
urday, AprU 13, while the news of the bombard
ment of Sumter was hurrying through the streets of
the town. Thus the war began. It was a war for
Union ; but the radical Republicans, full of a long-
tried faith, were from the outset determined that it
should become also a war for Emancipation.
In the newspapers of Monday morning, April 15,
appeared the President's proclamation calling for
75,000 mflitia to serve for three months, " to repos
sess the forts, places, and property which have been
seized from the Union." In Boston the first waves
of the great popular impulse that made this week
one of the most famous in American history were
felt in the Adjutant-General's office at the State
House. Men applied for commissions to raise com-

WAR 177
panies; officers came to press the claims of their
commands for service. In the large entrance hall of
the building, known as Doric Hall, the quiet that
usuaUy reigned from April to January was soon de
stroyed by a swiftly growing crowd. Presently word
wrent about that a telegram from Senator Wilson
in Washington gave the quota of Massachusetts as
twenty companies, with sixty-four privates in a com
pany; then telegrams from the War Department
foUowed in confirmation. This news set the sticklers
for militia etiquette in a great flutter. Fifty had al
ways been the maximum for a company ; where were
the additional uniforms to come from, and, for the
matter of that, what companies were near enough
ahke in uniform to make the newly formed regiments
presentable? In the midst of this discussion the
Governor appeared, and appeal was made to him.
The Journal of the next day described the scene.
When it was objected that it was desirable that
aU the companies of each regiment should be uni
formly uniformed, so to speak, His Excellency closed
the argument by saying : " It is n't uniforms — it 's
men we want ! " To avoid the perplexity occasioned
by a multiplicity of counseUors, the Governor, his
aides, and the Adjutant General then shut them
selves out from the common gaze, and remained
in secret session for something more than an hour.
The result of this " councU of war " was the pro
mulgation of an order for four regiments — the
third, Col. Wardrop ; the fourth, Col. Packard ; the
sixth, Col. Jones, and the eighth, Lieut. Col. Munroe,
to assemble on Boston Common at as early an hour

178 JOHN A. ANDREW
to-day as may be, from which the twenty companies
required, wUl then be selected.
Andrew, face to face with the emergency which
had been deferred from February, had now to carry
out the plans which he had formed then and since.
Inasmuch as the execution of these plans involved
the cooperation of the Secretary of War, the Gov
ernor's first care was to put himself in touch with
Washington. He had no mind to wait for the mus
tering officers whom Cameron proposed sending to
Boston and Springfield ; he intended to take mat
ters up at the point where he and Scott had let them
drop ten weeks before. " Despatch received. By
what route shall we send ? " was his reply to Cam
eron's telegram. This precipitate demand for march
ing orders he followed up by a letter crammed with
suggestions and requests. He recommended that the
Springfield armory should be ordered to double its
output of arms ; he reported a rumor that the armory
at Harper's Ferry was to be seized, and urged that
either its machinery and tools should be removed
or its buUdings should be defended by an adequate
guard ; he referred to experiments with a new kind
of projectile that had been carried on under the di
rection of his staff, and asked the government to take
advantage of the invention ; he asked permission to
raise a new regiment of special volunteers, and to
garrison the forts in Boston Harbor. As if all this
were not sufficient evidence that the Governor of
Massachusetts was ready to put his State at the head

WAR 179
of the column in support of the war, he concluded
with the words : " I am happy to add that I find
the amplest proof of warm devotion to the country's
cause on every hand to-day. Our people are ahve."
To understand how completely ready were the Gov
ernor and his militia, one needs only to compare
this letter with the " patriotic " responses of other
Northern governors to this same telegram of Cam
eron's.1 Governors who had not a single company
ready to march had plenty of time for composing
fervent telegrams; Andrew at once grappled with
the details of war.
Except for general oversight, he could leave to
his aides and to the Adjutant-General the improvis
ing of ordnance, quartermaster's and medical depart
ments, which should attend to the work of arming
and equipping the incoming regiments. They also
prepared the general orders which were necessary
to direct the movements of the troops. To him as
Governor were made of course the countless offers
of help of every conceivable sort which came from
every conceivable source, but his own particular work
was to come to an understanding with the War De
partment as to the route by which the Massachusetts
militia should be forwarded. Here his right-hand
man was John M. Forbes. To Forbes' thinking,
Washington stood in no greater need of troops than
Fortress Monroe, which, situated on a peninsula pro-
1 War of the Rebellion. Official Records of the Union and Confed
erate Armies, Series III. vol. i. pp. 70-75. For convenience this
unwieldy title will hereafter be abbreviated to O. R.

180 JOHN A. ANDREW
jecting into the southern reaches of Chesapeake Bay,
was isolated from the North, except as it could be
reached by steamer from Boston or New York, and
which he knew to be " held by old Colonel Dimick
with only a couple of small companies of regulars of
about sixty men each, — hardly enough to man the
gates, much less the ramparts." 1 Accordingly, when,
in reply to the Governor's message asking by what
route the troops were to be forwarded, Cameron tele
graphed, " Send your companies here by raUroad,"
Andrew, by Forbes' advice, suggested to the Secre
tary of War the need of reinforcements at Fortress
Monroe, and asked permission to send a regiment
there, in addition to the two regiments that were des
tined for Washington. As a further step, Forbes set
out to ascertain what steamers in port were available.
Thus at the end of the first day preparations for
moving the troops were well advanced.
On Tuesday morning came telegrams from Wash
ington calling for two more regiments from Massa
chusetts, with a brigadier-general to command the
brigade of four regiments thus formed. Three of the
regiments were to go to Washington and the fourth
to Fortress Monroe. For this last regiment the route
prescribed by General Scott was " by rail to Balti
more, and thence by steam-boat to Fort Monroe."
Forbes had no intention of being thus deterred. He
had already secured the refusal of the S. R. Spauld-
ing of the Baltimore line, and of one of the steam
ers of the FaU River line. From President Felton of
1 John Murray Forbes : Letters and Recollections, vol. i. p. 206.

WAR 181
the Philadelphia and Baltimore Railroad he knew the
plans of the Southern sympathizers for burning the
railroad bridges between the two cities, and he felt
convinced of the "absurdity of trusting to hiring
steamers in a half rebel city hke Baltimore, even if
we got the troops through to that place without in
terruption." J Andrew was quickly persuaded, and on
his own responsibUity told Forbes to engage the two
steamers. Then a shower of telegrams was precipi
tated upon the War Department ; on every official of
consequence was urged the safety and the economy
of the water route from Boston to Fortress Monroe.
We had given up any expectation of orders for
that day [continues Forbes in his reminiscences], —
it being after four p. m., — when I felt a hand on my
shoulder as I sat writing in my little den at the City
Exchange, and heard Colonel Henry Lee's voice . . .
saying, " The orders have come, we must send off the
first troops to-night." I sprang to the window to see
what the weather was, and said at once, " It is too late
to start in this storm." I sent, however, a messenger
to Colonel Borden by the five p. m. train, and then
hunted up George B. Upton, and got him started out
to hurry up the Spaulding, then lying in Boston.2
Forbes' fears were justified ; it proved impossible
to get the troops off that night. Since ten o'clock in
the morning, when the sturdy men from Marblehead
had made their appearance, nearly every train during
the day had brought into Boston a company or so,
little knots of men from twenty to sixty in number,
1 Forbes, vol. i. p. 206. 2 Ibid. p. 208.

182 JOHN A. ANDREW
most of them youths who had been able to drop work
at a moment's warning. As they trudged through the
streets, they were cheered by crowds standing under
umbreUas ; at Faneuil Hall a welcome was provided
by the man without whom no function in Boston
was complete, — J. B. Smith, the colored caterer. By
the end of the day enough companies had come in to
make it possible to send a regiment to Washington
and one to Fortress Monroe. For the latter destina
tion the Third and the Fourth Regiments, which to
gether made up a little more than the sum of 780
men required for one regiment, were designated ; for
Washington the Sixth was selected. Since its ranks
were by no means full, orders were issued attaching
to it two companies belonging to other regiments.
One of the companies was found drilUng in its haU
on Ehot Street ; the captain of the other was routed
out of bed at his home in Stoneham at two o'clock
in the morning by the summons to have his men at
the State House before noon.
On Wednesday came the crisis of confusion. All
day long Doric HaU was fiUed with stacks of arms
and piles of ammunition and equipments, guarded
by a company of mflitia. These supplies a stream
of mUitia officers and civihans, acting as adjutants,
quartermasters, or ordnance officers, carried to the
soldiers just outside on Mt. Vernon Street. As com
pany after company marched up, Ritchie and Lee
superintended the distribution and inspected each
man to see that his outfit was complete. Upstairs
in the Executive Rooms, where throngs came press-

WAR 183
ing in, volunteer clerks were grappling with the
huge piles of letters to be answered, messengers
were hurrying to and from the telegraph office, aides
were consulting about the movements of troops, and
Forbes was drawing up charters for the two steam
boats and giving orders for provisioning them. No
man could do his own work wholly for himself ; he
was constantly stopping to give and to get advice.
Thus, as the Governor was the final source of au
thority, appeal was invariably made to him ; in all
the work of aU these men there was scarcely a detaU
on which he did not himself pass. Every new appeal
to him was an interruption, and before it could be
half answered was in its turn interrupted.
Amid these affairs great and small that trod upon
one another's heels, one act of Andrew's deserves
to be taken by itself, for it started a train of conse
quences which produced one of the most notorious
" pohtical generals " of the war, and which reacted
upon Andrew in numberless forms of personal and
official annoyance. Of the six brigadiers in the mUi
tia, Andrew's choice of a general to lead the Massa
chusetts brigade lay between two. One, the senior
brigadier, Ebenezer W. Pierce, of Assonet VUlage,
held his position chiefly by reason of long connection
with the mflitia ; the other was Benjamin F. Butler,
of Lowell. Butler was of the same age as Andrew
and of the same profession. In pohtics he was a
Democrat. At the Charleston convention in 1860
he had voted repeatedly for Jefferson Davis ; when
the party spht, he allied himself with the Southern

184 JOHN A. ANDREW
wing, and as its representative in Massachusetts he
ran against Andrew for Governor. Though he might
sometimes lack the power, he never lacked the wish
to ingratiate. His success in the mUitia was beyond
dispute ; his fellow soldiers had elected him to higher
and higher rank, and at last to the command of a
brigade which was one of the best in the State. As
a lawyer he was feared, both for the things that he
was able and the things that he was wilUng to do.
In short, he gave the world to understand that he
held strong cards ; but as yet no man knew (to com
plete the figure) what his game was.
This, then, was the man who presented himself to
the Governor, to ask to lead the Massachusetts regi
ments. Andrew realized that in point of ability and
mUitia service Butler had a good claim to the appoint
ment. A still better claim Andrew found in the
fact that, with a Breckinridge Democrat at the head
of her troops, Massachusetts could proclaim that
her citizens stood united in defence of the Constitu
tion. He accepted the situation and gave the bri
gade to Butler. Thus, before the war was two days
old, this " political general " was launched, thanks
to Andrew, on his career as a national figure. He at
once established headquarters at the State House, and
worked untiringly with the rest.1
1 Butler's unashamed version of this appointment, that he brought
the aid of the Boston banks to Andrew, and hinted that it would be
withdrawn if he were not made Brigadier (see Butler's Book, p. 173),
though characteristic enough, is absurd on the face of it. But it is
not worth while to undertake the Augean task of disproving the
"facts " of Butler's Book.

WAR 185
By noon the Sixth Regiment, which was to go off
first, having received its equipments and having ex
changed its old smooth-bore muskets for new rifles,
drew up before the long and broad flight of the
State House steps, and the Governor came down to
give the regiment its colors and to bid it Godspeed.
For a moment the throng of workers in the State
House stopped ; they crowded down the steps, and
the throngs of people from the street below surged
up to meet them. Standing thus, the Governor for
five minutes poured forth the feehng pent up within
him for the last few days, surrendering himself, as
was his wont, to the fullness of eloquence which
served him so weU at these times, and which his
ringing voice could send far out over an open-air
crowd. At the end he gave the colors into the keep
ing of Colonel Jones, who rephed with a soldier's
brevity. The regiment marched off, little dreaming
what the future had in store for it. The Governor
and his f eUow-workers returned to their tasks within ;
the crowd dispersed, stiU sobbing and cheering.
Soon after three o'clock, the Fourth Regiment
appeared at the State House. It received its equip
ments, the Governor spoke a few sentences, — " You
cannot wait for words," he said, — and the regi
ment hurried away to take the train for FaU River.
At the end of the day, the Third was despatched,
and by seven o'clock it had embarked in the Spauld-
ing, which steamed down the harbor and anchored for
the night. These were the first armed troops to move
anywhere in the North ; the men at the State House

186 JOHN A. ANDREW
exulted in the expectation that within forty-eight
hours Washington and Fortress Monroe would be
reinforced. Every day the war spirit mounted. On Thursday
the crowd at the State House was greater than ever.
Women, gay with flags, rosettes, and patriotic em
blems, coming to offer themselves as nurses, mingled
with men pressing to enlist or to get permission to
raise companies. One committee was given power
to raise an Irish regiment ; another group of men
was at work on a regiment to be enlisted for the
war and to receive driU and discipline like United
States Regulars, under the command of Major Gor
don, a West Point graduate. Meanwhile, under the
direction of General Butler, who was to go with
the Eighth Regiment in the afternoon, the distribu
tion of ammunition and equipments went rapidly
forward. A rousing send-off for the regiment was to be the
chmax of the day and of the week. Early in the
afternoon, the troops, having formed at Faneuil HaU,
started for the State House. A platoon of National
Lancers, mounted, cleared the way ; in the van was
the Salem Light Infantry in its briUiant Zouave cos
tume, — a hohday garb soon to be discarded. The
Advertiser described the scene : —
As the sound of the drum indicated the approach
of the regiment toward the State House, the crowds
flocked from the various streets leading into Beacon
Street, and when they arrived the street presented
such a scene as has seldom been witnessed in Boston.

WAR 187
The area in front of the State House steps was a
dense mass of humanity, and every window in the
neighborhood was filled with both sexes who gave
expression to their enthusiasm with hearty and long
continued cheers, as the regiment appeared. They
came up in gaUant style, preceded by the Brigade
Band. After they had drawn up in hne, the Cadets
cleared a passage through the immense throng that
fiUed the State House entrance. Shortly the Gov
ernor, accompanied by his staff and Brigadier-Gen.
Butler, and members of the Council, appeared, amid
tremendous shouts and cheers from the large crowd.
They proceeded to the entrance, where they were
met by the officers of the regiment.
Here Andrew addressed them, — his words inter
rupted again and again by cheers and often drowned
in the universal tumult of feeling. The profound
impression that he made was due not to the words
which came from his hps, but to the mighty emo
tion behind them. The increasing excitement of the
swaying crowd was its response to the picture of
War which their governor held up to them. General
Butler rephed briefly. His closing words show the
temper in which the Breckinridge Democrat went
into the war. " We will not turn back tiU we show
those who have laid their hands upon the fabric of
the Union there is but one thought in the North, —
the Union of these States, now and forever, one and
inseparable." At the conclusion of Mr. Butler's remarks [con
tinues the Advertiser'], without regard to the sen
try or the pohce, gentlemen crowded upon him to

188 JOHN A. ANDREW
exchange greetings with him. One member of the
Executive CouncU exclaimed " God bless you."
Cheers without number were given for the Eighth,
the Union, and old Essex. Many gentlemen em
braced Col. Monroe of the Eighth Regiment, and
for a time the most thrilling excitement pervaded
the large concourse. The troops then took up their
line of march for Faneuil Hall, cheered on every
hand as they passed through the streets.
This public act of parting between the Governor
and his troops was the formal sign of the close re
ality of war, and the shock it gave was profound.
Many, many times repeated during the next four
years, the scene became famous ; one may see it
quaintly recorded on the soldiers' monument on
Boston Common, — the Governor, holding the colors,
surrounded by his staff ; before him the regimental
officers and the troops, all eager to be off.
Although the desperate haste at the State House
was due chiefly to the supposed peril of the gov
ernment at Washington, it was only human that the
spirit of rivalry should be a contributing motive.
Andrew and his associates knew that Governor
Sprague of Rhode Island had offered a regiment to
the War Department on Saturday, April 13, and that
the splendid Seventh Regiment of New York was
likely to be ready. Such competition heightened
their determination to " put Massachusetts at the
head of the column." The first reward of these tre
mendous efforts came in reports from the Sixth on
its triumphal journey; borne by Massachusetts troops,

WAR 189
the fiery cross spread the spirit of war through the
country-side. By Friday morning the whole North
knew of the wUd enthusiasm with which New York
had followed down Broadway the first regiment to
pass through the city. To temper the jubUation at
the State House came a despatch from the colonel
of the Fourth, sent from New York, where the
State of Maine had stopped for coal. Being " an
entirely inexperienced militia officer," he had taken
fright because " the country doctor who acted as sur
geon gave the sage opinion that the steamer was over
loaded," and was unwUhng to proceed. " The red
tape was cut roughly, in the unmistakeable terms of
the governor's order " through J. M. Forbes. " No
further orders for Colonel Packard. Push steamer
on without stopping. Massachusetts must be first on
tbe ground." x
The work of the day went on. The remainder of
the quota of Massachusetts, which was to consist of
the Fifth Regiment brought up to the required
number by the addition of five companies from the
Seventh and of a battalion of three companies from
Worcester commanded by Major Charles Devens,
was to start on Saturday. Equipments for them had
now to be coUected at short notice, since the original
supply for two thousand men was exhausted ; rifles,
too, had given out, and the Secretary of War must
be appealed to for permission to get them from the
United States armory at Springfield. Into the midst
of the throng that crowded about the Governor in
1 Forbes, vol. i. pp. 210, 211.

190 JOHN A. ANDREW
his room broke the news of riot and attack on the
Sixth in the streets of Baltimore. It fell on ears
disposed to credence ; the men who had been con
fident that Baltimore was filled with rebels naturally
beUeved the worst. Thus the rumor spread, and in
spreading grew. One thing only was certain : the
first blood had been shed; men of Massachusetts
were lying dead in Baltimore ; war was a necessity.
From that moment everything was done with a
difference. By nightfaU some of the rumors had established
themselves as facts, but the first authoritative com
munication came from General Butler after his ar
rival in PhUadelphia. AU night long despatches
from him came to the Governor at his house: the
Sixth, it was almost certain, had reached Washing
ton ; the dead and the wounded had been left in
Baltimore; no more troops could go through that
city ; both the mayor and the governor had pro
tested ; the railroad bridges were probably on fire ;
the telegraph office was held by the mob. Still
Butler announced his intention of obeying orders,
and, if necessary, of marching all the way from
Philadelphia to Washington. Soon after four o'clock
in the morning, however, he reported his decision to
transfer his troops by steamer from PerryvUle, at
the mouth of the Susquehanna, to Annapolis, and
thence to force his way to Washington. He urged
the Governor to send on immediately a battery
known as Cook's " Flying Artillery." 1
1 Butler's change of purpose had been brought about by the per-

WAR 191
As much of these telegrams as could be made
public Andrew directed Albert Browne to send to
the newspapers in the form of official bulletins, and
thus on Saturday morning men were able to read
reliable reports of what was known at the State
House as late as half past two. They also saw the
Governor's telegram to the Mayor of Baltimore.
One word in it — a word probably never before
formed by the Morse alphabet — expressed the pity
for these first victims, their names, even, as yet un
known, with which every heart was fuU. Though
incongruous here in its juxtaposition, it was the
utterance of a universal yearning.
I pray you to cause the bodies of our Massachu
setts soldiers, dead in Baltimore, to be immediately
laid out, preserved with ice, and tenderly sent for
ward by express to me. AU expenses wUl be paid
by this Commonwealth.
Butler's caU for Cook's Artillery was to the worn-
out laborers at the State House almost the last
straw. The Adjutant-General, who had gone down
to the Parker House to get a few hours' sleep, was
pulled out of bed and sent driving from one end
of town to the other, summoning the officers to have
the battery ready by noon of Saturday. The further
difficulty of finding seventy serviceable horses was
met after a fashion by a levy on the stables of the
sistent arguments of S. M. Felton and of S. F. Dupont, Command
ant of the Philadelphia Navy-yard, who assured him that all the
necessary arrangements had been made for this route, and that the
way was both feasible and safe. (See Schouler, vol. i. pp. 99-103.)

192 • JOHN A. ANDREW
Metropolitan Horse-railroad Company. As if these
were not emergencies enough, Forbes came in to
report that the owners of the Montreal, the only
steamer in port avaUable as a transport, had given
him a flat refusal. Since the rail route by way of
Baltimore was closed, there was nothing to do but
to engage transports in New York, and to this effect
Andrew telegraphed to Simeon Draper, a well-known
merchant who had been made chairman of the
Union Defence Committee1 there. Thus, although
the Flying ArtiUery and the Fifth Regiment in Bos
ton and the Third Battalion in Worcester were
ready by noon, lack of equipments and of transpor
tation prevented them from moving.
In the midst of the morning's work came the
meeting of the Governor's Council, which had been
summoned to give its sanction to the extraordinary
expenses that the Executive had been obhged to
incur. It voted to authorize the Treasurer of the
State to borrow $200,000 for an emergency fund.
It further advised and consented that the Governor
should purchase arms in Europe, for already the
supply of arms of modern pattern was exhausted,
and there were no more to be had in the country.
As agent for this purpose, Francis B. Crowninshield,
a Boston lawyer of position, a good Republican, and
a man of solid parts, offered himself and was ac
cepted. A letter of credit for fifty thousand pounds
1 On this committee were Simeon Draper, P. M. Wetmore, William
M. Evarts, John A. Dix, R. M. Blatchford, George Opdyke, Wil
liam H. Aspinwall, Moses H. Grinnell, and others.

WAR 193
was given him, and other governors were invited to
send by him orders for their own states.
In spite of unsparing labor, night came before the
arrangements for sending the Fifth by way of New
York were completed. In order to bid the men fare-
weU, the wearied Governor and his wearied staff went
down to Faneuil Hall. There they found a scene
of confusion and complaint. Already among the
officers, who had been taken from three regiments,
friction and jealousy had begun ; a large part of the
men had faUed to receive knapsacks, and their blan
kets were being packed in boxes, — an ill-starred
expedient, the cause now of delay and later of priva
tion ; the rank and file were exercising the soldier's
privUege of grumbling. Here the Governor dragged
through the early hours of the night, catching what
naps he could. At last, seeing that the regiment
could not hope to get off before dawn, and being
utterly worn out, he went home to bed.
After the departure of the Fifth on Sunday, AprU
21, no more mUitia, with the exception of a company
or so and scattering men, left the State. The Third
and the Fourth reached Fortress Monroe on the
morning of the 20th ; the Sixth reached Washing
ton on the afternoon of the 19th, the Eighth on the
afternoon of the 26th, one day later than the New
York Seventh and eight days after its departure
from Boston ; the Fifth arrived on the same day.
The Sixth was the only armed regiment to reach
Washington before the city was cut off from the
North, — an isolation which lasted for six days. For

194 JOHN A. ANDREW
that time it was the chief mainstay of hope to the
capital. " I begin to beheve that there is no North,"
said Lincoln to its men after four anxious days had
passed, and stUl no news came. " The Seventh Regi
ment is a myth, Rhode Island is another. You are
the only real thing." x
Within six days of the President's call Massachu
setts had sent off the 3120 men which formed her
quota, and several hundred men in excess. Pennsyl
vania had been first on the field with part of a regi
ment of unarmed troops ; Rhode Island had started
one regiment and one of her crack batteries of artil
lery ; New York had embarked four regiments. The
other states had barely begun to move. The splendid
record of Massachusetts was celebrated in " Warring
ton's" letter to the Springfield Republican on AprU
25. Everybody in Massachusetts seems to be congrat
ulating himself that he is a citizen of such a state.
We are ahead, as usual, though Rhode Island is
pretty near us. New York is slow in comparison.
But the difference mainly is in the greater state of
preparation, in which we were found, and the supe
rior energy, which our government has manifested.
I suppose the people of each state were equaUy ready,
but their leaders were not. Governor Andrew's
praise is in the mouth of everybody ; and he has
been very fortunate in his military advisers. His
aides . . . have shown great capacity. . . . Gen.
Schouler has worked indef atigably ; and indeed every
1 Abraham Lincoln : A History, by John G. Nicolay and John Hay,
vol. iv. p. 153.

WAR 195
department has been admirably managed. The Gov
ernor's general order, and his despatches to Mayor
Brown of Baltimore, have been read with the great
est satisfaction, and the official information which
he gives from our troops is read with more avidity
than anything else, because it is reliable and trust
worthy. While other legislatures are meeting and
voting money and supplies, our men are garrisoning
the capital of Maryland. It seems almost an age
since the Sixth Regiment left us, and the boys we
met at Faneuil Hall on Saturday are now, we hope,
doing service at the National Capital.
AU the time that the Governor was thus radiating
energy from his central authority, he was the focus
of the offerings of loyalty of the whole State. To
him were made proffers of every kind, for both state
and national governments. Men of aU ages, from
coUege boys to veterans of the War of 1812, wished
to volunteer ; manufacturers and merchants offered
their goods, no matter how remotely desirable they
might be ; money came pouring in ; and women
everywhere turned to the works which, without
waiting to ask or to offer, they knew would be
needed. It is impossible to recite the details of this
universal giving ; the hundreds of mass-meetings,
the flag-raisings, the pubhc protestations of loyalty
which made the very atmosphere of those days, must
be dismissed with a word. There is room for only
a few instances which serve to give what may be
called Andrew's reaction.
In the loyal uprising which began with the fif-

196 JOHN A. ANDREW
teenth of AprU, the Bell-Everetts and the Democrats
of Boston were not behind the rest. The mere fact
of the shot fired against the walls of Sumter simpli
fied the whole question for them, and they were quick
to faU into Une. Indeed, none now praised more
heartily than they those very preparations of the
Governor's which two months before they had been
so loud in ridicuhng. His selection of Butler to com
mand the Massachusetts brigade also won their ap
proval ; Wilham Gray, one of the ultra-conservative
merchants of Boston, offering Andrew ten thousand
doUars for the famUies of soldiers, remarked : " I feel
very great gratification at the designation of Briga
dier General Butler ... It offers to the people of
the whole country the highest evidence that Massa
chusetts knows no party, but stands as one man,
when the hberties of the Union, and the perpetuity
of the Government are assailed." Edward Everett,
too, the most distinguished citizen of the United
States at this time, a representative of the culture
and conservatism of Boston, appeared at the door of
the Governor's room on the morning of April 19, to
be received among the number of those coming for
ward to serve. Highly significant were such offers,
for they meant that Andrew's hands were to be up
held by the men whose help was as invaluable as it
was unexpected.
There remained one citizen of Massachusetts
whose action was awaited by loyal men with every
feeling of apprehension and distrust. Caleb Cushing
had continued to advocate, with an abUity and a

WAR 197
mahgnity that to Republicans seemed httle short of
satanic, the claims of the Southern Democrats. He
had been president of the Charleston convention and
of the Baltimore convention which nominated Breck
inridge ; he was believed to be in the councils of the
secessionist leaders. Ten days had now gone by
since the caU for troops, and he had not yet spoken.
More than one letter came to Andrew warning him
not to accept the gifts of the suspected traitor, but
they could have had httle influence on his decision.
It was not in his nature, when once he had stricken
a name off his books, ever to restore it. Conse
quently, when Cushing's offer of service was at last
received, although it was accompanied by a private
note protesting " earnest solicitude on my part to
discharge my duty to our common country," An
drew's reply was prompt and firm.
JOHN A. ANDREW TO CALEB CUSHTNG April 27, 1861.
Hon. Caleb Cushing.
Sir, — Under the responsibilities of this hour, —
remitted both as a man and a magistrate to the solemn
judgment of conscience and honor, — I must remem
ber only that great cause of constitutional hberty and
of civilization itself referred to the dread arbitrament
of arms. And I am bound to say that although our
personal relations have always been agreeable to my
self, and notwithstanding your many great qualities
fitting you for usefulness ; yet your relation to pubhc
affairs, your frequently avowed opinions touching
the ideas and sentiments of Massachusetts ; your in
timacy of social, political and sympathetic intercourse

198 JOHN A. ANDREW .
with the leading secessionists of the Rebel States,
maintained for years, and never (unless at this
moment) discontinued, — forbid my finding you any
place in the councU or the camp. I am compeUed
sadly to declare that, were I to accept your offer, I
should dishearten numerous good and loyal men,
and tend to demoralize our military service. How
gladly I would have made another reply to your
note of the 25th inst., which I had the honor to
receive yesterday, I need not declare, nor attempt
to express the painful reluctance with which this is
written. Faithfully your obedient servant,
John A. Andrew, Governor.
We of this day, knowing from the course of events
the sincerity of Cushing's offer, cannot help feehng,
perhaps to excess, what seem to be the cruelty and
the injustice of Andrew's refusal. It is impossible,
too, to avoid the reflection that if one of the two
most conspicuous Breckinridge Democrats in Massa
chusetts must be given recognition by the Governor
of the Commonwealth, it were much better that
Cushing had been taken and Butler left. Each of
these men, whose genius it was to be " true to one
party, and that is himself," must inevitably, sooner
or later, have turned up on the Union side. Again
and again the teasing inquiry comes to mind : What
if Andrew had hobbled the LoweU lawyer by choos
ing Cushing instead? His reason for acting as he
did is plain: with Butler, who was a less known
quantity, Andrew was willing to risk the chances of
an error of judgment; Cushing's record was too

WAR 199
voluminously damning for him to receive place at
Andrew's hands. The dread which good Repubhcans
had of Cushing is shown in the words of Forbes'
commendation of Andrew's course.
Our Govt, turns up a trump, fuU of decision and
having no Presidential aspirations, he has acted with
a single eye to the pubhc good, and has brought in
aU parties around him. His snub of Caleb Cushing,
who wanted to ride in on the storm, is said to be
dehcious. It was a sore disappointment to see Caleb
come out on our side — but the Govt, stopped his
doing any other mischief.
The offers of money which came crowding in from
the first formed the most surprising and solid proof
of the new-born confidence in the Governor on the
part of State Street. The Boston banks came for
ward to lend the State $3,600,000, and to the Sec
retary of the Treasury they offered to take treasury
notes to a large amount. Individuals were equally
ready. Besides William Gray, several other mer
chants promised their ten and even their twenty
thousand ; men of smaUer means gave no less wiU-
ingly. With the money went all the will and energy
of the money-making part of the community, now
thoroughly roused, and working in harmony with
the rest.
The offers, however, which went most to the heart
of the " over-humane " Governor, for they suggested
vividly the suffering that foUows war, were those of
women. In the midst of his thousand cares of great
moment, he would not pretermit a personal reply to

200 JOHN A. ANDREW
one of the least of these. Of numerous such let
ters, one, written to some Cambridge ladies who
had formed a society to work for the soldiers, must
suffice. In glancing over the list of their names, I realize
most completely how deep a hold the cause, in behalf
of which those troops are mustered, has upon every
social class in our community, — that there are no
hands in Massachusetts too dehcate to contribute
something to the work. Almost the next letter which
I opened, after breaking the seal of yours, was from
a poor needle- woman, saying she had but little, but
desiring to give something from that httle in the
same behalf ; and surely a cause which so appeals
both to the garret and the drawing-room cannot be
other than national and just.
At last, amid the press of other affairs, these offers
became too many even for the secretaries to acknow
ledge. A notice was sent to the papers that all of
fers of a benevolent sort would be received by Josiah
Quincy, Jr., and that the thanks of the Governor
must be given once for all in this public way. Con
tributions of money were turned over to a Committee
of One Hundred, organized to administer a soldiers'
fund. By this committee, composed of ex-governors,
mayors, and well-known citizens from the entire
State and of all parties, with Governor Andrew as
president, the work of rehef was instituted which
later was undertaken by the State.
In aU our history there is no more striking in
stance of the way in which efficiency may be

WAR 201
achieved under popular government than the story
of these first weeks of the War of the Rebelhon. The
demonstration is the more complete because, for no
small part of that time, the people, being cut off from
their federal government at Washington, had to ex
ercise sovereign authority through their local lead
ers. Thus at Boston Andrew and the men gath
ered about him, and at New York the men who
formed themselves into the Union Defence Com
mittee, finding that in this emergency the respon
sibility must be theirs, proceeded to assume the
ultimate authority, and to use it freely and wisely.
To them the other states turned for advice ; they
formed for these critical days a temporary national
government. The New York committee, in order to give its
extraordinary deeds some show of regularity, caUed
upon the highest mUitary officer east of Washington,
Major-General John E. Wool, in command of the
Department of the East. Of his loyalty there was
no question, but he was seventy-seven years old, and
his vigor was impaired both by age and by infirmity.
When on Saturday, AprU 20, orders ceased to come
from Washington, they induced him to leave his
home at Troy, N. Y., and come to New York City,
where they pushed him on to marvellous stretches of
authority. Announcing this removal to the Northern
governors, he offered aU the assistance that it was in
his power to give.
On the Monday morning of the second week of
the war, the first necessity at Boston was to reopen

202 JOHN A. ANDREW
communication with Washington, or at least to make
the attempt. For this mission, George S. Boutwell
was summoned by the Governor from Groton. Al
though not much over forty, he had been an ex-gov
ernor for nearly ten years and was still in close touch
with state politics. He had been one of the Peace
Commissioners from Massachusetts, and for this rea
son, as weU as for his " influence, acquaintance with
the Cabinet, knowledge of Eastern pubhc senti
ment," J he was selected as the man for this crisis at
the Capital. Letters to the President and the Secre
tary of War embodying requests and suggestions al
ready made in vain, — notably that the forts in the
harbor might be used as drfll-camps for the newly
formed militia companies, — were entrusted to him.
Forbes provided him with a hundred dollars in gold,
an improvised cipher-code for telegrams, and a small
revolver loaded. " The revolver," says Governor
BoutweU, " gave me more anxiety than all things
else connected with the expedition." 2 At New York,
where he stopped to confer with General Wool, and
to ascertain the best method of proceeding to Wash
ington, he was joined by Hannibal Hamhn, Vice-
President of the United States, who, at Andrew's
instance, had hurried from his home in Maine, to
be at hand if the worst befeU. They found General
Wool chiefly concerned with providing food for the
troops which had been projected toward Washing-
1 From Andrew's telegram to Boutwell,
2 Sixty Years in Public Affairs, by George S. Boutwell, vol. i.
p. 285.

WAR 203
ton. He knew that the city was inadequately pro
visioned, and to avert the threatened famine he had
begun to ship thirty thousand rations a day. Bout
weU offered the assistance of Massachusetts in this
work, and telegraphed to Forbes and Andrew :
" Send without delay a steamer with provisions for
Genl. Butler's command at Annapolis. She must be
armed."1 Wool readily gave his authority to An
drew to garrison the forts in Boston Harbor, and
the men in New York were of opinion, as BoutweU
wrote to Andrew, " that you should take the respon
sibility of furnishing and arming three vessels for
the protection of the coast. It is agreed that you can
exercise the power, under the circumstances, better
than anyone else." Having accomplished so much,
BoutweU contented himself with sending the letters
which Andrew had entrusted to him to Washington
by one of Scott's aides, who, more adventurous than
he, was determined to push through along the way
made by Butler's army.
Even before General Wool's permission to garri
son the harbor forts reached the State House, the
Governor had acted. On AprU 24, he ordered the
Fourth Battalion, under the command of Major
Thomas G. Stevenson, to Fort Independence. A few
days later another battalion went to Fort Warren,
and a major-general of militia was given command of
both forts. These troops contained the crack com
panies of Boston, and were composed of men who
1 For the enterprise which this telegram set on foot, vide infra,
p. 215.

204 JOHN A. ANDREW
could afford to take a month's vacation in this way,
and then go back to their usual employments.1
By the morning of April 25, the first maU from
Washington had reached Boston, but to the State
House it brought no instructions. The war spirit of
the North was still increasing ; if only the voice of
leadership could direct it from Washington, what
wonders might not be accomplished ! Instead of
this there was nothing but blank silence. The Gov
ernor, eager to impart to the national leaders some
thing of the fire of patriotism with which he was
surrounded, and impatient at Boutwell's delay in
New York, must needs send another messenger close
upon his heels. The beginning of Andrew's letter
of introduction to his friend Montgomery Blair, the
Postmaster-General, shows his wish to quicken the
Administration.2 1 When one of these battalions resented an addition to the garrison
of amore miscellaneous nature, the Governor wrote to Major-General
Andrews making short work of their exclusiveness. " I understand
Col. Clark's regiment of Volunteers wishes to get into Fort Warren,
is ready to go, and needs to go; — but that some objection is made on
the score of room. As the fort is built for a war garrison of 8000
men, I think this is an obstacle of the imagination only. And if any
one feels crowded, he may apply to me, and I will find an easy method
of relief. Please use the fort for the public service as amply as pos
sible. If the men's rations are supplied, I have no doubt about the
room. Therefore heed no objections of the sort."
9 With Montgomery Blair, still more with his father, Francis
P. Blair, Andrew was in correspondence throughout the war. He had
made their acquaintance, probably, in his July trip to Washington in
1859. Their Republicanism was of a decidedly moderate and border-
state stripe, — their home was at Silver Spring, Maryland, just out
side the limits of the District of Columbia, — and the elder Blair was
interested in politics less on the ideal than on what is known as the

WAR 205
Hon. Dwight Foster, our Attorney-General, wUl
hand you this note, with my full commendation of
Mr. F. as a gentleman with whom you can take
counsel, finding him fuU of the fire and hard work
ing zeal of Massachusetts. How long — oh Lord —
how long, will they delay our People.
The same energy is compressed into the letter which
he wrote to Cameron : — April 25.
... I desire ... to say that we can send to you
four thousand more troops from Massachusetts within
a very short time after the receipt of a requisition
for them.
Do you wish us to send men as we may be able
to get them ready, without awaiting requisitions ?
And can we send by sea up the Potomac ? Cannot
the river be kept open and safe to Washington?
What shaU we do, or what do you wish us to do,
about provisioning our men ? Is Fort Monroe sup
plied with provisions ?
WUl you authorize the enlistment here and mus
tering into the U. S. service of Irish, Germans and
other tough men, to be drilled and prepared here for
" practical " side ; nevertheless, Andrew established extremely sym
pathetic relations with them. He was constantly explaining his own
conduct for their benefit, seeking their advice, and invoking their
assistance. Francis P. Blair, Senior, who was a man of threescore and
ten at the beginning of the war, had been the Mentor of Jackson's
administration and sought to be the Nestor of Lincoln's. He and
his wife felt a strong personal regard for Andrew, which Andrew
returned as heartily. In his trips to Washington during tbe war he
rarely failed to see them, and he frequently stayed at their house.
He used to say of Mr. and Mrs. Blair that when they sat beside their
wood-fire in the evening and talked a thing over, and agreed about it,
they were pretty sure to be right.

206 JOHN A. ANDREW
service ? We have men of such description, eager to
be employed, sufficient to make three regiments.
FinaUy, will you direct some general instructions
and suggestions to be sent to me as to anything —
no matter what or how much — which you may wish
from Massachusetts, and procure General Scott also
to do so, and we wUl try to meet, so far as may be,
every wish of the Government up to the very limit of
our resources and our power.
Will you put the 6000 rifles, now at the U. S.
Arsenal at Watertown at our disposal for our men,
and send immediately orders for that purpose ?
Foster, tarrying in New York to see General Wool,
reported, with wonderful disregard of telegraphic con
densation, the information and impressions that he
had received from the interview.
. . . New York has sent up to this time five thou
sand four hundred troops, and by Tuesday next will
send four thousand more. Three regiments from
Connecticut are nearly ready, — two thousand four
hundred. New Jersey claims to have four regiments
nearly ready, — three thousand two hundred. Not
withstanding aU this, it seems to be the strong de
sire of every one here that more men should go from
Mass. without waiting for a requisition. General
Wool says if you telegraph to him whether you shall
send two more regiments, he will answer, " Yes." I
have seen him, and he appears well, but very much
overworked and worn out, and twenty years older
than he should be for the occasion. . . . The univer
sal cry is the Government is far behind the people.
The praise of the Old Bay State is in every mouth,
and the repetition of the half said of her Governor
to you would be flattery.

WAR 207
This was on Saturday, AprU 27. A direct tele
gram from the Governor to General Wool brought
in response the promised requisition for two more
regiments. An old Boston regiment, the First, was
ordered to be in readiness ; the work of grouping
new companies into regimental organizations was
pushed on. At the same time an attempt was made
to get ex post facto sanction from the stiU mute au
thorities at Washington. There was, however, httle
hope of success. Governor BoutweU had been last
heard from at Havre-de-Grace on Friday, whence he
had taken steamer for Annapolis ; Foster, it was
known, was a day behind him. It was still necessary
for the men in New York and Boston to act for
themselves. Act for themselves they must, and for others also.
To the other governors in New England Andrew
became the fountain-head of advice and authority.
" In order not to disappoint our daughter Common
wealth of Maine," he wrote to General Wool, " we
have loaned to that state some of our equipments and
thereby have postponed ourselves." Services such
as this for neighboring states made no smaU part of
his work. " Under the circumstances you are war
minister," telegraphed one man to him. The foUow
ing message to General Wool shows the Governor's
determination that some one should do the work of
that office : — April 30, 1861.
... I understand N. H. regiment is simply waiting
for orders to move. Vt. is waiting by reason of some

208 JOHN A. ANDREW
hitch merely — though ready. Maine, perhaps, needs
a hint. Conn., I heard, days ago, was prepared with
2 regts. Can't they receive a word from you. — I
reaUy want to see them on the march. But I shall
start some more Mass. troops, without " waiting for
manners " much longer. And I doubt not those
States are anxious for orders. I know they are good
and trusty.
The day of " manners " and red tape, however,
was about to return. A brusque order to General
Wool to go back to Troy, fortunately kept for three
days in the maU-bag between Washington and New
York, showed that the general government was pick
ing up the threads of control.1 The first intimation
of this fact reached the Governor of Massachusetts
in a letter from BoutweU. " I arrived in Washington
1 This letter, which was the first official communication of any sort
whatsoever that reached General Wool from the War Department,
shows how the rule of red tape ignored gratitude to the man whose
unofficial acts had helped to save Washington from starvation.
Washington, D. C, April 28, 1861.
General, — The General-in-Chief directs me to acknowledge re
ceipt of your letter of the 25th instant and to say in reply that the
very great necessity which exists for carrying out the business of the
several staff departments with system, under their proper chiefs,
compels him to request you will give no orders interfering with the
purchase or issue of army supplies, such orders being, in all cases,
dictated by the General-in-Chief himself. The General regrets your
infirm health does not permit him to assign you to an important com
mand away from your headquarters, and he recommends that you
return to Troy to conduct the ordinary routine duties of your depart
ment and for the recovery of your health, known by him to be feeble.
I have the honor to be, sir, very respectfully,
Your obedient servant, E. D. Towstsend,
Assistant Adjutant-General.

WAR 209
to-day," he wrote on Sunday, AprU 28, " after a
journey of forty-eight hours from Philadelphia by
Annapolis. There have been no mails from the
North for a week ; and you may easUy understand
that the mighty pubhc sentiment of the free States
is not yet fully appreciated here. The President and
Cabinet are gaining confidence and the measures of
the Administration wUl no longer be limited to the
defence of the Capital." He then gave a report of
the interviews that he had had with members of
the Cabinet, and of the war measures that were pro
posed. He described the wholesome effect produced
by the Northern soldiers on the state of pubhc feel
ing in Maryland, told briefly the story of Butler's
march from Annapolis, and gave some account of the
condition of the Massachusetts regiments in Wash
ington. In addition to this private information,
came the pubhc rumor that President Lincoln was
to make a new caU for soldiers. At first the number
was given out as 25,000 men for two years, then as
40,000 men for three years. No sooner had the re
port appeared in the papers than Andrew instructed
Governor BoutweU to ask that Massachusetts be al
lowed to furnish two regiments, — a request that was
promptly granted. This permission naturaUy put an
end to preparations for sending off the two addi
tional regiments as three months' men. On May 3,
the President's proclamation was made, and on Sat
urday, the next day, was issued from the War De
partment the plan of organization of the volunteer
forces thus caUed into existence. From this time on

210 JOHN A. ANDREW
the state governments had always to act with the
knowledge that, for better or for worse, military
affairs were directed from Washington.
When, out of a whirl and turmofl of events last
ing for more than three weeks, an attempt is made to
construct a coherent narrative, it is next to impos
sible to present in his true relation the man whose
mind and wiU dominated aU, and to make him stand
out in the narrative as he stood out in the fact. The
act of decision is single and of the instant ; the train
of consequences that it creates is complex and pro
longed. Thus inevitably the latter gets a share of
explanation beyond its deserts ; it must be left to
the discerning reader not to forget the true propor
tion between the man and the acts that he creates.
StiU, some help may be given by mere mention of
isolated deeds of minor importance which sprang from
Andrew's authority and received his care. For ex
ample : the State Arsenal at Cambridge, suddenly
supposed to be in danger, perhaps from Southerners
at the law school, was guarded for a month, at his
request, by students of Harvard College ; the State
School-ship, fitted out with four six-pounders, he sta
tioned at the entrance of the harbor to chaUenge
suspected vessels; he caused the cannon belonging
to Massachusetts to be rifled, and by every messen
ger to Washington he urged the same course on the
War Department. He sent word to Captain Hudson,
at the Charlestown navy-yard, to detain all officers
who would not take the oath of allegiance to the

WAR 211
Constitution.* With characteristic ardor he followed
up every rumor of the presence and work of traitors,
even going so far as to warn the Governor-General
of Canada of a suspicious vessel on Lake Ontario.
Saturday, May 4, marked the end of the third
week of the war. Work went on at the State House
without interruption and at unrelieved pressure ; but
the men there felt that the first milestone had been
passed, though they knew not at what hour of the
day or night. In their memory those early weeks
became set apart forever. Some of the character
istics that helped thus to distinguish that time, —
the tension of work, the confusion, the exuberance
of spirit, the sudden revelation all about them of a
people fiUed with the spirit of pure patriotism, the
uplifting of the soul, — are preserved in the words
of two of the Governor's aides, and of Andrew
himself. Early Tuesday morning [wrote Henry Lee J] four
regiments reported, marching in sleet and rain.
From that hour till the dawn of Sunday, the 21st
April, we all had to work night and day, and, as
suming the roles of armorers, quarter-masters, com
missaries, to obtain from raw officers the list of arms,
clothing, equipments, and rations required : to collect
and distribute or pack and forward and invoice these,
to organize a Medical Board to examine surgeons
and provide them with their instruments and sup
phes, to engage steamers and railroads to transport
the troops, and finally to accompany the Governor
as he presented to them the standards under which
1 MS Reminiscences.

212 JOHN A. ANDREW
they were sent forth and spoke words of encourage
ment and thanks. It is wonderful that the prepara
tions were so complete considering the rawness of
aU. It was the pressure that did it. The prompt
response of Massachusetts, whose sons had chiefly
promoted the irrepressible conflict, fused the whole
country into a glow of patriotism.
The memory of his witty words [said Sargent J of
the Governor], laughter that was almost articulate
with mirth, and his cheery shout of merriment at
some pronounced absurdity, reminds me how much
his sunshine hghtened labor in these early days of
the rebellion : when matters were so hurried that the
aides would foUow the soldiers of moving regiments
down the steps, to tighten some buckle of belt or
knapsack, or to thrust percussion caps into the
pocket ! In the offices, crammed to suffocation with
every applicant and contrast — the charitable and
the selfish, the sublime and the grotesque — there
was food for mirth as well as sadness. There were
sutlers seeking an outfit, and saints with bandages
and lint ; English officers tendering their service,
and our regulars giving good advice ; inventors of
new-fangled guns, pistols, and sabres, only dangerous
to their possessor, and which the inventors threat
ened to seU to the Confederacy if we did not buy
them ; gentlemen far gone in consumption, desiring
gentle horseback exercise in cavalry ; ladies offering
to sew for us ; needlewomen begging us not to let
ladies take the bread from soldiers' wives ; philan
thropists telling us that Confederate workmen, in
our arsenals, were making up cartridges with black
sand instead of powder ; saddlers proposing sole
1 Speech at the exercises in dedication of the Andrew Monument
at Hingham, October 8, 1875.

WAR 213
leather cuirasses shaped like the top of a coffin ;
bands of sweet-eyed, blushing girls bringing in nice
long nightgowns " for the poor soldiers."
I may testify [and these are the words of Andrew1]
to the impressions stamped forever on our memories
and our hearts, by that great week in April, when Mas
sachusetts rose up at the sound of the cannonade of
Sumter, and her MUitia Brigade, springing to their
arms, appeared on Boston Common. It redeemed
the meanness and the weariness of many a prosaic
life. It was the revelation of a profound sentiment,
of manly faith, of glorious fidelity, and of a love
stronger than death. Those were days of which
none other in the history of the war became the par-
aUel. And when, on the evening of the anniversary
of the battle of Lexington, there came the news
along the wires that the Sixth Regiment had been
cutting its way through the streets of Baltimore,
whose pavements were reddened with the blood of
Middlesex, it seemed as if there descended into our
hearts a mysterious strength, and into our minds a
supernal illumination. . . . Never after did any news
so lift us above ourselves, so transform earthly weak
ness into heavenly might. . . . The great and ne
cessary struggle had begun, without which we were
a disgraced, a doomed, a ruined people. We had
reached the parting of the ways, and we had not
hesitated to choose the right one.
1 At the dedication of the Ladd and Whitney Monnment in Lowell,
June 17, 1865.

CHAPTER VI
THE REGIMENTS OF 1861
Although it was not tiU May 7 that pubhc com
munication between Philadelphia and Washington
by way of PerryvUle and Annapolis was opened, the
special messengers whom Andrew had sent to Wash
ington furnished him a fairly regular and entirely
sure line of communication. One difficulty in dealing
with the national government being thus removed,
a much more serious difficulty was at once apparent.
Not one of the departments in Washington was in
condition to run smoothly; resignations of Southern
sympathizers occurred every day, and the new Re
pubhcan appointees were unfamUiar with even the
routine of their duties. The War Department was
in the worst case of aU. General Scott was a vale
tudinarian ; his staff of officers, when the Southern
ers had resigned, were, almost to a man, the slaves
of bureaucratic methods, — unprepared for emer
gency and incompetent to cope with it; Simon
Cameron, the Secretary of War, a thorough-going
politician, had no special capacity for administra
tion, and, what was worse, had been associated with
men whose honesty was " doubtful beyond a doubt."
As a consequence of this state of things, Massa-

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 215
chusetts, having sent off far too promptly four thou
sand men, now found that she had on her hands
the task of maintaining them in the field, — a
quasi-hostile country some four hundred and fifty
miles away.
The first summons to this new piece of work came
in the telegrams to Andrew and Forbes which ex-
Governor BoutweU sent from New York immediately
after his conference with General Wool and Vice-
President Hamhn.1 Forbes, who had foreseen that
something of the sort would have to be done and
had already obtained from the Governor and Council
authority to procure a month's rations for the troops,
was now intrusted with the work of engaging a
steamer. Within twenty-four hours he secured two
boats, the Cambridge and the Pembroke ; the CouncU
agreed at once to his proposition that these should
be bought, — the State paying one half, the other
half being raised by subscription ; and for the neces
sary funds the State accepted a loan from the banks
in Boston. Then for a week ensued a bustle of pre
paration that made itself felt in kitchens and bakeries
aU about Boston. Volunteer effort was the means
here, as in everything else, and when a suburban
town was called upon to boU hams, it went to work
with a will. A cargo containing not only full sup
phes of beef, pork, and pUot bread, but cheese and
preserved meats by the ton, tea, coffee, sugar, and
pickles by the barrel, with candles, beans, dried ap
ples, beets, onions, potatoes, and tobacco thrown in,
1 Vide ante, p. 203.

216 JOHN A. ANDREW
is a speaking testimony to zeal rather than to discre
tion, and reveals better than pages of exposition the
state of mind of the people before they had settled
down to the business of war. The guns deemed
necessary for the Cambridge — since Confederate
privateers were likely to be lurking about the en
trance to the Chesapeake — were provided from the
Charlestown Navy-yard. The steamer carried a com
pany of mihtia to strengthen the Third Battalion
at Annapolis, and on her return trip was to bring
back sick or discharged soldiers. Though she cleared
for Annapolis, she was instructed, if the Potomac
proved safe, to push up to Washington ; for with
the men at the State House it was a point of pride
that Massachusetts, having been first to reach the
capital by land, should also be first by sea.
To see that these supphes went in safety, more
agents were needed ; besides, from some of the regi
ments complaints of discomfort and privation were
coming in, and Andrew wished a report from persons
whose judgment he could trust. Accordingly he sent
Dr. Howe and Judge E. R. Hoar of the Supreme Court
in the steps of Boutwell and Foster, charging Howe
also with an investigation into the health of the sol
diers and Judge Hoar with the task of inducing the
government to take the Cambridge and the Pem
broke off the hands of the State, and to reimburse it
for its expenses. Howe sent back a vivid account of
the carelessness of the soldiers in sanitary matters
and of the lack of proper provision in that direction
on the part of the regular army.

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 217
There is more need [he said] of a health officer
than of a chaplain : but the U. S. knows no such
officer. Soap ! soap ! soap ! I cry but none heed.
I wish some provision could be made for army
washer-women : they are more needed than nurses.1
Judge Hoar, in an energetic and entertaining letter
conspicuously headed Private — Unofficial — Per
sonal and Confidential, set down the unvarnished
truth about Butler and his colonels. The Brigadier,
he wrote, in spite of "his fidelity and zeal, and
high capacity shewn in trying emergencies, is not a
man of method or system — expects to do what he
pleases, or the best he can, with everything when it
turns up — and lets the morrow care for the things
of itself." Furthermore, Butler had already left
Washington to curb rebellion in Baltimore. As to
the two Massachusetts colonels left in the capital,
one was " a very young gentleman who seems to
have very httle of the confidence of his officers or
men, who has almost everything to learn ; " the
other, " an old gentleman of courage, patriotism and
zeal, is understood to have brought with him in the
hurry of leaving only about brains enough to com
mand a single company." "Now the plain truth
ought to be told," he continued, — " and I therefore
teU it, — that if delay, waste, loss, and confusion are
not to attend the custody and distribution of Mas
sachusetts supphes, there ought to be an agent, with
brains, energy, sense, and business skUl, employed
1 Howe to Andrew, May 7, 1861.

218 JOHN A. ANDREW
to take charge of things . . . The 6th Reg. have
left their quartermaster here, to get and send after
them their share of what comes by the Cambridge
— but from previous experience I should fear that
Pennsylvania men would be full as likely to get a
large proportion in the end." To fill this position,
Hoar recommended Charles Russell Lowell, Jr., a
Harvard graduate and a member of a well-known
famUy in Boston, who was in Washington trying to
obtain a commission in the regular army. Forbes,
in whose employment Lowell had once been, heartily
seconded Hoar's proposal, and soon Massachusetts
affairs in Washington were well managed by a man
on the ground.
For a time, whUe this matter of a regular agent
was arranging itself, Andrew met in silence the vol
ume of complaint which was rolhng in upon aU
sides. But when a sharp letter from Henry WUson,
declaring that the Massachusetts troops were " far
inferior in uniform and in equipments to the troops
of other states," and bidding him "for the good
name of our State see to it that our men in the
field are fitted out well," reached the State House,
Andrew could no longer contain himself. He caused
Albert Browne to prepare a reply, in which the
secretary's full exposition of the facts alternated
with bursts of indignation dictated by the Gov
ernor. After reciting the means taken by the Massa
chusetts officials to equip and provision the mihtia,
the letter proceeded to fix the blame for misman
agement.

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 219
But it is the serious and important duty of the
officers of the various regiments to report to him
[the Governor] what they need, — fully and fre
quently, — in order that he may know what to fur
nish ; and it is a matter of disgust to him that men
who neglect their duty by neglecting to make such
reports, should reproach their Commonwealth for not
supplying what it is not advised from any source
is needed. His Excellency is entirely satisfied that
almost all the suffering and inconvenience to which
our gaUant troops have been subjected, has been
caused by the inefficiency and inexperience of their
officers. For instance Col.  's regiment ... on
the voyage from New York to Annapolis was allowed
to suffer from want of blankets when 1100 had been
provided for 800 men ; and provisions of the value
of more than $5000 which were shipped on the
Ariel and De Soto for their benefit were so care
lessly looked after that they were taken and dis
tributed among Pennsylvania troops.
Having justified himself in the matter of the state
troops, Andrew could not forbear freeing his mind
about the slowness of the national government.
His ExceUency requests that you will not miscon
strue his motives in expressing himself with this
warmth of feeling. He does not mean to cast any
reflection on such efforts as have undoubtedly been
made by yourself and others in behalf of this Com
monwealth; but he does mean to express the in
dignant surprise with which he perceives that other
States received at the hands of the Federal Govern
ment more consideration than Massachusetts; and
that surprise reaches its chmax when he is compelled
to recognize that Boston Harbor is undefended by a

220 JOHN A. ANDREW
single gun which bears on the ship channel ; that so
far as Federal armament is concerned she has no pro
tection — absolutely none — against an attack from
the sea; that the only guns mounted in any of the forts
are those only in Fort Independence which command
the city ; and that in answer to his representations
of these facts to the Federal Government and request
that an engineer officer may be sent on to examine the
condition of these forts and provide for their arma
ment, he meets with either silence or with positive
refusal, and that he is even denied by the Secretary
of War permission to clean Fort Warren at the ex
pense of the State so as to render it healthy and com
fortable for the volunteer troops to be placed there.
The necessity of setting the pubhc right on these
matters now seemed grave enough to warrant An
drew's taking some further steps. As a counterblast
to the tales of cruel privation narrated every day by
anonymous " citizen-soldiers " in the less reputable
newspapers of Boston, Andrew asked Charles Sum
ner's young friend, Edward L. Pierce, who had left
his lawyer's desk and joined the ranks of the Third
Regiment, to write a report of the condition of the
men at Fortress Monroe. He also requested Dr.
Howe to consolidate his letters from Washington
into a document which could be made public. On
the showing of these two authoritative reports, igno
rant fault-finding was sUenced. " You may depend
upon it," were Dr. Howe's words, " that when our
boys come back, they will laugh heartUy at the recital
of the fears and sorrows excited among their papas
and mammas by the stories of their privation and

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 221
sufferings on their first march to Washington." Real
grievances, of course, there had been ; but these were
mostly such as remedied themselves when once the
dazed officers at Washington — both in the regu
lar army and in the mihtia — had become adjusted
to the situation. Then, when quartermasters had
learned the mysteries of red tape, aU things were
opened unto them from regular rations to summer
uniforms. LoweU, having interrogated the regimental
quartermasters, sent back their answer to the State
House : " Do teU our good Governor not to ask us
to find any more wants at present."
Indeed, the new criticism which came to be made
bore rather heavily upon the indiscriminate lavish-
ness of the State. When Forbes was obhged to for
ward to Fortress Monroe three hundred and thirty
tons of ice given by a Boston firm, and a large quan
tity of fresh meat, the present of the market-men
of Quincy Market, he roundly declared the cargo to
be "frills." As to aU such superfluities, Dr. Howe's
report did not mince matters.
The invoice of articles sent by the Cambridge and
other vessels for our troops, contains articles hardly
dreamed of even by general officers in actual war.
Hundreds of chests of Oolong teas, tons of white
crushed sugar, and then a whole cargo of ice ! . . .
Many of these things wfll have to be left behind when
the troops go into the field. Their principal value
(and that is priceless) is as a testimony of the patriot
ism, zeal and generosity of the men and women who
felt that they must do something for the cause.1
1 Schouler, vol. i. p. 154.

222 JOHN A. ANDREW
The militiamen's brief day of glory was aheady
on the wane ; their duty was done when they reached
Washington and Fortress Monroe. After President
Lincoln's caU of May 3 for 42,000 men to serve for
three years or less as United States Volunteers, it
became plain that whoever had a taste for fighting
must enhst in that service. To finish up the af
fairs of the three months' regiments in Washington,
Mr. Charles H. Dalton took the place of Lowell, who,
with a captain's commission in the Sixth Regiment
of United States Cavalry, had entered upon his dis
tinguished career as a soldier. In spite of the fair
promises that Lincoln and the Secretaries of War
and of the Navy had given Judge Hoar, the nego
tiations for the disposal of the vessels of the irregular
navy of Massachusetts had barely entered upon the
first stage. The Pembroke was unfortunately worth
less as an armed transport ; but, thanks to Mr. Dal-
ton's persistency and address, the government con
sented to take the Cambridge. It also accepted the
biU for other expenses incurred by the State in the
first weeks of the war without the sanction of red
tape, and even made a handsome payment on ac
count. Meanwhile, on Andrew's assurance that the
federal government would reimburse the State, the
Legislature at a special session in May created a
Union Fund of $3,000,000 for the payment of these
expenses and whatever others might be incurred.1
1 On May 14, Andrew reported the indebtedness of the State to
be $267,000 for expenses already incurred, $100,000 for outstanding
contracts, £50,000 for the purchase of arms abroad. Besides creating
the Union Fund, the Legislature authorized the Governor, in case of

THE REGIMENTS OF 1S61 223
Thus the record of the three months' men was made
up. During the time of uncertaintv as to the basis on
which soldiers would be accepted by the national
government, the war fever took its course in several
forms. Some militia companies and battahons of
established reputation, such as the New England
Guards, went into camp in the forts in Boston Har
bor ; the First Regiment of militia also went into
camp ; another regiment, hastily formed from com
panies old and new about Boston, was sent to Fort
Warren. Other opportunities for enlistment were
the regiment which Fletcher Webster had besrun to
raise as early as April 21. and Gordon's crack regi
ment, to obtain the acceptance of which by Cameron,
WUder Dwip-ht and George L. Andrews had trav-
elled to Washington as soon as the wav was open.
The ranks of the Webster Regiment, however, had
been fiUed in three days ; and since the standard
of Gordon's regiment was to be that of the United
States Regular Army, and the men were to have no
part in the selection of officers, enlistment in it ap
pealed only to a special class of men. The ordinary
type of recruit, therefore, joined one of the unat
tached mihtia companies that ambitious voung men,
with their eyes on captaincies and lieutenancies, were
raising in everv town and vfllao-e throup-hout the
emergency, to issue scrip to the amount of 87,000,000. A further
finanpisl service of Massachusetts to the Union at the beginning of
the war was done by the banks in guaranteeing the six per cent, loan
of the national government The loan was for $14,000,000, of which
§5,000,000 was taken in Massachusetts.

224 JOHN A. ANDREW
State. Of these troops the only regiments besides
Gordon's which had the promise of service were the
First Regiment and the regiment at Fort Warren.
When Lincoln's call for volunteers was announced
the pressure upon the Adjutant-General's office
became so great that Andrew exerted himself with
aU his might to have the quota of Massachusetts,
as yet undecided, fixed at six regiments. He tele
graphed to Judge Hoar to press the request upon
Cameron, and in scriptural fervor of language
wrote a letter to Montgomery Blair, as being " my
personal friend who may speak for me and my
people to the President and in the Cabinet." The
whole State was enlisted for the war, and he urged
upon Blair the importance of taking advantage
of this enthusiasm to make the fight short and
sharp. In contrast to the energy displayed by Andrew,
the attitude of the Administration, or at any rate
of the War Department, was persistently lukewarm.
This was to be a little war, a gentle war, — in fact,
almost no war at all. The fewer the troops and the
shorter their term of enlistment, the better for the
speedy restoration of the Union. " In answer to my
urgent representations about the six Massachusetts
regiments for the War," wrote Judge Hoar, Mr.
Cameron " said that none could be received at pre
sent, and that he could give no promise or encour
agement for the future. I asked Mr. Chase if he
could help us, and he said he was afraid he could
not, as he had been trying to get Cameron to receive

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 225
ten regiments from Ohio, and had succeeded in get
ting him to accept only three." *
As long as the Secretary persisted in this refusal
and at the same time faUed to assign any definite
quota under Lincoln's caU, Andrew was at a stand
still. The impossible situation in which he found
himself is weU described by Schouler.
At this time, there were, in Massachusetts, up
wards of ten thousand men organized into companies.
They had enlisted as mihtia ; they now pressed for
ward to the State authorities to be accepted and or
ganized as volunteers for three years. The Governor
could not accept them ; could not muster them ;
could not encourage them, further than with kind
words, until answers were received from Washing
ton to messages which he had sent, asking that they
might be accepted. Days passed on ; no requisitions
came. The companies held to their organizations ;
paraded the streets, partly for drill, but chiefly to
pass the time. . . . They pressed daUy to the State
House ; the Governor wrote and telegraphed again
and again to Washington, beseeching the Secretary
to accept the services of men anxious to serve their
country.2To meet in part the difficulties of the case, the Gen
eral Court, then in special session, passed at the
Governor's request an act providing for the estab
lishment of camps up and down the State, into which
the street-parading companies might be gathered,
and where they might be put under military disci
pline and instruction. That sooner or later these men
1 Schouler, vol. i. p. 148. a Ibid. vol. L p. 165.

226 JOHN A. ANDREW
would be needed Andrew had not the shghtest doubt.
Forty-two thousand volunteers was a number totally
inadequate either to express Northern patriotism or
to crush Southern rebeUion.
Before the Encampment Act was passed, however,
some measure of relief had come from the War De
partment. On May 22 the Governor received the
first announcement of the Massachusetts quota as
six regiments. " It is important," added Cameron,
still under the influence of his fixed idea, "to re
duce rather than enlarge this number, and in no
event to exceed it. Let me earnestly recommend
you ... if more are already caUed for, to reduce
the number by discharges." 1 Andrew and his aides
now had the invidious task of selecting, from among
nearly two hundred companies, the thirty which
should form the three additional regiments aUowed
by the War Department. It must be said that the
role of official discourager of patriotism on behalf
of a government attacked by rebels Andrew modi
fied as much as possible. In the face of Cameron's
instructions to the contrary he put into camp five
mihtia regiments, — the maximum number permitted
by the Encampment Act. Of the men stiU unpro
vided for, six companies went to New York, the
quota of which was much larger in proportion than
1 The date of this inexcusably delayed letter is May 15. In addi
tion to the six regiments, the two regiments promised to Boutwell
(see p. 209) were allowed ; but, with characteristic perversity on Came
ron's part, were still referred to as being for three months instead
of three years, — a condition which, of course, rendered the permis
sion valueless.

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 227
that of Massachusetts, to join the so-called " Mozart
Regiment " and Sickles' Brigade ; three hundred
men were enhsted at Fortress Monroe in a " Union
Coast Guard Regiment ; " stUl others were gathered
in by agents from other states who set up recruiting
stations in Massachusetts. In aU, some three thou
sand men thus "went to sweU the apparent con
tribution of other communities while lessening the
abUity of this State to meet any subsequent draft
upon her military population." 1 At last, after three
weeks of hard work, when the ranks were full and
the disappointed had gone back to work or had
migrated to some other State, an opening appeared
of which Andrew eagerly took advantage. A letter
from Horace Greeley urged him to send his views
on the war to General Hiram Walbridge, " one of
the most decided and radical democrats " of New
York, who was doing his utmost to get the govern
ment to caU for more troops. The reply which one
of the Governor's aides sent, promising a regiment
a week for the rest of the year, proved a strong card
in General Walbridge' s hand. He read it to the
President, he sent extracts from it to the newspapers,
and at last, in response to a second letter of Andrew's
offering ten regiments to be sent fully equipped in
forty days, was able to report that the Secretary of
War had yielded. This news reached Boston on
June 17. At last, it seemed, the Administration had
i Andrew's Address to the Legislature, January, 1864. These facts
are necessary to a clear understanding of the difficulties which rose
later over the quota of Massachusetts under this call. (See vol. ii.
p. 135.

228 JOHN A. ANDREW
understood that its only possible course was to go
forward with boldness. In a joyful letter of thanks
to Walbridge, Andrew exclaimed : " I trust we shall
see the end of this war in a year from the 19th
of June, 1861, — and also that its conclusion wiU
demonstrate the vitality of democratic republican
government. . . . The beginning of an end, grand,
glorious and sublime, is aheady here." With ten
regiments added to six, and also Fletcher Webster's
regiment, the independent acceptance of which by
the War Department had been secured by his friends
only after an appeal to Lincoln,1 the military zeal of
the State was more than satisfied. Stifling as far as
possible their wrath at Cameron's misguided delay,
the aides set to work doing again all that they had
undone in the last month.
Andrew had decided that in the designation of
regiments the numbers belonging to the militia
should not be duplicated in the volunteer force.
Accordingly the first group of six regiments con
sisted of the First, the Second, the Seventh, the
Ninth, the Tenth, and the Eleventh. The Webster
Regiment was the Twelfth, and the regiments in the
group of ten were numbered consecutively from thir
teen to twenty-two inclusive. The First left Boston
on June 15 ; the next five went between that date
and July 10 ; on July 24 the Webster Regiment
marched down State Street, singing the John Brown
song, — even then the North was beginning to un
derstand what it was fighting for; by the end of
1 Life of Abraham Lincoln, Tarbell, vol. ii. p. 43.

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 229
the first week in August three more regiments had
started on their way to the front. The disaster at
BuU Run, however, so checked the zeal for recruiting
that for some time the other seven regiments were
at a standstill.
The labor which Andrew put into equipping, of
ficering, and despatching these first volunteer regi
ments was enormous. It fretted him to be unable
to pass upon every detail of their preparation, and
the same passion of diligence which he himself
felt he exacted of others. His attention to detail,
given under a sense that every omission might mean
the sacrifice of life, is shown in a confidential letter
which he wrote — supremely regardless of military
etiquette — to an officer in one of the first three years'
regiments. Even more than this the letter reveals
his yearning of sympathy for these young and un
tried soldiers, whether high or low in rank, known or
unknown to him.
Dear  : I followed the regiment through the
streets, and tried hard at the Depot to find you and
 at the cars last evening to shake hands and say
goodbye, but, in vain. I cdnt find in which car was
the  Company even ; and I began and walked
through the cars shaking hands along, but the train
started and I had to jump off, in motion, before I
had finished. . . . Allow me to beg of you all — offi
cers of the field — to have a single eye to the com
mon good, happiness, success and welfare of the
whole. Let no standing on etiquette or dignity, or nice
points ever postpone the interests even of the hum-

230 JOHN A. ANDREW
blest private. Let each one think that the regiment
depends on him, as much as if he was the only officer
in it. And I pray you regard every little thing that
makes for the comfort and convenience of the com
mand, or that promotes its order or safety. A lynch
pin out of a cart wheel and not supplied is fatal to
the whole load, loses the cargo, and makes the cart
and team as useless as if there were none. Every
soldier shd be taught and made to care for and save
all his property and implements, whether of war or
convenience. I think the regiment, if it fails at all, will fail for
the want of that nice and regular discipline and care,
which constitutes, in a trader the difference between
a bankrupt and a thrifty business man and which
in a household marks the odds between the good
housekeeper and a disgusting slut. Col.  seems
to me to think a regiment mainly intended for ex
hibiting a dress-parade, which is after all, to a regi
ment, just about what making a handsome bow is
to a man. It is a proper accomplishment and pro
perly comes in on receiving or parting with your host
or your guest and on occasions of ceremony ; but it
wont stand in the stead of yr dinner when hungry,
nor packing your trunk and getting yr ticket for a
journey. . . .
I think Col.  , under the excitement of battle
or great duties is hkely to [do] his best. I am more
afraid of his failure by the weakness of not com
prehending the value of details, and not understand
ing that all the victories of Life have to be won by
preparation long before the battle itself begins. A
man must see a thing in his mind, before he can do
it with his hand ; and unless he has seen every step
of the process he has not seen it at all.

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 231
Professor Cleaveland1 lectured on chemistry at
Bowdoin College for fifty years ; and yet, year after
year the grand and charming old man whose memory
brings tears to my eyes whUe I write his name, —
patiently worked out every experiment in his labora
tory before exhibiting it to his class, and would not
believe that he could perform it successfuUy this
year, untU he had tried it by testing every process
and manipulating it anew — though he had done
the same thing a hundred times before — today
was always given wholly to its own work. And in
fifty years the tradition is that he never faded before
his class. What an example and what a happiness
there is in such a faithful, devoted, dutiful hfe.
ShaUow men may think glory is won by showy ac
tion, hke a vapid actor tearing passion into tatters
close to the foot-lights. But you, I know, are not
misled by any such folly ; though to you as to me
it is always possible not to remember that such no
tions are always hanging at the door of the wisest
and may catch even them.
If you ever read through this long and tiresome
sermon, you will see, I hope, in it the evidence of the
personal interest and watchful, heart-felt affection,
which ought to be entertained by a friend, whose
acquaintance has been an intimacy of years. — With
every good wish and fervent blessings, believe me,
faithfully and always Yours
John A. Andrew.
The Governor's direct responsibility in the work
of raising the volunteer regiments was the selection
of commissioned officers, that is : the Field, — colonel,
1 Parker Cleaveland, professor at Bowdoin from 1805 to 1858.

232 JOHN A. ANDREW
lieutenant-colonel, and major ; the Staff, — adjutant,
quartermaster, surgeon, and assistant-surgeon ; 1 and
the Line, — a captain and two heutenants to each of
the ten companies. This task, which soon proved to
include the filling of aU vacancies even after the
regiment had been mustered into the United States
service, was beyond aU question the heaviest of his
burdens. It required infinite pains ; it could not be
performed according to a strictly ideal standard ;
and the admixture of praise and blame returned to
him was in a most discouraging proportion.
The selection of colonels was naturally of the
first importance. At the outset, Andrew, setting
his standard high, applied to Scott for officers from
the regular army. When his request was refused
on the ground that these men were needed to officer
the new United States regiments, he scoured the
country for Massachusetts men of West Point edu
cation who were now in civil Ufe. Then he looked
for mihtia officers, particularly those who had dis
tinguished themselves in the three months' service.
The two civUian colonels — Fletcher Webster and
Henry Wilson — had recruited regiments on " inde
pendent acceptances." The only questions that An
drew asked about a man were as to his loyalty to
the government and his fitness to be an officer. He
1 The other member of the Staff, the chaplain, was commissioned
by the Governor, but appointed by the colonel. Clergymen anxious
for the position displayed a density in apprehending this fact that
is almost incredible. The patience of the Governor's secretaries was
severely tried in putting numberless ministerial applicants on the
right track.

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 233
refused, in spite of appeals from some of his friends,
to give a command to Caleb Cushing ; he pursued
the same course with regard to Jonas H. French, a
well-known Democrat who had been conspicuous
among the " broadcloth rowdies," at the anti-slavery
meeting in January.1 On the other hand, he gave
a colonelcy to a West Point graduate of proved
ability in spite of protests from people who objected
to some facts in the man's domestic history. By ap
plying the two tests of loyalty and fitness Andrew
was able to exercise his duty impartially and to com
pass as great a degree of success as was possible.
It must not be supposed, however, that he attained
to this inexorable method except at the cost of bitter
experience. The disaster which followed his first
divergence from the narrow way for the sake of
pleasing others brought a swift punishment from
which he was wise enough to profit at once. When
one of the mUitia regiments enlisted in a body for
1 A story which Chandler tells (p. Ill) shows bow strong was the
pressure upon Andrew to appoint French, and how firm Andrew was
in resisting it.
" Many citizens came to the State House to ask for the commis
sion: 'The Irish would enlist under this man.' It was of no use.
Later, a large delegation of leading men came in a body, resolved to
get the commission. They labored with the Governor two hours. He
was courteous, but firm. They withdrew into an anteroom for con
sultation, and soon after returned with this suggestion: ' If we go
home and come tomorrow and bring old Governor Lincoln with us, and
he will endorse this man, will you commission him ? ' The Governor
rose up, and bringing his fist down on the table, said: ' Gentlemen,
if he was as good a soldier as Julius Caesar, and you should bring an
angel from heaven to indorse him, knowing what I do, I would not
commission him ! ' "

234 JOHN A. ANDREW
three years, it was natural that its colonel, who owed
his position to regimental election, should expect a
commission from the Governor. Andrew, though he
liked the man and knew him to be weU-meaning and
honest, stiU doubted his abUity to control the regi
ment. For aU that, to displace him would be an act
of severity to which Andrew had not yet steeled
himself, and he took the easier course. The regiment
had not been in camp two weeks before complaints
of its colonel began to reach the State House. The
unfitness of the appointment was seen of all men
when, on a hot day in June, he marched his men
through the streets of Boston with their overcoats on,
and a few days later, in the even warmer climate of
Washington, repeated the performance. His apology
was that the uniforms, of a very poor quality of
goods which he had himself ordered, were so badly
torn and patched that they must be covered up at
aU hazards. The Governor's wrath exploded in a
startlingly unofficial letter to the chaplain of the
regiment : " In the name of sense and decency
can't  resign ? His overcoat march in Boston
nearly drove me mad, and its repetition in Wash
ington is too much even for a fool to do, or a saint
to bear." To resign, however, was the last intention
of the deluded colonel. When Sumner and some
other Massachusetts men in Washington went to the
camp of the regiment to extort his resignation, they
were met with the excited declaration that he " would
sooner blow his brains out." Nothing could then
be done but appeal to the President, who cut the

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 235
Gordian knot by nominating the colonel a brigadier-
general. Andrew's abasement was complete. " I
made an inexcusable blunder in appointing him,"
he wrote to Sumner. " I knew better, because my
own opinion was against it ; and I did not follow
my own judgment but the prevaUing opinion about
me." Another error, into which Andrew was fairly
driven by press of circumstances, was that of giving
a colonelcy to a superannuated militia officer who had
been retired to the position of major-general. It was
almost the last colonelcy vacant, good material was
scarce, and the regiment was needed in a hurry at
Washington. ' So to this major-general, who was
irreverently known to the Governor's staff as " the
old critter," the command was given. In the hope of
redeeming so manifestly inadequate an appointment,
Andrew gave the lieutenant-colonelcy to a former
officer of the Italian army whose fine record and high
pretensions had made a great impression on him.
As it soon became apparent that the colonel was
neither brave nor honest, and that the lieutenant-
colonel, a strict disciplinarian and somewhat excita
ble in temper, could not manage Yankee volunteers,
the plight of the regiment may be better imagined
than described.
Through such mistakes as these two, as weU as
through his successful appointments, Andrew came
soon to learn that he must above aU else act for
himself. Writing to a correspondent on the subject
of military appointments, he said : —

236 JOHN A. ANDREW
Besides there are, in making appointments a thou
sand considerations which it is one's duty to weigh,
who has the burden of decision ; but which others
on whom it does not rest will never much regard
nor appreciate. My experience thus far has taught
me', what I did not at first feel in its real weight,
namely, that I must do my own thinking — that no
other mortal will do it for me ; that others, in ad
vising me, almost invariably, unconsciously or other
wise, do it from an entirely different point of view
from my own, — which is that of my own personal,
unavoidable and ever pursuing sense of responsibility
for the safety, success and honor of our soldiers, and
the credit of the State.
The selection of the ten captains and twenty lieuten
ants required for each regiment Andrew must needs
make chiefly by deputy. The first seventeen regi
ments were in large measure composed of militia com
panies the officers of which had been already chosen.
When a regiment was put into camp, these company
officers were allowed to continue for the time being
in command. As soon as colonel and lieutenant-
colonel were commissioned, they went over the list
of these men, and accepted or rejected them for per
manent positions according to the ability which they
had shown in camp. Every colonel also had access
to a book kept by the Governor's aides in which
were recorded the recommendations of every appli
cant for a commission ; from this list he could choose
a man to be tested sometimes by a fortnight in camp,
sometimes by examinations. When the colonel had
completed his roster he took it to the Governor, who

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 237
discussed it in consultation with his aides, and then,
a few days before the regiment left the State, issued
his commissions.
If it had been a simple matter of commissioning
the fittest, the burden of this work would not have
been excessive; what made it well nigh intoler
able was the fact that opposition was almost always
aroused when a mUitia captain or Ueutenant was dis
placed. As a general rule, in every such instance
charges of gross favoritism or threats of mutiny were
sure to follow. A case of this sort is the story that
General MUes tells. He had, he says, spent $3500
in recruiting a company, had been chosen captain by
the men, commissioned by the Governor, and mus
tered in. After a short time, however, Andrew, on
the plea that a man of twenty-one was too young to
command a company, made him take a lower com
mission, in order, as General MUes says, that the
captaincy might be given to a pohtical friend of the
Governor.1 Again, in a case where it was found ne
cessary to consolidate two companies, the men whose
captain was sacrificed were so indignant that they
refused to be sworn in under the other captain.2 The
state regimental histories show how strong was the
feeling among the rank and file against what they
deemed interference on the part of the Governor.
" Experience proved," says the historian of the Ninth,
with complacent conviction, "that it would have
been better not to have interfered with the results of
1 Personal Recollections, p. 30.
3 The Story of the Fifteenth Regiment, p. 29.

238 JOHN A. ANDREW
company officers duly elected." 1 The protests of men
who would apparently have been wUling, whenever
they lost an officer on the field of battle, to stop fight
ing in order to exercise the sacred right of the baUot,
avaUed much at the State House for a time. As soon,
however, as Andrew and his staff got a firm grip on
the situation, they were no longer comphant, for they
knew that with the war fever still high the muti
nous threats of bumptious " citizen-soldiers " could be
nothing but bluster. The testimony from the mUi-
tary point of view as to the worthlessness of many of
these mihtia officers and the viciousness of the elec
tive system is unanimous. " The charges of igno
rance, inefficiency, physical inability, drunkenness and
gross cowardice against many of them," wrote Harri
son Ritchie to Charles Sumner early in August, " are
too numerous and weU supported not to prove the
utter faUure of this method of selection, as the true
method of selecting men fitted to their posts. AU
of the superior officers in the service, all who have
returned unite in the declaration that nothing can be
hoped for or expected from the Volunteers, untU aU
such officers are weeded out." "Carelessly, thought
lessly elected, and even subsequently objected to by
the very companies electing them," is Andrew's char
acterization of them. The whole difficulty was put into
a nutshell in a phrase current at the State House.
Their task was, the aides said, that of " changing a
town meeting into a regiment." It was the same task
which the nation, on a larger scale, had undertaken
1 History ofthe Ninth Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteers, p. 20.

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 239
in waging war, and which was successfully accom
plished only through the high and patient wisdom
of its leader, who compeUed the principles of de
mocracy and efficiency to serve and to support each
other. Among the first seventeen three years' regiments,
the single regiment which had no dealings with
mUitia officers was the Second. According to the
plan which Gordon proposed to Andrew and which
Andrew approved on the fifteenth of April, every
officer was to be selected by Gordon himself, and
then received by the men and commissioned by An
drew without question. To Gordon, with his West
Point training, the notion that the privates in a
company should elect their captain was as absurd as
that a roomful of school chUdren should elect their
teacher. His thorough-going military method he
succeeded in carrying out. Securing as his officers
young men of abUity and education, a large propor
tion of them graduates of Harvard, he was able with
their aid to buUd up a regiment which, even when
it left the State, was no mean rival to a body of
regulars. Though the Governor had passed his word
not to interfere, he at first suggested names for the
colonel's consideration, and once offered him two
organized companies of Germans. Moreover, when
Gordon demanded the resignation of one of his
captains who was trying to ingratiate himself with a
subordinate by means of a friendly glass, Andrew, be
heving the captain's act to be " of no significance,"
objected to Gordon's curt treatment of the offender.

240 JOHN A. ANDREW
In spite of protests, whether from Andrew or from
anybody else, Gordon would not yield an iota. He
knew that the difficulty with mihtia officers would
soon be a crying one, and he believed that the Gov
ernor must eventuaUy adopt the strictly military
method of officering a regiment. For Andrew no
thing could have been more salutary than this de
monstration at the very outset of the world-wide
difference between the two ways, and as Gordon
dryly remarks in his account of the organization of
the Second Regiment, he " grew rapidly in wisdom."
Nevertheless there was good cause why Gordon's
method could not be generally followed. It dis
regarded not only the democratic demands of the
volunteer, but also the impatience of both govern
ment and people. Because of its slowness, two young
officers in the New England Guards, Thomas G.
Stevenson and Francis A. Osborn, eager to form
another such regiment as the Second, all summer
besieged the executive rooms in vain. Every offer
of command in the first seventeen regiments they
conscientiously refused, holding out for their ideal
with such persistency that Henry Lee dubbed them
" military old maids." When, however, early in Sep
tember, a call came for more troops, their claims were
among the first to be recognized. At this time the
need for haste was not so great, and thus the re
cruiting of the Twenty-Fourth, as this regiment was
numbered, could be allowed to cover fully three
months. When the Massachusetts regiments had been for

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 241
some weeks at the front, Andrew's responsibility to
the commissioned officers took a new form. Vacan
cies began to occur, and after the battle of Ball's
Bluff, in which the Fifteenth and the Twentieth suf
fered heavy losses, he was beset by the difficulties
arising from this source. At first the problem was
comphcated by the question of promotion from the
ranks, — a cause of great disturbance to some young
officers, who imagined that if a sergeant were com
missioned second lieutenant their superiority would
be contaminated. To the Governor's mind the ques
tion was not an open one, and he made short work
of their scruples. As to the nice matter of promo
tions and readjustments among commissioned offi
cers, it was a preposterous duty for a man to perform
who was five hundred mUes from the regiment and
dependent for his guidance almost entirely upon
written reports. Andrew, recognizing that the task
was proper to the commander of the regiment, made
announcement that he should try in every case to
foUow the colonel's recommendations. To guard
against favoritism, however, he required the indorse
ment of the brigade commander upon each nomina
tion by a colonel. This was the best that he could
hope to do, and under this system throughout the
war he made his appointments to vacancies in the
field. The only questions which Andrew asked about a
candidate for military appointment, as has already
been said, were with regard to his loyalty and his
fitness to command. In respect to pohtics he drew a

242 JOHN A. ANDREW
sharp line between his civil and his mUitary appoint
ments. The affairs of the State were to be managed
by the party in power ; the Union could be saved only
by the efforts of all parties. Thus, when the opposi
tion newspapers accused him of selecting an undue
number of Republicans as officers, the facts were all
on his side. From the list which he caused his secre
tary to prepare and publish, it appeared that of the
first fifteen colonels of volunteers " only one third at
the utmost had voted for Mr. Lincoln for President,
while more than one third had voted for Mr. Breck
inridge." " When it is remembered," says the secre
tary, commenting upon the fact, " that the vote of
Massachusetts for Lincoln in 1860 was more than
one hundred and six thousand, while for Breckin
ridge it was only six thousand, the fact becomes
more significant." * " Warrington," too, came to the
rescue, and going by name through the list of colo
nels and also the list of Andrew's appointments on
his own staff, with shrewd hits wherever a man's
pohtical record offered opportunity, demonstrated
the baselessness of the complaint.
Though the cry of partisanship was thus easily
disposed of, it was a different matter to deal with
the behef that " Beacon Street " influence was too
strong at the State House. Popular sentiment in
the State was jealously sensitive of aristocratic lean
ings in one who had been elected as the people's
governor; but though the class which Andrew
trusted most was that known as the " plain people,"
1 Browne, p. 82.

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 243
yet when it came to individuals he never considered
that the presumption was in favor of a man of that
class. For military office, indeed, he felt that there
was a presumption in the other direction. He real
ized that a liberal education and inheritance of social
traditions are likely to breed in a man not only
mental flexibility but also that sense of superiority
which is invaluable to those who would command.
Among the young fellows of good Boston famUy,
just graduated from Harvard or still under-gradu-
ates, he found what he wanted, — men who, though
uninstructed in mUitary matters, had been trained
to learn. In choosing from among them, Andrew,
unacquainted with either them or their famihes,
rehed mainly on the advice of Henry Lee, whose
information about the families of Boston stretched
back to colonial days, and who had had the men of
the younger generation under his eye ever since
they were breeched. Moreover, as Lee was a sure
judge of men, no amount of " influence " availed
with him when he knew the claimant to be unfit.
Thanks to him, the Governor was able to get for
many of his officers the best men of the best class.
In the rosters of the Second, the Twentieth, and
the Twenty-Fourth Infantry, and the First Cavalry,
fuU of names that recaU brave deeds of war and
later deeds, no less brave, of peace, one finds aU-
sufficient explanation of the distinction which those
regiments won. A further reason for Andrew's
course in this matter was his resolution that the
parents of these men, representative members of the

244 JOHN A. ANDREW
conservative class, should be held to the support of
the war. At its beginning they had been swept off
their feet and carried along in the rush of patriot
ism; they must not be allowed to fall behind.
" Many a gaUant young officer," writes Albert
Browne, " went down from Massachusetts into Vir
ginia to battle, an unconscious hostage for the loy
alty of men at home, who in times of disaster might
otherwise easily have fallen into indifference or
opposition." 1 What seemed to some people a
weak yielding to the influence of wealth and posi
tion was thus really the carrying out on Andrew's
part of a deliberate pohcy which the event fully
justified. As the summer went on, recruiting in Massachu
setts was at a standstill. Men were busy in the
fields, and those who in June had been eager for
war, having been once refused, had no mind to offer
themselves again at present ; the black disaster of
Bull Run stUl overshadowed the North. The five
regiments in camp lacked some 1700 men, and yet
the daily returns from the recruiting officers for
four of the regiments showed a total enlistment from
the fourteenth to the sixteenth of August of only
four men. Andrew, worn out by the hot weather
and the long pull of work, which had never relaxed
for an instant since the fifteenth of April, had taken
to his bed. At this moment, when things were at
their worst, came the news of one of those " scares "
in Washington to which the Administration was
1 Browne, p. 65.

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 245
subject throughout the war. It was the third of its
kind since Andrew had been governor ; it was by
no means the last. According to the report which
ex-Governor Boutwell sent to Andrew, the rebels
were weaving a net-work about the city, and its cap
ture was probable. " As in AprU, so now we must
rely on your energy and forethought to supply the
manifest deficiencies in the conduct of affairs at
Washington." Telegrams from the War Depart
ment asked that the five regiments be sent on
immediately. The feat seemed impossible; but
everybody set to work with a will. The Governor,
dragging himself up from Hingham, issued a pro
clamation urging the duty of enhstment, with a
special appeal to the mUitia just coming back from
their three months' service. Three regiments were
sent off at once, on the twenty-second, twenty-third,
and twenty-fourth of August, all of them without
full numbers, and one of them without a colonel ; a
fourth went the next week, and the last, the Twen
tieth, upon which the Governor and his staff had
lavished infinite care, a week later. Long before
this, of course, the danger to Washington had been
discovered to be purely imaginary; still the scare
had had its use in stirring up recruiting. To help
stiU further came General Thomas W. Sherman,
with the request that Massachusetts furnish him
five regiments to be part of an expedition to the
coast of North Carolina. Finally, permission was
given to Andrew to raise a regiment of cavalry, the
most attractive arm of the service, and the work was

246 JOHN A. ANDREW
begun at once. All these were signs of hope ; they
meant that at Washington it had been decided to
go forward.
Besides these greater labors, the Governor was all
the time at work upon a thousand matters of organ
ization and administration, for the conduct of busi
ness between the State House and the regiments
in the field, and between the State House and the
departments in Washington. The War Department
was still trying to deal with the governors of twenty-
two states according to the cut-and-dried methods
by which it had managed a tiny army. Though
Andrew could not bring about the radical changes
which were necessary, he could do his utmost to get
systematic attention to Massachusetts affairs, and in
so far forth help to establish the method by which
other governors should be dealt with. For example,
he gave no peace to the Adjutant-General, Lorenzo
Thomas, a man wedded to office routine, until that
official sent him notifications of vacancies occurring
in Massachusetts regiments. Without such notifica
tion Andrew could commission no new man to take
the vacant place ; yet, as he wrote to Thomas, " in
no single instance" had "any such vacancy been
so certified" to him.1 In the same spirit he did
his utmost to obtain from the Massachusetts colo
nels complete regimental rolls. The importance of
perfect rolls lay in the fact that if a private's name
was not found in its proper place, the man's family
could not receive the monthly State Aid which the
1 O. R., Series III. vol. i. p. 419.

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 247
Legislature had voted.1 With the object of securing
State Aid also to those men who had enlisted in the
Mozart Regiment and elsewhere outside the State,
Andrew made interminable efforts to get them trans
ferred to Massachusetts regiments.
As he accepted this extra labor, — passing still
upon every detail, — so he accepted the responsibility.
1 The " Act in aid of the Families of Volunteers " passed by the
Legislature at its final session in May provided for reimbursement
by the State of any towns and cities which should, under certain con
ditions, give relief to the family of " anyone of their inhabitants,
who, as a member of the volunteer militia of the state may have
been mustered into or enlisted in the service of the United States."
For the sake of completeness and somewhat in defiance of chro
nology, it is well to mention here another means of help which was
afforded to the families of soldiers and in which Andrew took the
keenest interest. The United States Allotment System, which en
abled soldiers to forego a portion of their monthly pay in favor of
their families or friends, was inaugurated by Act of Congress in
July, 1861. Andrew, to whom the idea was not new, immediately
began discussing methods and urging his views at Washington ;
meanwhile he sent to the front agents to explain the system and
bring home the men's allotments, so that, by the first part of October,
while the departments at Washington were still discussing among
themselves as to which should undertake all the trouble and expense
involved in executing the law, three Massachusetts regiments had
sent home from $16,000 to $20,000 each. It was Andrew, too, who
got the Massachusetts savings banks to supplement this first imper
fect federal system, and who, after the federal system had been
improved, brought its workings in Massachusetts almost to perfec
tion through the Legislature of 1862. After that, he tried to make
Massachusetts people independent of the irregularity of the army
pay-day by inducing the Legislature of 1863 to ask Congress for
permission to advance their pay regularly to Massachusetts soldiers.
This permission being refused in spite of all the persuasion that An
drew could bring to bear upon Congress, he and his assistants were
once more obliged to take what pride they could in having done
their best.

248 JOHN A. ANDREW
When an article in the Post attacked some mem
bers of his personal staff, he came hotfoot to their
defence. In his blandest style he explained that
there was more work than he himself could possi
bly do ; that the State made no provision for per
forming it ; that these gentlemen were giving their
time gratuitously and in large measure. " The least
duty that I can do," he wrote, " is to ask that they
may not be rewarded by sarcasm and unkind re
mark. Whatever is rightly done may be credited
to any one; but whatever is deemed worthy of
blame, charge it to me, not to them." The days of
irregularity and emergency were, however, nearly
over. The appointment of McCleUan as commander
of the Army of the Potomac marked the beginning
of broad organization at Washington, and before
long Andrew was able to feel that the conduct of
mUitary matters, both as within the State and as
between the State and the War Department, was
established upon a permanent and satisfactory basis.
If this hope should be disproved, the fault would be
none of his making.
It was natural that in the first shot fired against
Sumter Andrew should have heard the doom of
slavery ; and his Amen to the note which Dr. Howe
sent him on the fifteenth of April was hearty and
profound. Nevertheless, reahzing that the first need
was to build up a strong Union sentiment in the
North, he for once in his life checked his tongue on
the subject of slavery. When he was preparing his

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 249
message for the special session of the Legislature
which was to meet on May 14, he sought advice
from Washington as to what tone he should take
upon national affairs. Montgomery Blair's blunt
reply was to " drop the nigger." A rebellion against
popular government was what the nation had to cope
with, and to this end aU the states — northern,
western, and those along the border — must stand
together. Taking this cue, Andrew, at the same time
that he confirmed and strengthened the loyalty of
his own people, was careful not to offend the loyalty
of others. " This is no war of sections," he said, " no
war of North on South. ... It is the struggle of
the People to vindicate their own rights, to retain
and invigorate the institutions of their fathers . . .
and therefore while I do not forget, I wiU not name
to-day that ' subtle poison ' which has lurked always
in our national system." When an excited discus
sion broke out in the Legislature over a motion to
strike out the word " white " from the mihtia laws
in order that the negro should no longer be debarred
from mUitary service, he put an end to the debate by
proroguing the Legislature with aU speed. Never
theless, when at the end of August Fremont issued
his proclamation emancipating the slaves in Missouri,
Andrew welcomed it as giving " an impetus of the
grandest character to the whole cause," and was
willing for once to break through his rule of silence,
and in an unofficial way to interpret its significance.
He found his opportunity at a dinner in New York,
given to the Twentieth Regiment, which was on its

250 JOHN A. ANDREW
way to the front. When caUed upon for a speech,
he began by stirring the enthusiasm of the men on
one point and another, praising this commander and
that, and provoking laughter by his characterization
of the Union Army at Bull Run as " a congregation
of town-meetings without a leader." Then, having
his audience in a comfortable mood, and conscious of
the welcome that the North was giving to Fremont's
proclamation, he went further : —
And it is not my opinion that our generals, when
any man comes to the standard and desires to defend
the flag, will find it important to hght a candle to
see what is the complexion of his face, or to consult
the famUy Bible to ascertain whether his grandfather
came from the banks of the Thames or the banks
of the Senegal. But all they who have attempted to
overthrow the national Constitution, which was their
aegis as well as ours, to destroy their American liberty
as weU as ours, to overthrow the hopes of their pos
terity as well as ours, to destroy civil society and social
life in their own midst, shaU find that their pecuhar,
patriarchal institution, staggering, shall faU beneath
their own parricidal stroke ; whether they count it
misfortune or not, it wiU be their own chickens com
ing home to their own roost — their own fault, and if
it shaU fall in the good providence of God that other
men beside those of my own peculiar complexion and
blood shaU taste the sweets of liberty, God be praised.
[The newspaper report here inserts : " Great ap
plause, and three cheers for Governor Andrew."]
I am glad that this is not heresy in the commercial
metropolis of New York. I suppose that, although
we ought not, if peace had been preserved, either
to invade, or counsel, or promote invasion of any

THE REGIMENTS OF 1861 251
constitutional right preserved to any State, when a
State or people trample the Constitution itself be
neath their feet, and endeavor to crush us and our
children with it, we may at least have the poor privi
lege of praying for the happiness of them all —
bond as weU as free.1
For some of the officers in the Twentieth, scions of
conservative famUies, this was pretty stiff doctrine ;
others, however, good abolitionists, heard Andrew
gladly. This speech was all ; Lincoln's modification
of Fremont's order, which appeared in the papers a
week later, bound Andrew again to silence. Never
theless he looked forward with hope, for even then,
by the camp fires pn the Potomac, the John Brown
song, brought from Massachusetts by the Webster
Regiment, was constantly sung.
1 Moore's Rebellion Record, vol. iii. p. 67.

CHAPTER VII

THE DAY'S ROUTINE

At the beginning of Andrew's term the mUitary
affairs of the State were managed by the Adjutant-
General, — who was also Acting Quartermaster-
General, — with the assistance of one aged clerk.
The manifold new duties created by the outbreak
of war were for a few weeks performed by volun
teers. At the special session of the Legislature in
May, the Governor was given authority to appoint
a general mUitary staff and to fix the salaries of its
members. The position of Quartermaster-General
he gave to John H. Reed, who had been doing the
work ever since the first call. Reed had served as
senior aide to Governor Banks, and in that capacity
his latest act of military service had been the suc
cessful management in the preceding autumn of the
reception to the Prince of Wales. He was a young
man of a weU-known Boston family, of first-rate
business ability, and of that open and enthusiastic
temperament which Andrew found so sympathetic
to his own. For Surgeon-General the Governor se
lected Dr. WiUiam J. Dale of Boston, who also had
assisted him almost from the beginning of the war,
though at first his chief medical adviser had been

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 253
Dr. George H. Lyman. In all Andrew's staff there
was no one of finer cahbre than Dale. He was a
man with a scrupulous sense of honor, unremittingly
devoted to his work, and withal invincibly modest.
The appointment of Commissary-General was given
to Elijah J. Brigham ; that of Master of Ordnance
to Charles Amory. In the course of the war, as the
military business of the State grew enormously,
other officers were added : namely, Richard A. Peirce,
Inspector-General ; William L. Burt, Judge- Advocate-
General ; Joseph M. Day, Provost-Marshal-General ;
J. F. B. Marshall, Paymaster-General.1 The General
Staff included also state agents at Washington, New
York, and Philadelphia. The Washington agent for
the greater part of the war was Gardner Tufts, Mr.
Dalton's special service having ended in 1861. The
New York agent was Frank E. Howe,2 who early in
1 The first important change in the Governor's personal staff was
made in the latter part of 1861, when Horace Binney Sargent resigned
to take a commission in the First Cavalry. Harrison Ritchie then
became senior aide, and the fourth position on the staff was filled by
John Quincy Adams. In the summer of 1864, Henry Lee resigned,
and was succeeded by W. L. Candler. A year later Albert Browne's
place was taken by Henry Ware, who had been Assistant Military
Secretary since the autumn of 1862.
2 In recommending Howe at one time for a position in Louisiana
Andrew described him thus : "He is also capable of much labor,
of great activity and has more ' human nature ' than one man in a
thousand. Thus he can move, lead and influence men below him and
at the same time keep on a good footing with his equals. The fac
ulty of succeeding with men is a distinct one by itself. Our friends
tend to over-rate the importance of methods. I think there is a dif
ference in methods, but I quarrel but little about them. For, I think
it is our duty by dint of our own magnetism to defy methods and
succeed in spite of them. Col. Howe, if he should try, could attract

254 JOHN A. ANDREW
the war offered some rooms in his store on Broadway
for the use of Massachusetts soldiers passing through
the city. Accepting an appointment as Assistant-
Quartermaster-General on Andrew's staff, Howe made
himself invaluable to the regiments on their way to
the front and to the discharged and wounded sol
diers returning home. Other New England states,
adopting the same plan, made him their agent, and
203 Broadway came to be known as the " New Eng
land Rooms." Howe himself, a big, ardent fellow,
was the life of the place. He was indefatigable in
getting up receptions on a large scale, such as that
given to the Twentieth Regiment at which Andrew
spoke, and in producing the conditions from which
enthusiasm springs forth spontaneously. He was a
capital traveUing companion, always ready for an
excursion, and Andrew, dropping in at the New
England Rooms on his way to Washington, usually
found it easy to detach him and carry him off for a
day or two.
These officials bore military titles ranging from
major-general to captain. They were in almost every
case men of ability, good organizers, and able more
and more to take aU but the final responsibility off
the Governor's shoulders. Not only had they fitness
for their work, they were of the stamp of men —
one of the glories of the war — who were wiUing to
the colored people on the one hand, fight Copperheads, army and
staff officers, if there are any, on the other hand, and would be on
equally good terms with a deacon, a dancing master, a dealer in
second-hand clothes or in sutler's goods, and a commander in chief
of an army, or the Secretary of War."

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 255
take office not for what they could get but for what
they could give. The four aides, as a matter of
course, and also Reed, Amory, Howe, and Dalton,
served entirely without compensation. These mem
bers of the personal and the general staff constituted
the Governor's " famUy," and this intimate word is
the natural one to express the regard existing between
him and them. Together they worked, and in the
brief intervals snatched from work played. The labor
was endless, but it was for the sake of a nation, and
it was done with a will.
Andrew's surroundings and daily routine at the
State House, of which it is time that some picture
should be given, have been best described by the
man who knew them best, Albert Browne.1
The arrangement of the private executive rooms
at the State House [he writes] was unchanged dur
ing the whole of the Governor's administration. It
was faulty in many respects, and a few simple changes
in it, enabling him to seclude himself, would have
saved him from much care and annoyance. They
were on the same floor with the Council Chamber,
and were reached through a long and narrow cor
ridor which led into an antechamber. Out of this
the Governor's apartment opened directly, with no
intervening room. It was a low-studded chamber,
perhaps twenty-five feet square, hghted by two win
dows opening westward. In the centre was a mas
sive square table, on the side of which, facing the
1 The quotations which follow have been taken from divers places
in Browne's Sketch ofthe Official Life of John A. Andrew, principally
from chapter iv., and rearranged to suit the purpose of the pre
sent chapter.

256 JOHN A. ANDREW
door of the antechamber, the Governor had his seat.
Directly opposite him, at the same table, sat his sec
retary. At a desk near one of the windows was the
place of an assistant secretary. The chairs and sofa
were very plain and covered with green plush. The
large book-cases along the northern waU, empty at
the beginning of his administration, became filled
before the end of it with more than two hundred
volumes of the correspondence conducted under his
immediate direction. A large mirror, with a heavUy
carved black-walnut frame, surmounted the mantel,
gas-fixtures projecting from among the carving ; and
on these, during the first year of the war, whUe
Massachusetts was arming and equipping her own
troops, he was accustomed to hang specimens of
shoddy clothing or defective accoutrements, labeUed
with the names of the faithless contractors, thus pub
licly exposed to the indignation of the hundreds of
visitors who frequented the room. His only means
of seclusion was to retreat into a room beyond the
antechamber, from which there was no other outlet
than the door of entrance, which was of sohd iron.
Every frequenter of the State House may remember
seeing him, after being pestered beyond endurance,
hasten across the antechamber into this room, where
he would bolt and bar out the waiting crowd untU
he could finish some urgent work demanding free
dom from the interruptions to which he was subject
in his own apartment. Once behind that iron door
he was free ; and it was the only place in the whole
buUding where he was secure from intrusion.
Andrew took his breakfast in good season at
home. Here Joe Spear, the messenger, occasionally
brought him the morning's maU, and Andrew, as he

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 257
read each letter, wrote in pencil on the back of it a
rough draft of the reply.
Almost invariably he was at the State House as
early or even earher than either of his secretaries,
and his appearance was always the signal for fresh
work in every department of the building. Paying
hasty calls at the offices of the Adjutant-General and
the Surgeon-General, on his way, nine o'clock rarely
found him absent from his own desk. . . . His habits of
business lacked system, in part through inexperience
of official life, but more through eagerness to dispose
at once of the matters uppermost. So far, however,
as he may be said to have had a daily routine, it was
his custom to devote the early hours of the morning,
first to his mail ; then to reports from the depart
ments of the state government, and interviews with
officials of those departments and with officers of the
United States having business with him ; then to
interviews with officers from the field or engaged
in recruiting or organizing troops at home ; and fi
nally, at some time between noon and one o'clock, to
throw open the doors of his room to the public. By
that hour a great crowd had assembled in the ante
chamber, eager for admittance. Except the similar
though rarer pubhc receptions by President Lincoln,
there were no scenes in which it was possible to
witness more of the effect of the war on all classes
of society than in those daily inroads. Instantly the
room would be filled with the crowd. Women anx
ious for the safety or health of fathers, sons, brothers,
husbands, in the armies before Richmond or Vicks
burg, or in the rebel prisons, or having grievances to
present as to the administration of " State aid " to
their famUies; soldiers complaining of injustice or

258 JOHN A. ANDREW
of suffering in the field or at home ; selectmen and
recruiting committees suggesting plans or asking
favors to promote enlistments ; an endless host of
applicants for appointments, mihtary and civil ; cit
izens of every class seeking indorsement and aid of
schemes for sanitary and other charities; petition
ers for pardon of criminals, for admission of deaf
and dumb or bhnd or idiotic chUdren as public bene
ficiaries to the charitable institutions of the State, —
these, and a countless multitude of others, on every
conceivable variety of business, aU found a wUling
ear. . . . He would hear and examine personally into
every case, or give the apphcant in charge to his staff-
officers to make the examination under his own super
vision. In speaking of the spirit in which he thus put
himself at the disposal of the pubhc, Browne quotes
the foUowing anecdote from E. P. Whipple.1
Sir Frederick Bruce, the British minister, once
called upon the Governor at the State House and
found the room nearly fiUed with colored women who
had come to him to obtain news of fathers, brothers
and sons enlisted in the black regiments of Massa
chusetts. Sir Frederick waited, whUe the Governor,
with kindly patience, listened to complaints, answered
questions, gave advice, and tried to infuse consola
tion and cheer into the hearts of his humble friends.
After these interviews were all over the turn of the
British minister came, and he was a man with the
nobihty of soul to appreciate what he had witnessed.
Clasping the Governor by the hand, he declared that,
whatever might be the advantages of a republican
1 Eulogy before the City Government of Boston, November 26,
1867.

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 259
government, he had never believed that it could as
sume a paternal character, but what he had just seen
proved how much he had been mistaken.
Browne has another story which is apropos here, and
again gives a vivid picture of the Governor's daily
receptions. One day, among the many exhibitors of military
notions who beset him, was a man with a patent knap
sack. There were many visitors in attendance, some
of high distinction, awaiting audience ; but the knap
sack man was before them in obtaining his ear. He
listened to his description of the article ; and when
he was told that some of our Massachusetts troops
wished it as a substitute for the regulation knapsack,
he forgot the presence of everybody, asked for it to
be packed and buckled over his own shoulders, and
then marched up and down the room, testing himself
its asserted merits, before he would turn to any
other business.
Some other aspects of these receptions Colonel Hig
ginson has touched upon.1 "At the State House,
where his predecessor, Governor Banks, had loved
to sit with closed doors and to consult mysteriously
with the most commonplace intruder, Governor An
drew met all the world in the presence of all the
world. . . . The Governor had, moreover, a great
taste for letter-writing, and he liked to read aloud
his own letters ; and some point involving reaUy
difficult pohtical strategy . . . would be discussed
in resonant tones for aU to hear."
i New York Nation, July 28, 1881. Review by T. W. Higginson
of P. W. Chandler's Memoir of Andrew.

260 JOHN A. ANDREW
This method of receiving callers had, of course,
more than one disadvantage. " It was often to be
wished," says Browne, " for his own comfort, that he
could develop ever so smaU a degree of that official
manner which checks and repels intrusion ; but he
never did." Andrew's way, as his friends were al
ways telling him, wasted much energy over the small
affairs of small persons ; moreover, it often happened
that people of consequence, after waiting their turn
aU the morning, found themselves too late to reach
the Governor. To all remonstrance, however, he was
deaf ; it had never been in the man — least of aU
was it in him now — to allow any one else to decide
for him whose claim was and whose was not of im
portance. Since such functions never end of themselves, and
the Governor could not be expected to stop as long
as a single person was waiting, they usually contin
ued until the hour for the meeting of the Executive
CouncU. Then the Governor bolted into his private
room for a hasty lunch of bread and cheese with a
cup of tea, sometimes varied by soup or pie, or what
ever could be eaten in the shortest space of time.
This practice was the cause of much concern to his
friends, and some of them made it a point to come
to the State House and carry him by main force
away from the crowd. Forbes used to go to Parker's,
and from there send a carriage with a note, descrip
tive of a tempting biU of fare, to bring him* the short
distance from the State House to the hotel. Judge
Hoar was another of these masterful friends, and a

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 261
note of his, inviting the Governor to the Saturday
Club some time in May, 1861, shows the tone of
authority which it was necessary for them to adopt.
Saturday afternoon.
My dear fellow : I came to seize you and take
you down to dine at our club — where we expect
Motley — for your soul's salvation or body's, at least.
Send that foohsh CouncU away till Monday. A man
who has no respect for Saturday afternoon, has but
one step to take, to join in abolishing the 4th of
July. " The Court, having considered your case, do
adjudge," that you come — if you can't come now,
come down half an hour hence — to Parker's.
Yours, E. R. Hoar.
The need of such friends Andrew himself recog
nized, and sometimes provided for in advance.
Among the anecdotes in Cyrus Woodman's scrap-
book is a story of Andrew's sending one morning
for General Dale. When he appeared the Governor
addressed him with some excitement : " William J.
Dale, Brigadier-General and Surgeon-General of the
Commonwealth of Massachusetts, if you don't take
me out of this State House vi et armis at one o'clock
I 'U have you court-martiaUed." Dale replied : " It
shaU be done, sir," turned on his heel and left. At
the appointed time he returned and, making his way
through the crowd in the office up to the Governor's
chair, took his arm, saying, " Governor Andrew,
come with me, sir." And the Governor went.
After the CouncU meeting, what remained of the
day was devoted to correspondence and to other

262 JOHN A. ANDREW
affairs presented by members of the staff. This let
ter-writing, it may be noted in passing, to which
Colonel Higginson so lightly refers as a " taste " of
Andrew's, was, far from being a pet avocation, a
cruel and ever-present necessity. From the fifteenth
of April, 1861, untU the end of the war, the reading
and answering of letters consumed the entire time of
two secretaries, and often required even more assist
ance. Every letter and document received was filed
and indexed according to an exhaustive system de
vised by Browne ; of every letter written a letter
press copy was made. This system had to be organ
ized ab initio, for before Andrew no governor of
Massachusetts had had a private secretary, and
Browne on taking possession had found " that the
official documents of the Dept. consisted of a few
bundles of papers relating chiefly to applications for
pardons and for admission to public charitable insti
tutions, and no letters written to or by any preced
ing Executive had been preserved except such as
had passed into the care of the Secretary of the Com
monwealth in his official character as custodian of
such records." l Of course what swelled the Gov
ernor's maU to such huge dimensions was the innu
merable appeals from persons who had no claim upon
him, but who trusted to his well-known kindness for
an answer. For the same reason, people thronged to
1 Browne's report to Andrew, December 31, 1861. The letter-press
books containing the executive correspondence begin with the event
ful date of April 15, 1861. There is a story that John M. Forbes,
scandalized at the unbusinesslike methods of the executive office,
went out and himself purchased the first of them.

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 263
his daily reception ; and in both cases they were met
with the same courtesy, no matter how trivial the
request. "I am directed by His Excellency, Gov
ernor Andrew, to say in reply to your letter of the
1st of July that he has no means of knowing why
your husband does not write to you," — such is the
bland reply of one of the secretaries to the anxious
inquiry of a soldier's wife at North Vassalboro,
Maine. Worthy of record, too, is the petition of the
factory girls of Taunton, giving a glimpse into a
world where the labor problem seems to have been
one of Arcadian simplicity. They worked from five
in the morning tUl seven at night, and when they
asked for a ten-hour day, their employers refused the
request as unreasonable. To secure justice, the girls
felt that there was needed only an appeal to the
Governor. Of course Andrew's part in the bulk of
the correspondence was confined to an oral direc
tion, or a few scribbled lines of indorsement upon
the letter to be answered. When a letter had to be
of his own composing, he made a rough draft, nearly
Ulegible, with interlineations and erasures, or, better
stiU, dictated to Browne or the faithful Spear. This
method produced letters disproportionately long for
the matter they contained, and full of that expansive
phrasing which is more effective in oratorical than in
epistolary style. Herein perhaps lay Andrew's taste
for letter-writing, but it was an enjoyment which he
would probably have been quite wiUing to forego.
On the detaUs of Andrew's methods of writing,
his secretary is fuU of genial reminiscences.

264 JOHN A. ANDREW
For aU his communications to the Legislature and
his formal addresses to public bodies, he made elab
orate preparation, and freely commanded and used
the work of others in their detaUs. Burdened as he
was with care, it would have been impossible for
this to be otherwise. Whether preparing for a pro
fessional argument or an official message, he was
fond of laying in supplies and carefully organizing
and drUling his forces before beginning to move,
and then of moving en masse. . . .
He had the habit of sending his manuscript to
the printer with the various sheets pasted together
into a long roll Uke a mammoth petition ; and he
made revisions in the proofs with a freedom which
drove the compositors to despair. The handwriting,
though bold and flowing, was far from legible ; and
his signature, towards the end of his official life,
became a puzzle to strangers. He made a practice of
signing, himself, almost all the correspondence of his
office. One summer, having (with his usual pains to
satisfy even trivial inquiries) replied, over his own
signature, to the request of a country schoolmistress
to be informed, three months in advance, what day
he would appoint for Thanksgiving, she sent back
the letter with a suggestion that when replying to
" a woman," he should write himsefl instead of send
ing the letter of some secretary whose name she
could not read. His fair correspondent had better
cause of complaint about the day than about the
handwriting, for, that year, the Governor, attracted
by the fact that the third Thursday of November
was the anniversary of the signing of the compact
on board the Mayflower, designated it for Thanks
giving ; and the next day after his Proclamation he
received a multitude of indignant letters from peda-

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 265
gogues, of either sex, aU over the State, whose vaca
tions had been planned upon a presumed appoint
ment of the last Thursday of the month, according
to a time-honored custom from which he never af
terwards ventured to depart, for (he used often
laughingly to say) that morning's mail contained
more abuse better expressed than any other he ever
received. For a man having no natural inclination or pre
vious training for administrative work, the amount
which the Governor accomphshed was little short of
marveUous. The lack of system of which Browne
speaks, — an excessive defect only in comparison
with his own excess of excellence in the opposite
direction, — was undeniably a quality which dimin
ished Andrew's powers somewhat. A counterbal
ancing merit, however, was his power of making up
his mind on a matter as soon as it was presented to
him, and taking final action upon it then and there.
He finished what he began upon [says Bird, who
during the years 1863, 1864, and 1865 served on
the Governor's CouncU], he left no loose ends ; he
never had to go over the same ground twice, but
closed everything that was before him so far as
existing data made it possible ; and if not finally
finished, he "stuck a pin" at the stopping-place,
and pigeon-holed the case in his brain, so that he
could begin again precisely where he left off. And
then he was always ready to act upon every ques
tion as soon as the merits had been fuUy presented.
He was never concerned as to the bearings of any
decision upon himself personally. " Mrs. Grundy "

266 JOHN A. ANDREW
never disturbed his investigations. Thus freed from
influences which occasion indecision in less coura
geous and less conscientious men, he came to his
conclusions with promptness and positiveness ; and
decisions thus reached seldom required review.1
No matter how hard a man in Andrew's position
might toil, completing one task and turning in
stantly to the next, stUl he could never get ahead
of his work. The utmost that he could do in a long
day of labor was to keep abreast of it. In seasons
of emergency, which were by no means rare, he was
merciless to himself. Browne writes : —
During the first few months of the war his labor
at the State House averaged more than twelve hours
daily, and during April and May, 1861, the gray
hght of morning often mingled with the gaslight
over his table, before he abandoned work, discharged
his weary attendants, and walked down the hiU to
his little house in Charles Street to snatch a few
hours of sleep before beginning the task of another
day. . . . After his invariable bath and hasty break
fast he would reappear at the State House as fresh
as the morning itself, without a trace perceptible to
the casual visitor of irritation or fatigue, whUe per
haps half an hour later his attendants of the previous
night would come to their places cross and jaded.
The months of July and August, 1862, were an
other period of particularly hard work. One day
the Governor's secretary recorded over four hundred
people in the Governor's anteroom, " most of them
(about 3/5) for commissions." Writing at that time
1 Boston Commonwealth, January 18, 1868.

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 267
*
to Harrison Ritchie, Andrew said that he had at
last succeeded in reading Ritchie's report, but only
by rising at three o'clock in the morning after
barely three hours' sleep, having worked at the State
House tiU ten o'clock, then dined, and gone to bed
at twelve o'clock. A few days later he stated his
case to a disappointed visitor, with the frankness of
despair. I am very sorry that you are offended with me
because human nature is incapable of uninterrupted
confinement and work without food or rest. I told
Mr. Crandall that I would return to my office, but
that, having been up so late the night before, and
so early that morning, and having been driven so
hard all day, I must take some food, having had no
time to eat, — (my breakfast even having been in
terrupted, and my dinner untasted) and that I must
take the air, too, or I should soon fall to the floor.
I would work aU day and aU night, and not eat,
and never 'sleep nor breathe — but it is impossible.
I strain my powers to the utmost. I never spare my
self any care or toil, and I give myself no recreations,
only as car travelling on duty, — occupied, even in
the train, in consultations and in reading letters, —
may be caUed so. If my friends will bear with me
I can usually bring things round during the twenty-
four hours. But I am mortal, and cannot do every
thing or see aU persons at one and the same moment.
With this manner of life, as was to be expected,
Andrew was exclusively a pubhc servant.
His private affairs went utterly neglected. His fam
ily he rarely saw by daylight, except in the early
morning and on Sundays, and to a man of so affec-

268 JOHN A. ANDREW
tionate a disposition this was the greatest sacrifice.
Even on Sundays there was often no respite of work.
Sometimes, however, his children would come to his
crowded room at the State House, and hnger there
for an hour in the early afternoon on their way home
from school. No matter how urgent his business,
there was always a moment to spare for an affection
ate word or a caress, and an encouragement to make
a play-room of the chamber.
This unremitting labor continued through the five
years of Andrew's term. Though, at the beginning
of 1864, he was obliged to give up night work as the
price of continuing at his post at aU, the summer of
that year found him as deeply involved as ever. In
declining an invitation to attend Commencement at
Bowdoin, he wrote : " There is so much to do in con
nection with the State finances, the bounties, and
the recruiting, which requires my personal presence,
that everything gets into a snarl as soon as my back
is turned." It is no wonder that he caUed the State
House " my prison."
From his assistants there the Governor expected
no less devotion than he himself gave.
His secretary once recommended to him an increase
of the pay of a subordinate. The letter bears the
indorsement instantly made : " I cordially assent, but
on condition that he shaU come at nine o'clock a. m."
This was the case of an officer whose residence was
out of the city, and whose duties kept him at the
State House almost always until sunset and often
until midnight. It was an indorsement not unkind,
— never from all those years can any of his asso-

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 269
ciates or subordinates recall a single act or word of
unkindness done or spoken by Governor Andrew, —
but it was characteristic of his habit to hold every
one strictly to the fuU measure of duty.
In this absorbing and taxing round of duties,
there were breaks, diversions to duties less arduous,
which served in the place of vacation. Of these, as
has been said, the most frequent were trips to New
York and Washington. Though when once arrived
at either of these cities he worked as hard as at Bos
ton, the raUway journeys to and fro, albeit in the days
before what we know as sleeping-cars, were for him,
by a lucky exception, a real respite. Except when
the press of work was unusually great, he threw off
all care untU the train should bring him to his desti
nation. He seldom desired to talk; pulling a copy of
the Golden Treasury from his pocket, he devoted
himself to committing to memory one after another
of its lyrics. One summer he learned on the train
the whole of Longfellow's coUection of minor poems
called The Waif. Often some member of his staff
was with him ; occasionaUy, when his stay in Wash
ington was to be for some time, Mrs. Andrew was his
companion ; once, in the autumn of 1861, the Howes,
the Andrews, and James Freeman Clarke made to
gether a trip to Washington of which the Governor
afterward said that he had never enjoyed a journey
more. This " ladies' expedition," which, besides an
interview with the President and the usual " sights,"
included a brigade review of troops in and around
Washington, a division review and a skirmish in

270 JOHN A. ANDREW
Alexandria, where the party also visited the fortifi
cations and camps, was suggested and carried out
by Andrew for the sake of the soldiers especially.
Plainly the soldiers were greatly pleased ; Mrs. Howe,
having been induced to speak to them, was the hero
ine of the hour. " We rode home by night through
the Virginia woods," Clarke says, " Wisconsin and
Pennsylvania regiments marching by our side singing
John Brown 's Body whUe the moonlight glittered on
their bayonets." * The episode stirred all the romance
of Andrew's nature ; to Mrs. Howe it gave the inspi
ration of the Battle Hymn of the Republic.2
After the first year of the war [says Browne] he
was accustomed to travel a good deal through the
State in the summer season, but always on some offi
cial task which robbed him of a great part of the
pleasure of the journey ; and more than half the time
he travelled by night, so as to save the daylight for
business. On these excursions he would attend the
Commencements at Amherst and Williams Colleges,
the Wesleyan Academy, and the College of the Holy
Cross;3 inspect the work on the Hoosac Tunnel; be
present at the Agricultural Fairs, and the closing of
the terms of the Normal Schools ; examine insane
hospitals, almshouses, jails, and houses of reforma
tion and correction ; besides visiting the numerous
military camps, at Pittsfield, Greenfield, Springfield,
Worcester, Groton, Wenham, Lynnfield, and Lake-
vUle, and the great camp at ReadviUe. How delight-
1 Memorial and Biographical Sketches, p. 48.
2 Reminiscences, Julia Ward Howe, pp. 274, 275.
8 In his capacity of president ex officio of the board of overseers of
Harvard College, he yearly attended the commencement exercises
and took his part.

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 271
ful he made these journeys to others, by his shrewd
observation, lively wit, unfailing good temper, and
ardor for everything that was charitable or patriotic,
the happy recollections of those who had the privi
lege of being his companions wUl forever attest.
His favorite amusement was to drive far out into
the country around Boston with some intimate
friend, and at last, when clear of the thickly settled
suburbs, leaving the horse to travel almost at his
own wUl, to abandon himself to a hUarity than which
none could be more simple and genuine. Driving
thus in the fresh spring air along the beautiful roads
of Watertown or Newton, fringed and fragrant with
apple blossoms, he would overflow with a spring-tide
of anecdote and humor. But he aUowed himself few
such holiday hours. Almost all his excursions from
the city combined an element of business with what
pleasure they afforded. Was it a sleigh-ride on a
clear, crisp, Sunday morning in January ; the object
would be to attend the dedication of a soldiers' chapel
at the ReadvUle Camp, or the services in the chapel of
the State Prison, or to sit for an hour by the bed
side of some invalid soldier. Was it a drive into the
green of the country, in the twilight of a summer
evening; the horses would not turn their heads
homeward without first stopping at the State Arsenal
in Cambridge, the United States Arsenal at Water-
town, the camps at Brook Farm or Medford, or the
State charitable institutions at South Boston.
On these drives a frequent companion was the
Quartermaster-General, "Jack" Reed. In summer,
when famUies had sought the seashore and the men
stayed out the hot days and nights in town, it was
his habit to carry off the Governor to his bachelor

272 JOHN A. ANDREW
quarters out on Beacon Street, and there treat him
and one or two others to a mid-afternoon dinner of
the best that the season afforded. After dinner, the
rest put Andrew on the sofa, and while they smoked
and told round after round of the stories which the
war was always producing, let him doze for an hour
or so. Then, when the heat of the day had abated,
they started behind Reed's fine horses for their drive
into the country.
Another favorite recreation of the Governor's was,
on a Sunday morning, to go round the corner to
Peleg Chandler's house on Mount Vernon Street, to
" take a fish-ball "or to " bean." After breakfast
the two friends sat together, Andrew holding one
end of the long flexible speaking-tube which Chan
dler used, and frequently, in his excitement, gesticu
lating with it, to the serious detriment of his listen
er's appreciation. Particularly after Andrew's trips
to Washington, their talk was long and confidential,
for between them there were no reserves.
There were also, in summer, occasional visits : a
night or two spent with the HamUtons at Dobbs
Ferry, a few days at Portsmouth, Rhode Island, with
the Howes, or at Naushon, the island home of J. M.
Forbes. Andrew was too busy to accept ordinary
social invitations ; for entertaining others, his house,
as weU as his means, was too smaU. The most com
plete interruptions to his official hfe occurred when,
after some stretch of especiaUy exacting work, he
took to his bed in utter exhaustion. Several times
these warnings came, but he had neither the power

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 273
nor the wish to heed them. He accepted his fate,
and went forward with firm step and cheery voice.
Andrew's sense of official dignity showed itself in
many unexpected ways. Browne lays stress on the
constant pleasure that he took in all the historic
formahties belonging to his office.
He was very fond of certain stately old provisions
of the Constitution of the Commonwealth, which in
these democratic days it would hardly be possible to
reenact if the Constitution were now to be framed
anew; such as the recital of reasons for establishing
by law permanent and honorable salaries for the Gov
ernor and the justices of the Supreme Judicial Court,
and the whole chapter concerning Harvard College.
Even in httle things he manifested the same love of
old associations. He took an almost boyish satisfac
tion in discovering that there existed in the office of
the State Printer an old font of type, by means of
which his first Thanksgiving-day Proclamation could
be printed in precisely the same style in which he
had seen those of Governor Brooks and Governor
Eustis1 when he was a boy, and when they used to be
issued on a broad sheet which hung over the pulpit
cushions when the preachers read them.
By virtue of the same quality of mind, although he
was dehghtfuUy famihar with his official associates,
and in respect to freedom of access by the public was
informal beyond precedent, yet he was a lover of
ceremonial, when it did not interfere with what was
essential and practical. . . . The day of the Annual
Election Sermon was one of great delight to him.
Marching to the Old South Church, under the escort
1 Browne ignores the fact that Maine was set off from Massachu
setts when Andrew was two years old.

274 JOHN A. ANDREW
of his body-guard and surrounded by his associates in
the government of the Commonwealth, it was easy to
see in his face, as he passed down the old and narrow
streets, the noble consciousness that he was no unwor
thy successor of John Winthrop and Samuel Adams.
In aU the mUitary circumstance of his position as
Commander-in-Chief, too, he took keen delight.
Though he would not wear gold lace, and though
the constant recurrence of reviews, processions, and
flag-presentations was often irksome enough to him
and demanded subsequent compensation in the shape
of a chorus of " Johnny Schmoker " with his aides,
yet he loved the pageant and never failed to feel its
significance deeply.
In all these multitudinous labors the commanding
fact is the way in which Andrew managed to infuse
his own humanity into the dullest and most perfunc
tory tasks. His sense of human kinship penetrated
to the citadels of routine themselves. His frequent
expression, " my people," in its sheer unconsciousness
of self, reveals the sincerity of his feehng for all
those who, as he conceived, had been given into
his charge. For the soldiers and their famUies in
particular his care was active, and nothing brought
down his wrath more surely than any neglect of
their comfort, or any attempt to exploit their pa
triotism for selfish purposes. A delightfully char
acteristic example of his rushing to the aid of neg
lected soldiers occurred in January, 1862, when,
through some piece of carelessness at Washington,
the Twenty-Eighth Massachusetts Regiment, having

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 275
reached New York on its way to the front, found
no transportation provided for it, and was stored
like so much merchandise in a disused fort in the
harbor. For more than a week the regiment had
been suffering there, its none too efficient officers
being powerless to effect any rehef from Washington
for the men, and the only aid consisting in what
Frank Howe could provide from the New England
Rooms. When tidings of this scandal came to An
drew, he dropped his work and went straight to
New York. Ice and fog made it difficult for steam
ers to ply in the harbor, but the indefatigable Howe
secured a row boat, and in it the two men reached
the fort. To the astonished and dehghted soldiers
Andrew announced in no mild language that he
meant to stay on the island until the government
relieved aU their wants, — an event which it is need
less to say was speedily brought to pass. Of course
the loudness of the complaints had been out of all
proportion to the sufferings endured, for the men
were green at the business of war and were Irishmen
into the bargain. However that may be, the Govern
or's act, wholly single-minded and unpremeditated,
carried his fame far and wide through Union camps.
A Massachusetts man teUs the story that once, in
a PhUadelphia hospital, in the midst of the songs
and stories with which he was trying to cheer the
wounded soldiers, some one cried, " Tell us about
Governor Andrew ! " and that, after he had related
several incidents of the Governor's care for the vol
unteers, of whatever State, a man in the corner cot

276 JOHN A. ANDREW
called out, " We boys from Indiana think Governor
Morton is a bully fellow, but I swear I believe he
wUl have to take off his hat to Governor Andrew ! "
It was a foregone conclusion that with the people,
whether as soldiers or as citizens, Andrew should
never faU of popularity. It was quite another thing
that he should reveal qualities which endeared him
no less to men of wealth and high position in the
community. It is probably true [writes Bird] that no pubhc
man in Massachusetts ever gained so many new
friends as did Gov. Andrew. The explanation of
this is found not alone in the peculiar state of pubhc
affairs caused by the war, but in the discovery made
by these gentlemen that the most intense and ob
noxious radicalism was consistent with great capacity
for pubhc affairs. The men who had owned Mas
sachusetts so long, and who had so habituaUy de
rided abolitionists as men of one idea, retained those
prejudices in their full strength when Andrew be
came Governor; and when he sprang fuU-grown
into the pubhc arena and exhibited that profound
statesmanship which could only be founded upon
long and close study of the question of slavery in
its relations to our national government, and those
marvellous powers which surprised even us who
knew him so weU, these men — at least all who
were not given over to political bigotry — were com
peUed to a generous recognition of his practical
abilities, and to a cordial support of him in his
pubhc duties. Thus Gov. Andrew drew around him
troops of new supporters. But the " old guard "
never wavered, either through jealousy or lack of

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 277
confidence, in their support and love of him, and he
never wavered in his faith in them.1
Here again, in his deahngs with people trained to
believe in the safeguards of social forms, the cap
tivating thing about Andrew was that he insisted
upon taking aU these men and women simply and
naturaUy upon their human side. Henry Lee's en
tertaining picture of him in Boston society calls to
mind Carlyle's description of Robert Burns among
the fine ladies of Edinburgh.
It was amusing, sometimes exciting, to foUow the
Governor, after he became a lion, into certain circles,
knowing that their invitation was due to curiosity
more than to admiration ; and to see him tarrying
not in the ante-chamber of ceremony but blissfully
unconscious of the condescension implied and honor
conferred, march briskly and salute cordially and
heartUy his hostess, routing her from her preconcerted
formalities. This apparent or real (I never could tell
which) unconsciousness, this frankness and heartiness
of manner, this evident sincerity, won him real regard
among men of very antagonistic opinions. " Your
Governor is a good little fellow, though I don't agree
with him," was an observation constantly made.2
The patronizing attitude implied in this last remark
was not one that anybody could long retain towards
Andrew; aU people who possessed the touchstone of
genuineness made friends with him at once, and
many a house in Boston, New York, and Washing
ton had always ready for him its heartiest welcome.
1 F. W. Bird in the Boston Commonwealth, January 18, 1868.
a MS. Reminiscences, Henry Lee.

278 JOHN A. ANDREW
No duty drew more profoundly on the Governor's
sympathies than that of attending the funerals of
soldiers. When, after the skirmish of BaU's Bluff,1
that early disaster which taught so many families in
Boston the price of war, the body of young Lieu
tenant Putnam was brought to his mother's house,
Andrew accompanied the procession. " The mother
was sick in bed, but the sister met him at the door,
smiling, but tears falling thick and fast, and said,
' Governor Andrew, we thanked you when we got
WUlie's commission and we thank you now.' The
Governor completely broke down under his emo
tion." 2 No matter what the pageantry of obsequies,
no matter how sadly frequent such events became,
he was never insensible to the tragedy of private
bereavement which is merely one of the incidents in
the grim business of war.
The obvious reflection upon a hfe thus carried on
for five years is that the man who lived it must have
undergone an extraordinary development. Andrew
entered upon his term as governor a lawyer of good
ability, with practically no experience outside his pro
fessional work, and no circle of friends in Boston
except that of the Bird Club and of his church ;
he left it a trained administrator of large affairs and
a statesman having a name that stood among the
1 The Twentieth suffered heavily in the affair. Colonel Lee was
captured with four of his officers, three others were either killed by
the enemy or drowned in the Potomac while attempting to swim back
to camp. Five others were severely wounded ; the loss in privates
killed and wounded was also large.
2 A Life for Liberty, Chadwick, p. 208.

THE DAY'S ROUTINE 279
first of those who had earned distinction in the war.
But the power that sustained him was no less ex
traordinary. For a man so finely organized on the
emotional side it would have been impossible to en
dure the many months of grinding routine, to tide
over one discouragement after another, to watch the
waste of life and the suffering it caused, without
the sustaining behef in a power not himself which
made for righteousness. Faith was as simple and as
necessary to him as dayhght, and the act of prayer
avaUed to renew hope in him. Chandler teUs of a
long talk which he and Andrew once had together on
the subject of prayer, when they were driving home
late in the night from some speech-making occasion
in the country. " He spoke emphatically," says
Chandler, " of the childlike simplicity of the early
Christians in asking and expecting certain specific
results from supplication to God." For himself he
rehed on the comfort which it was " to lay out the
whole case." " ' I want,' he said, ' to teU the story
in my own way, although I know it is impossible for
me to give any information to the Almighty.' " 1 In
a man whose spiritual forces were thus renewed, the
power of accomphshment was limited only by physi
cal endurance. He could mount up with wings as an
eagle, he could run and not be weary, he could walk
and not faint. Whatever gain he made in the wis
dom of this world was of less significance than the
continuing power of his rehgious faith.
1 Chandler, p. 120.

CHAPTER Vni
ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY
The system of recruiting volunteer regiments through
the governors of the several states, which on the
recommendation of the War Department was legal
ized by act of Congress in July, 1861, established,
as has already been noted, a relation between each
governor and the War Department which it was of
the highest importance to have rightly adjusted.
That this relation must be one purely of mUitary
administration, untouched by pohtics, was a point of
theory to be accepted as soon as it was announced.
The practical submission to the principle as a hard
fact, however, could in our democratic country come
only after bitter experience. In the first year of the
war it was not until considerable trespasses against
this principle on the part of Lincoln, Cameron, and
even Andrew himself, had each brought its penalty,
that affairs between Massachusetts and the War De
partment settled into the proper routine. In the slow
and costly process of adjustment between efficiency
and democratic government, the fight into which the
Governor of Massachusetts was forced in defence
of his rights and the victory which he won, far from
being mere personal matters, helped to bring nearer

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 281
the day when the Administration, putting behind it
considerations of political expediency, set itself firmly
to conquer the South.
The act of Congress providing for the organiza
tion of volunteers declared that the governors were
to commission the field, staff, and line officers of
regiments, but that when the state authorities refused
or omitted to furnish troops the commissions were to
be signed by the President of the United States.1 In
the face of this plain exception, under which alone
the President was empowered to issue commissions,
Lincoln continued, after the passage of the act, his
practice of giving independent permissions to indi
viduals to raise regiments in loyal states. The con
dition of things which led to his sanctioning such a
ruinous competition with the state executives he de
scribed to Albert Browne and John Reed, who were
in Washington to protest against this and other
evUs. Without suggestion from ourselves [they wrote to
Andrew], he spoke of the impossibility of relying
upon the States to respond promptly to regular requi
sitions for troops, if their recruiting system should
be harassed by the competition of individuals en
gaged in recruiting under independent permissions ;
but he said such independent permissions as had
hitherto been issued had been extorted by the pres
sure of certain persons, who, if they had been refused,
would have accused the government of rejecting the
services of so many thousands of imaginary men — a
pressure, of the persistency of which no person not
1 Acts of the XXXVII. Congress, ch. ix. sec. 4.

282 JOHN A. ANDREW
subjected to it could conceive. He said that perhaps
he had been in error in granting such independent
permissions at aU, even under this pressure, but that
certainly it had not been intended to do any person
or any State a wrong.1
For aU that, wrong had certainly been done. New
York and Pennsylvania, in particular, had suffered
grievously. At the end of July, when a requisition
was made on Pennsylvania to furnish ten regiments,
permission was also given to fifty-eight individuals
to recruit. " It has happened in one instance," wrote
Governor Curtin, " that more than twenty men in
one company brought here as Volunteers under the
State caU, for the United States, have been induced
to abandon that service, and join one of the Regi
ments directly authorized by the United States. In
other cases, companies ready to march, and whose
transportation had been provided, were successfully
interfered with in like manner." As a consequence,
when nearly a month had elapsed, there were some
seventy fragments of regiments in Pennsylvania, and
not one with full ranks. Although Andrew had ex
perienced nothing hke these difficulties, — for Gor
don, Webster, and Wilson, the only persons to whom
" independent acceptances " had been given, had
worked in entire harmony with him, — he was an
noyed to find a captain in one of the three months'
regiments returned to Massachusetts with power from
Washington to raise a regiment of volunteers. An
drew was not slow in adding his protest to that of the
i O. R., Series III. vol. i. pp. 813, 814

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 283
governors of NewYork and Pennsylvania ; Cameron,
all politeness, sent him " positive assurance " that this
latest irregular commission was also to be the last ;
Browne and Reed, with the report of their conversa
tion with Lincoln and Cameron, enclosed a copy of
a general order from the War Department which re
quired all persons having independent acceptances
in New York to put themselves under the orders of
Governor Morgan, and they quoted the President as
standing ready, if need were, to issue a simUar order
for Massachusetts. "I trust we may congratulate
ourselves," wrote Andrew to Governor Curtin, " that
this source of trouble is to be dried up at the foun
tain head." The would-be colonel satisfied himself
with raising a company, of which he was to be com
missioned captain ; the future promised nothing but
order and routine.
This promise, however, was soon belied. Not long
after General Thomas W. Sherman had secured from
the New England governors promise of a dozen regi
ments to serve in a coastwise expedition,1 General
B. F. Butler appeared upon the scene with a request
for other regiments to serve in a similar expedition
under himself. Since Butler's departure from Boston
on April 18, his fame had perhaps blossomed even
more rapidly than Andrew's. Through him rehef
had come to Washington after its week of isolation ;
through him rebeUion in Maryland had been checked.
Then, no longer a brigadier of Massachusetts mUi
tia, but a major-general of United States Volunteers,
1 Vide supra, p. 245.

284 JOHN A. ANDREW
he had been put in command at Fortress Monroe.
From there he had, late in August, made an attack
upon the forts at Hatteras Inlet, and had gained
renown by their speedy capitulation.
These military achievements of the general from
Massachusetts, however, were of slight note beside
his shrewd political strokes. Pressing himself upon
Andrew, full of loyalty, when the war broke out, he
was still a Democrat, and when, at Annapolis, rumors
of a rising of the Maryland slaves reached his ears,
he had made haste to offer his Massachusetts mUitia
to the governor of the State for the purpose of re
pressing servile insurrection. AU this happened when
Andrew was still acting as " war minister," and he
was not the man to let such an offer in behalf of
Massachusetts troops go unreproved. " ServUe in
surrection," he wrote to the brigadier, "among a
community in arms against the Federal Union is no
longer to be regarded by our troops in a political
but solely from a military point of view; and is
to be contemplated as one of the inherent weak
nesses of the enemy from the disastrous operation
of which we are under no obhgation of a military
character, to guard them." Governor Hicks declined
General Butler's offer ; the disloyal sentiment in
Maryland rapidly subsided, and of " the benign
effect " of his own proposal Butler made the most
in a long disquisition which he wrote some two weeks
later in reply to Andrew. The Governor, having no
time for political debates, contented himself with re
minding Butler that his reply was not to the point.

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 285
All this is of smaU consequence save as contrast to
the fact that, fourteen days after Butler had written
this letter to the North, — he being now in command
at Fortress Monroe, — when several fugitive slaves
from Virginia appeared in camp, he called them to
him, heard their story, and set them to work. When
their owner, who was in command of the rebel troops
in the country about, sent a demand that his pro
perty should be given up according to the terms of
the Fugitive Slave Law, Butler, in suave refusal, re
phed that " the fugitive slave act did not affect a
foreign country, which Virginia claimed to be, and
that she must reckon it one of the infelicities of her
position that in so far at least she was taken at her
word." In so brief an interval had this astute man
caught the sign, long before it began to blow, of
the coming wind, and, for his own interest's sake,
promptly veered" about. His course met with the ap
proval of the War Department ; slaves poured into
camp by the hundred. " Contraband of war " they
were called, and the term was one of the cleverest
Northern victories. Butler took up heartUy the work
of employing negroes, and soon his officers were
writing home to ask the women to contrive for the
negroes some quasi-uniform of blouse and gay cap.
In the glow of this enthusiasm and of his appoint
ment as major-general of United States Volunteers,
Butler could not but be in friendly mood toward
Andrew, and the letter which he wrote resigning his
militia brigadiership was filled with profuse expres
sions of gratitude and protestations of firm friend-

286 JOHN A. ANDREW
ship. In spite of these fair words, on returning to
his State in September in quest of troops he felt
himself in a position to sue for favors from no one,
and to have his own way at aU hazards, — an attitude
which speedfly brought on a conflict between him
self and the resolute Governor of Massachusetts.
Butler had secured his authorization to raise troops
in New England from Lincoln himself in consulta
tion with the Secretary of War. The General had
asked for six regiments to make an expedition along
the eastern shore of Maryland and Virginia to Cape
Charles. It was a scheme of his own fertile brain,
which he had not submitted either to General Scott,
in command of all the Union forces, or to General
McClellan, in command of the Army of the Potomac.
According to his own story, his special object was to
raise regiments of Democrats ; and since, as he said,
the Republican governors of the New England states
would not commission political opponents, it was es
sential that he himself should have the power to
arrange the rosters of his regiments. Here was one
of those cases of " pressure " of which the President
had complained to Browne and Reed. As the easiest
way of disposing of Butler, Lincoln and Cameron
gave him an order the informalities of which make
it plain that it could never have come under the eye
of any official in the Adjutant-General's office or on
the staff of Scott or McClellan. At the same time a
telegram signed by the President and the Secretary
was sent to each of the New England governors,
asking his " consent " to Butler's undertaking.

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 287
That such a trespass of the Executive upon the
mUitary department was purely for politics is plain
from the fact that on the very day, September 11,
when the telegrams were sent off to the six gov
ernors, Cameron gave his approval to a plan, sub
mitted by McClellan, that Brigadier-General Ambrose
E. Burnside of Rhode Island should raise in New
England a force of ten regiments. On the next day
Burnside received his orders from the Commander
of the Army of the Potomac, and Butler received
from Cameron a revised form of the quasi-official
document that gave him his powers.1 The Secretary
pf War, washing his hands of the whole matter,
could look on with impartial interest at the competi
tion of which New England was to be the arena, and
utter with complacency the wish that the best man
might win.
Andrew's reply to the telegram from Lincoln and
Cameron was prompt and positive. Instead of giving
his " consent," he asked that the power to raise the
1 "We do not know what to call it," says Schouler (vol. i.
p. 256). "It is not a letter, because it is addressed to no one ; it is
not an order, because it is not so designated, and bears no number."
War Department, September 12, 1861.
Major-General Butler is authorized to fit out and prepare such
troops in New England as he may judge fit for the purpose, to make
an expedition along the eastern shore of Virginia, via the railroad
from Wilmington, Del., to Salisbury, and thence through a portion
of Maryland, Accomac and Northampton Counties of Virginia, to
Cape Charles. Transportation agents, quartermasters, and commis
saries of subsistence will answer General Butler's requisitions for
this purpose. Simon Cameron, Secretary of War.

288 JOHN A. ANDREW
additional regiments be left entirely with the state
authorities. Then, after Sherman had been supplied,
he promised to help Butler " to the utmost." The
Secretary in reply was f uU of fair words. " Massa
chusetts has done so well," he answered, " in all she
has promised that she shall not be disappointed in
anything from the General Government." Four days
later, on September 16, General Order No. 78, issued
from the Adjutant-General's office in accordance
with the policy already determined upon, placed all
persons having independent permission to recruit
volunteers under the orders of the governors of their
respective states. So far as forms and rules could
go, the War Department was now squarely ranged
on the side of legal procedure.
Nevertheless, there was good reason to suspect
that the civilian head of the War Department was
playing at cross-purposes with his military subordi
nates. Butler, travelling about New England to sub
mit his plans to the several governors, came in due
season to Boston and called upon Andrew. The
Governor met him fairly and offered him from
Massachusetts two regiments, — the Twenty-Sixth,
aheady in camp at Lowell, the nucleus of which was
the old Sixth, under Colonel Jones, " a townsman and
personal and political friend of General Butler ; "
the other, an Irish regiment about to go into camp
as the Twenty-Eighth. Butler, on his part, agreed to
postpone active recruiting for them until the regi
ments needed for Sherman should be more nearly
completed. In spite, however, of this amicable

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 289
arrangement, which was intrusted to memory and
not to paper, an order came from Cameron detaching
Wilson's regiment from Sherman, to whom the Gov
ernor had assigned it, and ordering it to report to
Butler. Andrew immediately warned Sherman, and a
brisk interchange of telegrams with Washington took
place in which the disputed regiment was bandied
back and forth between Sherman and Butler accord
ing as the official in Washington was a sympathizer
of one or the other. In the end Andrew won his
point ; WUson 's regiment was marched to Washing
ton, out of Butler's clutches, and Cameron sent more
fair promises to Andrew that he would act " strictly
in accordance with " his " suggestions."
Andrew understood his opponent weU enough to
know that he would not be deterred by this rebuff.
Butler, as Andrew had perceived from their conversa
tion, was bent on securing a colonelcy for his friend
and fellow-Democrat, Jonas H. French. To this hero
of the Tremont Temple riot and leader in the cho
rus of " Tell John Andrew," the Governor, like any
man with normal antipathies, had already refused a
commission. He felt no impulse to alter his decision
on the score of a plea from Butler, of all men, that>
Democrats were not having their fair share in the
war. By way of making public their agreement as
he himself understood it, and so forestalling Butler,
Andrew issued on September 23 a general order, in
which, after quoting the order of the War Depart
ment of September 16, he gave this plain direction :
" In accordance with the above, the Commander-in-

290 JOHN A. ANDREW
Chief directs that no new regiments or companies
be formed . . . without orders from these head
quarters." Butler's next move showed that these
precautions had been taken none too soon. He went
again to Washington, and by means of " pressure "
obtained a general order creating temporarily the
Department of New England, with headquarters at
Boston and himseK in command. As if this were
not enough, he extorted also an order which gave
him an immense advantage over the state authorities,
by enabhng him to offer his recruits a month's pay
in advance. Returned to Boston, Butler announced
the formation of the department, and required " aU
officers in command of troops mustered in the ser
vice of the United States " to " report ... to these
headquarters." In a few days his recruiting officers
were about, offering advance pay to men who would
enlist under them. Thus the issue between the Gov
ernor of Massachusetts and the Commander of the
Department of New England was fairly joined.
Now followed a deal of epistolary manoeuvring
between the parties. Butler asked of Andrew a
general order recognizing his authority to recruit
soldiers ; his request was refused. Andrew asked of
Cameron that advance pay be given to aU men en-
Usting in Massachusetts, thus doing away with the
exception in favor of Butler's men ; this was refused.
Butler asked for office room for himself and staff in
the State House ; he was again met with a refusal.
The correspondence made little difference to the
actions of either party : General Butler began to

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 291
enlist men for two new regiments, one, called the
Eastern Bay State Regiment, going into camp at
LoweU, the other, caUed the Western Bay State
Regiment, going into camp at Pittsfield ; Governor
Andrew continued to refuse sanction of any sort.
Butler announced that all men enlisting under him
would receive State Aid ; Andrew, in a counter pro
clamation, announced that only those enlisting in
the Twenty-Sixth and the Twenty-Eighth would be
entitled to it. To bring this matter to a head, But
ler asked the Governor to sign the commissions of
the officers chosen for a company in the Eastern Bay
State Regiment. Andrew promptly refused, basing
his refusal on the provision of the act of Congress,
and on the perfectly clear and consistent orders which
he had received from the War Department. The
Attorney-General of the State, in answer to a request
from the Mayor of Lowell, had given his opinion
that no regiment would be entitled to State Aid in
case the Governor should refuse to sign the com
missions of its officers. That contingency had now
occurred, and Butler's chance of enlisting more men
in Massachusetts, except by palpable fraud, was prac
ticaUy over.
Butler's reaUzation of the strait he was in is ap
parent from his report made to the United States
Adjutant-General on November 18.
I . . . was informed by Governor Andrew, in
substance, that the President of the United States
had no right to recruit in Massachusetts men for
the volunteer service of the United States without

292 JOHN A. ANDREW
his leave. This doctrine of secession did not seem
to me any more sound uttered by a Governor north
of Mason and Dixon's hne than if proclaimed by
Governor Magoffin, south, so that I paid no heed
to it.
Again, the State of Massachusetts pays as high,
in some cases, as $ 12 per month extra pay to sol
diers in the shape of a relief fund, at the option of
towns, which the State is bound to reimburse, and
for which a claim will be made on the General Gov
ernment. But whether it is made or not is imma
terial ; as a member of the Union the State impov
erishes herself in paying such bounties, for no State
can support a war with so extravagant an outlay for
the payment of her soldiery.1
To fraud accordingly, Butler now resorted. He sent
to Fort Warren for five men belonging to the
Twenty-Fourth, who, he claimed, had been enlisted
in one of his own regiments ; but the state author
ities were too quick for him, and had the men put
beyond his reach. He then made an effort to force
the Governor's hand by sending to sea a battery
which had been assigned him by the Governor and
placed in his camp at Lowell, but of which the offi
cers had not yet been commissioned. A week after
it had sailed, Butler sent to the State House a list of
officers elected by the members of the battery with
a request that they be commissioned forthwith. As
the list was not accompanied by the descriptive roll,
which was essential for identifying the men, no notice
was taken of this request. Three weeks later Butler
1 O. R., Series III. vol. i. p. 655.

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 293
renewed the application, ending his letter with the
remark : —
A reply to this communication either in refusal or
acquiescence would be but justice to the acting offi
cers of this Battery but a matter of entire indiffer
ence to His ExceUency's ob't serv't,
Benj. F. Butlek, Major-General commanding.
It was a favorite trick of Butler's, when beaten on
the main question, to turn the dispute upon a side
issue on which he could win an easy triumph. A
ridiculous wrangle now followed between the secre
taries of the two parties to the controversy on the
etiquette of mUitary correspondence. A letter writ
ten to Butler by Albert Browne, in behalf of Gov
ernor Andrew, was returned as being " of improper
address and signature," because, forsooth, General
Butler, being " the co-ordinate " of the Commander-
in-Chief, could not receive letters from that official's
secretary. Browne in reply denied the intention or
existence of any discourtesy, and by way of set-off
referred to the grossly intentional discourtesy of a
letter written by Butler a month before in which,
with the ingenious malice of a naughty chUd, he had
profusely employed the words " His ExceUency,"
enclosing them each time in marks of quotation.1
1 The following paragraphs show what the letter was like : —
Head-Quarters, Department of New England, j
Boston, October 12, 1861. j
Will " His Excellency Governor Andrew " assign to General But
ler the recruitment of a regiment of Massachusetts Volunteers, and

294 JOHN A. ANDREW
This piece of impudence, which was undoubtedly
as much a dig at the secretary for his precise ways
as at Andrew, had naturally been unanswered. By
bringing it up now, Browne, in his eagerness to hit
back, fairly overreached himself. Butler, addressing
himself to Andrew and writing " in the character of
a citizen," as if the stickhng for mihtary etiquette
had been aU on the other side, offered an ostensible
apology, every sentence of which bristled with new
insult. I disclaim [he wrote] most emphaticaUy any in
tentional or even accidental discourtesy to the Gov
ernor of Massachusetts. I have by far too high a
respect for the office to wish to aid in lowering its
dignity. . . .
In the matter of the address in quotation, I but
a squadron of mounted men, to be armed and equipped by him under
the authority of the President; the officers to be selected by General
Butler but commissioned by " His Excellency," with, of course, a
veto power upon what may be deemed an improper selection. As
these officers are to go with General Butler upon duty, would " His
Excellency " think it improper he should exercise the power of re
commendation. . . .
General Butler is informed, by the returns of those who have re
cruited for him, that he has already a number of men, equal to two
regiments, in such progress that they can be organized in ten days,
being the most prompt recruitment ever done in this State; these
besides the 26th and 28th Regiments, assigned to him by General
Order. General Butler trusts that " His Excellency " will not, without the
utmost necessity for it, throw any obstacles in the way of his recruit
ment . . .
General Butler hopes that these views will meet " His Excellen
cy's " concurrence and co-operation.
Most respectfully, " His Excellency's " obedient servant,
Benjamin F. Butler.

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 295
copied the address assumed by one of the numerous
mihtary secretaries who write me on behalf of the
Governor, and it was because of the formality of
that address. " His ExceUency Governor Andrew "
is neither a " baptismal, inherited or constitutional "
title, and, after using it once in the letter alluded
to, I carefully used the title of the constitution, and
marked it in quotation, to caU attention to the differ
ence. I was the more careful to use the third person in
the letter, because I was asking a favorable consid
eration to a request, and in that case I am not taught
to sign the rank with which I have been honored.
The major-generals of the United States seldom
officiaUy ask favors. You will also observe that
therein I used the third person in speaking of myself.
May I caU your attention to the fact that the rules
in regard to set-off, used in the profession which we
both practised, and which, perhaps, it would have
been better for both and for the country if we had
never left, do not apply to the courtesies of hfe. If
you have, by accident, treated me discourteously, it
is no set-off that I had accidentally or even intention
ally treated you discourteously. As soon as it is thus
made such set-off, then your discourtesy becomes in
tentional. But something too much of all this. As
you have disclaimed all intentional discourtesy, that
is sufficient. If my attention had been called to any
supposed want of courtesy on my part I should have
at once disclaimed it as I now do. Let, then, the citi
zen speak to the citizen, and say, without circumlo
cution, paraphrase or euphuism, that in the matter
of the officers of the Light Battery, I should not
have recommended Captain Manning unless I had
supposed that he was specially desired by yourself

296 JOHN A. ANDREW
and the Adjutant-General. If he does not commend
himself to you, I have no objection to his not being
commissioned, and will offer another. With regard
to the other officers, their good conduct, after sev
eral weeks' trial, commended them both to me and
their men. If any base charge can be substantiated
against either of them, I shall be happy to substi
tute others ; I believe, however, that neither of them
have ever done any thing worse than seducing a
mother, and making a father wifeless, and children
motherless ; and that, you know, is no objection to
a high mUitary commission in Massachusetts. I be
heve neither of them dead or physically disabled, as
suggested in your note. If apology is needed for not
notifying you of the fact that the Battery was going
to sea, I must say that your supposed absence from
the Commonwealth during all the time from the or
ganization of the company till the exigencies of the
service required them to go, is the best that I can
offer.1 As far as the battery was concerned, Andrew was
now helpless ; there was nothing for it but to com
mission its officers without more ado. But the con
test stiU went on in the region of scandal into which
Butler had turned it. A story of the sort to which
he alluded always has two sides, and Andrew, in
commissioning the man in question as colonel of a
regiment, had chosen, as has been said, to accept the
more lenient interpretation, and to rest on the fact
that the applicant was a good soldier, — a position
which, it should be said in passing, was fully justi
fied by the colonel's subsequent career. At the time
i O. R., Series III. vol. i. pp. 853, 854.

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 297
Andrew had bluntly refused to constitute himself a
" court of chastity ; " now he was forced to enter the
contest with proof and rebuttal, against an unscru
pulous antagonist.
MeanwhUe, under cover of the dust raised by this
side dispute, which was diligently kept up in Massa
chusetts, Butler was transferring his main operations
to the national capital. Much to the disgust of the
Washington authorities, they now found the Butler-
Andrew controversy on their hands for final settle
ment. From the first Lincoln and Cameron had
chosen, with true politicians' philosophy, to regard
the dispute as a factional squabble which it was the
business of the disputants to smooth over for the
sake of the cause. When Andrew obstinately con
tinued to maintain his legal rights, they assumed
that by " tipping him the wink " they could persuade
him to sacrifice justice to party harmony. Their
hopeful attitude was reported to Andrew by Henry
Lee, who, learning whUe in Washington that " Gen
eral Butler was here for the express purpose of abus
ing you and making misstatements," called on the
President " to present simultaneously counter testi
mony." The President expressed his regret [Lee wrote]
at the want of concert between your ExceUency and
General Butler, but from the fact that Col. Wilson
had been aided, he inferred that the want of encour
agement to Butler was owing to a personal dislike,
whereas I contended that the President's own decla
ration to me that he had never heard of the slightest

298 JOHN A. ANDREW
discord between your ExceUency and any of the U.
States authorities, or between your Excellency and
any individuals, was strong presumptive evidence in
your favor and against Butler, confirming his pre
vious reputation both here and at home as a factious
man. To sum up, the President said that the alternative
presented by me was to crush Butler or to prevail
upon your ExceUency to forgive him and to commis
sion his officers.
For the information which Lee gave him the Presi
dent professed to be grateful, saying that some of it
was new to him. Later, Lee had a talk with Colonel
Thomas A. Scott, the Assistant Secretary of War.
Though Scott was a business man of ability and de
cision, and had httle sympathy with the politico-
mUitary point of view, he made out the best case
possible for his superiors, and told Lee that Andrew
would " greatly oblige the Department here by com
missioning his officers and letting Butler go."
I told the Ass't Secretary of War [wrote Lee]
that I would comply with his request and communi
cate to you at once the desire of the Department,
and that I should not add that they had caught an
elephant and did not know what to do with him,
whereat the Asst. Secy, smiled.
At the same time [Lee continued] Attorney Gen
eral Foster was, at my request, presenting to the
President in a more quiet and convincing manner
than I am master of, the confusion brought upon
us by General Butler's mode of recruiting, during
which conversation the President remarked that Genl.

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 299
Butler was cross-eyed and he supposed he did n't see
things as other people did.
For a man of Andrew's temperament this was not
the kind of answer that turneth away wrath. He
had proposed to Cameron that the Department of
New England should be abohshed, and that the ir
regularly enlisted men should be distributed among
the regular Massachusetts regiments which, thanks
to Butler's competition, had been so long in filling
up. His anger and despair were increased tenfold
when, in response to this suggestion, he received
from the Secretary of War a roster of the Eastern
Bay State Regiment, headed by the name of Jonas
H. French, as Lieutenant-Colonel, with the request
that Andrew commission the men as officers and
give the regiment a number as a Massachusetts regi
ment. The peremptoriness of this demand was partly
explained by Cameron's desire to secure without
further delay every regiment avaUable for Butler's
expedition, which now was destined to take part in
an important movement against New Orleans. This
consideration, however, avaUed no more with An
drew than had that of rendering a personal favor
to Lincoln and Cameron, and he rephed sharply :
" Nothing whatever has occurred to change my de
termination not to commission officers over these
irregular troops since the time when that determina
tion was first made known to Major-General Butler
and to the department of war. Therefore I respect
fully dechne to comply with the request of the Sec-

300 JOHN A. ANDREW
retary." 1 In a personal note to Cameron, however,
he offered to waive his point as to the illegal method
of raising the regiments, and to do everything in his
power to organize and officer them as Massachusetts
volunteers, provided that he was not dictated to by
Butler. " But I must frankly say," he added, " that
there are men whose names I perceive are likely to
be proposed to me, and on which I presume Gen
eral Butler is likely to insist, whom I could not in
conscience appoint, and whom to commission would
offend both my sense of honor and of duty." An
drew's chief objection, of course, was to the name
of Jonas H. French, and on this "point he was im
movable. For once making an exception to his rule
never to give reasons for making or refusing to
make an appointment, he justified himself to Sum
ner. French was, Andrew wrote, "a good mihtia
captain, a handsome man, and belongs to a class of
fast genteel young men in Boston." He was " the
weU understood leader of the mob against the abo
litionists in the Tremont Temple last winter ; if he
had brought the mob into conflict with the civil
power and death had ensued, — which is always
probable when violent and riotous conduct is begun,
— my duty might now have been to consider whe
ther or not he sh'd be held to suffer aU its lawful
consequences, instead of considering his claim to
lead good soldiers to the field." 2 As Andrew was
entirely right in thinking that the General would in-
1 O. R., Series III. Vol. i. p. 852.
2 Andrew to Sumner, December 28, 1861.

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 301
sist on his own nominees, affairs were at a deadlock.
The Governor of Massachusetts was the only hv
ing person who could lawfully sign commissions for
the men who were aheady acting as officers of the
regiments, and this he flatly refused to do. As he
pointed out to Sumner, " Those who disapprove of
my decision must find a remedy in choosing another
for Governor."
It was now January, 1862. Congress and the
state Legislature were in session, and legislators
were anxious to get to the bottom of this unseemly
business. Andrew, holding firmly to his refusal to
sign the commissions of Butler's officers, could af
ford to be generous to the deluded men in the ranks,
and in his message to the Legislature recommended
that the privilege of State Aid be extended to them
by special enactment. Further, the importance of
letting the whole truth be known required the publi
cation of the correspondence in the dispute, scandals
and aU, — an act to which Andrew cdnsented with
great reluctance. For Sumner and Wilson he had
aheady had copies made, and he had entreated them
to see that justice was done him at Washington.
The " contemptuous sUence " with which his latest
offer to the Secretary of War had been received
showed, however, that the senators from Massachu
setts were none too eager to embroil themselves on
his behalf. At last, after an interval of two weeks,
Andrew received a personal telegram from the Presi
dent : " I wiU be greatly obliged if you wiU arrange
somehow with General Butler to officer his two un-

302 JOHN A. ANDREW
officered regiments. A.Lincoln." As a further sign
that the General was stfll working darkly at Wash
ington came a special order issued from the Adjutant-
General's office in which occurred this paragraph : —
The foUowing Usts of officers of the Western Bay
State Regiment Massachusetts Volunteers, raised by
authority of the War Department, approved by the
President Sept. 12, 1861, is announced for the in
formation of aU concerned ; the commissions to take
effect from the dates of their muster into service.
Butler's list of officers followed ; and another
section of the order " announced " in the same man
ner the officers of the Eastern Bay State Regiment.
Plainly, both Lincoln and Cameron were stUl on
Butler's side.
Nevertheless, Andrew did not despair. The tri
umph which his opponent had won should be, he *
determined, merely that which is accorded to the
vUlain in melodrama at the end of the fourth act.
In reply to Lincoln's telegram, he patiently wrote out
the statement of his case, which in one form or an
other he had sent so many times to Washington, and
repeated his proposal to officer the regiments in any
way except through Butler. With regard to the spe
cial order, the craven and irresponsible act of a Secre
tary whose official hours were already numbered, An
drew had no hesitation in holding its inconsistencies
up to ridicule for the benefit of the General Court.
For one of the regiments no Colonel is proposed.
For the other no Colonel nor Major. The first has

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 303
ten companies of infantry and three of cavalry. The
other has six companies of infantry. It should be
remarked that the law requires ten companies to a
volunteer infantry regiment, and ten only. Nor, by
law, can infantry and cavalry form constituents of
the same regiment.
By whom, where, and how, were these officers ap
pointed ? Are they erroneously " announced " by
the Adjutant-General, not having been appointed at
all? Or, having been rightly appointed, by whom,
when, how, and by what law are they to be com
missioned ?
Is it the purpose of the President to leave it to
the Governor somehow to commission these officers ;
or does he intend to find some other means of im
parting to them commissions? Or does he suppose
that the Governor has already appointed these very
officers, and that commissions will soon follow ? Or
has an effort been made, and is it now in progress,
to over-ride, break down and humiliate the Executive
of the Commonwealth, in which effort it is hoped to
involve the President himself ? 1
In these official utterances Andrew held his
wrath in check with a success that was really re
markable. In private he made no such effort.
It would have been impossible for me [he wrote
to a friend in Washington] to have beheved the
cross-purposes, mismanagement and no-management,
and the want even of gentlemanly consideration of
others, 'and of respect to their own rules and orders,
could have existed, had I not in my own person
1 Message of January 23, 1862, vetoing, because of its verbal in
accuracies, the bill which gave State Aid to the irregularly enlisted
men in Butler's regiments.

304 JOHN A. ANDREW
experienced them aU. . . . Indeed from the evidence
of incapacity and want of purpose as to what to do,
and of knowledge as to what has been done, and of
inattention to what is doing, I am led to think that
nothing but the special providence of Infinite and
Divine Mercy keeps us afloat, from one day to an
other. To Frank Howe he expressed himself more famil
iarly and tersely : " / am right, I know I am, in
spite of all that earth and — 't other place can do
or say."
The curtain now rose upon the last act. To the
rehef of the whole nation, Cameron, on January 11,
left the War Department, and was solaced with the
mission to Russia, — an effective banishment. With
the pubhcation of this grateful news came a tele
gram from Sumner, saying that if Andrew would
send on his programme, the War Department would
adopt it. Of the loyalty and vigilance of the new
Secretary, Edwin M. Stanton, Andrew had formed a
high opinion in the last uncertain days of Buchanan's
administration ; from what he now learned through
his own Washington correspondents, he felt that
here at last was the official who would deal justly,
fearing no man. Through one of these correspond
ents, who was also a friend of Stanton's, Andrew
sent the Secretary the pamphlet of eighty odd let
ters and telegrams which had been printed as a
document of the Massachusetts General Court, and
which, from its racy contents, was beginning to have
an unrivalled succes de scandale, and professed full

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 305
confidence in the Secretary's decision. Stanton, re
plying to the friend's letter, declared his esteem for
the Governor and added : —
In a short time, I shall request Governor Andrew
to favor me with an interview with him at Washing
ton, and I trust that, after a full explanation, I shaU
be able to redress whatever grievances may have
been occasioned by any action of this Department.
I beg you to assure the Governor that it is my anx
ious desire to prove worthy of the confidence and
good wishes he has expressed for me.
Again, a few days later, when Stanton happened to
meet Charles Sumner and Ralph Waldo Emerson, and
the absorbing topic of the day was mentioned, Stan
ton exclaimed, " WeU, why does n't he come here ?
If I could meet Gov. Andrew under an umbreUa at
the corner of the street, we could settle that matter in
five minutes, if he is the man I take him for." The
two men from Massachusetts assured him that he
was not mistaken, for Andrew " was precisely the
man to meet him cordiaUy and sensibly without
parade and offhand." x
In spite of the change at the War Department,
Butler's front was as brazen as ever. He showed
freely his version of the correspondence, which he
made to appear an elaborate treatise on mUitary eti
quette, written by Albert Browne. His talk was loud
and threatening. He declared to Senator Wilson
that he meant to prepare an address to the Legis
lature, accusing the Governor of Massachusetts of
1 Emerson's Diary, February 3, 1862. MS.

306 JOHN A. ANDREW
stirring up mutiny and insubordination in the two
Bay State regiments. At last, however, one man
after another at Washington, reading the corre
spondence, came to see and know the truth, to realize
with what a thick cloud General Butler had be
fogged what was a matter of plain statute law, and
to admit that the Governor of Massachusetts was
not an obstinate martinet, taking advantage of his
official position to harass a political opponent, but the
victim of a man who had practised all the wUes of
which he was past-master.
FuU of a sense that the stage was now prepared
for the entrance of the ultimate victor, Frank Howe
wrote to Andrew from Washington a letter the
breezy style and cavalier punctuation of which are
highly characteristic.
The tide has set the other way, and while Butler's
paid men here have and are working their hardest
(to my certain and full knowledge) the feehngs of
all those in cabinet are with you.
Mr. Lincoln told me he would like to see you —
Mr. Seward told Mrs. Andrew last night that he
wished to see you so much that if you were not com
ing here, he would go to Boston — by the time you
can get here Mr. Stanton wUl be ready to see you,
and I hope you will come at once, for I have learned
some wrinkles here, which will help matters — I will
wait if its a month if I can aid in any way to put
this Butler matter right. But the sooner you come,
the better. . . .
When Mrs. Andrew and I entered the room at
Presidents Reception, he advanced and taking Mrs

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 307
A by the hand — " Well how does your Husband
and Butler get on — has the Governor commissioned
these men yet ? " Mrs A hesitated — when I said
We are informed Sir that you have commissioned
them — " No " said he " but I am getting mad with
the Governor and Butler both " he said when Mrs
A said you dont look very angry — " No " said he " I
dontever get fighting mad, no how."
These were his precise words.
It was impossible for Andrew to leave Boston at the
moment, and that his cause might not suffer for want
of advocates, — for both the Massachusetts senators
still held aloof, — John M. Forbes and Samuel G.
Ward set out for Washington. On January 27,
Howe wrote again to Andrew : —
I have done nothing since I have been in this
place but talk the Butler matter strong.
Everybody asks me, and I have astounded them
by facts — I am myself astounded at the reading of
the pubhshed correspondence, for I had no idea
you had so strong a case. The two letters in Tran
script of 23rd inst which today I left in a casual and
careless manner with Mr. Stanton are rousers. . . .
In conclusion — the tide of thought and feehng
here in the Butler matter is changing strongly in
your favor — but I must confess, that by Butler's
course in showing parts of your correspondence, and
his snaky, slimy course generaUy, it was not alto
gether so a week ago. —
At last Andrew was able to disentangle himself
from State House business and go to Washington
for the expected interview. Stanton was f uUy dis-

308 JOHN A. ANDREW
posed to recognize the rights for which Andrew had
contended ; Andrew was anxious not to embarrass
Stanton by requiring of him any action that would
needlessly reflect back upon Cameron ; thus they
speedUy came to an agreement. Two officers of the
regular army were to be assigned as colonels of the
regiments in question, and with their help, Andrew,
following his usual practice, was to arrange the re
spective rosters. Two representatives of army organi
zation and tradition, the commander of the Army
of the Potomac and the Adjutant-General of the
United States Army, stood by and approved the
arrangement. They hastened to clear themselves of
blame, declaring, what was undoubtedly the truth,
that the army officials had always been on Andrew's
side, but that they had been constantly overruled
by Cameron. To the letter which Andrew wrote,
describing this happy consummation, he appended a
significant remark : " P. S. The ' Department of
New England ' is to be discontinued."
Andrew, though triumphant, was stiU a bit sore.
He was in a way the hero of the hour, and while he
stayed in Washington was constantly engaged with
people, great and small, on official business, particu
larly on the subject of defences for the Massachu
setts coast; but he could not bring himself to darken
the doors of the White House.
I ... did n't go near the Mrs. Lincoln BaU [he
wrote Frank Howe] nor did my wife. Are we not
true Romans ? Mrs. A. had a sick headache and
could n't, whUe I would n't. I am very glad — espe-

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 309
ciaUy when, the more I think of it, the more I feel
the improper levity of such a proceeding in the pre
sent awful condition of the country. It was on the
very brink of ruin, — and it is now.
By the time Andrew was back in Boston pubhc
sympathy was all in his favor. The Advertiser had
spoken with no uncertain condemnation of the au
thorities at Washington ; the loyal " Warrington "
had related in the Springfield Republican the cur
rent version of the interview between the Governor
of Massachusetts and the Secretary of War ; Caleb
Cushing had declared, doubtless with grim satisfac
tion, that Butler had " ridden rough-shod " over
Andrew. I have just finished reading the Butler corre
spondence [wrote T. P. Chandler], and thank you
for the best laugh I have enjoyed since the war
commenced. You never did anything better. I
hope old Lincoln wUl read it. It is time Cameron
was in Russia and Butler in heU.
None the less Butler and his friends were as
jaunty and jubUant as ever. Of course he knew
that the battle was lost ; he was merely attempting
to march off the field with colors flying. As a su
preme stroke of impudence, he began to recruit for
a third regiment ; and when the new colonel of the
Thirtieth, as the Eastern Bay State Regiment was
now designated, attempted to depose French, he
was warned that General Butler would refuse to
recognize any other Lieutenant-Colonel and would
compel Colonel Dudley to do the same. When this

310 JOHN A. ANDREW
information reached Stanton, he acted with all the
speed of his fiery nature. " If Gen. Butler assumes
to control your appointment or interfere with it,"
he wrote to Andrew, " he wiU transcend his author
ity and be dealt with accordingly. The Adjt. Genl.
. . . wiU transmit an order to Gen. Butler that wiU
prevent his improper interference with your legiti
mate authority." Forthwith Butler received a tele
gram ordering him to muster Lieutenant-Colonel
French out of the service " immediately," and let
it be recorded that for once at least in his career
the insubordinate major-general obeyed. The sec
ond of Butler's regiments was now embarked from
Boston. With its departure, on the 21st of Febru
ary, Butler pubhshed a general order announcing
that " The Department of New England, temporarily
created . . . for recruiting, having fulfilled the pur
pose of its creation, has been abrogated by the De
partment of War." 1 He himself left at once for Ship
Island, in Mississippi Sound, the rendezvous for his
command. From Ship Island he made his success
ful expedition up the Mississippi to New Orleans,
entering immediately after its surrender. There his
resentment against Andrew spent itself in petty
1 From Massachusetts, Butler had taken the Twenty-Sixth Regi
ment (the Twenty-Eighth, after much squabbling at the Adjutant-
General's office, he had refused), the two " Bay State " regiments,
which were now the Thirtieth and the Thirty-First Massachusetts
Regiments of United States Volunteers, three companies of cavalry,
and three of light artillery. From the other New England states he
had obtained in all ten regiments and three batteries. His force was
completed by three Western regiments from Fortress Monroe.

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 311
persecution of the officers commissioned by the
Governor to displace his own appointees.
This episode, it is hardly necessary to say, was
the only one of its kind in Andrew's career as gov
ernor. His path and Butler's did not cross again,
and Butler was certainly the only man in America
with the genius to create such a controversy. As
for the authorities at Washington, who by their
timidity encouraged the quarrel, Cameron would
have been a millstone round the neck of any Presi
dent or party, and Lincoln, in the first year of office,
was necessarily a novice in deaUng with the emer
gencies of combined civU and mUitary government.
The real and lasting harm was that it should not
have been Lincoln's fortune to adjust the difficulty
between the Administration and the Governor of
Massachusetts, and to exercise toward Andrew that
wise tact which was one of his supreme gifts, and
which by its personal touch won the devotion of
such different men as Seward, Stanton, and Sumner.
As it was, Andrew was forced into an attitude to
ward Lincoln which was far from sympathetic, —
an attitude external and aloof which he was never
wholly to abandon.
It must not be supposed that Andrew had any
less need of disciphne than the President. The
change from those hot and eager days when he was
"war minister" for the nation to the months of
weU-estabUshed routine was no shght thing, and for
him, too, the pohtical complication, in one form
and another, was often present. Under these cir-

312 JOHN A. ANDREW
cumstances, it is not surprising that he found him
self involved in a difficulty of his own making.
Up and down the Potomac on the Maryland shore
were Union camps, to which, as by a homing in
stinct, the darkies of the country-side resorted in
great numbers. Too often, however, they came not
back, and their masters, loyal or quasi-loyal, were
moved to remind the Administration that this war
was a war for union, not for freedom. In response
to their complaints an order was issued by Gen
eral C. P. Stone, commanding the division to which
the Massachusetts Twentieth and Fifteenth were at
tached, which, though its terms were general, was
obviously meant to enjoin upon all officers the active
enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law. To many
of the young fellows of the Twentieth, brought up
on stiff Websterian constitutionalism, this was sound
doctrine ; to abohtionists and Republican radicals
at home the order was a veritable red rag. There
fore, when the report came to Andrew's ears that an
officer of the regiment, who had recently been pro
moted to be captain, had been active in obedience to
the detested law, he forgot everything in a return
ing wave of his old anti-slavery zeal, and caused a
sharp message to be sent to the officer to the effect
that if the Governor had had this knowledge sooner,
the promotion would never have been given. The
message was sent through Lieutenant-Colonel Pal
frey, who, since the capture of Colonel Lee at BaU's
Bluff, had been in command of the regiment. Pal
frey, for aU that he was the son of a father who

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 313
had set free the slaves coming to him by inherit
ance, was tinctured with Boston conservatism, and,
as Andrew expressed it, had " no just sympathy with
the humane side of anything." Moreover, irritated
by Andrew's zealous interference, and believing that
the aUeged act was a harmless incident highly col
ored by young abohtionists in the regiment, Palfrey
did not send the Governor the true story of what
had happened. Although he wrote to the State House
two or three times a week, he did not even acknow
ledge the receipt of the Governor's communication.
Instead he referred it to General Stone, as a civilian's
attempt to interfere with military discipline.
The letter worked its way up through various staff
officers, receiving proper comments from these scan
dalized militarists — " there is danger in that abo
lition element unless a httle energy check it at the
start,"1 wrote one of them — untU at last it reached
General McClellan himself. Thereupon an extended
correspondence took place between the Headquarters
of the Army of the Potomac and the State House at
Boston. McClellan' s high and mighty assumption
that "the volunteer regiments from the different
states of the Union when accepted and mustered
into the service of the United States became a portion
of the Federal Army and are as entirely removed
from the authority of the governors of the several
states as are the troops of the regular regiments,"
had this weakness, that it ignored the exclusive
1 J. F. Lee, Judge- Advocate-General to General McClellan, Decem
ber, 1861.

314 JOHN A. ANDREW
power of governors of states to make promotions
within a regiment. At first Andrew contented him
self with pointing out this weakness in mUd but
firm language. Presently, however, he received from
General Seth WiUiams of McCleUan's staff the let
ter which General Stone had written by way of com
ment on Andrew's letter to Palfrey.
The fact [it read] that most of the soldiers in the
regiment referred to were enlisted into the service
of the United States in the State of which the gov
ernor referred to is the respected chief magistrate
does not I conceive give his exceUency a right to
assume control of the interior discipline of the regi
ment, nor does it give him authority to command the
punishment of a meritorious officer for any offence,
either real or imaginary.1
Not satisfied with emphasizing the mihtary point
in this somewhat personal way, Stone drew a com
parison between Andrew's act and the acts by which
secession had been accomplished in the Southern
states. The usurpations of those ambitious state authori
ties [he remarked] commenced in much smaUer mat
ters than this of assuming authority in a national
regiment serving in the field against the pubhc enemy
far removed from the State of which his exceUency
is governor. And it matters Uttle to me whether the
usurpation comes from South or North, Georgia or
Massachusetts, I feel it my duty to bring the matter
at once to an issue and if possible to arrest the evil
1 O. R., Series II. vol. i. p. 786.

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 315
before its natural fruits — open rebelhon — shall be
produced.1 This insult angered Andrew through and through.
Since McCleUan, by sending him the letter, seemed
to approve its tone, and since McClellan was the only
person to whom he could reply, Andrew addressed
to the commander of the Army of the Potomac an
answer which indignantly resented the disparagement
of Massachusetts.
The Regiment was raised in the State [he wrote]
under my authority in response to a certain requi
sition, not for soldiers, but for " ten Regiments,"
from the Department of War. I appointed and com
missioned its officers, and the regiment was recruited
here, on our own soil, at Camp Massasoit in the town
of Dedham and the county of Norfolk, and marched
from here to Washington with every kind of equip
ment and furniture recognized by the Army Regu
lations of the United States, — and all of it provided
and paid for by this Commonwealth, — from its
army-wagons, ambulances, and horses, and its En
field rifles (imported by Massachusetts from England
under contracts made by an agent sent there by the
State, the next week after the fall of Sumter) down
to shoe-strings and tent-pins. Nor did we omit to
supply anything for which the gaUant Colonel WU
liam Raymond Lee (now a prisoner in a felon's cell
at Richmond,) — himself a regularly-educated officer
and distinguished graduate of West Point, suggested
to me even a wish.
I would to Heaven that he were back now, at
the head of his regiment, — or that the Army of the
1 O. R., Series II. vol. i. pp. 786, 887.

316 JOHN A. ANDREW
Potomac were hammering at his prison door with
both hands, — and neither hand averted to protect
the institution which is the cause of all this war.1
To this slap, — it can hardly be designated by any
other word, — the Headquarters deigned no reply,
for obviously there was none to make.
All that remained of the affair was a coolness on
Andrew's part toward Palfrey, which the latter's stiff
and tardy explanation, forwarded in a roundabout
way to the State House, together with hints that
Colonel Lee, though stUl a prisoner, should be dis
placed in favor of himself, did not help to remove.
Here again, as in the Butler controversy, the point
is that the universal inexperience in the new state
of things brought forth comphcations every day. A
democratic nation was learning with slow steps how
to put down a rebellion of one part of its people.
The youthful abolitionists in the regiment who
too hastily magnified the original incident into a
panoplied enforcement of the Fugitive Slave Law,
the lieutenant-colonel who fancied that when his
superior officer was captured the position feU to him,
the governor and the general, each making excur
sions of authority into the other's territory, — aU were
in the act of learning a difficult lesson, and it is no
wonder that when the war was only nine months old
they were not yet letter-perfect.
To match this adventure, in which Andrew
brought his personal political principles to bear on
1 For the correspondence on this subject, see 0. R., Series H. vol. i.
pp. 784-797. ?

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 317
an official matter, was another in which his enthu
siastic temperament played a similar part. When
the news of the capture of the Confederate envoys,
Mason and SlideU, was received, Andrew, who was
in Washington, happened to be in the office of the
Secretary of War. As Cameron read aloud the tele
gram to the group of men in his office, nothing but
a feeling that the privilege was the Secretary's by
right prevented Andrew from leading off in the
cheer that burst forth. The envoys were in the power
of a government which they had plotted to destroy.
It was not strange for men to be eager that sentence
should be executed upon them as traitors. On the
other hand, when the two prisoners were brought
to Fort Warren, famUies who had entertained Mason
during his visit to Boston at the time of the dedi
cation of the Bunker Hill monument made ostenta
tious efforts to mitigate his comfortable confinement.
To Andrew's mind, these Southerners, representing
in their persons the evU counsels which had brought
upon the nation the curse of war, richly deserved
their punishment. When some one asked him to put
a stop to the demonstrations of sympathy toward
them, he wrote : —
I very weU remember Mason's insolent, overbear
ing demeanor in that memorable interview between
himself and old J. B., and can truly rejoice with
you that, ... in the few days which yet remain
to him in this hfe, his power for mischief is for
ever abridged, and that aU the luxuries which Bos
ton sympathizers with treason and with traitors can

318 * JOHN A. ANDREW
bestow cannot defeat the purposes and the plans of
infinite justice.
By the same token, Andrew set no stint to his
praise of the officer who had taken the Southerners
from the Trent. When Captain Wilkes, the hero
of the day, brought his captives to Boston, he was
given, besides a reception in FaneuU Hall, a private
dinner at which Andrew, Mayor Wightman, and
Chief-Justice Bigelow spoke. Sober second thought
had not yet come to the nation, and the speakers, in
attempting to justify the Captain's act, were plainly
expressing their enthusiasm rather than formulating
a dehberate judgment. Judge Bigelow's praise of
Wilkes for acting " more from the noble instincts of
his patriotic heart than from any sentence he read
in any law-book," was on the face of it a genial after-
dinner excursion into the fields of international law,
and Andrew was not behind the rest in praising the
saUor's bravery and decision. In the almost universal
commendation of the seizure of the Trent, the ebul
litions of the Revere House dinner met with protests
from but few people. It was only when, a month
later, the London Times of December 12 reached
this country, with a leader commenting in severe
language upon the remarks of the Governor and the
Chief-Justice of Massachusetts, that there was in
Boston any hint of blame for what had been said.
In the leader, which contained the characteristically
British modicum of misinformation, Andrew was
made to declare that " it crowns the exultation of

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 319
my American heart that Commodore WUkes fired
his first shot across the bows of a ship that bore the
British hon at its head," 1 — an utterance for which
the Times visited condemnation with a fine air of
offended propriety. To these transatlantic strictures
the American nation was acutely sensitive, for it was
face to face with its question of conscience ; and
when it had accepted Seward's decision, and Mason
and Slidell had been released from their quarters at
Fort Warren, the pubhc, by a natural reaction, joined
the Times in condemning the speakers at the dinner.
" Such men," Asa Gray wrote to Charles Darwin,
" should not have talked bosh, even at a little private
ovation, and we have reason to know some of them
were heartily ashamed of it as soon as they saw it in
print." 2
The main purpose which the incident served with
Andrew was to cause him to bestir himself in the
matter of defences for the coast of Massachusetts.
Seward, the Secretary of State, had already asked
the governors of states bordering on the Atlantic
seaboard and on the lakes to put in order the har
bor defences within their respective boundaries, as
suring them of reimbursement by the federal gov
ernment. From the Bureau of Engineers Andrew
obtained plans and estimates for the works neces
sary to protect Boston, Provincetown, and Vineyard
1 As reported in the Boston Journal of November 27, 1861, the sen
tence was, " And we are met to-nigbt to congratulate a gallant officer
who, to uphold the American flag, fired a shot across the bow of a ship
that bore the British lion.''
2 Letters of Asa Gray, vol. ii. p. 476.

320 JOHN A. ANDREW
Sound. With great earnestness he presented the
matter to the Legislature in his annual message in
January, 1862 ; and, going to Washington, he ap
peared before congressional committees, endeavoring
to obtain federal cooperation in the work that the
State was to undertake. Upon this subject he spent
an extraordinary amount of work and worry, for
even before the danger of foreign war declined, the
new danger from Confederate privateers threatened.
In spite of his endeavors to get the assistance of the
national government, it proved to be too closely en
gaged with the enemy in front to provide against
the possible attacks of an enemy in the rear, and
throughout the war the State had to cope with the
matter single-handed.
To round out the year 1861, a brief reference to
two other events is necessary.
When the Republican state convention met at
Worcester on October first, the renomination of An
drew was a matter of course, and the interest of the
proceedings was in the attempt to make a composite
state ticket, which should bring conservative Whigs
and Democrats to the support of the Republicans.
In convention the plan succeeded, but as the two men
nominated for this purpose declined to run, Repub
hcans had to be substituted. As to the doctrine to
be put forth in the party platform, Charles Sumner,
in an elaborate speech, attempted to get a declaration
in favor of " carrying Africa into the war." The
event proved that he was manifestly ahead of his

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 321
party. In most quarters the impulse of the days of
April to raUy aU parties to the support of the war
was still dominant ; the Border States were yet in the
balance ; by Andrew and aU the party managers it
was felt that the duty of the hour was not to push
on the Administration but to support it. Indeed,
it would have been highly absurd for a Republican
convention to put upon its ticket a BeU-Everett man
and a Democrat, and simultaneously to declare itself
in favor of emancipation and arming the slaves.
The sounding of the cry of Freedom Andrew was
willing to defer ; but if the people were willing to
move onward, the cry of Union needed present and
authoritative utterance. He was resolved that Mas
sachusetts at least should not lack such a summons,
and he found his opportunity in the governor's offi
cial proclamation for Thanksgiving Day. For this
document tradition required some quotation from
Scripture; Andrew ransacked his memory for the
most inspiring exhortations of the Jewish warrior-
poets, — sentences which were famihar to every con
gregation, and which, turned to this purpose, should
thriU every listener anew. When the day came for
composing the proclamation, the hours until late in
the evening were crowded with work. Then he and
Albert Browne went down to Parker's, and there,
over a bowl of oyster stew, so the story runs, the
Governor put together and wrote out the ringing
phrases which he knew so weU. When Browne ques
tioned the accuracy of his memory, a Bible was sent
for, which, being found after long search, justified

322 JOHN A. ANDREW
the Governor in every word. The proclamation was
then rushed off to the printer, and on Sunday was
read from every pulpit in Massachusetts. It was read,
too, throughout the North; it became, in very truth,
the message that Andrew had longed to have ut-
'tered. It broke the silence, it united and uplifted
men. One member of a devoted Union family in
New York wrote to another : " Did you read Gov
ernor Andrew's proclamation ?\ If you did n't, do !
It is hke a blast out of one of the old trumpets that
blew about the waUs of the strong city till they tum
bled down." J In the house of James A. HamUton,
son of Alexander, it hung for a long time on the
hbrary door. At that time the famUy did not know
Governor Andrew personaUy ; " it was the religious
fervor of that Proclamation," writes HamUton's
granddaughter, " the noble poetic ring it had, the
heart that was in it, that spoke to . . . all of us,
and consoled and inspired us through many a dark
hour of national reverse and disappointment."
The summing up of Andrew's first year in office
may be taken from his annual message of 1862. Its
recapitulation of domestic matters, forming a part
of the story of what, but for the war, would have
been the chief concern of his governorship, wiU find
place in a later chapter. The account of the mihtary
affairs of the Commonwealth was detailed, being in
effect the consohdated report of the departments for
which he was personaUy responsible. Under Lin
coln's caU for mUitia for three months, the State had
1 Letters of a Family during the War for the Union, vol. i. p. 215.

©ommontoralti) of

jWaaoacfjuaetta

BY HIS EXCELLENCY
Jill A. 1IB1IW,
GOVERNOR:

FOB A DAY OF

i PRMSL

The example of the Fathers, and the dictates of piety and gratitude, summon the people of Massachusetts, at this the har
vest season, crowning the year with the rich proofs of the wisdom and love of God, to join in a solemn and joyful act of united
Praise and Thanksgiving to the Bountiful Giver of every good and perfect gift
I do, therefore, with the advice and consent of the Council, appoint THURSDAY, the 21st day of November next, the
same being the anniversary of that day, in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and twenty, on which the Pilgrims of Massa
chusetts, on board the Mayflower, united themselves in a solemn and written compact of government, to be observed by the
people of Massachusetts as a day of Public Thanksgiving and Praise. And I invoke its observance by all people with devout
ana religious joy. " Sing aloud unto God, our strength : make a joyful noise unto tne: God of Jacob.
Take a psalm, and bring hither the timbrel, the pleasant harp with the psaltery.
Blow up the trumpet in the new moon, in the time appointed, on our solemn feast day.
For this was a statute for Israel, and a law of the God of Jacob. —Psa/m lxxxi. 1 — 4.
" O bless our God, ye people, and make the voice of his praise to be heard :
Which holdeth our soul in life, and sufifereth not our feet to be ntoved.
For thou O God, bath prnvod us: thou hast tried us, as silver is tried. "—J'mlm lxvi. 8 — 10.

vor tne many and gentle alleviations of the hardships which in the present time of public disorder have afflicted the
various pursuits of industry :
For the early evidences of the reviving energies of the business of the people :
For the measure of success which has attended the enterprise of those who go down to the sea in ships, of those who search
the depths of the ocean to add to the food of man, and of those whose busy skill and handicraft combine to prepare for various
use the crops of the earth and the sea :
For the advantages of sound learning, placed within the reach of all the children of the people, and the freedom and
alacrity with which these advantages are embraced and improved :
For the opportunities of religious instruction and worship, universally enjoyed by consciences untrammelled by any human
authority; For " the redemption of the world by Our Lord Jesus Christ, for the means of grace, and the hope of Glory."
And with one accord, let us bless and praise God for the oneness of heart, mind, and purpose in which He has united the
people of this ancient Commonwealth for the defence of the rights, liberties, and honor of our beloved country.
May we stand forever in the same mind, remembering the devoted lives of our fathers, the precious inheritance of Freedom,
received at their hands, the weight of glory which awaits the; faithful, and the infinity of blessing which it is our privilege, if
we wilL to transmit to the countless generations of the Future.
And, while our tears flow in a stream of cordial sympathy with the daughters of our people, just now bereft, by the
violence of the wicked and rebellious, of the fathers and husbands and brothers and sons, whose heroic blood has made verily
sacred the soil of "Virginia, and, mingling with the waters of tbe Potomac, has made the river now and forever ours; let our
souls arise to God on the wings of Praise, in thanksgiving that He has again granted to us the privilege of living unselfishly
and of dying nobly, in a grand and righteous cause ;
For the precious and rare possession of so much devoted valor and manly heroism ;
For the sentiment of pious duty which distinguished our fallen in the camp and in the field ;
And for the sweet and blessed consolations which accompany the memories of these dear sons of Massachusetts on to
immortality. And in our praise let us also be penitent. Let us " seek the truth and ensue it," and prepare our minds for whatever duty
shall be manifested hereafter.
May the controversy in which wc stand be found worthy, in its consummation, of the heroic sacrifices of the people and
the precious blood of their sons, of the doctrine and faith of the fathers, and consistent with the honor of God and with justice
to all men. And, " Lot God arise, let hi6 enemies be scattered : let them also that bato hijn flee before him.
As smoke is driven away, so drive them away."— 'Psalm lxviii. 1, 2.
" Scatter them by thy power, and bring them down, O Lord our shield." — Psalm lix. 11.
Given at the Council Chamber, in Boston, this thirty-first day of October, in the year of Our Lord one thousand eight hundred
and sixty-one, and the eighty-sixth of the Independence of the United States of America.
» „ . „ , JOHN A. ANDREW.
By His Excellency the Governor, with the )
advice and consent of the council. > OLIVER WARNER, Secretary.
God Save the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

ADJUSTMENTS OF AUTHORITY 323
sent five regiments of infantry, one battery of artil
lery, and one battalion of rifles, in all 3736 men.
In response to the call for volunteers, she had con
tributed twenty-four regiments of infantry, one
regiment of cavalry, five batteries of artillery, and
two companies of sharpshooters.1 The expenditures
for arming and equipping these troops amounted in
round numbers to $3,384,000. Of this sum $775,000
had already been paid to the Commonwealth by the
United States government, and a system of audit
ing accounts between them was in smooth working
order. As for other matters connected with the war,
the Governor reported the loan of two thousand
muskets to the loyal authorities in West Virginia in
response to an urgent appeal from them for arms
in the month of May ; the sending of three hundred
and fifty blankets and suits of clothing and the sum
of one thousand dollars to Richmond to relieve the

1 This enumeration includes the Twenty-Eighth and the Twenty-
Ninth regiments, which are set down as having left the State on Jan
uary 11, and January 2, 1862, respectively . To make up the total of
29,012 men sent by Massachusetts in response to the President's first
call for three years' men, it is necessary to add the three unattached
companies of cavalry raised by Butler, and his two Bay State regi
ments. This total, however, does not include the companies which
in June joined New York regiments (see p. 226), or a battalion of five
companies at Fort Warren, which afterwards became part of the
Thirty-Second, or those recruits sent to the front after their organiza
tions left the State, or men who entered the naval service.
The estimate of 29,012 men is taken from Andrew's annual message
of 1864, being that accepted by the U. S. Provost-Marshal-General's
office in computing the amounts to be credited to Massachusetts
against her several quotas. Computations based upon figures sent in
earlier than 1864 are of little value.

324 JOHN A. ANDREW
privations of the Massachusetts men captured at
Ball's Bluff; and the offer of Maryland, now re
stored to loyalty, to provide for the famihes of the
men killed in Baltimore on the nineteenth of April.1
All through the message was the sense of a great
State rousing herself for a great task. This business
of war was no longer a temporary matter, a series of
emergencies ; to carry it through to the bitter end
patriotic devotion must be aided by organization
and cooperation on the most comprehensive scale.
1 The sum of $7000 was later voted for this purpose by the legis
lature of Maryland.

END OP VOLUME I.

due Bitaerji&e $te.*ji
EUctrotyped and printed by H. O. Houghton &• Co.
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